Power and Security in Northeast Asia: Shifting Strategies 9781626374751

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Power and Security in Northeast Asia

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Power and Security in Northeast Asia Shifting Strategies

edited by

Byung-Kook Kim Anthony Jones

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

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Published in the United States of America in 2007 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2007 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Power and security in Northeast Asia : shifting strategies / Byung-Kook Kim and Anthony Jones, editors. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58826-506-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. East Asia—Foreign relations. 2. East Asia—Politics and government. 3. East Asia—Foreign relations—United States. 4. United States—Foreign relations—East Asia. I. Kim, Byung-Kook. II. Jones, Anthony, 1940– III. Title. DS518.1.P68 2007 327.5—dc22 2007007797 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5

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Contents

Acknowledgments

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Introduction: The Question of Power and Order in Northeast Asia Byung-Kook Kim and Anthony Jones

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The United States in Northeast Asia: Inescapable Hegemon

US Influence in a Changing Asia Stephan Haggard

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US Strategies in Northeast Asia: A Revisionist Hegemon Jonathan D. Pollack

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Part 2

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Northeast Asia’s Major Powers: Accommodating the United States

China’s Hedged Acquiescence: Coping with US Hegemony Minxin Pei Japan’s Activism Lite: Bandwagoning the United States Yoshinobu Yamamoto

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Russia’s China Card: Eyes on Washington Alexander Lukin

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Northeast Asia’s Middle Powers: Demanding More, Taking Risks

North and South Korea: Unlikely Challenger, Unlikely Mediator Byung-Kook Kim

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Taiwan’s Politics of Identity: Navigating Between China and the United States Yun-han Chu

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Part 4

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Conclusion

Interests, Identity, and Power in Northeast Asian Security Byung-Kook Kim

List of Acronyms Bibliography The Contributors Index About the Book

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his book began with a conference on “Peace, Development, and Regionalization in East Asia” cosponsored by the East Asia Institute in Seoul and the Gorbachev Foundation of North America in Boston. Since then, the project has evolved and gone through substantial revisions and additions. We would like to thank the sponsors of the conference for their support of the project; the chairman of the East Asia Institute, Lee Hong-Koo, and the chairman of the Gorbachev Foundation of North America, George J. Matthews, for their personal interest and inspiration; and the scholars and practitioners who have enriched the project with their comments and suggestions. We also very much appreciate Kim Ha-jeong and Park So-yeong at the East Asia Institute, who assisted us with preparations for the conference and the book. —Byung-Kook Kim and Anthony Jones

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1 Introduction: The Question of Power and Order in Northeast Asia Byung-Kook Kim and Anthony Jones

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iewed through lenses of political science theories, Northeast Asia appears to be headed for radical change. To enliven realists, its power structure is shifting under the impact of sustained and uneven economic growth.1 Among its major regional powers, Beijing is on the rise, while Moscow and Tokyo are on the decline. The balance of forces has also tilted irreversibly within each of Northeast Asia’s two divided nations—away from Taipei in cross–Taiwan Strait relations and toward Seoul in the inter-Korea rivalry. Then there is Northeast Asia’s equally extraordinary deepening of regional and global economic integration, which makes liberals speak of a different kind of change. Driven by market forces without a web of regionwide multilateral institutions to place state authority and resources behind a collective program of economic liberalization,2 its integration is regionalization without regionalism.3 Northeast Asia’s fiercely mercantilistic export economies have been driven into a common economic destiny, by accelerating a regional division of labor both among and within firms. As a result of these “cross-border production networks,”4 coupled with tides of financial globalization,5 liberals must underscore complex interdependence, not power transition. Rather than viewing Northeast Asia as locked in a zero-sum game of power politics between a hegemon and a challenger, they speak of its transformation into a Lockean community of nations with common ties. The arrival of a “third wave of democratization”6 on Northeast Asia’s shores after 1987, if not earlier, has triggered a third variant of “transitology.” With South Korea and Taiwan constructing a liberal democracy and Japan moving beyond its one-party dominant system,7 there emerged a zone of democratic peace inside Northeast Asia. The sharing of democratic norms and values makes inconceivable that these three countries would use military force against one another in resolving disputes, including territorial conflicts. Democratization has triggered the entry of new actors with new ideas into a radically expanding 1

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political society, and has damaged state control over processes of interest articulation, representation, and intermediation. As a result, public opinion has become a major driver of foreign policy, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have become contenders in agenda-setting in each of Northeast Asia’s three democracies,8 sometimes with profound repercussions on issues as fundamental as national identity. From this, there has emerged a constructivist discourse pioneering the study of myth-making and identity politics as a catalyst for change in a nation’s threat perceptions, foreign policy objectives, and behavioral styles.9 The direction of analysis is bottom-up, looking into societal value-change as a source of foreign policy shift. And, as democratization has coincided with globalization in Northeast Asia, there has been renewed interest in Peter Gourevitch’s “second image reversed,”10 which assesses how international factors affect domestic politics and economics. Northeast Asia, then, is experiencing three forces of significant change: power transition, economic interdependence, and democratization. Understanding how each of these three transformations influences its regional order is a challenging task. This volume strives for more; it analyzes their interactive and cumulative causal influences on Northeast Asia’s high politics of military security. Surprisingly, our authors show a deep consensus on major security issues: • The rise of China notwithstanding, Northeast Asia remains a zone of US primacy, given the regional and global lead of the United States in both hard power and soft power.11 • In spite of, or because of, US predominance, both the great powers and the middle powers of Northeast Asia, as well as the United States, harbor revisionist goals. Yet they pursue change peacefully, ready for renegotiation and even a postponement of their agenda when regional instability threatens national interest under Northeast Asia’s newly emerging condition of interdependence.12 The greatest source of regional instability lies not with great power ri• valry, but with North Korea and Taiwan, respectively a failing and a declining middle power, for whom Northeast Asia’s new “concert” of great powers poses a challenge against their strategy of national survival. • As America’s de facto and China’s de jure allies, respectively, Taiwan and North Korea may undermine their great power patrons’ politics of hedged accommodation, thus making alliance management rather than great power rivalry a key challenge for regional stability in Northeast Asia. • The middle powers’ politics of revisionism refuses to go away, in spite of opposition from their great power allies, because it is politically

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rooted in their crises of national identity and is conceived as a strategy of survival as separatist states. This consensus on Northeast Asian security is based on a common set of conceptual devices shared by our authors. This introductory chapter examines this shared set of conceptual devices while summing up common themes. The objective is to show where our authors stand on key theoretic issues in the field of political science while retelling their understanding of Northeast Asian regional politics in an analytically compact way. By doing so, we will show where our work is located in larger theoretic debates, as well as in Northeast Asian regional studies. The theoretic issues included for reinterpretation in light of Northeast Asian regional politics embrace a diverse range of classic analytic questions: which states are revisionist states and what makes them so, what are sources of power, whether interdependence breeds an asymmetric structure of vulnerability and leverage, how extraregional forces affect regional military security, and how much of the change in security politics is path-dependent. In taking up these theoretic issues in a case study of Northeast Asian security relations, each of our authors employs realism—in particular, its “powerstructuralist” variant—as both a positive and a negative navigator of research, because of its undeniable analytic strength and limitation. First, realism focuses on power, which remains a prime driver of change and continuity even in a rapidly emerging Lockean society of nations sharing common values, but without an overarching supranational authority. Yet, second, realism focuses too narrowly on power for the sake of logical consistency and clarity, and this focus prevents a fuller explanation of conflict and accommodation. The missing causal links, unanswered by realism, give each of our authors an opportunity to bring in constructivist approaches and domestic political theories as a supplement and even a corrective to realist insights.

Still a Century of “Pax Americana” The power-structuralist variant of realism views power transition as a moment of instability. A challenger on the rise, as argued according to this view, harbors a revisionist design on the status quo, established by and serving the extant but declining hegemon, and gets locked into a dangerous power struggle to impose a new order. In Chapter 2, Stephan Haggard refutes any such doomsday claims. Empirically, China is on the ascendance, but because this shift of power occurs from a baseline of US preponderance, Northeast Asia is far from being in transition to a bipolar world. The United States still has an overwhelming margin of superiority in both hard and soft power, and is even capable of setting China’s terms of entry into global markets through its leadership in multilateral economic regimes, as well as through its bilateral leverages drawn from uneven

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and asymmetrical interdependence. Also, any realist claim of great power collision is wrongly based on its direct inference of intention from capabilities. The causal link between power capabilities and political intention is anything but direct. Fearful of its Leninist party-state’s loss of political control under an external shock, and aware of its economy’s reliance on global markets for growth, China tames its revisionist ambition and seeks “peaceful ascendance,” with a neutral, if not friendly, United States at its side. As variables affecting national preferences and interests as much as power capabilities, Haggard offers political regime, domestic politics, and strategic interaction. The other authors of this volume agree on Haggard’s theoretic and empirical points. Jonathan Pollack, in Chapter 3, speaks of the United States as an “unrivaled hegemonic power” in global and regional security that is further strengthening its lead through a technological and organizational transformation of its armed forces and through a dramatic upgrading of its Japanese security ally into a “normal state” that is less shy in projecting its power in international arenas. Analyzing the distribution of nonmilitary resources hardly gives a different picture. Minxin Pei, in Chapter 4, sees even economic interdependence as working against China as it proceeded asymmetrically, becoming a source of leverage for the United States and a cause of restraint for China in foreign policy disputes. The geopolitical distance of the United States from Northeast Asia is also a source rather than an obstacle of power, as China’s neighbors actively seek out the United States to play the role of a stabilizer or a balancer against Chinese ambitions. Then there are the global alliances of the United States, including its bilateral security pacts with Japan and South Korea, which constitute a singularly unique structure of dominance based on asymmetric reciprocity and interdependence. The extensive nexus of linkages, encompassing all areas of political and economic life, has encouraged Japan and South Korea to control conflict with their US ally, lest their entire system of prosperity and security become threatened. With the distribution of hard power and soft power remaining lopsided in favor of the United States, each of our authors is skeptical of any alarmists who warn of a great power struggle escalating into a military crisis. As seen by Pei, China has pursued a strategy of “conflict avoidance” and even “hedged acquiescence,” because it is aware of its strategic vulnerabilities as well as benefits of living under US hegemony. Alexander Lukin, too, in Chapter 6, sees Russia as taking US primacy as an enduring geopolitical reality. The ad hoc balancing act that Russia adopts between the United States and China constitutes more an act of courting US support than a policy to construct a coalition for a multipolar regional order. By leaning toward China, Russia secures a strategic leverage with which to win political concession from the United States. Then there is Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who in Chapter 5 speaks of Japan’s new “activism lite” in military security realms as an effort to prevent the US war on terror from justifying any degrading of its place within the overall foreign policy priorities of the

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United States. The events of September 11, 2001, have strengthened a revolutionary change in the grand strategy of the United States, under way since its Gulf War of 1991, triggering Japan to transform its military doctrine and force structures along a similar line, lest it lose its strategic value. The goal is to make Japanese military troops fully interoperable with US armed forces, sharing similar threat perceptions, backing up each other with complementary capabilities, and operating under one grand strategy as part of a “joint force.” Power speaks even more clearly in case of Northeast Asia’s middle powers. As Byung-Kook Kim reports in Chapter 7, South Korea seeks greater autonomy in foreign policy under three changes: strongly enhanced power capabilities brought by its four decades of hypergrowth; an emergence of postwar generations, eager to flex those capabilities to forge a more equal US–South Korean security alliance; and a growing rift with George W. Bush’s United States over the North Korean nuclear and missile crisis. Fearful of becoming entrapped in a military showdown between Washington and Pyongyang, Seoul defines its role as a “mediator,” distancing itself from America in both foreign policy goals and foreign policy styles. However, after each burst of national pride and fear has followed a series of damage control, too. By dispatching military troops to Iraq, as well as accepting Bush’s unilaterally initiated relocation of the military bases of the US Forces Korea (USFK) away from the dangerously exposed front line, South Korea’s Roh Moo Hyun tried to make up for the damages caused by his show of independence on the North Korean nuclear crisis. Likewise, as analyzed by Yun-han Chu in Chapter 8, the United States continues to anchor Taiwan in its regional alliance system, but tries to do so without fueling Taiwan’s ambition for independence, the effect of which has been a worsening of the gridlock in Taiwanese foreign policy as well as domestic politics. The Taiwanese go for “creeping independence,” only to see the United States side against their policy of de jure secession. With the United States opposing both China’s takeover of Taiwan and Taiwan’s independence from China, society fractures into four major political forces, each with a distinctive vision of Taiwan’s political and economic future. The external tension, in short, is internally reproduced into a fragmentation of Taiwanese public opinion. Even North Korea, in Kim’s chapter, is portrayed as factoring into the power and security policy of the United States as the pivotal variable when formulating its strategy of national survival. After reviewing North Korea’s severely constrained options, Kim posits its survival strategy to be one of “salami slicing.” Within this strategy, the United States occupied a central place, conceived as a superpower capable of speeding both its national recovery and demise, given its hegemonic place in global military, financial, and trade regimes. All roads led to the United States. Only with its consent could North Korea get international organizations interested in supporting economic recovery programs. Securing reparation funds from Japan was no different; the

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United States decisively shaped Japan’s pace in approaching North Korea for diplomatic normalization. The threat capabilities of the United States were equally great, with its worldwide alliance system serving as a basis for organizing an interdiction of cargo ships suspected of trafficking in weapons of mass destruction. The International Atomic Energy Agency and United Nations Security Council similarly functioned as an instrument for the United States to keep alive the North Korean nuclear crisis as a global issue, justifying sanctions. The North Korean perception of the United States as its greatest threat and its greatest hope has led its leadership to play salami-slicing tactics to balance the two conflicting goals of deterrence and negotiation until it became certain of whether the United States was ready for a big deal.

A Region of Revisionist States That there is no state worthy of being called a challenger of US hegemony has not implied the lack of revisionist states in Northeast Asia. The power disparity remains immense, but each of Northeast Asia’s great and middle powers harbor a revisionist ambition. By showing the diverse kinds of Northeast Asian revisionism, each aiming to change different parts of Northeast Asia’s regional order as built between 1945 and 1954, this volume cautions against any direct inference of intention from power capabilities. The weak have frequently tackled a revisionist task lying beyond their capabilities. Moreover, depending on the reactions of their allies and foes, some of the middle powers’ revisionist acts could spill over into a major power rivalry with dire consequences. To pose an even greater critique of realism, the US hegemon has engaged in rewriting international rules, too. The status quo, periodically challenged, consists of four principles, each of which took shape during early Cold War years: Taiwan’s de facto separation from China; an armistice between the two Koreas; Japan’s peace constitution preempting its active projection of military power abroad; and America’s restraint from unilaterally exercising its national prowess, when vital interests of its foes as well as allies were at stake. The prime force threatening each of these four principles is domestic politics, conceptualized differently by each of our authors, as partisan conflicts, regime types, or ideological confrontations over national identity. In short, the chapters of this volume all take realist insights as their starting point of analysis, but also go beyond into a study of domestic politics, in order to explain the part of state preferences and intentions that realism leaves unexplained. To explain Northeast Asia’s remarkable proliferation of revisionist security politics in spite of its enduring power structure of US preponderance, and to identify domestic politics as a prime driver of this regional game of revisionism, this volume conceptualizes a dichotomous typology of revisionist politics. One

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consists of strictly strategic adaptation, with domestic political struggle focused on how to deter security threat and project military power abroad in the aftermath of the Cold War. By contrast, for Northeast Asia’s divided nations born out of a Cold War conflict, strategic rethinking could not remain only a strategic issue, especially when they entered into regime transition, like the democratizing states of South Korea and Taiwan, or suffered regime decay, like the Stalinist state of North Korea. Sooner or later, their politics of regime change or regime decay became entangled with national identity issues. The ensuing struggle to reconstruct or preserve their extant national identity, in turn, triggered a deep rethinking on security issues, because national identity by definition entailed both “positive” and “negative” description of what norms and values they professed and opposed as a polity both internally and externally, as well as which nations were and were not their “reference group” for designing domestic politics and foreign policy.13 Discarding one’s Cold War identity as a frontline capitalist or communist nation was bound to transform its perception of where security threats resided, who were its allies and enemies, and what security strategies furthered its national interests. Thus arose a second type of revisionism: a more transformative than adaptive kind, where strategic rethinking spilled over into a critical reflection on one’s national identity and resulted in foreign policy making becoming a function of one’s self-image as a sovereign nation-state. The privileged role of domestic politics in foreign policy making after the end of the Cold War is clearly borne out in Pollack’s analysis of the US variant of revisionist strategic adaptation. Free from Cold War rivalries and enjoying a position of preponderance, the United States has engaged in a series of policy experiments in search for a new grand strategy. George H. W. Bush pursued an adaptive strategy of consolidating US gains from the end of the Cold War without a major change in policy goals and policy styles. Bill Clinton was more innovative in spirit, moving away from the threat-based Cold War strategy of the United States in hope of prioritizing economic interests and human rights in foreign policy making, building up a web of multilateral institutions for interstate collaboration, and relying on carrots rather than sticks even in its dealings with rising China and blackmailing North Korea, only to see George W. Bush make a sharp U-turn to transform the unipolar moment of the United States into a unipolar era through a radical use of force. In place of existing ideas of deterrence and containment, George W. Bush offered a hawkish doctrine of preventive war and regime change. Instead of rule-based institutions and alliances, he saw a “coalition of the willing” as furthering US interests. The unipolar power structure, in short, coincided with a zigzag in US security policy rather than a convergence of goals and strategies across its elite groups. The power structure hardly determined US preferences and intentions. In Pollack’s eyes, strategic interests were far from being obvious or clear, as evident in a series of policy swings even within each of the three post–Cold War

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US presidencies. Moreover, however earnestly they mapped out a new grand strategy, they ended up “assembling pieces of a larger puzzle” rather than pursuing a “comprehensive approach,” thus leaving many strategic issues and questions in Northeast Asia unanswered. To explain these zigzags and missing pieces in US regional security policy, Pollack concentrates on its architect’s assumptions, beliefs, and conceptions of power and influence; theoretical constructs and ideas on military security strategy; as well as threat perceptions, which have correlated with partisan conflicts. China, too, harbored its own revisionist ambition, but unlike George W. Bush’s proactive strategy of mapping out a new strategic rulebook for Northeast Asia unilaterally but peacefully along “offensive realist” ideas, China has patiently pursued an incremental developmentalist strategy of ta¯ogua¯ng ya˘ nghuì (hide one’s talents and wait for a ripe opportunity), believing it had time on its side, given its size and growth trend. Even when China warned that it would “act when action is needed” (yousuo zuòwéi) for defending vital national interests, it avoided escalating conflict with the United States, lest a premature confrontation disrupt its economic growth and, hence, destroy that “ripe opportunity” to show its talents. As seen by Kim, this strategy of peaceful ascendance reflected China’s hope of realizing a great power status on par with the United States, although it remained unclear what it would do with its national “talents” once it rose to the top. Moreover, whether and when it could rise to the top in spite of myriad political tensions and economic contradictions entailed in its modernization process remained very uncertain. That China has aspired for a superpower status commensurate with its colossal size, however, is enough to make its strategy of ta¯ogua¯ng ya˘nghuì look revisionist and maybe even threatening in the eyes of its neighbors. This strategy is named “hedged acquiescence” by Pei in this volume. In explaining its emergence, he follows Pollack’s lead in rejecting any realist claim that national interest can be directly inferred from power capabilities. The strategy of living under US hegemony, but with a vision of its own eventual superpower status, has fit well into China’s current vulnerabilities and future potential, but is far from being its only option. The country appeared to be on a collision course with the United States in a missile crisis over Taiwan in 1996 and the shooting down of a US spy plane over Hainan Island in 2001. Consequently, Pei explains China’s strategy of hedged acquiescence through domestic political change. Given China’s Leninist party-state system, marked by an extraordinary level of stability among the political elite, he conceptualizes domestic sources of foreign policy in terms of “learning.” The strategy of hedged acquiescence arose from the lessons the Chinese leadership learned from the mistakes and failures of 1996 and 2001. Japan has joined Northeast Asia’s club of revisionist states still in a third way. To alarm China and South Korea, whose postwar security thinking rested on Japan’s restraint from engaging in military operations abroad, Koizumi

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Junichiro accelerated, if not placed on a qualitatively higher plane, Japan’s post–Cold War search for a greater role in global and regional security arenas following its enactment of an international peace cooperation act in 1992. Japan has also unambiguously sided with the United States in war on terror, adopting its ally’s discourse of military transformation and alliance transformation in its 2004 review of military organization, weaponry, and force structures; expanding the global role of its armed forces in logistical support, humanitarian activities, and peacekeeping through a series of laws since 2001; as well as endorsing theater missile defense systems after North Korea’s test-firing of a Taepodong missile in 1998. This surge of interest in becoming a “normal state” capable of projecting power abroad partly affirmed realism, because it was triggered and driven by three power factors: fear of China’s inexorable rise; alarm over US dissatisfaction with Japan’s lack of military burden-sharing in international peacekeeping; and its own sense of power, growing out of economic affluence and political stability. This new Japanese revisionism, however, was “activism lite,” falling far short of its power capabilities, to quote Yamamoto. Koizumi dispatched military troops only as part of UN peacekeeping operations or US-led alliance endeavors. Their missions, moreover, were noncombatant. To explain its activism lite, Yamamoto looks to domestic politics. The collapse of Tomiichi Murayama’s Socialist Party opened a way for Japan’s ruling elite to follow their realist instinct of balancing China, accommodating the United States, and projecting power abroad. However, Japan’s pacifist fear of becoming entangled in war has remained equally strong, enabling its conservative elite to dispatch military troops only as a noncombatant member of a larger UN peacekeeping or a USled alliance operation. By contrast, Russia lacks a revisionist ambition, as realism would expect from a declining state. However, being a status quo power did not necessarily make it a force of regional stability. The opposite is Lukin’s view. With its economy still in disarray, Russia’s capabilities are far short of backing up any balancer role in global arenas, but it nonetheless has pretended to be a balancer, capable of frustrating the United States and China through weighing in against one or the other. Whereas Japan underutilizes its power capabilities, Russia overshoots, pursuing goals beyond its reach. This misfit between power and strategy has entrapped Russia in a series of inconsistent ad hoc policy adaptations, which won trust of neither the United States nor China. Viewing China only as a card to raise the specter of Sino-Russian alliance in hope of triggering the United States into a concession, Moscow has sought a “strategic partnership” with Beijing and drummed up its rhetoric of constructing a multipolar international order. Consequently, when it saw an opportunity to make a deal with the United States, it did so without consulting its Chinese strategic partner, thus inadvertently damaging its credibility before not only China but also the United

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States. Lukin identifies domestic politics as a cause of such a self-defeating strategy of balancing. Whereas Pollack conceptualizes domestic sources of US security policy in terms of partisan conflicts and ideational struggles, Pei in terms of elite learning, and Yamamoto in terms of party politics and public opinion, Lukin focuses on factionalism within Russia’s political elite. The inconsistent strategy of ad hoc adaptations rose from Vladimir Putin’s effort of balancing and accommodating his two sources of domestic power. The St. Petersburg group, consisting of liberal lawyers and economists, leaned toward the United States, perceiving its support as indispensable for Russia’s economic recovery. The KGB group criticized its rival St. Petersburg faction for giving away too many concessions for too few gains in dealings with the United States, and saw China as a “card” to check US hegemonic intentions. In the list of domestic factors responsible for foreign policy inconsistency, Lukin also includes Russia’s badly shaken military industrial complex, separatist struggles, and the Communist Party’s political comeback.

Unlikely Challengers The authors of this volume are unanimous in identifying Northeast Asia’s middle powers, not its great powers, as a source of threat to regional stability. The great powers have pursued revisionism more or less incrementally, on the belief of their political elite that great power rivalry is a dynamic game, played out over several decades, if not longer. Moreover, they have de facto incorporated one another’s vital interests into their security thinking in an effort to avoid military conflict. The United States has accepted China’s principle of “one country, two systems” to allay China’s fear of Taiwanese separatism, but it has done so without jeopardizing its own national interest in keeping Taiwan within its long chain of strategic outposts that control vital sea lanes, as well as guarding its client state’s nascent democracy. The Japanese transformation into a “normal state,” too, has proceeded as part of its US ally’s military transformation or UN peacekeeping operations, lest Japan alarm its neighbors even more with its efforts to transform into such a state. Anchoring its own revisionist security strategy on US hegemony has deterred its neighbors from overreacting with their own countermeasures of conflict escalation, because with the United States still on top of Japanese military security policy, Japan could not or would not go astray and militarize its security policy unilaterally out of the fear of US abandonment and a rising China, or out of the nationalist desire for power projection. Nor has Russia’s strategy of ad hoc adaptations undermined regional stability. Even with a strategic partnership with China, Russia could not alter US primacy. The Sino-Russian partnership, moreover, was a tactical rather than a strategic move, pushed aside when the United States signaled its intent to collaborate on Russia’s economic recovery.

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The revisionism of Northeast Asia’s middle powers has posed a far greater challenge against the status quo. Whereas the great powers accommodated one another’s vital interests while in pursuit of their incremental and peaceful security strategy of adaptive revisionism, each of the middle powers took greater risks, taking on two of Northeast Asia’s four Cold War principles of coexistence: Taiwan’s de facto, but not de jure, separation from China, and an armistice between the two Koreas. The three middle powers took greater risks because more was at stake for them compared to their great power patrons. The revisionisms of both great and middle powers were triggered by an elite appraisal of security implications of the end of Cold War conflict, but unlike Northeast Asia’s great power revisionism, whose main target was focused on external strategic relations, its middle power revisionism was domestically originated and driven. The direct spillover of domestic politics onto security policy was inevitable, because for these middle powers, the end of the Cold War set off a painful reappraisal of national identity based on being a military outpost in the Cold War conflict. This contentious issue of national identity eventually became an issue of regime identity, too, because in each of Northeast Asia’s middle powers, nation building during early Cold War years was pursued top-down by an exclusionary power bloc of either leftist or rightist orientation, under one or another great power’s patronage. Because of their distinctive paths of nation building, national identity was indistinguishable from regime identity. The image of Taiwan as an integral but separated part of China, intent on national reunification on its own terms, under Sun Yat-sen’s eclectic san min chui i (three people’s principles), even by force if necessary, constituted the regime identity of its Kuomintang (KMT) party-state. The juche sasang (independence ideology) of Kim Il Sung constituted North Korea’s raison d’être as a nation of anticolonial and anti-US struggles. Without an indigenous ideology of political legitimation, Syngman Rhee and his successors depended on South Korea’s McCarthyist red scare, born out of a tragic civil war, for justifying not only its separation from North Korea, but also their regimes’ authoritarian way of political rule. Accordingly, when the Cold War rivalry ended, Taiwan and the two Koreas found themselves caught up in a soul search, asking who they were as nations, what kind of crossstrait and North-South political relationships they should respectively have, and which political ideals and values their regimes should embrace internally and externally. The impact that the end of the Cold War had on national identity and security policy, however, came differently in each of Northeast Asia’s three middle powers. The epochal change cut off Soviet aid, paralyzing North Korea, whose Stalinist command economy was already on an irreversible course of decay for more than a decade, and whose Yuil regime became isolated even from its Chinese ally after Deng Xiaoping’s days of reform. The crisis of national survival was basically a regime crisis for the North, but it followed neither Eastern Europe’s path of systemic change nor China’s partial reform strategy of con-

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structing a socialist market economy. The North Korean choice was rather a “long march of adversity,” whereby the elite reaffirmed their loyalty to juche sasang and militarized its already heavily militarized regime at the unbearably high cost for society, especially city-dwellers entrapped in a chronic shortage of food and medicine. The specter of being absorbed by its prosperous southern half, much like East Germany’s incorporation into West Germany, resulted in North Korea’s power elite rejecting any proposals for Chinese-style reform as too risky for regime survival. As Kim appraises in this volume, North Korea’s search for a new security strategy in the post–Cold War era proceeded within this reaffirmation of its Cold War national identity. The strategy of seon’gun jeongchi (military-first politics) expanded the armed forces’ share of power within the regime, lest Kim Jong Il’s capacity for political control crack. The country also designed a hedged brinkmanship strategy of salami slicing as a way to balance two competing security goals: deter hostile US military action, but also engage the United States in a dialogue for security guarantees. These two parts of its security strategy made it look a “rogue state” in the eyes of US policymakers, threatening nuclear proliferation in Northeast Asia as well as frustrating their efforts in the war on terror. The United States struck back with talks of regime transformation, further increasing military tension. The revisionist strategy of Taiwan was no less risky. Swiftly sucked into China’s orbit of economic growth after its cautious opening in 1987, Taiwan saw itself threatened with a de facto loss of economic sovereignty. Searching for ways to differentiate itself from China and, by doing so, legitimate its separate existence, Taiwan widened and deepened democratization. The development of democracy as a new raison d’être of Taiwan, however, cleared ground for the “creeping separatism” of Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian, who defined Taiwan as a sovereign nation qualitatively different from China not only in terms of fundamental political values of governance, but also in terms of ethnic roots. By re-creating and reconstructing ethnic conflict into an issue of national identity, as Chu demonstrates, Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian delegitimated their mainlander KMT foes as an alien force of occupation and acquired a mass following in society. To keep identity conflicts alive for partisan goals, as well as preempt China’s takeover of Taiwan through its own strategy of creeping economic absorption, they actively challenged China’s principle of “one country, two systems” by bidding for UN membership in 1993, by threatening tax auditing and loan recall against any violators of its “three-ban policy” to slow down Taiwan’s economic incorporation into China, and even by entertaining constitutional amendments for Taiwanese independence in 1999. Each of these raised tension in cross-strait relations, triggering the United States to make its support for China’s principle of “one country, two systems” more explicit. South Korea gave still a third variant of identity politics and foreign policy revisionism in Northeast Asia. The end of Cold War rivalry, ushered in with

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South Korea’s normalization of relations with Moscow and Beijing, and completed with North Korea’s economic disintegration and social decay, transformed the South Korean threat perception. The North looked more like a failing state, in need of outside aid, than a rogue capable of waging war against its other half. The prosperous South also looked safe from its radical dissidents’ acts of sabotage. These fundamental changes of both internal and external threat perception, moreover, coincided with South Korea’s double experiment of democratization and globalization, which weakened the conservative establishment’s capacity for closely monitoring and controlling the societal groups’ interpretation of what those changes of threat implied for South Korea’s choice of internal and external political relations. The task of forging a new national identity out of its altered threat perceptions was instead seized by its young postwar generations—progressive human rights activists, student leaders, and dissidents. Under their initiative, South Korea was turned ideologically upsidedown. The Cold War ideology of anticommunism was made a synonym of authoritarianism and US imperialism. From there they reconstructed North Korea’s image as a brother in need of aid rather than a foe; criticized South Korea’s military alliance system as not only unnecessarily crippling sovereignty, but also dangerously dragging it into the US war on terror against its will; and even entertained tilting away from the United States in an effort to become a “balancer” or a “mediator” in Northeast Asian great power rivalry. Caught between these revisionist domestic pressures and South Korea’s reality of US hegemony, as Kim analyzes, Roh Moo Hyun zigzagged, but in the end yielded when George W. Bush, in pursuit of his own revisionist global strategy of domination, proposed the redeployment of USFK military troops, requested their strategic flexibility of freely flying in and out of South Korea, and asked for South Korean participation in his Iraq War and beyond, including the newly launched Proliferation Security Initiative. In contrast to these accommodations of extraregional US interests, Roh Moo Hyun challenged the US policy toward North Korea both bilaterally and multilaterally. He consistently opted for dialogue rather than confrontation, and chose carrots over sticks in preventing nuclear proliferation even when the North escalated tension by crossing red line after red line. The US–South Korean alliance—and with it, Japan’s restraint of its power projection as well as America’s international regime of nuclear nonproliferation—was put in crisis. These middle powers’ revisionism, grounded on and driven by their internal politics of national identity, had profound implications for Northeast Asian security. The issues at stake were nothing less than the national identities that provided the rationales of legitimation for state and regime. Consequently, despite their disadvantages in power capabilities, they could not help but become risk-takers in formulating a revisionist security strategy, which fit with their internal and external requirements of survival in the post–Cold War era. The overwhelming power with which their external foes weighed in to oppose their

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revisionism certainly mattered, making these middle powers zigzag in their implementation of revisionist policy goals and ideals, but the great powers’ opposition could not stop their revisionist strategy, because they thought it was drawn up in the defense of regime and state legitimacy. The three middle powers could only zigzag, but not halt reinterpreting their identity, even if such an effort boomeranged into a security crisis with one or another great power. Moreover, once national identity was made a political issue by state elites, party leaders, and NGO activists for a wide range of partisan objectives, as Chu argues and Kim agrees, identity issues acquired their own life, obstructing those elites from manipulating their own creations at will. Fearful of an open conflict with China, weary of internal polarization, as well as buoyant over China’s gradual systemic transformation into a market economy, some Taiwanese developed a dual Chinese-Taiwanese identity while others embraced an “open-minded rationalist perspective” on unification and independence, postponing their judgment until time was ripe for either route. The rise of a revisionist bloc in South Korea, too, drove many into a centrist position on North Korean and alliance issues, as well as triggered the strong political comeback of its conservatives. The ensuing domestic political deadlock frustrated their elites’ revisionist security policy, but also kept alive identity as a prime political issue, thus ironically strengthening those revisionist state elites’ hold over foreign policy.

Extraregional Sources of Change Northeast Asia constituted a “system” in Kenneth N. Waltz’s sense of the term: a unique combination of a hegemonic interstate power structure and a set of distinctive state actors with a revisionist ambition, competing and collaborating without a densely knitted network of common multilateral organizations.14 As a system, Northeast Asian regional politics diverged from that of Western Europe, where states were pooling together their sovereign power for common interests, with a teleological vision of creating a supranational form of governance on top of individual nation-states, while restraining larger memberstates from military rivalry by respecting the preponderance of the United States in security realms, as embedded in its North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Northeast Asia also differed from Latin America and Southeast Asia, which built multilateral trade blocs based on their combination of symmetric intraregional power structure, US security preponderance, shared interests, and common values. To define Northeast Asia as a system of distinctive structures and actors, however, does not imply its immunity from extraregional forces. In fact, that was impossible, because its hegemon was also a global superpower, which defined its Northeast Asia strategy as part of a larger world strategy. In fact, as judged by Pollack, global interests too often dominated

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over regional interests in US security policy before and after the trauma of September 11, 2001. The United States left many of Northeast Asia’s security issues unanswered while trying to fit the region into its global strategy. Moreover, with globalization, each of Northeast Asia’s great and middle powers found itself compelled to include extraregional events in its interest calculation and strategy formulation. Many of the episodes of conflict and accommodation analyzed in this volume, in fact, obtained added momentum, if not originated, from the US war on terror. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq diverted George W. Bush’s strategic focus from China, thus opening a way for mutual accommodation over Taiwanese independence and North Korean nuclear crisis (Pollack, Pei, and Chu). The US embrace of capability-based rather than threat-based planning in security areas, again gaining a momentum from war on terror, put into motion the ambitious US military and alliance transformation, with different security impacts for each of Northeast Asia’s major players. For Japan, it was an opportunity to cautiously but irreversibly move toward its goal of transformation into a “normal state” through “activism lite” (Yamamoto); for South Korea, an uncertain period of USFK troop reduction and base relocation, which ended its “human tripwire” role in an event of war with North Korea (Kim); and for China, encircled by its superpower foe’s “ubiquitous net” of military bases, an added reason for hedging against the danger of US betrayal while engaging the United States in collaborative projects (Pei and Kim). The most dangerous spillover effect of the war on terror, however, hit the North Korean nuclear crisis. The events of September 11 transformed what was already an intractable crisis into a perilous contest of will. The United States included North Korea in its “axis of evil” in 2002, inadvertently hurting its credibility when it tried to persuade North Korea into giving up nuclear weapons projects in return for US security guarantees (Haggard). Correctly or incorrectly deducing US intentions from its Afghan and Iraqi invasions, North Korea even more aggressively pursued its hedged brinkmanship strategy of salami slicing, while its southern half ironically became more scared of the danger of US overreaction (Kim). Whereas the United States struggled to fit Northeast Asia into its larger global strategy and cope with consequences arising from the effort to mold its regional policy after global objectives, its allies, clients, rivals, and foes in Northeast Asia experimented with their own interregional linkage strategies in the search for leverage. Putin’s formulation of a “China card” (Lukin) constituted an example of using Northeast Asia as a leverage to gain US concessions outside Northeast Asia. Even a middle power like South Korea linked extraregional issues with regional policy questions in an effort to guard vital national interests. To dissuade the United States from opting for a military solution on North Korea, Roh Moo Hyun accommodated most US requests for troop redeployment, alliance transformation, and military troop dispatch to Iraq, while

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adamantly opposing any unilateral or allied military response against North Korea’s nuclear development. He certainly avoided discussing the proposal by the United States of strategic flexibility for its military troops deployed in South Korea, because of his fear of Chinese enmity. Nor did he hesitate in dispatching a smaller number of troops (3,000 noncombatant military engineers and medics) to Iraq than the United States had requested, in order to assure society of his intention not to get dragged into war. Nevertheless, he did accommodate most of George W. Bush’s initiatives in hope of creating leverage over US policy toward North Korea. Roh Moo Hyun’s strategy of issue linkages, in addition to America’s goal of preventing further Chinese inroads into South Korea as well as its lack of both carrots and sticks to dissuade North Korea from nuclear weapons development, must have factored into Bush’s choice to challenge Kim Jong Il with bellicose talks, but at the same time restrain from military action (Kim). Extraregional factors were equally critical for other powers. Ironically, China constituted a major beneficiary of US hegemony; without it, China faced an uphill battle in securing a stable supply of Middle East oil. The country could not militarily defend sea lanes through which oil tankers reached its shores. Nor could China intervene in its Middle East suppliers’ domestic politics to weed out Islamic fundamentalists in order to keep up oil production. In lieu of hegemonic capabilities, China chose to “free-ride,” which Pei describes as one of the rationales for hedged acquiescence and conflict avoidance. The geographic as well as functional expansion of US-Japanese allied military missions was also driven as much by George W. Bush’s vision of military transformation as by Koizumi’s effort to bandwagon the United States to realize his project of making Japan a “normal state” (Yamamoto). The two allies used each other for their own strategic goals, or more accurately, converged in threat perceptions. Likewise, North Korea refused to give up nuclear weapons programs because it feared becoming another Afghanistan or Iraq (Kim). In an ironic twist of events, when Taiwan gained membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) together with China in 2001, Chen Shui-bian decided not to invoke its opt-out provision of precluding any existing members from the application of WTO rules upon accession. The choice further prevented Taiwan from reversing its integration into China’s orbit of economic growth, as it obligated Taiwan to lift the import ban on a wide spectrum of mainland products (Chu). The global trade regime tilted the power imbalance further against Taiwan. Then there was the impact of a global spread of free trade agreements (FTAs). Like the United States, whose application of its war on terror to the North Korean nuclear crisis could only diverge from its Afghan and Iraqi solution of preventive defense and regime change, given China’s preference for a negotiated settlement and South Korea’s opposition against US unilateralism, Northeast Asia had to uncover its own distinctive path to “regionalism.”

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Because its states were without a teleological vision of creating a supranational community out of sovereign nations, the Western European model of building a “union” was beyond its reach. The Latin American path of developing a concentric circle of multilateral trade blocs, like the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur), the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, with several strategically located states holding membership in more than one trade bloc in their capacity as gatekeepers and linkage channels, also lay outside Northeast Asia’s policy options, because of two power factors. First, the US hegemon was hostile against any idea of building a closed Northeast Asian trade bloc from which it was excluded, whether the bloc was anchored on Japan or China, or even worse, on Sino-Japanese leadership. Even China and Japan were skeptical of jointly establishing their own closed trade bloc, because they were captives of what Kim calls a dynamically and asymmetrically bipolar power structure. Because of China’s confidence in its future as Northeast Asia’s regional hegemon, yet fear of its vulnerabilities as a newly industrializing country facing an economically and technologically superior Japan, it preferred to go it alone with the mercantilist strategy of modernization. Launching an FTA with Japan could destroy its sources of autonomy, if pursued prematurely. Ironically, Japan, too, opposed any early FTA with China, for fear of inadvertently speeding up China’s ascendance as a regional hegemon. The fear of such adverse unintended consequences was obviously great for Northeast Asia’s middle powers, too. Consequently, Northeast Asia ended up with regionalism of the third kind. To catch up with other regions in the innovation of trade regimes, but without triggering a destabilizing power shift, each of the Northeast Asian states pioneered in “bilateral regionalism,” whereby a country pursued multiple bilateral FTA talks with more eager or less threatening trade partners, while using those talks to get third parties to yield trade concessions and even engage in bilateral FTA negotiation. The initial lead came from outside, with Singapore and Chile contracting a series of trade deals from their respective strategic position as gatekeepers of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Mercosur markets. But once their efforts bore fruit, South Korea, with an economy occupying a midtier role within Northeast Asia’s “flying geese” of exporters and importers, became a strong advocate of bilateral regionalism. ASEAN joined in, too, making Northeast Asia a laboratory of all “combinations and permutations of two power, three power, four power, and even two-plus-four-power or three-plus-three-power FTA talks.”15 Because all states aimed to establish free trade areas without falling under Japanese or Chinese regional hegemony, FTA talks proceeded simultaneously on multiple fronts in a very compact way. ASEAN agreed to establish FTAs with its three largest northern neighbors in

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a matter of three years, from 2009 to 2012 (Kim). The innovative adaptation of regionalism to fit within Northeast Asia’s dynamically and asymmetrically bipolar economic structure ended up strengthening the status quo.

Conclusion How do Northeast Asia’s power structure of US preponderance, its actors with a wide range of revisionist inclinations, and its extraregional set of security challenges and opportunities, add up? The authors of this volume are neither alarmists fearing Northeast Asia’s slide into a doomsday armed conflict nor born optimists with a faith in human capacity for peaceful coexistence. Their views lie somewhere between these two extremes. In fact, they find many existing dichotomous concepts inadequate in describing Northeast Asia’s reality. To explain regional politics, they mix together what look like opposite ideas: compliance and confrontation, engagement and containment, and instability and stability. To analytically capture this hybrid character, Pei inserts an adjective “hedged” in front of his conceptualization of Chinese and US strategic thinking, respectively coined as “acquiescence” and “engagement” in his chapter. In a similar spirit, Kim offers “hedged brinkmanship” as a conceptual device through which to decipher North Korea’s way of acquiring security guarantees. Unsure of whether it could get what it wanted from the United States and even China, which flagged both carrots and sticks, North Korea left its “last” option open by going “slow” on nuclear weapons development. As seen by Chu, Taiwan also fell into a gray area, where the dichotomous mind-set of “peace” versus “war” missed much of its pluralistic but dynamic domestic politics, as well as its Janus-faced cross-strait and transpacific relations. The concept of “creeping separatism” is Chu’s way of describing Taiwan’s adaptation to its dualistic security reality, which both constrained and enabled separatist actions. The strategy of creeping independence constituted Taiwan’s version of hedged brinkmanship because it left intact Taiwan’s last step of making a U-turn to the status quo or crossing over the red line of declaring independence. Yamamoto similarly uses the term “activism lite” in order to clarify Japan’s hybrid strategy of revisionism, which challenged but also respected its internal and external political status quo. More critically, this dualism of compliance and conflict, engagement and containment, and instability and stability was likely to be a durable equilibrium rather than a passing moment of transition, because each of its two prime drivers—Northeast Asia’s power structure of US preponderance, and its actors’ inculcation of revisionist ideas and values—were deeply rooted. Even with its hyper–economic growth, the US Department of Defense forecasts, China will become a “middle-sized major power” only by 2050.16 The regime crisis of North Korea, and hence its risky strategy of survival, will continue be-

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cause its crisis is generic, rooted in its Stalinist way of political rule. The risks entailed in creeping separatism notwithstanding, Taiwan will continue its testing of China’s will and America’s appetite for conflict, because its revisionism derives force from identity issues, which will not go away simply because of military security risks and dangers. The same is true of South Korea’s strategy of balancing what it seems cannot be balanced: North Korea’s demand for security guarantees and America’s policy of nonproliferation. Despite great odds and high barriers, South Korea believes it can only push its frequently frustrated strategy of mediation and balancing, not just because it is geopolitically vulnerable, but also because its northern neighbor is its other, separated half, in need of its assistance, as well as a military foe threatening its prosperity. That dual image of North Korea will remain strong because it is grounded on South Korea’s reappraisal of what kind of a nation it is in the aftermath of the Cold War. This “equilibrium” of hedged engagement, hedged acquiescence, activism lite, and hedged brinkmanship requires foremost an art of alliance management if it is to continue into the future. The greatest threats against this regional equilibrium emanate from Northeast Asia’s two middle powers: North Korea and Taiwan. Conversely, its safety valve consists of the proven capacity of China and the United States to dissuade their respective clients from irreversibly going nuclear or separatist. Relying on Beijing to make up oil and grain shortages, to deter the United States from leading hostile UN Security Council actions, to keep North Korean human rights issues out of international scrutiny, as well as to prevent an exodus of refugees and migrants, Pyongyang could only take Chinese warnings seriously. The Chinese act of shutting down some of its oil pipeline for three days in February 2003, and even threatening its abstention from a future UN Security Council vote on sanctions,17 must have persuaded North Korea into accepting three-party talks and later sixparty talks—albeit with its reservation of the right to nuclear development. Likewise, the United States prevented Lee Teng-hui’s threat of going separatist in 1999 from snowballing into a showdown, through two tracks. The hegemon assured Beijing of its “one China” policy, while coming down on Taiwan to stop constitutional amendment. The US Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 being one of its pillars of de facto independence, Taipei could not take lightly its US patron’s warning. The key to peace in Northeast Asia, then, is whether its two most powerful states can maintain their newly forged concert of great powers to deal with the revisionist challenges of their client states, each troubled with a distinctive crisis of national identity and each dangerously toying with a revision of Northeast Asia’s Cold War understanding in search of a viable strategy of national survival. North Korea and Taiwan certainly are a source of tension. However, unless their patrons’ mechanism of mutual hedging and reciprocal accommodation breaks down, neither can trigger a chain reaction capable of

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unraveling Northeast Asia’s regional security order and transforming great power rivalry into conflict. In other words, regional peace and stability are determined more by whether Taiwan’s separatist project and North Korea’s nuclear program are kept on a short leash by the United States and China than by Taiwan and North Korea’s simple possession of revisionist ambitions. Are the United States and China capable of keeping their middle power allies in line with their mutual understanding of hedged accommodation into a distant future? The authors of this volume answer with a cautious yes.

Notes 1. On the impact of uneven growth on power transition, consult Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics; Organski, World Politics; and Tammen et al., Power Transitions. 2. Pempel, “Regional Ups, Regional Downs,” pp. 62–77. 3. Doner, “Japan in East Asia,” pp. 197–233; Selden, “China, Japan, and the Regional Economy of East Asia,” pp. 275–305; Naughton, “The Emergence of the China Circle,” pp. 3–37; and Naughton, “Economic Policy Reform in the PRC and Taiwan,” pp. 81–110. 4. Borrus, Ernst, and Haggard, International Production Networks in Asia. 5. Eichengreen, Capital Flows and Crisis. 6. Huntington, The Third Wave. 7. Diamond and Kim, Consolidating Democracy in South Korea; Chu, “Taiwan’s Unique Challenges,” pp. 69–82; and Kohno, Japan’s Postwar Party Politics, pp. 135–154. 8. Katzenstein, “Same War, Different Views,” pp. 731–760; and Kim, “The U.S.–South Korean Alliance,” pp. 225–258. 9. Zehfuss, Constructivism in International Relations; Fierke and Jorgensen, Constructing International Relations; Checkel, “The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory,” pp. 324–348; Ruggie, “The Past as Prologue?” pp. 89–125; Hopf, “The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory,” pp. 171–200; and Kowert and Legro, “Norms, Identity, and Their Limits,” pp. 451–497. 10. Gourevitch, “The Second Image Reversed,” pp. 881–911. 11. Nye, Bound to Lead. 12. Nye and Keohane, Power and Interdependence. 13. On the “positive” and “negative” definitions of national identity, as well as “reference group,” consult Dittmer and Kim, “In Search of a Theory of National Identity,” pp. 29–30. 14. For Waltz’s neorealist conception of international system, see his book Theory of International Politics. 15. Kim, “Regionalization and Regionalism in East Asia,” p. 59. 16. US Department of Defense, Annual Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China (2000), p. 1. 17. Consult Bezlova, “Politics China”; and Scobell, “China and North Korea,” p. 278.

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2 US Influence in a Changing Asia Stephan Haggard

T

he end of the Cold War has given rise to a wide-ranging debate about the future of international relations in Asia Pacific. This debate has been difficult to assess in part because of the elusive quality of the outcomes being explored, such as whether the region is characterized by “stability” or “rivalry.” What exactly do we want to explain? In Northeast Asia we must be concerned in the first instance with the prospects for militarized crises and war.1 These risks are most likely to arise around two enduring conflicts: across the Taiwan Strait and on the Korean peninsula. Yet we clearly think of “stability” and “security” as encompassing something more than the mere absence of crises or war. A stable environment also implies shared beliefs and expectations. To what extent are parties fundamentally divided over the legitimacy of the political and economic status quo? What is the subjective probability on the part of different actors that conflicts might be resolved by resort to force rather than through cooperative means? A third outcome of interest is the construction of regional institutions that facilitate cooperation in an ongoing way. The presence of institutions does not preclude conflict, or even armed conflict. But in a region such as Northeast Asia, which has historically enjoyed only a thin veneer of multilateral institutions, joint efforts to build them might signal convergence in interests and expectations. Such institutions are costly to build and once developed have at least some restraining influence on their creators. I will touch on all three of these outcomes: the probability of crisis and war, the prospects for cooperation, and the prospects for institutionalized cooperation and community building. If those are the outcomes of interest, what causal factors might be germane? I focus here on three: the balance of power, and changes in it; the political effects of economic integration; and the consequences of regime type. These factors have been at the core of contending theoretical approaches to 23

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international politics, but also have strong resonance in the policy world; in this case, at least, theoretical models are not without consequence. To a surprising extent, the new debate on Asian security was initially framed by outsiders: realists schooled in European history and the Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Their central preoccupation was on how the distribution of capabilities and changes in it affected the propensity for conflict. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, realists have focused on the adverse consequences of the rise of China and the emergence of a more multipolar power structure in the region. Wars and militarized crises are relatively rare events, and power-structural models cannot be expected to make point predictions about international conflict. Nonetheless, pessimistic expectations about the risk of great power rivalry in post–Cold War Asia have largely failed to materialize. One problem with polarity and power transition approaches is a lack of clarity about what the distribution of power in the region is. Realists display a peculiar tendency to underestimate US capabilities, and as a result have overestimated the propensity of “revisionist” states such as China to challenge the status quo. On the other hand, US preponderance has given rise to its own distinct set of problems that have received inadequate attention, including the difficulty the United States faces in committing to its own restraint; this has been particularly true following the events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent emergence of a doctrine of preemption, made credible by the invasion of Iraq in early 2003. But the preoccupation with great power rivalries has proven a misleading lens for understanding the Northeast Asian security environment. The status quo has been challenged most aggressively not by a rising or established power, but by a second-tier country that has seen a marked decline in capabilities (North Korea) and a new democracy toying with independence (Taiwan). In sum, the variables emphasized by realists operate in a more benign way than their models suggest, and the sources of risk in the region lie largely outside their purview. Even were such models to be more compelling, their predictions would have to be gauged against the offsetting or compounding effects of other factors, such as deeper economic integration and domestic politics. In Asia, a combination of outward-oriented economic reforms, strong complementarities among countries, and the emergence of cross-border production networks has created an increasingly dense regional economy. There are good reasons to expect that such economic integration has a moderating effect on state behavior, and little evidence that economic cooperation will move in a discriminatory direction. This can be seen by reviewing past fears about a Japan-led “yen bloc” as well as the current preoccupation about China’s growing economic might. Yet one caveat to this benign view of regional integration is worth emphasizing. The extent of economic integration itself rests on diplomatic and eco-

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nomic policy choices. North Korea remains economically isolated and as a result the moderating effects of interdependence operate on it only indirectly: through the opportunity costs of forgoing deeper economic exchanges— including through the explicit stick of sanctions—and the prospect of closer economic integration, the proverbial carrot. Because they are typically marginal, these inducements are much less robust in influencing foreign policy behavior than the broad economic ties that have evolved around market-oriented reforms. I conclude with some reflections on the consequences of regime type for conflict and cooperation. The empirical regularity that democracies do not go to war with one another is well established, but Northeast Asia is not a community of democracies, and a number of problems that arise between regimes of very different types are very much in evidence there. Despite predictions that China would democratize, or that the North Korean regime would collapse, these do not currently seem like good bets. Even if they were, the democratization process can generate conflicts of a different sort as foreign policy is politicized; recent Taiwanese and Korean foreign policy provide examples.

Realism Goes to East Asia The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War generated a brief moment of foreign policy euphoria in the United States. Yet realists quickly advanced a set of pessimistic arguments about power politics in both Europe and Asia.2 These arguments were no doubt colored by the adverse impression left by the events of 1989, subsequently known as “Tiananmen.” Yet from a theoretical perspective, the events of Tiananmen were incidental to core realist concerns. I focus on five realist arguments: • Rising powers such as China are inevitably “revisionist” and generate conflict as a result. • Multipolar distributions of power are prone to “instability.” • For domestic political reasons, the United States and its allies will be tempted to “appease” or “bandwagon” rather than contain the challenge from China. • If the United States limits its regional role, Japan will be tempted to expand its military capabilities with adverse effects for regional stability. • These features of the region are not offset by the existence of a common security framework. In sum, since the end of the Cold War, realists have predicted a continued if not heightened risk of crisis and military conflict and a low probability of cooperation on security issues. More important, they have specified a particular

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set of causal relationships leading to these outcomes: the uncertainties surrounding the rise of new powers. I begin by exploring the logic underlying these anxieties in more detail before outlining some theoretical and empirical doubts. Sources of Anxiety Drawing implicitly or explicitly on power transition models,3 a number of realists have argued that shifts in relative capabilities inevitably result in conflict. As Aaron Friedberg puts it succinctly, “swiftly ascending powers like today’s China invariably challenge the legitimacy of treaties, territorial settlements and hierarchies of prestige and deference put in place when they were relatively weak.”4 These concerns are not simply the work of academics, nor has the US-Chinese rapprochement after 9/11 muted them. The US Department of Defense’s annual reports to Congress on Chinese military power make for revealing reading in this regard. A consistent theme of these reports is China’s long-term interest in becoming the preeminent Asian power. The first report, for example, states that China “wants to become the preeminent Asian power by generating enough ‘strength’ so that no major action will be taken by any other international actor in Asia without first considering Chinese interests.”5 Realists see intentions as powerfully affected by capabilities; rising power will inevitably be exploited for revisionist ends. For that reason, the extent and nature of the Chinese military buildup since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been a key point of contention. Of particular concern is not only the increase in Chinese capabilities but the shift in strategic doctrine from defense against a conflict with the Soviet Union to an emphasis on regional force projection.6 Nonetheless, we still need to have some sense of what the Chinese would do with these capabilities. The Taiwan problem is the most obvious example of a revisionist ambition, and one on which the interests of the United States and China most directly conflict. The 2003 Department of Defense report draws a direct link between capabilities and intentions: “the ambitious military modernization [of the People’s Republic of China] casts a cloud over its declared preference for resolving differences with Taiwan through peaceful means [and] may reflect an increasing willingness to consider the use of force to achieve unification. . . . We estimate that Beijing’s objectives in any Taiwanrelated crises would be (1) to compel Taiwan authorities to enter into negotiations on Beijing’s terms and (2) to undertake military operations as required with enough speed to preclude third-party intervention.”7 But for the China hawks, the political advantages of rising power are by no means limited to the Taiwan issue. China might also use its increasing military weight in the region to pressure its neighbors to “bandwagon” on a number of other issues as well. The precise meaning of “bandwagoning” has been the subject of some definitional debate, from the higher hurdle of changing alliance

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commitments in favor of rising powers, to the much looser expectation that such powers would be accommodated. As Randall Schweller has argued, it is difficult to disentangle some “bandwagoning” behavior from self-interested actions that are completely unrelated to threat or even conflicts of interest.8 Is ASEAN interest in expanding its economic ties with China a form of “bandwagoning”? Ever since the early critique of British appeasement, however, virtually any accommodation to a rising power is seen by realists as potentially fraught with risk, since it can further exacerbate the initial power imbalance, open the door to future exploitation, and involve compromises of interest or principle. Samuel Huntington provides an exemplary list of bandwagoning actions in Asia that might be associated with rising Chinese power: • Acceptance of Chinese military predominance in the region and restraint in acquiring independent deterrent capabilities or in entering “anti-Chinese” military commitments or alliances, including with the United States. • Support for China’s incorporation of Taiwan. • Acquiescence to sovereignty over the South China Sea. • Support in any political conflicts that might arise with the United States or Europe on a variety of other political issues, including trade, human rights, the environment, and proliferation. • Orientation of trade and investment policies toward Chinese interests. • Sympathetic behavior with respect to the Chinese diaspora, including respect for the rights of Chinese and, conversely, restraints on anti– People’s Republic of China movements or groups.9 Linked to these dynamic concerns about the emergence of Chinese power is a second worry about the multipolar distribution of capabilities that is emerging as a result. Multipolarity has been a recurrent theme in both Chinese and Russian strategic discourse since the end of the Cold War,10 and even been the object of a joint statement between them (the 1997 Russian-Chinese Declaration on the Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order). The rhetoric of multipolarity is more a stated desire than an objective evaluation of the balance of power; when this rhetoric was briefly in vogue, Chinese and Russian analyses of multipolarity routinely began with expressions of concern about US hegemony! Nonetheless, these overtures toward one another—manifest most concretely in arms transfers and the Shanghai Group initiative—can be interpreted as the type of balancing behavior against the US and its alliance system realists expect in a multipolar setting. The concerns with a multipolar power structure are not simply a function of the constraint it imposes on the United States. Such a system is also more complex and potentially “unstable” than the bipolar order that presumably preceded it.11 Multipolar systems are more prone to miscalculation “both on the

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part of potential aggressors, who underestimate the size, power and resolve of the coalitions that ultimately form to oppose them, and on the part of their victims, who are often slow to cooperate in confronting a shared threat.”12 Realists’ fears are not simply the result of structural changes such as the rise of China, bandwagoning by small states, or the emergence of multipolarity. They extend to how the United States might respond to these challenges; here lies a third source of anxiety. The collapse of its Soviet rival or the lure of other gains, such as a reduction in military expenditures or the benefits of trade, might incline the United States to view the Asian security scene as more benign than it is. The result would be a foreign policy that strengthened China at US expense, accommodated its ambitions, or reduced its deterrent presence.13 In short, advocates of the balance of power fear that great power balancing may not occur. A fourth and related concern centers on what might ensue were the United States to weaken its commitments to the region. According to this view, the role of the US alliances in the region is not simply to balance against adversaries, but also to control the behavior of the junior alliance partners themselves.14 This objective was quite explicit during the 1950s, when the Dwight Eisenhower administration blunted revanchist ambitions on the part of both Chiang Kai-shek and Syngman Rhee. In the current period, the fear is of a resurgent Japan. In the absence of the United States as an offshore balancer, Japan would be forced to provide for its own defense, including through the development of destabilizing “defensive” systems (such as theater missile defenses) or even nuclear weapons. Finally, it is a staple of the security literature on East Asia that the conflicts among the major powers and the existence of a network of bilateral treaty arrangements in Northeast Asia weaken the opportunities for multilateral approaches.15 The region has no deficit of proposals for security communities and dialogues of various sorts, but these are interpreted as froth that is unlikely to gel into strong institutions that would mitigate the more central security challenges in the region. I have not yet focused on the events of 9/11 and the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, because, to the extent that the forces outlined here are structural in nature, the events of 9/11 should have little effect on them. In a reflection on the effects of 9/11 on US-Chinese relations, Friedberg draws precisely that conclusion. He argues that the war on terrorism provides only a passing and relatively inconsequential foundation for rapprochement between the two countries.16 None of the long-standing points of tension were fundamentally affected by 9/11: Taiwan, proliferation, theater and national missile defense systems. Similar points could be made with respect to the Russian and even the North Korean response to 9/11. The attack provided an opportunity for both countries to send reassuring signals to the United States, but did not fundamentally affect the core security concerns of either state, as the unfolding of the Korean crisis

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of 2002–2003 showed dramatically. (Of course, what realists missed was the way in which the doctrine of preemption might have unintended effects in the region, by generating strong incentives for countries there to balance against the United States; I return to this problem in more detail below.) Theoretical and Empirical Doubts Limits on power-structural models. Power-structural approaches to Asian

security are by no means of one mind on how to characterize the distribution of capabilities in the region, and therein lies a first major problem in evaluating the theory. On the one hand are those who suggest that the region is already multipolar, presumably with China, Russia, and Japan, as well as the United States, constituting “poles.” On the other hand are approaches that focus more on the power transition that is taking place as a result of China’s rise, but from a baseline of US preponderance. Yet both of these characterizations are questionable, and some realists have admitted as much.17 Realists are surprisingly uncomfortable with the fact of US dominance, and tend to see it either as self-liquidating or constrained by regional balances that are less favorable than the overall global one.18 The conception of power employed in overall assessments of this sort is frequently misleading. For example, a common device for demonstrating the challenge from China is to make linear extrapolations from recent growth rates that defy both economic theory, particularly the logic of diminishing marginal returns, as well as historical experience.19 A full consideration of various measures of national power are beyond the scope of this chapter, but Daniel Okimoto has recently marshaled some very simple indicators that cast some doubt on the speed with which any “power transition” is likely to occur: “In 2003, the United States spent more on defense—nearly $400 billion—than the next 20 countries combined. US military expenditures exceeded by eight times the combined defense budgets of Japan, China, and South Korea.”20 US expenditure was larger in part because it was spread over a wider set of interests, but that is in part the point. In contrast to virtually all other countries, the United States spent not primarily on defense as traditionally conceived, but on alliance commitments, forward defense, and force projection. Despite the debilitating political problems the United States faces in Iraq, its capacity to project military force—evidenced in the Gulf War, in the Balkans, and again in the invasion of Iraq—constitutes a core concern for any challenger. With respect to its economy, US gross national product (GNP) is roughly equal to the combined GNP of China, Japan, and South Korea. The output of the United States is more than ten times that of Russia. The size of the US economy is the ultimate underpinning of US military capabilities, but it also gives the United States weight in international negotiations on trade and investment; I return to this issue below. Again, these indicators are admittedly

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crude. But when considered in the context of standing alliances with both Japan and Korea and the geostrategic realignments resulting from 9/11—such as the new US military presence in Central Asia—they suggest a distribution of power that is much more lopsided than a power-transition or multipolarity approach would suggest. Even the relatively alarmist Department of Defense report on Chinese power reaches the conclusion that China expects to achieve the status of a “middle-sized major power” only by 2050!21 The problems with the realist perspective are not limited to the confusion over the nature of the distribution of capabilities; they also include the theoretical and empirical limitations on power-structural approaches themselves. The 1990s witnessed a substantial reformulation of international relations theory to focus greater attention on strategic interaction and actors’ preferences.22 Despite the repeated claims for the virtues of bipolarity and the instability of multipolarity, there is surprisingly little systematic evidence that one overall distribution of power is more peaceful than another;23 repeating this claim does not make it so. Given the difficulties in testing systemic theory, empirical work has gradually shifted toward the effects of dyadic distributions of power, and whether preponderance or balance is more likely to be associated with war. The findings are not altogether conclusive.24 But the bulk of the evidence finds preponderance of power more likely to be associated with peace than a more equal distribution, for the simple reason that miscalculations of relative capabilities are much harder to make.25 Precisely for that reason, the characterization of the regional balance is highly consequential for our expectations of conflict. Yet again, the problems are not just empirical; they are theoretical. A core tenet in the revival of the power-transition approach is the centrality of actor type. Power transitions are dangerous only if rising powers are “revisionist” and if status quo powers fail to respond. We need to open the black box of the state. The importance of actors, interests, and intentions. Beginning with the

presumed status quo power, the United States, it is hard to find any compelling evidence of the strategic drift that some realists fear. A strong military presence in the region enjoys bipartisan support in the United States, even by those who take a pro-engagement stance with respect to China.26 A full analysis of why this is the case would require a detour into the politics of foreign policy in the United States, but one hypothesis is that the Democrats’ political vulnerability on security issues makes it hard to prescribe a more minimalist military strategy for Asia. Iraq, to be sure, has constituted a major diversion of effort. But the Iraq War will ultimately be wound down, and whatever its cost, both economic and diplomatic, it was not adequately catastrophic to have any influence on the structural position of the United States in the international system. A brief list of relevant strategy documents in the post–Cold War period would include the 1992 draft of the defense-planning guidelines of fiscal year

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1994, with its explicit arguments for geostrategic dominance, and a quite similar set of arguments advanced nearly a decade later in the quadrennial defense review (released in September 2001 but drafted before 9/11). These documents appeared under Republican presidents, but between them a Democratic president took the first steps toward the development of national and theater missile defense systems and strengthened the core alliance relationship in the region. The 1995 strategy report on East Asia (or Nye Report), and the broader initiative with respect to the US-Japanese alliance, are worth considering in somewhat more detail.27 Reflecting on the report in 2001, Joseph Nye pointed to a host of adverse developments that called US alliance commitments into question: a belief that alliances were obsolete relics of the Cold War, squabbling over burden-sharing, the domestic policy bias of the Democrats, and preoccupation with trade and economic issues over the security agenda. As Nye concluded in his backward glance, “in 1995, American strategy needed a heavy dose of realism.”28 And that is in fact what occurred; far from cutting its regional commitments, the United States sustained and even deepened them, much to the dismay of critics.29 The initiative culminated in the toughening of the defense guidelines in 1997, Japanese commitment to participation in joint research on theater missile defenses, and a much more forthcoming posture toward overseas troop deployment following 9/11. In 2006, leadership of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was assumed by a candidate who openly espoused a more forward defense posture. Similar evidence can be found with respect to US relations with both Korea and Taiwan. The Bill Clinton administration is associated with a more forthcoming diplomacy toward North Korea than either the George H. W. Bush or the George W. Bush administration. But it is important to recall that the framework agreement emerged in the wake of a crisis in which the Clinton administration seriously contemplated military action, and was deterred from undertaking it as much by Jimmy Carter’s visit to Pyongyang as by North Korean capabilities.30 Debate about the disposition of US forces created deep unease in South Korea in early 2003, but these debates took place in the context of a military reform designed to give the United States even greater capacity to project force;31 the debates over the fate of the alliance were certainly important at the diplomatic and political level, and weakening Korean commitment to the alliance is worth worrying about. But no one could seriously argue that these challenges reflected a diminished US military capability. With respect to the Taiwan issue, President Clinton’s willingness to restate the “three nos”32 during his trip to China in 1998 was pounced on by critics as unnecessary deference to Chinese sensibilities. But this must be weighed against the quietly forceful intervention by his administration in the cross-strait crisis in 1996 and the return to a much more forward policy on Taiwan’s defense by the administration of George W. Bush. If anything, the United States had to pull back from the strength of its commitment precisely because of the

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moral hazard problems it created with respect to the behavior of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) toward the cross-strait problem. US grand strategy after 9/11 was shaped by two perceived threats. One, terrorism, was only indirectly germane to Northeast Asia. But the second issue, proliferation, was directly relevant and constitutes the most obvious area where US strategic policy underwent a shift after 9/11. The National Security Strategy (September 2002) and the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction (December 2002) explicitly state a right to preemption, and the Proliferation Security Initiative (June 2003) calls for interdiction against states suspected of proliferation. Moreover, despite the absence of good military options on the Korean peninsula, these policy statements were not just bluster; the invasion of Iraq showed that the Bush administration was willing to act on them. These initiatives are hardly those of a power in retreat. What about the intentions of the powers that have been deemed “revisionist,” China and North Korea? There is one issue on which the People’s Republic of China openly prefers a change in the territorial status quo, and that is with respect to Taiwan. Moreover, the cross-strait conflict is one in which China’s rising power provides it opportunities to exercise influence. We must ask two questions: Does China have the capability to challenge the status quo militarily? And would it be inclined to do so given possible US responses? In short, just how revisionist is China? The answer to the first question, about capability, is at the present almost certainly no. China’s military modernization efforts have clearly been devoted to capabilities that are of political as well as military use in dealing with Taiwan. But these capabilities do not currently constitute a credible threat to the territorial status quo, in part because of continuing shortcomings in Chinese capacity to project force, in part because of the manifest willingness of Taiwan to balance China on the issue, and in part because of the willingness of the United States—revealed once again under the administration of George W. Bush—to check Taiwan’s aspirations for independence.33 The second question concerns whether China would be inclined to test the credibility of that commitment or to use its military capability as it develops. China’s approach to Taiwan encompasses a number of elements, of which military leverage is only one. The Chinese leadership is also relying on economic integration and a “united front” strategy of reaching out to businesspeople and factions in the Kuomintang (KMT), People First Party, and the DPP itself. The shift in tactics away from the overt military pressure demonstrated during the 1995–1996 crisis is arguably just that, a shift in tactics. Perhaps the United States should be as concerned with integration through economic and political “stealth” as through more overt means.34 Yet from the perspective of the risk of militarized crisis, the Chinese Communist Party appears to have concluded that a confrontational approach to resolving the cross-strait conflict was counterpro-

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ductive; as elsewhere, it is pursuing these objectives through other, less confrontational means. The reassessment of Taiwan strategy now appears to be part of a wider reevaluation of Chinese grand strategy that began in the mid-1990s.35 Concerns about China’s behavior had antagonized the states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with respect to the South China Sea, contributed to the rise of the China hawks in the United States, and stirred Japan’s fears. These developments occurred in the context not of US weakness and disengagement, but of a booming US economy, a reinvigoration of key alliance relationships with Japan and Australia, and a series of reminders of the unique capacity of the United States to project force: in the Gulf War, in the Taiwan Strait in 1995–1996, in the Balkans, and finally in Iraq. These geopolitical developments unfolded in the context of a rapidly growing Chinese dependence on the US market and on foreign direct investment more generally, an issue I take up in more detail below. The revision of Chinese strategy consisted of two elements.36 The first was the effort to reassure other countries in the region through new engagement in multilateralism and cooperation on important regional issues, such as the Asian financial crisis. Second, China reached out to form “partnerships” with the other major powers in the region. Although this began with a new initiative toward Russia, the new line is wrongly interpreted as balancing behavior, since it was followed quickly by initiatives with Japan and ultimately the United States during the second Clinton administration. Avery Goldstein argues that in 1999 in the wake of the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, “there was at least brief consideration of shifting to a new diplomatic line that would emphasize straightforward opposition to American hegemony by uniting closely with Russia and the developing world.”37 But this line was rejected and the events of 9/11 and the North Korean nuclear crisis provided further opportunities for China to demonstrate its utility to the United States. If China’s revisionism has distinct limits, North Korea’s decision to pursue a nuclear option seems an unambiguous challenge to the status quo. In the space of six months in late 2002 and early 2003, Pyongyang reneged on its commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the 1992 North-South declaration on the denuclearization of the peninsula, the 1994 framework agreement, and statements made at the 2000 North-South summit and subsequent summits with both China and Japan. In 2006, Pyongyang conducted provocative missile tests and joined the nuclear club with the test of a small device. Realists are always quick to pounce on crises to remind us of the world’s dangers. But the particular brand of realism that has been exported to Asia is not just about the existence of threats; it purports to be a particular theory of them. A fundamental presumption of the multipolarity and power-transition schools is the existence of conflicts of interest among the major powers. But

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the preferences of the main regional actors with respect to the Korean peninsula are largely congruent: none welcomes a nuclear North Korea and all prefer détente between the two Koreas to the uncertainty associated with the current impasse. It is with respect to the preferred means for dealing with the crisis that the United States is constrained by other powers in the region. But this constraint is very different than North Korea’s military ambitions receiving support from China or Russia. Second, the problems on the Korean peninsula are not those associated with a rising state that miscalculates the resolve of status quo powers, but of a declining middle power that has faced a deteriorating security setting since the end of the Cold War. Victor Cha argues that such power transitions are also prone to conflict if the declining power believes that it will have to fight at some later point on terms that are even more adverse.38 But the declining power would only run these risks if it believes that such a conflict is inevitable, which returns us to the strategic interaction with the United States and the downside of preponderance. The realist interpretation of Asia has focused overwhelmingly on how the United States should respond to changes in the capabilities of other states, and has shown a surprising disregard for how other states might respond to the use and abuse of US power. North Korean policy statements from October 2002 to the present are consistent in their repeated and increasingly urgent sense of imminent danger: that the United States would make good on its stated policy of preemption (and even use nuclear weapons in doing so). Given the explicit link drawn between Korea and Iraq by George W. Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address, the swift move toward regime change in Iraq and hints that a similar approach was being considered with respect to North Korea, and the gradual drift toward a sanctions regime, it should not be surprising that US assurances of benign intent toward the North Korean regime have been unconvincing. The North Koreans have offered a perfectly compelling explanation for their behavior: to develop a deterrent capability against the United States (in the face, it should be added, of a severely degraded conventional military capability). If the balance of power in the region remains somewhere closer to preponderance than multipolarity, the United States has its own credible commitment problem: how to assure North Korea that it will not exploit its military advantage. Again, we return to the realm not of capabilities but of strategies: how to balance a credible deterrent of North Korea with adequate assurances and inducements that will limit its risk-taking. The missile and nuclear tests of 2006 show beyond doubt that the United States has utterly failed in this regard. The promise of (weak) multilateralism. Finally, the realist dismissal of the

extent and significance of multilateralism may also be exaggerated. Periodic efforts to float a multilateral security organization for Northeast Asia—most recently by the Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun administrations—have

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been stillborn, and for realist reasons; the conflict of interests in the region is so great that it is not clear what such an organization would do. The four-party talks of 1996–1999 were never very clearly institutionalized and ultimately collapsed. The six-party talks could well evolve into a mechanism for providing security guarantees on the Korean peninsula; the agreement reached in February 2007 promised consideration of such a possibility. But as of early 2007 the six-party talks remained an ad hoc mechanism. But the repeated denigration of the “thinness” of multilateral security commitments is becoming somewhat less defensible over time. Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) difficulties, addressed in more detail below, are well documented. Nonetheless, APEC provides a venue for diplomacy on its sidelines. The ASEAN Plus Three framework has provided similar opportunities and is poised to challenge APEC as the most significant, regular regional summit. With the entry of North Korea into the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 2000, the organization now includes all of the Northeast Asian countries, and Northeast Asia has a number of its own “track-two” or informal multilateral forums, including the Northeast Asian Cooperation Dialogue and the North Pacific Working Group, the latter belonging to the Council for Security Cooperation in Asia Pacific. And as noted, a resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue could well involve the creation of new regional security institutions. Do such institutional initiatives matter, and what constitutes evidence that they do? Analysts from quite different perspectives agree that these institutions and protoinstitutions do not entail the sorts of binding commitments seen in other settings.39 The argument for their efficacy must therefore lie elsewhere: in the increasing flow of information among the parties, in the socialization of personnel to the practice of multilateral diplomacy, and in the emergence of a normative structure that is conducive to the maintenance of the status quo.40 The increasing willingness of China to participate in these initiatives marks a clear change in diplomatic practice, and signals a new willingness to cooperate in an ongoing way with other countries in the region on security issues. Chinese leadership with respect to the North Korean issue is telling in this regard, including its surprising participation in two UN Security Council resolutions that imposed sanctions on North Korea. Thus, while it is wrong to put high hopes on the future of multilateralism, it is also misguided to dismiss the extent to which institutions—in the broader sense of shared norms—may be emerging in the region. Power-Structural Approaches in Asia: A Reprise A number of presumptions of power-structural approaches to Asian security seem debatable: that the power configuration in the region is subject to a “transition” or is becoming significantly more multipolar; or that these developments would necessarily matter even were they to occur. Much more complex

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is the debate over national strategies and intentions. With respect to the United States, there appears very little support to date for the (somewhat contradictory) concern that US predominance might lead to a gradual reduction of commitments in the region. If that presumption is questionable, then fears about Japanese behavior are equally misplaced. Japan may drift toward “reluctant realism,”41 but the reason for such a strategic change does not lie with any change in US behavior, but either in a reassessment of threats from China and particularly North Korea or from more purely domestic political dynamics. Chinese and North Korean “revisionism” also appear to have limits. Multilateralism is certainly not robust in Northeast Asia. But neither is it fair to dismiss its significance altogether. In short, we owe realists a debt for their willingness to risk relatively clear expectations about the regional security environment. But it appears, with the benefit of over a decade of hindsight, that their concerns either have not materialized, or that, where conflicts have emerged, most notably on the Korean peninsula, they are not attributable to the stipulated causal logic.

The Ties That Bind: Globalization in Asia Realists live largely in a world of states, and tend to discount the effects of economic integration. The contending liberal perspective is equally clear on the positive political consequences of economic integration: • Most empirical studies find an inverse relationship between interdependence and war.42 • Beyond the propensity to crisis, interdependence moderates foreign policy behavior through the creation of interest groups with stakes in existing political-economic relationships. • Economic integration generates demand for more formalized intergovernmental cooperation and institution building, which in turn deepens the integration process through the provision of international rules, monitoring, dispute settlement, and “spillover” into other areas of cooperation. Just like the balance-of-power accounts summarized above, these expectations need to be approached with appropriate skepticism. As Albert Hirschman argued over fifty years ago, interdependence can itself be a source of leverage.43 During the 1980s, concern centered on the prospect that Japan would come to sit at the center of a hierarchically organized East Asian bloc, with adverse implications for both the United States and other countries in the region. A number of developments, including the prolonged stagnation of the Japanese economy, make these arguments seem dated now. But quite similar arguments have resurfaced around the tremendous pull exerted by the China market. Tai-

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wan provides a textbook case of a country that is highly vulnerable to the strategy of influence described by Hirschman; one can certainly imagine scenarios in which the deepening of cross-strait economic ties does act as a brake on crisis. But China’s trade and investment ties with Korea and ASEAN have also grown at an explosive pace. Growing intra-Asian integration and a new center of economic gravity in China could culminate in a regional economy and institutions from which the United States would be excluded.44 Worse still, deepened economic integration with China could provide the basis for the exercise of “soft power,” Chinese style. These concerns mirror realist arguments about bandwagoning and are equally exaggerated. The best case for a strategy of Chinese influence is across the Taiwan Strait, where the pull of the mainland is large. But the same forces that generate leverage for China with respect to Taiwan and its other neighbors also operate on China as that country increases its dependence on foreign markets for capital, technology, and key commodities such as oil and grain.45 China no doubt gains some leverage over Taiwan through closer economic integration, but is itself constrained by its ties with the global economy as well. Elsewhere, Asia is becoming more integrated with itself, but is hardly economically self-contained. Many Asian countries rely as heavily on the United States and Europe as they do on other Asian countries. At the micro level, the growing density of cross-border production networks (CPNs) makes it difficult to imagine the emergence of closed or discriminatory regional institutions. Yet one skeptical note on the benefits of economic integration deserves somewhat closer scrutiny: that the conditions of the theory of liberal peace are simply not met in Northeast Asia. In particular, North Korea is weakly integrated with the rest of the region and thus the political as well as economic benefits of deeper integration remain prospective only; the low weight that such calculations played in North Korean decisionmaking was revealed quite clearly by the costly missile and nuclear tests of 2006. The Political Economy of the Flying Goose Model The history of the regional division of labor—and its presumptive hierarchy— typically begins with Japan and the “flying goose” pattern of industrialization in the region. Japan reached the advanced country frontier in the middle of the postwar era through self-conscious policies of technological catch-up, a large domestic market, and exports targeted initially at the United States. The second tier consisted of the newly industrializing countries (NICs)—Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea—that began their turn toward export-oriented industrialization in the 1960s, moving into sectors that Japan had shed and also relying heavily on the US market. The third tier of later-industrializers included the major Southeast Asian countries of Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. These countries began to emulate the first generation of NICs in the 1970s. Malaysia and Thailand, in particular, relied heavily on insertion into the

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networks created by Japanese, US, European, Korean, Taiwanese, and other overseas Chinese multinational corporations. They too exported heavily to the United States. The fourth tier came to be occupied by China (and Southeast Asia’s late-late developers, particularly Vietnam). China was large enough that it could have “deepened” its inward-looking, dirigist strategy, but since the late 1980s the trend toward a deeper incorporation into international trade and investment networks has been unambiguous; as with its predecessors, the US market has proven pivotal to this strategy. The key political-economy questions that follow from this simple model center on the question of leadership: To what extent was this process led by Japan, and what does that really mean? Could rising Chinese economic power find reflection in a China-centered Asian economy? What are the risks that a regional economic order might emerge that would exclude the United States? The Endaka: A Japan-Led System? The 1970s and 1980s were the heyday of Japanese investment in Asia.46 The Plaza Accord of 1985 and the yen appreciation that followed in its wake induced massive outflows of Japanese foreign direct investment to the region—and to the United States—and a much more gradual opening to imports from it. Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and with some delay, the Philippines, opened themselves to these capital inflows because of the demonstration effect from the first tier of NICs, declining commodity prices in the 1980s, and new pressures for economic reform emanating from Washington and the international financial institutions. Both US and Japanese interpretations of the endaka period of the strong yen tended to emphasize the centrality of Japanese leadership to the process: • Japan was seen to be the key source of both capital and technology, including through bank lending as well as foreign direct investment. • Japan’s foreign economic policy supported the regional integration process, most notably through the “open regionalism” approach of APEC47 and aid policy.48 • Although the Japanese were not politically positioned to lead a formal regional integration effort, East Asia was moving in the direction of an informal “yen bloc.”49 • US accounts in particular followed the industrial policy literature of the 1980s in seeing US-Japanese relations in the region as prone to rivalry,50 and expressed concern that the networks constructed by Japanese firms might prove exclusive.51 There may be some justification for this interpretative lens during the heady days of apparent Japanese dominance in the late 1980s. But in perspective of

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the long decade of the 1990s, this era now appears to be an aberration driven in large part by exchange-rate movements. A closer examination of patterns of regional integration suggests that the Japan-centered interpretation of the region’s integration was an exaggeration even at the time. First, the US market played a central role in the construction of a regional economy, and did from the beginning of the postwar period. Throughout the “Japan-led” period, countries of the region remained heavily dependent on the US economy. A consideration of the growth of cross-border production networks in Asia suggests that this dependence was not limited to the openness of the US market for Asian exports, but included an active role for US firms as well.52 The beginnings of CPNs in electronics can be traced to the 1960s, when US and Japanese multinational firms established (or in some cases reestablished) their presence in a number of Asian locations. Japanese firms in particular undertook import-substituting investments in sectors such as chemicals and durable electronic goods in order to take advantage of continuing tariff protection of local markets. By contrast, outward-processing investments by US, Japanese, and, later, European firms located first in Hong Kong, spread to Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore beginning in the 1960s. Multinationals established production units or contracted-out for narrowly defined activities that were intensive in the use of low-cost labor. Simple electronic components and semiconductor packaging and testing are examples. The buying arms of large US retailers played a pivotal role in Asian exports as well. Despite the rapid growth of Japanese foreign direct investment in the region during the endaka, European, US, and other Asian firms continued to develop their own cross-border production networks in the 1970s and 1980s.53 Affiliates of US firms increasingly relied on local suppliers for specialized inputs. Agglomerations of indigenous firms emerged in the newly industrializing countries to produce components and subassemblies or to provide services to foreign firms. These firms strove to integrate forward and backward from their initial point in the production chain. As they did so, they also imported needed capital goods and machinery, supporting the growth of intraindustry trade and crossborder production networks in those complementary goods. The division of labor within Asia became even more crosscutting as these suppliers from the second tier (e.g., Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Korea) began to export to other Asian production sites, and then extended their own operations into less developed parts of Asia (e.g., Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, southern China). A striking example of this phenomenon has been the rapid move of large Korean groups into China. As the region’s technological capabilities and labor skills deepened still further in the 1980s and 1990s, some multinational corporations focused increasingly on core competencies at home, and the contemporary structure of crossborder production networks emerged. Manufacturing capabilities in Asia had become so sophisticated that the supply portion of the value-chain for some

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firms centered almost entirely in Asia. Production was no longer confined to wholly owned subsidiaries; rather, production itself was outsourced. The US firms that pursued this strategy concentrated almost entirely on product definition, development, and marketing, and reaped tremendous competitive advantages from doing so.54 Even in the wake of the collapse of the dot.com bubble, the basic strategy of modular production has survived, with leading US firms seeking to maintain position through product and standards definition, while exploiting a deep Asian supply base and rapidly growing markets, including for services. This crosscutting, highly pluralistic economic structure suggests the difficulty of thinking in terms of clear economic hierarchies. Japan never exercised exclusive control over regional trade or production networks. Countries in the region may actively seek preferential relations with China; the conclusion of an ASEAN-China free trade agreement (FTA) provides an interesting precedent. But no country has an interest in locking itself into exclusive trade and investment relationships; the complex network of regional and bilateral agreements in the region are overlapping and open. Even where these agreements and firm-level networks were Asian-led, they did not preclude continued reliance on the US market, nor trade with Europe and other growing centers of economic power, including India looking forward. The deepening of regional ties only marginally diminished the significance of the United States in the regional economy and by no means implied closure to it. Sources of Change: Japanese Stagnation, the Asian Financial Crisis, and the Rise of China Even if we accept that Japan did enjoy a period of economic leadership, that role was profoundly affected by the “long decade” of economic stagnation in the 1990s,55 the Asian financial crisis, and the rise of China. The full consequences of the long decade of the 1990s go far beyond the scope of this chapter, but they include a declining Japanese share in regional trade, foreign direct investment, and bank lending. With respect to trade, there were signs before the crisis that Japan was finally opening itself up to exports from the region, reflected in a gradual rise in the income elasticity of imports from Asia. But the long recession meant a declining overall regional trade share even prior to the Asian financial crisis. With respect to foreign direct investment, both macroeconomic and microeconomic forces were at work in reversing Japan’s regional role, including the lack of funds for investment and a continuing reluctance on the part of some Japanese firms to forgo production in the home market in favor of more extensive regional operations. The story with respect to Japanese bank lending has become controversial in the region. Despite the subsequent proposal for a multilateral Asian monetary fund and the quite generous bilateral assistance extended to the most se-

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riously affected Southeast Asian countries under the Miyazawa Initiative, Japan’s own banking problems in 1997 contributed directly to the withdrawal of bank lending and panics of that year. As Ronald McKinnon, among others, has noted, the depreciation of the yen, associated as both cause and consequence of the downturn, spelled trouble for the region.56 Because the currencies in emerging Asian markets were effectively pegged to the dollar, yen depreciation only compounded the adverse effects of Japan’s sluggish growth on its intraregional trade and investment. The second critical development was the financial crisis of 1997–1998, which had several implications for regional integration. One, already hinted at, was the limited ability of Japan to serve as an offsetting force because of its own domestic weaknesses; the United States and the international financial institutions played the leading roles, with mixed effect. But a second long-term consequence of the crisis was to deepen the economic integration process. Portfolio flows to the region turned sharply negative during the crisis, reflecting a withdrawal of lending on the part of the Japanese and European banks that were the most heavily exposed to Asia. But the crisis had a much more modest effect on flows of foreign direct investment. Sharp depreciations made distressed local assets attractive to US, European, and other Asian investors, and governments made concerted efforts to liberalize rules governing foreign investment in order to attract such flows into the corporate and financial restructuring process.57 The gradual opening to foreign investment that had taken place over decades clearly accelerated. Finally, China again. The full scope of China’s concessions in its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) are still not fully appreciated in the United States, perhaps because of the tough rhetoric and shifting goalposts that accompanied the negotiations.58 The Chinese agreed to reductions in tariffs that would go far beyond those made by other large developing countries, such as Brazil or India; a significant reduction in agricultural trade protection; and the gradual elimination of quotas and licenses and expansion of trading rights. Yet the formal elements of the agreement build on a longer-standing process of integration through cross-border production networks, including the creation of a “greater China” through the rapid relocation of production from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the mainland.59 These trends will only accelerate with China’s WTO accession, since Beijing will open critical service sectors to foreign penetration and continue to improve—if only gradually—the protection of intellectual property. A New East Asian Bloc? I have suggested that the idea of a Japan-led bloc was exaggerated even during the endaka and was certainly brought to an end by Japanese economic stagnation, the Asian financial crisis, and the rise of China. Yet similar questions about

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regional economic organization have resurfaced. Does intra-Asian economic integration provide the basis for more institutionalized cooperation? If so, what are the risks that such cooperation might take an exclusive or discriminatory direction? The question of membership has been central to this debate, since the scope of participation is likely to drive both the agenda and the negotiating process. If the membership of regional organizations includes the United States, then the organization would be subject to US efforts toward somewhat greater formalization. It would also be under pressure to discuss the range of policy issues of interest to the United States, such as market access, investment, and intellectual property rights. But the very diversity of a wider organization would simultaneously serve to offset those US objectives and push toward a lowest-common-denominator equilibrium of weaker commitments. If membership is more narrow and excludes the United States, agreement might be more readily reached, but the agenda would necessarily be narrower and could become discriminatory. The concerns just outlined about a broad organization capture well the dilemmas at the heart of the APEC liberalization process.60 Table 2.1 shows intraregional trade in three groupings: from ASEAN, the narrowest; to ASEAN Plus Three, the core countries in an “all Asia” grouping such as that advanced by Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad; to APEC, which adds the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Russia, among other countries. APEC has the largest intraregional trade share. The intraregional trade of the ASEAN Plus Three “all Asia” grouping is the most modest of the three groupings, less even than ASEAN’s and roughly comparable to that of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). These patterns suggest that the economic gains from liberalizing at the level of APEC exceed those from narrower regional groupings and are outweighed only by the gains from liberalizing at the multilateral level. Yet the political problems with APEC have been exactly as predicted. After the agreement in 1994 to negotiate a regionwide free trade area and the success

Table 2.1

Intraregional Trade in Asia, 1990–2000 (percentage shares of total exports)

ASEAN ASEAN Plus Three (Japan, China, Korea) APEC EU NAFTA

1990

1995

2000

18.0 14.0 32.5 59.9 19.2

19.8 18.0 34.0 64.0 20.9

22.5 18.0 32.4 62.7 23.7

Source: Eichengreen, “What to Do with the Chiang Mai Initiative?”

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in brokering a broader liberalization in the information technology sector, the organization underwent a steady loss of momentum and focus. The absence of clear leadership is often cited as a cause of this deterioration,61 underneath which lay domestic political changes in key states, including Australia (the return to conservative government in 1996), Japan (the problems of the 1990s and the failure to ratify commitment to the Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization Initiative), the United States (the waning interest in multilateralism in the late Clinton and Bush years and the preoccupation with security issues), and China (the far bolder initiatives undertaken as a result of WTO accession). As this transpacific effort stalled, an unprecedented wave of intra-Asian cooperation began with respect to both trade and finance.62 Japan and Korea were the first to pursue a bilateral approach, and at roughly the same time. The history of the subsequent rush of initiatives is complex and need not be recounted in detail. It involved several axes: Korea and Japan in Northeast Asia; Korea and Japan with pivotal Latin American countries; Northeast Asia— China, Korea, and Japan—with ASEAN; and in 2007, the surprising conclusion of FTA negotiations between the United States and Korea. The negotiations between Japan and Singapore and Mexico—the first in the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), the second in NAFTA—and between Korea and Chile, moved more quickly than the more complicated process between Korea and Japan, which ultimately stalled. Japan’s first bilateral FTA with Singapore was signed in January 2002, Korea’s with Chile later in the year. In the interim, however, a second axis of negotiations opened with Southeast Asia. As early as December 1998, Kim Dae Jung had advanced the idea of forming an East Asian FTA built around the ASEAN Plus Three. The ASEAN secretariat had also advanced the idea, although the economic ministers were more comfortable with dealing with each of the “Plus Three” separately. But it was not until the surprising Chinese proposal for an FTA with ASEAN that this “second front” opened in earnest. Japan and Korea were forced into a defensive posture because of the difficulty of making the necessary concessions with respect to agriculture, and by late 2002 China and ASEAN concluded framework negotiations. By far the most consequential set of developments for the countries of interest here was the surprising conclusion of FTA negotiations between the United States and Korea in 2007. If ratified and implemented, this FTA would rival NAFTA in size and unleash a new wave of initiatives involving the major parties in Northeast Asia, including initiatives between China and Korea, between Japan and Korea, and perhaps even between the United States and Japan. It is far too early to assess the implication of these initiatives for trade in the region; John Ravenhill’s skeptical conclusion is that placing weight on these initiatives is to “confuse hyperbole with reality, a proliferation of meetings with institutionalization, and proposals with binding policy frameworks.”63 We have already seen some retreat by Japan from more ambitious

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proposals that would constitute strong “WTO plus” preferential agreements to “frameworks” that permit circumvention on WTO rules with respect to liberalization of all trade. But two preliminary observations are possible, one concerning the potential for discrimination, the other the significance of such agreements for political cooperation in Northeast Asia. I have already noted how Asia’s trade remains tied to markets outside Asia and how US as well as Asian firms have constructed CPNs in the region. The political influence of the United States on the “rules of the game” in Asia remains quite strong. China’s WTO accession negotiations constitute remarkable evidence of the leverage that the United States continues to enjoy, even when exercised through a nominally multilateral venue. Neither the firms participating in CPNs nor the host countries themselves have an interest in discriminatory rules. Nor should the story of preferential trade arrangements be told solely through an Asian lens. The United States was initially slow to get into this game, but once it did, it did so with a vengeance.64 The George W. Bush administration has made the concept of “competitive liberalization” through FTAs an explicit component of US trade policy. Once President Bush secured trade negotiating authority, the United States moved quickly to negotiate with countries that showed the willingness and capacity to consider the US agenda. Singapore and Chile were first in line, but agreements were negotiated and ratified with Australia and Central America, the Korean negotiations have been completed, and discussions with ASEAN are moving forward. In these negotiations, the United States has argued for agreements that go beyond trade to include the full panoply of new issues that are of interest to US multinationals: services, investment protection, intellectual property rights, e-commerce, and digital piracy. The United States has also sought to incorporate its domestic social agenda— particularly labor rights and environmental protection—into FTAs. In 2005– 2006, the United States and Korea entered into negotiations that, if completed, would constitute the most important free trade agreement since NAFTA. What relevance do these larger developments have for Northeast Asia? The striking yet obvious point is the extent to which economic integration rests on a political foundation. Economic integration across important dyads in the region has typically followed rather than led larger diplomatic initiatives. Examples would include Korea’s rapprochement with Japan in the mid1960s; the US opening to China in the 1970s, which paved the way for SinoJapanese relations as well; and the diplomatic breakthroughs of the early 1990s that led to mutual recognition between Korea and Russia, then China. The decision on the part of Taiwan’s authorities not to fight the natural complementarities that exist across the Taiwan Strait also should be viewed as a foreign policy decision of great significance. At present, the integration of North Korea awaits the outcome of a conflict among the parties in the region on the terms of a settlement to the nuclear

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standoff. It was highly doubtful even before the missile and nuclear tests of 2006 that economic initiatives, such as those advanced in great detail by the Roh administration, would overcome the larger uncertainty created by the nuclear standoff. Following those tests, such thinking is purely utopian. But the foundations of economic integration are not just political in the international sense; they also rest on the domestic policy measures that provide the basis for investment and trade relations. This was true of the export-oriented reforms of the early 1960s in Korea and Taiwan, to the great Chinese reforms that began in the late 1970s, to the reforms of the 1990s in Russia. Given North Korea’s resource endowment, a strong argument can be made for the strategy pursued by South Korea from the early 1960s and by China and Vietnam beginning in earnest in the 1980s and 1990s respectively: exploitation of comparative advantage in labor-intensive manufacturing.65 But such reforms elsewhere in the region were successful because of foreign support in the form of multilateral and bilateral aid and private investment. Even where direct foreign investment was not crucial and where domestically owned firms led the process—as they did for the most part in Japan and South Korea—transfers of technology, design, product standards, and above all market access came through connections with producer- and buyer-led cross-border production networks. North Korea enjoys the advantage of proximity to South Korea, and the complementarities are obvious. However, the domestic political equilibrium in North Korea has clearly shifted toward the military; even if we do not know the internal processes through which recent decisions were taken, they clearly do not reflect a revealed preference for successful economic reform. This brings us, finally, to the question of domestic politics in the construction of a regional order.66

Democratization and Democracy in Asia The 1980s and 1990s were periods of optimism about the prospects for democratic change. Democratization looked like a nearly ubiquitous development, affecting southern Europe, Latin America, Asia, central Europe, and the former Soviet Union. The development of democracy was also seen to go handin-hand with a variety of other positive outcomes, including economic reform, growth, and pacifist foreign policies. So influential was this way of thinking that the promotion of democracy became a central component of US foreign policy, both during the Clinton years and, albeit through different means, during the George W. Bush administration as well. With the passage of only a short decade, a number of important reservations have crept into the literature on democratization and the democratic peace; I focus here on four that are relevant for understanding Northeast Asia:

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• The theory of the democratic peace did not foreclose the possibility of conflict between democracies and autocracies; to the contrary. • The effect of democracy on peace thus hinged on the geographic extent of the community of democratic nations. As the 1990s wore on, it became clear that the apparent global trend toward democracy had limits.67 Many countries either were not “in transition” to democracy at all, or were new democracies hobbled by a variety of weaknesses, from fragmentation and what Thomas Carrothers called “feckless pluralism,”68 to residual authoritarian controls. • Important work by Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder,69 popularized and extended by Fareed Zakaria,70 showed that democratic-peace arguments did not hold with respect to “transitional” or “illiberal” democracies. Such regimes were more war-prone than either democracies or authoritarian regimes. • Even if new democracies did not increase the risk of war, they nonetheless were likely to redefine their foreign policies in ways that could upset the status quo. The first and most important point to underscore is that the theory of democratic peace does not claim that democracies are inherently more peaceful than authoritarian regimes. This proposition has now been subjected to extensive test, and has been decisively rejected.71 Rather, democracies do not fight one another. Of course, this qualification is critical in Northeast Asia, because the region is politically heterogeneous, with two established democracies (the United States and Japan), two new democracies that appear to be moving toward consolidation (Korea and Taiwan), one new democracy that is in much more questionable shape (Russia), and two communist political systems, with one (China) decidedly more pluralistic than the other (North Korea). It is far from clear what applicability the theory of democratic peace might have in such a setting. Cold War alliance relations and a complex history of very specific rivalries also affect the propensity for conflict. For example, it was never likely that authoritarian Korea or Taiwan would fall into a war with democratic United States or Japan simply because of differences in regime type. Nonetheless, differences in regime type may exacerbate other tensions. A first source of conflict arises if protagonists to a conflict see regime change abroad as advancing their foreign policy interests, or even crucial to their security. Concerns about communist expansionism rested on just such a presumption: that the Soviet Union and China were actively seeking to expand the geographic reach of socialism. Yet these sorts of ambitions now reside with the democracies, most notably in the rise of US human rights concerns and the debate about regime change as an objective of foreign policy. If leaders believe fundamental political change to be the ultimate policy goal of their ad-

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versary, regardless of the actual foreign policy behavior of the target state, then conflict is inevitable. A second set of problems that produces risks between regimes of different sorts arises from the different levels of transparency and openness that characterize them. In particularly closed regimes, such as North Korea, outsiders have little information on decisionmaking processes. In the absence of such information it is difficult for democracies to draw conclusions about intentions. It is also difficult to gauge the level of support for any given policy, and thus hard for authoritarian regimes to send credible signals.72 What are core concerns? What is tactical bluster? Both of these problems have been visible in the interactions between the United States and North Korea since October 2002. A third, and deeper, source of tension between democratic and authoritarian regimes can be traced to fundamental differences in their underlying support bases. Etel Solingen has developed the most wide-ranging theory along these lines. She argues that “backlash” coalitions—prevalent among, although not exclusive to, authoritarian regimes—rest on political forces that are threatened by globalization, including the military, internal security forces, and associated industrial complexes. Political leaderships in such systems appeal to communal, “organic” values threatened by market forces, and use critiques of international capitalism and “Western” institutions to mobilize support. Such regimes have profound implications for the regions in which they are located. It is worth quoting Solingen at length on this point: Backlash grand strategies seek to preserve state entrepreneurship and military industrial allocations, resist external pressures for economic liberalization and intrusions on sovereignty, and target internationalizing adversaries at home and abroad. Regional insecurity and competition is a natural side-effect at best, and a dominant requirement at worst, of this grand strategy. Regional cooperation threatens backlash coalitions because it scales back military imperatives, erodes statist privileges, and devalues nationalist and confessional mythmaking as a political currency. Intransigent and uncertainty-inducing regional policies raise the propensity for conflict and the risks for foreign investors.73

Where backlash coalitions dominate, as in the Middle East, Solingen predicts “war zones.” In regions where different sorts of states confront one another, or where hybrid forms exist (as in Northeast Asia), she predicts “zones of restrained conflict.” Such environments constrain the ability of internationalists (i.e., South Korea and Japan) “to advance cooperative stances and self-binding commitments regarding military investments but preserve their incentives to de-escalate conflict that might foil their domestic and global agendas irreversibly.”74 Given that these problems associated with the heterogeneity of political regimes are all visible in Northeast Asia, the prospects for regime change in

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China and North Korea are the source of either optimism or pessimism about the region’s future. A common stylization is that the prospects for good relations between China and the United States rest on a delicate balance between China’s rising power and the pace of economic reform and political change.75 If the latter forces unfold at the “right” pace, then the risks associated with the power transition will be mitigated. If not, then China’s rising power will be guided by nationalist political actors with revisionist ambitions. Predicting China’s political future is clearly a risky business; a full review would reveal cycles of hopefulness about the prospects of political change (for example, Henry Rowen’s bold prediction that China will be democratic by 2015),76 alternating with either fears of fragmentation or resignation to the staying power of communist rule. In the immediate wake of the leadership transition of 2002, assessments tended to favor the “resilience” of communist rule.77 In North Korea, the signs of political pluralism visible in China are altogether absent and the prospects of gradual democratic change thus even more remote. Some analysts have suggested that the “collapse” of North Korea is inevitable or even imminent, but the capacity of the regime to weather a halving of its gross domestic product and the great famine of the 1990s should cast some doubt on such hopefulness.78 Yet even were regime change to occur—either gradually or suddenly—recent theory and empirical research suggest that such change may not be a source of international stability. If government institutions and bases of support are weak, elites revert to nationalist rhetoric as a means of garnering support, “but then get drawn into the belligerent foreign policies unleashed by the process.”79 One reason why nationalism emerges as a political tool in such settings is because the breakdown of authoritarian rule threatens incumbent political elites and their allies in the military, security services, and linked economic sectors—in sum, Solingen’s “backlash” coalitions. If the democratic transition is incomplete or imperfect, such elites are capable of controlling aspects of foreign policy or forcing opposing coalitions to make political concessions to them. Such backlash coalitions have not triumphed in Russia, but they are part of the political landscape. The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party has used nationalist appeals as a unifying force in the face of political and economic change. North Korea’s use of mobilizing myths is well known, and the articulation of a self-conscious “military-first” ideological line since the late 1990s has demonstrated clearly the political priorities that emerge when countries experience foreign policy threats. Even where larger risks of war are low, democratization poses challenges to the status quo through the redefinition of foreign policy interests and the politicization of diplomacy. The ways in which this might occur are as broad as politics itself, but Taiwan and Korea both provide contemporary examples. In Taiwan, the differences between the Greens (the DPP and Lee Tung-hui’s Taiwan Solidarity Union) and the Blues (the KMT, the New Party, and the

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People First Party) on foreign policy issues have converged to some degree, for example in the mutual aversion to outright absorption. Nonetheless, the parties do compete on being more protective of independence (the Greens) or more amenable to collaboration with the mainland (the Blues). Quite obviously, partisanship has affected the course of cross-strait relations and even the ability to hold talks. Similarly, the issue of the relationship with the United States and the closely related question of how to deal with North Korea were sharply contested in the 2002 election in Korea. Since that time, Roh Moo Hyun’s position has moderated under both external and internal pressures and there are core issues on which there is a relatively wide consensus in public opinion, such as the importance of some sort of North-South dialogue and a peaceful resolution to outstanding disputes. But there can be little doubt that the country’s diplomacy and alliance relations are different than they would have been under a Lee Hoi Chang presidency. Domestic politics in Korea has become a more significant component of the alliance relationship with the United States than it was when decisions were centralized under Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan. These two examples of foreign policy in newly democratic settings do not challenge democratic peace arguments. But they do serve as a reminder of the limited applicability of the theory in understanding Northeast Asia, where a coalition of democracies interact not only with authoritarian regimes, but with one another as well.

Conclusion Big theories have been invoked to understand the international politics of Northeast Asia, but theory often stumbles on its way to application, and Northeast Asia is no exception. Balance-of-power approaches to the region have highlighted shifting capabilities and multipolarity as sources of tension, but this family of approaches remains divided both on what to expect from different power configurations and even on what the balance of power in the region is. US scholars have tended to fret about declining US power and thus have underestimated the problems that might arise as a result of continuing dominance, including perceptions of threat and problems of making credible commitments. Models based on power alone must give more serious attention to actor intentions. The presumption that we can draw strong inferences from capabilities alone rests on a misguided conception of the advantages of parsimony. There are good theoretical and empirical reasons to believe that economic integration has a restraining effect on the foreign policy behavior of states. Nor do I share the fear that Asia might retreat into a closed economic bloc, or that China will become the new “lead goose” to the detriment of the United States

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or its other trading partners. But liberals have their research work cut out for them too. The link between interdependence and peace has been demonstrated using macro-level data across many conflicts, but it would be reassuring to extend these tests to the micro level. For example, is it the case that Chinese firms engaged in international trade have pacific foreign policy preferences? Is there evidence to suggest that it would matter if they did? Moreover, the economic strand of liberal theory may not provide much help in understanding the two key security risks in the region. Economic interdependence may well constrain outright military conflict,80 but it could do so through a more complex set of political economy influences that end up serving Chinese interests. Sanctions and the economic costs of closure may ultimately weigh on the North Korean leadership; prediction is risky. But it is sobering to recall that the country experienced a famine in the mid-1990s, resulting in the death of 3–5 percent of the population, that could almost certainly have been averted if the leadership had sought international help with greater alacrity. Finally, both the logic and the evidence of democratic peace seem impeccable, but the theory provides little solace with respect to Northeast Asia. The region would be a more peaceful and secure place were China and North Korea consolidated democracies, but they are not, and likely will not become such anytime soon. If they were to begin a transition of some sort, the road would almost certainly be an uncertain one with respect to their foreign policies. In the meantime, the generality of the core concepts of democratic-peace theory— democracy and autocracy—are less than useful in understanding some of the core dynamics in the region. Differences among authoritarian regimes—for example, between a gradually liberalizing China and an increasingly militarydominated North Korean system—appear more important than the similarities. And differences among democracies—for example, between the United States and South Korea—are proving far more consequential for understanding the politics of the region than the mere fact that both are democratic.

Notes My thanks to Christian Gleditsch, Iain Johnston, David Kang, Andrew MacIntyre, Barry Naughton, and Byunk-Kook Kim for their comments and assistance. 1. Defined here to include the United States, Russia, Japan, North and South Korea, and “Greater China” (the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau). 2. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future,” pp. 5–56. 3. Kugler and Lemke, “The Power Transition Research Program,” pp. 129–163. 4. Friedberg, “Will Europe’s Past Be Asia’s Future?” p. 148. For explicitly realist accounts along these lines, see Betts, “Wealth, Power, and Instability,” pp. 34–77; Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia,” pp. 5–33; Friedberg, “Will Europe’s Past Be Asia’s Future?” pp. 147–159; Mearsheimer, The

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Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 396–400; and from a somewhat different perspective, Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, pp. 218–238. For essays on China and international security, see Brown et al., The Rise of China. For examples of “China hawks,” see Bernstein and Munro, The Coming Conflict with China, for a political account; and Wortzel, The Chinese Armed Forces in the 21st Century, for a more explicitly military one. Overviews of the debate can be found in Shambaugh, “Sino-American Strategic Relations,” pp. 97–115; Shambaugh, “China’s Military Views the World,” pp. 52–79; Segal, “East Asia and the ‘Constrainment’ of China,” pp. 107–135; Goldstein, “The Diplomatic Face of China’s Grand Strategy,” pp. 835–864; Christensen, “China, the U.S.-Japan Alliance, and the Security Dilemma in East Asia”; and Johnston, “Beijing’s Security Behavior in the Asian-Pacific,” pp. 34–96. 5. US Department of Defense, Annual Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China (2000). 6. For an alarmist account of Chinese military modernization, see Wortzel, The Chinese Armed Forces in the 21st Century; and US Department of Defense, Annual Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China (2002, 2003). For a skeptical view of China’s military capacity across the Taiwan Strait, see Eland, “The China-Taiwan Military Balance.” For a recent “centrist” synthesis, see Council on Foreign Relations, Chinese Military Power. 7. US Department of Defense, Annual Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China (2003), p. 46. 8. Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit,” pp. 72–107. 9. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, pp. 230–231. 10. Johnston, “Beijing’s Security Behavior in the Asian-Pacific,” pp. 34–96; Pei, “Coping with American Hegemony”; and Lukin, “The US Influence on Russian-Chinese Relations After the End of the Cold War.” 11. I say “presumably” because, given the Sino-Soviet split and the dramatic rise of Japanese economic power, it is far from clear that bipolarity was a useful way to think about the Asian security order before the end of the Cold War. 12. Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry,” p. 9; and Betts, “Wealth, Power, and Instability,” pp. 34–77. 13. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, p. 402. 14. Samuels and Twomey, “The Eagle Eyes in the Pacific,” pp. 3–20 ; and Mastanduno, “Incomplete Hegemony,” pp. 141–170. 15. Ikenberry and Tsuchiyama, “Between Balance of Power and Community,” pp. 69–94. 16. Friedberg, “11 September and the Future of Sino-American Relations,” pp. 33–50. 17. Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,” pp. 23–33; and Layne, “Less Is More,” pp. 64–77. 18. Betts, “Wealth, Power, and Instability,” p. 41. 19. See, for example, Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, p. 398. 20. Okimoto, “KASA and JASA” (original emphasis). 21. US Department of Defense, Annual Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China (2000). 22. See Powell, In the Shadow of Power. 23. See Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman, “Empirical Support for Systemic and Dyadic Explanations of International Conflict,” pp. 1–20. 24. Powell, In the Shadow of Power, pp. 108–110, 117–118.

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25. Lemke, Regions of War and Peace; and Kugler and Lemke, “The Power Transition Research Program,” pp. 129–163. 26. See Shinn, Weaving the Net; Council on Foreign Relations, Chinese Military Power; and Pei, “Coping with American Hegemony.” 27. See Funahashi, Asia-Pacific Fusion; and Green and Cronin, The U.S.-Japan Alliance. 28. Nye, “The ‘Nye Report’ Six Years Later,” p. 95. 29. Johnson and Keehn, “The Pentagon’s Ossified Strategy,” pp. 103–113. 30. Segal, “East Asia and the ‘Constrainment’ of China,” pp. 107–135. 31. Campbell and Ward, “New Battle Stations?” pp. 95–103. 32. The “three nos” are: no support for Taiwanese independence, no support for a “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan” solution, and no support for Taiwan’s entry into international organizations that require sovereignty as a principle of membership. 33. Eland, “The China-Taiwan Military Balance”; and Council on Foreign Relations, Chinese Military Power. 34. Tucker, “If Taiwan Chooses Unification, Should the United States Care?” pp. 15–28. 35. Goldstein, “The Diplomatic Face of China’s Grand Strategy,” pp. 835–864. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., p. 853. 38. Cha and Kang, Nuclear North Korea. 39. Acharya, “Regional Institutions and Asian Security Order,” pp. 210–240; Kahler, “Legalization as Strategy,” pp. 165–188; and Alagappa, “Asian Practice of Security,” pp. 611–676. 40. See particularly Alagappa, “Asian Practice of Security,” pp. 611–676. 41. Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism. 42. Russett and Oneal, Triangulating Peace. 43. Hirschman, National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade. 44. Bergsten, “The New Asian Challenge”; and Kang, “Hierarchy and Stability in Asian International Relations,” pp. 163–190. 45. A Council on Foreign Relations study of “conditional engagement” (see Shinn, Weaving the Net) refers to the “tyranny” of China’s growing dependence on world markets. 46. For the discussion in this section, I owe a debt to MacIntyre and Naughton, “The Decline of a Japan-Led Model of East Asian Economy,” and conversations with the authors of that manuscript. 47. Yamazawa, “On Pacific Economic Integration,” pp. 1519–1529; and Funahashi, Asia-Pacific Fusion. 48. Orr, The Emergence of Japan’s Foreign Aid Power; and Arase, The Political Economy of Japanese Foreign Aid. 49. Kwan, Yen Bloc. 50. See, for example, Frankel and Kahler, Regionalism and Rivalry. 51. For examples from different perspectives, see Bernard and Ravenhill, “Beyond Product Cycles and Flying Geese,” pp. 179–210; Hatch and Yamamura, Asia in Japan’s Embrace; and Katzenstein and Shiraishi, Network Power. 52. By a “cross-border production network” I mean the inter- and intrafirm relationships through which a lead firm organizes the entire range of its business activities, including research and development, product definition and design, supply of inputs, manufacturing (or production of a service), distribution, and support services. (On the cognate concept of “commodity chains,” see Borrus, Ernst, and Haggard, International Production Networks in Asia; and Gereffi and Korzeniewicz, Commodity Chains and

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Global Capitalism.) CPNs include the entire network of cross-border relationships between a lead firm and its own affiliates and subsidiaries, but also its subcontractors, suppliers, service providers, and other firms participating in cooperative arrangements, such as standards-setting and research and development consortiums. 53. Borrus, Ernst, and Haggard, International Production Networks in Asia. 54. McKendrick, Doner, and Haggard, From Silicon Valley to Singapore. 55. For review, see Lincoln, Arthritic Japan. 56. McKinnon, “After the Crisis, the East Asian Dollar Standard Resurrected,” pp. 197–246. 57. Haggard, The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis, pp. 178–180. 58. Lardy, Integrating China into the Global Economy. 59. Naughton, The China Circle. 60. Ravenhill, “A Three Bloc World?” pp. 167–195; and Ravenhill, APEC and the Construction of Pacific Rim Regionalism. 61. Ibid. 62. I forgo a discussion of regional financial cooperation because it is somewhat less relevant to Northeast than to Southeast Asia. See Henning, East Asian Financial Cooperation; and Eichengreen, “What to Do with the Chiang Mai Initiative?” pp. 1–49. 63. Ravenhill, “A Three Bloc World?” p. 190. 64. Feinberg, “The Political Economy of United States’ Free Trade Arrangements,” pp. 1019–1040. 65. Noland, “Famine and Reform in North Korea”; and Haggard and Noland, Famine in North Korea. 66. Choi, “Most Firms Negative on North Korea Investments.” 67. Diamond, “Can the Whole World Become Democratic?” 68. Carrothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” pp. 5–21. 69. Mansfield and Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of War,” pp. 5–38; and Mansfield and Snyder, “Democratic Transitions, Institutional Strength, and War,” pp. 297–337. 70. Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” pp. 22–43. 71. For a review, see Russett and Oneal, Triangulating Peace. 72. Schultz, Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy. 73. Solingen, Regional Orders and Century’s Dawn; and Solingen, “Mapping Internationalization,” p. 524. 74. Ibid., p. 526. 75. Shinn, Weaving the Net. 76. Rowen, “The Short March,” pp. 61–70. 77. For example, Nathan, “Authoritarian Resilience,” pp. 7–19. 78. Haggard and Noland, Famine in North Korea. 79. Mansfield and Snyder, “Democratic Transitions, Institutional Strength, and War,” p. 298. 80. Although see Kastner, “Does Economic Integration Across the Taiwan Strait Make Military Conflict Less Likely?” pp. 319–346.

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3 US Strategies in Northeast Asia: A Revisionist Hegemon Jonathan D. Pollack

F

or a decade and a half, US policymakers have grappled with the end of the Cold War in East Asia and its implications for US strategic interests. Debate has focused in particular on Northeast Asia, the predominant focal point of major power rivalry in the region for more than a century. The postwar division of Europe was the dominant battleground of the Soviet-American rivalry, but the longest and costliest US wars of the past sixty years have been fought in Asia. North Korea’s invasion of South Korea transformed containment into a global strategy, triggering the explosive growth of the US defense budget after five years of post–World War II retrenchment.1 The Cold War in Asia followed a very dissimilar path compared to that in Europe, imparting a much more complex and still unresolved legacy. The largest differences were twofold: the lack of definitive outcomes to the armed conflicts on the Korean peninsula and between China and Taiwan, and the absence of integrative security institutions in Asia and the Pacific. The United States (notwithstanding mid-1950s “pactomania”) never gave serious consideration to building a collective security structure in Asia akin to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and there were no regionwide political and economic institutions paralleling the ultimate development of the European Union. These differences were less a failure of policymaking than an acknowledgment of the region’s underlying political, security, and geographic realities: the conditions (especially in the early decades of the Cold War) did not enable creation of comprehensive political or security arrangements. However, the United States was fully enmeshed in regional politics from the earliest days of the Cold War. In the waning days of June 1950, the Harry Truman administration undertook two fateful decisions. The United States decided to intervene militarily on the Korean peninsula, thereby preventing North Korea’s expectation of rapid reunification; and it interposed US naval forces in the Taiwan Strait, thereby denying the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) final 55

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victory in its struggle against the Kuomintang. These decisions resulted in a divided Korea and an unresolved Chinese civil war, and established Northeast Asia’s essential strategic geography, which persists to the present day. Beginning with the US occupation of Japan, US power and policy singularly influenced the region’s evolution. But US approaches were tailored primarily to varying national circumstances. The US military presence in Japan, Korea, and later Southeast Asia shaped the internal development of noncommunist Asia in profound ways. In subsequent decades, the expansion of Soviet air, naval, and strategic reach, Moscow’s alliances with North Korea and Vietnam, and the latent possibilities of a Sino-Japanese competition provided additional justification for the open-ended presence of US military forces in the West Pacific. However, the containment of Soviet power was never the exclusive rationale for US regional policy, especially as the presumed unity of the communist world unraveled. The collapse of the Sino-Soviet alliance, the militarization of the Sino-Soviet dispute, Sino-American rapprochement, and the US withdrawal from Vietnam differentiated US policies toward the communist world, moving the United States from a “two-and-a-half war” doctrine to a more circumscribed regional strategy. These developments also created new political and diplomatic opportunities for regional states, starting with the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations in 1972. Thus the Cold War in Asia ended in stages: beginning with the Sino-American accommodation of the early 1970s and the subsequent end of US military involvement in Vietnam, and more conclusively with the Soviet Union’s disintegration in the early 1990s. Other observers date the end from the Sino-Soviet détente of the middle to late 1980s, but the dissolution of the Soviet state made the outcome definitive. The persistence of the political-military confrontation on the Korean peninsula remained a singular exception to these changing strategic circumstances. The Soviet military role in Asia was not fully developed until the latter decades of the Cold War, directed against China and Japan as well as the United States. As the Soviet Union’s regional military capabilities grew, inhibiting Soviet egress into the Pacific became an explicit component of US defense planning.2 However, Moscow’s political influence in the region (other than its links to the smaller communist states) remained minimal. The region’s rapid economic and political development enabled the United States to extend and consolidate its influence. East Asia thus assumed intrinsic importance to the United States, independent of Soviet military capabilities and geopolitical ambitions. As economic dynamism spread from Japan to South Korea and other Pacific Rim states, the US stake in regional development grew, without meaningful opposition to the US role. Regional political and economic patterns tilted decisively in favor of the United States. US ideological and military adversaries contested the legitimacy of the US presence, but only ineffectually. As long as US allies were prepared to accept a subordinate position to

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the United States, and as long as there was no credible alternative to US-led regional development, US primacy remained largely unchallenged. The United States could therefore pursue its regional strategic interests in relatively unconstrained fashion. However, the tests for US policy in the early twenty-first century are very different. Despite the imposition of US military capabilities, the era of unquestioned US regional predominance has passed. Although nearly all Asia Pacific states seek to enhance collaboration with the United States and do not favor US exclusion from the region, Washington confronts constraints as well as opportunities in the use of its power. Regional states are pursuing political and strategic identities distinct from those first defined by the United States. US policymakers are also increasingly absorbed by crises and commitments far removed from Asia and the Pacific, diminishing US attention to the region. Pressing threats in the Islamic world and increased confidence and competence across the region portend a future in which US leadership will be less pronounced. The growth of regional defense capabilities and indigenous security norms are further diminishing East Asia’s dependence on US power and the singularity of US regional influence.3 The political-military fault lines in inter-Korean relations and across the Taiwan Strait are also undergoing significant change, although Northeast Asia’s underlying strategic geography and the latent possibilities of acute crisis persist. These developments do not make the United States irrelevant or inconsequential to the region’s future, but they suggest far less reflexive deference to US power and policy. Five principal factors have reconfigured regional politics and security, the role of American military power, and future US policy options: the end of the US-Soviet global rivalry; development, democratization, and demilitarization in formerly authoritarian regimes; the surging participation of once autarkic socialist economies (especially China) in regional trade, investment, and commodity flows; the development of regional security identities distinct from the history of the Cold War, including among some of the core regional allies of the United States; and festering military threats and potential crises that pose major risks to regional stability and security, but that cannot be fully addressed by extant policy approaches. Is there an emerging pattern to future strategic relations in Asia and the Pacific, and what institutional arrangements and military forces would be needed to support it? As the relevance of long-standing security relationships diminishes, what structures, institutions, and processes will supersede past arrangements? Will these emergent possibilities diminish the centrality of US power in the region? What if new security patterns and relationships do not forestall a major crisis or fail to prevent heightened strategic competition? How would a future crisis reconfigure the region in the longer term? These issues constitute the subtext of the region’s strategic future, and of the place of the United States within it. To address these issues, this chapter will assess

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how the United States has tried to reconcile its regional strategies with its military capabilities and budgetary resources; alternative US conceptions of Asia Pacific strategy in the post–Cold War era; the predominant policy goals of the George W. Bush administration; and the effects of US policy goals on the region’s future strategic contours.

Strategy and Resources Strategy entails the relationship between long-term policy goals and resources, and East Asia has often been at the forefront of many such deliberations. In terms of absolute and relative US resources, US power across the region peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. The United States was deeply enmeshed in three major ideological and military struggles with Asian revolutionary nationalism: against China, in Korea, and in Indochina. These multiple involvements required the open-ended commitment of US manpower and military capabilities, the building of alliance relations across the region, and creation of an extensive base infrastructure. US policymakers created three separate rings of regional actors aligned closely with US power and avowedly hostile to the extension of communist influence: in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan; in Australia and New Zealand; and in noncommunist Southeast Asia. But the logic and sustainability of US interventions in Asia were being questioned well before the denouement of US involvement in Vietnam. At the end of the 1960s, the United States sought to extricate itself from its painful intervention in Vietnam and to reassess long-term relations with China. These mutually reinforcing policy goals enabled US policy planners to weigh the possibilities and implications of a reduced US regional military presence. In fits and starts, this process has persisted ever since. Beginning with the articulation of the Guam Doctrine in the summer of 1969, the United States began to withdraw forces from Vietnam; it also abruptly withdrew the Seventh Infantry Division from the Republic of Korea in mid-1971. The SinoAmerican accommodation resulted in the curtailment of the US military presence on Taiwan, the withdrawal of all US military personnel and closure of all US military facilities on the island, and the severing of the United States– Republic of China Mutual Defense Treaty, although unofficial defense ties continued under the Taiwan Relations Act. President Jimmy Carter also pushed for the withdrawal of US ground forces from the Korean peninsula, but he subsequently reversed this policy. Three interconnected assumptions dominated US policy calculations: the United States believed that regional security threats had diminished appreciably; the United States concluded that the scale of its military deployments were not sustainable in light of pressing needs on other fronts; and the United States also believed that regional allies were capable of assuming increased responsibility for their own defense. The threat of

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Soviet long-range power deployed in the region during the latter 1960s and 1970s was a partial exception to these assumptions, culminating in the US maritime strategy of the 1980s.4 But the dissolution of the Soviet system, the stunning erosion of Russian naval capabilities during the 1990s, and larger shifts in US-Russian relations invalidated the premises of the latter strategy. In the aftermath of Soviet collapse, the George H. W. Bush administration recognized the need to reduce its forward deployments in the West Pacific, without calling the US regional presence into question. The United States sought to sustain relations with its core regional allies, while explicitly recalibrating regional commitments in light of shifting US military requirements, with particular attention to the Persian Gulf. Following extensive internal deliberations, the Department of Defense for the first time put forward a regional defense strategy, with US forces concentrated in Korea and Japan.5 Additional policy assessments spelled out the implications of this strategy for US regional force levels and military requirements, including phased US withdrawals from the Korean peninsula, although this process was interrupted by the North Korean nuclear crisis of 1993–1994.6 The value of specific alliances also shifted over time. The Philippines offers a particularly relevant example. As US-Chinese relations advanced in the latter 1980s, the strategic value of US bases in the Philippines diminished. When internal opposition to the US naval and air presence mounted sharply in the early 1990s, the Bush administration opted to withdraw US naval and air forces, lest US security policy become hostage to the vicissitudes of Filipino public opinion. In the aftermath of the withdrawals, few US officials expressed particular concern about a weakened US strategic position. (These decisions prefigured comparable debate under George W. Bush about the role of location and presence in achieving US policy objectives.) The US military presence remained intact during the Bill Clinton administration, with force levels largely unchanged throughout the 1990s.7 US policy at times assumed an inertial quality. In the absence of major budgetary pressures or competing policy commitments, the United States believed it had few incentives to alter its course, especially since additional reductions would have limited longer-term policy options. Preserving the status quo was always a tempting possibility for policymakers and for the armed services, justified largely as a hedge against uncertainty. However, as the Cold War drew to a close and major military threats receded, the United States steadily reduced the size of the armed forces, with increased scrutiny to the relationship between strategy and resources. Quadrennial defense policy reviews in 1989, 1993, 1997, and 2001 all addressed the connection between policy goals and budgetary constraints.8 US policymakers sought to justify major decisions on strategic grounds, but the correspondence between means and ends was never far removed from these decisions. An exploding federal deficit was the often-unacknowledged shaper of defense priorities. Barring

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the identification of a new major threat, US deployments in Asia and the Pacific seemed likely to diminish over time.

US Post–Cold War Strategic Alternatives Three principal approaches have dominated US Asia Pacific strategy since the end of the Cold War, with each corresponding to successive presidential administrations: adaptation, transformation, and primacy (additional strategies have been explored within each administration, but never consummated). However, as the power of regional states grew and as democratization increased, US allies proved less automatically compliant with US policy preferences. Unfettered by the overlay of the Cold War, regional elites began to explore indigenous strategic possibilities. The range of US policy choice was thus more constrained and more differentiated. These new circumstances posed two central issues: What did the United States seek to achieve in its regional strategy? And which instruments of national power were essential to fulfilling these goals? The George H. W. Bush Administration George H. W. Bush concentrated on adaptation. Mindful of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and of the increased economic strength and political resilience of US regional allies, the Bush administration saw opportunities to preserve US regional primacy, but without undertaking fundamental shifts in strategy. Existing institutions and relationships would protect US security interests, with bilateral alliances arrayed in a “hub and spoke” system to ensure the ability to project US power into the region. This approach enabled the United States to focus primary attention on its air and naval deployments, with particular attention to US maritime preponderance. Though there were regional calls from the Association for Southeast Asian Nations for a more collaborative, multilateral approach to Asia Pacific security, the Bush administration saw little reason for a fundamental policy reappraisal. The end of the Cold War had established a new status quo highly favorable to US interests, and the United States had few incentives to perturb it. However, the outlines of an alternative strategy were already discernible during the latter stages of the Bush administration, though never formally enshrined as US policy. In the aftermath of Soviet collapse and the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the United States possessed unrivaled military power, but the extant threats were no longer commensurate with such overwhelming force. US policymakers began to debate how US military predominance could be justified over the longer term.9 Some senior defense strategists sought to enshrine US military primacy as the primary foundation of the

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post–Cold War security order. On the expectation that US alliances with Germany and Japan remained viable, the goal was to ensure that no single power or coalition of states could contest US preponderance. In the view of these strategists, a future challenge to US predominance could only emanate from an autonomous power of major weight. Only two states posed such a hypothetical challenge: either an ascendant China, or a resurgent Russia. Though neither prospect was assumed at the time, continued US military predominance was expected to discourage or dissuade either state from challenging US power. Due to unease within some senior policy circles (and perhaps on the part of President Bush himself), this ambitious long-term policy was shelved. The United States instead reiterated its commitment to US leadership, on the expectation that stable major power relations and reaffirmed US alliances would uphold fundamental US interests. The Bush administration therefore placed primary emphasis on deterrence and regional stability. These were important policy rationales, not simply convenient arguments. In the aftermath of the Gulf War, US officials characterized security threats from Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the primary “force sizing constructs” in US global defense strategy.10 In addition, the administration (impelled by election-year politics and by Russian sales of advanced combat aircraft to China) approved the sale of 150 F-16 aircraft to Taiwan in September 1992, the largest single weapons transaction in the history of US-Taiwanese relations. Senior officials also reaffirmed the centrality of US regional alliances and reiterated the US commitment to a forward-deployed force of approximately 100,000 uniformed personnel. Existing US force levels became an explicit floor for US military power and the presumed guarantor of regional peace and stability. These force levels assumed the persistence of military threats, the continued US need to forestall adverse developments in regional or local power balances, and the capability to prevent a major regional crisis or to intervene decisively should one occur, with particular attention to Korea. The Bush administration posited that regional states would maintain a paramount interest in security ties with the United States. Pressures for additional policy reassessment (especially after the withdrawal of US forces from the Philippines) diminished. But the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, and the first shift in control in the US executive branch in twelve years, created new possibilities for policy reassessment. The Clinton Administration The Clinton administration’s regional strategy sought a larger transformation in US policy, primarily by reducing reliance on US military capabilities, relative to other instruments of US power. President Clinton entered office intent on reviving the economic fortunes of the United States, and on pressing regional states to accelerate internal political and economic change. In the new

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administration’s view, globalization and democratization had diminished the value of the traditional instruments of US power. US attention would focus on increased access to regional markets, enhanced political transparency across the region, and the building of multilateral institutions. The United States would be less deferential to the domestic policy preferences of regional states and more forceful in asserting its interests and values. For example, Clinton viewed China more as a human rights issue, not as a military or strategic imperative. He also perceived the growing necessity to integrate China into the global trade regime. In addition, he argued that Japan’s trade practices severely disadvantaged US firms, and pressed Tokyo to reduce the barriers to US investment and enable much fuller US access to the Japanese market. At the same time, the United States expected its regional allies to assume more of the in-country costs associated with US regional military deployments, triggering disgruntlement, resentment, and hard bargaining between the United States and various regional partners. President Clinton sought to transcend the threat-driven policies of the Cold War, with the normalization of US-Vietnamese relations among his administration’s accomplishments. However, developments in Korea and in the Taiwan Strait quickly reversed these expectations, but without the United States returning to past strategies. Confronted by the prospect of nuclear weapons development in North Korea and by renewed tensions between China and Taiwan, the administration pursued security approaches that moved beyond existing US policy. These included unprecedented negotiations with North Korea and increased efforts both to deter and to reassure China. The North Korean nuclear crisis of 1993–1994 constituted the preeminent example of this shift.11 Pyongyang’s announced withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and its subsequent unloading of spent reactor fuel in defiance of its obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency led the United States to consider the most extreme of coercive options. But the starkness of the policy choices and the fierce opposition of South Korean president Kim Young Sam to any prospective use of force convinced the Clinton administration to depart from long-standing US policy. The United States for the first time undertook sustained, high-level negotiations with North Korea, resulting in an agreed framework in October 1994 and the provision of US energy assistance to Pyongyang. These agreements did not definitively preclude nuclear weapons development in the North, but they provided Pyongyang with clear incentives to forgo additional steps in this direction. The administration had identified counterproliferation as a high priority policy goal, with a clear preference for preventive diplomacy as an alternative to escalating threats and hugely vexing decisions about the use of force. The dominant approach was incentive-based rather than threat-based: security assurances and other forms of compensation would forestall larger long-term dangers. The administration concluded that it had defined an alternative strat-

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egy that could protect US security interests while enabling the United States to move away from adversarial relations with North Korea.12 This controversial strategy was pursued for the duration of the Clinton presidency, only to be reversed under George W. Bush. Separate but equally consequential policy dilemmas emerged in US-Chinese relations.13 After more than a decade of quiescence, tensions across the strait had again mounted, with democratization on Taiwan and the growth of a distinctive Taiwanese identity the proximate source of change. President Lee Teng-hui sought to distance Taiwan from close association with the mainland and expand Taiwan’s international space, triggering very hostile Chinese responses. China reversed its demilitarization policy in the coastal provinces opposite Taiwan, evident during the 1980s, and renewed its attention to military modernization. In the spring of 1995, the Clinton administration approved a visa for a private visit by Lee to his alma mater, Cornell University, provoking very hostile reactions from Beijing. These culminated with a series of major combined armed exercises and unarmed missile tests in the Taiwan Strait during the late summer and fall of 1995 and again in the spring of 1996. The 1996 exercises triggered the deployment of two US aircraft carrier battle groups east of Taiwan, while the Clinton administration also accelerated efforts at crisis management with Beijing.14 Chinese forces did not yet pose a direct military threat to Taiwan, but the events were deeply sobering to the Clinton administration, and portended longer-term risks to regional stability. US policy toward China and Taiwan assumed a dual dimension paralleling US policies toward the two Koreas. In the aftermath of the 1995–1996 Taiwan crisis, Washington and Beijing heightened efforts to build a “constructive strategic partnership,” including renewed emphasis on military-to-military relations. The exponential growth in US-Chinese trade (culminating in permanent normal trading status for Beijing and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization) provided additional incentives to advance bilateral relations. During a state visit to China in the summer of 1998, President Clinton reiterated the “one China” policy of the United States and its commitment not to support Taiwan independence. However, China was also demonstrating enhanced military prowess, with the Taiwan contingency the primary focus of Beijing’s military modernization efforts. Even as Sino-American relations were consolidated and expanded, the Department of Defense undertook new assessments of Taiwan’s defense requirements, resulting in augmented US military assistance to Taipei. US initiatives toward Beijing and Pyongyang necessitated efforts to reassure US security partners in Tokyo and Seoul. Japan’s minimal offer of financial assistance prior to the Gulf War (though subsequently reversed under major US pressure) had undermined alliance ties well before the Clinton administration. Highly public tensions underscored the renewed debate on both sides of the Pacific concerning the strategic purposes of the alliance. These debates gathered additional momentum as the Clinton administration challenged the

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pride of place traditionally enjoyed by Tokyo in US regional strategy, even as Japan’s protracted recession deepened.15 But Tokyo saw few alternatives to reaffirming its primary relationship with the United States. Japanese strategists had long been mindful of the highly asymmetric character of Tokyo’s security ties with Washington. Constitutional restrictions on the use of military power beyond the defense of the Japanese home islands, territorial waters, and air space had kept Tokyo in a highly subordinate position throughout the Cold War. Japan’s granting of land use for US forces, US access to Japanese ports and military facilities, and extensive host-nation support had long been deemed an acceptable outcome for both countries. But tensions and frictions had grown appreciably, highlighting the potential for a serious divergence across the Pacific. By mid-decade, the drift in alliance relations was palpable, with senior US defense officials attuned to the increased risks to US interests.16 Washington and Tokyo undertook detailed strategic reviews, culminating with publication of a joint security declaration in April 1996. Though first drafted in 1995, the declaration’s release immediately following the conclusion of China’s military exercises opposite Taiwan was not coincidental. The declaration obligated both governments to revise the US-Japanese security guidelines of 1978, with the results of the guidelines review formalized in the spring of 1999. The new guidelines presaged increased security roles and responsibilities for Tokyo (though still linked closely to the United States), as well as a pledge by the United States to move away from its heavy reliance on Okinawa for US military operations. From Tokyo’s perspective, these declarations reaffirmed Japan’s centrality in US regional alliance strategies, providing Tokyo a continued alternative to enhanced strategic autonomy, dependence on ambiguous multilateral security arrangements, or longer-term acquiescence to Chinese regional predominance. In addition, the Clinton administration had pulled back from its initial intention to treat US-Japanese economic tensions as a first-tier policy issue. With Japanese anxieties further heightened by North Korean missile tests near or over Japan in 1993 and 1998 and by renewed tensions in the Taiwan Strait, the United States had returned to a more traditional concept of alliance ties, thereby protecting Washington’s strategic equities with Tokyo. There was an equally complex balancing act in US relations with South Korea. The Korean peninsula was the final Cold War frontier, with the threat of large-scale armed conflict remaining a defining issue in successive US defense-planning reviews. But the Clinton administration’s direct negotiations with North Korea (and Pyongyang’s continued efforts to marginalize the role of South Korea) were deeply vexing to President Kim Young Sam. Persistent US attempts to open doors to Pyongyang provoked deep resentment among South Korean leaders, who argued that their core interests were being ignored or bypassed for the sake of US interests and policy goals. In an effort to conciliate and reassure South Korea, the United States in April 1996 proposed four-party talks involving Washington, Tokyo, and the two Koreas. Though

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this decision somewhat reduced South Korea’s fears of marginalization, it did not develop into a major venue for deliberations over peninsular security, and Washington continued to place primary emphasis on direct negotiations with North Korea. The tensions in the US–South Korean alliance remained palpable for the duration of Kim Young Sam’s presidency. The 1998 election of Kim Dae Jung sharply curtailed bilateral tensions with the United States. Kim’s unambiguous advocacy of reconciliation with North Korea, culminating in his summit with Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang in June 2000, created a latent possibility of South-North accommodation and of longer-term geopolitical change on the peninsula. Kim Dae Jung repeatedly called for improved US–North Korean relations independent of his “sunshine policy” toward North Korea, although these policy goals clearly reinforced one another. The administration’s initiatives toward North Korea culminated in the October 2000 visits of Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok to Washington, and of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Pyongyang, the highest-level official exchanges in the history of US–North Korean relations. But US defense strategy and US military deployments on the peninsula were essentially undisturbed. The disparity between US threat-based planning and Kim Dae Jung’s vision of a nonantagonistic relationship between the two Koreas (presumably as a precursor to integration and ultimate unification) remained striking. In the waning weeks of his second term, President Clinton demurred from a visit to Pyongyang and a summit with Kim Jong Il. The president implicitly conceded that the stakes were too high to gamble on a last-minute breakthrough with the North. President Clinton also recognized that any agreements with Pyongyang would also obligate his successor, George W. Bush, thereby preempting the new administration’s opportunities to shape its own strategies toward the North. The Clinton administration would thus end with the United States still straddling highly divergent approaches to regional security. For eight years, administration officials had sought to reconcile multiple policy goals: diminishing the threat-based policies of the Cold War; consolidating the gains of globalization and democratization for US interests; reducing the risks of nuclear proliferation; reasserting the relevance of regional alliances; and securing political and economic breakthroughs with China, even as cross-strait tensions again mounted. Though the region looked very different than at the outset of the Clinton presidency, there was neither closure nor consensus on a longer-term strategy. The George W. Bush Administration George W. Bush emphasized primacy as the fundamental US strategic goal, including in Asia. The Bush administration’s core policy objectives directly challenged many of the underlying premises of the Clinton administration’s policy. While not discounting the region’s economic and political transition,

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the new administration had a very different conception of the role of US power.17 Senior officials explicitly emphasized the prospect of renewed great power rivalry and the continued potential for a major regional crisis. China (labeled a “strategic competitor” during the 2000 presidential campaign) was the immediate focus of the administration’s attention. The goal of primacy, having been set aside in internal deliberations during the final year of the George H. W. Bush presidency, was now enshrined in the administration’s major strategic pronouncements. Preventing the emergence of a rival great power or a countervailing coalition within the Asia Pacific region became an avowed US policy goal. US predominance was deemed essential to precluding any prospective future strategic challenge. The United States would contest any effort to inhibit US freedom of action, either through a denial of US military access into the region or through potential threats to the US homeland. Numerous officials in the Bush administration had an intense interest and ample experience in the Asia Pacific region, but the administration approached national security in more generic terms. From the earliest stages of his campaign for the White House, George W. Bush and his senior advisers advocated major movement away from the military capabilities and strategies developed during the Cold War, without wavering from a commitment to unquestioned US military predominance. In a September 1999 speech delivered at The Citadel, then-governor Bush provided some early indications of his defense priorities, subsequently characterized as “transformation.”18 US military power, he contended, required a comprehensive set of changes focused on the anticipated character of warfare in the twenty-first century. Administration thinking assumed that the use of force would remain at the forefront of US national security strategy. New approaches would emphasize speed, lethality, precision, stealth, information technologies, and the capability for the United States to strike adversaries at very long range. These priorities would maximize the inherent technological advantage of the United States, while simultaneously reducing the potential vulnerabilities of US forces and of US territory to ballistic missile attack, cruise missile attack, terrorism, or other presumed asymmetric options (e.g., attacks on computer networks). In addition, President Bush argued that future weapons development and acquisition strategies needed to leapfrog generations of defense technology and exploit the information edge of the United States. In the new administration’s view, the United States also needed to move beyond the nuclear deterrence doctrines of the Cold War, opting for a mix of offensive and defensive missile systems designed to deter and protect the US homeland from possible attacks by regional adversaries, with North Korea uppermost on the list. President Bush delegated responsibility to his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, for overseeing this strategy. From the outset of the administration, Rumsfeld and his closest advisers seemed less concerned about traditional threats posed by North Korea or (at the time) by Iraq. The new Department of

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Defense leadership emphasized that the United States needed to plan and prepare for a very different array of security challenges, many bearing little relationship to existing forces, deployments, and strategies. Rumsfeld posited a future laden with uncertainty and unconventional threats; strategic flexibility became the paramount policy goal. The United States had to defend against new long-range threats that the administration deemed imaginable, but for which current capabilities did not exist. These included potential attacks on the US homeland (including with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons), vulnerabilities of the United States to cyberattack and information network disruption, and even the prospect of future military operations in space that could disable US intelligence and communications assets. In the defense secretary’s view, none of these longer-term threats could be predicted with certainty, but all required greatly heightened preparations if future threats were to be prevented or defeated. Although various senior advisory panels had sought to heighten attention to some of these issues in the latter years of the Clinton administration, the Bush administration was intent on placing these concerns at the center of its longer-term modernization and investment strategies.19 The breadth of these initiatives was sweeping, and entailed a willingness to consider sharp departures in US policy, including unilateral actions to accelerate pursuit of core US policy objectives (e.g., the US withdrawal from the Anti–Ballistic Missile Treaty). Unlike the Clinton administration, Bush policymakers concluded that they needed to prepare for imagined future threats, not to forestall them through preventive diplomacy. Though not immediately evident in official policy declarations, these changes presupposed major departures in US regional military deployments. US policy in Asia therefore assumed two simultaneous challenges: the prospect of a future major power adversary, with China the most prominent candidate; and actions by weaker states designed to undermine America’s military advantage, with North Korea as the lead example. However, the events of September 11, 2001, shifted attention away from the longer-term challenge of China and toward defeating Islamic radicalism in the Greater Middle East, including the administration’s impending plans to oust Saddam Hussein from power. This shift did not make other presumptive threats (including North Korea) irrelevant, nor did it eliminate the nascent elements of a US-Chinese strategic competition. But catastrophic terrorist attacks on the United States had altered the administration’s priorities, and would preoccupy senior officials for the duration of President Bush’s first term, and beyond. Administration strategy revealed an extraordinary paradox. The United States was an unrivaled hegemonic power, but it was also a revisionist state, intent on realigning global politics and security to extend and enhance US global dominance. From the outset of the administration and especially after September 11, the Bush administration endeavored to rewrite the strategic rulebook, or (in a less charitable characterization) dispense with one altogether. The admin-

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istration argued that future terrorist threats and parallel dangers posed by “rogue states” could not be contained, deterred, or defeated by traditional diplomatic or military means. Radical departures in US strategy were thus justified, with or without the concurrence of the international community. Administration officials contended that the invasion of Iraq was sui generis and did not constitute a precedent for other US interventions. But the White House’s national security strategy emphasized US readiness to employ force whenever and wherever US vital interests were deemed at risk, with particular attention to the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.20 Although administration officials alluded far less frequently to this document after the invasion of Iraq, it remained the official framework for US national security strategy, a judgment largely reaffirmed in a second version of the report released in early 2006.21 The central issues were twofold. First, did the United States deem its national security strategy applicable and sustainable over the longer term? Second, how did potential US adversaries, other major powers, and US allies assess their strategic options in light of US dominance and declared intentions? These issues bore centrally on US policy goals in Asia, where US defense planners asserted that the US ability to intervene militarily would be most severely tested over the longer term.22 In the near to middle term, US defense strategy had shifted to far more immediate security priorities outside the Asia Pacific region. The administration also concluded that US regional allies could fulfill roles previously assumed by the United States. These developments presupposed longer-term shifts in US regional strategy, major changes in the security orientations and capabilities of key regional states, and sharply reconfigured US expectations of its regional allies and security partners. The pivotal questions were whether the policy trajectories of the United States and its regional allies would remain convergent or at least complementary, and how potential US adversaries assessed their policy options, in light of the major changes in US strategy. The administration also argued that specific US manpower levels were no longer an appropriate measure for gauging US regional security commitments. US policymakers contended that the fundamental test of US strategy was not the observable, day-to-day presence of US regional forces, but the capability to bring overwhelming force to bear in a crisis. Administration strategists assumed that regional allies would continue to attach intrinsic value to defense collaboration with the United States, and would therefore accommodate US needs and expectations. The declared willingness of the United States to employ coercive power to protect US vital interests was also expected to inhibit any challenges by potential adversaries. These suppositions constituted the fundamental tests of US security strategy in the Asia Pacific region. This reassessment remains ongoing, and will continue to shape US policy for the duration of the Bush presidency, and possibly beyond. To weigh these possibilities, analysis needs to examine the administration’s strategic directions in Asia, and what they portend over the longer term.

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Defining a New Strategy At the outset of George W. Bush’s presidency, senior US officials quickly outlined their core regional policy goals. Incoming policymakers argued that clarity and consistency in defining policy objectives would supplant the supposed laxity and idealism of the Clinton administration. Reasserting US sovereign prerogatives, rebuilding US security alliances, preparing for a nascent strategic competition with China, and transforming US regional military strategy were all deemed essential. These views reflected a power-oriented view of international politics, deeply held by the administration’s senior leadership, that bore immediate comparison to offensive realism in international relations theory.23 Multilateralism would remain a core component of US trade liberalization policy, with globalization and democratization deemed major gains for long-term US interests. But these processes were clearly subordinate to US military predominance and to enhancing the power advantage of the United States. However, US regional strategy remained a work in progress throughout President Bush’s first term. The administration’s primary focus was on a larger national security strategy, not one designed with reference to the Asia Pacific region. Unlike the two previous presidential administrations, including the Department of Defense under Dick Cheney, the administration did not issue an Asia Pacific strategy report. To be sure, the White House’s national security strategy and major defense-planning documents paid heed to the regional dimensions of US policy. In addition, State Department officials identified longer-term priorities and the recurrent challenges of policy management related to Asia. But there was no systematic enunciation of the longer-term stakes of the United States in the Asia Pacific region, the underpinnings and expectations of a larger strategy, or how the United States proposed to achieve its long-term objectives. Ensuring regional stability, maintaining US military advantage, and enhancing various political, economic, and security partnerships were time-honored US policy goals. However, assuming automatic compliance of regional states (in light of larger shifts in US policy) seemed presumptuous, and potentially quite risky. How could the United States advance its larger regional interests amid Asia’s accelerating transformation, even as the United States embarked on a revisionist course of its own? The absence of an integrative policy statement on regional security begged an additional question: Did the Bush administration envision the need for an Asia Pacific strategy? The answer is not as obvious as it first seems. To administration officials, since the United States had enunciated a global strategy, regional concerns were subsumed under it, even as the administration argued that one size did not fit all. But this conviction entailed substantial liabilities in relation to the region’s primary strategic characteristics. Unlike Europe, Asia and the Pacific lacked institutionalized, regionwide political and security arrangements

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in which the United States was a core member. Unlike Latin America, the region was geographically distant from the United States, and there were other major powers capable of contesting US predominance. Unlike South Asia, regional relations were not defined by a dominant regional power, and the potential of a strategic rivalry persisted between regional major powers. Unlike the Greater Middle East and Southwest Asia, there was no active armed conflict within the region that required the United States to commit major forces to military operations. Even with the mounting demands on US forces elsewhere, US maritime and air power in the Pacific remained highly potent, with plans to augment these capabilities in future years. However, the Bush administration repeatedly emphasized the need to outgrow the military legacies of the Cold War. Something remained missing in US regional policy pronouncements, but the administration (beyond the articulation of broad regional goals) did not feel compelled to define it. Like its predecessors, the Bush administration sought to assemble pieces of a larger puzzle. The administration’s strategy entailed four principal priorities: major shifts in US regional military strategies intended to reduce the presumed vulnerabilities of US forces, while enhancing the capability to project US power against new threats and unanticipated contingencies; an appreciable enhancement of the US-Japanese alliance, predicated on Tokyo moving much closer to the status of a “normal power”; de-emphasizing the US-Chinese strategic partnership pursued under President Clinton, with a parallel effort to enhance security ties with Taiwan, including far more permissive arms sales toward the island and enhanced collaboration between US and Taiwanese military officers; and reversing the Clinton administration’s effort to achieve normalization with North Korea. Plans to accelerate US ballistic missile deployments also posited the need to counter a projected long-range North Korean missile capability purportedly capable of reaching US soil. All these policies assumed a much more threat-driven regional security environment, with the US initiating actions to forestall potential threats, rather than reliance on preventive diplomacy or risk reduction. The Bush administration also conveyed that it did not attach equivalent value to upholding the regional status quo or to ensuring undiminished “in theater” military deployments. The September 2001 quadrennial defense review unambiguously signaled the administration’s intention to revisit US regional defense strategy.24 The report (published less than two weeks after September 11) focused primarily on the changes in US military strategy identified in the 2000 presidential campaign and in the administration’s initial policy pronouncements. These priorities argued for a less continuous US operational presence in the zones of potential armed conflict, and less dependence on US allies in a crisis. Prior to September 11, 2001, the postulated threats to US interests were expected to emanate principally from nation-states, not nonstate actors. Even in the

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immediate aftermath of September 11, the assumption of a future nation-state threat in Asia remained evident in the quadrennial defense review, with elliptical reference to China. The report warned about “an [Asian] military competitor with a formidable resource base” intent on denying US forces access in the East Asian littoral, from Southeast Asia to the Sea of Japan.25 The Department of Defense asserted that the United States had decided to shift from “threat-based planning” characteristic of the Cold War to “capability-based planning,” thereby identifying hypothetical military requirements without designating an adversary. However, this was a distinction without a difference: notwithstanding the report’s obscure language, China’s identity was not even thinly disguised. This theme persisted in subsequent defense-planning documents. But a principal implication of September 11 was to diminish, or at least defer the possibilities of, a heightened US-Chinese strategic competition in US defense planning. The Department of Defense continued to emphasize the need for very different capabilities in the new century; it was the source of the threats and the relevant scenarios (at least in the near to middle term) that had shifted. In the Department of Defense’s view, the United States needed to diminish potential vulnerabilities of its military forces, retain a clear margin of superiority against any presumptive competitor, and ensure the capability for decisive, unfettered US military intervention wherever and whenever it might be judged necessary.26 The quadrennial defense review also redefined the geographic distinctions in US regional defense planning, especially in the Asia Pacific region. Four “critical areas” were identified in US defense planning: Europe, Northeast Asia, the East Asian littoral (i.e., a predominantly maritime environment “stretching from south of Japan through Australia into the Bay of Bengal”), and the Middle East and Southwest Asia (Central Asia was presumably incorporated in the last of these critical areas). A military conflict on the Korean peninsula was treated apart from any presumptive Chinese challenge to US forward-deployed air and naval power. The China-Taiwan contingency was not deemed part of defense planning for Northeast Asia; China’s potential threat was maritime rather than continental. But increased US reliance on longer-range military assets did not address how, where, or whether the United States saw the need for regional bases and access in a Taiwan crisis. Senior US officials repeatedly insisted that any changes in US deployments in Asia Pacific would enhance the US commitment to regional security, not call it into question. Policymakers drew attention to the quadrennial defense review’s posited goals of assuring US allies, dissuading potential adversaries from competing militarily with the United States, deterring potential conflicts in critical regions, and defeating one or more adversaries should deterrence fail. But strategists within the region expressed skepticism about some of these claims. These doubts were rooted in decades of relative stasis in US regional security policy. As noted previously, US officials had long tied the credibility of US regional security commitments to the forward presence of

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major US forces. Since the early 1990s, US officials had deemed 100,000 US forces forward-deployed in the West Pacific (with nearly 80 percent of these forces based in Korea and Japan) the tangible embodiment of the US regional security commitment. Given the symbolism, longevity, and seeming permanence of these deployments (albeit at numbers well below peak Cold War deployments), regional states had become inured to such force levels and to the US security commitments they were presumed to uphold. Senior administration officials openly questioned the relevance of past policies. In a May 2003 interview, Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, came close to asserting that nearly all US forces deployed in East Asia could be reassigned to new locations, for operations very different from their traditional missions, and with no commitment to employ these forces in the locales where they were based.27 Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense (then on a visit to Singapore), quickly disavowed Feith’s remarks, but the change in tone and argument was unmistakable. In essence, US military forces in East Asia would no longer be treated as fixed assets configured exclusively for their historic functions. The policy shifts of the Bush administration appeared to portend a major realignment in US regional strategy, whose full contours and implications had yet to be spelled out. To explore the possibilities, we need to assess the administration’s policy record in light of its stated goals.

Assessing the George W. Bush Administration’s Policy Record The Korean Redeployments From the outset of the George W. Bush administration, the senior civilian leadership of the Pentagon deemed major changes in the US military presence on the Korean peninsula a principal test case of its Asia Pacific defense strategy. By mid-2003, the United States and South Korea had reached preliminary agreement on redeploying major US combat units stationed near the Thirtyeighth Parallel.28 The Department of Defense’s push for a realignment of US forces in the midst of the impasse over North Korea’s nuclear weapons development generated ample consternation among Korean defense planners. But US officials argued that the “tripwire” concept for US military forces had outlived its utility, with no possibility that a second Korean war would be a carbon copy of the first. US defense officials also contended that the vulnerability of US forces could be minimized by redeploying these forces well south of the Han River, simultaneously relying on new technologies and operational concepts to counter North Korea’s military strategy. In addition, US planners argued that defense responsibilities on the peninsula could be increasingly en-

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trusted to South Korean forces, thereby freeing up US assets for more pressing needs, as well as consolidating US deployments in Korea in fewer locations. In June 2004, US officials notified South Korean counterparts that the United States had decided to withdraw 12,500 troops from Korea by the end of 2005, or approximately one-third of US forces deployed on the peninsula.29 South Korean planners had anticipated that the 2003 redeployment decisions would be accompanied by major US troop withdrawals, but the process unfolded much more rapidly than Seoul expected. Even prior to informing Seoul of the withdrawal decision, the Department of Defense in mid-May 2004 announced the pullout of the Second Combat Brigade of the Second Infantry Division, one of two brigades attached to the last remaining US division on the peninsula. The brigade redeployed to Iraq in August, and additional units were slated for redeployment by year’s end. The June notification reached much deeper into US ground-combat strength on the peninsula, constituting the largest US withdrawals from Korea in over three decades. In the Pentagon’s view, the United States could ill afford open-ended, static deployments of major combat units in geographic locations well removed from ongoing military hostilities, especially given that South Korean forces were judged capable of fulfilling missions previously performed by US forces. The Korean redeployments reflected a range of interrelated policy judgments. First, senior US defense officials asserted that US strategy in Korea did not satisfactorily address the likely parameters of a future military conflict on the peninsula (in particular, the expectation of a North Korean asymmetric strategy) or the optimal means to defeat such a threat. The Pentagon had directly challenged the shibboleth that a forward-deployed force of 100,000 personnel was the irreducible embodiment of the US regional security commitment. US officials insisted that these withdrawals in no way precluded the projection of overwhelming US power in the event of renewed hostilities. They contended that US strategy had been premised for far too long on the expectation of massive North Korean troop movements across the Thirty-eighth Parallel at the outset of the war—in essence, a reprise of the 1950 conflict. In the administration’s view, Pyongyang’s precipitous economic decline during the 1990s had severely degraded North Korea’s conventional capabilities. To US planners, the decline in the North’s conventional capabilities heightened Pyongyang’s reliance on missiles and long-range artillery to target major cities and military facilities in South Korea and in Japan.30 Such judgments, however, did not address the implications of a nuclear North Korea, or of how a nuclear capability might reconfigure US strategic planning as a whole. Second, US planners argued that US regional military deployments and war preparations had to focus increasingly on Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, not on conventional conflict in Northeast Asia. Despite the singularity of US global reach and capabilities, the United States did not have forces to spare in the

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post–September 11 environment, even less to maintain open-ended deployments for a military contingency that the Department of Defense judged increasingly implausible. The Bush administration asserted that US forces needed to be able to deploy on short notice to locations (including to highly remote areas) where military operations were ongoing or deemed far more probable. The United States believed that its Asia-based military assets had to focus increasingly on flexibility and longer-range power projection, with increasing expectations that security partners would fulfill logistical requirements and facilitate the operations of US forces flowing into and through various potential zones of conflict. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld also expressed a clear preference for consolidating US forces on the peninsula into air and sea hubs for unspecified “regional contingencies.” He believed that US forces needed to be “dual capable” and therefore relevant to conflicts beyond the peninsula. The buildup of air and submarine capabilities on Guam, the prospective deployment of an additional aircraft carrier in the Pacific, new strategic understandings with Singapore, and enhanced alliance relations with Japan all reflected these larger shifts.31 But it was not clear where South Korea fit in this evolving picture. South Korean officials were already increasingly wary about any prospective contingency planning against China. As President Roh Moo Hyun stated in a March 2005 presidential address, “our people will not become embroiled in conflicts in Northeast Asia without our consent. This is something that we must maintain as an uncompromising, firm principle under all circumstances.”32 The expansion and maturation of South Korean relations with Beijing since the mid-1990s had recalibrated Seoul’s strategic interests, with Korea having few if any incentives to be drawn into a nascent regional war-fighting coalition directed against Beijing. Third, the United States believed that local sensitivities necessitated reductions in the visibility and “footprint” of US forces, particularly in major urban settings. Once the scheduled redeployments in Korea are completed, the US military presence in Seoul will be minimal. The administration also believed that the redeployments and withdrawals would reduce the possibilities of the US presence becoming an issue in Korean public opinion, thereby avoiding circumstances akin to those encountered in the Philippines during the early 1990s. In addition, the withdrawals were expected to free up US resources for power projection elsewhere. In future years, US planners are likely to treat the Korean peninsula as one among a range of competing security priorities, not necessarily one entailing open-ended deployments of US military personnel. This outcome would be less likely if US forces on the peninsula were reconfigured for military requirements beyond Korea. But this latter possibility would depend on South Korea’s concurrence with a US shift away from peninsular missions and toward regional contingencies, and such assent seems unlikely under prevailing circumstances. Korean defense planners worry that the larger changes in US strategy will diminish the value of the US–South Korean alliance to US policymakers. The

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realignments have been initiated despite the continued South-North military confrontation, and without weighing the implications of a nuclear North Korea, potential instability on the peninsula, or the prospect of unification. The Korean leadership did not want to undermine bilateral security collaboration. Seoul therefore sought to accommodate US needs, though only after tough bargaining with Washington on the costs and timing of troop redeployments and on the pace of US withdrawals. South Korea’s August 2004 decision to send an additional 3,000 noncombat personnel to Iraq met with the Bush administration’s obvious approval. (Korea at the time contributed the third largest contingent of troops in Iraq, following the United States and the United Kingdom.) In the immediate aftermath of the decision to augment South Korean deployments in Iraq, the United States agreed to extend the troop withdrawal process by another three years. There is little doubt that the two decisions were closely related. But the ultimate effects were unchanged: by the conclusion of President Bush’s second term, US end-strength on the peninsula will be approximately 25,000 military personnel, a reduction by one-third from the outset of the administration. The troop withdrawals and the declared shifts in defense strategy reflected deeper policy changes that seem likely to redefine the US regional military presence in the years to come, with or without Korean unification, and independent of the North’s nuclear weapons capabilities. The Bush administration’s reevaluation of the Cold War “legacy force” on the peninsula was long overdue; US policy had persisted more by inertia than by design or need. But the shifts in US policy enunciated by the administration were often revealed in preemptory fashion, in the absence of full consultation with South Korea. To be sure, the statements and actions of the Roh Moo Hyun government also contributed to US actions. For example, in the spring of 2006, President Roh (largely for domestic political reasons) pushed for South Korea’s resumption of wartime operational control over its military forces, triggering intense opposition from numerous senior retired officers. But he also quickly confronted an unanticipated response from the United States, with the Department of Defense urging that this goal be realized as early as 2009, not the more measured target date of 2012 proposed by South Korea. The United States ultimately concurred with South Korea’s preference for the latter date, and also suggested creating a parallel system of operational control, with the two countries leading their respective military forces on the peninsula. The Bush administration was thus increasingly determined to refashion its military power and presence in Korea, without particular attention to established relations and policies. However, in the absence of a straightforward statement of the ultimate purposes and directions of such change, larger suspicions seemed likely to grow in the South of an undisclosed US strategic design. Crafting a credible and sustainable alliance bargain for the longer term will remain a pivotal challenge for the remainder of President Bush’s tenure in office, all the more so in light of the North’s first nuclear detonation in October 2006.

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In the absence of a serious effort to revisit the strategic purposes of the alliance, the US–South Korean relationship could be placed at increased risk. Major US policy change might also trigger decisions by Seoul to align more fully with Beijing, or to opt for a more autonomous security identity, which Korean leaders would otherwise be far less inclined to pursue. The US-Japanese Alliance The Bush’s administration’s biggest breakthroughs in Asia Pacific strategy occurred in US-Japanese relations, especially Tokyo’s readiness to assume a much more active political-security role in the aftermath of September 11. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi fostered the closest personal and political relationship with a US president since Yasuhiro Nakasone and Ronald Reagan. He recognized the potential political costs to Japan of an overly equivocal response to September 11. Memories of the damage wrought by Japan’s initially tepid response to the Gulf War were uppermost in the prime minister’s calculations. Rapid passage of domestic legislation authorizing provision of logistics support to US military operations in Afghanistan (with Japanese supply ships deployed to the Indian Ocean) established additional precedent for “out of area” operations. These measures culminated in the deployment of Japanese peacekeepers to Iraq in early 2004 and of Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force ships and personnel during the tsunami relief efforts of late 2004 and early 2005. Prime Minister Koizumi understood how Japanese actions could build much closer political ties with Washington. In contrast to relations with Seoul, the Bush administration saw ample incentives to deepen and broaden alliance ties with Tokyo. With senior US officials endorsing an enhanced international role for Japan, policymakers in Tokyo perceived an unparalleled opportunity to move the country much closer to the goal of a “normal” political-military power.33 Japan’s new security goals and defense budgetary priorities were outlined in two major policy reports released in late 2004. In October, a senior advisory group reporting to the prime minister issued a wide-ranging assessment of Japan’s future security requirements, connecting Japan’s aspirations for a more prominent international role to the building of a “multi-functional flexible defense force.”34 The more diverse threats discussed in the report included terrorism, nuclear and ballistic missile proliferation, instability on the Korean peninsula, and the possibility of armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait. North Korea was explicitly identified as a primary threat to Japanese security, and the authors of the report also deemed China’s enhanced military power a growing concern. China’s economic, political, and military ascendance was the focus of increased official and public debate, reopening hugely sensitive issues in Japan’s relations with both China and Korea.35 There was a clear connection between these issues and US policy priorities. To avoid any potential marginalization amid China’s power ascendance, Japan would align as closely

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as possible with US policy goals. The advisory panel argued that if Japan expected to provide for its own defense, uphold alliance commitments to the United States, and fulfill broader international responsibilities, it could not remain a bystander. In December 2004, Japan’s National Security Council and cabinet approved a new five-year defense expenditure plan, emphasizing increased allocations for intelligence, missile defense, information technology, and counterterrorist capabilities; and corresponding reductions in the size of Japan’s conventional forces, enabling the defense budget to remain flat or even decline.36 However, the underlying strategic goals of Japanese policy, not the budgetary allocations, warranted particular attention. The near-simultaneous publication of these major policy documents advanced Japan’s goal of “normal power” status. Officials in Tokyo were keenly aware that a prominent group of US strategists had endorsed such a policy shift in an October 2000 policy report, with many of the signatories subsequently appointed to senior positions in the Bush administration.37 The report’s authors argued for modifications of the “no war” clause in Japan’s postwar constitution, as well as Japan’s willingness to move toward collective security responsibilities. These aspirations included Japan’s push for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, which the Bush administration subsequently endorsed. The advisory group report to the prime minister alluded indirectly to US expectations, describing Japan’s contributions to the “international community” while also characterizing the US-Japanese alliance as a “public good” for the countries of the Asia Pacific region.38 The late 2004 pronouncements preceded a February 2005 meeting of the US-Japan Security Consultative Committee, including a joint statement issued by the US secretary of state, the US secretary of defense, the Japanese minister of foreign affairs, and the Japanese minister of state for defense.39 The “two plus two” statement was highly general, suggesting that strategic understandings between the two governments remained incomplete. The communiqué urged expanded security collaboration in the context of an ongoing reassessment of the roles and missions of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and additional consultations over the realignment of US forces in Japan. The statement drew attention to US-Japanese collaboration in the Proliferation Security Initiative (discussed further below) and in ballistic missile defense, both with obvious reference to North Korea. There was also specific “encourage[ment of] the peaceful resolution of issues concerning the Taiwan Strait,” provoking strong Chinese objections to the presumed extension of alliance planning beyond the “bilateral arrangement that took shape under the special historical conditions of the Cold War.”40 The implications of Japan’s possible involvement in US strategy toward North Korea and China were very different from Tokyo’s contributions to US maritime strategy in the 1980s. Maritime missions undertaken in Japan’s sea

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straits during the Cold War were clearly linked to the defense of Japan. However, Tokyo’s prospective inclusion in regional missions presupposed the extension of the geographic and functional framework of US-Japanese alliance relations, encompassing counterproliferation, missile defense, and contributions to US regional contingency planning. But translating pledges of comity into specific agreements was not a straightforward process. Commonality of purpose, mutual acceptance of risk, and detailed operational planning involved enormous complexities and sensitivities, even as Japan was less constrained by past inhibitions. As noted above, the US-Japanese February 2005 joint statement was very short on specifics. A host of contentious issues were not addressed in the document, including joint use of Japanese military facilities; consolidation and realignment of US ground and air capabilities based in Washington State and in Guam, and the financial costs associated with these transfers; and Tokyo’s explicit concurrence with US regional contingency planning as well as “out of area” operations.41 Tokyo also expected meaningful US responses to issues of immediate relevance to domestic political constituencies. Reducing the pervasive footprint of US forces in Okinawa had long been a core issue to local citizens, and Prime Minister Koizumi also identified it as a major concern. Despite a US pledge in 1996 to relocate major facilities on Okinawa, movement on these issues had proceeded at a glacial pace. Any resolution acceptable to Japan would very likely entail future limitations on the use of Japanese territory by US forces. The absence of definitive decisions on land-use issues clearly diminished Japan’s willingness to meet US expectations and needs. However, the understandings between the United States and Japan were fully aired and specified at subsequent “two plus two” meetings in October 2005 and May 2006.42 On October 27, 2005, the US Navy also announced agreement with Tokyo on the home-porting of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier in Yokosuka in 2008, thereby ensuring that a nuclear-powered carrier would be stationed in Japan upon retirement of the USS Kitty Hawk, one of the two remaining conventionally powered carriers still in US active service. Two days later, the US-Japan Security Consultative Committee for the first time provided details that would govern roles, missions, and capabilities in a refashioned alliance, including measures to enhance policy and operational coordination. These steps encompassed the strengthening of bilateral contingency planning (including increased use of Japanese airports and seaports by US forces), fuller information sharing and intelligence collaboration, strengthened interoperability, and heightened coordination in ballistic missile defense. The joint statement also noted preliminary agreement on long-pending US proposals for closer operational military coordination. For Tokyo, the larger benefits concerned Japan’s elevated stature in alliance relations with the United States and (in a domestic context) the realignment of US military deployments and facilities, especially on Okinawa. These

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included the announced relocation of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force to Guam, constituting a total reduction of the US Marine presence on Okinawa from 18,000 to 10,000 by 2014, including approximately 9,000 dependents. In addition, the respective obligations of the two sides to defraying the costs of infrastructure and facility construction on Guam (estimated at $10.3 billion) were also outlined, with Tokyo agreeing to pay 60 percent, including $2.8 billion in direct cash payments. The United States also assented to a variety of long-festering Japanese concerns about public safety and environmental damage, including relocation of various US air assets to locations where they were expected to be less disruptive to local populations. Thus, the basis for a larger US-Japanese strategic understanding had begun to emerge: in exchange for Tokyo endorsing shifts in US global military strategy and moving toward enhanced interoperability with US forces, the United States reaffirmed Japan’s standing as its primary strategic ally in Asia, and endorsed the development of a more robust, externally oriented Japanese military force. However, the future parameters of an augmented US-Japanese alliance, in particular the implications for China and North Korea, remained in flux. North Korea’s missile and nuclear activities of 2006 (discussed below) clarified some of these possibilities. But the larger tests for the future are whether Washington and Tokyo can achieve and sustain the candor and specificity appropriate to a major alliance, as opposed to the opacity and indirection customarily favored by leaders in both capitals. Declared fidelity with US security priorities was not a guarantee of congruent or complementary policies. Thus the alliance labored under incomplete understandings between the United States and Japan, and had yet to overcome wider regional suspicions about the alliance’s longerterm purposes. The incentives for increased interdependence in the alliance seemed self-evident to Washington and Tokyo, but not necessarily to others. Barring development of a larger strategic concept credible and acceptable beyond the two allies, a “stand-alone” US-Japanese relationship remained at best a partial answer for the looming regional challenges of the United States. As I discuss below, subsequent North Korean actions provided much of the needed rationale to justify alliance enhancement, but it left larger questions related to the Sino-Japanese future unresolved. China and Taiwan Enhanced relations with China, and a parallel cooling in US policy toward Taiwan, constitute one of the major unanticipated developments in the Bush administration’s regional strategy. In the earliest months of the administration, the shift toward a more arm’s-length US relationship with Beijing was unmistakable. The collision of a Chinese naval aircraft with a US EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft near Hainan Island on April 1, 2001, underscored the latent potential for adversarial relations. In the aftermath of the collision and detention

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of the US crew, the State Department and the Defense Department drew strikingly different conclusions about the incident. To State, timely crisis management with Chinese officials opened channels of communication with Beijing that became increasingly routine in subsequent years. To Defense, the EP-3 incident warranted a near-total freeze on US-Chinese military-to-military relations, a much more forward-leaning policy toward Taiwan, and indirect reference in the quadrennial defense review to an ascendant China with malign intentions toward the United States. In the immediate aftermath of the EP-3 episode, the Department of Defense opened the sluice gates on arms sales to Taipei (including proposed sales of submarines long denied Taiwan), and President Bush stated that the United States would do “whatever it took” to assist Taiwan’s self-defense. After only three months in office, the administration had advanced its stated intention to supplant “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan with “strategic clarity.” However, there was a major turnaround in Sino-American relations in subsequent months.43 Although the latent elements of a longer-term US-Chinese competition persisted, these possibilities were subordinated to the far more immediate needs of both leaderships, triggered in part by September 11 but moving well beyond it. President Bush had traversed appreciable political and psychological distance from his initial wariness toward China and warmth toward Taiwan, as evidenced by his increasing interactions with leaders in Beijing and his mounting irritation with leaders in Taipei. Sino-American military-to-military relations remained a partial exception to this pattern, although they slowly resumed in the latter half of President Bush’s first term, and then accelerated appreciably in 2005 and 2006. After initial expressions of enhanced US support for Taiwan, senior administration officials voiced growing frustration with President Chen Shuibian, making clear that US commitments were not intended as a blank check to Taipei. US support did not extend to President Chen provoking needless tension with Beijing to advance his larger political goals, in particular moves toward de jure independence. Washington’s commitment to the island’s democracy, prosperity, and security was substantial but not unconditional. US officials emphasized that they would not countenance unilateral changes in the status quo on either side of the Taiwan Strait that might force the hand of the United States.44 By distancing the United States from Taiwan’s claims to sovereignty, administration policymakers moved somewhat closer to Beijing’s concept of “one China,” tacitly redefining the US commitment to Taiwan. Although ambiguity had not returned fully to US policy, the liabilities of undue clarity were all too apparent and highly sobering to the Bush administration.45 The latent contradictions in US policy nevertheless persisted. Chinese officials continued to object strongly to Washington’s “two-track” policy of enhanced ties with both Beijing and Taipei. China drew particular exception to proposed US weapons sales to Taiwan; enhanced collaboration between US

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uniformed personnel and their Taiwan counterparts; and attempts to extend US bilateral alliances to contingencies involving Taiwan. However, Taiwan proved wholly unable to reach political closure on domestic debates over national defense policy, manifested primarily in protracted parliamentary wrangling over military appropriations. The outcome for Taiwan was the worst of both worlds. Taipei repeatedly failed to walk through the door of heightened weapons purchases that the US had opened, and Beijing’s military modernization proceeded apace. Taiwan’s inaction conveyed polarization as well as indecision, with the added consequence of frustrating the declared policy preferences of the United States, greatly vexing the Bush administration.46 However, apart from Taipei’s repeated demonstrations of political immobilism, the inherent tensions in US strategy toward China and Taiwan remained evident though contained, at least tactically. These complexities continued to require attentiveness and deft policy management if Washington was to avoid entrapment in the policy agendas of either Beijing or Taipei, or (even worse) embroilment in an acute regional crisis. The recalibration of US strategic interests in relation to China and Taiwan also reflected the ongoing transformation of Beijing’s international position and behavior. China’s extraordinary economic dynamism and its accelerated integration and accommodation with nearly all neighboring states had altered US policy options. (Sino-Japanese political and security relations continued to represent a major exception to this pattern, highlighting the absence of a larger strategic understanding among Washington, Tokyo, and Beijing.) In addition, Beijing’s strategy toward the United States evidenced increased suppleness and sophistication. China’s leaders were prepared to give the United States a wider berth in its global strategy, provided that the United States did not challenge Beijing’s fundamental national interests.47 Chinese officials repeatedly emphasized that they were not seeking to challenge or undermine US power in the region. China had also become a full member of the World Trade Organization and a major participant in the emerging regional order. The Bush administration recognized that marginalizing (let alone containing) Chinese power was increasingly illusory. Equally significant, the administration’s open-ended focus on Iraq and on the campaign against global terrorism provided the United States with added incentives to avoid heightened Sino-American antagonisms. US preoccupations on other fronts also provided Beijing with much added strategic breathing room, since US power was directed elsewhere, not against China. The United States also continued to rely on China to advance diplomacy on the North Korean nuclear impasse. Major changes in China’s global and regional strategies effectively precluded any possibility of inhibiting the growth of Chinese power or of building a larger coalition directed against Beijing.48 The country’s sustained high growth rates and its ever more prominent position in international trade (including a US trade deficit with China that surpassed $200 billion), energy

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flows, and natural resource transactions had resulted in regional and global interdependence on a scale unimaginable in the past. China’s increased pursuit of bilateral and subregional security understandings (especially with continental Asia) and its deepening involvement in regional political and economic affairs made a presumptive containment strategy nearly impossible to devise, let alone sustain. All the while, Beijing demurred from frontal criticisms of US regional policies, and diligently cultivated closer political ties across Asia. However, the augmentation of China’s military power was also part of its enhanced power and influence, and this development regularly triggered worrisome US assessments, especially from the Department of Defense. The pace of PLA modernization had accelerated significantly since the late 1990s, with particular attention to missile, maritime, and air capabilities that posed an increasing threat to Taiwan. The Pentagon repeatedly acknowledged that China’s development of an “anti-access capability” had heightened the risks of any prospective US military intervention on Taiwan’s behalf.49 China’s military modernization did not portend an inevitable crisis in the Taiwan Strait, but it appreciably raised the costs and consequences should one occur. Senior US officials continued to call attention to the PLA’s increased strength.50 The Bush administration’s efforts to dissuade China from developing more consequential military capabilities (as characterized in the 2001 quadrennial defense review) had not succeeded; if anything, the heightened defense efforts of the United States accelerated Beijing’s military modernization. But did China’s rise and military modernization pose an inherent risk to US security? What military capabilities did the United States deem within the legitimate purview of China’s security interests? How did the Department of Defense propose to influence the longer-term strategic choices of China?51 These questions repeatedly bedeviled senior US officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Both argued that the PLA’s modernization was disproportionate to the requirements of China’s national security and had already put the East Asian military balance at risk, though neither indicated what they deemed an appropriate level of Chinese military capability or security responsibility.52 Such concerns figured prominently in the 2006 quadrennial defense review.53 China was deemed (along with India and Russia) a major power “at a strategic crossroads,” but the attention in the report to Chinese military modernization was far greater than that devoted to the other two autonomous strategic powers. The report explicitly argued that China had the largest potential to compete militarily with the United States. The Department of Defense thus appeared to conclude that China would ultimately contest US military predominance in Asia and the Pacific, but Chinese strategists sharply disagreed with this argument.54 In the Pentagon’s view, this negative assessment of Chinese defense goals warranted an explicit “hedging” strategy toward China, with this term employed in the 2006 version of the White House’s national security strategy. Notwithstanding the Department of

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Defense’s claim that it relied on capability-based planning (as distinct from threat-based planning), the tenor and tone of the quadrennial defense review and of the assessments of Chinese military power suggested otherwise. The acceleration of US-Chinese military-to-military relations throughout 2005 and 2006 (with the US Pacific Command in a lead role) offered a distinct contrast to the views in the quadrennial defense review. These latter activities suggested that China as a long-term planning factor did not automatically translate into detailed operational planning. For the Department of Defense’s purposes, however, questions about the long-term purposes (“strategic intentions”) of Chinese military development had been asked and answered. But bureaucratic arguments do not automatically equate with national strategy. The predominant thrust of the US administration’s China policy remained one of political and economic engagement, captured by former deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick’s advocacy of China emerging as a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system.55 Moreover, with the United States intent on revamping its global military posture, it too is a state at a strategic crossroads. What kind of long-term order does the United States envision for the Asia Pacific region, and what is the postulated role of China in this order? Is the creation of a lasting power equilibrium in the region more likely through autonomous pursuit of national power goals, or by development of a more inclusive framework among all relevant major powers?56 The United States and China both claim the latter, but policy debate in both countries (especially in the United States) indicates that such a vision remains unrealized, and possibly unattainable. Long-term Sino-Japanese relations and the US position between an ascendant China and a more assertive Japan also loom as major factors in this context. The sharp deterioration of Chinese-Japanese relations under Prime Minister Koizumi (with Koizumi’s regular visits to the Yasukuni Shrine the proximate cause of heightened antagonisms) portended a renewed major power rivalry in Northeast Asia. For a time, officials in the Bush administration seemed largely oblivious to these possibilities, and of how the US desire to elevate the position of Japan could potentially stimulate such rivalry. Senior US policymakers also viewed Tokyo as a “natural” counterbalance to the growing power of China. However, the prospect of lasting animosities between Beijing and Tokyo threatened to put larger US interests at risk. The election of Shinzo Abe as Japan’s new prime minister in September 2006 appeared to create an opportunity for renewed civility between Northeast Asia’s major powers. Abe did not want to needlessly provoke Beijing by continuing Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to the shrine, which could have portended an even deeper chill in bilateral relations. Hu Jintao, for his part, reciprocated the more positive atmosphere. (Abe’s first trip abroad as prime minister was a sequential visit to Beijing and to Seoul, rather than to Washington.) But larger questions still loomed in relation to US policy. Did the United States have a strategy in mind to elevate the roles of both

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China and Japan, or would it remain wedded to bilateral ties with each? At the same time, did the United States envision explicit sharing of roles and responsibilities with Beijing as well as Tokyo? Absent such a concept, the US ability to simultaneously advance long-term relations with both China and Japan in Northeast Asia was far from ensured. North Korea No regional issue has consumed more time and energy of the US administration’s Asia policymakers during President Bush’s tenure in office than North Korea. Pyongyang’s open defiance of its nonproliferation commitments, its renewed accumulation of fissile material, its determined advance toward a nuclear weapons capability in the face of US opposition, culminating in its October 2006 nuclear test, constituted a major failure of US policy. At the outset of the administration, the United States sought to relegate relations with North Korea to the back burner; it succeeded only insofar as it wanted to minimize bilateral dealings with Pyongyang. In the summer of 2002, US intelligence estimates concluded that Pyongyang had embarked on a covert uranium enrichment program to circumvent the constraints on nuclear weapons development imposed under the agreed framework. However, the administration had already decided to halt movement toward the normalization of US-North Korean relations evident at the end of the Clinton administration. The administration’s spring 2001 review of policy toward North Korea set the bar very high for any serious pursuit of improved relations with Pyongyang. New US intelligence assessments and the rancorous October 2002 exchanges in Pyongyang between US and North Korean officials led to the abrupt breakdown of the agreed framework, North Korea’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and Pyongyang’s assertion that it would no longer be constrained by any previous limitations on nuclear weapons development.57 In the aftermath of the agreed framework’s collapse, three distinct policy outcomes ensued: successive rounds of multilateral diplomacy hosted and sponsored by Beijing that sought to end North Korea’s renewed nuclear weapons activities;58 US establishment of the Proliferation Security Initiative to interdict possible transfer of weapons of mass destruction, including weapon technologies and delivery systems, with Pyongyang a primary focus of these efforts;59 and North Korea’s claims of a nuclear weapons capability, beginning with a February 2005 declaration that it had manufactured an unspecified number of nuclear weapons and culminating in Pyongyang’s testing of a nuclear device in October 2006.60 However, the issues that triggered the renewed confrontation in 2002 (i.e., US claims of covert North Korean enrichment activities designed to circumvent the nuclear restraints imposed under the agreed framework) remained wholly unresolved, and almost forgotten. Pyongyang had repeatedly denied the exis-

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tence of an enrichment program, even as it resumed its long-dormant plutonium program that provided the fissile material for its first nuclear weapons test. The United States long claimed that Pyongyang retained both options for fissile material production, though it subsequently conceded that the site of any enrichment facility was undetected and nonoperational. Throughout most of the prolonged impasse, Washington asserted that Pyongyang needed to commit unequivocally to full disclosure and the verifiable dismantlement of the entirety of its nuclear facilities (including any nuclear energy applications for civilian purposes) before the United States would proffer renewed assistance to North Korea. In the event that North Korea were to take such steps, the United States (in conjunction with the other four participants in the six-party talks in Beijing) argued that it would be ready to provide security assurances and economic assistance to North Korea. However, neither Washington nor Pyongyang had moved appreciably from the policy positions both enunciated in the fall and early winter of 2002. There were repeated rounds of discussion, consultation, and the tabling of proposals at the six-party talks, but for the most part this was diplomacy in the absence of negotiation. The singular exception to this conclusion was the diplomatic process in September 2005, which resulted in a joint declaration in which all six parties committed to denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. However, the declaration was more a composite set of expectations, rather than agreed steps necessary to achieve this ultimate goal. The United States continued to pursue a united front with China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia to forestall nuclear weapons development on the peninsula. But divergent interests, perceptions, and policy calculations among the parties stymied maintenance of this notional coalition, providing Pyongyang maneuvering room, even as it grimly pursued nuclear weapons development. North Korea repeatedly insisted that the “hostile policy” of the United States compelled it to restart its nuclear weapons program, so in Pyongyang’s view US security assurances and renewed energy deliveries were essential before Pyongyang would again freeze its nuclear development and begin to discuss the conditions under which it would yield its “nuclear deterrent force.” An accord signed at the six-party talks in February 2007 outlined a set of actions to inhibit but not eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons potential. Pyongyang pledged to seal its graphite moderated reactor and its reprocessing facility at Yongbyon, which would cap its ability to produce additional fissile material. But fulfillment of these commitments was contingent on resolution of festering disputes over North Korea’s access to foreign exchange holdings at a bank in Macao and transfer of these funds to other foreign banks, as well as an initial provision of heavy fuel oil to the North. Though the February accord suggested a renewal of diplomatic momentum, these were at best preliminary measures in a long-term process that would entail far more contentious and wholly unresolved issues.

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Did the renewed nuclear confrontation constitute a true crisis? Neither the United States nor North Korea appeared to attach particular urgency to resolving the nuclear issue; both states appeared to believe that they could play for time and await concessions from the other side. The contradictions in US policy were especially striking. For example, the administration’s national security strategy (both in its original 2002 version and in the follow-on document of 2006) deemed prevention of the development of weapons of mass destruction by “rogue states” a defining imperative of US policy. But the Bush administration also insisted that a North Korean nuclear capability posed a far more acute threat to Pyongyang’s neighbors than to the United States. The administration also asserted that China and South Korea, not the United States, possessed far more leverage over North Korean decisionmaking. Despite these assertions, what courses of action remain open to the United States if it is unable to forestall the further development of a North Korean nuclear capability? How great a risk would this outcome entail for US interests? Short of preventive war or the collapse of the North Korean regime, and with the Bush administration unwilling to enter into bilateral negotiations with the North, Washington would have to acknowledge its inability to prevent nuclear weapons development in North Korea. To some US policymakers, this would validate their conviction that North Korea was never prepared to yield its nuclear weapons capabilities, though other observers insist that meaningful negotiating options were never fully explored. The United States would then have little alternative but to focus on containing any postulated nuclear threats from the North, in particular seeking to prevent the flow of nuclear material or technology into or out of North Korea. An elevated partnership with Japan would likely prove a core component of such a strategy, with China and South Korea decidedly equivocal about the implications of heightened defense and deterrence policies for regional security. In the aftermath of North Korea’s renewed missile tests in July 2006 and its nuclear detonation in October, the United States (with the concurrence of both China and Russia) introduced and imposed major new sanctions against the country in the UN Security Council. Japan vigorously endorsed such steps and seemed intent on imposing an especially broad range of sanctions. Extending the envelope of coercion short of war also encompassed new military measures well before the missile and nuclear tests. In September 2004, for example, the US Seventh Fleet initiated a missile defense early-warning mission in the Sea of Japan;61 US forces also conducted interdiction exercises south of Tokyo the following month, as a component of the Proliferation Security Initiative.62 In the aftermath of Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear tests, Washington and Tokyo agreed to accelerate the deployment schedule for introducing additional ballistic missile defense batteries into Japan. Heightened threat perceptions in Tokyo also helped legitimate Japanese security goals and activities strongly advocated by Prime Minister Abe, including his explicit calls for re-

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vision of the US-drafted postwar constitution. North Korea’s actions had therefore validated a much more threat-based concept of regional security, with Japanese defense officials privately signaling that a far more vigorous Japanese security strategy was designed at least as much with China in mind. Chinese leaders were deeply offended by Pyongyang’s willful defiance of Beijing’s urgings that it not test. But the Chinese remained equally uneasy over the longer-term implications of a more threat-driven regional environment, and of Japan’s prospective contributions to it. US antipathies toward Pyongyang undoubtedly run very deep, and vice versa. North Korea is the longest-standing international adversary of the United States. The wellsprings of national power in North Korea and its defiant challenges to globalization and nonproliferation are deemed anathema by the Bush administration. The United States therefore views North Korea as one of the dwindling number of post-Soviet states, whose legitimacy and survivability are both deemed open to serious question. Even as Beijing sought to coax Pyongyang to rejoin the six-party talks, the prospect for a major diplomatic breakthrough remained highly problematic, and the longer-term possibilities even grimmer. Notwithstanding its isolation, open defiance of nonproliferation norms, and acute internal vulnerabilities, North Korea continued to prove resilient and determined. Pyongyang understood that its capacity to inflict immense harm on South Korea and Japan and the risks to regional stability posed by an internal meltdown in the North provided the regime with continued leverage in relations with Beijing and Seoul. It is a hugely repressive state and very possibly an endangered species, but, again, what are the policy alternatives if the North refuses to fold its tent or if it responds militarily to perceived threats to its survival? What if the regime is able to revive its economy through external assistance and incremental reform, without definitively forgoing its nuclear weapons capabilities and future weapons potential? A North Korean nuclear weapons capability would constitute a profound failure in nonproliferation policy and an ominous turn in regional security. The Bush administration had long struggled to reconcile competing policy approaches toward North Korea, without discernible success. With Pyongyang having finally tested a nuclear device and with North Korea unprepared to bargain away its nuclear capabilities, the United States faces highly unpleasant policy alternatives. Will China be able to induce North Korea to consider the possibility of a nonnuclear future? Might the United States ultimately decide to table a more attractive offer to break the deadlock, or at least test the possibility of a negotiated outcome, notwithstanding its unmistakable distaste for direct dealings with Pyongyang? Or does neither state waver from its long-held position, despite the attendant nuclear dangers in Northeast Asia? But does the United States genuinely believe that the regional security environment has changed profoundly and irrevocably in the aftermath of North Korea’s nuclear test? Deterrence of armed conflict on the Korean peninsula

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remains an enduring concern in US regional defense strategy, but the United States contends that the requirements of deterrence must be viewed very differently in the post–September 11 world. Since 2001, the United States has identified potential terrorist threats in the Asia Pacific region, but these concerns focus disproportionately on Southeast, South, and Central Asia, not on Northeast Asia. Moreover, such threats differ profoundly from the prospect of an operational nuclear weapons capability in North Korea and an enhanced capability of North Korean missile forces to reach targets throughout South Korea, Japan, and beyond. Such a prospect suggests that deterrence and defense and an enhanced capability for interdiction will remain uppermost in US regional security strategy. The risks and consequences of a future conflict on the Korean peninsula also reflect the singularly unappealing options for US policymakers. The Bush administration asserts that the United States is prepared to initiate preemptive military actions against perceived imminent dangers. However, any attack on North Korean nuclear facilities would almost certainly trigger retaliation by the North against the South and potentially against Japan, thereby embroiling two of the world’s major industrial economies in armed conflict for the first time since World War II. Renewed warfare on the peninsula would also be fraught with major consequences and potential dangers for US-Chinese relations and US-Russian relations, as well as triggering a profound crisis in the US–South Korean alliance. For this worst of cases, no solution is in sight. More than a half century after the Cold War turned hot in East Asia, the possibility of renewed conflict persists, in the same locale where it began, and with even larger potential stakes. Will the clock again start? Or amidst the risks and unknowns, is a different outcome possible?

The Strategic Future: Does US Hegemony in Asia Still Matter? When it assumed office, the George W. Bush administration emphasized that it did not intend to sit still in Northeast Asia. Consolidation of US policy gains was judged too modest a goal. Senior policymakers believed that the unrivaled military capabilities of the United States, the latent possibilities of major power rivalry, and longer-term wariness across the region about the growth of Chinese power meant that nearly all states would concur (or at least not directly challenge) a revisionist US strategy. They also reflected a US focus on new threats (many far removed from the region), the unsurpassed technological advantage of US defense capabilities, and the steady maturation of US regional allies. The United States therefore undertook major shifts in policy, deployment, and purpose that the administration believed would ensure US strategic dominance well into the future.

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However, a parallel transformation has been under way within the region. Leaders across Asia are intent on establishing new rules of the game with Washington, and with one another. No regional actor wants to be on the receiving end of US power, and nearly all (with the conspicuous exception of North Korea) are prepared to go to ample lengths to remain off the US radar screen. China has repeatedly confounded US expectations by avoiding potential confrontations with the Bush administration and by pursuing a nearly all-azimuth accommodation within the region. But these changes do not foreclose more contentious SinoAmerican relations over the longer run.63 Many other trends are decidedly unpropitious. Pyongyang has repeatedly faced down US pressures to yield its nuclear weapons capabilities. US–South Korean relations have experienced major upheaval, reflecting differing strategic priorities with North Korea, generational change within South Korean politics, and South Korean unease over major changes in its defense relationship with the United States. The Bush policy agenda in Asia has been far more successful with Japan, but an augmented USJapanese relationship could also stimulate a longer-term Sino-Japanese rivalry amid a much more unsettled regional security environment. Despite a plethora of official policy documents, the Bush administration has often remained obscure in imparting a full sense of its military strategic goals. To a certain extent, this lack of full disclosure is an artifact of the defense-planning process, which is often more explicit about the “how” of defense planning than the “why.” This liability has been reinforced by the administration’s insistence that it is engaged in capability-based planning, as distinct from the threat-based planning characteristic of the Cold War.64 But the administration’s approach more closely resembles possibility-based planning. Planners have spelled out potential dangers that might necessitate the application of military force. But they have not indicated how these circumstances will materialize, or how US policies would seek to limit some of the risks. Unless the United States specifies much more clearly the precise contingencies against which it plans, how would Japan or any other regional ally consent to various courses of action? To this extent, capability-based planning seems at best a precursor to detailed contingency planning. This shortcoming underscores important unfinished business in US regional strategy. Are regional states (including major US allies) prepared to remain in the dark about future US military plans and requirements, without adequate knowledge of when, where, why, and how the United States might employ its military power? Is the United States prepared to explore less coercive options to ensure regional peace? These questions bear significantly on South Korean policy deliberations. South Korean officials find themselves uncomfortably balancing the dangers posed by North Korea, pressures induced by shifts in domestic opinion, the opportunities presented by closer ties to China, and Washington’s expectation that Seoul will concur in the Bush administration’s desire for major changes in US–South Korean defense relationship. The changes in US deployments raise

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major questions about the purposes and durability of US traditional security alliances, and what security order the United States envisions to supplant existing arrangements. Such concerns would be appropriate even in the absence of the latent dangers of a major crisis on the Korean peninsula, but they are far more critical in view of the continued nuclear impasse. US strategy continues to be premised on ensuring maximum autonomy and freedom of action. The predominant emphasis in the 2006 quadrennial defense review remains focused on US actions and capabilities designed to prevent or defeat military threats before they fully materialize. These include defense of the US homeland, offensive strikes against terrorist organizations, and preventing terrorist groups or adversary states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Traditional military conflicts continue to receive less attention, and the role of traditional US allies also been de-emphasized. There will be continued efforts to influence the weapons acquisition programs of “strategic crossroad states” such as China, although how this issue will be addressed over the longer term is far from certain.65 The administration, however, remains wary of locking itself into specific courses of action or into new institutional arrangements. The increasing US resort to “initiatives” conveys a decided preference for activities that are not based on existing alliances or security arrangements. These include (among others) proliferation security, container security, illicit activities, the future of alliance policy, security policy, and regional maritime security, all with specific application in Asia and the Pacific. These labels suggest a continued search for alternative concepts of security cooperation outside existing institutions, and thus inherently more flexible policy instruments, to be employed when and if the United States believes that circumstances warrant such actions. However, a threat-driven approach to international security (in which the United States reserves the right to initiate preemptive or preventive military actions) is at odds with security concepts and norms increasingly prevalent within the region, with North Korea the singular outlier. In the early and middle 1990s, various US security specialists characterized East Asia within the framework of nineteenth-century balance-of-power politics, with China cast as the quintessential rising power in a region “ripe for rivalry.”66 Analysts perceived a struggle for domination among Asia’s leading states, the denigration of multilateral institutions as largely peripheral to “hard power” calculations, and (to many) a resurgent, aggrieved China intent on displacing the United States within the region. By contrast, regional states began to give weight to indigenously derived concepts of a security order that differed significantly from balance-of-power strategies. As argued by Muthiah Alagappa, regional states have evolved a “widely shared normative framework” that has enabled adjudication of security rivalries, increased political normalcy, and approaches to conflict management without resort to force. Alagappa does not foresee a hegemonic Asia

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dominated by the United States or by a regional power such as China, nor “a genuinely bipolar or multipolar Asia.” He instead envisions a hybrid system entailing regional stability, increased well-being, local spheres of influence, and the reliance on “formal and informal forums and rules to manage [national] differences.”67 However, in the case of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, there is added subtlety and complexity when relations with major powers are at issue.68 At the same time, Gilbert Rozman has aptly characterized Northeast Asia international politics as “stunted regionalism,” with different actors as yet unable to overcome enduring elements of bilateral distrust.69 But the prevailing incentives of regional actors are to move toward more collaborative concepts and practices, even if they are not yet fully realized. Thus, defense planning detached from larger political, economic, and strategic considerations cannot lead to lasting regional security solutions. A future US strategy must define a larger concept of the regional future, not a vision tailored exclusively to the military strategic requirements of the United States.70 In a longer-term sense, the United States needs to address four principal questions in its Asia Pacific strategy: preventing a strategic breakdown or an acute regional crisis; defining sustainable alliance bargains that move beyond defense planning; achieving a durable relationship with both China and Japan, while facilitating if possible a longer-term strategic reconciliation between the region’s two major powers; and more fully linking the United States to regional political and economic institutions and trade regimes, in which China’s rise is increasingly pivotal. The answers to these questions will depend on whether the United States seeks new power- and responsibility-sharing arrangements with regional states, or defines success primarily by whether others accommodate US strategic preferences. The United States enjoys unquestioned military primacy within the Asia Pacific region, and this power ensures continued US influence within and throughout the region, especially in a maritime context. Regional states, however, seem intent on supplementing the extant Asia Pacific order with new arrangements to which the United States is not always a party. Washington has little experience as an outsider in regional politics, but this phenomenon attests to the region’s increasing self-confidence, self-sufficiency, and political maturation, all goals that the United States has long sought to encourage. US primacy cannot guarantee undiminished political influence. Shoehorning the region into a post–September 11 template has proven at best an imperfect fit, with few states prepared to defer fully to new US security imperatives, many of which derive from developments outside the Asia Pacific region. Incantations of looming dangers have not always convinced regional states of the wisdom of US strategy. To some, the United States is ever more intent on increasing its freedom of action, selectively abetted by a few longstanding security partners. But this is unlikely to prove a longer-term outcome acceptable to all regional states.

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The Bush administration does not want strategic drift or a major regional crisis in its final years in power. However, US military supremacy cannot fully address the internal political changes that are reshaping policymaking across the region. No one disputes the singularity of US military power should there again be a major regional crisis. But US military power may prove a depreciating asset, not because it is irrelevant, but because it cannot serve as a standalone instrument of US influence. In the event of an insufficiently attentive US regional policy, leaders across Asia and the Pacific could begin to view the United States as a more distant power that focuses on the region only when vital US interests are at risk. Under such circumstances, the United States may find itself progressively less attuned to the regional future, and hence less able to shape events to its advantage. There is nothing inevitable about such an outcome, but neither should US policymakers assume that regional states have no alternatives other than to accommodate US needs and expectations.

Notes The opinions expressed in this chapter are my own, and should not be attributed to the US Naval War College, the US Department of Defense, or the US government. 1. For additional detail on the Korean War’s impact on US national security strategy (including declassified texts of five successive iterations of the National Security Council’s “NSC-68,” the definitive US national security paper of the Cold War), consult Drew, NSC-68. 2. See, for example, Fukuyama, “Asia in a Global War,” pp. 387–413. 3. Consult Alagappa, Asian Security Practice; and Alagappa, Asian Security Order. 4. See Solomon and Kosaka, The Soviet Military Buildup. For a comprehensive assessment of the maritime strategy (including declassified versions of various policy and intelligence documents), consult Hattendorf, “The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy.” 5. Cheney, Defense Strategy for the 1990s. 6. US Department of Defense, A Strategic Framework for the Asian Pacific Rim. 7. For a review and critique of the Clinton administration’s planning process, consult Pollack, Straddling as Strategy. 8. For a thorough review of this process during the Bush and Clinton administrations, consult Larson, Orletsky, and Leuschner, Defense Planning in a Decade of Change. The 2001 quadrennial defense review and the results of the 2006 review will be discussed separately. 9. This history is well told in Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, pp. 198–215. 10. For example, see the prepared testimony of General Colin Powell (then chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff) in “Hearings on National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1993–H.R. 5006 and Oversight of Previously Authorized Programs,” Committee on Armed Service, US House of Representatives, February 6, 20, and 26, 1992, and March 4, 1992, esp. pp. 87–88. 11. For a definitive account, see Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical.

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12. For the fullest presentation of this alternative national security strategy (coauthored by two senior Clinton administration officials), consult Carter and Perry, Preventive Defense. 13. For a careful overview that draws extensively on declassified US policy documents, see Romberg, Rein In at the Brink of the Precipice. 14. For a detailed case study, consult Ross, “The 1995–96 Taiwan Strait Confrontation,” pp. 225–258. 15. Green and Cronin, The U.S.-Japan Alliance. 16. Funahashi, Alliance Adrift. 17. For an extended discussion, consult Mann, Rise of the Vulcans. 18. For additional insights into these shifts, see Lemann, “Dreaming About War.” For an early official statement of these priorities, see Rumsfeld, Guidance and Terms of Reference for the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. 19. Consult the following documents by the US Commission on National Security/21st Century: “New World Coming”; “Seeking a National Strategy”; and “Road Map for National Security.” See also Tenet, “Worldwide Threat 2001.” 20. White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (September 2002). 21. White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (March 2006). 22. See, in particular, Rumsfeld, Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review (2001). 23. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. 24. Rumsfeld, “Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review” (2002). 25. Ibid., p. 4. 26. For a useful overview of the major shifts in US defense strategy authored by one of the lead civilian planners responsible for these changes, consult Henry, “Transforming the U.S. Global Defense Posture,” pp. 33–48. 27. See Feith’s comments in Schrader, “U.S. to Realign Troops in Asia.” 28. For a more detailed assessment, consult International Institute for Strategic Studies, “American Forces in South Korea.” 29. International Institute for Strategic Studies, “U.S. Troop Withdrawals from South Korea.” 30. For a detailed assessment of these changing strategic calculations, see Pollack, “The Strategic Futures and Military Capabilities of the Two Koreas,” pp. 137–172. 31. For a detailed assessment of the effects of these shifts in US strategy on the US regional military presence (with particular attention to the increased reliance on Guam as a hub for US operations), consult Erickson and Mikolay, “A Place and a Base,” pp. 65–93. 32. Speech of South Korean president Roh Moo Hyun at the fifty-third graduation and commissioning ceremony of the Air Force Academy, Seoul, Ch’o’ngwadae (in Korean), March 8, 2005, http://www.bluehouse.go.kr/cwd/kr/archive/archive_view.php? meta_id=speech&page=&category=&sel_type=1&keyword=%b0%f8%b1%ba%bb%e7 %b0%fc%c7%d0%b1%b3&id=f5183d39b724c8abaeac57bd. As a senior presidential aide further argued, “The point is that we understand the U.S. global strategy for employment of rapid deployment forces. It is acceptable if the United States moves some of its forces to Iraq or any other conflict areas on condition that the troop redeployment does not have a critical effect on the Korean peninsula. However, such a U.S. troop redeployment should be restricted if it involves regional conflicts in Northeast Asia.” Yonhap News (in English), March 8, 2005, http://www.yonhapnews.net/engservices/300000000.html.

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33. For a comprehensive review, consult Hughes, “Japan’s Re-emergence as a ‘Normal’ Military Power.” 34. Council on Security and Defense Capabilities, Japan’s Visions for Future Security and Defense Capabilities. The report is widely known as the Araki Report, so named for the group’s chairman, Hiroshi Araki. 35. For a discerning discussion, see Tamamoto, “After the Tsunami, How Japan Can Lead?” pp. 10–18. 36. National Security Council and Cabinet (Japan), National Defense Program Guideline for FY 2005 and After. 37. Institute for National Strategic Studies, “The United States and Japan.” The report is widely known as the Armitage Report, so named for the group’s chairman, Richard Armitage, who subsequently served as deputy secretary of state during President Bush’s first term. 38. Council on Security and Defense Capabilities, Japan’s Visions for Future Security and Defense Capabilities, pp. 8–9. 39. US Department of State, “Joint Statement of the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee” (February 19, 2005). 40. “Statement of the Spokesman of the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” 41. Japanese press reports in advance of the security consultations had anticipated decisions in all these areas. Nikkei Telecom, December 21, 2004; Yomiuri Shimbun, December 24, 2004. 42. US Department of State, “Joint Statement of the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee” (2006). See also International Institute for Strategic Studies, “Japan’s Strategic Realignment.” 43. Consult Pollack, Strategic Surprise? 44. See, in particular, Kelly, “Overview of U.S. Policy Toward Taiwan.” 45. See, in particular, Romberg, Rein In at the Brink of the Precipice, esp. chaps. 8–9; and Tucker, “Strategic Ambiguity or Strategic Clarity?” pp. 186–211. 46. See, in particular, Swaine, “Taiwan’s Defense Reforms and Military Modernization Program,” pp. 131–161. 47. On the evolution of China’s international strategy (with particular attention to its implications for US-Chinese relations), consult Goldstein, Rising to the Challenge. 48. For an extended discussion, see Pollack, “The Transformation of the Asian Security Order,” pp. 329–346. 49. Office of the US Secretary of Defense, Military Power of the People’s Republic of China. 50. See remarks of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith to the Council on Foreign Relations, February 17, 2005, http://www.dod.mil/faq/comment.html; and Schmitt, “Rumsfeld Warns of Concern About Expansion of Chinese Navy.” See also International Institute for Strategic Studies, “The Pentagon Eyes China’s Military.” 51. Jaffe, “Rumsfeld Pushes Major Revamping of U.S. Military.” 52. For a searing critique of US assessments of Chinese military development, consult Blasko, “Rumsfeld’s Take on the Chinese Military,” pp. 263–269. 53. US Department of Defense, Report of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review. 54. For a particularly vigorous Chinese rebuttal, see Yang, “Occupy the Moral High Ground of a Rich Country with a Powerful Army.” Rear Admiral Yang Yi is director of the Institute of Strategic Studies of the China National Defense University. 55. Zoellick, “Whither China.” 56. Przystup and Saunders, Visions of Order. 57. The collapse of the agreed framework is too complex and lengthy for extended discussion here. See Pollack, “The United States, North Korea, and the End of the

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Agreed Framework,” pp. 11–49; and International Crisis Group, “North Korea: A Phased Negotiation Strategy.” 58. International Crisis Group, “North Korea: Where Next for the Nuclear Talks?” 59. Bolton, “U.S. Efforts to Stop the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction”; Bolton, “Proliferation Security Initiative”; Center for International Trade and Security, “The PSI”; and Valencia, “The Proliferation Security Initiative.” 60. Statement of the North Korean Foreign Ministry, Pyongyang Korean Central Broadcasting Station (in Korean), February 10, 2005; International Institute for Strategic Studies, “North Korea’s Nuclear Test”; and International Crisis Group, “North Korea’s Nuclear Test.” 61. Montgomery, “New Job for the 7th Fleet.” 62. Brooke, “Naval Drill a Message Aimed at North Korea”; Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Japan), “The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) Maritime Interdiction Exercise.” 63. For a fuller exposition of the uncertainties attending long-term US-Chinese relations and the potential sources of such uncertainties, consult Friedberg, “The Future of U.S.-China Relations,” pp. 7–45. 64. US Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Military Strategy of the United States of America 2004. 65. Jaffe, “Rumsfeld Pushes Major Revamping of U.S. Military.” 66. See, in particular, Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry,” pp. 5–33; and Friedberg, “Will Europe’s Past Be Asia’s Future?” pp. 147–159. 67. Alagappa, Asian Security Order, pp. 11–12, 7. 68. For a discerning treatment, see Yuen, “Coping with Strategic Uncertainty,” pp. 172–208. 69. Rozman, Northeast Asia’s Stunted Regionalism. 70. For a cogent critique of prevailing US approaches, see Heginbotham and Twomey, “America’s Bismarckian Asia Policy,” pp. 243–250.

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4 China’s Hedged Acquiescence: Coping with US Hegemony Minxin Pei

I

t has almost become a truism to say that the relationship between the United States and China is one of the most important in the world today. Yet beyond acknowledging its importance, few have managed to come up with a succinct and precise characterization that can fully capture the essence of this relationship. The complexities of the Sino-American relations in the post–Cold War era simply defy an easy and simple definition. Of course, most hard-nosed realists, both in China and in the United States, have not allowed such complexities to obscure the fundamentals in this relationship. For China, maintaining a stable and basically cooperative relationship with the United States is, and will remain, the most crucial foreign policy challenge for the foreseeable future, because the United States is the only country capable of altering China’s security environment and greatly complicating its ambitious goal of economic modernization. For the United States, the rise of China portends huge risks, because China will become the only nation-state with the potential of becoming a so-called peer competitor for Washington.1 Expectedly, such geopolitical concerns have led the most prominent realists in the United States to demand a preemptive strategy of containment against China to prevent the Middle Kingdom from ever attaining the capabilities comparable to a superpower.2 Despite such long-term worries about each other’s intentions and capabilities, however, China and the United States have both tried hard to maintain a stable and cooperative relationship, mostly because the benefits from cooperation outweigh the risks and costs of a premature and unnecessary confrontation. The overwhelming and comprehensive advantages enjoyed by the United States vis-à-vis China have allowed Washington to adopt a policy of “hedged engagement”—or “strategic hedging”—toward Beijing since the end of the Cold War. A product of tortuous evolution, this policy emerged during the administration of President Bill Clinton and, to the surprise of most Chinawatchers, continued in the George W. Bush administration. The essence of 99

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hedged engagement is to pursue a parallel strategy that aims to seek the benefits of a cooperative relationship with Beijing while laying the groundwork for confrontation in case engagement fails.3 As a result of this policy, the United States attempts to isolate the effects of bilateral disputes over a wide range of issues and prevent the fallout of such disputes from poisoning the entire relationship and precipitating an unnecessary conflict. The delinking of China’s human rights record from its most-favored-nation trade status by President Clinton in 1994 was the best example of such “compartmentalization.” At the same time, Washington actively pursues high-level dialogue with the Chinese leadership, promotes trade (although limiting transfer of sensitive technologies), coaxes China into adopting more cooperative policies on regional security and nonproliferation, and enmeshes China into various international agreements and organizations. These initiatives are designed, in the words of former deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick, to make China a “responsible stakeholder” in the current international order.4 As the United States also believes that a clear deterrence posture is a necessary complement to the engagement policy, Washington has carefully maintained and even expanded its alliance framework in Asia, which can be used to confront China should such a response be required. Strategic hedging has entailed strengthening long-standing US alliances with Japan, South Korea, and Australia in the 1990s, enhancing Taiwan’s defensive capabilities through arms sales and, increasingly, covert military technical assistance and intelligence sharing, and establishing a strategic relationship with India. Washington’s policy of hedged engagement is, of course, not without domestic critics. Right-wing hard-liners view this strategy as appeasement of a long-term rival that ought to be confronted and weakened immediately. Leftwing critics think such a strategy violates the liberal principles of US democracy and allows crass commercial interests and short-term security considerations to subvert the Wilsonian ideals of promoting democracy and human rights. The critics of Washington’s China policy—an unholy alliance of the far right and left—made it extremely difficult for the Clinton administration to maintain a necessary level of stability and consistency in the execution of hedged engagement. After the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, the China policy, along with many other domestic and foreign policy issues, quickly fell victim to an increasingly bitter and personalized contest of political will between the right-wing Republicans and President Clinton himself. Consequently, Sino-American relations experienced dramatic instability. However, by and large, Washington’s hedged engagement has survived, relatively intact, despite numerous crises in bilateral relations and constant attempts by China’s critics to undermine it. Even more surprising, it has weathered the transition from a centrist Democratic to a conservative Republican administration populated by a large number of skeptics of China.5

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Chinese leaders have, of course, seen through the dual nature of Washington’s China policy. Even though hedged engagement is not exactly ideal for China, which enjoyed the status of quasi–US ally toward the end of the Cold War, it is a compromise that serves China’s interests in general, and the Communist Party’s interest in maintaining its rule in particular. To the extent that China’s economic modernization and the Communist Party’s survival depend on sustained high rates of growth, hedged engagement should continue to ensure China’s access to the US market, capital, and technology. Nevertheless, it has been difficult for China to develop its own counterstrategy. It can be argued that Beijing’s own strategy toward the United States did not become fully formed until the beginning of the Bush administration. At the heart of China’s strategy is a recognition, driven home by the surge of US power in the 1990s, that US hegemony is an enduring geopolitical reality and that China can best serve its interest, not by confronting US hegemony, but coping with it. In addition, Chinese leaders further realize that, given the fragile foundations of SinoAmerican relations and huge asymmetry of power, China’s strategy must be centered on conflict avoidance. Thus, coping with US hegemony entails deep psychological adjustment in China’s strategic thinking—it requires, above all, a more narrow definition of China’s most vital national interests, as well as a recognition of the benefits of US hegemony. The result of this adjustment and new strategic thinking is a more mature and relaxed security posture, which has produced a dramatic change in Chinese foreign policy behavior. China’s opposition to key US strategic initiatives and policy changes (mostly undertaken after the advent of the Bush administration) has become much more low-key. Even some of the most provocative steps taken by the Bush administration, such as its tilt toward Taiwan, national missile defense, and nuclear posture review, were not greeted with the same kind of diplomatic vitriol that was common during the Clinton administration, the champion of the engagement policy. Of course, defining China’s most vital interests more narrowly also means that China will defend its core interests vigorously. This requires that Beijing, just like Washington, hedge its policy toward the United States in case accommodation fails to keep the United States from encroaching upon its core interests. Consequently, Beijing’s strategy is one of “hedged acquiescence”—China will maintain a strategy of conflict avoidance vis-à-vis the United States and acquiesce to US assertiveness where China’s core interests are not involved. But China is also prepared to confront such assertiveness where it encroaches on Beijing’s core interests. I begin this chapter by analyzing the fragile and complex nature of the Sino-American relationship and the extent to which both conflicts and cooperation are built into it. I then probe the effects of the asymmetry of power between the United States and China on the limits of strategic alternatives available to Beijing and the evolution of its strategic thinking in recent years, and also examine how China’s new strategic thinking values the benefits provided

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by US hegemony. Last, I discuss the contours and core elements of China’s new strategy itself.

The Sino-American Relationship: Conflicts and Cooperation Despite its growing importance to Northeast Asia’s peace, stability, and prosperity, the Sino-American relationship is built on fragile foundations. On the one hand, conflicts of political values and geopolitical interests, profound differences over specific bilateral issues, and the mutual distrust flowing from such disputes form the structural features of Beijing’s ties with Washington. On the other hand, both countries share important interests in maintaining regional peace and prosperity and have worked hard to seek mutual cooperation despite their differences. The duality of conflicts and cooperation makes US engagement with China simultaneously difficult and desirable. The list of factors that underlie the tensions in Sino-American relations is a familiar one. First, the differences in the political systems and values in the two countries are often thought to be among the most important sources of friction. In a democracy, the political process works on principles that are fundamentally different from those that structure incentives and decisionmaking in an authoritarian regime. Such differences not only create barriers to mutual understanding and communication, but also directly generate strategic distrust. For example, a significant portion of the ruling elite in Beijing are firmly convinced that Washington’s grand design is to seek the demise of the Communist Party. Similarly, a large number of political leaders in Washington believe that a China ruled by an authoritarian regime poses a long-term threat to US interests. Regime and value differences are of course behind the Sino-American disputes over human rights.6 For most Americans, China’s poor human rights record is not just a cause for concern, but proof of the moral indefensibility of a policy that appears to put commercial and strategic interests ahead of cherished American values. Driven by Wilsonian impulses, many Americans find it morally unacceptable to condone and engage regimes that repress civil liberties and restrict democracy. As a result, defending engagement has presented successive US administrations since Tiananmen with a Herculean political task. For China, Washington’s emphasis on human rights is viewed merely as another excuse for adopting policies designed to humiliate China and undermine the rule of the Communist Party. During the Cold War, the threat from the Soviet Union obviously far outweighed US discomfort with allying with a totalitarian Maoist regime in Beijing. But in the post–Cold War era, promoting human rights again became one of Washington’s key foreign policy priorities. Ironically, despite significant improvement in China’s human rights performance since the end of the Cultural Revolution, US political leaders have

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only intensified their criticisms of Beijing and demanded more progress (though US pressures on China were nonexistent before the Tiananmen incident in 1989). Inevitably, bilateral disputes over political values have eroded the public support in both countries for a cooperative relationship. In the United States, this is a much more serious problem, as polls show that China’s poor human rights conditions have consistently been the most important cause of opposition to friendly ties with Beijing.7 Lack of public support in the United States thus becomes the weakest link in Washington’s efforts to sustain its engagement strategy. Although China is no democracy, ordinary Chinese people have responded to the post–Cold War human rights offensive from Washington with resentment, mainly because the use of threats (such as revoking China’s most-favored-nation trade status) and high-handedness triggered a nationalistic backlash.8 Second, China and the United States have profoundly different world outlooks, especially regarding the principles of sovereignty and international order.9 Due to these differences, Beijing has consistently opposed US initiatives or interventions that would threaten not just its own sovereignty, but the principle of sovereignty in international politics. Ironically, on rare occasions, Beijing has not been averse to joining the United States in opposing efforts and initiatives by other countries that threaten to undermine the principle of sovereignty (as in the case of the International Criminal Court). On the whole, however, China has found US power and dominance more threatening than comforting. A nation steeped in the tradition of realism, China is also extremely uncomfortable with a Pax Americana in the post–Cold War world, and has consistently championed a multipolar world order as a substitute. In Washington, Beijing’s rhetoric about opposing “hegemonism” (a code word for US dominance) and supporting a “multipolar world” is unavoidably perceived as China’s hostility to US leadership.10 For most countries, differences in world outlooks normally do not affect their ties with the United States, because, after all, complaints about US unilateralism, bullying, and assertiveness are common in many countries. But for China, such differences matter a great deal, because of China’s own rapid rise. Historically, a rising power seldom avoids conflict with the reigning hegemon. In the case of Sino-American relations, the geopolitical concerns about a rising China have been further amplified by differing visions about the international order in general, and US hegemony in particular. Consequently, in the United States, China’s rise has been viewed with deep skepticism, if not anxiety.11 Similarly, in China, awareness of US suspicion and uneasiness about its rise has led many Chinese elites to fear that the United States will, out of self-interest, use its power and influence to frustrate China’s ambitions. Third, as Pacific powers, both have conflicting regional visions. In the post–Cold War era, China’s ambivalence about the US presence in the region in general, and its extensive security networks in the Western Pacific in particular, has grown. The US posture does not seem to be very reassuring, especially

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for a China that has unresolved territorial issues and sovereignty claims (such as the status of Taiwan and the South China Sea). China would like to see the United States drastically alter that posture to accommodate China’s own interests.12 But for the United States, such a vision conflicts with its own perceived leadership role in Northeast Asia. Becoming too solicitous of Beijing’s sensitivities and interests risks elevating China’s strategic role above that of Washington’s traditional allies in the region. Such a step would leave the United States with few strategic hedging options against an unfriendly China. Although the United States may be willing to adjust its role and posture to give recognition to China’s increasing regional importance, there is little doubt that Washington intends to preserve its dominance in Northeast Asia and fully expects China to be cognizant of its desire. Indeed, China’s attitude toward US presence and leadership in Northeast Asia has become a yardstick to measure the compatibility between the long-term interests of the two countries. Finally, aside from these three structural factors that complicate SinoAmerican relations, Beijing’s ties with Washington are plagued by difficult specific disputes over trade, Taiwan, and nonproliferation. Because of the unresolved structural conflicts between the two countries, disagreements over specific bilateral issues tend to assume greater importance and become the lens through which the overall relationship is often judged. On many occasions, the intermingling of specific bilateral grievances and underlying strategic distrust produces a vicious cycle: specific grievances reinforce strategic distrust, which in turn makes compromise and accommodation difficult. In 1996, 1999, and 2001, for example, such a dynamic almost led to a meltdown in bilateral relations when the near-simultaneous eruption of crises raised fundamental doubts in both capitals about the foundations of their relations.13 Amazingly, despite their strategic distrust and specific disputes, the United States and China also share important common interests, which have helped ameliorate tensions and strengthened the fragile foundations of their relationship. For the United States, China may not be a strategic partner, but many of Beijing’s key interests overlap with those of Washington. Both countries have an abiding interest in peace and stability in Northeast Asia. For China, a secure and peaceful neighborhood is a precondition for its economic modernization. For the United States, a peaceful and prosperous Northeast Asia is in its fundamental interest. In addition, China’s cooperation on key regional security issues, ranging from the unresolved conflicts on the Korean peninsula to turmoil in South Asia and Central Asia, is useful—or even critical—to the United States. In terms of nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Washington also needs assistance from Beijing to prevent unfriendly states from acquiring these weapons. Although Beijing’s record on nonproliferation is mixed and not wholly satisfactory to Washington, China appears to have given its ties to the United States a much higher priority than commercial profits from exports of sensitive technologies and weapons systems.14 In

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international organizations, China’s growing importance—in addition to its veto power as a permanent member on the United Nations Security Council— is a reality the United States cannot easily ignore. Last, as the fastest-growing economy in the world for the past two decades, China provides a huge potential market for US corporations, and has become a key supplier of low-cost, high-quality consumer goods for the United States. China’s large purchase of US treasury bonds, and other debts, has also supported the value of the dollar and helped keep down interest rates.15

Coming to Terms with US Hegemony China’s appreciation of the overwhelming superiority of US power, as well as the durability of US strategic advantage, appears to have convinced its leaders of both the costs of conflict and the benefits of accommodation. In particular, the asymmetry of power between the two countries, asymmetrical economic interdependence, China’s structural vulnerabilities, and the strategic advantage of the United States as a balancer in Asia’s geopolitical competition, braced by the huge benefits to other countries of free-riding on US hegemony, are among the most important factors that may have decisively influenced the thinking of the Chinese leadership. Asymmetrical Power Despite the rapid growth that China has experienced in the past two decades, the bilateral disparities of “hard” power between the United States and China continue to exist. Indeed, in terms of military capabilities, such a gap has been expanding, rather than narrowing. According to one of the most authoritative studies on the Chinese military, US military capabilities are at least twenty years ahead of those of China, and the United States will likely maintain its dominance over China beyond the next two decades. In the opinion of two respected analysts, China’s military is simply “hollow.”16 Chinese military leaders, according to David Shambaugh, have also come to understand and see more clearly China’s military weaknesses relative to the United States. Such recognition has only increased their sense of insecurity and diminished their confidence in challenging US power.17 More important, it has also raised doubts about China’s ability to conquer Taiwan militarily, with or without the threat of direct US intervention.18 Economically, China is unlikely to catch up with the United States for two decades, even under the most optimistic scenarios. The size of the US economy, close to $12 trillion in 2005, is about five times that of China ($2.4 trillion) when measured in exchange-rate terms. Even if China should realize its ambitious growth goal of quadrupling its economy by 2020, Beijing will still

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not be able to close its gap with the United States. The size of the Chinese economy will be about a third of that of the US economy in exchange-rate terms, and 85 percent of the US economy if measured in purchasing power parity.19 Per capita income in China will remain a small fraction of that in the United States.20 In addition, the enormous lead of the United States in science, technology, and higher education will surely persist, making it almost impossible for China to become a “peer competitor.” The United States also has the most sophisticated financial markets and a relatively effective system of protecting property rights and enforcing contracts. It is extremely unlikely that China will develop these institutional underpinnings of a market economy in the next two decades—even if there should be a regime change. Finally, China’s domestic economy has enormous imbalances and structural weaknesses, such as huge bad bank loans (estimated to be in excess of 50 percent of gross domestic product), unsustainable fiscal deficits, a weak agricultural base, enormous population pressures, and dangerously high regional and urban-rural disparities. These imbalances and weaknesses raise questions about whether China will be able to sustain high rates of growth. Asymmetrical Economic Interdependence Although economic interdependence has increasingly become a feature of SinoAmerican relations, such interdependence remains highly asymmetrical. This asymmetry is a source of vulnerability for China, influencing the thinking of Beijing’s elites and constraining their strategic choices. For China, the United States is its largest overseas market, accounting for 32 percent of China’s total exports in 2005. Trade surplus with the United States topped $200 billion in 2005 and constituted the single largest source of merchandise trade surplus for China.21 The United States is also one of the largest foreign investors in China; if investment from Taiwan and Hong Kong were reclassified as nonforeign, the United States would be China’s largest foreign investor.22 China also depends on the United States for imports of critical technologies, such as semiconductor manufacturing equipment, advanced computers, and telecommunications equipment. Despite strict export controls imposed by Washington out of fear of allowing sensitive technologies with potential military applications to leak to China, China has benefited significantly from its access to US technologies. On the other hand, US economic dependence on China is much less lopsided. US exports to China, though growing fast, constitute a relatively small portion of total US exports (China’s exports to the United States in 2005 were six times greater than US exports to China, according to US Department of Commerce data).23 As the world’s leader in science and technology, the United States does not rely on China for access to critical technologies. Furthermore, China is not a significant foreign direct investor in the United States (although Beijing has now become an increasingly important purchaser of US treasury bonds).

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This asymmetrical economic interdependence greatly increases the costs for China if relations with the United States deteriorate to the point of confrontation. At the same, the same asymmetry increases the incentives for cooperation. Indeed, one of the most plausible explanations for China’s persistent, though not necessarily always successful, efforts to seek accommodation with the United States, even when US action encroaches on Beijing’s vital interests (such as Taiwan), is the restraining power of this asymmetrical economic interdependence. Structural Vulnerabilities A third constraining factor in China’s relationship with the United States is a set of “structural vulnerabilities” that greatly reduce China’s security while further enhancing the advantages of the United States. These vulnerabilities are long-lasting weaknesses that can be exploited by a strategic competitor to inflict substantial damage. In the case of China, three such structural vulnerabilities come to mind. First, China’s future economic growth critically depends on secure access to energy supplies, because China cannot meet its energy needs domestically and must rely on imports to fill the gap. Of particular importance will be oil imports from the Middle East (which account for about three-quarters of China’s total crude oil imports today). It is estimated that China’s energy imports, which made up 40 percent of its total consumption in 2004, will exceed 50 percent by 2010, making China as dependent on foreign oil as is the United States.24 But unlike the United States, China does not have the military capabilities to defend its long supply routes or intervene in the oilproducing states in the Middle East. Indeed, in an open conflict, with either the United States or India, China would quickly see its oil supply routes cut off. Of course, China has recently tried to seek secure energy supplies in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Russian Far East. But so far such efforts have yielded only mixed results. In any case, China will continue to depend on oil imports from the Middle East for a substantial portion of its energy needs. Second, the nationalist aspirations of China’s ethnic minorities, especially those in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia, create opportunities for outside powers to take advantage of certain Chinese vulnerabilities. A hostile power can produce enormous mischief by supporting these minorities, either covertly or openly. Should secessionist movements gain sufficient strength in these areas, where China’s critical water, energy, and mineral resources are located, Beijing will face huge threats to its internal security and be forced to divert enormous military resources to pacification. Of course, the most serious threat to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is the proindependence movement on Taiwan. With a proindependence political party—the Democratic Progressive Party—in control of the government, Taiwan has embarked on a

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course of “creeping independence” aimed at establishing a separate national identity and seeking international legal recognition of its sovereignty. Given the emotional nature of the Taiwan issue in Chinese domestic politics, China’s ruling elite will be expected to treat this issue as their topmost national security priority and commit the bulk of China’s limited military resources to the defense of its sovereignty claims. This will both constrain China’s strategic options and allow outside powers, especially the United States, to exploit this structural vulnerability to their advantage. Third, China’s expanding ties with the world of international finance have left Beijing vulnerable to new risks. Aside from trade dependence on the United States and its Western allies, China today has extensive investments abroad, most of which are concentrated in the West. These assets, both direct and portfolio investments, are subject to seizure in the event of hostilities. Of most concern to China is the safety of its huge foreign exchange reserves (which approached $1 trillion in late 2006). A huge portion of these reserves, estimated to be over 60 percent, is invested in dollar-denominated assets (such as US treasury and agency bonds) and placed in the custody of US banks. Given the dominance of US financial institutions in this area, China has few other options to reduce the risks, however negligible in times of peace, of having its assets seized by the United States should conflict occur between the two. (Indeed, China might have to withdraw all its assets from US custodial institutions before contemplating a sudden assault on Taiwan.) In the arena of international finance, China’s structural vulnerabilities are likely to persist, because the West, especially the United States, controls the so-called commanding heights. US credit-rating agencies, investment banks, and regulatory agencies can dramatically increase the costs of China’s access to the capital markets. In addition, China’s weak regulatory framework and poorly managed banking system leave the country exposed to high risks of fraud and theft that can be easily exploited by outsiders.25 The Balancer’s Advantage The most enduring strategic advantage of the United States vis-à-vis China is Washington’s position as a distant but powerful balancer in Asia’s geopolitics. China’s rise has aroused concerns not only in the United States, but also in many of China’s neighboring countries that are fearful of its expanding clout. The relationship between China and its neighbors has been complicated by past histories of animosity, conflicting visions of regional leadership, and unresolved territorial disputes. In addition, China’s traditional grand strategy of yuanjiao jingong, loosely translated as “seek allies afar and attack those near,” is a recipe for alienating its neighbors. Unlike the United States, which faces no regional rivals and needs not fear strategic balancing by a distant power, China is located in a tough neighborhood home to three major regional pow-

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ers, Japan, India, and Russia. Each of these powers is strong enough to resist China’s expansion. If the United States should choose to balance against China’s regional influence by allying with any of these powers, it could easily form an anti-China coalition with far superior capabilities. Today, the US-Japanese security alliance alone can check China’s ambitions in Northeast Asia. In South Asia, Washington has already taken advantage of its role as the distant balancer by forming a quasi-alliance with India, which has grown increasingly wary of China’s rise. The balancer’s advantage enjoyed by the United States will likely endure for decades—unless China fundamentally changes its regional strategy and takes steps to alleviate the concerns of its neighbors. There are signs that China is moving cautiously in that direction concerning India, Russia, South Korea, and Southeast Asia. It is too early to tell whether this new strategy will be successful. However, the biggest challenge for China remains Japan, which has experienced a dramatic change in its perception of China. As a result, the dynamics of Sino-Japanese relations have been deteriorating, rather than improving. As long as Japan is left out of China’s equation of regional reconciliation and cooperation, the United States will always have a willing and strong partner to help constrain China’s influence. Free-Riding on US Hegemony If an adversarial relationship with the United States carries unacceptable costs for China, free-riding on US hegemony can yield substantial benefits. To be sure, coming to terms with US hegemony requires significant psychological adjustments on the part of the Chinese leadership and dictates that China’s foreign policy be determined through cold calculation of national interests, and not emotional sentiments. But once such psychological adjustments are made and the challenges posed by US dominance to China’s rise are viewed in a different light, the hidden benefits of US hegemony become almost self-evident. More important, it seems that China benefits most from continued US hegemony in areas where its most serious structural vulnerabilities lie. For example, the critical role played by the United States in maintaining secure oil supplies from the Middle East and in enforcing stability in the world’s energy markets (out of its own national interests) cannot be assumed by another power. As an oil-importing nation, China depends on secure oil supplies and stable energy prices to sustain its economic growth. Similarly, US hegemony is also indispensable in maintaining an open global trading system and stable financial markets. As a beneficiary of globalization, China does not have the capabilities to enforce open trading regimes or international financial stability. Consequently, it must free-ride on US dominance to protect its stakes in the international trade and financial systems. To the extent that US behavior contributes to the openness and stability of these two systems, China can benefit

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from US dominance. Even in geopolitical competition in Northeast Asia, US hegemony can be beneficial. Obviously, through US-Japanese security relations, Washington has managed to constrain Tokyo’s military ambitions. The presence of forward-deployed US forces in Northeast Asia has prevented a far more vicious regional security dilemma from becoming a reality. The ongoing US war on terrorism has inadvertently helped China in its efforts to suppress its own separatist threats in Central Asia.

Toward a New Strategy It is questionable whether the Chinese leadership experienced a sudden epiphany in its understanding of the costs of confronting US hegemony and the benefits of coming to terms with it. In all likelihood, the process was evolutionary, although the advent of a new leadership in early 2003 appeared to have injected fresh momentum into this process.26 Throughout the 1990s, Beijing appeared to be navigating between competing impulses, with the predictable results of policy disarray and instability in Sino-American relations. Of course, the same can also be said of Washington’s policy toward Beijing, as various political interests fought a fierce battle for the direction of US policy toward China. The outcome of that foreign policy debate was inclusive, but its impact on the bilateral ties was decidedly negative. Judging by the trends of SinoAmerican relations in recent years, it seems reasonable to judge that Beijing’s new strategy toward the United States did not take full shape until the advent of the George W. Bush administration, and might have preceded the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States. It is impossible to determine whether this new strategy would have been as effective without the war on terrorism, which has, at least temporarily, diverted the US strategic focus away from China and brought the interests of the two countries into alignment in one critical area. But there is little doubt that China was able to seize the strategic opportunities created by 9/11 and use them to implement its new strategy. The preliminary results of this new strategy appear to be very positive. After a decade of wild swings, Sino-American relations following 9/11 entered a rare period of consistent stability, with both sides stressing the positive aspects of their ties while working hard to manage potential tensions. The state of bilateral ties became so good that a long-term observer, Kenneth Lieberthal, openly asked whether China had become an ally of the United States. He attributed the improvement in relations largely to China’s emerging strategy: “In general, China has adopted a more confident overall approach to foreign policy. Beijing seems now to feel accepted as a major, respected actor in the international arena.”27 More important, the Bush administration’s ill-advised invasion of Iraq in March 2003, which created a quagmire for the United States, has offered China

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a golden opportunity not only to stabilize its relations with the United States, but also to expand its influence, particularly in Asia and other developing countries, while Washington is strategically distracted. Indeed, since the Iraq War, which China wisely chose not to oppose publicly, Beijing’s overall influence and prestige on the world stage have increased to an unprecedented level. A careful examination of China’s new strategy, sometimes loosely called the “new security concept,” shows that it has three core components: conflict avoidance, limited cooperation, and strategic hedging.28 On balance, this is a strategy that is based on realistic assumptions about Sino-American relations and designed to minimize the likelihood of a costly, if not disastrous, conflict. Conflict Avoidance The primary task in adopting a strategy of conflict avoidance is to base China’s foreign policy on a more narrow and strict definition of core national interests and resist domestic pressures for needless conflicts with the United States. China appeared to have learned this lesson in a costly way. In 1999 it fiercely opposed the intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Kosovo and saw its ties with the West, especially the United States, rapidly deteriorate. Contrast Kosovo with the Iraq War and one finds that China’s policy has changed almost completely. Although domestic opposition to the war, as in nearly all other countries, was high in China, the Chinese government adopted a low profile and avoided incurring Washington’s wrath as France and Germany did. More important, even when US action encroaches on narrowly defined core Chinese interests, such as Taiwan and nuclear deterrence, Beijing has learned to seek accommodation and avoid conflict, as the following two case studies illustrate. Taiwan. There is no doubt that the Taiwan issue remains the most sensitive, unstable, and dangerous problem between China and the United States. Indeed, the only conceivable military conflict between the two would be one over the status of Taiwan. When the Bush administration came into office in 2001, cross-strait relations were at a critical turning point. In Taipei, an openly proindependence party was in control of the government. Inside the Bush administration, many key players on the national security team were China skeptics and called for a radical change in Washington’s policy toward Taiwan during the campaign. Indeed, soon after the Bush team assumed control, Washington delighted Taipei—and shocked Beijing—with a dramatic policy shift. In short order, the Bush administration quickly demonstrated its pro-Taiwan stance. It approved the largest arms-sale package to Taiwan ever, which included, for the first time, offensive weapons systems (diesel submarines). It allowed Taiwan’s president, Chen Shui-bian, a high-profile “transit visit” to New York. It greatly accelerated efforts to aid Taiwan’s defense. And it permitted

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Vice President Dick Cheney to meet with Taiwan’s foreign minister at a conference in Colorado. These steps, when taken together, effectively hollowed Washington’s long-standing “one China” policy.29 However, China’s response to these setbacks was unexpectedly restrained. While rhetorically denouncing Washington’s policy shift, Beijing did not escalate the tensions, either with Washington or with Taipei. Such restraint has led to speculation, popular in the circle of US China-watchers, that Beijing responds only to toughness. Those who held this view credited the hard-line policy of the new administration with teaching the Chinese leadership a much needed lesson and bringing about desired behavior. But this view overlooks another important factor—China’s own calculation of the costs and benefits of a policy of confrontation with a Republican administration. Chinese leaders understood very well that allowing themselves to be provoked into such a confrontation would not serve China’s long-term interests. Conflict with the United States was to be avoided at all costs. In addition, Beijing found, beneath the tough rhetoric of the Bush administration, important reassurances. Despite the provocative nature of the steps taken by the Bush administration (some of which were punishment for Beijing’s intransigent behavior during the EP-3 spy plane incident in April 2001), these acts might not have crossed Beijing’s red line. For example, the arms-sale package announced in April 2001 did not contain destroyers equipped with Aegis battle management systems. The message from the Bush administration contained both clear deterrence and reassurance. It warned Beijing against taking military action against Taiwan, but also expressed Washington’s stance of not supporting Taiwan’s independence. This policy of strategic clarity may be a more effective instrument of dual deterrence under the changed circumstances across the Taiwan Strait.30 In retrospect, Beijing’s decision to avoid allowing the Taiwan issue to poison its entire relationship with the United States was a wise one. Perhaps by coincidence, shortly after Washington’s shift from strategic ambiguity to clarity, Beijing adopted a new approach toward Taiwan. The mainland’s strategy is centered on using the magnetic pull of its growing economy to achieve close economic integration with Taiwan.31 Assisted by market forces, China played the economic card skillfully. It adopted favorable policies to woo the Taiwanese business community and demonstrated tactical flexibility on the most critical cross-strait issue—the so-called three links. The objective of this economic strategy is twofold. Economically, it is designed to produce the incentives for the public in Taiwan to remain attached to the mainland through increasing dependence on the mainland market (which had already become Taiwan’s largest export market in 2002). Politically, ties to Taiwan’s business community, which provides the funds for the island’s political parties, will perhaps generate pressure on Taipei’s authorities to change their policies. Although it is too early to know whether Beijing will achieve these objectives, it is clear that the economic strategy has put the Chen government on the defense.

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Complementing the strategy are three additional policy tools. First, to improve its image in Taiwan, Beijing has softened its rhetoric and stopped issuing threats (which have backfired in the past). Instead, it has adopted a so-called united-front policy to reach out to Taiwan’s political elites who are not among the core proindependence elements within the Democratic Progressive Party. In 2004, China’s new leadership, under Hu Jintao, adopted an even more skillful policy of reaching out to the leaders of Taiwan’s main opposition parties, Lien Chan and James Soong, who were invited to visit Beijing and accorded lavish treatment. Beijing hopes that this will help isolate Chen and his party. It is to be noted that this ostensibly soft approach was accompanied by a simultaneous hardening of political deterrence—in March 2004, China passed a so-called antisecession law aimed to deter Taiwan from declaring formal independence. Second, Beijing has tightened its diplomatic noose around Taiwan and intensified its efforts to reduce Taipei’s international space. As a result, the number of countries that officially recognize Taiwan has decreased to fewer than twenty-five. Although such a policy has prevented Taiwan from making significant international gains, it has, in effect, worked against the mainland’s charm offensive aimed at the Taiwanese public. Because Beijing’s high-handedness succeeds only in humiliating the Taiwanese people and fueling resentments toward the mainland (as over the issue of Taiwan’s efforts to enter the World Health Organization), Beijing’s diplomatic strategy unavoidably cancels out the effects of its charm offensive. Third, while toning down its threats, Beijing has maintained the same level of intensity of acquiring the military capabilities for a Taiwan Strait contingency. The military element serves two purposes: it both enhances Beijing’s deterrent capacity and provides a useful focus for its military modernization program. So far, China’s strategy appears to have worked. Taiwan’s proindependence movement has lost its momentum; its chief champion, President Chen, is increasingly isolated and deeply unpopular, both with Taiwan’s voters and with the Bush administration, which has significantly curtailed its support for Chen following a series of ill-advised moves made by Chen that created heightened tensions with the mainland.32 In many respects, China appears to have succeeded in enlisting the diplomatic assistance of the United States in constraining Chen. Obviously, Chinese leaders have also significantly adjusted their goals by placing a higher priority on maintaining the status quo compared to achieving reunification. To be sure, China’s new Taiwan strategy itself has internal tensions and requires careful management and constant recalibration. But as long as the economic forces are in Beijing’s favor, the mainland can afford to de-emphasize the coercive elements in its strategy. Such a policy orientation is essential to Beijing’s overall strategy of conflict avoidance with the United States.33 Missile defense. The US plan to develop and deploy a system of national

missile defense (NMD) presented China with a difficult strategic decision.34

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Although this plan was forced through a Republican-controlled Congress during the Clinton administration, the arrival of the Bush administration in Washington fundamentally altered the political dynamics of this strategic initiative. The new administration formalized its withdrawal from the Anti–Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed with the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, and greatly accelerated the pace of developing the NMD system. Washington’s efforts to build an anti–ballistic missile system threatened to neutralize China’s minimum nuclear deterrence capability. But to the surprise of many observers, Bush’s action did not elicit a bellicose response from Beijing or trigger a nuclear arms race. The evolution—if not reversal—of Beijing’s stance on the NMD issue was a revealing illustration of China’s strategy of conflict avoidance. To be sure, as many China-watchers observed, Beijing had previously adopted an anti-NMD policy out of fear that its nuclear capabilities were vulnerable to such a system. In opposing Washington’s NMD plan, China threw its diplomatic support behind Russia’s attempt to block the United States from withdrawing from the Anti–Ballistic Missile Treaty. Beijing also highlighted the danger of a nuclear arms race that NMD could help unleash; it also dismissed Washington’s argument that NMD is necessary to prevent rogue states from using nuclear blackmail against the United States. Beijing’s opposition to NMD was grounded in serious security concerns. China is constrained by its “no-first-use” nuclear doctrine; in the event of a conflict, China’s relatively small nuclear force (with about 400 warheads) must withstand a heavy first offensive from the United States or Russia. The advent of an NMD system would magnify China’s strategic vulnerability by rendering ineffective China’s surviving nuclear capabilities.35 Although China has been engaged in a gradual but methodical program of nuclear modernization through the introduction of a more mobile and precise secondstrike capability that can withstand a first strike, a truly effective NMD system on the part of the United States could still negate the progress made in China’s nuclear modernization.36 Thus, many Western arms-control analysts were justifiably concerned about how China would respond to the US deployment of NMD. They believed that Washington’s NMD system could greatly influence China’s nuclear modernization effort. Skeptical about the real intentions of the NMD plan, China would view the US initiative through its own prism of relative weakness and vulnerability. In particular, since China itself had been subjected to nuclear blackmail from the United States on numerous occasions (such as during the Korean War and the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1954), no Chinese leaders would want to be accused of inaction in the face of a revolutionary change in the nuclear strategic balance between the United States and China.37 Indeed, based on more than sixty interviews with various Chinese officials, scholars, and experts, one US arms-control expert found that US plans for NMD could have a significant impact on China’s nuclear strategy. The Chinese

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insisted that their nuclear modernization was not designed to seek nuclear parity with the United States, but to enhance the survivability and effectiveness of their small force. However, US missile defense could render China’s nuclear deterrent impotent.38 Beijing could respond to NMD with several countermeasures, ranging from a moderately paced program of incremental improvement and increase to a dramatic increase of the size of its nuclear arsenal. A moderate response could include a small increase in the number of warheads to defeat the missile defense capability of the United States, development of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), and development of countermeasures to penetrate the system.39 It is unlikely that this response would initiate an arms race with India, which has long viewed China as its main strategic rival and security threat. Nor would it unduly alarm Japan. Most important, it would avoid confirming, in the minds of US strategic planners, that the nuclear threat from China is real and substantial. At the other extreme, China could respond with a huge expansion of its nuclear force. Such an expansion, mainly through increasing the number of Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) from the estimated 24 at present to 200, would enable China to overwhelm the 100 land-based interceptors planned for the initial stage of the NMD system. Increasing its ICBM deterrent by roughly eight times is, according to most experts, well within the financial capabilities of China.40 However, after the Bush administration officially withdrew from the Anti–Ballistic Missile Treaty and accelerated NMD development, China’s response was surprisingly restrained. The Chinese Foreign Ministry merely expressed “regrets,” and the official media did not launch a vitriolic attack on Washington’s action. Most notably, no Western intelligence has detected or reported any significant changes in China’s nuclear modernization efforts. It appears that Beijing has adopted a moderate response to the NMD challenge. Beijing’s restrained reaction was a perfect illustration of its strategy of conflict avoidance. In this case, the potential threat posed to its national security by a fully effective NMD system is considerable. But the risks of a robust response are equally huge. Large increases in defense expenditures aside, a tenfold rise in China’s nuclear arsenal could create such negative strategic consequences, especially in terms of US perception of China’s capabilities and intentions, that they would not yield, on balance, more security for China. In all likelihood, China would find its security environment deteriorating further, as the United States would respond to China’s nuclear buildup by accelerating its defense cooperation with Taiwan, helping strengthen Japan’s offensive capabilities, and assisting India in its own military modernization. In addition, Chinese leaders seem to believe that the risks posed by the NMD efforts of the United States are manageable. So long as the two countries take steps toward conflict avoidance, a nuclear confrontation between China and the United States belongs only in the realm of fantasy.

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Limited Cooperation To strengthen the foundations of bilateral relations, Beijing has adopted, as part of its new strategy toward the United States, a policy of limited cooperation. Limited cooperation is a compromise between completely subordinating China’s national interests to those of the United States and refusing to work with Washington even where China’s own core interests are at stake. The calculation behind such a policy is to enhance mutual trust and highlight the benefits of engagement with China. After late 2002 the contours of such a policy began to emerge in the war on terrorism, the South Asian crisis, and the North Korean nuclear crisis.41 In these three cases, China provided substantive assistance to the United States, out of both self-interest and a desire to demonstrate its new stance toward cooperation with Washington. The latter case—China’s intervention in the ongoing North Korean nuclear crisis—provides an apt illustration. The North Korean nuclear crisis. The revelation in October 2002 that the North Korean government was engaged in a new uranium enrichment program merely reignited a crisis that had lain dormant for eight years. In 1994 the United States almost launched a preemptive strike against North Korea’s nuclear facilities in Yongbyon to prevent Pyongyang from acquiring nuclear capabilities. The crisis was averted at the last minute after Washington and Pyongyang reached a compromise—the agreed framework—that froze North Korea’s plutonium-based nuclear program in exchange for two light-water reactors and fuel oil supplied by Washington and its allies. The role played by China in the resolution of the crisis was modest. It did not participate in the negotiations directly, although once the agreed framework took shape, China expressed its support and called on the North Korean government to honor its obligations under the agreement. China did, however, support the agreed framework. It is widely accepted that China played a behind-the-scenes role in defusing the crisis. In the days preceding former president Jimmy Carter’s June 1994 trip to North Korea, which produced an understanding with North Korea that it would stop its nuclear program at Yongbyon, China reportedly warned Pyongyang that it should not count on its support in confronting the United States. China also urged North Korea to allow international inspection of its nuclear facilities.42 In April 1994, China compromised with the United States and agreed to a UN Security Council statement that called on North Korea to allow inspectors to investigate the status of its nuclear activities, with an oblique warning that trade sanctions could result if North Korea did not cooperate. China definitely played a far more active role in the 2002–2003 crisis, apparently as part of its policy of limited cooperation with the United States. Beijing grew increasingly concerned after North Korean leader Kim Jung Il started to play a game of brinkmanship by withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonprolifera-

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tion Treaty, expelling the on-site inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, and restarting the plutonium reactors in Yongbyon. Shortly after the crisis erupted in October 2002, Chinese president Jiang Zemin and US president George W. Bush jointly declared their shared goal of preventing the nuclearization of the Korean peninsula. In December 2002, Jiang and the Russian president Vladimir Putin made clear their opposition to a nuclear North Korea and called for talks between Washington and Pyongyang. As diplomatic efforts appeared to be stalling in February 2002, Beijing, which supplied more than 75 percent of North Korea’s oil needs, sent a warning to Pyongyang by shutting off an oil pipeline to North Korea for three days, citing “technical difficulties.” This action, which implied China would use its economic leverage in the crisis, appeared to yield a modest concession from Pyongyang, which abandoned its demand for a one-on-one talk with Washington and accepted a compromise formula under which China, North Korea, and the United States would hold negotiations. In the ensuing trilateral talks in April 2003, China played a “critical role” in arranging and mediating the discussions.43 During the talks, the Chinese also encouraged the United States by stating firmly to the North Koreans that China was committed to the denuclearization of the peninsula and referencing directly the 1992 Korean denuclearization agreement between Pyongyang and Seoul. However, Pyongyang’s intransigence, coupled with Washington’s refusal to make concessions under Pyongyang’s blackmail, led to the virtual collapse of the talks in April 2003. With Washington distracted by the chaos in postwar Iraq, the Bush administration did not launch any new initiatives on resuming the diplomatic track with the Kim regime. Worried about a further deterioration in conditions on the Korean peninsula, China intensified its diplomatic efforts in July. It dispatched its executive vice minister of foreign affairs to Pyongyang for a four-day visit, during which he presented to Kim a letter from China’s new president, Hu Jintao. Soon afterward, the same Chinese diplomat went to Washington in an attempt to devise an acceptable formula for resuming the dialogue between North Korea and the United States. Eventually, North Korea agreed to join the so-called six-party talks hosted by Beijing. These negotiations, conducted among North Korea, South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia, and China, aimed to prevent North Korea from acquiring an overt nuclear capability. China’s intervention in the North Korean nuclear crisis in 2002–2003 was an apt example of its policy of limited cooperation with the United States. China’s own interests—preventing nuclear proliferation in its neighborhood, forestalling use of force by the United States, and preserving a strategic buffer on the Korean peninsula—were served by its adoption of a policy that was more closely aligned with Washington than with Pyongyang, China’s troublesome former ally. Ultimately, however, China’s efforts to prevent North Korea from declaring itself a nuclear power failed miserably, due to a combination of factors out of its

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control. The Bush administration maintained hard-line positions throughout the six-party talks, while Pyongyang consistently refused to commit itself to nuclear disarmament. In September 2005, the six-party talks appeared to have scored a victory when all the six participating countries issued a declaration pledging to seek denuclearization on the Korean peninsula. But before the ink on the agreement was dry, talks about how to implement the declaration collapsed, because North Korea was angered by new financial sanctions imposed by the United States that led to a freezing of North Korean assets in a small bank in Macao, China. Tensions quickly escalated. North Korea tested, albeit unsuccessfully, an intercontinental ballistic missile in July 2006. In response, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on North Korea that would ban trade in missile technologies and components with Pyongyang. China, for the first time, supported the sanctions resolution. Yet North Korea remained defiant and continued to play a game of chicken with the United States. On October 9, 2006, Pyongyang claimed that it had conducted a nuclear test. Although the yield of the test was so small (below half a kiloton) that many in the West suspected it was unsuccessful, China was deeply upset and joined the West in imposing more wideranging sanctions on North Korea (China used its influence to water down the sanctions for fear of further escalating the tensions in the region). Throughout this experience, China had attempted to demonstrate to the United States its value as a tactical partner on crucial regional security issues. Strategic Hedging Although the overall thrust of Beijing’s new strategy toward the United States is constructive, China nevertheless lacks fundamental strategic trust in the United States and must hedge against possible deterioration in bilateral ties or even future confrontation. Strategic hedging is an insurance policy. To be sure, China began its strategic hedging in the mid-1990s when its relations with Washington were highly unstable. The adoption of such hedging does not mean that Chinese leaders view conflict with the United States as unavoidable. Instead, strategic hedging from Beijing’s perspective is necessary as a means to both strengthen China’s own bargaining position with the United States and increase the costs of confrontation for the United States should bilateral tensions spiral out of control. So far, China’s strategic hedging rests on two sets of initiatives: reshaping its regional security environment and measured military modernization. Reshaping the regional security environment. Two initiatives taken by the Chinese leadership in reshaping its regional security environment in recent years are the establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with Russia and five Central Asian countries, and the overtures to Southeast Asian nations. The “Shanghai Five”—China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,

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and Tajikistan—held their first presidential summit in Shanghai in 1996, and continued to hold an annual summit each year thereafter. The Shanghai Five initially focused on resolving border demarcation and demilitarization issues between China and the former Soviet republics. In June 2001 the Shanghai Five became an official multilateral institution and renamed itself the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with Uzbekistan included as a member. Among other things, the SCO pledged to enhance regional security and combat the “three evil forces” of terrorism, extremism, and radicalism. In June 2002 the presidents of the SCO member states signed the group’s charter. The SCO’s institution building accelerated in May 2003, when the presidents of the SCO member states announced in Moscow that the SCO would set up in 2004 a secretariat in Beijing (with the first secretary-general being Chinese) and a regional antiterrorist structure in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek. They approved the organization’s emblem and flag. As a veiled criticism of US unilateralism, the group’s presidents also called for a stronger UN role in international affairs and a multipolar world. It is doubtful whether China’s investments in the SCO will bear the type of strategic benefits it has desired. The US military penetration into Central Asia after the launch of the US war on terrorism, and Washington’s bilateral arrangements with the countries of Central Asia, have raised questions about the usefulness and credibility of the SCO as an effective and independent regional institution. In addition, the SCO also failed to respond to the threat of international terrorism with a unified political or military policy. Its actions were limited to official rhetoric. It is also unclear how China and Russia, the two dominant players in the SCO, can work together to make the group a truly effective actor in regional security. For the foreseeable future, the SCO is likely to remain a regional security organization with symbolic, not substantive, value to its member states. Nevertheless, the downside risks for China in expending its diplomatic capital in the SCO are limited. The regional group may not evolve into a geopolitical alliance capable of checking US influence in Central Asia, but China’s efforts have not encroached on vital US interests or generated distrust from its wary neighbors. China’s overtures to Southeast Asia are another example of Beijing’s efforts to reshape its regional environment. Aware that the US-Japanese security alliance to its east will likely endure, China apparently believes that improving relations with Southeast Asian nations will significantly enhance its regional security and diplomatic leverage. On the security front, friendly ties with Southeast Asian nations will forestall US attempts to encircle China through the establishment of military bases in the country’s vulnerable southwest. Diplomatically, neutrality of Southeast Asian nations will reduce China’s anxiety of being isolated on regional issues. Economically, China’s integration with Southeast Asian nations will likely increase its influence in the region as a counterweight to deeply entrenched Japanese economic presence.

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Beijing began its charm offensive during the East Asian financial crisis in 1997–1998. While the United States dithered, China was among the first to pledge support for Thailand’s economy, offering $1 billion in loans. At the December 1997 summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China also pledged to contribute more than $4 billion to the International Monetary Fund’s program to support economic recovery in Southeast Asia. Just as important, China promised not to devalue its currency during the crisis to help maintain stability in the region. To allay the fears of ASEAN member states about China’s economic competitiveness following Beijing’s entry into the World Trade Organization, China accelerated its efforts to establish an ASEAN-China free trade area (FTA). At the ASEAN summit in Singapore in 2000, Chinese premier Zhu Rongji proposed the creation of such an FTA. In April 2001, the first meeting of the ASEAN-China Expert Group was held, and in October 2001 this group published a report on forging closer ASEANChina economic relations in the twenty-first century. The report noted that in 2000, ASEAN-China trade totaled $39.5 billion, compared to only $7.9 billion in 1991; and that an ASEAN-China FTA would create an economic region with 1.7 billion consumers, a regional GDP of $2 trillion, and total trade of $1.3 trillion. At the November 2001 ASEAN-China summit, a plan to pursue the free trade area was announced, and a year later China and ASEAN signed a framework agreement on comprehensive economic cooperation that called for the FTA to be completed by 2010.44 To reassure ASEAN, China has also abandoned its aggressive policy of seizing disputed islands and reefs in the South China Sea. In the mid-1990s, China’s island-grabbing in the South China Sea created much ill feeling in the region and damaged Beijing’s image. But since the end of the 1990s, Beijing appears to have adopted a different approach. At the November 2002 ASEANChina summit, China signed a declaration on conduct of parties in the South China Sea, and pledged to abide by international law, to exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability, and to handle any differences in a constructive and peaceful manner. Even though this declaration is not a binding code of conduct, which ASEAN originally sought, China’s signature on the document is considered a breakthrough for ASEAN.45 In October 2003, China took another step toward reassuring ASEAN by formally signing a treaty of amity with ASEAN nations that would serve to promote stability and cooperation in the region. Military modernization. Since the early 1990s, China has pursued a steady

and methodical program of military modernization. The motives for this program are complex, driven in part by domestic politics, growing awareness of China’s obsolete military capabilities, fear of overwhelming US military superiority, and the need to deter Taiwan’s movement toward independence. How-

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ever, unlike the former Soviet Union, which engaged in a costly and ultimately unaffordable arms race with the United States, China’s military modernization is not intended to match the capabilities of the United States, a goal that Chinese leaders know is definitely out of their reach. Instead, Beijing’s objectives are more limited. The new doctrine is called “winning limited wars under hightech conditions.” In the short to medium term, the primary goal is, according to a US Department of Defense report on China’s military power in 2002, to prepare for a potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait.46 A report by the Council on Foreign Relations reached a similar conclusion about the short-term objective of Beijing’s military modernization.47 As a strategic hedge, China’s military modernization is designed not only to deter Taiwan’s independence or compel Taipei to accept the mainland’s political conditions, but also to dramatically increase the costs of possible US intervention on Taipei’s behalf. As a result of this military modernization, China began to increase its defense budgets significantly throughout the 1990s. The improvement in relations with Russia also enabled China to purchase, perhaps as a stop-gap measure, high-performance fighter jets, missiles, submarines, and destroyers, to replace its obsolete weapons systems. In addition, the Chinese military has devoted considerable resources to modernizing its small nuclear arsenal by making it more accurate and mobile, and capable of withstanding a first strike.48 It has accelerated research and development on asymmetrical and information warfare aimed at overcoming its disadvantages in high-tech weapons systems. To remake its armed forces, Beijing has implemented far-reaching organizational reforms and forced the People’s Liberation Army to divest its commercial businesses and become totally focused on national defense. Even though China’s efforts of military modernization have yet to be battle-tested, some observers have given Beijing credit for taking the necessary steps to build a more modern, professional, and mobile force with greatly improved command, control, communication, and intelligence capabilities.49

Looking Toward an Uncertain Future The turnaround in Sino-American relations following the events of September 11, 2001, has caught many observers by surprise. Yet the durability of a cooperative and constructive relationship between Washington and Beijing remains a subject of dispute. The global strategic landscape changed dramatically since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, and especially since the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the subsequent full-blown insurgency that has tied down 130,000 US troops and consumed hundreds of billions of dollars in US war spending. With the George W. Bush administration devoting almost all of its focus, energy, and resources to combating international terrorism, Iraq, North Korea, and Iran, China was able to gain precious breathing

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space in stabilizing its relations with the United States. Consequently, its new policy toward Washington was implemented in a more favorable geopolitical environment, and had a better chance to produce results. As far as Beijing is concerned, the strategic distraction of the United States provides an opportunity to take much of Washington’s pressure off Beijing. The shifting of the security priorities of the Bush administration means, in reality, that the long-term challenges posed by China’s rise have ceased to be a galvanizing policy issue that demands a robust response. In policy terms, Washington’s China policy became more focused on engagement than on “hedging.” Beijing’s leaders deserve credit for seizing this rare opportunity to initiate a virtuous cycle of strategic interaction with Washington. In particular, their policy of limited cooperation with the United States on the war against terrorism helped gain goodwill from the Bush administration and improve the atmospherics—if not substance—in bilateral ties. However, it remains uncertain how long such positive bilateral dynamics will last (it is conceivable that this extraordinary period of stability can endure for another decade as the United States remains deeply bogged down in other, more urgent crises). The long-term foundations of Sino-American relations remain fragile.50 Both supporters and skeptics of engagement with China recognize that the underlying causes of strategic distrust, potential geopolitical rivalry, and shallow domestic public support continue to exist and cast a shadow over the future trajectory of bilateral ties.51 For example, Beijing’s current policy of moderation toward Washington could fall victim to a power struggle resulting from China’s ongoing leadership transition. The tentative cooperation between Washington and Beijing on the North Korean nuclear crisis could also collapse if China fails to vigorously enforce the UN sanctions against Pyongyang and is blamed by the United States for bolstering a dangerous regime. Indeed, despite the dramatic improvement in the tone of Sino-American relations following 9/11, most of the difficult substantive issues that have the potential of destabilizing this relationship remain unresolved.52 This means that China’s new strategy for stabilizing its relations with the United States has yet to be fully tested, despite the encouraging signs of its initial success and effectiveness. Everything else being equal, however, there is ground for cautious optimism, because, on balance, this new strategy is based on a realistic assessment of the conditions that both limit the potential upside improvement in China’s ties with Washington and constrain the extent of frictions and conflicts between the two countries. In addition, for the foreseeable future, neither country has the incentive to seek confrontation. China will be absorbed in meeting its daunting domestic challenges, while the United States has to confront multiple tasks of fighting a stubborn insurgency in Iraq, preventing nuclear proliferation in Iran, forcing North Korea to denuclearize, and waging the global war on terrorism. This will help create the time and space required for China’s new strategy to yield positive results. The future of Sino-

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American relations may remain highly uncertain, but the likelihood of conflict between the United States and China will probably diminish steadily as both countries work hard to expand their common interests while managing their differences.

Notes 1. Paul Wolfowitz expressed such sentiments in his essay “Remembering the Future,” pp. 35–45. 2. The most compelling case for such a strategy has been made by John Mearsheimer, a leading realist who is by no means a “China basher,” in his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Such thinking also greatly influenced the policy of the George W. Bush administration in 2001, although the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, laid to rest, for the short term, long-term worries about China. 3. The most articulate document that outlines such a strategy is Khalilzad, The United States and a Rising China. This strategy is sometimes called “conditional engagement,” and was first articulated in Shinn, Weaving the Net. 4. Robert Zoellick made an important speech in September 2005, “Whither China,” in which he spelled out the concept of a responsible stakeholder for China. 5. Shambaugh provides a useful review of the contentious issues between China and the United States on the eve of the Bush administration in his article “Facing Reality in China Policy,” pp. 50–64. 6. See Foot, Rights Beyond Borders; Wan, Human Rights in Chinese Foreign Relations; and Chan, “Human Rights in China and the United States,” pp. 1035–1053. 7. The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland has an excellent database of polls on how Americans view relations with China, at http://www.americans-world.org/digest/regional_issues/china/ch_summary.cfm. 8. In a poll of 5,700 urban residents at the end of 1998, conducted by a private survey firm, Beijing-based Horizon Research, respondents listed American criticisms of China’s human rights record as the most important cause of their resentment against the United States. Washington’s foreign policy as a whole was listed as the second most important cause; Washington’s support for Taiwan was the third most important cause. See Yuan, “Zhonguo chengshi shimin xintai zhonghe pingjie” [Overall Assessment of the Mood of Urban Residents], pp. 113–114. 9. Feigenbaum, “China’s Challenge to Pax Americana,” pp. 31–44. 10. China has recently toned down its call for multipolarity in international affairs. Instead, its new slogan is “democracy in international affairs.” 11. Wolfowitz expressed such skepticism about China’s future in his influential essay “Remembering the Future,” pp. 35–45. 12. Xinbo Wu discussed China’s preferences in detail in his article “To Be an Enlightened Superpower,” pp. 63–72. 13. In 1996: the Taiwan crisis in March, the showdown over human rights in Geneva, and the trade disputes involving intellectual property rights. In 1999: Bill Clinton’s last-minute rejection of Zhu Rongji’s World Trade Organization offer, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and the political storm over China’s alleged nuclear spying in the United States. In 2001: the collision between a Chinese naval fighter jet and a US spy plane in April, Washington’s approval of the largest-ever arms package for Taiwan, and George W. Bush’s “whatever it takes” talk about defending Taiwan.

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14. The only exception may be Pakistan, to which China has transferred nuclear technology and missiles, mainly out of a desire to counterbalance India. 15. With a reserve of foreign exchange in excess of $360 billion (second largest after Japan), China has also become, again after Japan, the second largest purchaser of US treasury debts in recent years as part of recycling its foreign exchange earnings and maintaining its fixed exchange rate vis-à-vis the dollar. 16. Council on Foreign Relations, Chinese Military Power. Also see Gill and O’Hanlon, “China’s Hollow Military,” pp. 55–62. 17. Shambaugh, “China’s Military Views the World,” pp. 52–79. 18. O’Hanlon, “Why China Cannot Conquer Taiwan,” pp. 51–86. 19. This assumes that the US economy grows at its trend rate of 3.5 percent, while China averages 7 percent annual growth. The size of the Chinese economy today, in terms of purchasing power parity, is about $6 trillion. 20. Per capita income in China in 2005 was roughly $1,700, about one-twentieth that of the United States. 21. US Department of Commerce, “Trade Statistics Express.” 22. In 2001, investment from the US accounted for 10 percent of the total foreign direct investment in China. 23. US Department of Commerce, “Trade Statistics Express.” 24. Andrews-Speed, Liao, and Dannreuther, “The Strategic Implications of China’s Energy Needs.” 25. An easy example is the massive theft by insiders at the Bank of China in 2001, which resulted in the loss of about $500 million. The perpetrators escaped China. The stolen money was reportedly laundered through Las Vegas and other North American channels. 26. The most intriguing evidence here is China’s decision to intervene more vigorously in the North Korean nuclear crisis. After President Hu Jintao became head of the foreign policy group in March, China became far more active in the diplomatic process. It succeeded in bringing Pyongyang and Washington to the negotiation table in Beijing under the three-party formula. 27. Lieberthal, “Has China Become an Ally?” p. A23. 28. For a discussion of this new security concept, see Wu, “The Chinese Security Concept and Its Historical Evolution,” pp. 275–283. 29. For a discussion of Bush’s Taiwan policy in 2001, see Ross, “The Stability of Deterrence in the Taiwan Strait,” pp. 67–76. 30. Christensen, “The Contemporary Security Dilemma,” pp. 7–21. 31. Sutter, “Business Dynamism Across the Taiwan Strait,” pp. 522–540. 32. These moves included pushing a plebiscite in 2003, terming the relationship with the mainland as “one country on either side of the strait,” attempting to pass a new constitution in 2004–2005, and abolishing the symbolic reunification council in 2006. 33. China’s strategy appeared to be working in the eyes of many longtime observers of cross-strait relations. One of them even speculated about desirable US policy response in the event of a reunification. See Tucker, “If Taiwan Chooses Unification, Should the United States Care?” pp. 15–28. 34. For a detailed analysis of the strategic impact of the US national missile defense plan, see Wilkening, “Ballistic-Missile Defense and Strategic Stability.” 35. McDevitt, “Beijing’s Bind,” pp. 177–186; also see Roberts, Manning, and Montaperto, “China,” pp. 53–63. 36. McDevitt, “Beijing’s Bind.” 37. Ferguson, “Sparking a Buildup,” pp. 13–18.

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38. Tompkins, “How U.S. Strategic Policy Is Changing China’s Nuclear Plans,” pp. 11–15. 39. Ibid. 40. Ferguson, “Sparking a Buildup.” 41. On China’s cooperation with the United States on antiterrorism, see Lampton, “Small Mercies,” pp. 106–113. 42. Mann, “China Assisted US Efforts on N. Korea, Officials Say.” 43. Romberg and Swaine, “The North Korea Nuclear Crisis,” pp. 4–7; Hiebert and Lawrence, “China Talks on Korea.” 44. For a description of this process, see Stubbs, “ASEAN Plus Three,” pp. 440–455. 45. Wain, “China and ASEAN.” 46. US Department of Defense, Annual Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China (2002). 47. Council on Foreign Relations, Chinese Military Power. 48. Roberts, Manning, and Montaperto, “China.” 49. Shambaugh, “The People’s Liberation Army and the People’s Republic at 50,” pp. 660–672. 50. See Swaine, “Reverse Course?” 51. For two representative views, see Lampton, “Small Mercies,” pp. 106–113; and Friedberg, “11 September and the Future of Sino-American Relations,” pp. 33–50. 52. For a comprehensive list of these issues, see Congressional Research Service, “China-U.S. Relations.”

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5 Japan’s Activism Lite: Bandwagoning the United States Yoshinobu Yamamoto

A

fter the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Japan enacted special antiterrorism legislation through which it sent naval vessels to the Indian Ocean to logistically support the allied forces. And in 2003, after the end of major operations in the Iraq War, Japan enacted special legislation through which it dispatched its Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to Iraq mainly to assist in recovery operations and humanitarian aid in the war-torn country. Nobody in Japan would have thought even a few years ago that the SDF would operate in the Indian Ocean or Iraq. Japan has experienced four changes in its security policies in the post– Cold War era. The first change occurred when Japan decided to send the SDF to UN peacekeeping operations in 1992. During the Cold War era, Japan had never sent the SDF overseas. This is the beginning of Japanese security activism in the international arena. The second change came in the middle of the 1990s when Japan and the United States decided to strengthen their alliance for regional stability. It started with the Bill Clinton–Ryutaro Hashimoto joint declaration in 1996 and culminated in the 1999 Surrounding Area Act, which allows the Japanese government to send the SDF to help US forces operating in the surrounding area (though in a very limited and insufficient manner). This change came in the aftermath of the first North Korean nuclear crisis, in 1993–1994, and immediately after the Chinese test-firing of missiles over the Taiwan Strait in 1996. At that time, Japan chose the strategy of cooperating with the United States in regional areas in addition to acting “under the UN flag” in the global area. The third change came after 9/11. The actions that Japan has taken are not peacekeeping operations under the auspices of the United Nations. They are of course neither for self-defense of Japan nor for the regional security around Japan. What happened after 9/11 is a global extension of US-Japanese security cooperation. This change was brought about, in addition to avoiding the déjà 127

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vu of the 1990–1991 Gulf crisis, by an acute sense of regional threats exemplified by North Korea, and by a recognition that current and future Japanese security depends on the United States, that only the United States has enough power to protect Japanese security, and therefore that Japan must maintain and enhance reliability of the bilateral alliance by all appropriate means. We can discern here a salient nexus between regional security and global security from the Japanese perspective. As a result, Japan seems to have chosen to come under the wing of US liberal hegemony. Japan has enacted a set of laws that allow it to send the SDF overseas, and has actually done so. But the SDF, when dispatched abroad, are not allowed to use force except for pure self-defense, due to constitutional constraints. Their activities are limited to peacekeeping operations and logistic support. I will call this “activism lite.” Thus we may term the current Japanese strategy “bandwagoning US hegemony with activism lite.” This strategy had been completed by the end of 2003 when Japan sent land-based SDF to Iraq. In 2004, Japan seemed have entered into a fourth stage in the development of security policies after the end of the Cold War (one may term this stage the “post-Iraq” period). In 2004, Japan issued new defense-planning guidelines. And in 2005, Japan and the United States agreed on a new basic form of cooperation on security policies and the relocation of US bases in Japan (the military transformation). During this process, Japan (and the United States) began exhibiting concerns about the rise of China. Furthermore, annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi since 2001 resulted in a deterioration of relations with China and South Korea. For example, China and Japan could not hold a summit meeting for about a year and half until the new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, went to China and South Korea in October 2006. While Prime Minister Abe was visiting China, North Korea conducted a nuclear test on October 9. The focus of Japanese security policies again comes to Northeast Asia. Abe is now trying to establish a national security council and seeking possibilities for using collective self-defense in some cases, while addressing the historical status of women in Japan, an issue of contention not only with China and Korea but also with the United States. The purpose of this chapter is to trace Japan’s path through these four changes and to explain why it has taken such a path. I begin by briefly reviewing the basic changes in Japanese security policies, focusing on how Japan has responded to global and regional environmental changes in the post–Cold War era. I next analyze five major security-related laws. Four of them are designed to send the SDF overseas, and thus they demonstrate some major aspects of the changes in Japanese security policies (the other law is concerned with direct attacks on Japan). I examine them in terms of their objectives, major stipulated activities of the SDF when dispatched overseas, and so forth, and

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demonstrate that whenever Japan tries to send the SDF overseas, it justifies deployment in terms of the United Nations (UN resolutions, for example), or the US-Japanese security alliance, or both. In a sense, Japan has embraced a greater role in global and regional areas within the context of the United Nations and the US-Japanese alliance. Japan is stipulated never to send the SDF overseas by its own decision alone, and will not allow the SDF to use force overseas under these laws. I next turn to the domestic side of the changes, examining how party politics and public opinion have worked in the passage of legislation. I briefly discuss the recent trends in the Japanese defense budget to demonstrate that “spectacular” changes in Japanese security policies have not caused a rise in the defense budget, as well as the implications of current Japanese security policies for regional security affairs, including affairs with China and inter-Korean affairs.

Development of Japanese Security Policies in the Post–Cold War Era A discussion of developments in Japanese security policies after the end of the Cold War should focus on three functional areas: global security roles (Japan’s security roles outside the region), regional security roles (Japan’s security roles in Northeast Asia and the Far East, or what Japan calls the “surrounding area”), and narrowly defined territorial defense, even though these three areas are closely linked. Expansion of Global Security Structural changes. Among the changes in Japanese security policies since

the end of the Cold War, the most important is the fact that Japan has expanded its global security role, from the International Peace Cooperation Act in 1992 to the most recent Iraqi Humanitarian and Reconstruction Act (also known as the Iraqi Special Act) in 2003. This expansion of Japan’s role in international security reflects the sea change in the post–Cold War and post-9/11 international system. While the major security issue had been the East-West confrontation during the Cold War, internal wars and those nations that readily violate international rules have become major security issues in the post–Cold War era. And since 9/11, international terrorism has become a salient issue, with the United Nations now more effective at coping with international security as compared to the Cold War period (even though some doubted UN effectiveness after the Iraq War of 2003). The United States has become the only superpower, and taken a stronger leadership role in maintaining international order, security of its allies, and its own security.

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Legal justifications. Japan did not have a legal (and policy) framework beyond its territorial defense during the Cold War, and had never sent the SDF overseas. But Japan had to adjust itself to the new international developments in the post–Cold War era. It has been expanding its international security role in a piecemeal manner by enacting specific laws and by revising them in response to individual events. The constitution. In its legislation, Japan has paid attention to three factors:

the United Nations, the United States (the US-Japanese security alliance), and the Japanese constitution. In expanding international security roles, Japan has always taken into account its constitution, however flexibly it might seem. The minimum requirement of the constitution now understood by the Japanese government seems to be that Japan is allowed to dispatch its SDF overseas, but that the dispatched SDF should not engage in combat operations except for self-defense (i.e., when they are directly attacked). Indeed, when dispatched under the International Cooperation Act, the SDF are only allowed to undertake peacekeeping operations. When dispatched under the Anti-Terrorism Special Act and the Iraqi Special Act, the SDF are restricted to operations in noncombat zones, and their functions are limited to logistic and humanitarian missions. The United Nations. The first law to send the SDF overseas was the Inter-

national Peace Cooperation Act of 1992, which allows Japan to send the SDF overseas, but only for UN peacekeeping missions. Another was the Anti-Terrorism Special Act of 2001, which was enacted in response specifically to 9/11 and legitimized by a series of UN resolutions. The same can be said regarding the Iraqi Special Act. Even though the United States did not obtain an explicit resolution from the UN Security Council to begin the attack against Iraq, the Security Council passed Resolution 1483 after the war’s outset, calling for international cooperation to reconstruct Iraq. Japanese legislation to send the SDF to Iraq is based partly on this resolution.1 Thus the United Nations has played a crucial role in Japan’s expansion of its global security role, at least by justifying that behavior. US-Japanese relations. Since the US-Japanese security treaty covers

Japan’s territorial defense and Far Eastern security affairs, it is not directly and institutionally related to Japan’s global security role. But US-Japanese relations have greatly impacted Japan’s expanding global security role. The 1992 International Peace Cooperation Act was passed mainly so that Japan could send its SDF to Cambodian peacekeeping operations in which the Japanese government wished to play a major role. But Japan felt it necessary to send troops in addition to money to contribute to international peace, based on experience from the Gulf War in 1991. Regarding the Anti-Terrorism Special Act

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of 2001, Prime Minister Koizumi and others who supported it argued that Japan made the decision on its own initiative (shutaiteki in Japanese).2 But in the minds of many, the memory lingered that Japan had not received proper evaluation from international society even when it contributed more than $10 billion in the Gulf War. Many thought that the terrorist attacks were inexcusable and that Japan should do something (analyzed later). But pressure from the United States (“show the flag”) played an important role in the Japanese decision to send naval forces to the Indian Ocean.3 Japanese behavior on the Iraq issue, from 2002 to 2003, also reflected USJapanese relations. The Japanese government supported, in the United Nations, the US-led coalition’s attempt to pass a resolution that would allow military action against Iraq (the attempt eventually failed). And when the United States began attacking Iraq on March 20, 2003, Prime Minister Koizumi did not seem to hesitate to support, rather than simply to “understand” as his predecessors usually did, the US war against Iraq. After the war ended, Japan decided to send the SDF to Iraq. During this process, one of the major arguments was that since Japan faced a threat from North Korea (its ballistic missiles and nuclear program), Japan should support the United States in Iraq in order to obtain US support in coping with the North Korean nuclear issue. This shows that there exists a strong nexus between global security issues and regional security issues, to say nothing of the narrowly defined national security of Japan, at least from the Japanese perspective. For example, regarding use of force by the United States against Iraq, Prime Minister Koizumi stated on March 20, 2003, that: “The United States is an indispensable ally of our country and provides invaluable deterrence to protect peace and security of our country. The role of the United States is also essential for peace and security in the Asian region surrounding our country. When such a United States is going to pay sacrifices for a cause of the international community, it is our duty and necessity to support it as much as possible.” Furthermore, the United States continued to assemble its “coalition of the willing” after the outset of war just as rigorously as it had before its attack against Iraq. It was reported that a US official told Japanese officials that Japan should not only “show the flag” but also put “boots” (troops) on the ground.4 Changing domestic politics. During the Cold War, US pressure on Japan to enhance and expand security capabilities and roles in the context of the US-Japanese security alliance had been strong. But there was division in Japanese domestic politics, and the Socialist Party had been strongly opposed to the US-Japanese security treaty and the SDF itself, so US pressure had a limit. If the United States placed too much pressure on the Japanese government, then Japanese domestic politics would be destabilized. This was not in the interests of the United States in the context of contention with the Soviet Union. But after the Cold War, Japanese politics changed, particularly after the Liberal Democratic Party

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(LDP)–Socialist (plus Sakigake) coalition formed the Murayama (Socialist) cabinet in 1994. Tomiichi Murayama turned Japan’s traditional socialist security policies 180 degrees. He approved the US-Japanese security alliance and admitted constitutionality of the SDF. Thereafter, the Socialist Party disintegrated and its representation in the Diet dwindled. The Cold War was internalized in Japanese politics, with each of the two major political parties representing, in terms of ideology and basic policies, one of the contending powers in the global arena: the LDP sided with the United States (or the West), and the Socialist Party represented the socialist camp. Their security policies were diametrically opposed. With the end of the Cold War came an end, though not immediately, to this domestic ideological division, typically evident in the decline of the Socialist Party. While party-line politics on security issues has continued, it is not ideological in nature. It is not easy to delineate differences in security policies among the major Japanese political parties. Generally speaking, the LDP is supportive of greater security roles, though the Democratic Party, the current major opposition party, though opposed to the LDP generally, is not pacifist in nature. Naoto Kan, who led the Democratic Party during this period (1998– 1999 and 2002–2004), was an enthusiastic advocate for strong policies against North Korea when North Korea test-fired a Taepodong missile in 1998. The Democratic Party denied legitimacy of the US attack on Iraq and was opposed to sending the SDF to Iraq. But the party’s arguments were based on its interpretation of the UN resolutions and the Iraqi Special Act. For example, the Democratic Party argued that since the Iraqi Special Act stated that Japan may send the SDF to noncombat areas, and that since it considered Iraq to be a combat area, the Japanese government was not allowed to deploy the SDF. In the post–Cold War era, while it is much easier for Japan to assemble a majority opinion, or to avoid violent opposition, on security policies in the Diet or in the street, it also seems easier, compared to the Cold War era, for the United States to press Japan to take on newer security roles. Strengthening of Regional Security Multilateral security in Asia Pacific and alliance adrift. Japan is located

in a region where very heterogeneous nations coexist and latent conflicts persist, such as across the Taiwan Strait and on the Korean peninsula (with a rising China becoming more salient). Japan has been trying to develop multilateral and bilateral confidence-building mechanisms with the countries in this region. Particularly in the first half of the 1990s, Japan made great efforts to develop a regional mechanism for multilateral security dialogue in the Asia Pacific region, the outcome of which was the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1994. The ARF is designed to promote confidence building among the Asia Pacific countries, including the United States, Japan, China, and Russia. It was strongly hoped among the Japanese that the ARF would be an effective multi-

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lateral security arrangement in the post–Cold War era (however, the ARF could not develop itself into a more institutionalized security framework and remains a forum for security dialogue only). Japanese security policies up to the mid-1990s seemed to be heavily colored by multilateralism, partly due to passage of the International Peace Cooperation Act and creation of the ARF. This inclination of Japan’s security policies toward multilateralism produced some difficulties with the United States, since the United States thought that Japanese inclination toward multilateralism would turn Japanese eyes away from the bilateral US-Japanese alliance.5 After the mid-1990s, Japan began trying to enhance its security relations with the United States. In the first half of the decade, both the United States and Japan seemed to be examining how the US-Japanese alliance should function after the major threat, the Cold War, had vanished. The alliance drifted.6 However, after a series of crises in Northeast Asia, including the first North Korean nuclear crisis, in 1993–1994, and the Chinese test-fire over Taiwan in 1996, both the United States and Japan came to the conclusion that their alliance should function not only for defense of Japan but also for regional stability, and Japan began consolidating their bilateral efforts. Expansion of Japanese security roles in the region. In 1995 the Nye Report was issued, which stated, inter alia, that the United States would keep a 100,000-strong force in the Asia Pacific region. In 1996 the ClintonHashimoto joint declaration was issued, which stated that the US-Japanese alliance would serve to promote regional stability. Since regional stability by bilateral cooperation went beyond what was originally intended, some argued that this was the beginning of redefinition of the US-Japanese alliance. In 1997 the United States and Japan issued a joint declaration that delineated a set of guidelines for US-Japanese security cooperation regarding both cases in which Japan is attacked and cases in which crisis occurs in the surrounding area, in addition to peacetime cooperation. China was strongly opposed to strengthening the US-Japanese alliance. But in 1999 Japan passed a law (the Surrounding Areas Act) concerning measures to ensure its peace and security in the event that US forces were mobilized to deal with crises in the areas surrounding Japan. What constituted “crises” and “surrounding areas” was controversial. The latter phrase was officially interpreted as being functional rather than geographical, involving crises outside Japanese territory related to Japanese security. Japan was to make a decision, on its own initiative, whether the crisis was related to Japan and whether it should send the SDF to provide logistical support for US forces. While some argued that “surrounding areas” covered the Far East as defined in the US-Japanese security treaty, such attempts at geographic specification were rejected. A major reason was that geographic specificity would be too provocative to China (Chinese officials repeatedly asked what areas the law would cover, particularly in regard to Taiwan). It also

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seems that there was a lack of consensus among the Japanese as to whether Japan should even logistically support US forces if a crisis were to occur in the Taiwan Strait. The constitution. In providing logistical support to the United States in the

surrounding areas, the SDF may not engage in combat activities (e.g., supplying ammunition to US forces) due to the Japanese constitution. Therefore, the SDF cannot be deployed to areas where combat activities are under way. Nexus between regional and global security roles. From the Japanese perspective, the alliance with the United States is invaluable for maintaining and enhancing Japanese security. Because Japan is wholly dependent on US extended deterrence in nuclear matters, in theory and in practice, one of its priority goals in security policy is to maintain the reliability of the US-Japanese alliance. Recognizing the rise of regional threats such as North Korea, Japan has tried to deepen its security relations with the United States, particularly regarding its policies toward US-forged global coalitions of the willing. This priority was accelerated in agreements between the two countries regarding military transformation of US bases in Japan in 2005 and 2006. The tendency for Japan to deepen its security relations with the United States when threats arise is again ascertained in its reaction to North Korea’s test-firing of missiles in July 2006, and its nuclear test in October 2006. Cost/benefit calculation and domestic politics. When the Japanese government tries to increase its security roles, particularly in the context of the US-Japanese alliance, such as through the Surrounding Areas Act and the special legislation regarding antiterrorism and Iraq, some argue that such behavior only increases Japan’s dependency on the United States, and that such behavior also increases the possibility that Japan will become entrapped in US actions overseas. The costs and benefits of the US-Japanese security alliance, and of Japanese expansion of international security roles, are difficult to estimate and are perceived differently among the varied parts of the Japanese body politic. But the domestic political equilibrium now seems to favor appreciating the benefits (say, enhanced security due to cooperation with the United States) as opposed to disparaging the costs (say, the possibility of being dragged into unwanted conflicts—this was a typical argument made by the Socialist Party against the US-Japanese security treaty during the Cold War).

Self-Defense Measures Rising regional threats. In addition to expanding its international security

roles and strengthening its security relations with the United States, Japan has been strengthening its self-defense measures, particularly since the late 1990s.

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This series of measures to enhance self-defense capabilities was partly triggered by North Korean behavior: the test-firing of a Taepodong missile in 1998; intrusion by amphibious ships (probably North Korean) into Japanese waters, with one incident resulting in cross-fire with the Japanese coast guard in 2001; the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s (admitted by Kim Jong Il at a bilateral summit in Pyongyang in September 2002); and the revelation of North Korea’s secret nuclear program in October 2002 and successive developments, such as North Korea’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and its announcement of possessing nuclear weapons, culminating in its nuclear test in October 2006. The Japanese now seem to feel that they cannot entirely buck-pass these issues to the United States.7 Security diplomacy. North Korean behavior has greatly impacted Japanese security policies. Japan has participated in trilateral coordination with the United States and South Korea, originally intended to cope with the North Korean missile issue in 1998, but now utilized to deal with the issue of North Korea in general (though this coordination group became dormant due to the textbook issue in 2002). Japan is also now participating in the six-party talks, first held in Beijing in August 2003. Japan has conducted its security diplomacy mainly with the United States, though it has participated in many multilateral talks and conferences on confidence-building measures and arms control as well. But at present, Japan seems to be participating, for the first time, in talks that are closely related to its own pressing national security issues. In a sense, Japan has broadened its diplomatic scope (and arsenals) in security areas by participating in the six-party talks, which produced a notable joint communiqué in September 2005 in which all six parties, including North Korea, agreed to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. But the talks stalled, and North Korea conducted its nuclear test of October 2006 (the talks resumed again in Feburary 2007 and exhibited some progress). Concrete measures for self-defense. Japan made a decision to acquire information-gathering satellites and to participate in research on theater missile defense with the United States in response to the Taepodong test-firing in 1998. In response to the North Korean amphibious ships, Japan strengthened its measures to cope with them and acquired high-speed ships to chase them. And in the backdrop of the current nuclear issue, the Japanese government decided to deploy theater missile defense by 2005. Missile defense has regional (and even global) as well as self-defense implications. In 2004 it was reported that the United States would create a missile defense network including Australia, Japan, Taiwan, and others, to which China reacted nervously.8 The constitution. Introduction of missile defense to Japan has also triggered

another constitutional debate. If North Korea launches missiles, then Japan will

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try to shoot them down. But if the target of the missiles is the United States, then Japan will militarily help its ally, which is an act of collective self-defense prohibited by the Japanese constitution. In March 2007, Patriot Advanced Capability 3 (PAC-3) was deployed in Iruma near Tokyo, to which North Korea reacted furiously. And on April 25, immediately before his first visit to the United States, Prime Minister Abe established a commission to examine the issue of collective self-defense in certain concrete cases, including the shooting down of missiles launched at the United States that travel over Japan. In 2003 the Diet passed the Armed Attack (Military Emergency) Act, which lays down a set of rules to be applied within Japan when Japan is militarily attacked. The act includes a definition of armed attacks, basic goals for Japanese governmental cooperation, protections on citizen rights, and the like.9 The Diet would not have passed this law even a few years ago, but given the security sensitivity that is now widely shared among the Japanese, there was little resistance (further discussed below). The Constitution, the United Nations, and the US-Japanese Security Alliance Japanese security policies have developed in response to international security environments, but within the web of institutions. The Japanese constitution, the United Nations, and the US-Japanese security alliance have been the major factors in shaping Japanese security policies. Among these factors are contradictions, mutual enforcement, and convergence. Constitutional constraints prevented Japan from sending the SDF overseas, but now a general consensus has been formed among the Japanese that the SDF may be dispatched overseas if they do not engage in combat operations and their deployment is justified by either UN resolutions or the US-Japanese security treaty. But the United Nations sometimes contradicts the United States, as was seen in the Iraq War in 2003. In such cases, Japan must choose either the United Nations or the United States. When considering missile defense, the constitutional constraints—prohibition against collective self-defense—contradict Japan’s individual (territorial) self-defense requirements. So Japan may have to choose between either missile defense (capable of shooting down missiles at high altitude—a capability that will take some time for Japan to acquire) or the current constitutional interpretations. Regional threats to Japan’s security reinforce US-Japanese alliance relations not only regionally but also globally. Though enhanced regional and global security cooperation with the United States would promote Japan’s territorial defense, such cooperation will not be without costs and risks. For example, Japan’s policies to enhance cooperation with the United States have sometimes caused conflicts and tension with its neighbors, as with China’s reservations about geographical versus functional definitions in the Surrounding Areas Act.

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A strategy is a choice of priority that considers contradictions, costs and benefits, mutual enforcement, convergence, and other factors. It now seems that the Japanese strategy is to side with the United States through activism lite.

Major Security-Related Legislation in Post–Cold War Japan It is important to examine what Japan’s major post–Cold War security laws— the International Peace Cooperation Act (1992), the Surrounding Areas Act (1999), the Anti-Terrorism Special Act (2001), the Armed Attack Act (2003), and the Iraqi Special Act (2003)—are designed to do. Table 5.1 shows briefly for each law: objectives, major activities, geographical scope, and duration. By examining these laws, we can discern several commonalities, differences, and changes over time in Japanese security policies.10 Commonalities Within the framework of either the United Nations or the US-Japanese security alliance. First, the laws that allow for deployment of the SDF over-

seas stipulate conduct within the context of the United Nations (peacekeeping operations and UN Security Council resolutions) or of the US-Japanese security alliance. Japan’s SDF are not to be sent abroad independently from the international community. Prohibition of combat operations. Second, combat operations are strictly

prohibited except for self-defense. Japan has tried to avoid involving the SDF in combat operations, particularly in the combat operations of, and in, other countries. This is because the constitution is considered to prohibit the SDF from using forces overseas (except for self-defense); Article 9 of the constitution states that Japan abandons the right of military engagements. Though interpretation of the constitution differs depending on groups and individuals and changes over time, the majority of Japanese are accustomed to thinking that deployment of the SDF to use force overseas, for any reason, is unconstitutional, and there exists no strong, widely shared, constitutional argument for such overseas deployment. Now that Japan is sending its SDF overseas, there exists the possibility of military engagement not conducted on the basis of self-defense. Security and humanitarian aid (double purposes). Third, the major activities specified in the three laws that allow deployment of the SDF beyond Japan’s surrounding areas include both security and humanitarian aid as their purposes. The International Peace Cooperation Act includes “humanitarian aid

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Table 5.1

Security-Related Legislation in Post–Cold War Japan

International Peace Cooperation Act (June 15, 1992)

Objective: Active participation in efforts toward international peace, centering on the United Nations. Major activities: UN peacekeeping operations, international humanitarian aid, international election supervision. Geographical scope: Foreign territories, including high seas (on consent from host countries). Duration: Permanent.

Surrounding Areas Act (May 24, 1999)

Objectives: Ensure Japan’s peace and security, and its alliance with the United States. Major activities: Logistic support in rear areas, search and rescue in rear areas, inspection of sea vessels. Geographical scope: Rear areas, Japanese territory, adjacent high seas and skies (limited to noncombat areas). Duration: Permanent.

Anti-Terrorism Special Act (October 29, 2001)

Objectives: Actively, and by Japan’s own initiative, contribute to international efforts to prevent and eradicate terrorism; ensure international and Japanese peace and security under UN Security Council Resolution 1368. Major activities: Cooperation and support, search and rescue, humanitarian aid. Geographical scope: Japanese territory, adjacent high seas and skies (limited to noncombat areas), foreign territories (on consent from host countries; limited to noncombat areas). Duration: Two years (with abolition or extension as needed).

Armed Attack Act (June 6, 2003)

Objective: Ensure Japan’s peace, security, and independence in the case of an armed attack on its territory (governmental response, civilian cooperation, legal measures, etc.). Major activity: Prepare Self-Defense Force troops for deployment (within rational limits according to the attack situation). Geographical scope: Japanese territory (not explicitly specified). Duration: Permanent.

Iraqi Special Act (July 26, 2003)

Objectives: Actively, and by Japan’s own initiative, contribute to international efforts to support the Iraqi people; ensure international and Japanese peace and security under UN Security Council Resolution 1483. Major activities: Humanitarian aid and reconstruction, security support. Geographical scope: Japanese territory, foreign territories (on consent from host countries; in the case of Iraq, on consent from the occupying administration; limited to noncombat areas), adjacent high seas and skies (limited to noncombat areas). Duration: Four years (with abolition or extension as needed).

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activities,” the Anti-Terrorism Special Act includes “aid and support for the sufferers and victims,” and the Iraqi Special Act includes “support activities for humanitarian aid and reconstruction.” Thus, under these acts, actual activities of the SDF overseas include construction, water supply, and so forth.11 Differences Identity: what is to be protected. Fourth, since these laws are designed for

different occasions and purposes, what is to be protected by the SDF differs. The Armed Attack Act states that “peace and independence of Japan and safety of the state and the people” are to be protected and promoted. The Surrounding Areas Act specifies “peace and security of Japan,” even though it is designed to promote an effective US-Japanese security alliance. The International Peace Cooperation Act specifies “international peace centering on the United Nations” as the objective to be protected. Both the Anti-Terrorism Special Act and the Iraqi Special Act specify “peace and security of the international society including Japan.” Such language demonstrates Japanese identity in the international system from two perspectives of security policy: “peace and independence of Japan” and “international peace centering on the United Nations.” Between these two poles lie “peace and security of Japan” and “peace and security of the international society including Japan.” This suggests that, as the international system has globalized, Japan’s security identity has gone beyond domestic peace and independence and come to include international peace and security.12 Changing Trends From active to self-initiated participation. Fifth, in relation to identity (what is to be protected), changes in Japanese attitudes toward sending the SDF have been predicated on participation in international security activities. The International Peace Cooperation Act of 1992 states that Japan is to actively participate in peacekeeping operations under the auspices of the United Nations. The Anti-Terrorism Special Act of 2001 states that Japan, actively and by its own initiative, is to contribute to international efforts to prevent and eradicate terrorism. The Iraqi Special Act of 2003 transposes the emphasis, self-initiated participation first, then active participation, in relation to international support of the Iraqi people. The language has changed from “actively” to “actively and by Japan’s own initiative” to “by Japan’s own initiative and actively.” On the one hand, this change demonstrates that Japan has become more active in participating in international security. On the other hand, particularly in the two special acts, the Japanese government might have felt it necessary to persuade the Japanese people that these laws are not the result of pressure from the United States, but of Japan’s own initiative.

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From institutional commitment to coalitions of the willing. Sixth, from institutional perspectives, there are two types of legislation. One is concerned with domestic and international institutions. The International Peace Cooperation Act is deeply embedded in the United Nations. The Surrounding Areas Act is also based on a long-standing institution—the US-Japanese security alliance. And the Armed Attack Act is concerned with domestic institutions. All of these are permanent laws without time limit. However, the two special acts—on terrorism and on Iraq—are not institutionally based, even though both are justified by UN Security Council resolutions. They are designed for coping with specific tasks in coalitions of the willing, and are to be abolished after achievement of those tasks. In the post–Cold War era, many unexpected security-related events have occurred globally, and will continue to occur, increasing the likelihood of further special legislation in the future.13 Loosening the Diet’s control. Seventh, the grips of the Diet seem to be

loosening. According to the International Peace Cooperation Act, prior approval from the Diet is required before deploying the SDF to participate in peacekeeping operations. According to the Surrounding Areas Act, prior Diet approval is required, in principle, regarding implementation of the SDF activities specified in the act. However, in the two special acts—on terrorism and on Iraq—there is no clause that mandates prior Diet approval. Both laws state that the basic implementation plan should be reported to the Diet without delay (meaning that Diet approval is in fact required), and that implementation of each activity should be referred to the Diet within twenty days after its commencement. This change may be due to the fact that activities based on the two special acts need flexibility and quick reaction in order to fulfill their objectives. But another reason may be that the Japanese government is trying to obtain as much decisional latitude as possible. Regarding loosening of the Diet’s control, as well as the move from institutional commitment to coalitions of the willing, the characteristics of the corresponding legislation comprise two factors (see Figure 5.1). One is Diet authority: Is prior Diet approval required for the basic implementation plan, or only post hoc approval? The other factor is the scope of the task: Is it specific and limited, or general and permanent? There are four logically possible types of legislation. The International Peace Cooperation Act and the Surrounding Areas Act mandate prior Diet approval, and mandate tasks that are intrinsic and permanent in nature (Type B). Both laws are related to international institutions—the United Nations and the US-Japanese alliance. The Anti-Terrorism Special Act and the Iraqi Special Act, by contrast, mandate specific but limited tasks, without the requirement of prior Diet approval (Type C). The latter two laws govern Japan’s participation in coalitions of the willing formed to cope with specific tasks. Because such tasks are specific and limited, the gov-

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Diet Authority and Scope of Task Scope of Task Limited A Prior Approval

Permanent B International Peace Cooperation Act (1992) Surrounding Areas Act (1999)

Diet Authority No Prior Approval (Review)

C

D

Anti-Terrorism Special Act (2001) Iraqi Special Act (2003)

Armed Attack Act (2003)

ernment needs flexibility and quick decisionmaking; therefore, no laws belong to Type A. The Armed Attack Act assumes that the prime minister and the Japanese Security Council will have primary responsibility for decisionmaking, even though the Diet has the right to review that decisionmaking; therefore, this act belongs to Type D.

Restraints on Developing Security Policies The Legislative Record and Public Opinion It may seem that, recently, Japan has been sailing smoothly in the direction of security activism. However, if we review the legislative record and public opinion, the historical path was not so smooth. When the Gulf crisis erupted in August 1990, and the global community geared against the Iraqi invasion into Kuwait, the Japanese government faced strong pressure, particularly from the United States, to contribute to the international efforts, not only financially but also in terms of troops (termed “human contribution” or “boots on the ground”). While Japan contributed a huge amount financially, it had difficulty contributing troops. The Japanese government tried to pass its UN Cooperation Bill (see Table 5.2), which would allow for SDF deployment to the Middle East. The bill would have changed the fundamental structure of the Japanese security policies in the Cold War era. However, the opposition was extremely strong. For example, in a September 1990 Asahi Shimbun survey, 67 percent of respondents were against sending the SDF to the Middle East, while only 19 percent were in favor.14 The Cold War structure within Japanese politics was still alive. The Socialist Party (a pacifist party) was still strong, and vehemently opposed the bill. In the Feburary 1990 general election, the Socialist Party gained 136 seats (lower house), up from 85 in the 1986 general election. Japan did not, and could not, contribute troops during the Gulf War, even though it contributed $13 billion to the multilateral coalition force. Inter-

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Table 5.2

Diet Voting and Public Opinion on Security-Related Legislation

UN Cooperation Bill (withdrawn November 6, 1990)

Public Opinion For: 21%, Against: 58% (Asahi Shimbun, November 3–4, 1990)

International Peace Cooperation Act (June 15, 1992)

Diet Voting Lower house, December 3, 1991 Total votes: 478, Yes: 311, No: 167 Upper house, June 9, 1992 Total votes: 239, Yes: 137, No: 102 Lower house (vote on revised bill), June 15, 1992 Total votes: 346, Yes: 329, No: 17, Abstention: 141 [major supporting parties: Liberal Democratic, Komei, Democratic Socialist; major objecting parties: Social Democratic, Communist] Public Opinion Before passing (Nikkei Telecom, December 4, 1991) For: 10%, Against: 21%, Cautious: 63% After passing (Nikkei Telecom, July 1, 1992) For: 36%, Against: 46%, Don’t know: 18% Five years later (Yomiuri Shimbun, September 7, 1997) For: 74%, Against: 17%, Don’t know: 8%

Surrounding Areas Act (May 24, 1999)

Diet Voting Lower house (no roll call vote) Upper house—Total votes: 239, Yes: 142, No: 97 [major supporting parties: Liberal Democratic, Komei, Liberal; major objecting parties: Democratic, Communist, Social Democratic] Public Opinion Before passing (Asahi Shimbun, March 19, 1999) For: 37%, Against: 43% After passing (Yomiuri Shimbun, August 4, 1999) Contribute to Japanese security: 33% Threaten Japanese security: 28% Can’t say either way: 35%, Don’t know: 5% continues

nationally, Japan was slighted for its behavior, particularly by the United States (where Japanese diplomacy was called “checkbook diplomacy”), and to many Japanese the trauma of this experience remains (when Japan contemplated the Anti-Terrorism Special Act in 2001, a significant number of Japanese argued that their country should avoid the international humiliation experienced during the Cold War. However, the situation changed after the Gulf War. The Japanese government decided to send mine-sweepers to the Gulf in April 1991, after the war had ended.15 The Japanese public for the most part supported this decision, with one survey, conducted by Mainichi Shimbun in June 1991, showing 61 percent in favor versus 33 percent against. Furthermore, the Cambodia issue was close to conclusion, and organization of the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) had begun. Wanting to play an important role in the Cambodian

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Continued

Anti-Terrorism Special Act (October 29, 2001)

Diet Voting Lower house (no roll call vote) Upper house—Total votes: 240, Yes: 140, No: 100 [major supporting parties: Liberal Democratic, Komei; major opposing parties: Democratic, Communist, Social Democratic, Liberal] Public Opinion Before passing (Asahi Shimbun, October 16, 2001) For: 51%, Against: 29% After passing (Asahi Shimbun, December 17, 2001) For: 49%, Against: 37%, Don’t know: 14%

Armed Attack Act (June 6, 2003)

Diet Voting Lower house (no roll call vote) Upper house—Total votes: 234, Yes: 202, No: 32 [major supporting parties: Liberal Democratic, Democratic, Komei; major opposing parties: Communist, Social Democratic] Public Opinion Before passing (Broadcast Studies and Research, May 9–11, 2003) Necessary: 66%, Unnecessary: 21%, Don’t know: 13% After passing (Broadcast Studies and Research, June 6–8, 2003) For: 56%, Against: 30%, Don’t know: 15%

Iraqi Special Act (July 26, 2003)

Diet Voting Lower house (no roll call vote) Upper house—Total votes: 238, Yes: 136, No: 102 [major supporting parties: Liberal Democratic, Komei; major opposing parties: Democratic, Communist, Liberal, Social Democratic] Public Opinion Before passing (Nikkei Telecom, June 23, 2003) For: 43%, Against: 41% After passing (Broadcast Studies and Research, July 11–13, 2003) For: 43%, Against: 48%, Don’t know: 9%

peace process, through SDF participation in UNTAC’s peacekeeping operations, the Japanese government prepared its International Peace Cooperation Bill to allow such participation under the auspices of the United Nations. The Japanese public was largely against the bill, as were the politically strong Socialist and Communist Parties, while the Liberal Democratic Party, Komei, and the Democratic Socialist Party formed a coalition to pass the bill. At that time, the Cold War structure within the Japanese political system still lingered, and the Socialist Party still had a strong influence. However, the LDP and Komei had successfully reached a compromise in 1992 (disallowing SDF participation in the military aspect of peacekeeping operations for the moment) to enable passage of the International Peace Cooperation Bill. As shown in Table 5.2, the coalition between the LDP and Komei has been the basic political force in Japan, pushing a series of laws that have enhanced the role of the SDF overseas.

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Passage of the International Peace Cooperation Act was indeed a pathbreaking move for Japan, in the sense that it allowed the SDF to go abroad for first time since the end of World War II. The bill was passed in the lower house of the Diet in December 1991. While the upper house debated, public opinion was very cautious. In a Nikkei Telecom survey in December 1991 (see Table 5.2), more than 60 percent of respondents advised careful deliberation on the bill; less than 10 percent were in favor of passing it, and more than 20 percent were against. After the bill was passed in upper house in June 1992, public opinion was unfavorable. A Nikkei Telecom survey in July 1992 showed that 46 percent were against the act and 36 percent were in favor. The International Peace Cooperation Act, like most legislation that has enhanced the role of the SDF, faced stiff opposition from the public and failed to obtain majority support. The International Peace Cooperation Act was not enacted due to pressure from the United States, though the United States was supportive of it; rather it was enacted, essentially, due to the desire of the Japanese government to participate in the peacekeeping operations in Cambodia. And this time, public opinion was in favor of sending the SDF to participate in those operations. An Asahi Shimbun survey conducted in September 1992 showed that 52 percent were in favor, while 36 percent were against. After Cambodia, Japan sent its SDF to Rwanda, Mozambique, the Golan Heights, East Timor, and other locations.16 Participation of the SDF in peacekeeping operations under the auspices of the United Nations has become a norm in the Japanese security policies, as demonstrated by the change in public opinion. For example, in September 1997, five years after passage of the International Peace Cooperation Act, a Yomiuri Shimbun survey showed that 74 percent were in favor of the act, while only 17 percent were against. In general, whenever the Japanese government tries to launch a new security policy or new security legislation, much (or even most) of the public are against the move. However, once the legislation is passed and put into practice, public support for it (and for actions based on it) increases. Thus one may say that the government and political parties can lead public opinion and transform it (of course, it is also true that the government and political parties are influenced by public opinion—such as seen in the withdrawal of the UN Cooperation Bill during the Gulf crisis).17 The Surrounding Areas Act is one of the final outcomes of a long process of “redefinition” of the US-Japanese security alliance that began in the mid1990s. The bill was pushed, in the Diet, by the ruling coalition, which comprised the LDP, Komei, and the Liberal Party. With the Surrounding Areas Act, the political process concerning major security-related legislation evolved under the post–Cold War domestic political configuration for the first time. That is, the Socialist Party, which had taken a staunch and strong stance against postwar Japanese security policies based on the US-Japanese security alliance and the SDF—the major protections of the Japanese antimilitarism norm—dis-

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integrated in the mid-1990s when the party joined with the LDP to form the Murayama cabinet. After this the Democratic Party became the second largest party. As Table 5.2 shows, voting on the Surrounding Areas Act was strictly along party lines (though not ideological): between the ruling coalition, comprising the LDP, Komei, and the Liberal Party on the one hand, and the three major opposition parties, Democratic, Communist, and Socialist, on the other. Before the Surrounding Areas Act became law, public opposition to the bill outweighed public support. Asahi Shimbun’s March 1999 survey (two months before passage of the bill) showed that 37 percent were in favor, while 43 percent were against. After the bill passed, public opinion reversed: 28 percent of respondents said that the act would jeopardize Japan’s security, while 33 percent said that the act would contribute to Japan’s security (35 percent were undecided). For those who are in favor of the act, it is natural and necessary for Japan to logistically support the United States when the latter takes military action to confront a crisis in areas surrounding Japan that are closely related to Japanese security. Those who are opposed to the act would argue that logistical support may drag Japan into military conflicts initiated by the United States, that Japan may doom itself to using forces rather than simply conducting logistic support, and that the act may unnecessarily provoke neighboring countries, particularly China. The content of the Surrounding Areas Act reflects these conflicting concerns. Its stated objectives are to contribute to the effectiveness of the US-Japanese security alliance, and to ensure Japan’s peace and security in the event of crisis in surrounding areas. Major activities include logistic support and searchand-rescue activities in rear areas. Rear areas include Japanese territory and adjacent high seas and skies. However, rear areas are limited to those areas in which no combat operations are under way nor expected to occur during the activities planned under the act. Therefore, logistic support and search-and-rescue activities by the SDF would be quite limited. The SDF will not get involved in combat operations if a crisis develops over cross-strait relations, or on the Korean peninsula. This restriction is due to a basic understanding that the Japanese constitution prohibits involvement of the SDF in combat operations. The Surrounding Areas Act is still untested legislation in the sense that Japan has not yet faced a situation to which the act applies. Thus we do not yet know how the Japanese, both the government and the public, would react to such a situation, should it ever occur. Assume that hostilities break out on the Korean peninsula and that the United States engages militarily in the conflict. First, Japan must judge whether the conflict is closely related to its security (self-defense, homeland security; if it is judged an armed attack against Japan, the Armed Attack Act applies after 2003). Second, if Japan judges that this is indeed the case, then it would have to find places (Japanese territory and on the high seas) where combat operations are neither under way nor expected to occur. Third, Japan would send the SDF to such “safe” spots to help US forces

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logistically, but only to undertake activities not considered to be part of war. All these decisions are difficult to make.18 For the Anti-Terrorism Special Act, like the Surrounding Areas Act, the LDP-Komei coalition (including the New Conservatives) voted for it,19 and all the opposition parties voted against. However, this time the public showed a favorable attitude toward the bill. In an Asahi Shimbun survey in October 2001, two weeks before passage, 51 percent were in favor, while 29 percent were against. In an Asahi Shimbun survey in December 2001, after the bill became law, 49 percent were in favor, while 37 percent were against. Among the five laws examined here, only the Anti-Terrorism Special Act and the Armed Attack Act generated stronger public support than public opposition before passage. It seems that this was related to the events of September 11, 2001. In October 2001, 57 percent of Japanese supported the US war in Afghanistan, while 37 percent were against (see Table 5.3), and in late November 2001, 48 percent supported the policies of the Japanese government toward that US war (i.e., the Koizumi administration’s strong support for the United States), while 43.3 percent did not. Legislative voting on the Iraqi Special Act was a replay of the voting on the Anti-Terrorism Special Act: strictly along party lines. The LDP-Komei coalition voted to approve the bill, while all the opposition parties voted against. This further demonstrates that the LDP-Komei coalition has been crucial in passage of all laws that allow the SDF to go abroad, beginning with the International Peace Cooperation Act in 1992. For the Iraqi Special Act, 136 members of the Diet’s upper house voted for passage, and 102 voted against. Among the yes votes, 112 were cast by members of the LDP, and 24 were cast by members of Komei. The significant influence of Komei on the content of security legislation in post–Cold War Japan is reflected in the fact that if Komei defects, the LDP cannot gain a majority (120 votes in the upper house if every member in attendance votes). Komei is generally more dovish than the LDP, and usually introduces restraints into legislation, including security policies. There are some differences between the Anti-Terrorism Special Act and the Iraqi Special Act in terms of public opinion. In a Nikkei Telecom survey in June 2003, about a month before passage of the Iraqi Special Act, 43 percent were in favor of the bill, while 41 percent were against. However, after the bill passed, public opinion turned against it. In a Broadcast Studies and Research survey in July 2003, 48 percent were against, while 43 percent were in favor. This change might have been due to deterioration in the Iraq situation between June and July 2003. It also seems to have been due to differences in public opinion between the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq: the majority of Japanese supported the former, while the majority of Japanese were against the latter. An Asahi Shimbun survey in March 2003 showed that 31 percent supported the war in Iraq, while 59 percent were against; and an Asahi Shimbun survey in April 2003 showed that 40 percent supported the Japanese government’s policies toward the war in Iraq, while 50 percent did not (see Table 5.3).

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Table 5.3

Japanese Public Reaction to the Gulf War, Afghanistan War, and Iraq War (percentages)

Gulf War (1991)

(Yomiuri Shimbun, April 12, 1991) For: 15 Against: 24 War was unavoidable: 58

Afghanistan War (2001)

(Mainichi Shimbun, October 16, 2001) For: 57 Against: 37

Iraq War (2003)

(Asahi Shimbun, March 22, 2003) For: 31 Against: 59

(Broadcast Studies and Research, March 2–3, 1991) For: 41 Against: 37 Can’t say either way: 16 Don’t know: 5 (Yomiuri Shimbun, November 22, 2001) Strongly for: 19 Somewhat for: 29 Somewhat against: 27 Strongly against: 16 Don’t know: 8 (Asahi Shimbun, April 25, 2003, regarding government support for US action) For: 40 Against: 50

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The Armed Attack Act, which passed about a month before the Iraqi Special Act, gained an overwhelming majority in the Diet. In the upper house, 202 members voted yes among the 234 votes cast. And even though there was no roll call vote in the lower house, 90 percent of its members were said to have supported the bill.20 Only the Social Democratic and Communist Parties went against it. The bill also gained majority support among the public. In a Broadcast Studies and Research survey in May 2003, about a month before passage, 66 percent said that the bill was necessary, while 21 percent said that it was not. In a Broadcast Studies and Research survey in June 2003, immediately after passage of the bill, 56 percent supported it, while 30 percent did not. That the Japanese public overwhelmingly supported the Armed Attack Act would seem natural, in that the act is concerned with the very core of Japanese national interests and self-defense, which is probably true. However, a military emergency law had long been negatively discussed in the Japanese body politic. Even during the cabinet of Yoshiro Mori, just prior to the cabinet of Junichiro Koizumi, when Prime Minister Mori raised the issue of a military emergency bill in 2000, many thought it would be premature and nobody would have expected the bill to sail so smoothly. The real reasons for the changes in the mood regarding a military emergency law should be cautiously studied. However, the North Korean nuclear issue, starting in October 2002, played a crucial role in passage of the Armed Attack Act. Japan’s efforts to enhance its security role in international society have not been easy, since legislation that would enhance the role of the SDF has usually faced an opposing majority public opinion, and since the politics within and between parties is usually fierce. The LDP-Komei coalition has played an indispensable role in passing all security-related legislation. Given the public’s (initial) reluctance and the split between political parties, it seems that political leadership of the prime minister has been also crucial. Basic Plan for Sending Self-Defense Forces to Iraq On December 9, 2003, the Koizumi cabinet decided on the basic plan to be executed under the Iraqi Special Act. It specified a variety of measures to promote reconstruction and humanitarian aid in Iraq, including sending the SDF to the country. Even though the timing of SDF dispatch would be determined later, the decision stirred up a variety of arguments and opinions in Japan, as such decisions to send the SDF overseas always do. And the pattern in this decision was very similar to the pattern seen previously. First, public opinion was sharply divided. An Asahi Shimbun survey on December 10–11, 2003, immediately after the decision, showed that 34 percent were in favor of sending the SDF to Iraq, while 55 percent were against. Among those who were in favor, 20 percent cited international contribution as the major

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reason (which, in general since the early 1990s, commensurate with a weakening of the Japanese norm of antimilitarism and pacifism, has overwhelmingly been the major reason for supporting overseas SDF deployment), while 6 percent cited the importance of maintaining good relations with the United States. Among those who were opposed, 26 percent pointed out that Iraq was still dangerous, while 7 percent said that such deployment was unconstitutional.21 Second, the LDP-Komei coalition exhibited its usual pattern: Komei tried to introduce restraints into overseas SDF deployment, while the LDP leadership, under Prime Minister Koizumi, tried to push forward. This time, Komei sought cautious timing in sending noncombatant troops. As well, within the LDP, visible cleavages appeared, particularly from factions that were critical to the prime minister (including one of the largest factions within the LDP, led by Shizuka Kamei). All of the opposition parties were strongly opposed to the government’s decision. Third, constitutional issues still linger. The most crucial issue is how “dangerous” Iraq is. The Iraqi Special Act stipulates, as with all such legislation, that the SDF may be sent only to areas in which combat operations are neither under way nor expected to develop. Certainly the Japanese government does not want to deploy the SDF in dangerous places, but the main reason for this limitation is that combat operations outside Japan (except in self-defense against unprovoked attacks on the SDF when deployed overseas) are considered unconstitutional, and thus such legislation attempts to minimize the chances of such combat operations. If the SDF were forced to engage in non-self-defense combat operations, it would stir a constitutional debate in Japan. Fourth, while the basic operational plan under the Iraqi Special Act is justified by UN Security Council Resolutions 1483 and 1511, Japan’s relationship with the United States played a crucial role in Prime Minister Koizumi’s justification of that plan. In an interview after having decided on the basic plan, Koizumi stated: “The US-Japan alliance and international cooperation are the basics of Japanese diplomacy. Japan is being tested as to what action, rather than talk, Japan will take with regard to supporting Iraq. The United States has now been making efforts in Iraq by paying great sacrifice. The United States is Japan’s ally and Japan must be a reliable ally of the United States.”22 Following its response to the US request, Japan sent missions to concerned countries in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere to explain its actions. Reactions from surrounding Asian countries were mild. A South Korean official said that, while Japan’s military strength might come to be seen as a threat to neighboring countries, its SDF deployment to Iraq for peace and reconstruction was understandable. A vice spokesman of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that he hoped Japan would pursue peaceful development alongside defensive security policies; doing so would contribute not only to Japan’s interests, but also to peace and stability in the region and the world

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(Chinese officials said the same when Japan passed the Anti-Terrorism Special Act).23 However, suspicion still remains in some Asian countries that Japan might reemerge as an aggressive military power. The resolution to approve deployment of the SDF to Iraq was introduced in the Diet on January 19, 2003, and approved on February 9, well after the January deployment had begun. In the lower house, which approved the resolution on January 31, the LDP-Komei coalition voted yes, while the opposition parties did not show up. In the upper house, there were 138 yes votes versus 103 no votes. However, public opinion significantly changed. When the government began dispatching the SDF to Iraq in January, a majority of Japanese were still opposed—52 percent, according to a Kyodo survey conducted on January 17–18, versus 43 percent in favor.24 But within a month, according to a Nikkei Telecom survey conducted on February 12–15, public opposition had decreased to 42 percent (with 43 percent still in favor).25 Stable Defense Budget: Military Transformation, Japanese Style Japan has been strengthening its self-defense measures and expanding its international security roles, but within a limited budget. The country’s defense budget does not reflect Japanese security activism. Indeed, Japan’s defense budget has been very stable and low compared to its economic size. As Table 5.4 shows, Japanese defense expenditures between 1993 and 2004 were virtually unchanged, and growth rates were near zero except for 1996 and 1997. And accordingly, ratios of defense-related expenditures to gross domestic product (GDP) have not exceeded 1 percent since 1976 (when this rule was established), except temporarily in the 1987 budget during the Yasuhiro Nakasone cabinet. These figures represent the domestic institutional constraints; that is, unless GDP grows, Japanese defense expenditures are not allowed to grow (of course, an austerity national budget is another factor limiting growth of the defense budget). Furthermore, in 1976, the Japanese government adopted a national defense program that specified quantitative objectives for weapons acquisition. These objectives remained unchanged in the 1995 and 2004 national defense program. Because the government had achieved its quantitative objectives for weapons acquisition, there was no reason to increase defense expenditures. In the post–Cold War era, particularly since the 1995 national defense program, Japan has been making its SDF more efficient, while reducing outmoded, Cold War–oriented military equipment and weapons. For example, the number of tanks has been declining steadily, as has the number of military aircraft (for the latter, 431 in 1996 to 371 in 2003, though the number of F-15s remained constant over this period). Expenditures for ballistic missile defense and research and development have been increasing as well. Furthermore, recent Japanese security-related legislation, such as the Anti-Terrorism Special

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1985 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004c

151

Japan’s Defense Expenditures, 1985–2004

Defense Budget (100 billion yen)a

Growth Rate from Previous Year

31.371 46.460 46.835 47.236 48.455 49.414 49.475 49.290 49.397 49.201 49.322 49.218 49.358 49.388 49.553 49.395 49.560 49.265 49.500 49.600

6.90 1.95 0.90 0.86 2.58 1.98 2.10 –0.30 –0.20 –0.20 –0.20 0.00 0.10 0.30 0.40 0.00 0.00 –0.30 0.00 0.70

Ratio of Defense-Related Expenditures to GNP/GDPb (original forecast) 0.997 0.937 0.959 0.959 0.977 0.958 0.959 0.948 0.950 0.991 0.994 0.987 0.989 0.952 0.956 0.995 0.999 0.988 0.993

Sources: Defense Agency (Japan), Defense of Japan, 2002, p. 384; Asakgumo Shinbunsha, Bouei Handobukku, 2007 [Handbook of Defense, 2007] [in Japanese], pp. 334–335. Notes: a. For 1997 to 2003 the upper figure excludes spending in projects related to the Special Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO), while the lower figure includes such spending. SACO was established by the US and Japanese governments in 1995 to reduce the burden on Okinawa and strengthen the US-Japanese alliance. The committee issued its final report in December 1996. Proposals in that report included relocation of US bases in Okinawa and returning to Japan some lands used as bases. SACO-related costs are borne by the Japanese government outside the defense budget. b. For 1985 and 1993 the ratio is to GNP, and afterward the ratio is to GDP. c. Budget request.

Act of 2001 and the Iraqi Special Act of 2003, have not significantly affected military expenditures.26 Rather, Japan has been trying to adapt to the new security environment by changing and rearranging the functions of the SDF.27 On December 19, 2003, the Koizumi cabinet approved a new security proposal by the Japanese Defense Agency, following a decision by the Japanese Security Council and the cabinet to introduce missile defense and accordingly reexamine the national defense program by the end of 2004. The proposal stated that Japan should prepare for such new security threats as international terrorism and ballistic missiles, and that such Cold War–type military equipment as tanks and antisubmarine equipment should be replaced with hard and soft defense systems

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better suited for coping with the new security threats.28 The Japanese SDF would remain a military with niche capabilities suited to complement US forces, but incapable of operating independently. Post-Iraq: Continuity and Change Japan seems to have entered a fourth stage in security policies since 2004. All the laws discussed in this chapter were passed by the end of 2003 (we may call these laws the institutions for activism lite), and the SDF were dispatched to Iraq in late 2003. Japan has completed its undertaking of activism lite. Since 2004, several important developments in Japanese security policies have occurred. Iraq and Afghanistan. Japan withdrew SDF land forces from Iraq in June

2006, though SDF air forces were still participating in coalition activities there. On March 30, 2007, the Abe government introduced a bill to extend the Iraqi Special Act for another two years (the four-year duration of the act will expire in July 2007; see Table 5.1). The Abe government is supportive of US efforts to quell insurgents and to stabilize the Iraqi situation. However, public opinion is not. An Asahi Shimbun survey conducted on March 10–11, 2007, showed that only 19 percent were in favor of the extension, while 69 percent were against. The same poll showed that only 12 percent considered prosecution of the Iraq War to be a good decision, while 75 percent thought it was a mistake. Here again, there is a large discrepancy between governmental policies and public opinion. Regarding Afghanistan, SDF naval forces are still supplying fuel to allied vessels in the Indian Ocean (the Anti-Terrorism Special Act has been extended, without strong opposition). Two recent developments are noteworthy. First, the Japanese government has begun talking about the possibility that the SDF will cooperate with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in recovery operations in Afghanistan. Second, discussion has begun in regard to Japan’s possible use of force for collective self-defense in cases in which US naval vessels are attacked while Japanese ships are supplying fuel to them. New guidelines and the military transformation. In December 2004, in

order to adapt to the quickly changing security environment, Japan issued its third set of defense-planning guidelines (the second set was issued in 1995, the first in 1976), regarding its security policies and the US-Japanese security alliance. The guidelines addressed, inter alia, international terrorism, peacekeeping operations, missile defense, and the rise of China, and emphasized Japan’s own efforts regarding security threats, as well as security cooperation with the United States and the United Nations. They also proposed the concept of integrated security to cope with diversified threats in the post-9/11 world. Notable in the 2004 guidelines was a concern about China’s increasing defense capa-

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bilities, which in turn aroused China’s concerns about Japan. The guidelines are to be reviewed in 2009, if necessary, due to the rapidly changing security environment (previous guidelines were reviewed at ten-year intervals). The transformation of US military forces had been long under way in Europe, South Korea, and elsewhere. It became a major topic in Japan during a meeting between US and Japanese defense and foreign ministers in February 2005. The process involved three stages. First, the two countries tried to reach common understanding on basic strategic objectives. Second, they agreed on basic concrete issues to solve jointly. Third, they outlined a course to reach these objectives. The United States and Japan agreed on creation of a Japanese missile defense system, relocation of US bases in Japan, joint use of military facilities, and transfer of a sizable number of marines from Okinawa to Guam, among other things. Security cooperation between the two countries was radically enhanced, with an emphasis on close and continuous policy and operational coordination, advanced bilateral contingency planning, improved interoperability, and so forth,29 though how these plans will be realized in the future remains to be seen. North Korea. A second important development in Japanese security policies

concerns North Korea. Since October 2002, when North Korea revealed its nuclear program, a nuclear Korean peninsula has been a serious security concern in Japan, as has North Korea’s abduction of Japanese. Japan has been participating in the six-party talks since August 2003 in order to solve the nuclear issue in collaboration with other concerned countries (see Chapter 4), but at the same time has been pursuing development and deployment of a missile defense system. Further, partly as a result of pressure from families of abductees, Japan has revised its law governing economic sanctions so that it can independently sanction other countries for security reasons (previously, the law required that economic sanctions be undertaken through international arrangements, such as with the United Nations). In September 2005 the six-party talks resulted in a joint communiqué in which every party agreed to a nonnuclear Korean peninsula. However, the talks subsequently stalled due to differences over how to execute the agreement, and due to US financial sanctions against North Korea for counterfeiting activities. In July 2006, North Korea tested seven missiles, after which the UN Security Council issued a condemnation against North Korea. In October 2006, North Korea conducted a nuclear test, after which the UN Security Council issued a unanimous resolution stating that the nuclear test threatened international peace and security, and that sanctions against North Korea were permissible. Japan, along with the United States and Australia, then sanctioned North Korea. In response to North Korea’s nuclear test, the Japanese government quickly announced that it would continue to follow the three principles of nuclear nonproliferation (do not produce nuclear weapons, do not possess them,

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do not allow them into the country), and in return the United States quickly offered security assurances to Japan (and South Korea). But some Japanese officials argue that Japan should go nuclear to counter the threat of North Korea, and that it should allow US nuclear weapons into its territory for effective defense. North Korea has been an important push factor in the strengthening of Japanese security policies. On February 13, 2007, after a delay due to financial sanctions by the United States against North Korean bank accounts in Macao, the six-party talks reached agreement on measures to achieve the September 2005 communiqué. What became clear was the change in US policies. The United States made significant compromises to North Korea to reach the agreement. And some suggested that there were discrepancies between Japan and the United States regarding, for example, the abduction issue. China, South Korea, and identity issues. A third development is Japan’s relations with neighboring countries, particularly China and South Korea. When Japan dispatched its SDF to the Indian Ocean and Iraq, both China and South Korea expressed caution, but not strong opposition (at least according to Japan’s perception). However, political, diplomatic, and even security relations between Japan and China, and between Japan and South Korea, deteriorated. A basic contention was the “history problem,” especially as exacerbated by Prime Minister Koizumi’s annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine since August 2001. China’s stance is that the shrine, since 1978, has been a memorial to war criminals, and thus that it is inappropriate for the Japanese leader to visit (i.e., such a visit would justify the war on the side of Japan). Even though Koizumi changed the dates of his visits, he did visit the shrine annually, despite strong protest by China and South Korea. The summit between China and Japan was forestalled for a year and half, and Japan has become more cautious about China’s behavior and military capabilities, openly stating its concerns (such as in its 2004 defense-planning guidelines and in a February 2005 joint statement with the United States). 30 The straying of a Chinese nuclear submarine into Japanese waters in 2004 and Chinese exploration of natural gas near Japanese waters have also aroused concern in Japan. Relations between South Korea and Japan also deteriorated in 2005, following publication of a Japanese textbook stating that Dokuto/ Takeshima was Japanese territory, and a subsequent declaration to this effect by Shimamae prefecture. Prime Minister Abe traveled to China and South Korea almost immediately after inauguration to mend Japan’s relations with the two countries. It was during Prime Minister Abe’s visit to China and South Korea, and summit meetings with their leaders, that North Korea tested its nuclear device. Paradoxically, this seemed to help develop cooperation between the three countries. Though Abe, during his tenure as director-general of the cabinet

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during the Koizumi administration, supported Koizumi’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, he has not stated whether he himself will visit the shrine. Abe visited the shrine on April 15, 2006, well before he became prime minister. If it is a tradition that one visits the Yasukuni Shrine once a year, Abe did not have to visit in 2006 as prime minister. While he has not said anything about a possible visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, it will be crucial whether he visits the shrine by the end of 2007. Historical issues with the United States. Though Koizumi’s visits to the

shrine constituted a political issue between Japan and China, and Japan and South Korea, they became an annoyance even in Japan’s relations with the United States. Both liberals and conservatives in the United States have shown anxiety about Japanese nationalism.31 In addition to the Yasukuni Shrine issue, the historical status of comfort women in Japan has become an issue for the United States, due partly to the introduction of a resolution in the US House by Representative Michael Honda on January 31, 2007 (H. Res. 121) to ask the Japanese government to formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility, in a clear and unequivocal manner, for coercion of young women into sexual slavery by Japan’s Imperial Armed Forces. On March 5, 2007, Prime Minister Abe stated in the Diet that he would not apologize if the resolution passes, which stirred up criticism from many corners in the United States, though he tried to address US concerns before and during his first visit to the United States, in late April 2007. If mismanaged, these issues could pose a psychological and political hindrance to promoting the US-Japanese alliance, to say nothing of Japan’s relations with China and South Korea. Use of collective self-defense and the constitution. With the institutions for activism lite established, Japan is still trying to strengthen its security framework. The Defense “Agency” was promoted to Defense “Ministry” on January 9, 2007. Even though this promotion is largely symbolic, it will impress on the international community that Japan is putting a higher priority on defense. Furthermore, in April 2007, in order to strengthen the leadership of the prime minister and to make security-related decisionmaking more effective, Prime Minister Abe introduced a bill in the Diet to establish a national security council. A major issue in Japan’s pursuit of activism lite concerns the use of force by SDF troops dispatched overseas. Collective self-defense is strictly prohibited by the constitution, and by all laws that allow dispatch of the SDF overseas: the International Peace Cooperation Act, the Surrounding Areas Act, the Anti-Terrorism Special Act, and the Iraqi Special Act. The prohibition on use of force other than for national self-defense sometimes causes awkward situations. Abe stated that he would examine collective self-defense closely during his campaign for the presidency of the LDP. On April 25, 2007, after he became

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prime minister, he formed a commission to discuss the issue; the commission is expected to present its conclusions in fall 2007 (i.e., after the upper-house election in the summer). The commission will examine four specific cases: (1) interception of third-country ballistic missiles targeting the United States and traveling over Japan; (2) counterattack of those who attack US ships that sail alongside Japanese naval vessels; (3) logistic support to multilateral coalition forces (transportation of ammunitions and weapons); and (4) use of force against those who obstruct peacekeeping tasks assigned to Japan by the United Nations.32 In all these cases, use of force is considered to be well within the framework of the United Nations and/or US-Japanese security relations. However, if use of force is permitted in these cases, it will push Japan toward a more activist international role. Australia, NATO, and India: democratic identity and collective hedging.

Even though Japan’s security relations with the United States have been the key to Japanese security, it has recently been strengthening its security relations with Australia, NATO, and India. Prime Minister Koizumi has argued since 2002 that Australia, which provided security for Japanese troops in Samawa, Iraq, until the Japanese contingent withdrew in June 2006, should participate in the East Asian summit. Abe had speculated prior to taking office about the possibility of cooperation among the United States, Australia, India, Europe, and Japan. A tripartite dialogue at the foreign minister level was held in March 2006 between Japan, Australia, and the United States. And, when Australian prime minister John Howard visited Japan in March 2007, a joint bilateral declaration affirmed trilateral cooperation between Japan, Australia, and the United States. When he visited NATO headquarters in January 2007, Prime Minister Abe showed his interest in cooperating with NATO with regard to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. On May 1, 2007, the US-Japan Security Consultative Committee convened. It discussed the North Korean nuclear issue and relocation of US bases in Okinawa, as well as cooperation between Japan and NATO in assisting Afghanistan. Security cooperation between the United States, Japan, Australia, India, and NATO will allow Japan to pursue and expand its security policies on the basis of democratic values, and at the same time forge a coalition to collectively hedge a rising China. Furthermore, cooperation with NATO in Afghanistan may provide Japan with opportunities to apply its activism lite. Indeed, when he visited Brussels in early May 2007, Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma mentioned the possibility of the SDF cooperating in the reconstruction of Afghanistan under modification of the Anti-Terrorism Special Act or enactment of another special law.

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Conclusion Concentric Representation of Japanese Security Policies Japanese security strategy comprises the following: • Solidification of self-defense mechanisms to counter external threats. • Strengthening of security relations with the United States, including logistic support in the areas surrounding Japan. • Participation in international efforts to cope with specific tasks such as terrorism and the reconstruction of Iraq. • Participation in UN peacekeeping operations. Viewed visually, as in Figure 5.2, Japanese security strategy is concentrically formed.33 At the center lies the Japanese territory and narrowly defined selfdefense. Territorially, Japan has been trying to ensure its security through the SDF and the US-Japanese alliance; accordingly, the Japanese government passed the Armed Attack Act in 2003. Only territorially has Japan declared that it will use military force if necessary (outside Japanese territory, the SDF are allowed to participate only in logistic support and peacekeeping operations, including humanitarian assistance). Next outward in this configuration of concentric rings, we have the surrounding areas, where the US-Japanese security alliance plays the essential role. Japan’s most pressing security threats come from its surrounding areas: inter-Korean and cross-strait relations, as well as a rising China. The United States and Japan issued a joint declaration for cooperation in 1997, and Japan

Figure 5.2

Concentric Representation of Japanese Security Policies

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passed the Surrounding Areas Act in 1999. The reason for sending the SDF outside Japan under the Surrounding Areas Act is to promote the peace and security of Japan, even though the act aims at maintaining an effective US-Japanese alliance. Next outward we have specific zones where war is under way. Japan can send the SDF to these war zones for logistic support and humanitarian aid, but only to noncombat areas. Japan enacted two special laws for this deployment, one concerned with antiterrorism and the other with Iraq. The purpose of these laws is to contribute to the peace and security of international society, including Japan. Next outward, and last, we have the largest ring—the globe (which comprises what we may call “civil war areas”). Under the International Peace Cooperation Act, Japan has sent the SDF to, for example, Rwanda and the Golan Heights to participate in UN peacekeeping operations. The areas to which the SDF are to be dispatched are unlimited. The purpose of this act is to contribute to international peace efforts led by the United Nations. In each of these concentric rings, Japan has been strengthening its activities. In the first and second rings, the major causes for Japan’s increased security activities are found in the regional security environment. In the third and fourth rings, changes in Japanese security policies have resulted essentially from structural changes in the global system. Global terrorism has become a major international threat since 9/11, and internal wars and ethnic conflicts have become major international security concerns in the post–Cold War era. Respectively, Japan has decided to participate in the international war on terror (the third ring) and in UN peacekeeping operations (the fourth ring). Each ring in this concentric formation has its own objectives and particular means to employ. Except for territorial individual self-defense (the first ring), use of force by the SDF is prohibited. And except for territorial selfdefense, independent Japanese behavior is not assumed (rather, UN Security Council resolutions in general, or the US-Japanese security alliance in the case of the Surrounding Areas Act). In the third and fourth rings, objectives include both security and humanitarian aid. Thus we can say that Japanese security activism is “activism lite.” Japanese activities in these rings are related, as indicated by the arrows in Figure 5.2. Japanese territorial defense heavily depends on the US-Japanese security alliance, and Japan tries to maintain regional stability through this alliance. And Japanese policies and activities in specific war zones are related both to the US-Japanese security alliance and to the United Nations. That is, the two special laws, on antiterrorism and Iraq, can be considered an extension of the US-Japanese alliance (security cooperation) outside the surrounding areas, and they are also legitimized by UN Security Council resolutions (with Japan’s dispatch of the SDF to peacekeeping operations being solely legit-

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imized by the United Nations). Thus US-Japanese security cooperation covers Japanese territorial defense, the surrounding areas, and now specific war zones, and the United Nations plays an essential role in Japan’s global security activities and in its conduct in specific war zones. Japanese policies have been pushed by regional threats (actual and potential), such as North Korea and China, and pulled strongly by the United States into strengthening the USJapanese alliance, while the United Nations has legitimized Japan’s deployment of the SDF to global civil war areas and specific war zones. It is interesting to note in Figure 5.2 that the arrow emanating from the UN intersects with the arrow emanating from the US-Japanese alliance, in the area of specific war zones. This demonstrates one of the serious dilemmas that Japan faces. If the United States and the United Nations give conflicting directions, which should Japan side with? The answer is that Japan will choose the United States. The overriding reason is that “if Japan is attacked, the United States will help us but the UN may not.”34 In regional conflicts surrounding Japan, the interests of the United States and those of China might not converge. If so, the UN Security Council may not be able to take effective measures to solve those regional conflicts. Thus Japan would have to rely on the United States rather than the United Nations as the final guarantor of security. Current Japanese security policies are characterized by activism lite and going along with US liberal hegemony. Japan has expanded and deepened its security roles in international society since the end of the Cold War. The result may look amazing, and some may call it Japanese security activism. Not only global and regional security environments, but also domestic political changes, have caused these changes. Japanese political leaders tried to purposefully adapt to new international environments, weighing international and domestic political pressures, going against majority public opinion in many cases. Japanese security policies have been developed within international and domestic institutions—the United Nations and the US-Japanese security alliance internationally, and the Japanese constitution and some unwritten basic principles and norms rooted in Japanese culture and security policies. This led to the basic characteristics of the current Japanese security policies: the SDF are to be dispatched outside Japan only within the framework of the United Nations or the US-Japanese security alliance, or both, and are to be restricted to noncombat activities in their functions abroad. And the unwritten rule that the defense budget is to constitute less than 1 percent of GNP is still strictly observed. Japan has been a purposeful adapter within a set of international and domestic institutions and norms. Japanese security activism is still activism lite. Particularly since 9/11, Japan has saliently followed a policy of going along with US hegemony. Japan always relies on the United States for its own security, and on strengthened cooperation for security in the surrounding areas. But after 9/11, Japan sent the SDF to the Indian Ocean and Iraq, mainly

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to maintain and enhance the US-Japanese security alliance, even though Japan’s laws are justified by UN resolutions. Japan’s basic strategy of expanding its security roles onto the global stage had been completed by 2003. A new, fourth stage began in 2004, when Japan issued a new set of defense-planning guidelines. The focus of Japanese security policies has now come back to national self-defense and regional security. Japan has further enhanced its security cooperation with the United States through the military transformation, but has begun to exhibit concerns about a rising China. After annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine by Prime Minister Koizumi deteriorated Japan’s relations with China and South Korea, Prime Minister Abe visited China and South Korea to forge new cooperative relations. Future Prospects However, the strategy of going along with US hegemony through activism lite seems unchanged. Given this strategy, there seem to be four possible future directions for Japanese security policies, as shown in Figure 5.3, which comprises two factors. One is the nature of security activism. Activism lite means that Japan may send the SDF overseas, but only in a noncombat role. “Real” activism means that Japan may use force for collective self-defense (outside Japan).35 The other factor concerns Japanese policy toward the United States— whether Japan goes along with US hegemony or distances itself from it (but still within the framework of the US-Japanese alliance). Thus the four possible directions for future Japanese security policies are: (1) going along with US hegemony and moving into real activism (Type A); (2) distancing itself from the United States with real activism (Type B); (3) going along with the United States with activism lite—the current policy (Type C); or (4) distancing itself from the United States with activism lite (Type D).36

Figure 5.3

Future Directions of Japanese Security Policies Policies Toward the United States

Policies Toward Global Security

Going Along with US Hegemony

Distancing from the United States

Real Activism

A

B

Activism Lite

C Current Policy

D

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Since both the United States and Japan need mutual security cooperation regionally and globally, the Type C policy—going along with the United States with activism lite—may possibly continue. However, this policy is based partly on policies of the George W. Bush administration and former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi. Thus the possibility exists that the policy could be modified if both the US and the Japanese administrations change course in the future (Prime Minister Shinzo Abe does not seem to have changed the basic security policies that Koizumi laid down). And if the war on terror encounters difficulties, and if US hegemony becomes problematic (say, in Iraq), then not only US policies but also Japanese policies may change. Two possible directions can be conceived if the Type C policy should change. If Japan feels insecure regionally and continues to believe that the United States is powerful enough, then the possibility exists that Japan will move from a Type C to a Type A policy. That is, if Japan tries to strengthen security cooperation with the United States, and still feels insecure, it may come to believe (as would the United States) that activism lite is not enough. In fact, there have been movements both within and outside Japan to transform Japanese security policies and go beyond activism lite. They argue for collective self-defense, and for the constitutional change that would be required to allow it under certain conditions overseas (a normal state, so to speak). Another possible direction for Japan could be a strategy of distancing itself from the United States with activism lite (Type D). This change would occur if regional security is relaxed, if Japan perceives that the United States is not strong enough, if Japan sees US behavior as erratic, or some combination of these events. As a result, Japan could become more independent of the United States (e.g., siding with the United Nations if discrepancies exist between the United Nations and the United States), but retain its activism lite (e.g., participating actively in UN peacekeeping operations, but not in coalitions of the willing forged by the United States outside of the United Nations). The change to a Type D policy might also occur if the political leadership changes (the prime minister, the ruling party, or both).37 Though Japan’s transformation of its security policies is still under way, it seems to have attained a precarious equilibrium—going along with US hegemony with activism lite—situated between Cold War passivism and real activism.

Notes The contents of the chapter were originally presented to the International Conference on Peace, Development, and Regionalization in East Asia, September 2–3, 2003, Seoul, Korea, organized by the East Asia Institute and the Gorbachev Foundation of North America. The author appreciates research assistance by Mayumi Itayama. 1. In this sense, Japan is behaving within the framework of the United Nations.

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2. The term shutaiteki was included both in the Anti-Terrorism Special Act and in the Iraqi Special Act, together with the term sekkyokutei (actively), which was first used in the International Peace Cooperation Act. 3. “Show the flag” was a symbol articulated in the Japanese news media in early October 2001 (see Yomiuri Shimbun, October 5, 2001; and Asahi Shimbun, October 5, 2001). It was reported that US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage referenced this symbol in a statement he made to Japanese ambassador Shunji Yanai, though exactly what Armitage told the ambassador is unclear. However, in an April 10, 2002, interview conducted by Edward Stouron (BBC Radio, “With Us or Without Us: Extended Interviews”), Armitage recollected the event: Stouron asked, “On September the 15th, you met the Japanese ambassador and said to him, it’s time Japan showed the flag. What did you mean by that?” Armitage replied, “We had a private meeting on a Saturday, and explained that we were at war, just as we were at war in 1991. Unlike 1991, didn’t want the same kind of controversy we’d had with Japan. It was necessary that Japan, as a good ally and as a good citizen of the world, would join this coalition and do something visible. When asked by the Japanese ambassador, ‘What do you have in mind?’ I said, ‘You’ve got to show the flag and show the flag in far-flung locations from Japan.’” Stouron followed with, “Are you happy with the way they responded?” Armitage replied, “Absolutely. So was our president, which is even more important. He had the occasion to tell Mr. Koizumi that.” 4. See, for example, Mainichi Shimbun (morning edition), December 11, 2003, p. 1. This newspaper reported that a US official requested Japan to send 2,000 troops to Iraq in May 2003. 5. Japan’s Higuchi Commission issued its final report in 1994, which put multilateral security arrangements before the US-Japanese security alliance. The US response was very negative. 6. Funabashi, Alliance Adrift. 7. A nuclear North Korea with possible long-range missiles is a serious global security issue. It would jeopardize the nuclear nonproliferation regime and exacerbate the problem of weapons of mass destruction in general. After North Korea’s nuclear test in October 2006, how to effectively cooperate with the United States became one of the most important security debates in Japan, more so than even the issue of collective selfdefense. 8. Norimitsu Onishi, “U.S. Quietly Seeks Asian Partners for Missile Shield,” International Herald Tribune (Asahi Shimbun edition), April 5, 2004, p. 1. 9. Along with and in relation to the Armed Attack Act, two other laws were passed, including revisions regarding Japan’s Security Council. The Security Council was established in 1986 to make major decisions on wide-ranging security matters that supersede the National Defense Council. The revisions include the establishment of expert advisory sections to effectively implement the act. In March 2004, five bills were introduced to concretize measures specified in the Armed Attack Act, including measures to protect nationals and measures to be implemented by the Japanese government in relation to actions taken by US forces under the act. 10. The essence of Japanese security policies cannot be completely ascertained through an examination of Japanese legislation. However, these five laws demonstrate important aspects of Japan’s security policies in the post–Cold War era. 11. Prime Minister Koizumi emphasized the humanitarian aid and reconstruction aspects of the Iraqi Special Act when his cabinet decided on the basic plan for sending the SDF to Iraq and played down the “support activities for securing safety.” And of course, this double-edged purpose, particularly humanitarian aid, is necessary in persuading the Japanese people.

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12. On the public side, it seems that “international contribution” has been the most important and effective symbol in justifying Japan’s participation in maintaining and promoting international peace, centering on the United Nations, and including Japan’s own peace and security. 13. Some Japanese argue that Japan should forge a general law rather than enacting special laws each time they become necessary. 14. In October 1990, several public opinion surveys were conducted regarding the constitutionality of overseas SDF dispatch. A Mainichi Shimbun survey conducted on October 21 showed that 49 percent believed such dispatch was unconstitutional, while only 16 percent believed it was constitutional (35 percent said they didn’t know). A Broadcast Studies and Research survey conducted on October 20–21 showed that 53.8 percent believed that the UN Cooperation Bill, which would allow SDF dispatch overseas, was unconstitutional, compared to 8.6 percent who believed it was constitutional (26.2 percent said they didn’t know). An Asahi Shimbun survey conducted on November 6, just before the government withdrew the bill, showed that 21 percent were in favor and 58 percent were against. 15. This decision was based on the Self-Defense Forces Act. 16. Under the International Peace Cooperation Act, Japan sent the SDF to Cambodia (1992–1993), Mozambique (1993–1995), Rwanda (1994), the Golan Heights (1996–); East Timor (1999–2000, transportation), Afghanistan (2001, transportation), East Timor again (2002–), and Jordan (Iraqi refugees, 2003). SDF participation in international relief activities is also permitted by the International Emergency Relief Act (according to its 1992 revision; first enacted in 1987), under which the SDF have been sent to Honduras (1998, hurricane), Turkey (1999, earthquake), India (2001, earthquake), Iran (2003–2004, earthquake), Indonesia (2005, tsunami), Thailand (2004–2005, tsunami), Russia (2005, submarine accident), and Pakistan (2005, earthquake). Asakgumo Shinbunsha, Bouei Handobukku, 2007 [Handbook for Defense, 2007]. 17. The phenomenon of public opinion changing from disapproval before the prime minister takes action, to approval after the prime minister takes action, is also seen in policy areas other than security, and was especially salient during the Koizumi administration. See “The Voters Follow the Decisions by the Prime Minister—Iraq, Postal Reform and Yasukuni,” Nihon Keizai Shimbun (evening edition), August 22, 2006, p. 1. 18. This leads to the argument that Japan should permit the exercise of collective self-defense so that it can logistically support US inspection of North Korean ships according to UN Security Resolution 1718. See, for example, Research Institute for Peace and Security, “Toward Exercise of Collective Self-Defense.” 19. The LDP-Komei-Liberal coalition fell apart toward the end of the Keizo Obuchi cabinet; the Liberal Party left the ruling coalition and voted against the AntiTerrorism Special Act. 20. According to decision rules in the lower house, in principle the voting is not roll call voting but “stand-up” voting (i.e., those who support a bill show their support by standing up). But, if more than one-fifth of those in attendance ask for a roll call vote, one is taken. 21. The Koizumi cabinet sent a small expeditional SDF land force to Iraq in midJanuary 2004. An Asahi Shimbun survey on January 17–18, 2004, showed that 40 percent were in favor of the expedition (a 6 percent increase from the previous month), while 48 percent were against (a 7 percent decrease from the previous month). The most frequently mentioned reason for supporting SDF deployment to Iraq was “international contribution” (24 percent); the most frequently mentioned reason against was “Iraq is still dangerous” (21 percent). Asahi Shimbun (morning edition), January 19, 2004.

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22. Asahi Shimbun (morning edition), December 10, 2003, p. 5. 23. Ibid., p. 2. 24. See http://www.nikkei.co.jp/sp1/nt69/20040118as3k1801w18012004.html. 25. See http://www.nikkei.co.jp/sp1/nt69/20040215as1e1500c15022004.html. 26. For example, the fiscal year 2003 budget for sending the SDF to Iraq was reportedly about 30 billion yen (about $300 million), a very small amount compared to the total defense budget (the Iraq appropriation came from the reserve fund, which is outside the defense budget; the budget for information-gathering satellites is also appropriated from outside the defense budget). 27. The Ministry of Finance reduced the defense budget for fiscal year 2004 by 0.2 percent, the largest reduction in history. An increased budget for missile defense, for example, has been compensated by reductions in other areas, such as number of tanks. Nihon Keizai Shimbun (morning edition), December 14, 2003, p. 1. Expenditures for missile defense were about 100 billion yen (about $1 billion) in fiscal year 2004, 120 billion in 2005, 140 billon in 2006, and 180 billion in 2007. In March 2007, PAC3 was introduced in Iruma, Saitama, for the first time. The deployment of missile defense systems is planned to be completed by 2012. The total costs are expected to be about 1 trillion yen (about $10 billion). 28. Yomiuri Shimbun (evening edition), December 19, 2003. Many factors will influence future defense expenditures, including missile defense, the war on terror, and military transformation (relocation of US bases). Though there exists the possibility that defense expenditures will rise in the future, a sharp rise is unlikely, due partly to the tight budgetary situation, even though some pressure to increase the defense budget may come from the United States (e.g., the second Armitage report—see Armitage and Nye, The U.S.-Japan Alliance). 29. US-Japan Security Consultative Committee, “U.S.-Japan Alliance: Transformation and Realignment for the Future.” 30. US Department of State, “Joint Statement U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee” (2005). 31. As for liberals, see, for example, Ikenberry, “Japan Has a Serious Geopolitical Problem.” For conservatives, see Boot, “Japan’s Memory Lapses”; and Will, “The Uneasy Sleep of Japan’s Dead.” 32. See, for example, Tokyo Shimbun (morning edition), April 26, 2007. 33.Hisayoshi Ina has devised a similar, but different, figure about Japanese security policies. Ina, “9.11 no shougeki” [Impact of the 9/11 Event], pp. 171–206, esp. p. 205. 34. Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state, said on December 23, 2003: “I would say to them [the many politicians in Japan who insist that Japan should decide according to what the UN decides] that the primacy of their [Japan’s] security comes from the U.S.-Japan security relationship and not from the United Nations.” Prime Minister Koizumi later made a similar statement. See http://www.melma.com/backnumber _89212_623068. 35. Use of force for collective self-defense is not an “all or nothing problem.” Force may be used for collective self-defense in limited cases. Therefore, the distinction between activism lite and real activism will not be easy. There is also another category, “passivism.” However, there seems little chance that Japan will go back to the kind of passivism it exhibited in the Cold War era. 36. There could be cases in which the United States might distance itself from Japan, which is not explicitly discussed here. Given these types of policies, we can say that Japan has moved from a Type D policy to a Type C policy, particularly since 9/11. In the Gulf War, Japan distanced itself from the United States by not sending the SDF.

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Until the war in Afghanistan in 2001, the Japanese position toward US use of force was “understand” rather than “support.” 37. The third possible change is that Japan will become more independent from the United States and that it will adopt a policy of real activism (Type B). This change would occur if Japan revises its current interpretation of the constitution regarding collective self-defense, or revises the constitution itself. And two different paths exist from Type C to Type B. Japan could move from activism lite to real activism under the strategy of going along with US hegemony, then begin distancing itself from the United States (C to A to B). Or Japan could distance itself from the United States, then move from activism lite to real activism (C to D to B).

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6 Russia’s China Card: Eyes on Washington Alexander Lukin

T

ripolar relations between Moscow, Washington, and Beijing have influenced the structure of world politics for decades. During the Cold War a decision taken by any two members of this triangle to develop closer ties would have invariably factored into the reactions of the third. Today the global balance of forces has changed fundamentally. As a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and a deep economic crisis in Russia, the United States remains the sole world superpower, while Russia’s role in world affairs has diminished significantly. At the same time, other important and influential world players have emerged, most significantly the European Union as well as other regional powers in Asia and South America. Nevertheless, watching developments within the former triangle is still important for students of international politics. On the one hand, Russia has retained certain aspects of its former role such as voting in the UN Security Council as its permanent member, exercising regional influence, and a role in solving many international problems. On the other, rapid economic growth in China has led to that country’s growing international influence. Finally, the very fact that only one superpower operates in the world has led to the coordination of policies by significant but less powerful countries that feel uncomfortable in a unipolar world. One of the most vivid examples of such coordination has been the normalization of relations followed by rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing prompted primarily by dangerous tendencies in Washington’s international strategy as viewed from Moscow and Beijing. This tendency toward growing cooperation is understandable. Both countries share similar international priorities: opposing international terrorism (particularly Islamic terrorism), extremism, and separatism; and supporting nonproliferation policy and promoting a multipolar international order that upholds the primacy of international law and international institutions (in particular the UN and the Security Council) as opposed to the hegemony of the United States. 167

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At the same time, the foreign policies of both countries are equally committed to revitalizing their domestic economies, which means maintaining good relations with the United States. This joint position was manifested during the Yugoslav crisis when Moscow and Beijing jointly objected bombardment of Yugoslavia despite US and European failure to accept their position. This happened again when the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was being liquidated: having supported the international operation, China and Russia insisted that it should be UN-controlled. Despite official statements to the contrary, Washington has been watching Russian-Chinese rapprochement with apprehension. After the end of the Cold War and disappearance of the Soviet Union from the world map, many in the United States (some guided by deeply ingrained habits of mind, some driven by ideological convictions, and others motivated by reasons of personal or corporate profit) began to search for another candidate for the role of international villain that had to be opposed. For the George W. Bush administration it seemed initially that this role would be filled by China. Anti-Chinese hysteria reached its peak in April 2001 in the aftermath of the Hainan spy plane incident when President Bush pledged that the United States would do “whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself” if the island were attacked by communist forces. However, Washington gradually realized that demonizing China was counterproductive for both economic reasons (China is one of the leading trade partners of the United States) and political reasons (it catalyzed anti-American feelings and alliances, including the Russian-Chinese rapprochement). The events of September 11, 2001, showed Washington who the real enemy was. By contrast, China (and Russia) could be a valuable partner in the struggle against the new evil of terrorism, thus putting an end to anti-Chinese policies. This chapter attempts to show that relations within the Moscow-WashingtonBeijing triangle are still important, with an emphasis on the views and policies of Moscow. It charts the changes in the international situation after the end of the Cold War and analyzes the tripolar relationship against the backdrop of broader international problems such as the talks on strategic nuclear weapons, the Anti–Ballistic Missile Treaty, enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and other issues where the United States and Russia have played an important role.

Russian-US Relations and International Issues By autumn 2001, Russian-US relations had entered a rather difficult period. The euphoria of the late 1980s and early 1990s in Russia about the West and the United States had gone, as was reflected in dramatic changes in public opinion. At the peak of Western popularity in the Soviet Union in 1990, 32

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percent saw the United States as a model for Russia to emulate. By 1992 it had dropped to 13 percent, and it continued to decline in subsequent years.1 In 2000 only 20 percent of Russians considered their country’s relations with the United States friendly, while 48 percent believed them to be difficult.2 The image of the United States deteriorated for several reasons. Russians associated economic hardships with the pro-Western government of Yegor Gaidar, and Russia’s diminishing role in the world with the policy of proWestern foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev. The United States was no longer seen as the major promoter of democracy and prosperity in the world (as it had been in the early 1990s), but as a country that had willfully caused or at least contributed to Russian hardships in order to achieve world domination. Some US policies in particular consolidated this image. NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia led to a turning point in both Russian public and Russian elite attitudes toward the United States. Post-Yugoslavia, President Vladimir Putin inherited three main problems that bedeviled Russian-US relations: NATO enlargement, the US intention to withdraw from the Anti–Ballistic Missile Treaty, and US criticism of Moscow’s policy in Chechnya. During the first months of Putin’s term, it seemed that he was going to continue his predecessor’s policy toward the United States. This policy combined the general wish to cooperate and strong criticism of specific US policies. The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, fundamentally changed the situation. President Putin was one of the first world leaders to call President Bush to express condolences and pledge support in fighting against international terrorism. Russia fully supported the US operation in Afghanistan. It pushed its longterm ally, the Northern Alliance, toward closer cooperation with the US forces, shared intelligence with Washington, and did not oppose the deployment of US forces in the Central Asian members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In fact, Russia’s position on Afghanistan was closer to that of Washington than were the positions of most NATO allies. But Putin did not stop there. He used the situation to orient Russia’s foreign policy toward the West. As a result, the three major irritants in Russian-US relations became largely irrelevant. The shift toward cooperation in Russian-US relations after September 11, 2001, was to a greater part the result of changes in Moscow’s position on key divisive issues (or, as critics believe, Moscow’s concessions). The reaction in Russia was complex. Putin supporters and pro-Western parties supported cooperation, believing that it answered Russia’s strategic interests. The most radical among them believed that there was no threat to Russia from the West and the United States, and therefore that the disappearance of strategic parity did not create a problem. They called for closer cooperation with the United States and for joining Western international organizations, including NATO, that in their view would be beneficial to Russia’s political and economic development. The other group of Westernizers, which was closer to the presidential team, saw the

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new cooperation in more pragmatic terms. It maintained that global competition with the United States was unrealistic because Russia lacked the necessary resources and because it needed Western cooperation to solve its economic problems. Therefore, it was reasonable to use US military strength when it served Russian interests. For example, in Afghanistan, US troops helped to destroy the Taliban and stabilize the situation there, eliminating danger for Russia’s Central Asian neighbors. This was Russia’s own long-term goal, and the temporary US military presence in the region was a necessary price for achieving it without wasting Russia’s own resources. This group believed that Russia’s strategic goal, as President Putin often put it, was to become a powerful, modernized, competitive country in the modern world. To achieve it, good relations with the West would be instrumental, since only economically developed Western countries could provide the investments and new technologies needed for Russia’s economic revival. They believed that, while Russia should not abandon its principal position on major international issues, it should nevertheless seriously limit its international ambitions and obligations. Supporters of this policy pointed to its practical achievements: US willingness to support Russian economic reforms, Russia’s joining of major international organizations (especially the World Trade Organization), and Russian attempts to ease its foreign debt burden. But supporters of intensifying cooperation with the United States were subjected to serious criticism from both political and academic circles. Critics maintained that Russia was giving up too much and getting too little in return. They claimed that the United States obtained unilateral advantages and never made the concessions necessary for a compromise, while Russia always met US demands. They pointed out that the United States had not met Russia’s interests on any serious economic question. Apart from capitulating over Yugoslavia, NATO enlargement, and the Anti–Ballistic Missile Treaty, they pointed to Russia’s unilateral withdrawal from the naval base in Vietnam and the military intelligence-gathering facility in Cuba as examples of unilateral concessions that had undermined Russia’s strategic interests and failed to pay off. They believed that by deploying its troops in Central Asia, the United States was intruding into Moscow’s traditional sphere of interests and encircling Russia militarily. They often called on the Kremlin to establish closer strategic relations with China and even with obvious US foes such as North Korea and some Islamic states. Public opinion was also divided. The September 11 attack led to significant growth in sympathy toward the United States in the Russian public. According to a 2002 poll, 68 percent expressed a “good” attitude toward the United States, while only 19 percent admitted to “bad” attitude when sympathy was at its peak in July of that year. By September 2002, however, 52 percent of Russian respondents believed that the US presence in Central Asia was against Russia’s interests, while only 19 percent believed it to be a positive thing.3 In October 2006 in another poll, respondents

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were asked the open-ended question: “Which countries you can name as the closest friend of Russia?” Only 5 percent named the United States (24 percent, Belarus; 13 percent, Germany; 10 percent, China and Kazakhstan; 9 percent, France; 5 percent, Ukraine). At the same time, 29 percent pointed to the United States as a hostile country able to launch a war against Russia, second only to Georgia (31 percent) and ahead of China and Ukraine (5 percent each). Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan received responses of less than 3 percent.4 This shows that few Russians support the official position that the main threat to Russia now comes from the south and not from the United States.

Russia’s Position on Iraq Russia’s stance toward Iraq seems to have taken into consideration both public opinion and views of some experts. By supporting France and Germany, and avoiding Cold War parlance and the danger of becoming the most radical critic of the United States, Moscow won a lot. First, it confirmed its principled position that the key role of the UN and the Security Council in dealing with the issues of war and peace should be preserved. It is in Russia’s interests to defend this position: its permanent seat on the Security Council is one of the few great power attributes Russia has retained. It gives Russia considerable influence on the world arena and certain guarantees that its interests will not be neglected. While Russia was virtually alone in fighting for the UN role in Yugoslavia, it obtained two important allies in Europe. Second, Russia has relieved itself of responsibility for the repercussions of the Anglo-American action in Iraq. The United States has won the war, but today it is clear that it can hardly deal with the postwar situation. As for Russian oil contracts in Iraq, even if Russia were to go along with the United States it could hardly expect any role in oil extraction. In addition, the United States will hardly be able to resume oil extraction anytime soon. Third, by supporting “old Europe,” to borrow a term from Donald Rumsfeld, Russia showed that it was not prepared to take the side of the strongest power either for ideological considerations (like the UK and certain East European countries) or for material gain (like Turkey). Russia’s position, prompted by its national interests and principles, was also pragmatic: Germany and France are Russia’s two main economic partners in Europe, and Russian relations with the European Union (EU) are more important than relations with the United States. Fourth, Russia strengthened its position in the Arab world—a fact that will boost its international role as a whole. Finally, Russian leaders have further strengthened their prestige inside the country—their antiwar stance resonated with what the nation’s majority were thinking.5 The war in Iraq aggravated the disagreements between “old” Europe and the United States. While old allies do not become foes overnight, European

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leaders, influenced by the growing anti-Americanism of their voters, became more resolute, at least for a certain period of time. In this situation, Russia was right to stick to its balanced position: it neither moved toward open anti-Americanism, to compete with Europe in criticizing the United States, nor abandoned its stand. As Russia goes about creating favorable international conditions to pull the country out of its economic crisis and raise living standards, continued contacts with both Europe (its key economic partner) and the United States (without which hardly any problem can be resolved) are vitally important. While the contradictions between the United States and Europe pile up, Russia should be guided by its own interests when deciding which position to take on each particular issue. Having supported France and Germany on the Iraq issue, Russia is not duty-bound to side with them on the Palestine issue. At the same time, Russia is trying to play its own game in the Middle East. This position manifested itself in Moscow’s invitation to the Hamas delegation in March 2006. It has many interests in Israel, and therefore a position in the middle is preferable. Similarly, it is much easier to find understanding in Washington than in European capitals on such problems as Islamic terrorism and the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Currently, a new Russian-US partnership on strategic issues, on the basis of the principles of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty and the Moscow Declaration, signed during President George W. Bush’s visit to Russia in May 2002, is being formed. According to the treaty, the United States and Russia are to reduce and limit strategic nuclear warheads to 1,700–2,200 each by December 31, 2012. Moscow and Washington maintain active dialogue on the key issues of strategic stability and international security, especially on nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and counterterrorism. In 2004, according to the treaty, the Bilateral Implementation Commission was launched. The two countries cooperate in realization of the agreements reached within the framework of the Group of Eight’s “Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction” initiative, especially UN Security Council Resolution 1540, of April 2004, on nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which was put forward by Russia and supported by the United States and its Proliferation Security Initiative. The main aim of this cooperation is to prevent terrorists from acquiring any type of modern weaponry or sensitive technology, including weapons of mass destruction. In September 2005, Presidents Bush and Putin were the first to sign the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, which was put forward by Russia and passed by the UN General Assembly. During the Bratislava summit in February 2005, a US-Russian joint statement on enhancing nuclear security and control of portable air defense systems further broadened cooperation in this field (on the latter effort, a bilateral framework provided for cooperating in the control of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, which could threaten global aviation if obtained by criminals, terrorists, and other nonstate actors).

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Cooperation on key international and religious problems and a search for joint answers to new global threats and challenges are also developing. Measures against international terrorism are discussed by the US-Russian Working Group on Counterterrorism. Among the most important regional issues of common interest are postconflict settlement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and managing conflicts in the Middle East and on the Korean peninsula. In recent years, relatively stable growth of the Russian economy, caused mainly by rising international oil and gas prices, made Russian foreign policy, including Moscow’s position vis-à-vis Washington, more self-confident and less flexible. This can be seen from Russia’s stronger reaction to unfriendly policies of some of its neighbors (such as Georgia, Moldova, and even Belarus), its refusal to meet US demands to cut nuclear cooperation with Iran, and its relatively mild position on nuclear tests in North Korea. This caused some criticism in the United States, but did not significantly change Washington’s policy toward Moscow. In fact, Washington badly needs Russia’s cooperation in many spheres, so one can expect that disagreements over some specific issues will not seriously damage the relations between the two countries unless Russia’s foreign or domestic policy becomes completely unacceptable to the United States.

Russia and China: Eyes on Washington Unlike Moscow’s relations with Washington, its ties with Beijing by September 2001 had reached a high point after normalization in the second half of the 1980s. In an interview with Chinese and Russian mass media ahead of his visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in July 2000, President Putin reaffirmed that China is Russia’s strategic partner, noting that both countries share similar national and international priorities: “our aspiration to maintain and strengthen a multipolar world, our joint efforts in preserving strategic equilibrium and balance in the world, and putting in place conditions for a peaceful, steady, and effective advancement of our states.”6 The new spirit of cooperation between Russia and China was a result of a two-decade process of gradual normalization and rapprochement. This process began in the early 1980s with China adopting a foreign policy of “independence and self-reliance.” It was given a push by the Soviet policy of “new thinking,” which resulted in President Mikhail Gorbachev’s historic visit to Beijing in May 1989 in the midst of student unrest. Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian foreign policy prioritized relations with the West and entering the “common European house,” initially disregarding relations with closer neighbors. While official representatives of the Russian Foreign Ministry did not downgrade relations with the East, they stressed the priority of Russia’s Western connection and

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their desire to make Russia a good citizen of the Western community. As early as August 1991, at a rally in Moscow on the occasion of the defeat of the putsch, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev announced Russia’s new official stand: that democratic Russia, the United States, and other Western democracies were natural friends and allies in the same way that they had been natural enemies of the totalitarian Soviet Union.7 The practical policy underpinned by this belief was defined by the Russian foreign minister as establishing “friendly and eventually allied relations with the civilized world, including NATO, the UN, and other structures.”8 However, soon the Russian government had to change its attitude. Speaking at the Chinese Association of People’s Diplomacy on January 27, 1994, Foreign Minister Kozyrev said: The realization of Russian interests not through confrontation but through cooperation with the outside world allowed us in many respects to rediscover for ourselves a whole number of Asian states. This relates to China, our great Eastern neighbor. After agonizing dashes from an ideological, obstructive friendship to a similarly unjustified and unreserved hostility, the two “continents” of civilization, Russia and China, have firmly entered the road to good neighborhood and cooperation. In elaborating Russian foreign policy we base ourselves on the strategic character of good neighborliness with the PRC.9

This rediscovery was made by the Russian leadership under pressure from various groups and forces that viewed relations with China, and Russia’s entire foreign policy, from a very different perspective. One of the groups that saw China as a major commercial partner was the Russian military-industrial complex. Russian military production suffered a hard blow from the economic policy of the first post-Soviet Russian government, headed by Yegor Gaidar, and its leaders were very critical of its inability to solve their problems. To cut the military budget, the government refused to honor its own arms-production contracts, and hundreds of thousands of workers in the military industry were left without pay. Exports became the only secure source of financing for Russian military producers, and China turned out to be the most enthusiastic buyer. According to Aleksandr Kotelkin, former head of Rosvooruzhenie, Russia’s main arms exporter, in the 1990s, proceeds from arms exports financed more than 50 percent of Russia’s military production, and the largest buyer was China.10 The Russian leadership began to realize that China could play a major role in filling budget shortfalls as well as solving some social problems. Another source of influence on the leadership that worked in the direction of forming closer relations with China was the State Duma. After the 1995 elections, the influence of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation became very strong, and the Duma’s Committee on Foreign Relations was also actively pro-China. The influence of the academic community should also not be underestimated, although it was most often realized indirectly, by means of creating a specific climate of opinion as a result of publications and discussions in the mass media.

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As a result of all these influences, the Russian president and Foreign Ministry officials began to pay more attention to the Asia Pacific region and China in official documents and statements. In 1993 the Asia Pacific region was officially rated the sixth among Russia’s international priorities (after relations with the CIS, arms control and international security, economic reform, and relations with the United States and Europe);11 in 1996, Foreign Minister Yevgeniy Primakov promoted it to third priority (after the CIS and Eastern Europe).12 The Russian leadership began to see China as a major international player, relations with which could be used to strengthen Russia’s international stance. At a meeting in the Kremlin with Russian diplomats in July 1995, President Boris Yeltsin formulated the basic Russian position on China: China is the most important state for us. It is a neighbor, with which we share the longest border in the world and with which we are destined to live and work side by side forever. Russia’s future depends on the success of our cooperation with China. Relations with China are extremely important to us in global politics as well. If we can rest on the Chinese shoulder in our relations with the West, the West will be more considerate to Russia.13

The concept of a multipolar world that Moscow officially adopted was obviously directed against the growing power of the United States, which China had similar interests in embracing. This recognition manifested itself in the Russian-Chinese “Declaration on the Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order,” signed by Presidents Jiang Zemin and Boris Yeltsin in 1997. Although the declaration was nonbinding, it was important as a manifestation of the goals that both countries shared. In the view of Grigoriy Karasin, who at the time was Russia’s deputy foreign minister in charge of relations with Asia, the support for multipolarity shown in the joint declaration is “especially pressing now, when world society is still running against the inertia of the old mode of thought characteristic of Cold War times with claims for sole leadership and attempts to steer the development of international relations in the direction of monopolarity.”14 It is quite clear that this and similar formulas imply the United States, since there was no other country in the world capable of sole leadership. The image of the United States looms behind another of Rogachev’s comments: “We are against dividing countries into ‘democratic’ and ‘totalitarian,’ ‘the leaders’ and ‘the followers,’ for definitions like these imply the right of some states to ‘judge’ and ‘penalize’ others, as it were, regardless of the international community.”15 Nevertheless, the Russian-Chinese accord was very far from the antiAmerican bloc envisaged by the Russian Communists. The Russian side, interested in stable cooperation with the United States, constantly clarified that “the expansion of the constructive Russian-Chinese partnership is not aimed at the interests of any other country or group of countries, nor does it forebode the creation of a bloc or alliance of any sort.”16 Both sides, interested in cooperation with other parts of the world, including the West and the United States,

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reiterated this in a joint communiqué signed during the Moscow summit in November 1998.17 Analyzing the official Moscow position on relations with China during the Yeltsin period, one should bear in mind a characteristic feature of the Russian political system at the time. In the coordination of Russian foreign policy, as in most other spheres, the official Foreign Ministry policy toward China was often not observed and even openly ignored by some other government branches and departments, to say nothing of independent and private institutions. Even in the area of strategy, statements by various Russian officials often contradicted one other. Sometimes, the words of President Yeltsin himself could be interpreted as favorable to the creation of a strategic alliance with China. Thus, during a visit to China in December 1999, Yeltsin, reacting to US president Bill Clinton’s threats to impose sanctions against Russia because of Moscow’s policy in Chechnya, exclaimed: “Clinton must have forgotten for a few seconds what Russia is. Russia possesses a full arsenal of nuclear weapons, but Clinton decided to show his muscles. I want to tell Clinton: let him not forget what kind of world he lives in. There has never been and will never be a situation when he is able to dictate. . . . We are going to dictate, but not him.”18 This emotional outburst, although quite telling, did not reflect Russia’s official position. Then–prime minister Vladimir Putin had to explain that Russia had “very good” relations with the United States and that any cooling of those relations was not in Russia’s interests.19 At the same time, Chinese representatives stressed that China rejected the Russian policy of diktat. Eliminating the administrative chaos of Yeltsin’s time by establishing orderly relations within the federal government, as well as between the federal center and the regions, has been one of the main aims of President Putin. These changes have brought greater consistency to both internal and foreign policy. After coming to power, Putin has continued the policy of upgrading relations with Asia. In a November 2000 article titled “Russia: New Oriental Prospects,” he stated: “We have never forgotten that the main part of Russia’s territory lies in Asia.” He admitted, however, that previously Russia had failed to fully use this advantage, and called for an intensification of political and economic cooperation with the countries of Asia Pacific.20

Strategic Partnership In April 1996, during Yeltsin’s visit to China, the two sides announced their desire to develop “a strategic partnership directed toward the twenty-first century.” Since then, strategic partnership has become the official policy recognized by both sides. One indication of the new level of bilateral relations was the Russian-Chinese “Good Neighborly Treaty of Friendship and Coopera-

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tion,” signed by Russian president Vladimir Putin and PRC president Jiang Zemin at a summit meeting in Moscow in mid-July 2001 (the two heads of state meet every year). The treaty aroused considerable interest and stirred up a lively controversy both in Russia and in the world at large. Some maintained that the two former communist giants were advancing toward a new alliance aimed against the United States and the West, while others contended that the document was purely rhetorical and did not have any practical value. Both views are overstated. Indeed, the new Russian-Chinese treaty does not establish an alliance, let alone a military alliance. Its text does not contain obligations on joint defense against aggression, unlike, say, the 1945 SovietChinese “Treaty of Friendship and Alliance,” signed on the Chinese side by Chiang Kai-shek, or the “Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Support,” concluded by the Soviet Union and the PRC in 1950 and laying the foundation for the historical “friendship in perpetuity.” The restrained, cautious wording of the 2001 treaty and the aspiration to avoid any ideological assertions or clearly unrealistic obligations show that Russia and China take a long-term view, seeking to avoid mistakes like those made fifty years earlier. The fact is that the 1950 treaty had died long before its term officially expired (formally it was in effect at a period when Moscow and Beijing saw each other as enemies and clashed militarily on their border). This, however, is not to say that the new treaty does not have any practical value. It records a major trend in contemporary international relations: the aspiration by two large world powers, members of the nuclear club and the UN Security Council, for closer cooperation. The 2001 treaty, just as Russian-Chinese cooperation in general, has two aspects: international and bilateral. The Beijing and Moscow leaderships have repeatedly stated that Russian-Chinese rapprochement is not aimed against third countries, including the United States. In fact, both countries are greatly interested in economic and political cooperation with the West—it is a major factor in the development of both states and, therefore, fully in line with their strategic objectives. It is also true, however, that Russian-Chinese rapprochement has been catalyzed by a number of negative trends in international developments, as seen from Beijing and Moscow, that have been especially encouraged by Washington. These include efforts to diminish the role of the UN and its agencies, NATO attempts to assume the functions of the Security Council, interference in the affairs of sovereign states under the pretext of humanitarian intervention, support for separatist movements, NATO enlargement, US withdrawal from the Anti–Ballistic Missile Treaty, and US refusal to join a number of other international agreements—in short, manifestations of US hegemony and unilateralism defended in the US national security strategy issued by the Bush administration in September 2002, with its concept of preemptive strikes. To be able to stand up to US pressure, a weakened Russia and a still-fledgling

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China (just like a number of other large but insufficiently strong states, such as India, Iran, and others) seek to coordinate their efforts to maintain the world of sovereign nations and its agencies, above all the UN. The 2001 RussianChinese treaty, with its obligations to preserve the role of the UN, support for fundamental accords underlying strategic stability (primarily the Anti–Ballistic Missile Treaty), and rejection of any attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states, is a comprehensive program designed to preserve state sovereignty and international law. Herein also lies the essence of multipolarity encapsulated in the Russian-Chinese “Joint Declaration on a Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order,” adopted in Moscow on April 23, 1997.21 Neither China nor Russia are interested in worsening their relations with the United States or creating an anti-American coalition. This rather artificial coalition is only possible if they perceive the threat on the part of the United States as more dangerous than the threat caused by refusal to cooperate with the West. However, Washington, especially under the new Republican administration, is doing much to give Moscow and Beijing this impression. In terms of bilateral relations, the 2001 treaty is also very important here. What is especially significant to China is that the treaty emphasizes no particular path of development. It signifies that Russia has abandoned attempts to preach at China about the preference of a particular political system or respect for “human rights,” which it did in the early 1990s even though its own human rights record was far from perfect while its political system in effect defied definition. Noteworthy is Article 8 of the treaty, which prohibits the use of Russian or Chinese territory by third countries to the detriment of each other’s sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity, as well as efforts by organizations or groups linked to such activities. Clearly, the reference is of a vital interest of both states: the fight against separatist movements supported by international terrorist organizations or third countries. The wording, however, may be a little loose. For example, can a Russian organization or a division of an international organization that is championing the independence of Tibet operate in Russia? The Russian constitution does not forbid this, but under the treaty (which takes precedence over internal laws), China now has the right to demand such a ban. True, Russia is certainly not interested in the disintegration or destabilization of China, but as a sovereign and democratic state it can hardly allow the activity of its nongovernmental organizations to be regulated from abroad. Article 6 of the treaty, which recognized the existing state borders and the need to preserve the status quo in areas that have yet to be demarcated, is very important to Russia. This provision addresses the speculation by Russian Sinophobes that China purportedly intends to claim tracts of Russian territory or is following a policy of establishing Chinese settlements in Russia’s Far East re-

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gion, effectively occupying it. Although there has been a lot of fuss over this issue, no one has as yet produced any evidence of official Chinese plans to settle Russian territories. Quite the contrary, Chinese leaders constantly urge their citizens in Russia to obey Russian laws, and accept all measures to straighten out the border regime proposed by Moscow. This does not mean, however, that demarcation of the Russian-Chinese border happened without problems. Nonetheless, China-related problems in the Far East have not in any way been provoked by Beijing—they are problems that the Russians have brought on themselves by neglecting their national interests in the late 1980s and early 1990s through inconsistent Russian diplomacy as well as self-interested local authorities. Under the banner of pseudopatriotism, local authorities (especially in maritime regions) in fact reduced their economy to utter chaos and ruin, and corrupt law enforcement agencies turned a blind eye to illegal migration. To top it all, ambiguity in federal relations enabled local authorities to revise the border regime in contravention of the intergovernmental agreement without suffering any consequences. China’s dynamic development is certainly a serious problem for Russia, and the present Russian leadership is aware of it. Talking about Russia’s Far East region, on July 21, 2000, in the city of Blagoveshchensk, Putin said that “unless we take effective measures in the foreseeable future, then in several decades even the indigenous Russian population will speak mainly Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.”22 The problem is nothing new: at the beginning of the twentieth century, Prime Minister Petr Stolypin, urging settlement of the Far East territory by Russians, warned that nature abhors a vacuum.23 Although the current Chinese leadership has no territorial claims to Russia, the long-term trends of China’s development are hard to predict. Chinese society is dominated by the view that the territory of Russia’s Far East went to Russia under “unequal” treaties, while some authors in China assert that their country is short of “living space.”24 The problem, however, is not a result of Chinese machinations and intrigues. The future of the Russian Far East will depend on whether Russia is able to solve its economic and demographic problems as well as develop its mineral-rich Far East regions.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization Evolution of a New Regionalism Not Involving the United States The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) evolved from the Shanghai Process, which originally comprised five participating states: Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The process originated from border negotiations between the Soviet Union and the PRC. Following the breakup of the

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Soviet Union, the discussions were continued by sovereign states, bordering the PRC, that emerged in its place. As a result, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan settled virtually all border issues with China. Intent to move further, the parties agreed on confidence-building measures on the border—in particular, creating 100-kilometer-deep zones along the border subject to reciprocal military inspections. Corresponding agreements were signed at the Shanghai and Moscow summits of 1996 and 1997, respectively. Having resolved border problems, the Shanghai Five, far from dissolving, quite the contrary emerged as a regional organization. It so happens that states in the region have also shared other interests, including, above all, joint efforts in fighting terrorism and Islamic extremism, as well as multilateral cooperation in the political, economic, and cultural spheres. Pursuant to the member states’ aspiration to pool their efforts in fighting terrorism and Islamic extremism, the fourth summit of the Shanghai Five, which took place in August 1999 in Bishkek, endorsed the Russian proposal to hold meetings of chiefs of law enforcement agencies and special services, defense ministers, and foreign ministers. The Bishkek Group, two years before the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, had begun creating a convention on fighting terrorism, separatism, and extremism; it was signed in June 2001 at the SCO summit in Shanghai. The establishment of the SCO was officially announced at that Shanghai summit. It included members of the former Shanghai Five, plus Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan’s accession meant that the Shanghai Process had formally moved outside the scope of matters related to the former Soviet-Chinese border, as Uzbekistan does not border on the PRC, while it has an entirely different set of common interests with members of the Shanghai Five. In particular, it is very interested in stabilization of the situation in Afghanistan and the destruction of terrorist bases there; after all, the Taliban, which controlled the greater part of Afghanistan, had repeatedly threatened to make Uzbek territory an arena of the struggle for the purity of Islam. In June 2002 the SCO summit in St. Petersburg adopted the SCO’s charter—the organization’s official founding document. To be sure, a joint fight against terrorism is not the only thing that unites SCO members. They also have common interests in other spheres: efforts to control drug trafficking, and economic, cultural, and educational cooperation. Interest in the SCO in many parts of the world is hardly accidental. Thanks to its clear-cut position on international issues, not only is the SCO a dynamic organization of regional cooperation in Asia, but it also attracts states that favor multipolarity and oppose the trends leading to a unipolar world. To Russia, the SCO is also important because the mechanisms of its cooperation to a certain extent complement cooperation within the CIS. For example, Uzbekistan is a CIS member but not a party to the Collective Security Treaty Organization, in which Russia plays a leading role. Yet, through the SCO, together with Russia, Uzbekistan is part of a multilateral regional security system.

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The SCO member states promptly responded to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack with a special statement condemning terrorist acts, stressing that they were already fighting terrorism, extremism, and separatism. They readily shared their experiences and resources in assisting the antiterrorist coalition, especially since the new objectives of the United States coincided with their objectives on stabilizing the situation in Afghanistan, including the liquidation of terrorist bases there. In this respect, it is the United States that has joined SCO efforts rather than vice versa; after all, its members have for years supported the Northern Alliance, even while the United States, through its assistance to Pakistan, was effectively funding the Taliban. Even so, the Afghanistan issue requires a sensible, long-term approach. Afghans will not tolerate a long-term foreign military presence in their country, which would only compromise the country’s new leadership and undermine regional stability. This approach is favored by SCO member states. By 2006, the fifth anniversary of the organization, the SCO had evolved into an effectively working organization with two permanent bodies: a secretariat in Beijing and a regional antiterrorist structure in Tashkent. Its governing bodies—councils of heads of state, heads of government, foreign ministers, and national coordinators—now meet on a regular basis. The council of heads of government, at a meeting in Beijing in September 2003, adopted a program of multilateral economic and trade cooperation that determines the major aims and stages of economic integration until 2020. The plan for realization of this program, approved by the council at its meeting in Bishkek in September 2004, includes more than a hundred specific cooperation projects, including a highway to be built from Volgograd (Russia) to Aktau (Kazakhstan) and Kungrad (Uzbekistan), and a transport route to be built from Kashgar (China) to Osh (Kyrgyzstan) and Bratstvo (Tajikistan), with a cargo terminal in Kashgar. The US Policy Reaction Toward Central Asia During the first years of its existence, the SCO was not taken seriously in the United States. Some thought it would never develop into anything more than a discussion club for leaders such as the CIS; others saw it as a hopeless attempt by China and Russia to increase their influence in Central Asia, which was doomed since both countries lacked resources and had many domestic problems. However, after the SCO strengthened and many influential regional players expressed interest in joining, this attitude changed. The bell rang for the United States when in 2005 its close partners India and Pakistan and its arch-rival Iran were granted the status of SCO observer states (another US partner, Mongolia, had been granted this status in 2004) and began close cooperation with Afghanistan, where US-led coalition troops were deployed. However, Washington began to worry when the SCO’s council of heads of state, at a meeting in June 2005 in Astana, adopted a declaration that included

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the passage: “Considering the completion of the active military stage of antiterrorist operation in Afghanistan, the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization consider it necessary, that respective members of the antiterrorist coalition set a final timeline for their temporary use of the above-mentioned objects of infrastructure and stay of their military contingents on the territories of the SCO member states.”25 This passage was suggested by Uzbekistan, which was disillusioned with Washington after it had demanded independent investigation of the clashes between the government and opposition forces in Andijon in May 2005, which led to many casualties. The Uzbek government decided to change its formerly cooperative approach to the United States and switch its allegiances to Russia and China, which were much less sensitive to human rights issues. It demanded withdrawal of the US military base in Khanabad, which had been established there after September 11, 2001, to support the coalition’s military action in Afghanistan. The US House of Representatives, on July 19, 2005, passed a resolution expressing concern with the SCO declaration. Worried about the prospect of US marginalization in the region, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in October 2005, rushed to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan and, among other things, reached an agreement with Bishkek that it would keep the coalition airbase in Manas and even allow the transfer of US military personnel from the Khanabad base, which was closing, to Kyrgyzstan, in exchange for more cash. However, the main result of this visit was arguably the birth of the concept of “Greater Central Asia.” Its sources can be traced to Frederick Starr’s article “A Partnership for Central Asia,” published in the July–August 2005 issue of Foreign Affairs. Its main idea was “establishment of a Greater Central Asia Partnership for Cooperation and Development (GCAP), a regionwide forum for the planning, coordination, and implementation of an array of U.S. programs.”26 Starr’s view of a partnership that would promote trade, cooperation, and cautious democratization in the region became possible because “recent progress in Afghanistan has created a remarkable opportunity—not only for Afghanistan but for the rest of Central Asia as well. The United States now has the chance to help transform Afghanistan and the entire region into a zone of secure sovereignties sharing viable market economies, enjoying secular and open systems of government, and maintaining positive relations with the United States.”27 In such a partnership, the role of Russia and China would be marginal (although Starr believes they may join if they can donate enough money), Iran is excluded, while Pakistan is a member and India and Turkey “would, along with the United States, become the unofficial guarantor of sovereignty and stability in the region.”28 As if fulfilling Starr’s recommendation, Condoleezza Rice, in October 2005, reorganized the Department of State’s South Asia Division and included the issues of the five Central Asian states in the jurisdiction of this division. In April 2006 the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on the Middle East and

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Central Asia, of the Committee on International Relations, held hearings on US policy in Central Asia. In testimony at the hearings, Richard Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs and the chief promoter of the new policy toward Greater Central Asia, obviously used Starr’s ideas, but went much further. He did not even mention the SCO (although this may have been due to inadequate knowledge, since Boucher failed to properly answer a question on its membership). While in his written statement he recognized Central Asian countries’ historical ties with Russia and growing relations with China, it was quite clear that he did not regard Russia and China as major players in the new US game of connecting Central and South Asia via Afghanistan.29 On June 13, 2006, just days before the SCO summit in Shanghai, the US Trade and Development Agency convened an “Electricity Beyond Borders” forum in Istanbul, where participants from Central Asia and South Asia presented major plans for the expansion of power infrastructure in Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan (Russia and China were not invited). The forum was obviously aimed at stressing the US role in promoting cooperation in Central and South Asia, and the new role that Turkey is supposed to play. The US idea of Greater Central Asia caused mixed reaction in Central Asian countries, indifference in Moscow, and worry in China. Kazakhstan’s foreign minister, Kasymzhomart Tokaev, spoke favorably of the concept as a subject for academic debate, but stressed that his country give preference to the SCO.30 Kyrgyz foreign policy expert Mutarbek Imanaliev concluded that the project was understood in Central Asia as being a US one, and that it might cause concern in Moscow and Beijing.31 But the strongest reaction came from Beijing. An editorial published in an official Chinese newspaper, People’s Daily, maintained that the reason why the United States “has brought up the socalled ‘choosing from the South’ policy in Central Asia is that it is determined to use energy, transportation and infrastructure construction as bait to separate Central Asia from the post–Soviet Union dominance. By this means, it can change the external strategic focus of Central Asia from the current Russia-andChina-oriented partnership to cooperative relations with South Asian countries. It can break the long-term Russian dominance in the Central Asian area, it can split and disintegrate the cohesion of the SCO and gradually establish US dominance in the new plate of Central and South Asia. However, in the long term, the United States may create a strategic misjudgment of other large countries by ‘setting up another cooking stove.’ It may also disrupt the existing cooperative mechanisms and put Central Asian countries into a choice dilemma.”32 It seems that the new US policy toward Central Asia can hardly be realized, since its main foundation—alleged success in Afghanistan—is becoming less and less obvious. At the same time, the United States can push Russia and China toward closer cooperation with each other, with Central Asian states, and with such SCO observer states as India, Pakistan, and Iran, since Moscow

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and Beijing may want to seize the initiative. One indication of this tendency was the invitation of US arch-rival Mahmud Ahmedinejad, president of Iran, to the SCO’s 2006 Shanghai summit despite US objections.

9/11: Moscow and Beijing Support the United States with Reservations The events of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States, and the subsequent antiterrorist operation, had no serious impact on the character of bilateral relations between Russia and China. Russian-Chinese cooperation in the security sphere, established well before September 11, only became more target-oriented and more effective. However, China’s position was more cautious. Although China had no contradictions with Russia with regard to the United States, it had concerns that the United States could use the fight against terrorism as a pretext to stay in Central Asia indefinitely, too close to PRC borders. Although at the official level there was extensive talk in Beijing about the need for pooling efforts to combat terrorism, at the unofficial level Chinese observers were sharply critical of the United States over the heavy toll of civilian casualties and disregard of the UN’s role, seeing every move made by Washington as a manifestation of its “hegemony.” The reason for this is that China, thus far, does not see the US threat as any less serious than the threat of Muslim terrorism. As far as Russia is concerned, Beijing is apprehensive over its possible bias toward the United States. Many in China believe that while Russia gave its unstinting support to the United States in the antiterrorist operation after September 11, it obtained nothing in exchange. Beijing fears that Russia is returning to Kozyrev’s foreign policy of unilateral concessions to the West, or even joining the US “hegemonic” course. In this case, China would have to deal with the United States on its own, and this is not what Beijing wants. Beijing’s worries were fueled by Russian diplomacy post–September 11, which was extremely active on the Western front while somehow forgetting China. It is not that contacts with China were canceled or limited; it was business as usual. But this very lack of any heightened activity contrasted sharply with the significant intensification of Moscow’s US dealings. This situation obviously contradicted Russia’s officially proclaimed policy that both the Eastern and the Western heads of the Russian double-headed eagle were equally important. While President Putin was the first to call President Bush, he spoke with Chairman Jiang Zemin only a week later. Russian and Chinese leaders met in October 2001 at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shanghai, but this was largely a protocol encounter. In Shanghai, the Chinese were trying to divert the attention of world leaders (somewhat unsuccessfully) from international terrorism to regional economic cooperation, which they believed to be a more appropriate topic for the occasion. Russian and Chinese leaders had telephone con-

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versations on November 19 and December 13, 2001, but such monthly conversations had become a norm well before September 11. Thus, Russian contacts with China remained at their previous level, while Moscow’s relations with the United States, NATO, and Western Europe intensified dramatically. Since early 2002, however, Russia’s Asian diplomacy has become more active. In January an extraordinary meeting of SCO foreign ministers was held in Beijing. In a joint statement, ministers stressed a common position that Afghanistan in the future should be a “peaceful and neutral country.” They also maintained that the activities of the international forces there should be conducted “in accordance with the UN Security Council mandate and with the consent of the legitimate government of Afghanistan.” They expressed an opinion that the global antiterrorism effort should be based on regional, subregional, and national structures.33 Thus, although some Chinese doubts about the future course of Russian foreign policy remained, Russian-Chinese cooperation continued to expand. While Russian-Chinese cooperation stagnated somewhat in the first months after September 11, subsequent developments showed that it was in fact stimulated by the terrorist events, especially in the field of security and coordination of antiterrorist activities within the framework of the SCO.

Iraq: Russia and China Oppose the United States On the Iraq issue, China, Russia, France, and Germany shared a common stand that ran contrary to the US position. Beijing was quite satisfied with Russia’s more balanced foreign policy and its position on Iraq. Until the last moment, China and Russia tried to find a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis; they firmly insisted on a political and diplomatic solution in full conformity with Resolution 1441 of the UN Security Council, and on continued international weapons inspections in Iraq. At the same time, Moscow and Beijing called on Iraq “to completely fulfill the corresponding resolutions of the U.N. Security Council” and to “recognize to the full extent the importance and urgency of these inspections.” A joint communiqué of the foreign ministers of the two countries, signed on February 27, 2003, during Igor Ivanov’s visit to Beijing, confirmed this.34 Unlike the Yugoslavia crisis, Russian and Chinese insistence on the primacy of the UN was shared in key European states.

Korea: China and Russia Between Washington and Pyongyang The crisis of North Korean weapons of mass destruction is the most recent example of Russian-Chinese cooperation prompted by disagreement with US (as well as North Korean) policy. During Igor Ivanov’s visit to China in February

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2003, Russia and China outlined areas of cooperation that had acquired a special urgency after the war in Iraq. Aware that North Korea could well become Washington’s next target, Russia and China called on North Korea to observe the nonproliferation regime and asked the United States to normalize its relations with North Korea and start a constructive and equal dialogue with it. North Korea’s nuclear weapons constitute a much more important problem for Russia and China than Baghdad’s chemical weapons, because North Korea is their closest neighbor. Neither Moscow nor Beijing welcome a nuclear North Korea on their borders—neither do they want a military conflict between North Korea and the United States that could trigger an environmental and demographic catastrophe. “Old” Europe will hardly be actively involved—the region is too far removed. This explains why the understanding that currently exists between Moscow and Beijing on the North Korean issue, which takes into account the positions of other neighbors (South Korea and Japan) and is designed to resolve the conflict by political means, is very important today, and will be probably even more important in the near future. The Russian approach to the crisis over North Korean weapons of mass destruction should be seen in terms of Moscow’s vision of the Korean peninsula. North Korea’s announcement of its withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, refusal to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, reactivation of its nuclear program, and admission to possessing nuclear weapons have caused concern and have been roundly condemned in Moscow. Moscow has declared many times that North Korea should renounce all nuclear and weapons of mass destruction programs. However, Russia also believes that Washington should assume its share of blame for the failure of the 1994 deal with Pyongyang and reach a compromise with North Korea to avoid hostilities. These are principles that Moscow shares with Beijing. A joint Russian-Chinese declaration, signed during Chinese leader Hu Jintao’s visit to Moscow in late May 2003, reiterates: “The parties state that preservation of peace and stability on Korean peninsula meets the security interests of the two countries and the common aspirations of the international community. The scenarios of power play or the use of force to resolve the problems existing there are unacceptable. The parties advocate the creation of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula and observance there of the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction regime. Simultaneously the security of [North Korea] must be guaranteed and favorable conditions must be established for its socio-economic development.”35 Russia has two fundamental interests concerning the Korean peninsula: it does not want weapons of mass destruction on its border, and it does not want a war in Korea. There are several reasons for this. First, Russia does not want North Korea to become a reason for US unilateralism as in Iraq. Second, a war near the Russian border would bring devastating consequences, ranging from nuclear fallout to thousands of refugees fleeing to Russia and neighboring

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countries. Third, as both North Korea and South Korea are Russia’s economic partners, it has projects in both countries that would be affected. Generally, Russia wants a friendly and cooperative situation on its borders that would provide conducive conditions for the growth of its troubled economy. The fact that North Korea changed its original position and agreed to the Russian proposal of multilateral talks shows that Russia and China were able to reason with Pyongyang. In fact, North Korean insistence on dealing only with Washington on the issue was unreasonable, since any possible US security guarantee to Pyongyang would hardly be worth the paper it was written on. It is currently widely recognized that China and Russia are the only countries that can press North Korea to fulfill any agreement reached with the United States. North Korea is dependent on oil supplies from China, seeks military cooperation with Russia, and wants both Russia and China to block any discussion of the North Korean issue in the UN Security Council (which could be used as a pretext for a US military attack). Conversely, China and Russia are the only countries that can give Pyongyang credible security guarantees. Sharing a border with North Korea, Russia and China can effectively prevent US military action in North Korea. Both countries acting together can be effective mediators between Washington and Seoul, and are the best hope for both sides if they wish to avert a war and conclude a working agreement. North Korea’s nuclear test changed the situation significantly. There is a general understanding in Russia that it runs counter to the fundamental interests of the country. Currently, only a few countries have nuclear weapons, and Russia and the United States have many times more than any of the other nuclear states. If the current structure of the United Nations guarantees Russia special status among other countries as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, then the nuclear weapons nonproliferation regime is at the base of Russia’s position as one of the world’s two most powerful countries. This means that nuclear weapons proliferation seriously devalues Russia’s influence in the world. The more nuclear states there are, the less Russia’s comparative military strength might become. This is a purely pragmatic consideration, to which can be added a number of other negative consequences from further nuclear proliferation, such as an increased probability of nuclear conflict, and threats to national security in the Far East. There are two lines of argument in Russia on the question of what to do in this new situation. One group argues that nuclear weapons are the only defense some countries have against possible aggression by the United States, and that Russia should support these countries—that Kim Jong Il’s regime, like many other anti-US regimes around the world, wants to defend itself using nuclear weapons. They maintain that since the United States applies double standards and occasionally, under the pretext of combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, punishes those it does not like (as was the case with Iraq), and that the George W. Bush administration’s approach to North

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Korea is to a large extent to blame for the current situation, Russia should not press Pyongyang too hard. Increased pressure may cause a collapse or at least huge problems for the North Korean regime, which could lead to instability on the Russian border and deprive Russia of a counterbalance to the growing US influence in the region. This approach is backed mostly by the traditionalists within the government (especially former and current army and security force members) who cannot fully free themselves from the Cold War complex, which says that anything that is bad for Washington is good for Moscow. The other group argues that in today’s world, Washington and Moscow can have their differences, but that there are other questions where their interests may be identical or similar (in addition to nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, these include the war on international terrorism, drug trafficking, and religious extremism, among many others) and that Russia’s position on North Korea should also be based on other considerations. Pyongyang is ruled by an extremely exotic regime that will fall sooner or later, although no precise time frame for this is clear. The result will be a united Korea. This is unavoidable, if only because both North Koreans and South Koreans are desperate for reunification, something not even Pyongyang denies. The creation of a united Korea would be good for Russia, both geopolitically and economically. First, a united Korean state—which would undoubtedly be based on the far more viable South Korea—would be less dependent on US influence, since its influence on Seoul is largely dependent on the threat from the North. Second, a united Korea’s relations with Japan would be tricky due to the historical problems between the countries. A united Korea would also look with some trepidation at its huge and booming neighbor, China. For Russia, which also has serious and stubborn difficulties with Japan, and for which a powerful China represents a strategic challenge, a united Korea could become a geopolitical partner in the same mold as, for example, India. In addition, an economically advanced and unified Korea that is still closer to Russia’s level of development than to that of more-advanced Japan could make a significant contribution to the development of the Far East and Siberian regions. The populations of these regions traditionally favor collaboration with the Koreans and have fewer reservations about them than they do, for example, about the Chinese. Thus the US course to change the political regime in North Korea clearly chimes with Russia’s long-term interests, which here diverge in part from those of Beijing. Of course, it would be good for Russia if the fall of Kim Jong Il’s regime and the unification of Korea occurred peacefully, without cataclysms that could lead to a flood of refugees or in any other way exert a baleful influence on territories bordering Russia. In this respect, the United States, which is much farther away, can afford to be much less cautious. From this point of view, Russia should look first to Seoul, where its interests coincide completely and where the position of those in favor of appeasing Pyongyang has weakened noticeably following the North Korean nu-

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clear test. At the same time, some parts of Russia’s position should also be coordinated with Washington and Beijing. Based on these considerations, Russia should support harsher sanctions than those outlined in UN Security Council Resolution 1718, and should advise Beijing to do the same, since China, which supplies North Korea with energy, is the only country with serious influence in Pyongyang. This would further strengthen Russia’s position—favoring the most serious sanctions possible, up to and including a blockade and inspections of all incoming goods, but not war.36 Currently, a compromise between these two approaches shapes Russia’s policy on the Korean issue. If North Korea sticks to its insistence on its right to possess nuclear weapons, the influence of the anti-Pyongyang group in Russia will grow, while a more cooperative North Korean policy will stimulate a milder Russian approach. Washington will attempt to pressure both Russia and China to use their influence on Pyongyang to fulfill it own agenda. However, Moscow and Beijing will not agree to being mere instruments of US policy and will insist on being independent mediators. Generally, the Russian position on Korea is based on three facts: Russia is interested in peaceful resolution of the issue, it has limited means of influencing North Korea, and it lacks resources to pay the bill. Therefore it wants to include in the process those countries that have more influence (particularly China) and more resources (Japan and the United States), while still actively participating in and contributing to the process.

Russian-Chinese Trade Russian-Chinese economic and trade cooperation is forming rather unfavorably for Russia, though developing quickly, achieving trade growth in recent years of about 30 percent. In 2006 it reached $33.3 billion. This is significant compared to previous years, but less so in comparison to China’s trade with other countries (the United States, Japan, major EU states), to the level of trade between countries with borders similar in length to China’s (the United States and Mexico, the United States and Canada), and to the potential possibilities of Russia and China. According to a recent study conducted at Moscow’s Center for Strategic Research, the chief obstacle to trade growth is the underdevelopment of Russia’s infrastructure, which does not allow for profitable delivery of goods both ways. From year to year, the surplus of Russia’s trade balance with China is shrinking. Taking into account the trade in illegal supplies, soon there will be no positive balance. Russia’s exports are decreasing, as it is producing fewer and fewer machines and equipment that might generate interest among Chinese businesses. Moreover, Russian factories cannot manage orders they have already received, and China is gradually replacing traditional Russian imports

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with Chinese-produced goods. Mutual investment between Russia and China is very insignificant as well. The major obstacle here is the unfavorable investment climate in Russia. Chinese businesspeople are very interested in investing in Russia. China has adopted a plan for increasing investment in Russia up to $12 billion by 2020. Several large projects are already under way: a consortium of Shanghai companies plans to build a “Baltic Pearl” residential neighborhood in St. Petersburg; a “Huaming Garden” business center is to be constructed in Moscow; and there are some large-scale projects in the works in other regions of Russia as well. However, all these projects became possible owing to support from local authorities, without which Chinese businesspeople do not dare come to Russia. This fear on the part of China is due both to general problems (corruption, unclear and contradictory laws), and to a particularly Chinese attitude. Russian people, as well as Russian officials, lack knowledge about modern China. Rich people in China are surprised to see the underdeveloped economy in many Russian regions, especially those bordering China. They are also surprised that Russian officials are not interested in Chinese offers. The most surprising fact for them is that Russian officials treat Chinese businesspeople very differently from their Western counterparts, still believing that they represent an underdeveloped country. Such arrogance is due to the fact that Russians cannot accustom themselves to the idea that Chinese, who used to be poorer than Russians only two or three decades ago, are now becoming richer and are looking on Russians not as “older brothers,” but as strangers, European in appearance but somehow unable to improve their lives. Russians are already accustomed to the fact that Koreans (South Koreans, naturally) and Japanese are serious about money, but refuse to look on Chinese as their equals. Such historic turns cause various fears, like fear of a Chinese “demographic expansion” that might lead to the annexation of Russian territories, or the fear that China will buy Russian weapons and use them against Russia, forcing it out of Central Asia. These fears are skillfully exacerbated by regional politicians in Siberia and the Far East who, unable to improve the lives of their voters, blame a convenient scapegoat, and by ignorant or unprincipled “experts” and nationalistic politicians who earn their points by cheap xenophobia. Moreover, some Russians are recommending strengthening of armed forces in the Far East, and a nearcomplete closure of the border with China. Russia needs good relations with China for both political and economic reasons. Bilaterally, there are no problems between Russia and China to prevent Russia’s cooperation with other countries of the region: neither territorially (like with Japan), nor politically (like with North Korea). Internationally, cooperation with China is very important for Russia. China shares Russia’s view of a future multipolar world. Both Russia and China do not like outside advice that they perceive as “intervention into domestic affairs.” Russia and

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China support each other in the struggle against separatism. That is why both countries in recent years have supported preservation of the principles of international law and the UN’s status, coordinated UN voting on major world issues, and shared the same stand on negotiations concerning Iran, North Korea, and many other burning issues of world politics. China-related fears are groundless. China never, even in hardest years, set official territorial claims for Russia, and there is no proof of state encouragement of Chinese migration to Russia. Certainly this does not mean an absence of population outflow, economy, crime, and corruption in borderline regions of Russia. Sometimes, Chinese citizens are involved in such illegal activities. Yet these are Russia’s problems, not China’s. It is not Chinese, but Russians, who sell their goods for a song, do not give birth to children, do not work in construction and agriculture, take bribes and allow undeclared goods to pass customs, turn a blind eye to passport violations, invite Chinese contract workers, and cannot create favorable conditions for themselves in the regions of Russia bordering China. Russian suspicions about China are based on the poor state of Russia’s own government and economy. If Russia becomes stronger politically and economically, it will become more self-confident in dealing with its neighbors, including China, and the current fear will die out. If it continues to become a mere source of raw materials for the Chinese market, the dissatisfaction of the Russian population may turn toward serious anti-Chinese sentiment.

Conclusion: Unstable Relations Between Russia, China, and the United States The growth of US influence in the world after the end of the Cold War presents Moscow and Beijing with similar challenges. Both countries need to balance cooperation with Washington and the West in order to further their internal economic reforms against coordinated international efforts to check US activism where it affects their interests. However, the second half of the equation has not been implemented very successfully. On the whole, Russia’s policy toward China (as in many other spheres) lacks consistency. Moscow, the capital of a vast state with two-thirds of its territory in Asia, merely talks about the importance of the East when, in practice, it still looks to the United States and the West as the center of the world with which it should coordinate its interests and actions. When Russia enjoys friendly relations with the West, it tends to forget China; when friendship with Western capitals slackens, Moscow starts seeking support elsewhere, particularly in Beijing. Substantive cooperation with Russia’s great eastern neighbor cannot be based on such shaky foundations; neither does this policy advance Russian interests in its talks with the West. Since the Yeltsin administration, Russian leaders have been saying that the Russian double-headed

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eagle should look both East and West, while in practice its policy has always been biased to one side or the other. However, Russia’s recent position on Iraq demonstrates a more mature and pragmatic foreign policy. One gets the impression that Russia has learned from the Chinese experience: Beijing realized long ago that it needed the widest possible cooperation with the West, together with the firm limits on possible concessions to the West in spite of such cooperation. Little wonder that Chinese representatives (who can be very anti-American) show moderation while talking to their Russian and American counterparts when issues of fundamental importance are not at stake, the country’s territorial integrity being but one of them. Moscow is gradually mastering this art: it should learn not to be overly friendly or hostile, seek from each partner what it needs, and clearly outline the narrow sphere of Russia’s national interests where no compromise will be tolerated. Russia badly needs this sort of pragmatism. Moscow followed this course during the Iraq crisis, and there is reason to believe that it will follow it in the future. Russia will need this course in the post–Cold War world when the conflict between the United States and “old Europe” deepens. This new world order will be much more complicated than the world of the Cold War and the decade that followed. There will be no obvious enemies or allies, and coalitions will acquire an ad hoc nature. Russia will have to find a place of its own in this new world and the means of ensuring its economic development. Russian policy of balancing US influence in cooperation with other countries that feel uncomfortable about growing US unilateralism needs to be more consistent. At present, Moscow has virtually no long-term foreign policy strategy, while specific policies are usually adopted on an ad hoc basis and are often meant to satisfy this or that foreign policy partner or domestic pressure group. This ad hoc balancing is nevertheless very different from the “hedged engagement” policy of the United States toward China, described by Minxin Pei in Chapter 4. Unlike Washington, the current Moscow leadership does not envisage a future possibility of confrontation with the West. It sincerely hopes to promote cooperation and “join the civilized world” in order to accelerate Russia’s economic development. Though prepared to accept some compromises to achieve this aim, Moscow is not ready to sacrifice Russia’s geopolitical interests as it understands them: maintaining Russia’s international role and influence by limiting the growing domination of the United States, and maintaining the world of sovereign states as it emerged after World War II. This at times creates contradictions in Moscow’s specific foreign policy actions, which are often aggravated by its domestic situation. The current ruling group, headed by President Putin, is a conglomerate of three major factions: remnants of Yeltsin’s elite (who have recently lost most of their power), Putin’s former KGB colleagues, and relatively young liberal lawyers and economists, most of whom previously worked with Putin in the St. Petersburg city government. While the security group has inherited many

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traditional Cold War perceptions of the world order, insisting more strongly on a “multilateral world” and balancing US influence by developing closer relations with China and other interested countries, the young liberals stress the necessity of “joining the civilized world.” Thus the resultant policy is often a compromise or a result of one group overcoming the other on a specific issue. This has already led to serious contradictions. For example, Russian leaders, when talking to their US and British counterparts, tend to forget the idea of “multipolarity,” while the same leaders stress it when talking to the French or the Chinese. Such inconsistency may hurt rather than further Russian security interests if viewed as being merely opportunistic. What Russia needs is a clear definition of its short- and long-term strategies, toward both the West and the East, through a proper balance between cooperation with the United States on global and security issues, with Europe on trade and humanitarian policies, and with China, France, Germany, and other interested states on creating a world where no single power dominates. While some contradictions may occur along the way to implementing this policy, Russia’s size and remaining international influence can help guarantee its overall success. The example of China, which is cooperating with other countries in order to achieve its own economic development, but without compromising its national interests, shows that such a policy can be successful. Notes 1. Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniia [Monitoring Public Opinion] no. 6 (1993): 14. 2. Department of State (Russia), Office of Research, Opinion Analysis, p. 4. 3. Sedov, “Obshchestvennoe mnenie v sentyabre 2002 goda” [Public Opinion in September 2002]. 4. Fond Obshchestvennogo Mneniya, Vneshnyaya politika Rossii [Russia’s Foreign Policy]. 5. According to a February 2003 public opinion poll conducted by Fond Obshchestvennogo Mneniya (Public Opinion Foundation), 67 percent of Russian citizens approved of the position of their leaders on the Iraq issue, while 88 percent approved the antiwar position taken by the European states. See Fond Obshchestvennogo Mneniya, “Situatsiya vokrug Iraka” [Situation Around Iraq]. 6. Putin, “Tekst teleinterv’yu Presidenta Rossiyskoy Federatsii” [Text of the Interview of the President of the Russian Federation]. 7. Kozyrev, Preobrazhenie [Transformation], p. 211. 8. Kozyrev, “A Transformed Russia in a New World,” p. 86. 9. Kozyrev, “‘Aziatskim’putem k sisteme bezopasnosti v Azii” [Via an ‘Asian’ Way to a Security System in Asia], p. 3. 10. Sergounin and Subbotin, “Sino-Russian Military Cooperation.” 11. Diplomaticheskii vestnik (January 1993), pp. 15–16. 12. Sergounin and Subbotin, “Sino-Russian Military Cooperation.” 13. Bazhanov, “Rossiysko-kitayskie otnosheniya na sovremennom etape” [RussianChinese Relations at the Present Stage], p. 419.

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14. Karasin, “Russia and China,” p. 27. 15. Rogachev, “The Principles and Parameters of Partnership,” p. 29. 16. Afanasiev and Logvinov, “Russia and China: Girding for the Third Millennium,” p. 53. 17. “Rossiysko-kitayskie otnosheniya na poroge XXI veka” [Russian-Chinese Relations at the Threshold of the 21st Century], p. 6. 18. Sukhoverkhov, “My budem diktovat’, kak zhit’, a ne on” [We Are Going to Dictate How to Live, but Not Him], p. 1. 19. Zaynashev, “Druzhili dva tovarishcha” [There Lived Two Friends . . . ], p. 2. 20. Putin, “Rossiya” [Russia]. 21. See http://www.fas.org/news/russia/1997/a52—153en.htm. 22. Putin, “Vystuplenie na soveshchanii ‘O perspektivakh razvitiya’” [Speech at a Meeting “On the Prospects of Development”]. 23. Stolypin, “Rechi v Gosudarstvennoi Dume” [Speaches at the State Duma], p. 132. 24. Wang, “Dangdai Zhongguo minzuzhuyi lun” [On Contemporary Chinese Nationalism], pp. 69–82. 25. Declaration of Heads of Member States of SCO. 26. Starr, “A Partnership for Central Asia.” 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. “U.S. Policy in Central Asia: Balancing Priorities (Part II),” pp. 7–9, 49–50. 30. Tokaev, “Interv’yu Ministra inostrannykh del Respubliki Kazakhstan Kasymzhomarta Tokaeva” [Interview of the Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Kasymzhomart Tokaev]. 31. Imanaliev, “Adres trevogi” [The Address of Worry]. 32. People’s Daily Online, “US Scheming for ‘Great Central Asia’ Strategy.” 33. “Sovmestnoe zayavlenie ministrov inostrannykh” [Joint Statement of the Foreign Ministers]. 34. “Sovmestnoe kommyunike ministrov inostrannykh” [Joint Communiqué of the Foreign Ministers]. 35. The Kremlin, “Joint Declaration of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China.” 36. Lukin, “No Interest in Kim Jong-Il,” p. 10.

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ctober 2006 saw North Korea cross a “red line.” Expecting China to restrain US response for fear of regime instability in the North, Kim Jong Il tested a nuclear device. The Chinese ally played its expected role, watering down the initial proposal by the United States for UN sanctions by expressly ruling out military action. The restraining role, however, was too weak for Kim Jong Il’s taste. The Chinese joined the United States in adopting UN Security Council Resolution 1718, which barred UN members from providing the North with nuclear technology and large-scale arms, and called for cooperation in the inspection of North Korean cargoes suspected of having nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.1 The press reported China’s reduction of oil supply to the North and Hong Kong’s inspection of its cargoes as part of a silent but threatening show of Chinese muscle. Those measures reminded North Korea of US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice’s pronouncement, three months earlier, that a coalition with China was in the making to secure a denuclearized Korean peninsula.2 Then China backed Resolution 1695, calling for North Korea’s suspension of ballistic missile activities.3 The concert of the powerful was, as realists predicted, rooted in power politics. The North was China’s buffer state against forward-deployed US military troops, but its strategic value could not surpass Chinese homeland security, which China saw as critically dependent on regional stability. The rising power could not let its North Korean client state thwart its grand strategy to build an “economically adequate” xia˘oka¯ng society with nuclear brinkmanship. The United States, too, could not let a “rogue state” like the North acquire nuclear capabilities in the middle of its war on terror. The specter of terrorists purchasing nuclear weapons haunted the United States, whose leadership identified North Korea’s “complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement” (CVID) of nuclear facilities as a precondition for any improvement in bilateral relations.

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The stakes were too high for both great powers to accept North Korea’s nuclear test as a fait accompli. The new concert of great powers inevitably entailed a drift in Northeast Asia’s Cold War alliance systems. From North Korea’s perspective, China placed great power accommodation before and above its regime survival. Ironically, Northeast Asia’s southern Cold War triangle of security alliance, tying Seoul with Tokyo through Washington’s role as stabilizer, showed signs of internal tension, too. Whereas Japan sided unambiguously with its US ally in every stage of UN Security Council deliberations, South Korea advocated restraint and defended Hyundai Asan’s industrial and tourist projects in North Korea’s Gaesung and Geumgang Mountains. Moreover, after a few days of wavering, its ruling Uri Party decided to stay out of the US-orchestrated Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to avoid conflict escalation on the Korean peninsula. Given South Korea’s highly exposed geopolitical position, the Uri Party thought alienating the United States, its security ally, was safer than threatening the North with sanctions. The strategy of hiding behind China and working with it to resist US requests for sanctions, moreover, served domestic political interests. Having embraced Kim Dae Jung’s reconciliatory “sunshine policy” toward North Korea and bet his political fortune in dismantling South Korea’s conservative establishment,4 Roh Moo Hyun saw UN sanctions as a frontal negation of his presidency’s ideological identity, raison d’être, and historical legacy. The two Koreas’ drift from their respective Cold War patron did not, however, mean a rupture of the alliance systems. Nor did it imply that the weak had its way. Even in the moments of resistance, power spoke, making the weak hedge. Three days after Resolution 1718 was adopted, the North broke out in a rage, declaring its preparedness for conflict, but it also claimed being a responsible state, interested in neither nuclear transfer nor nuclear attack. The North even pledged to build a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, as it had declared with South Korea in 1992.5 These words constituted an act of hedging. By pledging nonproliferation, Kim Jong Il was signaling that he was ready to accommodate the top US priority—preventing nuclear transfer. Similarly, by reiterating the two Koreas’ 1992 agreement for a denuclearized Korean peninsula, Kim Jong Il kept up China’s hope for an eventual negotiated settlement. Only then he could count on China to restrain US policy. Conversely, when Kim Jong Il decided to join the six-party talks rather than opt for a second nuclear test in December 2006,6 he hedged in the opposite direction. The North joined the six-party talks under Chinese pressure, but it declared its goal to be the dismantlement of US financial sanctions, not its nuclear programs. The resumption of the talks showed not only that power spoke even for the “rogue state,” but also that the strong could not unilaterally shape the preference of North Korea. The South also played a game of hedging when it resisted US pressure for sanctions. The United States was a superpower, with capabilities to make or

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break South Korea’s fate, but South Korea thought it could not accept its US ally’s strategy of sanctions because of the risks of becoming entrapped in an unwanted military conflict with the North. The South accordingly strove to keep the “right” distance from its US ally, neither too close nor too far, lest it inadvertently trigger another dangerous round of North Korean brinkmanship or irreparably damage US support for South Korea. In this spirit, it formally supported Resolution 1718, but having suspended food and fertilizer aid since a rupture in inter-Korea talks in July 2006, the South thought it was already doing enough and turned down the US request for a suspension of Hyundai Asan’s Gaesung and Geumgang projects. The South Korean position on PSI activities was similar. The middle power backed the PSI in principle, but it claimed that it could refrain from holding PSI activities in its territorial waters without hurting the initiative because the 2004 inter-Korea maritime transportation agreement enabled inspection of North Korean ships inside its territorial waters.7 Like North Korea’s China policy, the South adopted a hedging strategy toward its great power ally, supporting Resolution 1718 in spirit, but minimizing its participation in UN sanctions. The Korean peninsula, then, was caught between two opposing forces. “Rising” China looked like a status quo power, joining the United States in a concert of great powers to maintain a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. Against this coalition of the strong stood North Korea, engaged in calculated acts of hedged brinkmanship, with the South increasingly relegated to the role of spectator rather than player. To challenge realist assumptions, moreover, the weak remained as persistent as the strong in holding on to their strategies, thereby getting the region stuck in a zone of controlled tensions where conflict neither escalated into military clash nor became defused through negotiation. I posit this gray zone of controlled tensions to be a durable equilibrium rather than a transient moment in the game of nuclear contest in the Korean peninsula, by identifying two significant changes as the causes of controlled tension. First, the end of the Cold War sowed the seed for conflict escalation on the Korean peninsula by triggering a regime crisis in the North and a revolutionary change in US security doctrine. Second, this force of conflict escalation was restrained by a rising China, which prevented the North from unambiguously going nuclear and the United States from taking military actions.

North Korea’s Search for “Security Guarantees” Like the coming of the Cold War, its “ending” in 1989 impacted each of the stakeholders of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula in vastly diverging ways. For North Korea it was the beginning of a nightmare, with its economy falling apart from within under the contradictions of its Stalinist command system and its people dying of severe famine. However, rather than

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joining Eastern Europe in system change, the North chose to muddle through, because, being a feudal regime, with its collective identity derived from and legitimated by Kim Jong Il’s dynastic leadership, any major reform threatened not only leadership change but also regime collapse. Moreover, having crafted North Korea’s national identity as a land of juche sasang (independence ideology) in a historic struggle against its other southern half under “US colonial rule,” regime instability could escalate into its disintegration as a sovereign state. That East Germany’s demise came before North Korea’s triple crisis of leadership, regime, and state legitimacy only strengthened its ruling elite’s belief that their fate was intricately tied to the survival of Kim Jong Il. As a result of the wholesale purge of party and state leaders in East Germany after reunification, the North Korean ruling elite rallied around Kim Jong Il and accepted mass starvation as a necessary cost of their class, regime, and state survival. Consequently, the end of the Cold War revived North Korea’s Stalinist traditions. Rather than emulating China’s “market socialism” or Vietnam’s doimoi path to reform, the North continued its survival strategy of militarization adopted following the launching of a totalitarian Yuil regime in 1967. To fight the famine, the North demanded its people to join the “march of adversity,” in which 2 million people reportedly perished in the mid-1990s. The armed forces, by contrast, were showered with privileges under a newly declared “militaryfirst politics,” monopolizing scarce resources as North Korea’s last pillar of leadership, regime, and state survival. This decision to keep afloat the failing military-industrial complex necessarily excluded system change from North Korea’s options. Contrary to the expectation that it would adopt Chinese-style reform,8 an economic-management improvement measure, adopted in July 2002, aimed to defend the command economy by letting loose state-administered prices to catch up with the inflationary pressures built up since North Korea’s loss of Soviet aid. Prices multiplied by a factor of twenty-five, forcing an eighteenfold increase in wages.9 The factory-level managerial power was also propped up with a strengthening of material incentives. Together, these measures emulated Eastern Europe’s Soviet-style reform of the 1960s more than its postcommunist system change of the 1990s.10 Given the goal of system maintenance, it was only natural that the North reinstituted food rationing as soon as the agricultural sector showed a sign of recovery in October 2005.11 To ensure regime security and state survival, North Korea also pursued “slow-motion nuclearization.”12 The strategy entailed high risks, but it also promised high payoffs if pursued at the right pace in the right way. Particularly critical was North Korea’s ability to keep its Chinese ally, South Korean hostage, and US foe uncertain of whether its intention was to go nuclear or simply acquire a leverage to extract concessions. This ambiguity of strategic intention kept alive the Chinese and South Korean hope to negotiate a denuclearized Korean peninsula, thus securing their assistance in preventing the

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United States from conflict escalation. The nuclear card also looked like a regime-friendly way to secure resources from abroad. In return for denuclearization, the North demanded aid and proposed Geumgang- and Gaesunglike projects that channeled cash from abroad through barb-wired enclaves isolated from the rest of society.13 Another attractive source of safe money without the obligation of risky system reform that the North could trade in its nuclear programs was the Japanese reparations fund in an event of normalization of relations.14 The North had a reason to believe that its policy of strategic ambiguity could get Northeast Asia’s great powers interested in negotiating a deal. After twenty months of resisting demand by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for special inspection of its nuclear facilities, North Korea signed a Geneva Agreed Framework in 1994, whereby it froze nuclear development programs in return for the US pledge to improve bilateral relations, annually supply 500,000 tons of crude oil, and provide two 1,000-megawatt light water reactors through a multilateral framework.15 The Geneva Agreed Framework began to unravel when George W. Bush reversed Bill Clinton’s engagement policy with the identification of North Korea as a rogue state that clandestinely aided terrorists as part of an “axis of evil” in January 2001, but even then the North did not give up its hope for a deal.16 To get the United States back into the negotiating track as well as deter hostile US actions, it reactivated nuclear brinkmanship in October 2002. Tension built up rapidly once the North “revealed” its covert program to develop nuclear capabilities with highly enriched uranium. Eight days after the revelation, North Korea called on the United States to sign a nonaggression pact as part of an integral measure to peacefully resolve the nuclear crisis. Instead, the United States countered with the suspension of oil supply and the IAEA Council with a resolution calling for special inspection, prompting the North to escalate conflict with the formal renunciation of its 1994 Geneva pledge of nuclear freeze. The North removed IAEA seals and yanked monitoring cameras from its Yongbyon nuclear facilities, transferred a thousand fresh fuel rods into a 5-megawatt reactor, and resumed construction of two new reactors. Then it withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in January 2003.17 Tension hit a new high when the North transferred some 8,000 spent fuel rods into an underground reprocessing facility18 and reactivated its hitherto mothballed 5-megawatt reactor in February 2003. The next two months saw both US and South Korean policymakers on a roller-coaster ride, as the North talked ambiguously and acted deceptively to maximize its leverage.19 Apparently, for North Korea, nuclear weapons constituted not only a deterrent against hostile US military actions, but also a tool to get US policymakers interested in negotiating a deal. Figure 7.1 sums up North Korea’s strategic calculations. The second quadrant (Q2) describes a situation of asymmetric political exchange, with the

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Figure 7.1

US and North Korean Strategies of Asymmetric Political Exchange

US Actions Line 1

CVISa

Line 2 Q2 Negotiation

Peace regime without military withdrawalb

Line 4

Line 3

Economic aid Nuclear transfer and military Nuclear Missile clash test launch

Normalization of relations

North Korean Actions

Reprocessing CVIDc End illegal activitiesd TFMe

Q3 Sanctions

Line 5

Human Reform and rights liberalization improvements

UN Security Council resolutions PSIf

B Military surgical strike

Source: Adapted from Ha, ed., Bukhaek wigiwa hanbando pyonghwa [The North Korean Nuclear Crisis and Peace on the Korean Peninsula], pp. 18, 97–98. Notes: a. The North Korean demand for “complete, verifiable, and irreversible security guarantees” (CVIS) included the United States signing a nonaggression pact and a peace treaty with North Korea, as well as withdrawing its military troops from South Korea. b. The South Korean proposal for a peace regime aimed to accommodate the North Korean demand for CVIS, but excluded US military disengagement from the Korean peninsula. The United States appeared to think along a similar line when US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Christopher R. Hill reportedly pledged provision of economic assistance, supply of crude oil, normalization of relations, removal of North Korea from the list of state sponsors of international terrorism, and declaration of the end of the Korean War, if North Korea were to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs by 2008. Included in the US offer was also the pledge of nonaggression as well as provision of multilateral security guarantees. c. The US policy demanded “complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement” (CVID) of North Korean nuclear programs. d. North Korean illegal activities included clandestine exports of missiles, counterfeiting of US dollars, drug trafficking, and kidnapping. e. Targeted financial measures. f. Proliferation Security Initiative.

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horizontal and vertical axes respectively showing possible North Korean and US actions in the event that they accommodate each other’s demands for security guarantees and nuclear dismantlement, respectively. The asymmetric exchange could occur incrementally as Bush proposed,20 with the two parties agreeing on a subset of the pending issues in US–North Korean relations to build the trust required to engage in a next round of reciprocal but asymmetric exchange. Or it could proceed as a one-shot deal with all the essential components of the US and North Korean demands exchanged at once because of the two countries’ lack of trust. The one-shot deal had North Korea as its advocate. Some Americans, like William J. Perry, thought along a similar line, albeit with a different mixture of political exchanges, when they spoke of a “comprehensive and integrated approach.”21 The one-shot deal North Korea preferred is shown by Line 1, whereby it would give up nuclear weapons programs in return for lifting of sanctions, normalization of relations, and provision of security guarantees by the United States. As a second-best option (Line 2), it could also entertain the option of ending illicit activities like drug trafficking, counterfeiting, and missile exports, in addition to the dismantlement of nuclear programs, in return for the same US concessions. However, improvements in human rights fell outside what North Korea could or would do, because this threatened regime stability by exposing its ideological fault as well as weakening control mechanisms. The limitation of what it could or would give in return for US concessions is shown by the steepness of Lines 1 and 2.

Unbridgeable Gap The problem for North Korea was that its negotiating stand was unacceptable to the United States. The events of September 11, 2001, made war on terror an integral part of US homeland security, triggering a revolutionary change in how US policymakers perceived security. Seeing tyranny as a breeding ground of terrorism, Condoleezza Rice diagnosed world politics to be undergoing fundamental change, with weak and failing states threatening peace more than were any great powers. The “character of regimes” judged as being decisive in shaping foreign policy behavior, she spoke of the “promise of democratic peace”22 and targeted the North as an “outpost of tyranny” requiring a concerted US effort of regime transformation.23 That echoed Bush’s call for an “expansion of freedom” in his second inaugural speech, in January 2005.24 Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick was more explicit: “without broad economic and political reform, North Korea pose[d] a threat to itself and others.”25 The identification of regime character as the root cause of North Korean nuclear crisis inevitably resulted in the United States preferring an incremental negotiating strategy over the one-shot deal, because as a rogue state living

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outside global norms, the North was by definition an untrustworthy regime, ready to break its pledge whenever profitable. The highly enriched uranium program, breaching the Geneva Agreed Framework, demonstrated its untrustworthiness. To guard against the danger of betrayal, the United States thought it had to test North Korea’s intentions by demanding a concrete action to dismantle nuclear programs in a “complete, verifiable, and irreversible” way before it accommodated some, if any, of North Korea’s demands for security guarantees. The path of a negotiated settlement that the United States sought, then, was Line 3 in Figure 7.1, flatter than and far away from North Korea’s preferred route of Lines 1 or 2. To force US policymakers to accept its one-shot deal, the North pursued nuclear development, but unfortunately for its leadership, the strategy of nuclear brinkmanship only dragged it deeper into the world of sanctions (Q3 in Figure 7.1), not negotiation (Q2). When the North acknowledged its covert highly enriched uranium program in October 2002 to get the United States interested in signing a nonaggression pact, the superpower instead suspended its supply of crude oil. The North fought back by rescinding the Geneva pledge of nuclear freeze and withdrawing its membership in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The escalation of tension was briefly checked when China intervened to launch six-party talks in 2003, but this effort of mediation ran into a dead-end, provoking US policymakers to suspend the already much delayed construction of two light water reactors in November 2003. The next year saw the United States increase its pressures. When the North rejected its proposal for a “five-stage” negotiation in June 2004, the United States retaliated, with the House of Representatives unanimously adopting a North Korean human rights act. Tensions hit a new level in 2005 with Rice’s outpost-of-tyranny speech and Bush’s expansion-of-freedom inaugural speech. The North threatened to accelerate its nuclearization program, only to strengthen US resolve to contain the North by getting Japan to pledge greater cooperation in building a ballistic missile defense system and expanding its PSI activities in February. Then, in April 2005, Rice claimed the right of the United States to submit North Korea’s nuclear programs for UN Security Council deliberation when all hope for reaching a negotiated settlement appeared exhausted.26 The US strategy boiled down to a parallel pursuit of dialogue and sanctions. In September 2005, Christopher R. Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, negotiated a “joint statement of principles” with the other participants of six-party talks to include nuclear nonproliferation, normalization of relations, energy assistance, trade and investment, and “peace regime” in the agenda of the talks, to get the North back onto a negotiating track. But that same month, Stuart Levey, undersecretary of the treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, wore the hat of a hard-liner and designated Banco Delta Asia, based in Macao, as a “primary money laundering concern” of North Korea, prompting his Financial Enforcement Network to “pro-

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hibit U.S. financial institutions from directly or indirectly establishing, maintaining, administering or managing any correspondent account in the United States for or on behalf of Banco Delta Asia.” Then, in October 2005, the US Treasury designated eight North Korean firms as proliferators of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which resulted in the freeze of their assets under US legal jurisdiction as well as the prohibition of US citizens from all business transactions with these companies.27 The impact of what Levey called “targeted financial measures” was “more powerful than many thought possible,” striking a “deep blow” at North Korea because “money trails [did not] lie. Financial intelligence [was] uniquely reliable; it [allowed US policymakers] to track threats, as well as to deter and disrupt them.” Moreover, since it was nearly impossible to distinguish North Korea’s legal from illegal money, the US Treasury’s identification of North Korea as a WMD proliferator, a counterfeiter of US dollars, and a drug trafficker resulted in financial institutions around the world voluntarily cutting back or terminating their business with North Korea, lest they be subjected to punitive US regulatory actions. To avoid the risk of US sanctions, it became “simply good business”28 for many financial institutions not to do any business with the North. North Korea, then, was as constrained in the game of sanctions (Q3 in Figure 7.1) as in the search for a negotiated settlement (Q2). The instruments it could mobilize to threaten the United States consisted only of nuclear and missile programs. To tie its hands even more, these two instruments of brinkmanship had powerful impacts when they were threatened, rather than actually used, because it was the ambiguity of North Korea’s strategic intention and the threat of brinkmanship that gave the North its leverage. Once it crossed the red line that made clear its intention to become a nuclear state, China would lose the hope for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula and, hence, the incentive to check US unilateralism in defense of the North. Consequently, the North saw its leverages decrease, as its brinkmanship neared the red line. To make the best of its limited instruments, North Korea had to transform every stage of its nuclear development processes into a negotiating card in the six-party talks, in effect pursuing what Thomas Schelling once called a strategy of “salami slicing,”29 or an incremental escalation of tension based on “calculable and controllable risks.”30 As part of salami-slicing tactics, the North took major steps toward nuclearization, from the transfer of fresh fuel rods into a reactor to the resumption of reprocessing over a period of four years, while demanding US concessions at each of these turns of brinkmanship as the price to undo what it had just done. The strategy did not win US concessions, but neither did it trigger an escalation of sanctions before October 2006, because individually, each of these actions was too minor an offense in and of itself to make China give up its hope for dialogue and join the United States to push forward UN sanctions. However, cumulatively, they brought North Korea closer to acquiring nuclear capabilities.31

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Despite these advances, it is important to underline that this tactical adeptness strengthened North Korea’s weak hand, but did not free the North from its generic vulnerabilities. On the contrary, the resumption of reprocessing in March 2003 basically exhausted its salami-slicing tactics, because the next step—a nuclear test—would be widely interpreted as demonstrating North Korea’s intention to go nuclear. When it did actually conduct a nuclear test in October 2006, the result was a serious worsening of its security dilemmas. The test made North Korea only a partial nuclear state, not only because it looked like a technical failure, producing a low yield of under one kiloton, but also because North Korea did not yet possess the capability to “marry nuclear warheads with long-range missiles.”32 To become a full-fledged nuclear state, it had to overcome several more technological barriers. Nonetheless, by conducting the test, the North demonstrated its intention to go nuclear, as well as its possession of partial nuclear capabilities. Those capabilities deterred the United States from initiating an armed conflict, but utterly failed to force the United States to meet its demand for “complete, verifiable, and irreversible security guarantees” (CVIS) that included a nonaggression pact, a peace treaty, and US withdrawal of military troops from the South. When Bush did try to answer the CVIS demand by offering a “multilateral security guarantee,”33 thus moving the US position to Line 4 in Figure 7.1, he only showed how far apart from each other the United States and North Korea were. For the North, which remembered the fierce “cold” and “hot” wars fought against the United States and the economic plight under US sanctions since 1953, no document— whether packaged as a communiqué, a nonaggression pact, or a peace treaty— constituted a security guarantee unless backed by a complete, verifiable, and irreversible security guarantee like US military withdrawal from the South. What was left of the North Korean cards after October 2006, then, was either trading in its hard-won but still incomplete nuclear capabilities for what it thought were inadequate US concessions, or conducting a second nuclear test in defiance of Resolution 1718. The second test, however, looked unattractive, because it was likely to tilt China further toward US hard-liners. That danger resulted in North Korea’s game of hedged brinkmanship becoming stuck after October 2006, neither decelerating to a negotiated settlement through asymmetric exchange along Line 4 of Figure 7.1, nor escalating to a higher-level round of sanctions. By contrast, the US position in the game of sanctions was immensely stronger. Whereas North Korea had only military instruments, the United States commanded both hard power and soft power and could initiate sweeping pressure on military, economic, and ideological fronts at the same time.34 Moreover, in contrast to the exhaustion of North Korea’s bargaining cards through its play of salami-slicing tactics since October 2002, the United States only began to wield its arsenal in a systematic way after the nuclear test, as Japan and maybe even China came to agree with the United States that the root

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cause of crisis was the character of the North Korean regime and the remedy its transformation. The progressive strengthening of US cards was visible in PSI activities. The network of military containment widened and deepened with multilateral interdiction exercises on the high seas and even succeeded in securing China’s de facto, if not de jure, support when Hong Kong inspected North Korean ships in October 2006. Japan also prepared for military containment, albeit in a manner of “activism lite” (see Chapter 5), by allowing logistical support for US military activities in its “surrounding areas” in 1999, authorizing inspection of ships outside its territorial waters in a situation of emergency in 2000, and allowing refusal of port calls by North Korean ships in 2004.35 The Japanese development and deployment of a missile defense system moved forward, too. Economic sanctions showed a similar trend. The CVID policy received a big boost when Japan empowered itself with the right to impose economic sanctions at its own discretion. Previously, it could sanction only as part of larger UN efforts. After a revision of its foreign exchange law in 2004, Japan could suspend remittances of money to North Korea as well as freeze North Korean assets on its own judgment.36 Then there was Resolution 1718, which brought even China halfway into economic sanctions.37 The US effort to deprive North Korea of ideological legitimacy also accelerated amid reports of its Stalinist regime’s systematic violations of human rights38 and an uninterrupted flow of North Korean refugees into China. The driving force behind the US human rights offensive was US senator Sam Brownback and human rights activists from the “North Korea Freedom Coalition.” After two attempts, they succeeded in getting the US Congress to legislate a North Korean human rights act in 2004. The act removed much of its preceding bills’ overly explicit talks of regime change, but by advising US negotiators’ inclusion of human rights issues in the six-party talks, urging the United States to grant North Korean escapees refugee status, and pledging US financial support for nongovernmental organizations engaged in North Korean human rights issues and refugee relief,39 it was judged by North Korea to be an act of hostility, “frontally denying and institutionally sabotaging our-style liberty, democracy . . . and human rights.”40 The UN Commission on Human Rights gave a seal of global approval to this US moral campaign in 2004 by passing a resolution that expressed “deep concern about reports of North Korea’s systemic, widespread and grave violations of human rights.”41 In 2006, Japan too legislated its own North Korean human rights act.42

The Equilibrium of a “Second Best” Despite the proven capacity of the United States to mobilize a threatening arsenal of soft and hard power both unilaterally and multilaterally to “isolate and

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chock”43 North Korea on military, economic, and ideological fronts, it is important not to exaggerate US powers. As David A. Baldwin has shown, power was highly “infungible,”44 obstructing US policymakers from transforming its economic, military, and ideological power into the political type of influence that was required to persuade North Korea into giving up nuclear programs. In a state of armistice with the North since 1953, the United States was isolated from this reclusive state except through intermittently held bilateral and multilateral talks, and was thus deprived of any channels to directly shape North Korean preferences. Moreover, having defined the North to be a “hostile state,” a “state sponsor of terrorism,” a “WMD proliferator,” a “communist state,” a “violator of human rights,” a “transgressor of IAEA principles,” and a “rogue state,” and therefore the object of comprehensive US sanctions for more than a half century,45 the United States had few economic instruments of its own to make Resolution 1718 work. The main instruments of pressure were Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean resources. For the United States to get its hands on these resources for its North Korea policy, it had to wait until the North made its intention clearer by testing a nuclear device. Even then, the US space for political maneuver remained constrained, because any appearance of seeking regime change in North Korea rather than a negotiated settlement could drive China and South Korea away from the coalition of sanctions. The game was to get the North stuck in partial sanctions and, if that failed, make the North—not the United States—alienate China by initiating dangerous acts of nuclear brinkmanship. In the case of North Korea getting stuck in partial sanctions and partial nuclearization, the United States failed to dismantle North Korea’s capabilities, but it also secured the benefit of a de facto freeze of its nuclear programs without paying any concessions. By contrast, if the second case of conflict escalation were to occur, the United States calculated that China could not but support full-scale sanctions with the goal of nuclear dismantlement, with or without regime transformation. Conversely, the North Korean strategy after the nuclear test came to be that of refusing nuclear disarmament, but also refraining from further provocations that could transform the Sino-American concert of crisis management into a concert for regime transformation. This strategy of neither conflict deescalation nor conflict escalation, shown as “B” on Figure 7.1’s Line 5, essentially aimed to hold on to whatever partial nuclear capabilities North Korea had acquired through its nuclear test in the face of the concerted effort by the United States to construct a multilateral coalition of nonproliferation on the military, economic, and ideological fronts, both regionally and globally. For North Korea, the strategy of neither conflict de-escalation nor conflict escalation constituted a second-best equilibrium. Perceiving Bush to be a “personifier of evil,” a “tyrant,” and a “rogue,”46 breaking all international norms and principles in pursuit of world hegemony, the North thought it had to develop

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nuclear arms capabilities, however limited, if it were to protect itself from US military threats.47 The same fear of US military capabilities also obstructed the North from choosing a military option, because war would mean its destruction as a sovereign state. So, it maintained its strategy of neither conflict deescalation nor conflict escalation, neither giving away its nuclear programs nor provoking the United States with mass production of nuclear weapons, deployment of ballistic missiles, and transfer of nuclear materials, which could have put it on the path to full-scale sanctions, regime transformation, and maybe even military conflict. The United States saw the strategy of neither conflict de-escalation nor conflict escalation as a second-best situation, too. The superpower could not de-escalate conflict by recognizing North Korea as a nuclear state, because it thought the North was a “rogue” capable of doing the “unthinkable.” For the United States, the opposite option of conflict escalation was unattractive, too, when China and South Korea excluded the option of military action and when its own military troops were warring in Iraq. The choice of the strategy of neither conflict de-escalation nor conflict escalation as a second-best situation also rested on both parties’ confidence, not only their lack of options. To guard its partial nuclear capabilities acquired by October 2006, North Korea had to weather out Resolution 1718, and it believed it had regime capacity for this. A country born out of a Cold War military conflict, the North boasted of a monolithic society, which saw itself to be under a state of permanent seize by hostile US military troops. Through this threat perception grew its society’s blind loyalty to Kim Jong Il.48 To make the North Korean regime even more durable, it saw East Germany’s leadership undergo a de facto purge in the reunification with West Germany in 1990. That instilled in the North Korean elite the fear of “absorption” by the South,49 making its members coalesce around Kim Jong Il in time of crisis. The elite’s internal cohesion grew rather than declined with the North Korean regime decay, thus obstructing society even more from airing out its voice of discontent. Moreover, this was a society that had lived under absolute poverty for over two decades, if not longer, with a remarkable capacity to endure sanctions. There was no reason why it could not survive the post-2006 partial sanctions when it had survived the much worse famine of the mid-1990s. The choice of the strategy of neither conflict de-escalation nor conflict escalation was based on US confidence, too. Given North Korea’s economic crisis, it was unlikely that Kim Jong Il could acquire second-strike nuclear capabilities. Nor was it likely that North Korean ballistic missiles could threaten the west coast of the United States anytime soon. The July 2006 launching of a Taepodong 2 missile, reportedly a two-staged missile with a range of 3,750 kilometers and a payload of 1,000 kilograms, was certainly a cause for alarm, but it also revealed North Korea’s technological limitations.50 The Taepodong 2 missile failed, its first stage falling apart only two kilometers from the launch

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site and its second stage hitting North Korea’s coastal waters.51 This left North Korea’s transfer and sale of nuclear materials as America’s greatest security concerns, but US policymakers thought they were building up the capabilities to meet these two threats through targeted financial measures and the PSI. Besides, the North was aware of US sensitivity to the danger of nuclear transfer, and pledged not to engage in such acts as soon as it exploded a nuclear device in October 2006. Nuclear transfer would mean war with the United States, which the North did not want. To be sure, US ally Japan was in a qualitatively different position because of its geographic proximity. After North Korea’s launching of a Nodong 1 missile in May 1993, the west coast of Japan fell within the range of a North Korean missile attack. The testing of the Taepodong 1, with a range of over 1,500 kilometers, in August 1998, alarmed Japan even more, as the first stage of the missile traveled 300 kilometers and its second stage flew over Japan and fell 330 kilometers away from Hachinohe.52 To meet Japanese security concerns, the United States continued collaborating with Japan in the development of the national missile defense system. In fact, just as the North began to fuel a Taepodong 2 missile in June 2006, the United States and its Japanese ally agreed to cooperate in developing antiballistic missile technology and surveiling North Korean missile activities.53 The second source of US confidence in the strategy of neither conflict deescalation nor conflict escalation as a second-best situation, by contrast, stemmed from the US belief that North Korea could not but undergo regime transformation if economic sanctions progressively tightened. In the eyes of US policymakers, North Korea came out of the 1995 famine with its regime intact only because it had received international assistance under the Geneva Agreed Framework. The nuclear test of October 2006 ushered in a vastly different regional environment, with China calling the North Korean move a hànrán (flagrant and stubbornly defiant) act that revealed “massive differences” emerging between China and the North.54 The UN sanctions committee, established by Resolution 1718, confirmed this drift in Chinese–North Korean relations by announcing in November 2006 a list of materials to be banned from trade with the North for fear of their use in nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons, and development of ballistic missiles.55 Moreover, depending on North Korean responses to Resolution 1718, there could be more US-initiated, Japan-supported, and China-acquiesced UN sanctions. To encourage US policymakers, even South Korea had suspended rice and fertilizer aid, held back flood relief assistance, delayed new sales of factory land for South Korean investment in Gaesung, and put off transfer of road and railroad construction materials to the North since a rupture in interKorea dialogue in July 2006.56 For US policymakers, then, the strategy of neither conflict de-escalation nor conflict escalation looked like a “line” comprising several moves. If North Korea were to hold a second nuclear test, deploy

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ballistic missiles, mass-produce nuclear weapons, or transfer nuclear materials to a third party, UN sanctions could escalate dramatically, chocking off the North Korean economy and thus setting a stage for regime transformation. The North, aware of this danger, thought twice before going further down the road of nuclear brinkmanship, making the strategy of neither conflict de-escalation nor conflict escalation sticky. Complex Chinese interests constituted a third factor that resulted in the Korean peninsula becoming stuck between de-escalation to a negotiated settlement, and escalation to full-scale sanctions or maybe even military conflict. On the one hand, China could not tolerate the North becoming a nuclear weapons state, because this was likely to endanger its grand strategy of growing into an “economically adequate” xia˘oka¯ng society by triggering nuclear proliferation in Northeast Asia. However, given that North Korea was a buffer state, China had to tone down its support for UN sanctions. Letting South Korea take over the North with US military troops stationed in its territory was as intolerable as acquiescing to North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship. Consequently, China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya, carefully distanced China from the hard-line position of the United States by advocating a “firm, constructive, appropriate but prudent response.”57 Whereas its US “strategic partner” worked to denuclearize North Korea with or without Kim Jong Il in power, China hoped to achieve the same goal without triggering a disruptive regime change in the North. Moreover, just as critical for China was how a peaceful resolution of North Korean nuclear crisis would affect North Korea’s relationship with the United States. If a breakthrough were to usher in a stage of political exchange (Q2 in Figure 7.1), the United States would likely get the upper hand in great power competition to secure influence over this failing state, because much of what North Korea desired was under US control. In December 2006, as part of the US “dual-track strategy” of sanctions and dialogue58 to pressure North Korea’s acceptance of CVID, Christopher Hill reportedly pledged provision of economic assistance, supply of crude oil, normalization of relations, removal of North Korea from the US list of state sponsors of international terrorism, and declaration of the end of the Korean War, if North Korea were to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs by 2008. Included in the US offer was also a pledge of nonaggression as well as provision of multilateral security guarantees.59 The offer was made to persuade not only North Korea but also China of US sincerity to negotiate a peaceful resolution, and in case of North Korea’s rejection, to get Chinese support for an escalation of sanctions. However, this long list of carrots must have also warned China of the danger of how rapidly the North could be sucked into the US sphere of influence if there were a breakthrough in the six-party talks. That must have made China think twice before imposing full-scale sanctions on North Korea, and choose instead a strategy of waisong neijin (soft in one’s external appearance, hard in one’s internal resolve).60

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When the North launched ballistic missiles in July 2006, China joined the United States in unanimously adopting Resolution 1695, but refused endorsing its proposal for sanctions. Instead, China silently reduced the supply of crude oil to the North by September, as it had previously done to force its client state to end the boycotting of the six-party talks. In a similar spirit of waisong neijin, China backed Resolution 1718 when North Korea crossed another “red line” in October 2006 with a nuclear test, but only after explicitly excluding military instruments from sanctions—again, against US and Japanese proposals. Likewise, China accommodated the US demand to include in Resolution 1718 an article that called for international cooperation in inspection of North Korean cargo ships suspected of illicit trafficking in nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, but it also toned down this threat of containment by specifying that UN activities should comprise “inspection” rather than “interdiction,” and be voluntary rather than mandatory. The waisong neijin spirit of partial sanctions became clearer after the passage of Resolution 1718. While China publicly reaffirmed its intention to stay out of PSI activities and opposed international inspection of a sovereign country’s cargo ships, Hong Kong quietly inspected a North Korean ship with the help of US vessels in October 2006. The same month also saw Chinese state councilor Tang Jiaxuan return from the North with Kim Jong Il’s message to resume the six-party talks, thus putting the brake on conflict escalation. As Shirley A. Kan wrote, partially siding with the United States became a central trait in China’s strategic behavior after its entanglement in the North Korean nuclear crisis since October 2002.61

South Korea’s Marginalization South Korea had its own strategy of crisis management, too, but unlike Northeast Asia’s great powers, it had marginalized itself in the six-party talks by 2006. The reconciliatory “sunshine policy,” identifying South Korea’s role in the nuclear crisis as a mediator that bridged the United States and North Korea, much like China’s role as a broker or facilitator in the six-party talks, drove a profound wedge between South Korea and its traditional security partners. To quote Japan’s vice minister of foreign affairs, Yachi Shotaro, Japan even “restrained from sharing intelligence on North Korea because America distrusted South Korean intentions.”62 Having refused to scale down Hyundai Asan’s industrial and tourist projects in the North and reaffirmed its intention to stay outside PSI activities, South Korea looked like a “spoiler” of the US nonproliferation policy, making up for North Korea’s lack of resources with aid, regardless of what the North did. With its image as a spoiler, South Korea lost what credibility it had over the United States and was pushed to the side-

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lines in the six-party talks, as the United States began to deal directly with China to negotiate a great powers response to the North Korean nuclear test. The marginalization of South Korea was brought about more by its ruling elite’s misperception and miscalculation than by any irresistible structural forces. In fact, the structural forces would have led one to expect South Korea not to alienate US policymakers. The United States had guaranteed South Korea’s security with a nuclear umbrella since 1953, whereas China had kept North Korea afloat through a military alliance system since 1961. Moreover, despite China’s rise as a market for South Korean export goods after the two countries’ normalization of relations in 1992, the United States became an even more indispensable source of technology and capital after the post-1997 International Monetary Fund–guided economic restructuring.63 To make US support even more critical, it was the United States that possessed the resources North Korea feared and desired most, giving US policymakers the power to influence whether, when, and how the North Korean nuclear crisis would be resolved. Then there was a large conservative power bloc inside the South, ranging between a quarter and a third of its electorate, who saw the security alliance with the United States as an integral part of the South Korean guksi (national essence)64 and North Korea as the jujeok (main enemy). Consequently, providing the North with frontal aid against the nonproliferation policy of the United States entailed incalculable risks in both domestic politics and external affairs.65 Yet South Korea’s “386ers,” who came to power with Roh Moo Hyun’s presidential inauguration in 2003, challenged rather than acquiesced to the US policy toward North Korea.66 The 386ers did so because they prescribed South Korea’s strategy of crisis management based on a set of untested, if not wrong, assumptions. Extrapolating from China’s trajectory of hyper–economic growth and South Korea’s incorporation into its orbit of prosperity since 1992, they thought power transition was imminent in Northeast Asia, with China matching the United States in capabilities and locked with it in an irreconcilable struggle for hegemony. The 386ers once toyed with the idea of bandwagoning China to check what they perceived as unjust and unruly US unilateralism, but once in charge of the National Security Council (NSC), they aspired to become a “mediator” in the North Korean nuclear crisis and sometimes even a “balancer” in regional realpolitik.67 The risk of antagonizing US policymakers in the process of redefining South Korea’s interests, role, and strategy, however, was systematically underestimated, for two reasons. First, the 386ers posited that with South Korea’s economy globally ranking twelfth in size, and its armed forces numbering over 600,000 soldiers, South Korea was indispensable for US global security design. Second, acculturated into radical leftist ideologies during college years, they discounted as Cold War paranoia the conservatives’ warning that balancing would lead to alliance breakup. The

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intention of an imperial power, they thought, was, by definition, to hold on to its empire. The corollary was that South Korea could refuse joining the US-led coalition of sanctions without fearing US retaliation or abandonment. The 386ers had equally exaggerated fears and hopes on US–North Korean relations. After Bush included the North in his “axis of evil” in January 2002, they feared that the United States could drag South Korea into another war with its northern half while in pursuit of US homeland security.68 Moreover, while overestimating the US intention to take military action against the North, the 386ers underestimated North Korea’s resolve to develop nuclear capabilities. Although the North consistently claimed that it was under military siege and that hostile US actions constituted an act of war,69 the 386ers thought that the North was developing nuclear programs only as an instrument of negotiation. The question was not whether the North was prepared for a big deal. Rather, it was what it had in mind as the price for accepting CVID. Much of the South Korean public agreed, expecting the North to “eventually dismantle nuclear programs” (61.7 percent) if offered the right price.70 Sharing much of the South Korean public’s assumptions on US and North Korean intentions, but also injecting their own assumptions of China’s imminent rise, South Korea’s strategic indispensability, and US imperial ambitions, Roh Moo Hyun and his 386ers articulated a “peace and prosperity policy.” The nordpolitik emulated Kim Dae Jung’s “sunshine policy,” but in a vastly altered geopolitical context. Gone was Bill Clinton, who had worked for dialogue by sending William J. Perry to visit the North as his “coordinator” of North Korea policy in May 1999,71 and by receiving Vice Marshall Cho Myong Rok as Kim Jong Il’s special envoy to sign a joint communiqué on denuclearization in October 2000.72 In his place was George W. Bush, preaching the doctrine of preventive war and advocating US unilateralism. Moreover, the Geneva Agreed Framework disintegrated in the aftermath of North Korea’s “revelation” of highly enriched uranium programs in October 2002. Henceforth, US policymakers demanded the North initiate CVID before it engaged in dialogue, thus getting Northeast Asia’s great powers stuck with North Korea in partial sanctions, albeit with a time lag and a varying degree of enthusiasm. The 386ers, then, were setting goals beyond South Korean capabilities. By urging the United States to relax the CVID policy and accept North Korea’s nuclear freeze as an initial stage of deal-making, they de facto demanded US policymakers to soften the post-9/11 global strategy of war on terror. Similarly, the 386ers saw the North Korean call for CVIS as legitimate,73 but excluded US military withdrawal from the South as a necessary part of that guarantee. The likelihood of the North accepting the South Korean version of security guarantees was low, especially because, given the US military transformation,74 it was technically possible for the United States to strike the North even if it were to militarily disengage from South Korea. Unless the United States substantially revised the post-9/11 doctrine of preventive war

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and military transformation, and Japan ended its bandwagon strategy of becoming a “normal state,” the North could not feel secure about survival of its regime.75 The South, then, was asking the United States and the North to compromise what each thought could not be compromised—war on terror and regime survival, respectively—when it urged the North to accept CVID in return for limited security guarantees, and the United States to use the carrot rather than the stick in persuading the North into CVID. The South Korean strategy of mediation never took off. On the contrary, lacking capabilities, South Korea ended up being a “sucker” in pursuit of a mediator role, disproportionately sharing the cost of neither de-escalating nor escalating conflict. To bring the North back to the negotiating table, South Korea pledged to supply it with 2 million kilowatts of energy in the event of denuclearization, to make up for the US-suspended light water reactor project.76 The “joint statement of principles” issued at the six-party talks of September 2005 constituted another instance of South Korea’s mediation by appeasement; it shelved its traditional policy of not negotiating a peace regime for fear of becoming entrapped in a polemic over the role of US military forces on the Korean peninsula. Despite these efforts to pick up the costs to get the six-party talks going, the South failed to prevent the North Korean nuclear test. In the eyes of Kim Jong Il, what the South offered fell far short of the requirements of regime survival. The US reaction to the “peace and prosperity policy” was outright unfavorable. Even before Roh Moo Hyun was inaugurated in February 2003, the United States felt betrayed by his rhetoric of mediation. Richard V. Allen spoke for many Americans when he said that South Korea’s option was either to side with its US ally or to take “another path.”77 The 386ers responded with what they thought was a strategy of asymmetrical exchange with the United States, only to alienate US policymakers even more. To obtain US acquiescence to the “peace and prosperity policy,” the 386er-led NSC accommodated global US security policy, joining the Iraq War with the dispatch of 3,000 noncombat troops by 2005 and maintaining the peacekeeping operations even after other US allies began disengagement. In a similar spirit, the South accepted relocation of US Forces Korea (USFK) to Pyongtaek and Osan—away from the front line and safely below the Han River. The relocation provided USFK troops the capability to undertake a new stabilizer role in regional arenas, as well as occasioned a reduction of US troop presence by 12,500 soldiers, thus freeing sizable manpower for US military endeavors elsewhere. Then followed a negotiation for a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States in 2006, which the NSC aides thought would prevent US policymakers from airing their opposition to the “peace and prosperity policy,” because of the economic benefits accruing to the United States from the FTA initiative.78 The linkage strategy, however, failed dismally even before the North Korean nuclear test. As seen by many US strategists, South Korea’s dispatch of

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peacekeeping forces to Iraq was an act of duty expected of military allies in times of crisis, not a concession on the part of South Korea to be repaid by the United States in the form of support for the “peace and prosperity policy.” The 1954 Mutual Defense Treaty had reciprocity as its central organizing principle, and by that treaty, South Korea’s assistance to US war efforts in Iraq was a payment in kind for US guarantees of South Korean security. The effort to use the relocation of USFK military bases to obtain US acquiescence to the “peace and prosperity policy” drew even greater US resistance. The United States adopted a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, presenting USFK troop relocation as nonnegotiable on the principle that it was only the US president, as commander in chief, who could decide the deployment of US military troops. The timing, size, and speed of base relocation and troop reduction were set more or less unilaterally by the United States as part of its 2003 global defense posture review.79 The 386ers’ linkage strategy, then, threw South Korea into a grim situation. The 386ers thought they had made a concession, but the United States felt it had received a slap in the face. Rather than securing US support for engaging North Korea, their linkage strategy further strengthened the unilateralist inclination of the United States in alliance issues, as well as in North Korea policy, by portraying South Korea as an unreliable and ungrateful ally that was defeating the US dual-track strategy through generous aid packages to the North. By October 2006, the United States was dealing directly with China to design a strategy for denuclearizing North Korea.

Conclusion The North Korean nuclear crisis reached its equilibrium even before Kim Jong Il’s nuclear test in October 2006. The North was aware of the incalculable and uncontrollable risks of military invasion and regime collapse if it proliferated weapons of mass destruction and deployed nuclear weapons. Therefore, it sought leverage by pursuing brinkmanship, but hedged by leaving room for dialogue even during its bravest moment of challenging the United States. The United States also had its own dual-track policy of sanctions and dialogue, engaging in the six-party talks while denying North Korea ideological legitimacy, economic recovery, and military security through its North Korean human rights act, UN Security Council Resolutions 1695 and 1718, targeted financial measures, and its Proliferation Security Initiative. However, unlike the North, where hedged brinkmanship was brought about by regime decay and system crisis, the dual-track policy of the United States was a product of overwhelming power. The United States was confident that it could raise international support for sanctions without prompting the North to retaliate with military action. The failing state was too weak to take on the United States militarily.

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However, even the superpower could not impose its will. On the contrary, the United States had to leave open the option of dialogue even at the moment of sanctions, because the success of sanctions depended on whether it could persuade China that the option of dialogue had been exhausted and that only sanctions could stop the North from WMD proliferation. To convince the Chinese that the United States was not obstructing dialogue to bring regime transformation, the United States had to join the Chinese-brokered six-party talks even after the North Korean nuclear test. To make the game of winning Chinese support even more complex, the North was aware of the need not to give the United States the pretext to separate China from the North, and left open the option of a U-turn when it developed nuclear weapons capabilities. The resulting situation of partial sanctions and partial nuclearization also created equilibrium, because it did not hurt Chinese interests. On the contrary, China could even be seen as a winner, becoming a “mediator” in the six-party talks, a “balancer” against US unilateralism, a “deterrent” against North Korea’s escalation of nuclear brinkmanship, a “guardian” of North Korean sovereignty, and a “facilitator” of regional dialogue. Having assumed these multiple roles, China became sought after by all major players in Northeast Asian security. Consequently, its policy toward North Korea became artfully ambiguous, as China opposed North Korea’s irreversible step toward nuclearization, but at the same time refused to impose full-scale sanctions. Even after the nuclear test, China was willing to pursue only partial sanctions, and worked for a resumption of the six-party talks. China’s mediation certainly deterred the North Korean nuclear crisis from escalating into military conflict, but it also prevented a resolution of the crisis, because its checks and balances against US actions fed North Korea’s belief that it could resist US pressures without provoking regime collapse. This equilibrium between neither an escalation into military confrontation nor a de-escalation into peaceful resolution became possible mainly because China was not hurt by the tensions entailed therein. By contrast, Japan saw its interests threatened by North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, but it also came out of the crisis with some security gains. In particular, alarmed by North Korea’s missile launch, Japan—still cautiously and even timidly (see Chapter 5)—began putting in place its conservative project to transform itself into a “normal state,” free of its wartime guilt and postwar pacifist ethos. Moreover, coinciding with the US war on terror and US military transformation, this march to “normal” status proceeded with support from the United States. This projection of Japanese power, in tandem with a strengthening of its bilateral alliance system, softened global and even regional resistance against Japan’s transformation. To US policymakers, Japan becoming a “normal state” constituted a belated effort of burden-sharing to support the UScentric global order. Even China preferred Japan’s growth into such a state under US guidance, if the alternative was Japan’s unilateralist power enhance-

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ment, because China still could count on the United States to restrain the excesses of Japanese nationalism. By contrast, South Korea was a clear loser. The South thought its nordpolitik was a mediation strategy, but it ended up spoiling its US patron’s dual-track strategy by enabling the North to weather out US sanctions. The result was a drift in alliance relations that cost the South what limited leverage it had over the United States on the issue of North Korean nuclear crisis. The United States came to work directly with China to bring a concert of great powers, thus marginalizing South Korea in the six-party talks. Further worsening South Korean security dilemmas, this drift in alliance came without North Korea’s restraint in nuclearization. To stop the North from going nuclear, the middle power had to take on more of the costs of keeping the six-party talks going, but its aid did not deter the North from exploding a nuclear device, because that aid did not and could not solve North Korea’s regime crisis and security vulnerability. Only the United States could provide the security guarantees that the North wanted. Moreover, the “peace and prosperity policy” also resulted in a decline in South Korea’s leverage in inter-Korea relations, because the North came to expect the South to provide aid regardless of what it did. The North knew that the South would acquiesce if threatened. The North Korean public, deprived of basic necessities under partial sanctions, lost even more. In a fundamental way, then, whether the equilibrium created through partial sanctions would continue rested on the North Korean ruling elite’s capacity to remain united in the face of mass hunger. During the mid-1990s, Kim Jong Il survived without reforming his regime, but this was possible because of uninterrupted aid based on the Geneva Agreed Framework. The situation after October 2006 was vastly different, in two ways. First, having lived through a decade of absolute poverty, North Korean society was not what it once was. The “march of adversity” exhausted society and corroded its Stalinist mechanisms of social control, as a steady increase of North Korean migrant workers, refugees, and defectors into China demonstrated.80 Second, in this context of social anomie, sanctions were imposed—albeit partially, with China still restraining from transforming its oil and food aid into a weapon. Given these two new conditions, the capacity of the North Korean regime to maintain internal unity became the decisive determinant of whether and how long the North Korean nuclear crisis would continue to stabilize between conflict escalation and conflict de-escalation. If that regime capacity were to be threatened, Kim Jong Il would be forced either to de-escalate and satisfy himself with what limited concessions he could obtain, or to escalate tensions at the risk of full-scale sanctions, regime transformation, or even military conflict. The nuclear crisis, then, became a game of endurance after North Korea’s nuclear test in October 2006. To win over China, the United States demanded CVID as a nonnegotiable precondition for any security guarantees, but also restrained from “unjustifiably” hostile actions that China would oppose as un-

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duly escalating conflict. The objective was to carefully coordinate the dualtrack strategy of sanctions and dialogue so that China would come to believe in US sincerity to peacefully resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis rather than accuse the United States of using the nuclear issue to ferment regime transformation and even regime collapse in what was China’s backyard. This US strategy of CVID left North Korea with three unattractive options: Strategy 1: Accept CVID in return for the US version of security guarantees, which North Korea thought was insufficient for leadership, regime, and state survival. Strategy 2: Refuse nuclear dismantlement, but also restrain from further provocation; accept what partial nuclear capabilities the North already possessed through salami-slicing tactics; and fight alone the pressures of economic decay, social anomie, and regime contradictions, without sizable foreign economic assistance. Strategy 3: Play another round of brinkmanship by holding a second nuclear test, deploying ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, and mass-producing nuclear bombs in the hope of pressuring China to pressure the United States to accept a CVIS/CVID deal. With the nuclear test in October 2006, the United States thought North Korea’s salami-slicing tactics had hit their upper ceiling, because any further move, like a second test, nuclear weapons deployment, mass production of plutonium, and especially nuclear transfer, would damage Chinese interests as much as US interests. As seen by US policymakers, North Korea’s room for hedging disappeared with its nuclear test, and any further brinkmanship would be judged as a hànrán act threatening China rather than a justifiable defense of sovereignty in the eyes of Chinese strategic thinkers. Consequently, for the North, Strategies 1 and 2 were the lesser evils. The North judged that if it were to employ Strategy 3, in spite of Chinese opposition, China would impose fullscale sanctions and work with the United States for regime transformation. The Northeast Asian game of “endurance,” then, went through a qualitative change with North Korea’s nuclear test. Before October 2006, it was the United States that endured while North Korea pursued salami-slicing tactics. After October 2006, by contrast, it was the North that had to endure US hostilities, because with Strategy 3, hedged brinkmanship, more or less exhausted, it was left with either accepting the US demand for CVID without its CVIS package adopted in full (Strategy 1) or continuing its “march of adversity” while freezing nuclear provocations (Strategy 2). Neither Strategy 1 nor Strategy 2 satisfied North Korea. However, after the nuclear test, it looked like Kim Jong Il was betting on Strategy 2, because it left deal-making to the future by freezing rather than dismantling North Korea’s nuclear programs. This strategy was superior to Strategy 1, which destroyed the nuclear card; it was a policy of wait-and-see,

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calling for the North Korean people to endure adversity until a less hostile political force took charge of US foreign policy in the 2008 presidential election, and full-scale accommodation of North Korea’s demand for CVIS could begin. Whether Kim Jong Il could continue to pursue Strategy 2 or go astray into his unwanted path of Strategies 1 or 3 depended on his people’s capacity for endurance and his elite’s unity before massive human suffering. As long as his people chose silence over protest and his elite brushed aside mass suffering in the interest of keeping their privileges, the North Korean nuclear crisis was destined to become stuck between conflict escalation and conflict de-escalation. The equilibrium between partial great power sanctions and partial North Korean nuclearization appeared sticky, foreshadowing a continuing human rights disaster in the North.

Notes I would like to thank Ha Young-sun, Park Jong-cheol, Sin Seong-ho, Oh Seung-ryol, Jeon Jae-seong, Lee Dae-geun, Ryu Gil-jae, and Choi Sin-rim of the East Asia Institute’s National Security Panel and North Korea Research Panel for insights into the North Korean nuclear crisis. Much of the arguments developed in this chapter are collective ideas from the two panels’ discussion. This chapter is based on research supported by a Korea University grant. 1. See UN Security Council, UN Security Council Resolution 1718 on North Korea. 2. Rice, “Press Briefing.” 3. See UN Security Council, UN Security Council Resolution 1695 on North Korea. 4. On the conservative backlash against Roh Moo Hyun’s revisionist foreign policy since his presidential inauguration in 2003, consult Kim, “The Politics of National Identity,” pp. 79–120. 5. See Chosun Ilbo (South Korea), October 18, 2006. 6. See Chosun Ilbo, October 24, October 26, November 1, 2006. 7. See http://www.president.go.kr/cwd/kr/archive/archive_view.php?id=53d76a 42532af3317a596fd6&meta_id=hotis_2. 8. Consult Park, “Jung’guksik gaehyok gaebang jeongchaek” [The ChineseStyle Reform and Open Door Policy]; Kim, “Bukhan gyongjae gaehyok” [Economic Reform in North Korea]; and Hong, “Gyongjae gwanri gaeseon jochi” [Measure for Economic Management Improvement]. 9. See North Korean minister of trade Kim Yong-sul’s lecture in Japan, as reported in Korean Development Institute, KDI bukhan gyeongjae ribyu [KDI review of North Korea’s economy]. Also see Kim Yong-sul’s interview with Chosun Sinbo (North Korea) on December 11, 2004, reported by Saegye, December 2004. 10. Park, “Dongdokui singyeongjae chaejae” [East Germany’s New Economic System]. 11. Choi, “Chilil jochiwa bukhanui chaejae byonhwa” [The July 1 Measure and North Korea’s Regime Change], p. 1. 12. Kang, “Domestic Politics and North Korean Foreign Policy.”

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13. Hyundai Asan is estimated to have invested $173.6 billion—building port facilities, roads, and hotel for its Geumgang Mountain project—since November 1998. In the case of its Gaesung industrial complex, the first stage of construction was completed in April 2004. Hyundai Asan paid $16 million for use of land and other related matters. As of October 2006, a total of fifteen South Korean firms had invested $75.9 billion. Consult Wolgan Chosun at http://monthly.chosun.com/topic/read.asp?idx=627. Also see Ministry of Unification (South Korea), Tongil baekseo [white papers on unification], pp. 118, 123. 14. Park, “Hanbando bihaekhwa” [The Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula], pp. 83–88. 15. For information on the construction of two light water reactors in Kumho, North Korea, see Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, “Executive Director’s Statement.” 16. The press also incited North Korea with reports of the US “Nuclear Posture Review,” which identified North Korea, along with six other countries, as potential targets for US nuclear attack in the event of war. See Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2002. 17. Chosun Ilbo, October 17, October 25, November 14, November 29, December 12, December 14, December 16, 2002; January 10, 2003. 18. According to both South Korean and US intelligence, North Korea could extract up to 35 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium from its 8,000 spent fuel rods within six months after initiating reprocessing. That amount could be used to make four to six nuclear bombs. See Chosun Ilbo, April 20, 2003. 19. For contradictory intelligence reports on North Korea’s intentions of and capabilities for reprocessing, see Chosun Ilbo, March 13, April 18, April 21, April 25–27, May 8, 2003. 20. Lee, “Kim Dae-jung jeongbu haui gukga jayulseong’gwa gukga neungryok” [State Autonomy and State Capacity Under the Kim Dae Jung Government], p. 10. 21. Perry, “Review of United States Policy Toward North Korea.” 22. Rice, “The Promise of Democratic Peace.” 23. Rice, “Opening Remarks.” 24. At http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/01/20050120-1.html. 25. Zoellick, “Whither China?” 26. Chosun Ilbo, October 17, November 14, 2002; November 21, 2003; July 21, 2004; January 18, January 20, February 10, February 19, April 21, April 29, 2005. 27. Chosun Ilbo, June 30, July 12, September 15, September 19, October 21, 2005. Information on the US Treasury’s sanction against Banco Delta Asia is available at http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/js2720.htm. For information on the US Treasury’s sanctioning of North Korean firms suspected of proliferating weapons of mass destruction, consult http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/js4317.htm. 28. US Department of Treasury, “Prepared Remarks by Stuart Levey.” 29. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, pp. 66–67. 30. On control of risks in salami tactics, see George and Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy, pp. 537–541. 31. Kim, “North Korea’s Salami Tactics Put on Trial”; Financial Times, October 4, 2006, at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/798f81d0-53c4-11db-8a2a-0000779e2340.html; and Chanda, “Let’s Talk, but Change the Subject.” 32. Chanlett-Avery and Squassoni, “North Korea’s Nuclear Test,” pp. 2, 8. 33. Chosun Ilbo, October 22, 2003. 34. I am grateful for Ha Young-sun’s assistance in developing a multidimensional perspective on US policy toward North Korea, along military, economic, and ideological fronts.

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35. Valencia, “Maritime Interdiction of North Korean WMD Trade.” 36. Japan Policy & Politics. 37. To quote Christopher Hill, the United States was “working in an unprecedentedly close way with China.” See Hill, “The Current State of North Korea and the Future of the U.S.-Korea Alliance.” 38. Consult Korean Institute of National Unification, 2005 bukhan baekseo [2005 white paper on human rights in North Korea]. Also see the Freedom House website, at http://www.nkfreedomhouse.org. 39. See Lee, “Migukui bukhan in’gwon jeongchaek [The US Human Rights Policy Toward North Korea], pp. 9–14. 40. Ministry of Foreign Affairs (North Korea), “Bimangrok” [Memorandum], as reported by Chosun Jungang Bangsong (North Korea), March 3, 2005; and “Miguksik in’gwonroneun jajugwon yurineul haprihwa hagi wihan quebyon” [The American Human Rights Idea Is a Deceptive Talk to Rationalize the Violation of National Sovereignty], Rodong Sinmun (North Korea), December 2, 2005. 41. See the Amnesty International website, at http://web.amnesty.org/report2004/ prk-summary-eng. 42. Chosun Ilbo, June 25, November 20, 2006. 43. Chosun Jungang Tongsin (North Korea), July 27, 2004. 44. Baldwin, “Power Analysis and World Politics,” pp. 161–194. 45. Rennack, “North Korea.” 46. Chosun Ilbo, October 13, 2006. 47. Even US withdrawal of military troops from the South could look insufficient to guarantee state security in the eyes of North Korea, because with the new strategic doctrine of military transformation undertaken by the United States, US military troops acquired “greater mobility, precision, speed, stealth, and strike range.” As a result of those capabilities, North Korea feared US troops stationed in Japan and Guam as much as those deployed in South Korea. On the US military transformation, see US National Defense Panel, “Transforming Defense,” p. 3. 48. Son, “Han’guk jeonjaeng’gwa ideorogi jihyong” [The Korean War and the Ideological Terrain], pp. 1–27. 49. See Chosun Jungang Tongsin’s critique (March 31, May 1, 1999) of South Korean foreign affairs minister Hong Sun-young’s lecture on unification based on the principles of liberal democracy. 50. Hildreth, “North Korean Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States.” 51. Chosun Ilbo, September 1, 2006. 52. Chosun Ilbo, September 1, 1998. 53. Chosun Ilbo, June 23, 2006. 54. Tracik, “A New Track for China after North Korea’s Nuclear Test?” 55. See the following in UN Security Council, UN Security Council Resolution 1718 on North Korea: “Nuclear Programmes List Pursuant to Resolution 1718 (2006),” “Ballistic Missile Programmes List Pursuant to Resolution 1718 (2006),” “Chemical and Biological Programmes List Pursuant to Resolution 1718 (2006),” and “List of Chemical and Biological Items, Materials, Equipment, Goods, and Technologies Related to Other Weapons of Mass Destruction Programmes, as Approved by the Committee Pursuant to Paragraph 8(a)(ii) of Resolution 1718 (2006).” 56. Chosun Ilbo, July 11–14, 2006. 57. See Tracik, “A New Track for China after North Korea’s Nuclear Test?” 58. See Burns, “U.S. Policy Toward North Korea.” 59. Chosun Ilbo, December 4, 2006. 60. See Tracik, “A New Track for China after North Korea’s Nuclear Test?”

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61. Kan, “China and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles,” pp. 23–33. 62. Chosun Ilbo, May 24, 2005. 63. Kim, “To Have a Cake and Eat It Too,” pp. 222–226, 237–245. 64. On the polarization of the South Korean ideological terrain and its effect on US–South Korean relations after the 2002 presidential election, consult Kim, “The U.S.–South Korean Alliance,” pp. 228–236. 65. Consult Kim, “The Politics of National Identity,” pp. 79–120. 66. Also see Kim, “Defeat in Victory and Victory in Defeat.” 67. Chosun Ilbo, December 13, December 20, December 22, 2002. Also see Roh, “Speech Before the Graduating Class of the Air Force Academy.” 68. According to a Pew Global Attitudes survey, South Korea was more like Islamic countries than US military allies in negatively judging the US effort to combat terrorism. See Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “The Pew Global Attitudes Project.” The survey found that, in 2002, 72 percent of South Koreans opposed the US war on terror, compared to 24 percent who approved; and that 73 percent criticized US foreign policy as unilateralist, compared to 23 percent who did not. For an indepth analysis of the survey, see Kim, “To Have a Cake and Eat It Too,” pp. 235–236. 69. For reports on North Korea’s threat of war, see Chosun Ilbo, February 10, March 14, August 4, October 15, October 17, 2006. See also Chosun Ilbo, January 13, March 7, June 29, 2003. 70. Data from a July 2004 telephone survey conducted by the East Asia Institute in collaboration with Joongang Ilbo and the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations. The survey involved a randomly selected national sample of 1,000 adults, and the margin of error was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence interval. 71. Chosun Ilbo, May 26, 1999. 72. Chosun Jungang Tongsin, October 12, 2000. US secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright also held a meeting with Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang in return for Cho Myong Rok’s visit. See Chosun Jungang Tongsin. October 23, 2000. 73. See Ha, “Bukhaek munjaewa yukja hoidam: pyonggawa jeonmang” [North Korean Nuclear Crisis and Six Party Talks: An Evaluation and a Forecast]. 74. See US National Defense Panel, “Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century,” p. 3. 75. See Ha, “Bukhaek munjaewa yukja hoidam: pyonggawa jeonmang sujeongbon” [North Korean Nuclear Crisis and Six Party Talks: An Evaluation and a Forecast—Revised Edition]. 76. Chosun Ilbo, July 12, 2005. 77. New York Times, January 16, 2003. James A. Baker had even more disturbing words for a visiting delegation of South Korean national assembly members: “When Corazon Aquino asked U.S. troops to leave,” he reputedly said, “we left without any second thought. . . . When China seized some Filipino islands by force, she telephoned to ask whether we will let China get away with this. I said there were no U.S. soldiers in her country to prevent any such Chinese aggression. . . . The same applies to Korea” were she to opt for US military pullout. Chosun Ilbo, January 26, 2003. 78. Consult Kim, “Caught Between Rising China and Hegemonic America.” 79. Kim, “To Have a Cake and Eat It Too,” pp. 237–243. 80. The annual number of North Korean refugees entering South Korea via third countries also rose, from around a hundred in the mid-1990s to a thousand since 2002. See Wu, “Talbukja munjae” [The Issue of North Korean Defectors], p. 1.

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8 Taiwan’s Politics of Identity: Navigating Between China and the United States Yun-han Chu

I

n the past century, the political fate of Taiwan, like Korea, was ultimately linked with the outcomes of great power competition for the dominance over Northeast Asia. With each major shift in the region’s overarching order, Taiwan was always at the epicenter of strategic conflicts on the scale of platonic clashes. China’s cession of Taiwan to Japan after the 1895 Sino-Japanese War epitomized the meteoric fall of the Chinese Empire from the apex of regional hierarchy and, at the same time, signified the dawn of an era of Japanese imperialist expansion. The retrocession of Taiwan to Nationalist China came with the abrupt end of Japanese imperium and the beginning of an era of US hegemonic presence in the region. Soon after the formal partition of Vietnam in 1954, the United States institutionalized its security commitment to Taiwan by signing the United States–Repubic of China Mutual Defense Treaty. Thus a new security demarcation in Northeast Asia gave the Nationalists (Kuomintang [KMT]) some breathing space and a historic chance to consolidate a one-party authoritarian regime on a new social soil. The political survival of the island was thrown into doubt after Washington sought rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) during the 1970s. At each dramatic turn of the island’s political fortune, the dynamics of Taiwan’s internal politics carried little significance. But that was before Taiwan became democratized and the island’s power structure thoroughly indigenized. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Taiwan is caught in a contradiction between its economic and political priorities. The acute security dilemma that Taiwan finds itself in today once again epitomizes the dramatic shift in the strategic landscape of the region over the past decade. The rapid rise of China in both economic and geopolitical terms, and the dramatic diminishment of Japan’s economic vitality, are reshaping the regional order in ways that few anticipated only a few years ago. While Taiwan has little control and lessening influence over these larger trends, the island republic is a key catalytic 225

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factor in affecting the ongoing transformation of regional order. On the strategic horizon, two possible outcomes with drastically different consequences for the region await the political standoff in the Taiwan Strait. On the one hand, the tension in the strait might provoke a major war between China and the United States and reshape the regional order. If this happens, it will certainly tear down the bipolar peace under which China maintains a Pax Sinica on mainland Northeast Asia, and the United States maintains a Pax Americana in maritime Northeast Asia, and unravel the security that has anchored the region’s stability and prosperity for more than a quarter century.1 In polar opposite to the war scenario, the stepped-up pace of economic integration across the strait might lead to a peaceful reconciliation under some form of political union between Taipei and Beijing, and bring about an entirely new configuration of economic, political, and strategic forces in Northeast Asia, as the United States, China, as well as Japan, adjust to a different reality. If this happens, it will eradicate a major flashpoint in Northeast Asia as well as the risk of accidental clash between Washington and Beijing and, at the same time, make China potentially a more formidable strategic challenger to the United States and Japan, as a peaceful reunification across the strait will certainly alleviate China of a major historical burden and release a significant portion of its resources. What puzzles policymakers around the region is the perplexing fact that the momentum for war and the momentum for peaceful reconciliation have seemingly both been gathering steam at a stunning pace over the past few years. On the one hand, China’s military capacity is fast becoming more than just a threatening gesture, registering vast improvements over the past few years in the capacity of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to wage high-tech warfare. On the other hand, under the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government, China has hardened its bargaining position, taking Taiwan further away from a negotiated peace with mainland China, with the George W. Bush administration wasting no time doubling-up its efforts to improve Taiwan’s integrated sea and air defense, and to upgrade its own war plans as well as forward deployment in the West Pacific to hedge against a military showdown in the strait. Kurt Campbell and Derek Mitchell observed the dire situation in the Taiwan Strait in the summer of 2001: “Perhaps nowhere else on the globe is the situation so seemingly intractable and the prospect of a major war involving the United States so real.”2 Looking at the same crystal ball but coming away with a totally different prognosis, Morton Abramowitz and Stephen Bosworth observed recently that “Taiwan—long an economic powerhouse and ward of Washington—is being further marginalized internationally and increasingly integrated into the mainland’s economy. Peaceful reconciliation between the two Chinas thus now seems closer than ever.”3 Nancy Tucker also warned Washington policymakers that Taiwan’s economic dependence on and integration with China, as well

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as the changing perceptions of the island’s needs and interests, may make reunification desirable or at least necessary for Taiwan in the not-so-distant future.4 As well, many policy analysts notice that there is growing worry among the Taiwanese people that time might not be on their side. They sense a burgeoning popular aspiration to break free from the perpetual unease and fluid status quo, and to resolve the island’s security dilemma with either an innovative political formula or capitulation to one set of priorities. While the two scenarios could both be far-fetched, they cannot be equally plausible. What the two divergent prognoses agree on are that the expectation that the stressful political standoff is not sustainable over the long term, and that cross-strait relations might be on the verge of a major departure from the status quo, one way or another. What drives them apart are their divergent perceptions about Beijing leaders’ national priorities and strategic intents, diverse assumptions about the social, cultural, and political implications of cross-strait economic integration, and different understandings of the dynamics of Taiwan’s internal politics, in particular the politics of national identity. The last factor has been a major driving force, boxing Beijing, Washington, and Taipei into an ever tighter strategic spot over the past few years. At no point in history has the direction of Taiwan’s internal political process taken on such great importance in shaping the region’s future. In this chapter I examine the major assumptions underlying the two divergent prognoses and reveal the blind spots and one-sided admissions of evidence in each analysis. I emphasize the ongoing contest among elites over Taiwan’s mainland policy, and explain how parameters of Taiwan’s internal policy debate have been reshaped by changing economic and fiscal realities and evolving strategic circumstances. In particular, I clarify some widely held misconceptions about the dynamics of the contest over national identity on the island by drawing on longitudinal survey data that represent the most systemic and conclusive evidence on the subject to date. The data reveal that an updated perception about China’s potential and a growing awareness of the inevitability of greater cross-strait economic integration have dampened the popular predilection for de jure independence, despite the intensified effort by the incumbent elite to sway it in a proindependence direction. Also, the data reveal that neither principled believers in Taiwan’s independence, nor principled believers in reunification, are sizable enough to impose their favored resolution on national identity in the near future. The existence of a large number of noncommitted rationalists would mitigate the polarized conflict over national identity, and could potentially shift the future political equilibrium in either direction, depending on whether the external conditions become more favorable to reunification or to independence. As long as Taiwan’s electorate keep the future of cross-strait relations open-ended, the prospect of peace shall outweigh the prospect of war in the strait.

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The Coming Military Clash in the Strait? Ever since the 1995–1996 missile crisis, many security analysts have warned decisionmakers in Washington of the looming prospect for a military conflict in the Taiwan Strait that might drag the United States into a war with the PRC. They advised the US administration to hedge the country’s military preparedness, as well as its operational guidelines under the US-Japanese defense pact, against that dire possibility.5 They pointed to three treacherous developments, each of which on its own might not be explosive, but which together form a very volatile mix and might ignite a major crisis. First, Beijing leaders have become more and more alarmed by Taipei’s strategy of “creeping independence” and the rising tide of Taiwanese nationalism on the island, and they fear that the two mutually reinforced developments might soon pass the point of no return. Second, military buildup on both sides of the strait has escalated rapidly since 1996, while the channel of cross-strait political talks has been completely shut down since July 1999. Third, the dynamics of domestic politics have propelled all three parties—Washington, Beijing, and Taipei—to harden their positions and reduce room for diplomatic maneuvering. During Taiwan’s democratic transition, two interrelated developments frightened Beijing’s leaders. First, Taiwan’s leaders stepped up efforts to cultivate a popular aspiration for separate nationhood at home, and pushed for an independent sovereign status abroad. Second, support for Taiwan’s independence has risen, and Chinese identity among the Taiwanese populace has correspondingly declined. These trends have serious consequences for Beijing’s Taiwan policy, dampening the prospect for a peaceful reunification over the long term, and creating a series of political crises in the short run. According to proponents of the war scenario, ever since Taipei launched its drive to rejoin the United Nations in 1993, Beijing’s leaders have grown more suspicious that Taiwan’s leaders are abandoning the “one China” principle and are intent on the permanent separation of the island from China. Lee Teng-hui’s 1995 visit to the United States and his announcement of the “special state-to-state” formula in July 1999 simply reinforced Beijing’s perception that it is dealing with a ticking time bomb of Taiwan’s independence. Its repeated, failed attempts to cajole Taipei to the negotiation table under the premise of “one China” suggested that Beijing’s united-front strategies did not prop up proreunification forces in Taiwan as intended. Lee’s staunch position on refusing to open up the “three links” under the policy motto of “go slow, be patient,” despite growing discontent among Taiwan’s business community, also strengthened the view in Beijing that economic carrots were not enough. In the March 2000 presidential election, the electoral victory of the DPP, the longtime opposition that adopted a proindependence platform since its founding years, dashed Beijing’s lingering hope that it might put the genie back

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in the “one China” bottle in the post–Lee Teng-hui era. As their anxiety grew, Beijing leaders showed their impatience with this stressful stalemate and put more emphasis on veiled military threats. In particular, the alarmists pointed out that, in a 2000 white paper on the “one China” principle and the Taiwan issue, the PRC authority cited “Taiwan indefinitely refuses to conduct political negotiation” as one of the three conditions that might justify the use of military force to recover Taiwan.6 This stern-worded message was reiterated in Jiang Zemin’s farewell report to the sixteenth congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in October 2002, reminding Taipei that Beijing “would not allow the Taiwan issues to drag on indefinitely.”7 In the eyes of proponents of the war scenario, Beijing’s leaders have become not only increasingly frustrated and impatient, but also more serious about military options. Beijing has shut off all official channels of communication with Taipei since the summer of 1999. They also choose to ignore Chen Shui-bian, because the DPP government refuses to acknowledge the 1992 consensus on the “one China” principle.8 They have become more convinced that they need a credible military threat to deter Taiwan from moving toward independence and arrest the rising tide of Taiwanese nationalism. Since the 1996 face-off between two US aircraft carrier battle groups and the Chinese navy, the PLA top brass has pressed for an ever larger budget to acquire a multifaceted capacity to deter, deny, or complicate the ability of the United States and its allies to intervene on Taiwan’s behalf.9 From 1996 to 2000, China more than doubled its military spending; according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2000 it became the world’s biggest importer of weapons. Purchases of advanced weaponry from Russia and other former Soviet states, including fighter jets, Kilo-class submarines, Sovremenny-class destroyers, and sophisticated air defense systems, are designed to give US commanders pause before they enter a battle on Taiwan’s side. At the same time, Beijing has developed new ballistic missiles to maintain the credibility of its nuclear deterrent, and it will certainly expand its small inventory of intercontinental ballistic missiles in response to the George W. Bush administration’s pursuit of missile defense technologies. In addition, the PLA is rapidly expanding its arsenal of short-range and medium-range ballistic missiles along the coast facing Taiwan, assembling more than a hundred warheads per year. Increasingly, Pentagon experts worry that sustained increases in defense spending and new high-tech weaponry now give Beijing’s leaders “an increasing number of credible options to intimidate or actually attack Taiwan” in the event that Taipei crosses the red lines.10 The most worrisome trend in the eyes of proponents of the war scenario is the propensity of domestic politics in pushing all three sides, Beijing, Taipei, and Washington, to harden their positions. First, the United States, under President Bush, has demanded that any settlement of the Taiwan question be peaceful and in accord with the wishes of the people of Taiwan. Beyond that,

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the administration has repeatedly reminded Beijing of US obligations, under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, to help Taiwan defend itself.11 In 2001, acting on the assumption that war in the Taiwan Strait is sufficiently likely, the Bush administration moved to approve the single largest bundle of arms sales to Taiwan, including eight conventional submarines, four Kidd-class destroyers, and advanced missile defense systems, and to substantially upgrade the level of military exchange and cooperation between the Pentagon and Taiwan’s armed forces.12 More significant, the expansion of US military ties with Taiwan has been accompanied by a fading of the “strategic ambiguity” that previously marked US policy. That ambiguity was intended to keep Beijing and Taipei guessing about how the United States would respond to hostilities across the Taiwan Strait. As strategic ambiguity has ebbed, US positions have hardened all around, culminating in Bush’s well-known pledge that the United States would do “whatever it takes” to help Taiwan defend itself. Less well known has been a thorough revision of US war plans to help Taiwan repel an attack by the PRC under Admiral Dennis Blair of the Pacific Command. Those plans were updated to account for Chinese acquisition of modern Russian warplanes and warships, and addressed weaknesses in Taiwan’s defenses.13 At the same time, the political impasses between Beijing and Taipei are becoming ever more insurmountable with each passing day. On the one hand, popularly elected Taiwanese leaders are often motivated to arouse a sense of Taiwanese identity and a popular desire for self-determination, as these highly emotional symbolic issues always help divert the attention of the electorate from a sagging economy and unfulfilled promises on political reforms. In order to salvage his reelection bid amid an economic recession, DPP president Chen Shui-bian simply could not resist the temptation of pushing the envelope and testing the limits of Beijing’s tolerance. This explains why he made his unsettling remarks on August 3, 2002, that “there is one country on each side of the strait” and that Taiwan should seriously consider legislation to facilitate plebiscite before a proindependence audience. This also explains why Chen Shui-bian and his campaign strategists were eager to turn the 2004 presidential election into a popular affirmation of his “one state on each side of the strait” formulation, despite (or because of) the flammable nature of this campaign strategy. On the other hand, nationalistic sentiment is also on the rise in China, a trend best illustrated by large-scale anti-Japanese demonstrations. Public opinion is becoming a growing factor in the PRC, and serves to constrain the leadership, who do not have the flexibility they did a decade ago.14 No Chinese leader can afford to be seen as being “soft” on the Taiwan issue, especially at a time of power succession. To show their resolve to prevent Taiwan independence, Hu Jintao and the new generation of Chinese leaders decided to cast Beijing’s military deterrence into stone. In March 2005 the National People’s Congress enacted an “antisecession” law that mandated the use of “nonpeace-

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ful means” if Taiwan should move toward independence. So, proponents of the war scenario fear that any miscalculated incident or mishandling of accidental events might bring the tension to a boil. Is the tension in the Taiwan Strait as dire as some security analysts suggest? I would argue that proponents of the war scenario have overestimated the probability of the outbreak of military conflict in the strait because of their partial reading of Beijing’s strategic intent and one-sided interpretation of Taiwan’s domestic politics. Instead of viewing the situation as “even more dire today,”15 one might argue that from Beijing’s point of view the cross-strait standoff has already survived its most treacherous moment: the first year of the Bush administration, with the first-ever proindependence president sitting in Taipei and the most pro-Taiwan and most arrogant administration in thirty years sitting in Washington. Proponents of the war scenario would have a difficult time explaining why Beijing’s reaction to Chen Shui-bian’s “one state on each side of the strait” remark was surprisingly calm and muted and why Beijing leaders chose to turn their eyes away from Chen’s decision to hold Taiwan’s first-ever referendum in conjunction with the 2004 presidential election. Of course, the alarmists should not be faulted for failing to foresee that relations between the United States and China would undergo a dramatic transformation after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.16 No one could have foreseen that. However, they are liable to the criticism that they had vastly underestimated Beijing’s pragmatism and adaptability. At the operational level, they failed to recognize that Beijing’s leaders have undertaken some meaningful adjustments and adaptations as they climb the learning curve. At the strategic level, they failed to situate Beijing’s strategic decisions on the Taiwan issue within their conceptual framework of national strategic priorities at the higher level. And they did not detect a subtle shift in Chinese leaders’ longterm visions and underlying assumptions that take into account the new developments across the strait. First, at the operational level, Beijing’s latest policy initiatives reveal meaningful adjustments and adaptations in its priorities and approaches. On the eve of the CCP’s sixteenth congress, Jiang Zemin was able to rehash the consensus among top leaders over what adjustments in strategies and tactics were necessary to rejuvenate the moribund peaceful reunification campaign in the aftermath of the most devastating blow to Beijing’s reunification campaign: the electoral victory of the proindependence DPP in March 2000. Beijing unveiled its reformulated operational guidelines first through a major policy speech by Qian Qichen in January 2002, and then codified them in Jiang’s report to the CCP’s sixteenth congress—allegedly the most authoritative guidelines for the next few years. Beijing’s latest peace initiatives reveal that it has reset its short-term agenda. It no longer lays its expectations on wooing Taipei back to the negotiation table under the premise of the “one China” principle under a DPP administration.

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Furthermore, it seems that Beijing has recognized that it is unrealistic to expect any democratically elected Taiwanese government to relinquish Taiwan’s sovereign status under the rubric of the Republic of China. Not even the so-called “Pan Blue” camp (comprising the KMT and its offshoot parties) would go that far, its prounification orientation notwithstanding. With dimming hopes for cutting political deals, Jiang and his top advisers decided to concentrate their efforts on promoting the three links. To this end, Beijing has considerably lowered the political threshold for establishing the three links. This represented a marked shift in Beijing’s priorities. During much of the 1990s, Beijing’s top priority had always been tying down Taiwan with the “one China” principle and wooing Taipei into political talks; now it chose to put the horse of three links before the cart of political negotiation.17 Top on the list of Beijing’s targeted audiences are Taiwan’s business community and the pragmatic elements within the DPP camp. This shows that Beijing leaders have finally climbed a stiff learning curve in figuring out how to live with Taiwan’s chaotic pluralism and intractable democracy. In light of Taiwan’s deteriorating economic situation and growing dependence on the mainland, Beijing has gained points in promoting the view that the Chen Shui-bian government’s resistance to direct trade and direct air and sea links is both politically costly and economically counterproductive. Since Hu Jintao took over the steering wheel of the Taiwan issue, he has demonstrated an even higher degree of flexibility and pragmatism than his predecessor. His decision to receive Taiwanese opposition-party leaders Lien Chan and James Soong and engage them in substantive discussions was widely viewed as a breakthrough event. Most notably, the Hu-Lien and Hu-Soong communiqués shelved the issue of unification, focusing instead on preserving peace and stability. Nor did Beijing mention the “one country, two systems” formula, after years of insisting that unification must proceed on that basis. Instead, the statements released during the two visits stressed the “1992 consensus,” a loosely defined agreement to set aside the thorniest sovereignty issues, which allowed negotiations on practical matters to move forward.18 Mainland leaders also offered economic incentives and promised to relax their opposition to Taiwan’s participation in the international arena as long as Taipei’s demand is consistent with the “one China” principle. With the establishment of direct dialogue between Hu and leaders of Taiwan’s opposition parties, Beijing has managed to take the upper hand in cross-strait issues from the United States, whose influence over Taiwan no longer appears quite as dominant as it was. Furthermore, Beijing leaders were quick in seizing the window of opportunity opened up in the post–September 11 world. Since 2002 the extent to which pragmatic thinking has permeated Beijing’s recent approach to Washington-Beijing-Taipei triangular relations has surprised many observers. Increasingly it recognizes that the most effective way to seek US cooperation in keeping Taiwan’s “creeping independence strategy” in check is by offering

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quid pro quo. Thus, from removing long-standing irritants in relations with Washington (such as establishing additional rules controlling the export of missile technology and dual-use biological and chemical agents, and tightening military export regulations) to cajoling Pyongyang back to the six-party talks, Beijing is keen on building leverage within this triangular strategic relationship. It was reported that Jiang Zemin proposed during his meeting with President Bush in October 2002 that China could reduce its short-range missile deployment facing Taiwan in exchange for a cutback in US arms sales to the Taiwanese military.19 That was a marked shift from China’s past policy. Previously China had demanded that the United States cut its arms sales to Taiwan unilaterally and offered no quid pro quo, always insisting that any issue involving its missile deployments was an “internal matter” and could not be discussed. China’s recent strategic gesture is also symbolically significant, because in a way it suggests that the Beijing leadership has come very close to acknowledging the United States as the de facto custodian over Taiwan, an attitudinal adjustment inconceivable only a few years ago. At the strategic level, Beijing’s guiding principles on dealing with the Taiwan issue remained unchanged as the torch was passed on from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao. The source for continuity in their guiding principles came from a shared commitment among CCP leaders to certain higher-level national strategic priorities—most importantly the nation’s fundamental interests in maintaining a peaceful and stable surrounding environment for the sake of economic modernization. This shared commitment has facilitated the development of intraparty consensus over the basic policy guidelines dealing with the Taiwan issue during the post-Deng era, despite the occasional quibble over operational guidelines and tactics. The forging of this consensus has also been facilitated by a shared assessment, through a largely nonideological lens, of the constraints and opportunities presented by the international environment, the Washington-Beijing-Taipei triangle, and Taiwan’s changing political and economic conditions. It has been a widely shared view among CCP leaders that, as long as the prospect of peaceful reunification is effectively preserved, there is neither the urgency nor the strategic imperative to force a final resolution of the Taiwan issue before China accomplishes its modernization task. Ultimately, reunification is a mission for the long haul. The only urgency that has become increasingly intense since 1994 is the near-term task of defusing the ticking bomb of Taiwan’s independence without critically straining China’s relationship with the United States, inadvertently prompting Japan to seek rearmament, seriously disrupting the ongoing cross-strait economic exchanges, or diverting too many national resources. At the same time, some discerning China-watchers detected a shift that may be of deeper importance than adjustment in approaches and tactics. There has been some subtle shift in Beijing’s long-term vision and underlying assumptions as it updates its assessment about the challenges and opportunities

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brought about by the changing political and economic conditions in Taiwan and new developments taking place in the larger international context. Over the past few years, Beijing leaders have acquired a new confidence and a new perception of China’s rising standing in the region. This marked shift accounts for the programmatic adaptability, new flexibility, and professed pragmatism identified above. This shift has manifested itself not just through their approach toward the issue of Taiwan, but also in a score of other foreign policy issues, from the South China Sea, the free trade agreement between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, drug trafficking, environmental issues, and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The watershed event was the regional financial crisis, which was a wake-up call for Beijing leaders to the dawning of a brave new world. They suddenly realized how closely their economy was connected to the region and how much influence they had in preserving the region’s monetary stability and jump-starting Northeast Asian economic expansion. Since then, China has dramatically converted itself from a skeptical participant in multilateral arrangements to a principal architect of the region’s new security, monetary, and trade regimes. As one observer put it, “the curious mixture of insecurity and arrogance with which China’s government used to view the world has been replaced with a sense of possibility.”20 In the context of cross-strait relations, Chinese leaders increasingly appear to be approaching the Taiwan issue with a newly acquired confidence in the country’s overall capacity to keep Taiwan within its political and economic orbit, and with the implicit underlying assumption that “time is on the PRC’s side.” Therefore they can afford to be more flexible and patient, more reticent about Chen Shui-bian’s provocation, and more tolerant of stalemate. Their new confidence first came from an updated reading of US strategic intentions, especially those of the Bush administration. Beijing’s leaders have grudgingly accepted the dual role of the United States in cross-strait relations. On the one hand, Beijing has always felt resentful toward US “interference,” believing that Washington’s political and security backing constitutes the major obstacle to its reunification ambitions. On the other hand, it is increasingly counting on the United States to restrain Taiwan’s separatist tendency. While still harboring some lingering suspicions, Beijing has become increasingly convinced that Washington is not disingenuous about its pledge of “not supporting Taiwan independence,” through witnessing Washington’s preventive diplomacy as well as crisis management at work. For instance, Beijing recognized that the United States played an important behind-the-scenes role in installing the “Five Nos” pledge21 into Chen Shui-bian’s inaugural speech.22 And prompt action taken by Bush’s national security team to control the damage caused by Chen’s remark on “one state on each side of the strait” was taken as another reassuring sign that the United States would draw the lines out of its own national interests.

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Beijing’s new confidence also stems from vast improvements over the past few years in the PLA’s capacity to wage high-tech warfare, and a new recognition that the cross-strait military balance has moved steadily in Beijing’s favor, especially due to Taiwan’s rapidly deteriorating fiscal capacity. Beijing’s leaders felt that China must continue to build up its military power, not only as a hedge against Taiwanese provocations, but also a necessary element in reinforcing Washington’s motivation and seriousness in harnessing the Taiwanese independence horse. But they see less need for regular military exercises, which only alienate people on the island anyway. A further source of Beijing’s new confidence stems from its interpretation of recent political developments, and their implications, as the island moves into the post–Lee Teng-hui era. First, a new centralist position is emerging from post-Lee politics in response to a marked shift in popular opinion in favor of further economic integration with the Chinese mainland. Witnessing a new tidal wave of Taiwanese capital outflow looking for new market opportunities after China’s WTO entry, pragmatic-minded DPP politicians have grudgingly accepted the view that the trend toward further economic integration with mainland China is inevitable, despite its complicated social and political ramifications. Next, faced with a gloomy economic outlook, rising unemployment, runaway fiscal deficits, and a looming threat of Japanese-style deflation, Taiwan’s electorate seem to be so overwhelmed by the deteriorating economic bottom line that they have less appetite for lofty diplomatic objectives and outlandish political designs. Witnessing the shift in the underlying popular sentiment, Lien Chan, who succeeded Lee Teng-hui as the chairman of the KMT after the 2000 debacle, moved to set himself apart from Lee’s policy and advocated a cross-strait policy that was demonstrably more moderate and significantly less confrontational. Riding on a platform that advocated deepening of cross-strait economic integration and resumption of cross-strait negotiation on the basis of the “1992 consensus” on the “one China” principle, the newly formed alliance between the KMT and the People First Party (PFP), the latter a splinter party under the leadership of James Soong, had enjoyed a significant lead over Chen Shuibian until the eve of the 2004 presidential election, when a bizarre shooting event broke out and helped Chen win a substantial sympathy vote overnight and pushed him over the top by a razor-thin margin. Despite this frustrating setback, the KMT-PFP coalition retained its parliamentarian majority in the December 2004 Legislative Yuan election. The Pan Blue camp also delivered a convincing victory in the December 2005 local election, in which it took control of two-thirds of the county and city governments. As a great majority of Taiwan’s electorate approved the historic visits by Lien Chan and James Soong, the Pan Blue camp became more confident, believing its moderate and conciliatory approach to the cross-strait issue would be a winning recipe for its political comeback. So, Beijing leaders are able to spot quite a few silver

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linings in the DPP-reigning sky, believing that the best policy is to wait patiently for the island’s electoral process to sort out the unsettling post–Lee Teng-hui politics by itself. Most important, Beijing’s new confidence is fueled by the staggering trend of cross-strait economic integration and its political implications. Mainland China has rapidly evolved into Taiwan’s number-one trading partner, an indispensable manufacturing platform for its export-oriented sector, its single most important source of trade surplus, and the top recipient of the island’s outbound capital flows. Mainland China’s share of Taiwan’s total exports has risen rapidly throughout the past decade, and in 2002 surpassed the US share for the first time. By the end of 2005, mainland China accounted for 21.7 percent of Taiwan’s total exports (and as high as 38.8 percent if exports to Hong Kong are included), while the US share of Taiwan’s exports had dropped to 14.9 percent. Beyond this, Taiwanese companies have a total investment of at least $90 billion in China, operating more than 70,000 projects with more than 750,000 Taiwanese expatriates minding the business on the mainland. More than half of Taiwan’s listed companies and virtually all of the island’s top conglomerates have set up subsidiaries or joint ventures in China.23 Many of them will soon generate bigger revenues in the Chinese mainland market than in Taiwan, and thus have become more susceptible to Beijing’s regulatory authority and goodwill. As a result, Beijing has become more confident that the Taiwanese business elite will voluntarily do its bidding out of sheer business interest, a trend best illustrated by the increasingly blunt and open criticism against the existing restrictions on cross-strait economic exchanges coming from Taiwan’s leading business executives. These developments have reinforced the belief of Beijing’s leaders that time is on their side. They pin much of their hope on the possibility that the growing economic and social ties will eventually ameliorate political frictions and gradually shift political opinion on the island away from separatism and toward reunification.

The Prospect of Peaceful Reconciliation in the Strait It is interesting to note that Beijing’s new confidence converges with the prognosis by people like Morton Abramowitz, Stephen Bosworth, and Nancy Tucker, who have argued that some version of peaceful reunification actually could materialize, not immediately, but not too distantly either. Of course, proponents of the peace scenario have understood well that there are many other important (and not so predictable) factors involved in shaping the future of crossstrait relations other than just the trend of economic integration. One important factor is whether future PRC leaders will be willing and able to exercise greater creativity and flexibility in their approach to cross-strait relations. Rather than continue with their “marry me or die” approach, will they be able to offer incen-

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tives that will appeal to the Taiwanese public and to entertain some innovative political designs, such as a Chinese confederation (banglian) or federal commonwealth (lianbang), under which Taiwan would enjoy not only a high degree of autonomy, as it might under the “one country, two systems” formula, but also some considerable measure of sovereignty and international space? Another important factor is what the United States might do should Taipei decide to pursue reunification with Beijing. Will Washington have many viable options to prevent it? And if it does, will it take more aggressive action to keep Taiwan separate from the PRC, as a peaceful reunification might exacerbate the US security dilemma in Asia? A third factor, arguably even more important, is whether China can manage to sustain its momentum of economic modernization while wrestling with the huge challenge of growing economic disparity, social unrest, and rising demand for greater political participation for the foreseeable future. Leaving these big questions aside, central to the credibility of the peace proponents’ argument is the validity of two interrelated underlying assumptions. First, the imperative of growing economic dependence will compel Taiwan’s governing elite to strike a better balance between economic and security goals, and to seek a more moderate approach toward cross-strait relations. Second, the transformative power of economic integration has the potential to dissolve (and resolve) the security conflict across the strait at its root—that is, at the level of the construction of identity, which comes before the formation of national interest and security preference.24 Since existing literature in the international relations field offers little guidance on either question, we have to turn to historical evidence. Obviously, proponents of the peace scenario bear an unusually heavy burden of proof, because even a cursory review of the dynamics of cross-strait relations of the 1990s would yield ample contradictory evidence to their two underlying assumptions. First, during much of 1990s, the trend of intensified economic exchange did little to reduce the military tension across the strait. At the same time, the potential risk to the DPP government’s huge economic stake did not dissuade it from pushing the envelope. As a result, the level of mistrust and animosity between the two governments continued to rise. Next, between 1991 and 2005, closer economic ties and frequent social contacts across the strait have seemingly not had much effect on arresting the trend of rising Taiwanese identity and dwindling Chinese identity among the island’s mass public.25 So is there any basis for the assertion that further economic integration will sooner or later change the perceptions of the island’s needs and interests and refurbish the time-worn Chinese identity? To answer this question, one needs to take a closer look at the underlying factors shaping the parameters of debate over Taiwan’s mainland policy and the dynamics of identity construction. The starting point is: Why did the Taiwanese identity surge during Taiwan’s democratization? The simple answer is: Taiwanese consciousness and the society’s quest for a separate international identity were long-suppressed under the

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old Nationalist regime, which justified its ruling legitimacy and the mainlander elite its political dominance on the basis of the “one China” principle. So they were simply unleashed by the process of democratic opening. Furthermore, one might argue that some historical and global factors are at work. First, the seed of Taiwanese identity was deeply buried during Japanese colonial rule and the postwar political reconstruction. Next, one should pay attention to the epic changes in the international system, since the late 1970s, that first precipitated the state legitimacy crisis and later aroused the aspiration for an independent statehood.26 In addition, one should not overlook the poisonous effects of Beijing’s intensive efforts to isolate Taiwan from the international community, and its hostile reunification campaign. However, as most recent literature suggests, neither historical roots nor system-level changes can directly alter group identity.27 The effects of these historical and global forces on the people’s political consciousness must be actualized through state actions, the strategies of competing elites, and their mutual influences and compromises. Essentially, national identities are not inborn but are socially and politically constructed sentiments that are subject to change and manipulation, especially under the intensive mobilization of political elites at times of regime transition.28 So we need to know how, during Taiwan’s regime transition, the struggles over democratic reform and redistribution of political power between the mainlander group and native Taiwanese became entangled with the conflict and clash of national identity over different visions for Taiwan’s future political relations with mainland China. The conflict over national identity was fought first between the opposition and the mainlander-controlled KMT. Early on, leaders of the opposition had linked the goal of democratization directly to the issue of Taiwanese identity and the principle of self-determination in their effort to undermine the legitimating pillar of Kuomintang rule. After the death of Chiang Ching-kuo, the KMT’s last strongman, in January 1988, the main fault line shifted to the power struggle between Lee Teng-hui, a native Taiwanese who was handpicked by Chiang as his official successor, and the KMT old guard. The intraparty power struggle inadvertently accelerated the indigenization of the KMT power structure and provided the impetus for abandoning the KMT’s core commitment to Chinese nationalism. As it turned out, the struggle was not just about the redistribution of power between the mainlander and Taiwanese elite but, more fundamentally, a clash between two seemingly irreconcilable emotional claims about Taiwan’s statehood and the national identity of the people of Taiwan.29 The competing forces strove to gain control of the governing apparatus and use its power to steer cross-strait relations, erect a cultural hegemony, and impose their own visions of nation building in the direction of either Taiwanization or Sinicization. After the reelection of the Legislative Yuan in December 1992, Lee successfully ousted his political rivals from key positions and moved on to take full control of the state and the party apparatus. From this point on, Lee and

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his top security advisers were ready to implement their “grand strategy” for consolidating Taiwan’s sovereign status. Lee, who turned out to be a die-hard Taiwanese nationalist, reengineered the cultural orientation of the state, transforming it from a cultural agent of Chinese nationalism to a powerful agent sponsoring the growth of Taiwanese identity. The senior management of party and state-owned mass media were overhauled. Contents of school textbooks were revamped to promote the burgeoning Taiwanese consciousness, while de-emphasizing Chinese culture and history. Native literatures and performing arts were emphatically promoted and subsidized. In particular, Lee vigorously promoted the concept of “New Taiwanese” as a cultural vehicle for a new, assimilative identity. The newly installed democratic practices also served as an agent of political resocialization. The practice of democracy has gradually accustomed the people to participating in the deliberation and decisionmaking of “national” affairs and, implicitly or explicitly, led them to accept the island as the legitimate unit of governance. In the international arena, Lee and his advisers were eager to break away from the “one China” principle, which they believed endangered Taiwan’s sovereign status in the international community while providing it with little multilateral guarantee against the PRC’s forced retrocession. His most daring move was to launch the bid for United Nations membership in the summer of 1993. This was widely viewed as the most laudable message Taiwan had ever communicated to the international community about its aspiration for separate sovereign status in the international community. The UN membership drive was valued not only for its expected public relations benefits of generating international sympathy and attention, but also for its expected political mobilization in serving as a rally point around which emotions of loyalty and assurance could cluster. In a way, Beijing’s strong reaction to Taipei’s bid for UN membership was not only expected but also welcomed, as Beijing’s countermeasures would only raise popular awareness of Taiwan’s endangered sovereign status and its resentment toward Beijing. Lee and his advisers also harbored a deep-seated worry that time might not be on Taiwan’s side. They feared the window of opportunity for consolidating Taiwan’s sovereignty might soon be closed. Taiwan had to act in a timely manner before the island became economically too dependent on China and before China became too strong even for the United States to contain. They were encouraged by the emergence of the so-called new world order after the Gulf War. Lee and his advisers believed that the systemic change in international security arrangements made it possible for Taiwan to explore an alternative path of nation building. The KMT’s new leadership was also alarmed by the trend of expanding cross-strait economic ties. They reasoned that a full-scale economic integration with mainland China would eventually compromise Taiwan’s political autonomy. The acceleration of cross-strait exchange between Taiwan and the mainland was deemed detrimental to Taiwan’s political independence, because it

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would aggravate Taiwan’s economic vulnerability, facilitate Beijing’s political infiltration into Taiwanese society, and lead to an erosion of a separate Taiwanese identity. So Lee was determined to reestablish the state’s regulatory power over the pace of cross-strait economic exchange, exert dominance over the public debate on the mainland policy, and reassert the supremacy of national security priorities over economic pragmatism in the conduct of crossstrait relations. Lee steadfastly vetoed any policy proposal for a partial lifting of the ban on the three links. He and his top advisers firmly believed that once the government opened the floodgate, there would be no way to shut it off again. Also, throughout the 1990s, the KMT government, under Lee’s strong leadership, tried all conceivable measures to dampen “China fever.” For instance, all China-bound investment projects over $1 million were subjected to a rigorous government review process. Listed companies with investment projects in mainland China were also subject to stricter financial regulations by Taiwan’s Security and Exchange Commission.30 Despite all the government-imposed restrictions and disincentives, the government has failed to thwart a tidal wave of westbound investment. The 1995–1996 missile crisis temporarily cooled off the investment fever, but the momentum picked up again as soon as the tension dissipated, with some largest business groups taking the lead. In response, Lee decided to meet the challenge head-on. Throwing a cold shower on big business, he issued a stern warning on August 14, 1996, before the National Assembly, and advised the business community with his new motto: “no haste, be patient.”31 The new tightening was reinforced by a threat of tax auditing and recall of loans from state-owned banks, two powerful disciplining measures against defiant business groups. At the climax of his presidency, Lee surged as a charismatic leader. He was able to extract considerable political mileage out of an emerging popular sentiment anchored on Taiwanese identity. At the high point of his presidency, he was once viewed by a majority of native Taiwanese as the embodiment of the glory and honor of the Taiwanese people and the protector of the island’s political independence from the PRC’s hostile reunification campaign. His charisma had made him a powerful evangelist preaching a separate national identity. His elevated stature also had privileged him to occupy the moral higher ground and play the politics of character assassination against any political groups calling for unconditional removal of the existing bans on the three links. At the same time, Lee Teng-hui and his advisers vigorously promoted the thesis of the “coming collapse of China.” Thus, throughout his tenure, Lee and his top officials were quite effective in dominating the agenda of the mainland policy and in fixing the parameters for policy debate. Under the Chen Shui-bian administration, the government pursued a fullscale “de-Sinicization” campaign that was designed to erase the island’s Chinese cultural heritage and suppress the Chinese identity. On the economic front, the DPP government zigzagged between partial relaxation and periodic

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retightening. During his first term, Chen made some concession to the mounting pressure from the business community. He decided to replace Lee Tenghui’s “no haste, be patient” policy with “active opening, effective management.” The ceiling that capped China-bound investment at $50 million per project was lifted and the cap of 40 percent per company was kept intact. The DPP government also took more items, notably eight-inch wafers, notebook computers, DVD-ROM drives, and upstream petrochemicals, off the list of “banned industries.” However, as Chen Shui-bian’s approval rate sank to a depressingly low level due to recurring corruption scandals, he shifted to retightening control over China-bound investment in the beginning of 2006 to sustain the allegiance of his die-hard supporters. Toward Chen Shui-bian’s second term, the impact of this state-orchestrated construction of an exclusive Taiwanese identity and popular aspiration for a separate nationhood was quite dramatic. Based on a systematic study of national identity through face-to-face surveys, the self-identity of the people on the island has significantly shifted. As Figure 8.1 indicates, exclusive Chinese identity has decreased, from nearly 33.4 percent in early 1993 to only 4.6 percent in early 2005.32 On the other hand, people who considered themselves only Taiwanese has risen steadily, from 27.1 percent in 1993, to 38 percent in 2002, to 44.5 percent in 2005. However, as much as the DPP government wanted to sway the popular sentiment in one particular direction, they were not able to manipulate it at will. The end outcomes, as dramatic as they may seem, still fell short of the expectation of some die-hard Taiwanese nationalists. There were some major disappointments. First, while fewer and fewer people held on to an exclusive Chinese identity, more and more people acquired a dual identity, viewing themselves as both Chinese and Taiwanese. For the silent majority, the two identities were not mutually exclusive. In early 1993, about 33.8 percent of respondents considered themselves both Chinese and Taiwanese; toward the end of the 1990s, more than 50 percent of respondents had adopted this dual identity. This group shrank somewhat under the Chen Shui-bian administration, to 48 percent around early 2005, when the tidal wave of rising Taiwanese identity reached its peak. Second, the most targeted generation for the state-sponsored resocialization—the younger generation—turned out to be least susceptible to the incubation of an exclusive Taiwanese identity. As Table 8.1 shows, in the 2005 post–Legislative Yuan election survey, close to 53 percent of people under age thirty-five, the so-called E-generation, subscribed themselves to a dual identity, a considerably greater proportion compared to the postwar baby boomer generation (ages thirty-five to fifty-five) and the prewar generation (over age fifty-five). It is among the prewar generation one finds the sharpest division between exclusive Taiwanese identity and Chinese identity. To gauge the impact of the state-sponsored nation-building project on the popular sentiment toward future relations between Taiwan and mainland

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Figure 8.1

100%

Longitudinal Changes in Self-Identity Among the Taiwanese Electorate, 1993–2005

5.7

3.0

90% 80%

Percentage Who Self-Identify

Page 242

2.6 14.8

20.8

3.4 11.8

3.1 10.4

3.5

2.9

7.9

4.6

33.4

70%

47.9 43.0

60%

40.5

51.9

50.6

50.7

50%

33.8 40% 30% 20% 10%

39.6

35.7 27.1

32.9

35.8

38.0

1999 1999 LY LY (N = (N1,357) = 1,357)

2000 2000 PR PR (N = (N1,409) = 1,409)

2002 2002 LYLY (N = (N 2,022) = 2,022)

44.5

0% 1993 1993 LYLY (N = (N 1,398) = 1,398)

1996 1996 LY LY (N = (N1,383) = 1,383)

1996 1996 PRPR (N = (N1,406) = 1,406)

2005 2005 LY LY (N = (N1,258) = 1,258)

Time of Postelection Survey (sample size) Taiwanese

Both Taiwanese and Chinese

Chinese

No opinion

Source: The survey data employed here were collected by the research team at National Taiwan University under the leadership of Fu Hu (for 1993, 1996, 1999, 2000), and by an interuniversity electoral study consortium under the auspices of Taiwan Electoral and Democratization Survey (for 2002, 2005). All surveys were financed by the National Science Council and administered under a probability sampling design in accordance with the probability-proportional-to-size principle. Notes: LY = Legislative Yuan; PR = presidential.

China,33 I utilize a longitudinal data series generated by a carefully designed pair of questions that help us to identify principled believers in independence and principled believers in reunification, as well as other types of people holding hybrid orientations.34 In this analysis, a principled believer in reunification is defined as a person who supports reunification when the condition is ripe, but rejects independence even under the most favorable condition. In a similar vein, a principled believer in independence is defined as a person who supports independence when the condition is ripe, but rejects reunification even under the most favorable condition. Between, we can identify strong believers in status quo, people who reject both independence and reunification under the respective favorable conditions; open-minded rationalists, who are open to both possibilities under the respective favorable conditions; and passivists, who hold no opinion on either question. The remaining categories include lean toward independence, weak opponent to reunification, lean toward reunification, and weak

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Taiwan’s Politics of Identity Table 8.1

243

Distribution of Self-Identity Among Three Generations of Taiwanese, 2005 (percentages)

Generations E-Generation (ages 20–35) (N = 523)

Postwar Baby Boomers (ages 36–55) (N = 661)

Prewar Generation (ages 56+) (N = 403)

Total (N = 1,587)

Taiwanese Both Taiwanese and Chinese Chinese No opinion

42.4 53.0

42.2 50.5

52.6 36.7

44.5 47.9

2.3 2.3

5.4 1.8

7.7 3.0

4.6 2.9

Total

33.0

41.7

25.3

100.0

Self-Identity

Source: Taiwan Electoral and Democratization Survey (post–Legislative Yuan election), 2005.

opponent to independence. Figure 8.2 shows the wording of the paired questions and the nine different possible orientations that one might identify. This measurement design is considered more revealing than the commonly used question that asks respondents about their simple preference for independence versus reunification, because under the latter, many respondents tend to hide their real preference behind an “in favor of status quo” answer. This measure also helps us to determine the extent of the potential support for either eventuality. My empirical findings should surprise proponents of the war scenario, who usually assume that few people in Taiwan, except for old mainlanders, Figure8.2 8.2Nine Nine Taiwanese Orientations Toward Independence vs. Unification Figure Taiwanese Orientations Toward Independence vs. Unification Unification Under Favorable Conditions: “If the social, economic, and political conditions in the mainland become comparable to Taiwan, the two sides should become unified.”

Independence Under Favorable Conditions: “If Taiwan can maintain peace with mainland China after declaring independence, Taiwan should become a new nation (state).”

Agree

No Opinion

Disagree

Agree

Open-minded rationalist

Lean toward independence

Principled believer in independence

No Opinion

Lean toward unification

Passivist

Weak opponent to unification

Disagree

Principled believer in unification

Weak opponent to independence

Strong believer in status quo

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would ever want to embrace the option of reunification, and should disappoint many Taiwanese nationalists, who had hoped that, by the end of Chen Shuibian’s first term, the political base for reunification would have largely evaporated and the popular commitment to Taiwan’s independence would have been fully consolidated. Table 8.2 presents the longitudinal data in full detail. Most significant are the percentages of respondents who fall into the four major categories: principled believers in independence, strong believers in status quo, open-minded rationalists, and principled believers in reunification, which lie on the four corners of Figure 8.2. Table 8.2 shows that the number of principled believers in independence has registered the most significant growth, from less than 9.9 percent in early 1993, to 20.3 percent in 2002, to 29.8 percent in 2006. On the other hand, the number of principled believers in reunification has shrunk visibly, decreasing from 26.5 percent in 1993, to 18.1 percent in 2002, to 15.1 percent in 2006. While the political foundation for Taiwan’s independence has been significantly strengthened over the past decade, the outcome does not suggest that the political foundation for Taiwanese nationalism has already been consolidated. The number of open-minded rationalists has been considerable, approaching 33.3 percent in 2006, and has remained larger than the numbers of either principled believers in reunification or principled believers in independence. This is hardly a solid foundation that will guarantee success of the political project of Taiwanese nation building in the end. Also, the existence of a sizable rationalist group might serve as a healthy buffer to mitigate a polarized conflict between Taiwanese nationalists and Chinese nationalists, by preventing one from overdominating the other. As long as the rationalists remain a significant factor, the future is more likely to be open-ended, as they may shift the political equilibrium in either direction depending on whether the external conditions become more favorable to reunification or to independence. This underlying distribution of popular orientation toward the issue of nationhood also provides a hospitable soil for the Pan Blue camp, widely viewed as leaning toward reunification, to strive for electoral ascendance, as its prospect of regaining the presidency in 2008 looks quite promising. My findings suggest that the latest round of the state-sponsored nationbuilding project registered only a limited success, at least from the Taiwanese nationalists’ point of view. The incubation of exclusive Taiwanese identity and the suppression of Chinese identity have met with some formidable structural constraints and countervailing forces. Also, the popular aspiration for a separate nationhood has not grown as rapidly as they had hoped, while the potential supporters for reunification remain alarmingly large. Among the most arduous constraints are the sheer weight of history, culture, and geography, and the legacy of the state-sponsored re-Sinicization program during the fortyfive-year rule of the mainlander-dominated KMT regime.

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Table 8.2

Shifting Taiwanese Political Foundations for Independence vs. Unification, 1993–2006 (percentages)

Propensity Toward Independence or Unification

1993 LY 1996 LY 1999 LY 2000 PR 2002 LY 2005 LY 2006 AB (N = 1,398) (N = 1,383) (N = 1,357) (N = 1,409) (N = 2,022) (N = 1,258) (N = 1,587) 9.9 2.3 1.6 24.4 2.1 4.9 26.5 7.2 21.1

16.8 2.7 2.3 26.2 1.9 4.8 23.8 7.2 14.2

22.8 2.4 2.1 28.8 1.8 3.2 16.4 11.0 11.3

24.0 2.5 0.6 34.4 1.3 2.3 19.3 6.6 9.0

20.3 4.5 1.9 22.8 3.1 2.8 18.1 11.2 15.3

27.6 5.0 2.0 30.6 1.4 2.7 13.3 7.2 10.2

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Principled believer in independence Lean toward independence Weak opponent to reunification Open-minded rationalist Weak opponent to independence Lean toward reunification Principled believer in reunification Strong believer in status quo Passivist

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29.8 2.6 1.1 33.3 1.1 1.7 15.1 7.5 7.8

Source: The survey data employed here were collected by the research team at National Taiwan University under the leadership of Fu Hu (for 1993, 1996, 1999, 2000), by an interuniversity electoral study consortium under the auspices of Taiwan Electoral and Democratization Survey (for 2002, 2005), and by the Asian Barometer Project at National Taiwan University (2006). All surveys were financed by the National Science Council and administered under a probability sampling design in accordance with the probability-proportional-to-size principle. Notes: AB = Asian Barometer; LY = Legislative Yuan; PR = presidential.

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At the same time, the constructors of an exclusive Taiwanese identity had to wrestle with competing claims on their allegiance coming from within the society, the magnetic lure of mainland China’s fast-growing economy, the emergence of a Mandarin-based cultural industry that spans coastal China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong and penetrates overseas Chinese communities everywhere on the globe, and Beijing’s concerted effort in facilitating the growth of cross-strait social ties, such as granting national treatment to “Taiwanese compatriots” working and living in mainland China, enacting a special quota for incoming Taiwanese students at China’s elite universities, and subsidizing cultural exchange programs. The most potent countervailing factor is the transformation of China itself. For Taiwan’s younger generation, the frozen image of a stagnant and backward China under the rule of a totalitarian regime faded away quickly. The coastal China that they have experienced since their adolescent years is a China going strong, pluralistic and prosperous. Another important reason that the elite-orchestrated construction of a popular aspiration for separate nationhood lost some of its steam toward the end of Chen Shui-bian’s first term was the growing awareness among the better-informed citizens and opinion leaders that the grand strategy for a timely substantiation of Taiwan’s sovereign status, vigorously pursued by Lee Teng-hui as well as the DPP incumbent, has done little to advance Taiwan’s national security and international standing. Instead, it has resulted in Taiwan’s increasing isolation in the region and caused some visible harm to Taiwan’s international credibility and economic vitality. The campaign tactics that DPP politicians repeatedly employed to reap electoral benefits, from pushing the envelope and testing Beijing’s bottom lines, have become a major source of friction between Taiwan and its most important security ally, the United States. In the eyes of Washington, Chen Shuibian has become very untrustworthy and increasingly a potential source of trouble. During the last round of the campaign for the 2004 election, Chen resorted to the same nerve-breaking campaign ploy when he found himself substantially trailing behind Lien Chan in the polls and carrying a depressingly low approval rate into the race. In November 2003, Chen Shui-bian gave the DPP caucus the green light to push for the passage of a highly controversial bill, a plebiscite and referendum law, that had been pigeon-holed by the KMT-PFP alliance and moderate DPP parliamentarians. On the campaign trail, Chen unveiled his plan of adopting a new constitution through plebiscite by the end of 2006. Chen also created an ad hoc “New Constitution Drafting Committee,” under the office of the president, to mark the beginning of this “constitution moment.” In early December 2003, Chen dropped another bombshell by announcing his plan to hold Taiwan’s first referendum that would allow the Taiwanese voters to affirm his “one state on each side of the strait” formulation and demand that China withdraw ballistic missiles targeting the island. The DPP strategists

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found a loophole in the newly passed plebiscite and referendum law35 that empowers the president to initiate referendums on national security issues when the country’s sovereignty is under imminent threat. By holding the referendum in conjunction with the upcoming 2004 presidential election, they hoped that Chen could ride on the coattails of a well-anticipated outpouring of support for the two referendum votes. Chen Shui-bian’s surprise move prompted the White House into a new round of brinkmanship. President George W. Bush sent a special envoy to Taipei to deliver his personal message asking Chen to drop the two referendum votes. Chen chose to ignore the message. Bush was so infuriated that he openly criticized Taiwan’s leader for his intention to change the status quo unilaterally in front of the visiting PRC’s premier, Weng Jiabao. This was the lowest point in Taiwanese-US relations since the United States had shifted recognition from Taiwan to mainland China in 1979. The governments of Japan, Germany, France, South Korea, Australia, and many ASEAN countries all lined up behind the Bush administration, registering their disapproval loudly and clearly, and culminating in French president Jacques Chirac’s remark calling the March 20, 2004, referendum “a grave mistake” that would destabilize Asia. Not even the US Congress, Taiwan’s most reliable political ally, came out to defend Taipei this time, something inconceivable only a few years ago. In the end, Chen was pressured to adopt a watered-down version of the two propositions to make the unprecedented referendums seemingly less provocative. From this point on, the Washington-Beijing-Taipei triangular relationship visibly tilted in favor of Beijing. The US government no longer placed much confidence in Taiwan’s elected leaders and felt compelled to undertake behindthe-scenes political juggling at higher frequency and greater intensity. The State Department scrutinized virtually every remark and action by Taiwan’s ranking officials. At the same time, Bush’s national security team launched a concerted effort to subtly but steadily redefine the US commitment toward Taiwan. Secretary of State Colin Powell remarked: “There is only one China. Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation.”36 Following Powell’s remark, which was widely circulated and dealt a huge blow to Taiwan’s decadelong effort to substantiate its sovereignty claim, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage dealt another, describing Taiwan “as the biggest landmine in Sino-U.S. relations.” Asked whether the United States would defend Taiwan in the event of an attack, he replied: “We have the requirement with the Taiwan Relations Act to keep sufficient force in the Pacific to be able to deter attack; we are not required to defend.”37 Finally, the US government’s surprisingly muted reaction to Beijing’s enactment of an antisecession law that obliged Beijing’s leaders to take coercive actions to stop Taiwan from moving toward independence, was a wake-up call. The visible erosion of the trust between Taipei and Washington helped convince many better-informed citizens that Chen Shui-bian’s adventurous strategy has literally reached its realistic limit.

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The growing antagonism between Taiwan’s business elite and the government has taken a heavy toll on the island’s economic vitality. For years, the business community’s plea for normalizing the trade relationship with Beijing, lifting bans on direct transportation, relaxing the rigid entry control for mainland Chinese visitors, and abolishing the 40 percent investment cap for Taiwanese companies in China has fallen on deaf ears in the DPP government. At the beginning of 2006, the business community’s frustration with the DPP government finally passed the point of no return. More and more Taiwanese firms decided to circumvent the 40 percent investment cap by establishing offshore shell companies for operating their subsidiaries in China. Subsequently, when these operations become profitable, they avoided Taiwan and chose the Hong Kong stock exchange for launching their initial public offers.38 Furthermore, many of the listed companies decided to scale down their operations in Taiwan through strategic decapitalization. Between 2000 and 2005, 173 firms opted for decapitalization, and the trend accelerated in 2006, during which 142 firms filed for decapitalization between January and July, bringing the cumulative number of decapitalized firms to 20 percent of Taiwan’s total listed firms. Many US and European companies have also downsized operations or moved out of the Taiwanese market altogether. Taipei’s European Chamber of Commerce lost fifteen corporate members in 2005, and additional thirty-two during the first ten months of 2006. As well, the DPP’s ideological bias against a normal trade relationship with the PRC has increasingly amounted to selfimposed economic isolation and marginalization. When Beijing suddenly emerged as the principal architect of Northeast Asia’s new cooperative and policy coordination frameworks, Taiwan was precluded from membership in important regional multilateral arrangements, most notably the regional free trade regime, currency-swap agreements, and the East Asia Summit. Grim long-term prospects have prompted a large number of small business owners and young professionals, believing that Taiwan’s economy had passed its prime, to seriously look for career opportunities on the mainland. Many of them are resettling their families in Shanghai and other metropolitan areas. More and more Taiwanese college graduates (more than 4,000 in 2005) are entering top graduate schools on the mainland. Over the past few years, most opinion polls have also detected a shift in favor of further economic integration with China, especially among the younger generation. China’s phenomenal economic rise has also begun to shape long-term perspectives, with more people grudgingly acknowledging the inevitability of reunification compared to those who believe that Taiwan independence is still possible. In a 2005 survey conducted by the Center for Election Studies of National Chengchi University (see Figure 8.3), 43.6 percent of respondents believed independence to be improbable (i.e., a 0.0–0.4 probability, or 0–40 percent likelihood), while only 25.8 percent believed reunification to be improbable.39 In contrast, 38.4 percent of respondents considered the probability of indepen-

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Assessing the Possibility of Independence and Reunification in Taiwan, 2005

30

Percentage Who Percentage Who Believe Believe

25

20

15

10

5

0 0–20%

30–40%

50%

60–70%

80–100%

Likelihood Likelihoodof ofIndependence/Reunification Independence/Reunification Independence

Don't know/No Don’t know/ No answer answer

Reunification

Source: Center for Election Studies, National Chengchi University.

dence to be equal to or greater than 0.5 (i.e., a 50 percent likelihood), while 57.5 percent of respondents believed the probability of unification to be equal to or greater than 0.5. If the trend of cross-strait economic integration continues at its current pace, one cannot rule out the possibility that the rising tide of Taiwanese nationalism will be reversed, while the growing awareness of the imperatives of cross-strait economic interdependence may load the dice of national identity in favor of cross-strait political integration over the long run. Whether this possibility will come to pass depends on the many other big questions discussed in this chapter, in particular on the outcome of the 2008 presidential election, which will shape not just the future course of Taiwan’s mainland policy but also the orientation of state-sponsored socialization mechanisms.

Conclusion My analysis lends some limited support to proponents of the peace scenario. Under this scenario, as cross-strait economic interdependence grows, shared

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interests increase. As the view that Taiwan’s future is tied to China, at least economically, gains more popular acceptance in Taiwan, political leaders of all partisan stripes must now address growing concern about the adverse consequences of deteriorating cross-strait political relations, as well as rising societal demand for a better balance between national security and economic rationality, and for a reduction in or removal of the possibility of war. In the end, the imperatives of economic interest did help the Pan Blue camp to mobilize increasing societal support for a moderate approach toward cross-strait relations, one that increasingly sought normalization of trade relationships, moderation of conflicts, and avoidance of war. On the other end of the security equation, Beijing’s newly acquired confidence that it has hit upon a strategy to bring Taiwan peacefully into the China fold can also help reduce the chance that tensions will escalate into conflict. Working under an implicit assumption that “time is on the PRC’s side,” Beijing’s leaders feel that they can now afford to be more flexible and patient, more reticent about the DPP government’s provocation, and more tolerant of political stalemate. An updated reading of US strategic intentions has helped alleviate their long-held worry that the United States is secretly supporting Taiwan’s independence. They are now counting more on the United States to draw the red lines than on ostensible military intimidation. However, my analysis does not support the view that cross-strait relations are on the verge of a major departure from the status quo. While the prospect of peaceful reconciliation has turned more promising, a negotiated peace between the two sides is still far off. On the one hand, it is unlikely that, in the foreseeable future, PRC leaders will be able to convince the Taiwanese that the “one country, two systems” formula is realistically the best offer available. On the other hand, it is inconceivable that any democratically elected leader would embrace a lasting accord that looks like a capitulation to Beijing’s political demands. Democratization has reinforced the Taiwanese quest to retain charge of the island’s own future, making the threshold for constructing a winning coalition for reunification extremely high.

Notes 1. Ross, “The US-China Peace.” 2. Campbell and Mitchell, “Crisis in the Taiwan Strait,” p. 14. 3. Abramowitz and Bosworth, “Adjusting to New Asia,” p. 120. 4. Tucker, “If Taiwan Chooses Unification, Should the United States Care?” pp. 15–28. 5. For example, Shlakpak, Orlestsky, and Wilson, Dire Strait? 6. Taiwan Affairs Office, State Council, “The One China Principle and the Taiwan Issue.”

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7. The official English text of Jiang Zemin’s address can be found at the website of China Daily: http://english.people.com.cn/200211/18/eng20021118_106985.shtml. 8. In 1992 the negotiators from mainland China and Taiwan met in Hong Kong and reached a consensus about “one China.” While they did not agree to a precise definition, they agreed to disagree, with each side to express its own view of what “one China” would mean. This modus operandi enabled them to move forward in their dialogue. On that basis, chief negotiators of both sides, Wang Daohan and Koo Chen-fu, met in 1993 in Singapore. For the most authoritative account and documentation on the controversy over what actually constituted the so-called 1992 Consensus, see Su and Cheng, “Yige zhongguo gezibiaoshu” [One China with Respective Interpretations]. 9. Pomfret, “China to Buy 8 More Russian Submarines.” 10. This is the conclusion of a recent comprehensive assessment of China’s military aspirations by the Pentagon. See Loeb, “China Buildup Said to Target Taiwan, U.S.,” p. A14. 11. The most forceful statement came from Secretary of State Colin Powell in confirmation-hearing testimony before Congress on January 17, 2001: “Let all who doubt, from whatever perspective, be assured of one solid truth: We expect and demand a peaceful settlement, one acceptable to people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.” On October 25, 2006, in her address to the Heritage Foundation, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated: “The three joint US-China communiqués and the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act remain the basis of cross-strait policy. While the communiqués acknowledge China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, the act commits the US to provide Taiwan with arms to defend itself, and pledges the US to maintain the capability to defend Taiwan against a Chinese military attack.” See Taipei Times, October 27, 2006, p. 1. 12. Ross, “Navigating the Taiwan Strait,” pp. 48–85. 13. Halloran, “Asia on the Horizon,” pp. 22–34. 14. On this point, please see Bush, Cross-Strait Relations. 15. Halloran, “Asia on the Horizon,” pp. 22–34. 16. Swaine, “Reverse Course?” 17. For an analysis of Beijing’s policy toward Taiwan during the 1990s, see Chu, “Making Sense of Beijing’s Policy Toward Taiwan,” pp. 193–221. 18. Rigger, “Two Visits, Many Interpretations,” pp. 35–37. 19. Pomfret, “China Suggests Missile Buildup Linked to Arms Sales to Taiwan.” 20. Pomfret, “China Embraces More Moderate Foreign Policy.” 21. The “Five Nos” are no declaration of independence, no alteration of the “Republic of China” name, no referendum on independence, no insertion of a “special state-to-state relations” concept into the constitution, and no need for a renunciation of the national reunification guidelines. 22. It became widely known later on that Raymond Burghart, director of the American Institute in Taiwan, had several intensive consultations with president-elect Chen Shui-bian during the drafting stage of his inauguration speech. Also it was alleged that Beijing had obtained the transcript of Chen’s speech in advance through the US channel. 23. According to the official statistics of the Taiwan Security Commission, at the end of 2002 about 60 percent of companies listed on the Taiwan stock exchange had invested in the mainland, and about 55 percent of listed companies in the over-thecounter market had done so. See China Times, January 19, 2003. 24. This is a key assumption of the social constructivist school. See, for instance, Wendt, “Identity and Structural Change in International Politics,” pp. 47–66.

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25. For an analysis supporting this view, see Zweig, Democratic Values, Political Structures, and Alternative Politics in Greater China. 26. For the historical roots of Taiwanese nationalism, refer to Chu and Lin, “Political Development in 20th Century Taiwan.” 27. On the importance of political elites and their mobilization in the development of nationalism, see Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism; Breuilly, Nationalism and the State; and Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed. 28. Chu and Lin, “Consolidating Taiwan’s New Democracy amid Competing National Identities.” 29. See Chu, Crafting Democracy in Taiwan, chap. 2. 30. For example, listed companies are not allowed to earmark funds raised through new share-issuing for mainland projects. Also, in principle, the annual sum of mainland investment by listed companies should not exceed their gross domestic investment in the same year. In addition, the total investment in China of any listed company cannot exceed 20 percent of its paid-in capital or net worth of its assets, whichever is smaller. 31. See China Times, August 15, 1996, p. 1. 32. The post–Legislative Yuan election survey is customarily conducted in January of the successive year, because the Legislative Yuan election is always held about mid-December. 33. The most commonly cited poll data on the trend of popular preference for independence versus reunification are made available by Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council. However, the integrity of the council’s data is dubious, because it has never released the full content of its questionnaire. Also, it is well known that the council often demanded its commissioned polling agencies to insert long and loaded leading statements before certain questions. 34. This battery was designed collectively by a research team responsible for the 1991 National Assembly election survey as part of the Taiwan Social Image Survey Series. The team comprised the following members: Chu Yun-han, Shyu Huo-yan, Wu Nei-teh, and You Ying-lung. 35. The law was passed because this time the KMT-PFP coalition, in a totally unexpected way, took a tactical U-turn and played a game of chicken with the DPP. 36. Yuen, interview with Phoenix TV. 37. Based on a transcript, issued by the US State Department, of a television interview on December 20, 2004. 38. By the end of October 2006, there were forty-one China-based Taiwanese firms listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. See Commercial Times, November 3, 2006, p. A4. 39. In the survey, respondents were asked two parallel questions: first, to assess the probability of independence as the end outcome of cross-strait relations, on a 0–10 scale in which 0 meant zero probability and 10 meant 100 percent probability; and second, to assess the probability of reunification, on the same scale.

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PART 4 Conclusion

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9 Interests, Identity, and Power in Northeast Asian Security Byung-Kook Kim

T

he end of the Cold War has been celebrated for over a decade, but it is still debated what it means for Northeast Asia. The Cold War, as historically understood as a contest for ideological and military supremacy between liberal democracy and communism, ended in 1989, but the two Northeast Asian communist regimes survived and, in the case of China, even thrived along with the Vietnamese communist regime in Southeast Asia. The survivors, however, look like anything but orthodox communist regimes. The Chinese power elite has discovered a “socialist path” to the market economy, fostering and eventually incorporating burgeoning bourgeois forces into its Leninist party-state political superstructure. Even North Korea showed a sign of change—albeit a timid one—when it adjusted its price system in July 2002 after repeated failures of partial reform,1 only to lose control over politically corrosive inflationary pressures. The result is a hybrid regime refusing any easy classification in China, and a failed state incapable of even feeding people in North Korea. The Cold War has certainly ended in Northeast Asia, too, but because it ended with its communist party-states’ efforts of partial reform rather than their collapse from without by democratic forces, Northeast Asia’s post–Cold War order is still marked by an internal divide. That divide has two dimensions. The most frequently debated dimension concerns great power rivalry and focuses on only “partially” reformed China’s potential as a “revisionist state” challenging Northeast Asia’s US-centric regional order. The authors of this volume are skeptical of such alarmist views on great power conflict. To reap the benefits of cooperation, but also to ensure against the risks of conflict, the United States pursues a policy of “hedged engagement” toward China, and China a strategy of “hedged acquiescence” toward the United States, to quote Minxin Pei (Chapter 4). Aware of Russia’s limitation of power, Alexander Lukin (Chapter 6) argues, Vladimir Putin swings between the United States and China as a “balancer” in ad hoc inconsistent 255

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ways, but this balancing is in reality an act of courting US support with the “China card.” Russia sides with China less to put its weight behind the weaker China than to raise its strategic value before and win concession from the stronger United States. Then there is Japan, which Yoshinobu Yamamoto (Chapter 5) sees as having decisively placed itself under US leadership. Fearing China as a potential challenger and worried over North Korea’s nuclear and missile development, Japan strives to become a “normal state” capable of engaging in United Nations peacekeeping efforts and providing logistical support for US military forces in its “surrounding areas” and, increasingly, beyond. Each of these three great powers, in other words, has accommodated rather than challenged US primacy in its own distinctive ways. A deeper and more dangerous divide lies within each set of Northeast Asia’s divided nations rather than among its great powers. Moreover, it is from the weaker, not the stronger, part of these divided-nation dyads that serious threats to regional stability arise. Uneven economic growth has long tilted power toward Seoul against Pyongyang on the Korean peninsula, and in favor of Beijing against Taipei in cross-strait relations, prompting each of the weaker parties to scramble for political protection. Unable to keep up with Seoul’s military buildup, but also searching for a way to start dialogue with Washington on its own terms, Pyongyang has kept alive its option of going nuclear by clandestinely engaging in a uranium enrichment program since it froze plutonium-based nuclear programs as part of the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework. As Byung-Kook Kim (Chapter 7) argues, the rogue state has pursued nuclear development programs in “slow motion,”2 moving back one or another “red line” imagined by US strategic thinkers, in order to make its threat of nuclearization credible and its offer of denuclearization attractive to Washington. In a similar manner of defensive strategic thinking, Taipei has toyed with “creeping independence,” to quote Yun-han Chu (Chapter 8), before Beijing grows too big and too strong for it to resist unification. By doing so, Pyongyang and Taipei have respectively taken on Washington’s rule of nonproliferation and Beijing’s principle of “one China.” The critical question for Northeast Asia is how these two contrasting dynamics of the great powers’ accommodation of US foreign policy, and the revisionist challenges by the declining divided nations, add up. As realists predict, power “talks,” especially in a region like Northeast Asia, which lacks multilateral institutions to facilitate dialogue based on shared principles, norms, and rules.3 The United States pursued a pincer operation against North Korea from its position of preponderance in 1994, pledging a supply of heavy oil and two light water reactors in exchange for a nuclear freeze, but also threatening an escalation of conflict if North Korea refused any deal on its plutonium-based nuclear program. The result was the Geneva Agreed Framework. When North Korea allegedly revealed a highly enriched uranium weapons program in October 2002, power talked again. The United States sus-

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pended its supply of heavy oil. This time China, too, stepped in to dissuade North Korea from going nuclear, shutting down its oil pipeline for three days in February 2003 and even threatening its abstention from a future UN Security Council vote on sanctions if North Korea refused to change its course of action. To lure North Korea into resuming talks on a nuclear freeze, China, like the United States in 1994, increased its shipment of corn and wheat.4 As a result, China hosted the three-party talks and later the six-party talks with US support. The dynamics of major power accommodation usually had their way in cross-strait relations, too. The principle of “one country, two systems” is a product of this accommodation, recognizing China’s ambition for national unification as an undeniable, if not legitimate, political reality, but without jeopardizing the US security interest in controlling vital sea lanes and guarding Taiwanese democracy. The principle indefinitely postponed national unification, but also left room for negotiation on its timing and its institutional character. By endorsing a gradual and peaceful form of national unification, China alleviates the worst fear of the United States—Taiwan falling under Chinese military invasion—but it is also relieved from its own nightmare of “creeping Taiwanese independence.” To make China stick with this policy of gradual negotiated settlement, the United States finds it necessary to restrain Taiwan from declaring statehood based on its new “Taiwanese” rather than old “Chinese” identity. Having alleviated each other’s worst fears through ruling out immediate unification and independence, the United States and China have been able to collaborate where their interests converge, including international trade and the war on terror. Like North Korea’s toying with nuclear development, Taiwan as a declining power in cross-strait relations periodically shows a revisionist separatist urge, but its policy of creeping independence has been kept in check by China’s restrained but still threatening show of military power, as in 1996, and by US low-profile but unambiguous opposition against the rhetoric of separatism espoused by Lee Teng-hui and later by Chen Shui-bian. Nonetheless, power does not always flow unidirectionally from the strong to the weak.5 This is especially so in Northeast Asia, where the middle powers are de facto or de jure security allies and client states of the rival regional powers, thus enjoying a degree of influence over the powerful by virtue of ideology, geopolitics, and transnational political ties. China shares the US vision of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, but unlike its superpower competitor, it prefers employing carrots over sticks in discouraging North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship, for fear of provoking a regime change in what it perceives as a buffer zone against forward-deployed US military forces. The collapse of the Kim Jong Il regime could seriously jeopardize its credibility as a great power, too, because by maintaining its “Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance” with North Korea since 1961, China is an underwriter of North Korean security and a guarantor of its regime survival.

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Likewise, the United States is careful not to let its rapprochement with China politically demoralize Taiwan, lest an alarmed Taiwan declare independence or opt for unification on China’s terms. Neither Taiwan’s declaration of independence nor its unification with China falls within the security interests of the United States. The independence option raises threats of war, while unification undermines one of the most powerful leverages the United States maintains over China. The reputation of the United States as a great power would suffer, too, because by its Taiwan Relations Act, the United States has become a defender of Taiwanese sovereignty and democracy. And from such constraints have emerged opportunities for North Korea and Taiwan to test their revisionist ideas on not only their foes but also patron states, only to prompt the United States and China to reactivate a concert of great powers to defend whatever is left of their respective policies of nonproliferation and “one China.” Thus deadlock and crisis have become systemic features of Northeast Asian regional politics. The level of tension follows a controlled spiral pattern, rising higher as North Korea and Taiwan each tests its patron’s endurance of risks and its foes’ taste for conflict by pushing back “red lines.” The spiral of tension, however, has an upper—albeit incrementally upward-moving—ceiling, because knowing their security vulnerabilities, North Korea and Taiwan only push back red lines furtively rather than deploy nuclear weapons or declare independence. Those actions could explode Northeast Asia’s spiral of tension into conflict. Accordingly, Northeast Asia is in a perpetual standoff, and crisis is an integral part of its regional relations. The deadlock among its divided nations, their patrons, and their foes frequently shows signs of an implosion or an explosion, but this uneasy equilibrium of deadlock has always reestablished itself, because it is a second-best situation for Northeast Asia’s great powers as well as middle powers. The standoff leaves future cross-strait relations uncertain but also open, giving both China and Taiwan hope to pursue unification or independence at a later time. The escalation into military conflict, by contrast, threatens regional stability, without which China cannot maintain its hyper–economic growth and Taiwan its de facto sovereignty. North Korea is not much different, satisfied with what looks like an untenable standoff if the alternative were to be a US preemptive strike against its nuclear facilities or a US initiative of regime transformation, with or without tacit Chinese endorsement. Then there is the revisionism of the United States, which has resulted in Northeast Asia’s controlled tension becoming even more tense and potentially less controllable. Like Pyongyang’s challenging of global nonproliferation rules and Taipei’s defiance of Beijing’s principle of “one China,” on which regional stability rests, George W. Bush’s United States harbors a revisionist ambition, too. As demonstrated by Jonathan D. Pollack (Chapter 3), the United States is confident of its military primacy and technological edge, but is also caught in an unprecedented fear of asymmetric threats targeting its vulnerabil-

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ities. Both confidence and fear have driven its foreign policy revolution since September 11, 2001.6 Whereas during the Cold War the United States sought global leadership, today US “neocons” seek primacy. Breaking away from its reactive Cold War strategic doctrine of deterrence and containment, Bush embraces a radically assertive, if not bellicose, doctrine of preventive war and regime change in repelling asymmetric threats. Reflecting these changes in threat perception, power ambition, and strategic doctrine, he distances himself from multilateralism, too. In translating the post–September 11 US worldview into specific policy actions, Bush opts for unilateralism even toward US allies. From the launching of war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to the overhaul of military alliance systems into a “coalition of the willing,” the United States assumes its allies to be an accommodator passively accepting a long list of its strategic initiatives as an unalterable fait accompli. This revolution in US foreign policy shows up most visibly in war against Islamic terrorists, but it has profoundly affected Northeast Asia too. The “military transformation,” pursued in tandem with a deep US military penetration into the “arc of instability,” could serve as much as a basis for encircling China as it establishes an arc of forward-deployed military troops ready for an expedition against Islamic terrorist groups. Japan is aware of this potential, and so is an ardent supporter of the US war on terror. For Japan’s leaders, war on terror constitutes an opportunity to realize their own revisionist goal of transforming Japan into a “normal state,” capable of forcibly projecting power into its surrounding areas and beyond without any postwar pacifist ideological hang-ups and constitutional constraints. Apart from empowering Japan and thus fueling its rivalry with China, war on terror also puts the United States on a collision course with North Korea. Bush condemned it as a rogue state clandestinely aiding terrorists as part of an “axis of evil.” Kim Jong Il countered with the “revelation” of uranium enrichment programs in October 2002, and publicly declared his possession of nuclear weapons in February 2005. A month earlier, in his second inaugural speech, Bush had pledged to secure peace through an “expansion of freedom.” Condoleezza Rice followed with her own messianic rhetoric, singling out six countries, including North Korea, as “outposts of tyranny,” whose liberation furthered world peace. The secretary of state–designate solemnly declared: “We cannot rest until every person living in a ‘fear society’ has finally won their freedom.” Those words raised the specter of the United States putting into effect its strategy of regime transformation against North Korea. This concluding chapter is structured along three interrelated themes. First is the controlled spiral of tension in Northeast Asia, where conflict periodically escalates, but with an incrementally upward-moving ceiling, with asymmetric power structures in the region being a prime cause. The two pillars of regional stability, the United States and China, are in a temporally as

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well as spatially asymmetric race for power, giving each of their allies, foes, and clients a window of opportunity to play off these stabilizers in pursuit of revisionist foreign policy goals. Moreover, the United States under Bush harbors a revisionist ambition, too, making control over Northeast Asia’s controlled spiral of tension more difficult. Second is Northeast Asian “bilateral regionalism”—an enthusiasm for bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) as a result of the region’s three great powers attempting to prevent one another from triumphing in the asymmetric race for power. Third is the identity politics of Northeast Asia’s middle powers—North Korea, Taiwan, and South Korea—whose unorthodox, revisionist foreign policies make the controlled spiral of tension in the region even less controllable. These middle powers face steep uphill struggles in their revisionism, but do not abandon their effort despite repeated setbacks, because their revisionism arises from crises in national identity, with enduring ideological roots. Thus, Northeast Asia’s three middle powers are as much an enduring source of regional instability as are its three great powers. However, like their great power counterparts, Pyongyang, Seoul, and Taipei play their revisionism in a calculated way, with a sense of self-control, lest their revisionism turn national identity crises into explosive international security crises. Thus continues Northeast Asia’s spiral of tension with an upward-moving ceiling. Crisis management has become a generic feature of Northeast Asian regional politics.

Great Powers: A Race for Time The controlled spiral of tension in Northeast Asia, between stability and instability and between conflict and cooperation, is driven by the United States and China, whose distrust and even fear of each other’s hidden agendas and changing capabilities contradict their growing sense of common interests engendered by complex interdependence. The forces of distrust and fear have emerged from their power relations, which is a singularly unique condition in both spatial and temporal asymmetry. Spatially, the United States rules over maritime Northeast Asia through naval and air supremacy, whereas China dominates over continental Northeast Asia with its colossal land power. Temporarily, the United States is today’s hegemon and China is everyone’s imagined future superpower capable of ending US hegemony. This spatially and temporally asymmetric power structure has produced a uniquely dynamic game of rivalry. The United States strives to tame China before it grows too big and too strong, whereas China follows a strategy of ta¯ogua¯ng ya˘nghuì, or “hiding one’s talents and waiting for a ripe opportunity,” believing it has time on its side. China “acts when action is needed,” as its other more proactive or aggressive foreign policy principle of yousuo zuòwéi suggests, but even then it avoids escalating conflict with the United States, lest a premature confronta-

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tion disrupt China’s growth and, with it, destroy that “ripe opportunity” to show its talents. This race for time has certainly limited Sino-American cooperation in both scope and depth, but it is fought peacefully, without seriously weakening Northeast Asia’s status quo. The taming of China usually translates into a policy of engagement for US policymakers, including support for China’s entry into multilateral economic institutions embedded with liberal US values and norms. China, for its part, has sought membership in multilateral institutions as part of a strategy to tap global resources, including those of its real or imagined US rival, to economically catch up with and even surpass the United States, but this policy of ta¯ogua¯ng ya˘nghuì has further integrated China into global markets, thus leaving it less in charge of its own destiny. The volume and speed of transnational exchanges of money, goods, and humans have increased dramatically, dragging China into an unfamiliar condition of complex interdependence7 in which conflict proliferates with foreign trade partners and investors, but without a rupture of ties, because severing relations incurs prohibitively high economic and political costs. Surely, China is growing in power through its hybrid socialist market strategy of modernization, but its economy has also become deeply enmeshed in global markets, thus constraining as much as enabling China’s sovereign exercise of power. Because of its strategy of growth through foreign trade and investment, China’s perception of the United States has become Janus-like, with the United States seen as a partner-in-rivalry, or as a rival-in-partnership. A similar dualism characterizes how the United States perceives China. The uneasy equilibrium of America’s “hedged engagement” and China’s “hedged acquiescence,” then, has emerged from these dualistic images, which restrain the United States and China not only from moving too close to each other, but also from drifting too far away from each other in regional crisis management. The question, then, is whether the United States and China could succeed continuously in restraining their rivalry from escalating into confrontation. The 9/11 terrorist attack, and the war on terror that resulted from it, put the United States and China on a path of hedged engagement, away from their seemingly intractable pre-9/11 contest of will, which was played out over a diverse array of issues, including, in 1996, Taiwanese independence, human rights, and intellectual property rights; in 1999, the bombing by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of China’s embassy in Belgrade, China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), and a US crackdown on alleged Chinese nuclear spying; and in 2001, a collision between a Chinese naval fighter jet and a US spy plane near Hainan Island, Taiwan’s purchase of high-tech US military weapons, and Bush’s brave talk of defending Taiwan regardless of costs. The aftermath of 9/11 brought rapprochement, because the United States, entrapped in the quagmire of its war on terror, needed China’s neutrality, if not support, and because China required a friendly United States

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to successfully implement its ta¯ogua¯ng ya˘nghuì strategy of avoiding conflict until it acquired strength. Nonetheless, the war on terror could have a negative long-term fallout on regional stability by prompting the United States to transform its force structures and alliance systems. Initiated by Bill Clinton in 1997, but implemented aggressively under Bush after 9/11, the US bipartisan strategy of “military transformation” had ramifications far beyond the war on terror. Conceived as response to a new kind of “asymmetric threat”—rogue states and terrorists developing “niche capabilities” and attacking the United States at its vulnerable points with weapons of mass destruction—the US doctrine of military transformation was envisioned to make the US military services “interoperable.” Naval, air, and ground military troops were to support one another as part of a genuinely “joint” force through the systematic use of information technology in weapons systems, command structures, and military organization,8 and were geared up to “detect, identify, and track far greater numbers of targets over a larger area for a longer time than ever before.” The planned joint force, in other words, enjoyed “greater mobility, precision, speed, stealth, and strike ranges while [it] sharply [reduced] the logistics footprint,”9 in order to preempt terrorists and rogue states from striking with weapons of mass destruction. This revolution in military technologies and force structures is targeted at Islamic terrorism, but is bound to tip military power still further toward the United States in Northeast Asia. The high-tech-driven joint force of the United States dwarfs China’s military forces in capability, despite China’s renewed effort to catch up with US naval and air supremacy since 2002. The technological revolution, moreover, has proceeded in tandem with a revolution in the US military alliance system. The high-tech joint force could have its intended effect only if there exist “numerous small, dispersed supply points” from which ground, sea, and air forces can rapidly and flexibly move in and out to form one integral military force of varying size.10 That has required the United States to dismantle its Cold War strategy of concentrating armed forces in a few fixed bases. In their place, Bush has envisioned a “coalition of the willing,” who fly in and out of war zones with US military troops to attack rogue states and terrorists. The revolution in military organization requires a “comprehensive” alliance system, with its members sharing common values as well as common interests. Flying in and out of war zones with US military troops “anytime, anywhere,” far from one’s immediate region and through a US-built “ubiquitous network” of “power projection hubs,” “main operating bases,” “forward operating sites,” and “cooperative security locations,” as part of an international police with or without a UN endorsement, constitutes a too-demanding role for most countries, except those very few that comprehensively share values, interests, and threat perceptions with the United States in global as well as regional politics. Like the US revolution in military technologies and force structures, the US revolution in alliance goals,

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missions, strategies, and organization would surely serve as a “net” to restrict China’s future regional and global military options. Whether intended or unintended, such a negative impact on China’s strategic options is already visible. In December 2004, Japan revised its “National Defense Program Outline,” a set of basic rules, principles, and guidelines governing security policy and defense capability improvement, in order to bring its security strategy and force structures more in tune with those of the United States. Originally issued in 1976, Japan had revised its defense outline only once, in 1995, when the United States, for its part, drew up the “Nye Report” in support of continuing a strong military forward deployment in Northeast Asia. The US and Japanese efforts converged in a joint declaration making regional stability a new mission of the US-Japanese alliance. The 2004 defense outline was an extension of this long-term trend of alliance building, but it also raised bilateral security cooperation onto a qualitatively higher plane. The new defense outline echoed the post-9/11 strategic doctrine of the United States, calling for a slim but formidable information technology–equipped and network-centric Japanese armed forces working hand-in-hand with the United States to deter terrorists and rogue states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction and damaging global and regional stability with asymmetric threats. The US-Japanese alliance, in short, expanded its mission both geographically and functionally in the aftermath of 9/11, from homeland defense to regional stability to global war on asymmetric threats. That alliance expansion has also implied a technological, geographic, and functional transformation of the Japanese armed forces in relationship to the United States, from a support role to a global strategic partner. Given its geographic location, Japan’s slow but irreversible transformation into a “normal state,” with its sovereignty restored partly in security realms, was marked by latent hostility toward China. The 2004 defense outline called for keeping an eye on China’s pursuit of greater nuclear and missile capabilities, as well as its modernization of naval and air power. The document was sterner on North Korea, naming its deployment and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles as a “destabilizing factor” in Northeast Asian security affairs. The preceding 1995 defense outline had referred only generally to inter-Korea and crossstrait relations as a source of regional uncertainty and instability. The impact of the US transformation of military technologies, force structures, and alliance systems on China’s future range of options shows up in what US security analysts have called an “arc of instability” running from the Middle East, through Central Asia, into Southeast Asia. Within this arc are fought intrastate ethnic and religious battles, as well as interstate conflicts, including war on terror. Within this arc is also housed a “strategic energy ellipse” that supports global markets, including China, with a vast supply of oil and natural gas. The US military expansion into this arc of instability has occurred in tandem with the downsizing of US military bases in Germany and South Korea.

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By 2002 the United States had constructed its own arc of military bases across Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan.11 To the northwest of this “Greater” Middle East danger zone, moreover, the United States has secured base rights in Bulgaria and Romania. To the southeast is another long string of US military installations, encompassing India, Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia. Serving as “lily pads” to which US military troops can jump like frogs from larger military bases in the United States, in the territories of NATO allies, and in Japan and South Korea,12 these installations could be used against China if its ascendance suddenly looks threatening to US interests. Even Vietnam has provided military facilities. This “family of bases,” linking up distant countries into a “ubiquitous net” of US military forces, has provoked China’s fear of encirclement. China’s future strategic options surely have become constrained, because from these interlinked military bases and installations, the United States could cut off China from its Middle East sources of oil and natural gas “anytime, anywhere.” Undeniably, Bush’s military transformation, pursued in tandem with and drawing force from the war on terror, has met resistance both internally and externally. The concept of military transformation, in fact, was a compromise forced by US armed forces, who opposed the more ambitious original proposal for a “revolution in military technology.” The revolution, its critics charged, would push research and development costs beyond control and, more importantly, deprive some of the US military’s existing services of their raison d’être without a guarantee of success.13 Even after Bush conceptualized his objective in terms of a “transformation” rather than a disruptive and risky “revolution” or a less innovative “change,” it took three years for his security aides to convert their still-evolving ideas of military transformation into a concrete set of policies. The US military transformation has been an evolving concept, with new questions raised and old answers revised during its testing as a policy guideline. The war on terror, from which Bush has drawn political and technical rationales for his transformation strategy, has caused even more intense conflicts. There exists what The Economist has called “an American consensus” behind the war on terror, with the US Congress backing up military action against Afghanistan and Iraq with dollars and guns on a bipartisan basis.14 But in spite of such unity on overall foreign policy goals,15 the United States has internally polarized over how that war should be fought. Some have sided with unilateralism, while others have urged Bush to work through and with allies in hunting down terrorist groups. Americans have also split over his doctrine of preventive war. Outside the United States, where the shock of 9/11 was felt less, resistance has acquired a greater force. Two European allies, France and Germany, opposed Bush’s conduct of the Iraq War campaign. In need of US backing in

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peacefully resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis, South Korea dispatched over 3,000 noncombat soldiers, but not until a year after Donald Rumsfeld had made the request. These three allies, however, eventually established a modus vivendi with the United States, because they needed US cooperation to further their state interests. UN Security Council Resolution 1548, unanimously adopted in 2004, constituted an effort to rebuild transatlantic ties through political exchange, with the United States agreeing to swiftly establish a democratic Iraqi state, through a general election, in return for Western Europe’s support for its war on terror. Moreover, France and Germany won access to postwar reconstruction programs by forcing the United States to place Iraqi oil revenues under control of Iyad Allawi’s interim government. South Korea, too, agreed on an exchange with its US ally, albeit a fundamentally asymmetric one, given its security vulnerabilities as precipitated by North Korea’s nuclear program. To shed his image as a political radical with an anti-American bent, Roh Moo Hyun accepted Rumsfeld’s relocation of US military troops away from North Korea’s forward-deployed artilleries to the south of Han River, and began talks on the strategic flexibility of US Forces Korea (USFK) as a regional stabilizer whose military troops could fly in and out of South Korea’s territory to counter a military contingency. In return for this “concession,” Roh Moo Hyun hoped to arrest America’s alienation from his government, which profoundly threatened South Korea’s military security, economic growth, and political stability. The forces of political resistance, by contrast, ran much stronger at the level of society. Protected from external pressures, societies inevitably lacked their states’ sense of pragmatism in dealings with international political challenges. Whereas states put a brake on anti-American sentiments to defend their interests in international arenas, societies became hostage of those sentiments and raised an emotionally charged moral critique against US unilateralism. Thus, in many states allied with the United States, there developed a gap between foreign policy and public opinion, with states accommodating Bush’s war in Iraq in varying scope and speed, while their societies harbored strong antiwar sentiments. Even where the war on terror initially drew strong popular backing, as in Great Britain and Japan, public views acquired antiwar or even anti-American strains after Bush’s military campaign in Iraq turned into a quagmire. When asked whether Bush’s reelection in 2004 enhanced global security and world peace, only 29 percent in Great Britain replied positively. In Japan, which Richard L. Armitage once characterized as a “Great Britain in Asia,” unswervingly backing the United States with its growing military muscle in regional and global arenas,16 even fewer people, 15 percent, replied positively.17 Nonetheless, Tony Blair and Junichiro Koizumi stood by Bush in the war on terror, and thus the United States became a political issue between state and society even in these two most loyal US-allied states.

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South Korea constituted a more complex case, where the Bush administration’s drive to transform this unipolar moment of US hegemony into a prolonged unipolar era through military transformation and the war on terror has resonated with greater shock, given South Korea’s singularly unique security situation. The South saw a nuclear North Korea as threatening, but similarly feared its US ally’s neocons, whose radical crusade of annihilating rogue states and terrorists could intentionally or unintentionally boomerang into another civil war on the Korean peninsula. Then there was Roh Moo Hyun’s presidential election in 2002, followed by his hurriedly organized Uri Party’s general-election victory two years later. Both political surprises were partly a product of fortuitous events, including an increase in anti-American candlelight vigils triggered by what radical nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) called the “negligent homicide” of two girls by US soldiers during a military exercise in June 2002, and the motion of impeachment against Roh Moo Hyun by the opposition party—the Hannara Party (Grand National Party)—in March 2004, in spite of public opposition. Those two elections brought a silent revolution, with South Korea’s chaeya dissidents, NGO activists, and “progressive ‘386’ generation” politicians taking power away from its conservative “5060 generation.”18 Unlike Japan, South Korea was undergoing a drastic change of its political elite when Bush threatened Kim Jong Il with sanctions, invaded Iraq, and began transforming the military forces as well as alliance systems of the United States. Consequently, more than any other ally of the United States, South Korea reacted to Bush with both indecision and volatility (Chapter 7). Already in 2002, well before anti-Americanism became a global fad except among Muslim peoples, the United States suffered an image problem in South Korea, because the war on terror came much earlier here, in response to its northern neighbor’s nuclear blackmail. Then, in 2003, when “anti-Bushism,” if not anti-Americanism, spread globally like an epidemic in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, South Korea saw its public opinion swing rightward. Many of its “mid-roaders,” in particular, became conservative,19 lest South Korea lose US support when that support was most needed. To force North Korea to surrender its nuclear ambition and to rejuvenate South Korea’s badly shaken economy with a continuous injection of foreign capital, Roh Moo Hyun needed a robust alliance with the United States. The South Korean acquiescence to US foreign policy, however, scarcely restored trust and loyalty in the United States. On the contrary, Roh Moo Hyun antagonized Rumsfeld by pursuing a linkage strategy. In return for accommodating Rumsfeld’s request for USFK troop relocation and South Korean troop dispatch to Iraq, Roh Moo Hyun asked the United States to restrain from imposing sanctions on North Korea. The military transformation and troop dispatch were conceived as leverages to change Bush’s North Korea policy. While opposing any drastic US response against North Korea, including surgical air strikes and “regime transformation” aiming for a leadership change in Pyongyang, Roh

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also endorsed his predecessor’s conciliatory “sunshine policy” of buying peace through economic aid. To this end, Roh supported Hyundai’s construction of an industrial complex for South Korean business companies in Gaesong, North Korea. This policy of engagement irritated Washington, especially during Pyongyang’s escalation of nuclear brinkmanship. However, barring North Korea’s actual deployment of a nuclear weapon or, even worse, transfer of nuclear materials to state and nonstate sponsors of terrorism, Seoul and Washington were apparently ready to accommodate each other’s diverging foreign policy priorities through asymmetric political exchange.

Northeast Asian “Bilateral Regionalism” The race for time engendered a distinctive game of regionalism, too. For Western Europe and South America, where regional economic institutions deepened and widened more than in any other group of nations, regionalist ideas were born out of and driven forcibly by a security strategy of “mutual hostages.” The states simultaneously tied their hands by agreeing on a regional set of rules and norms on economic policy, with which they created a new historical condition of complex interdependence: peace ruled because wars imposed prohibitively high costs on all parties. The strategy of preempting war by making states hold each other’s economies hostage worked in Western Europe and South America because their major contenders for regional leadership—France and West Germany in 1951, and Argentina and Brazil in 1979—were roughly equal in power. Moreover, in Western Europe there existed a “swinging state,” like Italy and later Great Britain, that prevented any one country or group of countries from becoming a permanent majority in regional policymaking bodies. These two structural qualities, power symmetry and multipolarity, helped Western Europe collaborate without fearing France or West Germany as a future regional hegemon. Also, support for Western Europe’s regional integration by the United States as part of its Cold War strategy of containment obviously aided France and West Germany’s launching of a common policy on coal and steel in 1952. The power structure of Northeast Asia diverges sharply. Rather than multipolar, its top tier of great powers are more bipolar, but in a dynamic and asymmetric way. China, confident of its future status as Northeast Asia’s regional hegemon, but fearful of its current vulnerabilities as a newly industrializing country facing an economically and technologically superior Japan, prefers to go it alone with its mercantilist strategy of modernization. Launching an FTA with Japan could destroy its sources of autonomy, if pursued prematurely. Ironically, Japan, too, has opposed any early FTA with China, for fear of inadvertently speeding up China’s ascendance as a regional hegemon. Whereas regional integration was perceived as formalizing and strengthening the power balance in Western Europe and South America, in asymmetrically

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bipolar Northeast Asia, without any third party acting as a swinging factor in a credible way, regional integration has been judged as part of Sino-Japanese hegemonic rivalries. Thus it has prevented regionalist ideas from developing along the lines of South America’s model of an inclusionary FTA with its two most powerful regional players on board, let alone Western Europe’s more ambitious experiment of creating a supranational institution. The United States has also welcomed such a lack of interest in creating a Sino-Japanese FTA in both China and Japan, because this provides it with an opportunity to play off the two in pursuing its interests. However, outside of Sino-Japanese relations have emerged two other kinds of “regionalism,” which have played out Northeast Asia’s game of hegemonic struggles in different ways. The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), established as a form of “open regionalism,” in opposition to exclusionary regional blocs like the European Union (EU), North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur), set a timetable for trade liberalization and economic deregulation much in conformity with WTO rules and regulations for the heterogeneous Pacific Rim countries. APEC constituted a regional effort to prevent the spread of discriminatory regional blocs in the Asia Pacific region rather than a regionalist program driven by a teleological vision of creating a supranational entity valued in and of itself, as was the case with the EU. Nor was it a less ambitious but still regionalist campaign of creating a trade bloc like NAFTA or Mercosur. The objective was to strengthen global—not regional—economic integration through preventing major Asia Pacific countries from emulating the EU, NAFTA, or Mercosur. China and Japan became advocates of open regionalism because they were then confident of their mercantilist developmental abilities to compete globally, and were wary of each other’s political intentions. The United States welcomed APEC while embracing closed regionalism in the form of NAFTA in its backyard, because any Northeast Asian regionalist initiative excluding it threatened US interests. That included trade blocs anchored on Japan, its loyal Asian ally, as much as one centered around China, its imagined or real strategic rival. The US desire was for a Japanese state that operated as a junior ally. For each of Northeast Asia’s major economic players, then, APEC constituted a tool to preempt any regional and subregional blocs from forming without its participation. “Bilateral regionalism,” still in its embryonic stage of development, by contrast, emerged in the aftermath of East Asia’s 1997 financial crisis. The meltdown brought South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand under the “trusteeship” of the International Monetary Fund. The stronger economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan experienced aftershocks, too, which shook East Asia’s confidence. Asian values, once lauded as intrinsically superior to Western values by Mahathir Mohamad and Lee Kwan-yew, suddenly looked synonymous with moral hazards, corruption, and crony capitalism.20 Equally crit-

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ical, Northeast Asia’s confidence of going it alone in economic modernization, through a strategy of unilateralist mercantilism and its institutional infrastructure of developmental states, collapsed for good. Searching for a new formula of growth that fit with Northeast Asia’s suddenly rediscovered condition of globalization, but also remaining fearful of any regionalist experiment turning into a de facto Chinese or Japanese sphere of influence, Northeast Asia pioneered “bilateral regionalism,” whereby a country simultaneously engaged in multiple bilateral FTA talks with more eager as well as with less threatening trade partners in the hope of triggering similar negotiations with other states, or simply gaining access to an already existing free trade bloc.21 The pursuit of bilateral regionalism has proceeded in diverse “combinations and permutations of two-power, three-power, four-power, and even twoplus-four-power or three-plus-three-power FTA talks.”22 The search for partners transcended Northeast Asia, with geoeconomically strategic Australia, Chile, Czech Republic, and Mexico becoming targets of political courtship for their gateway roles into the Australia–New Zealand Closer Economic Partnership (CEP), Mercosur, the EU, and NAFTA, respectively. Despite this extraregional dimension of bilateral FTA talks, the big games have been played within Northeast Asia. While keeping a distance from each other, China and Japan separately approached the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), itself a free trade arrangement since 1993, for reciprocal trade concessions. The two giants could not afford to stay out of this race because of their fear of each other’s hegemonic intentions on Southeast Asia. Japan hoped to make Southeast Asia not only a de facto but also a de jure Japanese sphere of economic influence through its free trade initiative, before China could make further inroads. To keep Japan’s ambition in check, conversely, China wooed ASEAN with its own FTA proposal. ASEAN, in turn, pursued FTA talks with both China and Japan to balance out their influences. The dynamics of power rivalries has been even more visible in South Korea’s FTA policy. South Korea was initially slow in embracing FTA ideas, but once it became interested in bilateral regionalism, its enthusiasm surpassed China’s and Japan’s. A midsize trading nation, South Korea could not harbor an ambition for great power status, which drove China and Japan southward for FTA partners. Larger than all ASEAN economies combined, South Korea once thought it could go it alone without an FTA in securing international competitiveness, but its 1997 financial crisis changed all this. With the technocratic myth of its Weberian state turned upside-down, South Korea woke up to its profound isolation in what was a bilaterally, regionally, and multilaterally interlinked global economy. South Korea, the eleventh largest trading state, signed its first FTA only in 2004—with distant Chile. With China and Japan separately approaching ASEAN for bilateral FTAs, South Korea launched its own FTA initiative, lest its nightmare of becoming once again a peripheral state living under Chinese

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or Japanese regional hegemony become a reality. As expected of any midsize power caught between great powers, South Korea ran for cover and followed ASEAN’s balancing-act example. South Korea invited both China and Japan into FTA talks, even bravely declaring its intention of wrapping up negotiations with Japan before 2006, in spite of rising domestic political resistance.23 South Korea also saw ASEAN as an ideal FTA partner in keeping China and Japan under check, and announced, alongside its ten member states, a road map for FTA negotiations in February 2005.24 The next year even saw South Korea negotiating an FTA with the United States. To its progressives’ surprise, the United States showed a change of heart, responding positively to South Korea’s FTA overture and eventually producing an agreement with South Korea in April 2007.25 For ASEAN as well as South Korea, whose goal was establishing FTAs with China, Japan, and the United States, but without falling under one or another form of regional hegemony, it was critical to simultaneously catch two, or even all three, big prizes. Launching a free trade zone with only one risked sovereignty. The middle powers accordingly sequenced FTA talks with an eye toward separately drawing all three great powers into bilateral negotiations, resulting in a rapid succession of FTA talks. ASEAN agreed to establish an FTA with South Korea by 2009, followed by similar deals with China, by 2010, and with Japan, by 2012. With the United States also knocking on the doors of ASEAN and South Korea for bilateral FTA negotiations after 2002, Northeast Asia looked to be reestablishing its uneasy but surprisingly resilient regional power equilibrium from its uncoordinated expansion of bilateral regionalism. Each of Northeast Asia’s three great powers launched FTA talks in fear of the other two, only to see its penetration into the middle powers matched by its rivals’ similar actions. The tension and uncertainty that characterized Northeast Asia’s equilibrium of power, however, remained intact, because each of its great powers balanced separately as part of their spatially and temporally asymmetric game of preempting regional hegemony. These acts of check-andbalance were driven by fear and distrust built into the asymmetric game of hegemonic struggles, rather than by a teleological vision of building a supranational institution (the EU), or by an acceptance of extant hegemonic power relations (NAFTA), or by a recognition of stable bipolarity in regional power structures (Mercosur). The Northeast Asian game of bilateral regionalism, then, diverged from the regional community building of Western Europe, North America, and South America in fundamental ways. Whereas the EU, NAFTA, and Mercosur developed out of a series of multilateral talks in which all or most major regional powers were represented, Northeast Asia’s regionalism was played bilaterally, with its weakest ASEAN states separately as well as collectively acting as a catalyst for spreading FTA talks regionwide by provoking the great powers’ fears of one another’s hegemonic ambitions. The initial prime driver

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of Northeast Asia’s FTA domino game, in fact, was Singapore. Limited by its size but confident of its global competitiveness, Singapore transformed its ASEAN FTA membership into a leverage, projecting itself as a gatekeeper to the ASEAN markets in negotiating an agreement with any willing trade partners and using those as springboards for FTA talks with even more states. The Singaporean strategy soon became a model for ASEAN and South Korean foreign policy. Whereas France and Germany jointly led Western Europe’s regionalist bloc formation, and Brazil and Argentina jointly led South America’s subregional Mercosur experiment, it was Northeast Asia’s middle powers that triggered and drove bilateral regionalism. To be sure, Northeast Asia’s game of bilateral regionalism became a prime driver of change in regional power politics only when China, Japan, and the United States jumped into FTA talks. But, unlike the EU, NAFTA, and Mercosur, where multilateral talks proceeded with a prior understanding between regional great powers, Northeast Asia witnessed China, Japan, and the United States engaging the middle powers without any prior big power understanding. These three great powers tried to cut a separate deal with the middle powers, while postponing, if not outright rejecting, any big deal among themselves, because the United States and Japan, caught in their spatially and temporally asymmetric great power relations, remained fearful that any FTA with China would inadvertently boomerang by accelerating China’s ascendance as a rival with superpower ambitions. In contrast, China feared that the United States and Japan were attempting to tame it through FTAs before it could realize its historical destiny of regional leadership. Interestingly, even between the United States and Japan, where military security ties deepened and widened, there lacked any serious effort to put trade relations on a par with military ties through building a bilateral FTA. The lack of progress was hardly surprising, given the proven check-andbalance of the United States against its Japanese ally in regional economic realms. Unlike in security realms, where the United States constituted a hegemon, Japan was a superpower in its own right in regional economic arenas. Thus the United States opposed a series of ideas that could transform Northeast Asia from a region that was de facto integrated by a dense production network of Japanese business firms into a community that would be de jure anchored on Japan through legally binding FTAs. Included in this list of United States–vetoed regionalist economic ideas were Japan’s proposal for establishing an “Asian monetary fund” in the aftermath of the 1997 financial crisis, as well as Malaysia’s proposal to link Northeast Asia with Southeast Asia in an “ASEAN Plus Three” formula. The US “Enterprise for ASEAN Initiative,” launched in 2002, as well as its FTA negotiation with South Korea in 2006, then, arose from a tactical rather than strategic change. The United States approached these middle powers for FTA talks as part of its established strategy to prevent them from falling under Chinese or Japanese influence.

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Middle Powers: The Politics of Identity The standoff is likely to endure as Northeast Asia’s “equilibrium” for a considerable period, not only because its major powers are rivals within a broad framework of collaboration, hedging against one another’s possible betrayals while working for common interests, but also because its middle powers harbor revisionist ambitions, which are driven by a profound and enduring crisis of national identity triggered by the end of the Cold War. Certainly, the Cold War cost the two Koreas and Taiwan much, causing civil wars, setting off an arms race, and even providing a creepy security rationale for repressive ideological “cleansing.” However, Cold War conflicts were also a blessing in disguise, especially for the weaker side in each pair of Northeast Asia’s divided nations, by providing each of those weaker sides with a political raison d’être for remaining separate from the stronger, other half of its national community. For the two Koreas, sharing a uniquely homogeneous cultural, linguistic, and ethnic bond gestated during their thirteen centuries as a unified state; it was only from the Cold War that a rationale for establishing a separate state could develop. The North mixed Marxism with anticolonialism in explaining why it could not join its US-occupied southern brethren in a unified state in 1948. The South, by contrast, found its rationale for a separate statehood in a more ideologically contradictory package of liberalism and anticommunism. Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT), militarily defeated by Mao Zedong’s communists in a grueling civil war, but also sharing with it a common genealogical origin in Sun Yat-sen’s eclectic san min chui i (three people’s principles), also found itself giving its ideology an anticommunist streak after its banishment from mainland China in 1949. The strategy of developing national identity around Cold War ideological confrontation worked well for regime maintenance in the two Koreas and Taiwan, even when political leaders frontally violated their countries’ other ideological tenets. The KMT old guards, elected in 1947, continuously reproduced themselves as Taiwan’s ruling elite through a set of “temporary provisions,” thus violating their ideal of political rule by constitutional law, as enunciated in the san min chui i. The dictators of South Korea, too, made a mockery of their pretensions of liberal democracy with tight restrictions on civil rights to repress chaeya dissidents. Likewise, North Korea committed ideological heresy when it declared Kim Il Sung’s “humanistic” juche sasang (independence ideology) a central component of its national identity on par with, if not superior to, alien Marxism-Leninism in 1970, and began constructing a monstrous Yuil regime singularly unique in its militarization of state apparatus, its cult of personality, and its dynastic succession of top leadership. Such an unbridgeable gap in political ideals and practices notwithstanding, all three divided nations escaped from the Thai or Bolivian disease of perpetual regime turnover. The presence of a “hard state” with an unequaled capacity for repres-

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sion in each of Northeast Asia’s three middle powers certainly helped, but repression alone could not have prolonged their regimes for so long. To explain regime stability in spite of internal ideological inconsistency before 1989, one must turn to their historical birth as divided nations in a Cold War conflict. In each of the three countries, the political elite got away with their ideological heresies, because their people saw them as the lesser evil. For many South Koreans, their rulers’ violations of human rights were of a minor scale when compared with the three months of bloody occupation by North Korea’s Red Army in 1950. Some even saw repression as a justifiable act to weed out leftists and radicals before they intentionally or unintentionally helped North Korea by instigating social instability in the South. The experience of a bloody civil war gave a reason for South Korea’s separation from its northern half, especially among those who lived through it. The North constituted an axis of evil that broke with ilryun (human ethics) through its act of waging war against fellow Koreans. To counter its threat, South Korea’s ruling elite argued, anticommunism should be placed before and above all other ideological tenets, including liberal democracy and national sovereignty, resulting in a compromise of basic civil rights and nationalist aspirations. The North, as South Korea’s mirror opposite, by contrast, used its people’s terrifying memory of US military prowess and South Korean “white terror” between 1950 and 1953 as a basis for legitimating its construction of a totalitarian Yuil state. At that time, anti-Americanism for North Korea was what anticommunism was for its southern rival; as a result, people rallied around Kim Il Sung regardless of his faults, in fear of the greater evil of US military hostility. The war ended in 1953 with an armistice, but the two Koreas continuously relived their civil war as if it never ended, transforming their war experience into anticommunist or anti-American national myths, symbols, and rituals.26 Similarly, many Taiwanese endured the Kuomintang’s authoritarian rule because of their fear of Chinese takeover. The 2 million mainlanders who took exile in Taiwan in 1949, an island of 6 million inhabitants at that time, were more than refugees. They were part of a “soft” Leninist party-state, rebuilding a new order in Taiwan to prepare for the retaking of mainland China. Interpreting their defeat in civil war as much a political defeat as a military failure, they made a series of U-turns in both politics and economics, doing what they thought they should have done but did not or could not do during their civil war on the mainland. The KMT regime tightened control, remolding its intelligence agencies into a modern security apparatus as well as establishing a Soviet commissar system on top of and inside Taiwan’s military organization. The elite also cracked down on corruption and weeded out inflationary pressures through conservative monetary policy in hope of winning popular support behind their pretension of being the sole legitimate government of the Chinese people.27 The specter of a communist takeover of their exile island, in other words, loomed large over KMT leaders, influencing their choice of policy options for economic, social,

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and political issues. Like the South Korean authoritarian rulers, the KMT leaders acquired a McCarthyism of their own from the civil war years, and after 1949 became entrapped in a culture of hatred and distrust against all forms of socialism during their rule. That culture of anticommunism stood above and before all of the KMT’s other competing ideological tenets, including political rule by constitutional law, thus enabling its leaders to get away with ideological compromises and inconsistencies without triggering acute political instability. The end of the Cold War removed or weakened precisely this raison d’être and unleashed a crisis of national identity. The struggle over identity came in diverse forms. As China increasingly became “bourgeois” in economic and even social spheres, and succeeded in growth through an eclectic mixing of market incentives and authoritarian politics, Taiwan paradoxically saw its separate nationhood challenged. The crisis of sovereignty initially took the form of political isolation in world affairs, with loss of UN membership in 1971, followed by successive severances of diplomatic ties, but it also developed into a crisis of economic sovereignty after Taiwan cautiously opened itself to China in 1987, in response to Deng Xiaoping’s overtures of cross-strait cooperation under his 1984 principle of “one country, two systems.” The resulting exponential growth of trade and investment sucked Taiwan into China’s economic orbit, threatening it with a loss of sovereignty as well as jobs and capital. Searching for ways to differentiate itself from China, without which Taiwan could not survive as a separate sovereign state, its KMT leaders embarked on political democratization in 1987 in tandem with their economic exchange with China. This vision of developing democracy into a new raison d’être for Taiwan without making it a separatist state denying Taiwan’s “Chinese-ness,” however, eventually opened a way for the “creeping separatism” of Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian, who viewed Taiwan and China as not only polities governed by conflicting values, but also nations with different ethnic identities (Chapter 8). As a result of the irreversible and irresistible tilt of power toward China in cross-strait relations, which evoked the specter of China’s de jure or de facto takeover of Taiwan, many Taiwanese embraced separatism as a strategy of national survival. Moreover, with democracy and ethnic identity replacing Cold War anticommunism as Taiwan’s foremost ideological tenet after 1987, a number of atrocities committed by KMT military troops during Taiwan’s early days of nation building, including a massacre of some 30,000 islanders on February 28, 1947, as part of an effort to weed out all sources of opposition against KMT rule, became targets of historical revisionism in liberal Taiwan’s academic and political circles, with a scarcely hidden agenda of delegitimizing KMT rule and hence strengthening its people’s separatist identity. The end of the Cold War turned South Korea ideologically upside-down, too. With its public threat perception of war dramatically lowered as a result of its normalization of relations with Moscow and Beijing, Seoul saw its de-

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mocratization shake up not only political values but also foreign policy beliefs. After 1987, its progressive forces succeeded in making “anticommunism” a bad word, a synonym of authoritarian rule, human rights abuse, and “neocolonial” dependency on US power. From here, it took only a step or two for South Korea’s young postwar generations, without a personal memory of the horrifying civil war, to break out of its anticommunist myths, symbols, and rituals, and to raise fundamental questions on both internal and external dimensions of South Korea’s political order. Once anticommunism was judged both unfit and illegitimate for an economically prosperous, militarily confident, and democratically vibrant South Korea, many of its Cold War ideas no longer looked obvious. Was North Korea an enemy or a brother? Who was South Korea’s natural ally, a democratic United States or a Northeast Asian China? Should it continue its role as a frontline base for US military forces even when George W. Bush’s war on terror looked as threatening as Kim Jong Il’s nuclear brinkmanship? These questions on who were South Korea’s friends and foes in global affairs, moreover, were followed up with equally troubling questions on its internal order. Should it keep its Cold War history textbooks or endorse revisionist writers? How could Syngman Rhee be a patriot when he constructed an alliance with collaborators of Japanese rule in the civil war against leftist political forces? Should South Korea correct historical injustice by honoring its past victims of white terror and reprimanding their perpetrators through launching a truth commission? Were its leftists of the pre-1953 period, repressed for their ideology, heroes of national liberation or betrayers of nationalist aspiration under Joseph Stalin’s command? Was the white terror of the rightists an act of self-defense or a violation of human rights? These momentous questions about South Korea’s past, initially raised within its progressive intelligentsia after Park Chung Hee’s turn toward authoritarian rule in 1972 and later spreading rapidly throughout the college campuses with Chun Doo Hwan’s massacre of Kwangju demonstrators in 1980, were essentially questions about its present as well as future political order. How one judged South Korea’s past changed one’s view of how legitimate its extant “establishment” was and who should lead its future. Unlike Kim Young Sam, who embraced South Korea’s Cold War past as laying an infrastructure for democracy, or Kim Dae Jung, who showed a sense of ambiguity on historical issues out of his personal history of persecution for his unorthodox ideas on unification, Roh Moo Hyun took a negative stand on many of these ideological-historical issues, thus triggering an intense struggle over national identity and a discord with the United States over myriad issues, from the North Korean nuclear crisis to US troop relocation to provisions of the Status of Forces Agreement.28 Roh Moo Hyun radically reinterpreted South Korea’s Cold War state as a reactionary force led by traitors and collaborators of Japanese colonial rule and grossly violating human rights to establish an illegitimate separatist political system

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under US tutelage. He publicly disparaged South Korea’s military alliance system as unequal and unfair. The end of the Cold War unleashed a troubling soul search for Taiwan, too, but toward the opposite direction. Whereas the end of the Cold War came as a victory to South Korea, thus ironically making society less wary of leftist threats and more receptive toward radical historical revisionism, it descended on Taiwan as a crisis of national survival, with China standing tall as a new future for all Chinese peoples. When South Korea talked of absorbing its crippled northern brother, sometimes with a great anxiety and other times with a joy of victory, Taiwan worried about being absorbed into China. That fear of losing sovereignty gave Taiwan’s democratization-triggered reinterpretation of national identity a character vastly different from South Korea’s painful reflection on its past. Taiwan, too, had its share of ideological conflicts over history issues and truth findings in its effort to construct a new future of liberal democracy and market economy, but given that China’s irreversible ascendance was threatening Taiwan with absorption, both Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian gave Taiwan’s reinterpretation of national identity two distinctive foreign policy twists. Unlike South Korea, where its postwar generation’s critique of anticommunism as an ideology of political repression and foreign domination coincided with a surge of nationalist ideas, which sometimes acquired an anti-American dimension, democratic Taiwan sought to entangle or entrap the reluctant United States and Japan in cross-strait conflicts as its patrons, through cultivation of common liberal values and norms. Moreover, again unlike South Korea, whose reborn nationalism frequently transformed into a sense of brotherhood with economically crippled North Korea, Taiwanese nationalism developed into separatism, denying that Taiwan was a part of China. The reinterpretation of national identity set off by the end of the Cold War made South Korea and Taiwan more alike in their internal order by triggering democratization, but also more dissimilar in their external orientation by making their other halves either an object of sympathy or a source of threat. North Korea constituted still a third variant of the aftereffects of the end of the Cold War. Nowhere was crisis deeper than in the North. The economy collapsed with its Soviet patron’s disintegration, while society became paralyzed under the famine. However, in spite of, or because of, these traumas and shocks, which weakened its ruling elite’s mechanism of control, Kim Jong Il declared that North Korea be revitalized through a policy of seon’gun jeongchi (military-first politics) after Kim Il Sung died in 1994. Rather than repudiating juche ideology, Kim Jong Il held on to it even more tightly and strengthened his father’s policy of militarizing the North Korean regime, with its armed forces filling top party and state posts as part of honoring his father’s yuhun (dying injunctions). Pursued as part of his military-first politics was nuclear development as North Korea’s last insurance for regime survival. The xenophobic rhet-

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oric of anti-Americanism and anticolonialism remained strong, too, even when its elite pressed the United States for bilateral talks. Kim Jong Il could not do otherwise. To make a U-turn in political and military affairs risked his downfall, as it was an admission of his Yuil regime’s ideological bankruptcy as well as an attack on its military establishment, whose support he needed to weather security dangers of the post–Cold War era. Kim Jong Il was experimental in economic policy, dismantling in July 2002 North Korea’s thoroughly paralyzed mechanisms of price control and rationing, along with instituting wage increase and currency reform. However, he never let economic reform dictate political and military policy. On the contrary, he put the brake on economic reform whenever he thought it risked regime instability (Chapter 7). The forces of instability emanating from each of the three middle powers, then, were unlikely to disappear anytime soon, because they were driven by a fundamental search for, or a desperate reaffirmation of, national identity as part of adjusting to the extraordinary, irreversible changes brought by the end of the Cold War. The three middle powers were each a child of Cold War ideological conflicts, established under a US or Soviet military security umbrella in a peripheral area where a stalemate developed between the East and the West. Conversely, as a product of the stalemate of East-West military rivalries, the two Korea’s national identities of 1948, and Taiwan’s of 1949, were bound to falter after Moscow renounced Marxism-Leninism and Beijing embraced market socialism. The significant trends of destalinization and marketization being irreversible and inexorable prime drivers of change inside and outside Northeast Asia, the struggles of its three middle powers to redefine or reaffirm their national identities, but without undermining their separate nationhoods, were unlikely to end soon, because their tasks suffered from contradictions. Whatever each middle power’s choice of national identity, it needed to meet two very demanding requirements to let its choice take root: a strong endorsement by domestic power blocs, and an equally robust support from the United States and China. None of the three middle powers succeeded in meeting both conditions. Roh Moo Hyun toyed with the idea of frontally negating South Korea’s 1948 ideological origin, only to make a sharp U-turn, shedding anti-American colors from his “independencist” rhetoric after it triggered stock-market instability, provoked a spread of conservative protests, and boomeranged into an early unilateralist reduction and relocation of US military troops in South Korea in 2003. By January 2005, he even seemed to be scaling down his crusade of historical rectification, to uncover Japanese collaborators and traitors as well as human rights violators among South Korea’s Cold War political elite, when his popularity failed to recover amid a deep recession in domestic consumption. Chen Shui-bian, too, zigzagged in his pursuit of reinterpreting national identity, albeit less frequently and less sharply than his South Korean counterpart, winning as many foes as supporters in Taiwan’s unruly political society,

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and scaring the United States into shedding some ambiguities surrounding its likelihood of intervening in cross-strait conflicts. The rhetoric of separatism waxed and waned in tandem with Taiwan’s electoral cycle, with Chen Shuibian mobilizing votes under a banner of independence during elections and healing wounds within Taiwan and in cross-strait relations with a promise of ideological moderation after elections. Kim Jong Il saw his opposite strategy, regime continuity cum militarization, reach an even more dangerous deadlock, with the United States trying to cut off his escape routes. At China’s urging, the United States agreed to launch the six-party talks for peacefully resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis through dialogue. The superpower, however, backed this strategy with sticks, too, using its Proliferation Security Initiative to intercept North Korean freighters suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction; persuading Japan to proceed cautiously on its normalization talks with North Korea, which could result in a huge reparation fund for Kim Jong Il; and discouraging the South from expanding its aid to the North. Moreover, the United States left open its option of military action if Kim Jong Il crossed a “red line,” although it never clearly defined what that option was. Ironically, however, the middle powers’ failure to meet these two conditions, domestic political consensus and great power accommodation, kept alive rather than ended these identity issues, with adverse consequences for Northeast Asia’s regional stability. Keeping alive identity issues, in fact, served their political elites’ interests. For the political parties of South Korea and Taiwan, siding with one or another type of national identity constituted an opportunity to fracture society into revisionist and traditionalist blocs and then capture one of these blocs as their respective “ghetto” of loyalists within society. The North Korean garrison state, following Kim Il Sung’s “dying injunctions,” similarly reconfirmed the threatening image of US power to rally society around its leader’s military-first politics, in spite of that traditionalist strategy’s limitations in ensuring military deterrence and economic recovery. A perverse, self-fulfilling prophecy prevailed: North Korea’s policy of deterring hostile US actions through nuclear development only set off US hostility, which reverted back to reconfirming and reviving North Korea’s belief that the United States was necessarily an enemy to the survival of its regime. Thus far, the United States and China held back their respective Taiwanese and North Korean client states from rushing into declaring independence and confirming nuclearization as nonnegotiable acts of sovereignty, because they shared common interests in regional stability and bilateral engagement. This great power accommodation typically dominated over their client states’ politics of internal and external revisionism, but this domination was a carefully restrained exercise of power, falling short of pressuring Taiwan and North Korea to surrender their revisionist hopes. What each great power desired was to have its cake and eat it too. China valued North Korea’s historical role as a buffer state, and restrained from any drastic action that could trigger either an “implo-

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sion” or an “explosion” of North Korean nuclear crisis. The opposite strategy of benign neglect, however, damaged Chinese interests through threatening nuclear proliferation in Northeast Asia and, by extension, a US preemptive act against its North Korean client state. China saw its interests best served by positioning itself somewhere between these two extremes of confrontation and accommodation in its alliance relations, in hope of securing a nuclear-free but still divided Korean peninsula, with its northern half continuing as China’s buffer state. Ironically, the United States thought along a similar line on cross-strait relations, desiring a nonseparatist separate Taiwan, which would aid the United States in checking but not unduly provoking China into a military action. The island, without a revisionist design on its internal and external orders, could and did serve the United States as a leverage on China, so the United States, too, positioned its policy somewhere between confrontation and accommodation. The balancing act of the United States was seen as showing its ambiguity, if not support, toward Taiwan’s revisionist plans, thus encouraging Taiwan not to give up on its revisionist ambition. The two great powers, then, kept up their client states’ politics of identity in a double way, through creating their clients’ crisis of survival by ending Cold War rivalries, and through giving them a security guarantee under which to experiment with new strategies of survival. Thus, regional tension followed a controlled spiral pattern, but with an upper limit, as Taiwan and North Korea pushed their politics of identity a step further, and as the United States and China attempted damage control.

Conclusion The fundamental feature of power politics in Northeast Asia, established since the end of the Cold War, was an uneasy but resilient “equilibrium” of spatially and temporally asymmetric power relations. The forces challenging it were two kinds of revisionism, one arising from the weak and another from the strong. With the balance of power shifting irreversibly toward Seoul in interKorea rivalry and away from Taipei in cross-strait relations, Pyongyang looked for security in nuclear programs and Taipei in political separatism, thus triggering in the United States a fear of collapse of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and provoking in China an anxiety over the breakdown of the myth of “one China.” The strong, too, toyed with revisionist ideas, with the United States enhancing its military posture through a concerted effort of military transformation and joining Northeast Asia’s race for bilateral FTA negotiations before China could grow strong enough to consolidate its grip on the middle powers with its seemingly irresistible economic charm. The Chinese also pursued a strategy of revisionist unilateralism, but of a different kind. Whereas the United States unilaterally changed its alliance system and became

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a spoiler in Northeast Asia’s game of bilateral regionalism by joining it as a third force to hold China and Japan in check, China bet on its capacity for unilaterally engineering hyper–economic growth and “hid its talents” until its economy could deliver a “ripe opportunity” for its ascendance. Like the United States, China added a spice of bilateralism and even multilateralism to its predominantly unilateralist strategy of power struggle, by going southward for an FTA with ASEAN and by going global through its WTO entry. However, its role in bilateral regionalism was as much a spoiler of regionwide regionalism as that of the United States. These forces of revisionism, however, provoked only small crises, not an irreversible fracture of regional relations. Tensions rose in a spiral fashion, but with an upper ceiling, as each of Northeast Asia’s revisionist states tested its allies’ level of endurance and its foes’ taste for conflict, only to adjust before irreparable damage occurred in its regional standing. What Northeast Asia’s revisionist states hoped to achieve was a peaceful change of their regional role and status. When their revisionism seemed to be escalating conflict beyond control, they put off confrontation and waited for another opportunity to pursue their revisionist agendas. Thus North Korea went back and forth between nuclear blackmail and dialogue, Taiwan between brave talk of separatism and reluctant acceptance of its second-class status in international arenas, and South Korea between surging nationalism and acquiescence to US hegemony. Even the United States, enjoying a preponderant superiority of military power, held back when further escalation of conflict threatened to severely destabilize Northeast Asia. When North Korea threatened to go nuclear if its demand for bilateral talks made no progress, China stepped in to persuade the United States to participate in six-party talks, lest the United States and North Korea collide head-on militarily in its backyard. For its part, the United States agreed to participate in the six-party talks in order to win Chinese support for sanctions in the event of further North Korean provocations, and to prevent South Korea from deserting its war on terror. George W. Bush engaged in a balancing act on cross-strait relations, too, pledging support in the event of Chinese military action, but also discouraging Taiwan from taking a separatist path. For its part, China made clear in March 2005 its intention of taking a military action against Taiwanese independence, through legislating an “antisecession law,” but it restrained from openly confronting the United States on other fronts, including the transformation of the US military. The upper ceiling on Northeast Asia’s spiral of conflict, or what policymakers called “red lines” in each of its multiple revisionist games, then, was an incrementally upward-moving target. The red lines were pushed up furtively as far as Northeast Asia’s uneasy but resilient regional equilibrium of power allowed. After more than a decade of such a dangerous but highly calculated and sometimes even restrained game of incrementally pushing back red lines, there no longer remains much space for Northeast Asia’s revisionist

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states to further test one another’s endurance. In March 2005, China wrote into law its long-standing policy of military action against Taiwanese independence. In October 2006, North Korea detonated a nuclear device. Even US relations with South Korea, by March 2005, reached a critical juncture without much room for an additional exchange of proposals and counterproposals. A mere nine days after Roh Moo Hyun declared his intention of disallowing USFK military troops from flying in and out of South Korea for military missions in cross-strait conflicts, Rumsfeld reconfirmed his policy to transform South Korea into a naval and air “hub” in keeping with the global force posture of the United States. That was interpreted as a precursor to the restructuring of USFK troops into a regional “rapid response force,”29 with the expectation that South Korea would acquiesce. Northeast Asia’s spiral of tension was rapidly approaching its upper limit. This spiral could explode into conflict if some of its revisionist states push red lines further back. More likely, though, Northeast Asia will remain locked into its current equilibrium of hedged engagement, hedged acquiescence, hedged brinkmanship, and activism lite. Having tested China’s will to stop Taiwanese separatism even by military action, if necessary, Taiwan has restrained its rhetoric of independence since March 2005. Confronted with a de facto US ultimatum on the strategic flexibility of USFK military troops in March 2005, South Korea seems to be adopting a strategy of benign neglect, avoiding the issue of strategic flexibility altogether. Similarly, since the 2006 nuclear test, the North has put the break on conflict escalation by agreeing to “disable” its nuclear programs in return for US cooperation on economic and energy issues, normalization of relations, and construction of a “peace regime” in February 2007, thus bringing the Korean peninsula back to the equilibrium of controlled tension even after the North Korean nuclear test.

Notes I would like to thank Ha Young-sun and Kim Tae-hyun for their comments on an earlier version of this chapter, which is based on research supported by a Korea University grant. 1. On concept of partial reform, consult Hellman, “Winners Take All,” pp. 203–234. 2. Kang, “Domestic Politics and North Korean Foreign Policy.” 3. For liberal views on the role of trust, institutions, and collective action in international arenas, consult Keohane, International Institution and State Power. 4. See Bezlova, “Politics China.” Also consult Scobell, “China and North Korea,” p. 278. 5. See Baldwin, “Money and Power,” pp. 578–614; and Mack, “Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars,” pp. 175–200. 6. Daalder and Lindsay, America Unbound. 7. Nye and Keohane, Power and Interdependence.

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8. See US Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Joint Vision 2020.” Also see US Commission on National Security/21st Century, “New World Coming,” p. 6. 9. See US National Defense Panel, “Transforming Defense,” p. 3. 10. Ibid., pp. 2, 23–24, 34. 11. Kemp, “Arcs of Instability,” p. 62. 12. For a critical appraisal of US defense transformation, see Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire. 13. Davis, “Transforming the Armed Forces,” pp. 423–442. 14. Lexington, “One Nation After All,” p. 32. 15. For American public opinion on the war against terrorism, consult the following documents by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press: “9.11 Commission Has Bipartisan Support” and “Foreign Policy Attitudes Now Driven by 9.11 and Iraq.” 16. Institute for National Strategic Studies, “The United States and Japan,” pp. 3–4. 17. BBC World Service Poll conducted during December 2004 in twenty-two countries in collaboration with twenty-one research institutes and polling companies. 18. The name “386 generation” came from their age (“3”: thirty to thirty-nine years old), the decade of their college entrance (“8”: the 1980s), and the decade of their birth (“6”: the 1960s). The name “5060 generation” came from their age (fifties and sixties); the name also has a pejorative meaning, referring to the generation of the Fifth Republic (1980–1988) and the Roh Tae Woo presidency (1988–1993)—respectively called ogong and yukgong—which have the same pronunciation as “50” and “60” in Korean. 19. See public surveys conducted by the East Asia Institute in December 2002, May 2003, and February, May, and December 2004. Also see Kim, “The AmericanKorean Alliance in Crisis,” pp. 225–258. 20. Consult Kim and Im, “‘Crony Capitalism’ in South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan,” pp. 5–52. 21. Solís, “Japan’s New Regionalism,” pp. 377–404. See also Kim, “Regionalization and Regionalism in East Asia,” pp. 39–67. 22. Kim, “Regionalization and Regionalism in East Asia,” p. 59. 23. Consult Chosun Ilbo, February 14, March 8, 2005. 24. Chosun Ilbo, February 27, 2005. 25. Chosun Ilbo, February 3, February 22, 2005; April 3, 2007. 26. The Korean War constituted a critical moment when new cleavages arose and became “frozen” in culture and institutions, to quote Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan. See Lipset and Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments,” pp. 1–56. 27. Winckler, “Elite Political Struggle,” pp. 151–171. See also Chan and Clark, Flexibility, Foresight, and Fortuna in Taiwan’s Development. 28. Twice revised, in February 1991 and January 2001, since its original signing in July 1967, the Status of Forces Agreement defines the legal status—that is, legal rights and responsibilities—of USFK and its “civilian component . . . in the employment of, serving with, or accompanying” the USFK over a wide range of issues, including facility and land grants, taxation, customs duties, immigration, and criminal jurisdiction. For the “Basic Agreement,” “Agreed Minutes,” and other related documents, see http://www.korea.army.mil/sofa/sofa1966_ui1991.pdf and http://www.korea.army .mil/sofa/2001sofa_english%20text.pdf. 29. See Chosun Ilbo, March 20, 2005.

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APEC ARF ASEAN CCP CEP CIS CPN CVID CVIS DPP EU FTA GDP GNP ICBM KMT LDP Mercosur MIRV NAFTA NATO NGO NIC NMD NSC PAC-3 PFP PLA

Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation ASEAN Regional Forum Association of Southeast Asian Nations Chinese Communist Party Closer Economic Partnership (Australia–New Zealand) Commonwealth of Independent States cross-border production network complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement complete, verifiable, and irreversible security guarantees Democratic Progressive Party (Taiwan) European Union free trade agreement gross domestic product gross national product intercontinental ballistic missile Kuomintang (Taiwan) Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) Southern Cone Common Market multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle North American Free Trade Agreement North Atlantic Treaty Organization nongovernmental organization newly industrializing country national missile defense National Security Council Patriot Advanced Capability 3 People First Party (Taiwan) People’s Liberation Army (China) 283

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PRC PSI SCO SDF UNTAC USFK WMD WTO

People’s Republic of China Proliferation Security Initiative (United States) Shanghai Cooperation Organization Self-Defense Forces (Japan) UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia US Forces Korea weapons of mass destruction World Trade Organization

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The Contributors

Yun-han Chu is distinguished research fellow at the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica, professor of political science at National Taiwan University, president of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, and coordinator of the Asian Barometer Survey. Chu specializes in the politics of Greater China, the East Asian political economy, and democratization. Among his recent English publications are Crafting Democracy in Taiwan; Consolidating Third-Wave Democracies; China Under Jiang Zemin; and The New Chinese Leadership. Stephan Haggard is Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor of Korea-Pacific studies at the University of California–San Diego. Haggard’s research interests center on the international relations and comparative political economy of East Asia and Latin America. His books include Pathways from the Periphery: The Politics of Growth in the Newly Industrializing Countries; The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (with Robert Kaufman); Developing Nations and the Politics of Global Integration; The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis; and From Silicon Valley to Singapore: Location and Competitive Advantage in the Hard Disk Drive Industry (with David McKendrick and Richard Doner). Anthony Jones is executive director of the Gorbachev Foundation of North America, codirector of the Club of Madrid, affiliate at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and associate professor of sociology at Northeastern University. He has published widely on economic, social, and political issues in Russia, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe, and is currently engaged in research on development and security in the Mediterranean Rim. Among the books he has authored or edited are KO-OPS: The Rebirth of Entrepreneurism in the Soviet Union, Education and Society in the New Russia; 303

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Professions and the State; In Search of Pluralism; and Constructing Democracy: Lessons from Practice and Research (with Jorge Domíguez). Byung-Kook Kim teaches party politics, methodology, and comparative political theory in the Department of Political Science at Korea University. He is also director of both the East Asia Institute and the Institute for Peace Studies. He has authored or coedited The Dynamics of National Division and Revolution: The Political Economy of Korea and Mexico; State, Region, and International System: Change and Continuity; Korean Politics; Consolidating Democracy in South Korea; and Between Compliance and Conflict: East Asia, Latin America, and the “New” Pax Americana. Alexander Lukin is director of the Center for East Asian and Shanghai Cooperation Organization Studies at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He is the author of Three Journeys Through China (with A. Dikarev); The Political Culture of the Russian Democrats; The Bear Watches the Dragon: Russia’s Perceptions of China and the Evolution of Russian-Chinese Relations Since the Eighteenth Century; and numerous articles on Russian and Chinese politics, and Russian foreign policy in East Asia. Minxin Pei is senior associate and director of the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research interests include US-Chinese relations, the development of democratic political systems, and Chinese politics. His published work includes From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union and China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy. Jonathan D. Pollack is professor of Asian and Pacific studies and chairman of the Asia-Pacific Studies Group at the US Naval War College. His principal research interests include Chinese national security strategy, US-Chinese relations, East Asian international politics, Korean politics and foreign policy, US defense strategy, and East Asian technological and military development. His recent publications include three major edited volumes: Strategic Surprise? U.S.China Relations in the Early 21st Century; Korea: The East Asian Pivot; and Asia Eyes America: Regional Perspectives on U.S. Asia Pacific Strategy in the 21st Century. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is professor of international politics at the School of International Politics, Economics, and Business at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo. He is also professor emeritus of The University of Tokyo, Komaba. He is author of Comprehensive Security and Future Choice and Globalism, Regionalism, and Nationalism; and coeditor of Asia-Pacific Security: US, Australia, and Japan, and the New Security Triangle.

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Abe, Shinzo, 83, 86, 128, 155; 154 Abramowitz, Morton, 226, 236 Afghanistan, 152, 163n16, 169, 182, 183, 185; postconflict settlement in, 173; Taliban in, 168, 180, 181; United States in, 15 Alagappa, Muthiah, 90 Albright, Madeleine, 65, 223n72 Alliances: commitments, 29, 33; global, 4, 6; hub-and-spoke system, 60; management of, 2, 19; security, 5, 69, 130; Sino-Soviet, 56; sustainable, 91; systems of, 5, 27; United States/Japan, 4 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, 67, 114, 115, 168, 177, 178 Anti-Terrorism Special Act (2001), 131, 137–141, 143tab, 146 Armed Attack Act (2003), 137–141, 143tab Armitage, Richard, 94n37, 162n3, 164n34, 247 ASEAN-China Expert Group, 120 ASEAN-China free trade agreement, 40 ASEAN Plus Three, 35, 42 ASEAN Regional Forum, 35, 132 Asia: lack of definitive outcomes in armed conflicts in, 55; potential terrorist threats in, 88; wars in, 55 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), 35, 38, 42, 184 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 17, 35, 60, 91; Chinese

relations with, 31, 32, 33, 37, 43; contributions from China during financial crisis, 120; free trade agreements and, 17, 18; Japanese relations with, 43; South Korean relations with, 43. See also ASEAN Australia: alliances with, 33; Japanese relations with, 156; political change in, 43; trade agreements with, 44; US relations with, 58 Baker, James, 223n77 Baldwin, David, 208 Bandwagoning, 25, 26, 27, 37, 127–161 Bilateral Implementation Commission, 172 Bishkek Group, 180 Bosworth, Stephen, 226, 236 Boucher, Richard, 183 Burghart, Raymond, 251n22 Bush, George H.W., 7, 31, 59, 60–61 Bush, George W., 5, 7, 13, 15, 16, 31, 32, 34, 43, 44, 45, 58, 63, 65–68, 72, 75, 80, 81, 82, 88, 99, 113, 115, 117, 168, 169, 172, 187, 201, 214, 226, 229, 233, 247, 258, 259 Capital goods, 39 Carrothers, Thomas, 46 Carter, Jimmy, 31, 58, 116 Cha, Victor, 34 Chechnya, 169 Cheney, Dick, 69, 112

305

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Chen shui-bian, 12, 16, 80, 111, 112, 113, 229, 230, 231, 232, 235, 240, 241, 246, 247, 257 Chiang Ching-kuo, 238 Chiang Kai-shek, 28, 177 China: access to US markets, 101; adverse consequences of strengthening of, 24; ambivalence about US presence in region, 103, 104; antiJapan demonstrations in, 230; aspirations for superpower status, 8, 17, 26; asymmetrical power relationship with United States, 105–106; benefits from US hegemony, 16; border negotiations with Russia, 179, 180; civil war in, 56; commitment to revitalization of domestic economy by, 168; common interests with United States, 104, 105; Communist Party in, 32, 101; conflict avoidance by, 4, 8, 16, 101, 111–115; conflict/cooperation with United States, 102–105; coping with US hegemony in, 99–123; corruption in, 124n25; Cultural Revolution in, 102–102; defense budgets, 121; demilitarization policy reversal, 63; democratization in, 48; dependence on foreign markets, 33, 37; desire for strategic partnership with Russia, 176–179; domestic politics in, 120; in East Asian financial crisis, 120; economic growth in, 8, 12, 16, 24, 38, 81, 82, 101, 105; economic interdependence with United States, 106–107; economic modernization goals, 99, 101; economic ties to Taiwan, 37, 112; emerging cooperative strategy of, 110–121; fear of Tawainese separatism, 10; foreign investment in, 33, 106; foreign policy behavior in, 101; “free rider” policy of, 16, 109–110; global/regional strategies of, 81, 82; gross national product in, 29; hedged acquiescence strategy of, 8, 15, 16, 99–123; human rights record in, 100; imbalances in domestic economy in, 106; incremental developmentalist strategy of, 8; interest in investment in Russia, 190; investments abroad by, 108;

Japanese relations with, 17, 83, 154–155; Leninist party-state system in, 8; market economy in, 14; mercantilist strategy of modernization in, 17; military modernization in, 26, 63, 81, 82, 113, 120–121; military weakness relative to United States, 105; missile crisis in, 8; most-favorednation trade status, 100; multipolarity as theme in, 27; nationalism in, 230, 238; nationalist aspirations of ethnic minorities in, 107; need for access to energy supplies, 107; new security concept of, 110–121; North Korean relations with, 87, 116–118, 185–189, 257; nuclear deterrence capability, 114; opposition to National Missile Defense system, 114, 115; opposition to war in Iraq, 185; peaceful ascendance strategy of, 4, 8; People’s Liberation Army in, 55, 121, 225–250; per capita income in, 106, 124n20; policy of hedged acqueiscence toward United States, 255; political pluralism in, 48; possibility of peaceful reconciliation with Taiwan, 236–249; post-9/11 support for United States with reservations, 184–185; potential for alienation of neighbors, 108–109; potential market for US corporations, 105; principle of “one country, two systems,” 10, 12, 80; protection of intellectual property and, 41; reactions to North Korea nuclear test, 116, 117, 118; reduces oil supply to North Korea, 197; relaxed security posture by, 101; reliance on global markets for growth, 4; relocation of production to, 41; reshaping regional security environment by, 118–120; restraining role with North Korea, 197; revisionist strategies of, 8, 25; rise of, 1, 3, 17, 26, 38, 48, 91, 103, 104, 128; Russian relations with, 4, 56, 167–193, 256; Security Council membership of, 105; seeking preferential relations with, 40; in Shanghai Cooperation Organization, 118, 119; socialist market economy in, 12; South Korean relations with, 37, 74; strategies for dealing with Taiwan, 31, 32, 33; structural vulnerabilities in,

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Index 107–108; struggle against separatism in, 191; support for multipolarity, 175, 190; Taiwanese relations with, 32, 37, 111–113, 225–250, 258; Taiwan policy issues, 228–236; tariff reduction in, 41; tendency toward cooperation with Russia, 167; threats to Taiwan from, 82; “three nos” policy on Taiwan, 52n32; Tiananmen incident in, 103; trade disputes with United States, 104; trade surplus with United States, 106; trade with Russia, 174, 189–191; trade with United States, 63, 168; treaties with Russia, 176–179; US relations with, 10, 48, 56, 58, 63, 79–84, 89, 91, 99–123, 168; unresolved territorial/ sovereignty issues of, 104; use of opportunities created by 9/11 to enhance relations with United States, 110; willingness to consider force for unification with Taiwan, 26; in World Trade Organization, 16, 41, 43, 63, 81, 120, 123n13 Chinese Association of People’s Diplomacy, 174 Chirac, Jacques, 247 Cho Myong Rok, 223n72 Chu, Yun-han, 5, 16, 18, 225–250 Clinton, Bill, 7, 31, 43, 45, 59, 61–65, 69, 70, 84, 99, 100, 101, 127, 176, 201, 214 Cold War: alliances, 46; anticommunist ideology in, 13; ending favorable to US interests, 60; expectations of great power rivalry after, 24; implications of end of for United States, 55; “legacy force” in South Korea, 75; multipolarity as theme after, 27; nation building during, 11; probability of cooperation after, 25, 26; resulting in divided nations in Northeast Asia, 7 Collective Security Treaty Organization (Shanghai Five), 180 Commonwealth of Independent States, 169 Communism: concerns about expansion of, 46; hostility toward extension of, 58 Communist Party, 32, 101 Conflict: avoidance, 4, 10, 16, 111–115; ethnic, 12; identity, 12; management,

307

90; military, 10, 50, 73, 90; partisan, 6; political, 27; power transitions and, 34; presence of institutions and, 23; regime type and, 25; from shifts in relative capabilities, 26; US-China, 102–105; “zones of restrained,” 47 Containment, 55 Cooperation: economic, 24; facilitation of, 23; institutionalized, 42; intraAsian, 43; political, 44; regime type and, 25; regional, 180; security, 90, 104, 127, 128; tendency toward, 167; US-China, 102–105 Council for Security Cooperation in Asia Pacific, 35 Currency: appreciation, 38; depreciation, 41 “Declaration on the Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order” (Russia and China), 175, 178 Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), 32, 107, 113 Democratization, 62; challenges to status quo from, 48; damage to state control from, 1–2; geopolitical issues, 46; globalization and, 2; increase in, 60; in Northeast Asia, 2; peace claims for, 46; possibility of conflict with autocracies and, 45, 46; in South Korea, 13; in Taiwan, 12, 63; third wave, 1 Deng Xiaoping, 11 Department of Defense: assessments of Taiwan’s defense requirements, 63; forecasts on China, 18; on military modernization of China, 26; quadrennial defense review by, 70, 71, 82, 83; regional defense strategy of, 59 Development: geopolitical, 33; regional, 56; weapons, 66; of weapons of mass destruction, 68 Diplomacy: multilateral, 35; normalizing, 6; politicization of, 48; preventive, 6, 62, 67, 234; security, 135; traditional, 68 Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization Initiative, 43

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E-commerce, 44 Economic: affluence, 9; change, 62; cooperation, 24; disintegration, 13; growth, 8, 12; institutions, 55; integration, 1, 23, 24, 32, 36, 41, 42, 44, 45, 49; interdependence, 4, 50, 106–107; liberalization, 1; policy, 25; recovery, 5, 10; reform, 24, 38, 45, 48, 170 Economy: export, 1; political, 50; regional, 24, 37, 39; socialist, 57; socialist market, 12 Eisenhower, Dwight, 28 Energy needs, 107 Ethnic conflict, 12 European Union, 167, 171 Factionalism, 10 Feith, Douglas, 72 France: opposition to war in Iraq, 185; position on Iraq, 171 Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, 17 Free trade agreements (FTAs), 16, 17, 44, 234; ASEAN-China, 40, 120; bilateral, 17; with Latin America, 43; with Southeast Asia, 43 Friedberg, Aaron, 26, 28 Gaidar, Yegor, 169, 174 Geneva Agreed Framework, 201, 204, 214 Germany: opposition to war in Iraq, 185; position on Iraq, 171; US relations with, 61 Globalization, 62; in Asia, 36–45; democratization and, 2; financial, 1; South Korea and, 13; threats from, 47 “Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction” (Group of Eight), 172 “Good Neighborly Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation” (Russia and China), 176–177 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 173 Gourevitch, Peter, 2 Greater Central Asia Partnership for Cooperation and Development (GCAP), 182 Group of Eight, 172 Guam, 79

Guam Doctrine, 58 Haggard, Stephan, 3, 15, 23–50 Hamas, 172 Hashimoto, Ryutaro, 127 Higuchi Commission, 162n5 Hill, Christopher, 204, 211, 222n37 Hirschman, Albert, 36, 37 Honda, Michael, 155 Hu Jintao, 83, 113, 117, 124n26, 186, 230, 232 Huntington, Samuel, 27 Identity: assimilative, 239; collective, 200; conflict, 12; construction, 237; democratic, 156; international, 237; national, 2, 3, 6, 7, 11, 13, 19, 227, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 243tab; politics, 2, 12, 13; preservation of, 7; reconstruction of, 7; regime, 11; regional security, 57; reinterpretation, 14 Imanaliev, Mutarbek, 183 India, 181; Japanese relations with, 156; US relations with, 109 Indonesia: Japanese investment in, 38; late industrialization in, 37 Industrialization: export-oriented, 37; flying goose pattern, 37–38; indigenous firms and, 39; laborintensive, 45; late, 37 Inner Mongolia, 107 Institutions: building, 36; economic, 55; international, 167; international financial, 38; multilateral, 7, 62, 90, 119; regional, 23; security, 55; strength of, 48 Integration: economic, 1, 23, 24, 32, 36, 41, 42, 44, 45, 49; financial crisis and, 41; intra-Asian, 37; regional, 24, 25, 38, 39, 41; restraining effect on foreign policy, 49 International Atomic Energy Agency, 6, 62, 117, 186, 201 International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism (2005), 172 International Criminal Court, 103 International Emergency Relief Act (1992), 163n16 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 120

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Index International Peace Cooperation Act (1992), 129, 130, 133, 137–141, 142tab, 144, 146, 163n16 Investment: in China, 33; foreign direct, 33, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45; importsubstituting, 39; intraregional, 41; lack of funds for, 40; outwardprocessing, 39; protection, 44 Iraq, 15, 16, 28, 29, 34, 66, 111, 152, 164n26, 259; anti-Americanism as result of, 172; invasion of by United States, 24, 68; Japanese forces in, 131; Japanese peacekeepers in, 76; open-ended focus on, 81; postconflict settlement in, 173; redeployment of US troops from South Korea to, 73; Russian position on, 171–173; South Korean troops in, 5; United States in, 15 Iraqi Humanitarian and Reconstruction Act (2003), 129, 130, 137–141, 143tab, 162n11 Iraqi Special Act. See Iraqi Humanitarian and Reconstruction Act (2003) Islam: extremist, 180; radical, 67; terrorism and, 259 Ivanov, Igor, 185 Japan: acceptance of regional exports in, 40; activism lite in, 4, 15, 127–161; in Afghanistan, 152, 163n16; alliances with, 33; alliance with United States, 76–79; antiterrorism legislation in, 127; Anti-Terrorism Special Act in, 131, 137–141, 143tab, 146; apparent dominance of, 38–40; Armed Attack Act in, 137–141, 143tab; Australian relations with, 156; bandwagoning US hegemony by, 128–161; bilateral security pacts with, 4; in Cambodia, 130, 142, 143, 144; changes in security policies in, 127; Chinese relations with, 17, 83, 154–155; concern over US dissatisfaction with military burden-sharing, 9; concerns over China, 128; constitutional constraints on defense planning, 130, 134, 135, 136, 137; constitutional restrictions on use of military, 64, 134, 141–148; contributions in Gulf War, 131; contributions to international

309

community, 77; cooperation with North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 156; cooperation with United States in regional situations, 127; decline in power of, 1; defense expenditures in, 77, 151tab; defense missile system in, 210; defense planning in, 128; democratization in, 46; dependence of on United States, 128; deployment of peacekeepers from, 76; desire for greater role in global arena, 9; development of post-Cold War security policies in, 129–137; domestic politics in, 131–132, 134; Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization Initiative in, 43; economic affluence in, 9; economic stagnation in, 36, 41; effects of expansion of military capabilities, 25; endaka period, 38–40; expansion of global security policies, 129–132; fear of ascendancy of China in, 9; fears of resurgence of, 28; financial crisis in, 40–41; foreign economic policy, 38; gross national product in, 29; Higuchi Commission in, 162n5; historical issues with United States, 155; historical status of women in, 128; in Honduras, 163n16; hybrid revisionism strategy in, 18; identity issues, 154–155; Indian relations with, 156; International Emergency Relief Act in, 163n16; International Peace Cooperation Act, 9, 129, 130, 133, 137–141, 142tab, 144, 146, 163n16; interoperability of troops with US armed forces, 5; investment in Asia, 38; in Iraq, 131, 148–150, 152, 163n21, 164n26; Iraqi Humanitarian and Reconstruction Act and, 129, 143tab, 162n11; lack of funds for investment in, 40; legal justifications for defense legislation, 130; legislative constraint on security planning, 141–148; military transformation in, 10, 150–153; missile defense system in, 9, 77, 78, 86; in Mozambique, 144, 163n16; multilateralism and, 133; National Security Council in, 77; North Korean relations with, 153–154; opposition to free trade agreements with China, 17; pacifist fear of war in,

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9; in peacekeeping operations, 127, 130; Proliferation Security Initiative and, 77, 86; public opinion in, 129, 141–148, 147tab, 163n17; recession in, 64; in regional security, 132–134; regional threats to, 134–135; restraints on development of security policies, 141–156; revisionist goals of, 8, 9; in Rwanda, 144, 163n16; security alliance with United States, 64, 136–137; security policies, 157–160; security-related legislation in, 128, 137–141; Self-Defense Forces in, 76, 127, 130, 134–136, 148–150; in sixparty talks over North Korea, 135, 154; South Korean relations with, 43, 154–155; strengthening of regional security and, 132–134; support for United States against North Korea, 198; Surrounding Areas Act in, 127, 133, 136, 137–141, 142tab, 144, 145; technological catch-up in, 37; three principles of nuclear nonproliferation and, 153–154; trade practices disadvantageous to United States, 62; transformation of military doctrine in, 5; in Turkey, 163n16; UN Cooperation Bill, 141, 142tab; in United Nations peacekeeping operations, 10; US occupation of, 56; US relations with, 4, 30, 35, 38, 58, 61, 76–79, 91, 127–161; wish for permanent seat on UN Security Council, 77; wish to be “normal state,” 4, 9, 10, 15, 76–79, 256 Jiang Zemin, 117, 175, 177, 229, 231, 233 Jo Myong Rok, 65 Jones, Anthony, 1–20 Karasin, Grigoriy, 175 Kazakhstan, 118, 119, 179, 180, 182, 183 Kim, Byung-Kook, 1–20, 197–220, 255–281 Kim Dae Jung, 34, 43, 65, 198, 214 Kim Il Sung, 11 Kim Jong Il, 12, 65, 116, 117, 187, 197, 200, 209, 211, 215, 223n72, 259 Kim Young Sam, 64

Koizumi, Junichiro, 8, 9, 16, 76, 78, 83, 128, 131, 148, 149, 162n11, 163n21 Koo Chen-fu, 251n8 Kotelkin, Aleksandr, 174 Kozyrev, Andrei, 169, 174 Kuomintang (KMT), 11, 12, 32, 48, 225, 238, 239, 240 Kyrgyzstan, 118, 119, 179, 180, 182, 183 Kyuma, Fumio, 156 Labor: low-cost, 39; regional division of, 1, 37, 39; rights, 44; skills, 39 Latin America: democratization in, 45; trade agreements with, 43, 44 Lee Hoi Chang, 49 Lee Teng-hui, 12, 19, 48, 228, 235, 238, 239, 240, 241, 257 Levey, Stuart, 204, 205 Liberalization: Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, 42; competitive, 44; economic, 1; of foreign investment rules, 41; in information technology sector, 43; trade, 44, 69 Lieberthal, Kenneth, 110 Lukin, Alexander, 4, 9, 15, 167–193, 255 Mahathir Mohamad, 42 Malaysia: Japanese investment in, 38; late industrialization in, 37 Mansfield, Edward, 46 Markets: access to, 45; Asian, 41; domestic, 37; financial, 106; foreign, 37; regional, 62; socialism, 200; tariff protections for, 39 Military: capabilities, 105; conflict, 10, 50, 73, 90; crisis, 4; security, 2, 4; technology, 4; tension, 12 Miyazawa Initiative, 41 Mongolia, 181 Moscow Declaration (2002), 172 Multilateralism, 34–35, 90, 133, 162n5; security commitments, 35; trade liberalization and, 69 Multinational corporations, 38, 39, 44 Multipolarity, 27, 30, 103, 175, 190 Murayama, Tomiichi, 132, 145 National Security Strategy, 32 Newly industrializing countries, 37

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Index Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 2 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 42, 43 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 14, 17, 55, 123n13, 156, 168, 177 Northeast Asia: “arc of instability” in, 259; in Asian financial crisis, 40–41; balance of forces in, 1; balance of power in, 23; bandwagoning activities in, 26, 27; bilateral regionalism in, 260, 267–271; Chinese policy of hedged acquiescence, 99–123; consequences of regime type in, 23; controlled spiral of tension in, 260–267; democratization in, 2, 45–49; dependence on US economy, 39; diminishing US influence in, 91, 92; divided nations resulting from Cold War conflict, 7; drift in Cold War alliance system in, 197–220; economic integration in, 1, 2, 23; fears of resurgence of Japan in, 28; globalization and, 36–45; identity politics of middle powers in, 260, 272–279; institution-building in, 23; intraregional trade in, 42tab; middle power threat to stability in, 10–14; multilateralism in, 34–35; outwardoriented economic reforms in, 24; political heterogeneity in, 46; postCold War division in, 255; powerstructural model of security in, 1, 29–30; power transition in, 2; probability of crisis/war in, 23; prospects for cooperation in, 23; realism in, 25–36; reconciliation of US regional strategies with military capabilities, 58–60; regional equilibrium in, 19; revisionist goals in, 2, 6–10; security issues in, 255–281; seeking collaboration with United States, 57; sources of anxiety over, 26–29; strategic geography in, 56; strategies for dealing with North Korea, 197–220; uneven economic growth in, 256; US balancing role in, 108–109; US hegemonic power in, 88–92, 99–123; US influence in,

311

23–50; US primacy in, 2; US strategies in, 55–92; zone of democratic peace in, 1 Northeast Asian Cooperation Dialogue, 35 Northern Alliance, 181 North Korea: alliances with Russia, 56; challenges to status quo by, 33, 203–207; Chinese relations with, 87, 116–118, 185–189, 257; chronic shortages for populace in, 12; claims “hostile policy” from United States, 85; command economy in, 11; disputes over access to foreign exchange holdings, 85; economic decline in, 13, 73, 199, 200; economic isolation of, 25; economic recovery programs in, 5, 6; effect of regime character in nuclear testing, 203, 204; effects of interdependence on, 25; effort to marginalize role of South Korea by, 64, 65; as failing state, 2; fearful of placement of US troops, 222n47; freeze on assets on, 205; hedged brinkmanship strategy in, 12, 18; identified as WMD proliferator, 204, 205; inspection of cargoes of, 197; Japanese relations with, 153–154; mass starvation in, 200; militarization as survival strategy, 200; military-industrial complex in, 200; missile crisis in, 5, 9, 33, 45, 59, 62, 209; need for security guarantees, 18, 19; negotiations with, 62, 64; nuclear testing by, 256; nuclear testing/development in, 5, 6, 15–16, 45, 84, 128, 200, 201, 202, 203–207; as part of “axis of evil,” 15, 201, 259; policy of strategic ambiguity in, 201; political equilibrium in, 45; possible accommodation with South Korea, 65; provocations by, 33; refusal to give up nuclear weapons program, 16, 203–207; requests nonaggression pact from United States, 201; resource endowment of, 45; Russian/Chinese cooperation on, 185–189; Russian relations with, 185–189; “salami slicing” survival strategy, 5, 12, 15, 205, 206; sanctions on, 50, 118, 189,

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197, 198, 205; search for security guarantees, 12, 199–203; signing of Geneva Agreed Framework (1994), 201, 204, 214; in six-party talks, 85, 87, 118, 204; “slow-motion” nuclearization in, 200; as source of regional instability, 2, 19, 20, 24, 203–207; Stalinist tradition in, 200; strategy of asymmetric political exchange with United States, 202fig; strategy of neither conflict deescalation or escalation in, 207–212; survival strategy of, 207–212; threats to regional equilibrium from, 19, 20, 24; unbridgeable gap in negotiations with, 203–207; US policy contradictions over, 86; US relations with, 12, 31, 47, 84–88, 89, 116–118; use of mobilizing myths in, 48; use of nuclearization as means to secure resources, 201; value to China, 197; weak integration with region, 37; withdrawal from Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, 62, 84, 116, 117, 185, 186, 201 North Pacific Working Group, 35 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, 62, 84, 116, 117, 135, 186, 201 Okimoto, Daniel, 29 Okinawa, 78, 79 Organizations: international, 52n32, 105; regional, 180 Pakistan, 181, 183 Pei, Minxin, 4, 8, 15, 18, 99–123, 255 People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 55, 121, 225–250 Perry, William, 203 Persian Gulf, 59 Philippines: Japanese investment in, 38; late industrialization in, 37 Plaza Accord (1985), 38 Pluralism, “feckless,” 46 Policy: aid, 35, 38; change, 101; changes with differing administrations, 7–8; choices, 25, 60; of deterrence, 61; dilemmas, 63; domestic, 45, 62; economic, 25; engagement, 201; experiments, 7; foreign, 2, 4, 7, 45, 47, 48, 49; military, 119;

nonproliferation, 100, 104, 167; public opinion and, 2; regional, 15; security, 11, 15, 90, 127, 128, 141–156; trade, 44 Political: change, 8, 43, 46, 48; conflicts, 27; cooperation, 44; economy, 50; elites, 10; immobilism, 81; influence, 91; intentions, 4; normalcy, 90; pluralism, 48; values, 102, 103 Politics: balance-of-power, 90; domestic, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 24; identity, 2, 12, 13; military-first, 12; power, 1, 197; of regime change, 7; regional, 14, 55, 57; of revisionism, 2, 6 Pollack, Jonathan, 4, 7, 8, 14, 55–92, 258 Powell, Colin, 247, 251n11 Power: capabilities, 4, 6, 9; disparities, 6; distribution of, 4, 24, 30; domestic, 10; as driver of change/continuity, 3; exploitation for revisionist ends, 26; hard/soft, 4, 90, 105; hegemonic, 4, 6, 10, 16, 17, 27, 57, 88–92; infrastructure, 183; interstate structure of, 14; multipolar distributions of, 25; politics, 1, 197; realism and, 3; regional, 167; rivalry, 66, 255; sources of, 4; sovereign, 14; status quo, 9; struggles, 4; transition, 3, 26, 33; transitions, 29, 30, 34 Prices, commodity, 38 Primakov, Yevgeniy, 174 Production: competitive advantage in, 40; cross-border networks of, 1, 24, 39, 41, 44, 45, 52n33; modular, 40; outsourcing of, 40; relocation to China, 41 Proliferation Security Initiative, 13, 32, 77, 86, 172, 199 Putin, Vladimir, 10, 15, 117, 169, 170, 172, 176, 177, 184, 192, 255 Qian Qichen, 231 Ravenhill, John, 43 Realism: and capabilities of United States, 24; globalization and, 36–45; intentions vs. capabilities in, 26; multilateralism and, 34–35; multipolarity views, 30–34; in Northeast Asia, 25–36; offensive, 8;

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Index power-structuralist variant of, 3; power-transition school, 29–30, 33–34; and preemptive strategies in China, 99 Regime: authoritarian, 47, 57, 102, 225; backlash coalitions, 47; change, 7, 48; character, 203; closed, 47; decay, 7; democratic, 102; feudal, 200; identity, 11; militarist, 12; stability, 200; trade, 62, 91; transformation, 12; transition, 6, 7; transparent, 47; types, 23, 25, 46, 47 Regional: alliance systems, 5; cooperation, 180; crises, 66; defense capabilities, 57; development, 56; economy, 24, 37, 39; equilibrium, 19; hegemony, 17; institutions, 23; integration, 24, 25, 38, 39, 41; interests, 15; markets, 62; order, 2, 4; organizations, 42, 180; peace, 102; policy, 15; politics, 14, 55, 57; powers, 167; security, 4, 57, 58, 69–72, 86, 100, 119, 128, 134; stability, 2, 10, 57, 61, 63, 91, 102, 127, 197; “stunted,” 91; trade, 40 Regionalism: adaptations of, 18; bilateral, 17; Northeast Asian path to, 16; not involving the United States, 179–181; open, 38 Revisionism: adaptive, 7, 11; Chinese, 32; foreign policy, 12, 13; goals of in Northeast Asia, 2, 6–10; hybrid strategy, 18; middle power, 10–14; North Korean, 32; politics of, 2; security politics of, 6; security strategies of, 12, 13; transformative, 7 Rice, Condoleezza, 82, 182, 197, 203, 204, 251n11, 259 Rights: human, 46, 62, 100, 102, 123n8, 123n13, 178, 182, 204; intellectual property, 44, 106, 123n13; labor, 44 Roh Moo Hyun, 5, 13, 15, 16, 34, 49, 74, 75, 93n32, 198, 213 Rowen, Henry, 48 Rozman, Gilbert, 91 Rumsfeld, Donald, 66, 67, 74, 82, 171 Russia: alliances with North Korea and Vietnam, 56; arms race by, 121; arrogance in dealing with Chinese, 190; Asian diplomacy of, 185; “Baltic Pearl” project in, 190; Bilateral

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Implementation Commission and, 172; border negotiations with China, 179, 180; Chinese relations with, 4, 56, 167–193, 256; commitment to revitalization of domestic economy by, 168; corruption in, 190, 191; as declining state, 1, 9; decreasing exports from, 189; democratization in, 46; desire for strategic partnership with China, 176–179; desire for united Korea, 188; desire for United Nations role in Yugoslavia, 171; diminished competition with United States, 170; diminishing role in world affairs of, 167; domestic politics in, 9, 10; economic disarray in, 9, 167; economic recovery in, 10; economic reforms in, 170; end of global rivalry with United States, 57; erosion of military capabilities in, 59; exports from, 174; factionalism in, 10; foreign debt of, 170; “Huaming Garden” project in, 190; inability to alter US primacy, 10; interest in cooperation with United States, 175, 176; interest in strategic partnership with China, 9; interests in Korea, 186, 187; investment climate in, 190; KGB Group in, 10; lack of long-term foreign policy in, 192; military industrial complex in, 10; military production, 174; Moscow Declaration and, 172; multipolarity as theme in, 27; North Korean relations with, 185–189; obstacles to trade in, 189; opposition to war in Iraq, 185; position in Arab world, 171, 172; position on Iraq, 171–173, 192, 193n5; post-9/11 support for United States with reservations, 184–185; pretense at balancer role in Northeast Asia, 9; public opinion in, 168, 169, 170, 171, 193n5; St. Petersburg Group in, 10; in Shanghai Cooperation Organization, 118, 119; struggle against separatism in, 191; support for multipolarity, 175, 190; support for US involvement in Afghanistan, 169; tendency toward cooperation with China, 167; trade with China, 174, 189–191; treaties with China,

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176–179; underdevelopment of infrastructure in, 189; US relations with, 4, 59, 167–193, 168–171; view on US supremacy, 4; weapons sales by, 61; in World Trade Organization (WTO), 170 Russian-Chinese Declaration on the Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order (1997), 27 Saddam Hussein, 67, 259 Schelling, Thomas, 205 Schweller, Randall, 27 Security: activism, 127; alliances, 5, 69; Asian, 24; bilateral pacts, 4; capability-based planning for, 15, 71, 83, 89; challenges, 67; collective, 55; common, 25; container, 90; cooperation, 90, 104, 127, 128; crises, 14; diplomacy, 135; forces, 47; global, 4, 9, 128, 134; institutionalized, 55, 133; internal, 47; issues, 2; lack of effect of terrorist attack on, 28; military, 2, 4; multilateral, 35, 132, 162n5, 211; national, 68; peaceful strategies for, 11; policies, 11, 15, 90, 127, 128, 141–156; postwar, 8, 9; power-structural models of, 29–30; priorities, 79; reality, 18; regional, 4, 57, 58, 69–72, 86, 100, 119, 128, 134; rethinking issues of, 7; rivalries, 90; services, 48; strategies, 12; threatbased planning for, 15, 71, 83, 89; threats, 58 Self-Defense Forces (SDF), 127, 130 Shambaugh, David, 105 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), 118, 119, 179–184 “Shanghai Five,” 118, 119, 180 Shanghai Group, 27 Shanghai Process, 179 Shotaro, Yachi, 212 Snyder, Jack, 46 Solingen, Etel, 47, 48 Soong, James, 232, 235 South China Sea, 27, 33, 104, 120 Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur), 17 South Korea: accommodation of US requests by, 15–16, 75; advocates

bilateral regionalism, 17; alienation of United States in defense of North Korea, 198, 212–216; attempt to distance itself from United States, 199, 212–216; autonomy in foreign policy in, 5; balancing strategy, 19; bilateral security pacts with, 4; Chinese relations with, 37, 74; concern over alliance with United States in, 74–75; democratization in, 1, 13, 46; globalization and, 13; gross national product in, 29; hedging strategy toward United States, 199; identity politics in, 12, 13; in Iraq, 16; Japanese relations with, 43, 154–155; marginalization in North Korean nuclear crisis, 212–216; military commitment in Iraq by, 75; national identity in, 13; normalization of relations with China and Russia, 13; North Korean refugees entering, 223n80; opposition to US unilateralism, 16–17; possible accommodation with North Korea, 65; power capabilities in, 5; public opinion in, 223n68; public opinion regarding US troops in, 74; redeployment/withdrawal of US military in, 72–76, 93n32; relocation of US military bases in, 5; resistance to US pressure for sanctions on North Korea, 198; revisionist strategies in, 12, 13; rift with United States over North Korea crisis, 5; security alliance with, 5; sunshine policy in, 198, 212, 214; troops in Iraq, 5; US base relocation in, 15; US relations with, 13, 30, 31, 43, 58, 65, 89, 212–216; US troop reduction in, 15 Starr, Frederick, 182, 183 State(s): behavior and economic integration, 24; failing, 2, 203; legitimacy, 14; nation, 14; repressive, 87; revisionist, 255; rogue, 12, 68, 86, 197, 201, 209, 256; separatist, 3 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (2002), 172 Sun Yat-sen, 11 Surrounding Areas Act (1999), 127, 133, 136, 137–141, 142tab, 144, 145 Syngman Rhee, 11, 28, 275

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Index Taiwan: antagonism between business elite and government, 248; bid for United Nations membership by, 12, 228, 239; Blues in, 48, 49, 232, 235; challenge to “one country, two systems” policy, 12, 80; China’s objectives concerning, 26; Chinese relations with, 32, 37, 111–113, 225–250, 258; Chinese threat to, 82; creeping independence in, 5, 18, 19, 108, 228, 232, 256; curtailment of US military presence, 58; decline in Chinese identity among populace of, 228, 237, 239, 240, 243tab, 244; declining power of, 2; Democratic Progressive Party in, 32, 107, 113; democratization in, 12, 46, 63, 228, 238; deteriorating economic situation in, 232; economic integration with China, 37, 235; effect of US-Chinese relations on, 231; foreign policy in, 5; Greens in, 48, 49; import ban on Chinese goods, 16; increase in nationalism of, 229; as key factor in ongoing transformation of regional order in Northeast Asia, 225–250; Kuomintang in, 11, 12, 32, 48, 225, 238, 239, 240; loss of economic sovereignty, 12; marginalization of, 226; military budget, 61; missile crisis in, 8; national identity issues in, 225–250; nationalism in, 239; orientations to independence vs. unification, 243tab, 245tab, 249fig, 252n33; peaceful reconciliation with China possibilities, 226, 227; People First Party, 32, 48; politics of identity in, 225–250; possibility of peaceful reconciliation with China, 236–249; prospect of military conflict over, 228–236; retrocession to China, 225; revisionist strategy of, 12; Security and Exchange Commission in, 240, 251n23; security commitments to, 225; separatist views in, 10; as source of regional instability, 2, 19, 20, 24; Taiwan Solidarity Union in, 48; threats to regional equilibrium from, 19, 20, 24; “three nos” Chinese policy on, 12, 52n32; unification issues, 227; US relations with, 31, 58, 79–84, 111,

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225–250, 258; US support for, 5, 19, 168; in World Trade Organization (WTO), 16 Taiwan Relations Act (1979), 30, 58, 247, 258 Tajikistan, 119, 179, 180, 182, 183 Taliban, 168, 180, 181 Technology: capabilities, 39; information, 43, 77; military, 4; missile defense, 229; nuclear, 124n14; sensitive, 172; transfer, 45; United States lead in, 106 Terrorism. See War on terror Thailand: Japanese investment in, 38; late industrialization in, 37 Tibet, 107 Tokaev, Kasymzhomart, 183 Tomiichi, Murayama, 9 Trade: agricultural, 41; bilateral, 17; concessions, 17; dependence, 108; free, 16–17; illegal, 189; international, 81; intra-Asian cooperation in, 43; intraindustry, 39; intraregional, 41, 42, 42tab; liberalization, 44, 69; mostfavored-nation status, 100; orientation toward Chinese interests, 27; policy, 44; preferential, 44; promotion of, 100; protection, 41; reform, 45; regimes, 62, 91; regional, 40; relations, 45 Truman, Harry, 55 Tucker, Nancy, 226, 236 Turkmenistan, 183 Unilateralism, 16–17, 119, 177, 214, 259 United Nations: peacekeeping operations, 9, 10, 130; preservation of role of, 178; role in expansion of global security role of Japan, 130 United Nations Commission on Human Rights, 207 United Nations General Assembly, 172 United Nations Security Council, 77, 86, 105, 116, 118, 167, 171, 177, 197, 198 United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), 142, 143 United States: adaptation as regional strategy of George H.W. Bush administration, 60–61; in Afghanistan, 15; alliance commitments, 29, 100;

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alliances in Northeast Asia, 100; alliance with Japan, 76–79; Asian policy, 56; Asian regional strategic interests of, 55, 56, 57; assumptions on Asian defense needs, 58, 59; asymmetrical power relationship with China, 105–106; attempts to fit Northeast Asia region into its global terrorism strategy, 15; attempts to make China a responsible stakeholder in international community, 100; Australian relations with, 58; as balancer of Chinese ambitions, 4; Bilateral Implementation Commission and, 172; Chinese relations with, 10, 48, 56, 58, 63, 79–84, 89, 91, 99–123, 168; claims North Korea in “axis of evil,” 15; commitment ot military predominance by, 66; common interests with China, 104, 105; concerns over China, 128; conflict/cooperation with China, 102–105; credibility issues, 15; critics of Northeast Asia policies, 100; defense against long-range threats, 67; defense budget in, 29; defense planning in, 71; demand for CVID of nuclear facilities in North Korea, 197, 207, 211, 214, 215; deterioration of international image, 169; diminished competition with Russia, 170; distancing from Taiwanese claims to sovereignty, 80; distrust of South Korea intentions in North Korean nuclear crisis, 212–216; doctrine of preemption in, 24, 88, 90; doctrine of preventive war, 7, 259; dual-track strategy in North Korea, 211; economic growth in, 33; economic interdependence with China, 106–107; end of global rivalry with Russia, 57; exclusion from intra-Asian integration, 37, 42; failure of North Korea strategies, 34; federal deficit in, 59–60; foreign policy of, 4–5; geopolitical distance from Northeast Asia, 4; German relations with, 61; global defense strategy, 61; gross national product in, 29; “hedged engagement” policy toward China, 99–123; hegemonic power of, 4, 6, 10, 16, 17,

27, 57, 88–92, 101, 128; historical issues with Japan, 155; hostility toward Northeast Asian trade blocs, 17; human rights concerns in, 46; imperialism of, 13; importance of market in, 38; inability to prevent nuclear weapons development in North Korea, 86, 87; inability to shape North Korean behavior, 207–212; Indian relations with, 109; influence in Northeast Asia, 23–50; intention of preserving dominance in Northeast Asian region, 104; interest in multilateralism, 43; invasion of Iraq by, 68; involvement in Asian wars, 58; in Iraq, 15, 24, 29, 34; Japanese relations with, 4, 30, 35, 38, 58, 61, 76–79, 91, 127–161; in Korea War, 55, 56; lessening of attention to Asia by, 57; maritime preponderance of, 60; military capability of, 4, 31; National Missile Defense system, 113, 114, 115; National Security Strategy of, 32; nonproliferation policy, 19; North Korean relations with, 12, 31, 47, 84–88, 89, 116–118; occupation of Japan by, 56; “one China” policy, 63, 112, 229, 256; opposition to Chinese takeover of Taiwan, 5; opposition to independence for Taiwan, 5; passing of regional predominance, 57; policy contradictions, 86; policy of hedged engagement toward China, 255; policy of regime change by, 7; policy of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan, 230; policy reaction toward Central Asia, 181–184; policy regarding North Korea, 84–88; political influence of, 44, 91; post-Cold War strategic alternatives in Northeast Asia, 60–68; predominant policy goals of George W. Bush administration, 69–88; preoccupation with security issues in, 43; primacy as security strategy of George W. Bush administration, 65–68; primacy of in Northeast Asia, 2; public opinion on rise of China, 103; reconciliation of regional strategies with military capabilities, 58–60; redeployment/withdrawal of military in South Korea by, 72–76;

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Index refusal to join international agreements, 177; refuses request for nonaggression pact by North Korea, 201; regional security commitments of, 31, 71–72; reliance on China for diplomacy with North Korea, 81, 82; responses to capabilities of other states, 34; revisionist strategies of, 2, 13, 88–92, 258; Russian relations with, 4, 59, 167–193, 168–171; security alliance with Japan, 64, 136–137; security alliance with South Korea, 13; security preponderance of, 14; security priorities, 79; in six-party talks over North Korea, 85, 87, 118; South Korean relations with, 13, 30, 31, 43, 58, 65, 89, 212–216; strategic planning for maximum autonomy and freedom of action, 90; strategies in Northeast Asia, 55–92; strategy of asymmetric political exchange with North Korea, 202fig; strategy of neither conflict deescalation or escalation in North Korea, 207–212; strength of commitments to Northeast Asian region, 28; superiority in hard/soft power of, 3, 4, 88, 90; support for “one country, two systems” policy, 12; support for Taiwan by, 5; Taiwanese relations with, 31, 58, 79–84, 111, 225–250, 258; technological advantage of, 66; terrorist attack on, 5; trade deficit with China, 81–82, 106; trade policies, 44; trade with China, 63, 104, 168; transformation as regional strategy of Clinton administration, 61–65; underestimation of capabilities

317

of, 24; unilateralism of, 8, 16–17, 119, 177, 214, 259; unwillingness to enter bilateral negotiations with, 86; in Vietnam War, 58; war on terror, 4, 15; weapons sales to Taiwan, 80, 81; willingness to employ coercion by, 68; withdrawal from Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, 67, 114, 115 United States–Republic of China Mutual Defense Treaty, 58 United States Trade and Development Agency, 183 US-Japan Security Consultative Committee, 77, 78 US-Russian Working Group on Counterterrorism, 173 US-Taiwan Relations Act (1979), 19 Uzbekistan, 180, 182 Wang Daohan, 251n8 Wang Guangya, 211 War on terror, 4, 15, 28, 32, 121, 122, 167, 169, 172, 180, 181, 259 Wen Jiabao, 247 Wolfowitz, Paul, 72 World Trade Organization (WTO), 123n13, 234; China in, 16, 41, 43, 63, 81, 120; Russia in, 170; Taiwan in, 16 Yamamoto, Yoshinobu, 4, 9, 15, 18, 256 Yanai, Shunji, 162n3 Yeltsin, Boris, 174, 175, 176, 191, 192 Zakaria, Fareed, 46 Zhu Rongji, 120, 123n13 Zoellick, Robert, 83, 100, 123n4, 203

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About the Book

A

s China’s influence rises and the United States attempts to retain its primacy in Northeast Asia, the countries of the region are reconsidering their own security needs—and availing themselves of new opportunities. Power and Security in Northeast Asia explores the complexities of current security strategies in the region, revealing motivations and policies not often considered in traditional analyses of international relations.

Byung-Kook Kim is professor of political science at Korea University and director of the East Asia Institute in Seoul. Among his numerous publications are Consolidating Democracy in South Korea, coedited with Larry Diamond, and Korean Politics. Anthony Jones is associate professor of sociology at Northeastern University. He is coeditor with Jorge Domíguez of The Construction of Democracy: Building and Sustaining a Democratic State in the Modern Age.

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