International Relations of Asia (Asia in World Politics) [3 ed.] 1538162849, 9781538162842

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International Relations of Asia

Asia in World Politics Series Editor: Samuel S. Kim Cooperation or Conflict in the Taiwan Strait? by Ralph N. Clough China Rising: Power and Motivation in Chinese Foreign Policy edited by Yong Deng and Fei-Ling Wang In the Eyes of the Dragon: China Views the World edited by Yong Deng and Fei-Ling Wang Pacific Asia? Prospects for Security and Cooperation in East Asia by Mel Gurtov South Asia in World Politics edited by Devin T. Hagerty The United States and Northeast Asia: Debates, Issues, and New Order edited by G. John Ikenberry and Chung-in Moon East Asia and Globalization edited by Samuel S. Kim The International Relations of Northeast Asia edited by Samuel S. Kim North Korea and Northeast Asia edited by Samuel S. Kim and Tai Hwan Lee International Relations of Asia, 3rd ed. edited by David Shambaugh Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy since the Cold War, 5th ed. by Robert G. Sutter International Relations in Southeast Asia: The Struggle for Autonomy, 3rd ed. by Donald E. Weatherbee The United States and Asia: Regional Dynamics and Twenty-First-Century Relations, 2nd ed. by Robert G. Sutter

International Relations of Asia Third Edition

Edited by David Shambaugh

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Acquisitions Editor: Katelyn Turner Acquisitions Assistant: Haley White Sales and Marketing Inquiries: [email protected] Credits and acknowledgments for material borrowed from other sources, and reproduced with permission, appear on the appropriate pages within the text. Published by Rowman & Littlefield An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2022 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. First edition 2008. Second edition 2014. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Shambaugh, David L., editor. Title: International relations of Asia / edited by David Shambaugh. Description: Third edition. | Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2022] | Series: Asia in world politics | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021061205 (print) | LCCN 2021061206 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538162842 (cloth) | ISBN 9781538162859 (paperback) | ISBN 9781538162866 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Asia—Politics and government—21st century. | Asia—Foreign relations. Classification: LCC DS35.2 .I56 2022 (print) | LCC DS35.2 (ebook) | DDC 327.5— dc23/eng/20220127 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061205 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061206 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Dedicated to: Michael Yahuda Valued friend, colleague, and leading scholar of China and the International Relations of Asia

Contents

Map of Asia

ix

List of Figures and Tables

xi

List of Acronyms

xiii

Preface to the Third Edition

xix

Part I:  Introduction  1  International Relations in Asia: Grappling with Complexities David Shambaugh

3

Part II: Legacies and Theories  2  The Evolving Asian System: Three Transformations Samuel S. Kim

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 3  Thinking Theoretically about Asian IR Amitav Acharya

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Part III: The Roles of Regional Powers  4  America’s Role in Asia: Challenged Leadership Robert Sutter

87

 5  China’s Role in Asia: Attractive or Aggressive? Phillip C. Saunders

115

 6  Japan’s Role in Asia: From Free Rider to Thought Leader Michael J. Green

139

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Contents

 7  India’s Role in Asia: A Regional Power with Global Ambitions T. V. Paul

161

Part IV: Subregional Actors  8  S  outheast Asian States and ASEAN: A Center of Courtships and Cooperation Cheng-Chwee Kuik

189

 9  South Korea: An Ambivalent Middle Power Scott Snyder

229

10  North Korea: Continuity without Change Victor Cha and Ellen Kim

257

11  Taiwan: Foreign Relations without Formal Recognition Shelley Rigger

283

12  Australasia: Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands Robert Ayson and Rory Medcalf

309

Part V: Transregional Linkages and Dynamics 13  The Asian Regional Economy Edward J. Lincoln

339

14  The Asian Regional Security Environment Bates Gill

365

15  E  thnicity, Religion, Gender, and Human Rights in Asian International Relations Rollie Lal

397

Part VI: Looking to the Future 16  Asian IR in the 2020s: Factors for the Future David Shambaugh

425

Index 441 About the Editor and Contributors

463

Asia Source: CIA.

Figures and Tables

FIGURES   6.1  Value of FDI to China by Country   8.1  Map of Southeast Asia   8.2  ASEAN and the ASEAN-Led Mechanisms   9.1  South Korean Trade Volume, 2005–20   9.2  South Korean Foreign Direct Investment, 2005–20   9.3  Student Exchanges Between South Korea and China 10.1  China-DPRK Bilateral Trade Volume, 2011–20 10.2  North Korea’s Ballistic Missile Range Map 13.1  GDP in 2019 at Market Exchange Rates 13.2  GDP per Capita at Market Exchange Rates, 2019 13.3  Japan’s Imports 13.4  Japan’s Exports 13.5  ASEAN Imports 13.6  India’s Exports 13.7  China’s Exports 13.8  China’s Imports 13.9  Foreign Direct Investment Flows into ASEAN 13.10 The Stock of Inward Foreign Direct Investment in India, 2019 14.1  Top 10 Military Spenders in Asia, 2020 14.2  Military Expenditures in Asia, 2011–20 14.3  Cumulative Military Spending in Asia, 2011–20 14.4  Volume of Arms Imports in Asia, 2011–20 14.5  The First and Second Island Chains 14.6  Multilateral Security Institutions in Asia 16.1  Asia-Pacific Regional Organizations xi

144 190 203 237 237 239 263 266 340 341 345 346 347 348 349 350 357 358 366 367 367 368 372 384 434

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Figures and Tables

TABLES   3.1 Three Perspectives on International Relations   3.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Asia’s International Relations   5.1 Percentage of Imports from China (China’s Rank as Import Source)   5.2 Percentage of Exports to China (China’s Rank as Export Market)   8.1 Southeast Asian Countries: Main Indicators, 2020   8.2 World’s Leading Economies’ Top 5 Trading Partners, 2019 10.1 Inter-Korean Annual Trade Volume, 2012–20 11.1 Taiwan’s Asian Relations by the Numbers, 2019 13.1 Real GDP Growth Rates in Asia 13.2 Shares of Japan’s Foreign Direct Investment Flows 14.1 Selected PLA Weapons Platforms, 2020

57 59 120 120 193 198 264 301 343 355 370

Acronyms

5G A2/AD ACD ACFTA ACMECS ADIZ ADMM ADMM+ AEC AFTA AICHR AIIB AIMPLB AIT AMDA AMF AMM AMRO ANZUS AOIP APEC APSC ARF ARSA ASA ASCC ASEAN

fifth-generation broadband cellular network technology Anti-Access/Area Denial Asia Cooperation Dialogue ASEAN–China Free Trade Area Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus ASEAN Economic Community ASEAN Free Trade Area ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank All-India Muslim Personal Law Board American Institute in Taiwan Anglo-Malay(si)an Defense Agreement Asian Monetary Fund Aceh Monitoring Mission ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation ASEAN Political-Security Community ASEAN Regional Forum Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army Association of Southeast Asia ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Association of Southeast Asian Nations xiii

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ASEAN+ ASEAN+3 ASEAN+6 ASEM ASW AUKUS AUSMIN AVIC BIMP-EAGA BJP BMMA BRI BUILD CCP CEAC CER CETC CIA CICA CLB CLMV CMI CMIM CNAPS COVID-19 CPEC CPTPP CSCAP CSGC CSIS CSO CTBT DACOWITS DCA DMZ DPJ DPP DPRK

Acronyms

ASEAN plus ASEAN plus China, Japan, and South Korea ASEAN plus Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Brunei Asia-Europe Meeting anti-submarine warfare Australia, United Kingdom, United States Australia–United States Ministerial Consultations Aviation Industry Corporation Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area Bharatiya Janata Party Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan Belt and Road Initiative Better Utilization of Investment Leading to Development (Act) Chinese Communist Party Council on East Asian Community Closer Economic Relations China Electronics Technology Group Corporation Central Intelligence Agency Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia Cabinet Legislative Bureau Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam Chiang Mai Initiative CMI Multilateralization Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies Coronavirus Disease 2019 China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for TransPacific Partnership Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific China South Industries Group Center for Strategic and International Studies Consociational Security Order Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Defense Advisory Commission on Women in the Service Defense Cooperation Agreement Demilitarized Zone (North/South Korea) Democratic Party of Japan Democratic Progressive Party Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea



EAFTA EAS ECFA EDCA EEZ ESCAP ETIM EU EWEC FDI FEALAC FGM FOIP FPDA FPPC FTA G7 G20 GATT GCTF GDP GEACPS GMF GNI GNP GONGO GSOMIA GSLV HADR IAEA IAT ICAO ICBM IFI IISS ILO IMET IMF INDOPACOM INF INSS IPE

Acronyms xv

East Asian Free Trade Area East Asia Summit Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement Exclusive Economic Zone United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific East Turkestan Islamic Movement European Union East-West Economic Corridor Foreign Direct Investment Forum for East Asia–Latin America Cooperation female genital mutilation Free and Open Indo-Pacific Five Power Defense Arrangements Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence Free Trade Agreement Group of Seven Group of Twenty General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Global Cooperation and Training Framework Gross Domestic Product Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere Global Maritime Fulcrum Gross National Income Gross National Product government-operated non-governmental organization General Security of Military Information Agreement Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle humanitarian assistance and disaster relief International Atomic Energy Agency Interchange Association in Taiwan International Commercial Aviation Organization intercontinental ballistic missiles international financial institution International Institute for Strategic Studies International Labor Organization International Military Education and Training International Monetary Fund Indo-Pacific Command (United States) Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Institute for National Strategic Studies (Japan) international political economy

xvi

IPR IR IRBM ISA ISEAS ISRO IT ITU JAD JI JMSU JMSDF JBIC KEDO KMT KORUS FTA KPA KWP LDP LGBTQ MaBaTha Maphilindo MDT MILF MITI MOFA MOU MPAC MRBM MTJA MUI NAM NAPCI NATO NBR NEAT NIC NIE NGO NLD NORINCO NPT NSC

Acronyms

intellectual property rights international relations intermediate-range ballistic missile International Studies Association Institute for Southeast Asian Studies India Space Research Organization information technology International Telecommunication Union Jamaah Ansharut Daulah Jemaah Islamiyah Joint Maritime Seismic Understanding Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces Japan Bank of International Cooperation Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization Kuomintang (Guomindang) Korea-US Free Trade Agreement Korean People’s Army Korean Workers’ Party Liberal Democratic Party lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer Association for the Protection of Race and Religion Malaya-Philippines-Indonesia Mutual Defense Treaty Moro Islamic Liberation Front Ministry of International Trade and Industry Ministry of Foreign Affairs Memorandum of Understanding Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity medium-range ballistic missile Malaysia-Thailand Joint Authority Indonesian Ulema Council Non-Aligned Movement Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative North Atlantic Treaty Organization National Bureau of Asian Research (US) Network of East Asian Think-Tanks newly industrialized country National Intelligence Estimate non-governmental organization National League for Democracy China North Industries Corporation Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty National Security Council



NSG NSP NSS NTS OECD OIC P4 P5 PAP PAS PBEC PDI PECC PIF PLA PLAN PPBM PPP PRC PSI PSLV Quad R&D RCEP ROC ROK SAARC SAFTA SAIS SCO SCS SEANWFZ SEATO SIPRI SKRL SLD SME SOAS SOE SPT SRBM SWP

Acronyms xvii

Nuclear Suppliers Group New Southbound Policy National Security Strategy non-traditional security Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Organization of Islamic Cooperation Pacific Four permanent members of UN Security Council People’s Action Party Parti Islam Se-Malaysia Pacific Basin Economic Council Pacific Deterrence Initiative Pacific Economic Cooperation Council Pacific Island Forum People’s Liberation Army People’s Liberation Army Navy Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia Purchasing Power Parity People’s Republic of China Proliferation Security Initiative Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Australia, India, Japan, US) research and development Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Republic of China Republic of Korea, or South Korea South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation South Asia Free Trade Area School of Advanced International Studies Shanghai Cooperation Organization South China Sea Southeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Southeast Asia Treaty Organization Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Singapore-Kunming Rail Link Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore) small- and medium-sized enterprises School of Oriental and African Studies state-owned enterprises Six-Party Talks short-range ballistic missiles Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (German Institute for International and Security Affairs)

xviii

TAC TCA TECRO THAAD TIFA TLP TPP TSMC UAV UK UMNO UN UNAIDS UNCLOS UNCTAD UNESCO UNHCR UNSC USNS UTM VFA WHO WITS WMD WTO

Acronyms

Treaty of Amity and Cooperation Trilateral Cooperative Arrangement Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense Trade and Investment Framework Agreement Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan Trans-Pacific Partnership Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation unmanned aerial vehicles United Kingdom United Malays National Organization United Nations Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea United Nations Conference on Trade and Development United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization UN High Commissioner for Refugees United Nations Security Council United States Naval Ship Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Visiting Forces Agreement World Health Organization World Bank Integrated Trade Solutions weapons of mass destruction World Trade Organization

Preface to the Third Edition

The first edition of this volume was published in 2008, the second in 2104, and now the third in 2022. During the intervening years, Asia has become an even more central— many would argue the central—region in international affairs. This is true by many empirical measures (which are delineated in the introductory chapter). What is now increasingly referred to as the “Indo-Pacific” encompasses a sprawling geographic region including the Pacific and Indian Oceans, involves many of the major powers and a number of “middle powers,” is the most dynamic economic region in the world, is increasingly militarized and includes some of the most acute “hot spots” in international security, and is extraordinarily diverse in terms of its social and cultural features. The rate of change is rapid on many levels, but tepid in others (e.g., the region’s political systems). It is a big and complex world, and other regions are all important in international relations, but there is a growing recognition that Asia and the Indo-Pacific have become the most significant. If nothing else, events there have collateral impacts around the whole globe. As with the previous two editions, Rowman & Littlefield Asian Studies editor Susan McEachern was instrumental in catalyzing this new edition. Susan recently retired from her long tenure as an R&L editor, and she enjoys and deserves widespread admiration and recognition for all that she has brought to the field of Asian Studies over several decades. The incredibly impressive list of books commissioned by Susan, and published under her auspices, is a living testament of her contributions to, and impact on, the field of Asian Studies over several decades. Not only highly professional, Susan has always been a complete joy to be and work with as a person. In her absence, Rowman & Littlefield acquisitions editors Ashley Dodge, Katelyn Turner, and Haley White are filling her big shoes. They, together with production editor xix

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Alden Perkins, have been superb to work with in shepherding this manuscript through production and into publication. Sincere thanks also go to copyeditor Jacqueline Plante for improving the prose throughout the volume and catching many lacunae that escaped my eye. Susan had kept after me for several years to undertake a new edition, but I preferred to wait until the dust had settled after Donald Trump’s tumultuous tenure as president, in order to gain a more detached and balanced assessment that was not distorted by his unpredictable behavior. Thus, this volume was written by the contributing authors during the summer of 2021 as the new Biden administration was settling into office in the United States. As described further in my introductory chapter, this third edition has been not only thoroughly updated, but also thoroughly revised. There are eight entirely new chapters, and the other eight (that were in the second edition) have been considerably rewritten. Once again, this book is published in the signature Rowman & Littlefield series Asia in World Politics, which was initiated and has been superbly overseen by Professor Samuel Kim (also a contributor to this volume) since 1999. The volume has also received financial assistance from the China Policy Program of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, and I wish to particularly thank Christopher Fussner for his continuing support for the program and this volume. All three editions of this volume have been conceived and written primarily for one principal audience: university students. It has become one of two leading textbooks on the subject,1 and this is heartening to the editors and all of those who contributed to the first two editions. Each edition has truly been a collective and collegial enterprise. While primarily aimed at university students (undergraduate and postgraduate), the contributors (among the world’s leading scholars) have also written their chapters with a depth and sophistication that will also make the book very useful for a variety of other professions: diplomats, security and military officials, intelligence analysts, risk analysts and investors, journalists, NGOs, the business community, and interested publics. In terms of intended audiences, therefore, it is a “crossover” volume. I sincerely hope that all readers and audiences find the overall approach, and the individual chapters, to be informative, intellectually digestible, and stimulating. Last, but not least, I wish to acknowledge and thank my much-respected scholarly colleague and longtime personal friend Michael Yahuda for his decades of comradery and intellectual stimulation. I have learned an enormous amount from Michael and his writings over the years, he has been a mentor to me (particularly during my years teaching at SOAS in London), and he has had an enormous impact on the scholarly fields of Chinese foreign policy and Asian international relations since the 1970s. Michael and I collaborated



Preface to the Third Edition xxi

in editing the previous two editions of this volume, but following his “retirement” I have undertaken editing this one on my own. Nonetheless, Michael’s intellectual influence continues to grace these pages—and for all that he has contributed to the field, and to me personally, I warmly and admiringly dedicate this third edition to him. David Shambaugh Washington, DC January 2022 NOTE 1  Michael Yahuda’s The International Politics of the Asia-Pacific (London: Routledge, four editions) being the other.

Part One

INTRODUCTION

Chapter One

International Relations in Asia Grappling with Complexities D avid S hambaugh

By a variety of measures Asia has become the world’s most important region. It may also be the world’s most diverse and complex region. The sprawling Asian (Indo-Pacific) region is primarily distinguished by its remarkable contrasts and diversity in multiple respects: geography, weather, cultures, ethnicities, languages, religions, demographics, politics, economies, societies, cultures, technologies, educational levels, militaries, and other elements. The other principal regions of the world—Europe, the Middle East, North America, Latin America, and Africa—all display greater homogeneity than does Asia in these respects. With such remarkable heterogeneity spanning the thirty-eight nation-states covered in this volume (including fifteen separate Pacific Island countries and territories), generalizations inevitably do not apply across the region. THE APPROACH OF THE THIRD EDITION As a consequence of the complexities that characterize the region, conceptualizing and understanding the diverse and fluid dynamics of Asian international relations is increasingly vexing and thus necessitates multidimensional analytical approaches. This introductory chapter wrestles with these complexities, and the entire volume does so as well, in four distinct categories: historical legacies and the applicability of international relations theories; the roles of regional powers; the roles of subregional actors; and transregional linkages and dynamics. This chapter also introduces readers to some of the basic characteristics that define Asia today. In the concluding chapter, I attempt to peer into the proverbial crystal ball to assess some of the factors that will shape how the Asian order may evolve in the future. In between 3

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these book-end chapters, our contributing authors offer in-depth assessments of the different “pieces of the puzzle.” They are each sophisticated in-depth assessments of the various national actors and transnational processes that characterize the region and, taken together, they add up to a “whole” that will provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of the complex forces operating in Asia today. Readers will wonder: How does this third edition differ from the previous two? Aside from updating developments that have occurred since the second edition was published in 2014, this volume has also been reconceptualized. First, the geographical definition of the Asian region adopted in this volume is somewhat different from the first two editions. This edition is limited to four distinct subregions: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Australasia. The exclusion of Central Asia from this edition has mainly to do with the fact that there are few linkages between Central Asian states and these other subregions (with the exception of China via the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Belt and Road Initiative). The Central Asian states remain land-locked and highly insular, and they have much closer ties to Russia than they do to the rest of Asia (which is why the region is usually considered part of Eurasia by governments, think tanks, and universities).1 Second, this time I also decided not to include a chapter on Europe in Asia (this was a tough judgment call, that my European colleagues will no doubt criticize). To be certain, collectively, the European Union member states all have diplomatic ties across Asia, historically many are former colonial actors in the region, today Europe is a very significant commercial actor ($1.3 trillion in total trade with the region in 2020),2 many states and private entities maintain cultural exchanges, and two nations (France and the UK) maintain a very limited military presence in the region (in 2021 Germany also dispatched a naval frigate to tour the region). Yet, overall, and despite the regular pronouncements from Brussels of the EU’s prioritization to Asia and the Indo-Pacific, I concluded that Europe’s roles remain too limited (other than trade and investment) to really warrant a separate chapter. Europe lacks overall impact and influence in diplomacy, security, and civil society (this sense was reinforced in my conversations with diplomats and experts across the region). While perhaps overstated, one observer has even declared Europe “increasingly irrelevant” and the “end of European influence in Asia,” arguing that “As its influence rapidly fades, Europe is very much on the fringes of Asia’s geopolitical and economic dynamics.”3 Even in the areas of trade, investment, and finance—Europe’s strongest suits—the writer notes that Europe’s portion has shrunk significantly over the past two decades. While not included in this edition, Europe’s roles in Asia are well covered by many other institutions, and readers are referred to these for further information.4



International Relations in Asia 5

Nor does this volume include a chapter on Russia in the region (neither did the first two editions). Russia is largely a single-dimensional actor in Asia (arms sales), although it also supplies China, Japan, and North Korea with energy. Yet, Russia’s total trade with East Asia and the Pacific in 2018 only totaled $177.8 billion (China is by far the largest trading partner for Moscow, accounting for approximately $140 billion of the regional total in 2021).5 Thus, despite Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric about Russia’s own “pivot” to Asia post-2014, one study has aptly characterized Russia’s regional role as “less than meets the eye.”6 Putin’s and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine further isolates it from the region. On the other hand, this third edition does include eight entirely new chapters. These include separate chapters on North and South Korea (by Victor Cha and Ellen Kim, and Scott Snyder, respectively), a new chapter on Taiwan (by Shelley Rigger), a new and broadened chapter on Australasia (by Robert Ayson and Rory Medcalf), a new chapter on Southeast Asia and ASEAN (by Cheng-Chwee Kuik), a new chapter on regional security (by Bates Gill), and a new chapter on ethnicity, religion, gender, and human rights by Rollie Lal. The previous chapters on regional powers have all been thoroughly revised and updated: the United States (Robert Sutter), China (Phillip Saunders), Japan (Michael Green), and India (T. V. Paul). The historical and theoretical chapters, by Samuel Kim and Amitav Acharya, respectively, and the chapter on the regional economy by Ed Lincoln, have also been thoroughly revised and updated. This introductory chapter is also thoroughly revised and the concluding chapter is altogether new. Taken together, I believe that these sixteen chapters do capture well the principal actors, dynamics, and trends in the international relations of the Asian (Indo-Pacific) region as we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century. While this volume attempts to be comprehensive and up-to-date, readers are also referred to other recent books that cover international relations in the region.7 DIVERSITY DEFINES ASIA The diversity of the broad Asian region is apparent in many ways. While panregional interactions have increased dramatically in recent decades, drawing the disparate parts of the sprawling region closer together, the geography and distinct dynamics of the region’s subregions (Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, and Australasia) all still remain somewhat self-contained geopolitical ecosystems. Despite the increased connectivity, it thus still remains somewhat questionable the degree to which one can truly speak of “Asian” international relations beyond a geographic descriptor and

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in a systemic sense. Moreover, the increasing use of the term “Indo-Pacific” further expands the geographic definition and confuses more than it clarifies (defining the region as encompassing the entire Indian Ocean littoral and reaching all the way to Yemen, Oman, the Persian Gulf, and eastern Africa). Also contributing to the difficulties of describing the region as a whole are the disparate characteristics of the states and societies across the region. The individual governments range in size, political type, state capacity, and governance effectiveness: these include Leninist systems, mature democracies, struggling democracies, hybrid authoritarian-democracies, monarchies and sultanates, secular states and single religion dominant states, strongman-ruled states, and military juntas. Societies themselves are extraordinarily diverse along multiple dimensions (demographies, religions, ethnicities, languages, cultures, and standards of living). Their economies are also very different: in aggregate size, the balance between state and market forces, government regulation, technological levels, investment inputs and production outputs, and integration into regional and global economic institutions and supply chains. ASIA BY THE NUMBERS The region’s heterogeneous diversity is also evident statistically. Asia includes some of the world’s most and least developed countries, some of the strongest and some of the weakest. Demographically, 4.69 billion people lived in Asia in 2020, according to United Nations estimates.8 This includes 1.94 billion in South Asia, 1.68 billion in Northeast Asia, and 668 million in Southeast Asia. Altogether, Asia comprises 60 percent of the world’s population. Eleven of the world’s fifteen most populated nations are in Asia (China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Philippines, and South Korea). Asia is home to many of the world’s major religions—including Buddhism, Catholicism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Shintoism, Sikhism, and Taoism. The world’s four largest Islamic societies are in Asia (Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh), with 870 million Muslims (nearly 70 percent of the global Muslim population) living across the region—more than anywhere in the world and more than all Middle East nations combined.9 Asia has a diversified, but steadily improving, quality of life. Average Asian life expectancy is at an all-time high of seventy-eight years (according to UN data).10 Japan’s life expectancy ranks first in the world (84.1 years), Singapore fourth (82.9 years), and South Korea ninth (82.6 years). At the same time, none of the top twenty infant mortality rates today are in Asia—dramatic evidence of the economic development and improved



International Relations in Asia 7

standards of living across the region. As Asia has modernized, its public health profile has steadily improved and it has been able to eradicate a number of pandemic diseases (yet others like malaria, typhoid, and cholera remain active in South and Southeast Asia). COVID-19 blanketed the region, although on a per capita basis Asia has had a lower percentage of cases than all other regions of the world except Africa.11 Other types of influenza periodically break out in the region, while HIV/AIDS remains a pressing problem (India, China, Russia, and Thailand now rank among the top fifteen nations with people living with HIV/AIDS). Asian societies are also increasingly urbanized. In 1960 fewer than 200 million Asians lived in cities, today it is approximately 1.5 billion.12 Asia is the most densely populated region in the world: South Korea has 1,303, India 993, Japan 870, the Philippines 866, Indonesia 391, and China 367 people per square mile.13 With increased urbanization, the region has also enjoyed progress in reducing poverty, although 517 million Asians still live below the poverty line.14 China, India, and Southeast Asian countries have all made significant strides in reducing absolute poverty over the last four decades (China claimed in 2020 to have eliminated absolute poverty, while India still has 22 percent and Southeast Asia 14 percent, respectively, living below the World Bank poverty line of $1.25 per day). Despite the overall progress, the regional disparities are evident when one considers the range of Asian GDP per capita annual incomes, which range from a low of $1,155 in Nepal to a high of $65,640 in Singapore, in 2019, according to the World Bank.15 While large parts of Asia remain poor, various indicators illustrate the transition that many societies are making from developing to newly industrialized country (NIC) and developed economy status. Since the late 1980s Asian economies have grown at the fastest rate in the world. Asia has been the economic engine that has powered the global economy for several consecutive decades. China alone accounted for 36 percent of global growth from 2010 to 2020, according to the World Bank.16 No Asian nation has known either flat or negative growth over the past quarter century. Even Japan, where the growth rate has been the most anemic in the region, grew at 1.76 percent from 1981 to 2021.17 From 2010 to 2019, the economies of Asia averaged 5.1 percent growth overall (see table 13.1). China’s GDP growth was the highest in the region during this period, growing at a clip of 7.7 percent, while India’s was 6.7 percent, Myanmar’s 6.6 percent, Vietnam’s 6.3 percent, the Philippines’ 6.4 percent, Malaysia’s 5.3 percent, and Singapore’s 4.9 percent. Even tiny Cambodia and Laos grew at 7.0 and 7.3 percent, respectively. Overall, Asia accounted for 59.76 percent of the world economy (global GDP) in 2020, with an aggregate nominal GDP of $37.1 trillion.18 With a (nominal) GDP of $14.3 trillion, China has become the world’s second largest economy

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(largest if calculated by purchasing power parity or PPP) and its gargantuan size accounts for 47 percent of the entire Asian economy. In GDP, six other Asian economies also rank among the top twenty in the world in 2020: Japan ranks third ($5.0 trillion); India is fifth ($2.8 trillion); South Korea twelfth ($1.6 trillion); Australia thirteenth ($1.32 trillion); and Indonesia is sixteenth ($1.01 trillion).19 Collectively, the ASEAN countries constitute the fifth largest economy in the world today ($3.08 trillion GDP in 2020), after the United States, China, Japan, and Germany.20 This growth has contributed to the expansion of middle classes. Today Asia boasts more than one-third of the world’s middle class (as measured by disposable per capita income).21 Southeast Asia’s middle class alone is expected to more than double from 135 million to 334 million between 2020 and 2030.22 This expansion has also been powered by demographics. In ASEAN countries, for example, 58 percent of the population (380 million) are under the age of thirty-five, contributing to the world’s third largest labor force (trailing only China and India).23 Asia has also become the center of world trade—accounting for nearly one-third of global trade volume. Excluding the United States and Russia, Asian nations accounted for seven of the top twenty exporting nations in the world in 2020: China (1), Japan (4), South Korea (5), Hong Kong (8), Singapore (13), Taiwan (15), and India (19).24 As Ed Lincoln’s chapter details, dramatic growth in intraregional trade has been an evident feature, characterized by multinational production and supply chains. Most of Asia’s trade outside the region travels by shipping containers. Nine of the world’s top ten biggest container ports (measured by volume of merchandize handled) are in Asia. By rank these are: Shanghai, Singapore, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Busan, Qingdao, Hong Kong, and Tianjin—with six of the next ten also in Asia.25 A staggering fifty thousand vessels traverse the strategic Strait of Malacca every year, carrying 40 percent of the world’s merchandize trade and 25 percent of crude oil shipments.26 The dramatic domestic economic growth has also been stimulated by strong growth in interregional investment (FDI). Asia accounts for about nearly 60 percent of global investment inflows—with inbound FDI approximately $535 billion in 2020, while outbound flows totaled $389 billion.27 Asia’s economic growth has also been fueled (literally) by dramatically increased amounts of energy imports to the region. China, India, South Korea, Japan, and Thailand ranked respectively as the first-, third-, fourth-, fifth-, and ninth-largest oil importers in the world in 2020. Asia’s wealth can also be seen in the region’s amassing of foreign currency reserves. Asian countries held 66 percent of total global foreign currency reserves in 2020. Six of the world’s ten largest holders of these



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reserves are in Asia: China (1), Japan (2), Taiwan (6), Hong Kong (7) India (8), and South Korea (9). China alone held $3.4 trillion in reserves at the end of 2020, leading the world. Electronic connectivity in Asia ranks second only to Europe in the world. Altogether, the International Telecommunications Union estimates that 70 percent of the population in the Asia-Pacific enjoy internet access, while 94.2 percent had access to mobile phones in 2019.28 China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and Vietnam all rank in the top ten of Internet and mobile phone users, while South Korea is the most “wired” population per capita on earth.29 Despite many ASEAN societies still being relatively poor and rural, the ten ASEAN countries enjoy over 90 percent internet usage connected via smartphones, with 914 million active users (more than 1.5 times the total population). Even in poor Cambodia and Myanmar, when I traveled there in 2017, I was struck by the ubiquitous presence of smartphones. Among other things, this has contributed to the digitalization of e-commerce, with online spending in Southeast Asia expected to reach $240 billion by 2025.30 Asia has also become a leading source of global innovation and technological advances. Many cutting-edge technologies are now developed in Asia. China, India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand all have undertaken large government spending initiatives in science and technology research and development (R&D). South Korea leads the world in the percentage of GDP spent on R&D (4.6 percent), while Taiwan and Japan both rank in the top five globally (3.5 and 3.2 percent, respectively).31 Commensurate with Xi Jinping’s “self-reliance” (自力更生) and “Made in China 2025” strategies, China is making a huge push to be a—if not the—global leader in aggregate spending ($377.8 billion in 2020).32 At this current rate of expenditure (2.4 percent in 2020), China is on pace to invest approximately $580 billion by 2030 and $940 billion by 2020! That’s billion with a “b”— just in technology R&D alone, and on an annual basis. If China increased to 3 percent per annum, in line with most OECD countries, it would amount to approximately $650 billion by 2030 and $1.12 trillion annual R&D spending by 2040. If China were to increase to 3.5 percent per annum, in the league of South Korea, that would result in R&D spending of approximately $800 billion by 2030 and $1.9 trillion by 2040—easily overtaking all other countries in aggregate spending.33 In terms of regional security, Asia has five of the world’s ten largest active service militaries (China, India, North Korea, Pakistan, South Korea, and Vietnam) and two of the world’s four largest surface navies (China and Japan, with the United States and Russia being the other two). China now boasts the world’s largest navy in terms of total vessels (350 ships, of which 130 are major surface combatants). In terms of total defense expenditure,

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Asia overtook European nations in 2012, and spent a collective $500 billion in 2019, approximately one-quarter of total global defense spending (see chapter 14 by Bates Gill).34 The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) estimated that in 2020 China had the world’s second largest defense expenditure ($181.1 billion), India ranked fifth ($60.5 billion), Japan eighth ($48.6 billion), and South Korea tenth ($39.8 billion). As Professor Gill’s chapter indicates, almost all militaries across the Asian region are modernizing their forces. For most, this involves importing sophisticated weaponry from abroad: five of the world’s top ten arms importers are in Asia (India, South Korea, China, Australia, and Japan).35 Taking Stock Thus, by many measures, Asia ranks in the top tier globally. These trends are only likely to accelerate in the future. Among other consequences, it means that the entire world would be severely and negatively affected if Asia experienced a major economic downturn, social catastrophe, or military conflict. Understanding these national capacities across Asia, as illustrated by the indicators above, is an important starting point for understanding the complex dynamics and stakes involved in Asian international relations. LINKING THE PAST AND THE PRESENT The regional order in Asia today, at the outset of the third decade of the twenty-first century, still bears many of the hallmarks that have characterized it for a number of decades: the American presence and alliance system, a “rising” China; the divided Koreas and China/Taiwan; a threatening North Korea; ASEAN searching for real “centrality,” cohesion, and impact; Russia struggling for relevance; Europe trying to increase its presence; a diverse amalgam of political systems (amid a general trend of democratization); entrenched and competitive nationalisms; ethnic separatism; dynamic economic growth; and increasingly educated societies and disciplined workforces. These characteristics all still continue to distinguish Asian international relations today. In addition to the persistence of these traditional features, however, a variety of new ones have also appeared, which are reshaping regional dynamics and order. These include: an increasingly strong and assertive China; growing geostrategic competition between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (with all regional states caught in between); the rise and increasing influence of India; a more confident and purposeful Japan; a South Korea



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taking steps to become a more significant regional actor; increasing military budgets and modernization across the region, with more acute security “flashpoints”; the continued growth of intergovernmental multilateral institutions and dialogue forums; increased intraregional interaction and interdependence at the sub-state level and the electronic connectivity of societies; the growing impact of “soft power” in intercultural relations; the advent of governmentsponsored “influence operations”; the ascent of political and radical Islam; occasional terrorism; the spread of various “non-traditional” (non-military) security threats (including pandemics); and growing separatist movements (in China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Thailand). Over time, an Asian multilateral architecture has also gradually taken shape, with organizations such as the East Asia Summit (EAS), ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation community (APEC), the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), although none of these groupings are fully inclusive of all regional states. Since the end of the Cold War, the region has experienced these complex trends. While these features collectively define Asian IR today, it remains difficult to say that they collectively constitute a regional order, much less a system per se.36 To a considerable extent, Asian IR remains a hodgepodge of these disparate features, rather than an integrated order or system. Despite the proliferation of intergovernmental groupings, which do constitute a regional “architecture” of sorts, in my view, the Asian order is not (yet) institutionalized enough and bound by pan-regional norms and regulations to be accurately described as an integrated regional “system” in international relations parlance. Asia comes nowhere near Europe in this regard. Asian international relations must be viewed both as a regional subset of the global system and as possessing distinct regional properties. Samuel Kim’s and Amitav Acharya’s subsequent chapters illustrate different ways of thinking about these—both historically and theoretically. Analysts and students are well advised to use both prisms when evaluating the regional system today. Even if the historical features described by Professor Kim (which he identifies as the “three transformations”) no longer define Asian IR today, his chapter notes that their lingering residual influences continue to be present in the minds of many Asians. As in Europe and the Arab world, the burden of historical experiences (the “international politics of memory”) and nationalism weigh heavily on the collective consciousness of Asians. Professor Kim’s chapter describes how the traditional hierarchical “Sinic” or “Sinocentric” system (also commonly referred to as the “tribute system”) characterized Asia for centuries, and continues to cast its shadow today as China undergoes its fourth “rise” in history (indeed it is fair to say that China has now “risen”).37

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Many Asians (and IR scholars) wonder if China is trying to re-create a modern-day version of the ancient hierarchical hegemonic “tribute” system. Indeed, as China grows stronger, the evidence is increasing. Readers should recall that the imperial “tribute system” was simultaneously a normative system, a commercial system, and a coercive system. Imperial Chinese elites thought of China as the “middle kingdom” (中国), the center of the universe, and superior to all others in many aspects. The centrality was, in essence, cultural—what today would be described as “soft power.” Peripheral peoples were invited to China to learn Chinese ways and customs—literally “coming to be Sinicized” (来华). Chinese dynastic rulers thought of their culture as superior. As such, they demanded deference and obeisance from its neighbors, near and far. If such recognition was provided—through ritualistically sending emissaries to the imperial court bearing tributary gifts, performing the symbolic koutou (口头), and learning Chinese ways of doing things—then the Middle Kingdom would reward these foreigners with cultural and commercial benefits. There was, however, also a coercive militaristic element to the system as well.38 China dispatched military forces against Vietnam several times (occupying the country nearly a millennium from 111 BC to AD 938), modern-day Laos and Cambodia (kingdoms then called Zhenla, Anchor, and Champa), Korea, and even northern Borneo (modern-day Indonesia). Thus, today, some analysts see this same pattern of interaction—based on dependence, deference, and deterrence—emerging between China and Southeast Asia (to a lesser extent in Northeast and South Asia). Time will tell as to whether these states slip back into such a subservient relationship with Beijing. As the subsequent chapters by Scott Snyder and Cheng-Chwee Kuik make clear, South Korea and Southeast Asia in particular will continue to practice “hedging,” as they do not wish to be fully sucked back into the Chinese fold. The key word here is “fully,” as they are already significantly entrapped into (inter)dependent economic relationships and cannot escape China’s grip, buttressed by diplomatic and cultural linkages. Thus, the best these states can do is diversify their external relationships to the maximum extent possible, thus decreasing their degree of dependence on China. Nonetheless, their desire for autonomy will not keep Beijing from demanding obeisance, respect, deference, and strict observance of China’s “core interests.” As discussed further in the concluding chapter, much of the future of Asian international relations will be defined by this tug-and-pull between China and its peripheral states. Samuel Kim’s chapter also briefly describes the traditional “Indic system,” which lasted from the fourth through the eighteenth century, and which still weighs heavily on the South Asian subcontinent, although the region is now comprised of seven sovereign states. T. V. Paul’s chapter further elaborates



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this centrality of India in contemporary South Asian IR. Given the historic backdrop of the Sinic and Indic systems, and the newfound contemporary power of China and India, one can only surmise that these two states will increasingly become regional rivals over time. The European colonial systems, which penetrated into Asia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, have also had a lasting impact, particularly on South and Southeast Asian states and societies—although more on intrastate than interstate systems. It was the colonial period that brought the modern nation-state to Asia, and with it the concepts of sovereignty, defined boundaries, national governments (many republican) and the “administrative state,” professional militaries, modern higher education, and other key features of the modern international system. While the European colonial powers did bring these elements of modern nationhood to Asia, colonialism and imperialist aggression simultaneously fostered new national identities across the region, which remain deeply embedded in the psychological DNA of former colonial states in South and Southeast Asia.39 Thus, in one sense, the colonial era can be considered the midwife between the traditional Sinic and Indic systems and the modern nation-state system. Japan’s ascendance from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century also defined the regional (dis)order for half a century, and its horrific consequences continue to lie not far below the surface of Asian minds and memories today (particularly in those societies once occupied by Japan). The historical rivalry between Japan and China also still remains a distinguishing feature of Asian IR. The Cold War in Asia also defined (and polarized) the regional order from 1950 to 1991. While it embodied the same global feature of bipolar competition between the United States and the former Soviet Union, the Cold War in Asia also had its own unique characteristics owing to nationalist and communist revolutions in Korea, China, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian societies. These all continue to have residual influence today. THEORETICAL ALTERNATIVES There is no shortage of theoretical explanations or alternative models attempting to characterize the Asian regional order/system. Thus, one must draw on a variety of theoretical paradigms in order to grasp the totalities of Asian regional dynamics. The contributors to an earlier stimulating book, International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific, edited by John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno, offered a number of alternatives: hegemonic stability theory, balance of power theory, Liberal institutionalism, Constructivist theory, normative socialization theory, identity theory, economic

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interdependence theory, and hierarchical stability theory.40 In another major study, Muthiah Alagappa identified three conceptions of regional order: hegemony with Liberal features, strategic condominium/balance of power, and normative-contractual conceptions.41 In my earlier edited book Power Shift, I identified seven distinct alternative models (hegemonic system, major power rivalry, “hub-and-spokes” American-centric alliance system, concert of powers, condominium of powers, normative community, and complex interdependence).42 These are just some of the previous examples of the eclectic menu that IR scholars have generated in order to try and conceptualize the Asia-Pacific system. Amitav Acharya’s subsequent chapter zeroes in on, and examines the utility of, the “Big Three” theories—Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism. He too also finds that none, alone, is sufficient. Realism and Its Adherents The Realist school has long held the predominant place in analysis of Asian international relations, and for two good reasons. First, modern regional history since the late nineteenth century clearly reveals a region prone to great power rivalry and conflict. The enduring rivalries in the region over time have included China-Japan, China-Russia, Japan-Russia, United States–Russia, China–United States, China-Vietnam, Vietnam-Thailand, China-India, and India-Pakistan.43 These rivalries became manifest in no small number of devastating regional wars: the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, the SpanishAmerican War of 1898, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45, the broader Pacific War of 1941–45, the First Indochina War of 1946–54, the Korean War of 1950–53, the Second Indochina War (a.k.a. US-Vietnam War) of 1955–75, the Sino-Indian War of 1962, the Indonesia-Malaysia konfrontasi conflict of 1962–66, the Sino-Soviet border war of 1969, the Cambodia-Vietnamese War of 1975–89, the China-Vietnam border war of 1979, and the China-Taiwan-US militarized crises of 1954–55, 1958, 1960–61, 1995, and 1996. These hot wars and militarized crises between major powers and among regional states are ample testimony that Asia has hardly been pacific over the past 130 years. In addition to these interstate conflicts, Asia has constantly been prone to intrastate civil wars and armed secessionist movements. Indonesia, the Philippines, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Malaysia, China, and India have all been plagued by these internal insurgencies for decades, and they continue in every one of these countries today. Armed anti-colonial independence movements contributed further to domestic conflicts during the 1940s through the 1960s.



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Thus, any analysis of Asia’s future must begin by taking into account its violent past. This is why Princeton professor Aaron Friedberg famously argued that “Asia’s future is Europe’s past.”44 That is, rivalry among the regional powers is inevitable and will result in sustained disequilibrium, strategic competition, and wars.45 Another leading Realist IR theorist, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, applies his “offensive Realism” theory (or what I would label “hegemonic inevitability theory”) to Asia by arguing that China—like all great powers before—will inevitably seek regional hegemonic dominance and that this “structural asymmetry” between the rising power (China) and existing dominant power (the United States) will define the Asian order and inevitably cause a great power war—unless, Mearsheimer argues, the United States takes preemptive action to constrain China’s rise.46 Establishing regional hegemony is seen by Mearsheimer as the necessary precursor to great powers’ grab for global hegemony. When Mearsheimer first enunciated his theory two decades ago it was dismissed by many as overly structural and too alarmist, but entering the third decade of the twenty-first century this explanandum has gained much greater currency as the US-China rivalry intensifies. Joining the Realist chorus in 2017 was Harvard professor Graham Allison’s provocative book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?47 Based on analyses of sixteen historical cases of the rising power–established power dyad, Allison’s research concluded that twelve of the sixteen cases resulted in conflict.48 “Power transition” theorists contribute to the growing anxiety by noting that, historically, the closer the rising and established power become in their overall comprehensive power, the more dangerous the dyadic balance is—as one or the other is likely to take “preemptive” action and strike first against the other.49 These Realist studies are just the tip of the iceberg of a large number of studies of recent years that have examined the growing US-China strategic rivalry and the possibilities for rising tensions, competition, and even war. When the second edition of this volume was published eight years ago, such studies were still in a minority and were largely dismissed as overly alarmist fringe analyses. At that time, the “engagement paradigm” still held sway in American analyses of the US-China relationship—but that predominant paradigm began to steadily erode after 2015. Today, in 2022, the US-China “competition paradigm” is paramount. This said, not all who embrace this paradigm view conflict between the United States and China as inevitable— in other words, they do not accept the “structural inevitability” arguments of Friedberg, Mearsheimer, and Allison. Rather, they believe that a combination of human agency, rational thinking, the imperative of existential preservation,

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interdependent economic and cultural ties, and a combination of practical policy measures, can all avert a Sino-American showdown. These analysts accept that the competition is comprehensive and the rivalry will be enduring (the “new normal”), but they also believe that it can be “managed.” The most prominent of these analysts is former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, but several others (including this author) are of similar views.50 Not all Realists argue the need to counterbalance or constrain China. Realists, after all, assess the balance of (comprehensive) power that nations possess and base their analyses thereupon. Australian National University professor Hugh White, who is a long-established Realist and influential strategic thinker, has long argued the “inevitability thesis” that “Asia’s future is China’s.”51 Based on his analysis of extrapolated trends in China’s comprehensive power, Professor White has argued for “accommodating” China and, on this basis, has advocated that the United States and its allies (including his Australia) should, in essence, cede the Asia-Pacific to China as its natural sphere of influence. A similar (in my view) capitulationist view is put forward by the “Grand Bargain” theorists, most notably my George Washington University colleague Charles Glaser, who is also a well-respected Realist IR theorist.52 He too argues that the United States and others need to “accommodate” (“appease” may be a more apt description) China’s national interests in order to avoid a confrontation and stabilize the regional order.53 The most controversial part of Glaser’s argument for a “Grand Bargain” between Washington and Beijing is for the United States to abandon Taiwan, which he claims is “not a vital US interest.” Equally controversial is that he also argues that American alliances throughout Asia are an affront to Chinese interests and should be weakened or abandoned.54 In “return,” Glaser argues, China would be willing to negotiate with the other South China Sea claimant countries and “permit” the United States to continue its commercial access to the region. This is neither a grand, logical, nor rational bargain, in my view. International relations history has repeatedly shown that appeasing a wouldbe aggressor—especially unsatisfied, aggrieved, and revanchist rising powers like China—is a recipe inviting aggression and disaster. Moreover, the one time when a grand bargain was struck between the US and China, during the Nixon-Kissinger era in 1971–72, is long past and the two powers’ interests are no longer aligned (indeed they are comprehensively competitive today), and there is no overriding mutual security concern to sublimate these competitive national interests in the interests of mutual cooperation (as was the case vis-à-vis the Soviet Union). Thus, of whatever stripe, Realists all foresee an Asian region beset by strategic competition—largely, but not exclusively, between the United States and China. This is consistent with the Realist premise of unbridled



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anarchy prevailing, unless constrained by a benevolent hegemon (which they perceive to be the United States). While the Sino-American dynamic is the central feature in their views about contemporary regional competition, China’s regional rivalries with Japan, India, and a number of American allies also figure into their forecasts. But in all of these cases, it is China’s rise, its revanchist territorial claims, its aggrieved nationalism, and its domestic political system that drive China to be the revisionist and revanchist power and troublemaker in the region. Finally, there is another sub-school of Realism that has a voice in debates about the future Asian regional order. These are the “defensive Realists.” Unlike Mearsheimer’s “offensive Realism,” whereby aspiring hegemons do all in their power to maximize their national power in order to achieve and maintain their hegemony, defensive Realists argue that in an anarchical environment all states adopt “self-help” policies of strengthening their comprehensive national power in order to protect themselves. This is known as “internal balancing”—as distinct from “external balancing,” whereby smaller nations align with larger ones to offset threats. The defensive Realists primarily point to the region-wide trend of military modernization as evidence of this trend in Asia. The subsequent chapters by Green, Snyder, Kuik, Paul, Gill, and Ayson and Medcalf all provide evidence of internal balancing behavior (as well as external balancing) vis-à-vis China and in times of uncertainty. Liberalism and Its Limits In contrast to Realism, Liberal IR theorists view international relations in Asia through different prisms. I use the word prisms (plural) intentionally, because one can discern at least three different strands of Liberal thinking. The first are those who focus on the political economy of the region and emphasize the deep and extensive interconnectedness and interdependence among Asian economies. This can be described as “commercial Liberalism” (with Asian characteristics). The second cohort emphasizes politics—particularly the region-wide trend toward democracy (again with “Asian characteristics”) since the 1990s. To be sure, there are still states such as Cambodia, China, North Korea, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam that have bucked this trend—but, in one form or another, every other country in Asia has democratized to some extent over the past two decades. This can be described as “political Liberalism.” Concomitant with the trend toward democratization has been a reduced role of militaries in national politics across the region (Myanmar and Thailand being exceptions). The political Liberals also tend to accept “democratic peace theory”—that is, that democracies do not fight each other. Third, there are “Liberal institutionalists”

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who emphasize interstate multilateral mechanisms and institutions that try to promote cooperation and common standards for regional behavior. These three Liberal perspectives on Asian IR are not mutually exclusive,55 yet they all have a distinctly more positive vision for the Asian region than the pessimistic Realists. They also strongly believe that the twin powers of deep interdependence and growing multilateral institutions serve to bind countries together and restrict strategic competition.56 Yet the Liberals must face up to the fact that all three variants have had their limits in Asia. Commercial Liberalism has been the most successful, with free trade agreements (FTAs), market economies, and regional economic cooperation regimes all mushrooming across the region. Yet, the intervention of the Asian state remains very strong in most Asian economies. Similarly, although the regional trend toward democratization has been both notable and positive, “democracy with Asian characteristics” still does not sanctify and protect individual and human rights, or civil society, as in the West. Authoritarianism remains prevalent in many Asian states. Finally, although regional multilateralism has also flourished, it too has “Asian characteristics”—a lack of institutionalization, lack of enforcement capacity, and lack of legal foundations. While Liberal theorists should take heart from the growth of these three developments in Asian IR over recent decades—and they are commendable when seen against the historical backdrop of dictatorial states—nonetheless, Liberal institutions and practices in Asia still have a way to go. Constructivism’s Cohort Finally, IR Constructivists reject the applicability of the Realist paradigm, embrace some of the Liberal paradigm, and have alternatively argued that Asia is experiencing the emergence of shared norms about interstate interaction, rooted in the “ASEAN Way,” which are becoming embedded in regional institutions.57 Unlike Realists or Liberals who emphasize material and institutional factors among states, Constructivists focus on ideas that are “socially constructed” as behavioral norms in and among societies. The formation, socialization, and transmission of individual and national identities are important processes for Constructivists.58 One variant of the Constructivist approach is the view that China’s historical regional hegemony was both benign and rooted in Confucian values and norms, which were accepted by other Asian societies, and that there is a similar “gravitational pull” toward a China-centric order again emerging in the region (and that this is seen as the most “natural” order and equilibrium for Asia). The foremost proponent of this viewpoint is former Singaporean diplomat and public intellectual Kishore Mahbubani.59 Another is American professor David Kang, who directly challenges the Friedberg “Asia’s future



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is Europe’s past” thesis and argues that Asia is not going to follow Europe’s past of great power competition, but is naturally “returning” to a twentyfirst-century version of the pre-nineteenth-century Sinocentric hierarchical system, with many Asian states accommodating themselves (“bandwagoning,” in political science parlance) to China as the emerging preeminent power in the region.60 While no single IR theory explains all, each contributes, in part, to our understanding of Asian international politics in the early twenty-first century—what Amitav Acharya (drawing on Katzenstein and Sil) describes in his chapter as “analytical eclecticism.” Acharya’s stimulating subsequent chapter does much to clarify and “unpack” these competing theories. THE NEED FOR MULTIDIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS From the various perspectives discussed in this and subsequent chapters, it is evident that international relations in Asia today are multilevel and multidimensional phenomena: pan-regional, intergovernmental, and intersocietal. These are not mutually exclusive. They reinforce each other. They may be analytically distinct, but they are interactive phenomena. To be sure, governments play a vitally important role in facilitating intersocietal contact— through signing bilateral agreements as a result of diplomatic relations, which permit sectors of societies to interact with each other. In the absence of such agreements, no students could be exchanged, tourists could not travel, trade would be illicit, and so on. One need only look at isolated nations like North Korea and Myanmar to understand the drawbacks of not enjoying the normal fruits of diplomatic relations. All other nations in Asia are deeply enmeshed in the web of ties that interweave their societies together. This bilateral interaction is compounded significantly by the forces of globalization.61 While analysts and scholars traditionally tend to adopt (by design or default) a Realist prism through which to view international relations in the Asian region, thus focusing on states and major power interactions, it is equally important to examine the sub-state level. Those who work in the commercial and financial arenas pay scant attention to state actors—for them, the real “stuff” of international relations occurs electronically and in a millisecond. For intellectuals, it is ideas that matter (and know no national boundaries). Other professionals ply their trades directly with each other and care little about major power relations, security dilemmas, arms races, diplomatic summits, and so forth. In other words, there exists a huge sphere of intersocietal relations that normally escapes the purview of most international relations analysts. Thus we need to “bring society back in” to the analysis of international relations in Asia.

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As during the previous two centuries, the potential for violent conflict still looms on the horizon. Major power and intraregional rivalries remain. But the deep interdependence evident at the societal level can serve as a powerful buffer against potential hostilities breaking out. The growth of intra-Asian multilateral groupings and institutions is a further buffer and facilitator of cooperation. Human agency is also a deterrent. While international relations in Asia have historically known considerable conflict, hopefully the future will be increasingly cooperative and peaceful—although this is not at all certain. The intensification of major power rivalry, competing nationalisms, and the increased militarization of the region suggest a more unsettled future. NOTES 1.  Martha Brill Olcott’s chapter in the second edition of this book remains relevant and an excellent “snapshot” of the region. Not that much has changed since it was published in 2014. Also see analyses done by the Central Asia programs at: CSIS, https://www.csis.org/programs/russia-and-eurasia-program/archives/central -asia-0; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, https://carnegieendow ment.org/regions/267; Chatham House, https://www.chathamhouse.org/regions /russia-and-eurasia/central-asia; Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/region/central-asia; Indiana University, https:// ceus.indiana.edu; George Washington University, https://ieres.elliott.gwu.edu /programs/central-asia-program/; School of Oriental and African Studies, https:// www.soas.ac.uk/cccac/; University of Washington, https://jsis.washington.edu/el lisoncenter/; and Harvard University, https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/research -initiatives/program-central-asia. 2. “Exports to Counterpart Countries,” International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics, https://data.imf.org/regular.aspx?key=61726508; “Imports from Counterpart Countries,” International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics, https://data.imf.org/regular.aspx?key=61726510. 3.  William Bratton, “The End of European Influence in Asia,” Nikkei Asia, January 26, 2021, https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/The-end-of-European-influence-in-Asia. 4. See the European Commission, https://ec.europa.eu/international-partnerships /where-we-work/asia_en; Asia-Europe Foundation, https://asef.org; German Marshall Fund’s Asia Program, https://www.gmfus.org/asia-program; Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), https://www.swp-berlin.org/en/swp/about-us/organization /research-divisions/asia; European Council on Foreign Relations, https://ecfr.eu /asia/; Chatham House, https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/our-departments /asia-pacific-programme; and centers and programs in individual EU member states. Sebastian Bersick’s chapter in the previous editions also remain relevant. 5. “Russia: Trade with East Asia and Pacific, 2018,” World Bank Integrated Trade Solution (WITS), https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/RUS /Year/2018/TradeFlow/EXPIMP/Partner/EAS/Product/All-Groups.



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6. Eugene Rumer, Richard Sokolsky, and Aleksander Vladicic, “Russia in the Asia-Pacific: Less Than Meets the Eye,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 2020, https://carnegieendowment.org/files/SokolskyRumer_Asia -Pacific_FINAL.pdf. 7. Perhaps the best single assessment is Michael Yahuda, The International Politics of the Asia-Pacific (London: Routledge, 4th ed., 2019); also, see Saadia M. Pekkanen, John Ravenhill, and Rosemary Foot, eds., The Oxford Handbook of International Relations of Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Derek McDougall, Asia Pacific in World Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2nd ed., 2016); and annual editions of Strategic Asia, compiled and published by the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). 8.  See “Population of Asia,” Worldometer, https://www.worldometers.info/world -population/asia-population/. 9.  Asia Society, “Islam in Southeast Asia,” https://asiasociety.org/education/islam -southeast-asia; Association for Asian Studies, “The Demographics of Islam,” https:// www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/the-demographics-of-islam-in-asia/. 10.  “World Life Expectancy 2019,” https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expec tancy-at-birth-total-years. 11.  World Coronavirus Report, https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/world-coro navirus-report (accessed October 2, 2021). 12.  Cited in Kurt Campbell, The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia (New York: Twelve Books, 2016), 43. 13.  Ibid., 38. 14.  Gwen Robinson, “Coronavirus Pushes 38 Million Asian Below Poverty Line: World Bank,” Nikkei Asia, September 29, 2020, https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy /Coronavirus-pushes-38m-Asians-below-poverty-line-World-Bank. 15. “GDP Per Capita—East Asia and Pacific,” World Bank, https://data.world bank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=Z4: GDP Per Capita—Southern Asia: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=8S. 16.  World Bank, World Development Indicators, online database (accessed October 4, 2021). 17. “Japan GDP Annual Growth Rate,” Trading Economics, https://tradingeco nomics.com/japan/gdp-growth-annual. 18. See “GDP Current Prices (2021),” International Monetary Fund, https://www .imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD/APQ. 19.  See “GDP by Country,” Worldometer (2021), https://www.worldometers.info /gdp/gdp-by-country/. 20.  See Aaron O’Neil, “ASEAN Countries’ GDP 2021,” Statistica, November 30, 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/796245/gdp-of-the-asean-countries/. 21.  Homi Kharas and Geoffrey Gertz, The New Global Middle Class: A Crossover from West to East (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Wolfensohn Center for Development, 2010), 5–6. 22. East-West Center, US-ASEAN Business Council, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, eds., ASEAN Matters for America//America Matters for ASEAN (Washington, DC: East-West Center, 2019), 8.

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23. Ibid. 24. Central Intelligence Agency, CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/the -world-factbook/field/exportsn. 25.  “Top 50 Ports,” World Shipping Council, https://www.worldshipping.org/top -50-ports. These rankings are based on 2019 statistics. 26.  “Fact Box: Malacca Strait Is a Strategic Chokepoint,” Reuters, March 4, 2010. 27. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), World Investment Report, “Investment Flows to Asia Defy COVID-19,” https://unctad.org /news/investment-flows-developing-asia-defy-covid-19-grow-4. 28. International Telecommunications Union, Digital Development: Facts and Figures 2020, https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/FactsFig ures2020.pdf. 29. See “Smartphone Users by Country Worldwide 2021,” Statistica, June 24, 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/748053/worldwide-top-countries-smart phone-users/. 30. Data on ASEAN in this paragraph from East-West Center, US-ASEAN Business Council, and ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, ASEAN Matters for America/ America Matters for ASEAN, 26. 31.  “Gross Domestic Spending on R&D,” Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending -on-r-d.htm. 32.  “China R&D Spending Rises Record 10% to $378 Billion in 2020,” Bloomberg News, February 28, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-01 /china-s-r-d-spending-rises-10-to-record-378-billion-in-2020. 33.  These are author’s calculations based on OECD data and extrapolating from 2.3 percent expenditure in 2019. 34.  See International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2020, https://www.iiss.org/publications/the-military-balance/military-balance-2020-book. 35.  Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Arms Trade Database 2020, https://armstrade.sipri.org/armstrade/page/toplist.php. 36.  For an illuminating discussion of the concept and typology of “order” in international relations, see Muthiah Alagappa, “The Study of International Order: An Analytic Framework,” in Asian Security Order: Instrumental and Normative Features, ed. Muthiah Alagappa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 33–69; and Evelyn Goh, The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy, and Transition in Post-Cold War East Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 37. Among the many studies on China’s rise, see David Shambaugh, ed., The China Reader: Rising Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Shaun Breslin, China Risen? Studying Chinese Global Power (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2021); Asle Toje, ed., Will China’s Rise Be Peaceful? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 38. See Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 39.  The classic study is by Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); also, see Kishore



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Mahbubani and Jeffrey Sng, The ASEAN Miracle (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2017); and David Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet: America & China in Southeast Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021). 40.  See G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno, eds., International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). 41. Muthiah Alagappa, “Constructing Security Order in Asia: Conceptions and Issues,” in Asian Security Order: Instrumental and Normative Features, ed. Muthiah Alagappa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 72–78. 42.  David Shambaugh, “Introduction: The Rise of China and Asia’s New Dynamics,” in Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics, ed. David Shambaugh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 1–22. 43.  “Russia” includes the former Soviet Union. 44. Aaron Friedberg, “Will Europe’s Past Be Asia’s Future?” Survival 43, no. 2 (2000): 147–60. 45.  Aaron Friedberg’s writings include: Getting China Wrong (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2022); A Contest for Supremacy: The United States, China, and the Struggle for Mastery of Asia (New York: Norton, 2012); “Bucking Beijing: An Alternative US China Policy,” Foreign Affairs (September–October 2012), 48–58; “Competing with China,” Survival 60, no. 3 (2018): 7–64; “Getting the China Challenge Right,” The American Interest, January 10, 2019, https://www.the-american-interest .com/2019/01/10/getting-the-china-challenge-right/; “The Source of Chinese Conduct: Explaining Beijing’s Assertiveness,” The Washington Quarterly 37, no. 4 (2014): 133–50; “The Future of US-China Relations: Is Conflict Inevitable?” International Security 30, no. 2 (2005): 7–45; “Ripe for Rivalry: The Prospects for Peace in Multipolar Asia,” International Security 18, no. 3 (Winter 1993–94): 5–33. 46.  John Mearsheimer’s writings include: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001), concluding chapter; “The Inevitable Rivalry,” Foreign Affairs (November–December 2021), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles /china/2021-10-19/inevitable-rivalry-cold-war; “The Gathering Storm: China’s Challenge to US Power in Asia,” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 3, no. 4 (2010): 381–96; “Clash of the Titans,” Foreign Policy 146 (2005): 46–49. 47. See Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (New York: Mariner Books, 2017); and “The Thucydides Trap: Are the US and China Headed for War?” The Atlantic, September 24, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/united-states-china-war -thucydides-trap/406756/. 48.  The Thucydides’s Trap Case File, Belfer Center, Harvard University, https:// www.belfercenter.org/thucydides-trap/case-file. 49.  For an excellent analysis of power transition theory as applied to the US-China rivalry, see Robert S. Ross and Øystein Tunsjø, eds., Strategic Adjustment and the Rise of China: Power and Politics in East Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017). 50.  See Kevin Rudd, The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and Xi Jinping’s China (New York: PublicAffairs, 2022); and Kevin Rudd, “Short of War: How to Keep the US-Chinese Confrontation from Ending in Calamity,” Foreign Affairs (March–April 2021): 58–72. Also see Ryan Haas, Stronger: Adapting America’s China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence (New

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Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021); David Shambaugh, “Parsing and Managing Sino-American Competition,” in Managing Strategic Competition: Rethinking USChina Relations in the 21st Century, ed. Evan S. Medeiros (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2022). 51. See, among his many writings, Hugh White, The China Choice: Why We Should Share Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 52.  See Charles Glaser, Rational Theory of International Politics: The Logic of Competition and Cooperation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 53.  See Charles Glaser, “A US-China Grand Bargain? The Hard Choice Between Military Competition and Accommodation,” International Security 39, no. 4 (Spring 2015): 49–90; and “Washington Is Avoiding the Tough Questions on Taiwan and China,” Foreign Affairs, April 28, 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles /asia/2021-04-28/washington-avoiding-tough-questions-taiwan-and-china. 54.  Glaser, “Washington Is Avoiding the Tough Questions on Taiwan and China.” 55.  See, for example, T. J. Pempel, “Introduction: Emerging Webs of Regional Interconnectedness,” in Remapping East Asia: The Construction of a Region, ed. T. J. Pempel (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). 56.  This is even the case in US-China relations. See G. John Ikenberry, “The Rise of China, the United States, and the Future of the Liberal International Order,” in Tangled Titans: The United States and China, ed. David Shambaugh (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). 57.  See, in particular, the writings of Amitav Acharya, “How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism,” International Organization 58 (Spring 2004): 239–75; Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order (London: Routledge, 2001); Amitav Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?” International Security 28, no. 3 (Winter 2003–4): 149–64; and Amitav Acharya, “Regional Institutions and Asian Security Order: Norms, Power, and Prospects for Peaceful Change,” in Asian Security Order: Instrumental and Normative Features, ed. Muthiah Alagappa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 210–40. Also see Alice D. Ba, ed., [Re]Negotiating East and Southeast Asia: Region, Regionalism, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009); and Goh, The Struggle for Order. 58. In this regard, Gilbert Rozman has pioneered interesting research on East Asian national identities. See Gilbert Rozman, ed., East Asian National Identities: Common Roots and Chinese Exceptionalism (Washington, DC, and Stanford, CA: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press, 2012). 59.  See, in particular, Kishore Mahbubani, Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy (New York: Public Affairs, 2020). 60.  David Kang, China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); David Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong: The Need for New Analytic Frameworks,” International Security 27, no. 4 (Spring 2003): 57–85. See also Shambaugh, Power Shift. 61.  See Samuel S. Kim, ed., East Asia and Globalization (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); and Nayan Chanda’s chapter in the first two editions of this volume.

Part Two

LEGACIES AND THEORIES

Chapter Two

The Evolving Asian System Three Transformations S amuel S. K im

Does history repeat itself in Asian international relations? Will the future of Asia resemble the past? Asia’s or Europe’s past? In the post–Cold War years, these questions of both theoretical and real-world significance have been debated among scholars and policy pundits of diverse normative and theoretical orientations, only to generate many competing prognostications. For analytical purposes in this historical chapter, only two “back to the future” models are worth noting as points of departure. The first is a Realist “Asia’s future will resemble Europe’s past” school of thought. This dominant paradigm foresees a conflictual future spurred by major power competition, the rise of China, and the destabilizing political dynamics associated with power transitions. This vision of the future has been led by Aaron Friedberg and other “pessimistic” Realists. They see Asia as primed for the revival of a classical great power rivalry as Europe experienced over the past several centuries. In short, Asia’s future is considered ready-made to repeat Europe’s war-prone past.1 An alternative second view is a Sinocentric “back to the future of Asia’s past” school. Applying the “clash of civilizations” theory to the “rise of China” debates, Samuel Huntington argued that Asian countries will be more likely to bandwagon with China than to balance against it. Huntington and other proponents of this view argue that European-type hegemonic wars and a European-style balance of power system have been absent from Asia. Instead, according to Huntington, for two thousand years before the arrival of the Western powers in the mid-nineteenth century, “East Asian international relations were Sinocentric with other societies arranged in varying degrees of subordination to, cooperation with, or autonomy from Beijing.”2 Asia’s Sinocentric past, not Europe’s multipolar past, he concluded, “will be Asia’s future,” even as “China is resuming its place as regional hegemon.”3 27

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A more recent proponent of this paradigm is David Kang, who argues that Asian international relations have historically been more peaceful and more stable than those in the West, owing to the region’s historical acceptance of a hierarchical world order with China at its core.4 Kang makes a sweeping assertion that the Asian international system from 1300 to 1900 was both intensive and extensive as well as stable and hierarchic, thus posing a major challenge to the argument that balance of power is a universal phenomenon across time and region. Indeed, Kang claims that “accommodation of China (“bandwagoning”) was the norm in East Asia during the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) eras.”5 Accordingly, this group of scholars argue that Asia’s Sinocentric hierarchical past, not Europe’s multipolar past, would guide and ensure its future stability. Asian history may provide a baseline for a comparative diachronic analysis and assessment of the changes and continuities in the evolution of the “Asian” system in modern times. What follows is neither a full history nor an argument in support of historical or cultural determinism, but only a broad synopsis of some salient and system-transforming events in the history of the region. In pursuit of this line of inquiry, this chapter provides a historical overview of the “Asian” international system as it evolved and mutated through three systemic transformations from the early nineteenth century to the end of the Cold War. The first of four sections critically appraises the main features of the Chinese tribute system as well as its progressive unraveling from the Opium War of 1839–42 to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95. The second section examines the rise and fall of the Japanese imperial system from the end of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 to the end of World War II (the Pacific War) in 1945. The third section examines the rise and demise of the Cold War system (1947–89). The fourth and concluding section looks at the impacts and implications of these three systemic transformations for the future of Asian international relations after the post–Cold War world in twenty-first century. The geographical scope of this chapter, defining “Asia” as mainly including East Asia but not South Asia, requires some explanation.6 Because of its size and central location, China physically dominates Asia, impinging on all of Asia’s subregions, with borders adjoining more countries than any other nation-state in the world. Asia is and becomes Sinocentric not only in geographical terms but also in systemic terms. Moreover, the rise of China is often conflated with the rise of East Asia, where China constitutes some 70 percent of the region.7 In terms of the level and intensity of interstate interaction, which is the key marker of an international regional system, the waxing and waning of Chinese power has always been one of the defining characteristics of all “Asian” systems. Although historically there were two



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distinct interstate systems in Asia—the “Sinic system” in East Asia and the “Indic system” in South Asia8—in the following discussion the Indic system is excluded because it withered away with the advent of British rule during the periods of the Chinese tribute system and the Japanese imperial system. Even during the period of the Cold War system, India was a founding father of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and remained mostly outside the bifurcated Cold War system. Before World War II, “Southeast Asia” had no particularly defined regional identity and had been known by a number of different names (e.g., “further India,” “Indochina,” “Little China,” or “the Far Eastern tropics”). It was Japan’s invasion and occupation in the early 1940s that gave rise to the term “Southeast Asia.”9 TRANSFORMATION I: THE CHINESE TRIBUTE SYSTEM The image of world order in traditional China seems to bear out the sociological maxim that people and nations react not to the objective reality of the world but to their perception of that reality. In theory, if not always in practice, the traditional Chinese image of world order remained tenaciously resistant to change. It was the Chinese officials’ image of what the world was like, not what it was actually like, that conditioned their response to international situations. The strength and persistence of this image were revealed most dramatically during the first half of the nineteenth century, when China was faced with a clear and continuing threat from the imperialist West. What is so striking about the traditional Chinese image of world order—at least the high Qing scholar-gentry class—is the extent to which it was colored by the assumptions, beliefs, sentiments, and symbols of their self-image.10 Indeed, world order was no more than a corollary to the Chinese internal order and thus an extended projection of the idealized self-image. As John King Fairbank reminded us, even during the golden era of the Sinocentric world order, “China’s external order was so closely related to her internal order that one could not long survive without the other.”11 In other words, even imperial China with all its pretensions of normative self-sufficiency could not really live in isolation—it needed outside “barbarians” (野蛮人) in order to enact and validate the integrity of its different identity. The chief concern of China’s traditional foreign policy centered upon the means of making diplomatic practice conform to that idealized self-image. At times, the desire to preserve the purity of its self-image led to a distortion of the official record so as to square deviant practice with idealized theory.12 The absence of any rival civilization also became a major factor in the development of the Chinese image of world order, and natural geographical barriers

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exerted considerable influence. China is guarded on the west by almost endless deserts, on the southwest by the Himalayan range, and on the east by vast oceans. Admired but often attacked by the “barbarians” of the semiarid plateau lands on the north and west, and cut off from the other centers of civilization by oceans, deserts, and mountains, China gradually developed a unique sense of its place under heaven. What is even more striking, if not all that surprising, is the absence of a nationalistic dynamic in the enactment of identity; for judging by the contemporary usage, the Chinese identity as mobilized in specific response to the Western challenge was more civilizational than national. As in days of yore, such civilizational identity was presumed to reproduce itself in expanding concentric circles as the correct cosmic order. Hence we find in traditional China a conspicuous absence of any institution corresponding to a ministry of foreign affairs in the West. Only in 1861 was a proto–foreign affairs bureau known as the Zongli Geguo Shiwu Yamen (总理各国事务衙门), Office for the General Management of Affairs concerning the Various Countries—commonly shortened to the Zongli Yamen—established (or actually grafted onto the ancient bureaucracy) at the insistence of the victorious British in the wake of the Second Opium War of 1856–60. Relying on documentary and behavioral referents of Qing diplomacy in the nineteenth century, historian Immanuel C. Y. Hsü flatly declared, “Doubtless, imperial China was not a nation-state.”13 What, then, have been the real-world operational consequences of the Sinocentric hierarchical image of world order? Although there is no single exact Chinese term for this traditional order, “tribute system” has been used by Western Sinologists to designate the sum total of complex institutional expressions of the hierarchical Chinese world order. The tribute system served a vital symbolic and political “imperial title-awarding function”—that is, as investiture of a king in each tributary state in order to assure Chinese suzerainty and supremacy—by legitimizing the myth of the Middle Kingdom (China) as the universal civilizational state governed by the Son of Heaven. What are conspicuously absent here are the Westphalian principles of state sovereignty and state equality as the foundational principles of modern international law.14 The tribute system worked relatively well for centuries, reaching its height of classical refinement in the Ming (1368–1664) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties. Its longevity may have been due to its ability to foster mutually complementary interests on the part of the tribute receiver and the tribute bearer.15 Historian Morris Rossabi, among others, has argued that the Chinese institution had a long tradition of interaction with Inner Asian states on equal footing in pre-Qing times, especially when the dynasties were weak or disintegrating, and that at such times China became more flexible and pragmatic, accepting others as equals.16



The Evolving Asian System 31

For others, the tribute system proved to be useful in establishing and maintaining their own political legitimacy at home. Korea, which had served as a model tributary state longer than any other, is a case in point. The Sino-Korean tributary relationship was more political than economic. The Confucian ruling classes in Korea found the tribute system not only ideologically congenial—as expressed in the Korean term mohwa-sasang (ideology of emulating things Chinese)—but also a sine qua non for establishing and maintaining political legitimacy at home, explaining its long duration thus: “To live outside the realm of Chinese culture was, for the Korean elite, to live as a barbarian.”17 As late as the early 1880s, few Koreans regarded their country as equal to or independent of China.18 Although many Southeast Asian kingdoms sent tribute to China, such “tributary” relations (except in Vietnam) “did not carry the same meaning and obligations as those between China and the states in the Sinic Zone.”19 For many, however, the tribute system was accepted as an unavoidable price to pay for the privilege of trade, and the China trade was sufficiently lucrative to justify suffering whatever humiliation might be entailed in the ritual requirements, especially the performance of the kowtow (口头)—nine prostrations and three kneelings—symbolizing acceptance of the hierarchical Chinese world order. In the face of the Russian challenge, the tribute system demonstrated a capacity for adjustment to the power reality. Between 1728 and 1858, the tribute system really worked by avoidance as far as the SinoRussian relationship was concerned. A special system of communications between court officials of secondary or tertiary rank in both St. Petersburg and Beijing (Peking) was set up to bypass the sensitive question of the czar’s having to address the Son of Heaven as a superior, while Russian trade caravans to Beijing “could be entered in official Manchu court records as tribute caravans, if necessary.”20 Thus, the Chinese image of world order was preserved intact, while the Russians were allowed to pursue their commercial activities in China without direct participation in the tribute system. As these diverse examples show, so long as both parties viewed their respective interests as complementary—or at least mutually acceptable—the tribute system could continue to work. The (first) Opium War (1839–42) marked a momentous benchmark event in the reshaping of East Asian international relations in the nineteenth century, the beginning of the end of the tribute system as well as the commencement of China’s “modern” history.21 The crushing defeat of China in its first military confrontation with the West failed to modify the Sinocentric image of outlandish barbarians; rather the British resort to force reaffirmed it. These conditions became not only the source of contradictory policy for China but also the excuse for arbitrary use of force on the part of the Western powers.

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Denied any intercourse with the central government ensconced in the Forbidden City and subjected to endless delays by the provincial authorities, the Western powers lost no time in using gunboats at the orders of consular officers to remedy their grievances in the treaty ports. Such was the genesis of the so-called gunboat diplomacy that characterized Western policy in China during much of this transitional or interwar period of 1842–56. The conviction gradually grew among Westerners that the source of all troubles was the anomalous mode of conducting diplomatic affairs at the periphery—rather than at the center—of the Qing government, and that direct contact and communication with the imperial court must be established as a prerequisite to normal relations. Demand for such direct contact, whether for the enhancement of trade or for diplomatic prestige, soon became universal among contemporary foreign consuls, merchants, and journalists as well as diplomatic representatives. The ensuing Sino-Western conflicts in the interwar period of the 1840s and 1850s, which were eventually resolved by the Arrow War of 1856–60 (the second Opium War), and the allied military expedition to Peking in 1860 highlighted the traditional Chinese image of world order on trial. China once again suffered a humiliating defeat. The reinforced Anglo-French troops launched an all-out military campaign, shooting their way to the capital, burning and ransacking the Summer Palace (颐和园), forcing the emperor to flee to Jehol (Chengde), and securing all of their demands with the ratification of the Tianjin Treaties (constituting the Second Treaty Settlement) and the signing of the Peking Conventions in the fall of 1860. The last fortress of the Chinese world order thus crumbled at the point of Western bayonets. The formal acceptance by China of direct diplomatic intercourse with the Western powers in 1860 marks the end of the long journey China was forced to take, departing from the tribute system at first with resistance and finally with great reluctance. The vestiges of the tribute system continued until 1894 with Korea, but it was really destroyed beyond repair in 1860. Faced with the twin dangers of the internal disorder created by the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64) and the external menace posed by the West, a recurrence of the traditional bête noire of “internal disorder, external aggression” (内乱外患) China began a concerted campaign to put its own house in order under the so-called Self-Strengthening (自强) Movement (1861–95). Protected for the time being by the Cooperative Policy of the Western treaty powers under the sympathetic leadership of the American and British resident ministers (ambassadors), Anson Burlingame and Sir Frederick Bruce,22 the Qing court was encouraged to initiate a series of self-strengthening reform measures at its own pace and on its own terms. As a result, some important reforms were adopted in the diplomatic, fiscal, educational, and military



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fields with the help of an increasing number of Western experts. In the end, however, the Self-Strengthening Movement failed because the requirements for an effective response to Western encroachment ran counter to the requirements of preserving the Confucian internal order.23 The ideological disruption created by Western imperialism required a revolutionary response, but the self-strengthening reformers were no more than “realistic” conservatives who wanted to borrow Western science and technology—especially “strong warships and efficient guns”—to preserve the Confucian order. All the successive reform measures in economic, administrative, and constitutional matters during the last quarter of the nineteenth century also failed because what China needed was a system transformation not only in institutions but, more importantly, in ideology. Such an ideological transformation did not come about until China was thoroughly humiliated by an Asian neighbor in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95. The vestigial influence of the traditional Chinese image of world order was finally shattered beyond recall. The net effect of all the concessions extracted by the treaty powers amounted to an “unequal treaty system,” which China was unable to change until 1943. It is ironic, then, that China’s struggle to preserve its hierarchical system of world order as expressed in the tribute system should have ended with acceptance of the unequal treaty system imposed by the West. China’s response to the West should not be viewed within the framework of the Eurocentric international system. The Sino-Western confrontation was no less than a system-to-system conflict between two diametrically opposed images of world order. The Second Treaty Settlement represented the subordination of the traditional Chinese world order and the tribute system to the Eurocentric system of international relations. TRANSFORMATION II: THE JAPANESE IMPERIAL SYSTEM Paradoxically, the rise of Japan in the last quarter of the nineteenth century seems in no small measure due to the Western penetration and dominance of Asia during this century of colonialism and imperialism. Indeed, the nineteenth-century history of Asian international relations can be summed up in terms of three critical geopolitical transformations. First, the rise of the West, and particularly Great Britain as the dominant hegemonic power, resulted in all the South and Southeast Asian kingdoms and states (except Nepal and Thailand) falling under European colonial rule; the subordination of Asia within the Eurocentric world system was complete by the end of the nineteenth century. Second, China lost its long-standing position as the

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dominant regional power due to the progressive decay of the empire, the discrediting and demise of the tribute system, and the gradual disintegration of the state together with the division of coastal Chinese territory into “spheres of influence” among Western and Japanese colonial powers. The nineteenth century began with China still the most dominant regional power—but ended with China as semi-sovereign, or as a “hypo-colony.”24 Third, a rising Japan replaced China as the dominant regional power, starting to expand by fits and starts its own Japan-centric imperial system, the prologue to the “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” as a way of countering Western imperialism.25 Symbolically and strategically, the Opium War has come to represent the most significant system-transforming point in the history of Asian international relations. For China it marks the transition from the pre-modern to the modern era. For Great Britain it marked the rise as the dominant power in East Asia and in the Indian Ocean. And for Japan it is the beginning of a momentous ideational change in the Japanese image of China from admiration to contempt, with all the concomitant geo-strategic implications for the Meiji Restoration in the second half of the nineteenth century. In opening Japan to the West, the United States took the initiative in showcasing its version of gunboat diplomacy. By the early 1850s, a combination of interests, power, and ideology had led the United States to expand its presence into the Asia-Pacific. Against this backdrop, Commodore Matthew Perry arrived at Edo Bay with menacing “black ships” in 1853 to carry out his mission to “open” Japan by diplomacy if possible or with gunboat cannon if necessary. By succumbing to Perry’s demands and by signing the Treaty of Kanagawa in 1854 and the United States–Japan Treaty of Amity and Commerce of 1858, Japan’s two-hundred-year policy of seclusion came to an end, paving the way for the rise of the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912). The provision of a “most favored nation” clause in Article 9 of the Treaty of Kanagawa was most significant for the creation of an unequal system as the Europeans came, one after another, adding extraterritoriality and opening additional ports.26 Aided and abetted by the arrival of the Western warships, diplomats, and merchants, the Meiji Restoration served as the chief catalyst and the final blow for the demise of the 265-year feudalistic Tokugawa shogunate. The success of the Meiji Restoration, unlike China’s Self-Strengthening Movement, is evident in the time it took Tokyo to abolish the unequal treaty system: only half as long as China. In 1899 Tokyo had won revision of the unequal treaties, ending the extraterritorial privileges Westerners had enjoyed in Japan. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Meiji Japan’s domestic reform and external expansionist policy developed in tandem, following the



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logic, “If you can’t beat them, join them—and beat them by their own rules.” Japan’s immediate challenge was to seek an equal status, with imperialism and domination as later goals that came to be viewed as essential to sustaining its great power status. Korea provided the most proximate and logical geopolitical point of departure for seeking first equality and then hegemony in greater East Asia. Through the Tokugawa Period that preceded the Meiji Restoration, Korea’s relations with Japan proceeded with little Chinese involvement. In contrast to the sadae chui (serving the great) tributary relationship that traditional (Chosun) Korea had with China, foreign relations with Japan were defined as kyorin (neighborly relations). The Korean king and the Japanese shogun treated each other as equals and dealt with each other through the medium of Tsushima, an island between Japan and Korea.27 This began to change with the coming of the Meiji Restoration and Japan’s opening to the West. Although Japan continued to maintain the same type of relations with Korea, using Tsushima as an intermediary, national opinion regarding Korea became more interested and expansionist, with some intellectuals claiming a traditional tributary role for Korea vis-à-vis Japan. Watching Russian and British interests in Tsushima and various parts of coastal China grow, Japan knew that if it was going to take a dominant role on the Korean Peninsula, it would have to hold off Western powers that wanted to stake their own claims there. In 1871 Japan and China signed the first East Asian treaty based on Western international law. With the door open, Japan also began revising its relations with Korea, first ending the tradition of conducting relations through Tsushima. Following its 1874 expedition in southern Taiwan (a clear challenge to China and a warning to Korea), Japan began taking bold actions in Korea that led quickly to the Treaty of Kanghwa in February 1876.28 The treaty declared Korea an “autonomous state,” terminating traditional relations between Japan and Korea in favor of Westernized relations, and interaction increased markedly.29 As if to seek equality with the British and American gunboat diplomacy in earlier years, it now became Japan’s turn to open the Hermit Kingdom. These interactions, however, were far from universally positive. A mutiny with an anti-Japanese character led to Japan demanding indemnity, while two years later the Japanese were on the other side of the fence, involved in an attempted coup by Korean progressives. China responded to the coup with military force, and Japan, at the end of the event, again demanded reparations from Korea.30 The Tonghak Rebellion of 1894 served as the proximate catalyst for the Sino-Japanese War. During the war, the Japanese occupied the royal palace in Seoul, remodeling the Korean government and instituting detailed reform measures that covered almost all aspects of Korean life.31

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Japan’s victory in the first Sino-Japanese War (1894–95)—the first shot of the Japanese imperialist system—resulted not only in China’s loss of Korea as the last tributary state, but also in the transfer of Taiwan (Formosa) and the Pescadores Islands, and the ceding of the Liaodong Peninsula in Manchuria, to Japan. It triggered a new round of survival-of-the-fittest competition among Western powers at the expense of Japan as well as China. Despite its victory in the war, Japan’s imperial ambitions and acquisitions were somewhat scaled back when France, Germany, and Russia demanded that Japan return to China both Port Arthur and the Liaodong Peninsula. Japan complied, only to see the Western powers reap the fruits of their victory through the scramble for exclusive spheres of influence over Chinese territory. Thus the stage was set for another war, this time with a European or Eurasian continental power. Japan’s stunning victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, the first military victory by an Asian country over a European power, was a benchmark event for the successful enactment of Japanese national identity as a great power. The Treaty of Portsmouth (1905), brokered by Theodore Roosevelt, gave Japan control over the Liaodong Peninsula, Port Arthur, the southern half of Sakhalin Island, the southern part of the railway built by the Russians in Manchuria, and—most important of all—a free hand in Korea, which Japan formally annexed as a colony five years later. Korea, the “dagger to the heart of Japan,” was thus transformed into a springboard to further expansion in China and a major source of cheap food with which to support Japan’s rapidly increasing industrial population.32 By and large, the twenty-five years after the Russo-Japanese War may be viewed as a consolidation phase. Korea increased in importance to Japan as the essential path to its newly acquired sphere of interest in southern Manchuria. The Russians had conceded Japanese hegemony, and the British posed no challenge. The secret 1905 Taft-Katsura Agreement brought about Washington’s acceptance of Tokyo’s hegemony over the Korean Peninsula in return for Tokyo’s acceptance of American hegemony over the Philippines as well as an expression of support for the Anglo-Japanese alliance. Having obtained support from the United States and Britain, Japan vigorously pursued protectorate status over Korea, achieving in a November 1905 treaty “control and direction of the external relations of Korea” and the stationing of a residentgeneral in Seoul to manage diplomatic affairs.33 Within two years, Russia and Japan reached an agreement that would allow for Japan’s official annexation of Korea.34 Opposition to Japanese rule was squelched with brutal efficiency, and the economic and strategic needs of the Japanese home islands, rather than the interests of the Korean population, dictated the course of Korean economic and social development.



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These gains were increased further during the First World War. Having joined the war on Britain’s side, Japan seized German concessions in China and German possessions in the Northern Pacific. Because of its growing dependence on US and British markets for trade, Japan yielded to US pressure at the 1921–22 Washington Naval Conference to accept an unfavorable battleship ratio of 5:5:3 for the United States, Britain, and Japan, respectively. With the stock market crash of 1929 unplugging Tokyo from its core overseas financial and commodity markets, imperialist tendencies returned with a vengeance.35 Fearful that Manchuria was slipping from its grasp, on September 18, 1931, Japan’s Kwantung army, after setting off an explosion on the Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railroad in order to allege Chinese provocation, began the military conquest of Manchuria. After consolidating their hold on Manchuria with the puppet government of Manchukuo in 1931–32, the Japanese gradually edged into a full-scale war with China, triggering the second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. World War II had begun in Asia two years earlier than in Europe.36 With the coming of war in Europe in September 1939, the Japanese increasingly looked southward to exploit opportunities created by Hitler’s pressure on Britain, France, and the Netherlands. Japan’s defeat by Soviet and Mongolian forces near the Soviet/Mongolian border also accelerated Japan’s southward expansion. In September 1940 Tokyo forced the French to allow its forces to move into Indochina. And a few days later, on September 27, 1940, they concluded the Tripartite Pact—the Axis alliance—with Germany and Italy. Having already eclipsed Great Britain as the dominant power in East Asia, for all practical purposes, Japan felt confident enough to proclaim the “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” (GEACPS or Dai-to-a Kyoeiken). Although official proclamation came only in August 1940 as the policy to create a self-sufficient “bloc of Asian nations led by the Japanese and free of Western powers,” its core idea of liberating Asia from Western imperialism was a strong current in Japanese thought from the Meiji period through World War II. Fukuzawa Yukichi’s nationalist slogan, “To escape Asia,” captured the imagination of a Westernizing Japan. Escaping from Asia meant to abandon Sinocentric Asia, whereas entering Europe was to establish Japan as a European-style great imperial power that could re-enter Asia to establish a new Japan-centric world order. As Japan began to feel more secure and confident with its stunning industrial and military accomplishments in the early twentieth century, it flattered itself with the divine right to educate and “civilize” the rest of Asia still slumbering in a state of “barbarism.” The apogee of such thinking came in the form of the GEACPS, “which was presented as

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a justification for Japanese military expansion in the name of liberating Asia from Western imperialism.”37 Japan’s rise to primacy among the imperial powers in East Asia came with incredible speed and vigor, transforming it from a victim of Western imperialism to a victimizer of its Asian neighbors. Its initial military success in Southeast Asia destroyed the myth of European superiority and paved the way for national independence movements in the region. On December 7, 1941, Japan took a penultimate strategic gamble in attacking the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. In the following six months Japan conquered Southeast Asia, but defeat in the naval Battle of Midway in June 1942 eliminated Japan’s capacity to carry the war to the Eastern Pacific. By the summer of 1943, Japanese troubles prompted them to offer more concessions to local nationalists in the vain hope of gaining greater cooperation. In April 1945, the Japanese suffered more than three hundred thousand casualties in Southeast Asia, where the British (with American and Chinese assistance) completed the destruction of Japanese forces on the mainland.38 World War II, along with the Japanese imperial (interregnum) system, ended in Asia three months later than in Europe, even as it had started in Asia two years earlier than in Europe. The legacies of the Japanese imperial system are legion. Foremost among them for Southeast Asia was a process of decolonization set in motion by imperial Japan that proved unstoppable—an unintended boost to the liberation of Southeast Asian and South Asian countries from Western colonial rule—and the transformation of political units from kingdoms and empires into modern nation-states.39 For Northeast Asia the historical scars and animosities still resonate strongly in post–Cold War Sino-Japanese and Korea-Japanese relations. TRANSFORMATION III: THE COLD WAR SYSTEM In contrast with Europe, where a bipolar Cold War system emerged and morphed into two competing, but relatively stable, multilateral security institutions with the establishment of NATO in 1949 and the Warsaw Pact in 1955, the Cold War in Asia encountered and developed in tandem with such turbulent transformations as national liberation movements, revolutions, civil wars, and two major international wars. While Europe enjoyed a long “cold peace” with no major armed conflict, the Asian Cold War turned into hot war in Korea and Vietnam. With three of the four major Cold War fault lines— divided Germany, divided Korea, divided China, and divided Vietnam—East Asia acquired the dubious distinction of having engendered the largest number of armed conflicts resulting in higher fatalities between 1945 and 1994



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than any other region or subregion. Even in Asia, while Central and South Asia produced a regional total of 2.8 million in human fatalities, East Asia’s regional total is 10.4 million including the Chinese Civil War (1 million), the Korean War (3 million), the Vietnam War (2 million), and the Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia (1 to 2 million).40 Studies on the origins of the Cold War have concentrated on the SovietAmerican conflict over Europe and the Middle East, as if the Cold War in Asia were but a corollary of its lateral escalation from elsewhere—or as if it were the later, unfortunate but inevitable outcome of the Chinese Civil War. Faced with the imminent fall of the Japanese Empire in 1945 and with a threat of the Soviet Red Army pushing its way into the Korean Peninsula, the minds of many American policy makers had already shifted to Japan as the linchpin of a post-war Pax Americana in Asia.41 By the end of 1945, a de facto Cold War in Asia had already begun as the United States and the Soviet Union viewed each other as potential adversaries, with enormous ramifications for the peoples and countries of Asia, including Southeast Asian states long subject to European colonial powers.42 Inexorably, the post-war trajectories of almost all the states of East Asia, if not of South Asia, began to be keyed to superpower conflicts and rivalry. The Cold War was under way in Asia with the declaration of the Truman Doctrine on March 12, 1947, as the ideological turning point for the United States’ global strategy and three of four major Cold War fault lines already drawn or in the process: Korea, China, and Vietnam. The Cold War system reflected three major features: a bipolar order of power, an intense ideological conflict and rivalry, and fear of nuclear war (World War III).43 This bipolar Asia constituted a break from the two previous attempts at regional integration: the Chinese tribute system over much of the preceding millennium and the ambitious but abortive Japanese imperial system in the first half of the twentieth century.44 Nonetheless, what really held Washington back from constructing the comprehensive Cold War alliance system in Asia had much to do with domestic politics. By any reckoning the Korean War (1950–53) was the single greatest system-transforming event in the early post–World War II era, with the far-reaching catalytic effects of enacting the rules of the Cold War game as well as congealing the patterns of East-West conflict across East Asia and beyond. It was the Korean War that brought about such features of the Cold War as high military budgets (e.g., a quadrupling of US defense expenditures); the proliferation of bilateral defense treaties with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, South Vietnam, the Philippines, and Thailand—the hub and spokes of the San Francisco System—and an ill-conceived and short-lived multilateral security organization, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization

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(SEATO); and the crystallization of East-West conflict into a rigid strategic culture dependent on a Manichean vision of stark bipolarity.45 Particularly significant, but not sufficiently acknowledged, is the role of the Korean War in the creation of Cold War identity for the two Koreas as well as for the “Big Four” of Asian international relations—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and Japan.46 For both Koreas, the war experience triggered a decisive shift in identity politics from the competition of multiple identities to the dominance of the Cold War identity. The United States, too, owes to the Korean War the crystallization of its Cold War identity—which, in turn, gave birth to an American strategic culture that thrived on the image of global bipolarity and the omnipresent communist threat. Until the latter half of the 1980s, Soviet strategic culture was similarly anchored in and thriving on its own Cold War identity. The simplicity of a stark, bipolar worldview provided an indispensable counterpoint for the quest for superpower identity and security in a region dominated by American hegemony. Soviet geopolitical conduct seems to make no sense except when viewed as the drive to assume a superpower role and to acquire equal status with the United States in order to compensate for its siege mentality and to legitimize its authoritarian iron hand at home. The newly established People’s Republic of China almost single-handedly rescued Kim Il Sung’s regime from extinction, but at inordinate material, human, and political costs. In addition to more than 740,000 casualties47—including Mao’s son—China missed the opportunity to “liberate” Taiwan, was excluded from the United Nations for more than two decades, and lost twenty years in its modernization drive. However, Beijing succeeded in forcing the strongest nation on earth (the United States) to compromise in Korea and to accept China’s representatives as equals at the bargaining table. No one in the West would ever again dismiss China’s power as had General Douglas MacArthur in the fall of 1950. Indeed, the Korean War confirmed that China could stand up against the world’s anti-socialist superpower for the integrity of its new national identity as a revolutionary socialist state. For Japan, the Korean War turned out to be a godsend because Tokyo reaped maximum economic and political benefits. Thanks to the Korean War, Japan was converted from a defeated enemy to an indispensable regional ally in the United States’ Asian strategy. The San Francisco System was designed and constructed in 1951 as the Korean War was raging, in an effort to integrate Japan into the “hub and spokes” of US-led Pacific Cold War alliances through the non-vindictive San Francisco Peace Treaty (1951). The system reflected and affected the Cold War structure of international relations in Asia in general and Northeast Asia in particular.48



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By the end of the Korean War, Tokyo had regained its sovereignty and had skilfully negotiated a new Mutual Security Treaty that provided for US protection of Japan while allowing Tokyo to escape the burden of joint defense. Without becoming involved in the bloodshed or material deprivation, Japan was able to reap the benefits of a war economy and had been imbued with new potential as a logistical base for the United States and as a key manufacturing center for war supplies. The Cold War logic and geo-strategic situation that emerged after the Korean War also allowed Japan, aided and abetted by Washington, to deflect scrutiny of its domestic politics. This resulted in the quick reintegration into Japanese politics of individuals directly implicated in the expansion of imperial Japan, the war against the United States, and wartime atrocities. Emblematic of this phenomenon was the re-emergence of Kishi Nobusuke, who was the former head of the Manchurian railroad as well as minister of munitions in the Tojo government and a signatory of the 1941 declaration of war against the United States. Although he was held briefly as a Class A war criminal after the war, Kishi returned to active politics in the 1950s and became prime minister in 1957, a turn of events that would have been unthinkable in the German context. Japan’s conservative leadership, who gathered together under the umbrella of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) after 1955, favored a narrative of the origins of the Pacific War that was largely exculpatory, stressing the “defensive” motives behind the expansion of the empire and neglecting the simmering issue of Japanese wartime atrocities. The United States and its Cold War allies were determined to contain communism in Asia as in Europe, and Indochina became the next battlefield in the Cold War. French efforts to restore imperial control by insisting that Indochina was another arena in the Cold War gained credence as the containment of communism became a greater American concern than European colonialism or Asian nationalism. American assistance to the French began as early as May 1950—even before the outbreak of the Korean War on June 25, 1950—and increased substantially over the next few years. As in Korea, the Vietnam War became internationalized with growing US involvement. From the United States’ creeping containment in the 1940s and 1950s to the massive enlargement in money and troops in the second half of the 1960s and the final desperate attempts of the early 1970s to seek a diplomatic solution, its policies in Indochina had all ended in ashes, marking the most disastrous chapter in post-war American foreign policy as well as the beginning of the relative decline of US influence in world affairs. Ironically, the United States had fought the Vietnam War ostensibly to prevent the expansion of a monolithic communist bloc, but by early 1975 (even before the North Vietnamese

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troops marched into Saigon), Washington was already aligning itself with Beijing to oppose the Soviets in the emergent strategic triangle. One of the many unexpected and paradoxical consequences of the Korean War was that the Sino-Soviet alliance, formally forged on February 14, 1950, was strengthened in the short run and weakened in the long run. The irony is that the Sino-Soviet split became the unavoidable consequence of growing equality in the alliance. The widening gap between Beijing’s rising demands and expectations and Moscow’s inability and unwillingness to satisfy them undermined an alliance rooted in shared values and shared fears. Still, Sino-Soviet differences in 1956–58 were confined to esoteric intra-bloc communications. From mid-1958 onward, the dispute began to escalate from ideological to national security issues, reaching by early 1964 the point of no return. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the 1969 Sino-Soviet military clashes on Zhenbao Island in the Ussuri River, and the ensuing Soviet threat to launch a preventive attack on Chinese nuclear installations, all refocused Beijing’s and Washington’s minds on strategic considerations. This transformation led China to abandon the dual-adversary policy as it sought to improve US-Chinese relations in order to offset the escalating Soviet threat. While in Europe the Cold War ended with a bang, in Asia it withered away in instalments. Here again China was at the creation as well as the gradual demise. By the late 1960s, important premises and pillars of the bipolar order in Asia had already begun chipping away. With the Sino-Soviet conflict escalating to military clashes and a border war in 1969, Moscow took several measures to isolate China, including the not-so-subtle hint at the possibility of a nuclear strike, the anti-China proposal for an Asian Collective Security System, and the 1971 treaty with India.49 Meanwhile, China was seeking alignment with the United States to balance against the Soviet Union even as the United States was seeking an exit from the quagmire of the Vietnam War. Thus, the rise and fall of the strategic triangle was closely keyed to the rise and decline of Soviet power relative to that of the United States.50 The Sino-American rapprochement in 1970–72—also known as the “Nixon in China Shock” in much of Asia (especially in Japan)—came to serve as the chief catalyst (and a force multiplier) for China’s belated grand entry into the United Nations and UN Security Council as one of the five permanent members in late 1971. By 1978 bipolarity had been not so much destroyed—at least not yet—as shifted and mutated into a US-Soviet-China strategic triangle. Even the Korean Peninsula as the last stronghold of the Cold War could not remain unaffected by the changing geopolitical realities in Northeast Asia: the two Koreas held the first-ever inter-Korean talks, resulting in the North-South Joint Communiqué of July 4, 1972. In addition, the Sino–South Korean rap-



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prochement was well under way even before the end of the Cold War, paving the groundwork for diplomatic normalization in 1992. The Cold War system worked well in the establishment and maintenance of American hegemony in the region until the beginning of the 1970s. But there were economic ramifications as well. The growing costs of maintaining a far-flung “hub-and-spokes” system undermined the strength of the dollar and the fiscal foundations of US primacy.51 Japan’s economic resurgence, followed by that of the newly industrializing countries, also increased American pressures for “burden sharing without power sharing.” But in the end, as previously in history, the American hegemon could not arrest the cycle of the rise and fall of a great power, as the law of imperial overextension turns today’s dividends into tomorrow’s debts with compound interest. Gorbachev’s Soviet Union was the single greatest factor in the reshaping of Asia’s strategic context in at least three separate but mutually interdependent ways—the end of the Cold War bipolarity, Sino-Soviet renormalization, and Soviet-ROK normalization. “All of this had happened by 1990,” as Robert Legvold aptly put it, “two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and largely as the result of the revolution that Gorbachev brought about in his country’s foreign policy. In the end, the demise of the triangle, which had been a profound manifestation of the old order, became one of the profoundest manifestations of its passing.”52 DOES HISTORY MATTER? “History” is one of most frequently used and misused terms, even by political scientists. Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (1992) stands out as a case in point. With the triumph of Western liberal democracy and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Fukuyama argued that humanity has finally reached “the end of history as such.”53 We cannot find a more misleading use of “history.” Whether history matters cannot be answered without first specifying whose history on what issues in what context. There are several ways of assessing the weight of the past in the post–Cold War era. The three historical system transformations discussed in this chapter lead to one obvious and somewhat paradoxical conclusion: contrary to the Eurocentric and Sinocentric “back to the future” models, there is no past that can serve as a useful guide for the future of Asian international relations. Both the Japanese imperial system and the Cold War system reflected a sharp break from their predecessors. The emerging post–Cold War Asian system also represents a discontinuity from the three past systems assessed above.

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The most obvious continuity over the years has been the centrality of the Middle Kingdom, with the waxing and waning of Chinese power as the main reality and critical factor. But the traditional hierarchical Chinese world order—the tribute system—was limited to the Sinic zone. The Indic system in South Asia, even during its heyday before British rule, was largely disconnected from the Chinese tribute system, while Southeast Asia (except Vietnam) also remained largely outside of the Sinic zone fighting its own wars among kingdoms of the region. Despite cultural and economic interaction within the Sinic zone, there was no truly Asian international system that enveloped all Asian subregions. Evelyn Rawski argues that, for about half of its existence, the Chinese empire was not in a hegemonic position on its northern frontiers, but struggled with neighbors who were at least as strong.54 The post–Cold War era of globalization and economic integration, too, has produced a level and intensity of interaction and interdependence such as the world has never known.55 There is no disagreement that China is at the center of both competing “back to the future” models. The more popular realist, Eurocentric balanceof-power model, in which the rise of China is often conflated with threat, suffers from several problems. The correlation between power transition and war causation may no longer hold—Asia has not experienced a single interstate war in the post–Cold War era. There are many other differences between ascendant China and the rise of Wilhelmine Germany. The German case illustrates how national roles can change over time. German nationalism was redefined and reduced in both East and West Germany, whereas previous defeats (1806 and 1918) had only generated more aggressive nationalism. Harold James offers an explanation in the changing international normative cycle that moulded a new German national identity.56 Indeed, what distinguishes the post–Cold War Asian system is the rise of regionalism and two regional organizations: the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). As Amitav Acharya argues, Asians are now coping with political and economic challenges through “shared regional norms, rising economic interdependence, and growing institutional linkages.”57 Asia’s new regionalism here can be best seen as a calculated response to the complex of rapid-fire developments occurring as a result of global, regional, national, and local interactions simultaneously involving state as well as non-state market and society actors.58 In short, the interactions of Asian nation-states have lost much of the Realist simplicity of the struggle for power or the choice between anarchy and hierarchy, as a result of globalization dynamics.59 The Sinocentric model also fails to meet the desirability and feasibility test. Due to the colonial and post-colonial (decolonization) experience, sovereignty



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has had a profound impact on the aspirations of all the newly independent Asian states. Consequently, hierarchy—whether Sinocentric or Americancentric—is now more difficult to reconcile with the overwhelming support by Asian states for state sovereignty, state equality, and non-interference. China itself has shown no interest in recycling or reproducing the Sinocentric hierarchical world order. On the contrary, China’s acceptance of state sovereignty and associated notions in the form of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (FPPC): (1) mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, (2) mutual non-aggression, (3) mutual non-interference in internal affairs, (4) equality and mutual benefit, and (5) peaceful coexistence—have been reaffirmed repeatedly since their official adoption in 1954. The FPPC have become globalized, providing the basic norms for state-to-state relations, whether East–West, North–South, South–South, or East–East. With the rise in late 1978 of Deng Xiaoping as the paramount leader came a drastic reformulation (and re-legitimation) of China’s future in terms of such hitherto proscribed concepts as the open door, international interdependence, division of labor, and specialization. Even China’s backwardness and stunted modernization were now attributed not to Western imperialism but to China’s own isolationism going back to the Ming dynasty, and implicitly to its tribute system. According to Qin Yaqing (professor and former president of China Foreign Affairs University, 外交学院), “China does not expect to restore the tribute system or bring China back to its former position as the Central Kingdom, for it has accepted the basic norms and rules in the current international system. . . . Reform and opening up have changed China’s status and identity in international society, making it possible to interact with the world as a full member of the international community.”60 Asia today confronts a vastly different set of challenges and threats as well as a vastly greater range of resources and solutions than those of the Eurocentric balance of power system or the Sinocentric tribute system. As the world’s largest and most populous continent, Asia’s chief characteristic is its diversity-cum-disparity in virtually all categories: geographic, demographic, cultural, religious, political, military, economic, environmental, and technological. Even post–Cold War Asia is still better defined by cultural and ideational diversity than by its putative Confucian cultural heritage. And yet ASEAN, with eleven official languages, seems to have overcome its linguistic diversity by making English a common working language.61 Not surprisingly, the responses of Asian states to the rise of China span a wide spectrum—from balancing against China to bandwagoning with it. As Jae Ho Chung argues, “Explicit balancing or containment has been rare and engagement, if not appeasement, appears to be East Asia’s modus operandi in responding to the rise of China,” with state responses “conditioned largely

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by three factors: alliances with the United States, territorial disputes with China and regime characteristics.”62 What is missing in Chung’s list is geoeconomic power, arguably the most important independent variable in the responses of both Asian states and the United States. It is important to keep in mind that a fair and balanced assessment of China’s power or its role in Asian and world politics begs the question: compared to when, to whom, and in what context? Although national power generally comprises economic, military, and normative (soft) components, economic power is the most immediately measurable and convertible form of power because it can purchase military hardware as well as resources for soft-power diplomacy. Some economic data may spotlight China’s rise as an economic superpower. When Deng Xiaoping announced the policy of reform and opening up in 1978, China’s GDP was only $149.5 billion, representing only 6 percent of US GDP; in 2020 China’s GDP was $14.722 trillion, 70 percent of US GDP. China’s total trade value (both imports and exports) in 1978 was only $20.6 billion, ranking thirty-second among all trading states and accounting for less than 1 percent of global trade. Since then, China’s investment- and export-led economy has grown more than a hundredfold at an average annual rate of 10.1 percent. In the post–Cold War era, China’s GDP surpassed that of Canada in 1993, Italy in 2000, France in 2003, the United Kingdom in 2006, Germany in 2008, Japan in 2010, and the United States in 2014 (as measured in purchasing power parity, PPP). Even more remarkably, in 2012 China leapfrogged the United States to become the world’s biggest trading power (with a total trade value of $3.87 trillion compared to the US total $3.82 trillion), bringing an end to the post–World War II dominance of the United States in global trade. In Asia, China’s rise as the dominant economic superpower is manifest in the surge of China’s trade with virtually all other Asian states, usually as their number 1 or 2 trading partner. As of 2020, ASEAN countries became China’s largest trading partner, with trade volumes hitting $731.9 billion, a 7 percent growth year-on-year. China has been ASEAN’s largest trading partner since 2012. This has also sent a positive message for international trade under the shadow of COVID-19 uncertainties.63 China’s top five trading partners are ASEAN, the EU, the US, Japan, and South Korea, and China’s growth in foreign trade has been a worldwide trend. Despite Trump’s trade war beginning in 2018, the China-US trade surplus reached a record high in December 2020. Strong global demand for workfrom-home technology and health-care equipment related to the pandemic fuelled a surge in shipments, while China’s early control of virus cases gave



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it a competitive advantage. That export momentum is expected to keep going even as vaccines are rolled out to tame the COVID-19 virus spread.64 Equally revealing is a long “China Number One” list Graham Allison provides in his book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?: Most students are stunned to learn that on most indicators, China has already surpassed the United States. As the largest producer of ships, steel, aluminium, furniture, clothing, textiles, cell phones, and computers, China has become the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. Students are even more surprised to discover that China has also become the world’s largest consumer of most products. America was the birthplace of the automobile, but China is now both the largest automaker and the largest auto market. Chinese consumers bought 20 million cars in 2015—three million more than were sold in the United States. China is also the world’s largest market for cell phones and e-commerce, and has the largest number of Internet users. China imported more oil, consumed more energy, and installed more solar power than any other nation. Perhaps most devastatingly for America’s self-conception, in 2016—as it has since the 2008 worldwide financial crisis—China continued to serve as the primary engine of global economic growth.65

The single greatest accomplishment in terms of social and human development—and “human rights” too—is China’s unmatched record in poverty alleviation. Since reform and opening up in 1978, more than 770 million rural people have been raised from poverty, accounting for more than 70 percent of the global total over the same period, according to the World Bank’s international poverty standard. More than any of his predecessors, Xi Jinping’s repeated assertion—“I have spent more energy on poverty alleviation than on anything else”—sent a powerful message to the entire country. More than three million first Party secretaries and resident working team members have been selected and dispatched to carry out a targeted poverty reduction program since 2013. Investment in poverty alleviation from the central, provincial, city, and county governments during that short time have totaled nearly 1.6 trillion yuan (about $244 billion). From 1978 to 2017 the incidence of rural poverty dropped from 97.5 percent to 3.1 percent.66 Despite these dramatic developments on the part of China, which have deeply affected the Asian regional system, however, history still matters. Not in the sense of recycling any historical system, but in coming clean with historical scars and especially enmities transmitted by the Japanese imperial system. The 1980s, as the last Cold War decade, was a turning point (especially for Korea and China) in bringing the historical issues back into Asian, particularly Northeast Asian, international relations. As the Cold War world

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structure began to unravel, issues of national identity reconstruction and reenactment became increasingly salient. Most East Asian states, freed of the constraints imposed by the East-West conflict and increasingly wealthy and prosperous in their own right, no longer felt as dependent as they once had on Japanese support. Far from sharing a homogeneous Confucian culture, East Asia still embodies (albeit in attenuated form) a high degree of historical and national identity animus.67 At the same time, the arrival of the third wave of democratization in East Asia created more political space where such sentiments could be voiced without fear of repression. Japan is often accused of suffering from “historical amnesia” regarding its modern history. But this should be seen rather as selective remembering and forgetting. Japan has not made a clean and decisive break with its past in the way that Germany did following the conclusion of World War II. In Korea, there is a significant amount of what Allen Whiting once described (in the Chinese case) as “war recall”; for Korea it might be “colonial/ imperial recall.”68 In response to Japanese political statements, history textbooks, Yasukuni Shrine visits, and the “comfort women” (sex slaves) issue,69 Korean reactions among political leaders, civil society protests, and the media bring historical enmities to the fore. Therefore, even as economic relations between Japan and South Korea have become closer than ever, the two countries have nonetheless engaged in acrimonious disputes over fishing and territorial boundaries, the history textbooks, and the festering “comfort women” issue. In the early twenty-first century, the national identity conflict in East Asia retreated for a moment, only to recently return with a vengeance. With the threat of terrorism pressing for inter-Asian cooperation, leaders at the APEC summit in the fall of 2001 agreed to put the “history issue” aside for the time being. With Korean-Japanese dialogue and the two countries’ joint sponsorship of the 2002 World Cup soccer tournament, unprecedented numbers of Koreans and Japanese held a positive image of each other’s country—79 percent felt that the relationship between the two nations was headed in a good direction.70 At the level of popular culture, a “Korea wave” took hold in Japan with K-pop and Korean TV drama series. Even the Japanese emperor observed that the imperial household historically had its roots in Korea.71 This period of camaraderie was short-lived, however, as the textbooks controversy and the dispute over the Tokdo Islands reignited in 2005 and the “comfort women” issue arose once again in mid-August 2021. Predicting the future of Asia’s international relations has always been hazardous—and never more so than today, when the international system itself is undergoing a profound and long-term transformation. Momentous global changes such as those from 1989 to 1992 (the end of the Cold War, German



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reunification, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the demise of the Warsaw Pact, the third wave of democratization) are unprecedented in their nature, scope, and rapidity and beyond the predictive power of social scientists. To a significant degree, as Robert Jervis argued, the flow of world politics has become contingent or “path dependent,” since certain unexpected events can easily force it along quite different trajectories. Hence, past generalizations can no longer provide a sure guide for the future.72 Recognizing this, the challenge for the uncertain years ahead is neither one of making a false choice between balancing against or bandwagoning with China, nor one of seeking an alternative supranational global organization (world government). The challenge, rather, is to find a greater synergy among the many types of state and non-state actors in order to collaborate for more effective prevention, regulation, and resolution of simmering conflicts while simultaneously expanding multilateral dialogues and economic integration as vehicles for the creation of a pluralistic Asian security community. NOTES 1.  For pessimistic Realist analyses along this line with some variations, see Aaron L. Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia,” International Security 18, no. 3 (Winter 1993–94): 5–33; Aaron L. Friedberg, Europe’s Past, Asia’s Future?, SAIS Policy Forum Series 3 (Washington, DC: Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, 1998), 1–15; Aaron L. Friedberg, “Will Europe’s Past Be Asia’s Future?” Survival 42, no. 3 (Autumn 2000): 147–59; Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York: Norton, 2011); and Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal, “Rethinking East Asian Security,” Survival 36, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 3–21. 2.  Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 234. 3. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, 238. 4.  See David C. Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong: The Need for New Analytical Frameworks,” International Security 27, no. 4 (Spring 2003): 57–85; David C. Kang, “Hierarchy in Asian International Relations, 1300–1900,” Asian Security 1, no. 1 (January 2005): 53–79; and David C. Kang, China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 23–49. 5.  Kang, “Hierarchy in Asian International Relations,” 174. 6.  The idea of “Asia” is not an indigenous invention but a European one, lending itself to highly problematic and often sweeping or misleading generalizations. The notion of Asia—or the Orient (Orientalism)—was constructed by prominent European political philosophers (e.g., Charles de Montesquieu, Adam Smith, G. W. F. Hegel, and Karl Marx) from the eighteenth century onward as a way of sharpening and strengthening European identity (Eurocentrism). In such a teleological image of world history,

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Europe was depicted as outward looking, dynamic, and progressive in us/them contrast with inward looking, stagnant, and backward Asia. See Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1994); Wang Hui, “Reclaiming Asia from the West: Rethinking Global History,” Japan Focus, February 23, 2005; and Gerald Segal, “‘Asianism’ and Asian Security,” National Interest 42 (Winter 1995): 59. 7.  See Segal, “‘Asianism’ and Asian Security,” 60; see also Warren I. Cohen, East Asia at the Center: Four Thousand Years of Engagement with the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Mark T. Berger and Douglas A. Borer, eds., The Rise of East Asia: Critical Vision of the Pacific Century (London: Routledge, 1997); and Giovanni Arrighi, Takeshi Hamashita, and Mark Selden, eds., The Resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150, and 50 Year Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2003). 8. For further analysis of the Indic interstate system, see Muthiah Alagappa, “International Politics in Asia: The Historical Context,” in Asian Security Practice: Material and Ideational Influences, ed. Muthiah Alagappa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 71–75. 9.  Christopher Hemmer and Peter J. Katzenstein, “Why Is There No NATO in Asia? Collective Identity, Regionalism, and the Origins of Multilateralism,” International Organization 56, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 591. 10.  On the traditional Chinese world order, see John K. Fairbank, ed., The Chinese World Order: Traditional China’s Foreign Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968); and Samuel S. Kim, China, the United Nations, and World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 19–48. 11.  John K. Fairbank, “A Preliminary Framework,” in The Chinese World Order, 3. 12.  A classic example is the case of Lord Macartney in 1793, who was entered in the Chinese diplomatic record as having performed the kowtow before the Chinese emperor. In fact, Lord Macartney refused to perform that ritual. Nor did George III send tributary gifts to the emperor in 1804, contrary to a Chinese documentary assertion. See Kim, China, the United Nations, and World Order, 19–20. 13.  Immanuel C. Y. Hsü, China’s Entrance into the Family of Nations: The Diplomatic Phase, 1858–1880 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 13. Lucian W. Pye is also known for his signature mantra: “[Post-Mao] China is a civilization pretending to be a state.” See Lucian W. Pye, “China: Erratic State, Frustrated Society,” Foreign Affairs 69, no. 4 (Fall 1990): 58; Lucian W. Pye, The Spirit of Chinese Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 235; and Lucian W. Pye, “International Relations in Asia: Culture, Nation and State,” Sigur Center Asia Papers 1 (Washington, DC: Sigur Center for Asian Studies, 1998), 9. 14.  See Michel Oksenberg, “The Issue of Sovereignty in the Asian Historical Context,” in Problematic Sovereignty: Contest Rules and Political Possibilities, ed. Stephen D. Krasner (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 83–104; and Samuel S. Kim, “Sovereignty in the Chinese Image of World Order,” in Essays in Honor of Wang Tieya, ed. Ronald St. John Macdonald (London: Martinus Nijhoff, 1994), 425–45. 15.  Curiously and confusingly, the 1818 Collected Statutes of the Qing Dynasty (Da Qing hui-tien) categorized Tibet, Corea (Korea), Liu Ch’iu (Ryukyu), Cambodia, Siam, Sulu, Holland, Burma, Portugal, Italy, and England as tributary states, while



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Russia, Japan, Sweden, and France were listed merely as states having only commercial relations with China. See Kim, China, the United Nations, and World Order, 24. 16.  See Morris Rossabi, ed., China Among Equals (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); and Oksenberg, “The Issue of Sovereignty in the Asian Historical Context,” 89–90. 17. Carter Eckert, Offspring of Empire: The Koch’ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, 1876–1945 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), 226–27. 18. Key-Huik Kim, The Last Phase of the East Asian World Order (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 341. For further analyses of Sino-Korean tributary relations, see Chun Hae-jong, “Sino-Korean Tributary Relations in the Ch’ing Period,” in The Chinese World Order, 90–111. 19.  Alagappa, “International Politics in Asia,” 81. 20.  Mark Mancall, “The Persistence of Tradition in Chinese Foreign Policy,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 349 (September 1963): 21. 21.  “According to this canonical version of modern Chinese history, 1842 is year one. Every high school student preparing to take the intensely competitive and dreaded college entrance examination is now required to memorize the official national narrative that divides Chinese history neatly into pre-Opium [pre-modern] and post–Opium War [modern] periods.” Orville Schell and John Delury, Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century (New York: Random House, 2013), 14. 22.  For the inauguration of the Cooperative Policy and the role played by Burlingame, see Samuel S. Kim, “Burlingame and the Inauguration of the Cooperative Policy,” Modern Asian Studies 5 (October 1971): 337–54. 23.  For a comprehensive treatment of this theme, see Mary C. Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T’ung-Chih Restoration, 1862–1874 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962). 24.  Sun Yat-sen characterized China under the unequal treaty system as a “hypocolony,” which is a grade worse than a semi-colony because of the multiple controls and exploitation exercised by the imperial powers. Sun Yat-sen, San Min Chu I: The Three Principles of the People, trans. Frank W. Price (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1932), 39. 25.  See Giovanni Arrighi, Takeshi Hamashita, and Mark Selden, “The Rise of East Asia in World Historical Perspective” (Binghamton: Fernand Braudel Center, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1997); Alagappa, “International Politics in Asia,” 81–82. 26. Cohen, East Asia at the Center, 261–64. 27.  On Tsushima, see Kim, The Last Phase of the East Asian World Order, 17–20. 28. Kim, The Last Phase of the East Asian World Order, 193–94, 200–203. 29. Kim, The Last Phase of the East Asian World Order, 253. 30.  C. I. Eugene Kim and Han-Kyo Kim, Korea and the Politics of Imperialism, 1876–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 34–38, 46–54. 31.  Kim and Kim, Korea and the Politics of Imperialism, 80–81. 32.  Alvin So and Stephen W. K. Chiu, East Asia and the World-Economy (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1995), 91, 94; S. P. S. Ho, “Colonialism and Development:

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Korea, Taiwan and Kwantung,” in The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945, ed. R. Myers and M. Peattie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 340–50. 33.  Kim and Kim, Korea and the Politics of Imperialism, 125, 131. 34.  Kim and Kim, Korea and the Politics of Imperialism, 141–43. 35.  Peter Duus, “Economic Dimensions of Meiji Imperialism: The Case of Korea, 1895–1910,” in The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945, 161–62. 36.  So and Chiu, East Asia and the World-Economy, 105–8. 37.  Masaru Tamamoto, “Japan’s Uncertain Role,” World Policy Journal 8, no. 4 (Fall 1991): 583. For a more detailed analysis of Fukuzawa’s influence in Meiji Japan, see Sushila Narsimhan, Japanese Perceptions of China in the Nineteenth Century: Influence of Fukuzawa Yukichi (New Delhi: Phoenix, 1999). 38. Cohen, East Asia at the Center, 358–59. 39.  Alagappa, “International Politics in Asia,” 86. 40.  See IISS, “Armed Conflicts and Fatalities, 1945–1994,” in The Military Balance 1997/98 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1997). 41. Cohen, East Asia at the Center, 362. 42.  See Marc S. Gallichio, The Cold War Begins in Asia: American East Asian Policy and the Fall of the Japanese Empire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). 43. Barry Buzan, “The Present as a Historic Turning Point,” Journal of Peace Research 30, no. 4 (1995): 386–87. 44.  Mark Selden, “China, Japan and the Regional Political Economy of East Asia, 1945–1995,” in Network Power: Japan and Asia, eds. Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 306–7. 45.  See Robert Jervis, “The Impact of the Korean War on the Cold War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 24, no. 4 (December 1980): 563–92. 46.  See Samuel S. Kim, The Two Koreas and the Great Powers (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2–4. 47. According to one official Chinese estimate, combat casualties were more than 360,000 (including 130,000 wounded), and non-combat casualties were more than 380,000. See Zhang Aiping, Zhongguo Renmin Jiefangjun [China’s People’s Liberation Army], vol. 1, Contemporary China Series (Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo Chubanshe, 1994), 137. 48.  See Kent Calder, “US Foreign Policy in Northeast Asia,” in The International Relations of Northeast Asia, ed. Samuel S. Kim (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 225–48. 49.  Alagappa, “International Politics in Asia,” 93–94. 50.  For the rise and fall of tripolarity, see Robert S. Ross, ed., China, the United States, and the Soviet Union: Tripolarity and Policy Making in the Cold War (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993); and Lowell Dittmer, Sino-Soviet Normalization and Its International Implications, 1945–1990 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992), 147–255. 51.  Selden, “China, Japan and the Regional Political Economy of East Asia,” 313.



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52.  Robert Legvold, “Sino-Soviet Relations: The American Factor,” in China, the United States, and the Soviet Union: Tripolarity and Policy Making in the Cold War, ed. Robert S. Ross (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), 87. 53.  Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). 54.  Evelyn S. Rawski, “Chinese Strategy and Security Issues in Historical Perspective,” in China’s Rise in Historical Perspective, ed. Brantly Womack (Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 63–83. 55. Cohen, East Asia at the Center, 480. 56.  Harold James, A German Identity, 1770–1990 (New York: Routledge, 1989). 57.  Amitav Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?,” International Security 28, no. 3 (Winter 2003–4): 164. See also Amitav Acharya, “How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism,” International Organization 58 (Spring 2004): 239–75; Samuel S. Kim, “Regionalization and Regionalism in East Asia,” Journal of East Asian Studies 4, no. 1 (January–April 2004): 39–67; and Kent E. Calder and Francis Fukuyama, eds., East Asian Multilateralism: Prospects for Regional Stability (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). 58.  Kim, “Regionalization and Regionalism in East Asia,” 43. 59. See David Shambaugh, ed., Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); David M. Lampton, The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); and Samuel S. Kim, “China and Globalization: Confronting Myriad Challenges and Opportunities,” Asian Perspective 33, no. 3 (2009): 41–80. 60.  Qin Yaqing, “Struggle for Identity: A Political Psychology of China’s Rise,” in China’s Rise in Historical Perspective, 263, 265. 61.  For a comprehensive study of ASEAN, see Amitav Acharya, ASEAN and Regional Order: Revisiting Security Community in Southeast Asia (London: Routledge, 2021). 62.  Jae Ho Chung, “East Asia Responds to the Rise of China: Patterns and Variations,” Pacific Affairs 82, no. 4 (Winter 2009–10): 659. 63.  Global Times, January 14, 2021. 64. “China Ends 2020 With Record Trade Surplus as Pandemic Goods Soar,” Bloomberg News, January 13, 2021. 65. Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017, Kindle edition), 9–10. 66.  See White Paper, Poverty Alleviation: China’s Experience and Contribution (The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, April 2021), xinhuanet.com/English/2021-04/06/c-139860414.htm. 67.  Gilbert Rozman, ed., East Asian National Identities: Common Roots and Chinese Exceptionalism (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012). 68. Allen S. Whiting, China Eyes Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

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69.  “Comfort women” were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. Estimates vary from fifty thousand to two hundred thousand and most were from Korea, China, and the Philippines. Many survivors have testified to being tricked and forced into slavery. The surviving women in Korea and throughout Asia are still fighting without success for apology and compensation. 70.  According to survey results reported in the Asahi Sinbun, July 6, 2002, 2. 71.  Howard French, “Japan Rediscovers Its Korean Past,” New York Times, March 11, 2002. 72. Robert Jervis, “The Future of World Politics: Will It Resemble the Past?,” International Security 16, no. 3 (Winter 1991–92): 39–45.

Chapter Three

Thinking Theoretically about Asian IR A mitav A charya

Any discussion of theoretical perspectives on the international relations (IR) in Asia confronts the challenge that much of the available literature on the subject had, until quite recently, remained largely atheoretical. Whether from within or outside the region, many analysts of Asia were largely unconvinced that theory was either necessary or useful for studying Asian international relations.1 Although interest in IR theory is growing in the region, particularly in China, where efforts to develop a “Chinese School” of IR are gathering steam, theory is still seen as too abstract or too divorced from the day-to-day concerns of governments and peoples to merit serious and sustained pursuit. Moreover, theory is criticized by many in Asia as too “Western.” Thus, even among those writers on Asian IR who are theoretically oriented, disagreement persists as to whether IR theory is relevant to studying Asia given its origin in, and close association with, Western historical traditions, intellectual discourses, and foreign policy practices. International relations theory, like the discipline itself, remains, an “American social science,” to quote Stanley Hoffmann.2 The recent advances made by the “English School” and continental European Constructivism have not made IR theory “universal”; indeed, they have further entrenched and broadened the Western theoretical dominance. The question of how relevant IR theory is to the study of Asian security has evoked strikingly different responses. On the one hand, David Kang has seized upon the non-realization of Realist warnings of post-war Asia being “ripe for rivalry” to critique not just Realism, but Western IR theory in general, for “getting Asia wrong.”3 In analyzing Asian regionalism, Peter Katzenstein comments, “Theories based on Western, and especially West European experience, have been of little use in making sense of Asian regionalism.”4 Although Katzenstein’s remarks specifically concern the study of Asian re55

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gionalism, they can be applied to Asian IR in general. This view is a view widely shared among scholars in Asia. On the other side, John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno defend the relevance of Western theoretical frameworks in studying the international relations of Asia.5 David Shambaugh’s introduction to this volume also illustrates the partial applicability of various IR theories—but the impossibility of any single one—to explain international relations in the region. While intra-Asian relationships might have had some distinctive features historically, this distinctiveness had been diluted by the progressive integration of the region into the modern international system. The international relations of Asia have acquired the behavioral norms and attributes associated with the modern interstate system that originated in Europe and still retains many of the features of the Westphalian model. Hence, the core concepts of international relations theory such as hegemony, the distribution of power, international regimes, and political identity are as relevant in the Asian context as anywhere else.6 To this observer, this debate is a healthy caveat, rather than a debilitating constraint, on analyzing Asian international relations. To be sure, theoretical paradigms developed from the Western experience do not adequately capture the full range of ideas and relationships that drive international relations in Asia. But IR theories and approaches—Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism, and analytic eclecticism—are relevant and useful in analyzing Asian IR, provided they do not encourage a “selection bias” in favor of those phenomena (ideas, events, trends, and relationships) that fit with them and against those that do not. IR scholars should feel free to identify and study phenomena that are either ignored or given scarce attention by these perspectives. They should also develop concepts and insights from the Asian context and experience to study not just Asian developments and dynamics, but also other parts of the world. In other words, Western IR theory, despite its ethnocentrism, is not to be dismissed or expunged from Asian classrooms or seminars, but universalized with the infusion of Asian histories, personalities, philosophies, trajectories, and practices. To do so, one must look beyond the contributions of those who write in an overtly theoretical fashion, explicitly employing theoretical jargon and making references to the theoretical literature of IR. A good deal of empirical or policy-relevant work may be regarded as theoretical for analytical purposes because it, like the speeches and writings of policy makers, reflects mental or social constructs that side with different paradigms of international relations.7 To ignore these in any discussion of theory would be to miss out on a large and important dimension of the debate on, and analysis of, Asian IR. In the sections that follow, I examine three major perspectives on Asian international relations: Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism, along with

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Table 3.1.  Three Perspectives on International Relations Realism

Liberalism

Constructivism

Main Actors

States

States, multinational corporations, and international organizations

Primary Goals of States

Pursuit of national interest; power maximization (offensive Realism); survival and security (defensive Realism) A balance of power system underpinned by self-help and alliances to maintain international order

Cooperation and coordination to achieve collective goals; world peace

States, transnational knowledge communities, and moral entrepreneurs Community building through interactions and shared normative frameworks

Preferred International Order

Primary Mode of Interaction between Units

Strategic interaction backed by causal ideas and military and economic power

A Major Variation

Neo-Realism: distribution of power decides outcome

A collective security system underpinned by free trade, liberal democracy, and institutions Two-level (domestic and international) bargaining backed by causal ideas; trade and other forms of functional institutionalization Neo-Liberal institutionalism: international system anarchic, but institutions created by states in their self-interest do constrain anarchy

Global and regional security communities forged through shared norms and collective identity Socialization through principled ideas and institutions

Critical Constructivism: challenges the state-centric Constructivism of Wendt

some reflections on the merits of “analytical eclecticism”8 (see table 3.1). None of these theories are coherent, singular entities. Each contains a range of perspectives and variations, some of which overlap with those of the others, although this complexity is seldom acknowledged in academic debates. Using even these broad categories is not that simple because most writings on Asian IR are generated by area specialists, who are unlikely to pigeonhole themselves into Realist, Liberal, and Constructivist slots. So theorizing Asian IR necessarily involves generalizing from a thin conceptual base and making arbitrary judgments about who and what belongs where. Although theories of IR are built around a set of assumptions and arguments that are broad in scope and supposed to apply to every region, in

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reality, theoretical debates about the international relations of regions often develop around issues and arguments peculiar to the region. Asia is no exception. Hence in discussing the three theoretical perspectives in the context of Asia, I identify and discuss those arguments and metaphors that have dominated both academic and policy debates (see table 3.2). This chapter looks primarily at international relations and regional order, rather than the foreign policy of Asian states (which are well covered in other chapters in this volume). It is not intended as a survey of the literature on Asian international relations. Furthermore, I am interested in exploring the relationship between theoretical constructs and empirical developments in Asian international relations. Theory does not exist in a vacuum. Both at the global level and in the region, theoretical work responds to major events and changes occurring within and outside (at the global level) the region. In the last section of this chapter I make some general observations about the prospects for developing an Asian universalism in international relations theory as a counter to both Western dominance and Asian exceptionalism. A final aspect of this chapter is that it is oriented more toward security studies than international political economy (IPE). This to some extent reflects the state of the study of Asian international relations, in which the work on security studies exceeds that of IPE. REALISM Realists take the international system to be in anarchy (no authority above the state), in which states, as the main actors in international relations, are guided mainly by considerations of power and the national interest. International relations is seen as a zero-sum game in which states are more concerned with their relative gains rather than absolute gains (how much one gains vis-à-vis another is more important than the fact that everybody may gain something). The relentless competition for power and influence makes conflict inevitable and cooperation rare and superficial; international institutions operate on the margins of great power whims and caprice. International order, never permanent, is maintained by manipulating the balance of power, with power defined primarily in economic and military terms. A later version of Realism, developed by Kenneth Waltz and called “neo-Realism,” stresses the importance of the structural properties of the international system, especially the distribution of power, in shaping conflict and order, thereby downplaying the impact of human nature (emphasized by classical Realists) or domestic politics in international relations. More recently, intra-Realist debates have revealed differences between “offensive Realists” and “defensive Realists.” Offensive

Multipolar rivalry

Adjuncts to balance of power (effective only if there is a prior balance of power)

Europe’s past (late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries)—Friedberg

Likely impact of the end of the Cold War and the rise of China

The role and impact of regional institutions

Asia’s future will resemble:

America’s past (nineteenth century)—Mearsheimer

Instruments of Chinese sphere of influence

Chinese expansionism

Bipolarity

Neo-Realism (Offensive Realism) Interdependence induced by rapid economic growth Multipolar stability due to expansion of capitalism and commerce Building economic and security regimes to promote free trade and manage disputes arising from growing interdependencea (no available argument)

Liberalism and NeoLiberal Institutionalism

Asia’s past (pre-colonial benign hierarchy)—Kangb

1. Multipolar stability through socialization of Cold War rivals (e.g., Acharya) 2. Benign hierarchy (Kang) Norm-setting and community building through habits of dialogue and informal institutions

Norms diffused through ASEAN

Constructivism (English School)

(a) A conflict avoidance regime within a capitalist mode of development. (b) Not all Constructivists agree with this (see, for example, Amitav Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?,” International Security 28, no. 3 [Winter 2003–4]).

US military presence

What kept order in Asia during the Cold War

Classical Realism (Defensive Realism)

Table 3.2.  Theoretical Perspectives on Asia’s International Relations

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Realists such as Mearsheimer argue that states are power maximizers: going for “all they can get” with “hegemony as their ultimate goal.” Defensive Realists, such as Robert Jervis or Jack Snyder, maintain that states are generally satisfied with the status quo if their own security is not challenged, and thus they concentrate on maintaining the balance of power. Whether academic or policy oriented, Realists view the balance of power as the key force shaping Asia’s post-war international relations, with the United States as chief regional balancer.9 A major proponent of this view was Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s senior statesman. Lee ascribed not only Asian stability, but also its robust economic growth during the “miracle years,” to the stabilizing influence of the US military presence in the region.10 In his view, the US presence and intervention in Indochina secured the region against Chinese and Soviet expansion and gave the Asian states time to develop their economies.11 In the wake of the communist takeover of South Vietnam in 1975, Seni Pramoj, the leader of Thailand’s Democrat Party, described the US role as the regional balancer in somewhat different terms: “We have cock fights in Thailand, but sometimes we put a sheet of glass between the fighting cocks. They can peck at each other without hurting each other. In the cold war between Moscow and Peking, the glass between the antagonists can be Washington.”12 Until the end of the Cold War, Realist arguments about Asian IR were closer to classical Realism than the neo-Realism developed by Kenneth Waltz, which stresses the causal impact of the distribution of power. This has changed with the end of the Cold War, which spelled the end of bipolarity. Thus, a new Realist argument about Asian international relations is the view that the end of bipolarity spells disorder and even doom for the region. For neo-Realists, bipolarity is a more stable international system than multipolarity, both in terms of the durability of the system itself and the balance between conflict and order that prevails within the system.13 The end of the Cold War would witness the “decompression” of conflicts held in check under bipolar management.14 Hence, Realism paints a dark picture of Asia’s post–Cold War order. In policy debates, the favorite Realist cliché in the initial post–Cold War years was the “power vacuum” created by superpower retrenchment, as could be foreseen from the withdrawal of Soviet naval facilities in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, and the dismantling of the US naval and air bases in the Philippines. Questions about a vacuum of power inevitably beg the question of who is to fill it. Initially, Realist prognosis favored a multipolar contest featuring a rising China, a remilitarized (thanks partly to US retrenchment) Japan, and India (whose potential as an emerging power was yet to be recognized). But with the persistence of China’s double-digit economic growth matched by double-digit



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annual increases in its defense spending, it was the rise of China that became the focal point of Realist anxieties (delight?) about Asian insecurity. From a “power transition theory” perspective, Realists foresaw an inevitable confrontation between the status quo power (the United States) and its rising power challenger (China). But paving the way for such a confrontation was the logic of offensive Realism, which sees an inevitable tendency in rising powers toward regional expansionism. John Mearsheimer likened the rise of China to that of the United States in the nineteenth century, where the aspiring hegemon went on a spree of acquiring adjacent territories and imposed a sphere of influence (Monroe Doctrine) in the wider neighborhood.15 Expansionism occurs not because rising powers are hardwired into an expansionist mode, but because anarchy induces a concern for survival even among the most powerful actors. In other words, great powers suffer from survival anxieties no less than weak states, and it is this concern for survival that drives them toward regional hegemony. The result is the paradoxical logic of “expand to survive.” Since a balance of power is likely to be either unstable (if multipolarity emerges) or absent (if Chinese hegemony materializes), is there a role for multilateral institutions as alternative sources of stability? During the Cold War, Realists paid little attention to Asian regional institutions or dialogues, of which there were but a few: an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) preoccupied with the Cambodia conflict, a severely anemic South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), and some loose economic frameworks such as the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC). But with the end of the Cold War accompanied by a refocusing of ASEAN toward wider regional security issues and the emergence of new regional institutions such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC, 1989) and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF, 1994), Realism came under challenge from “institutionalist” perspectives, that is, those who argued that regional norms and institutions, rather than just the balance of power system, have helped to keep the peace in Cold War Asia and would play a more important role in the region’s post–Cold War order. Realists responded to this challenge by targeting Asian regional institutions. Their main preoccupation is no longer just to highlight the crucial need for a stable balance of power system, but also to expose the limitations of regional institutions. Realists dismiss the capacity of regional institutions in Asia to act as a force for peace. For them, regional order rests on bilateralism (especially the US hub-and-spokes system), rather than multilateralism. During the Cold War, Realist scholar Michael Leifer famously described Asian regional security institutions as “adjuncts” to the balance of power.16 While institutions may be effective where great powers drive them (e.g., NATO), Asian institutions are

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fatally flawed because they are created and maintained by weak powers. One concession made to Asian institutions by their Realist critics is to accord them a role in smoothing the rough edges of balance of power geopolitics, an argument consistent with the English School perspective. Since weak powers are structurally incapable of maintaining order and achieving security and prosperity on their own terms and within their own means (there can be no such thing as a “regional solution to regional problems”), the best way to manage the security dilemma is to keep all the relevant great powers involved in the regional arena so that they can balance each other’s influence. Such involvement cannot be automatic, however; it has to be contrived, and this is where regional institutions play their useful role as arenas for strategic engagement. Instead of great powers creating institutions and setting their agenda, as would be normal in a Realist world, weak powers may sometimes create and employ institutions with a view to engaging those powers that are crucial to an equilibrium of power.17 This limited role of regional institutions notwithstanding, Realists generally find Asia’s international relations to be fraught with uncertainty and danger of conflict due to the absence of conditions in Asia that ensure a multipolar peace in Europe. In a famous essay, Aaron Friedberg argued that the factors that might mitigate anarchy in Europe resulting from the disappearance of bipolar stability are noticeably absent in Asia, thereby rendering the region “ripe for rivalry.”18 These mitigating factors include not only strong regional institutions like the EU, but also economic interdependence and shared democratic political systems. Some Realists, like Friedberg, have found Asian economic interdependence to be thin relative to what exists in Europe and the interdependence between Asia and the West. Others—like Barry Buzan, the late Gerald Segal, and Robert Gilpin—argue that economic interdependence cannot keep peace and may even cause more strife than order.19 Ironically, Realists see economic interdependence within Asia to be either scarce or destabilizing, or both at the same time. In terms of its contributions, Realism can take credit for an analytical and policy consistency in highlighting the role of the balance of power in regional order. This view has been maintained both during the heydays of US hegemony in the 1950s and 1960s, through the course of its relative decline in the post-Vietnam years, and in the post–Cold War “unipolar moment.” In China, Realism was the one Western theory of IR that broke the monopoly of Marxist-Leninist and Maoist thought. This would later pave the way for other perspectives on international relations, including Liberalism and Constructivism, to draw attention in China’s IR circles. Realism also gave a certain underlying conceptual coherence to a great deal of atheoretical or policy writings on Asian international relations.



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During the Cold War, Realism was arguably the dominant perspective on the international relations of Asia. This was true not just of the academic realm, but also in the policy world. Although it is difficult to find evidence for the cliché that Asians are instinctively wedded to a Realist worldview and approach, Asian policy makers (with the exception of some of those who fought against colonial rule, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru in particular), tended to be Realist (even Nehru claimed not to have been a “starry-eyed idealist”).20 Even in communist China, Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations enjoyed a huge popularity in classrooms, matching or exceeding the appeal of Marx or Mao. The same was true of Nehruvian India, where the indigenous idealism Gandhi and Nehru inspired scarcely formed part of IR teaching and learning. More recently, Realist perspectives on Asian IR have come under attack. The predictions of Realists about Asia’s post–Cold War insecurity have yet to materialize.21 Moreover, Realism’s causal emphasis on US military presence as the chief factor behind Asia’s stability and prosperity ignores the role of other forces, including Asian regional norms and institutions, economic growth, and domestic politics. In a similar vein, Realism’s argument that the Cold War bipolarity generated regional stability can be questioned. China’s preeminent Realist scholar of international relations, Yan Xuetong of Tsinghua University, argues that while Cold War bipolarity might have prevented war between the superpowers, it permitted numerous regional conflicts causing massive death and destruction: The history of East Asia does not support the argument that the balanced strengths between China and the United States can prevent limited conventional wars in East Asia. During the Cold War, the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union did prevent them from attacking each other directly in this region, but it failed to prevent wars between their allies or wars between one of them and the allies of the other, such as the Korean War in the 1950s. Hence, even if a balance of power existed between China and the United States after the Cold War, we would still not be sure it had the function of preventing limited conventional wars in this region.22

The Realist explanation of Asia’s Cold War stability, while having the virtue of consistency, actually contradicts a key element of its foundational logic, which sees power balancing as a universal and unexceptionable law of international politics (even if Realists disagree whether it is an automatic law of nature or has to be contrived). The notion of balance of power in Asia as understood from a Realist perspective has actually been a fig leaf for US primacy, or even preponderance. Hence, what should be anathema for a classical Realist23—the discernible absence of balancing against a hegemonic power—

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has acquired the status of an almost normative argument about Asian regional order in Realist writings on Asia. This contradiction cannot be explained by simply viewing the United States as a benign power which can escape the logic of balancing. If Realism is true to one of its foundational logics, then any power (benign or otherwise) seeking hegemony should have invited a countervailing coalition. The fact that the United States has not triggered such a coalition is a puzzle that has not been adequately explained. Adding a qualifier to their causal logic (benign powers are less likely to be balanced against than malign ones) only lends itself to the charge, raised powerfully by John Vasquez, of Realism as a “degenerative” theoretical paradigm.24 Nonetheless, Realists would see the recent case of Chinese “assertiveness” in the South China Sea and East China Sea as vindication of their arguments about the coming instability in Asia. The scenario of a hegemonic Chinesestyle Monroe Doctrine (i.e., new “tribute system”) over Asia as imagined by the offensive Realists may appear closer to realization with China’s growing military prowess, its 2009 publication of a new map claiming much of the South China Sea, its foot-dragging in concluding a binding code of conduct for the South China Sea with ASEAN, and its coercive tactics against Vietnam and the Philippines (which are parties to the South China Sea territorial disputes). Realists would also see the prioritization of the Indo-Pacific in US strategy as proof that power balancing, rather than institutional engagement, would be the predominant force shaping the international order of Asia. This argument is bolstered by the view held by many in China that the previous US “pivot” and more recent emphasis on the Quad are forms of “containment” of China. Whether these Realist claims are exaggerated or not, or whether Chinese assertiveness is really anything new,25 they certainly merit careful examination and need to be judged against the mitigating forces that Liberal and Constructivist perspectives claim to find in Asia today. LIBERALISM Traditional Liberalism rests on three pillars: 1.  Commercial Liberalism, or the view that economic interdependence, especially free trade, reduces the prospect of war by increasing its costs to the parties. 2.  Republican Liberalism, or the “democratic peace” argument, which assumes that Liberal democracies are more peaceful than autocracies, or at least seldom fight one another.



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3.  Liberal institutionalism, which focuses on the contribution of international organizations in fostering collective security, managing conflict, and promoting cooperation. A modern variant of Liberal institutionalism is neo-Liberal institutionalism. Unlike classical Liberalism, which took a benign view of human nature, neo-Liberal institutionalism accepts the Realist premise that the international system is anarchic and that states are the primary, if not the only, actors in international relations. But it disagrees with neo-Realism’s dismissal of international institutions. Neo-Liberals maintain that international institutions, broadly defined—including regimes and formal organizations—can regulate state behavior and promote cooperation by reducing transaction costs, facilitating information sharing, preventing cheating, and providing avenues for peaceful resolution of conflicts. While Realism as a theory of international relations is preoccupied with issues of security and order, Liberalism is more concerned with the nature and dynamics of the international political economy. Liberal perspectives on Asia’s international relations are no exception. For Liberals, the foundations of the post-war international relations of Asia were laid not by the region’s distinctive geography or culture, or by security threats facing the region, but rather by the post–World War II international economic system under American hegemony. The United States was central to the creation of international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which collectively played a crucial role in diffusing the norms of economic Liberalism. In Asia, the United States served as a benign hegemon providing the collective goods of security against communist expansion and free access to its vast market by Asia’s early industrializers, even at a cost to itself (in terms of incurring huge deficits). The outcome was rapid economic growth in a number of Asian economies, which created “performance legitimacy” for the region’s autocratic rulers, thereby stabilizing their domestic politics. At the same time, the region witnessed a growing interdependence resulting from the pursuit of market-driven and market-friendly economic growth strategies, which furthered the prospects for regional stability and security. Liberal conceptions of the international relations of Asia have particularly stressed the role of expanding interdependence as a force for peace.26 The interdependence argument was advanced with ever more vigor with the end of the Cold War and the rise of Chinese economic power. Liberals, both Western and Asian (including many of them within China itself), came to view interdependence as a crucial factor in making China’s rise peaceful. Yet

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the argument also invited much criticism, especially, as noted earlier, from Realists, who often take the failure of European economic interdependence to prevent the First World War as a severe indictment of the “if goods do not cross borders, soldiers will” logic. Defending against such charges, Liberals stress differences between nineteenth-century and contemporary patterns of economic interdependence. The former was based on trade and exchange, while the latter is rooted in transnational production, which is more “costly to break” and which has a deeper and more durable impact on national political and security autonomy. The argument about economic interdependence in Asia as a force for peace is tested by the recent escalation of the Sino-Japanese rivalry over issues such as the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea and visits to Yasukuni Shrine by Japanese leaders, despite nearly $330 billion worth of bilateral trade (in 2018) between the two countries. On the other hand, there is a clearer sense that economic interdependence in the more important dyad, US-China, would be far costlier for either side to break. That interdependence is underpinned not only by more than half a trillion US dollars in bilateral trade (rising from US$5 billion in 1981 to $615.2 billion in 2020)27 but also by China holding some US$1.04 trillion worth of US debt in 2021.28 The second strand of Liberalism—democratic peace theory—has found very little expression in writings on Asian IR. This need not be surprising since historically Asia has had few democracies to test the claims of this theory meaningfully. Moreover, Asia’s democracies tend to be of the “illiberal variety,” making it more plausible for us to speak of an “illiberal peace” in the region (especially in Southeast Asia), whereby a group of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states avoid conflict by focusing on economic growth, performance legitimacy, and sovereignty-preserving regional institutions. Critics of democratic peace in the West, such as Jack Snyder and Ed Mansfield, have also questioned the normative claims of democratic peace by highlighting the danger of war associated with democratic transitions. In Asia, the Liberal/democratic peace argument has found more critics than adherents, but in general it has not been an important part of the debate over the region’s international relations. The neglect is as unfortunate as the criticism of democratic peace is misplaced. Contrary to a popular perception, democratic transitions in Asia have never led to interstate war and only occasionally to serious domestic instability. The case of Indonesia post-Suharto might be an exception to the latter, but didn’t more people die in the transition to authoritarian rule in that country in the 1960s than from it? In South Korea, Taiwan, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Thailand, democratic transitions have not caused serious internal strife or interstate conflict. On the contrary, it might be argued that such transi-



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tions have often yielded a “cooperative peace dividend,” whereby the new democratic governments have pursued cooperative strategies toward their traditional rivals. Examples include Thailand’s “battlefields to marketplaces” policy in the late 1980s that helped to break the stalemate in the Cambodia conflict, Kim Dae Jung’s “sunshine policy,” and Indonesia’s ASEAN Security Community initiative. Pakistan’s democratic breakdown under Musharraf might have led to improved prospects for peace with India, but this was induced by a strong external element, the 9/11 attacks and the US-led war on terror. Democratization fueled demands for Taiwan independence, thereby challenging East Asian stability, but democratization has also created populist countervailing pressures on Taiwan’s pro-independence governments from going over the brink in inviting a Chinese military response. At the very least, there is not much evidence from Asia to support the critics’ view that democratic transitions intensify the danger of war, or even domestic strife. The impact of the third element of the Liberal paradigm, Liberal institutionalism, on Asian IR discourses is both easier and harder to establish. On the one hand, the growth of regional institutions in Asia allows greater space to Liberal conceptions of order-building through institutions. But the Liberal understanding of how institutions come about and preserve order overlaps considerably with social Constructivist approaches. Indeed, institutionalism (the study of the role of international institutions) is no longer a purely Liberal preserve; in Asia at least, it has been appropriated by Constructivists who have both deepened and broadened the understandings of what institutions are and how they impact on Asia’s international relations. Classical Liberal institutionalism was identified with both collective security and, to a lesser extent, regional integration theory (which was closely derived from early West European integration during the 1950s and 1960s). But neither type of Liberal institutionalism has had a regional application in Asia, where there has been no collective security (even if one stretches the term to include collective defense) or supranational institutions. The newest Liberal institutionalism, neo-Liberal institutionalism, narrowed the scope of investigation into institutional dynamics (how institutions affect state behavior) considerably. It shared the Realist conception of anarchy while disagreeing with Realism on the importance of institutions as agents of cooperation and change. But it gave an overly utilitarian slant to the performance of institutions. Institutions may (but not always or necessarily) induce cooperation because they can increase information flows, reduce transaction costs, and prevent cheating. Institutions are not really transformative; their end product may be an international regime rather than a security community where the prospect of war is unthinkable. In Asia, APEC has been the one regime/ institution that neo-Liberals have been most attracted to. But even there, and

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certainly in the case of the more ASEAN-centric institutions (e.g., ASEAN, the ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN+3, and the East Asia Summit), Constructivism (with its stress on the culture- and identity-derived notion of the “ASEAN Way”) has been a more popular mode of analysis than neo-Liberalism or classical Liberalism (collective security and regional integration). In general, then, Liberal perspectives have made little impact on the study of Asia’s international relations. This need not have been, or remain, the case. Liberalism is more notable as a causal theory of peace, just as Realism focuses on the causes of war. In a traditionally Realist-dominated field of Asian international relations, and with the region’s domestic politics landscape marked by a durable (if changing) authoritarian pattern, Liberal conceptions of peace and democracy have found few adherents. Yet, as noted above, the criticisms of Liberal notions of interdependence and democracy on the one hand and peace and stability on the other are often rooted in misplaced historical analogies and selective empirical evidence. Liberalism has a brighter future in the analysis of Asia’s international relations as the region’s historical (post–World War II) combination of economic nationalism, security bilateralism, and political authoritarianism unravels and gives way to a more complex picture where economic Liberalism, security multilateralism, and democratic politics acquire force as determinants of regional order and form the basis of an “Asian universalism” in IR theory. The Liberal perspective on Asian security has taken a new turn with growing attention to the role of “rising powers” and the renewed debate over “American decline” in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis that centrally featured the United States. John Ikenberry has argued that despite the US decline, the “American-led Liberal hegemonic order” would persist. This argument has special resonance for Asia. Ikenberry suggests that the rising powers, like China and India, that are potential challengers to US hegemony, have benefited so much from the Liberal order, including the free trade regime and international institutions, that they would refrain from revisionism and would be co-opted into that order.29 Yet this optimism is questionable. Rising powers such as China and India were not really “present at the creation” of the Liberal order; indeed, until their economic reforms (China’s since 1979 and India’s since the early 1990s), they pretty much stayed out of or even opposed it. Second, both India and China are uncomfortable with some of the new norms of Liberal internationalism that challenge state sovereignty, especially humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect. Third, both countries, along with other emerging powers such as Brazil, desire a reform of the existing institutions created and maintained by the Liberal hegemonic order with a view to acquiring a greater voice in their decision making. Until these



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reforms are carried out, resistance, rather than co-optation, may be a more likely element of their attitude toward existing global institutions. CONSTRUCTIVISM For Constructivists, international relations is shaped not just by material forces such as power and wealth, but also by subjective and intersubjective factors—including ideas, norms, history, culture, and identity. Constructivism takes a sociological, rather than “strategic interaction,” view of international relations. The interests and identities of states are not preordained or given, but emerge and change through a process of mutual interactions and socialization. For constructivists, conditions such as anarchy and power politics are not permanent or “organic” features of international relations, but are socially constructed. State interests and identities are in important part constituted by these social structures rather than given exogenously to the system by human nature or domestic politics. Norms, once established, have a life of their own; they create and redefine state interests and approaches. For Constructivists, international institutions exert a deep impact on the behavior of states; they not only regulate state behavior but also constitute state identities. Through interaction and socialization, states may develop a “collective identity” that would enable them to overcome power politics and the security dilemma. Constructivism is struggling to acquire the status of a “theory” of international relations comparable to Realism or Liberalism. Some critics view it as a social theory that has no basis in IR. Constructivists are also accused of lacking middle-range theory and not pursuing serious empirical research (although this criticism would be increasingly hard to sustain as more empirical studies emerge employing a Constructivist framework); some Constructivists themselves acknowledge that, like rational choice theory, it is more of a method than a theory per se.30 Constructivism has helped to answer a number of key puzzles about Asian security order. While Constructivism is essentially a post–Cold War theory, it has been employed to explain key puzzles of Asian international relations during the Cold War period. Constructivists stress the role of collective identities in the foundation of Asia’s post-war international relations. In an important contribution, Chris Hemmer and Peter Katzenstein explain the puzzle of “why there is no NATO in Asia” by examining the differing perceptions of collective identity held by US policy makers in relation to Europe and Asia.31 American policy makers in the early post-war period “saw their potential Asian allies . . . as part of an alien and, in important ways, inferior

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community.”32 This was in marked contrast to their perception of “their potential European allies [who were seen] as relatively equal members of a shared community.” Because the United States recognized a greater sense of a transatlantic community than a transpacific one, Europe rather than Asia was seen as a more desirable arena for multilateral engagement—hence there was no Asian NATO. While this explanation stresses the collective identity of an external actor, another Constructivist perspective highlights the normative concerns of Asian actors themselves, especially Asia’s nationalist leaders, who delegitimized collective defense by viewing it as a form of great power intervention through their interactions in the early post-war period, culminating in the Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung in 1955.33 Constructivism also explains why a different form of regionalism was possible in Asia, one that was more reflective of the normative and cultural beliefs of the Asian states and their collective identities as newly independent states seeking national and regional autonomy. This explains the origins and evolution of ASEAN, Asia’s first viable regional grouping. ASEAN’s establishment in 1967, Constructivists argue, cannot be explained from a Realist perspective, in the absence of a common external threat perception, or from a Liberal one (which would assume substantial interdependence among its members). Neither of these conditions marked the relationship among ASEAN’s founding members at its birth. Instead, regionalism in Southeast Asia was a product of ideational forces, such as shared norms, and socialization in search of a common identity. Shared norms—including non-intervention, equality of states, and avoidance of membership in great power military pacts—were influential in shaping a deliberately weak and relatively non-institutionalized form of regionalism that came to be known as the “ASEAN Way.” Regional institutions have thus been at the core of Constructivist understanding of Asia’s post-war international relations. It is through Asian institutions that Constructivists have attempted to project and test their notions about the role of ideas (for example, common and cooperative security); identity (“Asian Way,” “ASEAN Way,” “Asia-Pacific Way”); and socialization.34 The influence of Constructivism is especially visible in attempts to differentiate between European and Asian regionalism—stressing the formal, legalistic, and bureaucratic nature of the former and the informal, consensual, and process-centric conception of the latter. That the European-derived criteria should not be used to judge the performance and effectiveness of Asian institutions has been a key element in Constructivist arguments about Asian regionalism.35 Apart from conceptualizing the distinctive nature and performance of Asian regional institutions, which are either dismissed (by Realists) or inadequately



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captured (by neo-Liberal or rationalist institutionalism), Constructivists have also stepped into the debate over Asia’s emerging and future security order by frontally challenging the “ripe for rivalry” scenario proposed famously and controversially by Aaron Friedberg.36 David Kang, noting that Realist scenarios such as Friedberg’s have failed to materialize, calls for examining Asian security from the perspective of Asia’s own history and culture. He raises the notion of a hierarchical regional system in Asia at the time of China’s imperial dominance and the tributary system. Asia was peaceful when China was powerful; now, with the (re-)emergence of China as a regional and global power, Asia could acquire stability through “bandwagoning” with China (which in his view is occurring).37 While for Mearsheimer, Europe’s “back to the future” means heightened disorder of the type that accompanied the rise of Germany in the late nineteenth century, for Kang, Asia’s “back to the future” implies a return to hierarchy and stability under Chinese preeminence. Kang’s thesis presents one of the most powerful Constructivist challenges to the Realist orthodoxy in Asian IR. But his argument has been controversial, even among Constructivists,38 who have questioned its claim about the peaceful nature of the old tributary system, whether China’s neighbors are actually bandwagoning with China, and the structural differences between Asian regional systems during the tributary system—especially the absence of other contenders for hegemony that can now be found in the United States, Russia, Japan, and India, and the continuing importance of sovereignty to both China and its neighbors that militates against hierarchy. Constructivism has acquired a substantial following not only among Western but also Asian scholars of Asian IR.39 A key factor behind this is the growing interest in the study of Asian regionalism with the proliferation of regional institutions and dialogues in Asia in the post–Cold War period. In China, aside from regional institutions, local discourses about China’s “peaceful rise” play an important role behind the emergence of Constructivism as the most popular IR theory among younger-generation academics. Constructivism has given an alternative theoretical platform to Chinese scholars wary of Realist (power transition) perspectives from the West (as well as other parts of Asia), which see the rise of China as a major threat to international stability. Constructivism has advanced the understanding of Asia’s international relations in important ways. Their focus on the role of ideational forces— such as culture, norms, and identity—enriches our understanding of the sources and determinants of Asian regional order compared to a purely materialistic perspective. Second, Constructivists have challenged the uncritical acceptance of the balance of power system posited by Realist and neo-Realist scholars as the basis of Asian regional order by giving greater

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play to the possibility of change and transformation driven by socialization. Third, Constructivist writings have introduced greater theoretical diversity and opened space for debate in the field, and have helped to link the insights of the traditional area studies approach to Southeast Asia to the larger domain of international relations theory.40 Moreover, perhaps more so than Realism and Liberalism, Constructivist writings drawing upon the Asian experience have challenged and enriched the wider theoretical literature on Constructivism. Kang’s invocation of hierarchy as a defining feature of Asia’s once and future interstate relations may be debatable (especially insofar as the future is concerned), but there is little question that it poses a frontal challenge to Realism and Liberalism by pointing to alternatives to the Westphalian model. Another example can be found in the literature on norms, a central part of Constructivist theory. The first-wave literature on norm diffusion was essentially about “moral cosmopolitanism” of Western transnational advocates, which transformed “bad” local ideas and practices in the non-Western world. These writings paid little attention to the agency of norm-takers, mainly nonWestern actors, who were relegated to being the “passive recipients” of global norms. But the experience of the diffusion of ideas and norms from an Asian backdrop (classical and modern) suggests that local actors do not simply act as passive recipients but as active players in norm diffusion, and they not only contest, modify, and localize global norms, but also universalize locally constructed norms. These insights have had a major impact on Constructivist theory and have been applied to explain norm diffusion globally and in other regions of the world.41 The growing visibility of Constructivism in Asian IR has nonetheless invited criticism of a “new Constructivist orthodoxy.” Despite having begun as a dissenting view, side-by-side with other critical perspectives on international relations, Constructivism is now bracketed as a “mainstream” perspective. This is ironic, because Constructivism is also dismissed by some as a fad, a passing fancy of a handful of intellectuals, which will fade into obscurity as the optimism generated by the end of the Cold War dissipates. Equally unconvincing are accusations leveled against Constructivism for uncritically emulating their rationalist foes, of normative determinism (too much emphasis on norms at the expense of material forces), and unreformed state-centrism (ignoring the role of civil society actors). While critics see the degree of Constructivist optimism about Asia’s future to be as misconceived as Realist pessimism, in reality Constructivist optimism has been more guarded than what the critics portray. More serious are the criticisms of Constructivism’s tendency to ignore domestic politics (how domestic interactions change identity and interests) and its self-serving moral cosmopolitanism (bias toward “universal” ideas and global norm



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entrepreneurs at the expense of preexisting local beliefs and local agents). Constructivist perspectives on Asian international relations have also been criticized on the ground that Asian regional institutions have yet to, and are unlikely ever to, become more than “talk shops.” These criticisms are not new but have acquired greater force in recent years over signs of Chinese assertiveness and other developments. For example, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is yet to move beyond a confidence-building stage to a more action oriented preventive diplomacy role. The entry of the United States into the East Asian Summit (EAS) in 2011 creates the danger of it being undermined by US-China competition. The unity of ASEAN shows signs of being frayed by intramural conflicts, such as the genocide against the Rohingya people and 2021 military coup and ensuing human rights abuses in Myanmar, as well as differences over how to deal with China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. These episodes suggest that socialization in Asia remains incomplete, and that while Asian institutions as claimed by the Constructivists may be regarded as distinctive, the “ASEAN Way” may no longer work and may need to be reinvented or replaced with a more institutionalized and legalistic form of regional cooperation. ANALYTICAL ECLECTICISM It is quite obvious that the lines separating the three theoretical perspectives on Asian international relations have never been neat. As David Shambaugh’s introduction to this volume reminds us, “no single IR theory explains all” in Asian international relations. As a consequence, we need to employ what Katzenstein and Sil have called “analytic eclecticism.”42 The usefulness of analytic eclecticism lies in producing middle-range theoretical arguments as well as in addressing “problems of wide scope that, in contrast to more narrowly parsed research puzzles designed to test theories or fill in gaps within research traditions, incorporate more of the complexity and messiness of particular real-world situations.”43 This is especially relevant to the analyses of “mixed scenarios” of conflict and cooperation, which is perhaps more apt for Asia than the extremes of “ripe for rivalry” and “security community.” I would add that such eclecticism is needed not just between theoretical paradigms but also within them (intra-paradigm and inter-paradigm). Prospects for Asia’s future cannot be ascertained from tightly held paradigmatic frameworks, but from synthesis between and within them. This chapter has suggested a considerable overlap between Liberalism and Constructivism (which in turn has significant English School foundations), especially when it comes to the study of Asian regional institutions and to

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countering Realist pessimism about Asia’s future international order. But the Realist-favored notion of balance of power can also be seen as having its basis in normative and social foundations, as evident in notions such as “soft balancing” or “institutional balancing.” The idea of a Consociational Security Order developed by this author represents an example of the application of analytical eclecticism to Asian security.44 “A Consociational Security Order (CSO) is a relationship of mutual accommodation among unequal and culturally diverse groups that preserves each group’s relative autonomy and prevents the hegemony of any particular group(s).”45 Going beyond existing perspectives that rely on single theoretical lenses, the CSO concept captures a wider range of determinants of Asia’s security, including interdependence, equilibrium, elite restraint, and institutions and norms. These conditions draw from defensive Realism (balance of power), Liberalism (especially economic interdependence and institutions), and Constructivism (socialization and cooperative security norms), thereby creating an eclectic framework for the study of the Asian security order. While not predictive, the CSO offers an analytic device for evaluating trends and directions in Asian security by identifying the conditions—interdependence, equilibrium, institutions, and elite restraint—that can produce order (understood as the absence of system-destroying war rather than of small-scale conflicts), and their absence, disorder. As Rosemary Foot and Evelyn Goh note, the CSO model “comes close to the type of approach [that] can hold the tension between power competition and interdependence and acknowledge the enduring duality that classical realists like Machiavelli stressed: power, at the same time at which it is asserted, has to be tamed.”46 While the debate between Realist “pessimism” and Liberal/Constructivist “optimism” about the future of Asia’s security order remains far from settled, it should not be forgotten that debates over Asian international relations can also be intra-paradigmatic, such as the Kang-Acharya Constructivist debate and between offensive and defensive Realists. Moreover, the debate over Asia’s future security order is less about whether it will feature some type of cooperative mechanism (rather than approximating a pure Hobbesian anarchy) than which type of cooperation/accommodation (concert, community, soft balancing, or hierarchy) will be feasible. In this context, while traditional conceptions of regional order in Asia revolved around the relationship of competition and accommodation among the great powers, how the great powers relate to weaker states has become especially crucial for a region in which the weaker states drive regional cooperation and institution building. There is little movement in the direction of an “Asian” IR theory in the regional sense. This is not surprising, given



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Asia’s subregional and national differences.47 This does not preclude, however, emergence of national perspectives.48 In particular, Chinese contributions to IR theory have grown stronger since the second edition of this book was published. One such approach in the “Chinese School of IR,” led by Qin Yaqing, builds on the Chinese worldview, historical practices, and epistemology.49 Qin has further developed his ideas into a “Relational Theory of World Politics,”50 which argues that instead of rational calculations of self-interest and need, states and non-state actors alike often base their action on relationships. Here he draws on Chinese Zhongyong (中庸, Doctrine of the Mean) dialectic, which rejects the Hegelian concepts of “thesis” and “anti-thesis” ending in “synthesis.” Instead, the two ends in Zhongyong are non-conflictual and inclusive to start with, the yin and the yang of a complementary and co-evolutionary process. Among IR theories familiar in the West, Constructivism also makes similar arguments. On the other side of the Chinese IR spectrum, Tsinghua University’s Yan Xuetong has proposed what he calls the theory of “Moral Realism,”51 which sides with Classical Realism in rejecting the logic of Structural Realism. In contrast to the latter, which sees international relations as a function of the logic of anarchy, Yan sees a role for values and morality in inducing benevolent leadership by Great Powers, including China. He traces such values in pre-Qin Chinese thinking, especially in the notion of “Kingly Way” (王道), which stresses righteous and benevolent governance over the Western notions of equality and democracy.52 Another contribution that has attracted attention within and beyond China is from Zhao Tingyang, a philosopher by training who has developed the concept of Tianxia (天下, All Under Heaven), as a template for a more inclusive, non-Westphalian world order. Tianxia rejects the Westphalian model, takes the “whole world as a unit,”53 and envisions a world system characterized by “harmony and cooperation without hegemony.”54 Translated into traditional IR theory, Yan’s approach is closer to Classical Realism, Qin’s to Constructivism, and Zhao’s to Idealism—but each draws extensively from traditional Chinese political and moral philosophy, thereby giving these IR theories a distinctive Chinese flavor.55 At the same time, other Chinese scholars object that IR theory must have a universal frame. Attempts to develop IR theory should be guided by “scientific” universalism, rather than cultural specificity.56 Moreover, a key challenge for Chinese IR scholars is to make their ideas “travel” (outside of China to garner international appeal). Attempts to broaden the horizons of existing IR theory by including the Chinese and Asian experience will fail if it only amounts to developing a perspective that will better capture and explain China’s or Asia’s unique historical experience, but have little relevance elsewhere. Moreover, to be

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viable and credible, the Chinese contributions (or for that matter any national or regional school of IR) must attract a critical mass of scholars both within and outside China, inspire and guide a vibrant research agenda, and maintain some distance from Chinese official foreign policy advocacy. Interestingly, other countries or subregions of Asia—like India and Southeast Asia—are yet to match the Chinese efforts by developing national or subregional “schools” but increasingly scholars here have sought to engage and challenge IR theory.57 Whatever the naming, these Chinese and Asian contributions might be seen as part of a broader movement to develop a “non-Western IR,” or Global IR, which, while not rejecting traditional West-dominated IR, seeks to extend the purview of IR theory by bringing in the histories, cultures, ideas, and institutions of non-Western societies into IR.58 CONCLUSION It should be noted that a good deal of theoretically-informed writing that might be helpful in broadening the scope of IR remains “hidden” due to language barriers, lack of resources in Asian institutions, and the dominance of Western scholarly and policy outlets. But this is changing with the infusion of new scholarship and the broadening intellectual parameters of theoretical discourses. As elsewhere and in other points of history, theoretical arguments and claims about Asian IR closely approximate shifts in global and regional international relations. The emergence of Liberalism and Constructivism in Asian IR is thus closely related to the end of the Cold War and the emergence of new regional institutions in Asia. While events drive theoretical shifts, to some extent theories have offered rationalization of event-driven policy perspectives and approaches. Just as the emergence of Asian regional institutions such as the ARF and EAS gave a fillip to Liberal and Constructivist optimism after the end of the Cold War, renewed Sino-US tensions have given a fresh impetus for Realist pessimism Yet, while Realism retains a dominant, if no longer hegemonic, position and Realist arguments such as “power transition,” “back to the future,” “ripe for rivalry,” and “offensive Realism,” or more recently in the specific US-China context, the “Thucydides Trap,”59 have figured prominently in academic and policy debates over Asia’s emerging and future international order, newer approaches, especially Liberal and Constructivist perspectives, and contributions from Chinese scholars, are enriching academic and policy debates on Asian IR. Realism, especially empirical Realism (i.e., academic and policy writings that reflect the philosophical assumptions of Realism



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without being self-consciously framed in theoretical jargon), will remain important. While Constructivism has been criticized as a fad, and has lost some of its appeal due to the perceived ineffectuality of Asian regional institutions, including ASEAN, it is likely to retain its place in writings on Asian IR because its focus on issues of culture and identity resonate well with Asian thinkers and writers. Liberal perspectives, such as democratic peace, interdependence, and institutions, sometimes used as a justification for the persistence of the American-led Liberal International Order, may lose importance with the decline of that order globally, as the US pursues its interests in the region through the more Realist-oriented Indo-Pacific strategy, whose centerpiece is the Quadrilateral Strategic Dialogue (Quad) featuring the US, Japan, India, and Australia. A final word of this chapter concerns the question of whether the theoretical writings on Asia would challenge or enrich the broader corpus of IR theory, which has been derived from Western or transatlantic ideas, experiences, and writings. As stated, I am not a fan of Asian exceptionalism. Nor do I think theories derived from Asia would entirely displace the existing corpus of IR theory. But I also do not think existing IR theories are sufficient, as Ikenberry and Mastanduno have argued, with minor adjustments, to explain the major developments in the international relations of Asia. And I am more confident than Alastair Iain Johnston appears to be about the possibility of Asia offering a robust challenge to many deeply held assumptions of the three mainstream IR theories (Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism).60 Johnston sets the bar too high by holding that for theoretical contributions to IR focusing on Asia (whether by Asians or non-Asians) to succeed, they would need to “resolve major controversies, lead to breakthroughs, and drive theory development.” He is not sure if this will ever happen. While I cannot be certain if Asia can resolve major controversies (especially those that originally emerged in Western contexts, often with limited relevance for Asia), I could see the possibility of theoretical contributions to IR focusing on Asia in time producing breakthroughs and driving theory development, especially by offering new concepts and approaches drawing on Asian ideas, history, and practice.61 This is already evident in works on Asian regionalism, conceptualizations of historical interstate systems (Kang), and the aforementioned work on norm diffusion. While the distinctive aspects of Asia’s history, ideas, and approaches will condition the way Western theoretical ideas are understood and make their impact, elements of the former will find their way into a wider arena, influencing global discourses about international order in the twenty-first century. The challenge for theoretical writings on Asian IR is to reflect on and conceptualize this dynamic, whereby scholars do not stop at testing Western

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concepts and theories in the Asian context, but generalize from the latter in order to enrich a hitherto Western-centric IR theory.62 NOTES 1.  In this chapter, I use the term “theory” broadly, focusing on grand theories that have paradigmatic status, such as Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism. The term “theory” has many different meanings. The American understanding of theory tends to have a social-scientific bias, whereby the general assumptions of a theory must be translated into causal propositions that can be rigorously tested and yield some measure of prediction. Europeans view theory more loosely as any attempt to systematically organize data, structure questions, and establish a coherent and rigorous set of interrelated concepts and categories. Writings on Asian IR remain atheoretical in either sense, but moreso in terms of the American understanding than the European one. For further discussion, see Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan, “Why Is There No Non-Western IR Theory: An Introduction,” International Relations of the AsiaPacific 7 (October 2007): 287–312. 2. Stanley Hoffmann, “An American Social Science: International Relations,” Daedalus 106, no. 3 (1977): 41–60; Ole Wæver, “The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline: American and European Developments in International Relations,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 687–727; Robert A. Crawford and Darryl S. L. Jarvis, eds., International Relations—Still an American Social Science? Toward Diversity in International Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000). 3.  David C. Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong: The Need for New Analytical Frameworks,” International Security 27, no. 4 (Spring 2003): 57–85. See also his later works developing this critique: David C. Kang, China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Stephan Haggard and David C. Kang, eds., East Asia in the World: Twelve Events That Shaped the Modern International Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 4. Peter J. Katzenstein, “Introduction: Asian Regionalism in Comparative Perspective,” in Network Power: Japan and Asia, eds. Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 5. 5.  See G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno, eds., International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). 6.  G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno, “The United States and Stability in East Asia,” in International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific, 421–22. 7.  Stephen M. Walt, “International Relations: One World, Many Theories,” Foreign Policy 110 (Spring 1998): 29–46. 8.  This leaves out critical IR theories such as Marxism, post-modern/post-structural, post-colonial, and feminist perspectives. Critical IR theory includes, among others, post-modernism, post-structuralism, Marxism/neo-Marxism, Gramscian approaches, feminism, and post-colonialism, often in some combination (e.g., post-colonial femi-



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nism). An important recent book applying critical theories of IR to Asia is Anthony Burke and Matt McDonald, eds., Critical Security in the Asia-Pacific (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). 9.  For two well-known perspectives, see Paul Dibb, Towards a New Balance of Power in Asia, Adelphi Paper 295 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1995); Michael Leifer, The ASEAN Regional Forum, Adelphi Paper 302 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1996). 10.  Lee Kuan Yew repeatedly asserted his faith in the balance of power, a typical example being his comments in Canberra in 2007 that “the golden strand [in Australia-Singapore relations] is our common strategic view that the present strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific, with the US as the preeminent power, provides stability and security that enables all to develop and grow in peace.” See “S’pore and Australia Share Common Strategic View: MM,” Straits Times, March 29, 2007, https://ere sources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/issue/straitstimes20070329-1. “MM” refers to “Minister Mentor.” 11.  For a theoretical discussion of Lee’s views, see Amitav Acharya and See Seng Tan, “Betwixt Balance and Community: America, ASEAN, and the Security of Southeast Asia,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 5, no. 2 (2005). 12.  “Toward a New Balance of Power,” Time, September 22, 1975, http://www .time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,917875,00.html. 13.  Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Stability of the Bipolar World,” Daedalus 93 (Summer 1964): 907; Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), 171; John Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” International Security 15, no. 1 (Summer 1990): 5–55. A contrary view that stresses the stabilizing potential of multipolarity is Karl W. Deutsch and J. David Singer, “Multipolar Power Systems and International Stability,” World Politics 16, no. 3 (April 1964): 390–406. 14.  For a discussion and rebuttal of this view in the context of the Third World, see Amitav Acharya, “Beyond Anarchy: Third World Instability and International Order after the Cold War,” in International Relations Theory and the Third World, ed. Stephanie Neumann (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997), 159–211. 15.  John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001), 41. 16. Leifer, The ASEAN Regional Forum, 53–54. For a critique of Leifer’s view, see Amitav Acharya, “Do Norms and Identity Matter? Community and Power in Southeast Asia’s Regional Order,” Pacific Review 18, no. 1 (March 2005): 95–118. 17.  This shows that Realism is not a homogenous theory as its critics sometimes portray and that important differences exist among Realists insofar as the nature and purpose of international institutions are concerned. It also shows a disjuncture between disciplinary neo-Realist theory and Realist perspectives on Asian institutions. Mearsheimer, a neo-Realist (but not an Asian specialist), views international institutions as pawns in the hands of great powers: See John J. Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” International Security 19, no. 3 (Winter 1994–95): 5–49. Michael Leifer took a more nuanced view. For example, following the end of the Cold War, Leifer saw the ARF as the means for locking China into

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a network of constraining multilateral arrangements that would in turn “serve the purpose of the balance of power by means other than alliance.” See Michael Leifer, “The Truth about the Balance of Power,” in The Evolving Pacific Power Structure, ed. Derek DaCunha (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1996), 51. I am grateful to Michael Yahuda for pointing to this aspect of Leifer’s writings. 18. Aaron Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia,” International Security 18, no. 3 (Winter 1993–94): 5–33; Aaron L. Friedberg, Europe’s Past, Asia’s Future? SAIS Policy Forum Series 3 (Washington, DC: Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, 1998). 19.  Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal, “Rethinking East Asian Security,” Survival 36, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 3–21; Robert Gilpin, “Sources of American-Japanese Economic Conflict,” in International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific, eds. G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 299–322. 20. See Amitav Acharya, “Why Is There No NATO in Asia? The Normative Origins of Asian Multilateralism” (Cambridge, MA: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 2005). 21.  Muthiah Alagappa, “Introduction,” in Asian Security Order: Normative and Instrumental Features, ed. Muthiah Alagappa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). 22.  Xuetong Yan, “Decade of Peace in East Asia,” East Asia: An International Quarterly 20, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 31. This view sets limits to Realist optimism found in Robert Ross’s “The Geography of the Peace: East Asia in the Twenty-First Century,” International Security 23, no. 4 (Spring 1999): 81–118. Ross argued that a geopolitical balance between the United States as the dominant maritime power and China as the leading continental power would preserve stability in post–Cold War East Asia. 23.  Gilpin and others would attribute international stability to the role of a hegemonic power and consider the absence of balancing against such a power as an indicator of stability. See Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 24.  John Vasquez, “Realism and the Study of Peace and War,” in Realism and Institutionalism in International Studies, eds. Michael Breecher and Frank P. Harvey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 79–94; John Vasquez and Collin Elman, eds., Realism and the Balancing of Power: A New Debate (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003). 25. Alastair Iain Johnston, “How New and Assertive Is China’s New Assertiveness?” International Security 37, no. 4 (2013): 7–48. 26. Ming Wan, “Economic Interdependence and Economic Cooperation,” in Asian Security Order: Normative and Instrumental Features, ed. Muthiah Alagappa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); Benjamin E. Goldsmith, “A Liberal Peace in Asia?” Journal of Peace Research 44, no. 1 (2007): 5–27. Goldsmith finds weak empirical support for the pacific effects of democracy and international institutions, but evidence for the pacific effects of interdependence is “robust.”



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27.  United States Trade Representative (USTR), US-China Trade Facts: https:// ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china. 28. “Major Holders of US Treasury Securities as of September 2021,” Statistica, https://www.statista.com/statistics/246420/major-foreign-holders-of-us-treasury -debt/. 29.  G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). 30.  Jeffrey Checkel, “The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory,” World Politics 50, no. 2 (January 1998): 324–48. 31.  Christopher Hemmer and Peter J. Katzenstein, “Why Is There No NATO in Asia? Collective Identity, Regionalism, and the Origins of Multilateralism,” International Organization 56, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 575–607. They reject not only the power disparity explanation, but also neo-Liberal explanations that would see alliance design as a function of differing calculations about what would be the most efficient institutional response to the threat at hand. Europe and Asia differed in this respect: the threat in Europe was a massive cross-border Soviet invasion, while the threat in Asia was insurgency and internal conflict. 32.  Hemmer and Katzenstein, “Why Is There No NATO in Asia?” 575. 33.  Acharya, “Why Is There No NATO in Asia?” 34.  Amitav Acharya, “Ideas, Identity and Institution-Building: From the ‘ASEAN Way’ to the ‘Asia-Pacific Way’?,” Pacific Review 10, no. 3 (1997): 319–46; Amitav Acharya, “How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism,” International Organization 58, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 239–75; Tobias Ingo Nischalke, “Insights from ASEAN’s Foreign Policy Cooperation: The ‘ASEAN Way,’ a Real Spirit or a Phantom?,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 22, no. 1 (April 2000): 89–112; Jürgen Haacke, ASEAN’s Diplomatic and Security Culture: Origins, Developments and Prospects (London: Routledge-Curzon, 2003); Amitav Acharya, “Regional Institutions and Asian Security Order: Norms, Power and Prospects for Peaceful Change,” in Asian Security Order: Instrumental and Normative Features, ed. Muthiah Alagappa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 210–40. 35.  Katzenstein, “Introduction: Asian Regionalism in Comparative Perspective”; Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston, eds., Crafting Cooperation: Regional International Institutions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 36.  Thomas C. Berger, “Set for Stability? Prospects for Conflict and Cooperation in East Asia,” Review of International Studies 26, no. 3 (July 2000): 405–28; Thomas C. Berger, “Power and Purpose in Pacific East Asia: A Constructivist Interpretation,” in International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific, eds. G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 387–420. 37.  Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong”; David Kang, China Rising: Peace, Power and Order in East Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 38.  Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?” These criticisms from Constructivist scholars suggest that the latter are not a homogenous orthodoxy as some critics allege.

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39.  In the words of a Malaysian scholar, “Thinking in the Constructivist vein has been about the best gift made available to scholars and leaders in the region.” See Azhari Karim, “ASEAN: Association to Community: Constructed in the Image of Malaysia’s Global Diplomacy,” in Malaysia’s Foreign Policy: Continuity and Change, ed. Abdul Razak Baginda (Singapore: Marshal Cavendish Editions, 2007), 113. 40. Acharya, “Do Norms and Identity Matter?”; Amitav Acharya and Richard Stubbs, “Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations: An Introduction,” in “Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations: Emerging Debates,” eds. Acharya and Stubbs, Pacific Review 19, no. 2 (June 2006): 125–34. 41.  Amitav Acharya, “How Ideas Spread”; Amitav Acharya, Whose Ideas Matter: Agency and Power in Asian Regionalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009); Amitav Acharya, “Norm Subsidiarity and Regional Orders: Sovereignty, Regionalism and Rule Making in the Third World,” International Studies Quarterly 55 (2011): 95–123; Amitav Acharya, Civilizations in Embrace: The Spread of Ideas and the Transformation of Power (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2013). 42.  Peter J. Katzenstein and Rudra Sil, “Rethinking Asian Security: A Case for Analytical Eclecticism,” in Rethinking Security in East Asia: Identity, Power and Efficiency, eds. J. J. Suh, Peter J. Katzenstein, and Allen Carlson (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 1–33; Rudra Sil and Peter Katzenstein, Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 43.  Rudra Sil and Peter Katzenstein, “Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics: Reconfiguring Problems and Mechanisms Across Research Traditions,” Perspectives on Politics 8, no. 2 (June 2010): 411–31. 44. Amitav Acharya, “Power Shift or Paradigm Shift? China’s Rise and Asia’s Emerging Security Order,” International Studies Quarterly (2013): 1–16. 45.  Acharya, “Power Shift or Paradigm Shift?,” 2. 46.  Rosemary Foot and Evelyn Goh, “The International Relations of East Asia: A New Research Prospectus,” International Studies Review 21, no. 3 (September 2019): 398–423. 47.  Acharya and Buzan, “Why Is There No Non-Western IR Theory: An Introduction.” 48. Acharya and Buzan, “Conclusion: On the Possibility of a Non-Western IR Theory in Asia,” in Non-Western International Relations Theory, 427–28. 49.  Yaqing Qin, “Why Is There No Chinese International Relations Theory?” in Non-Western International Relations Theory, 313–40. 50. Yaqing Qin, A Relational Theory of World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 51.  Xuetong Yan, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers (Princeton, NJ: Prince­ ton University Press, 2018). 52. Xuetong Yan, “New Values for New International Norms,” China International Studies 38 (January–February 2013): 17. In a previous work Yan had already outlined elements of such morality, including “humane authority,” “restraint,” “nonuse of force” or “mild force,” “justice,” “just war,” “benevolence,” “multilateralism,” “gentleness,” “mild punishment,” low taxes, and no cheating on contracts; see Yan



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Xuetong, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). 53.  Tingyang Zhao, “Redefining the Concept of Politics via ‘Tianxia’: The Problems, Conditions and Methodology,” translated by Lu Guobin and edited by Sun Lan, World Economics and Politics, no. 6 (2015): 4, 22. 54.  Feng Zhang, “The Tianxia System: World Order in a Chinese Utopia,” available at http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/tien-hsia.php?searchterm=021_utopia .inc&issue=021. 55. For a critical review of these books and those of other Chinese scholars, especially Zhao Tingyang, see Amitav Acharya, “From Heaven to Earth: ‘Cultural Idealism’ and ‘Moral Realism’ as Chinese Contributions to Global International Relations,” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 12, no. 4 (Winter 2019): 467–94. 56.  Author’s interviews with Chinese scholars Tang Shiping, formerly of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, September 8, 2007; Qin Yaqing, former President of China Foreign Affairs University; Yan Xuetong, Director of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University; Chu Sulong, Director of the Institute of Security Studies at Tsinghua University; and Wang Zhengyi, professor of International Political Economy, Beijing University, all during September 10–13, 2007. 57.  See Navnita Chadha Behera, “Re-Imagining IR in India,” in Why Is There No Non-Western IR Theory?; Takashi Inoguchi, “Why Are There No Non-Western Theories of International Relations? The Case of Japan,” in Why Is There No Non-Western IR Theory?; Alan Chong, “Premodern Southeast Asia as a Guide to International Relations between Peoples: Prowess and Prestige in ‘Intersocietal Relations’ in the Sejarah Melayu,” Alternatives 37, no. 2 (2012): 87–105. 58.  Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan, The Making of Global International Relations: Origins and Evolution of IR at Its Centenary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 59. Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) 60.  Alastair Iain Johnston, “What (If Anything) Does East Asia Tell Us About International Relations Theory?” Annual Review of Political Science 15 (2012): 53–78. 61.  More on this in Amitav Acharya, “International Relations Theory and the Rise of Asia,” in Oxford Handbook of International Relations of Asia, eds. Rosemary Foot, Saadia Pekkanen, and John Ravenhill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 62.  In his study of cultural globalization, Arjun Appadurai calls this process “repatriation” of knowledge. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).

Part Three

THE ROLES OF REGIONAL POWERS

Chapter Four

America’s Role in Asia Challenged Leadership R obert S utter

For more than a half century the United States has been seen as providing regional leadership and public goods ever since the aftermath of World War II. But now, for the first time, that perception and leadership is being significantly challenged: by China’s rise and actions, by changing dynamics in the region, and by Washington’s own inconsistent policies. This chapter traces these shifts during recent years, it tracks the approaches of different American administrations, focuses on how Washington is attempting to counter China, while engaging more widely across the region. LEGACIES OF THE AMERICAN ROLE IN ASIA American policies and practices in contemporary Asia rest on interests and experiences in the region going back over two centuries.1 First, the United States has sought to maintain a favorable regional balance of power in Asia that precludes domination by hostile powers. This danger emerged with the collapse of the Chinese Qing empire and scramble for exclusive spheres of influence by foreign powers at the end of the nineteenth century. At first, the United States relied on others, notably Great Britain, to sustain an advantageous order. Washington was very reluctant to take on responsibility of leadership in the face of Japanese expansionism. But the attack on Pearl Harbor brought a fundamental reorientation with America entering the Pacific War in 1941. After the war American leaders and officials undertook the massive burdens of leadership in the region and the world. This resolve continued during the Cold War, notably in the war in Korea, the US containment of communist expansion in Asia, and the war in Vietnam.2 87

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American leadership was seriously weakened by the defeat in Vietnam and ascendance of an expansionist Soviet Union. Further, American economic leadership was challenged by Japan’s rise as Asia’s dominant economic power. Over time American economic and military revival, effective diplomacy, and leadership perseverance brought victory in the Cold War. US strategy during this period valued close collaborative engagement with China, but China’s rise in the twenty-first century is now seen as threatening regional stability, security, and potential regional domination (long viewed as a fundamental danger to American security and well-being).3 Other principal American interests have involved access to beneficial economic interchange with Asia and the opportunity to spread American values and norms. These objectives are rooted in the two hundred–plus years’ experience of American traders and investors, missionaries, teachers, medical personnel, journalists, academic specialists, and many others not in the US government. Until World War II, US foreign policy in the region was driven more by these extensive non-governmental groups. These interests were seriously challenged by Japanese militarism and Cold War communist expansionism. Now, the rise of Chinese state capitalism and political authoritarianism pose major challenges to core American values and interests.4 Discussed below are three phases of US interaction with Asia prior to the twenty-first century explaining the experiences that underline American interests in contemporary relations with Asia. THREE PHASES OF US RELATIONS WITH ASIA In the first phase of interaction, ending with the close of the nineteenth century, Americans focused on economic interests and promoting American values. The US Navy sometimes preceded US diplomats in opening official relations with Asian governments, but the navy’s mission focused heavily on fostering and protecting American commercial, missionary, and related interests. Northeast Asia, especially China and Japan, was the focus of US interest and subsequently remained the top priority of the United States in Asia. The acquisition of the Philippines in the late nineteenth century gave the United States its only colony and a new stake in Southeast Asia—as American business, resource extraction, and missionary activities expanded southward. The United States generally cooperated with British, French, and other European colonial powers in Southeast Asia and in South Asia. Central Asia was the preserve of tsarist Russia and later the Soviet Union.5 Overall, the main American interactions were informal activities such as trade and missionary work. Military and diplomatic considerations were



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almost always subordinate to commerce and shipping. Economic activities in turn were often secondary to cultural relations. American commerce with Asia in this period never amounted to more than a small share of total American trade, whereas thousands of Americans went to Asia as missionaries and in other non-governmental and non-commercial capacities to bring American ways to Asia. Thus, in the first phase of their encounter, America and Asia met at three levels—strategic, economic, and cultural—but the cultural dimension was clearly the most significant.6 At this time, significant numbers of Chinese workers entered the United States. At first welcomed by US authorities and business leaders, racist backlash against migrants involved violence and killings along with local and national laws and regulations seeking to halt and reverse Chinese immigration and later restricting all Asian immigration. In response, Asian governments naturally complained, and popular demonstrations and boycotts of US goods occurred.7 The second phase in relations with Asia, lasting until the start of World War II, began with China’s unexpected defeat by Japan in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95. European powers had previously joined Japan in seeking exclusive spheres of influence in China. To protect American access to China’s economy, the United States crafted the “Open Door” policy that would preserve “equal” commercial access to China. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, American officials cited the Open Door policy in diplomatic efforts to support the territorial integrity of China. US strategic and economic interests in Asia grew. By 1914, the United States had one of the largest navies in the world and naval bases in the Pacific. As the world’s largest economy since the late nineteenth century, the United States became a major exporter of manufactured goods and source of investment.8 The US military focused increasingly on Japan’s challenge to the balance of power in the region.9 Economically, the United States repeatedly affirmed the Open Door to prevent Japanese dominance over the China market. At the same time, economic ties between the United States and Japan grew. Japan shipped 30 percent of its exports to America and received hundreds of millions of dollars in American loans.10 The cultural dimension of American policy and relations with Asia also remained strong. The Progressive movement reinforced the American sense of mission. The reformist impulse found an outlet in Asia, particularly China, which was trying to transform itself into a modern state.11 Japan eventually occupied Manchuria in 1931 and fully invaded China in 1937. Reflecting powerful isolationist tendencies in American politics and public opinion at this time, the US government did little of substance to counter the aggression.12

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The third phase of US relations with Asia lasted from the start of World War II to the end of the Cold War.13 During this period the United States focused on fighting the massive worldwide conflict and determining the post-war international order. Other important objectives, like forging political unity in China between the Nationalists and the Communists, received secondary treatment. US policy failed in sustaining support for Chiang Kaishek’s Nationalists and shunning outreach from Mao Zedong’s Communists. The Communists defeated the Nationalists on mainland China in 1949, and Mao aligned with the Soviet Union against America in early 1950.14 Rapid demobilization after the war meant the United States was militarily poorly prepared when North Korean forces (backed by Moscow and Beijing) launched an unexpected all-out invasion of South Korea in June 1950. The aggressors were surprised when the United States quickly intervened and also guarded Taiwan against Chinese communist attack. Adroit military strategy helped US forces and their South Korean allies encircle the North Korea army and then enter North Korea to reunify the peninsula. China responded by sending hundreds of thousands of Chinese forces across the Yalu River, driving back the US and South Korean forces. Over two more years of tough combat followed.15 The United States accelerated plans to create a ring of alliances, forward deployed forces, economic embargos, and diplomatic pressure to contain communism in Asia. Promotion of American values and access to economic opportunities were subordinated to the overall global strategic confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union.16 US efforts supported Japanese economic recovery and forged an alliance. This was similarly done with nearby non-communist Asian states, South Korea and Taiwan. As Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan expanded their trade and industrial production, this gradually eroded American economic supremacy in the region.17 The rapprochement between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), US-Soviet détente in nuclear arms, and oil shocks of the 1970s shook the foundations of the Cold War system in Asia. Weakened by the failing war in Vietnam and facing an expansionist Soviet Union, the United States sought security cooperation with China and requested Asian countries to contribute much more to their own defense. Following the collapse of American-supported regimes in South Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975, US policy in Asia was in disarray. America’s leadership credibility was badly damaged. Congress imposed new constraints on the president’s use of military force abroad. The Carter administration (1977–81) fully normalized official relations with China but faced serious opposition in Congress over sacrificing official ties with Taiwan. The ad-



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ministration seemed overwhelmed by the Iranian revolution and the ensuing hostage crisis, the second oil shock, and internationally expanding Soviet military power.18 The two terms of the Ronald Reagan administration (1981–89) saw episodes of serious controversy but, in the end, they marked a turn toward greater American confidence in international leadership. The economy rebounded strongly, while impressive growth of American military power seemed to overwhelm the Soviet Union now facing a stalled economy, sclerotic leadership, turmoil in Eastern Europe, and a failing war in Afghanistan. The Reagan government stabilized relations with South Korea after a military coup; assisted in the removal of authoritarian Philippines leader Ferdinand Marcos (as he faced mass popular resistance); and elevated the alliance with Japan on par with Great Britain. China pressed Reagan hard for concessions on Taiwan, but following US commitments to scale down arms sales to the island in the 1982 joint communique, Beijing struck a more accommodative posture commensurate with its overriding interest in countering the Soviet Union. President George H. W. Bush (1989–93) was faced with managing the consequences of the dismantling of the Soviet empire. Bush directed the impressive demonstration of American military power and international leadership in reversing Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990. Bush resisted widespread pressures from Congress, the media, and public opinion to adopt a much tougher policy in reaction to Beijing’s crackdown against popular demonstrations in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.19 Nonetheless, the Tiananmen massacre severely stressed the US-China relationship. After five years of estrangement, the subsequent Clinton administration began to reengage with Beijing—although, following the traumatic events of 1989, SinoAmerican relations never again found a strong basis for stable cooperation. A major challenge to American leadership in Asia at the time resulted from Japan’s increasing dominance in regional economic matters. The US now traded more with Japan and other Asian states than with Europe, and the large US trade deficit grew exponentially. Concurrent budget deficits made the United States a debtor nation for the first time since World War I. It soon became the world’s largest debtor nation.20 A series of decisions in the mid1980s realigning the value of the American and Japanese currencies would eventually benefit the United States but the immediate result was to greatly strengthen Japan’s ability to purchase American goods and to invest in the United States. Now dominant economically in Asia and the world’s largest international creditor, Japan exerted great influence in the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Asian Development Bank.21

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POST–COLD WAR TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY DEVELOPMENTS The demise of the Soviet Union ended decades of American focus in Asia and world affairs on strategic competition with the USSR. The ability of the US president to lead foreign policy became more diffuse. In Asia, economic issues with Japan were prominent for several years. Human rights issues caused George H. W. Bush great difficulty in preserving a modicum of relations with China in the face of strenuous domestic opposition. Partisan interests prompted Bill Clinton to successfully attack Bush’s China policy in winning the 1992 election.22 President Clinton (1993–2001) misjudged China’s resolve in opposing the Taiwan president’s visit to the United States in 1995. Prolonged aggressive Chinese military behavior caused the most severe military crisis in the Taiwan Strait since the 1950s, with mainland China firing intimidating salvos of short-range ballistic missiles into the ocean near the island. Though Clinton ultimately deployed two US aircraft carriers to deter Chinese aggression at the time, he also subsequently pushed for deeper positive engagement by granting permanent most favored nation trade status and facilitating China joining the World Trade Organization. Republicans in Congress attacked and constrained Clinton’s engagement initiatives with measures emphasizing human rights and freedom in Tibet, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Clinton began a remarkable positive relationship with India only a few months after India and Pakistan carried out nuclear weapons tests in 1998.23 The George W. Bush administration (2001–9) gave much stronger emphasis than the outgoing Clinton administration to mobilizing US national security power and working with close allies and partners abroad. Viewed as a strategic competitor, China was the main target in Asia. The Republicancontrolled Congress strongly backed the new president. The war on terrorism, begun after the attacks of September 11, 2001, shifted American attention in foreign affairs to Afghanistan and Iraq, so even when Congress came under Democratic Party control in 2007 there was only secondary controversy in Congress concerning Asia.24 The Bush government advanced Clinton efforts placing India prominently in US policy toward Asia. The moves were strongly backed by the large India Caucus in Congress representing the burgeoning and politically active Indian-American community. Meanwhile, the “war on terror” saw the Bush government endeavor to improve security relations throughout the IndoPacific region, including establishing Southeast Asia as a “second front” in the war against terrorism. The Bush government pursuit of bilateral free trade agreements led to initial negotiations on a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).25



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The Obama administration (2009–17) broadened and strengthened these relationships in its signature “rebalance”—or “pivot”—policy toward the Asia. The idea behind the initiative was to reduce the US footprint in the Middle East and shift it to Asia. The policy strengthened US regional security, economic, and diplomatic capacities for constructive interchange with regional governments and their varied multilateral organizations that had received less attention from the Bush government. Senior American officials interacted much more closely and constructively with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the important regional organizations it led. Plans to disperse US regional military forces to counter China’s growing capacity to destroy US bases in Asia went forward. The problem of North Korea’s nuclear weapons development was handled with quiet resolve, working with allies and partners to deter provocative actions and to impose costs when they occurred. On economic relations, the Obama government fostered the TPP involving Japan, Australia, and nine other economic partners working together to create a high-standards accord that would advance development, while protecting the US and regional partners from China’s increasingly problematic predatory economic practices. Southeast Asia became an elevated priority, notably in commerce and cultural exchanges. As in the Bush years, the Obama government rebalance sought to strengthen constructive engagement with China, recognizing the reality that its regional partners were relying on the United States to keep stability in Asia in part by avoiding major controversy with China.26 Despite all of these steps, many Asian governments (notably those in Southeast Asia) perceived more rhetoric than reality in the “pivot.” By this time, strong continuities in contemporary US policy toward the Indo-Pacific region became clear. They would continue into the Trump administration (2017–21) and provide the basis for the government of President Joseph Biden (2021–). First was the scope of American interest and concern. Historically, the United States had given priority to Northeast Asia. US interest in South Asia was secondary, while interest in Southeast Asia waxed and waned. Under Presidents George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden, Northeast Asia continued to represent a high priority; Australia and India received more prominent support as did Southeast Asia (though attention to Southeast Asia waned in the Trump years). By contrast, previously strong US interest in Southwest Asia and nearby Central Asia declined with the withdrawal of forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. Second, US strategic interests in shoring up collaborative relations with regional allies and partners continued, albeit in the Trump years often despite the president’s personal interventions to the contrary. Third, there was growing attention to devising effective means to advance

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American interests among the burgeoning regional economies, amid ongoing American debate about which means were preferable.27 Of course, the most important difference between the Trump government and its predecessors was its intense preoccupation with the dangers and challenges posed by China. Sharply departing from regional policies of the Bush, Obama, and previous administrations, Trump’s strategy put aside close engagement and focused on countering China’s multifaceted challenges to US power and interests. Acute competition with and resistance of China was at the center of the administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy. The Biden administration followed a similar strategy.28 Determinants and Evolution of America’s Regional Strategy Targeting China The remarkable negative shift in American policy against China now dominates US policy across the Indo-Pacific region. The region is one of two top policy arenas of acute US rivalry with China; the other is competition for dominance in the high technology industries determining which country will be the world’s economic and military leader. In both critical policy areas, the United States seeks to counter Chinese challenges and prevent Chinese dominance and its negative impact on American security and well-being.29 American debates about what to do concerning China’s growing challenge pre-dated the Trump government. At the start of the election campaign in 2015–16, Congressional Republicans and others in the party saw the Obama administration’s “rebalance” policy as weak and ineffective in dealing with rising China actively challenging American interests in the region. However, the focus on China became secondary among Asian issues as presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders successfully challenged free trade and the TPP. Trump created further prominent controversy by warning Japan and South Korea that he would withdraw US troops if they did not pay more “host nation support,” and then asserting that he would accept Japan and South Korea developing nuclear weapons in response. During the campaign Trump fueled more controversy by showing respect for and advocating for a summit with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un.30 Entering office, the new Trump administration stressed high importance for what it now called the Indo-Pacific region—replacing previous exclusive usage of “Asia-Pacific.” For example, the US military’s Pacific Command was redesignated the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). The region’s burgeoning economic importance for the United States was recognized, though Trump rejected free trade arrangements of the previous Democratic and Republican governments. Developing closer security ties with allies and



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partners in order to strengthen the US regional position and broaden strategic options continued robustly, but they were complicated by Trump’s own emphasis that allies and partners needed to do more to financially compensate America for its military support.31 The drivers of the sharply negative turn against China came in part from American domestic politics. While continuing to take advantage of the wide range of benefits gained from constructive interaction with the existing international order supported by the United States, China also continued to challenge a wide range of American interests through often coercive, intimidating, and covert security, economic, and diplomatic practices, grossly unfair and exploitative of international norms, in its headlong pursuit of wealth and power at the expense of others. Such practices eventually prompted a shift in China policy among officials in Washington that emerged in public view with the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy in December 2017.32 The strategic shift emerged erratically. Serious divisions within the Trump administration over economic countermeasures against China prevailed for a time, before Trump initiated an escalatory tariff war and slapped other economic sanctions on China. Yet, President Trump vacillated unpredictably between criticism of China’s practices and avowed friendship with China’s leader Xi Jinping. Bipartisan majorities in Congress proved much steadier in establishing a “whole of government” US effort to counter China’s challenges. Trump administration punitive tariffs and restrictions on high technology sales to China resulted in the so-called trade war until a truce in December 2018 led to talks resulting in a “phase one” agreement in January 2020.33 American public opinion in 2019 slowly moved toward a more negative view of China, but it remained ambivalent about taking a tough approach toward China. Democratic presidential candidates, including Joseph Biden, reflected this ambivalence as they infrequently discussed China, with Biden prone to disparaging China’s capacities relative to the United States. As the campaign wound on into 2020, Biden experienced something of an epiphany on China—largely as a result of briefings from hawkish advisors. Growing US suspicions of China crystallized when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States with a vengeance in the midst of the presidential campaign of 2020. Both Trump and Biden emphasized toughness toward China as US public opinion of China reached all-time lows. After entering office, Biden set forth policies very much in line with approaches supported by Congressional majorities and Trump administration officials since 2018.34 Among other significant developments in US interaction with Asia during the Trump administration was the threatening US pressure applied to North Korea in 2017 as it developed nuclear weapons capable of reaching the United States. There followed North Korean moderation toward the

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United States and South Korea, but no lasting progress was achieved as a result of Trump’s summit meetings with Kim Jong-un in Singapore in 2018 and in Hanoi in 2019. Key allies Japan, South Korea, and Australia as well as partners in India and Southeast Asia saw their interests best served by cooperating with the sometimes difficult and erratic President Trump. In 2017, the president also showed strong interest in Southeast Asia in carrying out summits with leaders from Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Trump traveled to Asia for annual leaders’ meetings of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the ASEAN-led East Asian Summit (EAS) leaders’ meeting. In following years, however, he avoided the meetings and generally eschewed high-level interaction with ASEAN and Southeast Asian leaders.35 With increased defense budgets, the United States expanded military spending and military deployments in Asia, increased “freedom of navigation” operations in the disputed South China Sea, and publicized ever increasing warship transits of the Taiwan Strait. US allies Great Britain, France, and Canada also sent warships through the Taiwan Strait, while American military operations in the South China Sea were supported or complemented by military operations of allies Australia, France, Great Britain, Japan, and South Korea (also by India).36 To compete with China’s international financing of infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific and other areas, the BUILD Act (Better Utilization of Investment Leading to Development), passed by Congress in October 2018, raised the ceiling on US development financing from $29 billion to $60 billion. The United States and its allies and partners, including those in Asia, reportedly were sharing intelligence and other information to counter adverse Chinese economic and other practices. They tightened export controls and investment approvals, and condemned Chinese economic espionage and strengthened surveillance of Chinese influence operations and espionage. An American campaign to stop allies and partners from using 5G communications equipment from the prominent Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei and other Chinese providers gradually persuaded a number of Asian countries. US efforts to mobilize government and private sector investment in Asia to compete with China enjoyed strong support from Australia and Japan.37 In 2020, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo broke precedent in siding with other claimants rebuffing China’s South China Sea claims. Freedom of navigation operations became more frequent in the South China Sea. For the first time, US warships were deployed to deter China’s intimidation of ongoing oil and gas exploration operations carried out by other South China Sea claimants. Defense Department military operations included unprecedented aircraft carrier battle group exercises conducted by three different US car-



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riers in regional waters with forces from Australia, Japan, and India. Close US-Indian ties featured Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States in 2019 and President Trump’s visit to India in 2020.38 Biden Administration Developments President Biden took office amid a crescendo of anti-China Trump administration actions designed to constrain moderation by the new administration. Congress remained steadfast as it held over many of the three hundred legislative proposals targeting China at the end of the 116th Congress for consideration in the 117th Congress beginning in 2021. The new administration’s attention to China, Asia, and other foreign policy issues also faced massive domestic distractions, widely seen in China and elsewhere in Asia as causing continuing decline in US global and regional leadership. Partisan turmoil and violence were stoked by President Trump erroneously claiming victory and accusations of enormous voter fraud. Most prominent among Biden’s complaints was his stress that China used predatory economic practices that challenged the United States for leadership in high technology industries that provided the foundation for American economic and military leadership, threatening US domination by China in these key areas. Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s priority attention to countering Chinese expansionism in Asia showed repeatedly in his meetings with key allies and partners, and the president’s attaching high importance to the four-nation Quad grouping involving Australia, India, Japan, and the United States.39 American interests in Asia challenged by China involve deeply rooted and longstanding American goals: seeking stability through a favorable balance of power; free economic interaction with Asia (now the world’s most dynamic economic region); and the promotion of liberal values and norms. The Biden government sought to reverse the perception of an overall decline in American influence in Asia commensurate with China’s growing prominence and influence. Across the Indo-Pacific region to the south and east of China and extending into the Pacific—the main area of concern in US rivalry with China—China seemed increasingly ascendant in Southeast Asia. In contrast, despite shortcomings in Trump administration policies caused in considerable part by the erratic US president, Asian powers Japan and India, as well as middle powers Australia and South Korea, faced China’s increasing assertiveness, leading them to consolidate cooperation with the United States.40 As events developed, the Biden administration showed strong capacity to deal effectively with high-priority domestic problems while carrying out foreign policy where China was the top danger. In methodical and well-

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orchestrated initiatives, the Biden administration sustained and sometimes advanced existing US government strictures involving trade, human rights, and other disputes with China. It demonstrated the priority of allies and partners as the US delayed high-level interchange with Chinese leaders until after high-level US consultations with those likeminded governments had taken place. The Biden government also delayed any significant policy changes until after extensive reviews of policy toward China during 2021.41 The Biden administration worked quicky and effectively to rebuild ties across the region—beginning with Northeast Asia, then South Asia, then Southeast Asia and Australasia. Its China policy was a regional policy. This included the use of vaccine donations to win friends abroad. The first summit meeting with the Quad leaders (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) in March announced a major agreement of priority importance to Asia to provide up to one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine to ASEAN countries and beyond by the end of 2022. The developed countries of the G7 meetings in May–June 2021 gave top priority to their relations with China. Australian, Indian, and South Korean leaders participated as guests at the June summit, and China figured prominently in high-level US discussions with NATO, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and Australia as the US leaders repeatedly asserted their intention to deal with China’s challenges from “a position of strength.”42 Senior US administration officials led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan worked with allies and partners in directly countering Chinese demonstrations of force targeting Taiwan and claimants in the disputed South China Sea. Such American reassurance saw the Philippines carry out their most prominent rebuke of Chinese pressure tactics in many years, while President Biden sent his close friend and top-level political advisor, former Senator Christopher Dodd, to lead a bipartisan delegation showing support for Taiwan’s president.43 The administration conducted a review of Taiwan policy which reinforced the impressive array of Trump administration incremental advances in US government interaction despite China’s strenuous objections. Perhaps of most importance was President Biden’s personal assessment of the stakes involved in US competition with China. In his press statements, a speech to Congress, and various interviews, President Biden moved well beyond his earlier ambiguity as to the priority of the Chinese threat to the United States. He advised that the main inflection point facing America is the “fourth industrial revolution” with China confident that its authoritarian system will overtake America because of what Beijing views as the less efficient US democratic decision-making process. Biden argued “we can’t let them win.”44 Reflecting sustained bipartisan Congressional efforts to



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strengthen America in defense against various Chinese challenges, and running in parallel with the President’s recent sense of urgency about China, was an enormous Congressional legislative initiative led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to pass multifaceted bipartisan legislation in 2021 to improve US high technology industries and advance other measures to counter China. As Schumer advised, “We can either have a world where the Chinese Communist Party determines the rules of the road—or we can make sure the United States gets there first.”45 Administration and Congressional efforts targeting China enjoyed continued strong bipartisan support in Washington, mainstream media, and public opinion during the Biden presidency. The opposition appeared scattered and marginalized amid focused US government rivalry with China. Some argued that the tough approach led to counterproductive economic results.46 Others judged support for Taiwan risked US-China war.47 Another risk involved alienating Chinese who engaged positively with America over the past forty years.48 Among serious limits and shortcomings, the administration was slow to come up with trade programs attractive to Asian states heavily invested in China-centered production chains and seeking smooth access American markets. Key Democrats continued to oppose joining the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) and the Biden administration targeted China in stressing creating secure production chains and economic policies beneficial to US workers. India and Southeast Asian countries had little time for US initiatives as they battled devastating consequences of new variants of COVID-19.49 In Southeast Asia, senior US officials were attentive in support of the Philippines challenging Chinese security forces in the South China Sea, but their attention to Southeast Asian states and ASEAN overall remained low for many months. Biden administration officials held extensive high-level consultations with Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, European leaders, and even Taiwan, but little with ASEAN and individual ASEAN states until a flurry of cabinet-level meetings with ASEAN counterparts in August 2021, capped with Vice President Kamala Harris visiting Singapore and Vietnam.50 The coup in Myanmar in February 2021 and resulting widespread civil turmoil and significant armed resistance worked against US competition with China, on balance. The Biden government emphasized sanctions against abusive military leaders in Myanmar. ASEAN reportedly sought ways to engage both China and the United States to strengthen ASEAN “centrality” in dealing with the Myanmar crisis. Preserving good relations with the Myanmar junta, China was attentive in cooperating with ASEAN. China’s foreign minister hosted an in-person meeting with ASEAN counterparts in early June, one of many such meetings he had with ASEAN counterparts in 2021.

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White House Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell said in July 2021 that as part of its competition with China, the Biden government would “step up its game” in Southeast Asia. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin became the first Biden administration Cabinet member to visit Southeast Asia in late July. Secretary of State Antony Blinken followed in early August with a week of back-to-back virtual meetings with ASEAN and regional counterparts highlighting important initiatives on providing COVID-19 vaccines, and closer US engagement on economic recovery, climate change, and maritime security. Vice President Harris visited Singapore and Vietnam later in August. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of US activism remained limited by more important US priorities and Southeast Asian reluctance to offend Beijing.51 Despite burgeoning growth of US economic relations with Vietnam, a key protagonist in the South China Sea disputes, US eagerness to advance military ties ran up against Hanoi’s uncertainty about US resolve and Vietnam’s reluctance to offend China. The Biden administration’s calling out Chinese pressure tactics in the South China Sea garnered strong endorsement from Quad members and NATO allies, but ASEAN and its members generally feared China’s retaliation and avoided comment. At bottom, US steps that countered Chinese challenges were often not welcomed in Southeast Asia, posing serious complications for US leaders seeking to counter China and advance ties with ASEAN at the same time.52 Biden administration policymakers face many important challenges going forward. The fundamental US policy change from “engagement” toward strong rivalry with China has seriously impacted regional relationships in ways unwelcome by most Asian leaders. As many regional governments became more economically dependent on Chinese trade, investment, financing, and infrastructure, they much preferred to avoid having to choose between China and the United States (as US rivalry with China seemed to require). The Biden government’s mobilization of international support from allies and partners by emphasizing common interests in democracy and opposition to authoritarianism seemed unappealing to those Asian states with more authoritarian than democratic tendencies. Neither the Biden nor Trump governments proposed alternative multilateral trade arrangements, and the Trump administration withdrew from the TPP. More deeply, the US national government’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, political gridlock between Democrats and Republicans, and repeated domestic mass demonstrations added to regional perceptions of the United States in decline. The unexpected rapid collapse of the US-backed Afghanistan government and ignominious American retreat in August after twenty years of failed nation building further weakened regional US leadership.53



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One advantage for American relations with the region remains the deeply rooted webs of relationships established over past decades among nongovernment entities and individuals throughout the region. Related is the benefit provided by millions of Asian migrants coming to the United States with many playing important roles in American politics and other fields. The American commercial presence throughout the region is also highly significant, although unappreciated. US GOALS, RECENT CHALLENGES, STRENGTHS, AND SHORTCOMINGS IN ASIA Contemporary US policy reflects long-standing pursuit of three sets of objectives. First, the United States seeks regional stability and a balance of power favorable to America; it has long opposed domination by hostile powers. Second, US economic interests in Asia grow through increasing involvement in its vibrant economic development. Third, US culture and values prompt fostering democracy, human rights, and rules and norms viewed as progressive by Americans.54 Recent challenges to the US interests are primarily posed by the powerful impact of China’s rise. China has risen to peer competitor status by many metrics, and this has occurred, including a wide variety of unfair, illegal, covert, coercive, and subversive practices. These undermine the interests of the United States, Asian neighbors, and other countries and international organizations seen at odds with China’s ambitions. A head-long Chinese drive to achieve dominance in Asia in the economic sphere through controlling positions in the high technology industries of the future is apparent.55 American preoccupation with the dangers posed by China overshadows other issues influencing US relations with the region. North Korea’s nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles increasingly threaten the United States, and its allies and partners. Terrorism and instability in Southwest Asia represent a major concern for the remaining US forces in the region and American foreign policy more broadly. A crisis with Iran could easily spill over and impact security in nearby countries. Meanwhile, the salient flashpoints for armed conflict between ever-stronger Chinese forces with the US forces in Asia include Taiwan, the disputed territories in the South China Sea and the East China Sea, and North Korea.56 Mutually beneficial economic interchange is threatened by Chinese mercantilist policies, and US and Chinese punitive tariffs and trade and investment restrictions. Further challenging US interests is regional anxiety and

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uncertainty over American capabilities and resolve. The United States has a history of sometimes intense involvement and unwelcome intrusion into Asian security, economic, and diplomatic matters, paralleled by pronounced disengagement and withdrawal.57 The on-again, off-again tendency of American attention is highly disturbing to Asian states. It also provides an opening for China to exploit, with its geographic proximity, economic largesse, and diplomatic consistency. As Asians and others commonly saw the US in decline as China rose,58 American retrenchment means China will have a freer hand in advancing toward regional dominance. Nevertheless, diminishing US power and influence will take time. Even though rising China has momentum, the United States benefits from massive inertia as the region’s leading power since World War II. The United States while in relative decline is still the dominant power in the world.59 US Strengths Among often overlooked strengths, America has a unique and remarkably strong foundation of non-government connections with Asian countries. This is supplemented by many millions of Asians now settled in the United States and participating constructively in interchange connecting the United States and Asia. The deeply rooted US military and intelligence interchange with many Asian governments has made the head of the US Indo-Pacific Command by far the most active senior US government representative in the region; these relationships remain of mutual benefit and do not depend on sentiment. And despite US withdrawal from the TPP and carrying out a disruptive trade war with China, the American market remains open and still absorbs a massive amount of manufactured goods from China and other regional exporters and their component suppliers in neighboring countries.60 American corporate investment across Asia also remains robust. Basic determinants of US strength and influence in the Asian region involve five factors, starting with security.61 In most of Asia, governments are viable and make the decisions that determine their direction in foreign affairs. Popular, elite, media, and other opinions might influence government officials in their policy toward the United States, China, and other countries. In general, officials see their governments’ legitimacy and success resting on nation building and economic development, which requires a stable and secure international environment. Unfortunately, Asia is not particularly stable, and most regional governments remain privately wary of, and tend not to trust, each other. As a result, they have tended to look to the United States to provide the security they need to pursue goals of development and nation-building in an appropriate



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environment. They recognize that the US security role is very expensive, involving annual costs for forward-deployed forces and related assets valued at over $100 billion annually; and the United States accepts great risk, including large-scale casualties, if necessary, for the sake of preserving Asian security. They also recognize that neither rising China, nor any other Asian power or coalition of powers, are able or willing to undertake even a small part of these risks, costs, and responsibilities. Second, the nation-building priority of most Asian governments depends greatly on export-oriented growth. Much of Chinese and Asian trade depends on exports to developed countries, notably the United States. America ran a massive trade deficit with China and a total annual trade deficit with Asia valued at close to $700 billion in 2020. Asian government officials recognize that China, which consistently runs an overall trade surplus, and other trading partners in Asia are unwilling and unable to bear even a fraction of the cost of such large trade deficits, which nonetheless are very important for Asian governments.62 Third, despite the negative popular view in Asia of the George W. Bush administration’s policies in Iraq and the broader war on terror, that administration was seen as generally effective in its interactions with Asia’s powers— notably with China, Japan, and India. The Obama administration built on these strengths. The Obama government’s broad rebalancing with regional governments and multilateral organizations emphasized widely welcomed consultation with and inclusion of international stakeholders before coming to policy decisions on issues of importance to Asia. The Trump administration seriously disrupted this pattern of behavior, but US relations with key powers Japan, India, and Australia remained sound. Meanwhile, the US Indo-Pacific Command and other US military commands and security and intelligence organizations remain at the edge of wide-ranging and growing US efforts to build and strengthen webs of military and related intelligence and security relationships throughout the region.63 Fourth, for decades, reaching back to past centuries, the United States engaged the Asian region through business, religious, educational, media, and other interchange. To this day, the United States carries out foreign relations using non-government means more than any other major power. Such active non-government interaction puts the United States in a unique position and reinforces overall American influence. Meanwhile, more than fifty years of generally color-blind US immigration policy, since the ending of discriminatory American restrictions on Asian immigration in 1965, resulted in the influx of millions of Asian migrants who call America home and who interact with their countries of origin in ways that underpin and reflect well on the US position in the region.64

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Fifth, part of the reason for the success of US efforts to build webs of security-related and other relationships with Asian countries has to do with active contingency planning by many Asian governments. As power relations change in the region, notably on account of China’s rise, regional governments generally seek to work positively and pragmatically with rising China on the one hand, but on the other hand they often seek the reassurance of close security, intelligence, and other ties with the United States in case China shifts to greater assertiveness or dominance.65 Indeed, given recent repeated episodes of Chinese demands, coercion, and intimidation, the Asian governments’ interest in closer ties with the United States often has meshed well with US engagement with regional governments and multilateral organizations. This pattern showed notably in improved US relations with Japan, India, Australia, and Taiwan. The American concern with deterring and countering Chinese challenges to regional order and US interests, maintaining regional stability while fostering economic growth, overlap constructively with the priorities of the key regional governments as they pursue their respective nation-building agendas.66 These synergies still auger well for the American position in Asia. US Shortcomings Relative to China While arguing that the recently anticipated American decline in leadership in Asia (relative to rising China) will take some time to develop, this chapter also identifies another key element in determining the relative influence of the United States compared to rising China that takes time to develop. This element involves the fundamental shift over the past five years from an American policy in Asia premised on sustained constructive engagement with China to a policy premised on acute US rivalry with China. Democracies of large countries like the United States cannot carry out such dramatic changes of a very consequential policy overnight. The record of the past five years makes clear that the process of moving from engagement to rivalry was beneficial in demonstrating the need for fundamental change in US policy toward China, but the process was carried out in unilateral and often erratic ways by the Trump administration, thereby accelerating the perception of relative decline of the United States in Asia.67 The Biden administration has promised and taken substantive actions to rebound US leadership in Asia through reviving close ties with allies and partners in Asia as the foundation for dealing with China’s challenges from a “position of strength.” US alliances remain a fundamental strength for US leadership compared to China (which has no firm allies), provided the US government remains prepared to bear the risks that come with alliance



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commitment. President Trump personally put US commitments in question, but his administration, large bipartisan majorities in Congress, and US public opinion strongly supported continued close alliance relations. Japan, Australia, and South Korea shared this strong American view. Even current leaders of the Philippines and Thailand, relying less on the United States and seeking better ties with China, have preserved US alliance relations as a major source of leverage.68 As noted above, the Biden administration emphasized strong ties among the four power Quad (US, Japan, Australia, and India), launching a major effort to compete with China in providing one billion vaccine doses in Asia and establishing working groups on common efforts involving global public health, climate change, and new technologies ensuring resilient supply chains. Biden’s subsequent summits with leaders of Japan and South Korea highlighted these objectives, adding to evidence that Quad initiatives incorporate many other Asian allies and partners, including South Korea, New Zealand, and Vietnam. Concurrently, the Quad powers have strengthened security and other cooperation among themselves and with important regional states, notably Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The broad scope of the US-led cooperative efforts has included US collaboration with Japan and Australia to create alternative infrastructure financing to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and efforts to counter China leading Asia’s 5G infrastructure development with more secure digital infrastructure not subject to China’s surveillance and influence.69 Meanwhile, the Biden administration has sought strong support for actions targeting Chinese challenges from US allies in Europe and Asia. These powers have participated in shows of maritime power countering China in the Taiwan Strait and the South and East China Seas. They have opposed Chinese human rights practices, undermining of Hong Kong’s autonomy, egregious cyber intrusions, and illegal claims in the South China Sea.70 Despite these promising advances, the balance sheet of US-China competition in Asia shows strong momentum in China’s advance simultaneous with Washington’s efforts to revive regional leadership. The scope of competition does not include Russia, where China enjoys unprecedented cooperation with the Vladimir Putin government in common efforts to exploit Western weaknesses and undermine their resolve as the two powers expand influence and control in their respective spheres of influence (China in Asia and Russia in Europe and the Middle East). The United States’ interests in Central Asia have declined markedly in tandem with withdrawal of US and allied forces from Afghanistan. Thus, US-China rivalry in Asia has centered on the vitally important Indo-Pacific region from India in the west to Japan in the East and going south to include Australia and the South Pacific.71

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China’s central proximity and rising economic importance as the largest trading partner, important investor and source of financing, and provision of critical infrastructure provided the foundation of emerging Chinese leadership in regional affairs. China’s decades-long investment in military modernization, coast guard, and other security forces reached a point where China is fundamentally challenging the regional balance of power previously dominated by forward deployed US forces. Employing a wide range of economic, security, and diplomatic tools, Xi Jinping’s China currently implements various overt or covert efforts to expand influence and control though inducements featured in the BRI and other development plans and through coercion seen in threatening diplomacy, economic punishments, and intimidating demonstrations of security force short of direct military attack.72 A common regional response has been to welcome opportunities for economic development linked with deeper access to the Chinese economy and infrastructure development capacities leading often to a honeymoon period of cordial relations. But, over time, China’s use of economic ties to demand deference to Beijing’s interests, along with direct challenge by Chinese security forces to the territorial claims of neighboring countries, and the threat of broader regional dominance by China has caused key states to seek closer alignment with the United States to offset feared Chinese regional dominance. At times in the recent past, several of these governments have seen their interests better served with a “hedging” strategy that pursued seemingly beneficial economic and other cooperation with China while supporting close security as well as economic and political ties with the United States. These governments’ perceptions of dominating Chinese security and economic power along with Beijing’s increasingly assertive international diplomacy prompted a shift with the governments now viewing China as a threat—an opinion backed by increasingly negative public views about China in each state.73 China-US Rivalry in Southeast Asia—America Is Losing The ongoing competition between China and the United States among the ten Southeast Asian member states of ASEAN is less favorable to the United States than the discussion above involving Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India, and Australia. China has many advantages over the United States. It is an enormous country with common borders and proximity to its Southeast Asian neighbors. It controls the headwaters of major rivers of utmost importance to neighboring states. It is the leading trader and largest or second largest source of financing for infrastructure in Southeast Asia. Many Southeast Asian states are deeply invested in China while China’s investment in the region has grown impres-



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sively over the past decade. China’s military, coast guard, and maritime militia ably control and defend China’s enormous claim to most of the South China Sea against comparatively weak capacities of Southeast Asian claimants.74 A prevailing regional view is that China is the engine of economic growth for the region and its BRI provides financing and construction capacity needed in Southeast Asian development. The Chinese party-state’s overt and covert organs have established control over the important ethnic Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia and China uses this leverage to promote its objectives. It exerts strong influence on governments increasingly dependent on Chinese transportation, communications, and other infrastructure. It routinely accommodates corrupt practices by regional leaders in economic agreements under the BRI rubric that benefit those leaders and Chinese interests at the expense of the host country’s overall national interests. China works to establish its leadership through penetrated local media, numerous Confucius Institutes, cultural and student exchanges. Chinese tourists dominate the industry in Southeast Asia.75 Media discourse in the region pervasively views China as ascendant and the United States in decline. Whereas in the recent past the United States was viewed as the region’s most important strategic power and a leading economic power as well, surveys of regional opinion now overwhelmingly see China as the most influential outside power economically, diplomatically, and strategically (this perception showed signs of shifting back with the transition from Trump to Biden).76 At a practical level, Beijing has developed what David Shambaugh calls “veto power” over regional governments’ commentary and actions on a wide range of issues sensitive to China77—including, notably, the disputes in the South China Sea as well as such subjects as China’s human rights violations against minorities and its disavowal of past obligations in carrying out a crackdown against dissent in Hong Kong. Beijing’s power over ASEAN manifests itself with client states Cambodia and Laos blocking efforts by others to get the organization to defend regional territorial rights against China’s egregious claim deemed illegal by an international Law of the Sea Tribunal in 2017—a decision all regional governments avoid discussing in public because of China’s disapproval. A decade ago, US observers commonly judged that talks between China and ASEAN to reach a binding “Code of Conduct” for the South China Sea would work to stabilize the situation in line with the interests of the Southeast Asian claimants and outside powers like the United States seeking a check on Chinese expansionism. Today, a common expectation is that China will so thoroughly dominate the discussion that the Code may well have provisions supported by China barring military activities by the United States and other powers, thereby undercutting the US alliance

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with the Philippines, strategic access to bases in Singapore, and US defense of freedom of navigation through this strategic waterway.78 For its part, the United States struggles for relevance in contemporary regional media discourse. US policy is seen in Southeast Asia as devoting only episodic attention to the area.79 The many internal problems of the United States are well known and show vividly a nation poorly positioned to lead abroad. Meanwhile, the US government does not have the funds to compete with China’s BRI. And Washington is repeatedly seen to not have the patience to work with the slow consensus-driven “ASEAN Way” in dealing with regional issues. US emphases on democracy and human rights are not well received by most regional states. Recent American efforts to increase attention to Southeast Asia in order to counter Chinese challenges also are unattractive to Southeast Asian states seeking Chinese blandishments and wary of provoking Chinese punishment for close association with the United States. Against this background most regional states and commentary ignore the benefits for Southeast Asia provided by US investment and foreign assistance—both much larger than comparable Chinese efforts.80 While viewing China as much more influential than the United States in regional economic, security, and diplomatic matters, Southeast Asian elites recently exhibit acute anxiety that the region’s growing dependence on and deference to China will overwhelm local interests creating a sphere of influence dominated by China. Such concern has not reached a point as seen in actions by Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, and Australia (noted above) to try to work with the United States and take other steps to check Chinese ambitions to expand at their expense. Some officials and specialists urge America to become more engaged in the region as a way to offset reliance of China, but the regional governments are reluctant to do so publicly. At bottom, they remain uncertain that US policy now focused on countering China’s challenges will be sustained, and they recognize that Beijing will remain sustained in its determination to thwart US ambitions and punish those in the region seen collaborating in this effort.81 OUTLOOK Challenges facing the Biden administration in shoring up American leadership in Asia are varied and serious. Domestic preoccupations can rise in the United States, diverting attention from foreign policy. Major uncertainties in Asia include the persistent COVID-19 pandemic, an erratic Asian economic revival, North Korea, the crisis in Myanmar, and the fallout from the US retreat from Afghanistan.



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China seems resolved in using a combination of blandishments and coercion in advancing itself in regional affairs. A few key regional states are prepared to resist China, and they seek closer US ties (and with each other) in response. But a significant number of countries straddle the fence between the two superpowers. They are biased toward avoiding actions deemed offensive to China—in particular because Beijing is much more likely than the United States to punish such offensive actions with seriously impactful measures. In dealing with these countries, US policy may face a prolonged effort to support regional interests in the face of Chinese challenges with little expectation of substantial regional support for the United States and its interests. As fear of China’s dominance looms larger in the calculations of regional states, they may over time become more inclined to move closer to the United States. Such an uncertain long-term payoff may be hard to justify to impatient US policy makers. Meanwhile, the United States remains at the beginning of a process that demonstrates to the region that its recent posture emphasizing strong rivalry with China is here to stay and that a return to the unpredictable and unilateral America-first policies of the Trump government represented an aberration in America’s longstanding regional leadership. Under current circumstances, the United States can try working with the Quad regional powers and other countries that associate with the Quad on a selective basis to support regional economic development, improvements in public health, environmental conditions, good global governance, and a secure strategic environment. The Quad powers indirectly support US interests as they cooperate among themselves and with a variety of Southeast Asian states in promoting security capacity and modern infrastructure deemed less sensitive to China than such efforts directly involving the United States; they thereby reduce the likelihood of Chinese retaliation against those involved. America’s NATO allies significantly add to its ability to muster support against adverse Chinese challenges in the United Nations and other bodies, and in securing the South China Sea and other disputed maritime areas for free navigation. American policy in the region would be strongly enhanced with US proposals for trade cooperation that is attractive to the region—but such proposals may be hard to accomplish in an American domestic political environment favoring production at home that benefits US workers. NOTES 1. Akira Iriye, Across the Pacific: An Inner History of American–East Asian Relations (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967); Warren Cohen, ed., Pacific Passage: The Study of American–East Asian Relations on the Eve of the 21st Century

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(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Michael Green, By More Than Providence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). 2.  Robert Sutter, East Asia and the Pacific: Challenges for US Policy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), 15–27; Robert Sutter, The United States and Asia: Regional Dynamics and Twenty-First Century Relations, 2nd ed. (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), 23; Green, By More Than Providence, 541–47. 3. Sutter, The United States and Asia, 20–23; Aaron Friedberg, “Competing with China,” Survival 60, no. 3 (June 2018): 7–64. 4. Green, By More Than Providence; Sutter, The United States and Asia, 19–41; Aaron Friedberg, “A New US Economic Strategy Towards China?” The Washington Quarterly 40, no. 4 (December 2017): 97–114. 5. Sutter, The United States and Asia, 22–24. 6. Iriye, Across the Pacific; Cohen, Pacific Passage. 7.  Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian America (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998). 8.  For a review of this period, see Michael Hunt, The American Ascendance: How the United States Gained and Wielded Global Dominance (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 55–78. 9. Sutter, East Asia and the Pacific, 16. 10. Ibid. 11. Sutter, The United States and Asia, 28; James C. Thomson Jr., While China Faced West: American Reformers in Nationalist China, 1928–1937 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). 12. Green, By More Than Providence, 115–244. 13.  Ibid., 245–322. 14.  Tang Tsou, America’s Failure in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963). 15.  Robert Sutter, US-Chinese Relations: Perilous Past, Pragmatic Present, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), 55–56. 16. Sutter, East Asia and the Pacific, 19. 17.  Ibid., 19–20. 18.  Michael Yahuda, The International Politics of the Asia-Pacific: Change and Continuity in Asian International Relations since World War II (New York: Routledge, 2004), 62–84, 107–12; Alice Lyman Miller and Richard Wich, Becoming Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 161–93; Robert Scalapino, Seizaburo Sato, Jusuf Wanandi, and Sung-Joo Han, eds., Asia and the Major Powers: Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 19. Green, By More Than Providence, 429–52. 20. Sutter, The United States and Asia, 39–41. 21.  Ibid., 24–25. 22. Green, By More Than Providence, 429–81; Sutter, The United States and Asia, 45–56. 23. Sutter, The United States and Asia, 53–56; Michael Yahuda, The International Politics of the Asia-Pacific: Change and Continuity in Asian International Relations since World War II (New York: Routledge, 2019), 78–79.



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24. Yahuda, The International Politics of the Asia-Pacific (3rd ed., 2019), 108– 22; Sutter, The United States and Asia, 57–62; Green, By More Than Providence, 482–517. 25. Green, By More Than Providence, 482–517. 26. Sutter, The United States and Asia, 62–67; Yahuda, The International Politics of the Asia-Pacific (2019), 123–32; Green, By More Than Providence, 518–40. 27.  Among surveys of US policy and policy debates at this time see Robert Sutter and Satu Limaye, Washington Asia Policy Debates: Impact of the 2015–2016 Presidential Campaign and Asian Reactions (Honolulu, HI: East-West Center 2016); Robert Sutter and Satu Limaye, A Hardening US-China Competition: Asia Policy in America’s 2020 Elections and Asian Responses (Honolulu, HI: East-West Center 2020). 28.  Joe Biden, “My Trip Is About America Rallying the World’s Democracies,” Washington Post, June 6, 2021; David Brunnstrom, Alexandra Alper, and Yew Lun Tian, “China Will ‘Eat Our Lunch,’ Biden Warns After Clashing with Xi on Most Fronts,” Reuters, February 10, 2021; David Sanger, Catie Edmondson, David McCabe, and Thomas Kaplan, “In Rare Show of Unity, Senate Poised to Pass a Bill to Counter China,” New York Times, June 7, 2021. 29. Sutter, The United States and Asia, 1–2; Mark Warner, The China Challenge and Critical Next Steps for the United States (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, May 15, 2019); Timothy Heath, Derek Grossman, and Asha Clark, China’s Quest for Global Dominance (Washington, DC: RAND Corporation, 2021); Evan Medeiros, Major Power Rivalry in East Asia (Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, April 2021). 30.  Sutter and Limaye, Washington Asia Policy Debates, 6–18. 31. Sutter, The United States and Asia, 89–136. 32.  Robert Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy of an Emerging Global Force (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), 142–44. 33.  Ibid., 144–48. 34.  Ibid., 16–22; Robert Sutter, “Congress and America’s Negative Turn Against China: Strategic Ballast,” FULCRUM: Analysis on Southeast Asia, July 27, 2021, https://fulcrum.sg/congress-and-americas-negative-turn-against-china-strategic -ballast/. 35. Sutter, The United States and Asia, 89–96. 36. Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations, 207–9, 167–70. 37. Robert Sutter, “Trump, America and the World—2017 and Beyond,” HDiplo/ISSF POLICY Series, January 19, https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443 /discussions/3569933/issf-policy-series-sutter-trump%E2%80%99s-china-policy-bi -partisan. 38.  Robert Sutter and Chin-Hao Huang, “China-Southeast Asia Relations,” Comparative Connections 22, no. 2 (September 2020): 61–67; “Trump Concludes India Visit,” CNN, February 24, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/24/politics/donald -trump-india-narendra-modi-trade/index.html. 39.  Bonnie Glaser and Hannah Price, “Continuity Prevails in Biden’s First 100 Days,” Comparative Connections 23, no. 1 (May 2021): 29–37.

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40. Ralph Cossa and Brad Glosserman, “Change in Style, Continuity in Asia Policy,” Comparative Connections 23, no. 1 (May 2021): 1–7. 41.  Glaser and Price, “Continuity Prevails in Biden’s First 100 Days.” 42.  Cossa and Glosserman, “Change in Style, Continuity in Asia Policy,” 1–7. 43.  Robert Sutter and Chin Hao Huang, “China-Southeast Asia Relations,” Comparative Connections 22, no. 1 (May 2021): 70–72; Nick Aspinwall, “Biden Delegation Pledges US Support for Taiwan Self-Defense,” The Diplomat, April 17, 2021, https://thediplomat.com/2021/04/biden-delegation-pledges-us-support-for-taiwan -self-defense/. 44.  “US View of China Competition,” US-China Policy Foundation Newsletter, May 21, 2021, https://uscpf.org/v3/2021/05/21/us-china-competition/. 45.  Sanger et al., “In Rare Show of Unity, Senate Poised to Pass a Bill to Counter China.” 46.  Simon Lester and Huan Zhu, “The US-China Trade War: Is There an End in Sight?,” Cato Journal 40, no. 1 (Winter 2020), https://www.cato.org/cato-journal /winter-2020/us-china-trade-war-there-end-sight; Yen Nee Lee, “US Businesses Are Bearing the Brunt of Trump’s China Tariffs,” CNBC, May 18, 2021, https://www .cnbc.com/2021/05/18/us-companies-bearing-the-brunt-of-trumps-china-tariffs-says -moodys.html. 47.  Richard Bush, Bonnie Glaser, and Ryan Hass, “Don’t Help China by Hyping Risk of War over Taiwan,” NPR, April 8, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/04/08/984524521 /opinion-dont-help-china-by-hyping-risk-of-war-over-taiwan. 48. “Open Letter: China Is Not an Enemy,” July 2019, https://www.ncuscr.org /news/open-letter-china-is-not-the-enemy. 49.  “The Five Worst COVID-19 Outbreaks in Asia and Southeast Asia,” Deseret News, July 23, 2021, https://www.deseret.com/2021/7/23/22588662/top-5-worst -covid-19-outbreaks-in-southeast-asia-indonesia-india-russia-thailand-myanmar. 50.  Huang Le Thu, “Biden Must Change the Narrative of Neglect for Southeast Asia,” Foreign Policy, July 9, 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/09/southeast -asia-biden-asean-centrality/; Catharin Dalpino, “ASEAN Confronts Dual Crisis,” Comparative Connections 22, no. 1 (May 2021): 57–65. 51.  Robert Sutter, “US Challenges in Southeast Asia Under Biden,” FULCRUM: Analysis on Southeast Asia, July 5, 2021, https://fulcrum.sg/us-challenges-in-south east-asia-under-biden/. 52.  “Kurt Campbell: US and China Can Coexist Peacefully,” Asia Society Policy Institute, July 6, 2021, https://asiasociety.org/policy-institute/kurt-campbell-us-and -china-can-co-exist-peacefully; Robert Sutter, “US-Vietnam Military Relations,” FULCRUM: Analysis on Southeast Asia, July 5, 2021, https://fulcrum.sg/us-vietnam -military-relations-marking-time-in-chinas-shadow/. 53.  David Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet: America and China in Southeast Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 5, 69, 246–51. 54. Green, By More Than Providence, 245–96; Yahuda, The International Politics of the Asia-Pacific (2019), 13–38; Miller and Wich, Becoming Asia, 233–78. 55.  “Special Report: China and America,” The Economist, May 18, 2019, 3–16.



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56.  Cossa and Glosserman, “Change in Style, Continuity in Asia Policy.” 57.  “US View of China Competition,” US-China Policy Foundation Newsletter, May 21, 2021, https://uscpf.org/v3/2021/05/21/us-china-competition/; Sutter and Limaye, A Hardening US-China Competition, 24–47. 58. Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet, 5, 69, 246–51. 59. Yuan Peng, “The New Coronavirus Epidemic Situation and Centennial Changes in 袁鹏, “新冠疫情与百年变局,” published online, June 17, 2020, http:// www.aisixiang.com/data/121742.html, and translated in Reading the China Dream at https://www.readingthechinadream.com/yuan-peng-coronavirus-pandemic.html (accessed January 7, 2021). 60.  For recent assessments on US strengths in Asia see Yahuda, The International Politics of the Asia-Pacific (2019), 277–85; Ashley J. Tellis, Alison Szalwinski, and Michael Wills, Strategic Asia 2020: US-China Competition for Global Influence (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2020); Bonnie Lin et al., Regional Responses to US-China Competition in the Asia-Pacific (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2020); Heath, Grossman, and Clark, China’s Quest for Global Dominance; Michael Mazarr et al., Understanding Influence in the Strategic Competition with China (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2021); Sutter, The United States and Asia, 332–34; Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations, 308–11. On Southeast Asia, see Shambaugh, Where Powers Meet, 244–46. 61. Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations, 308–9. 62. Sutter, The United States and Asia, 332–33. 63.  Robert Sutter, US-Chinese Relations: Perilous Past, Uncertain Present, 3rd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 279–80. 64. Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations, 309–10. 65. Sutter, US-Chinese Relations: Perilous Past, Uncertain Present, 280. 66.  Lin et al., Regional Responses to US-China Competition in the Asia-Pacific. 67. Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, State of Southeast Asia 2020 Survey Report (Singapore 2021), https://www.iseas.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2021/01 /The-State-of-SEA-2021-v2.pdf; Sutter and Limaye, A Hardening US-China Competition, 24–47. 68.  Lindsey Ford and James Goldgeier, Retooling America’s Alliances to Manage the China Challenge (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, January 21, 2021). 69.  Smith, “Japan, the Quad and the Indo-Pacific”; Glosserman, “What Was Unsaid Hovers Over the Biden-Moon Summit.” 70.  The White House, “The United States, Joined by Allies and Partners, Attributes Malicious Cyber Activity and Irresponsible Behavior to The People’s Republic of China,” July 19, 2021. 71.  Richard Maude, “Explainer: The Biden Administration and the Indo-Pacific,” The Asia Society Australia, April 7, 2021, https://asiasociety.org/australia/explainer -biden-administration-and-indo-pacific. 72. Sutter, The United States and Asia, 328–29; Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations, 301–3. 73.  Review relevant states in Bonnie Lin et al., Regional Responses to US-China Competition in the Asia-Pacific; on India, see Ashley Tellis, “India: Capable but

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Constrained,” in A Hard Look at Hard Power (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, 2020); on Taiwan see Toward a Stronger US-Taiwan Relationship (Washington, DC: CSIS, October 2020). 74.  For a recent authoritative, in-depth review, see Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet, 179–246; other such authoritative assessments are Murray Hiebert, Under Beijing’s Shadow (Washington, DC: CSIS, 2020); and Sebastian Strangio, In the Dragon’s Shadow (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020). 75. Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet; Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations, 204–11. 76. Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, State of Southeast Asia 2019 Survey Report (Singapore 2020), https://www.iseas.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/The StateofSEASurveyReport_2019.pdf. 77.  See Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet. 78. John West, “Book Review: Where Great Powers Meet,” Australian Outlook (Australian Institute of International Affairs), February 15, 2021, https://www .internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/book-review-where-great-powers-meet -america-and-china-in-southeast-asia/; Viet Hoang, “The Code of Conduct for the South China Sea: A Long and Bumpy Road,” The Diplomat, September 28, 2020, https://thediplomat.com/2020/09/the-code-of-conduct-for-the-south-china-sea-a -long-and-bumpy-road/. 79.  See Joseph Chinyong Liow, Ambivalent Engagement: The United States and Regional Security in Southeast Asia After the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017). 80. Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet; Sutter and Limaye, A Hardening US-China Competition, 39–44, 67–70; Zach Cooper, “Mind the Gap: Biden’s Opportunity to Re-engage with Southeast Asia,” FULCRUM: Analysis on Southeast Asia, November 25, 2020, https://fulcrum.sg/mind-the-gap-bidens-opportunity-to -reengage-southeast-asia/; Sebastian Strangio, “ASEAN and China Minister Talk COVID-19, Myanmar Crisis,” The Diplomat, June 8, 2021, https://thediplomat .com/2021/06/asean-and-china-ministers-talk-covid-19-myanmar-crisis/. 81.  “After Years of Chinese Influence, US Tries to Renew Ties with Southeast Asia,” New York Times, July 27, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/world /asia/austin-us-southeast-asia-diplomacy.html.

Chapter Five

China’s Role in Asia Attractive or Aggressive? P hillip C. S aunders

After decades of exerting only modest regional influence, China now plays an active and important role across Asia and the Indo-Pacific. Market-oriented economic reforms and China’s subsequent integration into regional and global production networks have produced more than forty years of rapid economic growth that have dramatically increased China’s national power. On the other hand, aggressive Chinese behavior toward Taiwan and in the South and East China Seas has created alarm about a “China threat,” a shift from earlier views when countries in Asia regarded China more as an opportunity.1 Beginning during the second decade of this century, however, more aggressive Chinese behavior on maritime territorial disputes and other issues dissipated much of the goodwill built by China’s charm offensive and revived regional concerns about how a strong China might behave.2 This dynamic has continued and accelerated under Xi Jinping’s leadership, increasing strains in China’s relations with its neighbors. This chapter examines China’s Asia strategy, the sources of Chinese power and influence, and how Beijing has tried to reconcile the region to a dominant Chinese role without antagonizing the United States or destabilizing the security environment. It considers the impact of China’s more aggressive recent behavior and discusses how Chinese leaders have adapted their Asia policy in light of new circumstances. Chinese leaders have had to strike a balance between restrained policies to preserve a stable regional security environment and the desire to use China’s new power to reshape the region and to make progress on long-standing territorial disputes. This tension has driven China toward “gray zone” tactics that employ coercion while staying below the threshold of lethal force. The conclusion considers key variables and potential developments that might alter China’s regional policy. 115

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CHINA’S ASIA STRATEGY China’s regional strategy derives in part from its global grand strategy.3 The top domestic concern of Chinese leaders is maintaining political stability and ensuring the continued rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).4 CCP leaders have tried to build new sources of political support by raising living standards through rapid economic growth and by appealing to nationalist sentiment. Throughout the reform era, Chinese leaders have focused on maintaining a stable international environment that supports economic modernization. This requires China to avoid a hostile relationship with the United States, the dominant power in the current international system. Given the high costs of confrontation, Beijing has sought stable, cooperative relations with Washington. Yet many Chinese elites believe that the United States seeks to subvert the Chinese political system and to contain China’s economic and military potential. China therefore also seeks to build positive relationships with other powers and regional actors in order to accelerate the emergence of a multipolar world order and to deny the United States the opportunity to contain China and prevent its continued rise.5 By properly managing relations with the United States, other great powers, and developing countries, Chinese leaders have sought to take advantage of a “period of strategic opportunity” in the early twenty-first century to build China’s comprehensive national power and improve China’s international position. This grand strategy defines the international and domestic context in which China formulates and pursues its Asia policy. Asia is the most important region of the world to China in economic, security, and political terms. It serves as a source of raw materials; as a supplier of components, technology, and management expertise for production networks operating in China; and as a market for finished Chinese products. The Asia-Pacific region is the most important destination for Chinese exports and for Chinese direct investment. Investment from other Asian countries played a critical role in fueling China’s economic take-off and export boom. Much of China’s economic success can be attributed to the operations of multinational companies that import components from Asia, assemble goods using Chinese workers, and export the finished products to markets in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Approximately 40 percent of Chinese exports are produced by foreign-owned or foreign-invested companies, and even higher percentages in high-technology sectors such as electronics.6 China’s economic growth has also produced increasing dependence on oil imported from the Middle East and Africa and on secure sea lanes to support its maritime trade. Most of this traffic passes through Asian waters, including



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through potential choke points such as the Strait of Malacca (a fact which China’s leaders have termed their “Malacca dilemma”). Geography also makes Asia critically important to China from a security perspective.7 China shares land borders with fourteen East Asian, South Asian, and Central Asian countries. Chinese leaders worry that neighboring countries could serve as bases for subversion or for military efforts to contain China. This is of particular concern because much of China’s ethnic minority population, which Chinese leaders view as a potential separatist threat, lives in sparsely populated border regions such as Xinjiang and Tibet. Chinese concerns about threats posed by “terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism” have prompted increased efforts at security cooperation with its Central Asian and South Asian neighbors. Hong Kong has also been viewed by China’s rulers as a base of potential political subversion, which is the primary reason for instituting the draconian National Security Law in 2020. China’s unresolved territorial claims are all in Asia, including claims to the Spratly Islands and the South China Sea, the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands and parts of the East China Sea, disputed land borders with India and Bhutan, and China’s self-described “core interest” in unification with Taiwan. China also worries about the possibility of encirclement and threats from conventional military forces based on its periphery. In the 1960s, the United States had significant military forces based on Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand, all within striking distance of Chinese territory. Chinese strategists are highly sensitive to US actions to improve its military power projection capability in the Pacific and the possibility that US alliances in Asia might someday be turned against China. These concerns strengthened with the Obama administration’s “rebalance to Asia,” the Trump administration’s “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” policy, the Biden administration’s view of China as a formidable strategic competitor with global ambitions, and the emergence of the US-Japan-India-Australia Quad as a factor in regional politics.8 As the other chapters in this volume delineate in depth, Asia is also important politically, diplomatically, and economically. The broader Indo-Pacific region is home to major powers such as China, Japan, and India, “middle powers” such as Australia, Indonesia, and South Korea, and to advanced economies such as South Korea and Singapore. East Asia alone houses 30 percent of the world’s population and produces about 33 percent of global GDP.9 If Asia were able to act collectively, it could rival the geopolitical weight of North America and Europe. Asia has historically lacked the web of regional institutions that produced economic and security cooperation in Europe and which supported the regional integration process that led to the

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creation of the European Union. The political, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the region and the tendency of Asian states to jealously guard their sovereignty have impeded the creation of strong regional institutions. Over the last twenty years, however, new regional institutions have emerged to promote regional cooperation between Asian states in the economic, security, and political domains. A robust set of non-governmental organizations and peopleto-people contacts have also emerged at the societal level. Some see these processes as promoting greater regional integration, which would greatly alter the political dynamics in Asia. Thus, China has a strong stake in influencing the evolution of the region in ways that advance Chinese interests, and in blocking developments that might work against Chinese goals. China’s preferred outcome is a stable Asia which permits rapid Chinese economic growth to continue and which supports increased Chinese regional influence. China denies any desire to dominate Asia, declaring that it will “never seek hegemony” and speaking about cooperation on the basis of equality, mutual respect, and non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations. China’s 2017 White Paper on Asia-Pacific Security explicated Beijing’s regional security policies, calling for a new model of international relations based on mutually beneficial cooperation and “common development” that will lay a foundation for regional peace and security. The White Paper advocated “dialogue instead of confrontation” and “partnerships rather than alliances,” arguing that big powers should respect the “legitimate interests and concerns” of others and that small and mediumsized countries “need not and should not take sides among big countries.” It called for improving existing regional multilateral security mechanisms and intensifying military exchanges and cooperation. Disputes should be solved peacefully through direct negotiation and consultation between the parties or managed via dialogue and conflict management tools.10 Although the White Paper did not employ the term, Chinese leaders increasingly talk about regional security in terms of a “community of common destiny” where shared interests and increasing mutual trust will change the pattern of interactions from a zero-sum “Cold War mentality” to a pattern of “win-win relations.”11 In characteristic Chinese fashion, this regional vision is heavy on principles and glosses over the role power plays in international relations. In practice, Chinese leaders are acutely sensitive to trends in the global and regional balance of power, which are closely monitored by Chinese intelligence agencies and research institutes. Chinese leaders and analysts view an emerging multipolar world as a positive development that that will create a balance of power to constrain the United States. Within Asia, however, they increasingly view US alliances and the US regional security role as negative factors that constrain China and prevent it from achieving its regional goals. In the context of

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a “community of common destiny” (one of Xi Jinping’s signature concepts) Chinese elites appear to expect that weaker countries will defer to Chinese wishes as the country grows more powerful.12 For their part, Asian countries worry about China’s potential to employ its superior power against smaller and weaker countries in Asia using “divide-and-conquer” tactics. China’s significant strategic challenge is to reconcile the rest of Asia to a dominant Chinese regional role without using force in ways that destabilize the region. This task is greatly complicated by Beijing’s increasing efforts to strengthen its control of disputed land borders and maritime territories. China regards these as legitimate actions to “safeguard sovereignty and territorial integrity,” but neighboring states see increasingly aggressive Chinese efforts to use coercion and intimidation against rival claimants. Similarly, Beijing would prefer to resolve the Taiwan issue peacefully, but has refused to rule out the use of force and is making increasing use of its military forces to pressure Taiwan. Another growing source of concern is that Beijing has also increased its use of united-front “influence operations” in various Asian societies. A peaceful regional environment for economic development—a necessity for China’s internal stability—is thus in tension with the desire to use China’s power to shape the region in favorable directions and to achieve nationalist territorial goals at the expense of China’s neighbors. The irony is that the more that China’s power grows and the more closely integrated Asian economies are with it, the greater the anxieties concerning China are in countries around the region. Beijing’s efforts to manage these tensions are further complicated by the increasing US strategic focus on the IndoPacific, which has altered regional security dynamics and heightened USChina competition for regional influence. SOURCES OF CHINESE POWER IN ASIA Economic Power China’s rapid economic growth, and the increasing economic ties with Asia that it has produced, is the most important source of China’s power and influence in Asia. Chinese officials regularly use free trade agreements, trade-facilitation agreements, and non-binding bilateral trade targets to leverage access to China’s market as a diplomatic tool in bilateral relations. One important pattern in China’s trade relations is that other East Asian countries are becoming more dependent on exports to China, but China’s relative dependence on East Asian markets is declining. The volume of Chinese trade with East Asia has increased dramatically, but the share of Chinese exports

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Table 5.1.  Percentage of Imports from China (China’s Rank as Import Source) Japan 1986 1996 2006 2012 2016 2020

4.7% 11.6% 20.4% 21.3% 25.8% 25.8%

South Korea

(4) (2) (1) (1) (1) (1)

0.0% 5.7% 15.7% 15.6% 21.4% 23.3%

(—) (3) (2) (1) (1) (1)

Taiwan* 0.28% (33) 3.0% (7) 12.2% (2) 15.0% (2) 19.2% (1) 22.2% (1)

ASEAN+6** 4.0% 3.0% 11.0% 13.2% 20.7% 29.9%

(6) (5) (3) (2) (1) (1)

India*** 0.55% (27) 1.9% (18) 9.4% (1) 11.1% (1) 17.00% (1) 16.2% (1)

* Taiwan Trade Statistics: Taiwan figures are from Taiwan’s Bureau of Foreign Trade, cus93.trade.gov.tw/eng lish/FSCE/FSC0011E.ASP; 1989 data (the earliest available) are used for the 1986 figure. ** ASEAN+6 are Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Brunei. ASEAN+6 data for Brunei use 1985 data and 1998 data to substitute for unavailable 1986 and 1996 data. ASEAN+6 rankings consider intra-ASEAN+6 trade with other ASEAN+6 members (e.g., ASEAN+6 exports to Singapore) as trade with other countries for ranking purposes. *** 1986 India data are from the IMF Direction of Trade Statistical Yearbook 1990. Source: UN Comtrade Database.

going to East Asia (excluding Hong Kong) has declined from 34 percent in 1996 to 25 percent in 2020.13 Conversely, China has become the first or second-largest trading partner of almost every country in the region since the turn of the millennium (see tables 5.1 and 5.2). Despite political tensions, Japan’s trade with China now exceeds Japan’s trade with all ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and surpassed US-Japan trade levels in 2007. China is now the largest export market for ASEAN products and, in 2020, ASEAN overtook the European Union as China’s number 1 trading partner by volume. Increasing dependence of Asian countries on the Chinese market reflects both the shift of export production from other East Asian economies to tap inexpensive Chinese labor and the Chinese domestic market’s appetite for imports from Asia. Chinese leaders and analysts believe that trade dependence can generate significant political influence as groups that benefit from trade with China mobilize to protect their economic interests. China has also shown a growing willingness to use economic coercion against other Asian countries Table 5.2.  Percentage of Exports to China (China’s Rank as Export Market) Japan 1986 1996 2006 2012 2016 2020

4.7% 5.3% 14.3% 18.1% 17.7% 17.8%

(4) (5) (2) (1) (2) (1)

South Korea 0.0% 8.8% 21.3% 24.5% 25.1% 25.9%

Taiwan Trade Statistics.

*

Source: UN Comtrade Database.

(—) (3) (1) (1) (1) (1)

Taiwan* 0.00% (—) 0.54% (23) 22.7% (1) 26.7% (1) 26.4% (1) 29.7% (1)

ASEAN+6 2.3% 2.9% 8.8% 11.4% 12.4% 19.9%

(12) (12) (3) (2) (1) (1)

India 0.74% (28) 1.8% (14) 6.6% (3) 5.1% (3) 3.4% (4) 7.3% (2)



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over political or territorial disputes.14 Australia, Japan, Mongolia, the Philippines, and South Korea have all been on the receiving end of Chinese economic coercion in recent years. This tactic has produced concern among foreign business groups but has not necessarily produced the desired outcomes. For example, Japanese business groups have called for better Sino-Japanese relations, but their influence has not outweighed other Japanese voices seeking a tougher policy toward China. Similarly, as Scott Snyder’s chapter in this volume on South Korea shows, there has been a significant downturn in South Korean views of China as a result of China’s punitive economic measures following the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) deployment.15 Robert Ayson and Rory Medcalf’s chapter reveals a similar backlash in Australian views of China following Beijing’s punitive tariffs and trade measures. China has also emerged as a major source of outbound foreign direct investment and aid in Asia. Direct investment from China into Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand from 2005 to 2020 totaled at least $272.8 billion, making a significant contribution to the development of regional economies, especially in Southeast Asia.16 China does not publish a detailed breakout of its foreign aid programs, but poorer countries in Southeast Asia and Central Asia are significant recipients of Chinese development assistance.17 The best available independent estimate of China’s financial diplomacy (debt relief, budget support, humanitarian assistance, and infrastructure investments) suggests that China spent at least $48 billion in the (East) Asia-Pacific region between 2000 and 2016.18 A significant amount of this assistance has been devoted to improving ground and maritime transportation infrastructure connecting Asian countries to China. Southeast Asia was the initial proving ground for what eventually expanded into China’s global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This infrastructure contributes to these countries’ economic development, but it also links them more closely to the Chinese economy and will produce greater trade dependence in the future.19 China’s role as a production site in regional production networks also serves as an important link between Asian producers of capital goods and production inputs and developed country markets in the United States and Europe. This ties together the economic interests of Asian companies and countries in a positive-sum manner. Military Power China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), is also becoming a more effective policy tool, both in terms of its combat potential and its role in security cooperation. The PLA has historically been a large land force with very limited ability to project and sustain power beyond China’s borders.

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China’s military power has increased significantly over the last fifteen years, creating both newfound respect and heightened concerns in other Asian countries. China now has the largest military in the world (about two million soldiers) and the PLA conducted a major reorganization in 2016 that has improved its ability to conduct joint combat operations.20 China’s 2020 defense budget was $209.2 billion, the second highest in the world, but the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates that include militaryrelated and off-budget spending suggest that the actual total may be about 1.25 times the official budget, or $252 billion.21 This funding has underwritten higher salaries, expanded training and facilities, and the development and procurement of advanced weapons. Many of the new capabilities and weapons systems that the PLA is acquiring are focused on deterring Taiwan independence and on deterring or delaying possible US intervention—but they also have a dual purpose of expanding China’s power projection more broadly around the region. These include development of accurate conventional ballistic and land-attack cruise missiles that can target US airbases and ports in the Asia-Pacific, acquisition of advanced Russian submarines and destroyers and development of anti-ship ballistic missile systems that can attack US aircraft carriers, investments in sophisticated air defense systems that can track US stealth aircraft, and modernization of China’s strategic nuclear arsenal. The Chinese military has also invested heavily in offensive cyber capabilities to attack US military logistics and command and control systems and counter-space systems that can exploit the US military’s reliance on satellites for intelligence, communications, and targeting purposes. To the extent that these “anti-access strategies” can hold US military forces in the Western Pacific at risk, they have begun to shift regional perceptions of the military balance of power in Asia.22 These new capabilities have significantly expanded the PLA’s ability to project military power within Asia.23 In addition to the capabilities listed above, China is deploying airborne tankers and air-refueling technology that will extend the range of Chinese fighters and bombers. The PLA is improving the capabilities of its airborne and amphibious forces capable of “expeditionary” operations and has made progress in improving its airlift and sealift capability. The PLA refurbished a Soviet-era Ukrainian aircraft carrier, built an indigenous copy, and is now constructing a third carrier that can operate aircraft with heavier payloads. The PLA already performs some power projection missions such as responding to natural disasters, contributing to deterrence, and enhancing regional stability. Although limited overseas bases constrain PLA power projection capability, China has constructed artificial islands in the South China Sea that can support PLA ships and aircraft and is increasing PLA “presence deployments” through exercises, port calls, and



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regular participation in joint and combined military exercises with other militaries.24 China also has extensive naval paramilitary forces that nominally handle tasks such as maritime surveillance and enforcing fishing laws, but which have been used regularly to reinforce China’s maritime claims.25 Soft Power China is also seeking to expand its “soft power,” defined as China’s ability to persuade others to pursue its goals and values or to emulate its behavior. One important trend is increasing contact between Chinese citizens and people in other Asian countries. Flows of tourists and students between China and other Asian countries increased dramatically before the COVID-19 pandemic hit as China has loosened restrictions on overseas travel and Chinese consumers have more disposable income. Chinese tourists have flocked to Asia, with about 120 million visiting other East Asian countries in 2018.26 Many Chinese tourists visit Asian countries as part of large tour groups, which do not always leave positive impressions on their hosts. Educational contacts between China and Asia have also increased significantly. China sent about 311,000 students to Asia-Pacific countries (including Australia and New Zealand) in 2019 and hosted more than 295,000 students from the region in 2018, with South Korea and Thailand sending the most.27 The Chinese government has also provided scholarships for students from Mongolia and less developed countries in Southeast Asia and Oceania.28 The Chinese government has supplemented student exchanges by establishing “Confucius Institutes” in foreign countries to teach Chinese language and promote Chinese culture. As of 2021 there were ninety-eight Confucius Institutes in thirteen East Asian and five South Asian countries, with Thailand, South Korea, and Japan hosting at least fifteen apiece.29 The Chinese government also actively supports the participation of Chinese scholars and experts in academic and unofficial “Track II” policy conferences in Asia. Much of this activity occurs via Chinese government think tanks or government-operated non-governmental organizations (GONGOs) created to interact with foreign non-government organizations. The Chinese government has sought to increase contacts between Chinese and East Asian think tanks—and to exert some degree of control over the regional agenda— by providing financial and organizational support for participation of Chinese experts and by sponsoring the establishment of the Network of East Asian Think-Tanks (NEAT), which includes members from all the ASEAN+3 countries.30 Chinese scholars and experts increasingly have the language skills and expertise to function effectively in these types of meetings. However, the perception that Chinese participants often deliver approved government

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talking points and cannot fully express their individual viewpoints probably limits their influence. Appeals to cultural and linguistic affinities have been important in dealing with countries with significant ethnic Chinese minorities. Malaysia and Indonesia, which previously viewed their ethnic Chinese populations with considerable suspicion, now regard them as an asset in building economic relations with China. Beijing found some sympathy in Southeast Asia for appeals to “Asian values” during its efforts to resist Western human rights pressure in the 1990s, but this has been tempered by the deepening of democracy in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and some Southeast Asian countries. Cultural and linguistic diversity in Asia is likely to limit China’s ability to harness purported common “Confucian values” as a diplomatic tool. Few Asian elites are attracted to Chinese values or desire to emulate China’s increasingly authoritarian system of government.31 In the cultural sphere, talented Chinese artists are beginning to win regional and international recognition. Some Chinese cultural products reflect traditional Chinese culture in ways that resonate within East Asia, but most have limited appeal due to their focus on Chinese domestic concerns, their derivative nature, political constraints on content, and language barriers. Films have arguably been China’s most successful cultural exports. Some of these constraints may ease as China becomes richer, but for now other Asian countries are producing work with more regional impact and influence. It is worth noting that many of the most successful Chinese artists achieved their fame with work done outside China, including Nobel Prize–winning novelist Gao Xingjian. Chinese companies have sought, with some success, to build internationally and regionally recognized brand names. Consumer electronics brands such as Lenovo, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Anker are becoming well known, along with home appliance brands such as Haier and Hisense. However, most Chinese products compete on the basis of price rather than quality. Nevertheless, if goods are cheap enough, Chinese products can promote a positive image. This is particularly the case around Southeast Asia where Chinese companies are now ubiquitous.32 For example, Chinese motorcycles that sell at about a quarter of the price of those produced in Japanese-owned factories in Thailand have become affordable for poor villagers in Laos. The resulting access to transportation has literally saved lives and has had a major improvement in the quality of life for Laotian villagers in remote areas.33 But the Chinese commercial presence reaches far beyond manufactured products. Chinese companies are also building out infrastructure throughout Southeast and South Asia (via its vaunted Belt and Road Initiative)—from roads, to high-speed rail, to ports, model cities, and telecommunications.34 China has also penetrated into regional media in Southeast Asia, buying up and control-



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ling newspapers and television outlets. This has permitted Beijing to surreptitiously influence media narratives. Taken together with the PRC stepped-up “united front” activities targeting the overseas Chinese diaspora (discussed below), there is a rising concern across the region (as elsewhere around the world) about Beijing’s “influence operations.”35 Many Asian elites look at China’s economic success with envy and admiration. The pace of construction in China’s major cities—and the number of architecturally ambitious new buildings in Beijing and Shanghai—is striking. Beijing built an impressive set of facilities and infrastructure improvements to support the 2008 Olympics. China’s manned space program is regarded by some Asian elites as an important technological achievement of the Chinese system.36 Yet these impressive accomplishments have a darker side. China’s breakneck growth has been accompanied by rampant environmental degradation that has severely damaged China’s air and water.37 Poor urban planning and rapid growth in the number of automobiles make traffic a nightmare in many Chinese cities. These deleterious domestic elements taint China’s reputation abroad. Some believe the Chinese approach of reforming the economy while limiting political freedom represents a new development model with considerable appeal to authoritarian leaders in developing countries.38 China’s development model actually draws heavily on orthodox development economics and benefits from factors such as a large domestic market and the large labor supply that cannot readily be replicated by others. Since 2017, Chinese leaders have started to promote China as a valid alternative development and governance model (dubbed the “China Option,” 中国方案), including claiming that China’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates its superior performance relative to liberal democracies.39 Within Asia, Vietnam has clearly been influenced by China’s approach to economic development, but the country Chinese leaders have tried hardest to influence—North Korea—has proved reluctant to embrace a Chinese-style opening. Domestic problems, social inequality, environmental degradation, and periodic political clampdowns limit China’s attractiveness as a model for others to emulate. A significant slowdown in growth, a widespread financial crisis, or a major internal security crackdown would highlight the downsides of the Chinese model and significantly reduce China’s ability to employ soft power as a diplomatic tool. CHINA IN A COMPETITIVE ASIA As noted at the outset of this chapter, from 1998 to 2008 China conducted a “charm offensive” to improve relations with neighboring countries by em-

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ploying an array of diplomatic, military, and economic measures to support its claim that a more powerful China would be well behaved and good for countries in the region.40 The effectiveness of these assurance measures was predicated on a patient approach to territorial disputes and restraint in the employment of Chinese military forces (even as PLA budgets grew and military modernization accelerated). However, in 2009 a more aggressive Chinese posture emerged on a wide range of bilateral, regional, and global issues.41 Chinese diplomatic bullying, aggressive military and paramilitary actions, and disregard for foreign reactions undid many of the gains from Beijing’s decade-long charm offensive. In particular, the means used to advance Chinese maritime sovereignty claims in the South China Sea and East China Sea did considerable damage to Beijing’s efforts to persuade others that China’s rise would be peaceful.42 This trend toward a more assertive Chinese regional policy predated Xi Jinping’s accession to top leadership positions in November 2012, but has continued and intensified under his leadership. This shift had both international and domestic causes. Chinese officials initially feared that the 2008 global financial crisis would severely damage China’s economy, but these concerns eased as China’s massive four trillion RMB economic stimulus (proportionately about four times the size of the US stimulus) took effect. As Chinese growth resumed and the United States and Europe remained mired in a recession, Chinese officials and analysts appear to have concluded that a fundamental shift in the global balance of power was under way. Chinese officials also appear to have misinterpreted Obama administration efforts to increase bilateral cooperation and expand China’s role in global institutions as a sign of US weakness.43 An exaggerated sense of Western decline was coupled with overconfidence in China’s international position following the successful hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games. This assessment played into a nationalist mood in China, where many commentators (including retired military officers) argued that a more powerful China should take a hard line on challenges to Chinese territorial claims and use its economic leverage to punish the United States for arms sales to Taiwan. Chinese officials and scholars began to regularly cite nationalist public opinion as a reason China could not compromise on territorial and sovereignty issues.44 Finally, senior Chinese leaders appear to have been preoccupied with domestic concerns and not focused on foreign policy, allowing the PLA and China’s paramilitary forces more autonomy in implementing policy on maritime disputes. Chinese officials and scholars initially denied that Beijing had changed its foreign policy goals, expanded its territorial claims, or adopted a more aggressive attitude toward maritime disputes. They argued that other countries, emboldened by US support, had stepped up their challenges to longestablished Chinese claims and that China was simply responding. The May



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2009 deadline for submissions to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) did spur many Asian countries (including China) to clarify their claims to disputed islands and waters. Sometimes China initiated contentious actions, such as increased patrolling in disputed waters and arrests of foreign fishermen; other times Chinese nationalists clamored loudly for strong reactions to actions by countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan that challenged Chinese sovereignty claims. Chinese officials and military officers argued that restraint in responding to foreign provocations would be interpreted as weakness; Beijing could either allow others to infringe on Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity or take appropriate measures in response.45 Beijing employed economic coercion in some of the sovereignty disputes, including a temporary ban on exports of rare earths to Japan following the 2010 arrest of a Chinese fishing boat captain and import restrictions on Philippine bananas in 2012. China also took a tough line on military activities in its exclusive economic zone, acting to interfere with US ships (including a March 2009 incident off Hainan Island when Chinese paramilitary vessels attempted to snag the towed sonar array of the USNS Impeccable).46 China’s self-image as a peace-loving country reluctantly forced to respond to foreign provocations contrasted with the views of neighboring countries that Beijing was using coercion and intimidation to expand its effective control of disputed territories. Heightened concerns about Chinese behavior found political expression in the July 2010 ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting in Hanoi, when twelve Asian states joined US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in expressing concerns about freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, despite the efforts of Chinese diplomats to discourage them from raising the issue. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi gave an angry speech during the meeting in which he wagged his finger at the Singapore representative and pointedly stated that “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.” This meeting highlighted the negative impact of aggressive Chinese actions on China’s position in Asia. China’s growing assertiveness prompted policy responses throughout Asia and in the United States. Asian countries (especially those involved in territorial disputes with China) began to improve their military capabilities to reduce their vulnerability to Chinese pressure. ASEAN members tried to engage China multilaterally in order to reduce Beijing’s power advantage in dealing with individual states, with a particular focus on negotiating a legally binding code of conduct governing behavior in the South China Sea. ASEAN members also sought to increase the involvement of major powers such as Japan, India, Russia, and the United States in regional affairs in order to offset China’s power and influence. (This is one reason the East Asia Summit

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included India, Australia, and New Zealand and later added Russia and the United States.) US treaty allies and partners such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam increased security cooperation with the United States (including allowing greater base access to US forces) and urged Washington to reinforce its long-term commitment to the region. This political context formed the backdrop for the US “rebalance” to Asia announced in November 2011. Although primarily a response to expanding US economic, political, and security interests in Asia, the rebalance also reflected heightened regional demands for concrete evidence of US long-term commitment to help balance against a stronger China.47 The Obama administration coupled the rebalance with efforts to build a more cooperative and stable Sino-US relationship. The broad US strategy of seeking to integrate China more fully within the current global order, while discouraging any efforts to reshape that order by force or intimidation, remained in place through the end of the Obama administration. Washington sought to make the rebalance robust enough to reassure allies and partners of the US capability and will to maintain a long-term presence in Asia while not alarming Chinese leaders to the point where they abandoned bilateral cooperation. Chinese leaders responded to the US rebalance with both assurance measures and enhanced efforts to deter challenges to Chinese sovereignty claims. One aspect of China’s initial response was to redouble efforts to stabilize Sino-US relations, most notably through efforts to build a “new type of great power relations” (新型大国关系) with Washington.48 A second element was to recalibrate China’s approach to countries in Asia to pay closer attention to each country’s relations with Washington and the overall state of US-China relations. This more restrained “triangular approach” sought to avoid driving countries into Washington’s arms. At the same time, China continued its harder line on territorial disputes. Chinese leaders have defined sovereignty and territorial integrity as a “core interest” where compromise is impossible.49 President Xi Jinping declared that “China will never sacrifice an inch of territory.”50 Beijing has employed a range of diplomatic, administrative, and military tactics to expand its effective control over disputed territories, including increased military and paramilitary exercises, patrols, and law enforcement actions as Chinese navy and coast guard capabilities increased.51 China’s use of “gray zone” tactics that seek to avoid the use of lethal force represent an effort to strike a balance between China’s interests in regional stability and desire to pursue its territorial claims more aggressively.52 Chinese leaders also accelerated military modernization efforts, with a focus on limiting the US ability to operate close to Chinese territory and gradually extending the PLA’s power projection capability.



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The regional dynamics that emerged in the period from 2009 to 2012 have continued and intensified since then. China has repeatedly sought to convert its growing economic and military power into increased regional influence and substantive progress on its outstanding territorial disputes without destabilizing the region or provoking a conflict. Regional countries have refused to make territorial concessions to China, responding with modest increases in defense spending and increased cooperation with the United States and other major powers to resist Chinese intimidation. At the same time, they have increased bilateral and multilateral efforts to engage China and declined to participate in security cooperation explicitly aimed against China. The United States has increased its diplomatic and military focus on the region, with an increasingly overt emphasis on balancing against Chinese power and limiting Beijing’s ability to achieve its goals, which are assumed to include regional hegemony. American and Chinese leaders regularly proclaim that they do not want to force countries to choose between Washington and Beijing, but increasingly view each other as rivals engaged in a zerosum and intensifying strategic competition. CHINA’S BALANCING ACT In a July 2013 Politburo study session on maritime issues, President Xi reiterated China’s uncompromising position on sovereignty, but also highlighted the importance of simultaneously pursuing the goals of “maintaining stability” (维稳) and “safeguarding rights” (维权).53 This balancing act is an essential aspect of China’s regional policy, which includes a number of elements to make this tension more manageable. One method is to rely primarily on non-lethal coercion and paramilitary forces (such as the coast guard and maritime militia) while minimizing use of lethal force and employment of military assets. This reduces the political cost of aggressive tactics and limits the risk of escalation into a broader military conflict. A second element is to try to deter challenges by ensuring that countries that challenge China’s claims wind up in a worse position. Beijing’s insistence on bilateral resolution of territorial disputes allows it to differentiate and adjust its policies to individual claimants, preventing rivals from uniting to resist Chinese tactics. China has also used its influence over countries such as Cambodia and Laos to impede ASEAN from reaching consensus on measures it opposes. China’s proclaimed willingness to pursue joint development in disputed areas is also intended to soften Beijing’s hard-line approach to territorial disputes and offer “win-win” solutions. Chinese leaders hope that these measures, coupled with growing regional dependence

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on the Chinese economy, will allow China to gradually expand its effective control of disputed territories without using lethal force. However, China’s increasingly aggressive tactics on territorial disputes— which have shifted from responding to actions of other states to proactive measures to assert China’s claims and improve its position—have made it hard to strike the right balance. Chinese actions included using paramilitary ships to seize control of Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines (April 2012), the initiation of maritime patrols near the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands (September 2012), unilateral declaration of an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea that includes territory claimed by Japan (November 2013), oil exploration by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation inside Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone (May 2014), and extensive land reclamation and subsequent militarization of China-occupied land features in the South China Sea (2013–2016). While proclaiming that its maritime claims are consistent with international law, China refused to participate in a case brought to the Permanent Court of Arbitration by the Philippines and rejected its May 2016 ruling, which found a number of China’s claims, including the claim of “historic rights” to waters inside the nine-dash line, to be without legal foundation under the UNCLOS.54 In August 2017, Chinese troops constructed roads in an area of Doklam claimed by China and Bhutan, prompting a tense standoff with the Indian military. In June 2020, Indian military road construction in the Galwan Valley near a disputed section of the China-India border led to a violent clash using handheld weapons that killed soldiers on both sides before a ceasefire and withdrawal was negotiated. In addition to activities focused specifically on territorial disputes, China has used its newly constructed airstrips and ports in the Spratly Islands and growing military and coast guard capabilities to increase its military and paramilitary presence in the South China Sea and East China Sea. Heightened military activity also includes more frequent naval exercises (including with China’s aircraft carriers), heightened intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, and increasing strike training over water by PLA Air Force bombers.55 China has also stepped up military pressure against Taiwan, including regular flights by PLA Air Force aircraft near the centerline of the Taiwan Strait and naval exercises focused on Taiwan scenarios.56 China has also increased its use of economic punishments, including sanctions. Some of this has been in the form of “tit for tat” responses to US sanctions and tariffs imposed on Chinese individuals and industries, but Chinese leaders are increasingly using economic means to punish countries and companies that displease Beijing.57 Examples include curtailing Chinese tourism to South Korea after its 2016 decision to allow the United States to deploy the



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THAAD missile defense system on its territory and raising tariffs on goods such as barley, wine, and coal following Australia’s 2018 decision to block Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from its 5G network and calls for an independent investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 corona virus. This more aggressive approach to territorial disputes is in inherent tension with efforts to persuade neighbouring countries of Beijing’s commitment to “peaceful development.” A hard line on territorial disputes increases tensions with other claimants, including major powers such as Japan and India, and highlights broader regional concerns about how a strong China will behave. Ultimately, Beijing’s patient approach is based on the belief that the regional balance of power is moving in China’s favor and that other countries will eventually have to compromise their interests to maintain good relations with a dominant China. This belief allows Chinese leaders to avoid the high political, military, and economic costs of resolving disputes with force and avoid the difficult compromises that would be necessary to settle maritime territorial disputes. However, other claimants also face nationalist publics and are unlikely to abandon their claims to disputed territories. As a result, Beijing’s efforts to strengthen its control of disputed territories are likely to have an increasingly corrosive impact on China’s relations with its neighbors and the regional security environment. China’s dilemma is aggravated by heightened US-China strategic competition, which impedes Beijing’s ability to achieve its regional goals and gives other countries new options to reduce their vulnerability to Chinese power. This competition manifests itself in an ideological competition of political systems, a regional competition for influence and military dominance, and a global competition over international rules, norms, and influence.58 Within the region, military competition is evident in US and Chinese operational deployments, conventional force modernization to gain an edge in a potential conflict over Taiwan, and development of nuclear and non-nuclear strategic capabilities, including a struggle for space and cyber dominance and modernization of each side’s nuclear, missile, and ballistic missile defense forces.59 The US military now treats China as its “pacing threat” and is increasing its focus on building military capabilities and operational concepts that can defeat the PLA in a conflict over Taiwan or elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific. For its part, China regularly describes the US military presence in Asia as destabilizing and seeks to discourage regional countries from maintaining or strengthening security ties with Washington, thus far with limited success. At the political level, the United States has stepped up its bilateral and multilateral diplomatic activity in the Indo-Pacific, including with its established treaty allies, new security partners such as Indonesia and Vietnam, multilateral forums such as the East Asian Summit and ASEAN Regional

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Forum, and new groupings such as the United States-Japan-India-Australia “Quad,” which has begun to take on a more institutionalized form. China has responded by intensifying its diplomatic engagement of the region, including in venues such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Conference of Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), and ASEAN+3 (ASEAN plus China, Japan, and South Korea) where the United States does not participate. Both the United States and China are employing diplomatic, economic, and military instruments to try to increase their influence with countries in the Asia-Pacific, a dynamic that improves the bargaining position of smaller countries.60 US-China rivalry and competition for regional influence appear likely to continue and intensify in the future (as is discussed in other chapters in this volume). CONCLUSION China’s future role in Asia will be shaped by a number of variables. The first important one is China’s own power trajectory. China is undergoing a difficult transition to an economy driven less by exports and more by domestic demand, a transition complicated by opposition from politically powerful state-owned enterprises, a weakened financial system, and adverse demographic trends. Growth will slow considerably under the best-case scenario, and a major financial crisis or protracted political infighting could derail China’s growth trajectory. A weaker China whose leaders are distracted by domestic problems is likely to improve economic cooperation with other countries and to seek to stabilize its regional environment by following more restrained policies on territorial disputes. However, some analysts believe Chinese leaders might divert attention from a lagging economy by picking fights with neighboring countries. Conversely, a stronger China will have more military power projection capabilities and may be less restrained in its international behavior. Because power is relative, a second important factor will be the power of other regional and extra-regional actors. One critical question is the US ability to sustain its position in Asia. If financial problems or reduced willingness to deploy military forces overseas compels US strategic retrenchment, China would have a freer hand. However, the United States appears more likely to increase its strategic focus on China and the Asia-Pacific region. The relevance of Russia and the European Union to regional political and security affairs is also uncertain. Within Asia, the economic fortunes of Japan and India and their political ability to sustain an active regional role will be critical variables. Aggressive Chinese policies on territorial disputes would increase



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tensions with both countries, impeding regional integration and potentially beginning to unwind regional economic interdependence. No single ASEAN country can stand up to China alone, so the ability of ASEAN to engage the support of outside powers and maintain a degree of internal unity will also be an important factor.61 A third variable will be the relative weight Chinese leaders place on legitimacy derived through economic growth versus legitimacy derived by achieving nationalist goals. In the reform era, Chinese leaders have prioritized growth to raise living standards and maintain the Communist Party’s leading position. Given China’s economic interdependence with its neighbours, Chinese leaders have been highly sensitive to the economic consequences of aggressive actions and have generally shifted to more restrained policies when military or nationalist tensions threatened economic cooperation. However, Xi Jinping appears willing to run greater risks and tolerate more tension with neighbouring countries in order to advance nationalist goals. Will this attitude eventually lead China to seek to resolve its outstanding territorial disputes with force regardless of the economic costs? A fourth variable for the future involves the ability of Chinese leaders to adapt policy smoothly to maintain the right balance between a stable regional environment and expanding control of disputed territories. China’s national security policymaking apparatus is relatively weak and uncoordinated. It has difficulty recognizing and responding rapidly to changed circumstances, especially when responses require politically difficult compromises. During the Xi Jinping era, China has sometimes pursued policies and diplomatic approaches that alienate other countries and generate negative reactions, such as its efforts to deflect any responsibility for the spread of COVID-19, intrusive attempts to control how foreign countries talk about China, and “wolf warrior” diplomacy that insults other countries. Heightened US-China military interactions and China’s aggressive approach to territorial disputes also increase the likelihood of an accident or an incident that might escalate into a larger military confrontation. China’s relatively underdeveloped crisismanagement capabilities could be put to the test and fail. Finally, unexpected regional security problems could produce fundamental changes in Chinese policy. A North Korean collapse or a military conflict precipitated by Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons ambitions could lead to Chinese military actions to control the situation, which would heighten conflicts with Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington. Despite China’s efforts to paint Taiwan as a “domestic issue,” Asian countries still view Beijing’s approach to Taiwan as a litmus test for Chinese behavior. A Chinese decision to resolve the Taiwan issue with force would alarm Asian countries and might lead to a major USChina war that permanently shifts regional security dynamics.

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During the reform era, China has sought to preserve a stable international environment that supports continued economic growth that can help maintain domestic stability, build its national wealth and power, and expand its influence. These principles have also guided China’s Asia policy, which has emphasized the need to reassure Asian countries that a stronger China will not threaten their interests. China’s increasing efforts to use its power to shape regional developments in Asia and more aggressive approach to territorial disputes are in tension with China’s commitment to “peaceful development.” If Beijing cannot maintain the right balance, the result will be increasingly strained relations with its neighbors, heightened strategic competition with the United States, and a more hostile regional security environment. NOTES The views expressed in this chapter are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the US government. The author thanks Joseph Kettel, Katrina Fung, and Jake Rinaldi for research assistance. 1.  For the positive period in China’s regional relations during the first decade of the 2000s, see Robert Sutter, China’s Rise in Asia: Promises and Perils (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); David Shambaugh, ed., Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); David Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order,” International Security 29, no. 3 (2004–5): 64–99; Bronson Percival, The Dragon Looks South: China and Southeast Asia in the New Century (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007). 2.  See David Shambaugh, “The Chinese Tiger Shows Its Claws,” Financial Times, February 17, 2010; and Michael Swaine, “Perceptions of an Assertive China,” China Leadership Monitor, no. 32 (May 2010). 3.  For assessments of China’s grand strategy, see Michael D. Swaine and Ashley J. Tellis, Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past Present and Future (Washington, DC: RAND Corporation, 2000); David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Avery Goldstein, “China’s Grand Strategy under Xi Jinping: Reassurance, Reform, and Resistance,” International Security 45, no. 1 (Summer 2020): 164–201; Rush Doshi, The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 4.  Kevin Rudd, “How Xi Jinping Views the World: The Core Interests That Shape China’s Behavior,” Foreign Affairs, May 10, 2018. 5.  For a useful overview from a Chinese scholar, see Ye Zhicheng, Inside China’s Grand Strategy: The Perspective from the People’s Republic (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2011).



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6.  “Private Firms Lead China Imports, Exports for the First Time,” Xinhua, January 14, 2020. 7. For a comprehensive analysis of Chinese security concerns, see Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell, China’s Search for Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). 8.  Phillip C. Saunders, “The Rebalance to Asia: US-China Relations and Regional Security,” INSS Strategic Forum, no. 281 (2013); National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: White House, December 2017); Interim National Security Strategic Guidance (Washington, DC: White House, March 2021); Sheila A. Smith, “The Quad in the Indo-Pacific: What to Know,” Council on Foreign Relations, May 27, 2021, https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/quad-indo-pacific-what-know. 9.  World Bank, “Key Development Data and Statistics,” http://www.worldbank .org. The East Asia percentage of global GDP is based on 2020 World Bank purchasing power parity estimates at http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/GDP-PPP -based-table. 10. China State Council Information Office, “China’s Policies on Asia-Pacific Security Cooperation,” January 11, 2017, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng /zxxx_662805/t1429771.shtml (accessed September 12, 2021). 11. For a useful explication, see Jacob Martell, “The ‘Community of Common Destiny’ in Xi Jinping’s New Era,” The Diplomat, October 25, 2017. 12.  See Denny Roy, “More Security for Rising China, Less for Others?” AsiaPacific Analysis, no. 106 (January 2013). 13. Calculated from Chinese export statistics as reported in the UN Comtrade database. 14.  Bonnie S. Glaser, “China’s Coercive Economic Diplomacy: A New and Worrying Trend,” PacNet, no. 46 (Honolulu: Pacific Forum CSIS, July 23, 2012). 15.  Choe Sang-Hun, “South Koreans Now Dislike China More Than They Dislike Japan,” New York Times, August 20, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20 /world/asia/korea-china-election-young-voters.html. 16.  Figures are from the American Enterprise Institute China Global Investment Tracker, which provides better fidelity than official Chinese data in tracking the ultimate destinations of Chinese investment, https://www.aei.org/china-global-invest ment-tracker/ (accessed September 8, 2021). 17.  China’s Foreign Aid (Beijing: Information Office of the State Council, 2011). 18.  Samantha Custer et al., Ties That Bind: Quantifying China’s Public Diplomacy and Its “Good Neighbor” Effect (Williamsburg, VA: AidData at William & Mary, 2018). 19.  See Andrew Chatzky and James McBride, “China’s Massive Belt and Road Initiative,” CFR Backgrounder, January 28, 2020, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder /chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative (accessed September 6, 2021); and John E. Hillman, The Emperor’s New Road: China and the Project of the Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020). 20.  Joel Wuthnow and Phillip C. Saunders, “Chinese Military Reform in the Age of Xi Jinping: Drivers, Challenges, and Implications,” China Strategic Perspectives 10 (March 2017).

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21.  Estimate is from the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, accessed September 2, 2021. 22.  See Office of the Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2021 (Washington, DC: Office of Secretary of Defense, 2021); and Phillip C. Saunders, “US-China Relations and Chinese Military Modernization,” in After Engagement: Dilemmas in US-China Security Relations, eds. Jacques deLisle and Avery Goldstein (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2021), 267–95. 23.  See Joel Wuthnow et al., eds., The PLA Beyond Borders: Chinese Military Operations in Regional and Global Context (Washington, DC: NDU Press, 2021). 24.  Phillip C. Saunders and Jiunwei Shyy, “China’s Military Diplomacy,” in China’s Global Influence: Perspectives and Recommendations, eds. Scott D. McDonald and Michael C. Burgoyne (Honolulu, HI: Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, September 2019), 207–27. 25.  Conor M. Kennedy and Andrew S. Erickson, China Maritime Report No. 1: China’s Third Sea Force, The People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia: Tethered to the PLA (Newport, RI: China Maritime Studies Institute, 2017). 26.  Calculated by the author based on data from the China Tourism Academy 2019 Annual Report (Beijing: China Tourism Academy, 2019). 27.  Figures for 2019 outbound Chinese students are from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, http://uis.unesco.org/en/uis-student-flow (accessed September 6, 2021); figures for Asia-Pacific students in China are from Ministry of Education, “Statistical Report on International Students in China for 2018,” April 18, 2019, http://en.moe .gov.cn/documents/reports/201904/t20190418_378692.html. 28.  Samantha Custer et al., Influencing the Narrative: How the Chinese Government Mobilizes Students and Media to Burnish Its Image (Williamsburg, VA: AidData at William & Mary, 2019), 27–40. 29.  In June 2020, the Chinese government transferred management of Confucius Institutes to the Chinese International Education Foundation, which describes itself as a private, non-profit foundation. Figures are from DigMandarin.com, https:// www.digmandarin.com/confucius-institutes-around-the-world.html (accessed September 5, 2021). 30.  See Kim Hyung Jong and Lee Poh Ping, “China and the Network of East Asian Think Tanks: Socializing China into an East Asian Community?” Asian Survey 57, no. 3 (May–June 2017): 571–93. 31.  See Shambaugh, China Goes Global, chap. 6. 32.  For discussions of China’s economic presence across Southeast Asia see David Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet: America and China in Southeast Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021); Murray Hiebert, Under Beijing’s Shadow: Southeast Asia’s China Challenge (Lanham, MD, and Washington, DC: Rowman & Littlefield and CSIS, 2020); Sebastian Strangio, In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020). 33.  Thomas Fuller, “Made in China: Cheap Products Change Lives,” New York Times, December 27, 2007.



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34.  See David M. Lampton et al., Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020). 35. See Appendix 2 (Singapore and ASEAN) in Larry Diamond and Orville Schell, eds., China’s Influence and American Interests (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2019), 195–201. 36.  Other Asian countries also view their space programs as an indicator of national achievement. See James Clay Moltz, Asia’s Space Race: National Motivations, Regional Rivalries, and International Risks (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 37.  See Elizabeth C. Economy, The River Runs Black (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004). One useful resource is the Wilson Center’s “China Environment Forum” website, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/china-environment-forum. 38.  Joshua Cooper Ramos, The Beijing Consensus (London: Foreign Policy Centre, 2004), http://fpc.org.uk/fsblob/244.pdf; Stefan Halder, The Beijing Consensus: How China’s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century (New York: Basic Books, 2010); Randall Peerenboom, China Modernizes: Threat to the West or Model for the Rest? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). For more skeptical views, see Minxin Pei, China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); and Scott Kennedy, “The Myth of the Beijing Consensus,” Journal of Contemporary China 19, no. 65 (2010): 461–77. 39. Minxin Pei, “China’s Misplaced Pandemic Propaganda,” Project Syndicate, March 26, 2020. 40.  See note 1. 41. See Jeffrey A. Bader, Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2012), chap. 7; and the discussion in Michael D. Swaine, “Perceptions of an Assertive China,” China Leadership Monitor 32 (2010). 42.  Michael D. Swaine and M. Taylor Fravel, “China’s Assertive Behavior—Part Two: The Maritime Periphery,” China Leadership Monitor 35 (2011). 43.  For an insider’s perspective on Obama administration thinking about building a partnership with China, see Bader, Obama and China’s Rise, chap. 1. Chinese overconfidence in Western decline and the increasing power of the developing world is evident in the shifting language used to describe the trend toward a multipolar world in the 2008, 2011, 2013, and 2015 defense white papers. Also see Andrew Scobell and Scott W. Harold, “An ‘Assertive’ China? Insights from Interviews,” Asian Security 9, no. 2 (2013): 111–31. 44.  Suisheng Zhao, “Foreign Policy Implications of Chinese Nationalism Revisited: The Strident Turn,” Journal of Contemporary China 22, no. 82 (2013): 535–53. 45. Author’s interactions with Chinese officials, military officers, and scholars, 2009–13. 46.  Mark E. Redden and Phillip C. Saunders, “Managing Sino-US Air and Naval Interactions: Cold War Lessons and New Avenues of Approach,” China Strategic Perspectives 5 (2012). 47.  Saunders, “The Rebalance to Asia.”

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48. See David Shambaugh, ed., Tangled Titans: The United States and China (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). 49.  See Michael D. Swaine, “China’s Assertive Behavior—Part One: On ‘Core Interests,’” China Leadership Monitor, no. 34 (2011). 50.  Robert Sutter and Chin-hao Huang, “China’s Growing Resolve in the South China Sea,” Comparative Connections 15, no. 1 (2013). 51.  M. Taylor Fravel, “China’s Strategy in the South China Sea,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 33, no. 3 (2011): 292–319; Andrew Chubb, “PRC Assertiveness in the South China Sea: Measuring Continuity and Change, 1970–2015,” International Security 45, no. 3 (Winter 2020–21): 79–121. 52.  For useful case studies and analysis of Chinese gray zone tactics, see Michael Green et al., Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia: The Theory and Practice of Gray Zone Deterrence (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2017). 53.  M. Taylor Fravel, “Xi Jinping’s Overlooked Revelation on China’s Maritime Disputes,” Diplomat, August 15, 2013. 54.  Jane Perlez, “Tribunal Rejects Beijing’s Claims in South China Sea,” New York Times, July 12, 2016, and Law of the Sea: A Policy Primer (Medford, MA: Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 2017), 73–79. 55. See Shinji Yamaguchi, “China’s Air and Maritime ISR in Coastal Defense and Near Seas Operations,” in The PLA Beyond Borders, eds. Joel Wuthnow et al., 127–50; and Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, “Bomber Strike Packages with Chinese Characteristics,” in The PLA Beyond Borders, 199–234. 56.  Mathieu Duchâtel, “An Assessment of China’s Options for Military Coercion of Taiwan,” in Crossing the Strait: China’s Military Prepares for War with Taiwan, eds. Joel Wuthnow et al. (Washington, DC: NDU Press, forthcoming). 57.  Andrew Rennemo, “How China Joined the Sanctions Game,” Diplomat, February 8, 2021. 58.  For a comprehensive analysis of US-China strategic competition, see Thomas F. Lynch III, ed. Strategic Assessment 2020: Into a New Era of Great Power Competition (Washington, DC: NDU Press, 2020). 59.  See Phillip C. Saunders, “The Military Factor in US-China Strategic Competition,” in Managing Strategic Competition: Rethinking US-China Relations in the 21st Century, ed. Evan S. Medeiros (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, forthcoming). 60.  Bonny Lin et al., Regional Responses to US-China Competition in the IndoPacific: Study Overview and Conclusions (Arlington, VA: RAND Corporation, 2020). 61.  See Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet.

Chapter Six

Japan’s Role in Asia From Free Rider to Thought Leader M ichael J. G reen

Few nations in history have been more racked with self-doubt about their national strategy than Japan. Fewer still have held so tenaciously to their national interests or been more acutely aware of the power relations around them. A STRATEGIC TRANSFORMATION Since the sixth century, when Prince Shotoku introduced himself to the Sui Emperor in China as “the leader of the land where the sun rises” and called China “the land where the sun sets,” Japan has been a nation sharply focused on rank, prestige, and independence.1 Yet, constrained by a post-war Constitution that forbids the use of war to resolve international disputes, Japan was forced for decades to seek rank, prestige, and independence through economic excellence and military self-restraint. The architect of Japan’s post-war foreign policy framework, Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru, accepted security dependence on the United States but ensured Japan’s independence through expanding economic ties with Asia and the institutionalization of Japan’s peace Constitution as a break against entrapment in US Cold War conflicts in the region. This so-called Yoshida Doctrine proved remarkably resilient throughout the Cold War, but as Japan’s economy surged ahead scholars found themselves puzzled by the prolongation of this pacifist and seemingly passive grand strategy. Structural realists such as Herman Kahn predicted that Japan would inevitably abandon pacifism and pursue nuclear weapons to assert its autonomy in an anarchic international system.2 Constructivists like Peter Katzenstein argued that Japan had transformed into a permanent pacifist state through deeply rooted antiwar sentiment and institutionalization of Article 9 (the peace clause in the 139

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Constitution).3 Other scholars, such as Richard Samuels and Zbigniew Brzezinski, suggested that post-war Japan had developed a new form of geopolitical competition focused on “techno-nationalism” and “mercantile realism,” rather than either pure pacifism or more traditional military approaches.4 Japanese strategic thinkers debated a variety of options, but generally approached the post–Cold War era confident in a grand strategy that would allow continued anti-militarism and increased international prestige, influence, and security through economic means. Within two years of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, however, this confidence was unravelling. Paralyzed by inaction during the 1990–91 Gulf War and then struggling to restore economic growth after the collapse of the so-called bubble economy in 1991, Japan found itself by the mid-1990s flailing with ineffective economic tools in response to North Korean nuclear weapons and aggressive new Chinese forays into the East and South China seas. Rather than moving toward decreased strategic reliance on the United States and unrivalled economic leadership in Asia, as many had expected, Japan returned to dependence on the United States while searching for new tools to maintain a favorable external security environment in the region. In Japan’s Reluctant Realism (2000), I argued that these structural changes in the distribution of power were leading to a new Japanese strategic consensus around a balance-of-power logic of neo-Realism, rather than nuclear weapons autarky, perpetual pacifism, or techno-nationalistic mercantilism.5 After a decade of drift, Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro (2001–6) began to restore Japan’s confidence with a deliberate break from the confines of the passive Yoshida Doctrine, a new embrace of alliance with the United States, and Japan’s first real military deployments abroad to Iraq and the Arabian Sea. But Koizumi’s successors did not have his charismatic political magic, and six prime ministers from two different parties fell from power between 2007 and 2012 before Koizumi’s own lieutenant and first successor, Shinzo Abe, returned from the political wilderness to re-establish a stable conservative government. “Japan is back,” Abe declared in Washington, DC, in February 2013, asserting that “Japan is not, and will never be, a Tier-Two country.”6 Over the next eight years as prime minister, Abe proved just that. His legacy was a new grand strategy to counter China’s rise that has irreversibly replaced the Yoshida Doctrine with a new emphasis on external alignment with the United States and other maritime powers, a leading role in infrastructure finance and institution-building in Asia, and increased military capabilities—yet still tempered by pacifist sentiment and continuing economic ties with China. No major Japanese political figure has offered an alternative vision since Abe, nor is likely to, absent another major shift in the external environment. Equally important for Japan, other major powers



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such as the United States and Australia are adopting key elements of Japan’s strategy for the region. The remainder of this chapter describes this strategic transformation, assessing the trial-and-error experiences that led to Abe’s powerful eight-year rule and the unfinished business he left in his wake. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first focuses on Japan’s response to China, once seen as a source of new markets and decreasing dependence on the United States, but now also as a dangerous regional rival. The second section examines the complexities of Japan’s return to closer alignment with the United States. The third section details Japan’s surprising emergence as a neoliberal rule-maker in the Indo-Pacific. The fourth section assesses the remaining weaknesses in Japan’s toolkit, particularly as they relate to the Korean Peninsula, demographics, and domestic political fluidity. Finally, the chapter concludes with a brief review of the structural variables in international relations that could force Japan to choose different strategies from those examined below. CHINA When Japan emerged from the ruins of the Second World War and prepared to re-enter the community of nations, the conservative elite advanced different ideas about what role a newly democratized Japan would play. Some former bureaucrats from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, like Kishi Nobusuke, wanted to align closely with the United States in the struggle against communism, even cooperating after the Korean War to turn Japan into an arsenal for Asia. Others, like Democratic Party leader Hatoyama Ichiro, wanted to establish greater independence from the United States by signing a peace treaty with Russia (still not signed to this day) and revising Japan’s Constitution. Still others wanted to eschew any military buildup that might lead Japan down the road to war again. Pulling these disparate camps together into a ruling coalition fell to Yoshida Shigeru, who defined a simple strategy for Japan that brought all conservatives under one tent and assured they would dominate politics and marginalize the socialists and the communists for the next half century. Beneath that broad conservative tent, however, were different ideas about Asia and specifically China. Yoshida established the mainstream view, which was based on a prescient assumption that Communist China would eventually wean itself from the Soviet Union and grow closer to Japan based on commerce. While “anti-mainstream” conservatives continued to favor the Republic of China on Taiwan, Yoshida’s protégés ensured that Japan avoided any involvement in the security of Taiwan or confrontation with Beijing as a

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proxy of the United States. Prime Minister Sato Eisaku agreed in a joint statement with President Nixon that Japan had an interest in the stability of the Taiwan Strait in 1969, for example, but only because he had to do so in order to win Nixon’s commitment to return Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty (his words were followed by no action by the Japanese government to Nixon’s enormous frustration). In the same period Japan quietly expanded economic relations with China through the semi-official “L-T” (Liao Chengzhi and Tatsunosuke Takasaki) trade channel. Surprised by Kissinger’s 1971 visit to China, Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei rushed to normalize relations with Beijing (a full seven years before Washington did) and then signed in 1978 a Treaty of Friendship that initiated Japanese Yen loans. Japan also worked as a broker to help China and the West reengage after the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen incident, breaking out of the West’s sanctions regime set at the 1990 Houston Summit. Yoshida’s predictions about China were uncannily accurate, and intellectuals in Japan saw the possibility of a strategic sweet spot in which Tokyo enjoyed more favourable relations with both Beijing and Washington than the two enjoyed with each other. By the mid-1990s, however, Japan’s relations with China suddenly began to change. Yoshida was right about the degree of Sino-Japanese economic interdependence, but he failed to anticipate how difficult it would be to harness that interdependence to shape Chinese behavior in the security realm. Nor did he or other Japanese leaders sufficiently appreciate the degree to which Chinese leaders eventually expected to supplant Japan as the leading power within Asia. The turning point came on May 15, 1995, when China tested nuclear weapons at its Lop Nor facility. Japanese diplomats warned that SinoJapanese economic relations and Yen loans could be put at risk by the tests, and Japanese political parties of all stripes were critical of Beijing. Beijing countered that the Yen loans were in fact reparations for Japan’s invasion of China, undermining the very notion that China owed Japan appreciation for the economic assistance. Beijing continued its nuclear tests undeterred. Then, in March 1996, China bracketed Taiwan with missile firings (in response to Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui’s visit to the United States). In response, Japan and the United States issued a joint security declaration in April 1996, which reaffirmed the US-Japan alliance and agreeing to revise bilateral “Defense Guidelines” to now plan for “situations in the area surrounding Japan that have a direct effect on Japan’s security.” Over the course of the next decade, Sino-Japanese rivalry became an unmistakable feature of Asian international relations. As the old adage goes, Japan and China had been lying in the same bed, but dreaming different dreams. The experiences of the mid-1990s taught the Japanese public and elite just how uncertain Chinese intentions were and how ill-equipped Japan was to



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shape Chinese behavior. The problem only compounded over the next decade as China surpassed Japan’s GDP to become the second largest economy in the world in 2010; increased deployments of PLA Navy and Coast Guard ships to contest Japan’s control of the Senkaku Islands beginning in 2009; and then constructed and fortified artificial islands in the South China Sea in 2014–15. At the end of the Cold War Japan’s defense budget had been twice the size of China’s: despite annual increases under Abe, Japan’s defense budget in 2021 was only one-fifth the size of China’s—as the PLA was eager to remind Japan’s thinly stretched Self Defense Forces and Coast Guard. As former Ambassador to the United States Katō Ryōzō put it, China’s moves were meant to leave the Japanese archipelago “like a sheep shorn of its wool.”7 Japanese diplomats attempted to reboot the relationship with China in 2008 on the twentieth anniversary of the Treaty of Friendship—but that effort ended in disaster when Chinese leader Jiang Zemin donned a Mao jacket and lectured the Japanese Emperor at the formal banquet on Japan’s imperial past. In 2008 the moderate Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo used the thirtieth anniversary of the treaty to agree with Chinese President Hu Jintao that the East China Sea would be a “Sea of Peace, Cooperation and Friendship” with joint development of natural resources—but by 2015 the Japanese government had identified sixteen structures China had built for unilateral resource extraction in the supposed “Sea of Peace.”8 Abe’s effort on the fortieth anniversary of the treaty also failed as COVID-19 prevented Xi Jinping’s visit to Tokyo and the National Security Committee of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) called for cancellation of the summit because of China’s crackdown on Hong Kong and growing military operations around the Senkaku Islands.9 Beginning in the late 1990s, the Japanese Foreign Ministry and scholars in Tokyo began searching for a more effective strategic response to the challenges posed by China to the regional order. There were many white papers and strategy documents produced by the political parties, government advisory committees, and Japan’s growing think tank community. But the enduring strategy was first articulated in the Abe government’s 2013 National Security Strategy document—the first in Japan’s history—which reframed Japan’s approach to the region around the goal of countering Chinese coercion and harnessing new tools to preserve Japan’s interests in maintaining what Abe (and soon much of the world) would come to call the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific.” As the 2013 document stated, Japan faces an “increasingly severe security environment” which would require proactive steps to: increase deterrence; improve the security environment in partnership with the United States and like-minded states in Asia; and “improve the global security environment and build a peaceful, stable, and prosperous international community by strengthening the international order based on universal values and rules.”10

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Figure 6.1.  Value of FDI to China by Country Kiyoyuki Seguchi, “FDI toward China: Japanese Companies Becoming More Aggressive— Japanese Cars Sold Well in the Chinese Market, Which Will Feature Growth Equivalent to More than 16% Growth in the Japanese Market,” The Canon Institute for Global Studies, January 17, 2019, https://cigs.canon/en/article/20190311_5631.html.

Japan was the first maritime power to construct a comprehensive strategic framework for competition with China (five years before the Trump administration put strategic competition with China at the center of its National Security Strategy or the Biden administration adopted the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” language from Japan), but Tokyo’s strategy was designed to mix competition with cooperation.11 As the chart above indicates, Japan’s corporations maintain a high level of foreign direct investment in China despite a drop in the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) as geopolitical competition intensified over the last decade. The majority of Japanese strategic thinkers do not favor complete decoupling from China’s economy, which is a critical source of growth for Japan as well.12 Instead, the Japanese government is looking for a surgical approach that will protect Japan’s critical technology base from predatory Chinese behavior typified by Beijing’s Made in China 2025 blueprint.13 Thus, for example, the Japanese government has introduced regulations barring Huawei, ZTE, and other Chinese telecom companies from participating in 5G broadband in Japan; it has ordered corporations not to export sensitive technologies on the US entities list to Chinese firms; and Tokyo has strengthened strategic investment screening from China into Japan.14 For this strategy to work, Tokyo has been forced to move away from autonomy and toward closer alignment with the United States vis-à-vis a much larger and more ambitious China.



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THE US-JAPAN ALLIANCE The centerpiece of the original Yoshida Doctrine was the alliance with the United States—which provided resources, markets, and a security umbrella that would allow Japan to stay focused on restoring autonomy through economic recovery. While “anti-mainstream” politicians like Abe’s grandfather Kishi Nobusuke (1957–60) or Nakasone Yasuhiro (1982–87) pushed for Japan to make explicit commitments to the US-Japan alliance (Kishi through the revision and expansion of the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1960 and Nakasone with his strategy to make Japan an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” to contain Soviet expansion in the 1980s)—these were the exceptions. The real political power lay with the “mainstream” factions that followed Yoshida’s lead and ensured Japan benefited from the American security guarantee without taking on geopolitical risk itself. This reticence began to change after the geopolitical shocks of the 1990s when Tokyo agreed to revise the bilateral “Defense Guidelines” with the United States in 1996 to cover for the first time “situations in the area surrounding Japan that have a direct impact on the security of Japan.”15 But the major obstacle to bilateral joint operations in a regional context remained— the Cabinet Legislative Bureau’s (CLB) ban on Japan’s exercise of its right of collective self-defense based on the bureaucrats’ interpretation of how Article 9 should be implemented in defense-related laws. With the election of Koizumi in 2001, the mainstream factions’ hold on the LDP broke and the once anti-mainstream politicians now held the upper hand in the party (and still do). Koizumi chose to stand by George W. Bush in the “global war on terror” by dispatching the Self-Defense Forces on their first mission in harm’s way in the post-war era (but did not attempt to alter interpretations of the Constitution to allow collective self-defense within Asia).16 Abe succeeded Koizumi in 2006 with that specific mission in mind, but he stumbled politically (and physically) and resigned by 2007 without making progress. Over the next five years Abe’s successors pushed other priorities, including a bizarre proposal by Hatoyama Yukio of the short-lived Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government to create an “East Asia Community” with China to counter reliance on the United States.17 Dismissed by President Barack Obama as “loopy” and experts as an aberration in Japanese politics, Hatoyama was replaced by other DPJ leaders who steadily returned to many of the alliance policies of Koizumi. The last DPJ prime minister, Noda Yoshihiko (2011–12), tried to remove the ban on collective self-defense but was too politically weakened to overcome opposition within his own party. Instead, that mission fell to Abe who retook the government for the LDP in 2012.

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In July 2014 Abe’s cabinet announced “The Development of Seamless Security Legislation to Ensure Japan’s Survival and Protect Its People.”18 Buoyed by new US-Japan Defense Guidelines and the first ever speech by a Japanese Prime Minister before a joint session of the US Congress in April 2015, Abe entered a gruelling two months of Diet debate. The opposition skilfully frightened the public with exaggerated images of national conscription and Abe had to mind his pacifist-oriented coalition partners in the Komeito Party (evidence that anti-war sentiment was still strong in Japan). But in July 2015 the Diet passed what the centrist Nikkei Shimbun called an “incredible turning point in Japan’s security” and one that came with “a high degree of accountability for future governments.”19 Abe had essentially convinced the public that with Japan now on the front lines of military competition with China, it was more important to lock in defense planning with the United States than to have an alibi against entrapment in conflicts that might mean the alliance was not ready for contingencies that now seemed increasingly serious. That did not mean that Japan would now rely entirely on the US-Japan alliance, though. With uncertainty caused by the Obama administration’s efforts at strategic reassurance with China and the Trump administration’s retreat from regional institution-building and threats to withdrawal from the Korean Peninsula, it has become more important than ever to Tokyo that Japan lead in reinforcing a rules-based regional order. SHAPING A FREE AND OPEN INDO-PACIFIC Japan has long been sensitive to the international order in East Asia and has attempted to shape that order as Japanese power assets have increased. In the nineteenth century the goal was to end the unequal treaties and achieve legal parity with the Western powers, which was first accomplished through bilateral treaties and alliance with Britain in 1902. Japanese intellectuals also developed a pan-Asian ideal that resonated with anti-colonial nationalists in China, Vietnam, and Korea at the beginning of the twentieth century (and as far away as Turkey). The perverse evolution of that pan-Asianist ideal into the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere led post-war Japanese leaders like Yoshida to be wary of ambitious schemes to shape the regional order. As Japan’s economy recovered and reparations and aid began in Southeast Asia, Japanese political leaders began exploring their nation’s role in the regional order again. After Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka’s motorcade was stoned by protesters during a visit to Indonesia in 1974, it became clear that Japan would have to “reintroduce” itself in order to move beyond memories of the



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war. In 1977 Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo launched the new “Fukuda Doctrine,” which sought to emphasize Japan’s relationship with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a whole, including a $1.5 billion aid package and a pledge to distance itself from Washington and improve relations with Vietnam consistent with the wishes of Hanoi’s neighbors. The appreciation of the Yen in 1985 and the resulting explosion of Japanese aid and investment in Southeast Asia intensified efforts in Tokyo to take a lead in regional integration and institution building. The North American specialists in the Foreign Ministry opposed integration schemes that would exclude the United States (such as Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir’s proposed East Asia Caucus)—or proposals designed to dilute US alliances (like Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1985 call in Vladivostok for a new multilateral regional security forum). Asia hands in the Foreign Ministry (Gaimusho) and some in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) saw intra-regional economic groupings as a way to gain leverage against the United States in tough bilateral trade negotiations over market access to Japan. The business community generally preferred a mix of intra- and inter-regional economic statecraft, participating actively in the earliest region-wide arrangements like the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) and the Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC). In 1989 the Japanese and Australian governments found the right synthesis for these various approaches in a new proposal to establish the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum which aimed to encourage regional economic integration on a trans-Pacific basis. The internal clash between exclusive intra-regional and inclusive transPacific integration strategies peaked in the 1990s. In 1991 Japan’s Ministry of Finance pushed for and funded a study by the World Bank on the “Asian Economic Miracle” in an effort to show that Japanese and Asian capitalism was different,20 and, in the words of economist and Vice Finance Minister Sakakibara Eisuke, had “surpassed” Western capitalism.21 The apex of Japanese efforts to establish alternative economic arrangements to the so-called “Washington Consensus” of free market economic policy came with the 1997 East Asian financial crisis when Sakakibara attempted to form an Asian Monetary Fund (AMF) to counter the influence of the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF). The AMF scheme collapsed under pressure from Washington and concern within Japan about accepting the moral hazard of responsibility for Asia’s weakly governed economies and was replaced by a less ambitious program for swapping debt and exploring longer-term arrangements for regional currency systems—the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI).22 The CMI, however, became bogged down in Sino-Japanese competition and was never operationalized in a regional debt crisis.

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Certainly, part of the impetus for pushing intra-regional economic groupings had by then dissipated. Japan had new tools against US unilateralism with the inauguration of the World Trade Organization in 1993, while the collapse of Japan’s 1980s bubble economy fundamentally restructured interest group politics within Japan as inward foreign investment grew and corporate profits surpassed government revenue. Now the challenge was China’s revisionist behavior and Japanese corporations turned their attention to taming predatory Chinese economic practices rather than countering US pressure to open Japan’s own economy.23 With the Koizumi era (2001–2006) Japan began an energetic new strategy of rule-making in Asia to manage the rise of Chinese power. When ASEAN senior officials yielded to Chinese pressure to decouple a proposed East Asia Summit from Southeast Asia and host the second meeting in Beijing, Japan joined with Singapore and others to ensure that the summits would be hosted by ASEAN states and that India, Australia, and New Zealand would be invited to dilute Chinese influence and increase the voice of democracies within the forum. As part of the strategy to move the regional institutional architecture to Japan’s advantage, rather than China’s, the Japan’s Foreign Ministry pushed for what it labelled “principled multilateralism” that would enhance democracy, governance, and the rule of law rather than Beijing’s preference for a value-neutral architecture that would retain the principle of non-interference in internal affairs.24 In part this new emphasis on “universal values” was glue for the US-Japan alliance and an effort by conservatives to brand Japan as superior to China, but even the most ardent Asianists in the Foreign Ministry were now pushing for Koizumi to highlight the importance of democracy and rule of law in his speeches at the Bandung Asia-Africa Conference in April 2005 (the fiftieth anniversary of the legendary Bandung Conference), where no Americans were present at all.25 This was the natural evolution of Japanese efforts to take a lead in rule-making in Asia and to ensure that Chinese norms did not undermine Japanese interests in an open, inclusive economic region reinforced by the rule of law. Japan’s efforts to lead Asian integration today are multilayered and focused on the norms of global institutions like the IMF and WTO. Japan encouraged the US government to join the East Asia Summit and worked to ensure that India, Australia, and New Zealand reinforce the theme of “principled multilateralism” in groupings such as RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), where the United States is not present. Japan’s strengthened ties with Australia and India have been a striking new feature of a strategy aimed at enhancing Japanese influence based not only on economic power, but also values. The Trump and Biden administrations have also embraced Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s proposal for a “Quad” partnership of the United States,



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Japan, Australia, and India. This materialized in 2021. Meanwhile, Japan also still plays the “Asia” game, as the Japanese Finance Ministry has pushed other participants in the Chiang Mai Initiative to consider studying a regional currency, while the Foreign Ministry has launched a new OECD-like arrangement for East Asia that would exclude the United States as a full member.26 And, in the most significant development in regional trade architecture, Japan elected in 2013 to join the US-centered Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—at once transforming what had been a grouping of smaller economies, most of which already had free trade agreements with the United States, into the most significant trade liberalization effort since the World Trade Organization talks stalled a decade earlier.27 When the Trump administration withdrew from the TPP in early 2017, Japan convinced the other parties to ratify the agreement (now called the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership or CPTPP) and to hold a place for the Americans to join in future. In the meantime, Japan under Abe announced a new Free and Open Indo-Pacific framework for “high quality” infrastructure financing from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) that exceeds China’s own lending through the Belt and Road Initiative. The transformation from follower on trade liberalization to leader was evident in the fact that from 2012 to 2021 the proportion of Japan’s international trade covered by agreements such as CPTPP and RCEP rose from less than one-fifth to more than four-fifths of total trade. As the Australian Lowy Institute concluded in its 2019 assessment of power in Asia, Japan had emerged as the “quintessential smart power” in the region and the “leader of the liberal order in Asia.”28 STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES IN JAPAN’S DIPLOMATIC TOOL KIT Faced with more mature economic growth rates and a rapidly rising China, Japan’s leaders have diversified their diplomatic tool kit in order to sustain national power and prestige. External balancing through closer relations with the United States and now the Quad have been complemented by a new emphasis on quality infrastructure investments and global norms in order to shape Asian regional integration in ways that bond the region more closely with Japan and not China. Yet at the same time, Japan is maintaining economic ties with China and focusing on resilience in the region against Chinese predatory behavior rather than complete decoupling from the Chinese economy or diplomatic containment that might alienate countries seeking to avoid geopolitical confrontation. Meanwhile, domestic institutional reforms, including the strengthening of the prime minister’s office, establishing a new

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National Security Council Secretariat, increasing “jointness” among selfdefense forces and intelligence agencies (including with the Coast Guard), and opening new military capabilities such as stand-off strikes—have all enhanced the ability of the Japanese government to be more proactive on security and diplomatic affairs.29 Yet Japan faces three uncertain variables with respect to its future role in the region. The first is the burden of history. It would be inaccurate to argue that Japan has not officially “apologized” for the war. Significant apologies have been issued on anniversaries of the end of the war, including Abe’s 2015 statement which was the longest and most detailed accounting of the damage Japan caused, surpassing comparable statements made by German Chancellors on the war in length and detail.30 Nor would it be accurate to argue that Japan is isolated in Asia because of its past. In most surveys in South and Southeast Asia Japan surpasses all other countries as the most trusted in the world.31 Even recent polls conducted in Japan’s old nemesis China show an improvement in public views of Japan despite the Japanese public’s deteriorating views of China and a Chinese Propaganda Department that continually ensures popular media is rich with dramas about Japan’s brutal invasion of China.32 The real geopolitical problem for Tokyo is Korea. Japanese grand strategy in Asia has long been driven by the goal of ensuring that no hostile hegemonic power gains control of the Korean Peninsula—the historic embarkation point for the Mongol invasion of Japan in the thirteenth century and a geographic and ideological “dagger aimed at the heart of Japan” in the words of Meiji Era leaders. Indeed, Japan’s expansion onto the continent and wars with China, Russia, and then, again, China between 1894 and 1945 were driven primarily by the aim of drawing what Meiji leader Yamagata Aritomo called the “line of advantage” over the Korean Peninsula. Even after the war, Japanese leaders went to great lengths to assure that the United States did not retreat from its commitment to contain communist expansion at the DMZ (demilitarized zone).33 Yet today Japan’s influence on the Korean Peninsula—North and South—has dropped to its lowest point in a generation. There is great irony in the ongoing political feud between Tokyo and Seoul given not only Japan’s own geopolitical history but also the close alignment in thinking of Japanese and Korean elites today on everything from democratic norms to support for alliance with the United States and distrust of China.34 The proximate cause of the current bilateral impasse was a series of South Korean court cases that reopened Japanese firms’ liability for wartime transgressions despite a 1965 normalization agreement between Seoul and Tokyo that waved any such reparations.35 There is a longer list of irritations in the relationship, ranging from duelling claims over the Dokdo islands (Takeshima in Japanese) and Korean objections to UNESCO world heritage



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status for Japanese sites which Seoul says were built by Korean slave labor. At a time when the rest of the democratic world has officially moved on from the World War II (Abe’s 2015 statement was positively received in capitals from Jakarta to London), Korea appears to Tokyo to be joining authoritarian China and North Korea in perpetuating Japan’s supposed illegitimacy as a thought leader in Asia. Many Japanese strategic experts also assume that Korea is “bandwagoning” with a rising China because of Seoul’s pursuit of “strategic independence” and seeming neutrality vis-à-vis the Quad and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy. The reality is that Korean strategic views are far more nuanced, and few Japanese experts fully appreciate how deep the joint and combined US-ROK defense relationship really is. Yet Japanese observers are right to notice that Korea is playing a different game—attempting to shape North Korea’s choices while Japan is trying to shape the dynamics of the broader Indo-Pacific. What may appear to be Korean neutralism in that broader game in the Indo-Pacific is not neutralism, it is really myopia about taming the threat from the North.36 Japan’s initial shift toward greater national security realism in the 1990s was driven by shocks from North Korea as much as by Chinese expansionism. Japanese leaders entered the post–Cold War era hoping to buy off North Korean cooperation with long overdue normalization, calculating that a comparable price tag offered to Seoul could reach as high as US$10 billion for Pyongyang. But money could no more buy security from North Korea than it could from China. In 1993 a US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was leaked assessing that Pyongyang may already have had enough plutonium for a bomb, and then in 1994 Pyongyang launched a Nodong missile over Japan (at the time the public thought it had landed in the Sea of Japan). The public then watched in fear as North Korea deployed hundreds of Nodong missiles aimed at Japan, sold methamphetamines to Japanese kids through criminal syndicates, tested a long-range Taepodong missile over Japanese airspace and then nuclear weapons in October 2006. The most emotional issue of all was the confirmation that dozens of Japanese citizens had been abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s even though the Japanese government had been denying there was proof. When Prime Minister Koizumi succeeded in winning the release of five of the abductees after a dramatic visit to Pyongyang in September 2002, the stories the returning Japanese citizens told infuriated the Japanese public even more. By 2015, 87.6 percent of Japanese continue to view the abduction issue as their biggest concern about North Korea—ranking nuclear and missile issues below by a wide margin, despite the fact that Pyongyang had deployed a sizeable arsenal capable of striking Japan.37 By then, North Korea was no longer needed as a proxy for building-up defenses against China since the public now fully accepted that threat as well.

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When Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in 2018 and 2019, it was Abe who worked hardest among world leaders to convince the showman American leader not to give away too much. Moon Jae-in of South Korea pushed in the opposite direction, urging the American president to offer a peace treaty and other major concessions to the North.38 Having coordinated approaches to the North in the late 1990s through the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group and come close to issuing a collective US-Japan-ROK trilateral security statement in 2010, Seoul and Tokyo were working at cross purposes.39 With North Korea unwilling to return to earlier commitments for “complete, verifiable and irreversible” dismantlement of its nuclear programs, the diplomacy of the Korean Peninsula has been at a complete impasse. The threat to Japan is greater than ever, but the scope for Japan to influence North Korean decisions has been diminished—including through joint efforts with Seoul. Given the overlap in values and long-term interests in a US-led regional order, Japan and Korea may yet turn the corner on their recent troubled relationship. Many observers in Japan hope that a more conservative Korean government might prove more sympathetic with the dominant LDP in Tokyo, though it is worth noting that it was conservative President Lee Myung-bak who inflamed bilateral relations by visiting the contested Dokdo/Takeshima islands in 2012. Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide, who succeeded Abe in 2020, had no political interest in inflaming relations with Korea, but froze in place because of polls showing that more than 80 percent of the Japanese public had a negative view of Korea and simply did not trust Seoul to keep its side of any future agreement.40 Nevertheless, political leaders need not be entirely bound by history or even identity politics. Indeed, because so much of bilateral Japan-Korea tensions flow from questions of identity and image, future Japanese and Korean political leaders may find themselves able to send reassuring signals that restore mutual trust. Of all the variables Tokyo could shape to secure its position in Asia, improving relations with Korea may actually prove the easiest. The second variable that casts a shadow over Japan’s successful strategy in Asia is the unfinished business of economic reform. The fount of any nation’s national power is the economy, and all the more so with Japan. In 2013 the new LDP government promised to bring Japan back with “Abenomics,” and initial stimulus packages and inflation-targeted monetary easing added confidence and growth within months of Abe coming to the helm. What the government called the “third arrow” of Abenomics—sustainable growth from reform—proved a more challenging problem.41 Certainly participation in CPTPP and Abe’s enthusiasm about empowering women in the Japanese economy has helped, but structural reforms do not come easily to the con-



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servative Japanese bureaucracy and business community—unless, that is, the nation sees no other choice. As historians Kenneth Pyle and Carol Gluck note, Japan has historically always reordered its domestic institutions to sustain its position against new challenges when all other choices had failed.42 Quietly, Japan has broken many precedents in the effort to maintain competitiveness with a population that is set to decline from 127 million today to 100 million in 2049.43 Women are now able to apply for virtually all billets in the military, for example, commanding warships and flying jets because there will not be enough young men to available to serve.44 Immigration, once considered the ultimate taboo in insular Japan, is also rapidly expanding as the conservative LDP opens the spigot to fill employment shortfalls through short-term contracts and other temporizing measures.45 These are the kinds of variables scholars will watch to determine whether Japan’s internal balancing strategy can be sustained. The third variable that could impede Japan’s role in Asia is internal political instability. It is worth first emphasizing that at the time Great Britain and the United States found their traditional global leadership roles upended by the populist revolts represented by BREXIT and the election of Donald Trump, Japan was a sea of political stability and predictability. With low unemployment rates and earlier restructuring after the collapse of the economic bubble, Japan had already made adjustments to globalization. Rather than turning more protectionist, Japanese governments led by the Democratic Party of Japan and then the LDP shifted to greater opening of the economy in order to sustain domestic demand and strategic influence in Asia.46 Yet this transformation required the unprecedented eight-year rule of Abe Shinzo to accomplish. Before Abe’s term, Japan went through a six-year period in which prime ministers came and went each year. This pattern of long-term political stability followed by comparable periods of rapid political turnover has been endemic in Japan’s post-war parliamentary politics, where a no-confidence resolution could theoretically bring down a government at any point if it fails to gain traction. The striking element of Japan’s politics today is how much consensus there is across the major parties regarding alliance with the United States and competition with China. The only one of Japan’s top six parties that opposed the alliance with the United States and rearmament is the Japan Communist Party, which in 2021 had only 12 out of 465 seats in the more powerful Lower House of the Diet. National strategic consensus is a strength Japan has over many other major powers, but even with a national consensus it is difficult to manage alliance relations with the United States or execute strategy when leadership changes every year. Japanese politicians often say that in parliamentary politics “one step ahead is darkness” while Japanese business leaders are always quick to plead for “stable politics.”

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OUTLOOK When Japan challenged the prevailing Anglo-American world order in 1941, the nation had only 3.8 percent of global GDP. Today Japan is stepping up to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific backed by the third-largest economy in the world (8 percent of global GDP), a deepening alliance with the United States, strong trust in Southeast Asia, and growing strategic relations with other maritime democracies such as Australia, India, and Great Britain. While Japan’s geopolitical throw-weight will be limited by factors such as relations with Korea, demographics, and political leadership—the trajectory of national purpose is clear. Importantly, polls indicate that much of the region and the world understands that Japan is a force for good.47 Beyond the three variables within Japan’s control addressed above—what exogenous shocks outside of Japan’s control might change this national trajectory? As the introduction of this chapter suggested, structural changes in the international system have been the most important determinants of change in Japanese strategy. The choices of the United States and China will be most consequential. A catastrophic loss of US hegemonic leadership—either through defeat in war in Asia, major retrenchment at home, or failure to honor security commitments to Japan in the face of Chinese or North Korean aggression—would inevitably force a reorientation of Japanese security policy in the region. Whether Japan increased its internal and external balancing against China or bandwagoned with Beijing would depend on the nature and scope of Chinese and American power. A collapse of regional (but not global) US dominance would likely push Japan to balance China regionally through increased internal balancing and alignment with the United States globally. However, Chinese hegemonic power at a global level would put Japan in the position of having to consider accommodation with China as both a regional rival and leader of the international system for the first time in half a millennium. In that admittedly remote scenario, bandwagoning with China would not be out of the question, though certainly out of character for Japan—a nation that claimed from earliest recorded history to have an emperor no less divine than China’s in the eyes of heaven. Of course, the nature of the US political debate about America’s role in the world and also the difficulties China faces at home both suggest that either a US retrenchment or a linear Chinese trajectory toward global dominance is unlikely. Japan is therefore more likely to adjust its strategy in increments depending on how these two powers conduct themselves. Generational change at home will mean that self-restraint will likely diminish as a characteristic of Japanese policy in Asia, but a more assertive security policy will still have strong structural constraints when it puts at



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risk Japan’s beneficial security arrangement with the United States and its political-economic engagement with Asia. The Korean Peninsula has also been a trigger for Japanese strategic change in the past, prompting both the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars as the “line of maximum advantage” was recalculated. North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs will continue to fuel Japanese strategic realism, but a successful multilateral framework for ending that threat could contribute to an easing of tensions with continental Asia someday. If Japan were somehow frozen out of such an agreement, or if the United States reached an accommodation with Pyongyang that failed to eliminate the nuclear and missile threats, one would expect to see more pronounced Japanese hedging, including in the nuclear area. That scenario seems unlikely, however, since the United States will insist on addressing broader Japanese security concerns as part of any resolution, and Japan’s own economic power will be indispensable for substantive reconciliation, reunification, or reconstruction of the North. The collapse of North Korea would trigger great uncertainty for Tokyo and could propel distrust of Seoul and Beijing just as easily as it might give way to a new multilateral framework to manage reunification and peace on the peninsula. On the Korean Peninsula one step ahead is also darkness for Japan. Economic interdependence within Asia, represented in the growth of intraregional trade to well more than 50 percent of all trade, coupled with continued reliance on North American markets and global capital flows, all help to ameliorate these darker trends in the security environment around Japan. The search for an “East Asian Community” and the development of regional institutions such as APEC, the East Asia Summit, and the Six-Party process all help to socialize Japan and China to higher levels of cooperation, though these efforts have all slowed with rising geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington. Ultimately, Japan’s security environment and strategic trajectory will be determined by the structure of power relations, with the nature of economic interdependence and institution building and the role of identity and nationalism as critical secondary and tertiary variables. To understand Japan requires an eclectic and layered theoretical approach and an appreciation of history with all its precedents and unexpected discontinuities. NOTES 1. Prince Shotoku sending Onono to say “land of rising sun” citation. . . . Ihara Takushū, “Chūgoku to Nihon no Kokkōjuritsuno Kigen: Kenzuishi Onono Imoko” [Origin of diplomatic relation between China and Japan: Japan’s Mission to Sui Onono

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Imoko] Ajia Gakka Nenpō 6 (2012): 27–35; Delmer Brown, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 182. 2. For an overview of this Realist perspective, see Kenneth Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War,” International Security 5, no. 21 (Summer 2000): 5–41; David Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong: The Need for New Analytical Frameworks,” International Security 27, no. 4 (Spring 2003): 57–85; and Michael J. Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism: Foreign Policy Challenges in an Era of Uncertain Power (London: Palgrave, 2001). 3.  Peter Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). 4.  Eric Heginbotham and Richard J. Samuels, “Mercantile Realism and Japanese Foreign Policy,” in Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies after the Cold War, eds. Ethan B. Kapstein and Michael Mastanduno (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 182–217; Richard J. Samuels, “Rich Nation, Strong Army”: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). 5. Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism. 6.  Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), “Japan Is Back” (policy speech by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC, February 22, 2013), http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/pm/abe/us_20130222en.html. 7.  Cited with permission of Katō Ryōzō, April 9, 2021. 8.  Joint Statement between the Government of Japan and the Government of the People’s Republic of China on Comprehensive Promotion of a “Mutually Beneficial Relationship Based on Common Strategic Interests,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, May 7, 2008. https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/china/joint0805.html; Nicholas Szechenyi, “China and Japan: A Resource Showdown in the East China Sea?” National Interest, August 10, 2015, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz /china-japan-resource-showdown-the-east-china-sea-13540; “Japan-China Joint Press Statement: Cooperation between Japan and China in the East China Sea,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, June 18, 2008, https://www.mofa.go.jp/files/000091726.pdf; “The Current Status of Chinese Unilateral Development of Natural Resources in the East China Sea,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, updated March 21, 2020, https://www.mofa .go.jp/files/000091726.pdf. 9.  Nippon no Boei 2019 [Defense of Japan, 2019] (Tokyo: Japan Ministry of Defense, 2019), 274. Some experts note that Japan is more likely than other countries to scramble when intruders approach, but even allowing for that higher state of readiness, the increase was noteworthy and corresponded with independent assessments by the RAND Corporation and others. See, for example: Edmund J. Burke, Timothy R. Heath, Jeffrey W. Hornung, Logan Ma, Lyle J. Morris, and Michael S. Chase, China’s Military Activities in the East China Sea: Implications for Japan’s Air SelfDefense Force (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018), https://www.rand .org/pubs/research_reports/RR2574.html; “LDP Policy Group, Not Party, Requests State to Cancel Xi’s Visit,” Asahi Shimbun, July 8, 2020, http://www.asahi.com/ajw /articles/13526200; Yukihiro Sakaguchi, “Japan’s Ruling Party Torn Over Xi Jinping



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Invitation,” Nikkei Asian Review, July 8, 2020, https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Japan -s-ruling-party-torn-over-Xi-Jinping-invitation. 10. Kantei National Security Council, National Security Strategy, December 17, 2013, http://japan.kantei.go.jp/96_abe/documents/2013/__icsFiles/afield file/2013/12/17/NSS.pdf. 11.  The White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America (NSS) (Washington, DC: White House, 2017), 2–3, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp -content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf. 12. For a comparison of Japanese strategic views on China compared with the United States and other allies, see Mapping the Future of U.S. China Policy: Views of U.S. Thought Leaders, the U.S. Public, and U.S. Allies and Partners (Washington, DC: CSIS), https://chinasurvey.csis.org. 13.  Wayne Morrison, “The Made in China 2025 Initiative: Economic Implications for the United States,” Congressional Research Service, Updated April 12, 2019; “Chūgoku Shushō ‘Seizō Kyōkokue Tenkan’” [Chinese Prime Minister “Shift to Manufacturing Powerhouse”], Nihon Keizai Shimbun, March 5, 2015. 14.  See Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, “Results of Acceptance of Applications for Authorization of Establishment Plans for Specified Base Stations for Diffusion of 5G Mobile Communications Systems” (Dai 5 sedai ido tsushin shisutemu no donyu no tame no tokutei kichikyoku no kaisetsu keikaku ni kakaru nintei shinsei no uketsuke kekka), February 26, 2019, http://www.soumu.go.jp/menu _news/s-news/01kiban14_02000375.html; Yomiuri Shimbun, “Japan to Ban Huawei, ZTE from Govt Contracts,” Reuters, December 6, 2018, https://www.reuters.com /article/japan-china-huawei/japan-to-ban-huawei-zte-from-govt-contracts-yomiuri -idUSL4N1YB6JJ; Isabel Reynolds and Emi Nobuhiro, “China Says Unfair Treatment of Huawei Could Damage Japan Ties,” Bloomberg, March 29, 2019, https://www .bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-29/china-says-unfair-treatment-of-huawei -could-damage-japan-ties; Simon Denyer, “Japan Effectively Bans China’s Huawei and ZTE From Government Contracts, Joining US,” The Washington Post, December 18, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japan-effectively -bans-chinas-huawei-zte-from-government-contracts-joining-us/2018/12/10/748fe9 8a-fc69-11e8-ba87-8c7facdf6739_story.html; “Draft Rules and Regulations of the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act,” Ministry of Finance, March 25, 2020, https://www.mof.go.jp/english/international_policy/fdi/kanrenshiryou_20200325 .pdf; 外資規制、政府関与強める、中国念頭に技術保護、出資「１％以上」•役員選任 も審査。[Enhanced government involvement in the foreign exchange regulations for protecting technology with China in mind], Nihon Keizai Shimbun, October 9, 2019. 15.  Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, “Japan-US Joint Declaration on Security: Alliance for the 21st Century,” Tokyo, April 17, 1996, http://www.mofa.go.jp /region/n-america/us/security/security.html; Paul S. Giarra and Akihisa Nagashima, “Managing the New US-Japan Security Alliance: Enhancing Structures and Mechanisms to Address Post–Cold War Requirements,” in The US-Japan Alliance: Past, Present, and Future, eds. Patrick Cronin and Michael Green (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1999).

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16.  Norimitsu Onishi, “Japan’s Troops Proceed in Iraq Without Shot Fired,” The New York Times, October 6, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/06/world/mid dleeast/japans-troops-proceed-in-iraq-without-shot-fired.html (accessed August 3, 2020); Ministry of Defense, “DEFENSE POLICY: JDF—Japan Defense Focus (No. 9): Japan Ministry of Defense,” Japan Ministry of Defense, April 2008, https://www .mod.go.jp/e/jdf/no09/policy.html (accessed August 3, 2020). 17. Shingo Ito. “Japan’s New PM Proposes East Asian Community to China,” Agence France Presse—English, September 22, 2009. 18.  “Cabinet Decision on Development of Seamless Security Legislation to Ensure Japan’s Survival and Protect Its People,” July 1, 2014, https://www.mofa.go.jp /fp/nsp/page23e_000273.html; Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal Basis for Security, May 15, 2014, http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/anzenhosyou2/dai7 /houkoku_en.pdf; see also “Collective Self-Defense,” Sasakawa Peace Foundation, October 27, 2015, https://spfusa.org/research/collective-self-defense/. 19.  “Dō Tsukaukade Kimaru Anpohō no Hyōka” [The Assessment of the National Security Legislation Will Depend on How It Is Used], Nikkei Shimbun, September 19, 2015. 20.  Edith Terry, “How Asia Got Rich: World Bank vs. Japanese Industrial Policy” (Working Paper 10, Japan Policy Research Institute, June 1995), http://www.jpri .org/pub lications/workingpapers/wp10.html; World Bank, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 21. Sakakibara Eisuke, Shihonshugi wo Koeru Nihon no Keizai—Nihon Gata Shijo Keizai no Seiritsu to Tenkai [A Japanese Economy That Surpasses Capitalism: Formation and Development of the Japanese Market Economy] (Tokyo: Toyo Keizai Shimposha, 1990). 22.  For details, see Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism, chap. 9. 23. Saori Katada, Japan’s New Regional Reality: Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020), Loc. 333 and 1962 of 10287 on Kindle. 24.  See, for example, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Speech by Mr. Taro Aso, Minister for Foreign Affairs on the Occasion of the Japan Institute of International Affairs Seminar ‘Arc of Freedom and Prosperity: Japan’s Expanding Diplomatic Horizons,’” http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/fm/aso/speech0611.html; and “Towards Principled Multilateralism,” in Gaiko Forum [Forum on Foreign Affairs], no. 225 (Tokyo: Toshi Shuppan, 2007). 25.  Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister of Japan, “Speech by H. E. Mr. Junichiro Koizumi,” April 22, 2005, http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/koizumispeech/2005/04/22 speech_e.html. 26.  “Japan, ASEAN Agree to Set Up East Asian Version of OECD in Nov.,” Jiji Press, August 25, 2007. 27.  Bruce Miller, “Japan’s Participation Would Encourage the Economic Expansion of the TPP,” Nikkei Business, December 5, 2011. 28.  “Asia Power Index 2019 Key Findings,” Lowy Institute, https://power.lowy institute.org/downloads/Lowy-Institute-Asia-Power-Index-2019-Key-Findings.pdf. 29.  Franz-Stefan Gady, “Japan’s Ministry of Defense Confirms Plans to Procure New Stand-Off Missiles,” The Diplomat, February 4, 2020, https://thediplomat



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.com/2020/02/japans-ministry-of-defense-confirms-plans-to-procure-new-stand -off-missiles/. 30.  Advisory Panel on the History of the Twentieth Century and on Japan’s Role and the World Order in the Twenty-First Century, Toward the Abe Statement on the 70th Anniversary of the End of World War II: Lessons from the 20th Century and a Vision for the 21st Century for Japan (English edition of Sengo 70 nen danwa no ronten) (Tokyo: Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, 2015), iii. 31.  See for example, Tang Siew Mun et al., The State of Southeast Asia: 2020 (Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2020), https://www.iseas.edu.sg/images/pdf /TheStateofSEASurveyReport_2020.pdf; “Tonan Asia/Indo; Tainichi kankei ‘yoi’ kyu wari” [90 Percent in India and Southeast Asia View Relations with Japan as Positive], Asahi Shimbun, September 4, 2006. 32.  According to Genron NPO’s opinion poll conducted in September 2019, 45.9 percent in China responded they have a “favorable” impression of Japan, the highest record since the survey began in 2005, whereas 15 percent in Japan responded they have a “favorable” impression of China, slightly higher than the previous year (13.1 percent). For further details, see The 15th Joint Public Opinion Poll: Japan-China Public Onion Survey 2019 (Tokyo: The Genron NPO, October 2019), http://www .genron-npo.net/en/archives/191024.pdf. 33.  The Japanese government’s lobbying of the United States on US-Korea alliance issues is well documented in Murata Koji, “The Origins and the Evolution of the US-ROK Alliance from a Japanese Perspective,” Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University, March 1997. 34.  Mapping the Future of US China Policy, https://chinasurvey.csis.org/. 35.  Simon Denyer, “New South Korean Court Ruling Angers Japan, Deepening Crisis Between America’s Closest Pacific Allies,” The Washington Post, November 29, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/s-korea-court-orders-japans-mitsu bishi-to-pay-compensation-for-wartime-forced-labor/2018/11/28/4f0a6616-f37e -11e8-9240-e8028a62c722_story.html; Kan Kimura, “South Korea’s Botched Handling of the Forced Labor Issue,” The Diplomat, July 9, 2019, https://thediplomat .com/2019/07/south-koreas-botched-handling-of-the-forced-labor-issue/. 36.  See, for example, David C. Kang and Jium Bang, “The Pursuit of Autonomy and Korea’s Atypical Strategic Culture,” in Strategic Asia 2016–2017: Understanding Strategic Cultures in the Asia-Pacific, National Bureau of Asian Research, November 2016, https://www.nbr.org/publication/the-pursuit-of-autonomy-and-south-koreas -atypical-strategic-culture/; Narushige Michishita, “Changing Security Relationship Between Japan and South Korea: Frictions and Hopes,” Asia-Pacific Review 21, no. 2 (2014): 24, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13439006.2014.970327. 37. Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister of Japan, Gaiko ni Kansuru Yoron Chousa [Public Survey on Diplomacy], October 2012, http://www8.cao.go.jp/survey /h24/h24 -gaiko/zh/z29.html. 38.  “Namboku Yūwa Nihon wa Naze Shimpaigao?” [Why Japan Is Worried About the North and South Korea’s Reconciliation] Nihon Keizai Shimbun, May 21, 2018. 39. On the almost-issued trilateral collective security pledge, see “CSIS Korea Chair Oral History Interview with Ambassador Chun Yung-woo,” August 9, 2017, https://beyondparallel.csis.org/living-history-ambassador-chun-yung-woo/.

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40. Michishita Narushige, “Changing Security Relationship between Japan and South Korea: Frictions and Hopes,” Asia-Pacific Review 21, no. 2 (2014): 24. 41. Kaori Kaneko and Leika Kihara, “Japan May Slide Toward Recession as ‘Abenomics’ Impact Fades,” Reuters, November 14, 2019, https://www.reuters .com/article/us-japan-abe-economy-analysis/japan-may-slide-toward-recession-as -abenomics-impact-fades-idUSKBN1XO2YN; “Abenomics Provides a Lesson for the Rich World,” Financial Times, November 21, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content /f4326dba-0ba5-11ea-bb52-34c8d9dc6d84; Motonao Uesugi, “Has Abenomics Run Out of Steam?” Nikkei Asia, January 12, 2020, https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight /Comment/Has-Abenomics-run-out-of-steam; William Pesek, “Coronavirus Fallout Highlights Failure of Japan’s Womenomics,” Nikkei Asia, June 18, 2020, https://asia .nikkei.com/Opinion/Coronavirus-fallout-highlights-failure-of-Japan-s-womenomics. 42. Pyle, Japan Rising; and also see Carol Gluck, “Patterns of Change; a ‘Grand Unified Theory’ of Japanese History,” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 48 (March 1995): 35–54. 43. Sasha Ingber, “Japan’s Population Is in Rapid Decline,” NPR, July 28, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/12/21/679103541/japans-population-is-in-rapid -decline#:~:text=About%20127%20million%20people%20live%20in%20Japan.%20 The,its%20inhabitants%20are%20aging%20out%20of%20the%20workforce. 44. Emiko Jozuka and Yoko Wakatsuki, “Answering the Call: The Women on the Front Lines of Japan’s Defense,” CNN, February 3, 2019, https://www.cnn .com/2019/01/23/asia/japan-self-defense-force-recruitment-intl/index.html; “Women Taking on More Frontline Roles in Japan’s Self-Defense Forces,” Kyodo News, October 14, 2018: https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2018/10/7eca2543f9e6-feature -women-taking-on-more-frontline-roles-in-japans-self-defense-forces.html; the US Advisory Board is DACOWITS—Defense Advisory Commission on Women in the Services, see https://dacowits.defense.gov/. 45.  Oguma Eiji, as quoted in Martin Gelin “Japan Radically Increased Immigration—and No One Protested,’” Foreign Policy, June 23, 2020, https://foreignpolicy .com/2020/06/23/japan-immigration-policy-xenophobia-migration/; December 26, 2018 Mainichi Shimbun [Morning], “Revised Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law—No Settlement in the Countryside Expected Despite the Expansion in Accepting Foreign Nationals, Government Lacking Clear Policy”; Chris Burgess, “A Japanese Multicultural Society Still Far Off,” Asia Forum, October 13, 2016, https:// www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/10/13/a-japanese-multicultural-society-still-far-off/. Recent examples of conservative LDP politicians embracing immigration in some form include Nukaga Fukushiro and Inada Tomomi. See what you can find on Nikkei Telecom. Funada wrote a book and Inada has spoken about this before. “Konbini mo ‘Tokutei Ginō ni’ Gaikokujin Ukeire de Jimin Teigen” [LDP Proposes to Add Convenience Store to the ‘Specific Skilled Industry’ for Accepting Foreigners], Nihon Keizai Shimbun, June 13, 2020. 46.  Mireya Solis, “The Underappreciated Power: Japan after Abe,” Foreign Affairs 99, no. 6 (November–December 2020): 124. 47. During Abe’s tenure American public opinion shifted decidedly away from China and toward Japan as the partner of choice in Asia. See Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2018 Chicago Council Survey, https://www.thechicagocouncil.org /sites/default/files/report_ccs18_america-engaged_181002.pdf.

Chapter Seven

India’s Role in Asia A Regional Power with Global Ambitions T. V. P aul

India’s role in Asia is gradually emerging as a crucial topic of interest in contemporary international relations, along with the prospective rise of India as a major global power. The reasons for this newfound attention can be viewed both in economic and in strategic terms. India began the liberalization of its economy in 1991 and has since then shown considerable growth in its gross domestic product (GDP), averaging between 6 and 8 percent annually, only to slow down to 4.5 in 2019. The economic downturn accompanying the 2020 pandemic crisis has sharply decelerated the Indian economy but this is expected to be for the short-term with growth once again picking up momentum in the post-pandemic era. This growth placed India’s $8.443 trillion economy, in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), as the third in the world in 2020, behind only China and the United States. Even in current US dollar terms, the Indian economy of $2.622 trillion was sixth in world position.1 As a result, the world has begun to view India in a new light as a land of economic opportunities (despite several constraints in doing business in India, including its archaic bureaucratic rules, chronic corruption, and poor infrastructure). In strategic terms, India’s role has increased globally given the expectations among official and strategic circles in the United States and its allies in Asia and Europe that the rise of China inevitably calls for countervailing power centers. Within Asia, India and Japan are the most potent nations for balance of power individually or collectively. The dramatic transformation of US-India relations, although partially driven by economic considerations, is largely propelled by strategic calculations on both sides. While the US-India friendship is unlikely to emerge as a patron-client relationship or a typical military alliance, it has already become more like a limited cooperation for “soft balancing,” although it could mature into a hard-balancing alliance if 161

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China assumes a threatening posture in the Indo-Pacific region.2 India, however, has simultaneously been engaging in “internal hard balancing” vis-à-vis China by relying on arms imports, nuclear and missile build-up, and steady infrastructure development in the border areas. Indian military capabilities do not yet match China’s, and in fact are diverging rapidly; hence it constitutes only a limited hard-balancing effort. Until 2010, the probability of an intense balance of power competition with China by the United States and India appeared to be low, as both had emerged as major trading partners of China. Moreover, the Chinese approach to its own rise in the international system did not seem to imitate the aggressive route followed by European rising powers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which called for hard-balancing strategies by affected powers.3 But by 2013 this changed with the arrival of paramount leader Xi Jinping with an ambitious agenda to make China the dominant global power by 2049, the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.4 As a result of China’s aggressive territorial intrusions in the South China Sea, and since 2017 against India in the contested border areas (in for the first time in forty-five years, where Indian and Chinese forces had engaged in lethal combat in June 2020 killing some twenty Indian soldiers and an undisclosed number of Chinese counterparts), there is more explicit discussion of balancing Chinese power by the US and India together. The hardening of China’s position on territorial disputes over small islands in the South and East China Seas, as well as intrusion incidents involving Chinese troops on the Indian border in 2012, 2013, 2017, and 2020–21, have generated much concern among its Asian neighbors. In response, India— along with the United States, Japan, and some of the ASEAN states—has resorted to partial hard balancing while maintaining economic ties and diplomatic engagements with Beijing. The United States, especially through its “pivot to Asia” strategy, had signalled to China its active balancing effort unless Beijing modified its aggressive policies, but these efforts did not produce much change in Chinese behaviour. The Trump administration continued the limited hard balancing efforts while the Biden administration has increased US military presence in the Indo-Pacific.5 India’s policy toward China, similar to others in the Asia-Pacific, has moved from a hedging mode to limited hard balancing relying on arms build-up and quasi-alignment with an increased focus on the border as well as the Indian Ocean. The most significant effort in this direction has been the strengthening of the Quad (the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) grouping involving the US, Japan, Australia, and India. Earlier conceived as a toothless forum, in March 2021 it was elevated to a serious soft balancing mechanism when the heads of state and foreign ministers of the four countries met to discuss broad issues including joint responses to the



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COVID-19 pandemic crisis.6 However, the forum is yet to mature as a hard balancing alliance, yet its soft balancing significance cannot be ruled out. India’s search for a major power role has been largely through peaceful institutional means. However, India has not pursued the global goal as vigorously as China has, even though India has emerged as a more confident nation during the past three decades and has been able to develop strategic partnerships and diplomatic engagements with all leading powers. India’s status adjustment seems more acceptable to most other states in Asia, except China and Pakistan, and its democratic order is raising little alarm among them. Accommodation is taking place gradually, especially since the landmark US-India nuclear accord was signed in July 2005, and other subsequent agreements that made India a de facto nuclear weapon state although it is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). India has also become an active partner in forums such as the Group of Twenty (G20). In the 2021 Group of Seven (G7) meeting India was invited along with South Korea, South Africa, and Australia as special invitees by the British hosts, a small but significant step toward institutional recognition.7 However, India is still not a permanent member of the UN Security Council. The Indian efforts in this direction have received much support among all P5 states except China, but since it is still tied to the politics of Security Council reforms, they are unlikely to come to fruition in the near future. Thus, India’s formal acceptance as a major power with all the associated institutional and political privileges may be a distant event as the international system has not yet devised a peaceful mechanism for the accommodation of rising powers, although it may already be taking place informally.8 This chapter first discusses the origins of India’s foreign policy, especially the initial effort by India to carve out an independent position in the world system, and its interactions with neighboring countries, which is followed by a discussion of its efforts at gaining major power status. The second section offers a brief explanation for India’s foreign policy behavior. The final section discusses the future trajectories of India’s foreign policy in the coming decades of the twenty-first century. THE PAST AS PRELUDE India emerged as an independent state in August 1947 after being colonized by Great Britain for about two hundred years. At the time of independence, it was divided between nine main British-ruled provinces and some five hundred–plus nominally independent princely states (protectorates). The colonial experience left deep marks on the political, economic, cultural, and other

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facets of India, as well as an elite sceptical of great power alignments and balance of power competition. Even though British rule helped to develop a sense of national identity and liberal democracy in India, the country was left extremely poor economically as the colonial rulers used it for raw material collection and as a market for their finished goods while developing very few indigenous industries. A stark reminder of this is contained in the statistics that in 1750 India had a share of 24.5 percent of the world manufacturing output and 7 percent of per capita industrialization, which by 1900 had shrunk to 1.7 and 1 percent, respectively.9 India’s independence occurred almost at the same time as the onset of the US-Soviet Cold War competition and the creation of two adversarial blocs in the post–World War II international system. The leaders of the Indian nationalist movement, especially the first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, envisioned an independent foreign policy role for India and did not wish to entangle themselves in the superpower competition, which they viewed as somewhat similar to past imperial struggles among European powers. Moreover, India sought developmental assistance from both sides in furtherance of Nehru’s policy of state-led economic development based on heavy industry and import substitution. At the international level this meant a policy of organizing newly emerging states into an independent bloc. The first key event toward this goal was the convening of the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, in April 1955. Subsequently, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) emerged as an offshoot of this endeavor, led by Nehru along with Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Yugoslavia’s Marshal Tito. The movement was aimed at newly emerging countries staying away from Cold War alliances while at the same time making efforts to solve some of the pressing problems of the day—decolonization, nuclear disarmament, and new international economic order. India became very active in mediation roles, especially in Korea, and lent its strong support for peacekeeping operations to the UN. The Indian activism in developing a third diplomatic front raised the ire of the United States, especially the Eisenhower administration. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called the Indian efforts “immoral.”10 The relationship between India and the United States was frosty during much of the Cold War, except for a brief interlude during the Kennedy administration. They were aptly called “estranged democracies.”11 The Non-Aligned Movement never achieved the status of a truly independent bloc, although the member states worked at the UN and other forums on core issues like decolonization, development, and nuclear disarmament, with some successes in the first area. The stated goals of India’s foreign policy under Nehru were maintenance of international peace and security, promotion of self-determination of all colonial peoples, opposition to racialism, peace-



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ful settlement of disputes, and securing voice and influence for emerging countries of Asia and Africa.12 India under Nehru achieved a somewhat high international status for an economically weak country, although with a long sense of culture and civilization, based on soft power attributes and potential material power parameters. India’s struggle for freedom and independence, mostly through non-violent methods under the leadership of Mohandas Gandhi, attracted the liberal world’s admiration. The creation of a democratic system with federal and secular foundations despite its high diversity was a great achievement. India proved that democracy could work in a multiethnic and pre-modern developing country, challenging existing theories of democratic transitions and modernization. Nehru’s government, partly under domestic economic compulsions, but partially due to an idealistic bent, neglected defense, on which it spent a paltry 1.9 percent of its GNP between 1950 and 1962, insufficient for defending two hostile fronts with China and Pakistan.13 However, similar to many newly emerging countries, India showed a strident attitude on territorial matters and an unwillingness to compromise with neighboring countries. India’s independence, although achieved largely through peaceful means, was bloodied by the partition of the subcontinent and the creation of Pakistan with its two wings in the west and in the east separated by more than one thousand miles of Indian territory. Partition generated deep-seated scars on the two states and their relations. The massive bidirectional flow of refugees, numbering some 10 million, and the genocide-like violence perpetrated by Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs, engendered intense feelings of hostility between the two states and their peoples from the outset. The independence was followed by a short war in Kashmir with Pakistan (1947–48), which saw some 40 percent of the state falling into Pakistani hands and 60 percent to the Indian side. The Kashmir conflict occurred because the princely ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, first dithered to join either India or Pakistan while the latter claimed the territory owing to its large Muslim population. Facing the prospect of complete defeat, resulting from an offensive by tribal forces into Kashmir with the support of the Pakistani army, the ruler of Kashmir agreed to join the Indian union and sought its armed intervention. The war, however, was inconclusive. It was the beginning of a bitter conflict between the two South Asian states, producing three more wars (1965, 1971, and 1999). The 1971 war was primarily focused on the liberation struggle of East Pakistan. The rivalry has also seen many crises and some efforts at peace, often producing little positive results.14 India’s other conflict has been with the People’s Republic of China which occurred after a short period of friendship based on Panchsheel (Five Principles) of amity and cooperation between the two countries (the forerunner

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to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence). The surprise Chinese attack on Indian border posts in November 1962 in some key locations of the 2,100-mile-long contested territory over the disputed McMahon Line separating the two countries was a watershed moment for Indian foreign policy. Nehru’s policy of forward defense and his government’s earlier accordance of refugee status to the Dalai Lama and his Tibetan followers contributed to the Chinese action, although it may well be that the Chinese leaders viewed Nehru as a “lackey” of Western imperialism, a challenger to their dominance in Asia and the emerging countries, and wanted to teach India a lesson.15 The defeat in the war was a major shock and demoralizing event for India. Nehru died in 1964 only to leave a weakened country, yet one determined to build up its military and economic strength. The war generated a brief period of Western military and economic aid to India, especially under US President John F. Kennedy.16 By the mid-1960s India acquired better military strength and began the green revolution in agriculture, which increased food production under the leadership of Indira Gandhi. Nehru’s immediate successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri (1964–66), faced foreign policy challenges from Pakistan and China, the latter by way of nuclear tests in 1964. In 1965 a short war was launched by Pakistan in Kashmir in which Shastri’s government responded strongly, even though the war concluded in a stalemate and both sides agreed to withdraw troops to previously held positions after an agreement was reached at Tashkent in 1966, with Soviet help. In 1971 war broke out again between India and Pakistan, this time in response to the liberation struggle in East Pakistan and India’s active military intervention in support of the Bangladeshi freedom movement Mukhti Bahini.17 India’s major challenge in foreign policy involving the great powers was in the nuclear weapons area. India dithered in its response to the 1964 Chinese nuclear tests for a decade, but by 1974 it had acquired a crude weapon which the Indira Gandhi government tested at Pokhran in the Rajasthan Desert, calling it a peaceful nuclear explosion. The international response was intense condemnation, and the United States took the lead in imposing sanctions on India which lasted until September 2001. The Gandhi government, largely under pressure from abroad and owing to a lack of grand strategic vision, left the Indian nuclear deterrent to hibernate. In 1989 Gandhi’s son, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, launched an active nuclear weapons procurement program in response to Pakistan’s accelerated nuclear arms development and his own failed efforts at global disarmament. After wavering for a decade, in May 1998 India, under the right-wing government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, tested five nuclear devices and immediately received additional sanctions for violating the spirit of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), although it had signed neither.18 Enhanc-



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ing international status and strengthening domestic support were the two key calculations of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in this decision. Prior to this, in 1991 India, under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao of the Congress Party and his finance minister Manmohan Singh, initiated an economic liberalization program which began to improve India’s growth rates and international profile with foreign investors who began to invest in large numbers, although the extent of it was limited compared to that of China. The severe balance of payment crisis India faced in the immediate post–Cold War era propelled the reforms. The collapse of the Soviet Union as a superpower state and its socialist model also helped in changing the ideational bases of Indian economic policies.19 These larger changes also encouraged India to launch new foreign policy initiatives in its own region, South Asia. The results have been mixed, with some successes and some failures in making a dent on India’s fractious relationship with its immediate neighbors. Some of the initiatives that India has undertaken under the Narendra Modi government since 2014 follow the policies of its predecessors, especially the Congress-led coalition headed by Manmohan Singh (2004–14). However, with China’s active presence in the South Asia region, since 2014, India is no longer able to hold its regional primacy position which it had enjoyed for some six decades. THE SOUTH ASIAN DIMENSION Within the South Asia region India’s relations have been one of limited hegemony, although it is debatable whether it was ever able to achieve its will on all crucial matters involving the smaller powers. India half-heartedly supported the creation of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in 1977, but it has not been active in building up this grouping into anything similar to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). India’s concern has been that the smaller states would bargain hard for concessions since it borders all of them except Afghanistan and occupies nearly 70 percent of South Asia. The enduring India-Pakistan rivalry is another reason for SAARC not progressing to its full potential. The South Asian states objected to India’s preponderance by erecting barriers, as well as becoming vocal in their opposition to Indian dominance over crucial bilateral issues. The weak states of South Asia also do not fully subscribe to the norm of territorial integrity, and they tend to intervene in each other’s internal conflicts.20 Some states allowed, or have been unable to control, anti-India groups operating from their territories while India has also intervened in the affairs of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Maldives in particular, sometimes invited by the beleaguered regimes in those countries. India occasionally displayed

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an enlightened approach in dealing with the smaller neighbors. An example is the Gujral doctrine of 1996 based on nonreciprocity giving considerable benefits to selected South Asian neighbours.21 The Manmohan Singh government also followed some of the friendly policies showing better relations with smaller neighbors, especially with Bangladesh. Regional cooperation has made incremental progress with the signing of the South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA) in January 2004, which is expected to eliminate customs duties in a phased manner, reaching 0 percent by 2016 for tradable goods among the eight-nation SAARC. However, the potential for wide-ranging economic cooperation in South Asia is yet to be fully exploited, although trade tariffs have been lifted by most member countries. The arrival of China as an active player in South Asia has affected India’s predominant position in the region. In 2013, President Xi Jinping announced the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) linking Asia and Europe via both land and water which, as part of its massive infrastructure development, has been taking place in all South Asian states, especially Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. China’s investments in these states have produced somewhat dependency relationships, and the weak states like Sri Lanka have given territorial concessions to China by way of leasing coveted lands surrounding ports. India has attempted to offer support to these states but only managed up to a fraction of it. China still has major constraints in obtaining full hegemony as its debt-trap strategy is generating opposition among some of them and, as a result, countries like the Maldives have frequently elected governments sympathetic to India. Within the region, India had a testy relationship with Sri Lanka where it initially supported the Tamil liberation movement, which it withdrew after the Indian peacekeeping forces failed to quell the Tamil Eelam guerrillas and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by them in 1991.22 The complete defeat of the Tamil guerrillas in the bloody battles of May 2009 changed the dynamic in a major way. India had already concluded a Free Trade Agreement with Colombo in December 2008, and later introduced zero customs duties on most products, which has substantially increased the bilateral trade volumes. China has made many inroads in Sri Lanka with its ninety-nine-year lease to the Hambantota port in 2017 and the development of the Colombo port city as well as many other infrastructure projects. With Bangladesh, India has had a less than friendly relationship over the division of river waters, as well as the massive illegal migration from that country to border states like Assam, Bengal, and Tripura. Since 2010 the relations had improved much with the signing of some water sharing agreements and increased connectivity between the two states, although since the mid-2010s Bangladesh has manged to equalize its relations with both India and China,



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gaining economic benefits from both. India’s ties with Nepal have been of a dominant-subordinate type, something many Nepalis resented, even though this has also come under change after a decade-long Maoist uprising in that country. New Delhi’s support for the democratic transition in Nepal helped in improving relations. China’s active presence in Kathmandu along with many infrastructure projects linking the land-locked country to China have helped to reduce its dependence on India to an extent. India has a strong benign hegemony over Bhutan that has benefited economically from friendly ties with India. The hydropower agreements and the annual financial aid from India have helped to make Bhutan’s economy number one in South Asia in terms of per capita income. China’s border incursions on Bhutan’s disputed borders have further strengthened India’s security relationship with the tiny kingdom. Another smaller neighbor, the Maldives, has maintained cordial relations with India, although the island nation has been undergoing changes due to pressure from China and its own fractious internal politics. Despite its strong historic ties, India has also been a reluctant player in Myanmar, especially in terms of support for the democracy movement, fearing the Rangoon military regime tilting toward China. India’s relations with Pakistan have been the most contentious, involving all neighboring states. Even after seventy-four years this rivalry shows little possibility of resolution. The rivalry is not only for Kashmir and the sharing of river waters, but for regional status and maintenance of a balance of power.23 Pakistan has aggressively pursued a very proactive military policy that includes acquisition of nuclear and conventional weapons, as well as alignment with great powers in an effort to obtain strategic parity with India. Pakistan has also resorted to the use of non-state actors to challenge India’s control over Kashmir since 1989. Pakistan-supported terrorists have also struck within India, most notably in December 2001 attacking the Indian parliament, and in November 2008 launching a mass attack on India’s financial center, Mumbai, killing some 164 people and wounding 368. Despite periodic peace talks, a genuine rapprochement has not been achieved between the two South Asian rivals as many stakeholders, especially the Pakistani military, act as spoilers whenever the political elite start engaging each other seriously. The election of the Nawaz Sharif government in May 2013 rekindled hopes that the peace process would be resumed, but it was complicated by continuous tensions on the border, as well as India’s general elections which produced an unstable coalition government in Delhi. The Modi government, after an initial effort to reach out, basically froze the relations and aggravated the tensions by removing Article 360 of the Indian Constitution that gave a special status to Jammu and Kashmir and also dividing the province into three centrally controlled units. Meanwhile, China has increased its presence

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in Pakistan with the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project and the building of the Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea on the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, although the progress in infrastructure development has been haphazard.24 The China-Pakistan military cooperation has also been evident while the two South Asian neighbours added to their nuclear weapons and engaged in periodic border skirmishes. India’s position on Afghanistan is partially responsible for New Delhi’s conflict with Pakistan. Afghanistan, prior to the rise of the Taliban, maintained close ties with India as a supporter for its own disputes with Pakistan. India backed the Pashtun cause from the late 1940s. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, New Delhi maintained an uncomfortable neutrality because of its friendship treaty with the Soviet Union. After the Soviet retreat, India supported the Northern Alliance, but when the Taliban won the civil war with Pakistan’s support in 1996, India’s position became very untenable. India supported the Hamid Karzai government by way of training Afghan security forces, offering developmental aid estimated at $2 billion a year, and expanding infrastructure. India watched the US withdrawal in 2021 with much trepidation as a Taliban return to power will undercut its investments in Afghanistan and undermine its security interests, with Afghanistan once again becoming a springboard for terrorist groups that also target India. RELATIONS WITH THE LARGER INDO-PACIFIC In fact, the major changes in the Indian foreign policy have been noticeable in its relations with the larger Indo-Pacific region, especially East Asian and Southeast Asian states, as well as Australia more so than its immediate region. The “Look East” policy was first initiated in 1991 by Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao’s government—a policy which was actively pursued by his successor governments, especially A. B. Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh. The policy envisaged and produced substantial improvements in India’s economic, strategic, and cultural ties with Southeast Asian countries which India had neglected during the Cold War era. The ASEAN countries reciprocated this policy by according India membership in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and holding India-specific annual dialogues. Among the ASEAN countries, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand developed major commercial links with India. In fact, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia have concluded separate free trade agreements with India in addition to the ten-nation ASEAN-India Free Trade Area that came into existence in January 2010 after seven years of negotiations. The trade volume between the ASEAN countries and India grew from a modest $2.9 billion in 1993 to $86



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billion in 2020.25 The Narendra Modi government rebranded the policy as “Act East” in 2014 and initially pursued an activist agenda aimed at improving connectivity with ASEAN states via India’s northeast (which has produced only limited results). India’s unwillingness to join the fifteen-member Regional Economic Partnership (RCEP) Free Trade Agreement among East and Southeast Asian states has dented hopes for a major economic relationship emerging with ASEAN in the immediate future. India feared that China would use ASEAN countries as platforms to export manufactured goods to India as the trade balance heavily favours China. Other Asian trading states, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, have developed extensive links with India in the economic arena, and all three have been active investors in the Indian economy. Seoul has already concluded a Free Trade Agreement with India which came into force in January 2010. India’s economic relations with China saw much upswing during the past two decades. From a paltry $2.92 billion in 2000, it reached $86.7 billion in 2020 and it grew 62.7 percent in the first half of 2021, despite the border tensions, making Beijing the leading single trade partner for India.26 What is surprising is the quantum increase in trade links occurring even when political and strategic relations have not been warm. This trade relationship is not without contention as China has a favorable balance of trade, with India importing many manufactured goods and machine tools, while Beijing imports Indian natural resources like iron ore. In line with its growing economic aspirations and desire to obtain oil and gas, India has built strong links with Central Asian, African, and Latin American countries. There has been some competition and cooperation between China and India in the development of new oil and gas resources in these countries.27 India’s special relationship with Iran is most interesting as it has seen ups and down along with US-led sanctions for Teheran’s nuclear program. India has been helping to build the Chabahar port and a railway in Iran as a way to reach Afghanistan, sidestepping Pakistan. India’s relations with Japan show much promise and accomplishment. From estranged democracies during and immediately after the Cold War, partly due to Japan’s opposition to India’s nuclear tests, today both countries see major improvements in economic and strategic ties. They have also conducted military exercises and weapons transfers. Since 2006 they have engaged in several summit meetings on both strategic and economic issues. Japan has been a lead investor in India in the area of infrastructure development. Moreover, Japan has slowly relaxed its opposition to India’s nuclear program. During the past decade many Asian states, especially Japan and ASEAN members, began to see India as a mature power and began to court it for strategic or economic reasons. The formation of the Quad grouping (US,

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Australia, Japan, India) has further strengthened the Japan-India strategic relationship. Today, India is viewed much more positively by most of the great powers. It is common for the leaders of these states to reaffirm India as a rising power or a great power when they visit New Delhi. What are the bases of India’s claim? INDIA AS A RISING POWER Realizing its putative power capabilities, leaders from the days of Nehru envisioned India achieving a leadership position in the world system. It is debatable whether they assiduously worked for it similar to China’s ruling elite, or if they developed a plan to reach the goal in the short and medium terms. India’s fractious democratic polity and the ideological hangovers dating back to the anti-colonial struggle have been part of the challenge, but it is the international and regional constraints that matter most. More significantly, although the economic achievements of India since 1991 are impressive, internally huge developmental challenges plague the country and the 2020–21 COVID-19 pandemic crisis has exposed the weaknesses of the Indian state even further. The limited progress in poverty alleviation owing to the two decade long stellar economic growth was overturned with the debilitating COVID-19 pandemic that killed many millions of Indians, presumably more than any other country in the world, even though the reported cases place India in third place behind the US and Brazil.28 Despite the lingering constraints, over the past six decades India has developed a number of hard power capabilities that are necessary ingredients for claiming great power status. India is perhaps the leading contender for major power status in the developing world in the twenty-first century due to its comprehensive national capabilities, defined in both hard and soft power resources. The hard power resources include extensive military capabilities, economic resources, and technological and demographic assets. According to estimates in 2021 India ranked fourth out of 140 countries in Global Firepower.29 The soft power assets include leadership in international institutions, cultural appeal, democracy, secularism, and a federal polity.30 Moreover, India is geographically situated at a major strategic location, with the Indian Ocean being crucial waters for the world’s oil transportation. The Indo-Pacific is today the most significant strategic arena for great power competition and India plays a significant strategic position due to its location and military/economic prominence. In addition, among most of the emerging powers, India has shown the highest inclination, in terms of its elite and public positioning and



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in terms of its invocation of its grand civilizational history, for the position of a major power even if it is not aggressively pursuing that goal. More concretely, what are the sources of India’s aspirations in this regard? The prospects of an aspiring power to obtain great power status depend on the availability of adequate hard and soft power resources, and their utilization for the achievement of national objectives in a well-crafted strategy. How does India fare in these dimensions of power and its exercise? Hard Power Resources In terms of military power India has always been a pivotal player for the security order in the larger Indian Ocean and South Asian regions. In recent years it has made some major strides in broadening its reach beyond the immediate region. In manpower, with 1.32 million regular troops, India has the third-largest armed forces after China and the United States in the world. In terms of conventional capabilities it has air, naval, and land assets that it can now extend beyond the immediate South Asian region to a shorter periphery, such as Southeast Asia and the Persian Gulf. It has acquired nuclear weapons and delivery systems, including intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) that can reach major cities of China. The shorter-range Prithvi and Agni I and II missiles are meant for deterrence against Pakistan, while the Agni III has a reach of 3,000 kilometers that can offer a key deterrent toward China. In 2012 and 2013 it tested a 5,000-kilometer-range Agni V, an intercontinental ballistic missile that can hit most of China, including Beijing. It is working on even longer-range intercontinental ballistic missiles with a range of 10,000 kilometers, but it is unlikely to deploy or develop them in the near term due to concerns about potential implications for relations with the United States. India is also acquiring capabilities in the naval area such as nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, and air power that would extend its power projection capabilities to the larger Asia-Pacific region. Moreover, if the planned deployment of missile defense systems materializes, India may have defensive capacities as well. In recent years, India has been on a major arms-buying spree in its efforts to replace its aging fighter jets, aircraft carriers, battlefield tanks, and other systems that will give it an edge in technological capabilities vis-à-vis major regional rivals. During the period between 2016 and 2020, India emerged as the world’s number two arms importer partly because its domestic arms industry is not fully able to meet the growing demand of its armed forces.31 In terms of economic power India is already the world’s fourth largest economy by way of purchasing power parity (PPP). It will become a leading

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economy by the middle of the twenty-first century if its growth rate continues at the present level. This outcome has been possible because of an annual growth rate of 6 percent. If this trend continues, India’s GDP will double every ten to twelve years or so. A quadrupling of the economy in the space of thirty years could dramatically alter India’s power position, especially given the prospect that many developed countries are unlikely to grow at that rate. The possibility exists that in dollar terms the Indian economy could become number three in the next decade, and number two by 2050.32 Since the mid1980s, India’s growth has been incremental, but it has accelerated between 1991 and 2012, only to decelerate to 5.5 percent or so by 2013 partly because of a global slowdown. A growing capitalist class is emerging in India which is making use of economic globalization fairly effectively. India has been producing many billionaires in that process while widening the gap between the rich and the poor. More reforms in various areas could make Indian economic growth even bigger and more sustainable. This economic change has foreign policy, as well as strategic, implications. However, a dramatic opening of the economy, or the building up of a strong manufacturing sector, or the adoption of an intensive export-driven strategy like China’s is politically difficult for India. The fractious political system constrains India in adopting a blitzkrieg economic strategy. But India’s development seems more stable and locally generated, relying on knowledge-based industries which are likely to stay pivotal for growth in the twenty-first century. India’s concentration on services has worked so far given the availability of a skilled and semi-skilled workforce, but it has not fully developed its manufacturing potential. Technological assets are linked to both economic and military power, and in India’s case these are most noticeable in the information and space arenas. India’s space program has succeeded in placing different categories of satellites in orbit and in developing and deploying multiple types of launch vehicles. With the launch of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), India has been able to place heavier remote-sensing satellites at higher altitudes. On April 18, 2001, India used the GSLV (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle) to place a 1.53-ton communications satellite in orbit. In April 2008, India launched ten satellites using a single launch vehicle. It sent a vehicle to the moon in October 2008 that brought back samples of water. In December 2013, India succeeded in sending a small unmanned probe to Mars. In July 2019 it sent the second mission to moon. India’s Space Research Organization, ISRO, is also a major commercial satellite launcher for many countries.33 India’s space capabilities will likely give it a key role in the future international system, especially if space becomes militarized and there is competition among the major powers for control of it. India is also a leading



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power in the area of information technology (IT), which now accounts for 5 percent of the country’s GDP. In software development, application, and exports, India has benefited much from the globalization process and the interactions of Indian multinationals with their American counterparts. Demographic assets also provide India certain advantages and disadvantages. India will have the largest population of working age in the world during the next three decades or so. Between 2000 and 2020, India will add 310 million people to its population. The median age of the Indian population in 2020 was estimated at 28.7 to China’s 38.4.34 Although 25 percent of the Indian population still lives in abject poverty, the low age of the working population brings certain advantages. However, clear policy initiatives, especially in education and poverty alleviation, are needed to bring this population to productive use. Considerable social and economic disparities exist in Indian society along caste, class, and gender bases, making it difficult to use the population asset optimally. In terms of soft power indicators, India’s position is significantly high in some areas, while it has considerable potential in others. The key ingredients of India’s soft power resources are its multiethnic society, peace-generating civilizational values (including religious and philosophical ideals), rich traditional culture and religions, and unique art forms and literature. More importantly, contemporary India possesses crucial values and ideas that have great promise for managing multiethnic societies, especially in the developing world. These arise from the institutional structures that its first prime minister, Nehru, helped to instill in India: democracy, secularism, federalism, and the three-language formula. As the twenty-first century advances, India is slowly making use of its soft power assets as the global media are paying much attention to it. However, harnessing soft power resources effectively would require India to become a more equitable society and a global economic power—that is, a state whose economy commands a major share of the global wealth, especially global trade and investment, but one that values fairness and equity. The BJP government’s Hindutwa (Hinduness) agenda and several anti-minority policies have dented India’s secular credentials while the government has undercut some of the key liberal-democratic freedoms including freedom of the press and expression. One area where India has increased strength is at the global institutional level. Its membership in leading organizations of the world such as the G20, BRICS, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) gives it a unique opportunity to influence global negotiations, especially on climate and trade talks. India has played a leading role in world trade negotiations in the Doha Round, as well as in climate change negotiations, along with China and Brazil, and has emerged as a veto player, whose agreement is crucial to the conclusion

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of any such deals in the future. At the United Nations, India has long been a very active provider of peacekeeping forces. It is not a permanent member of the Security Council yet, but this might be a continuing issue for India’s peaceful integration into the world order. The invitation of India as a special attendee to the G7 in recent years has given India a higher profile among the developing countries. INDIA’S LINGERING CONSTRAINTS India faces several constraints at the international, regional, domestic, and perceptual levels in achieving a global leadership role in the near term. At the international level, India’s late arrival as an independent state in 1947, two years after the post–World War II order was finalized in San Francisco, precluded a leading role in the UN system. The UN Security Council was set up then, with five permanent members who were allies in the winning coalition of the war. That setup still continues because the leading powers, as well as many developing countries in the Security Council, are unwilling to alter the composition of the council. No systemic event has yet taken place to upset the post–World War II order in terms of the structure of international institutional governance. The Cold War rivalry caused India to avoid joining alliances and led it to pursue a non-aligned policy that allowed it to somewhat compensate for the immediate dearth of hard power resources. However, India’s quasialliance with the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s precluded Western support for it to achieve a leading role. Regionally, India has been constrained by the conflict with Pakistan and China and the need to divide its military forces into two fronts. The relations with China have worsened and today India has increased its military presence in the 2,167-mile-long border. The on-and-off alliance that the United States and Pakistan have traversed, and China’s continuing alliance with Pakistan, have constrained India’s power position in the region. The conflict in Kashmir has also consumed a considerable amount of Indian attention, and it is still simmering partly due to Pakistan’s support to Kashmiri groups seeking independence. In recent years, India has been affected by the weak states populating its neighborhood—especially Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. All these states have internal conflicts that have impacted India as well. Nepal has emerged as a major source of security challenges to India through the Maoists (Naxalites) who now form a corridor in India’s tribal belts from the north to the south. Large-scale migration from Bangladesh has caused internal conflict in Assam and Tripura as well.



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The external challenges have been accentuated by the weak-state syndrome of India itself. The Indian state has strengths in some areas, but it is often called a “soft state” when dealing with pressing national problems. Many parts of India, especially states such as Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand, are similar to sub-Saharan Africa in terms of poverty levels and the poor state of governance and infrastructure. The Naxalites have maintained off-and-on control of much of the tribal belt land of central India, and the state’s inability to integrate or suppress them generates high levels of internal violence. Terrorist groups, some internal and others externally sponsored, cause much mayhem in India. The ability of the state to provide public goods and services, especially in the health and human security areas, has been stagnant despite the fact that the Indian state at every level has acquired considerable resources in the globalization era. The poor handling of the second wave of the COVID pandemic crisis in May 2021 showed the weaknesses of the Indian state. India is yet to utilize its soft power resources effectively. Strategy and diplomacy are crucial components of soft power to compensate for some of the weaknesses in the hard power area. Moreover, effective utilization of national power would require a proper grand strategy. Until recently, the Indian elite avoided this subject due to the fractious nature of its domestic politics. Grand strategy in contemporary times focuses not only on military security, but on economic security as well. It attempts to increase the wealth of the country since economic capability is equally important in gaining and retaining a state’s power position. A grand strategy is often an intervening variable in translating a state’s capabilities into actual power and influence in the international system. India’s lack of a proper grand strategy may be due to the need to accommodate divergent interest groups and political ideologies within India. CHANGING STRATEGIC CIRCUMSTANCES Since 2000, India’s strategic position had improved appreciably. Many factors are responsible for this change. Most prominently, the United States has increasingly perceived India’s potential in balancing against China. It can be argued that economic liberalization, sustained economic growth, favorable changes to the strategic environment, nuclear tests and the declaration of a no-first-use policy, and a measured response to Pakistani provocations have earned India the status of a “mature regional power.” Arguably, through its nuclear tests in 1998 India repositioned itself from a largely marginal player

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in the international system to a serious candidate or contender for major power status.35 The test allowed India to get out of its fence-sitter mode on the nuclear weapons issue. Had it remained there, India would have been clubbed along with Iran and North Korea by non-proliferation advocates. It is true though that in the immediate aftermath of the tests India’s relations with Pakistan deteriorated as the so-called stability-instability paradox entered the strategic relationship between these two states.36 Despite the initial intense opposition by the major powers, all of them in the end entered into a strategic or security dialogue with India. The reason for India’s acceptance as a de facto nuclear power by the international community is the realization among leading states that, with two nuclear rivals and no membership in nuclear protected alliances, India may well have different security dynamics from those other countries pursuing the nuclear option. Moreover, India has behaved maturely in the nuclear proliferation arena by refraining from offering assistance to other states seeking nuclear weapons.37 The strategic dialogue with the United States and other major powers has also helped India in clarifying its objectives, but greater levels of cooperation would require concrete policy postures and advancements in capabilities. Some incremental but crucial changes have taken place in India’s foreign policy over the past two decades that reflect the economic and strategic realities outlined above. The foreign policy changes are also driven by the conviction of the Indian elite that they ought to make use of the favorable economic and strategic circumstances in order to emerge as a leading world power. These new attitudes are caused by changes in the international system, as well as India’s internal confidence deriving from newfound economic progress.38 There are multiple elements to the new foreign policy dynamism that India has exhibited over recent years. The first is the deepening of the strategic and economic relationship with the United States. Second is the effort to improve relations with all other major powers. Third is the increased vigor in pursuing the Act East policy toward its ASEAN neighbors and East Asian states. Fourth is engaging with pivotal rising or resurging power centers such as China, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa in order to form bargaining groups that would strengthen India’s position in world trade forums and on other issues. Fifth is India’s focus on economic diplomacy including a vigorous search for new oil and gas sources in Africa and Latin America. Sixth, India is building up its armed forces as well as military hardware even while pursuing dialogue with neighboring states. And finally, it is continuing the peace process with Pakistan and China, although major concessions from the Indian side on the border issues are unlikely to come anytime soon, largely because of the constraints operating in the fractious democratic polity.



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Deepening Ties with the United States The change in US attitude toward India began in the early 1990s when—in response to the Soviet collapse—India began to adjust its foreign policy. However, the nuclear issue intervened as a significant stumbling block. The 1998 nuclear tests by India caused a major furore in international relations, and the US response was harsh, with Washington and its allies imposing a series of sanctions on New Delhi. However, the United States and India initiated a dialogue which eased many of the irritants. The 1999 Kargil conflict was a watershed for India-US relations, especially when President Bill Clinton sided with India and forced Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to commit to a withdrawal of Pakistani forces from the Kargil Hills on the Indian side that the former had occupied. The Clinton visit to India in March 2000 was a major success, but it was the George W. Bush administration that initiated major changes in US policy toward India, especially in the nuclear area. The 1995 India-US nuclear deal that President Bush signed with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh elevated India to the status of a de facto nuclear weapon state while allowing it to engage in international nuclear trade. A series of steps were undertaken, including India bifurcating its civilian and military facilities, the Hyde Act which exempted non-NPT signatory India from nuclear trade sanctions, and the 123 Agreement and the waivers from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as well as the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in September 2008. In the post–September 11 world the Indian perception of the United States has changed in a big way. The US war on terror in Afghanistan against Islamic radicals is part of the reason for the change. It is very plausible that had there been no September 11 attacks, India-US relations would have matured even further. The need for Pakistan’s support in the war in Afghanistan somewhat mellowed the level of cooperation that the United States could develop with India. The Modi government also has managed to keep the relationship growing during the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden in the strategic realm in particular and some meaningful improvement in trade and investment areas have also taken place. A number of concrete steps have been taken to strengthen this relationship. They include the joint exercises that Indian and US militaries have conducted, several defense deals that made the United States one of the leading sources of weapons for India, cooperation in the energy field, and bilateral strategic dialogues. Several rounds of dialogue have been held at the US secretary of state–Indian foreign minister levels. The elevation of India as a “Major Defense Partner” in 2016, the different naval agreements on logistics and communications have offered the two militaries, especially the navies, to cooperate in the increasingly competitive Indo-Pacific strategic domain

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vis-à-vis China. Two-way trade has also seen a considerable increase over the years. It is not only US companies that invest in India, but the reverse, with more and more Indian companies bringing capital to the United States. The two-way trade in 2020 stood at $78.284 billion.39 India has also maintained strong ties with Russia, especially as its traditional source of weapons acquisition. It is, however, difficult to see the emergence of a deep strategic relationship (as transpired during the Cold War era) even if Russia emerges as a global power once again. This is because India has been diversifying its economic and military sources and Russia has only very limited non-military and non-oil resources for India’s fast-globalizing economy. With respect to China, India’s foreign policy has maintained an outward cordiality, but there are ongoing tensions in relations. Over the past few years, several border incidents of Chinese troop intrusions in disputed areas have occurred which are not reported by the world media but are picked up by the Indian media. These incidents reflect the continued rivalry that these states have over territory, influence, and policies over Tibet, Pakistan, and the emerging US-India relationship. China has also incurred Indian hostility by affixing stapled visas for residents of Jammu, Kashmir, and Arunachal Pradesh, the latter it considers as part of its extended territorial claim. As China attempts to expand its military bases in Tibet and its economic and potentially military outposts in the Indian Ocean rim countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma, and Pakistan, India is pressured to counter such moves as evident in the increased activism by the two states in Burma. The increasing economic links between China and India somewhat cushion the rivalry from escalating to a full-fledged military competition, but this could change. The relationship transformed into an active rivalry under Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi. India’s refusal to join BRI and RCEP has posed some challenges to China’s ambitions for domination in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. The PLA increased its military activities on the border and the two significant clashes—in 2017 Dokhlam and 2020 in Eastern Ladakh—have embittered the relationship even further. China is particularly unhappy with India joining the Quad as it fears a US-India military alliance will be a strong balancing force against its aspirations. EXPLAINING FOREIGN POLICY CHANGE IN INDIA From an international relations perspective, it is intriguing to identify what generates change and continuity in India’s foreign policy behavior. Change in foreign policy can be explained using theories at three levels of analysis



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pertaining to systemic, state (internal), and individual factors. Systemic-level factors are externally driven such as the end of the Cold War, or the rise of China and the dominance of the United States. Internal factors could be the orientation of the political and bureaucratic elite, as well as domestic economic considerations. The absence of strategic elite thinking or a consensus to make judgments on foreign policy issues could be an internal constraint. Individual-level factors include leaders’ perceptions and their capacity to make informal policy assessments and choices. In India’s case, factors at all these levels have influenced or constrained India’s foreign policy options. It must be remembered that the systemic and sub-systemic factors act as underlying variables for foreign policy outcomes. It is the domestic- and individual-level variables that shape the policy choices in most critical dimensions. Yet the big changes in Indian foreign policy cannot be attributed without reference to systemic and external variables such as the end of the Cold War, as well as the intensified globalization phenomenon in which India has actively participated. It must be recognized that India has changed course from its earlier non-aligned posture to a player willing to engage in limited balance of power. Even when there has been no overarching strategic planning, some level of strategic formulation has developed, especially under the governments of Manmohan Singh and his predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. There is something of a consensus among leading political parties in India on the need to form limited alignments with Western powers and Japan in view of the rise of China, even when there are still calls from influential opinion makers in favor of adopting a modified non-aligned posture.40 In the second decade of the twenty-first century, India has come a long way from its isolation and is looked upon as a policy partner by most Asian and Western powers. Among the international relations theory perspectives, neo-classical Realism best explains India’s foreign policy behavior. According to this perspective, systemic variables have to be factored through domestic-level and individual-level variables in order to understand the particular foreign policy choices of a country.41 Neo-classical Realists believe that the scope and ambition of foreign policy are primarily determined by systemic factors and the material capabilities of states vis-à-vis other actors. However, intervening variables at the state and individual level affect the manner in which a state formulates its foreign policy as well as responds to systemic opportunities and constraints. Elite perceptions affect how they respond to foreign policy challenges and opportunities. Thus, for neo-classical Realists, particular national contexts matter for foreign policy outcomes more than structural realists account for.42 The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union affected India like all other states in the

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world. This systemic event did make the initial push for change in offering policy adaptation. India in particular lost its patron, and this affected the Indian position and economic situation. The closed economic model also showed its failure. However, the manner in which India changed, and its lingering difficulties in coming up with a concrete policy posture, suggests that domestic politics still matter in how India responds to its new environment. India’s slow but steady acquisition of capabilities, both military and economic, as well as its efforts to acquire major power status suggest that systemic factors are working behind these policy choices, although they often appear to be lacking in cohesion or concerted effort. FUTURE STRATEGIC TRAJECTORIES In the next decade India is likely to pursue both limited hard-balancing and low-cost soft-balancing strategies to achieve its security and economic objectives. It is unlikely to conclude a deep alliance with any of the great powers but may indeed pursue a somewhat limited coalition strategy using soft balancing techniques even when it is not stating so. The state of relations among the great powers is a major variable in this approach. Although situations can change, and crises can develop over Taiwan or in relations between Japan and China, the US and China, or the US and Russia, the prospects of intense hardbalancing—based on arms build-ups and alliances—emerging in Asia anytime soon look low. Hedging, economic balancing, limited hard-balancing, and soft-balancing are all more likely strategies for states including India in the foreseeable future. For concerned states, including the United States, India’s economic and military development may be important for neutralizing China’s dominance in Asia and beyond. While the full economic containment of China is difficult, economic balancing may be possible. The sheer existence of multiple economic powerhouses, such as India and Japan in Asia, may mellow China, especially in the strategic arena. Tight Cold War–era-style alignments are also unlikely to succeed because of the absence of intense ideological competition among the great power states. In the face of its regional challenges from Pakistan and China, India is likely to expand its nuclear capability by doubling it to the two-hundredweapon range, but it is unlikely to go for an expansive nuclear force (as some critics fear). Considerable internal and external constraints exist to prevent such a move. India may have little to gain by acquiring too many nuclear weapons, unless it has a first-use posture. Doctrine and the strategic environment rule that possibility out, at least for now. However, a steady expansion



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of naval power by India is likely in the face of China’s growing capabilities and the expected reduction of US projection capabilities in Asia. Globalization has created both opportunities and constraints for India and other states in Asia. They have more money to arm, but fewer propensities to wage wars as the costs of war are too high. In Asia, a partial stability has emerged that is both deterrence based and economic interdependence based. A kind of mixed Realist-Liberal world is emerging which is more complex than the one during the Cold War era. More nuanced tools may be necessary for states to tackle the multifarious problems they encounter. However, increasing nationalism in China, and more belligerent actions by Beijing and an active US response, is changing the dynamics. Much will depend on how India sorts out its domestic politics. To sum up, the rise of India is occurring, and it has been a major beneficiary of the deepened globalization process in the post–Cold War era—but myriad domestic difficulties constrain India from pursuing a blitzkrieg strategy for obtaining its strategic or economic goals. It may well be a good thing for the international order that rising India is not a revisionist power, but one that seeks slow integration into the great power system while emerging as a bridge builder between various centers of power, as well as developing countries. NOTES 1. For these estimates, see World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator /NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?most_recent_value_desc=true. 2.  Soft balancing is a strategy using institutions, limited alliances or ententes, and economic instruments to constrain the power of a threatening state. Traditional hardbalancing strategies involve active and formal military alliances and/or intense arms build-ups to constrain or balance the power or the threatening behavior of an adversary. For more on this, see T. V. Paul, Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018). 3.  On China’s rise, see David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); and David Kang, China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 4.  Graham Allison, “What Xi Jinping Wants,” The Atlantic, May 31, 2017, https:// www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/what-china-wants/528561/. 5.  On this, see “Pivot to the Pacific? The Obama Administration’s ‘Rebalancing’ Toward Asia” (Congressional Research Service Report, March 28, 2012), http://www .fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/ R42448.pdf. 6.  On this see, Abhinjan Rej, “In ‘Historic’ Summit Quad Commits to Meeting Key Indo-Pacific Challenges,” The Diplomat, March 13, 2021, https://thediplo mat.com/2021/03/in-historic-summit-quad-commits-to-meeting-key-indo-pacific -challenges/.

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7.  See “India’s Engagement with G7 Stands on Its Own, Govt Looking Forward to COP26: MEA,” Hindustan Times, June 13, 2021, https://www.hindustantimes.com /india-news/indias-engagement-with-g7-stands-on-its-own-govt-looking-forward-to -cop26-mea-101623592786855.html. 8.  On this, see T. V. Paul and Mahesh Shankar, “Status Accommodation through Institutional Means: India’s Rise and the Global Order,” in Status in World Politics, eds. T. V. Paul, Deborah Larson, and William Wohlforth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), chap. 7. 9.  For these figures, see Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987), 149. 10.  On the US policy toward Pakistan and India in the 1950s, see Robert J. McMahon, Cold War in the Periphery: The United States, India and Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 11.  Dennis Kux, India and the United States, Estranged Democracies (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1992). 12.  M. S. Rajan, Studies on India’s Foreign Policy (New Delhi: ABC Publishing, 1993), 220–22. 13.  Raju G. C. Thomas, Indian Security Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 185. 14.  See T. V. Paul, ed., The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Stephen P. Cohen, Shooting for a Century (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2013). 15.  On this, see John W. Garver, Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001). 16.  See Bruce Reidel, JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA, and the Sino-Indian War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2015). 17.  Richard Sisson and Leo E. Rose, War and Secession: Pakistan, India and the Creation of Bangladesh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 18.  On this, see T. V. Paul, “The Systemic Bases of India’s Challenge to the Global Nuclear Order,” Non-Proliferation Review 6, no. 1 (Fall 1998): 1–11; George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 19.  On India’s reforms, see Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, Why Growth Matters (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013); Baldev Raj Nayar, India’s Globalization: Evaluating the Economic Consequences (Washington, DC: East-West Center, 2006). 20.  T. V. Paul, ed., South Asia’s Weak States (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011). 21.  The doctrine propounded by former Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral when he was External Affairs Minister during 1996 contained five principles: India will not seek reciprocity with its smaller South Asian neighbors such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka; the countries shall not allow their territories to be used against another country; they shall not interfere in each other’s internal affairs; they shall respect each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; and they shall settle their disputes through peaceful bilateral negotiations. On this, see “Opinion: Gujral Doctrine,” Calibre, December 4, 2012, http://thecalibre.in/in-depth-current -affairs/opinion-gujral-doctrine/122012/?p=2344.



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22.  Sankaran Krishna, Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka, and the Question of Nationhood (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). 23.  For the various causes of this rivalry, see T. V. Paul, The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), chap. 4; Paul, The India-Pakistan Conflict; Cohen, Shooting for a Century; T. V. Paul, “Why Has the India-Pakistan Rivalry Been So Enduring? Power Asymmetry and an Intractable Conflict,” Security Studies 15, no. 4 (October–December 2006): 600–30. 24.  David Sacks, “The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor—Hard Reality Greets BRI’s Signature Initiative,” New York: Council on Foreign Relations, March 30, 2021, https://www.cfr.org/blog/china-pakistan-economic-corridor-hard-reality -greets-bris-signature-initiative. 25.  Value of Indian trade with ASEAN countries in financial year 2020, by country, Stastia.org, https://www.statista.com/statistics/650795/trade-value-asean-countries -with-india/. 26. “Despite Border Tensions, India-China Trade Grows 62.7% To $57.4 Billion In H1,” Business Today, July 13, 2021, https://www.businesstoday.in/latest /economy/story/despite-border-tensions-india-china-trade-grows-627-to-574-billion -in-h1-301261-2021-07-13. 27.  Chris Alden, “China in Africa,” Survival 47, no. 3 (Autumn 2005): 147–64. 28. According to one report, more than three million died in India or ten times more people due to the pandemic than reported. See Karan Deep Singh, “India’s True Pandemic Death Toll Is Likely to Be Well Over 3 Million, a New Study Finds,” New York Times, July 20, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/20/world/asia/india -covid-pandemic-excess-deaths.html. 29.  On this see Global Firepower, “2022 Global Military Strength,” https://www .globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.php?country_id=india. 30. For these, see Baldev Raj Nayar and T. V. Paul, India in the World Order: Searching for Major Power Status (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). On India’s search for major power status, see Stephen P. Cohen, India: Emerging Power (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2002); Henry R. Nau and Deepa M. Ollapally, eds., Worldviews of Aspiring Powers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 31.  SIPRI Fact Sheet, March 2021, https://sipri.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/fs _2103_at_2020.pdf. 32.  Goldman Sachs, “Ten Things for India to Achieve Its 2050 Potential.” 33. Anubhavi Yadav, “These 7 Turning Points in India’s Space Race Made Us a Global Force,” Times Now, updated March 4, 2021, https://www.timesnownews .com/india/article/these-7-turning-points-in-indias-space-race-made-us-a-global -force/727779. 34.  Central Intelligence Agency, World Fact Book, 2021. 35.  Nayar and Paul, India in the World Order. 36.  Paul Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); Vipin Narang, “Posturing for Peace? Pakistan’s Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability,” International Security 34, no. 3 (Winter 2010): 38–78.

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37.  Mohammed Ayoob, “Nuclear India and Indian-American Relations,” Orbis 43, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 59–74. 38.  On India’s foreign policy adaptation, see C. Raja Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 39. United States Census Bureau, “Foreign Trade,” https://www.census.gov/for eign-trade/balance/c5330.html. 40.  Nonalignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the TwentyFirst Century, New Delhi, Center for Policy Research, 2012, http://www.cprindia.org /working papers/3844-nonalignment-20-foreign-and-strategic-policy-india-twenty -first-century. 41.  For this perspective, see Steven E. Lobell, Norrin M. Ripsman, and Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, eds., Neoclassical Realism, the State and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 42.  Gideon Rose, “Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy,” World Politics 51, no. 1 (October 1998): 144–78. See, also, Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

Part Four

SUBREGIONAL ACTORS

Chapter Eight

Southeast Asian States and ASEAN A Center of Courtships and Cooperation C heng -C hwee K uik

Except during the Vietnam War, Southeast Asia as a region and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a regional organization have for decades been largely off the radar screens of policymakers in Washington and other Western capitals.1 As areas of academic enquiry, Southeast Asia and ASEAN are also of peripheral interest to many scholars in international relations (IR) and Asian IR.2 This is perhaps not surprising to those who view international politics from the perspectives of power and might. After all, Southeast Asia, unlike Northeast and South Asia, is a region absent indigenous major powers or nuclear states. With the exception of Indonesia, all the other ten Southeast Asian states are small or medium-sized countries in terms of their territories and populations (see figure 8.1. and table 8.1). As militarily weaker states with limited resource bases and small domestic markets, all the Southeast Asian states are vulnerable—some more than others—to such external shocks as security threats, political interference, and economic crises. As a group, ASEAN—a regional organization and not an alliance—is frequently stereotyped by observers as ineffective and incapable of resolving serious regional issues. THE STRENGTHS OF THE WEAK Yet, despite all the perceived weaknesses and inherent limitations, Southeast Asia and ASEAN have played central roles in shaping post–Cold War Asian international relations—chiefly by building institutions, bridging interests, and binding countries to facilitate region wide cooperation, contributing to regional peace and stability amid uncertainties. None of these accomplishments should be taken for granted, though, especially considering Southeast 189

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Figure 8.1.  Map of Southeast Asia Source: Author’s diagram.

Asia’s problematic past. After all, Southeast Asia was once described as the “Balkans of the East,” with individual countries struggling with post–World War II imperialist legacies and intraregional problems, while suffering from big power proxy conflicts throughout the Cold War. Presently, because of the widening ASEAN-led regional multilateralism, deepening Asia-wide economic interdependence, and the growing US-China rivalry, Southeast Asia and ASEAN have become the center of courtships and cooperation in Asia. Southeast Asia is the area “where great powers meet,” as aptly put by David Shambaugh.3 Located where the Indian and Pacific Oceans converge, Southeast Asian states are being courted by all the major powers and key players, as the “Indo-Pacific” construct evolves into a strategic reality. This chapter argues that such trends underscore the quiet but growing value, significance, and institutional strengths of Southeast Asia and ASEANled mechanisms. The small state-led, norm-based multilateralism may be



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ineffective in dealing with hard-security and sovereignty-related issues, but it is indispensable in providing region wide public goods that none of the powerful external actors can or could be expected to deliver: inclusive platforms for uninterrupted cooperation and institution-building processes beneficial to all sides, the competing powers included. The big powers accept that the smaller states perform this role because the latter are weak and non-threatening to any of the extraregional powers. The decades-long cooperative processes at the ASEAN and ASEAN+ levels have also enabled the Southeast Asian countries—sovereign states with diverse interests, myriad internal challenges, and bilateral disputes among them—to manage their own intraregional differences and disputes through dialogue and consultation, instead of conflict and confrontation. This is not a trivial matter, as Southeast Asian states have had numerous past and present problems among themselves, which could have led them to rival each other like the way Northeast and South Asian states do. Such norm-based multilateral processes, of course, do not replace or eliminate power-based realities, but coexist and condition them. By complementing both the US-centered hub-and-spoke alliances and partnerships (including the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad) as well as the China-centered developmental networks, these multilateral processes contribute to regional stability and prosperity and enable cooperation, even as big power rivalries grow. The chapter proceeds in six sections. The first illustrates the Southeast Asian identities by discussing the region’s wide-ranging diversities. The second illuminates the importance of the region by identifying the conditions that make the region the center of courtships by powers far and near. The third explains why ASEAN, despite its weaknesses and limitations, has been indispensable for institution-building in Asia. The fourth underscores the key ASEAN states’ foreign policy aspirations and approaches. The fifth analyzes how the ASEAN states navigate among the big powers and unpacks why these states choose to hedge (avoiding taking sides and keeping their options open) the way they do. The sixth and concluding section highlights the key themes and main challenges for the future. SOUTHEAST ASIAN IDENTITIES: DEALING WITH DIVERSITIES Southeast Asia—with a wide spectrum of differences in virtually all the key sociocultural, political, and developmental attributes—is the most diverse subregion in Asia. Many of these differences resulted from centuries-long migrations, commercial exchanges, trade networks, and legacies of coloniza-

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tion by Western powers.4 They are also the products of the uneven pace of post-independence political and economic developments across the region.5 Socio-cultural heterogeneity across and within borders is a central feature of the region. Almost all Southeast Asian countries are ethnically or religiously plural societies, with some communities more segregated than others. Mainland Southeast Asian states are predominantly Theravada Buddhists, while most of the maritime Southeast Asian states are Muslim-majority countries, with the exceptions of the Philippines (where 80 percent of the population is Roman Catholic) and Singapore (where more than half its people practice a combination of Mahayana Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism). Internally, the socio-cultural and demographic differences—as marked by the presence of varying sizes of ethnic or religious minorities—are often a source of tensions and conflicts for many Southeast Asian countries. Identity diversities thus make nation- and state-building major challenges for all governments in Southeast Asia.6 Southeast Asian states also have highly diverse political systems and regime types.7 Some are democracies, albeit not necessarily liberal, and they often operate with various (dis)qualifying adjectives: ineffective or unstable (the Philippines after Marcos, Thailand in between military coups, Burma/ Myanmar before 1962 and under Aung San Suu Kyi, post-independence Timor-Leste); semi- or quasi- (Malaysia during and after Mahathir Mohamad, Singapore since independence, Indonesia under Suharto), and new or burgeoning (post–New Order Indonesia). Many other states are under various shades of authoritarian rule: Brunei is an absolute monarchy; Cambodia, under Hun Sen, is a strongman-authoritarianism; Vietnam and Laos are surviving communist polities; Myanmar and Thailand have been intermittently ruled by military regimes. In part because of the different government systems, the eleven Southeast Asian countries have displayed varying degrees of state strengths, political institutionalization, and civil society dynamics. They also vary in other governance aspects: Not all are modern republics (Thailand, Malaysia, and Cambodia have constitutional monarchs) and not all are unitary states (Malaysia is officially a federalist country). Regionally, not all are ASEAN member states (Timor-Leste is still on the group’s waiting list). Economically, there exists a huge diversity and disparity in terms of market sizes, developmental stages, industrial structures, growth outlooks, and national wealth levels across Southeast Asian countries (see table 8.1). Indonesia is the largest economy in the region, with a GDP of more than $1 trillion dollars. The top six economies in Southeast Asia—Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam—possess markets and industrial capacity that are more than twenty times larger than those of the smaller

5,770 181,040 1,916,862 236,800 330,345 676,590 300,000 719 513,120 14,870 331,230

Country

Brunei Darussalam Cambodia Indonesia Lao PDR Malaysia Myanmar Philippines Singapore Thailand Timor-Leste** Vietnam

437,483 16,718,971 273,523,621 7,275,556 32,365,998 54,409,794 109,581,085 5,685,807 69,779,978 1,318,442 97,338,583

Population 12 25 1,058 19 337 76 361 340 502 2 271

Aggregate (in billions) 27,466 1,513 3,870 2,630 10,402 1,400 3,299 59,798 7,189 1,381 2,786

Per Capita

GDP (in US Dollars)

65,662 4,422 12,073 8,234 27,887 4,794 8,390 98,526 18,236 3,356 8,651

Per Capita, PPP 1 23 14 16 8 23 10 0.03 9 14 15

Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing

59 35 38 32 36 36 28 24 33 29 34

Industry (including Construction)

Percentage of GDP, %*

42 36 44 41 55 41 61 71 58 57 42

Services

Source: World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/.

*The sum of GDP percentages for (a) Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing; (b) Industry (including Construction); and (c) Services does not add up to 100 percent because of statistical discrepancies. **The data for Timor-Leste are for 2019.

Size (in sq. km)

Table 8.1.  Southeast Asian Countries: Main Indicators, 2020

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ones combined (Timor-Leste, Brunei, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar). When their GDPs are added together, ASEAN economies constitute the sixth largest collective economy in the world. With a GDP per capita (based on purchasing power parity, PPP) of US$98,526, Singapore, which has an open, high-value, knowledge-driven economy, has the most developed economy and is the only country which has moved from third to the first world in the region. Singapore is followed by Brunei (US$65,662), Malaysia (US$27,887), and Thailand (US$18,236). Vietnam—which has fared better than most other countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and a main beneficiary of the US-China trade war, is among the fastest emerging economies in the region (alongside the Philippines and Cambodia). Overall, while Southeast Asian governments’ economic policies have lifted millions out of poverty, many gaps remain. As they move up their developmental ladders, all Southeast Asian countries face different degrees of income inequalities and sustainability deficits. Southeast Asia, therefore, is a region defined by diversities and differences, inherent or otherwise. These diversities are not only the principal identity characterizing the region, but also one of the primary factors conditioning and constraining the individual states’ internal and external policies, including shaping their bilateral relations and multilateral involvements.8 All Southeast Asian states are dealing with problems and challenges stemming from identity-related differences. These often heighten inter-elite power struggles and worsen socio-political cleavages, which, in turn, complicate nation- and state-building efforts in respective countries.9 Some— Myanmar, but also the Philippines and Thailand—are still confronted by violent internal conflicts involving ethnic or religious minorities (e.g., Yangon/Naypyitaw’s long-running conflicts with various armed ethnic groups, and Manila and Bangkok’s problems with Muslim separatist movements in the south of their countries). Indonesia has made some progress in managing several separatist and communal conflicts (e.g., Aceh, Maluku), but other localized incidents of identity-based violence persist, particularly in Poso and Papua. In some countries, political violence involves not only the ethnic minorities but also the majority groups (e.g., Indonesia and Malaysia face varying degrees of periodic threats from Islamist extremists and transnational terrorism). In more stable Southeast Asian states where violent conflicts are largely absent (e.g., Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos), minority grievances or other forms of societal tensions remain a key governance issue for the ruling elites. Some of these ethno-religious problems resulted from colonial legacies, others from contemporary internal movements, ideational cleavages, and/or government policies.10 Regardless, such problems have had multiple adverse



Southeast Asian States and ASEAN 195

effects internally and regionally: exhausting state resources, distracting the authorities from otherwise more important developmental and functional tasks and, in some cases, creating spill-over issues for neighboring countries—ranging from forced migration (e.g., Rohingya refugees), to crossborder armed robberies, kidnappings, and other forms of “grey-zone” conflicts (e.g., the security implications of the Mindanao situation in the Philippines for neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia). Yet, despite these heterogeneous attributes, a shared regional identity— driven primarily by common experiences and shared vulnerabilities—has gradually emerged among Southeast Asian countries. Historically, all of them were colonized (or dominated, in the case of Thailand) by Western powers. These experiences left deep post-colonial imprints on Southeast Asian shared- and self-identities. Their collective memory as the victims of imperialism—alongside their modern-day dealings with extraregional powers during the East-West confrontation and the present-day US-China rivalry—have combined to shape Southeast Asian states’ outlook as secondary or weaker states. This outlook, coupled with other factors discussed below, has pushed them to jointly build a regional community in a world dominated by powerful actors. Such community-building processes have progressed in stages: ASEAN was originally formed by five non-communist countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand) in August 1967 at the height of the Cold War, and joined by Brunei in 1984 (upon its independence). The ASEAN-Six was later enlarged to ASEAN-Ten when Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam (the CLMV countries) joined in the 1990s. The ASEAN community 2015 and its subsequent Vision 2025 have further reinforced a sense of shared future—and identity—among the smaller states, which, despite their differences, use ASEAN as a needed platform to tackle common external challenges, while focusing on internal nation- and state-building. As a result, a mindset has developed in Southeast Asia: an acceptance of living with diversities (internally and externally), an awareness of shared vulnerabilities, and a corresponding readiness to cooperate and compromise, especially when confronted by pressing common problems that cannot be dealt with alone.11 This mindset manifests in a cluster of contradictions: displaying a post-colonial outlook, yet demonstrating a pragmatism to work with extraregional powers and former foes for present and future benefits; acknowledging power asymmetries, yet insisting on sovereignty and selfpreservation; emphasizing national interests, yet respecting differences and investing in continuous region-building efforts to cultivate space for inclusive dialogue, consensus-building, and mutual accommodation.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF SOUTHEAST ASIA: A CENTER OF COURTSHIPS Over the past decade or so, Southeast Asia has been courted by the major and middle powers from within and outside Asia. Since the early 1990s, Southeast Asia has been the focus of China’s “good neighborhood policy” or “periphery diplomacy” (周边外交). The region was also the focus of the Obama administration’s “pivot” and “rebalancing” to Asia strategy. Although some momentum was lost during the Trump years, President Joseph Biden—who declared “America is back”—has sought to revitalize US alliances and partnerships in Southeast Asia (as elsewhere). In addition to Washington and Beijing, other powers have eyed Southeast Asia as the focus of their regional activism. Japan, India, and Australia—the countries which joined the United States to revive the Quad in 2017—have all emphasized partnerships with ASEAN as a vital part of their respective Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategies. The EU and its individual member states have launched their own Indo-Pacific policies one after another. Other “old” powers are “returning” to Southeast Asia as well. After a passive presence for decades, Russia is slowly getting more involved with Southeast Asia. So is post-Brexit Britain. These developments are taking place as India is upgrading its “Look East Policy” to an “Act East Policy” (described in T. V. Paul’s previous chapter), while South Korea and Taiwan are implementing their own “New Southern Policy” and “New Southbound Policy,” respectively, in Southeast Asia (see the chapters by Scott Snyder and Shelley Rigger). These are all indicators of the growing importance of Southeast Asia and ASEAN, notwithstanding their innate weaknesses. For geographic, economic, and strategic reasons, virtually all major actors and second-tier powers are devoting more attention and resources to compete in both military and non-military (e.g., infrastructure-building, public health, supply chains, digital and other technologies, transport connectivity, sustainable development) domains. Southeast Asia’s geographic location also places it at the center of international commercial and strategic lifelines. The region connects the Northeast Asian economic powerhouses—China, Japan, South Korea, and to some extent, Taiwan—with the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and other developmental zones of the global prosperity networks. The Straits of Malacca, the South China Sea, and other Southeast Asian waters (see figure 8.1) are among the busiest sea lines of communication in the world, vitally critical for seaborne trade, logistics and transport connectivity, offshore resource and fishing ac-



Southeast Asian States and ASEAN 197

tivities, as well as maritime safety and security not only for the littoral states, but also for user states and industrial stakeholders across the globe. These geographical factors—alongside Southeast Asia’s huge, young, and growing populations as well as their governments’ open trade policies—are continuously generating economic dividends and potential to countries within and without the region. As a whole, ASEAN has emerged as the top or one of the top trading partners of the world’s leading economies (see table 8.2). ASEAN became China’s number one trading partner in 2019. In the same year, it was also India’s leading trade partner, the second largest for South Korea and Australia, the third for Japan, as well as the fourth for the United States (after Canada, Mexico, and China), the EU (after the United States, China, and Switzerland), and Brazil (after China, the United States, and Argentina). Diplomatically and strategically, the fact that Southeast Asia is a region of eleven non-great powers presents the big powers with an infinite set of partnership opportunities at bilateral, minilateral, and regional levels. On one hand, participating in the ASEAN+ institutions opens channels of communication and cooperation not only with all the ASEAN states, but also with their partners in the development, diplomatic, and/or defense domains. On the other hand, an extraregional power’s initiative(s)—regardless of domain or level—usually takes off faster, farther, and wider, if and when it attracts most if not all Southeast Asian states to join. Examples include: Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC, est. 1989), the Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD, est. 2002), the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP, est. 2018), as well as China’s Xiangshan Forum (est. 2006) and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (est. 2015). In such institution-building and order-shaping processes, Southeast Asian states are neither mere followers nor passive partners. Rather, through ASEAN and the ASEAN+ multilateral institutions, the smaller states have exercised the “ASEAN Centrality” in shaping regional affairs and pursuing multi-domain cooperation that involve multiple extraregional partners. Centrality does not equate with dominant leadership—but rather being in a position, acknowledged and accepted by ASEAN’s extraregional partners, big and small, to perform several region-wide roles. These roles include convening concentric circles of ASEAN+ regional multilateral meetings (see figure 8.2 below); setting the agendas for these institutionalized forums; establishing the norms of interactions; as well as bringing together ASEAN’s dialogue partners across Asia and beyond for forging continuous institutionalized cooperation. Such roles have made ASEAN an increasingly indispensable pillar of post–Cold War Asian architecture.

Canada 618,966,992 Mexico 617,692,024 China 579,091,559 ASEAN 299,763,472 Japan 221,624,974

1

US 821,847,582 China 720,028,603 Switzerland 328,043,452 ASEAN 267,423,144 Russia 263,276,840

EU 15.634 trillion

Source: https://wits.worldbank.org/.

Unit: USD.

5

4

3

2

Ranking

US 21.433 trillion

Country

Japan 5.065 trillion China 303,901,431 US 221,681,122 ASEAN 213,996,114 South Korea 75,895,962 Australia 59,948,925

China 14.28 trillion

ASEAN 642,028,423 US 541,819,906 Japan 314,747,281 South Korea 284,538,129 Germany 184,743,303

ASEAN 91,289,635 US 89,206,166 China 85,680,926 UAE 59,848,237 Saudi Arabia 32,974,162

India 2.871 trillion

UK 2.831 trillion US 140,608,011 Germany 132,031,116 China 95,683,789 Netherlands 84,305,685 France 70,177,351 *ASEAN 31,745,285 (12th rank)

Table 8.2.  World’s Leading Economies’ Top Five Trading Partners (in US Dollars), 2019

China 98,628,338 US 60,277,371 Argentina 20,343,707 ASEAN 19,433,570 Germany 15,011,762

Brazil 1.878 trillion China 111,463,481 Germany 53,159,860 Netherlands 48,765,814 Belarus 35,371,571 US 26,618,254 *ASEAN 13,964,918 (14th rank)

Russia 1.687 trillion

China 243,430,695 ASEAN 151,238,734 US 135,704,041 Japan 75,999,206 Australia 28,487,869

South Korea 1.674 trillion

China 159,942,401 ASEAN 63,557,902 Japan 54,926,913 US 36,396,921 South Korea 26,100,856

Australia 1.397 trillion



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ASEAN TODAY: INADEQUATE BUT INDISPENSABLE As a regional institution, on the one hand, ASEAN is flawed, ineffective, and often fails to produce the expected effects on some issues—but it is also indispensable in several areas. This is primarily a result of the origins and organizational features of ASEAN, in turn the products of historical, domestic, and structural realities. This section depicts what ASEAN is (and is not), before tracing the factors driving and limiting the evolution of ASEAN, illuminating the institutional features of the ASEAN+ mechanisms, as well as assessing the key functions and flaws of the ASEAN-based system. ASEAN is an intergovernmental organization, not a supranational entity and, as noted at the outset of this chapter, it is a regional grouping, not a military alliance. As the most dynamic regional institution in the developing world, ASEAN is often compared with the European Union, the most successfully integrated regional body in the world. This comparison is understandable, but it often leads to wrong assumptions and false expectations. ASEAN is not the same as the EU. They developed out of different historical contexts and respond to different contemporary needs. The EU is a highly institutionalized body with formal and legalistic mechanisms, whereas the ASEAN member states have deliberately kept ASEAN moderately institutionalized, sustained by relatively informal and ambiguous arrangements. Here lies the biggest distinction between them: unlike the European countries which formed the EU to ease their respective national sovereignty for regional interests (having learned from two disastrous world wars), Southeast Asian states created ASEAN as a platform to protect and advance—not erode—their own national sovereignty. The smaller states drew different lessons from their history. Because of their bitter experiences as subjects of imperialist exploitation, none of the post-colonial states in Southeast Asia want their regional grouping to function as a supranational entity that would encroach their sovereignty or undermine their hard-won independence. Factors Driving the Creation and Evolution of ASEAN Historical reasons aside, there are domestic and structural conditions underpinning the origins, evolution, and organizational features of ASEAN as a loosely institutionalized grouping. Domestically, the primacy of nationbuilding and state-building have necessitated successive ruling elites across Southeast Asian capitals to develop a workable regional platform, based on the prevailing needs and circumstances of the day. To concentrate on tackling the myriad, more pressing challenges at home, the elites all want a stable external environment and a productive regional grouping—one that serves

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and supports their own internal tasks, rather than constrains or complicates them. Hence, they prefer a flexible, gradually institutionalized ASEAN that allows them to pursue their shared external goals, but not an overly institutionalized entity that might undermine their sacrosanct autonomy. The authoritarian regimes of some ASEAN states are also concerned that a highly institutionalized regional group would be intrusive, tying their hands and limiting their options domestically. Structurally, as weaker states with numerous domestic and regional problems but not much capacity to deal with extraregional powers, Southeast Asian states have pressing need of a collective platform to manage their relations while carrying out collective actions for tackling shared external challenges and pursuing shared goals that cannot be accomplished alone. Such structural logic—coupled with the domestic drivers noted above—determine the prioritized functions of ASEAN. They are, first and foremost, managing intraregional problems and disputes, followed by mitigating all external challenges—that is, extraregional powers, cyclical economic pressures, as well as traditional and “non-traditional” security (NTS) issues. Indeed, the raison d’être of ASEAN formation was more intraregional than extraregional dynamics. The intraregional issues—political and territorial problems between and among the Southeast Asian states—were also the reasons the predecessors of ASEAN failed to launch in the early 1960s. In February 1961, the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA) was formed by Malaya, the Philippines, and Thailand. The association, however, fell apart in two years as a result of the dispute over Manila’s claim to the Malaysian state of Sabah. Maphilindo (for MAlaya, the PHILippines, and INDOnesia), founded in August 1963, suffered the same fate. Maphilindo ended a month later when Manila and Jakarta broke off diplomatic ties with Kuala Lumpur, in the wake of the formation of the Federation of Malaysia with the merger of Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo (Sabah), and Sarawak. From 1963 to 1966, Indonesia under Sukarno launched Konfrontasi, a low-intensity military campaign against the newly-formed Malaysia. It was not until the regional states reconciled in the Konfrontasi aftermath that ASEAN was born on August 8, 1967, with the primary aim of preventing the recurrence of a Konfrontasilike situation in Southeast Asia. Since then, to ensure national resilience and regional stability, non-interference and peaceful management of inter-state problems have been the core foundational principles of ASEAN.12 The aims and functions of ASEAN have expanded over time. By 1975 the situation in Indochina had deteriorated with the communist victories in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The non-communist Southeast Asian states saw a growing threat from their north, one backed by the Soviet Union, an extraregional power. This shared threat perception pushed the smaller states to begin



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using ASEAN as a collective platform. The leaders of the ASEAN states met in Bali, Indonesia, in February 1976. This historic meeting—the first summit since the creation of ASEAN a decade ago—kicked off the states’ first efforts to institutionalize the regional body. The key documents setting the direction for ASEAN’s future development included: a Declaration of ASEAN Concord, a Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC), and an agreement to set up a permanent secretariat in Jakarta. The TAC is a nonaggression agreement, which laid out the principles governing inter-state relations for collective political security in the region. Vietnam’s subsequent invasion and occupation of Cambodia in 1978 further increased the ASEAN states’ threat perception, prompting them to consolidate their efforts through ASEAN, the non-communist states’ platform to act as a diplomatic community to attract international attention, mobilize support, and exert pressure on Hanoi, as they sought peaceful resolution of the conflict. The end of the Cold War (circa 1990) and the resolution of the Indochina conflict (in 1992) marked a new chapter for Southeast Asian security and the organizational development of ASEAN. The new era witnessed the expansion of ASEAN to a ten-member group and the continuous further institutionalization of ASEAN. While the former marked intraregional reconciliation and the inclusion of all Southeast Asian states into ASEAN, regardless of ideologies and political systems, the latter signified a gradual extension of the ASEAN model beyond Southeast Asia, enmeshing more powers from within and without the region into the ASEAN+ multilateralism, while institutionalizing the “centrality” of ASEAN in Asian regional affairs. The institutional expansion of ASEAN was driven by prevailing needs and enabled by conditions following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet empire. While the ideological-based divide and old bipolarity ended with the Cold War, such changes also brought about an era of strategic uncertainty, marked by diffuse threat perception, multifaceted risks and challenges (both traditional and NTS issues), and ambiguous sources of patrons and partnerships.13 To respond to the emerging regional uncertainties in the immediate post–Cold War era, ASEAN created the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1993–94. An annual multilateral meeting attended by foreign ministers from Southeast Asian countries and many powers and actors across the Asia-Pacific to discuss regional security, the ARF was the first ASEAN+ regional institution. Subsequently, more ASEAN-centered, ASEAN-led, mechanisms were created one after another. These include: the ASEAN+3 (APT, i.e., ASEAN plus China, Japan, and South Korea) in 1997, the East Asia Summit (EAS) in 2005, and the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM+) in 2010.14 The founding members of the EAS were the ten ASEAN states, plus China, Japan,

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South Korea, and plus India, Australia, and New Zealand (i.e., ASEAN+3); they were joined by Russia and the United States in 2010, the same year when these same eighteen members kick started the ADMM+ (see figure 8.2). Features Characterizing ASEAN+ Multilateralism These ASEAN-led institutions are, as the late and leading scholar of Southeast Asia Michael Leifer put it, an extension of the ASEAN model.15 Indeed, the institutional features of the ASEAN+ multilateral mechanisms are in many ways expressions of the Southeast Asian mindset—that is, living with diversities, collaborating on the basis of shared vulnerabilities, as well as cultivating space for coexistence and common progressions. Examples abound. The Southeast Asian states’ inclusive, gradual, and consensus-seeking approach—the so-called ASEAN Way—in establishing the ARF and other regional platforms, for instance, is a sine qua non for the multilateralist turn and institution-building journey in post–Cold War Asia.16 In their efforts to explore the modalities of the first Asia-Pacific-wide multilateral security institution (which culminated in the ARF) in the early 1990s, the Southeast Asian mindset prevailed. Instead of excluding and isolating non-likeminded actors, ASEAN states opted to invite and include all relevant actors of different interests and ideologies. In addition to engaging China bilaterally and multilaterally, the ASEAN states also extended olive branches to Russia, Vietnam, and other socialist countries. Regardless of ideological differences, these countries were enmeshed in the ASEAN-based multilateral processes.17 The communist and post-socialist countries in the Asia-Pacific were all included in the ARF’s founding dinner in 1993 (held in Singapore) and its inaugural meeting in 1994 (held in Bangkok), alongside ASEAN’s longstanding partners from the Western and other developed nations.18 In retrospect, such an approach has created an inclusive, institutionalized (as distinct from ad hoc) platform for forging region-wide cooperation, while enabling the regional states to manage their differences and mitigate shared challenges.19 Significantly, this approach has also opened up possibilities for continuously expanding collaboration on multiple policy domains, including those involving non–Southeast Asian partners. The features of the ASEANled multilateralism are manifested most evidently as follows: • An open and evolutionary process: The participating countries of the ARF, for instance, increased from 18 in 1994 to 27 by 2007 (see figure 8.2), as ASEAN accommodated—in stages—the requests by countries around and beyond Asia to join the only Track-One multilateral forum on regional security in the Asia-Pacific.



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• Gradual but responsive institutionalization: Layers of cooperative mechanisms are continuously added to each of the ASEAN-led institutions, mostly in response to emerging crises and shared challenges. For example, the APT was established by ASEAN states and the three Northeast Asian economies of China, Japan, and South Korea in response to the 1997 East Asian financial crisis.20 Under the APT framework, the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI), a network of bilateral currency swap arrangements among the thirteen states, was created in 2000 to provide mutual support among participant countries in times of liquidity need. Ten years later, the APT countries multilateralized the initiative by creating the CMI Multilateralization (CMIM) to establish a common decision making mechanism.21 Since the early 2000s, the APT has gradually expanded into a multi-sector, multilevel East Asian–wide cooperative platform, as the thirteen countries expand their cooperation and coordination on non-finance sectors, including public health (after the SARS outbreak in 2003), transnational crime, environment, energy, education, information, transport, and so on. • A web of overlapped cooperation: The ever-expanding ASEAN-led institutions constitute concentric circles of partnerships involving powers and actors in and out of East Asia, as illustrated by figure 8.2 below. Each outer circle—with multilevel cooperative mechanisms, some in multiple domains—has emerged at different junctures along a path-dependent trajectory. For instance, the EAS was created in 2005 on the basis of the APT (when the thirteen APT members were joined by Australia, India, and New Zealand), whereas the ADMM+, a defense-minister-level mechanism, was established in 2010, when the sixteen-member EAS, a leader-level meeting,

Figure 8.2.  ASEAN and the ASEAN-Led Mechanisms Countries without a year in parentheses next to their names denote that they are founding members of the institution. Otherwise, the year in parentheses next to a country’s name denote when it joined the institution.

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was expanded to include Russia and the United States (the membership of ADMM+ overlaps with that of EAS). Three observations can be drawn from these processes. First, an overlapping and seemingly incoherent organizational structure still allows for complementary effects. The ASEAN-based institutions are mutually supportive and reinforcing in their roles. For instance, the ARF focuses on regional security, whereas APT focuses on regional economic and functional cooperation; the ARF involves Foreign Ministry officials, whereas ADMM+ involves Defense Ministry establishments; the ARF and ADMM+ are at ministerial and working levels, whereas the EAS and APT also involve summit-level interactions. Second, the ASEAN-based institutions combine to form a regional multilateral system, covering virtually all sectors, progressing in scope, scale, and speed in accordance with what is needed and what is possible. Third, the ASEAN-based multilateral system in Asia is a manifestation of small-state agency. As observed by Sheldon Simon in the previous editions of this volume, the structures and procedures of most of the Asian institutions “are largely determined by Southeast Asian preferences.”22 Despite their reactive nature, the ASEAN states’ institution-building efforts do demonstrate an ability to respond and turn a perceived danger and an actual crisis into opportunities to explore and eventually establish institutionalized cooperative platforms, one after another. These developments, of course, are more by default than by design. As elaborated below, they are as much the pragmatic adaptations of national interests, regional needs, and power realities as cultural embodiments. Functions and Limitations In large part because of the institutional features discussed above, ASEAN is inadequate in several aspects but indispensable in a number of key functions. These crucial functions are: (a) managing intra-ASEAN differences and problems; (b) dealing with extraregional powers; and (c) providing inclusive and institutionalized platforms that allow actors of diverse interests and values to forge region-wide cooperation (e.g., the fifteen-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership [RCEP] concluded in November 2020, which involves all ASEAN members, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand).23 These functions enable ASEAN to deliver regional public goods, while drawing in resources for individual members’ domestic functions. The small state-led institutions have also benefited non-ASEAN countries by offering platforms for dialogue and cooperation (e.g., providing opportunities for the three Northeast Asian countries to meet regularly at



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the sidelines of the APT and other ASEAN+ meetings, more than a decade before they created their own regional cooperative mechanism, the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat, in 2011). Nevertheless, ASEAN is weak and lacks impact on several grounds. To begin, ASEAN is handicapped in managing sovereignty-related issues. The ongoing Myanmar crisis is the most recent example of ASEAN’s limitations. ASEAN has scarcely acted on crises like this because of ASEAN’s norm of non-interference in the domestic affairs of member states, a principle grown out of Southeast Asian countries’ acute sensitivity about their own national sovereignty.24 In addition, ASEAN and its extended institutions are toothless in tackling hard-security issues and territorial disputes. ASEAN has no military bite as it was never intended to evolve into a military alliance. In fact, it took ASEAN some four decades to create an intra-ASEAN defense cooperation mechanism, in the form of ADMM, in 2010. Individual ASEAN member states prefer to forge and maintain military alignments with powers outside the region. THE ACTIVIST STATES: ASPIRATIONS AND APPROACHES While the whole of ASEAN (the group) is indeed greater than the sum of its parts (the ten member states), one must understand the individual states’ foreign policy aspirations and approaches. Given space constraints and considering that not all ten ASEAN states (or eleven if Timor-Leste is included) are active and central actors, this section focuses on six “mover and shaker” states in the ASEAN region, providing snapshots of their respective foreign policy orientations and offering brief comparisons. The section begins by focusing on Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore—described by Donald Emmerson as ASEAN’s “security core”25—before proceeding to the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. All six are activist states, albeit with varying degrees and forms of activism across domains and junctures. There are several common denominators across these activist states’ external policies, each of which underpins their orientations in adapting and responding to power dynamics at the systemic level. First, all of them regard ASEAN as the cornerstone of their foreign policy and view ASEAN-based multilateralism—despite its limitations—as necessary platforms to pursue stability, prosperity, and autonomy.26 Second, from day one, each of the states have experienced the ASEAN system as an insufficient instrument, and hence they have augmented and complemented the system with other layers of foreign policy tools (e.g., defense alignment with external powers, additional multilateral avenues, bilateral diplomacy, minilateral mechanisms). Many of

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these tools involve non–Southeast Asian states and non-ASEAN forums, with some of the forums consolidating ASEAN centrality (e.g., the Asia-Europe Meeting [ASEM] and the Forum for East Asia–Latin America Cooperation [FEALAC]), but others displaying intra-ASEAN differences in terms of external outlook, threat perceptions, and willingness to work with extraregional powers in tackling certain regional problems (e.g., Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore’s different responses to the US-backed Proliferation Security Initiative [PSI]). Third, each state’s external activism has ramifications not only for ASEAN’s own community building (with some efforts complementing but others competing and even contradicting ASEAN regionalism), but also for the wider regional architecture and order (e.g., cultivating or constraining the space for competing powers to expand their regional influence). Each of the individual states’ activism, however, entails its own aspirations and approaches. The variations are rooted in the respective country’s historical experiences (especially toward external powers and immediate neighbors), geographical conditions, and security perceptions. Domestic political needs, leaderships, and other internal circumstances are key determinants as well. Indonesia: A Free and Active Garuda Indonesia is not (yet) a big power, but it is the biggest country in Southeast Asia, the largest Muslim country, and the third largest democracy in the world (after India and the United States). Its sheer size makes it first-among-equals within ASEAN. Indonesia thus feels entitled to a central position and leadership role in Southeast Asia.27 The Secretariat of ASEAN is located in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. Indonesia’s leadership in ASEAN has been largely sectorial—that is, primarily in the political and security spheres28—and its leadership style is to share with other members (thus it is sometimes chided for “leading from behind”). Thus, other smaller members have opportunities to shape the directions of the regional grouping and wider regional affairs, for example: the enlargement of ASEAN; the creations and institutionalization of the ASEAN+ platforms, including issues concerning criteria, pace, and role of memberships for the ASEAN+ institutions; and drafting the ASEAN Charter as a blueprint to transform the grouping into an ASEAN Community.29 However, by and large, Indonesia is a de facto leader of ASEAN, and has often—albeit not always—provided leadership within and for the group. This is especially so when Indonesia is not internally preoccupied with its own domestic problems (e.g., the period after the fall of Suharto’s New Order in the wake of the 1997–98 economic and political crises), or when there are conflicts and crises that affect ASEAN’s internal cohesion or group interest. Indonesia’s regional leadership is most profound in cultivating an



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autonomous regional environment, promoting regional institution-building, and engaging in conflict management,30 as evidenced in Jakarta’s efforts over the South China Sea disputes, the Thai-Cambodian border conflict in 2011, and the current Myanmar crisis. Indonesia also played an instrumental role in materializing the “ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific” (AOIP), a five-page document that represents ASEAN’s response to the Quad’s “Indo-Pacific” narrative, in June 2019. While ASEAN is integral to Indonesia’s pursuit of its national interests and regional resilience,31 Indonesia’s foreign policy is neither all nor always about ASEAN. Indeed, as Indonesia’s capabilities and confidence grow, so do its international aspirations, global commitments, and policy approaches.32 By the 2010s, while the Indonesian policy elite still regards ASEAN as a necessary platform and a key diplomatic asset, some within Jakarta’s foreign policy circles have begun envisaging the republic playing a larger international role proportionate to Indonesia’s rising place in the world, with the possibility of viewing ASEAN as a—rather than the—cornerstone of Indonesian foreign policy.33 In addition to participating in the G20 and other important global forums, Indonesia has also been increasingly active on such international issues as democracy promotion, good governance practice, and human rights protection.34 Former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans observes that “Indonesia is beginning to show signs of punching closer to its weight in international forums.”35 Indonesia’s regional leadership and international aspirations are attributable not only to its size, but also to its geographical features, historical memories, sociocultural traditions, and domestic necessities. These sources manifest most persistently in Indonesia’s “free and active” (bebas-aktif) principle, its archipelagic outlook, and its sensitivity about external power interference. As a vast and diverse archipelago nation of seventeen thousand islands, Indonesia has long prioritized the defense of its maritime sovereignty, maritime rights, and maritime culture as the basic tenets of its strategic objectives. As a post-colonial country with deep memories of using armed struggle and diplomacy to resist and negotiate with the Western powers to win its hard-won independence, Indonesia has come to prioritize strategic autonomy and territorial integrity.36 As a huge country with complex political cleavages and ideological divisions among the elites as well as a wide range of internal differences and immense challenges at the societal level, Indonesia has emphasized national identity and Pancasila ideology at home. These go hand-in-hand with Jakarta’s “free and active” doctrine, often associated with the Indonesian tradition of mendayung antara dua karang (rowing between two reefs), as espoused by former Vice President Mohammad Hatta back in September 1948, when the new country was confronted

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with the growing antagonism between the two opposing camps (the Western and Socialist blocs) as well as domestic divisions (among political parties and interest groups across the ideological spectrum). This tradition has persisted until the present day, as Indonesia (and other ASEAN states) faces the accelerating US-China rivalry.37 While the Indonesian leaders have all aimed at upholding the free and active principle in pursuing the country’s international interests, each leader has framed it differently. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–14) articulated “dynamic equilibrium,” whereas current President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) is advancing the “Global Maritime Fulcrum” (GMF) as a strategic framework. While taking a tough stance on defending Indonesia’s maritime interests, Jokowi has also pursued a peopleoriented foreign policy, pragmatically partnering with all powers (including China, Japan, Australia, the United States, and other Western powers) in diversifying and balancing commercial and strategic interests. Malaysia: A Paradoxical Pragmatist Malaysia—a medium-sized, middle-income, Muslim-majority multiethnic country—has long pledged to be non-aligned and has proactively pursued regionalist, multilateralist policies.38 But this has not always been the case. Previously, Malaysia pursued a pro-West, alliance-centric policy from 1957 to 1971, when the newly independent country relied on its alliance with its former colonial ruler—the Anglo-Malay(si)an Defense Agreement (AMDA)—to protect its interests in the face of internal and external communist threats, alongside Indonesian Konfrontasi from 1963 to 1966. However, the British “East of Suez” policy and the US Nixon Doctrine of the late 1960s, which led to the reduced strategic presence of the Western powers in the region, highlighted the risks of abandonment and unpredictable nature of alliance commitment. The British withdrawal from Southeast Asia and the replacement of AMDA by the Five Power Defense Arrangements (FPDA) in 1971 eventually ended Malaysia’s Western-tilted policy and pushed Malaysia to embrace neutralism and regionalism. Since then, Malaysia has pursued pragmatic diplomacy, engaging with countries near and far, regardless of ideology. Malaysia’s position has continued until the present day, even and especially when the accelerating US-China rivalry is increasing the risk of entrapment for all smaller states in the region. Malaysia’s pragmatic policies are paradoxical in several key aspects. Chief among these is Putrajaya’s ambiguous alignments with both Washington and Beijing. Since the 1980s, Malaysia has forged a close defense partnership with the United States, but has deliberately kept it low-profile. At the same time, Malaysia’s China policy has been marked by increasingly



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close cooperation and open deference on one hand—but quiet defiance on selective issues (e.g., Xinjiang, South China Sea, the Belt and Road Initiative [BRI]) on the other. In addition, while pursuing its low-key equidistance policy vis-à-vis the big powers, Malaysia has adopted a high-profile, punch-above-its-weight activism in regional and international affairs. Globally, Malaysia—especially during the maverick Mahathir Mohamad’s first premiership (1981–2003)—has championed Third World interests, criticized the West’s double-standards, contributed to international peacekeeping, while collaborating with members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Palestinian and other issues concerning the Muslim Ummah. Regionally, while promoting Southeast Asian cooperation, Malaysia has also actively adopted an Asianist approach to push for further integration and institutionalization of East Asian (ASEAN+) and minilateral cooperation. Some of Malaysia’s initiatives were unsuccessful (e.g., the East Asian Economic Group), but several others—either working with other ASEAN members or outside partners (including China)—were established and eventually evolved into key elements of the post–Cold War regional architecture in Asia (e.g., the APT, the EAS, the Singapore-Kunming Rail Link [SKRL] Special Working Group). Such paradoxical pragmatism and activism are driven by the imperative of small-state survival amid strategic realities, as filtered by the ruling elite’s domestic political needs.39 Malaysia is a country with two physically separated territories—the Malay Peninsula (the southernmost landmass of the Eurasian continental mainland, between the Pacific and the Indian Oceans) as well as the states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo Island (facing the South China Sea). These geographical realities underpin not only strategic appeals, but also security vulnerabilities, especially for a country with territorial disputes with all its neighbors in all directions (products of historical legacy and geographical centrality). In part because of the Konfrontasi experience and in part because of more pressing domestic governance challenges, successive Malaysian elites have taken a long view, seeing the multiple sets of territorial and sovereignty problems as neighborly matters to be managed (but not necessarily resolved), preferring to use non-military means as its primary external tools. Pragmatism reigns. Although Malaysia’s external activism has lost momentum in recent years, largely due to internal preoccupation with unprecedented political changes (having the same ruling coalition for sixty-one years since 1957 but undergoing three regime changes between 2018 and 2021), the country’s aspiration to punch above its weight endures. Malaysia’s inaugural Defense White Paper (2020) envisages Malaysia as a small but vital “bridging linchpin” between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean regions, looking to play an

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active international role by leveraging its diplomatic linkages, developmental assets, and strategic location (at the center of Southeast Asia, linking the mainland north and the maritime south of the Indo-Pacific region), not least to connect its past (the Malacca Sultanate) with its present and future, in the age of connectivity-building. Singapore: An Anticipatory Activist Located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, the tiny island-state of Singapore has long pursued an activist foreign policy and has played a significant role in post–Cold War Asian affairs. Like Malaysia, the city-state has also sought to shape its external environment by pursuing pragmatic, purposefully contradictory approaches: emphasizing the idealist principles of norms and international laws to maximize the moral and ideational space required for small-state survival, but simultaneously embracing the realist practices of developing and leveraging power to pursue prioritized policy ends, as defined by the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) elite. Accordingly, under Lee Kuan Yew and his successors, Singapore has anchored on ASEAN regionally and the UN system globally, while advocating or advancing circles of productive partnerships with players in and out of the Asia-Pacific (e.g., Singapore’s proposals for ASEM and FEALAC back in the 1990s, as well as its role in the Pacific Four [P4] in the 2000s, later expanded into the TPP).40 Singapore’s foreign policy, as Michael Leifer observed, focuses on coping with innate vulnerability.41 As a minuscule state (660 square kilometers) with near-zero natural resources and an intricate geopolitical environment, Singapore does not take its existence as a sovereign entity for granted. Amitav Acharya notes that Singapore—since gaining its statehood after a brief and unhappy union with the Federation of Malaysia from 1963 to 1965—“has come a long way from its post-independence vulnerabilities as ‘a Chinese island in a sea of Malays.’”42 To ensure Singapore’s security, prosperity, autonomy—and by extension, the political relevance of the PAP—the ruling elites have strived to enhance Singapore’s defense and, indeed, all-round capabilities while creating space and cultivating favorable external conditions for mitigating threats and perceived risks. To pursue these ends, Singapore has relied on several key approaches, in particular, promoting economic interdependence and regional interactions, developing armaments and alignment, and facilitating a favorable regional balance of power via both military and non-military means.43 Yuen Foong Khong has described Singapore as a “classic anticipatory state,” in which leaders “think in terms of possible scenarios for the future and how they might affect Singapore.”44 Given the city-state’s heavy dependence



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on maritime trade and safety of sea navigation, Singapore has always been concerned about—and thinking and acting well ahead to prepare for—undesired but possible scenarios (including the possibility of regional conflict) that could disrupt regional tranquillity and prosperity. Hence, even though Singapore is not directly involved in the South China Sea disputes (and for that matter, the Taiwan Strait), it has paid constant attention and exercised active diplomacy to ensure Singapore’s interests will not be adversely affected. Along a similar anticipatory logic, Singapore joined the Arctic Council as an observer state in 2013, out of its concerns about rising sealevels, trade routes, and other long-term interests. A core element of Singapore’s external policy is its strong alignment (but not alliance) with the United States. Singapore-US defense cooperation—institutionalized by a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in 1990 and expanded by the Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) in 2005, the enhanced DCA in 2015, and the Protocol of Amendment in September 2019—is the most robust bilateral strategic arrangement in Southeast Asia (even more so than US defense relations with the Philippines and Thailand, the two US treaty allies in the region). Like Malaysia, Singapore is also a member of the FPDA; but unlike Malaysia whose domestic politics necessitate its leaders to keep its partnership with the Western powers low-key, Singapore has no such constraint. Instead, changing geopolitical circumstances have led its leaders to view Washington as an indispensable partner, which it has to leverage.45 Singapore has also collaborated closely with and participated in various Western-initiated arrangements, for instance, housing the headquarters of the APEC since 1989 and hosting the annual Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD) since 2002. Singapore’s relations with China, by comparison, are much more ambivalent: close in economic and diplomatic ties, but relatively distant in the geopolitical and strategic spheres. Domestic and geopolitical conditions have constrained the extent and nature of Singapore’s relations with China. With ethnic Chinese comprising up to 76 percent of its population, Singapore has always been concerned about the cultural and ethnicity pull that China exerts on the ethnic Chinese in the city-state, where the elite’s domestic authority is grounded on the principle of multiracialism rather than “Chinese cultural supremacy.”46 Externally, Singapore’s demographics are often a complicating factor for its foreign policy. During the Cold War, Singapore was uneasy about its image as a “third China,” for fear of drawing suspicion from its two larger Muslim-dominant neighbors, Malaysia and Indonesia. Even after the end of the Cold War, Singapore has attempted to downplay the ethnic affinity in Singapore-China relations and to avoid leaving any impression that it is promoting China’s interest in the region.47

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The Philippines: Personalized Policy with Leader-Led Change Unlike the above maritime Southeast Asian states, the Philippines has not always played an active and central role in shaping regional security affairs, but it is occasionally active in other domains, with proposals and propositions reflecting the country’s geography, leader’s priorities, civil society dynamism, and other internal traits. Under President Fidel Ramos (1992–98), the Philippines proposed an important subregional initiative: connecting and expanding economic cooperation among the border areas of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. This culminated in the creation of the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA), which was launched in March 1994 in Davao City, Mindanao. Other Philippine administrations have proposed initiatives regarding international and regional matters, including: the rights of migrant workers; human trafficking; human rights and human security; promoting democracy; as well as climate change and environmental protection.48 As the oldest and continuing (albeit flawed) democracy in Southeast Asia, with one of the more vibrant civil societies in the region, some of these proposals entail bottomup input from groups and stakeholders at the societal level. The Philippines played an instrumental role in drafting the blueprint for the ASEAN SocioCultural Community (ASCC), one of the three pillars of the ASEAN Community. Since 2016, it has collaborated with Indonesia and Malaysia to institutionalize and implement the Trilateral Cooperative Arrangement (TCA), a trilateral arrangement created in 2016 to conduct joint sea and air patrols to combat armed robbery and kidnapping in the Sulu and Sulawesi Seas. Changes in the Philippines’ national administration have often led to significant changes in the country’s foreign policy, in part because of the country’s presidential system and in part because of leader idiosyncrasies. This is most recently and perhaps most dramatically demonstrated by the Rodrigo Duterte presidency.49 Since Duterte came to power in mid-2016, the populist leader’s “independent foreign policy” has steered the Philippines away from Manila’s long-held alignment position, shifting from the pro-US policy under Benigno Aquino III (2010–16) to an ambiguous policy termed by analysts as “hedging” (discussed below). Aquino’s China policy was a classic example of realist-styled balancing: fully allying with the United States, while openly challenging and even confronting China, particularly on South China Sea issues, bringing territorial disputes to the Arbitral Tribunal in 2012, while keeping away from Beijing’s BRI. Aquino’s China policy was itself a shift from his predecessor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (2001–10). While maintaining a stable alliance with Washington, Arroyo opted to also pursue a close partnership with Beijing on economic, infrastructure, and other policy areas, including at sea. In 2005, the Arroyo government signed the Joint Maritime



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Seismic Understanding (JMSU), a tripartite agreement with Beijing and Vietnam, which reversed Manila’s longstanding position in emphasizing the use of multilateralism, transparency, and international law in managing the multination territorial disputes.50 Duterte then reversed Aquino’s key positions not only by downplaying the victory of the arbitral ruling (announced in 2016) and setting the verdict aside (despite Beijing’s continuing maritime assertiveness), but also pursuing a China-friendly policy, praising Beijing’s support for his anti-drug campaign, and partnering with China on infrastructure projects aimed at boosting his own “Build Build Build” program.51 Duterte did all these while distancing and downgrading the Philippines’ alliance ties with the United States, at one point even threatening to end the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) signed by both countries in 1998. While Duterte’s announcement in February 2020 to terminate the VFA has cast a shadow over the future of the 1951 Philippine-US Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) and the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), the leader deferred and eventually decided to keep the military arrangement in late July 2021. Thailand: Bending with Which Wind? Thailand—the other US treaty ally in the ASEAN region—is the only Southeast Asian country that escaped Western colonialization, a feat that speaks to the kingdom’s skills in navigating among the great powers. Its diplomatic and strategic culture has long been described by scholars as “bending with the wind,” which denotes the smaller state’s bamboo-like flexibility and pragmatism.52 Like the Philippines, Thailand became a US ally through the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) under the aegis of the 1954 Manila Pact, paving the way for both countries to maintain US military bases on their territories as part of the Pentagon’s forward positioning to contain the communist threats. Bangkok housed the headquarters of SEATO until the multination alliance was dissolved in 1977. But unlike the Philippines, where the United States maintained the Clark and Subic bases until the early 1990s (when the US Navy relocated its Commander, Logistics Group Western Pacific to Singapore under their 1990 MOU), US troops left Thailand in June 1976 as part of the US military disengagement after the fall of Saigon. Like the Philippines, Thailand also followed Malaysia’s footsteps by forging diplomatic ties with China in the mid-1970s (well ahead of Indonesia, Singapore, and Brunei, which only did so in the early 1990s). But unlike the Philippines, whose military cooperation with China remained minimal until the Duterte years, the Thailand-China security partnership developed in the 1980s, when Bangkok and Beijing formed a de facto alignment to resist the Soviet-backed Vietnamese forces in the aftermath of Hanoi’s invasion and

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occupation of Cambodia in 1978, which made Thailand a “frontline state” in the Indochina conflict. To cope with the looming Vietnamese threat in the wake of the US withdrawal from the mainland Southeast Asia, Bangkok aligned with Beijing militarily.53 These experiences partly explain why Thailand, formally a US ally, is the ASEAN state with the earliest and closest military ties with China.54 Thailand hedged much more deeply than other ASEAN states even before the Cold War ended. Thailand-China ties have expanded steadily throughout the post–Cold War era.55 Over the past decade or so, chiefly because nationalistic sentiments among the public amid elite contestation and political polarization—especially after the last coup in 2014—are increasingly complicating Thailand’s relations with Washington and Beijing, Thai authorities have at times failed to accommodate American policies but instead acted in favor of China, a pattern leading a Thai analyst to argue that Thailand’s current big-power policy—akin to “bamboo swirling in the wind”—is “not a product of a well-planned strategy, but rather a reaction to the China factor and domestic sensitivities.”56 Thai foreign policy must be understood not only by its postures vis-àvis the big powers, but also toward its immediate neighbors. Thailand is a “smaller state” while dealing with the major powers, but it is a main actor in its immediate neighborhood.57 Located in mainland Southeast Asia but connected to maritime Southeast Asia (through Malaysia and via sea), Thailand is also facing the Pacific Ocean (and Northeast Asia) on its east and the Indian Ocean (and South Asia) on its west. Like Malaysia, such geographical centrality and circumstances are both a boon and a bane for Thailand: enhancing its geopolitical and geo-economic leverages, but also exposing it to neighborly disputes and even tensions. The former is well reflected in Thailand’s activism in promoting regional cooperation (e.g., ASEAN in 1967; Asia Cooperation Dialogue [ACD] in 2002; Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy [ACMECS] in 2003) as well as regional transport and connectivity-building (e.g., East-West Economic Corridor under the Greater Mekong Subregion; the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity). The latter manifests in an array of bilateral problems with nearly all of its bordering neighbors: Cambodia (conflict over the Preah Vihear Temple, located in a disputed area between the Cambodian province of Preah Vihear and the Thai province of Sisaket);58 Laos (cultural affinity but territorial nationalism); Malaysia (although the two governments succeeded in establishing the MalaysiaThailand Joint Authority [MTJA] in 1979 to jointly exploit resources in the seabed or continental shelf in the Gulf of Thailand claimed by the two countries, the Malay-Muslim ethno-nationalist insurgency in southern Thailand is a sporadic source of mutual suspicion); Myanmar (historical animosity; ethnic minorities, refugees, undocumented laborers, and other transboundary



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contentious issues; mutual regime necessity); and Vietnam (improved relations despite historical hostility and Cold War–era conflict; but a quiet sense of geopolitical competition in the continental Southeast Asia remains). Vietnam: From (Hegemony-Seeking) Adventurism to (Integration-Oriented) Activism Vietnam has evolved from a hegemony-seeking Indochinese military power during the Cold War to one of the more impactful strategic actors with the fastest growing economy in present day Southeast Asia. In 1975, after the triumph of the North Vietnamese forces over the US-backed South Vietnamese regime in Saigon, Vietnam was united and became the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. With the backing of the Soviet Union, Vietnam then sought to establish a Hanoi-centered hegemony in Indochina by imposing a patron-client relationship with Laos in 1975 and by invading Cambodia in December 1978 and occupying it until September 1989. The collapse of the Soviet Union ended Hanoi’s adventurism. In the post–Cold War era, regional reconciliation and international integration have become the main themes in Vietnamese foreign policy. Vietnam joined ASEAN in July 1995, improving relations with the noncommunist Southeast Asian states, while deepening its 1986 Doi Moi reform policies, transiting from a closed and centralized economy to an open and market-oriented one. Vietnam’s membership in ASEAN has been a major transformation. It has provided a key platform for Hanoi to accrue not only economic and functional benefits but also to pursue diplomatic and strategic ends. In addition to improving market access and increasing foreign direct investment, ASEAN and the ASEAN-led mechanisms have served as additional avenues for Vietnam to conduct multilateral diplomacy, defense dialogue, and security cooperation, complementing and consolidating Vietnam’s own bilateral diplomacy and military modernization. Strategically, the ASEAN+ forums have enabled Vietnam to rally international support for its position on the South China Sea disputes and maximize diplomatic pressure on China. The internationalization of such efforts converged with the US changing its policy on the multi-nation disputes in the South China Sea at the height of the Obama administration’s pivot and rebalancing policy. While attending the ARF in Hanoi in July 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared, “The United States, like every nation, has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia’s maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea.”59 A shared concern about China’s rise has thus led to a growing strategic convergence between Vietnam and its former foe. This convergence has underpinned

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the increasingly strong Vietnam-US defense partnership.60 In March 2020, the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt visited Vietnam, the second time (the first was in March 2018) a US warship had docked in the country since the Vietnam War ended in 1975. The same China factor—coupled with Hanoi’s stance in standing up to Beijing’s maritime aggressiveness when it directly challenged Vietnamese interests—has also attracted such second-tier powers as Japan, India, Australia, and several European players to court and develop comprehensive partnerships with Vietnam. It is important to note, however, that these developments do not signify that Vietnam is now joining and siding with an “anti-China” camp. As Vietnam steps up its multi-track alignments (but not alliances) with these partners (despite its ideological differences with all of them), it has adopted a seemingly contradictory measure. While partnering with others to push back China on maritime and strategic spheres, Vietnam has simultaneously forged strong cooperation with China in other domains. The ruling Vietnamese Communist Party has sought to offset its security defiance against China by: emphasizing ideological affinity and enhancing party-to-party exchanges with the Chinese Communist Party; and maximizing the mutually beneficial bilateral economic ties (China is Vietnam’s largest trading partner and Vietnam is China’s largest trading partner in the ASEAN region). The net effects: there are signs that Vietnam’s defiance of China—like its partnerships with the United States and “like-minded” countries—has been pursued in a selective manner. While Hanoi has strongly criticized Beijing’s maritime assertiveness, it has not joined the Western powers in criticizing China on other issues (e.g., Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang, and handling of the COVID-19 pandemic). Similarly, while Hanoi is increasingly drawing strength from Washington, it has done so cautiously, without crossing the red line of forging an alliance with Washington. Such a hedging approach is not unique to Hanoi, but also other ASEAN states. NAVIGATING AMONG THE POWERS: NATIONALISM AND NEUTRALISM The above explication of Southeast Asian foreign policy orientations indicates that while the ASEAN states are militarily weaker states, they are not necessarily powerless pawns. Numerous developments since the end of the Cold War have allowed the Southeast Asian states to exert varying degrees of small-state agency while navigating among the big powers. Their approaches vary, but all of them have pledged to be “non-aligned” and “neutral”—that is, avoiding full alignment with the United States and full



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“bandwagoning” with China. Such a “middle” position is widely described by analysts as “hedging”—that is, insurance-seeking behavior where a rational state avoids taking sides and pursues opposite measures vis-à-vis competing powers to have a fallback position.61 Virtually all Southeast Asian states have sought to collaborate with both competing powers (the US and China), displaying selective deference and selective defiance while avoiding siding with one power against another to keep all options open. While the space for such maneuvering is shrinking as US-China rivalry grows,62 the smaller states still insist on navigating without putting all their eggs in any power’s basket for as long as possible. Historical, domestic, and structural reasons—manifested as various forms of nationalism and neutralism—explain why Southeast Asian states have opted to hedge and why some of them hedge more heavily than others. Southeast Asian history is a history of big-power politics. Almost all the Southeast Asian states underwent centuries-long Western colonization, Japanese occupation, post–World War II struggles for independence, and US-Soviet Cold War confrontation. Even during the post–Cold War era, Southeast Asian states still have to reckon with recurring external interference, cyclical aggressions, and mounting pressures from competing big powers. These experiences engender the smaller states’ quest for strategic autonomy.63 Big-power politics often complicate or distract the Southeast Asian elite from focusing on their domestic governance tasks. The political survival of the ruling elites across ASEAN capitals necessitates that they surmount their domestic rivals and problems instead of figuring out which big power will prevail. Put differently, they navigate big-power politics by internally-driven pragmatism. That is, the extent to which and the ways a state chooses to collaborate, defer, and/or defy a big power are motivated primarily by the state elite’s domestic political needs. Hence, when some Southeast Asian states (e.g., Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei, Timor-Leste, Singapore, the Philippines under Duterte, Myanmar under Aung San Suu Kyi, Indonesia under Jokowi) choose to engage more deeply and widely with China’s BRI, it is not necessarily because they embrace the Beijing-led order, but because doing so brings benefits (including political patronage) that boost the elites’ development-based performance-legitimation (and/or enhances their chances of winning elections). Similarly, when some ASEAN states (e.g., Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia) opt to strengthen their defense partnerships with the United States and its allies (including the Quad members), this is not necessarily because they share Washington’s goal of perpetuating the American primacy, but mainly because doing so enhances their national capabilities and enables them to better defend security and territorial integrity, thereby boosting their nationalist-based legitimation (especially

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for countries where anti-China nationalism is strong, for instance, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines under Aquino III). The ruling elites of smaller states, accordingly, pursue prosperity, security, and autonomy concurrently by collaborating with all competing powers in a selective, limited, and seemingly contradictory fashion, without rigidly committing themselves to any power. Thus, they display selective deference and selective defiance simultaneously. This is significant because cooperation and deference without defiance risk subservience and dependency, while defiance without deference and cooperation invites hostility and confrontation. Either scenario harms the smaller states’ external interest and undermines their ruling elite’s internal legitimation. There are structural reasons as well. Given the uncertain and unpredictable nature of big-power actions and relations, smaller states realize there will always be possibilities of: (a) power rivalry escalating into power conflict (thereby potentially entrapping smaller states in big-power military confrontation); (b) power competition turning into détente, or a big-power patron reducing its commitment (thereby risking abandonment); and (c) a big power becoming more aggressive when no allied support is on the horizon (thereby incurring security loss and/or the erosion of autonomy). Such structural uncertainties and risks compel smaller states—regardless of regime types and leaderships—to hedge rather than balance or bandwagon. Vietnam, for instance, has hedged by publicly and persistently pushing back Beijing, both by confronting Chinese maritime assertiveness and by cultivating countervailing forces with Washington and other likeminded powers to check and constrain China. But Vietnam has done so without burning its bridges, as evidenced by Hanoi’s offsetting acts: maintaining close party-toparty relations with the CCP, as noted, while declaring its “four no’s” external policy aimed at reassuring and deterring Beijing simultaneously (i.e., no military alliances, no foreign military bases in Vietnam, no reliance on one country to fight another, no using force or threatening to use force).64 Indonesia has also hedged by pursuing open defiance and partial deference. Jakarta, for instance, has responded to Beijing’s growing assertiveness by conducting high-profile military exercises near its Natuna Islands and developing high-level strategic ties with more defense partners (e.g., 2+2 security talks with Australia, Japan, and Germany), but doing so side-byside with opposite acts: developing an increasingly institutionalized strategic partnership with China, selectively embracing the BRI, and remaining silent on the Xinjiang issue (despite Indonesia being the world’s largest Muslimmajority country).65 Singapore, too, has persistently hedged. Throughout the post–Cold War era, the vulnerable city-state cultivated multiple approaches to cope with un-



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certainties and offset multiple risks that might endanger its existential stakes. Since 1990, the island-state has hosted US military assets and maintains a robust strategic alignment with Washington, while defying Beijing’s will at several junctures (e.g., Lee Hsien Loong’s insistence on visiting Taiwan in 2004; Singapore’s stance on publicly supporting the 2016 arbitral tribunal’s ruling on the South China Sea). At the same time, however, the city-state has also pragmatically forged productive economic ties and maintained close dialogue relations with China, pursued a forward and wide-ranging engagement with the BRI, and—like other smaller states in the region—made it a point to expand its defense ties with China, even while continuing to engage and explore a wide range of security partnerships (including cyber and supply chain cooperation) with the United States and other powers. Other ASEAN states have also been pursuing various forms of hedging, albeit more lightly—by emphasizing cooperative and deferential acts while displaying indirect, low-key defiance vis-à-vis China. Malaysia, for instance, despite its claimant status in the South China Sea disputes and its longstanding strategic ties with the United States and other Western powers, has chosen to highlight the mutually beneficial aspects of its increasingly robust and comprehensive partnership with China, playing down security concerns and avoiding a confrontational approach, a stark contrast to its openly defiant and adversarial posture against Beijing in the 1950s and 1960s. Similarly, the Philippines under Duterte and Brunei—the other claimant states in the South China Sea disputes—have hedged lightly. Cambodia, which prefers to prioritize profits from its partnership with China, has opted to hedge quietly by diversifying its development and defense relations with Japan and other actors. By pleasing and displeasing China concurrently (and doing both selectively and partially), the seemingly contradictory acts serve to hedge multiple risks externally and internally, thereby enabling the smaller states to maximize cooperative space and optimize interests without rigidly locking themselves into irreversible positions amid an uncertain power structure. In short, virtually all the ASEAN states have navigated among the powers by hedging prudently throughout the post–Cold War decades. They have avoided placing all their eggs in China’s or, for that matter, any power’s basket. Instead, they have diversified, kept equidistance, and cultivated space to ensure the involvement of as many powers as possible in regional affairs. Indeed, Southeast Asian states are not only navigating between the United States and China, but also among such second-tier powers as Japan, India, Australia, the EU, and South Korea. As discussed in the earlier sections, these “other powers” have long been ASEAN’s dialogue partners and, in recent years, they have stepped up their courtships of Southeast Asia (both bilaterally and collectively), in part because of the growing economic and

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diplomatic importance of ASEAN and its institutional offsprings, and in part because of the increasing strategic convergence—that is, the mutual desire to prevent the emergence of any predominant power in Asian affairs. Like the ASEAN states, these second-tier and secondary powers are also increasingly concerned about China’s future intentions and US long-term commitments. Such push and pull factors give rise to the phenomenon of multilayered partnerships across domains among these non-great powers. This is not to suggest that the ASEAN states are forming an anti-Beijing coalition with any of the second-tier powers. Neither does it imply that Southeast Asian states share similar outlooks on the extent and manner through which individual states should strengthen their partnerships with each of these powers. In fact, while the ASEAN states want to constrain China, they are not thinking about containing it. Moreover, because the Quad is increasingly perceived as an anti-China bloc, ASEAN states have kept their distance from the Quad, even though individual ASEAN states are developing ties with individual Quad member states. ASEAN states have also made it a point to avoid endorsing the Quad member states’ respective Indo-Pacific strategies. Instead, ASEAN has developed its own “ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific” to underscore its emphasis on “inclusivity” and other norms that are not shared (or shared evenly) by the Quad members or their other Indo-Pacific partners from Europe. CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK Looking ahead, Southeast Asia as a region and ASEAN as a group will continue cultivating identity and unity from their diversities, while building strength from their weaknesses. While the enormous differences and shared vulnerabilities within and across the borders of Southeast Asian states are constant challenges, they also bond the smaller states to address shared problems no one state can handle alone. These are the reasons why Southeast Asian countries rally behind ASEAN— albeit in stages—to build institutions, bridge interests, and bind countries to continuously facilitate regional cooperation despite intra-ASEAN disputes, external power rivalries, and other challenges. While ASEAN and its institutional offsprings are ineffectual in tackling hard-security and sovereigntyrelated issues, they are vital in providing regional public goods which no other actor can deliver. The ASEAN+, norms-based multilateral institutions—which include partners across and beyond Asia—provide a power-equalizing platform for the smaller states to forge inclusive region-wide cooperation, manage intra-ASEAN differences, enmesh the involvement of big powers and key



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players, thereby maintaining the balance of power via non-military means, mitigating risks and challenges externally while maximizing elite authority internally. Perhaps none of these would be possible if the institution-building processes were led by any of the big powers. Precisely because ASEAN states are weaker actors, they are threatening to none and hence acceptable to all. For each of the competing powers, allowing the weaker states to play the leading role in hosting and facilitating cooperation is preferable to letting their rival play such a role. Among the diverse groups of ASEAN’s dialogue partners, most are not likeminded, many are competing powers, and nearly all are more powerful than the host. Yet, the dialogue partners are all supportive of ASEAN centrality in regional affairs. Southeast Asian weaknesses, hence, are a strength that sustains an ecosystem of region-wide collaboration and institution-building, enabling countries with diverse interests to dialogue, while encouraging big powers to court, compete, and cooperate. The whole of the (continuously expanding) group, hence, is greater than the sum of its constituent parts. However, the positively multiplying dynamics are not expected to continue forever, primarily because of several enduring and emerging challenges. Chief among these challenges are: • the growing big-power competitions along the military and non-military chessboards as US-China rivalry intensifies;66 • the increasing salience of such non-traditional security problems as the COVID-19 pandemic, religious extremism, and transboundary environmental issues; • neighborly disputes among ASEAN members; and • individual countries’ domestic governance and legitimation challenges. None of these challenges exists in isolation; all of them highlight the instrumentality of the ASEAN-based system as an essential—albeit insufficient—platform to manage them simultaneously. In the absence of a feasible, credible alternative mechanism that is acceptable to all parties to continue forging and exploring greater collaboration amid ongoing power rivalries and systemic uncertainties, Southeast Asia’s emergence as a center of courtships and ASEAN’s continuing centrality (however fragile) are the geopolitical intermediary and geo-economic catalyst of our time, keeping cooperative space to pursue regional stability and progression for all. NOTES *I thank David Shambaugh, Aries A. Arugay, Alice D. Ba, Fong Chin Wei, Makmur Keliat, Ardhitya Eduard Yeremia, and Zakaria Haji Ahmad for their useful suggestions

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and feedback on earlier versions of this chapter. I also thank Fikry A. Rahman for superb research assistantship. 1. Karl D. Jackson, “Southeast Asia: Off the Radar Screen,” SAISPHERE 23 (2004): 21–23. 2.  In North America and Europe, only a handful of universities offer programs on Southeast Asia. Most Asian Studies departments tend to concentrate on Northeast Asia (mainly China and/or Japan) rather than Southeast Asia. 3.  David Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet: America and China in Southeast Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 4. Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680, vol. 1: The Lands below the Winds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988); Nicholas Tarling, Imperialism in Southeast Asia (London: Routledge, 2004). 5.  Gary Rodan, Kevin Hewison, and Richard Robison, eds., The Political Economy of South-East Asia: Conflicts, Crises, and Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Jonathan Rigg, Challenging Southeast Asian Development: The Shadows of Success (London: Routledge, 2015). 6.  Wang Gungwu, ed., Nation-Building: Five Southeast Asian Histories (Singapore: ISEAS, 2005). 7. Muthiah Alagappa, ed., Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995); Dan Slater, Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Alice D. Ba and Mark Beeson, eds., Contemporary Southeast Asia: The Politics of Change, Contestation, and Adaptation, 3rd ed. (London: Palgrave, 2018). 8. Charles E. Morrison and Astri Suhrke, Strategies of Survival: The Foreign Policy Dilemmas of Smaller Asian States (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979); David Wurfel and Bruce Burton, eds., The Political Economy of Foreign Policy in Southeast Asia (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990); N. Ganesan and Ramses Amer, eds., International Relations in Southeast Asia: Between Bilateralism and Multilateralism (Singapore: ISEAS, 2010). 9. Chin Kin Wah and Leo Suryadinata, eds., Michael Leifer: Selected Works on Southeast Asia (Singapore: ISEAS, 2005); Duncan McCargo, Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008); Ben Bland, “Historical Tensions and Contemporary Governance Challenges in Southeast Asia: The Case of Indonesia,” Brookings Report (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2020). 10.  Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 3rd ed. (London: Verso Books, 2006); Joseph Chinyong Liow, Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Michael Vatikiotis, Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2017). 11.  Jurgen Haacke, ASEAN’s Diplomatic and Security Culture: Origins, Development and Prospects (London: Routledge, 2002). See also Amitav Acharya, “Ideas, Identity, and Institution-Building: From the ‘ASEAN Way’ to the ‘Asia-Pacific Way’?” The Pacific Review 10, no. 3 (1997): 319–46.



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12. Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order (New York: Routledge, 2001). 13.  Yuen Foong Khong, “Coping with Strategic Uncertainty: The Role of Institutions and Soft Balancing in Southeast Asia’s Post-Cold War Strategy,” in Rethinking Security in East Asia: Identity, Power, and Efficiency, eds. J. J. Suh, Peter J. Katzenstein, and Allen Carlson (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 172–208; Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia; Ralf Emmers and Joseph Chinyong Liow, eds., Order and Security in Southeast Asia: Essays in Memory of Michael Leifer (London and New York: Routledge, 2016); Mely CaballeroAnthony, Ralf Emmers, and Amitav Acharya, eds., Non-Traditional Security in Asia: Dilemmas in Securitization (Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 2006). 14. Ralf Emmers, Cooperative Security and the Balance of Power in ASEAN and the ARF (London: Routledge, 2003); See Seng Tan, Multilateral Asian Security Architecture: Non-ASEAN Stakeholders (London: Routledge, 2015); Alice D. Ba, Cheng-Chwee Kuik, and Sueo Sudo, eds., Institutionalizing East Asia: Mapping and Reconfiguring Regional Cooperation (London and New York: Routledge, 2016); Kei Koga, Reinventing Regional Security Institutions in Asia and Africa: Power Shifts, Ideas, and Institutional Change (London: Routledge, 2017). 15.  Michael Leifer, “The ASEAN Regional Forum: Extending ASEAN’s Model of Regional Security,” Adelphi Paper 36, no. 302 (1996): 1–65; Emmers, Cooperative Security and the Balance of Power in ASEAN and the ARF. See also Yuen Foong Khong and Helen E. S. Nesadurai, “Hanging Together, Institutional Design, and Cooperation in Southeast Asia: AFTA and the ARF,” in Crafting Cooperation: Regional International Institutions in Comparative Perspective, eds. Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 32–82. 16.  Amitav Acharya, The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Alice D. Ba, (Re)Negotiating East and Southeast Asia: Region, Regionalism, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009); Andrew Yeo, Asia’s Regional Architecture: Alliances and Institutions in the Pacific Century (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019). 17.  Evelyn Goh, “Great Powers and Hierarchical Order in Southeast Asia: Analyzing Regional Security Strategies,” International Security 32, no. 3 (Winter 2007–8): 113–57. 18.  Australia and New Zealand became ASEAN’s first dialogue partners in 1974 and 1975, respectively. They were followed by Canada, the European Community, Japan, and the United States, all in 1977, as well as the Republic of Korea in 1991. Other countries became ASEAN’s dialogue partners in subsequent years and decades: India (1995), China (1996), Russia (1996), and United Kingdom (2021). 19.  Khong, “Coping with Strategic Uncertainty.” 20. Richard Stubbs, “ASEAN Plus Three: Emerging East Asian Regionalism?” Asian Survey 42, no. 3 (2002): 440–55. 21. Kaewkamol Pitakdumrongkit, “Co-chairing International Negotiations: The Case of the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization,” Pacific Review, 28, no. 4 (2015): 577–605.

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22.  Sheldon W. Simon, “ASEAN and Southeast Asia: Remaining Relevant,” in International Relations of Asia, 2nd ed., eds. David Shambaugh and Michael Yahuda (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 225–45. 23. Kishore Mahbubani and Jeffery Sng, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace (Singapore: NUS Press, 2017); Marty Natalegawa, Does ASEAN Matter? A View from Within (Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2018). 24.  Lee Jones, “ASEAN’s Unchanged Melody? The Theory and Practice of ‘NonInterference’ in Southeast Asia,” Pacific Review 23, no. 4 (2010): 479–502. 25.  See Donald K. Emmerson, “Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore: A Regional Security Core?” in Southeast Asian Security in the New Millennium, eds. Richard J. Ellings and Sheldon W. Simon (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe for the National Bureau of Asian Research, 1996). 26.  Donald E. Weatherbee, International Relations in Southeast Asia: The Struggle for Autonomy, 2nd ed. (Singapore: ISEAS, 2009). 27. Michael Leifer, Indonesia’s Foreign Policy (London, UK: George Allen & Unwin, 1983). 28.  Ralf Emmers, “Indonesia’s Role in ASEAN: A Case of Incomplete and Sectorial Leadership,” The Pacific Review 27, no. 4 (2014): 543–62. 29. Ba, (Re)Negotiating East and Southeast Asia; Emmers, “Indonesia’s Role in ASEAN.” 30.  Anthony L. Smith, Strategic Centrality: Indonesia’s Changing Role in ASEAN (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000); Emmers, “Indonesia’s Role in ASEAN.” 31.  Dewi Fortuna Anwar, Indonesia in ASEAN: Foreign Policy and Regionalism (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1994). 32.  John Bresnan, ed., Indonesia: The Great Transition (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); Anthony Reid, ed., Indonesia Rising: The Repositioning of Asia’s Third Giant (Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2012); Amitav Acharya, Indonesia Matters: Asia’s Emerging Democratic Power (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2015). 33.  Rizal Sukma, “Indonesia Needs a Post-ASEAN Foreign Policy,” The Jakarta Post, June 30, 2009; Shafiah F. Muhibat, ed. Untuk Indonesia 2014–2019: Agenda Sosial Politik dan Keamanan, 2014 (Jakarta: CSIS, 2014); Evan Laksmana, “Indonesia’s Rising Regional and Global Profile: Does Size Really Matter?” Contemporary Southeast Asia 33, no. 2 (2011): 157–82. 34.  Rizal Sukma, “Do New Democracies Support Democracy? Indonesia Finds a New Voice,” Journal of Democracy 22, no. 4 (2011): 110–23; Philips J. Vermonte, “Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Domestic Sources of Indonesia’s Foreign Policy under SBY’s Presidency (2004–2014),” The Indonesian Quarterly 42, nos. 3–4 (2014): 201–15. 35.  Gareth Evans, “Foreword: Indonesia, Australia, and the World,” in Indonesia Rising: The Repositioning of Asia’s Third Giant, ed. Anthony J. S. Reid (Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2012), xvii. 36.  Rizal Sukma, “The Evolution of Indonesia’s Foreign Policy: An Indonesian View,” Asian Survey 35, no. 3 (March 1995): 304–15.



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37. Leonard C. Sebastian, “Indonesia and EAS: Search for a ‘Dynamic Equilibrium,’” RSIS Commentaries, 168, https://www.rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads /2014/07/CO11168.pdf. 38.  Johan Saravanamuttu, Malaysia’s Foreign Policy: The First Fifty Years (Singapore: ISEAS, 2010). 39.  Zakaria Haji Ahmad, “Malaysian Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics: Looking Outward and Moving Inward?” in Asia and the Major Powers: Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy, ed. Robert A. Scalapino et al. (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1990), 256–79. 40. Alan Chong, “Singapore’s Foreign Policy Beliefs as ‘Abridged Realism’: Pragmatic and Liberal Prefixes in the Foreign Policy Thought of Rajaratnam, Lee, Koh, and Mahbubani,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 6, no. 2 (2006): 269–306; Tommy Koh, The Tommy Koh Reader: Favorite Essays and Lectures (Singapore: World Scientific, 2013). 41.  Michael Leifer, Singapore’s Foreign Policy: Coping with Vulnerability (London: Routledge, 2000). 42.  Amitav Acharya, Singapore’s Foreign Policy: The Search for Regional Order (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2008), 23. 43. Leifer, Singapore’s Foreign Policy; Yuen Foong Khong, “Singapore: A Time for Economic and Political Engagement,” in Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power, eds. Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert S. Ross (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 109–28; Bilahari Kausikan, Dealing with an Ambiguous World (Singapore: World Scientific, 2017). 44.  Khong, “Singapore.” 45. See Seng Tan, “America the Indispensable Power: Singapore’s Perspective of America as a Security Partner,” Asian Politics & Policy 8, no. 1 (January 2016): 119–35. 46.  Asad-ul Iqbal Latif, Between Rising Powers: China, Singapore and India (Singapore: ISEAS, 2007), 47–48. 47.  Khong, “Singapore.” 48.  Jorn Dosch, “The Impact of Democratization on the Making of Foreign Policy in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines,” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 25, no. 5 (2006): 42–70; Jurgen Ruland, “Democratic Backsliding, Regional Governance and Foreign Policymaking in Southeast Asia: ASEAN, Indonesia and the Philippines,” Democratization 28, no. 1 (2020): 237–57. 49.  Renato Cruz De Castro, “The Duterte Administration’s Foreign Policy: Unravelling the Aquino Administration’s Balancing Agenda on an Emergent China,” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 35, no. 3 (2016): 139–59; Michael Magcamit, “The Duterte Method: A Neoclassical Realist Guide to Understanding a Small Power’s Foreign Policy and Strategic Behaviour in the Asia-Pacific,” Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 5, no. 4 (2019), 416–36. 50.  Ernest Z. Bower, “The JMSU: A Tale of Bilateralism and Secrecy in the South China Sea,” CSIS, July 27, 2010, https://www.csis.org/analysis/jmsu-tale-bilateralism-and-secrecy-south-china-sea.

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51.  Aileen Baviera, “Duterte’s China Policy Shift: Strategy or Serendipity?” Asia Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation, May 16, 2017, https://appfi.ph/publica tions/commentaries/1426-duterte-s-china-policy-shift-strategy-or-serendipity; Malcolm Cook, “The Philippines in 2017: Turbulent Consolidation,” Southeast Asian Affairs 2018 (Singapore: ISEAS, 2018). 52. Arne Kislenko, “Bending with the Wind: The Continuity and Flexibility of Thai Foreign Policy,” International Journal 57, no. 4 (Autumn 2002): 537–61; Ann Marie Murphy, “Beyond Balancing and Bandwagoning: Thailand’s Response to China’s Rise,” Asian Security 6, no. 1 (2010): 1–27. 53.  John D. Ciorciari, The Limits of Alignment: Southeast Asia and the Great Powers Since 1975 (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010). 54.  Ian Storey, “China’s Bilateral Defense Diplomacy in Southeast Asia,” Asian Security 8, no. 3 (2012): 287–310. 55.  See Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet; Murray Hiebert, Under Beijing’s Shadow: Southeast Asia’s China Challenge (Lanham, MD, and Washington, DC: Rowman & Littlefield and CSIS, 2020); Sebastian Strangio, In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020); Benjamin Zawacki, Thailand: Shifting Ground Between the US and a Rising China (London: Zed Books, 2017). 56.  Pongphisoot Busbarat, “‘Bamboo Swirling in the Wind’: Thailand’s Foreign Policy Imbalance between China and the United States,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 38, no. 2 (2016): 233–57. 57. Leszek Buszynski, “Thailand’s Foreign Policy: Management of a Regional Vision,” Asian Survey 34, no. 8 (August 1994): 721–37. 58. Thitinan Pongsudhirak, “All Quiet on the Thai-Cambodian Front: Drivers, Dynamics, Directions,” South East Asia Research 26, no. 4 (2018): 330–46. 59. US Department of State, “Remarks at Press Availability: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State,” July 23, 2010, https://2009-207.state.gov/ secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2010/07/145095.htm. 60.  William Choong, “Vietnam and the Great Powers: Agency Amid Amity and Enmity,” ISEAS Perspective 62 (May 2021). 61. Cheng-Chwee Kuik, “How Do Weaker States Hedge? Unpacking ASEAN States’ Alignment Behavior towards China,” Journal of Contemporary China 25, no. 100 (2016): 500–14. 62. David Shambaugh’s writings are particularly germane in this regard. See Where Great Powers Meet; “US-China Rivalry in Southeast Asia: Power Shift or Competitive Coexistence?” International Security 42, no. 4 (2018): 85–127; “The Southeast Asian Crucible: What the Region Reveals About the Future of US-China Competition,” Foreign Affairs, December 17, 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ articles/asia/2020-12-17/southeast-asian-crucible. 63. Weatherbee, International Relations in Southeast Asia; Hiebert, Under Beijing’s Shadow: Southeast Asia’s China Challenge; Donald K. Emmerson, ed., The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (Stanford, CA: Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2020).



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64.  Le Hong Hiep, “Vietnam’s Hedging Strategy against China since Normalization,” A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs 35, no. 3 (December 2013): 333–68; Carlyle A. Thayer, “Vietnam’s Foreign Policy in an Era of Rising Sino-US Competition and Increasing Domestic Political Influence,” Asian Security 13, no. 3 (2017): 183–99. 65. Dewi Fortuna Anwar, “Indonesia-China Relations: Coming Full Circle?” Southeast Asian Affairs (2019): 145–62; Ardhitya Eduard Yeremia, “Explaining Indonesia’s Constrained Engagement with the Belt and Road Initiative: Balancing Developmentalism against Nationalism and Islamism,” Asian Perspective 45, no. 2 (2021): 325–47. 66.  Cheng-Chwee Kuik, “The Twin Chessboards of US-China Rivalry: Impact on the Geostrategic Supply and Demand in Post-Pandemic Asia,” Asian Perspective 45, no. 1 (2021): 157–76.

Chapter Nine

South Korea An Ambivalent Middle Power S cott S nyder

The Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) faces a foreign policy identity conundrum. Is it a simply a Northeast Asian country, an Indo-Pacific regional actor, or a global “middle power”? One, two, or all three? How South Korea answers this question will shape the country’s profile and regional orientation as well as its global reach. THE SOURCES OF AMBIVALENCE Internationally, South Korea has emerged as a member of the G20, the world’s tenth largest economy, is a pacesetter in global popular culture (music, movies, and drama), and actively contributes to a number of multilateral institutions. Its soft power is exemplary, its multinational companies are among world leaders, its exports of consumer durables span the globe, its production of technologies are cutting edge, its workforce is disciplined and its people tenacious, several of its universities are world class, and its military is one of the toughest on the planet. Yet, while South Korea possesses many of the attributes of a “middle power,” it struggles to act as such—either in Asia or globally. The country remains entrapped by its geography and rivalry with North Korea. Despite South Korea’s obvious differences with the regime to the north, the divided Korean Peninsula is something of an obsession to South Koreans. South Korea’s immediate neighborhood also keeps it from playing a broader role in Asia and internationally. Seoul wants to be a good neighbor, but lives in a tough neighborhood, surrounded by more powerful countries with conflicting security interests. 229

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Thus, the main task of South Korean foreign policy is to develop nearterm strategies for ensuring the country’s defense and prosperity in its immediate neighborhood in Northeast Asia, while pursuing the longer-term goal of becoming a fully engaged regional actor in the Indo-Pacific. To these ends, South Korea’s longstanding alliance and mutual security treaty with the United States (dating to 1953) has bought it security in a dangerous neighborhood. Yet, South Korean foreign policy has consistently failed to really establish itself as a player to be reckoned with, even within Asia. Its regional commercial presence and cultural soft power far outstrips its diplomatic influence. President Moon Jae-in’s ballyhooed “New Southern Policy” initiative, launched with much fanfare in Indonesia in November 2017, was intended to foreshadow a substantial uptick in South Korean political influence in Southeast and South Asia, but it did not materialize. This false start was reminiscent of other previous attempts to “break out” of its Northeast Asian preoccupations. South Korean public opinion polls over the past decade have consistently revealed public ambivalence if not distrust toward all its immediate neighbors: North Korea, China, Japan, and Russia.1 While the distant but powerful United States has also been a source of political support for South Koreans, South Korean perceptions of the United States have also fluctuated over time, reflecting a deep ambivalence. On the one hand, there is gratitude for the security protection that the US provides, as well as cultural attraction to American sports, universities, and popular culture. On the other hand, antiAmericanism has deep roots in certain sectors of South Korean society. South Korean views of China have similarly fluctuated wildly—from hot (so-called China fever) to cold. In one stunning poll in mid-2021, South Korean negative public attitudes toward China were greater than negativity toward Japan, for the first time.2 South Korean attitudes toward China are quite fickle and highly volatile. Close geographic proximity, strong historical and cultural ties, and deep economic interdependence tie South Koreans to China, but dislike of the PRC’s political system, abuse of human rights, support for North Korea, and the behemoth power that China has become—all disturb South Koreans. South Korean perceptions of Japan have been consistently negative, even hostile. The historical sources of Korean distaste for Japan stem from the country’s annexation and oppression under Japanese imperial rule, victimization of Korean protestors and dissidents at the hands of Japanese colonial occupation authorities, companies that took advantage of Korean forced labor without pay during World War II, and military related organizations that enslaved young Korean women to provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers. South Korean individual victims of forced labor and sexual slavery have kept



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the flames of grievance alive despite repeated efforts between the two governments to finally and fully resolve outstanding historical grievances, and an ongoing territorial dispute over the island known to Japanese as Takeshima and to Koreans as Dokdo persists as a persistent source of political division. Navigating among China, Japan, North Korea, and the United States has never been easy for South Korea. The “Korean strategy,” adopted by King Gojong as a blueprint for South Korea’s nineteenth century opening to the outside world, was encapsulated in the saying “Stay close to China, associate with Japan, ally with America.”3 Having lost national independence to imperial Japan beginning in 1895, and having fought the bloody Korean War (that was part civil war and part global geopolitical confrontation), South Korean dependence on the United States for its security became formalized with the establishment of the US-ROK Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) in 1953. SEARCHING FOR GREATER AUTONOMY As a result of its rapid economic development since the 1960s, and its political transformation from authoritarianism to democracy in the 1980s, South Korea’s growing capabilities and desires to chart its own course have sharpened a fundamental debate within South Korea about its roles, particularly concerning the constraining role of the security alliance with the United States and the aspiration for autonomy necessary to pursue an independent South Korean foreign policy.4 South Korea’s attributes as a middle power (noted above) have fed its citizens’ desires and ability to chart its own course at the same time that US capabilities and political will appear to be on the wane. Yet, the inter-Korean political and security competition resulting from the Korean Peninsula’s division into separate states remains unresolved. China’s growing influence and the intensification of Sino-US major power rivalry are generating fault lines on top of preexisting peninsular divisions, while unresolved grievances over Japan’s reckoning with its imperial past continue to impede South Korean foreign policy objectives. All of these impediments complicate South Korea’s efforts to formulate a regional strategy, either as a supplement to, or as a possible replacement for, the alliance with the United States. South Korea’s growing material capabilities and political influence as a middle power remain stymied by the country’s inability to fully manage its own security environment in the face of the North Korea challenge and contending interests of more powerful regional actors. Ideally, South Korea would lead the development of a Korean Peninsula– centered strategy that would institutionalize an inclusive and cooperative

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security regime in Northeast Asia built on functional network-building in pursuit of shared interests.5 Such a regime would provide a mechanism for restraining major power rivalry, preventing conflicts from arising, and managing disputes when they do arise. An effective Northeast Asian cooperative security regime would also mobilize multilateral cooperation to address shared security challenges arising from transnational problems such as pollution management and climate change. And it would lessen Seoul’s dependence on the United States. Ever since President Roh Tae-woo proposed a Six-Party Consultative Conference for Peace in Northeast Asia in his October 18, 1988, address to the UN General Assembly,6 South Korean presidents have consistently proposed various iterations of a cooperative security regime for Northeast Asia. As part of his Sunshine Policy promoting reconciliation with North Korea, Kim Dae-jung proposed to leverage inter-Korean cooperation following the first inter-Korean summit in 2000 to reestablish regional rail and energy links from South Korea through China and Russia to Rotterdam.7 Successive progressive and conservative South Korean leaders have proposed versions of Northeast Asian cooperation that repackaged these same themes, most recently including Park Geun-hye’s Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation and Eurasian Initiatives and Moon Jae-in’s New Northern Policy as well as his 2020 UNGA proposal to launch the Northeast Asia Cooperation Initiative for Infectious Disease Control and Public Health.8 The full development of a South Korean regional strategy based on the institutionalization of cooperative multilateralism to restrain major power aggression and establish a normative framework for promoting good behavior has been inhibited by ongoing tensions with a nuclear North Korea, the constraints generated by major power rivalry between the United States and China, and the perpetuation of historical grievances against Japan. In the face of impediments to achieving a regional cooperative security regime and the necessity of coping with both ongoing inter-Korean tensions and rising regional rivalries, South Korea’s regional strategies have, as a practical matter, been shaped by instrumental and tactical maneuvering to manage the North Korean threat, to balance the contending influences of major powers, and to reduce the risks of Korean entrapment in major power conflict. This chapter will analyze the impediments facing South Korea’s efforts to fulfill its efforts to build a cooperative security regime in its regional relations with North Korea, China, Japan, and Russia, develop South Korea’s relations with India and Southeast Asia, and Seoul’s tactical maneuvers to manage its regional strategies and multilateral cooperation efforts in the face of growing US-China strategic rivalry.



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INTER-KOREAN RELATIONS AND SOUTH KOREA’S REGIONAL STRATEGY The first and most obvious obstacle to South Korea’s ability to promote its preferred regional strategy of institutionalized regional cooperation stems from the territorial division of the Korean Peninsula. This is not to say that Korean unification would bring about the development of a successful Korean regional strategy, but it is to observe that South Korea’s continuing preoccupation with the threats and liabilities posed by North Korea have created an environment in which South Korean foreign policy foci are divided between peninsular and regional security priorities. The challenge of dealing with North Korea as a practical matter takes up considerable space on the diplomatic agenda of South Korea’s foreign relations that might otherwise be spent on other purposes—limiting South Korea’s ability to exercise its full influence on regional issues. North Korea policy, for understandable reasons, is the main priority and preoccupation of South Korean presidents, especially for progressive South Korean administrations. The question of how to approach North Korea is an ongoing source of domestic division between Korean conservatives and progressives. South Korean conservatives are disposed toward international pressure strategies on North Korea, and they anticipate German-style reunification by absorption (of the North by the South). Progressives, on the other hand, prioritize accommodation with North Korea toward the objective of peaceful coexistence and gradual political integration of the North and South Korean systems. The approaches could not be more different—yet North Korea has proven hostile to either approach. When the Lee Myung-bak administration appeared to focus South Korean foreign policy on South Korea’s global role and contributions rather than around engagement with North Korea around 2011, North Korean provocations, including the sinking of the Korean warship Cheonan in South Korean controlled waters of the Yellow Sea near North Korea and the shelling of South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island only a few kilometers from the North Korean coastline, ensured that South Korea could not turn its back on the North. As a result, the Lee administration diverted attention from its global Korea strategy to launch a regional and international diplomatic campaign to condemn North Korea for its actions. But the effort failed, as China supported its North Korean ally by blocking the condemnation in the United Nations Security Council. On the other hand, the Moon Jae-in administration’s peace policies toward North Korea have seemingly subordinated South Korea’s relations with other

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countries to Moon’s primary goal of inter-Korean reconciliation, even despite North Korea’s overt expressions of hostility and non-cooperation. The South Korean preoccupation with engaging North Korea has made that issue the overarching diplomatic priority within South Korea’s foreign policy agenda while distracting from the country’s ability and willingness to play a leadership role in addressing regional issues and problems beyond the peninsula. The North Korea factor impinges on the management of South Korea’s most important bilateral relationships because the question of how each of South Korea’s partners might be helpful in relation to North Korea is ever-present as a factor influencing South Korean diplomacy. The South Korean progressive outreach efforts to the North have been premised since the Kim Dae-jung administration in the late 1990s on the idea that inter-Korean economic cooperation and person-to-person exchanges would transform North Korea and pave the way for integration of the two Korean economies and intensified political cooperation between the two polities. The initial hypothesis underlying the Kim Dae-jung era policy of separating economics and politics was that projects like the Mount Kumgang tourism project and the Gaesong Industrial Zone would catalyze cooperation and induce North Korea’s economic and political transformation.9 The same idea has motivated the Moon administration’s vision of building a single Korean economy. Yet, North Korea has never fully bought into the progressive South Korean vision, treating South Korean–led projects as a Trojan horse and containing them in inter-Korean border areas on North Korea’s periphery. Of the more than 186,000 Korean travelers who crossed the inter-Korean border during the peak year of 2008, only 332 were North Koreans who traveled to the South.10 Inter-Korean trade grew steadily to over $2.7 billion in 2015 due to the expansion of the Gaesong Industrial Complex, built and managed by South Korean firms using North Korean land and labor a few kilometers north of the demilitarized zone, but it did not restrain North Korea’s nuclear weapons development (and has been accused of indirectly helping to fund the program).11 Inter-Korean economic cooperation plummeted following Park Geun-hye’s sudden decision to close the Gaesong Industrial Complex following North Korea’s January 2016 fourth nuclear test. UN Security Council resolutions in response to ongoing North Korean nuclear and missile tests through 2017 reinforced the shutdown of inter-Korean trade despite the inauguration of the progressive Moon administration in 2017. In 2018, inter-Korean trade managed to reach a peak under the Moon administration of only $31 million despite North Korea’s participation in the PyeongChang Olympics and two inter-Korean summits at Panmunjom largely due to the strengthening of UN Security Council sanctions on the North.12



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With inter-Korean economic cooperation projects off the table, the Moon administration has had difficulty maintaining momentum in inter-Korean political exchanges, especially following the failed US-North Korea summit in Hanoi in February of 2019. Moon’s persistent efforts to encourage Kim Jong-un to negotiate with American presidents have born little fruit, and the Iron-Silk Railway he proposed as a practical step toward linking regional railways has shown no progress.13 Trial balloons from Moon administration supporters for sanctions relaxation to promote inter-Korean economic exchanges gained limited support, either from the South Korean public or from the United States. Despite differing progressive and conservative regional strategies, there is an enduring hope within South Korea that peninsular unification would empower a unified Korea to play a more central role in regional relations. South Korean economists such as Kwon Goo-hoon of Goldman Sachs envisioned Korean unification as a catalyst for peninsular and economic growth that would integrate the Korean Peninsula both internally and externally, making Korea a global economic growth center.14 Former President Park Geun-hye famously referred to unification with North Korea as a “bonanza” as she promoted “Trustpolitik” with North Korea in spite of Kim Jong-un’s lack of a significant response.15 President Moon Jae-in’s desire to be in the “driver’s seat” in shaping policy toward North Korea also reflects an assumption that inter-Korean reconciliation would enable South Korea to be more influential internationally.16 The addition of 25 million North Koreans to South Korea’s population of 50 million would close the gap in relative economic and political power between unified Korea and its neighbors and provide Korea with momentum to influence regional relations. The primary impact would be economic, as unified Korea becomes a connector and crossroads between continental and maritime interests in Northeast Asia. A unified Korea’s added economic heft might support greater political influence, which would assist it in securing leadership and cooperation from its near neighbors (China and Japan), as well as most distant powers (the United States and Russia). A unified Korea would seek to supplement, and eventually replace, the US military presence and the collective security of the alliance structure with a cooperative structure designed to inhibit major power rivalry and create channels for multilateral cooperation. All of these assumptions are premised on the establishment of peaceful coexistence and political accommodation between the two Koreas that would finally transform the peninsula from a security quagmire into an engine for economic opportunity. In the absence of tangible progress toward inter-Korean reconciliation and peaceful coexistence, the task of managing the North Korean security threat will continue to be a drag on South Korean

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regional strategy and a distraction from the promotion of cooperative security multilateralism in Northeast Asia. THE CHINA FACTOR AND SOUTH KOREA’S REGIONAL STRATEGY Another factor that inhibits South Korea from acquiring greater influence and establishing a regional security multilateralism is opposition from China, which seeks to replace the current US-led regional security order with a Sinocentric security order. China’s opposition to South Korean aspirations toward building cooperative security mechanisms is less about the concept of cooperative security than about who leads it and the motivations behind such an effort. Initial frictions between China and South Korea over who should play the leading role occurred in 2003 with the Roh Moo-hyun administration’s Northeast Asia Cooperation Initiative efforts that characterized South Korea as the “hub of Northeast Asia.” The South Korean–led initiative ran counter to Chinese foreign policy frameworks premised on the concept of a Sinocentric order in which the Korean Peninsula is a key linchpin and security buffer on China’s periphery.17 Moreover, given Korea’s historical position as a virtual client state within China’s ancient “tribute system,” Beijing assumes Korea would assume a subservient position within a new Sinocentric order. A more substantive conflict over the order and purpose of cooperative security resulted from Xi Jinping’s efforts to lay out a Chinese vision for security cooperation at the 2014 meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) that directly excluded the role of Asian security alliances.18 Despite Chinese pressure, the Park Geunhye administration declined to sign on to the statement because it explicitly criticized alliances, including the US–South Korea alliance. Since the normalization of relations between China and South Korea in 1992, economic opportunities have been the primary driving force that superseded any political problems that might arise in the relationship, including disputes over history, management of North Korean refugees, and popular disputes in social media between Chinese and South Korean netizens. China surpassed the United States to become South Korea’s number one trading partner in 2004 and the relationship grew by double digits for almost every year from 1992 to 2011, generating huge economic opportunities for South Korean companies that benefited from Chinese cheap land and labor to manufacture products for international export. As shown in figure 9.1, Sino–South Korean trade has far outstripped South Korean trade with the United States and Japan, reaching as high as $268 billion in 2018.

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Figure 9.1.  South Korean Trade Volume, 2005–20 Source: Korea International Trade Association.

Concerns about South Korean economic dependency on China, technology transfer demands and technology theft, and increasing wage pressures in the Chinese market catalyzed South Korean investment diversification efforts to Southeast Asia and primarily to Vietnam in the late-2000s and early-2010s. China was South Korea’s number one destination for foreign direct investment in the mid-2000s, but as shown in figure 9.2, South Korean investment shifted to other parts of Asia (and in particular, to Vietnam) from 2007 to 2015, before shifting back to the United States as the number one destination of South Korean foreign direct investment since 2016. $18m $16m $14m $12m $10m $8m $6m $4m $2m

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Figure 9.2.  South Korean Foreign Direct Investment, 2005–20 Source: Statistics of foreign direct investment, Export-Import Bank of Korea.

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The upswing in Sino–South Korean trade was accompanied by an upswing in South Korean exchange students in China, peaking at more than 73,000 students in 2017. South Korean students constitute the largest number of any foreign country in Chinese universities. Chinese students have also come to study in South Korean universities, fueled by fascination with K-pop and K-drama as well as the relative quality, cost, and international orientation of South Korea’s educational sector, almost matching the number of South Korean students in China with more than 71,000 in 2019. Despite the momentum in bilateral ties. South Korea’s 2017 decision to allow the US installation of THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense) missile batteries on South Korean soil—despite China’s stringent opposition—proved to be a turning point in which bilateral political differences were no longer contained for the sake of joint economic opportunity and cultural attraction. Rather, China used economic retaliation against South Korea as punishment for deciding in a manner China perceived as contrary to its interests. Notably, the THAAD issue involved a choice between US and Chinese preferences on an issue critical to South Korea’s security in the face of North Korea’s expanding missile capabilities. It also represented an effort by China to send a signal to South Korea and the United States that the scope of the US–South Korea alliance should be contained on the Korean Peninsula and must not be allowed to target China. China’s selective economic retaliation against South Korean retail outlets in China such as Lotte and restrictions on Korean pop music concerts in China and Chinese group tours to Korea cost South Korea at least $24 billion in lost sales, while overall imports of necessities to Chinese economic growth such as semiconductors enabled bilateral trade to reach a new high of $268 billion in 2018.19 The number of South Korean students in China declined from 73,000 in 2017 to just over 50,000 in 2019, restoring the American position as the leading destination for South Korean students (at 54,000).20 It became increasingly clear to many South Koreans that Xi Jinping’s pursuit of the “China Dream” and China’s expanding influence and roles in regional affairs were more likely to crowd out—rather than to enable— Korean dreams of peaceful coexistence and eventual unification. South Korean attitudes toward China continued to steadily sour to the point that South Korean polls showed that public dislike for China had exceeded ill feelings toward Japan.21 From the start of Sino–South Korean diplomatic normalization in 1992, both countries have been acutely aware of China’s potential leverage over North Korea. China delayed its decision to normalize relations with South Korea out of consideration for North Korean interests for several years following the 1988 Seoul Olympics despite burgeoning Sino–South Korean trade relations. As part of his Nordpolitik policy, South Korean president Roh

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Figure 9.3.  Student Exchanges Between South Korea and China Source: Ministry of Education, Republic of Korea.

Tae-woo sought normalization with China in part as a means of pressuring North Korea. When President Park Geun-hye attended China’s seventieth anniversary commemoration of the end of World War II held in Beijing in 2015, she stood in the place that Kim Jong-un might have occupied between Xi and Putin, with some interpreting that Seoul was replacing Pyongyang in Beijing’s strategic calculus. But Xi’s failure to return Park’s call for over a month following North Korea’s January 2016 nuclear test, the emergence of the THAAD issue, and China’s subsequent reassessment of its need to maintain strategic ties with North Korea imposed new limits on Sino–South Korean strategic cooperation toward North Korea. President Moon Jae-in spearheaded efforts to stabilize the relationship with China in late 2017, at which time the two sides agreed to the “Three No’s”: no further addition of THAAD missile batteries on South Korean soil, no regional integration of South Korea’s missile defense systems with those of the United States and Japan, and no trilateral US-Japan-South Korea alliance. But differing interpretations quickly emerged between the two sides, with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa insisting that the statement represented current facts about South Korea’s position on these matters while China had a more expansive interpretation of the durability of the pledges. Moon’s visit to China in December of 2017 marked a step forward in partially normalizing the Sino– South Korean economic relationship but was marred by South Korean media reporting on perceived slights toward Moon and an incident in which Chinese security manhandled the always boisterous South Korean media scrum.

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President Moon’s efforts to improve relations with China came into relief once more in early 2020 during the early stages of the global COVID-19 outbreak. The Moon administration, eager to host Xi prior to the South Korean National Assembly elections scheduled for April, opted not to impose a travel ban on Chinese citizens in the initial stages of the COVID spread to South Korea, instead praising Xi and stating in a February 2020 telephone call to Xi that “China’s suffering is our suffering, and the Korean government will try its best to give assistance to its closest neighbor in these difficult times.”22 Weeks later when South Korea’s COVID-19 transmission rates spiked and it had become clear that the pandemic had made bilateral summitry impossible, China imposed travel restrictions on foreign citizens including South Koreans coming into China. More significantly, the gap between the Moon administration’s accommodationist approach toward China and China’s deepening public unfavorability has politicized South Korean debates over China policy. South Korean conservatives have argued that the country should strengthen the alliance with the United States while Moon’s Foreign Minister Chung Eui-young stated that South Korea “cannot pick sides.”23 After the Trump administration’s announcement of its 2017 National Security Strategy, which set a framework for confrontation between the United States and China, South Korea struggled to avoid making strategic choices between the United States and China. Former senior Joongang Ilbo columnist Kim Young-hie wrote upon the release of the 2017 strategy that “The new competitive structure between the United States and China and Russia is extremely ominous for South Korea, which has to tackle its urgent issue of the North Korean nuclear threat. No North Korean issue, including its nuclear and missile programs, can be resolved without China’s cooperation or against China’s will.”24 This critique underscores both South Korean anxieties about the impact of rising Sino-US tensions on the regional security environment and South Korea’s ongoing preoccupation with North Korea. The Moon administration’s hedging strategies relied on choice avoidance and seeming neutrality in the face of rising Sino-US tensions, even as South Korea continues to rely on the alliance with the United States as the anchor guaranteeing the country’s security. At the time of this writing in 2022, conservative politician Yoon Suk-yeol has just been elected president. As with previous conservative presidents, it is anticipated that the Yoon administration will draw away from China and closer to the United States. THE JAPAN FACTOR AND SOUTH KOREA’S REGIONAL STRATEGY Another major constraint on the ability of South Korea to effectively pursue a regional strategy rooted in the establishment of a Northeast Asian coopera-



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tive security regime has been the perpetuation of bilateral frictions between South Korea and Japan over how to properly deal with individual victims of Japan’s imperial legacy, including ongoing disputes over responsibility for compensation to wartime victims of forced labor and to “comfort women.”25 The inability to reach a political accommodation over history-related issues has hamstrung Japan–South Korea relations until conservative President Park Geun-hye forged a 2015 “comfort woman agreement” with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that the Moon administration proceeded to overturn in 2018. Moreover, South Korea’s relationship with Japan became entangled in South Korean domestic politics when the former Supreme Court Justice under the Park administration, Yang Sung-tae, was imprisoned for a variety of offenses including for consultations with the Park administration on issues including the handling of Korean Supreme Court cases brought by Korean victims of forced labor by Japanese firms during World War II. The Moon administration initially pursued a “dual track” policy with Japan that attempted to separate disputes over history from other components of the relationship, while calling on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to conduct a review of the Park-era comfort woman agreement in 2017. Upon the completion of the review in January 2018, Moon strongly criticized the agreement as “defective” and urged Japan to “accept the truth and apologize with a sincere heart.” However, the failure of South Korean administrations under both Park and Moon to prevent historical disputes from paralyzing the broader relationship with Japan in effect hamstrung prospects for Korea-Japan cooperation on joint security projects. The Park administration’s efforts to promote functional cooperation under the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative (NAPCI) in the mid-2010s went nowhere in part because of bilateral difficulties between South Korea and Japan. The Moon administration likewise failed to build the foundation for its Northeast Asia Cooperation Initiative for Infectious Disease Control and Public Health by exploring bilateral antipandemic cooperation measures with Japan as a result of the negative spiral in the relationship resulting from the impasse over history. The trigger for a negative spiral in South Korea-Japan relations came in October of 2018, when the South Korean Supreme Court ruled in favor of compensation claims by Korean claimants forced to work for Japanese firms during World War II. The ruling determined that the individual rights of forced labor victims to seek damages for their treatment is outside the scope of the 1965 Japan–South Korea Treaty on Diplomatic Normalization and Claims Agreement. The Abe administration strenuously objected to the ruling and treated it as a violation of the 1965 treaty by calling on the South Korean government to settle differences through arbitration as called for under the provisions of the treaty, while the Moon administration pressured the Abe administration to open political discussions based on the South Korean

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Supreme Court ruling. The Moon administration decided in response to Japan’s objections to the Supreme Court’s ruling on forced labor in November 2018 to announce the disbanding of the Japan-funded Reconciliation and Healing Foundation on grounds that the foundation had lost its purpose.26 Abe expressed his deep disappointment, stating that “relations between states don’t work when international agreements aren’t kept.”27 The Japan-South Korea relationship continued to deteriorate rapidly in the aftermath of South Korea’s Supreme Court ruling. A December 20, 2018 “fire-lock incident” involving an encounter in Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone off Ishikawa prefecture between a South Korean destroyer engaged in a humanitarian operation and a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces (JMSDF) P-1 patrol aircraft caused further tension in the relationship.28 Conflicting narratives regarding the incident between the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and the South Korean Ministry of National Defense generated internal political pressures on both defense ministries to defend their positions and place the blame on the other side. The Japan-South Korea relationship further deteriorated after the Japanese government-imposed restrictions on the export of three chemicals critical to the manufacture of South Korean semiconductors and the removal of South Korea from Japan’s White List of closest trading partners in July of 2019.29 These measures generated strong public backlash in South Korea, including boycotts against Japanese firms such as Uniqlo. Japanese exports to South Korea dropped from over $54.6 billion in 2018 to $47.5 billion in 2019, an almost 15 percent year-over-year decline.30 The dispute resulted in an approximately 25 percent decline in South Korean tourism to Japan between 2018 and 2019.31 (Interestingly, Japanese tourism to South Korea grew by over 10 percent during the same period.)32 South Korea pushed arguments against Japan’s export restrictions at the World Trade Organization and threatened to end its participation in a bilateral General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) between Japan and South Korea that entered into force in 2016. Mutual public opinion between South Koreans and Japanese plummeted as a result of these developments. In a 2020 survey of opinion in each country by Genron NPO, a Japanese think tank, and the East Asia Institute, its Korean counterpart, 71 percent of South Koreans had either a “bad” or “relatively bad” impression of Japan, an increase of 21.5 percentage points from the 2019 survey. The percentage of those with either a “good” or “relatively good” impression of Japan plummeted from 31.7 percent in 2019 to just 12.3 percent in 2020. Views of South Korea among the Japanese public are slightly better. Under half (46.3 percent) of Japanese respondents expressed either a “bad” or “relatively bad” impression of South Korea in 2020, a 3.6 percentage point improvement over 2019. Still, in 2020, more



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than half of respondents (54.7 percent) described Japan-South Korea relations as either “relatively bad” or “extremely bad,” an improvement from 63.5 percent in the previous poll.33 As part of an emphasis on restoration of alliances under the Biden administration in early 2021, the United States undertook strenuous efforts to stabilize the relationship between Japan and South Korea and to promote trilateral coordination between the three countries at the highest levels. These efforts sent a clear signal to both the Moon administration and the Suga administration, which had succeeded the Abe administration in October of 2019, that a stable Japan-South Korea relationship was important to US regional strategy. But American efforts to encourage improvement in Japan-South Korea relations could only go so far in the absence of a willingness from Japanese and South Korean political leaderships to reframe the relationship in a forwardlooking way while bringing closure to the historical grievances that have long impeded Japan-South Korea relations. Even if new leadership in Japan and South Korea are able to successfully manage the historical dimension of the relationship, there remain fundamental strategic differences between South Korean and Japanese threat perceptions and preferred regional strategies. South Korean progressive governments prefer to pursue dialogue and political accommodation with North Korea, while Japanese governments have historically emphasized deterrence and containment of North Korea’s growing regional military threat. In this respect, Japanese governments may find greater opportunities for cooperation with conservative South Korean administrations on policies toward North Korea. The brief Suga administration (2020–21) took a more defensive and openly critical attitude toward China than the Moon administration. The differences between the governments of Japan and South Korea over what to say about China were most clearly revealed in a side-by-side comparison of Biden administration joint statements with the two governments at parallel 2+2 and White House summit meetings with Suga and Moon held in April and May of 2021.34 Japan has opted for balancing and an emphasis on collective security cooperation against China’s growing regional influence, while South Korea continues to harbor visions of cooperative security mechanisms that would rely on much weaker instruments for inducing self-restraint among major powers. As a result, prospects for South Korea and Japan to coordinate policies toward China, even in the context of trilateral cooperation with the United States, will remain limited. South Korea faces a conflict between the pressure to align with the United States and Japan to bolster collective security cooperation against China and pressure to accommodate China in hopes of preserving a foundation upon which to institutionalize cooperative security practices in Northeast Asia.

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SOUTH KOREA–RUSSIA RELATIONS South Korea has historically viewed relations with Russia as a major power actor that has historically influenced geopolitics on the Korean Peninsula. Russia was present on the Korean Peninsula in the late nineteenth century as a political influence until its defeat in the Russo-Japanese war in the mid1890s and as an investor in the Korean minerals sector. The Soviet Union, along with the United States, was responsible for the peninsula’s occupation and intended temporary division of the peninsula into two separate states, as a major backer of Kim Il-sung in the North following World War II, and as a longstanding source of political, financial, and technical support to the North Korean regime. Given the historic role of the Soviet Union as a primary benefactor of North Korea, South Korea’s effort to normalize relations with the Soviet Union in 1990 following the 1988 Seoul Olympics had a strategic aim. But the $3 billion loan offered months prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union loomed over South Korean–Russian relations for decades. Post-Soviet Russia retained commercial and political interests and influence on the Korean Peninsula and as a participant in the Six Party Talks between 2004 and 2008. Russia remained a potential energy supplier and partner for refurbishment of North Korean railroads and construction of oil and gas pipelines through the peninsula. In 2019, Kim Jong-un pursued summitry with Russian President Vladimir Putin following the failed Hanoi summit, but little seemed to come of it, reflecting Russia’s waning capacity to assert influence on the Korean Peninsula. Russia remained part of South Korea’s traditional diplomatic framework as one of the four major powers but was no longer capable of generating the same influence on the peninsula it had enjoyed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. SOUTH KOREAN APPROACHES TO REGIONAL MULTILATERALISM South Korea is understandably primarily concerned with managing its immediate tough neighborhood, harboring desires for the region’s transformation while dealing with the realities inherent in managing relations with difficult and more powerful immediate neighbors. In recent years, South Korea’s diplomatic reach has expanded beyond Northeast Asia on the strength of South Korea’s expanded trade and global supply chains, enabling the country to think anew about diplomatic opportunities beyond its immediate neighborhood. At the same time, the aperture of US-China competition has grown, creating demands on South Korea to have the growing Sino-American



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competition in the back of its mind even as it expands its own reach beyond Northeast Asia. The combination of South Korea’s growing global reach beyond Northeast Asia and the widening aperture of Sino-US competition has created complex pressures on South Korea’s outreach to new partners. These circumstances have placed pressure on South Korea to strengthen preexisting relationships in South and Southeast Asia on their own merits, while also taking into account developments in the broader competition for influence between the United States and China. To the extent that rising USChina rivalry forecloses possibilities for South Korea to build regional support for inclusive and cooperative multilateralism, it also forces South Korea to utilize its relationships tactically to achieve gains for itself in the context of tactical maneuvering between the United States and China. President Moon’s New Southern Policy and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy Former president Moon Jae-in signaled his desire to look beyond South Korea’s traditional framing of relations with the four major powers by sending a special envoy to Southeast Asia shortly following his 2017 inauguration as president. Moon’s dispatch of Seoul Mayor Park Won Soon for the mission was the first time that a South Korean president has sent a special envoy to a region or country aside from the United States, China, Japan, and Russia. In introducing his New Southern Policy (NSP) during a policy speech in Jakarta, Indonesia, on November 9, 2017, Moon said, “It is my goal to elevate Korea’s relationship with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to the level of its relations with the four major powers around the Korean Peninsula.”35 The Moon administration elaborated the objectives behind the establishment of his New Southern Policy primarily in terms of supporting South Korean business interests and promoting Korean culture through adoption of “a cooperative model that satisfies the needs of each partner country. Ultimately, we aim to build a foundation for mutually beneficial and futureoriented economic cooperation with the NSP target countries.”36 President Moon’s New Southern Policy involved a range of South Korean investment, development, finance, and capacity building priorities organized around the themes “Prosperity, People, and Peace,” referred to as the 3Ps. The rising prominence of Southeast Asia as part of South Korea’s trade profile illustrates the rationale behind Moon’s elevation of the region as a strategic priority. As shown in figure 9.1, the ASEAN region has emerged as South Korea’s second largest trading partner behind China, representing over US$159.7 billion in trade in 2018. Moreover, South Korean investment flows to Southeast Asia, particularly to Vietnam, increased from $3.2 billion in 2007 to $6.1 billion in

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2018, surpassing Korean investment to China in 2014 and buttressing the South Korea–ASEAN economic relationship. Over one-quarter of inbound visitors to South Korea are from countries targeted by the NSP.37 While South Korea’s perspectives on its relations with Southeast Asia have long been dominated by economic considerations, Southeast Asian countries have desired South Korea to place a greater strategic priority on the development of the relationship with the idea that South Korea and ASEAN have a shared interest in maintaining engagement with great powers in a manner that balances their respective influence so as to ensure that no single great power predominates (sometimes known as “hedging” behavior). Yet, South Korea’s preoccupations with its immediate neighbors have inhibited its willingness to embrace the political and strategic aspects of the relationship with ASEAN. South Korea’s emphasis on “peace” as a pillar of the NSP clearly soft-pedals any strategic intent toward relations with Southeast Asia while seeking to strengthen political relations with the region. The centerpiece of the NSP lies with the development of South Korean economic relations with Vietnam as part of a diversification strategy led by South Korean businesses, in an attempt to decrease dependency on Chinacentered supply chains for manufacturing and production. That strategy has propelled Vietnam to third place among South Korean export destinations with a total trade volume of almost $70 billion in 2020, almost equivalent to South Korea’s total trade with Japan.38 However, the intensifying Sino-US strategic competition has introduced a new lens through which South Korean strategists have begun to think about relations with Southeast Asia. The primary impetus for consideration of relations with Southeast Asia in strategic terms has been the United States, which under the Trump administration sought to enhance and extend coordination between South Korea’s New Southern Policy and the US “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” policy. During President Trump’s June 2019 visit to South Korea following the G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, Moon publicly stated that “under the regional cooperation principles of openness, inclusiveness and transparency, we have agreed to put forth harmonious cooperation between Korea’s New Southern Policy and the United States’ Indo-Pacific Strategy,” linking the respective US and South Korean strategies for the first time.39 Initially reluctant to embrace cooperation with the United States and preferring to pursue the New Southern Policy as a stand-alone initiative, South Korea moved to develop a joint fact sheet on coordination of the New Southern Policy and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific which was released on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in November of 2019. But the Moon administration did not appear to publicly reference cooperation with the Free and Open Indo-Pacific policy



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in NSP events with ASEAN leaders held just weeks later in Busan to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of ASEAN. South Korea’s reluctance to publicly link the NSP with the Free and Indo-Pacific Policy in diplomacy with Southeast Asian countries signals South Korea’s desire to maintain independence from and distance with the United States while still responding to requests from its US ally. As their respective policy approaches toward Southeast Asia have evolved, the United States and South Korea have identified and agreed to pursue parallel elements. The Moon administration touted the NSP while downplaying its strategic significance. The US-ROK Joint Fact Sheet issued on November 2, 2019, formally and publicly identifies specific areas of cooperation for further development, including joint efforts to support renewable energy projects, infrastructure finance and urban development, international development cooperation, water management, and disease control and prevention.40 But the extent to which US–South Korean alignment of policies toward Southeast Asia occurs in practice remains to be seen. Some South Korean scholars have been more forward-leaning in giving meaning to the possible role of ties with Southeast Asia in the context of the growing Sino-US strategic competition. For instance, Ajou University professor Kim Heung-gyu has argued that South Korea should strengthen relations with other middle powers in Asia and beyond to buffer against the fallout of Sino-US strategic competition. In this approach, South Korea would seek to leverage its middle power capacities through outreach to and coordination with countries such as Australia, Indonesia, and Vietnam and the strengthening of relations with multilateral organizations such as ASEAN, the EU, and the North Atlantic Trade Organization (NATO). As such, South Korean diplomatic efforts would avoid alignment with either the United States or China while aiming to promote solidarity with like-minded actors that seek to develop a unified voice in urging self-restraint by both parties. A major challenge to this strategy is that in the strategic context of US-China rivalry, the respective interests, priorities, and thresholds for joint action on individual issues of middle powers or other groupings may not always align with each other. There is also tension between South Korea’s desire to highlight and develop closer economic and cultural ties with Southeast Asia and its caution in assigning strategic significance to those ties, either independently or in the context of the US “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” policy. South Korea–India Relations and the Indo-Pacific The Moon administration also grouped India together with ASEAN as part of its New Southern Policy, underlying India’s importance and potential as

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an economic and political partner. South Korea’s emerging relationship with India has also gained impetus from an explicit focus under the leadership of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on South Korea as a model for India’s economic development. During his first visit as prime minister, Modi and South Korean President Park Geun-hye released a joint statement on the occasion of his first visit to Seoul as Prime Minister in March of 2015 establishing a Special Strategic Partnership that stated that “India sees the ROK as an indispensable partner in its ‘Act East’ strategy, and the ROK and India recognize the value of the bilateral partnership and its contribution to bringing peace, stability and security in the Asia Pacific Region.”41 For its part, South Korea recognized that relations with India have possible strategic significance by including India in the NSP, but has shied away from embracing strategic motives for developing the relationship. Despite Modi’s explicit reference to South Korea as a development model, growth in Indo–South Korean trade has been modest. South Korea’s total trade with India only reached $20 billion during 2015 and experienced a prepandemic peak at $24 billion in 2018. During Modi’s summit with Moon in February of 2019, he reiterated his admiration for South Korea’s economic development, saying that “for India’s growth, Korea’s model is probably the most exemplary. Korea’s progress is a source of inspiration for India. . . . We consider Korea as a valuable partner in India’s economic transformation.”42 Interestingly, Prime Minister Modi confined his comments on the strategic significance of India’s relationship with South Korea to his pre-departure speech in India, at which time he stated that “We regard the Republic of Korea as a valued friend, a nation with which we have a Special Strategic Partnership. As fellow democracies, India and the ROK have shared values and a shared vision for regional and global peace.”43 Modi’s restraint in attributing strategic significance to his visit to Seoul most likely reflects the Moon administration’s caution and requests for Modi to exercise restraint in an effort not to offend or attract attention or public opposition to the relationship from China. The closest that Moon came to making similar remarks was the following September on the occasion of Moon’s return visit to Delhi at an event celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. After linking Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance and economic boycott strategies to South Korea’s resistance against Japanese colonial rule, Moon stated that “India and Korea, both having suffered from colonial rule, were partners who gave inspiration to and courage for each other’s liberation. Now, India and Korea are advancing our special strategic partnership further, based on the shared values of democracy and common prosperity.”44 The Moon administration included India in the New Southern Policy along with ASEAN, but kept South Korea’s association with and references to



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India’s involvement with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) at arm’s length. But perhaps more interesting is the parallel yet diverging respective positions South Korea and India have taken on the Indo-Pacific architecture. India has opted to join with Japan, Australia, and the United States not only as an essential member of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific, but also to establish the Quad as a multilateral grouping clearly aimed at countering Chinese regional influence, although India’s Foreign Minister Jaishankar explicitly stated that the Quad is not an “Asian NATO” and that the “Indo-Pacific is a return to history. It reflects a more contemporary world. It is actually overcoming the Cold War, not reinforcing it.”45 In contrast, South Korea, as an ally of the United States, has signed up in support of Quad priorities and even to some degree taken on parts of India’s anticipated contributions to Quad priorities by signing onto a Global Vaccine Partnership with the United States, partnering with the United States on supply chain resiliency, and pledging to combat climate change. However, the Moon administration has strenuously avoided public mention of China in statements with the United States and has avoided formal associations with the Quad.46 Thus, the South Korean relationship with India has potential, but neither side has shown a willingness to fully define or embrace it as having strategic significance, preferring to focus on economic opportunities. Stuck Between Competing Interests: The Quad and US-China Rivalry The Trump and Biden administrations both encouraged South Korea to consider joining the Quad, but the Moon administration viewed the Quad with an abundance of caution out of fear of alienating China.47 Former Moon policy advisor Moon Chung-in expressed concern that “if the United States forces us to join some kind of a military alliance against China, then I see that will pose a very existential dilemma for us.”48 At its core, South Korea’s choice avoidance efforts revolve around the conflict between South Korea’s desire to build a regional order built on mutual trust and reliant on the institutionalization of a cooperative security paradigm and its fundamental reliance on a bilateral collective security structure, the US–South Korea alliance. On the one hand, the Moon administration felt the imperative of maintaining cooperation with China to keep hopes for interKorean reconciliation alive, but on the other hand recognized the necessity of cooperation with the United States as the foundation for ensuring South Korea’s security against the North Korean nuclear threat. Moon’s efforts to preserve an opening for Sino–South Korea relations increasingly came under pressure from conservative South Korean assertions that a failure to

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align more closely with the United States would critically compromise South Korea’s national security. Initial criticisms focused on the Moon administration’s reluctance to align with the Trump administration’s hardline approach to China, but pressure on the Moon administration ramped up further as the Biden administration reframed its approach to the Quad around a positive mission and around upholding of international norms and rule of law, rather than a negative focus on demonizing the Chinese Communist Party. The Biden administration further sharpened choices for allies and likeminded countries, between the United States and China, by casting the USChina relationship in terms of a competition between authoritarianism and democracy and making the Quad a centerpiece of its Indo-Pacific policy. The Biden administration’s shift in its engagement efforts in the Indo-Pacific away from a framework aimed at calling out and excluding China—to a framework positively focused on collaboration to uphold a rules-based international system, to preserve peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific, and to generate global public goods through collaboration on vaccine diplomacy, supply chain resiliency, climate change, and environmentally sustainable infrastructure projects appears to have increased pressure on South Korea to work with the Quad in one form or another. The May 21, 2021, US-ROK Joint Statement released in conjunction with the Moon-Biden summit suggested surprisingly broad convergence of US and South Korean regional strategies, but without naming China. Most notably, the statement emphasized that the two countries “oppose all activities that undermine, destabilize, or threaten the rules-based international order and commit to maintaining an inclusive, free, and open Indo-Pacific,” including specific mention of the “importance of preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” but carefully avoiding direct mention of China.49 Regional Economic Cooperation South Korea’s primary overarching framework for its approach to China and the United States, respectively, over the past decade has been that relations with China generate economic opportunities while relations with the United States ensure South Korea’s security. The diminishing US role in shaping the regional economic architecture following the US withdrawal from the establishment of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) has probably reinforced South Korean views on regional cooperation. The diminishing US role has been reinforced by the conclusion of the Regional Cooperative Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement in 2020, which includes China and most other East Asian countries but not the United States. Moreover, China and South Korea have consistently attempted to ex-



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pand their own economic partnership through the deepening of bilateral trade negotiations following the 2012 entry into force of the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA). Thus, South Korea’s involvement with regional economic cooperation frameworks would appear to be increasingly shaped by Sinocentric trade patterns, buttressed by China’s growing economic influence, the creation of RCEP, and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) investments. While for over a decade the South Korean private sector has diversified its investments and supply chain to Southeast Asia, some South Korean specialists continue to dream that a United States return to the CPTPP might also open opportunities for South Korea to join. Moreover, China’s expression of interest in joining CPTPP following the conclusion of RCEP negotiations has removed a possible concern for the South Korean government in considering future CPTPP membership.50 South Korea has sought opportunities to engage with Chinese-led regional economic development efforts, but to no avail. South Korea has long held out the possibility of greater involvement with Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB) leadership, having joined the organization as a founding member at the time it was established in 2016. But those opportunities did not result in substantial South Korean roles in AIIB governance and South Korean firms do not appear to be heavily involved in AIIB project implementation. South Korean private sector involvement in implementing BRI projects appears to remain minimal.51 Moreover, South Korean lessons learned from its own experiences inside China may provide a cautionary tale regarding the limits Chinese partners would likely impose on the participation of South Korean private sector partners. CONCLUSION South Korea’s economic capabilities and political clout have grown considerably in recent decades, but the country still does not have the capability to independently shape its regional security environment or strategy as long as it is wedged among larger neighbors with even greater political and economic capabilities and global aspirations. One consequence of South Korea’s tough neighborhood is that its vision of transforming regional relations from a paradigm based on security competition to one based on mutual trust and cooperation remains infeasible for the time being. The obstacles deriving from the division of the Korean Peninsula, China’s efforts to establish a Sinocentric regional order, and unresolved historical legacies in relations with Japan remain serious obstacles constraining South Korea’s realization of its preferred regional strategy.

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As South Korea navigates toward its long-term objective of renewing and transforming the neighborhood of Northeast Asia, successive South Korean leaders have maintained realism in the management of near-term bilateral relations with each of the country’s immediate neighbors in a manner designed to maximize South Korean interests while also continuing to strive toward the long-term goal of achieving a new cooperation-based multilateral security order. While the achievement of that goal often seems idealistic, it is important to remember that South Korea’s pursuit of such a goal is also tempered by a realistic appraisal of the country’s own circumstances: South Korea’s relative weakness vis-à-vis its immediate neighbors means that the country will never be able to achieve its objectives through power or coercion. Therefore, South Korea has no choice but to use persuasion in an attempt to build mechanisms, step-by-step, that are capable of inducing more powerful neighbors to voluntarily embrace self-restraint as the guiding principle that will overcome security conflicts and lead to both mutual cooperation and mutual prosperity. NOTES 1. Asan Institute polling shows that the United States has consistently enjoyed positive favorability over the past decade. China had favorable ratings (over five) during 2014–16, but those ratings never exceeded those of the United States. “South Koreans and Their Neighbors 2015,” Asan Institute for Policy Studies, 2015; “South Koreans and Their Neighbors 2019,” Asan Institute for Policy Studies, 2019. 2.  Choe Sang-Hun, “South Koreans Now Dislike China More Than They Dislike Japan,” New York Times, August 20, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20 /world/asia/korea-china-election-young-voters.html. 3.  Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2005), 104. 4.  Scott Snyder, South Korea at the Crossroads (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2018). 5.  Moon Jae-in called on the United Nations to work toward establishing such a regime in his September 22, 2020, speech to the United Nations General Assembly. “Address by President Moon Jae-in at Seventy-Fifth Session of the United Nations General Assembly,” Office of the President, September 23, 2020, https://english1 .president.go.kr/Briefingspeeches/Speeches/881. 6.  Speech available at A/43/PV.33; see Won-hyuk Lim, “Regional Multilateralism in Asia and the Korean Question,” in Asia’s New Multilateralism: Cooperation, Competition, and the Search for Community, eds. Michael J. Green and Bates Gill (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 78–102. 7.  원일희, “김대통령, ‘철의 실크로드’ 제안,” SBS News, September 24, 2002, https://news.sbs.co.kr/news/endPage.do?news_id=N0311294606.



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8. “Address by President Moon Jae-in at 75th Session of the United Nations General Assembly,” Office of the President, September 23, 2020, https://english1 .president.go.kr/Briefingspeeches/Speeches/881. 9.  Chung-in Moon and David Steinberg, eds., Kim Dae-jung Government and Sunshine Policy: Priorities and Challenges (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1999). 10. 2008 was the first year of the Lee Myung-bak administration prior to the closure of the Mount Gumgang tourist zone, which was due to the killing of a South Korean tourist at the hands of a Korean People’s Army soldier; “Inter-Korean Traffic,” ROK Ministry of Unification, Republic of Korea, https://www.unikorea.go.kr /eng_unikorea/relations/statistics/traffic/. 11. “Inter-Korean Exchanges and Cooperation,” ROK Ministry of Unification, Republic of Korea, https://www.unikorea.go.kr/eng_unikorea/relations/statistics /exchanges/. 12. Ibid. 13.  “President Moon Jae-in Hopes for Lasting Peace on Korean Peninsula with Railways,” ROK Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, April 11, 2019, http://m.molit.go.kr/viewer/skin/doc.html?fn=dc0fd7ebf67068ec37ff36da1bc5795c &rs=/viewer/result/20190503. 14.  Kwon Goohoon, “Global Economics Paper No: 188,” Goldman Sachs, September 21, 2009, http://nautilus.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/A-United-Korea-Re assessing-North-Korea-Risks-Part-I.pdf. 15. “박성우, “박근혜 대통령 기자회견 ‘통일은 대박,’” Radio Free Asia, January 6, 2014, https://www.rfa.org/korean/in_focus/nk_nuclear_talks/pressmeeting -01062014091331.html. 16. “S. Korea Seeks to Get Back to ‘Driver’s Seat’ on Korean Peninsula Issues,” Dong-A Ilbo, August 16, 2018, https://www.donga.com/en/article/all/201808 16/1427544/1. 17.  “Xi Jinping: Let the Sense of Community of Common Destiny Take Deep Root in Neighboring Countries,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, People’s Republic of China, October 25, 2013, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjb_663304/wjbz_663308 /activities_663312/t1093870.shtml. 18.  Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, https:// www.s-cica.org/page/China14/. 19. Troy Stangarone, “Did South Korea’s Three Noes Matter? Not So Much,” Diplomat, October 30, 2019, https://thediplomat.com/2019/10/did-south-koreas -three-noes-matter-not-so-much/; Korea International Trade Association, https://stat .kita.net/stat/kts/ctr/CtrTotalImpExpDetailPopup.screen. 20.  Republic of Korea Ministry of Education, https://www.moe.go.kr/sn3hcv/doc .html?fn=6834dbc31099caebd2c9b0aa59a5043a&rs=/upload/synap/202108/. 21.  Choe Sang-hun, “South Koreans Now Dislike China more Than They Dislike Japan.” 22.  “Korea, China Agree to Boost Cooperation vs. COVID-19 Outbreak,” Office of the President, February 21, 2020, https://english1.president.go.kr/Media/News/683. 23.  Choe Sang-hun, “South Koreans Now Dislike China More Than They Dislike Japan,” New York Times, August 21, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20 /world/asia/korea-china-election-young-voters.html.

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24. Kim Young-hie, “Trump’s Bad News,” Joongang Ilbo English, December 29, 2017, https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2017/12/29/etc/Trumps-bad -news/3042691.html?detailWord=. 25.  The “comfort women” were women forced to provide sexual services to members of the Japanese imperial army during World War II. 26.  Esther Lee, “여성가족부가 밝힌 ‘화해치유재단 해산’ 결정 이유는,” Joongang Ilbo, November 21, 2018, https://news.joins.com/article/23143138. 27.  Cho Ki-weon, “Abe Denounces S. Korea’s Decision to Dissolve Reconciliation and Healing Foundation,” Hankyoreh, November 22, 2018, http://english.hani .co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/871356.html. 28.  “South Korean Warship Directs Fire-Control Radar at Japan Plane,” Kyodo News, December 21, 2018, https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2018/12/9a854f9b8e73 -urgent-s-korean-warship-directs-fire-control-radar-at-japan-msdf-plane.html. 29. “Update of METI’s Licensing Policies and Procedures on Exports of Controlled Items to the Republic of Korea,” Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of the Government of Japan, July 1, 2019, https://www.meti.go.jp/english/press /2019/0701_001.html. 30.  “Exports and Imports by Country,” Korean Statistical and Information Service, https://kosis.kr/statHtml/statHtml.do?orgId=360&tblId=DT_1R11006_FRM101. 31.  “Trends in Annual Visitor Arrivals to Japan by Country/Area,” Japan National Tourism Organization, https://statistics.jnto.go.jp/en/graph/#graph—breakdown— by—country. 32. “2020년 12월 한국관광통계 공표,” 한국관광공사, February 5, 2021, https:// datalab.visitkorea.or.kr/site/portal/ex/bbs/View.do?cbIdx=1127&bcIdx=16449&page Index=1. 33.  Yasushi Kudo, “South Korean Attitudes Toward Japan Have Worsened Dramatically, Annual Survey Finds,” Genron NPO, October 19, 2020, https://www .genron-npo.net/en/opinion_polls/archives/5562.html. 34.  “US-Japan Joint Press Statement,” US Department of State, March 16, 2021, https://www.state.gov/u-s-japan-joint-press-statement/; “Joint Statement of the 2021 Republic of Korea–United States Foreign and Defense Ministerial Meeting (‘2+2’),” US Department of State, March 18, 2021, https://www.state.gov/joint-statement -of-the-2021-republic-of-korea-united-states-foreign-and-defense-ministerial-meet ing-22/; “US-Japan Joint Leaders’ Statement: ‘US-Japan Global Partnership for a New Era,’” The White House, April 16, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov /briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/16/u-s-japan-joint-leaders-statement-u-s -japan-global-partnership-for-a-new-era/; “US-ROK Leaders’ Joint Statement,” The White House, May 21, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements -releases/2021/05/21/u-s-rok-leaders-joint-statement/. 35. Sohn Ji-Ae, “President Moon Unveils New Southern Policy for ASEAN,” November 10, 2017, https://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/policies/view?articleId=151 092&pageIndex=7. 36.  “Presidential Committee on the New Southern Policy,” November 27, 2019, https://apcss.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Republic_of_Korea-New_Southern _Policy_Information_Booklet.pdf.



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37.  Ibid., 12. 38.  Korea International Trade Association, https://stat.kita.net/stat/kts/ctr/CtrTotal ImpExpList.screen. 39.  “Opening Remarks by President Moon Jae-in at Joint Press Conference Following the Korea-US Summit,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, June 30, 2019, http:// www.mofa.go.kr/eng/brd/m_5674/view.do?seq=319902. 40.  “US and ROK Issue a Joint Factsheet on Their Regional Cooperation Efforts,” US Embassy and Consulate in South Korea, November 2, 2019, https://kr.usembassy .gov/110219-joint-fact-sheet-by-the-united-states-and-the-republic-of-korea-on-coop eration-between-the-new-southern-policy-and-the-indo-pacific-strategy/. 41.  “India-ROK Joint Statement for Special Strategic Partnership,” Embassy of India to the Republic of Korea, May 19, 2015, https://www.indembassyseoul.gov.in /page/india-rok-joint-statement-for-special-strategic-partnership/. 42. “Translation of Press Statement by Prime Minister During the Visit of Republic of Korea,” Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, February 22, 2019, https://www.mea.gov.in/outoging-visit-detail.htm?31078/Translation+of+Press +statement+by+Prime+Minister+during+the+visit+of+Republic+of+Korea+Febru ary+22+2019. 43.  “PM’s Statement Prior to Departure for Republic of Korea,” Press Information Bureau, Government of India, February 20, 2019, https://www.pib.gov.in/PressRelese Detail.aspx?PRID=1565619. 44.  “Remarks by President Moon Jae-in at Celebration of the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi,” Office of the President, September 24, 2019, https://english1 .president.go.kr/Briefingspeeches/Speeches/665. 45. Nayanima Basu, “Quad Is Not ‘Asian NATO,’ India Never Had ‘NATO Mentality,’ Jaishankar Says,” The Print, April 14, 2021, https://theprint.in/diplomacy /quad-is-not-asian-nato-india-never-had-nato-mentality-jaishankar-says/639924/. 46. “Fact Sheet: United States–Republic of Korea Partnership,” The White House, May 21, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-re leases/2021/05/21/fact-sheet-united-states-republic-of-korea-partnership/. 47.  Do Je-hae, “Quadrilateral Alliance and Korea,” Korea Times, October 9, 2020, https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/10/113_297283.html. 48. “Seoul’s Participation in ‘Quad’ Will Antagonize China: Moon’s Advisor,” Korea Times, October 28, 2020, https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/10 /120_298350.html. 49.  “US-ROK Leaders’ Joint Statement.” 50.  “Xi Jinping Attends the 27th APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting and Delivers a Keynote Speech,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, November 12, 2021, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1834551 .shtml. 51.  John Power, “What Does South Korea Think of China’s Belt-and-Road? It’s Complicated,” South China Morning Post, June 1, 2019, https://www.scmp.com /news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3012713/what-does-south-korea-think-chinas-belt -and-road-its.

Chapter Ten

North Korea Continuity without Change V ictor C ha

and

E llen K im

North Korea is the land of both certainty and uncertainty. In popular Western media, the world knows very little about what is really happening inside the country as North Korea continues to live in isolation. From the outside, the regime’s unpredictable aggression and incessant military provocations threaten peace and stability in Asia. Moreover, the country’s fast-advancing nuclear and missile weapons program heightens the insecurities of neighboring countries and raises questions about the prospect of a potential arms race in the future. At the same time, there is much about the country that is not uncertain. The same family has run the country since 1948 and has maintained control despite acute economic and humanitarian hardships inflicted on its people. The regime has made no secret about its pursuit of an advanced nuclear weapons program capable of threatening all adversaries, including the United States. From an international relations theory perspective, one may argue that North Korea is a classic example of the Realist state, showing both how insecurity drives a country to pursue survival and how the obsession with power maximization can be all-encompassing. But the case of North Korea also raises other questions. For instance, what makes it possible for a small country like North Korea to survive all these years of isolation and international sanctions? Why do North Korean people not revolt, yet ardently worship their political leaders despite the country’s failed economy and dysfunctional state governance system, not to mention horrendous societal oppression? Moreover, what is the endgame of North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons? All of these questions cannot be simply explained by Realism. To better understand the idiosyncrasies of North Korea, one also needs to know, among other things, the internal traits of the country, its regional relations in a historical 257

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context of Northeast Asia, and the complex interplay of convergent and conflicting interests of the neighboring countries in the region. KIMS 1.0 AND 2.0 The Cold War ended in 1991, but its remnants still remain on the Korean Peninsula with the continued division of two Koreas. In August 1945, Imperial Japan’s surrender brought an end to its thirty-five-year colonial rule over Korea. The Allied Powers already promised Korea’s independence “in due course” through the 1943 Cairo Declaration. In February 1945 the idea of four-power trusteeship was proposed at the Yalta Conference. However, after the Soviet Union entered the Pacific War against Japan (a week before Japan’s surrender), the fate of the post-war Korean Peninsula changed as the US and the Soviet Union agreed to divide Korea at the thirty-eighth parallel and create their temporary occupation zones.1 This “temporary” division became formalized in May 1948 when separate elections were held in the South only after the Soviet Union opposed holding a national election across Korea under UN supervision. In August 1948, the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) was founded with the support of the United States. One month later a Soviet-backed communist regime was established in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea). On June 25, 1950, North Korea suddenly invaded South Korea to reunify Korea under the control of the communist regime. Having disengaged from Korea as a result of a post–World War II “defense perimeter” identified as solely maritime, the United States reversed course and plunged into war to repel communist aggression. Even after the US, North Korea, and China signed the Armistice Agreement in 1953 to end the Korean War, the military confrontation between the two Koreas continues today. The first leader of the DPRK, handpicked by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, was Kim Il-sung. He was virtually an unknown in the swirl of political leaders vying for power in post-colonial Korea (largely because he had been living outside of the country for well over one decade). Politically, Kim ran the country with little tolerance for any dissent or openness, ruthlessly purging any competitors. Kim’s five-year development plans, which emphasized both heavy industry modernization and food self-sufficiency, made little economic sense. The northern part of Korea, rich in mineral resources and the center of Japan’s industrial development of colonial Korea, was fertile ground for a Soviet-backed industrialization push, but theories of comparative advantage should have dictated Pyongyang trade those industrial goods for agricultural products. With little arable land and mountainous terrain, and with the man-



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date to move labor to the factories, not the farms, Kim was already setting the country up for a food shortage that would come decades later (but was not evident because of heavy subsidies by the Soviet Union). Kim also emphasized increased economic productivity through massive labor campaigns (that also acted as tools of political control), but without major technological innovation. When he died in 1994, both of these policies resulted in a country that had effectively stalled in its economic growth with technology from the 1960s and 1970s and suffering massive food shortages. The second leader Kim Jong-il took over a desperate situation in 1994. North Korea no longer enjoyed Soviet subsidies after Moscow normalized relations with South Korea in 1990, receiving a $3 billion loan from Seoul. The absence of Soviet oil imports led to a massive energy shortage, which in turn deforested the country as citizens sought lumber as an alternative energy source. The combination of deforestation and annual flooding precipitated a famine in the mid-1990s that killed 10 percent of the population. The international community carried out annual food appeals for North Korea (Japan and the US were among the largest contributors) that helped to end the famine, but Kim did not utilize this support as a platform for changing decades of mismanaged economic policies. Instead, the regime focused on “militaryfirst” politics and development of the nuclear weapons and missile programs. Unlike his father, Kim Jong-il was a reclusive leader who rarely spoke in public. His diminutive stature starkly contrasted with his father, who was a large man by Korean standards (almost six feet tall), and who enjoyed being filmed in propaganda videos laughing and engaging with citizens in his ubiquitous “on-the-spot guidance.” Part of Kim Jong-il’s reclusiveness stemmed from the fact that the end of the Cold War dramatically changed the external environment for North Korea. While Kim Il-sung would vacation with leaders like Romania’s Nicolai Ceausescu and East Germany’s Erich Honecker, his son would not have Soviet satellite countries as comrades. Indeed, with the end of the Cold War, many of these Eastern European countries would be drawn to the economic opportunities offered by South Korea. KIM 3.0 Following the death of Kim Jong-il in December 2011, North Korea had a third-generational “dynastic” succession with his son Kim Jong-un coming to power. The ascent of a young leader, who briefly studied in Switzerland in the 1990s and had exposure to the outside world, raised hope that the “Great Successor” could be reform-minded and may usher North Korea on to a different path from his father and grandfather. However, this thin ray of hope

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was quickly dashed as Kim Jong-un proved to be as brutal, as dictatorial, and as belligerent as his father and grandfather. Kim Jong-un carried out a rocket launch in April 2012 that collapsed a newly made weapons-freeze-for-food agreement (the Leap Day Agreement) concluded with the US several weeks prior. In May 2012, the country declared North Korea as a “nuclear-armed state” in its new revised constitution and carried out a third nuclear test several months later. The new North Korean leader has also ruled brutally, including the execution of his uncle in 2013 and the assassination of his halfbrother in 2017. This chapter seeks to trace and analyze the changes and continuities brought to North Korea since he came to power in December 2011. First, we begin with a survey of the overall political, economic, military, and diplomatic events and trends related to North Korea. Second, the chapter turns to the current policy challenges, focusing on North Korean human rights issues. Third, the chapter explores the country’s regional relations with the US, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the key variables that could shape future developments in and surrounding North Korea. KIM JONG-UN’S RISE TO POWER One of the enduring aspects about North Korea is the political continuity of the Kim family’s rule in the country. North Korea is one of the few surviving totalitarian states in the world, with tight state control over its people, border, and information. But what is really unique about the country is that everything essentially exists and operates to support the Kim family and its generational rule. Severe political oppression, systematic purges of political rivals and dissidents, the country’s own version of the caste system (songbun), combined with the cult of personality and the culture of surveillance deeply rooted in society, have all contributed in ways that enabled the Kim family to maintain an ironclad grip on power for more than seventy years. Despite being woefully unprepared to run a country as a twenty-something year old (his actual age has not been verified) after the sudden death of his father in 2011, Kim Jong-un’s succession and consolidation of power has so far proceeded smoothly, at least on the surface. Soon after he was announced as the “Supreme Commander” of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) in December 2011, with the help of a group of regents Kim quickly consolidated power through extensive purges in the regime’s two power centers, the Korean Worker’s Party (KWP) and the military. He replaced his father’s generation of leaders with younger loyalists and confidants, placing them in key



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party, government, and military posts. He also shifted power away from the KPA and toward the KWP. Formal political institutions did little but served as a flexible platform for the young leader to keep the key decision-making under his control. Kim Jong-un also made sure to anoint himself as the country’s supremo. His appointment to top political offices in the country was unprecedented even by North Korean standards. Unlike his father, who spent nearly fifteen to twenty years building his political credentials before he assumed power in 1994, Kim Jong-un, who had no prior military experience or had held a political office, took less than three years to assume key posts in the party and the army. In April 2012, he was elected the First Secretary of the KWP and the Chairman of the National Defense Commission. Three months later, in July 2012, he was given the title of Marshal, the highest rank in the military. In May 2016, North Korea held the Seventh Congress of the Korean Worker’s Party in sixteen years and elected him as the Chairman of the KWP. Five years later, he was elevated to become General Secretary of the KWP and became the country’s supreme leader. Ideology is one of the keys to the Kim regime’s political continuity and serves, as scholar Han S. Park describes, as the “primary basis of regime legitimacy.”2 In 1970, the country’s founder Kim Il-sung adopted Juche (or national “self-reliance”) as the state ideology. Juche serves as a convenient vehicle of internal control as it preaches complete loyalty to the North Korean leader as vital to the country’s successful revolution against the capitalists and imperialists.3 Juche is also the key guiding principle of North Korea’s external policy by emphasizing economic self-reliance and political “independence and freedom from the pressures and influence of external powers.”4 Kim Jong-un’s use of Juche ideology echoed that of his father, but not without his own spin. He maintained a cult of personality surrounding the Kim family and propagated national development under the slogan of Kangsong taeguk, or “rich nation, strong army.” In addition, he announced in 2013 a new policy of Byungjin, which means the parallel pursuit of economic prosperity and modern nuclear weapons status. Byungjin reinvigorated a concept pursued by his grandfather back in the 1960s. Kim Jong-un’s return to Byungjin is designed to make nuclear weapons status not just his father’s legacy but tied to his own. It is also designed to highlight economic improvement, which is critical to his legitimacy after the lean years of his father’s rule. But Byungjin wraps North Korea in three dilemmas. First, the international community has posed a “guns vs. butter” tradeoff for any US-DPRK nuclear deal—that is, denuclearization in return for political recognition and economic assistance—which directly counters the Byungjin doctrine. Second, even if the first dilemma were resolved, economic development will likely

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pose a greater challenge for Kim Jong-un’s leadership because North Korea has a fundamental reform dilemma (discussed below). Third, the firmer he controls the country’s nuclear weapons development, the more this will invite stronger international sanctions that devastate North Korea’s economy. In the end, the global and domestic narratives of North Korean nuclear development are part of a zero-sum game in which the former frames the weapons as the source of the country’s economic hardships while the latter frames it as requisite to the algorithm of a strong and rich country vision. REFORM DILEMMA AND MARKET ECONOMY There are two elements that Kim Jong-un inherited from his father. One is the country’s nuclear weapons program, and the other is the Kim leadership’s “reform dilemma.” A term introduced by Victor Cha nearly two decades ago, the reform dilemma refers to the reality facing North Korea that “it needs to open up to survive, but the process of opening up could lead to cracks in the hermetically sealed country precipitating the regime’s demise.”5 After the great famine and the collapse of the public distribution system in 1994, Kim Jong-il tried experimental reforms by establishing special economic zones. Most of these attempts failed. As a result, the dysfunctional planned economy gave a rise to the emergence of the market economy in the country as North Koreans could not rely on the state distribution system anymore and began to find ways to survive on their own. Knowing that it could not stop growing market activities, the Kim Jong-il regime sanctioned official markets to operate since 2002 although it intermittently intervened to reassert the state control over them.6 Kim Jong-un has walked in his father’s footsteps by adhering to a policy of isolation and a centralized command economy. At the same time, his regime has unofficially embraced markets as an important economic force in the country that can help to stabilize prices, that can provide an alternative when the public distribution system is underperforming, and perhaps most important for the state, that can provide hard currency through collecting taxes and fees from vendors in exchange for a license to participate in these state-sanctioned markets.7 Many North Korean defectors testify that the market has become an integral part of North Koreans’ daily economic activities.8 According to the unique CSIS Beyond Parallel study, which tapped into views of North Koreans, there are roughly 436 state-sanctioned markets operating across North Korea, and more than 70 percent of survey respondents inside the country indicate that they are making most of their incomes from the markets.9 While exploding market activities are a positive trend, North Korea’s macroeconomic performance in the last ten years does not show signs of overall

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economic improvement. In the first five years since Kim Jong-un assumed power, the economy showed slight improvements. North Korea’s real GDP increased from 33.4 trillion won in 2011 to 34.5 trillion won in 2014 and to 35.5 trillion won in 2016.10 But the economy began to show a sharp contraction since 2016, arguably due to international sanctions and the pandemic. In 2020, North Korea’s real GDP dropped by 4.5 percent, down to 31.4 trillion won ($27.4 billion), which is even lower than when Kim came to office.11 According to the Bank of Korea, this marks the second lowest growth rate North Korea has ever seen since its largest fall of 6.5 percent in 1997.12 The sheer gap in economic power between North and South Korea is massive. In 2020, North Korea’s gross national income (nominal GNI) and per capita GNI were 35.0 trillion won and 1.379 million won, each accounting for 1.8 percent and 3.7 percent of South Korea’s nominal GNI and per capita GNI.13 In terms of the country’s external trade, China remained North Korea’s primary and largest trading partner in 2020, followed by Russia, Vietnam, India, and Nigeria.14 Since 2014, China has accounted for more than 90 percent of North Korea’s foreign trade.15 However, as shown in figure 10.1, the volume of bilateral trade between China and North Korea began to decline significantly from 2017, with a sharp drop in both North Korea’s exports to and imports from China, reflecting the impact of international sanctions and the pandemic.16 In 2020, North Korea’s trade dependence on China continued but declined to 88.2 percent, which is the lowest since 2010, largely due to the closure of the border in January 2020 instigated by Pyongyang to prevent COVID-19 virus transmission.17

Trade Volume (US $ Billions)

8 7 6

5.63

6.01

6.55

6.86 6.06

5.71

5.26

5 4 2.72

3

3.09

2 0.76

1 0 2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

Year NK’s Export to China

NK’s Import from China

Total Volume of Trade

Figure 10.1.  China-DPRK Bilateral Trade Volume, 2011–20 Source: Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency.

Victor Cha and Ellen Kim

264

Table 10.1.  Inter-Korean Annual Trade Volume, 2012–20

NK to SK SK to NK Total

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

1074.0 897.2 1971.1

615.2 520.6 1135.8

1206.2 1136.4 2342.6

1452.4 1262.1 2714.5

185.5 147.0 332.6

0.0 0.9 0.9

10.5 20.7 31.3

0.2 6.7 6.9

0.0 3.9 3.9

Unit: USD millions. Source: Bank of Korea (2019 and 2021).

Meanwhile, inter-Korean trade has been small and limited compared to China-DPRK trade. The volume of bilateral trade between the two Koreas has steadily increased during periods of pro-engagement progressive governments in South Korea and declined during periods of conservative governments. From 2003 (Kim Dae-jung government) to 2008 (Roh Moo-hyun government), trade increased from $724 million to $18.2 billion in 2008.18 It dropped to $11.36 billion in 2013 (Lee Myung-bak government).19 As shown in table 10.1, inter-Korean trade has been almost non-existent since 2017 after the Park Geun-hye government closed the Gaesong Industrial Complex in February 2016 in response to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test and longrange rocket launch. These trends suggest inter-Korean trade volume is in part political (in South Korea), but it also shows that North Korea is willing to take advantage of the generosity of South Korea when the politics in that democracy dictate as such, without a bearing on denuclearization necessarily. All of these economic indicators show signs of economic contraction and distress in North Korea. The regime was not able to benefit from the proengagement initiatives of the Moon Jae-in government because of the international sanctions regime levied against the nuclear program. A self-imposed lockdown has also stymied its trade with China since January 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. One year after the border closure had a devastating impact on the economy, at the Eighth Party Congress held in January 2021, Kim Jong-un broke precedent by publicly acknowledging the country’s economic difficulty. He stated that the country’s five-year economic plan announced in 2016 “immensely underachieved in almost all sectors” and called on the country’s return to Juche (self-sufficiency).20 NUCLEAR POWER ASYMMETRY ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA North Korea’s economic weakness stands in juxtaposition to its military strength. The country remains a formidable military power in Asia. In 2020, the country’s conventional military strength ranked sixth place in the region



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following right behind South Korea, according to the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index.21 Although North Korea’s defense spending, estimated to be $4.47 billion in 2020, comprises only 10.9 percent of South Korea’s total defense expenditure ($40.7 billion), the North still dwarfs the South in terms of the size of armed forces.22 In 2021, North Korea has the third largest active military personnel (1,280,000) in Asia after China and India.23 The army is the largest (1,100,000), followed by air force (110,000), navy (60,000), and strategic forces (10,000).24 In comparison, South Korea has 599,000 active military personnel: 464,000 army, 70,000 navy, and 65,000 air forces.25 These numbers, however, tell a distorting picture as the quality of North Korea’s conventional military weapons, personnel, and training falls far short of that of South Korea. In the end, what creates military power asymmetry on the Korean Peninsula is North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Contrary to popular belief, North Korea’s nuclear program did not start after the collapse of its primary patron, the Soviet Union. The origins of the program date back to the 1960s when North Korea started to create a massive area at Yongbyon surrounding the small Soviet-supplied experimental reactor, according to declassified CIA imagery.26 Today, in 2021, it is estimated that North Korea may possess roughly forty to fifty nuclear weapons.27 Although there is no conclusive evidence, based on the latest assessments made by the US government and UN expert panel, Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda suggest that “North Korea has developed nuclear devices small enough to be mounted on its medium- and long-range ballistic missiles, [but] it is unclear if it has developed a reentry vehicle capable of protecting a device during reentry through the Earth’s atmosphere.”28 In September 2017, North Korea claimed that it had carried out a hydrogen bomb test. But some experts argue that it is difficult to verify the North’s putative claim without examining the radioactive debris collected from the test site.29 North Korea’s fast-advancing missile program and the high number of missile flight tests reflect a national effort to develop an advanced portfolio of delivery capabilities, including state-of-the-art road-mobile, solid-fuel, and targeting technologies harbored only by a handful of countries. Under Kim Jongun, North Korea launched at least seventy-one short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) between 2012 and 2020, far exceeding the number of SRBM tests conducted under his father and grandfather combined between 1984 and 2011 (thirty-one missile tests).30 What’s more, North Korea test-fired two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), Hwasung-14 and Hwasung-15, in July and November 2017. In his testimony before the US Senate Armed Services Committee on March 6, 2018, Lieutenant General Robert Ashley, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, stated that these tests “demonstrated a capability

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Figure 10.2.  North Korea’s Ballistic Missile Range Map Source: Missile Defense Project, “Missiles of North Korea,” Missile Threat, Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 14, 2018, last modified June 14, 2021, https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/dprk/.

to reach the United States” (see figure 10.2 for North Korea’s missile range in the map).31 He also highlighted the country’s solid-propellant medium-range missile technology, calling it a “significant” development for its reduced preparation time for launch compared to the liquid-propellant system.32 Summit Diplomacy and the Collapse of the Hanoi Summit Kim Jong-un’s father engaged in denuclearization diplomacy with the United States bilaterally (1994 Agreed Framework) and multilaterally (2005–7 Six-Party Talks), resulting in two agreements that offered economic and energy assistance and political recognition in return for a freeze and eventual dismantlement of its nuclear programs. These agreements, although now defunct, were painstakingly negotiated by government experts and diplomats (including one of the authors). Kim Jong-un’s engagement in denuclearization diplomacy was very different from that of his father, but no more effective in the end. Kim would engage in three historic meetings with US President Donald Trump—first in Singapore on June 12, 2018, second in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27–28, 2019, and last in Panmunjom on June 30, 2019. These three summits came against the backdrop of North Korea’s sixth nuclear test and ICBM tests conducted in September and November 2017,



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which prompted a series of international sanctions under the US campaign of “maximum pressure.” One can probably argue that these historic summits came not through Kim’s initiatives, but largely because of Trump’s personal negotiation style and unusual diplomatic approach toward North Korea. No sitting US president had previously held a direct face-to-face negotiation with a North Korean leader. These meetings failed to make any significant progress on denuclearization despite a declaration at Singapore in 2018 by Kim committing the regime to the objective. Sitting at the table with the US president afforded Kim legitimacy as a leader of a de facto nuclear weapons state that neither his father nor his grandfather ever enjoyed. In this sense, it played the most important negotiating card held by the United States, for nothing in return. Nevertheless, this period of summitry, after a dangerously difficult year in 2017 when Trump and Kim nearly took the peninsula to war with spiraling escalations over missile tests and military exercises, did confirm empirical studies over the past thirty years that show a significant reduction in North Korean testing and provocations when in dialogue with the United States.33 Summit diplomacy was in full swing not only between the US and the DPRK, but also among Six-Party Talks countries in 2018 and 2019. North Korea’s growing engagement with the US stirred anxiety and incentivized China to improve the strained relationship with North Korea (discussed further later). Chinese President Xi Jinping, who had not been enamored with the leadership of Kim over the previous five years, invited Kim to Beijing and held their first summit in March 2018, which was followed by four additional summits in 2018–19, including Xi’s first state visit to North Korea in June 2019. In this regard, Kim’s greatest dividend from the summits with Trump was to elicit a reengagement of Chinese aid and political support. The dialogues with the US and China also offered Kim an unprecedented opportunity to display himself as a major player on the global scene. Kim cast off his father’s reclusive style and broadened his diplomatic space by meeting leaders of South Korea, Russia, Singapore, and Vietnam in 2018–19. Following the collapse of the Hanoi summit, the prospect of North Korea’s denuclearization has become more uncertain. While US policy still calls for complete and irreversible denuclearization of the North, few believe this is a realistic objective in the near term. The stalled diplomacy left open the possibility that the country would return to its provocation cycle to welcome in the new Biden administration. Indeed, empirical studies show that the regime, whether under Kim Jong-un or his predecessors, increased the level of provocations in US presidential election years.34 And already in 2021, North Korea carried out a series of cruise and ballistic missile tests in violation of UN resolutions.

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Nevertheless, there are two key takeaways from the period of summit diplomacy ending with the Hanoi summit. One is that the Yongbyon nuclear facility is not the most important nuclear asset to the regime anymore.35 While it still retains some value, the old facility has become a bargaining chip North Korea can easily abandon, especially considering the revelation made during the summit between Kim and Trump that North Korea has other secret nuclear facilities and arsenals. While this again raises serious doubts in the United States about the regime’s sincerity to denuclearize, North Korea’s expanding nuclear weapons program also calls for an urgent need to delineate a clear boundary of what “complete denuclearization” means for both the US and North Korea.36 The other takeaway is that both countries came away believing that pressure indeed works.37 For the United States, Kim’s sole demand for sanctions relief despite other issues on the negotiation table made very clear that the recent sanctions were really hurting the North Korean economy.38 Likewise, Kim’s demand for sanctions relief in exchange for the partial dismantlement of the Yongbyon nuclear facility, which North Korean negotiators had already been told that such a deal would not be acceptable to the American president, suggests a belief on the North Korean side that their recent nuclear and missile tests had put enough pressure on the US to extract greater concessions from Trump.39 In addition, the fact that North Korea fired several “projectiles” in later months after the Hanoi summit is an indication of the country’s further attempt to pressure the US into making concessions. NORTH KOREAN HUMAN RIGHTS While the subject of denuclearization has usually dominated any government discussion about North Korea, another equally important (yet always neglected) issue is North Korean human rights. There is no way we can truly understand the extent of the human rights abuses inside the country because the victims are “nameless” and “faceless.”40 For example, the North Korean and Chinese governments collude to sweep up citizens who cross the border into China and return them to face punishment in a practice known as refoulement. These citizens, who were brave enough to vote with their feet to escape tyranny, are sent back in the cover of darkness on buses with blacked out windows. Thus, no name or face can be associated with the victims of this practice around which human rights organizations and governments can organize. The atrocity of human rights violations in the country first came to light in the mid-1970s when the international community learned about the ex-



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istence of prison camps inside the country. Since then, the disturbing truth about the prison camps and other inhuman conditions and human rights abuses, such as hard labor, torture, and public executions, has been revealed through many North Korean defectors, human rights activist groups, and international organizations. The prison camps are one of the most distressing cases of human rights violations in North Korea, but they are not the only one. In fact, the breadth of North Korean human rights issues is extensive, ranging from issues of chronic food shortage and public health, such as malnutrition and stunted growth, to refoulement and human trafficking involving North Korean defectors and migrants in China and other Asian countries, and to the abduction of foreign citizens by North Korean government agents. Despite its significance, the human rights issue has usually come to take a backseat as North Korea’s denuclearization was always given the top priority in many countries, including the United States. Besides, apprehension that bringing up the human rights issue would derail the negotiation talks with North Korea made the issue a non-starter. The American approach toward the North Korean human rights issue changed under the George W. Bush administration. Bush was the first US president to invite North Korean defectors into the Oval Office. The administration also created the first refugee resettlement program for North Korean defectors outside of South Korea. The passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act in 2004 was an important milestone in US North Korea policy since the legislation made clear that “the human rights of North Koreans should remain a key concern in future negotiations between the United States, North Korea, and other parties in Northeast Asia.”41 In addition, the legislation also called on China to abide by the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and allow the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to have access to North Korean refugees and asylum seekers inside the country. Finally, the act authorizes a US president to appoint a Special Envoy for human rights in North Korea. The tragic death of American college student Otto Warmbier, who was detained in North Korea as a tourist for the alleged crime of subversion and died soon after his release in June 2017, once again brought home the magnitude of human rights abuses in North Korea. Despite that, little progress has been made in the way countries talk about human rights issues. The US return to the UN Human Rights Council under the Biden administration is a good sign, but a paradigm shift in the US and regional approach is necessary. That is to say, North Korean human rights should be treated as vital to the resolution of denuclearization, not as mutually exclusive or secondary to the latter, given that many of the carrots on offer by the US in a denuclearization deal (e.g., economic assistance, political normalization) cannot by American

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law be provided without eradication of human rights abuses in the supply chain.42 Contrary to what many think, human rights could help move forward the denuclearization talks as North Korea’s effort to address its own human rights abuses in meaningful and verifiable ways could serve as an important barometer that enables the country to signal its own credibility of commitments to join international society.43 A notable improvement in human rights conditions could also help North Korea to attract economic assistance and foreign investment the country desires.44 NORTH KOREA’S EXTERNAL RELATIONS United States US-DPRK relations continued to be defined by two dynamics over the past decade. The first is a cycle of provocations and dialogue in which every US administration has been entrapped. The second is a steady and unimpeded growth of its weapons programs despite US sanctions. The second of these is a national security threat that is often relegated to the back burner as US administrations are distracted by higher priorities. When it comes to the front burner, usually as a result of North Korean provocations, energies are invested in a deal that freezes the program long enough to remove it from the front burner without really achieving meaningful progress toward denuclearization. The Obama administration came to office in 2009 with the hope to engage North Korea and proceed with the Joint Statement left by the Bush administration. But Pyongyang’s provocations soon disappointed many people inside the government. Obama publicly warned that “there will be no rewards for provocation,” yet it still engaged in negotiations to find a deal.45 A few weeks later, North Korea conducted a satellite launch in April 2012, which was viewed in Washington as the violation of the Leap Day deal reached several weeks ago. No formal negotiation was held between Washington and Pyongyang subsequently, while the Obama administration responded to North Korea’s continuous hostility with unilateral and multilateral actions, including four UN Security Council Resolutions (2087, 2094, 2270, and 2321). However, this US policy of “strategic patience” with more enhanced sanctions could neither stop North Korea’s nuclear and missile development nor deter its belligerence. From Kim Jong-un’s rise to power in December 2011 until the end of Obama’s presidency in January 2017, North Korea conducted sixty-three provocation events, including more than seventy missile tests and three nuclear tests.46 North Korea’s provocations continued in the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency. Between February and September 2017, the country carried out



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twenty-four missile tests and its sixth nuclear test.47 In August, September, and November 2017, the UN Security Council imposed a series of tougher sanctions (UNSC 2371, 2375, and 2397) by banning North Korea’s exports in metal, agriculture, textile, natural gas, and labor; prohibiting any joint venture projects with North Korea; putting tight caps on North Korea’s oil imports; and imposing financial sanctions on North Korean individuals.48 Under the campaign of “maximum pressure,” the Trump administration put North Korea back onto the list of state sponsors of terrorism and also imposed secondary sanctions that would target foreign institutions that have any financial transactions with or related to the country. The peninsula came dangerously close to war in 2017 with personal insults slung between the two leaders, North Korea threatening nuclear war, and the US doing strategic bombing run exercises around the peninsula. In the spring of 2018, the Trump administration engaged in summit diplomacy with North Korea as the inter-Korean peace dialogue gained momentum following the PyeongChang Winter Olympics and the inter-Korean summit. In the US, Trump’s decision to meet Kim Jong-un face-to-face raised concern that their summit meeting, especially without any prior agreement struck at the working level, could only be used to give legitimacy to the North Korean leader. The Singapore summit was a working rehearsal for Trump and Kim to exchange greetings and establish some personal rapport. The optics of the summit was great for them both domestically and internationally. However, the joint statement they signed lacked essential commitments, such as a declaration of weapons and verification, as well as a timeline for denuclearization.49 The Hanoi summit collapsed abruptly over the fundamental disagreements between the two leaders about the definition of denuclearization and the sequencing of denuclearization steps and sanctions relief (many of which could have been sorted out at working-level talks had these negotiations proceeded in the bottom-up process). Meanwhile, the failure to reach a deal was a big embarrassment to the North Korean leader at the historic event. In Washington, there was a general sense of relief, with many experts believing that no deal was better than a bad deal, although the collapse of the talks, once again, brought us back to where we were thirty years ago. South Korea Historically, the “sweet and sour” state of inter-Korean relations correlates with changes of government in South Korea. That is, when there is a conservative government in office, inter-Korean relations often turn sour because there is a tendency that conservative governments adopt a hardline policy with a greater weight on pressure to deal with North Korea’s nuclear development

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and military provocations, and as a result, North Korea finds fewer opportunities to draw concessions from South Korea. Conservatives are not against cooperation with North Korea but they believe more in a tit-for-tat strategy that any economic assistance or sanctions relief should be commensurate with meaningful progress on North Korea’s denuclearization. By contrast, a progressive government in South Korea usually believes that North Korea’s denuclearization and inter-Korean reconciliation can be better achieved through a policy of GRIT (in game theory), offering diffuse reciprocity in terms of engagement even if it is unreciprocated for the purpose of clearly signaling an intention to cooperate. Consequently, when a progressive government is in office, North Korea tends to find greater opportunities for concessions from South Korea and seeks to improve inter-Korean relations. Inter-Korean relations ran hot and cold in the last ten years. Under the conservative Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye governments in 2008 to 2017, inter-Korean relations deteriorated significantly over North Korea’s provocations. Presidents Lee’s “Grand Bargain” and Park’s “Dresden Declaration” promised massive economic aid and humanitarian assistance to North Korea in exchange for North Korea’s complete denuclearization. But these proposals conditioned assistance on tangible steps by the North, a responsibility that Pyongyang wished not to bear. These initiatives were undermined, moreover, by North Korea’s sinking of an ROK corvette Cheonan in March 2010, killing forty-six sailors, and the artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November 2010. The Park government tried to leverage inter-Korean relations through an approach to China. Park drew closer to Xi Jinping to enhance the two countries’ strategic cooperation on North Korea. Buoyed by Xi’s personal distaste for the North Korean leader, the Park government’s strategy was somewhat successful in drawing China away from North Korea—as noted earlier, Xi would not meet with Kim until 2018. Yet, this wedging strategy also saw a limitation when South Korea’s call for China’s greater cooperation using its economic leverage on the North received a cold response from Beijing. In July 2016, the Park government decided to install the US Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system against North Korea’s increased missile threats despite China’s strong opposition and economic pressure. Under the progressive Moon Jae-in government, South Korea pushed hard for an inter-Korean peace dialogue when Trump’s “fire and fury” rhetoric raised fear of a military conflict between the US and North Korea. Sports became a diplomatic vehicle to defuse tension on the peninsula. With South Korea hosting the PyeongChang Winter Olympics game in February 2018, the Moon government proposed to delay a scheduled annual US-ROK military exercise and invited North Korea to attend the Olympics. Amid the estranged



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ties with China and tension escalating with the US, North Korea was receptive to Moon’s overture. The North Korean leader sent a high-level delegation to South Korea to attend the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics and invited Moon to hold an inter-Korean summit. The Moon government used this positive momentum to push for a peace treaty on the Korean Peninsula. At their first inter-Korean summit held in Panmunjom in April 2018, Moon and Kim agreed to work toward denuclearization and improve the inter-Korean relationship by ending hostile acts toward each other and resuming economic cooperation. The Panmunjom Declaration later led to two additional inter-Korean summits, which provided an opening for South Korea to drive the peace dialogue process on the Korean Peninsula, but also to mediate the talks between Washington and Pyongyang. However, after the Hanoi summit collapsed in February 2019, Moon’s engagement policy toward North Korea saw a significant setback when North Korea exploded an inter-Korean joint liaison office in June 2020. China China is North Korea’s treaty ally and key patron. North Korean and Chinese diplomats at meetings in the Six-Party Talks always framed their relationship as time-tested and forged in battle. But the reality of their relationship is much less glamorous and historic. It is driven by two dynamics. The first is akin to a “mutual hostage relationship.”50 That is, although China strongly opposes North Korea’s destabilizing belligerency that undermines regional stability in Asia, China cannot abandon North Korea which provides the strategic buffer between China and South Korea (and, more precisely, American forces stationed in the South). Likewise, North Korea despises the way China treats it like a poor province and is always wary that Beijing might someday abandon it, but China is the only ally Pyongyang has, and it therefore must countenance its overdependence on the country. The second is “pivot dynamics.” That is, North Korea’s policy toward China is greatly affected by the state of US-China relations.51 When US-China relations are good, Pyongyang becomes overcome by fears of abandonment, victimized by a great power condominium in which China sells out North Korean interests. When US-China relations are more competitive (as they are now), North Korea sees opportunity to draw close to Beijing, but also to leverage the competition to flirt with the US and thereby draw China closer. This mutual hostage relationship between China and North Korea was tested in the early years of Kim Jong-un’s rule when Pyongyang ramped up military provocations in defiance of Beijing’s repeated warning. This was a big embarrassment for Beijing and deepened its frustration over recalcitrant

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Pyongyang. Moreover, in December 2013 Kim Jong-un executed his uncle Jang Sung-taek, who was a key figure handling economic cooperation between China and North Korea. Beijing did not hide its discontent with Pyongyang, which was on full display with China’s increased warming with South Korea. One month after vice marshall Choe Ryong-hae visited China in May 2013 as a special envoy to repair North Korea’s ties with China, Xi Jinping hosted South Korean President Park Geun-hye for their first summit. In July 2014, Xi became the first Chinese leader who visited South Korea before China’s traditional choice of North Korea. In North Korea, China’s support for the UN Security Council Resolutions against the country further increased a sense of abandonment. In February 2017, China announced a temporary suspension of its coal imports from North Korea, which is one of the vital financial resources to the regime. Many countries welcomed China’s announcement, thinking that Beijing was finally taking a big step and using its economic leverage to rein in North Korea. “Pivot politics” was evident in March 2018. Sino-DPRK relations began to rebound when Xi and Kim held their first summit and agreed to enhance their countries’ strategic relationship. Xi’s overture to Kim, which came amid growing engagement between Pyongyang and Washington and the simmering tension between Beijing and Washington over trade, was prompted by a shifting strategic calculation vis-à-vis North Korea. China, which used to drive the Six-Party Talks and shape the regional dialogue concerning the Korean Peninsula, became anxious about being marginalized in the regional discussion and felt the need to keep North Korea back in its fold. Meanwhile, North Korea knows China’s geopolitical gambit. North Korea tends to find opportunities to draw China closer when the US-China relationship is bad. Kim played the US card to bring Sino-DPRK relations back onto a normal track as the country returned to the negotiation table. As Sino-American relations continue down the competitive track, there will be more opportunity for Pyongyang to play the pivot. It can align with China in support against the common adversary, but it can also entertain dialogue with the adversary and compel China to respond in order to avoid Beijing’s marginalization on the peninsula. Japan Japan remains an important potential player in any denuclearization deal with North Korea. It would play a critical role in any inspection regime, economic assistance, or energy package related to denuclearization. Yet, it is arguably the most marginalized power on the Korean Peninsula, rejected by both the North and the South due to longstanding historical animosities.



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The high point of cooperation between North Korea and Japan came in 2002 pre-dating Kim Jong-un when then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi signed the “Pyongyang Declaration.” This agreement laid out a path in principle toward normalization of relations, non-aggression mutual assurances, and resolution of outstanding issues regarding the 1970s abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korean operatives. Though now defunct, the agreement remains the foundation of any future negotiation between the two sides precisely because it was signed by the former leader. Under Kim Jong-un’s regime, Japan-DPRK bilateral relations experienced a downward spiral as North Korea’s increased nuclear and missile tests presented an existential threat to Japan. This prompted changes in Japan’s declaratory and operational defenses, including a pledge in 2014 by the government to shoot down any incoming missiles from North Korea. The Japanese government enhanced its deterrence capability and upgraded ballistic missile defense (by acquiring additional Aegis ships and installing the second X-band radar system to track and intercept North Korea’s missiles) while closely coordinating its policy response with Washington. As part of enhancing US-ROK-Japan trilateral cooperation against North Korea’s missile threats, Japan and South Korea also concluded the General Security of Military Intelligence Agreement (GSOMIA) in 2016. Meanwhile, rising concern about Japan’s own deterrence capability vis-à-vis North Korea’s growing threats prompted domestic debates in Japan to acquire a pre-emptive first strike capability to defend against North Korea’s missile launch sites.52 There will be no reconciliation between Japan and North Korea without a resolution of the Japanese abduction issue. North Korea maintains that the issue had been resolved in 2002 with the personal apology from Kim Jongil in his summit with Junichiro Koizumi and the release of five confirmed victims and their families afterward. However, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who led Japan’s negotiation with North Korea at that time as Koizumi’s deputy chief cabinet secretary, insisted that the full resolution of the abduction issue is a precondition for the improved relationship between Japan and North Korea. Furthermore, Abe declared that he would not meet Kim Jong-un until there was progress on the denuclearization and the Japanese abduction issues. Japan, which had once been the world’s top donor to UN annual food appeals for North Korea, has since become one of the staunchest leaders of the sanctions regime. However, Trump’s policy shift from “maximum pressure” toward summit diplomacy and meetings with Kim created awkward alliance politics for Abe. He had to countenance Trump’s rhetorical delinking from Japan’s security when Trump said he only cared about long-range ballistic missile tests, while at the same time showing support for the diplomatic efforts to reduce tension on the peninsula. In

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May 2019, Japan changed its position and expressed interest to meet Kim without a precondition to resolve the Japanese abduction issue, but these proposals have been rebuffed by North Korea. Russia Russia is often considered as a “forgotten player” on the Korean Peninsula. Although the Soviet Union was the key ally and largest patron to North Korea, Russia no longer possesses such leverage over Pyongyang. Despite that and, perhaps because of that, one of Russia’s core objectives concerning the Korean Peninsula has been to reassert its influence on Korean affairs and not get marginalized in the denuclearization negotiation process, which could affect Russia’s geostrategic interests in Northeast Asia. In addition, Russia has keen economic interest in infrastructure projects such as railway connections and gas pipelines to South Korea through North Korea, which incentivizes Russia to enhance cooperation from the North to make progress on these projects. The argument put forth by Russians is that such infrastructure projects are “win-win” as they create obvious economic benefits for all parties; moreover, they would be accepted by the North because they circumvent the “reform dilemma.” Pipelines or railway connections through the territory of North Korea facilitate “rent payments” to the regime without causing broader societal liberalization effects through insulating from contact with the outside world. DPRK-Russia relations were relatively stable compared to other neighboring countries in Northeast Asia. Vladimir Putin was the only Russian leader who took an interest in building a relationship with the North Korean leadership since Stalin. Putin developed a good rapport with Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, and perhaps in an effort to do the same with the son in September 2012, Russia decided to write off 90 percent of North Korea’s Soviet-era debts (nearly US$11 billion) and contribute the rest to help develop energy and healthcare projects in North Korea.53 This generous offer, despite years of tough negotiations between both sides, set DPRK-Russia relations off to a good start. Like in China, North Korea’s continuous nuclear and missile tests stymied Russia’s desire to maintain regional stability and preserve a global nuclear non-proliferation regime. But instead of distancing itself away from recalcitrant Pyongyang, Putin invited the North Korean leader to Russia in 2015 to commemorate the end of WWII. This is a marriage of mutual convenience. In addition to the long game of infrastructure, Putin tactically finds benefits in befriending the North vis-à-vis China, as well as to create some leverage vis-à-vis the United States. For North Korea, Russia is an alternative partner when its relationship with China is stagnating. It is also a source of hard currency from the export of North Korean labor. In September 2014,



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North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong paid a ten-day visit to Russia, the first of its kind in four years, to enhance the two countries’ relationship. There is also no harm for Pyongyang in gaining the allegiance of Moscow as a Permanent Five (P5) member of the UN Security Council (UNSC). North Korean provocations force Russia to step back from engagement with the North, such as in December 2017 when Russia backed the passage of the UNSC Resolution 2397 in response to North Korea’s launch of the Hwasong-15 ICBM. But even when Russia agrees to punish the North, it still calls on the US to re-engage in dialogue and loosen sanctions. The resolve to pressure North Korea was short-lived in 2017, for example, as Russia (and China) began to call for sanctions relief on North Korea in the aftermath of the Singapore summit between Trump and Kim. In September 2018, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated, “Steps by the DPRK toward gradual disarmament should be followed by the easing of sanctions.”54 His remark came less than two weeks after the US strongly accused Russia of its “consistent and wide-ranging . . . violations” with the UN Security Council resolutions.55 Putin saved Kim some face in April 2019 when he held a summit with Kim in the aftermath of the failed Hanoi summit with Trump. In December 2019, Russia, in conjunction with China, proposed partial sanctions relief on North Korea, specifically lifting a ban on the country’s seafood and textile exports and North Korean contract labor, based on “humanitarian” grounds. But the proposal was rejected by the United States and other permanent members of the UN Security Council. CONCLUSION While North Korea is often labeled as “unpredictable,” there has been remarkable consistency in the regime’s policies and strategy since Kim Jong-un assumed power ten years ago. First, the regime pressed on and even doubled down on its nuclear and missile development. Second, Kim consolidated his power centered around key elites and loyalists while removing political rivals and silencing any dissenting voice through political purges and a reign of terror. Third, the regime paid lip service to economic reform but remains hesitant to attempt serious liberalization because of the reform dilemma and fear of losing political control. Fourth, while the flourishing market economy is an encouraging sign, the overall economic situation did not improve in any significant ways. Fifth, there has been no improvement in the human rights situation. The implications of this continuity for regional security are clear. North Korea’s major strides in its nuclear and missile capabilities increasingly

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threaten the United States and its allies, opening up the potential for an arms race around the peninsula. The continuity in North Korea’s policies and growing Sino-American strategic competition generate growing alignments between North Korea and China, as well as North Korea and Russia. Addressing this challenge opens the opportunity for regional problem-solving forums like the Six-Party Talks, if leaders have such inclinations. The COVID-19 pandemic has become an unexpected variable in the current diplomatic impasse. The suspension of all activities in and out of the country, including its key trade with China since January 2020 for more than eighteen months (as of fall 2021) is not a sustainable situation. Empirical studies of North Korean responses to past pandemics suggest that the lockdown could continue well into 2022. In 2020, North Korea’s bilateral trade dropped by “about 81 percent year over year.”56 The immediate effect of the pandemic and border lockdown is that North Korea has become more isolated than ever before.57 Opening up to avert an economic disaster could expose a broken public health system to uncontrollable spread of the virus. Kim Jong-un’s public remark in April 2021 ordering the country to prepare for the “arduous march”—a term referring to the country’s struggle during the famine in the 1990s—is an ominous sign of the extremely harsh conditions inside the country. In the end, how to manage the pandemic situation will be very critical and will likely have a profound impact on North Korea. This may provide a window of opportunity to resume the bilateral or regional dialogue for humanitarian assistance. In the mid-to-longer-term, the key challenge will be how to maintain regional cooperation on North Korea’s denuclearization amid the intensifying US-China competition. During the Six-Party Talks, China took ownership of the issue and worked more or less in concert with the United States to make tangible progress toward denuclearization. But the current state of SinoAmerican relations has changed the way Beijing approaches the North Korea issue. Rather than see it as a regional security problem, China now looks at cooperation on North Korea as a transactional bargaining chip to be traded for reduced US pressure in bilateral relations with Beijing. This will neither solve the North Korea problem, nor positively impact US-China relations. NOTES 1.  For more background information, see James I. Matray, “Captive of the Cold War: The Decision to Divide Korea at the 38th Parallel,” Pacific Historical Review 50, no. 2 (1981): 145–68.



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2. Han S. Park, “Military-First (Songun) Politics,” in New Challenges of North Korea Foreign Policy, ed. Kyung-Ae Park (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 91. 3. Victor D. Cha, The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 2012), 37–39. 4.  Ibid., 39. 5.  Victor D. Cha, “Korea’s Place in the Axis,” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2002); also see Cha, The Impossible State, 304. 6.  Victor D. Cha and Lisa Collins, “The Markets: Private Economy and Capitalism in North Korea?” Beyond Parallel, August 26, 2018, https://beyondparallel.csis .org/markets-private-economy-capitalism-north-korea/. 7. Ibid. 8. On North Korean defectors’ testimony, see Anna Fifield, “Life Under Kim Jong Un,” Washington Post, November 17, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com /graphics/2017/world/north-korea-defectors/ 9. Cha and Collins, “The Markets: Private Economy and Capitalism in North Korea?” 10. Jeong-ho Lee, “North Korea’s Economy Contracted Most in Two Decades in 2020,” Bloomberg, July 29, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles /2021-07-30/north-korea-s-economy-contracted-most-in-two-decades-in-2020. 11. Ibid. 12.  See press release from the Bank of Korea, “Gross Domestic Product Estimate for North Korea in 2018,” July 26, 2019, and “Gross Domestic Product Estimate for North Korea in 2020,” July 30, 2021. 13.  See press release from the Bank of Korea, “Gross Domestic Product Estimate for North Korea in 2020,” July 30, 2021. 14. See Jeong-yeol Yoo, “2020 North Korea’s Foreign Trade,” Korea TradeInvestment Promotion Agency, July 2021, 12. 15.  Ibid., 15. 16.  Ibid., 14. Note that trade data originally come from Global Trade Atlas. 17.  Ibid., 15. 18. ROK Ministry of Unification, “Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation,” https://unikorea.go.kr/eng_unikorea/relations/statistics/exchanges/ (accessed on July 13, 2021). 19. Ibid. 20.  “Kim Jong-un Says North Korea’s Economic Plan Failed,” BBC News, January 6, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55563598. 21. Lowy Institute Asia Power Index 2020 Edition, https://power.lowyinstitute .org/data/military-capability/ (accessed on August 15, 2021). 22. Ibid. 23.  See “Chapter Six: Asia,” IISS, The Military Balance 121, no. 1 (2021): 218. 24.  Ibid., 274. 25.  Ibid., 277. 26.  Joseph Bermudez, “Yongbyon Declassified Part I: Early Work on First Nuclear Research Reactor,” CSIS Beyond Parallel, April 23, 2018.

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27. Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, “North Korean Nuclear Weapons, 2021,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 77, no. 4 (2021): 222, https://thebulletin.org /premium/2021-07/nuclear-notebook-how-many-nuclear-weapons-does-north-korea -have-in-2021/. 28.  Ibid., 227. 29.  Robert E. Kelley, “North Korea’s Sixth Nuclear Test: What Do We Know So Far?” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, September 5, 2017, https:// www.sipri.org/commentary/expert-comment/2017/north-koreas-sixth-nuclear-test -what-do-we-know-so-far. 30.  See CSIS Missile Defense Project, “Missiles of North Korea,” Missile Threat, Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 14, 2018, https://missilethreat .csis.org/country/dprk/. 31. LTG Robert Ashley, “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community,” Testimony before the US Senate Armed Services Committee, March 6, 2018, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Ashley_03-06-18.pdf. 32. Ibid. 33.  See Lisa Collins, “25 Years of Negotiations and Provocations: North Korea and the United States,” CSIS Beyond Parallel, https://beyondparallel.csis.org/25 -years-of-negotiations-provocations/. 34. Victor D. Cha, “North Korean Provocations Likely Around US Elections,” CSIS Beyond Parallel, September 23, 2020. 35.  Victor D. Cha, “Statement Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy: US Policy toward North Korea After the Second Summit,” March 26, 2019. 36. From the virtual meeting held by the Council on Foreign Relations, “The Future of US Policy Toward North Korea,” September 22, 2020, https://www.cfr .org/event/future-us-policy-toward-north-korea; also see Christy Lee, “Experts: US, North Korea Must Agree on Terms of Denuclearization at Talks,” Voice of America, October 1, 2019, https://www.voanews.com/usa/experts-us-north-korea-must-agree -terms-denuclearization-talks. 37.  Cha, “US Policy toward North Korea After the Second Summit.” 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Cha, The Impossible State, 166. 41.  H.R.4011—North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, https://www.congress .gov/bill/108th-congress/house-bill/4011 (accessed on July 25, 2021). 42.  Victor D. Cha, “Human Rights Is the Forgotten Issue in US Foreign Policy,” The Catalyst 15 (Summer 2019), https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/global-chal lenges/cha-refugees-forgotten-in-us-foreign-policy.html. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45.  “Obama in Push for ‘World Without Nuclear Weapons,’” BBC News, March 26, 2012, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-17507976. 46.  Collins, “25 Years of Negotiations and Provocations.” 47. Ibid.



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48.  See “UN Security Council Resolutions on North Korea,” Arms Control Association, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/UN-Security-Council-Resolutions -on-North-Korea#res2321 (accessed on August 30, 2021). 49.  Victor D. Cha and Sue Mi Terry, “Critical Questions: Assessment of the Singapore Summit,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 12, 2018, https:// www.csis.org/analysis/assessment-singapore-summit. 50. Cha, The Impossible State, 17 and 317. 51.  For North Korea’s diplomatic strategies, see Victor D. Cha, “Allied Decoupling in an Era of US-China Strategic Competition,” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 13, no. 4 (2020): 526–29. 52.  Motoko Rich, “North Korea’s Threat Pushes Japan to Reassess Its Might and Rights,” New York Times, September 15, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15 /world/asia/japan-north-korea-missile-defense.html. 53.  Miriam Elder, “Russia Writes Off $10bn of North Korean Debt,” The Guardian, September 18, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/sep/18/russia -writes-off-north-korea-debt. 54.  Lesley Wroughton and David Brunnstrom, “At UN, US at Odds with China, Russia over North Korea Sanctions,” Reuters, September 27, 2018, https://www .reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-un/at-u-n-u-s-at-odds-with-china-russia-over -north-korea-sanctions-idUSKCN1M725O. 55.  Abigail Williams, “Amb. Haley Attacks Russia for Undermining Sanctions on North Korea,” NBC News, September 17, 2018, NBC News, https://www.nbcnews .com/politics/national-security/amb-haley-attacks-russia-undermining-sanctions -north-korea-n910386. 56.  Min Chao Choy, “Trade between China and North Korea Plummeted by 81% in 2020,” NK News, January 19, 2021, https://www.nknews.org/pro/trade-between -china-and-north-korea-plummeted-by-81-in-2020/. 57.  Victor D. Cha, “Covid Helped Isolate North Korea in a Way Sanctions Never Could. So What Happens Now?” NBC News, February 10, 2021, https://www .nbcnews.com/think/opinion/covid-helped-isolate-north-korea-way-sanctions-never -could-so-ncna1257143.

Chapter Eleven

Taiwan Foreign Relations without Formal Recognition S helley R igger

If you enjoy a lively debate, type “Is Taiwan a country?” into a search bar and scroll through the responses. For every passionate defense of Taiwan’s claim to statehood as a self-governing territory with jurisdiction over its 24 million citizens you will find an equally determined argument that the island of Taiwan is not a country, but a province of the People’s Republic of China that needs to be brought under Beijing’s control as soon as possible. This debate is relevant to this chapter because proponents of the second view maintain that Taiwan cannot participate in international relations in Asia or anywhere else, because it is not recognized as a nation. The trouble is that Taiwan is a key factor in many of the dynamics analyzed in this volume; it’s impossible to understand international relations in the region and the world if we ignore Taiwan. This chapter will not resolve the debate over Taiwan’s statehood, but it will acknowledge the reality that Taiwan acts as a state in the Asia-Pacific, even if it is not recognized as one. Taiwan’s contested status is unusual but not unique—there are other political entities that claim to be states but are not recognized by others—but its ability to thrive without formal recognition, diplomatic ties, or international representation is unique. Forlorn and abandoned—the so-called Orphan of Asia—Taiwan nonetheless has much to admire, even envy. Diplomatic recognition and representation in international bodies are weak substitutes for the substantive strengths that Taiwan enjoys: a powerful economy, central role in global economic networks, close ties with the United States and other countries, and a positive global image.

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TAIWAN’S POLITICS AND ECONOMY Taiwan emerged as an important factor in Asian politics in the 1950s. The island, which is located about one hundred miles from the Chinese mainland, was first settled by Austronesian peoples whose descendants today are recognized as the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan. In the seventeenth century, Han people from mainland China began settling in Taiwan and on other smaller islands nearby. Taiwan was fought over by Spanish and Dutch colonizers, by Han settlers and Indigenous communities, by different groups of Han, and by forces representing two Chinese dynasties, the Ming and Qing. In 1683 the Qing defeated Ming remnants to make Taiwan a peripheral territory within its empire. In 1895 the Qing ceded the island to Japan, and it remained within the Japanese empire until the end of World War II. In 1945 the victorious allied nations returned Taiwan, which had been a colony of Japan’s since 1895, to the state ruling mainland China at the time, the Republic of China (ROC). Under ROC rule Taiwan acquired a disproportionate role in regional politics. The ROC lost control of the mainland when communist forces defeated the ROC armed forces and established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. As far as the PRC is concerned, those events ended the legal existence of the ROC. However, as the ROC was collapsing on the mainland, more than a million of its surviving military and civilian personnel evacuated to Taiwan, where they continued to govern under the ROC flag. The stormy waters of the Taiwan Strait (and the ROC army) protected Taiwan from PRC attack, and after the Korean War broke out in 1950 the United States threw its weight behind the ROC as well, committing itself to the island’s defense with a Mutual Security Treaty that endured from 1954 to 1979. Taiwan, as the ROC was commonly known, became a lynchpin in Washington’s regional security strategy, a bulwark against communist expansion in the region. The United States shifted its thinking in the 1970s, when Washington’s rapprochement with Beijing seemed to offer solutions to two thorny problems: how to weaken the Soviet Union’s strategic position and extricate the US from the Vietnam War. In 1979 the US formally recognized the PRC and established full diplomatic relations—a move that required the US to derecognize the ROC/Taiwan. In the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué the United States “acknowledged” that both the PRC and the ROC believed Taiwan to be part of China, although it did not endorse that view.1 In the 1982 joint communiqué between Beijing and Washington, which concerned establishing a framework whereby US arms sales to Taiwan would decline over time, the US and China both expressed their desire for the “peaceful resolution” of the differences between the two sides of the strait. Beijing expected that



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the shift in American policy would force Taiwan to accept annexation by the PRC, a process it calls “unification” or “reunification,” but that was not to be. Following US-PRC normalization, the US Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act. The TRA established the institutional framework for an unofficial relationship with Taiwan, one that treated Taiwan as if it were a de facto state, even after the US withdrew its formal recognition of the ROC. The United States was not the first country to withdraw formal recognition from the Republic of China; in fact, it was one of the last. Almost fifty countries cut ties with the ROC between 1970 and 1979; by the time the US and China completed their normalization process, Taiwan’s list of diplomatic partners had shrunk to about thirty. Although Taiwan retained a handful of important diplomatic partners into the 1990s—notably Saudi Arabia (severed ties in 1990), South Korea (1992), and South Africa (1998)—most of the countries that continued to recognize Taiwan after 1979 were small states that were willing to forgo relations with China in exchange for generous development assistance from Taiwan. Those states were concentrated in Africa, the South Pacific, Central America, and the Caribbean. As of 2022, Taiwan has formal diplomatic ties with only fourteen nations. The smallest is the Holy See (Vatican); the largest is Guatemala. Taiwan’s lack of diplomatic ties is mirrored in its lack of representation in international organizations. It withdrew from the United Nations in 1971 when the body voted to seat the PRC. Today, Taiwan is a full member of thirty-three international governmental organizations, and an observer to fifteen, but it is excluded from some of the most significant groupings for Asian states: World Health Organization (WHO), Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its various “ASEAN+” formulations, International Commercial Aviation Organization (ICAO), and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). However, Taiwan is a member of the Asian Development Bank, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). It participates in these groups under various non-state monikers, such as “Chinese Taipei” and “Taipei, China.” Entering the WTO was especially important—the feat was achieved by clever diplomacy that brought the PRC and Taiwan into the body simultaneously—but even that good fortune is wearing thin as the WTO is increasingly sidelined in favor of new bilateral and multilateral trade agreements which Beijing blocks Taiwan from joining. One potential opportunity for Taiwan to reduce its isolation is the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Transpacific Partnership (CPTPP), which is open to all APEC members. Taiwan can use the APEC channel to seek CPTPP membership, but if Beijing continues true to form, even as a non-CPTPP member, it will pressure the other member states to exclude Taipei.

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Taiwan’s limited international space has created countless challenges for its government and people, but it has not prevented the island from achieving both political and economic successes. Between 1950 and 1980, Taiwan’s economy became a hub for global manufacturing, with dominant positions in small electronics, plastics, shoes, toys, and apparel. Rising costs pushed many traditional manufacturers out of Taiwan in the 1990s (most moved production to mainland China), clearing the way for a new wave of industrial growth centered on high-tech goods and services, including semiconductor manufacturing. Taiwan—the size of Maryland and Delaware, with a population of just under 24 million—plays a huge role in the global economy, especially in information technology products. In 2019 the World Economic Forum ranked Taiwan twelfth out of 144 countries for competitiveness. It is the world’s eighteenth largest trading economy, with a GDP per capita of US$32,000. It’s America’s tenth largest trading partner and thirteenth largest export market. Taiwanese companies, led by industry champion TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation), produce about 60 percent of the world’s semiconductors, a crucial ingredient in all electronic devices. TSMC’s position in high-end semiconductor production is even more dominant. Taiwanese PC brands Acer and Asustek are fifth and sixth in global PC sales. Taiwanese firms also play a big role in manufacturing in other countries; the most famous of these is Foxconn, a major Apple supplier with factories in China and at least ten other countries. Taiwan is deeply embedded in global supply chains. It trades most with countries in the region. Mainland China is its top trade partner; since 2005, it has taken around 40 percent of Taiwan’s exports. The island’s trade with regional players is growing faster than its trade with Western countries. However, it’s important to note that much of Taiwan’s regional trade is in intermediate and capital goods, with the finished products ending up in Western markets. Semiconductors manufactured in Taiwan are exported to the PRC and assembled into devices (often in Taiwan-owned factories) that are sold as PRC products in the US and elsewhere. In other words, import-export statistics understate the value of Taiwanese exports to the US. The ROC state that engineered this astonishing economic success was, for four decades, a single-party authoritarian regime run by post–World War II refugees from the Chinese mainland. Over time, economic development engendered a movement for democratization, including full participation and representation for the majority of Taiwanese, those whose ancestors had arrived on the island before the Japanese colonial era. In the 1970s and 1980s, as calls for democracy grew louder (including among Taiwanese in the US and their supporters in Congress) the ROC’s global stature faded, and so did



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its hopes of returning to power on the mainland. Under pressure from inside and out, the regime allowed a gradual transition to democracy, and by the early 1990s, Taiwan’s transformation into a liberal democracy was irreversible. Democratization and economic development halted Taiwan’s slide into global irrelevance. Although countries continued to sacrifice formal ties with the ROC in order to recognize the PRC, pragmatic arrangements to enable continued relations with Taiwan proliferated. For example, the US and Taiwan use quasi-official organizations to conduct their relationship: the American Institute in Taiwan in Taipei (AIT) and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) in Washington. While the US fulfills its promise to keep relations unofficial by limiting high-level interactions and formal recognition, it continues to sell “defensive” weapons and conducts a robust menu of economic and people-to-people activities. Almost fifty countries use this approach, exchanging representative and trade offices with Taiwan while eschewing formal diplomatic ties. In fact, Taiwan is rich in unofficial ties in the region: except for Pakistan, all the major Asian nations have representative offices in Taipei. As Taiwan’s political system democratized, a new issue emerged that has challenged both Taiwan and its international partners. Under the authoritarian system, the government forced Taiwanese to embrace a Chinese identity and pay lip service to the ROC government’s goal of recovering mainland China—that is, unifying Taiwan with the mainland under ROC rule. As that goal receded, critics of the ROC’s ideology grew bolder. Without the possibility of recovering the mainland, they asked, why should the ROC continue to exist? Why shouldn’t Taiwan become a country in its own right, detached from China? At first, democracy and independence seemed like a logical pairing: an independent Taiwan wouldn’t need a pro-unification government, and a democratic Taiwan would choose independence. But for most Taiwanese, even many who had no interest in unification, independence was too risky, especially after the PRC began using military intimidation to show its displeasure with the idea. Today, about two-thirds of the island’s citizens identify as “Taiwanese,” while the rest see themselves as “both Taiwanese and Chinese.” Support for independence remains much lower—about a third of Taiwanese say they would like to see independence now or in the future.2 The plurality preference is to keep the “status quo”—often called “de facto independence” (in contrast to formal, de jure independence). The status quo means different things to different people, but the bottom line is this: Taiwan is not fully independent, but it is self-governing. Taiwan today is a liberal democracy whose citizens see themselves as politically distinct from the PRC but are willing to accept the designation

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“Republic of China” to keep the peace (even if many wish they did not have to). While they recognize their heritage as ethnic Chinese, they do not believe history should limit their freedom to choose their own political system. For Taiwan’s leaders, then, the challenge is to weave a network of pragmatic, substantive relationships that will allow the island to thrive economically and to resist the PRC’s pressure to accept unification. In other words, to preserve and (when possible) expand Taiwan’s international space. Taiwan’s elected presidents have met this challenge in various ways; one approach that all have shared is leveraging Taiwan’s economic success to strengthen both official and unofficial relationships. Since President Lee Teng-hui took office in 1988, Taiwan has extended development assistance and investment to targeted countries, sometimes in the hope of securing formal diplomatic ties, but more often as a way of entrenching economic relationships that Taiwanese hope will encourage political decisions that benefit Taiwan. Those activities are at the heart of Taiwan’s “pragmatic diplomacy.” Another shared approach is to emphasize “the importance of Taiwan’s democracy as a common value for all Taiwanese, and as a role model for mainland China and other countries.”3 Democracy itself is a diplomatic tool; Taiwan has become a major resource for democracy promotion in the Asia-Pacific and beyond. The non-partisan, government-sponsored Taiwan Foundation for Democracy runs programs aimed at boosting democratic development in the region, such as the World Forum for Democratization in Asia, and publishes the Taiwan Journal of Democracy. The Global Cooperation and Training Framework (GCTF) is a joint project of Taiwan and the US that shares Taiwan’s technical and governance expertise with governments that don’t have diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Taiwan’s two Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidents, Chen Shuibian (2000–2008) and Tsai Ing-wen (2016–), prioritized relations with the other countries over relations with the PRC. As a result, both faced unrelenting pressure and opposition from Beijing aimed at reducing Taiwan’s international space. Kuomintang (KMT) president Ma Ying-jeou (2008–16) took a different approach. He prioritized cultivating good relations with Beijing, with the goal of loosening restrictions in cross-strait (Taiwan-China) relations and in Taiwan’s external relations more broadly. Ma’s efforts bore fruit. Cross-strait relations improved markedly during his term of office, yielding significant benefits to Taiwanese such as allowing direct flights between the mainland and Taiwan. With President Ma in office, the PRC allowed Taiwan to expand its international space. Beijing declined to court Taiwan’s small number of diplomatic partners and it refrained from blocking its access to the World Health Assembly and ICAO. Nor did it interfere with Taiwan’s efforts to sign free trade agreements with



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New Zealand and Singapore—and it concluded twenty-three economic agreements of its own with Taiwan. In the end, however, Beijing pulled back these goodwill gestures as soon as Ma left office, leaving Taiwanese in no doubt: what Beijing gives, Beijing can—and will—take away, if its leaders disapprove of Taiwan’s actions. President Tsai’s foreign policy has centered on finding ways to use soft power and economic incentives to fend off Beijing’s political, economic, military, and diplomatic pressure, all of which have intensified since her election. Beijing has punished Tsai for her party’s stated support for independence and for her refusal to pay lip service to the idea that Taiwan is part of China. Under Ma Ying-jeou, Taipei and Beijing finessed the fundamental question— “what is China?”—by agreeing to something that came to be called the “’92 Consensus.” This convenient mantra allowed the two sides to agree in 1992 that Taiwan is part of China without specifying what that means. For Ma, “China” means the ROC; for Beijing, it means the PRC, but the ’92 Consensus allowed them to leave that element unspecified. Since Tsai took office, without endorsing the ’92 Consensus, the PRC has acted on multiple fronts to reduce Taiwan’s international space. When Ma Ying-jeou left office in 2016, Taiwan had formal diplomatic ties with twenty-three countries. At the time of this writing, that number is down to fourteen (Nicaragua being the latest to break diplomatic relations with Taipei). Taiwan is now locked out of international organizations that Beijing had not blocked previously, including the World Health Assembly. A new PRC strategy is to pressure private companies to downgrade Taiwan’s status; for example, Beijing forced international airlines to remove the word “Taiwan” from flight listings. Stiff-armed by Beijing, Tsai has turned her attention to cultivating ties with the US, an effort that has been easier on her watch than in previous eras because of the growing skepticism in the United States and elsewhere about the direction the PRC is taking under the leadership of Xi Jinping. RELATIONS ACROSS THE TAIWAN STRAIT As this summary of recent policy reveals, Taiwan’s foreign relations and diplomacy are shaped—even dominated—by its relationship with the People’s Republic of China. Cross-strait relations, as interactions between Taiwan and the PRC are called, are a unique type of external relations that has evolved over seven decades. The shadow of cross-strait relations hangs over all of Taiwan’s other external relations, in the Asia-Pacific and beyond; it constrains nearly every action Taiwan takes in the global realm. Under-

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standing Taiwan’s role in Asia first requires that we explore its relations with its nearest neighbor. Taiwan’s existence in its current form is a product of the Chinese civil war that raged from 1945 to 1949. As far as the PRC is concerned, once it succeeded in driving the ROC government and military off the Chinese mainland, the ROC ceased to exist. But even after it was exiled to Taiwan, the ROC state continued to function, albeit in a drastically reduced form. Technically speaking, the civil war continues to this day. The two sides have not recognized one another’s existence as states, and Beijing has never given up the option of using force to compel Taiwan to accept incorporation into the PRC. From 1949 to 1987, the two sides had almost no interaction. Travel and trade were non-existent; even letters and phone calls had to be routed through a third country. After the United States normalized relations with the PRC and broke ties with Taiwan in 1979, Beijing tried to leverage Taiwan’s isolation to force Taipei to accept unification on its terms. But Taiwan’s leaders refused; they held firm to their “three no’s”: no contact, no negotiation, no compromise. Democratization transformed Taiwan’s domestic politics in the 1980s, and it also sparked an overhaul in the island’s approach to cross-strait relations. In 1987, Taipei decided to allow people who had fled to the island in the 1940s to visit the mainland. It was a humanitarian gesture aimed at giving wartime refugees a chance to see loved ones they had left behind forty years earlier. But many of those elderly visitors were accompanied by young relatives who recognized that the economic reforms of the Deng Xiaoping era had created a huge demand for foreign investment. The result was a wave of traditional manufacturers relocating to the mainland. Most Taiwanese investors owned small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); officials in coastal China courted them aggressively, hoping to attract Taiwanese investment to their localities. The result was win-win: the mainland contributed labor and land and the Taiwanese SMEs supplied jobs, capital, and business and technical know-how. In the 1990s, Taiwan’s high-tech companies also sought opportunities in the mainland, although many operations remain on Taiwan. Both sides benefited enormously from the opportunity to marry Taiwan’s high-quality, globally integrated manufacturing industry with the PRC’s abundant workforce, but Taiwan’s “three no’s” created problems. Without government-to-government interactions, Taiwanese businesses in the mainland were on their own. From sending a letter to moving money to traveling across the strait to mainland China, nothing was easy; everything required routing through a third location. In April 1991 Taiwan’s president Lee Tenghui broke the logjam. He declared the end of the state of war between the PRC and ROC. While he did not recognize the PRC state, he did acknowl-



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edge Beijing’s jurisdiction over the mainland area. His action opened the door for high-level talks between the two sides. In 1992, representatives of the two sides met in Hong Kong. Each side sent a trusted person who was not a government official—they did not recognize one another, after all. The two negotiators agreed that Taiwan and the PRC were both Chinese territories. Their conversation proceeded on that basis; they set aside the fundamental question of which side was the “real” China. This idea allowed the negotiators to tackle the myriad practical problems faced by Taiwanese investors. As noted above, in 2000 a Taiwanese official coined the term “’92 Consensus” to capture that idea. The ’92 Consensus has become the “open sesame” of cross-strait relations. When the government in office in Taipei is willing to recite the mantra, relations move forward. When it is not, talks stop. From 2000 to 2008, Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian rejected the ’92 Consensus, and for eight years, the PRC refused to talk to Taipei. The absence of talks did not slow the economic momentum—PRC-bound investment in 2008 was about twice what it had been in 2000—but it did make life more difficult for Taiwanese businesses. One of Chen’s main campaign promises was to open direct flights between Taiwan and the mainland, but Beijing refused to make it happen. Frustration with the lack of progress in reducing obstacles for investors was one of the factors that helped Ma Ying-jeou win the presidency in 2008. Ma believed the best way to protect Taiwan’s security and economy was to cultivate good relations with the PRC. He did not hesitate to endorse the ’92 Consensus, and Beijing reciprocated his goodwill. Less than a year into his term, planes were flying directly between Taiwan and mainland cities. Over Ma’s two terms in office, the PRC and Taiwan signed twenty-three economic agreements, including a comprehensive Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA). The Ma administration deepened and institutionalized cross-strait economic ties. He also opened Taiwan to visitors and investors from the PRC. That move sparked a backlash among Taiwanese. Most Taiwanese have never participated directly in the cross-strait economic boom. They may not object to others going to the other side to invest, work, or study, but they see little day-to-day effect when they do. Thus the sudden appearance of a two-way strait was a shock. The PRC economy is twenty-two times the size of Taiwan’s; once admitted, PRC investors could swamp Taiwan. The arrival of mainland tourists aggravated those fears. Between 2007 and 2015, the number of PRC tourists visiting Taiwan went from zero to more than 4 million.4 One result was a series of social movements aimed, in various ways, at reducing the role of PRC-linked money in Taiwan’s politics and economy, which culminated in protesters occupying Taiwan’s legislative

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chamber for a month in 2014. Another was the election of a DPP president, Tsai Ing-wen, in 2016. With Tsai in office, as we have seen, cross-strait relations iced over once again. TAIWAN’S NORTHEAST ASIAN NEIGHBORS Beijing would like to limit Taiwan’s external ties to cross-strait relations, but its efforts to isolate Taiwan have not prevented the island from forging other partnerships, including in Asia. Taiwan’s most important Asian relationship is with Japan. Historically, the two sides have a complicated relationship. On the one hand, the ROC regime that took over Taiwan in 1945 had been at war with Japan since 1937, and despite Washington’s efforts to unite the two countries behind its anticommunist strategy for the region, relations between Taipei and Tokyo were chilly. On the other hand, following the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, Taiwan became a Japanese colony for fifty years and, unlike former Japanese colonial subjects, Taiwanese tend to view that colonial era positively. That is both because of the virtues of Japanese colonial rule, which afforded both social stability and economic development, and because of the vices of ROC authoritarianism. As Taiwan democratized, and the wartime generation of ROC leaders left the scene, relations between the two island countries warmed. Taiwan’s first democratically-elected president was Lee Teng-hui, who served from 1988 to 2000, grew up under Japanese rule, attended Kyoto Imperial University, and served in the imperial army. A committed Japanophile, Lee helped cultivate support for Taiwan among Japanese politicians. Japan recognized the Republic of China/Taiwan after the end of World War II, but in 1972 it switched its diplomatic recognition to the PRC. The negotiations were difficult; Beijing wanted Tokyo to endorse its view that Taiwan was part of China, and the PRC was the sole Chinese government. Japan agreed to recognize only one China, but it sidestepped Beijing’s demand to endorse its characterization of Taiwan’s status: The joint communiqué announcing the two sides’ normalization of relations says only that Japan “understands and respects” China’s view.5 That wording echoed the position the US had taken a few months earlier when the US and China announced their intention to normalize relations.6 The agreement ended Japan’s formal ties with the ROC/ Taiwan, but Tokyo’s deft diplomacy enabled it to avoid cutting off the substantive relationship. Japan replaced its embassy in Taipei with an organization called the Interchange Association in Taiwan (IAT).7 Technically, the IAT was a private non-governmental organization, but it was staffed by Japanese diplomats, funded (indirectly) by the Japanese government, and carried out the



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practical functions of an embassy, including consular services. Seven years later, as the US and the PRC were finalizing their normalization process, the US copied this model when it created the American Institute in Taiwan. Since 1972, Taiwan and Japan have maintained close economic, cultural, and people-to-people ties. Each is a top-five trading partner of the other, and Japan is a top-five source of foreign direct investment in Taiwan. Both are high-tech manufacturing powerhouses whose firms collaborate in countless supply chains. They also are among one another’s top tourism destinations: 2 million Japanese traveled to Taiwan in 2019, while almost 5 million Taiwanese visited Japan in that year.8 The two peoples appreciate one another’s democracies, economic achievements, and cultures, and unlike Japan’s other neighbors, Taiwanese rarely call attention to Japan’s twentieth-century aggression. The strongest displays of fellow-feeling have followed natural disasters, to which both Taiwan and Japan are prone. Both are quick to offer relief to the other after earthquakes and floods. Meanwhile, both are highly attuned to the challenges a rising PRC poses to their freedom of action. Taiwan and Japan would seem to be natural allies, but their relationship is still, as Singaporean scholar Lam Peng-er described it in 2004, suspended “between affinity and reality.”9 As Lam put it, “Japan’s conception of national interests and its geostrategic priorities take precedence over warm sentiments toward Taiwan.”10 Japan’s foreign policy balances contradictory forces. On the one hand, it is a military ally of the United States, which provides critical elements of its national defense. On the other, it is a near neighbor of the PRC, a rising economic, political, and military power and important economic partner. Beijing and Tokyo also need to manage ongoing historical disputes. In deference to those concerns, Japanese leaders tend to stay a step or two behind Washington when it comes to support for Taiwan. US-Japan agreements commit Japan to assisting the US in military operations in “areas surrounding Japan,”11 but the wording is intentionally vague. It was thus a big deal in April 2021 when the US and Japan released a joint statement affirming the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. Japan followed up a few months later with an annual defense report that linked the Taiwan Strait to Japan’s security. After decades of downplaying the Taiwan factor in its foreign and defense policies, these initiatives indicated a new willingness to stand up to Beijing. On economic issues, too, there are limits to the affinity between Taiwan and Japan. The two sides have conducted annual trade talks since the 1970s, and they opened a dialogue about a trade agreement in 2001 but there is still no trade agreement. These negotiations tend to highlight areas of economic competition, especially in agriculture. The most recent trade dialogue broke down after Taiwanese citizens passed a referendum calling on their government to

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reject food imports from the area affected by the 2011 nuclear meltdown. Since Lee Teng-hui left office, his political party, the KMT, has shifted away from Lee’s strong pro-Japan direction. The ROC claims the same territory in the East China Sea that complicates PRC-Japan relations. Lee, as well as presidents from Taiwan’s other main party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), tended to downplay that dispute, but when the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou won the presidency in 2008, he took a harder line. That complicated efforts to bring Taipei and Tokyo closer. Relations improved when the DPP candidate, Tsai Ing-wen, was elected president in 2016. Tsai eased Taipei’s position on territorial disputes, allowing the two sides to open a Japan-Taiwan Maritime Affairs Cooperation Dialogue in 2016. The following year, Tokyo ignored Beijing’s objections and upgraded the name of its quasi-official representative organization in Taipei to include the word “Japan.” Taiwan reciprocated with its representative organization.12 The year 2017 also saw the highest-level visit of a Japanese official to Taiwan since 1972. The two sides were unable to maintain that positive momentum in the second half of Tsai’s first term. One reason was Tokyo’s disappointment over Tsai’s failure to reverse the ban on food imports from the Fukushima area. Japan’s foreign minister went so far as to suggest that the ban “might have a negative effect on Taiwan’s future application for the CPTPP.”13 With bilateral agreements, including with Japan, going nowhere, joining the CPTPP is one of Taiwan’s few possibilities for breaking its exclusion from regional trade agreements, so the threat of exclusion was disheartening. The pessimistic tone deepened when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ignored Taiwanese calls for a security dialogue; instead, he affirmed Tokyo’s commitment to keeping relations with Taiwan unofficial. Since Tsai began her second term in May 2020, Japan’s dilemma has been apparent. On the one hand, it is determined to avoid giving unnecessary offense to Beijing. Proximity, economic interdependence, and military vulnerability make that a top priority. At the same time, however, Sino-Japanese relations are rocky, and many Japanese are growing weary of what they see as PRC bullying. They don’t see why Tokyo should bend over backward to accommodate Beijing’s preferences on the Taiwan issue. According to Madoka Fukuda, the COVID crisis heightened those frustrations, sparking a return to a more pro-Taiwan posture.14 She argues that during the pandemic Beijing was “engaging in a propaganda campaign and aggressive politico-military operations in the region,” while Taiwan was succeeding at suppressing COVID domestically and providing assistance to others. Japan supported Taiwan’s (unsuccessful) efforts to participate in the World Health Assembly during the pandemic and supplied millions of COVID vaccine doses to Taiwan in 2021.



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Finally, Fukuda says the shift away from dependence on the PRC economy is likely to further deepen Taiwan-Japan economic ties. Japan’s policy shift was unmistakable after its July 2021 Defense White Paper, which called out the PRC’s growing military threat. According to the official document, “Chinese military trends, combined with insufficient transparency about China’s defense policies and military affairs, have become a matter of grave concern to the region including Japan.”15 For the first time, Japan included Taiwan in its defense report, which read, “Stabilizing the situation surrounding Taiwan is important for Japan’s security and the stability of the international community. Therefore, it is necessary that we pay close attention to the situation with a sense of crisis more than ever before.”16 The defense report affirmed a US-Japan joint statement from April 2021 in which Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and US President Joe Biden asserted “the importance of peace and stability across the TW Strait” and called for “the peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues.”17 It was the first reference to Taiwan in a joint statement by American and Japanese leaders in fifty-two years. Japan is by far Taiwan’s most important regional partner. While South Korea might seem a likely runner-up, Taipei’s relationship with Seoul is much cooler. South Korea and Taiwan share a similar story: former Japanese colonies with strong manufacturing economies that traded anti-communist, authoritarian regimes for liberal democracy in the 1980s. The first part of that history bonded them together; it was only in 1992, that Seoul cut ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing. Since then, relations have been distant. Despite the wide appeal of Korean popular culture in Taiwan and the two sides’ significant economic cooperation (South Korea is Taiwan’s fifth-largest trading partner; it is Korea’s sixth) Taiwan’s political relationship with Korea is not as close as its ties with Japan. Taiwan and South Korea had a hard break-up. After decades together on the frontline of US efforts to block communist expansion in Asia, a newly democratized South Korea switched its loyalty (and official relations) to the PRC. South Korea was one of the last major countries to abandon Taiwan, and the rejection stung. Taipei ended the aviation agreement that enabled direct flights by Taiwanese and Korean carriers, halving the number of visitors between the two sides (direct flights were restored in 2004).18 Economic ties also suffered, although the two sides followed the path forged by the US and Japan and exchanged quasi-official representative offices. Tensions began to recede in the early 2000s, as Taiwan’s burgeoning high-tech industry found synergy with Korean firms and cultural imports improved Korea’s image in Taiwan. Korean television shows and K-Pop music stars found enthusiastic audiences in Taiwan and the number of Taiwanese studying Korean language and visiting Korea increased markedly.19 Trade and investment continued

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apace, and in 2005 Taiwan opened a representative office in Korea’s secondlargest city. In sum, while Taiwan’s unofficial ties with South Korea are strong, Seoul’s political priorities lie elsewhere. SOUTH ASIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA Turning from Taiwan’s western and northern neighbors to the south and east leads us to a vast and complex region in which Taiwan has spent decades trying to cultivate economic and political partnerships. Taipei’s concerted effort to win friends in South Asian and Southeast Asia began under President Lee Teng-hui in the 1990s. Lee’s foreign policy centered on “pragmatic diplomacy”—the idea that Taiwan could use flexibility to escape the marginalization Beijing sought to impose. Pragmatic diplomacy had a political element—Taiwan leaders including Presidents Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian used “vacation diplomacy” to visit Southeast Asian countries—but its goals were primarily economic. Taiwan’s leaders were concerned that the flood of investors heading to the mainland was hollowing out Taiwan’s economy and undermining its economic and political autonomy. Lee wanted to wrest some of that investment away from the PRC and redirect it toward Southeast Asia. His initiative, known as the Southbound Policy, had only modest success. The PRC’s economic magnetism was hard for businesses to resist; Southeast Asian nations were hard-pressed to compete on economic terms. The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis seemed to prove what many had been saying: Southeast Asia was a bad bet. Nonetheless, Taiwan was able to negotiate economic agreements with six Southeast Asian countries and India under the original Southbound Policy. Reviving Lee’s approach as the (barely) rebranded New Southbound Policy (NSP) was one of President Tsai Ing-wen’s first acts as president. Critics questioned how “new” the policy would be, but Tsai could see what her critics did not: times had changed, and for the better. Taipei launched the NSP at a moment when rising production costs already had Taiwanese manufacturers looking for opportunities outside of mainland China. The Trump-era trade war, which added tariffs to the price of goods marked “made in China” turbocharged that trend. While not all Southeast Asian countries have participated equally, the NSP has had a strong impact on Taiwan’s economic and peopleto-people ties in the region. In her inaugural address Tsai said the goal of the NSP was “to elevate the scope and diversity of our external economy, and to bid farewell to our past over-reliance on a single market.”20 The NSP targets eighteen countries—the ten ASEAN members plus India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal,



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Bhutan, Australia, and New Zealand. The policy focuses on six priority countries: India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. The biggest winner in terms of raw investment value is Singapore, but Taiwanese investors have arguably had a bigger impact in Vietnam, which had more than $30 billion in accumulated Taiwanese investment by early 2021.21 Vietnam has proven especially friendly to the kind of labor-intensive manufacturing that has become increasingly expensive in the mainland. Taiwan’s traditional manufacturers have been flocking to Vietnam for more than a decade, and the most recent investments include electronics giants Foxconn and Pegatron. Taipei also has high hopes for economic cooperation with India, whose software expertise complements Taiwan’s strength in information technology hardware design and manufacturing. India’s difficult relations with the PRC are another potential factor encouraging ties with Taiwan. Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy is a sophisticated blend of economic and political initiatives. It is designed to mitigate the effects of Beijing’s economic overtures in the Indo-Pacific by offering countries an alternative source of economic development. The hope is that economic engagement will encourage South Asian and Southeast Asian countries to preserve some space in their foreign relations for Taiwan. It’s also about giving Taiwanese firms a diverse set of opportunities to thrive, recognizing the diversity of comparative advantage in the region. The NSP is a very different concept from Beijing’s signature economic policy in the region, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI funds infrastructure projects that employ Chinese firms (and some local firms) in partner countries. The PRC is selling things to the BRI target countries; Taiwan is building businesses. For example, in Vietnam, PRC investment mostly takes the form of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) investing in real estate, construction, infrastructure, and energy projects, while most Taiwanese investment is from SMEs in traditional manufacturing.22 In contrast to the BRI’s megaprojects, Taiwan’s NSP emphasizes peopleto-people ties and connectivity. Lee Teng-hui discovered that it’s impossible to compel investors to go where the economics don’t make sense. The NSP addresses that limitation by working to create an environment that is attractive to investors, including bilateral trade and tax agreements that help Taiwanese firms to see an economic advantage in shifting their operations out of mainland China. From a soft power standpoint, this strategy has defects as well as advantages. While Taiwanese investors bring jobs and opportunity to target countries, they are not there as an act of charity—they expect to make money, and they abide by—at best—local labor standards. Where the NSP does contribute to Taiwan’s soft power is in its focus on increasing people-to-people ties, especially bringing students and tourists to Taiwan. In the first three years after its adoption, tourist visits from NSP target

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countries increased by nearly 60 percent.23 That increase more than made up for the loss of tourists from the PRC resulting from Beijing’s decision to punish Tsai’s administration by withholding mainland visitors. The NSP has a strong education component, including relaxing visa requirements, offering scholarships to students from target countries, and establishing institutional relationships. These measures are helping Taiwan’s education industry ease and mitigate the effects of declining population on the island. Taiwan also sponsors an annual multilateral economic dialogue, the Yushan Forum, which attracts hundreds of participants from around the region each year. Taiwan has sidestepped countries’ self-imposed restrictions on official interactions by promoting “parliamentary diplomacy,” in which Taiwanese parliamentarians interact directly with counterparts in other countries, including India and the Philippines. Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy cannot overcome its exclusion from formal international institutions, nor is it a substitute for diplomatic recognition. Still, without it, Taiwan’s isolation would likely be even worse. Having a government that actively encourages and invests in outreach to neighboring nations helps Taiwan’s companies, non-governmental organizations, universities, and individuals forge substantive relationships with counterparts in South Asia and Southeast Asia. Most governments in the region put a high priority on maintaining good relations with the PRC; nonetheless, the NSP has provided opportunities and incentives for them to put at least a few of their eggs in the Taiwan basket. The New Southbound Policy leverages Taiwan’s economy and society to enhance its reputation as a “one of the good guys” in Asia, but its security challenges are not as easily managed. Territorial disputes are among the most persistent and thorny conflicts in the Indo-Pacific region, and Taiwan is involved in three of them. The first, of course, is its struggle to remain selfgoverning in the face of Beijing’s determination to absorb it. The other two are maritime conflicts in which Taiwan’s territorial claims mirror the PRC’s. One is in the East China Sea, and involves Japan; the other is in the South China Sea, and puts Taiwan at odds with five of the Southeast Asian neighbors the NSP is designed to cultivate. When the ROC government moved to Taiwan it did not change its position that the Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea and a large portion of the South China Sea was ROC territory. Taiwan’s South China Sea claim is expressed in a U-shaped line that appears on ROC maps. It defines as Chinese territory an area very similar to the PRC’s (in)famous “Nine Dash Line.” Taiwan claims islands in the South China Sea’s Spratly and Paracel Island groups, and it has a significant military installation on the Spratlys’ Taiping/Itu Aba Island. These claims complicate Taiwan’s efforts to present itself as one of the “good guys” in the region. Its foreign policy seeks to thread a needle, neither offend-



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ing its neighbors nor giving up sovereignty claims. Some have questioned why Taiwan doesn’t simply abandon its territorial claims as a gesture of goodwill toward its neighbors. Such a move is not as easy as it might seem, both because dismissing sovereignty claims could further weaken Taiwan’s assertions of statehood and because abandoning longstanding claims on behalf of China could spark a confrontation with Beijing. To pull off this difficult balancing act, Taiwan has positioned itself as a peacemaker, promoting cooperation and flexibility in the use of disputed territories without giving up its long-term claims. President Ma Ying-jeou institutionalized this approach in his South China and East China Sea Peace Initiatives. He decided to set aside sovereignty disputes and focus on opportunities for economic cooperation and sharing. Both Ma and his successor proposed dedicating Taiping/Itu Aba Island to humanitarian and environmental causes. One of the region’s most vexing maritime issues is fishing rights; under Ma, Taiwan blunted the politics of the issue by negotiating fishing agreements with Japan (2013) and the Philippines (2015). Ma’s measures were designed to defuse conflict with the PRC as well as other claimants, but Beijing continued to squeeze Taiwan. It pocketed Taipei’s statements of support for Chinese sovereignty in the contested regions but blocked it from playing a meaningful role in the dispute resolution process. For example, when the Philippines challenged the Nine Dash Line under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Taiwan was only permitted to submit a “Friend of the Court” brief. Nor has Taiwan been able to participate in negotiations on a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea. President Tsai Ing-wen’s approach is similar to Ma’s but devotes less attention to pacifying Beijing. Tsai emphasizes keeping Taiwan in compliance with UNCLOS and other international agreements and institutions. As Mariah Thornton put it, “These shifts in Tsai’s South China Sea policy therefore demonstrate Taiwan’s commitment to respecting and upholding international law as a dedicated member of the international community, a move which remains consistent with her broader soft-power–oriented strategy for improving Taiwan’s international space. In addition, the contrast between Taiwan’s adherence and respect for international law and China’s bypassing international law indirectly strengthens Taiwan’s soft power and image within the international community.”24 TAIWAN’S AUSTRALASIAN PARTNERSHIPS Taiwan’s formal diplomatic ties in Asia are limited to a handful of South Pacific island nations: the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, and Tuvalu (Kiribati and the Solomon Islands broke relations with Taiwan in 2019). Those four

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countries’ combined population barely passes the hundred thousand mark, but they are important to Taiwan. They prevent the PRC from denying Taiwan (or the Republic of China, as its diplomatic partners call it) any formal recognition within the region and they periodically advocate for Taiwan in international bodies from which Taiwan itself is excluded. They are also the object of intense diplomatic competition between Taiwan and the PRC, and overseas development assistance is both sides’ weapon of choice in that contest. For example, the Solomon Islands cut ties with Taiwan in 2019 after thirty-six years of recognizing the ROC, a move that provoked significant dissent within the Solomons. Some Solomon politicians complained that Taiwan’s aid was too focused on agriculture and health, while the PRC was more willing to finance big infrastructure projects. Their opponents worried Beijing’s approach might overburden the country with debt, and that switching relations could put the tiny country at the center of a great power competition between the United States and the PRC. The drama in the Solomon Islands illustrates the spectrum of challenges Taiwan faces in its campaign to preserve its diplomatic partnerships. The two large Australasian countries, Australia and New Zealand, share many of the dilemmas facing other Asian states when it comes to Taiwan. They both have a “one China” policy and maintain only unofficial relations with Taiwan, but those unofficial relations are robust, in part because of their political affinity with Taiwan. In 2013 New Zealand and Taiwan even signed a Free Trade Agreement, thanks to Beijing’s willingness to look the other way as a favor to Ma Ying-jeou. At the same time, however, both countries prioritize good relations with Beijing. They are close trading partners of the PRC whose strengths in agriculture and natural resources complement China’s economic needs. In 2019, Australia and New Zealand were China’s fourth and fifth largest sources of agricultural imports, respectively (the top three are Brazil, the EU, and the US), and the PRC is both countries’ largest market for agricultural exports.25 In addition to their economic interdependence with the PRC, Australia and New Zealand are sensitive to its geopolitical weight in the region. Preserving a positive relationship with Beijing is thus a high priority for Canberra and Wellington. On the other hand, Australia and New Zealand are not natural allies of the PRC in ideological, historical, or political terms. They are liberal democracies that invite immigration, especially from other Asian countries. They also are allies of the United States under the ANZUS Treaty. Whether and how that alliance—which is not binding—would obligate them to respond in the event of a US-PRC military clash over Taiwan is a longstanding topic of debate in both countries. The PRC’s rising economic, political, and military power is making it harder to keep the balance between their allegiance to the

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Table 11.1.  Taiwan’s Asian Relations by the Numbers, 2019

PRC Australia Hong Kong Indonesia Japan Malaysia Philippines Singapore South Korea Thailand Vietnam

Total Trade (US$million)*

Taiwanese Outbound Investment* (US$1,000)**

Visitors to Taiwan***

14,9183 13,254 41,387 7,603 67,331 19,765 8,271 26,106 34,658 9,771 16,054

4,173,090 234,533 577,707 134,610 619,881 54,108 149,703 165,967 220,714 146,376 901,411

2,714,065 126,122 1,598,223 234,968 2,162,426 560,099 510,966 421,121 1,245,144 410,385 404,570

*Source: “Value of Total Imports” and “Value of Total Exports” Taiwan government statistical portal, https:// portal.sw.nat.gov.tw/APGA/GA29E_list. **Source: “Statistics on Approved Outward Investment by Area,” Investment Commission, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan, https://www.moeaic.gov.tw/english/news_bsAn.jsp. *** Source: “Inbound Visitors,” Tourism Statistics Database of the Taiwan Tourism Bureau, https://stat.taiwan .net.tw/inboundSearch.

democratic world and their commitment to good relations with China. Relations between Beijing and Canberra have become much more complicated in recent years as the PRC has gained confidence to press Australia to yield to its preferences, and that pressure is felt in New Zealand as well. In 2020 and 2021, Australia and New Zealand attracted Beijing’s ire when they supported statements criticizing China’s actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. The PRC accused them and their partners of “ganging up on China.”26 New Zealand’s efforts to distance itself from those joint actions prompted criticism from Canberra, where some leaders suggested New Zealand was giving in to PRC pressure at the expense of collective action on human rights. As if that were not enough, US policy toward Taiwan is making it ever more difficult for the ANZUS partners to cordon off the Taiwan issue. The Trump administration tended to be pro-Taiwan but skeptical of traditional alliances; the Biden administration has returned to a more traditional approach to alliances but is preserving the Trump administration’s pro-Taiwan tilt. The result is renewed debate in Australia and New Zealand about how to avoid being dragged into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait. THE UNITED STATES IN TAIWAN’S ASIAN RELATIONS It’s important not to overstate the success of Taiwan’s diplomacy in Asia. Taipei’s policies toward Japan, South Korea, and the NSP target countries

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have enabled Taiwan to stave off economic marginalization and to cultivate ties with individuals and non-governmental organizations in many countries. However, those policies have not been able to reverse Taiwan’s exclusion from the community of nation-states: other countries in the region simply have too much at stake to risk a rupture with the PRC. When it comes to the most sensitive aspects of international relations—diplomatic recognition and military cooperation—Taiwan’s Asian partners are almost completely absent. As a result, Taiwan relies on the United States as its primary security partner (and only provider of weaponry, defense equipment, and training). The US ended its formal military alliance with Taiwan at the same time it de-recognized the ROC, but it continues to sell weapons and collaborate with Taiwan on defense-related issues. The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which Congress passed just after the de-recognition, states that “any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes is considered a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.”27 The law obligates the United States to “help Taiwan defend itself,” and to maintain the ability to help Taiwan resist coercion. The PRC considers these actions a violation of Washington’s commitment to “one China,” enshrined in the Shanghai Communiqué, and arms sales are a source of near-constant friction in US-PRC relations. When Sino-US relations are smooth, that friction tends to recede, but in periods of tension between the US and China, the Taiwan issue invariably comes to the fore as an additional irritant. We are in such a period now. Relations between the United States and the PRC are at a low ebb in the early 2020s, as are cross-strait relations, but during Ma Ying-jeou’s presidency (2008–16) the US-PRC-Taiwan triangle was relatively tranquil. American policymakers were concerned about Beijing’s foreign and domestic policy moves—especially after the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 emboldened Beijing to challenge US interests more directly—but the Obama administration did not want to lose opportunities for cooperation with Beijing. Avoiding having Taiwan become an irritant in US-PRC relations was made easier by the Ma Ying-jeou administration’s decision to make constructive cross-strait relations its top diplomatic priority. Ma’s policy bore fruit in the 2015 meeting between Ma and PRC leader Xi Jinping in Singapore, the first meeting between leaders of the two sides since Chiang Kai-shek’s ill-fated meeting with Mao Zedong in 1945, just before the civil war began. Thanks to Ma’s approach, the Obama administration never faced pressure from Taipei to upgrade or reinforce Taiwan-US relations. If anything, in Obama’s second term, some US officials began to worry that the Ma administration might be giving relations with the US short shrift. That dynamic changed when Tsai Ing-wen took office in May 2016. When Tsai refused to



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accede to Beijing’s demand that she endorse the ’92 Consensus, the PRC responded by ramping up its economic, diplomatic, and military pressure, a trend that intensified when she won reelection in 2020. In addition to wooing away several of Taipei’s diplomatic partners, reversing its policy to promote tourism, and intensifying its efforts to influence Taiwan through online propaganda and misinformation, Beijing also embarked on an escalating campaign of military intimidation that included activities from openly practicing an attack on Taiwan’s presidential office to flying war planes into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and across the Taiwan Strait midline. During 2021, the PLA Air Force flew over three hundred sorties into Taiwan’s ADIZ in a blatantly intimidating show of force. The Trump administration pushed back hard against China’s growing assertiveness, an approach that continues under President Joe Biden. Long-time China expert Harry Harding suggests their policies may reveal a paradigm shift—the first time America has reconsidered the fundamentals of its Taiwan policy since de-recognition.28 In Harding’s view, US China policy is driven by four factors: “American perceptions of China’s capabilities and ambitions, especially toward Taiwan; American evaluations of China’s domestic political and economic evolution; US appraisals of Taiwan’s posture toward mainland China; and American judgements about Taiwan’s domestic economy and political system.”29 Currently, all four of those factors are pushing the US toward stronger support for Taiwan. That support includes policies that affect Taiwan indirectly—the Obama administration’s “Pivot to Asia,” the Trump administration’s “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy,” and the Biden administration’s emphasis on the Quad (a cooperative security group consisting of the US, Japan, Australia, and India)—and directly, as, for example, the decision to revive talks on a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) with Taiwan that was taken at the end of the Trump administration and carried forward under Biden. US policy is not wholeheartedly pro-Taiwan—the Trump administration’s abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership crushed hopes for Taiwan’s inclusion in a regional trade agreement, for example—and it’s sometimes hard to tell whether American officials are motivated by a desire to help Taiwan or to frustrate Beijing. Nonetheless, US leaders today are far more willing than their predecessors a decade or more ago to express, as President Biden has done, their “rock solid” support for Taiwan and to back those statements up with things like high-level visits. TAIWAN’S FUTURE RELATIONS IN ASIA AND BEYOND The future of Taiwan’s foreign relations will be determined by three main factors: how skillfully Taiwan plays its weak hand, how hard the PRC

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squeezes Taiwan and others, and how willing other states are to resist PRC pressure. We’ve already seen that Taiwan’s diplomacy is crafted to make the most of difficult circumstances, but it does not always maximize its opportunities. As happens in all countries, Taiwan’s domestic politics sometimes gets in the way of its diplomacy. Taiwanese farmers’ and consumers’ resistance to food imports from the US (beef and pork) and Japan (the Fukushima region) have hampered efforts to improve relations with those important partners. Taiwan’s restrictions on trade and investment diminish foreign partners’ motivation to lobby their own governments to upgrade relations with Taipei. Political discord and polarization make some governments reluctant to engage. Taiwan cannot afford these unforced errors. It needs to enlist all the friends and partners it can if it is to resist the PRC’s pressure for unification on Beijing’s terms. How strongly Beijing will push for unification is another important factor shaping Taiwan’s future—indeed, it is probably the single biggest factor determining whether Taiwan will even have a future as a free, self-governing society. The task for Beijing is extraordinarily difficult. Squeezing Taiwan too hard produces a backlash, both among Taiwanese, who become even more determined to resist the PRC’s overtures, and among third countries, which see aggression toward Taiwan as evidence that Beijing is a bully that uses coercion to achieve its goals (this is even more the case since Russia’s 2022 invasion and aggression against Ukraine). For example, when Beijing cut off pineapple imports from Taiwan in order to drive a wedge between Tsai and her rural supporters, Taiwanese and Japanese consumers stepped in to mitigate the damage. Pineapple exports to Japan increased by 800 percent.30 But relaxing the pressure risks letting Taiwan drift even farther away from unification. It could also give other countries the idea that deepening ties with Taiwan is okay. These possibilities seem unlikely as Taiwan and the world have plenty of reason to believe the PRC is deadly serious about unification. This same dynamic helps shape other countries’ decisions about Taiwan. It is a paradox: If the PRC were to lessen its pressure, perhaps because of economic setbacks that deflate global perceptions of its power and importance, other nations might feel free to ramp up their ties with Taiwan. But if it strengthens them, others might worry that their own freedom of action and economic prosperity might be in danger. They might use closer ties with Taiwan to hedge against rising Chinese power. We see evidence of the second dynamic already; economic decoupling is a response to the perception that the PRC has become too big a player in the global economy. The United States, Australia, and many European countries are already acting on their concern that the PRC is using unfair practices to devour global demand and undermine their economies. Still, it’s important to not overstate that effect.



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The PRC is still a huge player in the global economy and a heavyweight in global political institutions. Meanwhile, ASEAN and the PRC are one another’s top trading partners.31 That leaves limited room for Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy to peel away Beijing’s economic partners, even in the region most likely to be overshadowed by a rising PRC. There are those who argue that Taiwan is doomed to economic marginalization until it can resolve its conflict with the PRC. Scholar Liu Da-nien analyzed the many trade agreements in Asia and concluded that the only way Taiwan can enter CPTPP (or other multilateral trade agreements) or negotiate bilateral trade agreements is with Beijing’s approval.32 He may well be correct, and an economically marginalized Taiwan would have even fewer resources to sustain its political autonomy. Thus, Taiwan’s future may rest, above all, on Beijing’s ability to persuade (or compel) other countries to accept its claim to economic and political leadership in Asia. NOTES 1.  The precise wording in the agreement, the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972, is “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.” Office of the Historian, United States Department of State, “Joint Statement Following Discussions with Leaders of the People’s Republic of China, February 27, 1972,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XVII: China 1969–1972, https://history.state .gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v17/d203. 2. “Trends of Core Political Attitudes,” Election Study Center, National Chengchi University, accessed July 21, 2021, https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/ Detail?fid=7801&id=6963. 3.  Frederic Krumbein, “Human Rights and Democracy in Taiwan’s Foreign Policy and Cross-Strait Relations,” International Journal of Taiwan Studies 2, no. 2 (September 2019): 303. 4.  Shelley Rigger, The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China’s Economic Rise (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), 89. 5.  Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Joint Communiqué of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People’s Republic of China, September 29, 1972, https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/china/joint72.html. 6.  See note 1. 7. The Interchange Association in Taiwan was renamed the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association in 2017. 8. “Taiwan Welcomes Record 2 Million Japanese Tourists in 2019,” Taiwan News, January 7, 2020, https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3852065; Japan

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National Tourism Organization, Japan Tourism Statistics, https://statistics.jnto.go.jp /en/graph/#graph—breakdown—by—country. 9.  Lam Peng-er, “Japan-Taiwan Relations: Between Affinity and Reality,” Asian Affairs: An American Review 30, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 249. 10.  Lam, “Japan-Taiwan,” 250. 11. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, The Guidelines for US-Japan Defense Cooperation, April 2015, https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/n-america/us/security /guideline2.html. 12.  The PRC objects to the use of “Japan” and “Tokyo” in these organizations’ titles because it believes they imply recognition of Taiwan as a state-like entity. It prefers that other governments refer to Taiwan as “Taipei,” “Chinese Taipei,” or “Taiwan, China”—formulas that downgrade Taiwan to a sub-national status. 13. Madoka Fukuda, “Recent Developments in Japan-Taiwan Relations,” in Japan-Taiwan Relations: Opportunities and Challenges (Washington: Stimson Center, 2021), 15, https://www.stimson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Japan-Taiwan -Relations-March-2021-R25.pdf. 14.  Fukuda, “Recent Developments in Japan-Taiwan Relations,” 15–16. 15.  Ministry of Defense of Japan, Defense of Japan 2021 Digest, 2021, 17, https:// www.mod.go.jp/en/publ/w_paper/wp2021/DOJ2021_Digest_EN.pdf. 16.  Ibid., 19. 17. Ken Moriyasu, “Biden and Suga Refer to ‘Peace and Stability of Taiwan Strait’ In Statement,” Nikkei Asia, April 17, 2021, https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/In ternational-relations/Biden-and-Suga-refer-to-peace-and-stability-of-Taiwan-Strait -in-statement. 18.  Sung Deuk Ham and Sooho Song, “The Impact of the Korean Wave on South Korea-Taiwan Relations: The Importance of Soft Power,” Asian Survey 61, no. 2 (March–April 2021): 224. 19.  Ibid., 227, 230. 20. Ralph Jennings, “Taiwan’s New President Says She’s Willing to Talk to Beijing,” Los Angeles Times, May 20, 2016, https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg -taiwan-president-20160520-snap-story.html. 21.  Tran Hung, “Since 1990 Economic Relations Between Vietnam and Taiwan Have Grown Ever Closer,” AsiaNews.it, March 19, 2021, http://www.asianews.it /news-en/Since-1990-economic-relations-between-Vietnam-and-Taiwan-have-grown -ever-closer-52652.html. 22.  Chun-Yi Lee, “Review and Look Ahead: Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy in the Case of Vietnam,” in Taiwan’s Economic and Diplomatic Challenges and Opportunities, eds. Mariah Thornton, Robert Ash, and Dafydd Fell (London: Routledge, 2021), 97–113. 23.  Shirley Syaru Lin, “Taiwan in the High-Income Trap and Its Implications or Cross-Strait Relations,” in Taiwan’s Economic and Diplomatic Challenges and Opportunities, eds. Thornton, Ash, and Fell, 62. 24.  Mariah Thornton, “Walking Towards China or Towards the World? Taiwan’s International Space Under Ma Ying-Jeou and Tsai Ing-Wen,” in Taiwan’s Economic and Diplomatic Challenges and Opportunities, eds. Thornton, Ash, and Fell, 184.



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25.  Hui Jiang, “China: Evolving Demand in the World’s Largest Agricultural Import Market,” US Department of Agriculture International Agricultural Trade Report, September 2020, https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/china-evolving-demand-world-s -largest-agricultural-import-market. 26. “New Zealand Says It Will Set China Policy, Not US-Led Five Eyes,” Al Jazeera, April 19, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/19/new-zealand -says-it-will-set-china-policy-not-us-led-five-eyes. 27.  Taiwan Relations Act (United States Public Law 96-8), April 10, 1979, https:// www.congress.gov/bill/96th-congress/house-bill/2479. 28.  Harry Harding, “Change and Continuity in American Policy Toward Taiwan,” in Taiwan’s Economic and Diplomatic Challenges and Opportunities, eds. Thornton, Ash, and Fell, 148. 29.  Ibid., 155. 30.  Betty Ho, “Pineapple Ban Flops as Japan Steps Up,” Bloomberg, August 5, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-05/china-s-ban-on-taiwan -pineapples-backfires-as-new-buyers-step-in. 31. ASEAN Secretariat, ASEAN Statistical Yearbook, Jakarta 2020, 57, https:// www.aseanstats.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ASYB_2020.pdf. 32.  Liu Da-nien, “How Can Taiwan Enlarge Its Role in the Process of Asia-Pacific Economic Integration?” in Taiwan’s Economic and Diplomatic Challenges and Opportunities, eds. Thornton, Ash, and Fell, 43.

Chapter Twelve

Australasia Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands R obert A yson

and

R ory M edcalf

It would be difficult to find two countries anywhere in the world with a more intimate relationship than Australia and New Zealand. In their respective foreign policies, that closeness is most evident when they are cooperating on relations with the countries of the South Pacific. For that reason, it is only fitting that this chapter begins with the larger partner Australia, then considers the smaller partner New Zealand, but also considers the regional place of the Pacific Island countries themselves. In their participation in the international relations of an evolving Asia and Indo-Pacific, Australia and New Zealand are deeply interconnected, as well as with many of the leading institutions for regional cooperation. From trade arrangements like APEC, RCEP, and the CPTPP,1 to diplomatic forums such as the East Asia Summit, Canberra and Wellington have been united by a common interest in regional engagement. Yet, Asia’s growing geopolitical strains have also revealed some of the differences in Australian and New Zealand perspectives and interests. In recent years, both have taken an increasingly wary view of China’s growing power, but not at the same pace or intensity. Likewise, the two neighbors maintain important, but by no means identical, relationships with the United States: Australia is a closely integrated formal ally of Washington, while New Zealand a close security partner. The growing weight of leading Asian nation-states in regional affairs has made even more dubious the idea that the Pacific Island countries set their foreign policy courses in deference to Australia and New Zealand. Geopolitical conceptions of international relations are an odd fit for the South Pacific, home to many small states more concerned about economic viability and their vulnerability to transnational challenges such as climate change. Pacific Island countries are nonetheless experiencing the push and pull of competitive geopolitical influence efforts, with China becoming increasingly involved in particular, 309

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while Wellington and Canberra face some difficult choices about their Pacific partnerships and how to respond to China’s growing presence and influence. AUSTRALIA: AN ANOMALOUS POWER Australia’s role in the international relations of Asia and the Indo-Pacific defies neat definition. The country makes no claim to be a major power. While it plays a large role in its nearby neighborhood of Southeast Asia, the northeast Indian Ocean, and above all the South Pacific, it cannot be defined solely as a subregional security actor. For many years Australia described itself as an “Asia-Pacific” actor. The “middle power” category is widely used, but even that term is contested at home and viewed sceptically around the region. Former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop insists Australia is “a Top-20 country”—recognizing the weight of a nation which ranks twelfth globally for the size both of its economy and its military expenditure.2 Canberra also pursues a confident and active foreign policy agenda. This history of activism has included a driving role in regional and international multilateralism. More recently, amid strategic tensions dominated by China’s assertive power, Australia has redirected its diplomatic energies with a harder edge: crafting new security partnerships—bilateral and “minilateral” groupings—defined by an “Indo-Pacific” concept. The Indo-Pacific concept reimagines a region centered on maritime Asia as a two-ocean strategic system of connectivity and contest, apportioning Australia an integral place in the regional order.3 This vision reflects perhaps the greatest tension in Australia’s way of engaging the world. Canberra is incapable, unilaterally at least, of protecting its interests across such a vast region. Australia has substantial military and intelligence capabilities, yet defines its external affairs around a “rules-based order,” where might does not make right. It is an ally of the United States yet demonstrates a strong streak of independent foreign policy. It advocates liberal democratic values, yet pragmatically engages diverse partners. Australia is a developed democracy, but its region includes varied levels of development and regime types, from small and fragile Pacific Island states to larger powers, some authoritarian and some democratic. These dissonances in external policy reflect complexities in Australia’s identity and character as a nation. Australia has a relatively small population (about 25.8 million in 2021), yet a huge territorial footprint (including an entire continent), possesses rich mineral resources, and has responsibility for some of the world’s largest maritime zones. It has a Western political heritage, but also ancient indigenous cultures and an increasingly multicultural



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society: in 2020, 30 percent of its residents were born overseas (with India and China alongside Britain as the top three nations of origin).4 Australia is a longstanding and robust liberal democracy yet is building formidable domestic national security institutions that affect civil society. Unsurprisingly for a nation surrounded by sea, Australia’s politics and society can be insular and parochial. Yet, enmeshment defines its external relations. A history of its foreign policy defines alliance with a great and powerful friend, engagement with Asia, and support for global order as the three constant ingredients, all infused with a fear of abandonment.5 Expansive National Interests The ways that Australian governments have defined national interests over time have informed the nation’s external relations. As a middle player in a connected world, Australia has defined those interests in expanding ways. The 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper identified five fundamental objectives to Australia’s security and prosperity: an open, inclusive, and prosperous Indo-Pacific region in which the rights of all states are respected; opportunities for business; security and freedom against such threats as terrorism; promotion of international rules; and support for a more resilient South Pacific neighborhood.6 In 2016, the Defense White Paper defined three “strategic defense interests”: a “secure, resilient Australia”; a secure near-region encompassing maritime Southeast Asia and the South Pacific; and a catch-all category combining “a stable Indo-Pacific region and rules-based global order which supports our interests.”7 This was refined in a starker “strategic update” document in 2020, to declare a focus for defense planning on the immediate region of the northeast Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, Papua New Guinea, and the Southwest Pacific.8 In a world that—despite pandemic, protectionism, and populism—remains deeply interdependent, every nation’s interests outweigh its capabilities. But for Australia this problem is extreme: hence its fixation on partnerships over strategic autonomy. Australia needs lifelines to the world: flows of trade, investment, energy, technology, knowledge, and people. This has been acutely apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, with disrupted supply chains and restrictions on travel. Despite tremendous natural resources, the country relies on imports, especially advanced manufactures and liquid fuels. Of the latter, it retains only frugal stocks, leaving it vulnerable to maritime blockade or disruption from conflict. Australian governments also define national interests in terms of domestic stability and values. Its policy elites link liberal democratic values (and thus national identity) with pragmatic interests in a rules-based international order:

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Australia does not define its national identity by race or religion, but by shared values, including political, economic and religious freedom, liberal democracy, the rule of law, racial and gender equality and mutual respect. Our adherence to the rule of law extends beyond our borders. We advocate and seek to protect an international order in which relations between states are governed by international law and other rules and norms.9

This virtuous circle between domestic democratic strengths and effective foreign policy can be a device for policy coherence, but it also invites criticism when Australian actions are at odds with accepted rules and norms.10 At the same time, recent Australian articulations of its national interests emphasize domestic factors: prosperity, social cohesion, and security, including socioeconomic resilience and the protection of democratic institutions. These have international dimensions, involving protection against such risks as terrorism, pandemics, and foreign political interference. All this makes Australia’s international policy outlook more multidimensional than the familiar twentieth-century mix of diplomacy, trade, aid, and military posture. Recent developments, especially responses to rapidly rising Chinese power, have been a work-in-progress in building a more coordinated national strategy to prepare Australia for difficult times ahead, an era that Prime Minister Scott Morrison likened to the 1930s: “poorer . . . more dangerous . . . and more disorderly.”11 The China Challenge China’s importance to Australia is not new. The spectacular growth of the Chinese economy in the 1990s and 2000s was of immense value to Australia’s fortunes, helping the country avoid recession during the 2008–9 global financial crisis. China overtook Japan in 2008 to become Australia’s largest trading partner and has remained overwhelmingly so since (largely due to demand for Australian iron ore, but with coal, education, tourism, and agriculture also in the mix). Even in 2020–21, amid a crisis in bilateral relations, fully one-third of Australian exports were bound for China. For at least the first fifteen years of the twenty-first century, Australian governments were at least as heavily focused on the opportunities from China’s rise as on the risks. Still, security concerns were always part of the picture. In 2009, the Labour government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd—a fluent Chinese speaker who many had assumed would be China-friendly—released a defense policy document defined by naval modernization with China in mind. Over the past decade, downside risks have overtaken upside opportunities as the main impact of China’s rise on Australia’s interests and values. Australian governments now openly and routinely say so. Leaders have



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dropped most of their ambivalence about the meaning of Chinese power and how Xi Jinping’s regime is using it. As recently as 2014, during a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott celebrated a free trade agreement, a “comprehensive strategic partnership,” and a friendship that “invariably . . . becomes stronger.”12 This turned out to be the last hurrah of decades of accentuating the positive and downplaying the negative. Abbott’s successor was Malcolm Turnbull, a political moderate with a business background, who had criticized the Rudd defense posture as based on “prejudice.”13 His 2015–18 term became the pivot point in relations, a reality check in which relations with China soured. Australia hardened its security capabilities and criticized Chinese actions—from building and militarizing islands in the South China Sea, to cyber intrusions, and acts of interference inside Australia, including inducements to political parties and intimidation in diaspora communities.14 Media revelations about Beijing’s influence and interference activities were startling to many Australians, and contributed to the Turnbull government introducing (and passing) unprecedented legislation in Parliament to counter them. Was Australia changing? Or was this a defensive response to a changed China (the turn toward hard authoritarianism and assertive nationalism under Xi Jinping)? Notions that this firmer Australian stance (and China’s diplomatic freeze) was a passing phase, which would end if only Australia could be more polite, were soon dispelled. In 2020, the Australian government was an early advocate in calling for an international inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a catalyst for an escalation in Chinese coercion against Australia, involving economic sanctions (on barley, beef, seafood, coal, and wine) and propaganda, some of it so extreme as to generate mistrust of China across Australian public opinion, the political spectrum, and even the business community.15 The COVID inquiry was not the only issue, but by taking the unprecedented step of publicly presenting fourteen “grievances” against Canberra—from South China Sea policy to investment decisions, and human rights criticisms related to Xinjiang and Hong Kong to the counterinfluence legislation—Chinese diplomats only solidified Australian resistance. Australia’s many China challenges have driven heated domestic debates, involving media investigations, court cases, and concerns about actual or perceived prejudice against Australians of Chinese origin. It has also become an issue that crosses the boundaries of security, foreign policy, and economic policy. By 2021, even the Treasurer—traditionally a voice that would have accentuated the positive in Australia-China relations—was openly deploring Beijing’s economic coercion, calling on Australian business to diversify international markets, and emphasizing strategic competition as the new policy paradigm.16

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Security: Inside-Out Australia is modernizing its defense posture for strategic competition. In 2020, Canberra committed to additional investment in warfighting capabilities such as warships, submarines, conventional missiles, and intelligence satellites. The focus is on great-power risk—competition, coercion, confrontation, conflict—with China the obvious driver. A turning point came in September 2021, with a signature decision to acquire, with US and UK collaboration, a capability usually associated with major powers: a submarine force with nuclear propulsion.17 But Australia’s security posture now goes far beyond defense. Much of the policy activity of recent years has been about fortifying civilian sectors for strategic competition, where risks like cyber intrusion, critical infrastructure sabotage, supply chain shocks, propaganda, and foreign interference can easily collapse borders and geographic distance. Not all of Australia’s national security hardening relates to China of course. Over the two decades since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, successive Australian governments have toughened the nation’s counter-terrorism capabilities and legislative frameworks. Since the late 2010s, the latter priority has been overtaken by an emphasis on foreign state threats. In 2017 a new super-portfolio of Home Affairs was established to encompass multiple functions: these included immigration and customs, disaster management, cyber and critical technologies, social cohesion, and the countering of terrorism, transnational crime, foreign interference, and disinformation. A new lead agency, the Office of National Intelligence, was mandated to coordinate an intelligence community spanning foreign and domestic risks.18 The Australian Signals Directorate was strengthened to combine electronic eavesdropping with domestic cyber security and a declared capability for offensive cyber operations. Laws criminalizing foreign political interference were introduced in 2018, following scandals involving alleged PRC efforts to influence Australian policy concerning the South China Sea and intimidation acts against the ethnic Chinese diaspora in the society. In 2021, additional laws gave the federal government veto over any agreement with a foreign state made by an Australian sub-national (state or territory) government or university; these laws were invoked to nullify a deal in which the state of Victoria had endorsed China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In 2018 Australia was the first country to block the Chinese company Huawei from its crucial “5G” telecommunications and internet-of-things network, as “non-trusted” vendors that could be directed by a foreign power for spying or sabotage (this influenced other countries to do likewise).19 Foreign investment approvals now involve explicit national security considerations. In 2021 laws were being developed to protect critical infrastructure, obliging business to play a larger role in cy-



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ber security. In aggregate, Australia has begun whole-of-nation preparations for a contested future. At Home in the Indo-Pacific Through all this self-strengthening, Australia aims not only to discourage coercion, but to be a more credible partner to others. Since the 2010s, Australian governments have actively redefined the regional security environment as the “Indo-Pacific,” to make sense of the region’s scale and diversity in terms of Australian interests and provide a basis for building coalitions. This translates into activism ranging from encouraging other countries to adopt Indo-Pacific policy frameworks to deploying the Royal Australian Navy on “Indo-Pacific Endeavour” exercises with countries as diverse as India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and Vietnam. The 2013 Australian Defense White Paper was the first policy document of any nation to formally designate its region as the Indo-Pacific.20 This idea is now a bipartisan orthodoxy: it was introduced by the Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, refined by the conservative governments of Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison, and endorsed by Labor oppositions. The IndoPacific is far from universally accepted in the academic community, where debate persists whether it is a more-or-less valid analytical construct than the equally manufactured term “Asia-Pacific” from the late twentieth century.21 But the reality is that by the early 2020s, variants on the Indo-Pacific had been rapidly adopted by many nations as the dominant definition of the world’s strategic, economic, and demographic center of gravity. Australian diplomatic activism has encouraged this tide. Why was Australia an early mover in such a regional reimagining? Here was a definition that, unlike simply “Asia,” automatically included Australia. Australian officials were also early to recognize the vital importance of the flows of trade, energy, investment, people, and naval power that were breaching twentieth-century barriers between a Pacific-centric East Asian or Asia-Pacific region and a South Asian theater restricted to the Indian Ocean. India was “acting east,” and being embraced by the United States. China was staking much of its future on access to the Indian Ocean—the sea lanes for its oil lifelines, soon to be recast as the “Maritime Silk Road” in Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road strategy. China’s assertiveness confirmed in Australian policy minds the reality of the Indo-Pacific as a zone of competition. The distinct character of the region could help limit or balance China’s power: it was too large for any empire to dominate, and it engaged the interests of many players across collapsed geographic boundaries. Thus, Australia could encourage coalitions with a wide

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range of partners, based on shared geography and principles like respect for international law, the sovereign equality of nations and non-coercion. Against concerns in non-aligned Southeast Asia that the United States, in particular under President Donald Trump, was using the terminology of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” to rally the region into confrontation with China, Australian rhetoric has increasingly emphasized the commonalities of a wide range of Indo-Pacific policy visions, not only involving US allies but also Indonesia and the 2019 “ASEAN Outlook.”22 The US Alliance: Life Begins at Seventy? Despite the conceptual reconfiguration of the region and the pluralization of Australia’s interests and partners, the alliance with the United States remains fundamental to Australia’s security. Canberra considers it ahead of any other relationship by an order of magnitude—in trust, capability, and interoperability. Arguments that the 1951 ANZUS Treaty would feature less prominently in Australia’s external posture have been overtaken by new realities. A decade ago, scholar Hugh White suggested Australia faced a “China choice” which would make it harder to simultaneously sustain strong economic ties with China and the US alliance, as China challenged America for primacy.23 Australian governments have been making many choices since, but these have tended to downgrade China’s preferences, in two ways. One has been to accentuate the multipolarity of the region—thus Canberra’s proliferation of Indo-Pacific security partnerships accompanied by a push for economic diversification. The other way has been to reinvigorate ties with the United States, as a fullspectrum partnership beyond military and intelligence links to include critical technologies, cyber security, development assistance, pandemic response, and counter-disinformation.24 It is inaccurate to depict America as solely about Australia’s security and China as about its economy when the United States remains overwhelmingly Australia’s largest foreign investor. The vicissitudes of the Trump term did not radically alter Canberra’s alliance calculus. It encouraged Australia to develop greater military “selfreliance” and strengthen its web of Indo-Pacific partnerships, notably with Japan and India. However, public opinion remained reasonably strong about Australia’s need for America, given the context of China risk. Such attitudes spread after Trump’s election defeat and the beginning of the Biden administration. Thus in 2021, the Lowy Institute poll indicated that only 36 percent of Australians agreed that “the United States is in decline relative to China and so the alliance is of decreasing importance” and 75 percent considered that America would help if Australia was attacked. That said, younger Australians



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placed markedly less confidence in America, so overall alliance uncertainties could well grow over time.25 It is important to distinguish Australia’s rhetoric about the alliance—upbeat and adorned with sentiment—from concerns harbored by strategists, both in and out of government. Australia’s defense community is watching as the rapid Chinese military build-up alters the military balance in the Indo-Pacific, and Canberra worries that the professed Indo-Pacific strategies of both the Trump and Biden administrations have been resourced neither rapidly nor robustly enough (for example with the dispersed firepower needed for a Taiwan or South China Sea conflict).26 Australian anxieties here remain predictable. While Canberra wants Chinese coercion to be countered and its dominance prevented, it does not seek war: the goals are coexistence and stability. Australia wants an ally that will deter conflict, but one that possesses the will to fight and win if conflict occurs. Australian leaders are wary of committing to an Australian combat role in advance. The ANZUS Treaty promises each party will consult and act to “meet the common danger,” but does not specify combat forces as the only instrument.27 That said, as US-China competition intensifies, expectations will grow on Australia to be clearer about the part it would play in plausible scenarios, including over Taiwan. Australia’s order of battle includes maritime capabilities that would be valued in alliance operations. Also, given the deep intelligence sharing relationship with Washington, including the joint signals facility at Pine Gap in central Australia, Australia would likely have an immediate hand in supporting US-led operations from the outset of conflict. An Indo-Pacific Web: The Quad, the Neighbors, and the World Australia’s regional diplomacy takes a hybrid approach, combining bilateralism, inclusive multilateralism, and the “minilateralism” of self-selected small groups. Australia remains an active member in the full set of inclusive regional institutions it helped to establish and shape: ASEAN-centric processes the East Asia Summit, ASEAN Regional Forum, and ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus; APEC; the Pacific Islands Forum; and the Indian Ocean Rim Association. Canberra is serious when it declares that it sees ASEAN as the center of regional diplomatic architecture: both because only ASEAN is accepted by all powers as a convener, and because of Southeast Asia’s location at the crossroads of the Indo-Pacific sea lanes. But there are no illusions about achieving consensus or rapid practical outcomes in such fora. Australia utilizes multilateralism for dialogue and norm-setting while reserving practical ambition for partnerships of two, three, or four.

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Japan and India stand out as the most promising of Australia’s Asian partners in the Indo-Pacific: they are both major powers with convergent interests, complementary strengths, and a demonstrated willingness to cooperate. The Japan relationship withstood disappointment in 2016, the dashed expectation of a defense industry partnership: the supply of Australia’s next-generation submarine fleet (this deal went to France, another emerging partner, before it in turn was replaced by the US and UK in 2021). TokyoCanberra ties regained momentum with strategic dialogue, intelligence sharing, a defense logistics pact, development assistance coordination, and a blossoming technology component of cooperation on critical minerals, cyber, and space programs.28 For their part, Australia-India relations have made some of the most dramatic progress of any regional partnership. From indifference and mistrust in the late twentieth century—with estrangement over India’s 1998 nuclear tests—convergence has accelerated, culminating in 2020 in a “comprehensive strategic partnership,” encompassing military cooperation, maritime security, cyber, critical technologies, supply chains, and infrastructure.29 The security relationship has overtaken economics, but both governments are mapping closer commercial ties, despite India’s caution on free trade. Knitting these bilateral relationships into small groups is the work of “minilateralism,” where Australia has taken a lead. Indeed, almost all the region’s diplomatic geometry of small groups involves Australia: the Trilateral Security Dialogue of Australia, Japan, and the United States now has high levels of military interoperability; Australia, Japan, and India have a strategic dialogue and “supply chain resilience: initiative; Australia, India and Indonesia discuss maritime security in their contiguous waters; Australia, India, and France have a growing agenda including Indian Ocean and technology issues; and then there is the Quad. This is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue of Australia, Japan, India, and the United States, one of the most analyzed—yet misunderstood—of diplomatic groupings. Since its revival in 2017 (after an ahead-of-its-time experiment in 2007) the Quad has defied the claims by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi of “an attention-grabbing idea [that would] dissipate like ocean foam.”30 Its critics have insisted two contradictory things: that the Quad was dangerous, an “Asian NATO” that would raise risks of war by encircling China; and it was flimsy and futile because its members would never take risks for each other. The first Quad summit meeting—a virtual dialogue in March 2021—reset the debate, affirming that alongside growing strategic dialogue and loose military coordination the Quad would focus on “public goods” issues like vaccines, environmental security, and technology standards.31 The Quad could become a core for flexible “Quad Plus” coalitions on



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emerging issues, with additional partners like Vietnam, South Korea, or New Zealand (which have already coordinated on pandemic response), or with European powers that are adopting their own Indo-Pacific policies. Indeed, Australia increasingly ranks other partnerships based on their relevance to its Indo-Pacific strategy, which at a diplomatic level involves multipolarity and middle power agency, but at a security level continues to require US-led deterrence. Most of the Southeast Asian relationships still matter considerably to Australia, both as ASEAN members and multidimensional partnerships: Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand are major trade partners whose significance will grow in this era of diversification. Vietnam appeals not only as a growing economy but as an ASEAN member with serious military potential which possesses a strategic worldview and willingness to defy China. Indonesia retains singular importance as a sometime leader in ASEAN at the geographic crossroads of the Indo-Pacific, a large and growing economy, and a complicated neighbor whose future successes or stumbles could have a major effect on Australia’s priorities. What has dramatically shifted over the past generation is any sense of Jakarta as a potential source of security threat. Australian foreign and defense policy overwhelmingly portrays Indonesia as a partner rather than a risk, and Canberra often—if unevenly—seeks to bolster its northern neighbor’s resilience, with defense cooperation, development assistance, and counter-terrorism cooperation.32 A prime Australian concern in the 2020s will be how to help Indonesia assert its sovereignty against China’s influence, without unrealistically pushing this non-aligned power toward taking sides in US-China rivalry. A useful way to track Australia’s priority relationships is the caliber and quality of its dialogues. Canberra has been a pioneer not only in promoting the Indo-Pacific framework but in normalising the “2+2” mechanism—combined foreign and defense ministers’ dialogues—to strengthen strategic coordination. Building on the “AUSMIN” model with the United States, Australia now holds such dialogues with Indonesia, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Britain, France, and Germany. With Singapore it goes one better: a “3+3” involving trade ministers also. The inclusion of European powers on this list is striking. Europe is discovering its strategic equities in the Indo-Pacific, recognizing that it cannot cope with Chinese power globally without contributing to stability in this maritime region. Australia has influenced this shift, expanding its range of capable Indo-Pacific partners. This has been most obvious with France, a power with recognized regional territories and growing defense links with Australia and India.33 In 2021, the UK “tilt” to the IndoPacific, and the formation of a new trilateral defense technology arrangement with the United States, called AUKUS, could foreshadow the sustained return

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of Britain as a near-ally in the US-led regional security structures, though time will tell if it ranks alongside ANZUS in Australia’s priorities. Australia’s Indo-Pacific web provides a somewhat challenging new context for an old and valued relationship, that with New Zealand. It would be hard to find two other countries with more commonalities in their historic experience, social development, and political systems, symbolized by the confusing similarity in their flags. There is a truly kindred quality to transTasman relations, which endures despite differences. Those arise in part from national scale and geographic location, but also from an accentuation of political choices, including New Zealand’s alliance rupture with the United States in the 1980s over nuclear-armed and/or powered warship visits, its more progressive posture on global issues, and its more reluctant awakening to China risk. Wellington’s 2021 warning that it will not accept visits by future nuclear-powered Australian submarines is a reminder that such differences will likely persist. The China factor also looms large in Australia’s relations with its smallest neighbors, the Pacific Island states. Since 2018, Canberra has invested in a major “step-up” of infrastructure, health assistance, education, and security presence across Melanesia. Publicly, the government insists this is about doing the right thing as Pacific “family.” Indeed, despite phases of neglect and mutual frustration, Australia has a long history of seeking to strengthen its fragile neighbors, such as through security stabilization missions—with New Zealand and other Pacific partners—in Bougainville and the Solomon Islands. Papua New Guinea occupies a special place: Australia’s former UNmandated “trust territory,” with a growing population, vast resources, and potential for instability on Australia’s doorstep. Now geopolitics has come to the fore. China’s presence in the South Pacific has rapidly expanded, to include naval visits, critical infrastructure, and political influence. Despite its seemingly out-of-the-way location, the South Pacific has since 2015 been declared by China as a branch line of the Belt and Road Initiative. For the first time since 1942, Australia is countenancing the prospect of an unfriendly major power establishing a military base on its eastern flank. Media reports suggest Australian officials are convinced this is China’s intent. Canberra is determined to stop that possibility.34 Expectations and Risks for Australia The China challenge is enough to dominate the external policy of any regional country. But, like others, Australia must contend with a crowded horizon of risk. Thus, Canberra has simultaneously sought to sustain the “Pacific Step-Up”; deliver financial and other support to struggling Southeast Asian



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partners; follow through on the growing partnership with India; push the ambition of a summit-level Quad; foster geo-economic diversification to cope with Chinese coercion; manage a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan; and hold its own as a global player on issues like pandemic response and democratic solidarity. All this must be done while addressing the societal, health, and economic impacts of COVID-19 and an unsustainably isolated climate policy, which hampers Australia’s efforts in the South Pacific. Moreover, there remains the prospect of further strategic shocks, notably US-China confrontation or even conflict. All of this adds up to an enormous set of demands on national capabilities and political will. Australia will need to do more with less, as globally and regionally its relative economic weight declines. NEW ZEALAND’S REGIONAL OPTIMISM Many of the factors binding Australia closely to Asia’s international relations do not automatically apply to New Zealand. Buffered on all sides by thousands of kilometers of ocean, New Zealand lacks Australia’s proximity to the southernmost maritime archipelagos of Southeast Asia. Indo-Pacific conceptions of the region are a natural fit for Australia, an island continent that sits astride the Indian and Pacific Oceans. But they do not apply as readily to New Zealand’s position. Australia has direct experience of the breakdown of a favorable equilibrium of power in Asia, including the bombing of Darwin by Japan in World War II. With its more remote location, New Zealand has had less reason to feel strategically vulnerable. The makers of Wellington’s external policy have not felt obliged to seek a qualitative edge in maritime military capabilities, as have their colleagues across the Tasman Sea. That option is implausible given the size of New Zealand’s economy. Instead, New Zealand has sought a role for itself as a small power committed to supporting strong rules of international conduct, with diplomacy ruling over defense. Wellington has seen for itself a special responsibility for upholding these rules in the South Pacific, the location for many significantly smaller polities. New Zealand’s Pacific territories—the Cook Islands, Niue, and Tokelau—reinforce the importance of these subregional connections. New Zealand’s closer interests also include the Southern Ocean and an historical claim to a portion of Antarctica. Yet, none of these, individually or collectively, have created a strong argument for New Zealand developing significant power projection capabilities. Major missions have been conducted further afield. After WWII, when New Zealand sent forces to support Britain’s Mediterranean strategy, East Asian theaters of conflict shaped a new set of military commitments. In a

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series of campaigns shaped by Cold War concerns, New Zealand sent forces to the Korean War and the Malayan Emergency in the early post-war years, then to the Vietnam War, and to help its Commonwealth partners deal with Sukarno’s Konfrontasi in the mid-1960s.35 By that time New Zealand was well established alongside Australia in the US-led San Francisco system of alliances by virtue of the ANZUS Treaty, even if it could not always match Canberra’s heightened enthusiasm for America’s regional role. After Britain’s East of Suez withdrawal and America’s decision to avoid future wars on the Asian mainland, New Zealand found it had little to come home to in terms of a security rationale. There was no “Kiwi equivalent” of the Defense of Australia logic. And by the mid-1980s, alliance links with the United States had ended in a diplomatic dispute over New Zealand’s nuclear free policy.36 Connections to Asia, meanwhile, had already been turned on their head. No longer a place for New Zealand to send its forces, the burgeoning economies of Asia had become places for New Zealand to send its goods. Moreover, diplomatic developments in the region had become more promising including the establishment of ASEAN in the late 1960s and the opening of New Zealand’s diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China just a few years later. New Zealand retained some defense links into the region, especially the 1971 Five Power Defense Arrangements (FPDA), which had superseded Britain’s formal alliance commitments to Malaysia and Singapore. But, unlike Australia, New Zealand did not take a leading role in the stationing of air force assets at Butterworth (in peninsula Malaysia) or in the command of the FPDA’s Integrated Air Defense System. In contrast to Australia’s lingering sense of military insecurity, New Zealand’s biggest worry was being cut adrift from its international sources of prosperity. Potentially more significant than the end of Britain’s power projection in Asia was the collapse of British markets for New Zealand’s agricultural exports once London decided to hitch its wagon to the European Economic Community. In that environment, Asia’s burgeoning economies (and Japan in particular) became central to the necessary task of trade diversification, one of the most important chapters in Wellington’s foreign policy story.37 Long-serving Prime Minister Robert Muldoon’s view that New Zealand’s foreign policy was essentially about trade represented an oversimplification but was not completely without foundation: it was during his tenure that New Zealand moved toward a customs union with Australia. The result, Closer Economic Relations (or CER) would provide a new platform for New Zealand’s economic engagement with the wider region. After New Zealand’s sclerotic economy had been deregulated under David Lange’s Labour government (elected in 1984) it made perfect sense for New Zealand to see coopera-



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tion under Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) as a major point of attachment to Asia’s good news story. APEC was anything but an exclusive grouping, bringing in China and the United States as well as most of the East Asian economies whose future would increasingly shape New Zealand’s. This early post–Cold War era of optimistic inclusiveness suited New Zealand’s strong preference for multilateralism. It also suited the first unwritten rule of Wellington’s policymaking toward Asia, which remains in place today: get inside as many cooperative tents as possible. New Zealand was an enthusiastic joiner of the ASEAN Regional Forum, which also offered a point of regional engagement more efficient for a small power than a full range of separate bilateral initiatives. At times New Zealand’s diplomacy exaggerated the effectiveness of ASEAN-centered dialogue,38 and Wellington seemed unworried that these initiatives lacked enforcement power. Unlike Australia, New Zealand no longer had an active alliance relationship with the United States which offered a transmission belt to East Asia’s security hot-spots and emphasized deterrence rather than negotiation. So, when it came to the next main opportunity to join ASEAN-centered institutions, Wellington did not share Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s initial concern that signing the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in 2005 to enter the East Asia Summit might dilute alliance ties with the United States.39 New Zealand’s economic and diplomatic optimism was barely budged by the momentary downturn caused by the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Soon afterward, New Zealand was less directly affected than Australia by the collapse of the Suharto regime, which was followed by a humanitarian crisis as pro-Indonesia militants caused havoc following the result of the East Timor independence referendum. The Australian view that Indonesia’s challenges coupled with a series of domestic crises in Melanesia amounted to an arc of instability did not resonate in the more optimistic New Zealand. But with their Australian counterparts, New Zealand’s forces would nonetheless find themselves in stabilization missions in East Timor (from 1999) and in Solomon Islands (from 2003). By that time New Zealand forces were also serving in Afghanistan in the early stages of what would become a nearly twenty-year mission. New Zealand was far from immune from the shock of the events of September 11, 2001. And in the following year, three New Zealanders would lose their lives in the Bali bombings. In the New Zealand debates, though, there was not as much emphasis on American concerns about Southeast Asia becoming a “second front” in “the war on terror.” Also, unlike the experience of John Howard’s government in Canberra, the Clark government in Wellington was not depicted as Washington’s “deputy sheriff in Asia.”

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Closer to the United States, More Concerned about China? New Zealand’s commitment in Afghanistan, including the sending of special forces, did however pave the way for a significant warming in the security relationship with the United States. Most surprising, perhaps, is that it began under the Presidency of George W. Bush and the prime ministership of Helen Clark, who had been a very vocal critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq (in which Australia was one of the very few participants). The warming would accelerate after John Key, of the center-right National Party, became New Zealand’s prime minister. The Wellington Declaration, which was signed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in New Zealand’s capital, and which emphasized common interests in the South Pacific, was followed by the 2012 Washington Declaration which had more to do with maritime cooperation in the AsiaPacific. The reason for the Obama administration’s desire to close the gaps with New Zealand was obvious: even before the Asian “pivot” became an official American strategy, building regional partnerships was already a priority as the China challenge mounted. New Zealand may have welcomed a closer security relationship with the world’s strongest power. But it also welcomed the rise of the main challenger: China. In 2008, Wellington and Beijing had entered into a Free Trade Agreement, whose completion marked one of the many “firsts,” including New Zealand’s status as the first developed country to recognize China as a market economy and enter into and conclude Free Trade Agreement negotiations.40 The subsequent take-off in New Zealand–China trade would take place as Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Communist Party of China. This change in the Politburo in Beijing signaled the beginnings of a more assertive period in Beijing’s international behavior. In what might be called a case of the “lasts,” New Zealand was much slower than Australia to raise significant concerns about China’s behavior in the South China and East China Seas, or to call out China’s “united front” “influence operations.” To some extent this was a function of the company that New Zealand did not keep. While closer security cooperation with Washington had been normalized, and New Zealand remained a member of the “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing arrangement, a formal alliance relationship between the two had not been reestablished. Neither was New Zealand part of the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (between Australia, Japan, and the United States) nor was it building a strong bilateral security relationship with Tokyo, as had been Canberra’s practice for some years. New Zealand’s approach was less like a Western ally of the United States and more like one of Washington’s closer partners in ASEAN, which for the most part had a tradition of not raising Beijing’s hackles by pushing any alignment with Washington as far as it could go.



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On issues of sensitivity to Beijing (including human rights) a quiet diplomacy approach suited John Key’s center-right government which had been elected in 2008. This was the tail end of the global financial crisis, one of those moments which encouraged a foreign policy centered on New Zealand’s economic interests. As the new engine for so many Asia-Pacific economies, this period gave China a special place in New Zealand’s economic recovery. These factors all combined to create a monocular New Zealand view of China restricted largely to visions of economic opportunity and a bilateral relationship based around little else but trade.41 Eventually, but not rapidly, some of the less pleasing aspects of China’s rise would come to shape New Zealand’s approach. Key’s defense and foreign affairs ministers would become increasingly vocal (although not to Australian decibel levels) about China’s approach to its South China Sea claims,42 appealing to Beijing’s responsibility as a larger power with particular obligations for maintaining regional order. Beijing was not pleased. On one visit to China, Key was greeted with newspaper headlines (including in the infamous Global Times) suggesting that if New Zealand wanted an upgraded FTA, it needed to learn when to “be quiet.”43 New Zealand’s increasing willingness to criticize China’s regional behavior is not just a reflection of a more worrying security equation in Asia. Domestic political change has also been important. While not winning the largest number of seats at the 2017 general election, the Labour Party under Jacinda Ardern’s leadership gained office in a coalition with the populist New Zealand First Party. Among the portfolios allocated to New Zealand First were Foreign Affairs (Winston Peters) and Defense (Ron Mark). A China skeptic, Peters was less sure than his predecessors that New Zealand should be involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, he also latched on to the concern about China’s increasing role in the South Pacific, calling for a redoubling of Western efforts there.44 Some similar themes were apparent in the Ministry of Defense, where Mark got his Cabinet colleagues (including from the Greens) to agree on replacements for New Zealand’s aging anti–submarine warfare maritime surveillance aircraft. These dated back to Vietnam War days, the last time in which New Zealand had been noticeably concerned about China’s ability to upset the strategic equilibrium. Mark’s 2018 Strategic Defense Policy Statement laid out New Zealand’s concerns about China’s South China Sea exploits in the most concerted fashion to date.45 At the end of the year, China had also joined North Korea and Russia in the short list of countries the Ardern government was willing to name as responsible for cyber activities which were causing harm in and to New Zealand.46

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Public sentiment was part of this shift. New Zealanders are generally slow to see other countries as threatening. One post–Cold War prime minister had famously suggested that New Zealand enjoyed a “benign strategic environment,”47 a set of words that even if restricted to the prevalence of interstate war would never be heard from an Australian leader. But the views of many New Zealanders toward China have been growing less favorable. In its 2021 annual survey of public sentiment, the Asia New Zealand Foundation (a publicly funded organization established to increase New Zealand’s Asia literacy) reported that “Despite notable increases in the perceived friendliness of Asian nations toward New Zealand between 2019 and 2020, there is one country that is bucking that trend: China.”48 The level of disquiet about China in New Zealand is no match for the sentiment in Australia. Nor have New Zealand’s political leaders followed Australia’s lead in passing the foreign interference legislation mentioned above. Yet, New Zealand has also had its own debate about China’s influence in domestic institutions. Claims of actual interference, including by “united front” activities directed by the Communist Party of China, have featured in prominent research,49 and have been considered by a parliamentary select committee. For both countries, Asia policy is now effectively defined by China policy. Both have hardened their positions toward Beijing. However, New Zealand still has a view of international relations where China can be a partner. That said, the terms of the partnership may be narrowing for New Zealand: aside from trade (where Australia’s recent experience has been far less promising), Prime Minister Ardern singled out the climate change emergency as a common area of interest with Beijing. New Zealand has also taken a more selective approach than Australia in joining collective expressions of concern about China’s behavior, including on human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. On some other occasions, including high profile statements by other Five Eyes partners, New Zealand has sometimes preferred to make its position known separately and with its own language, occasions which, as scholar Jason Young suggests, have produced rather more consternation in some quarters than they deserve.50 In keeping with the preference for staying in as many tents as possible, New Zealand is anxious not to endorse obviously exclusive views of regional cooperation. The idea of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific may still seem a distant dream, but Wellington will continue to look at all options as building blocks. That includes what was once called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (whether or not the United States eventually joins) and RCEP, which includes China but also Australia, Japan, Korea, and all ten members of ASEAN.



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Inclusive multilateralism continues to be a guidepost, even in an era where blocs seem to be hardening. What does that mean for New Zealand’s views of Indo-Pacific conceptions of Asia? If it was just about geography and the flow of goods and resources, Wellington would not have had a problem latching on to a regional concept that goes further to the west than it has a habit of contemplating. If the IndoPacific idea was simply about identity, the fact that New Zealand boasts growing populations of migrants and descendants of migrants from India, as well as from East Asia and the South Pacific, could be brought into service of a change. But New Zealand governments have been sensitive to the geopolitical implications of Indo-Pacific thinking, especially in the Quad variant in which ally Australia has been a significant player. As the “Indo-Pacific” chorus grew, however, it was only a matter of time before New Zealand would join in. The crucial moment came when, encouraged by an initiative from Indonesia, the members of ASEAN produced an Indo-Pacific posture that emphasized the centrality of their own institutional roles. That was an opening for New Zealand whose subsequent version of Indo-Pacific thinking similarly emphasizes openness, multilateral cooperation, and the centrality of existing regional institutions centered on ASEAN.51 New Zealand’s preference is for non-exclusive approaches to Asian regionalism. “Us and them” approaches are avoided. This does not mean that New Zealand is trying to find a halfway house for itself between the US and China, still less that it sees a role for itself as a mediator of tensions between the two giants. Wellington does not envisage a division of the region by regime type, with leading democracies in one corner and an especially large autocracy in the other. Rather, room must be made for the smaller players, including those smaller than New Zealand. In a definitive 2021 speech on New Zealand’s perceptions of the region, and on a note that would have been well received in Canberra, Prime Minister Ardern said that her government was happy to regard the Indo-Pacific as New Zealand’s wider regional home (but she began her remarks by noting that if you had asked her where New Zealand’s actual home was located, her answer would have been the Pacific).52 The South Pacific: Engagement with Asia If asked to drill down further, Ardern might have mentioned New Zealand’s especially close connections to the Polynesian part of the Pacific. Strong similarities between te reo Maori and the languages of indigenous populations in French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, and Hawaii are but one indication of close familial links. But the Pacific subregion does not look the same

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elsewhere, including for Australia which focuses in its foreign policy on the larger and linguistically diverse countries of Melanesia including Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. Many of the closest United States connections in the Pacific are north of the equator in Micronesia, including Palau and Republic of Marshall Islands (the latter also being the scene of American nuclear testing in the early Cold War years). The diversity of the Pacific can make it difficult to speak of a definitive overall connection to the international relations of Asia (notwithstanding the enormous diversity of Asia itself). There are more members of the Pacific Islands Forum, the primary regional institution, than of ASEAN, which nonetheless represents a remarkably diverse grouping of Southeast Asian countries. The Pacific Island countries include Papua New Guinea, with rich natural resources and a population much larger than New Zealand’s 5 million people, and which shares a land border with West Papua and hence Southeast Asia’s largest country. They also include Tuvalu, a sovereign state with a population of little more than ten thousand people, and whose low-lying atoll geography makes the future of this country in question as sea levels rise. They range from Tonga, which in a formal sense has never been colonized, to New Caledonia, which remains part of French territory in the South Pacific. Some countries in the South Pacific therefore have much greater capacity than others to develop sovereign relations with the generally much larger and more powerful polities of Asia. However, it is not as if the connections between the South Pacific and Asia are a recent phenomenon. During World War II, Japan’s advances included the takeover of several Pacific countries, which were scenes of brutal combat with American forces. In more recent times, a very different Japan has been one of the longest serving providers of development assistance to Pacific countries. Well before Xi Jinping’s arrival in office, the South Pacific was the scene of competitive assistance programs, as China and Taiwan competed for recognition and influence.53 Pacific natural resources—on land and at sea—have long attracted interest in Asia. Southeast Asian forestry firms, including from Malaysia, have a lengthy track record in Melanesia, where forest cover has been shrinking.54 The Forum Fisheries Agency, one of the most important stories of Pacific regionalism in action, was established in 1979 as a collective approach among Pacific countries with a common interest in the sustainable management of tuna fisheries which had for decades attracted the attention of boats from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, as well as from the United States.55 It is therefore incorrect to see South Pacific countries as passive recipients of influence attempts by external powers, including the countries of Asia, nearly all of which are significantly larger actors than any of the small Pacific polities. Yet, views of the South Pacific as little more than yet another venue



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for great power competition wax and wane depending on the way that international relations beyond the region is understood. As international tensions were growing in the mid-1980s, the South Pacific was occasionally written up as the next venue for Cold War competition, as the Soviet Union signed fishing deals with a small number of Pacific countries. Before long, with the initial coup in Fiji in 1987, a rebellion in Vanuatu, and a civil war developing on Bougainville, the main security concern in metropolitan capitals was the internal stability in parts of the Pacific. Hence, a reconceptualization of the region took place as an era of concern about weak states and internal stability. A geopolitical lens is now back in fashion in the external analysis of the South Pacific as China’s growing diplomatic and development aid presence in the Pacific has come under the microscope. China’s increased presence in the South Pacific is not a variation on its activities in maritime East Asia, including the South China Sea. China does not claim territory in the Pacific Islands area (where it has not been occupying and militarizing previously uninhabited features). Instead, it has developed a series of relationships with other (albeit much smaller) sovereign states, with a significant diplomatic presence, expanding trade relationships, the provision of development assistance, and the building of infrastructure. In many cases, these connections have been welcomed by Pacific Island countries. One explicit example is Fiji’s “look north” policy, which while having mixed results for both sides of the Fiji-China relationship, reflects the agency that is still possible among much smaller states in their relationships with the very largest.56 Likewise, there are limits on how far traditional partners of Pacific Island countries can remind their smaller neighbors that there can be risks in courting Beijing and accepting China’s assistance. After all, Australia and New Zealand have a long record of encouraging Pacific self-reliance (which means outward facing economies). For the geopolitically minded, the risks associated with China’s rising profile in the South Pacific are a variety of the wider concerns about Beijing using the Belt and Road Initiative as a source of influence and leverage. In line with its historical concerns about the regional power equilibrium, Australia has been especially sensitive to the security implications. Since 2018, Australian officials have reportedly taken seriously the possibility of China’s seeking bases or at least access points for its military in the South Pacific. Australia has also focused on the potential for China to use economic infrastructure for political leverage.57 Thus, in 2018 the Australian government offered to fund underwater internet cables for the Solomon Islands (in place of an existing plan which would have seen Huawei assume that role).58 Australia and China also found themselves in a competitive cycle over the provision of vaccines to COVID-19 vulnerable Pacific nations.59 To

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the extent that there are murmurings of a major power contest in the South Pacific, it is at least as likely to take the appearance of a contest between China and Australia as between China and the United States. Washington’s concerns about China’s rising role in the Pacific drew the attention of the Obama administration with Hillary Clinton attending the Pacific Islands Forum summit as Secretary of State. Similarly, President Joe Biden provided a virtual message to Forum attendees in the first year of his presidency (and Pacific Islanders have established their voices in US domestic politics).60 But sustaining high-level US interest in Pacific matters can be difficult, and Washington has tended to delegate responsibility to Australia (with a fair amount expected of New Zealand also). To some extent this new period of geopolitical sensitivity creates opportunities for Pacific Island countries to play the larger powers off against each other. The diversity of outlook in the Pacific means that there is anything but a single view on the merits and risks of engaging China, and of the amount of reassurance to be gained from traditional partners. New divisions, including the decision in early 2021 by several Micronesian states to leave the Pacific Islands Forum,61 also mitigate against a unified approach. Nonetheless, China is now a permanent feature of Pacific international relations. The number of Pacific capitals which recognize Taipei instead of Beijing has declined and visits by PLA naval vessels to South Pacific harbors (when the latter are of a sufficient size) can be expected to increase. In the end, how much this all matters depends on one’s perspective. For many countries in the South Pacific, interstate rivalry is far from the biggest challenge in the years ahead. Climate change is an existential matter, as it threatens Pacific livelihoods and in some cases the survival of whole countries, and is the most pressing issue of regional security concern.62 At least on the surface, and notwithstanding the sheer scale of its carbon emissions, China has given the impression of taking climate change more seriously than Australia as an issue for multilateral cooperation. The impact of its statesponsored trawler fleet on Pacific fisheries has not yet resonated fully with some Pacific Island governments. More broadly, the appeal of Indo-Pacific renditions of regional identity will continue to struggle in parts of the Pacific Islands subregion. They may need to be reworked to make room for the transnational and human security concerns of South Pacific countries and the way in which they are engaging with diverse partners.63 This will require a diplomatic emphasis on the consistency of Indo-Pacific ideas of multipolarity with the agency of small countries, rather than the framing of the Indo-Pacific primarily as a theater of great power rivalry.



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CONCLUSION There is an old notion in international relations that when a group of countries encounter a common external challenge, they are likely to become even closer. And there is no question that Australia, New Zealand, and at least some of their Pacific Island neighbors have had growing concerns about the overall direction of Asia’s international relations. The increase in great power competition is a common problem. Reducing its impact should therefore be a shared priority. That common management would not suit the great powers equally. For the United States a unified approach increases the chances of Western predominance having an even longer history across Australasia and the South Pacific. But, for China, a more multipolar Pacific is likely to be appealing, and this means exploiting the slightest perceptions of divergence. That can occur in relations between Canberra and Wellington whenever the latter is more reluctant to criticize Beijing. Simply because of their sheer number and political variety, even more divergence is possible among the Pacific Island countries. This goes to show that some of the leading dynamics in Asia’s international relations do not constitute an external challenge for Australasia and the South Pacific. Partly because of the opportunities that have also come from the shift in global power in Asia’s direction, the connections already run deep. To at least some extent, Canberra, Wellington, and the Pacific capitals do not have the luxury of wondering what to make of the region. They are absorbed in the process of what the region is making of them. NOTES 1. These acronyms refer, respectively, to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). 2.  Julie Bishop, “Address to Lowy Institute,” June 11, 2015, https://www.foreign minister.gov.au/minister/julie-bishop/speech/address-lowy-institute; Austrade, “Resilient Economy,” https://www.austrade.gov.au/benchmark-report/resilient-economy; Diego Lopes da Silva, Nan Tian, and Alexandra Marksteiner, “Trends in World Military Expenditure 2020,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, April 2021, https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2021-04/fs_2104_milex_0.pdf. 3.  The Indo-Pacific concept has been articulated in many Australian documents, notably a 2013 Defense White Paper and a 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper: Australian Government, “Defense White Paper,” Canberra, 2013; Australian Government, “Opportunity, Security, Strength: Foreign Policy White Paper, 2017.” For its origins

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and impact, see Rory Medcalf, Indo-Pacific Empire: China, America, and the Contest for the World’s Pivotal Region (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020). 4. Australian Bureau of Statistics, “30% of Australia’s Population Born Overseas,” Migration, Australie, 2019–20 Financial Year, April 23, 2021, https://www .abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/30-australias-population-born-overseas. 5.  Allan Gyngell, Fear of Abandonment: Australia in the World since 1942 (Melbourne: La Trobe University Press/Black Inc., 2017). 6. Australian Government, “Opportunity, Security, Strength: Foreign Policy White Paper, 2017,” 3. 7.  Australian Government, “Defense White Paper 2016,” 17. 8.  Australian Government, “2020 Defense Strategic Update,” 6. 9. Australian Government, “Opportunity, Security, Strength: Foreign Policy White Paper, 2017,” 11. 10.  A notable instance being alleged spying against East Timor in 2004 linked to the negotiation of a controversial maritime boundary and resources agreement. This was revised equitably in 2018 through international conciliation. 11. Scott Morrison, “Address: Launch of the 2020 Defense Strategic Update,” July 1, 2020, https://www.pm.gov.au/media/address-launch-2020-defence-strategic -update. 12.  Tony Abbott, “Address to Parliamentary Dinner for President Xi, Parliament House, Canberra,” November 17, 2014, https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release /transcript-23978. 13.  Malcolm Turnbull, “Same Bed, Different Dreams—Asia’s Rise: A View from Australia,” speech to the London School of Economics, October 5, 2011, https://www .malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/same-bed-different-dreams-asias-rise-a-view-from -australia. 14.  John Garnaut, “How China Interferes in Australia,” Foreign Affairs, March 9, 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-03-09/how-china-inter feres-australia. 15. John Lee, “How China Overreached in Australia,” The National Interest, August 29, 2021, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-china-overreached-aus tralia-192560. 16. Josh Frydenberg, “Resilience and the Return of Strategic Competition,” https://joshfrydenberg.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Treasurer-Speech-Build ing-Resilience-and-the-Return-of-Strategic-Competition-ANU-Crawford-Leader ship-Forum-6-September-2021.pdf. 17. Andrew Greene, Andrew Probyn, and Stephen Dziedzic, “Australia to Get Nuclear-Powered Submarines, Will Scrap $90 Billion Program to Build FrenchDesigned Subs,” Australian Broadcasting Corporation, September 15, 2021, https:// www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-15/allied-naval-united-states-biden-australia-nuclear -submarines/100465628. 18.  Michael L’Estrange and Stephen Merchant, “Report of the 2017 Independent Intelligence Review,” Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Canberra, 2017, https://pmc.gov.au/resource-centre/national-security/report-2017-independent-intel ligence-review.



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19.  Simeon Gilding, “5G Choices: A Pivotal Moment in World Affairs,” The Strategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, January 29, 2020. 20.  Australian Government, “Defense White Paper,” Canberra, 2013. 21.  For a thoughtful contra view see Brendan Taylor, “Is Australia’s Indo-Pacific Strategy an Illusion?” International Affairs 96, no. 3 (2020): 95–109. 22.  Marise Payne, “Delivering for Our People and the Indo-Pacific Region,” Jakarta, September 9, 2021, https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/marise-payne /speech/australia-and-indonesia-delivering-our-people-and-indo-pacific-region. 23. Hugh White, The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2010). 24. See, for instance, “Joint Statement: Australia-US Ministerial (AUSMIN) Consultations,” 2020, https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/united-states-of-america/ausmin /joint-statement-ausmin-2020. 25.  Lowy Institute Poll 2021, https://poll.lowyinstitute.org/charts/attitudes-to-the -united-states. 26.  Ashley Townshend, Susannah Patton, Tom Corben, and Tony Warden, Correcting the Course: How the Biden Administration Should Compete for Influence in the Indo-Pacific, United States Studies Centre, August 27, 2021, https://www.ussc.edu .au/analysis/correcting-the-course-how-the-biden-administration-should-compete-for -influence-in-the-indo-pacific. 27.  Rod Lyon, “ANZUS: Reading the Treaty,” in ANZUS at 70: The Past, Present and Future of the Alliance, ed. Patrick Walters (Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute), 57–58. 28.  Suga Yoshihide and Scott Morrison, “Japan-Australia Leaders’ Meeting: Joint Statement,” November 17, 2020, https://www.mofa.go.jp/files/100116180.pdf. 29. Dhruva Jaishankar, “The Australia-India Strategic Partnership: Accelerating Security Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific,” Lowy Institute Analysis, September 17, 2020, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/australia-india-strategic-partner ship-security-cooperation-indo-pacific. 30.  Bill Birtles, “China Mocks Australia Over Indo-Pacific Concept It Says Will ‘Dissipate,’ Australian Broadcasting Corporation, March 8, 2018, https://www.abc .net.au/news/2018-03-08/china-mocks-australia-over-indo-pacific-concept/9529548. 31.  Quad Leaders’ Statement, “The Spirit of the Quad,” March 13, 2021, https:// www.pm.gov.au/media/quad-leaders-joint-statement-spirit-quad. 32. Greta Nabbs-Keller, “Understanding Australia-Indonesia Relations in the Post-Authoritarian Era: Resilience and Respect,” Australian Journal of International Affairs, 74, no. 5 (2020): 532–56. 33.  Frederic Grare, “Exploring Indo-Pacific Convergences: The Australia-FranceIndia Trilateral Dialogue,” The Washington Quarterly 43, no. 4 (2020): 155–70. 34.  David Wroe, “‘How Empires Begin’: China Has Made Its Global Move: This Is Australia’s Response,” Sydney Morning Herald, June 22, 2018. 35. Ian McGibbon, “Forward Defense: The Southeast Asian Commitment,” in New Zealand in World Affairs, Volume II, 1957–1972, ed. Malcolm McKinnon (Wellington: New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, 1991), 9–39.

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36.  Malcolm McKinnon, Independence and Foreign Policy: New Zealand in the World Since 1935 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1993), 278–301. 37.  Bruce Brown, “New Zealand in the World Economy: Trade Negotiations and Diversification,” in New Zealand and World Affairs, Volume III, 1972–1990, ed. Bruce Brown (Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington Press), 2–61. 38.  See Jim Rolfe, “Coming to Terms with the Regional Identity,” in Southeast Asia and New Zealand: A History of Regional and Bilateral Relations, ed. Anthony Smith (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2005), 46. 39.  On the latter, see James Cotton, “Asian Regionalism and the Australian Policy Response in the Howard Era,” Journal of Australian Studies 32, no. 1, (2008): 115–34. 40.  John Key, “Joint Statement Between New Zealand and the People’s Republic of China on the Establishment of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership,” November 21, 2014, https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/joint-statement-between-new-zealand -and-people%E2%80%99s-republic-china-establishment-comprehensive. 41.  See Patrick Kollner, “Australia and New Zealand Recalibrate Their China Policies: Convergence and Divergence,” The Pacific Review, 34, no. 3 (2021): 416–17. 42.  David Capie, “How New Is New Zealand’s New Language on the South China Sea?” Incline, April 15, 2016, http://www.incline.org.nz/home/how-new-is-new -zealands-new-language-on-the-south-china-sea. 43.  Jesse Johnson, “Beijing Urges ‘Discretion’ over South China Sea as New Zealand Leader Key Visits,” The Japan Times, April 17, 2016, https://www.japantimes .co.jp/news/2016/04/17/asia-pacific/beijing-urges-discretion-south-china-sea-new -zealand-leader-key-visits/#.XYMCL6axWi4. 44.  Winston Peters, “Shifting the Dial,” Speech to Lowy Institute, March 1, 2018, https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/shifting-dial; Winston Peters, “Pacific Partnerships—Georgetown Address, Washington, DC,” December 15, 2018, https://www .beehive.govt.nz/speech/pacific-partnerships-georgetown-address-washington-dc. 45.  New Zealand Government, Strategic Defense Policy Statement (Wellington: Ministry of Defense, 2018). 46. New Zealand Government Communications Security Bureau, “Cyber Campaign Attributed to China,” December 21, 2018, https://www.gcsb.govt.nz/news /cyber-campaign-attributed-to-china/. 47.  Helen Clark, Remarks to UN Asia Pacific Regional Disarmament Conference, Wellington, March 27, 2001, https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/un-asia-pacific -regional-disarmament-conference-wellington. 48. Asia New Zealand Foundation, Perceptions of Asia 2020 (Wellington: Asia New Zealand Foundation, 2021), 33. 49. Anne-Marie Brady, Magic Weapons: China’s Political Influence Activities Under Xi Jinping (Washington DC: Wilson Center, September 2017), https://www .wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/magic_weapons.pdf. 50. Jason Young, “China Policy and the Five Eyes,” RUSI Commentary, June 18, 2021, https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/china-policy -and-five-eyes.



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51.  New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, “Remarks on the IndoPacific—Ben King, Deputy Secretary for Americas and Asia,” October 23, 2018, https://www.mfat.govt.nz/kr/media-and-resources/remarks-on-the-indo-pacific-ben -king-deputy-secretary-for-americas-and-asia/. 52.  Jacinda Ardern, “Prime Minister’s Speech to NZIIA Annual Conference,” July 14, 2021, https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/prime-ministers-speech-nziia-annual -conference. 53.  John Henderson, “China, Taiwan and the Changing Strategic Significance of Oceania,” Revue Juridique Polynesienne 1, no. 1 (2001): 143–56. 54.  See Tarsisius Tara Kabutaulaka, “Rumble in the Jungle: Land, Culture, and (Un)Sustainable Logging in Solomon Islands,” Culture and Sustainable Development in the Pacific 33 (2000): 88–97. 55.  Andrew Wright and David J. Doulman, “Drift-Net Fishing in the South Pacific: From Controversy to Management,” Marine Policy 15, no. 5 (1991): 303–29. 56. Sandra Tarte, “Building a Strategic Partnership: Fiji-China Relations since 2008,” in The China Alternative: Changing Regional Order in the Pacific Islands, eds. Graeme Smith and Terence Wesley-Smith (Canberra: Australian National University Press), 375–96. 57. David Wroe, “China Eyes Vanuatu Military Base in Plan with Global Ramifications,” Sydney Morning Herald, April 9, 2018, https://www.smh.com.au/ politics/federal/china-eyes-vanuatu-military-base-in-plan-with-global-ramifications -20180409-p4z8j9.html. 58. David Wroe, “Australia Takes Over Solomon Islands Internet Cable Amid Spies’ Concerns About China,” Sydney Morning Herald, January 25, 2018, https:// www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-takes-over-solomon-islands-internet-ca ble-amid-spies-concerns-about-china-20180125-h0o7yq.html. 59.  Natalie Whiting et al., “China Accuses Australia of COVID-19 Vaccine Sabotage in the Pacific,” ABC News, July 6, 2021, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07 -06/china-accuses-australia-papua-new-guinea-covid-vaccinations/100269320. 60. Jonathan Barrett, “Biden Pledges ‘No Strings’ Pacific Pandemic Support,” Reuters, August 6, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/biden-pledges -no-strings-pacific-pandemic-support-2021-08-06/. 61.  Greg Fry, “The Pacific Islands Forum Split: Possibilities for Pacific Diplomacy,” DevPolicy Blog, February 23, 2021, https://devpolicy.org/the-pacific-islands -forum-split-possibilities-for-pacific-diplomacy-20210223/. 62.  Pacific Islands Forum, “Boe Declaration on Regional Security,” September 5, 2018, https://www.forumsec.org/2018/09/05/boe-declaration-on-regional-security/. 63.  Joanne Wallis and James Batley, “How Does the ‘Pacific’ Fit into the ‘IndoPacific’? The Changing Geopolitics of the Pacific Islands,” Security Challenges 16, no. 1 (2020): 2–10.

Part Five

TRANSREGIONAL LINKAGES AND DYNAMICS

Chapter Thirteen

The Asian Regional Economy E dward J. L incoln

Asia captures the imagination as a dynamic part of the global economy, driven in part by very high growth in Japan for the first three decades after the Second World War and then three decades of equally high growth in China after 1980. East Asia and India continue to do well economically on average. This chapter provides an economic overview of the region and explores whether the region has become more interconnected within itself. Looking at the region as a whole, this chapter makes five major points. First, growth in the region continues to outpace other parts of the world. During the most recent decade of 2010–19, the real GDP of East Asia (excluding the highincome countries of Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) grew at 7.2 percent and that of India at 6.4 percent. During the same time period, that of sub-Saharan Africa, for example, grew at only 3.5 percent.1 Second, the region is characterized by extreme diversity in economic size and affluence among the various economies. That diversity makes the process of policy dialogue and cooperation more difficult (than, for example, in Europe). Third, while some economies in Asia have been the most dynamic in the world over the past four decades, economic growth has varied widely across the region. Fourth, many (but not all) countries around the region have had strengthening trade linkages with China. Interestingly, as ties with China have strengthened, those with Japan have diminished. Furthermore, broader trade and investment linkages between East Asia and India are quite weak, and even within subregions, only East Asia is characterized by relatively strong intraregional trade ties. Fifth, regional policy dialogue and cooperation has expanded over the last three decades, but actual outcomes are generally weak and a plethora of overlapping dialogues characterizes the region, many of which include participants from outside the region. This chapter concludes, therefore, that the region has not coalesced as an economic bloc like the EU, nor is it likely to do so in the next several decades. 339

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THE ECONOMIC LANDSCAPE One of the striking characteristics of this region is a huge range in size and affluence among the various economies. The common measure of economic output for a country is gross domestic product (GDP), the value of all goods and services produced in a country during a specific period of time (usually measured quarterly or annually). Figure 13.1 shows the size of GDP in the dozen largest Asian countries in 2019, with the output of each converted to US dollars at the average exchange rate between the local currency and the US dollar during the year. Market exchange rates provide an imperfect way to compare economies since these rates can sometimes make prices in a country seem unusually high or low. Nevertheless, market rates still provide a rough guide to comparing the size of countries in the region. China has emerged as the economic giant of the region. At $14.3 trillion, China is the second-largest economy in the world at present, with a GDP that 16,000 14,280 14,000

10,000 8,000 6,000

5,082

4,000

2,869

Brunei

Laos

Papua New Guinea

Cambodia

Macao

Vietnam

Malaysia

Hong Kong

Singapore

Indonesia

Korea

India

Japan

China

0

544 377 372 366 365 262 54 27 25 18 13 Philippines

1,647 1,119

2,000

Thailand

Gross Domestic Product

12,000

Figure 13.1.  GDP in 2019 at Market Exchange Rates Note: Billions of US dollars. Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators, online database (accessed July 15, 2021).

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is two-thirds the size of the United States. China also represents a large 47 percent of the GDP of all of Asia. Japan, which had been the second-largest economy in the world for several decades, is now third, with a GDP of $5.0 trillion, only one-third the size of China. India, with a population comparable to that of China, remains a much smaller economy, with a GDP of $2.9 trillion. Fundamentally, Asian GDP consists of the top five countries (China, Japan, India, South Korea, and Indonesia) and all the rest. Some, like Laos ($18 billion), or Brunei ($13 billion) are tiny in comparison to the top five. A second economic disparity in Asia is affluence. The region contains economies with high levels of economic affluence and very poor countries. The common measure that economists use is GDP divided by the total population (called GDP per capita), showing the total amount of goods and services produced in the economy per person. While GDP per capita is a crude method of measuring affluence (since not all of the output in the country ends up as household income), it provides at least a rough means of comparing countries. Figure 13.2 shows GDP per capita at market exchange rates for East Asian economies. Economists often prefer to use price-adjusted data (converting data from local currencies to dollars at what are called purchasing power parity exchange rates) when measuring GDP per capita. The disparities 1,000 900 Billions of US Dollars

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100

Figure 13.2.  GDP per Capita at Market Exchange Rates, 2019 Note: US dollars. Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators, online database (accessed June 29, 2021).

Cambodia

India

Laos

Vietnam

Papua New Guinea

Philippines

Indonesia

Thailand

China

Malaysia

Brunei

Korea

Japan

Hong Kong

Singapore

Macao

0

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in figure 13.2 would be somewhat smaller with this alternative approach, but the basic conclusions would remain the same. Japan began modern economic development well before most other countries in the region and by the mid-1970s was by far the most affluent large economy in the region. Since then, several other economies in the region have emerged as centers of affluence, and in 2012 the city-states of Hong Kong, Macao, and Singapore exceeded the level of GDP per capita in Japan. In 2019 Japan had a GDP per capita measured at market exchange rates of $40,113, or 61 percent the level of Singapore. Among the larger economies, South Korea, at 80 percent the level of Japan, is now a high-income nation. Note that GDP per capita in Taiwan (not shown in figure 13.2) is two-thirds the level of Japan.2 However, because Taiwan is excluded from most World Bank and International Monetary Fund databases, this chapter is unable to provide information on Taiwan for lack of comparative data. At the bottom of the distribution is Cambodia. At less than $2,000, it one of the poorest nations in the world. China’s GDP per capita was $10,117, placing it slightly above Thailand and a bit lower than Malaysia. These are levels high enough to consider these three countries to be middle-income economies. These disparities matter when considering the possibilities for regional economic institution building. Economies that are somewhat similar in overall size or affluence share more common economic interests. Europe exemplifies a region where the disparities among the nations that originally formed the European Union were not very large. The very large disparities in Asia, on the other hand, have been an obstacle to developing institutions or region-wide economic cooperation. For example, affluent Japan (like all industrialized nations) protects its inefficient agricultural sector from imports. One particular source of friction between Japan and its Asian neighbors for many years has been Japan’s policy of almost complete closure of its rice market to imports. The final characteristic of the region is relatively high rates of economic growth. Economists argue that poor countries are capable of producing very high rates of economic growth if they can get the fundamentals for a modern market-based economy in place (along with other supporting factors such as political stability, strong education policies, and improved public health). Given the right institutional fundamentals, poor countries can accelerate growth by importing existing technology from abroad and combining it with inexpensive domestic labor. This process of “catch-up” can continue until available technology from abroad has been absorbed and growth has driven up domestic wages to levels similar to those in the advanced industrial nations. The experience of some Asian economies has provided the evidence for the possibilities for “catch-up.”



The Asian Regional Economy 343

The story of Asian growth begins with Japan. The process of industrialization in Japan stretches back to the 1870s, much earlier than most other economies in Asia. By the time of the Second World War, Japan had already come a long way, but it lost much of its industrial facilities in a wave of destruction in the final year of the war. After the Second World War, a combination of rebuilding from wartime destruction and successful industrialization strategies resulted in the highest growth rate in the world—with an average real GDP growth rate (that is, after subtracting inflation) of almost 10 percent for the period from 1950 to 1973. This prolonged rapid growth brought Japan into the ranks of the advanced industrial nations, as noted earlier. Even after the mid-1970s, Japanese economic growth remained higher than that in the other advanced economies until the end of the 1980s. Table 13.1 shows economic growth rates since 1980 for a number of Asian economies. The major story is the very high growth of China from 1980 to 2010 with 10 percent average growth. But note that China’s growth from 2010 to 2019 was a lower 7.7 percent. Since China was so poor when rapid growth began, it is still not an affluent nation, as indicated in the earlier discussion of GDP per capita. A major question for economists is whether China’s growth will continue to decelerate (due to demographic factors and the failure to continue economic reforms) before it becomes a high-income economy. Table 13.1.  Real GDP Growth Rates in Asia

Brunei Cambodia China Hong Kong India Indonesia Japan Korea Laos Macao Malaysia Myanmar Papua New Guinea Philippines Singapore Thailand Vietnam

1980 to 1989

1990 to 1999

2000 to 2009

2010 to 2019

–2.4 NA 9.8 7.3 5.9 6.4 3.7 7.7 4.1 7.9 5.9 1.9 1.4 2.0 7.5 7.3 4.5

1.4 7.4 10.0 3.8 5.7 4.8 1.5 6.3 6.4 3.2 7.2 6.1 4.9 2.8 7.5 5.3 7.4

1.4 8.4 10.3 4.2 6.3 5.1 0.5 4.9 6.9 9.4 4.7 12.4 2.8 4.5 5.3 4.3 6.6

0.5 7.0 7.7 2.8 6.7 5.4 1.2 3.3 7.3 4.8 5.3 6.6 5.4 6.4 4.9 3.6 6.3

Note: Percentages. Source: Calculated from data in World Bank, World Development Indicators, online database (accessed June 29, 2021).

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Growth in Japan, in contrast, has been quite low since 1990. As an advanced industrialized nation by the mid-1970s, Japan could no longer grow at high rates. But a series of problems—both a real estate and stock market price bubble in the late 1980s, poor policy response to the collapse of the bubbles, the 2008 global recession, and the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011—all conspired to keep Japanese growth below its potential for most of the period since the early 1990s. Now, with a shrinking and rapidly aging population, Japan’s GDP growth potential over the next decade is 1 percent or less. India, the other population giant in Asia (1.4 billion in 2022), has not grown as rapidly as China. From the 1950s until the mid-1990s, India favored a development strategy called “import substitution,” in which the government establishes barriers to imports and to inward investment by foreign firms in order to stimulate the growth of domestically owned firms. This strategy was not very successful, as is the case in most developing countries that have tried it. Rather than promoting domestic growth, this strategy tends to produce very inefficient domestic firms that actually impede growth beyond a certain point. Since the mid-1990s, India has lowered import barriers and encouraged investment by foreign firms. As a result, table 13.1 shows that Indian growth has accelerated from an average of 5.7 percent in the 1990s to 6.7 percent in the 2010–19 period. This acceleration is encouraging, Growth in the rest of the Asian economies in this table is mixed. On average, they have grown relatively fast (and faster than the averages in other parts of the developing world as noted earlier), but not as fast as China. Some were hit by the 1998 Asian Financial crisis, but rebounded quickly. In the period of 2010–19, the picture is mixed; some accelerated while others decelerated. Thailand, in particular, had its growth slow to only 3.6 percent, an obvious consequence of domestic political turmoil. Trade Flows A principal reason people think of Asia as an emerging cohesive region is rising intraregional trade linkages. However, much of that rise is due to the rapid growth of China as a trading partner for all other nations in the region. This shift is due to both China’s rapid economic growth (with an economy producing more goods to sell to the world, and absorbing more goods from the rest of the world) and to increased openness to trade as the ratios of both imports and exports to GDP increased substantially. China’s rise as a trade partner actually affects many nations in the world, including the United States and others outside Asia.

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While ties with China have risen for many economies around the region, the rest of the trade story does not suggest that Asia is becoming a more tightly knit economic bloc. Offsetting the rising importance of China has been an equally remarkable fall in the relative importance of trade with Japan. Furthermore, linkages among subregions of Asia remain weak. East Asia, for example, has had thin trade ties with India. The pattern of increased relative importance of trade with China is most evident when looking at Japan. Figure 13.3 shows Japan’s imports. In the forty years since 1980, the share of Japan’s imports coming from the rest of East Asia has increased substantially, from a level of 26 percent to 47 percent in 2020, a very sizable increase. However, all of that increase is due to imports from only one country: China (note that “China” refers to the People’s Republic of China plus Hong Kong and Macao). The principal reason for treating these three together as China is due to the very large share of trade for Hong Kong and Macao that is simply transhipment of goods destined ultimately for mainland China or the rest of the world. Japan’s imports from East Asia other than China were no higher as a share of total imports in 2020 than they were in 1980, at just below 20 percent. The opportunity for expanding economic ties with India became a topic of discussion in Japan in the 2000s, 50% 45%

Percent of Total Imports

40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% 1980

1985

1990

East Asia Plus India

1995 China

2000

2005

2010

2015

East Asia other than China

2020 India

Figure 13.3.  Japan’s Imports Note: Percent of total imports. Source: International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics, online database (accessed July 12, 2021).

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but these data indicate that no change has occurred in the relative importance of India as a source of imports. Imports from India were 0.7 percent of total imports in both 1980 and 2020, and at no point did they exceed 1 percent. The picture for Japan’s exports is essentially the same as for imports, as shown in figure 13.4. Once again, all of East Asia has been an increasingly important destination for Japanese exports, rising substantially from 20 percent of total exports in the first half of the 1980s to 48 percent in 2020. Most of this increase was due to China, rising from only 8 percent of Japan’s exports in 1980 to 27 percent in 2020. East Asia other than China absorbed an increasing share of Japanese exports from 1985 up to 1995, but remained flat thereafter at or slightly above 20 percent. Once again, India is a minor trade partner—absorbing 0.7 percent of Japan’s exports in 1980 and 1.4 percent in 2020. To be sure, that was a doubling over the forty-year period, but still at a trivial level in 2020. These trends in Japan’s trade help explain why the Japanese have been leaders in talking about the desirability of dialogue and cooperation among East Asian governments. Even though the share of both exports and imports with East Asia other than China has been relatively flat in the past twenty years, the 20-percent share is fairly substantial. The Japanese government 60%

Percent of Total Exports

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0% 1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

East Asia

2005

2010

2015

2020

China

Figure 13.4.  Japan’s Exports Note: Percent of total exports. Source: International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics, online database (accessed July 12, 2021).

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30%

Percentage of Total Imports

25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

0% 1980

1985

1990 Japan

1995

2000

China

2005 ASEAN

2010

2015

2020

India

Figure 13.5.  ASEAN Imports Note: Percent of total imports. Source: International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics, online database (accessed July 14, 2021).

has also expressed interest in promoting trade with India as an alternative to China, but little has happened. Figure 13.5 shows ASEAN imports, a subregion of Asia that has also experienced rising trade with China. For the sake of brevity, the discussion of ASEAN, will focus only on imports. ASEAN imports from China hovered around 5 percent of total imports until the mid-1990s, and then rose continuously, reaching 24 percent by 2020. Imports from Japan are the mirror image of China, fluctuating between 20 and 24 percent from 1980 until the mid-1990s and then falling rather steadily to only 8 percent by 2020. Imports from India have remained low throughout this long period with no significant increase, fluctuating in a range of 1.0 to 2.5 percent. Equally interesting and important is the trend of intra-regional trade within ASEAN. Imports from other ASEAN countries as a share of total imports fluctuated in the range of 14 to 17 percent in the 1980s, rose from 1990 to a peak of 24 percent in 2006, and subsequently subsided to 20 percent by 2020. The ASEAN countries formed a Free Trade Area, signed in 1992. Typically, when countries form a Free Trade Agreement, the result is an increase in the trade among them compared to trade with the rest of the world. These data

Edward J. Lincoln

348 30%

25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

0% 1980

1985

1990 Japan

1995 ASEAN

2000

2005

2010

Greater China

2015

2020

East Asia

Figure 13.6.  India’s Exports Note: Percent of total exports. Source: International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics, online database (accessed July 23, 2021).

suggest that the impact of the ASEAN Free Trade Area on fostering intraregional trade was modest. Now consider trade linkages from the perspective of India, shown in figure 13.6. In the 1980s, 15 to 20 percent of Indian exports were destined to East Asia. In the thirty years since then, they have fluctuated in a 20 to 25 percent range. That indicates at least a modest increase in the role of East Asia in India’s exports, but with no significant increase in the twenty-five years since the mid-1990s. Meanwhile, these data show the same pattern as that of ASEAN of rising exports to China and falling exports to Japan. Back in the 1980s, 10 to 13 percent of India’s exports were destined to Japan, but that ratio has fallen steadily since 1990. By 2020, the percentage was down to 1.5 percent, a trivial amount. In contrast, exports to China were only 2 to 3 percent of India’s total exports back in the 1980s, and then doubled to 10 percent by 2005. But in the fifteen years since then, that share has remained in a narrow 10 to 11 percent range with no indication of any sustained rise. Similarly, exports to ASEAN countries had been in a low 2 to 3 percent range back in the 1980s, rising to 10 percent by 2005. But, like exports to China, exports to ASEAN have remained in a narrow 10 to 11 percent range since 2005. These trade data indicate a small increase in India’s trade

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connection to East Asia, but exports to the major markets of China and Japan remain modest in the context of India’s total exports. These results are interesting because at least since 2010 there was discussion in Japan of increasing economic ties with India as the Japanese government and firms became more wary of China. But if, for example, that led Japanese firms to shift their overseas production away from China to India to produce products for the Japanese market, that would show up as an increase in the share of Indian exports sent to Japan. The falling share of exports to Japan shown in figure 13.6 negates that hypothesis. Finally, what about China itself? As other nations in the region have experienced rising trade linkages with China, has the same been true for China’s ties to the rest of the region? Figure 13.7 shows the pattern of China’s exports (China is defined as the sum of exports from China, Hong Kong, and Macao, and, in this case, with the trade among these three deducted from their global exports to avoid double counting). The data for China indicate two principal developments. First, the share of exports to East Asia has been rather flat for the whole forty-year period, fluc35%

30%

25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

0% 1980

1985

1990 Japan

1995

2000

ASEAN

2005 India

2010

2015

2020

East Asia

Figure 13.7.  China’s Exports Note: Percent of total exports. Source: International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics, online database (accessed July 15, 2021).

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tuating between 25 and 30 percent with no sustained movement up or down. Within East Asia, though, the share of exports to Japan has fallen since 1995, from 17 percent to only 6 percent by 2020. In contrast, exports to ASEAN have risen since about 2005, from the 10 percent level that had prevailed since 1980 to 17 percent by 2020. Second, exports to India remain very low despite some increase. From only 0.2 percent in 1980, exports to India rose to 3 percent forty years later in 2020. For two large economies this is a surprisingly low ratio, perhaps indicative of troubled political relations. Or it could be a reflection of the lack of India’s integration into regional production networks established by large global firms (that help explain the rising role of trade with ASEAN). China’s imports are somewhat similar to exports, but with a few differences, as shown in figure 13.8. Imports from East Asia as a whole fluctuated in a narrow band of 40 to 45 percent of total exports from 1980 to 2005, but then declined, and in the most recent five years, fluctuated in a 30 to 35 percent band, a considerable drop. This was driven by a decline in the share of imports coming from Japan. These peaked at 37 percent in 1985, a time when Japan was by far the largest source of China’s imports. But thereafter 50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% 1980

1985

1990 Japan

1995

2000 ASEAN

2005 India

2010

2015

2020

East Asia

Figure 13.8.  China’s Imports Note: Percent of total imports. Source: International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics, online database (accessed July 16, 2021).



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the share declined steadily, levelling off at only 9 percent in the most recent five years. Imports from ASEAN, on the other hand, rose modestly. After fluctuating between 6 and 10 percent in the 1980s, imports were drifted up to 17 percent in 2020. As with China’s exports, imports from India rose a bit but remained a very small share of China’s imports—from 0.4 percent in 1980 to 1.2 percent in 2020. These trade data lead to several conclusions. First, much of what might appear a rising East Asian economic bloc is due to the very rapid rise of China as a trade partner. This, however, is true for all countries that trade with China, not just those in East Asia. That is, the combination of very rapid economic growth and the expansion of both exports and imports as a share of GDP has resulted in the stunning growth of China as a trade partner for many countries around the world. But, from China’s perspective, East Asia has not become a more significant trade partner. Second, at the same time that China has become a more important trading partner, Japan has shrunk in relative importance. The rest of Asia is much less connected to Japan through trade today than was the case forty years earlier. This trend is important because the initial American interest or concern in an emerging East Asian region back in the 1980s and 1990s was driven by the notion of a region coalescing around Japan.3 The Japanese certainly saw themselves as de facto informal leaders in the Asian region as a consequence of their economic size, affluence, and strong trade ties. That self-perception has diminished. Japan’s slow economic growth since the early 1990s explains why it has become a less important export destination for regional exports (relative to the more rapid growth that has sucked in more imports in China and elsewhere). A rising value for Japan’s currency (the yen) against other currencies since the mid-1980s also explains why Japan has declined relatively as a source for regional imports (as Japanese products became more expensive due to the exchange rate movement). Third, part of what is happening is the result of changing production location. The relocation of Japanese manufacturing production from high-cost Japan to lower-cost ASEAN, for example, should explain much of the decline of Japan as a relative source of China’s imports since 1985 (with rising imports from Japanese firms producing in ASEAN substituting for imports directly from Japan). As a result, Japanese firms are still important in explaining regional trade developments even though Japan as a nation has become less important as a trade partner. Fourth, implicit in the trade data is a continuing importance of nations and regions outside Asia. For the sake of clarity, the figures presented do not show trade with the United States and Europe. But for much of the region, both the United States and Europe remain vitally important trade partners.

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To provide just one example of this, consider Malaysia’s imports. In 2020, Japan provided 7.7 percent of Malaysia’s imports, while the EU provided 7.4 percent and the United States 8.7, both comparable to Japan. To be sure, the big story for Malaysia is a rise in imports from China (up from only 4 percent of imports back in 1980 to 23 percent by 2020). But it is significant that both the EU and United States remain as important a source of imports as is Japan. Fifth, India is not integrated into East Asian trade patterns at all. From either the perspective of various East Asian countries or from India’s perspective, the trade linkages are very small and have not changed significantly over the long forty-year period of the data presented here. There may be legitimate geostrategic reasons to include India in regional discussions such as the East Asian Summit, but it is an insignificant trade partner. Trade Policy Global trade is loosely governed by the World Trade Organization (WTO), which presides over global trade negotiations in which all members agree to mutual reductions in trade barriers. A number of these negotiations have occurred in the years since 1947 when the organization was originally formed (then called the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). However, the WTO permits pairs or groups of its members to negotiate so-called free trade agreements among themselves (not offered to all the other members of the WTO), as long as they remove substantially all the barriers among themselves. These agreements have become quite popular around the world since around 1990. East Asia is no exception, especially in the years since 2000. Some of these agreements have been within the region—the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), Japan-Singapore, and others. China, Japan, and India each have agreements with ASEAN. India has individual agreements with Japan and South Korea. Those agreements give the image of a region that is coming closer together as a distinctive economic bloc. Nevertheless, many of these individual agreements are between governments within the region and partners outside (South Korea–Chile, India-Chile, Japan-Mexico, Singapore– United States, and others). The real impact of such agreements in making the region a more cohesive whole, therefore, is still unclear. This diversity of intra- and extra-regional approaches continued in the most recent decade. The most significant development was the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, begun in 2008 and signed in 2016. This agreement included twelve governments (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam).4 The agreement was signed in 2016, but the Obama administration, worried about rejection, did not submit it to Congress for ratifica-



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tion in that presidential election year. The very next year, the new Trump administration withdrew from the agreement. The other eleven members then engaged in further negotiations, mainly to remove a few elements that had been heavily pushed by the US government during the negotiations, and signed the revised Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for TransPacific Partnership (CPTPP). Note that a number of the participants in this agreement are not in Asia; it is truly a trans-Pacific agreement. It is also significant that when the US chose to withdraw, the other participants stuck together—to the detriment of American firms since they will not benefit from the lowered trade barriers. India participated in the negotiations, but chose not to sign the revised agreement. The other major development was the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which came into force on January 1, 2022, and involves the ten ASEAN members, Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand.5 While RCEP was more clearly centered on governments in Asia, note that it included Australia and New Zealand, two countries not always defined as a core part of Asia. The biggest difference in participation is the inclusion of China in the RCEP agreement, but not CPTPP. The RCEP agreement was signed in 2020, but as with CPTPP, India participated in the negotiations, but refused to sign the agreement. Of the two negotiations, CPTPP is more likely to have a significant impact because of strong pressure by the US government during the original TPP negotiations for a robust agreement. The sense that China was not ready to make significant concessions was a principal reason for its exclusion from that agreement. Even though some of the US demands were removed or weakened in the CPTPP agreement (mostly related to intellectual property rights), it appears to remain robust. The main problem is the absence of the United States, by far the largest economy in the original TPP negotiations. The diversity of intra- and extra-regional agreements and negotiations also reflects the simple reality of the trade data: with the United States, EU, and other economies outside Asia continuing as major trade partners for nations within Asia, there is no reason to limit free trade agreements only to partners within the region. What many countries want is better access to the US market, and they are aware that negotiations with China or Japan (without the US government as a participant) are less likely to yield agreements that fully open markets to their exports. From this standpoint, the Trump administration’s withdrawal from TPP was unfortunate. The same lack of geographical clarity exists for less formal discussions of economic policy. The oldest group, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings, began in 1989 and includes the United States, Australia, Canada, and other governments not part of East Asia. APEC members discuss

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a number of broad economic issues, but the organization has worked through a principle of voluntary implementation of decisions (unlike a Free Trade Area where the agreements are binding on the member countries). Since 1993, APEC has included an annual summit meeting (in addition to the existing ministerial and working-level meetings), often marking the one time a year that the American president travels to East Asia. The ASEAN+3 group (ASEAN plus Japan, China, and South Korea) began meeting at the ministerial level in 1995, added a summit meeting in 1997, and was deliberately created to be a rival or alternative to APEC for East Asian governments. This purely (East) Asian grouping was motivated in part by both a general desire to foster a sense of Asian commonality and anger with the dominance of the United States (particularly over American and International Monetary Fund reaction to the Asian financial crisis in 1997). In structure the two groups are quite similar—discussing a number of economic issues but reaching non-binding decisions. The most substantial decision emerging from ASEAN+3 was the Chiang Mai Initiative (discussed later in this chapter). Even though the ASEAN+3 group was intended to be an East Asian alternative to the APEC discussion, it evolved in a more inclusive direction. Beginning in 2005, an East Asia Summit meeting has been held immediately upon the annual ASEAN+3 discussions. In addition to the ASEAN+3 members, the initial East Asia Summit added Australia, New Zealand, and India. A key motivation for this new organization was the desire of Japan and some other governments to add another very large country in terms of population to the discussion—India—in order to diminish the dominance of China. However, the membership of the East Asia Summit continued to expand. Beginning in 2011, both Russia and the United States were invited to join the group. China began its own regional dialogue, this one a discussion with Central Asia, through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which also includes Russia as a member. This group began in 1996 (without Uzbekistan and under a different name) and became the SCO in 2001. All of these groups include discussions of economic issues, although all of them have gained a substantial role in discussing diplomatic and security issues over the years. None of them have had major accomplishments on the economic front. The action on trade has been left to the plethora of free trade negotiations discussed earlier. These groups have mainly been forums for discussion and information sharing, with some action on trade facilitation (such as streamlining customs procedures) or development deals (such as highway construction in Central Asia). In the 1980s and 1990s, the US government had been worried about the possible emergence of an East Asian economic bloc—a concept touted by then-Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir. The ASEAN+3 discussions are the

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legacy of his approach, but as just described, ASEAN+3 does little to create a regional bloc, and other discussion groups include non-Asian members. Even ASEAN+3 tacked on the EAS, which now includes the United States. The desire to create organizations just for Asians, partly as a rebuke to American dominance, was popular in the late 1980s and 1990s, but appears to have faded. Direct Investment Trade is not the only way in which economies interact. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is also important. This form of investment involves companies owning subsidiaries in other countries (in which they have a sufficient ownership stake to control the management, with 100 percent ownership the preferred format but not necessary for control). FDI data, much like the trade data, show some intra-regional activity, with high levels of involvement by American and European firms as well.6 Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, the main development was a new, large wave of Japanese investment. Particularly after the yen had risen strongly against the dollar in 1985, Japanese manufacturers were eager to relocate production to countries with lower labor costs. East Asian nations were a natural choice (since investing there involved crossing fewer time zones, easing the task of managing factories abroad). Some Japanese firms were well known for having established strong regional production networks, especially in the electronics industry. The initial Japanese investment wave diminished after the early 1990s (with many firms facing difficulties at home in Japan due to the collapse of the stock market and real estate price bubbles and the subsequent period of very low economic growth). However, since 2005, outward investment has increased substantially—from ¥5 trillion ($45 billion) in 2005 to ¥18 trillion ($170 billion) in 2020. Japan’s investments abroad are not predominantly within Asia, as shown in table 13.2. Firms have many reasons for investing abroad other than seekTable 13.2.  Shares of Japan’s Foreign Direct Investment Flows

Years 1996–2000 2001–2005 2006–2010 2011–2015 2016–2020

Total

Asia

China

Asia other than China

United States

Europe

¥ trillion

%

%

%

%

%

30 21 40 63 103

17.2 23.1 29.0 30.1 22.6

2.9 9.0 10.4 8.9 6.2

14.2 14.1 19.4 21.2 16.5

33.6 22.3 20.8 28.8 23.4

31.8 32.5 26.6 26.5 36.9

Note: Trillions of yen, percent of total. Source: Ministry of Finance, https://www.mof.go.jp/english/policy/international_policy/reference/balance _of_payments/ebpfdi.htm, online database (accessed July 28, 2021).

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ing low wages (such as circumventing import barriers or shortening delivery times to customers). In Japan’s case, its investments in Europe and the United States have always dominated, and that situation has not changed in the past twenty years. Roughly 50 to 60 percent of Japan’s annual outward FDI flow went to the United States and Europe during the twenty-five-year period shown in the table. Asia receives a considerably smaller 20 to 30 percent. Almost all of investments in Asia are in East Asia; India absorbed less than 1 percent of Japanese investments during this period. From 1996 through 2015, China absorbed a growing share of Japanese investment, peaking at 10 percent in the five-year period from 2006 to 2010. But in the most recent decade, the share going to China diminished again. East Asia other than China has absorbed 14 to 20 percent of Japanese investments. Economists do not expect developing countries to engage in much outward direct investment. They have low wages (so they have no need to move production abroad to find cheaper labor), lack the managerial expertise to manage investments abroad, and produce fewer sophisticated products that require a local presence for sales and service. However, in the past decade China has rapidly increased its investments abroad. As of 2019, China had a total stock of foreign direct investments of $2.2 trillion (compared, for example to Japan’s stock of $1.7 trillion, or $6.0 trillion for the United States).7 However, 51 percent of that investment is in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is now so integrated into China that perhaps Chinese investments there should no longer be considered foreign direct investment. In comparison, only 4 percent of investments were in ASEAN, and less than 1 percent were in Japan or Korea. Even if one discounts all investments in Hong Kong, these percentages would be low. What motivates Chinese investments in the absence of a labor-cost motive is unclear, but quite likely much of this investment is related to the large infrastructure projects the Chinese government is financing in developing countries called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This, in turn, is motivated as much or more by geostrategic factors as economic ones. The largest recipient of foreign investment in the region has been China, which emerged over the past forty years as a major location for manufacturing by global firms. Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, rules governing inward FDI were eased, and with adequate infrastructure (electricity, water supply, roads, etc.) plus inexpensive labor, China became a profitable location for such investment. However, it is impossible to get an accurate picture of which countries are the most active in investing in China because two-thirds of FDI in China is listed as coming from Hong Kong. Clearly, for a variety of reasons, foreign firms choose to route their investments through Hong Kong, which obscures the true national origin of the investments.

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30%

25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

0% ASEAN

EU

Japan 2000-2009

USA

China

2010-2019

Figure 13.9.  Foreign Direct Investment Flows into ASEAN Note: Percent of total. Source: ASEAN Secretariat, ASEAN Statistical Yearbook, 2008, 2017, 2020, table 7.2, https:// www.aseanstats.org/category/yearbook/ (accessed July 27, 2021).

Figure 13.9 shows foreign direct investment flows into ASEAN, comparing the past two decades. Intra-ASEAN investment flows have increased, making ASEAN firms the largest investors in their fellow ASEAN countries. Keep in mind, however, that some of this intra-ASEAN flow may be global firms with subsidiaries in Singapore that then invest in other ASEAN countries. Singapore is the source of almost two-thirds of intra-ASEAN direct investment flow. Nonetheless, these data at least suggest that intra-ASEAN investments are rising, perhaps enhanced by implementation of the loosened investment rules in the ASEAN Free Trade Area. In the first decade of this century, European firms had been the largest investors. In the most recent decade, though, the EU share declined somewhat so that the EU, United States, and Japan are all at a somewhat similar level (in an 11 to 16 percent range). All three can be described as important but not dominant investors in ASEAN. The fact that Japan is not a more dominant investor in ASEAN is significant. Since Japan is geographically closer to ASEAN countries and is separated by fewer time zones, as noted earlier, it

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would be a logical hypothesis that Japanese firms would be the major investors in ASEAN countries, as Japanese firms sought low-wage locations for manufacturing investment after the mid-1980s. But the data do not bear out that hypothesis. Finally, throughout these two decades, Indian firms were the source of only 1 percent or less of FDI flows into ASEAN. Investments in India also illustrate the importance of non-Asian sources of inward direct investment. Figure 13.10 shows the sources of the stock (rather than the flow of foreign direct investment) in India belonging to the top eight investors. As with both China and ASEAN, the data are muddied somewhat by Mauritius, a tax haven, so that the national origin of investments passing through Mauritius is unknown. With that caveat in mind, the largest sources of investment in India are the EU (23 percent) other than Britain, which was still part of the EU in 2019, the United States (17 percent), and Britain (16 percent). Together, they represent 56 percent of the stock of direct investment in India. Singapore (13 percent), Japan (7 percent), and Korea (2 percent) are the only significant Asian investors, at a considerably lower level. Overall, these data suggest that direct investment links between India and the rest of Asia are relatively small. The overall pattern of foreign direct investment should not be surprising. Firms of large industrialized countries dominate global direct investments. 25%

23

20% 17

16 14

15%

13

10% 7 5

5%

2

Korea

Switzerland

Japan

Singapore

Mauritius

United Kingdom

United States

EU other

0%

Figure 13.10.  The Stock of Inward Foreign Direct Investment in India, 2019 Note: Percent of total. Source: Coordinated Direct Investment Survey, online data base (accessed August 17, 2021).



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Japanese firms certainly fit in that category, and they have been active in investing, although the bulk of their investments are in other developed countries, and within Asia are concentrated in East Asia. And, inward investments in Asian countries show a strong presence of non-Asian investors, a pattern similar to what the trade data discussed earlier shows. Financial Cooperation The Asian financial crisis of 1997 resulted in drastic currency devaluations and a short but sharp recession in some countries (particularly Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea). One consequence of that episode was a regional discussion of currency cooperation. The major outcome of that discussion was an agreement in 2000 for central banks in participating countries to expand “swap agreements” with various partners in Asia. A swap agreement is one in which the central bank of one country agrees that under certain circumstances it will lend foreign exchange reserves to the central bank of another country for the purposes of intervening in foreign exchange markets to defend its currency. This agreement, called the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI), meant for example that Thailand could borrow US dollars from the central bank of Japan in order to defend the Thai baht in currency markets.8 In the years since 2000, the CMI has expanded in amount and format. Originally the agreement involved only bilateral swap agreements, but in 2010 the amounts were pooled in a common fund, and the name of the agreement changed to the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM). Thus, if Thailand wanted to borrow it would go to the common fund rather than individually to the central banks of Japan, China, and South Korea. As of 2020, the total amount in the pooled fund was $240 billion, of which 80 percent was pledged by China, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. The other participants in the agreement are all of the ASEAN countries, whose small pledges make up the other 20 percent of the fund.9 Even though the original purpose of the agreement had been to enable East Asian nations to avoid the slowness and undesired conditions attached to loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that had been such a point of irritation in 1998, the initial CMI stipulated that only 20 percent of any bilateral swap decision could be activated prior to approval by the IMF. That restriction has been gradually relaxed and by 2020 was at 40 percent. With establishment of the pooled fund, a new organization was added to the agreement, the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO). This organization was to provide macroeconomic research to provide input to decisions within CMIM on providing loans to member central banks. AMRO was established in 2011.

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Optimists have seen the Chiang Mai Initiative as leading over a period of several decades to the kind of tight financial integration that characterizes the European Union, with its common currency.10 A unified currency would remove currency fluctuations in the region and presumably thereby increase the flow of trade and investment (since exporters, importers, and investors would not need to worry about losing profits through an unexpected movement in exchange rates). However, there are several reasons for viewing the Chiang Mai Initiative as a very small step in regional cooperation. First, participation in the CMIM includes only some of the countries in Asia, entirely within East Asia. There has been no discussion of extending participation in this agreement to non-ASEAN countries in East Asia (such as Papua New Guinea) or to either South or Central Asian governments. Second, the agreement has been entirely symbolic so far. In the years since the original CMI agreement was signed, the swap agreements have never been activated. During the global recession of 2008–9, there was only one attempt to activate a CMI loan. The South Korean government asked the Japanese government to activate its bilateral CMI swap agreement, borrowing dollars from the Bank of Japan to defend a weakening South Korean won, but the Japanese government refused. Thus, there have been no actual swaps within either CMI or CMIM. The CMIM stands as a symbol of the ability of Asian governments to reach an agreement on financial cooperation outside the framework of the IMF and without the United States, but it has had no real impact. Third, as more countries in Asia move to floating (or at least flexible) exchange rates, the need for such an agreement has diminished. Swap agreements provide funds for governments to defend a fixed exchange rate (often unwisely), but in a market where exchange rates respond daily or at least frequently to market pressures, the need for government intervention in exchange markets is reduced. That is, foreign investors sometimes invest in developing countries with fixed exchange rates based on the belief that they face zero risk to their investments from currency fluctuation. They then pull their money out massively if they believe the fixed-rate guarantee is becoming untenable. But with a floating or flexible exchange rate, investors know they face currency risk and therefore behave in a more prudent fashion. The kind of mass exodus of funds from a developing country as investors suddenly realize that their assumption of a fixed rate may be incorrect simply does not occur when exchange rates are continuously changing. In the longer run, it is also difficult to envision anything resembling the Eurozone emerging in Asia, for two important reasons. First, the only way to manage currency unification is through a single central bank (the European Central Bank in the case of the Eurozone, that runs a unified monetary policy



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for all the countries that use the Euro). It is difficult to imagine any of the governments in Asia ceding control over their domestic monetary policy to a common Asian central bank. This scepticism applies especially to the economic giants of the region, Japan and China, as they would struggle bitterly over political control of the bank. Second, even if a common central bank could be created, the extreme diversity of economic growth rates, inflation, and levels of affluence all make a common currency virtually impossible. Fast-growing developing nations (such as China) and slow-growing mature economies (such as Japan) have very different macroeconomic conditions and preferences for interest rates. Thus, aside from the purely political struggle over who would control the bank, the underlying divergent preferences or needs for monetary policy militate against strong cooperation. The only reasonable conclusion is that discussion of currency and other forms of financial cooperation in Asia will remain theoretical—the stuff of international academic conferences but not policy action. CONCLUSION The economic story of Asia over the past half century has been a remarkable one. Rapid economic growth, beginning with Japan and then spreading to a number of other countries in the region, has transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Japan, of course, is not growing quickly now, but the main explanation lies in the fact that it is a mature, highincome industrialized nation with a falling and aging population. China has been the most remarkable growth story in recent decades, although it faces challenges in the near future from both environmental problems and a rapidly approaching decline in population. India appears to have shrugged off its economic sluggishness of the past as economic reforms have taken place and economic growth has accelerated. Nonetheless, the economic success of Asia should not be exaggerated. While some economies have had remarkable success, others have not, and the region continues to have a wide disparity in levels of affluence as well as in rates of economic growth. Some that were growing rapidly back in the 1980s have had lower growth in the decade of 2010 to 2020 (including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand), while others that did not grow rapidly in the 1980s have accelerated by the most recent decade (including Laos, the Philippines, and Vietnam). In general, those nations that have attained political stability, embraced reforms supporting market-based economic activity, lowered import barriers, and accepted inward foreign direct investment have been the most successful.

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Some countries in the region (such as Thailand and Myanmar) have suffered from dysfunctional domestic political turmoil that has harmed growth. A number of countries are now also facing adverse demographic change. In Japan the population is already falling and rapidly aging (with a very rapid increase in the share of the population aged sixty-five or above), all driven by a very low birth rate over the past five decades. South Korea and Singapore both have even lower birth rates than that of Japan, and face shrinking populations in the near future, although they have been somewhat more accepting of immigration than Japan as an offset to the low birth rate. China is another country with a low birth rate, despite the lifting of the one-child policy. The population continues to grow, but the share of those aged sixty-five and above is rising and total population will begin to decline within a few more years. The picture of regional economic interactions is mixed. In general, the region has become more closely tied to China through trade (although India still has quite limited trade ties with China). As trade linkages with China have risen, those with Japan have fallen. To be sure, Japanese firms have invested around the region, with local production substituting for trade in some cases. Nonetheless, the Japanese do not stand out as the dominant investors around the region, with investors from outside Asia often investing as much or more than the Japanese. As a developing economy, China has not played much of a role investing in the rest of the region until recently. That investment, some of it related to the Belt and Road program, appears to be motivated as much by foreign policy objectives as straight economic motivations. The picture of regional institutions and policy coordination is also mixed at best. Most regional organizations have been more important in fostering familiarity and discussion than in creating agreements that yield greater interaction. Even the one agreement that has attracted considerable attention, the Chiang Mai Initiative, has been entirely symbolic since it has not been used. To be sure, free trade agreements have proliferated, but many of these are with partners outside the region. Even with organizations focused on general discussion, no clearly defined Asian approach has emerged. ASEAN+3 began as a deliberate effort to create an organization that included only East Asian members, but now the East Asia Summit includes several non-Asian participants, including the United States. Forecasting what will happen to the region over the next decade is difficult. The demographic challenge certainly implies that Japan will continue to grow very slowly—perhaps no more than 1 percent per year on average. China’s growth may also slow as the economy copes with an aging and declining population, environmental problems, and a shift away from the most laborintensive industries (as wages continue to increase). Southeast Asia should continue to grow relatively rapidly, perhaps helped by relocation of some



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foreign investments away from China (as wages in Vietnam and some other Southeast nations look increasingly attractive to investors relative to China). India should continue to perform well, but its problem in providing sufficient infrastructure to support economic growth will probably hold growth below the Chinese level in the coming decade. Nor is there any sign yet of India becoming more integrated with East Asia. What should one conclude from all these developments? In its entirety, Asia has somewhat outperformed other parts of the world economically. But high growth is not characteristic of the whole region, and wide disparities in affluence will remain for decades to come. Trade and investment linkages within Asia, or even within subregions of Asia, give little indication of a region that is coalescing as an economic bloc, largely for the reasons of extreme diversity in size, affluence, and performance discussed early in this chapter. The potential for continued robust growth in many parts of the region certainly exists. Having put the institutional basis for economic growth over the past several decades, what matters for the future is mainly domestic political stability to ensure an environment conducive to growth. NOTES 1.  World Bank, World Development Indicators, online database (accessed August 11, 2021). 2.  Republic of China (Taiwan), National Statistics; National Accounts, https://eng .stat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=37408&CtNode=5347&mp=5, online database (accessed August 19, 2019). 3.  For an example of this view, see Walter Hatch and Kozo Yamamura, Asia in Japan’s Embrace: Building a Regional Production Alliance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 4.  Office of the US Trade Representative, “Joint Press Statement TPP Ministerial Meeting Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam,” http://www.ustr.gov/Joint -Press-Statement-TPP-Ministerial-Brunei (accessed September 12, 2013). 5.  ASEAN Secretariat, “Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Joint Statement: The First Meeting of Trade Negotiating Committee,” http:// www.asean.org/news/asean-statement-communiques/item/regional-comprehensive -economic-part nership-rcep-joint-statement-the-first-meeting-of-trade-negotiating -committee (accessed September 12, 2013). 6.  For further details on foreign direct investment flows in East Asia in the 1980s and 1990s, see Edward J. Lincoln, East Asian Economic Regionalism (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), 72–113. 7. International Monetary Fund, Coordinated Direct Investment Survey (CDIS), online database (accessed August 18, 2021).

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8.  For analysis of the political and strategic issues in the early evolution of the Chiang Mai Initiative, see William W. Grimes, Currency and Contest in East Asia: The Great Power Politics of Financial Regionalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009). 9.  For further details on the evolution of the Chiang Mai Initiative, see John West, “Chiang Mai Initiative: An Asian IMF?” Asian Century Institute, April 2017, https:// asiancenturyinstitute.com/economy/248-chiang-mai-initiative-an-asian-imf. 10.  For examples of enthusiasm in the early 2000s for eventual currency unification, see C. H. Kwan, Yen Bloc: Toward Economic Integration in Asia (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001); or Policy Council of the Japan Forum on International Relations, Economic Globalization and Options for Asia (Tokyo: Japan Forum on International Relations, 2000).

Chapter Fourteen

The Asian Regional Security Environment B ates G ill

As other chapters in this volume demonstrate, the international relations of Asia are increasingly complex conceptually, competitive economically, and contentious geo-strategically, both among the region’s great powers and for countries at the subregional level. That increased complexity, competition, and contentiousness emerges most starkly when we examine the Asian security environment and especially its dynamic interplay of threat perceptions, arms build-ups, and simmering tensions which could erupt into open conflict among the region’s powers in the future. This chapter will assess the regional security environment and its prospects by considering four important elements which shape its present and future. First, the chapter will provide an overview of regional military budgets and arms procurement to gain a clearer sense of how militarized Asia has become now and for the years ahead. Second, the chapter considers what is driving that defense spending and arms procurement, giving particular emphasis to military modernization in the People’s Republic of China (PRC or China) and the military dimensions of US-China rivalry. Drawing from these first two elements of the regional security dynamic, the third section will detail how that dynamic plays out across three regional flashpoints—the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait—which are the source of increased tensions today and possibly conflict in the years ahead. A fourth section will then briefly consider aspects of Asia’s security architecture—the range of institutions, security partnerships, and alliances which seek stability through a mix of dialogue, reassurance, and deterrence—and the roles these frameworks will likely play in underpinning or undermining regional security going forward.

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REGIONAL DEFENSE SPENDING AND ARMS PROCUREMENT The tables and graphs in this section detail information on regional defense spending and arms procurement. Several key points emerge from these data. First, the ten largest military budgets in Asia in 2020 (see figure 14.1) expended nearly US$500 billion that year, accounting for about one-quarter of global military spending.1 Second, what stands out about these figures is how China dominates regional military spending. In 2020, China spent more than three times as much on its military than India, the second-largest spender in the region. Moreover, of the top ten military spenders in Asia that year, the PRC military budget was larger than those of the next nine countries on the list combined. In addition, as figure 14.2 shows, China’s military spending between 2011 and 2020 grew at a much faster pace than others in Asia. With the second largest military budget in the world (behind the United States)—a position it has held since the early to mid-2000s—China increased its defense spending by 76 percent over the decade 2011 to 2020; in 2020, China marked twenty-six consecutive years of rising defense budgets, the longest stretch of uninterrupted annual increases by any country since 1949.2 By looking at China’s military spending over time, its dominance in comparison to others in Asia becomes all the more apparent. Figure 14.3 shows that when PRC military spending is calculated cumulatively over the decade 2011 to 2020, the gap between China and its neighbors widens even further: China’s cumulative military expenditures over that period reached nearly 300 252.3

200 150 100

12.2

10.9

10.4

9.4

7.3 Thailand

27.5

Indonesia

45.7

Pakistan

49.1

50

Singapore

72.9

Taiwan

US$ (billions)

250

Australia

South Korea

Japan

India

China

0

Figure 14.1.  Top Ten Military Spenders in Asia, 2020 Note: Figures expressed in current US dollars for 2020. Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Military Expenditure Database, 2021.

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300

China India Japan South Korea Australia Taiwan Singapore Pakistan Indonesia Thailand

US$ (Billions)

250 200 150 100 50 0

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Figure 14.2.  Military Expenditures in Asia, 2011–20 Notes: Figures expressed in constant 2019 US dollars, except for 2020 data, which is expressed in current 2020 US dollars. The ten countries listed were the top ten military spenders in Asia in 2020. Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Military Expenditure Database, 2021.

$2 trillion, almost four times as much as India spent over that same period (see figure 14.3). The data on regional arms imports tells a somewhat different story. India stands out as the largest importer of major conventional weapons in Asia over the decade 2011 to 2020, followed by China, Australia, and South Korea (see figure 14.4). Measured cumulatively, the volume of India’s arms imports between 2011 and 2020 was nearly three times that of China’s.3 However, it is important to note that China’s arms imports have been in general decline since the early to mid-2000s. China’s arms imports in 2020, for example, were at their lowest levels since 1998.4 This is because the PRC has steadily built up its indigenous capability to develop and produce advanced weaponry with the long-term aim of making the country less 2500

China India Japan South Korea Australia Taiwan Singapore Pakistan Indonesia Thailand

US$ (Billions)

2000 1500 1000 500 0

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Figure 14.3.  Cumulative Military Spending in Asia, 2011–2020 Notes: Yearly figures calculated in constant 2019 US dollars, except for 2020 data, which is expressed in current 2020 US dollars. The ten countries listed were the top ten military spenders in Asia in 2020. Source: SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, 2021.

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368 6

US$ (billions)

5 4 3 2 1 0 2011

2012

India Japan

2013

2014

Australia Philippines

2015

2016

2017

South Korea Indonesia

2018 China Myanmar

2019

2020 Pakistan Thailand

Figure 14.4.  Volume of Arms Imports in Asia, 2011–20 Notes: The countries shown were the top 10 arms importers in Asia in 2020. Data shows SIPRI “trend indicator values” and does not represent the actual cost of given arms imports. More information here: https://www.sipri.org/databases/armstransfers/sources-and-methods. Source: SIPRI Arms Transfer Database, 2021.

dependent on outside suppliers for its defense needs. A pioneering study in 2020 found that major PRC weapons producers—firms such as Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC), China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), China North Industries Group Corporation (NORINCO), and China South Industries Group (CSGC)—had arms sales at home and abroad amounting to some $54 billion in 2017, placing these firms among the top twenty defense contractors globally and making China the “secondlargest arms producer in the world, behind the USA.”5 This is an important point because, as we will see in the following section, China’s arms buildup increasingly relies on its own defense production and is not as easily explained by looking at its arms imports alone. In assessing these data for Asia it becomes clear that China and India are outliers and dominate regional military spending and arms imports, respectively. Total military spending for Asia, excluding China, rose by an average of just 2.7 percent per year between 2011 and 2020, further underscoring how China’s military spending far outpaces the Asia region as a whole.6 Similarly, figure 14.4 shows that, with the exception of India, regional arms imports have remained relatively steady and show little sign of rapid increases. That said, other governments in the region have also undertaken significant new weapons procurement programs. As described in further detail in the following section, the region’s military spending and arms procurement increasingly prioritizes capabilities in such key areas as maritime and air power projec-



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tion, precision stand-off weapons such as ballistic and cruise missiles, and enabling technologies in the space and cyber domains. KEY DRIVERS OF THE REGIONAL SECURITY DYNAMIC PRC Military Modernization China’s dramatic rise as a regional—and increasingly global—security actor stands out as a fundamentally important factor driving and shaping Asia’s entire security dynamics. As the previous section details, China spends by far more on its military than any of its immediate neighbors and is a major importer of advanced weaponry. Not captured in those statistics, however, is the indigenous progress China has made since the early 2000s in developing and producing its own array of increasingly sophisticated armaments and supporting technological infrastructure, especially in critical power-projection capabilities such as naval vessels, combat aircraft, and missiles, and the space- and cyber-related technologies which render these systems even more powerful. Today, China has the world’s largest navy (and the world’s largest shipbuilding industry by tonnage produced), with a fleet of more than 350 ships and submarines, a number which includes 130 major surface combatants.7 China’s first aircraft carrier became fully operational in 2018; its second carrier (its first such warship entirely produced domestically) entered service in 2019; and a third is to be launched from its shipyard for sea trials in 2022.8 The combined aircraft fleets of the PLA Air Force and the PLA Navy—some 2,000 combat aircraft and more than 2,500 aircraft in total—form the largest aviation forces in China’s region and the third largest globally.9 The PLA also fields one of the world’s largest and most diverse arrays of land-based ballistic and cruise missiles, numbering more than 1,250 at the end of 2020. China has also invested heavily to improve and expand its nuclear forces— overtaking France in 2020 to have the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal.10 Importantly, the US Department of Defense reported that in 2019 “the PRC launched more ballistic missiles for testing and training than the rest of the world combined” and that China will at least double its stockpile of nuclear warheads between 2020 and 2030.11 China’s increasing deployments of more advanced weaponry have been accompanied by one of the most sweeping reform and reorganization efforts the PLA has ever experienced. Launched in late 2015, this initiative aims to transform the PLA from a bloated, untested, and technologically unsophisticated force to a comprehensively more modernized military increasingly capable of conducting joint operations and carrying out technologically

Table 14.1.  Selected PLA Weapons Platforms, 2020 Weapon Platform Fighters • J-7 variants • J-8 variants • J-11 • Su-27 variants Fighter Ground Attack • J-11 variants • J-10 variants • JH-7 variants • Su-30 • J-15 • J-16 • J-20 • Su-35 Bombers • H-6 variants AEW&C • KJ series • Y-8 Tankers • H-6 • Il-78 Submarines • SSBN • SSN • SSK Surface combatants • Aircraft carriers • Cruisers • Destroyers • Frigates Missiles* • ICBM • IRBM • MRBM • SRBM • GLCM

Amount 512 124 95 52

Comments incl. J-7 E & G incl. J-8B, F & H incl. Su-27SK & UBK

approx. 202 468 120 97 20 approx. 100 approx. 22 24

incl. J-11B & BS incl. J-10A, C & S

211

incl. H-6 A, G, H & K

25 4

incl. KJ-200, 500 & 2000

15 3

incl. H-6DU & U

6 6 46 2 1 31 46 100 200+ 150+ 600+ 300+

(100) (200) (150) (250) (100)

range: >5,500 range: 3,000–5,500 range: 1,000–3,000 range: 300–1,000 range: >1,500

kms kms kms kms kms

Key: AEW&C: airborne early warning and control aircraft; SSBN: nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine; SSN: nuclear powered attack submarine; SSK: attack submarine; ICBM: intercontinental ballistic missile; IRBM: intermediate-range ballistic missile; MRBM: medium-range ballistic missile; SRBM: short-range ballistic missile; GLCM: ground-launched cruise missile; kms: kilometers. * Data for surface-to-surface missiles; columns show number of missiles with number of launchers shown in parentheses. Source: Institute for International Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 2020; missile data drawn from Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China: Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, August 2020), Appendix I.



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intensive and high-tempo warfighting. According to the PLA’s official timeline, these improvements will mean that by 2035 China’s military will be fully modernized and by 2049 will become a “world-class military.”12 The US Department of Defense acknowledges that the PLA has made important advances in meeting these goals, progressing from a “mostly obsolete” force to a military that has the “resources, technology and political will . . . to strengthen and modernize the PLA in nearly every respect,” even surpassing the United States military in key areas.13 Of greatest concern to regional militaries and especially to the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies are China’s “Anti-Access/Area Denial” (A2/AD) capabilities, especially the PLA’s land-based ballistic and cruise missiles, air power, and anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities. From Beijing’s perspective, this increased military capability is necessary in response to the challenges its sees against China’s national security interests. PRC leaders and war fighters are especially concerned to develop and deploy the capabilities needed to deter, combat, and defeat potential adversaries across increasingly contested spaces in what they refer to as China’s “near seas (近海).”14 Within these areas—encompassed by what is known as the “first island chain”15—China has several highly contentious and continuing territorial and sovereignty disputes with its neighbors such as Japan, Taiwan, and several Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines and Vietnam. The fact that several of these neighbors are treaty allies (Japan and the Philippines) or have close security ties with the United States (such as Taiwan) raises the stakes of these territorial and sovereignty disputes even further. These regional hotspots in the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and the South China are discussed further below. China has also developed a greater capacity to project power beyond the first island chain and into the western Pacific and Indian Oceans. The PLA Air Force and PLA Navy conduct increasingly sophisticated training maneuvers and routine patrol missions in these waterways and the PLA Rocket Force deploys increasingly powerful and accurate cruise and ballistic missiles which can attack targets thousands of kilometers away from their launch sites in China. Weapons such as the DF-21 (range of 1,500 kilometers) and DF-26 (4,000 kilometers) ballistic missiles, as well as the DH-10 cruise missile (1,500 kilometers) reportedly give the PLA options to launch precision strikes—even against aircraft carriers and other warships at sea—well beyond the first island chain. While the PLA does not yet have a traditional expeditionary capability to project power globally, its increased activities participating in United Nations peacekeeping operations, conducting anti-piracy operations around the Gulf of Aden, evacuating PRC civilians from war zones, and establishing a military base in the east African nation of Djibouti,

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Figure 14.5.  The First and Second Island Chains Note: Boundary representations are not necessarily authoritative. Source: Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2006 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2006), 15.

all demonstrate a growing capability to deploy and sustain military forces across distances far from its homeland.16 In addition to these traditional military capabilities, China has also become more adept at deploying so-called gray zone tactics as a means to pursue its security interests. These tactics operate beneath the threshold of kinetic conflict and include the use of lightly-armed coast guard craft, civilian commercial shipping, such as fishing fleets, the construction of man-made islands, economic intimidation, and information and influence campaigns which aim to create facts on the ground in disputed areas—such as the South China Sea—which are favorable to China and which other powers are neither willing nor able to reverse.



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Regional Responses While Beijing believes its national interests require the procurement and deployment of these capabilities, China’s neighbors are increasingly concerned about what these developments mean for their own sovereign interests and national security. As a result, across the region, countries are shifting their defense strategies and arms procurement priorities, often in reaction to China’s increasing capabilities. Pursuing these priorities, militaries in the region have increasingly deployed precision-strike cruise missiles, more advanced warships and submarines, and fourth and fifth generation fighter aircraft.17 This action-reaction dynamic between China and its neighbors in Asia is a fundamental factor fueling a steady buildup in defense capabilities across the region. A brief review of some recent and planned weapons procurements by major Indo-Pacific governments shows their intention to counterbalance the PLA’s capabilities, especially China’s growing maritime capabilities, missile deployments, and gray-zone tactics. With the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia and the official designation by the Trump administration of China as a “revisionist power” seeking “to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific,” the United States has long been concerned with the growing challenge the PRC presents to US interests and regional stability (see chapter 4 by Robert Sutter).18 The US Congress established and funded the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI) in 2020 with the express aim of addressing the “pacing challenge” China presents to US and allied forces in the Pacific. In spelling out its intentions for the PDI and its strategy for the Pacific region more broadly, the Biden administration Pentagon highlighted the need to develop “advanced, asymmetric capabilities . . . designed to operate in an anti-access/area denial environment,” requiring investments in “long-range munitions development and procurement, advanced strike platforms, expanded forward force posture and resiliency [and] targeted security cooperation programs to enhance the capabilities of our allies and partners” among other critical needs.19 China’s significant buildup of ballistic and cruise missiles is a longstanding concern for Washington and presents an enormous challenge for US forces within strike range of these systems. To counterbalance those capabilities, the United States has launched a number of new weapons development programs with the aim of introducing its own set of intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles which can range PRC targets, as well as other offensive and defensive systems to mitigate China’s missile threats. These include a ground-based variant of the Tomahawk intermediate-range cruise missile, an intermediate-range ballistic missile, hypersonic weapons, and a variety of missile defenses.20 Deployments of some of these offensive strike systems had been previously banned under the US-Russia Intermediate-Range Nu-

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clear Forces (INF) agreement. However, in announcing its withdrawal from the INF, the Trump administration, while citing Russia’s non-compliance with the treaty as the principal reason for doing so, also cited the threat of China’s intermediate-range missiles as another important reason for leaving the treaty.21 Over the course of the 2020s, the PDI may account for nearly $30 billion in spending with the aim of deploying long-range strike capabilities and missile defenses along the first and second island chains, enabled by advanced space- and earth-based sensors, to ensure the operational security of American and allied forces arrayed around China’s periphery.22 The United States is not alone in its responses to China’s burgeoning capabilities. Increasingly concerned with the PLA’s growing presence in the IndoPacific region, US ally Australia has made significant new investments to bolster its defense capabilities. Australia rose to become the world’s secondlargest arms importer in 2019, driven largely by decisions to procure up to seventy-two F-35 Joint Strike Fighters from the United States and to produce up to twelve new, French-designed Attack class submarines.23 Canberra also announced its intention to prioritize advanced, long-range, precision-strike missiles, especially anti-ship missiles, and including hypersonic missiles, as part of a major new procurement program expected to cost tens of billions of dollars over the 2020s and beyond.24 In a major strategic decision, Australia joined the United Kingdom and the United States to form the AUKUS partnership in 2021, a military-technical collaboration agreement which will have as its flagship program the provision of nuclear-powered attack submarines to Australia.25 These procurement plans have been undertaken with China’s growing maritime presence in Australia’s neighborhood in mind. The increasingly tense situation on the Sino-Indian border since 2013— including, in 2020, the first outbreak of deadly violence across that disputed frontier in more than forty years—as well as China’s expanding naval presence in the Indian Ocean have sparked a deep rethinking in Indian strategic circles about the country’s relationship with, and strategic approach toward, China. Improving security ties between India and key Indo-Pacific partners are driven in large measure by New Delhi’s increasing concerns about China as a security threat. Most importantly at a strategic level has been the revival of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or “Quad”) among Australia, India, Japan, and the United States. The grouping held its first-ever leader-level summit in 2021, and, while not naming the PRC by name, vowed to cooperate “to meet the challenges to the rules-based maritime order in the East and South China Seas.”26 To help back up that commitment, the four Quad members have since 2020 conducted annual cooperative naval exercises to improve their joint communications and operational skills. At home, following the bloody clash with China in 2020, Indian authorities accelerated plans



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to deploy two mountain strike corps along the disputed Sino-India border. In addition, India announced ambitious plans to expand its submarine fleet and other maritime forces while opening new defense technology relationships with regional partners, including most importantly, the United States. While continuing to rely on Russia as its principal weapons supplier, India significantly expanded its defense trade relationship with the United States, with arms deals worth more than $20 billion since 2008, with more than $9 billion announced during the Trump and early Biden administrations alone, including Harpoon anti-ship missiles and ASW aircraft.27 India is also improving its nuclear force so as to have missiles capable of ranging larger parts of PRC territory, including a new intercontinental ballistic missile, the Agni V.28 As Tokyo views its security environment under increasing threat from China, it has taken a number of unprecedented steps in recent years (see chapter 6 by Michael Green). Perhaps most tellingly was the statement by Japan’s defense minister that because of China’s improving military capabilities and the need for security investments in emerging domains of space, cyber, electromagnetic warfare, Japan “must increase our defense capabilities at a radically different pace than in the past.” This opened the way for Japan to break with its longstanding tradition of keeping defense spending under 1 percent of national gross domestic product (GDP).29 In addition, the Japanese Defense White Paper in 2021 for the first time openly declared the importance of Taiwan to Japan’s security: “Stabilizing the situation surrounding Taiwan is important for Japan’s security and the stability of the international community. Therefore, it is necessary that we pay close attention to the situation with a sense of crisis more than ever before.”30 That statement was bolstered by a joint US-Japan leadership declaration that “underscores the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait” and, for the first time, a meeting between senior leaders of the ruling parties in Japan and Taiwan to consult on mutual security interests.31 At the same time, Japan’s National Defense Guidelines envision an “increasingly severe and uncertain security environment surrounding Japan” and call for the development of a “multi-domain defense force”—especially in the air, maritime, space, cyber, and electromagnetic domains—increased capabilities in air and missile defense, and the possible deployment of long-range, stand-off strike weapons such as ballistic and cruise missiles.32 The president of the Philippines between 2016 and 2022, Rodrigo Duterte—who initially sought friendly ties with Beijing and downplayed PRC incursions against Philippine sovereignty in the South China Sea—began to take a tougher stance toward Beijing toward the end of his tenure.33 These steps included the decision to reverse his threat to terminate the US-Philippine Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) which provides the basis for cooperation between the two countries’ armed forces on Philippine soil, including the

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presence of US troops and equipment. With the continuation of the VFA and related implementing agreements, US forces would be allowed to expand their rotational presence and pre-position equipment in the Philippines. Improved relations between Manila and Washington will also facilitate the transfer of more modern naval vessels, maritime surveillance and defense capabilities, and military training and capacity building for the Philippine armed forces. For its own part, the Philippines has committed to acquiring more modern naval, coast guard, and coastal defense platforms, including submarines, frigates, patrol vessels, ASW helicopters, and anti-ship missiles.34 Taiwan has likewise sought to improve its defense capabilities in the face of China’s expanding military capabilities across the Taiwan Strait. Given the PLA’s overwhelming quantitative advantage over Taiwan, debate over the island’s defense has centered around a proposed “Overall Defense Concept” which emphasizes force preservation, highly-advanced conventional capabilities—including fighter aircraft and an indigenous submarine program—and the dispersed deployment of lethal asymmetric capabilities such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), precision-guided weapons and anti-ship cruise missiles, man-portable air-defense weapons, stealthy fast-attack and missile assault craft, and underwater smart mines.35 Taiwan’s Quadrennial Defense Review, released in 2021, struck similar themes, calling for investments in mobility, precision strike weapons, and asymmetric warfare capabilities.36 Taiwan has traditionally relied heavily on the United States for access to modern military equipment but also has a significant domestic defense production capability. US arms sales to Taiwan since 2011 have provided significant resources to assist in countering China’s advances, including hundreds of Harpoon anti-ship missiles and Patriot missile defense missiles, 40 self-propelled howitzers, 108 M1 Abrams main battle tanks, and 66 F-16V fighter aircraft.37 Taipei also announced its intention to mass-produce a range of anti-ship and other offensive strike missiles in order to hold mainland PRC targets at risk.38 China’s neighbor to its south, Vietnam, has since 2011 imported hundreds of anti-ship missiles (including ship-, air-, and submarine-launched versions) and purchased more than 30 Su-30 fighter-ground attack aircraft from Russia and 100 coastal defense rockets from Israel. While Hanoi has traditionally relied on Russia for its arms imports, US arms sales to Vietnam have increased with Washington’s decision in 2016 to lift the ban on lethal weapons sales to the country. Since then, US exports have included two Hamilton-class offshore patrol vessels for the Vietnamese coast guard and assistance under the Maritime Security Initiative to improve Vietnam’s maritime domain awareness.39 Looking ahead, Vietnam is likely to bolster production of its own anti-ship cruise missiles, the VCM-1, which it has de-



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veloped with assistance from Russia and reportedly will seek to import the supersonic BrahMos cruise missile from India.40 Notably, as part of a more competitive environment between Beijing and Washington, and as others in the region look to bolster their capabilities visà-vis China, the United States will likely become a more and more important supplier of weaponry to regional powers. This is already true for US relations with such partners as Australia, Japan, and Taiwan. But the United States is poised to further deepen defense relations with other key but non-allied partners such as India and Vietnam, and will look to revitalize its allied relationships with Thailand and the Philippines. US arms exports and other defense assistance to Thailand includes technology transfers and offsets for production of parts to be used in assembly of exported trainer jets and selling such complete systems as helicopters and anti-air, anti-tank, and anti-ship missiles. However, while the United States was Thailand’s largest weapons supplier over the two decades from 2001 to 2020, it has ceded that position to others in more recent years: over the course of 2011 to 2020, Thailand’s top five sources of arms were (in rank order) South Korea, Sweden, Ukraine, China, and the United States.41 In the case of the Philippines, Washington will likely provide additional naval systems, maritime surveillance craft and radars, anti-ship missiles, and intensified military training, including an increase in the rotation of US military personnel and equipment on Philippine territory.42 Other countries also play significant roles as arms purveyors in Asia. From 2010 to 2020, Russia’s three largest weapon export markets in Asia, in order of value, were India, China, and Vietnam (Russia is the number one foreign weapons supplier for all three), accounting for 53 percent of global Russian arms exports over that period.43 China is also a major supplier of weaponry to many countries in the region and is the number one arms exporter to Bangladesh (providing about 74 percent of its imported weapons), Cambodia (31 percent), Myanmar (53 percent), and Pakistan (60 percent).44 In addition to exporting weapons platforms to Pakistan, China has been a critically important military-technical partner to Islamabad, assisting in the domestic development of aircraft (K-8 trainer, JF-17 fighter), naval vessels (corvettes, offshore patrol vessels, and submarines), missiles (DF-11 short-range ballistic missile), and nuclear weapons.45 Beijing also has a license agreement allowing the production of a Chinese self-propelled artillery system in Thailand and the two countries reportedly set up a joint munitions production and maintenance facility.46 Other arms suppliers have identified niche areas in Southeast Asia, including France (Exocet anti-ship missiles and helicopters), Israel (unmanned aerial vehicles and radars), South Korea (naval vessels), and the United Kingdom (naval vessels and surface-to-air missile systems).47

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REGIONAL FLASHPOINTS As flagged above, the ongoing build-ups of military capabilities in Asia—especially around its eastern, southeastern, and southern littoral—in turn drive (and are driven by) several unresolved and dangerous territorial and sovereignty disputes which introduce additional tensions to the regional security dynamic. Five regional hotspots stand out in particular: the East China Sea, the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, the Korean Peninsula, and the SinoIndian border region. In all of these disputes, China is a major contestant. With the exception of the Korean Peninsula, China has direct territorial and sovereignty interests at stake in these highly-militarized flashpoints. But even in the case of the Korean Peninsula, China plays a critical role as an official signatory to the 1953 Armistice Agreement which suspended—but did not formally end—hostilities between the parties to the Korean War and by dint of the China–North Korea Mutual Defense Treaty, signed in 1960 and Beijing’s only formal alliance relationship.48 As a source of tensions and sometimes bloody conflict in the past, these regional flashpoints are likely to become more contested in the years ahead and will continue to shape Asia’s security dynamic and the region’s prospects for peace and stability. The following pages delve more deeply into three of these hotspots.49 The East China Sea In recent years, China-Japan tensions have escalated over their contested sovereignty claims to uninhabited islands—known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan and called the Diaoyu Islands by China—in the East China Sea. Japan does not acknowledge a sovereignty dispute over the islands and exercises administrative control over them, whereas China claims they were a part of Chinese territory for centuries, were wrongfully wrested away by Japan following the Qing dynasty’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, and should have been returned to Chinese sovereignty following Japan’s defeat in World War II. Japan asserts that the PRC never expressed much interest in these islands until the 1970s and the discovery of potentially vast gas reserves beneath the waters of the East China Sea. The territorial dispute is further enflamed by the painful history of Sino-Japanese relations and rising nationalism in China: in 2010 and again in 2012, violent anti-Japan demonstrations erupted across China demanding the islands be handed over to PRC sovereignty. Since 2009, the PLA Navy, PLA Air Force, PRC Coast Guard, and Chinese commercial vessels have significantly stepped up their incursions around the Senkaku Islands, as a way of establishing a regular presence in these waters and asserting China’s claims. These actions have forced thousands of inter-



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cepts by Japanese aircraft, naval vessels, and coast guard ships in response in recent years: over the five years from 2016 and 2020, for example, Japanese military aircraft scrambled more than 3,000 times in response to PLA aircraft intrusions.50 To further assert its claims, in 2013 the PRC announced the formation of an “Air Defense Identification Zone” (ADIZ) off of its east coast (which included the Senkaku Islands). Beijing declared this was necessary to “identify, monitor, control and dispose of entering aircraft” and “guard against potential air threats.”51 China and Russia also held joint naval drills in the Sea of Japan in 2017 and the East China Sea in 2019. PRC and Russian long-range bombers also conducted a joint flight over international waters of the Tsushima Strait between Japan and South Korea in 2019 and again in 2020, prompting both US allies to scramble jets in response.52 These types of assertions of Chinese sovereignty are likely to increase in the years to come. As PRC and Japanese forces increase their interactions with one another in the East China Sea, the risk of an unintended incident, loss of life, and military escalation also increases.53 The potential involvement of the US-Japan alliance further adds to the military complexity and volatility of this regional flashpoint. Successive US administrations made clear that the islands fall within the purview of Article IV of the US-Japan security treaty which states: “Each Party recognizes that an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger.”54 In 2021, the Biden administration reinforced this position, issuing a joint statement with Biden’s Japanese counterpart declaring America’s “unwavering support for Japan’s defense,” affirming that the US-Japan security treaty applies to the Senkaku Islands, and “oppos[ing] any unilateral action that seeks to undermine Japan’s administration of the Senkaku Islands.”55 There is little-to-no likelihood of compromise by either China or Japan over this issue. Both sides are taking steps to strengthen their military presence and deterrent posture in and around the East China Sea. Embedded within the historically troubled relationship between China and Japan and increasingly wrapped up in US-China strategic competition, disputes in the East China Sea will remain a continuing source of great power tension and a volatile feature of the Asian security dynamic for years to come. The South China Sea China’s maritime sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea date back several decades and have included deadly skirmishes between China and South Vietnam in 1974 and between China and Vietnam in 1988. However, since 2012

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and especially following Xi Jinping’s appointment as China’s paramount leader that year, the PRC has become far more assertive in establishing “facts on the water” in support of its expansive territorial claims in this vast waterway. The territorial disputes in the South China Sea involve numerous claimants: Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam all have claims to various features in their contiguous exclusive economic zones. Other major powers—most prominently the United States—are not direct claimants, but regularly conduct freedom of navigation and overflight missions in the South China to protest the sovereign assertions of claimants which are in excess of what is prescribed by international law. US and PRC naval forces have been involved in a number of close and dangerous encounters in the South China Sea, exacerbating tensions between the two great powers. In addition, the strategic value of the South China Sea further raises the territorial stakes. An estimated $3.37 trillion in annual trade transits the South China Sea and its seabed may have some 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 11 billion barrels of oil.56 Adding to its controversial and contested nature, Beijing has thus far declined to clarify the extent of its claims in the South China Sea. PRC makes its claims based on “historical rights”—claims that were rejected in 2016 in a case against China brought by the Philippines and ruled on by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. Beijing did not participate in those proceedings and rejects the court’s findings. Rather than explicitly clarify its claims, China instead appears to define its territorial rights in the South China on the basis of the “nine-dash line” which encompasses 800,000 square miles and at its southernmost point is some 1,200 miles away from the Chinese mainland. Standing by this expansive claim, while expressing a willingness to shelve disputes, carry out joint economic activities, and negotiate a “Code of Conduct” with the other claimants, China has taken a number of steps to solidify its control of this contested body of water. For example, in 2012, shortly before Xi Jinping assumed the reins of power, China wrested control of Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines. Beginning in 2013, the PRC launched a massive project to build artificial islands, amounting to some 3,200 acres of new land, mostly in the Spratly Island area of the South China Sea. These new features now house facilities suitable for military use, including runways, naval wharves, air defense batteries, surveillance and communications systems. The PLA has also stepped up the frequency and sophistication of its military exercises in the South China Sea, sending an unmistakable message to others who may wish to challenges its claims. In a 2019 exercise the PLA launched six anti-ship ballistic missiles—missiles which reportedly can hit rival aircraft carriers—from the Chinese mainland into the South China Sea.57 In addition to such overtly militarized activity, China has also increased its use of “gray zone” tactics—expressly attempting to keep



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its confrontations with rival claimants beneath the threshold of kinetic conflict—to push and sustain its territorial claims. China’s Coast Guard is active in this work as are other maritime militia vessels.58 The Chinese Coast Guard is the largest in the world and was significantly empowered by a 2021 PRC law which grants it the authority to use force to “stop and eliminate” foreign threats to Chinese sovereignty in waters claimed by China.59 These developments deepen the level of misgivings and mistrust about PRC ambitions, especially in Southeast Asia. Beijing prefers to handle its South China Sea disputes bilaterally where China can leverage its superior economic and military might to cow weaker neighbors and rival claimants. The most important multilateral effort to stabilize the territorial disputes in the South China—negotiations between China and the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on a “Code of Conduct in the South China Sea”—have languished without conclusion since the early 2000s.60 More broadly, Beijing strenuously objects to outside powers—such as the United States, Australia, and others—asserting freedom of navigation and overflight rights or condemning PRC bullying and excessive claims in the waterway. It steadfastly refuses to apply international law to resolve disputed claims, preferring instead to maintain its apparent claim to most of the South China as defined by the “nine-dash line.” Looking ahead, others in the region will continue to push back—most obviously with the development and deployment of more advanced weaponry to confront and deter PRC provocations. At best, this is a recipe for a continuing set of simmering disputes between China and many of its closest neighbors in Southeast Asia. At worst, the region could be headed for militarized stand-offs, sporadic clashes, and possibly conflict should matters escalate. The Taiwan Strait Since the founding of the PRC in 1949, Beijing has insisted that the formal unification of Taiwan with the mainland is a “core” national interest (Taiwan’s role in the international relations of Asia is discussed in more detail by Shelley Rigger in chapter 11). Since the mid-1990s, with the “missile tests” into waters north and south of Taiwan in 1995–96, China’s Anti-Secession Law in 2005, the amassing of offensive military power along the Taiwan Strait, and, in recent years, the increased intensity of PLA naval, naval air, and air force activities around Taiwan, Beijing has signalled its resolve to prevent Taiwan independence and to reunify Taiwan by force if need be. That said, China’s claims of sovereignty over Taiwan remain contested, especially the possible use of force to assert those claims. Moreover, with a government maintaining control over well-defined borders, armed forces, a permanent population, an

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economy which engages in international commerce, and an ability to conduct diplomatic and other ties with other governments, Taiwan exhibits most of the elements of a sovereign state. China’s claims of sovereignty are further complicated by the fact that the people of Taiwan have with time increasingly identified themselves as “Taiwanese” and not a part of mainland China and overwhelmingly prefer a continuation of the status quo—neither independence nor reunification for the indefinite future.61 In addition, Taiwan’s relationship with the United States adds another layer of contentiousness and risk across the Taiwan Strait.62 While in 1979 the United States shifted its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing and formally ended its treaty alliance with Taiwan, US-Taiwan relations have nevertheless stayed close. But the diplomatic relationship is complicated. Washington’s official position does not accept that Taiwan is a sovereign country, but at the same time does not take a position on China’s sovereignty claim over Taiwan and considers Taiwan’s sovereign status as currently unsettled.63 Above all, the US position holds that the ultimate resolution of differences across the Taiwan Strait should be reached peacefully. To bolster that expectation, and in accordance with the US Taiwan Relations Act, the United States regularly provides defense equipment to Taiwan, views “any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means” as a threat to peace and security of the region and of “grave concern” to the United States, and seeks to maintain the ability to “resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”64 While China and Taiwan have avoided open warfare, a number of factors make the Taiwan Strait increasingly volatile. In response to the election of Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party as Taiwan president in 2016, and her re-election in 2020, China has significantly ramped up its pressure on the island. The PRC relaunched its effort to diplomatically isolate Taiwan, strong-arming international organizations, governments, and private companies to diminish Taiwan’s international standing and convincing seven governments to cut off official ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing.65 In addition to these diplomatic measures, China also expanded its militarily threatening activities targeting Taiwan, including increasingly frequent incursions into the island’s air space with fighters, bombers and surveillance aircraft, stepped-up naval operations around Taiwan, large military exercises to simulate invasion scenarios against Taiwan, and intensified “gray zone” maneuvers including political warfare and disinformation campaigns to undermine the resilience and confidence of the Taiwanese public.66 The US Department of Defense estimates that in the mainland military regions opposite Taiwan, the PLA has amassed more than 1,000 land-based ballistic



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and cruise missiles, some 100 major surface vessels (including one aircraft carrier), 40 submarines, 600 fighter jets, and 250 bombers and ground attack aircraft. These capabilities, the Pentagon finds, “provide options for the PRC to dissuade, deter, or, if ordered, defeat third-party intervention during a large-scale, theatre campaign such as a Taiwan contingency.”67 While the situation across the Taiwan Strait is increasingly militarized, it is also increasingly problematic politically. As the Taiwanese people continue to distance themselves from identifying with the PRC and its one-party, authoritarian leadership, Beijing’s preferred approach for absorbing Taiwan—the “one country, two systems” formula—is in tatters following its failure as a model for Hong Kong. Arguably, Taiwan and the PRC have never been so far apart on the matter of unification. Nonetheless, Chinese leader Xi Jinping explicitly stakes Taiwan unification to his “China Dream” for “national rejuvenation”: “Our country must be reunified, and will surely be reunified. . . . [I]t is also critical to the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation in the new era.”68 At the same time, US-China relations have deteriorated to their lowest point in decades, in part driven by deepening ties between Washington and Taipei, including in defense and security affairs. Preparations for—and the escalating risk of—conflict across the Taiwan Strait will profoundly shape the Asian security environment for years to come. SECURITY ARCHITECTURE: FROM DIALOGUE TO DETERRENCE In the face of these challenges in the Asian security environment, an array of institutions, partnerships, and alliances seek to maintain stability through a mix of dialogue, transparency, reassurance, and deterrence. These mechanisms can be loosely grouped into two categories: those primarily focusing on political and security dialogue on the one hand and those mostly concerned with defense and deterrence on the other. In some cases, security institutions can perform both functions (the regional economic architecture, which can have an effect on regional security, is discussed by Ed Lincoln in chapter 13). Generally speaking, as the regional security environment has become increasingly complex, competitive, and contentious, political and security dialogue mechanisms have proven ill-equipped to manage and defuse this dynamic and have often become platforms for contestation rather than compromise. On the other hand, in a more intensely competitive and uncertain regional security environment, governments have turned to defense and deterrence mechanisms, both bilaterally and multilaterally, in an effort to bolster security and stability.

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One of the most important and longstanding regional institutions is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Formed in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, the organization subsequently expanded to ten members with the addition of Brunei (in 1984), Vietnam (1995), Laos and Myanmar (both in 1997), and Cambodia (1999). With a permanent secretariat in Jakarta, ASEAN aims to advance regional economic growth and development, promote regional stability and peace, and foster common interests among its members and in partnership with others in Asia and beyond. Beginning in the 1990s, following the end of the Cold War, the organization has spurred the creation of a range of additional “ASEAN-centric” mechanisms to help fulfill those aims by drawing in the participation of other countries from around Asia and beyond. These included the East Asia Summit (EAS), ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN+3, and ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM+). In addition to these ASEAN-associated bodies, other key regional institutions promoting similar aims include the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC, established in 1985) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO, 2001). Figure 14.6 shows the web of interlocking memberships across these several institutions.

Figure 14.6.  Multilateral Security Institutions in Asia Notes: ADMM—ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting; ARF—ASEAN Regional Forum; ASEAN—Association of Southeast Asian Nations; EAS—East Asia Summit; SAARC—South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation; SCO—Shanghai Cooperation Organization



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These multilateral groups have played a fundamentally important role in building greater trust and transparency in the region and focusing resources toward common goals of peace, development, and prosperity. They also contributed to fostering a greater degree of diplomatic and political integration among countries which had been on opposite sides of the Cold War divide. Importantly, many of these organizations helped embed a rising China within a set of regional norms and expectations (at least that was ASEAN’s intent). The patterns of cooperation embodied by these organizations combined with the overriding interest across the region to reap the benefits of Asia’s economic dynamism go a long way to helping explain the near absence of major interstate conflict in this part of the world since the early 1980s, especially in East Asia.69 However, while these mechanisms can promote trust and facilitate cooperation, by and large they are not designed to manage or prevent conflict or deflect “gray zone” coercion, let alone pursue collective defense in the face of common security threats. Often operating on the basis of consensus and with no legally binding enforcement power to regulate the actions of their members, these organizations mostly provide a lowest-common-denominator approach in the interests of institutional unity and “comfort” for all participants. Moreover, given China’s central involvement in nearly all of Asia’s key multilateral dialogue mechanisms (see figure 14.6), it can shape these institutions in ways which favor Beijing’s interests. In short, they are unable to effectively address the emerging security dilemmas in Asia, the intensifying competition among great powers in the region, and increasing concerns about China’s ambitions and intentions—from the Himalayas to the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait, East China Sea, Korean Peninsula, and beyond. As the Asian security environment becomes more contested, other elements of the region’s security architecture gain (or regain) salience: alliances and other defense-related partnerships. Paramount among these, the US treaty alliance system stands out as one of the region’s most longstanding security networks and, for the United States and its partners, is the critical foundation for maintaining stability in Asia. America’s formal treaty alliances with Japan (signed in 1951), Australia (1951), the Philippines (1951), South Korea (1953), and Thailand (1954) represent a unique and powerful set of partnerships for the United States in Asia. Importantly, these partnerships greatly facilitate the forward presence of US armed forces, including in permanent bases in Japan and South Korea and through a variety of rotational deployments and other cooperative arrangements with Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Perhaps most importantly, the United States and its treaty allies commit to one another’s mutual defense—though the precise political and operational elements of those commitments vary across the relationships.

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The US military also has critical access arrangements with other, non-allied but close security partners, notably Singapore (where the US Navy maintains a logistics unit to support regular deployments of warships and aircraft), but also periodic rotations through Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. As noted above, the United States also has a close, but not formally allied, security relationship with Taiwan, which includes American deterrence and reassurance commitments to the defense of the island as embodied in the Taiwan Relations Act and other US political statements. Those bilateral relationships—and especially the US alliances with Australia, Japan, and South Korea—remain the bedrock defense and deterrence mechanisms for Washington and its key partners in the region in the face of a rising China. However, also in reaction to China’s growing power, American allies and other security partners in Asia have increased cooperation with one another bilaterally and multilaterally through a range of military-to-military and defense-related activities such as joint exercises, humanitarian assistance missions, maritime security capacity-building, military-technical cooperation, and high-level operational and strategic consultations. Among these security partnerships are the Quad (partnering Australia, India, Japan, and the United States), the Trilateral Security Dialogue (Australia, Japan, United States), and deepening military and defense ties between India and Vietnam, between Australia and Japan, and between the Philippines and Vietnam.70 For its part, China too has turned to deeper military relationships with key partners, both bilaterally and multilaterally, to send deterrence signals to potential adversaries and sharpen its warfighting capabilities. China’s closest defense partner is Russia and the two countries have significantly ramped up the frequency and complexity of their joint exercises, including drills in the Mediterranean Sea, the Baltic Sea, East China Sea, Yellow Sea, South China Sea, Japan Sea, and Okhotsk Sea. In addition, China, Russia, and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization conduct joint counterterrorism and military exercises involving thousands of troops, usually every two years.71 Beijing and Moscow also take part with others in major exercises such as the Caucuses-2020 (other participants included Armenia, Belarus, Myanmar, and Pakistan) and joint naval drills in the Indian Ocean with Iran.72 More broadly, the China-Russia defense technology relationship, dating to the early 1990s, has made a critical contribution to the PLA’s doctrinal and operational modernization, especially in terms of projecting air and sea power.73 As noted above, China has become an increasing supplier of weaponry to some Southeast Asian militaries, it engages in an increasing number of annual joint naval exercises with ASEAN navies (individually and collectively), and offers training courses for some Southeast Asian militaries



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(notably Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand—as well as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka in South Asia) at Chinese military academies. A MORE CONTESTED REGION These developments do not mean that dialogue and economic cooperation have failed as organizing principles for Asian security. Rather, while dialogue and the pursuit of mutual prosperity remain critically important for mitigating tensions, resolving regional disputes, and avoiding conflict, the willingness and ability of key Asian players to rely as heavily on those means has waned relative to the tools of defense and deterrence for achieving national security interests. This more hard-headed and realpolitik character of the Asian security environment is evident in the rising threat perceptions, arms build-ups, and increasingly volatile hotspots across the region. A fundamental source of this shifting regional security environment is China’s burgeoning comprehensive national power, its willingness to brandish and employ that power in pursuit of its interests, and how in turn those pursuits encroach on the interests of others. This creates a classic “security dilemma,” in which the measures one country takes to improve its security is perceived by others as a threat to their own. Such competition lies at the heart of the strategic relationship between the United States and China and reverberates across the region as the two powers struggle to define the regional security environment on their own terms. Many of China’s closest neighbors—and especially several which have outstanding territorial and sovereignty disputes with Beijing—are close allies and security partners with the United States or seeking closer defense ties with Washington, further exacerbating the overall regional security dynamic. The stakes are increasingly high, involving contentious and unresolved matters of national prestige, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, making it increasingly difficult to find compromise through dialogue or setting aside concerns in the interests of economic benefit. As a result, the region is facing a far more contested future than it has known since the depths of the Cold War. Governments with a capacity to do so will look increasingly to themselves and to like-minded partners to build up their defense and deterrence capabilities to confront the growing threats they see. The lines of division defining this contested environment are increasingly clear, with the United States and its closest allies on one side and China on the other. Others will struggle to balance their relationships between the two, but they will find it increasingly difficult to remain neutral. It remains to be seen whether this shift from dialogue to deterrence

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will extend Asia’s decades-long success in averting catastrophic interstate conflict. But across deepening divisions in the region today, preparations to deter and defeat the other side escalate the risk of the very conflagration such preparations hope to avoid. NOTES 1.  Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Military Expenditure Database, https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex, accessed August 9, 2021. 2.  “World Military Spending Rises to Almost $2 Trillion in 2020,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, April 26, 2021, https://www.sipri.org/media /press-release/2021/world-military-spending-rises-almost-2-trillion-2020. 3.  SIPRI Arms Transfer Database, https://www.sipri.org/databases/armstransfers, accessed August 9, 2021. 4. Ibid. 5.  Nan Tian and Fei Su, Estimating the Arms Sales of Chinese Companies, SIPRI Insights on Peace and Security, January 2020, https://www.sipri.org/sites/default /files/2020-01/sipriinsight2002_1.pdf; quotation on p. 11. 6. SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex, accessed August 9, 2021. Author calculated total military spending for the decade 2011 to 2020 for the twenty-six countries (other than China) listed under “East Asia,” “South Asia,” “Southeast Asia,” and “Oceania” in the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database. 7.  Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2020 (Washington, DC: United States Department of Defense, 2020), ii. 8.  “Chinese Aircraft Carrier Forming All-Weather Combat Capability with Successful Night Takeoff and Landing,” Global Times, May 28, 2018, https://www .globaltimes.cn/content/1104460.shtml; Liu Xuanzun, “China’s Third Aircraft Carrier ‘Progressing Smoothly,’” Global Times, September 13, 2020, https://www.global times.cn/content/1200749.shtml; Matthew P. Funaiole, Joseph S. Bermudez, Jr., and Brian Hart, “China’s Third Aircraft Carrier Takes Shape,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 15, 2021, https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-third -aircraft-carrier-takes-shape. 9.  Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2020, viii. 10. Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, “Status of World Nuclear Forces,” Federation of American Scientists, accessed August 16, 2021, https://fas.org/issues /nuclear-weapons/ status-world-nuclear-forces/. 11.  Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2020, 56, 85. 12.  Xi Jinping, Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, report delivered at the Nineteenth National Congress of



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the Chinese Communist Party, October 18, 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english /special/2017-11/03/c_136725942.htm. For an insightful discussion on the concept of a “world-class military,” see M. Taylor Fravel, “China’s ‘World-Class Military’ Ambitions: Origins and Implications,” Washington Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2020): 85–99. 13. Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China: Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, August 2020), i, https://media.defense.gov/2020 /Sep/01/2002488689/-1/-1/1/2020-DOD-CHINA-MILITARY-POWER-REPORT -FINAL.PDF. 14. Andrew S. Erickson, “China’s Near-Seas Challenge,” The National Interest, no. 129 (January–February 2014): 60–66. 15.  The “first island chain” refers to the string of archipelagic features to the east of the Asian landmass, stretching from north to south to include the Kuril Islands, the main Japanese islands, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, the northern and western Philippines, Borneo, and the Indonesian Riau Islands, and encompassing the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, and South China Sea. The “second island chain” refers to a line roughly extending from the Japanese home islands to the Mariana Islands, which include, importantly, the US territory of Guam, and continuing southward to Papua New Guinea. See figure 14.5. 16.  Kenneth Allen, Phillip C. Saunders, and John Chen, China’s Military Diplomacy, 2003–2016: Trends and Implications, China Strategic Perspectives 11 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2017). On China’s first overseas base, see Jean-Pierre Cabestan, “China’s Military Base in Djibouti: A Microcosm of China’s Growing Competition with the United States and New Bipolarity,” Journal of Contemporary China 29, no. 125 (2019): 731–47, https://doi.org/10.1080/106705 64.2019.1704994. 17.  On regional submarine procurements, see H. I. Sutton, “Undeclared Submarine Arms Race Takes Hold in Asia,” Forbes, February 18, 2020, https://www.forbes.com /sites/hisutton/2020/02/18/undeclared-submarine-arms-race-takes-hold-in-asia. 18. See Hillary Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century,” Foreign Policy, November 2011, https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/10/11/americas-pacific-century/; The White House, National Security Strategy of the United States, December 2017, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Fi nal-12-18-2017-0905.pdf. 19.  Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller), Pacific Defense Initiative, May 2021, 1, https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget /FY2022/fy2022_Pacific_Deterrence_Initiative.pdf. 20. A listing of these offensive strike systems is found in Kingston Reif and Shannon Bugos, “US Aims to Add INF-Range Missiles,” Arms Control Today, October 2020, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2020-10/news/us-aims-add-inf-range -missiles. 21. Bates Gill, “Exploring Post-INF Arms Control in the Asia-Pacific: China’s Role in the Challenges Ahead,” International Institute for Strategic Studies Research Papers, June 29, 2021, https://www.iiss.org/blogs/research-paper/2021/06/post-inf -arms-control-asia-pacific-china.

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22.  Joe Gould, “Eyeing China, Indo-Pacific Command Seeks $27 Billion Deterrence Fund,” Defense News, March 2, 2021, https://www.defensenews.com/con gress/2021/03/02/eyeing-china-indo-pacific-command-seeks-27-billion-deterrence -fund/; see also “Statement of Admiral Philip S. Davidson, US Navy Commander, US Indo-Pacific Command before the Senate Armed Services Committee on US IndoPacific Command Structure,” US Senate Armed Services Committee, March 9, 2021, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Davidson_03-09-21.pdf. 23. Andrew Greene, “Australia Now World’s Second-Biggest Weapons Importer Behind Only Saudi Arabia,” ABC News, September 30, 2019, https://www.abc .net.au/news/2019-09-30/australia-worlds-second-biggest-weapons-importer-behind -saudi/11558762. 24.  2020 Force Structure Plan (Canberra: Department of Defense, July 2020), https://www1.defence.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-11/2020_Force_Structure _Plan.pdf. 25. “Joint Leaders Statement on AUKUS,” The White House, September 15, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/09/15 /joint-leaders-statement-on-aukus/. 26. “Quad Leaders’ Joint Statement: ‘The Spirit of the Quad,’” The White House, March 12, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements -releases/2021/03/12/quad-leaders-joint-statement-the-spirit-of-the-quad/. 27. “US Arms Sales to India,” Forum on the Arms Trade, n.d., https://www .forumarmstrade.org/usindia.html: “US Security Cooperation with India,” United States Department of State, January 20, 2021, https://www.state.gov/u-s-security -cooperation-with-india/. 28. Dinakar Peri, “DRDO Successfully Tests New Generation Nuclear Capable Missile Agni-P,” The Hindu, June 28, 2021, https://www.thehindu.com/news /national/drdo-successfully-tests-new-generation-nuclear-capable-missile-agni-p /article35013208.ece. 29. Junnosuke Kobara, “Japan to Scrap 1% GDP Cap on Defense Spending: Minister Kishi,” Nikkei Asia, May 20, 2021, https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks /Interview/Japan-to-scrap-1-GDP-cap-on-defense-spending-Minister-Kishi. 30.  Defense of Japan 2021 (Tokyo: Ministry of Defense, 2021), 19, https://www .mod.go.jp/en/publ/w_paper/wp2021/DOJ2021_EN_Full.pdf. 31.  “US-Japan Joint Leaders’ Statement: US-Japan Global Partnership for a New Era,” The White House, April 16, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room /statements-releases/2021/04/16/u-s-japan-joint-leaders-statement-u-s-japan-global -partnership-for-a-new-era/; Kara Inagaki, Robin Harding, and Kathrin Hille, “Japan and Taiwan to Hold Talks to Counter Chinese Aggression,” Financial Times, August 25, 2021, https://www.ft.com/content/49dfa9ed-797f-4165-acbf-42cec205887c. 32.  Defense of Japan 2021, 23–24; Scott W. Harold and Satoru Mori, “A Taiwan Contingency and Japan’s Counterstrike Debate,” The Diplomat, July 22, 2021, https:// thediplomat.com/2021/07/a-taiwan-contingency-and-japans-counterstrike-debate/. 33.  Alan Robles, “Philippines Won’t Move an Inch on South China Sea, Duterte Tells Beijing,” South China Morning Post, May 14, 2021, https://www.scmp.com



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/week-asia/politics/article/3133559/philippines-wont-move-inch-south-china-sea -duterte-tells-beijing. 34.  Priam Nepomuceno, “Submarines to Give AFP Credible Defense Capabilities,” Philippine News Agency, March 31, 2021, https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1135438. On Philippine weapons imports, see SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, https://www .sipri.org/databases/armstransfers (accessed August 28, 2021). On Philippine weapon procurement plans, also see Renato Cruz De Castro, “The Philippines Discovers Its Maritime Domain: The Aquino Administration’s Shift in Strategic Focus from Internal to Maritime Security,” Asian Security 12, no. 2 (2016): 111–31. 35.  Lee Hsi-min and Eric Lee, “Taiwan’s Overall Defense Concept, Explained,” The Diplomat, November 3, 2020, https://thediplomat.com/2020/11/taiwans-overall -defense-concept-explained/. 36.  Quadrennial Defense Review 2021 (Taipei: Ministry of National Defense, 2021), https://www.ustaiwandefense.com/tdnswp/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2021 -Taiwan-Quadrennial-Defense-Review-QDR.pdf. 37.  For full details on Taiwan’s arms imports from the United States, see SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, https://www.sipri.org/databases/armstransfers (accessed August 28, 2021); see also “Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States (TECRO)—155mm M109A6 Paladin Medium Self-Propelled Howitzer System,” Defense Security Cooperation Agency, August 4, 2021, https://www .dsca.mil/press-media/major-arms-sales/taipei-economic-and-cultural-representative -office-united-states-20. 38. Rowan Allport, “Long-Range Conventional Precision Strike: Taiwan’s PostNuclear Deterrent?,” The Diplomat, August 13, 2021, https://thediplomat.com/2021/08 /long-range-conventional-precision-strike-taiwans-post-nuclear-deterrent/; Ben Blanchard, “Taiwan Has Begun Mass Production of Long-Range Missile,” Reuters, March 25, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-defence-idUSKBN2BH0IT. 39.  “US Security Cooperation with Vietnam,” United States Department of State, June 2, 2021, https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-vietnam/. 40.  “Vietnam Unveils Its New VCM-01 Anti-Ship Cruise Missile,” Navy Recognition, May 28, 2020, https://www.navyrecognition.com/index.php/naval-news /naval-news-archive/2020/may-2020/8491-vietnam-unveils-its-new-vcm-01-anti -ship-cruise-missile.html; Rajat Pandit, “India Draws Up Nations’ List for Akash, BrahMos Export,” The Times of India, January 7, 2021, https://timesofindia.india times.com/india/india-draws-up-nations-list-for-akash-brahmos-export/article show/80144307.cms. 41. SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, accessed September 7, 2021, https://arms trade.sipri.org/armstrade/page/values.php. 42.  Bonnie S. Glaser and Gregory Poling, “China’s Power Grab in the South China Sea,” Foreign Affairs, August 20, 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles /china/2021-08-20/chinas-power-grab-south-china-sea. For more detail on US defense engagement in contemporary Southeast Asia, see David Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet: America and China in Southeast Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), especially chap. 3.

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43.  SIPRI Arms Transfer Database, accessed September 5, 2021, https://armstrade .sipri.org/armstrade/page/values.php. 44. Ibid. 45.  Ibid. On PRC assistance to Pakistan’s missile and nuclear weapons programs, see T. V. Paul, “Chinese-Pakistani Nuclear/Missile Ties and the Balance of Power,” The Nonproliferation Review (Summer 2003): 1–9. 46. SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, https://armstrade.sipri.org/armstrade/page /values.php (accessed September 7, 2021); see also Panu Woncha-um, “Thailand Plans Joint Arms Factory with China,” Reuters, November 16, 2017, https://www.reuters .com/article/us-thailand-defence-idUSKBN1DG0U4. For further detail on China’s defense-related activities in Southeast Asia, see Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet, especially chap. 5. 47. SIPRI Arms Transfer Database, https://armstrade.sipri.org/armstrade/page /values.php, accessed September 7, 2021. 48. “Sino-Korean Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance,” Peking Review 4, no. 28 (1961): 5. Article II of the treaty reads: “The Contracting Parties undertake jointly to adopt all measures to prevent aggression against either of the Contracting Parties by any state. In the event of one of the Contracting Parties being subjected to the armed attack by any state or several states jointly and thus being involved in a state of war, the other Contracting Party shall immediately render military and other assistance by all means at its disposal.” 49.  On the Korean Peninsula, see chapters 9 and 10 in this volume; on Sino-Indian rivalry, see chapter 7 in this volume. For a more in-depth look at the most contentious areas of potential conflict in Asia, see Brendan Taylor, The Four Flashpoints: How Asia Goes to War (Melbourne: La Trobe University Press, 2018). 50.  Defense of Japan 2021, 25. The annual figures were 851 in 2016, 500 in 2017, 638 in 2018, 675 in 2019, and 458 in 2020. 51.  Michael Green et al., “Counter-Coercion Series: East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone,” Center for Strategic and International Studies Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, June 13, 2017, https://amti.csis.org/counter-co-east-china -sea-adiz/. 52. On these China-Russia activities, see “China-Russia ‘Joint Sea-2019’ Exercise Makes Two ‘First Times,’” China Military Online, May 5, 2019, http:// eng.chinamil.com.cn/view/2019-05/05/content_9495927.htm; Mike Yeo, “RussianChinese Air Patrol Was an Attempt to Divide Allies, Says Top US Air Force Official in Pacific,” Defense News, August 23, 2019, https://www.defensenews.com /global/asia-pacific/2019/08/23/russian-chinese-air-patrol-was-an-attempt-to-divide -allies-says-top-us-air-force-official-in-pacific/: “Russia, China Conduct 2nd Joint Air Patrol over Sea of Japan,” Kyodo News, December 23, 2020, https://english .kyodonews.net/news/2020/12/9f04b578fd28-update2-russia-china-conduct-2nd -joint-air-patrol-over-sea-of-japan.html. 53.  Mike Mochizuki and Jiaxiu Han, “Is China Escalating Tensions With Japan in the East China Sea?,” The Diplomat, September 16, 2020, https://thediplomat .com/2020/09/is-china-escalating-tensions-with-japan-in-the-east-china-sea/.



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54.  Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States of America, January 19, 1960, https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/n-america/us /q&a/ref/1.html. 55.  “US-Japan Joint Leaders’ Statement.” 56.  “China’s Maritime Disputes,” Council on Foreign Relations, https://www.cfr .org/chinas-maritime-disputes/#!/; “East China Sea,” United States Energy Information Administration, September 17, 2014, https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis /regions-of-interest/East_China_Sea. 57. Amanda Macias and Courtney Kube, “Chinese Military Conducts Anti-Ship Missile Tests in Hotly Contested South China Sea,” CNBC, July 1, 2019, https:// www.nbcnews.com/news/china/chinese-military-conducts-anti-ship-missile-tests -hotly-contested-south-n1025456; “Defense Ministry’s Regular Press Conference on Jun. 27,” PLA Daily, June 27, 2019, http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/view/2019-06/27 /content_9541430.htm. 58. Steven Lee Myers and Jason Gutierrez, “With Swarms of Ships, Beijing Tightens Its Grip on South China Sea,” New York Times, April 3, 2021, https://www .nytimes.com/2021/04/03/world/asia/swarms-ships-south-china-sea.html. 59.  “Force Majeure: China’s Coast Guard Law in Context,” Center for Strategic and International Studies Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, March 30, 2021, https://amti.csis.org/force-majeure-chinas-coast-guard-law-in-context/; Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China: Annual Report to Congress, 71. 60. Viet Hoang, “The Code of Conduct for the South China Sea: A Long and Bumpy Road,” The Diplomat, September 28, 2020, https://thediplomat.com/2020/09 /the-code-of-conduct-for-the-south-china-sea-a-long-and-bumpy-road/; Felix K. Chang, “Uncertain Prospects: South China Sea Code of Conduct,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, October 6, 2020, https://www.fpri.org/article/2020/10/uncertain -prospects-south-china-sea-code-of-conduct-negotiations/. 61.  On public attitudes to these issues in Taiwan, see for example, “Changes in the Taiwanese/Chinese Identity of Taiwanese as Tracked in Surveys by the Election Study Center, NCCU (1992-2020.12),” Election Study Center, National Chengchi University, January 25, 2021, https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7800&id=6961; “Changes in the Unification-Independence Stances of Taiwanese as Tracked in Surveys by Election Study Center, NCCU (1992-2020.12),” Election Study Center, National Chengchi University, January 25, 2021, https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/ Detail?fid=7801&id=6963. 62.  For an in-depth review and analysis on the history and centrality of the “Taiwan question” in US-China relations, see Alan D. Romberg, Rein In at the Brink of the Precipice: American Policy Toward Taiwan and US-PRC Relations (Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, 2003). 63. On this point, the most authoritative statement of the US position is that it “acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.” See “Joint Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations Between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China,” December 15,

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1978 (emphasis added), https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ait-taiwan/171414/ait-pages /prc_e.pdf. 64.  Taiwan Relations Act, Public Law 96-8, April 10, 1979, https://uscode.house .gov/statutes/pl/96/8.pdf. 65.  These governments were Panama (in 2017), São Tomé and Príncipe (2017), Dominican Republic (2018), Burkina Faso (2018), El Salvador (2018), Kiribati (2019), and Solomon Islands (2019). For an ongoing account of Beijing’s activities to delegitimize Taiwan’s international status, see “Instances of China’s Interference with Taiwan’s International Presence,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan), https://en.mofa.gov.tw/cl.aspx?n=1510. 66. See, for example, Liu Xuanzun, “PLA Carrier Enters S. China Sea After American Flattop Exercise Amid Taiwan Tensions,” Global Times, April 11, 2021, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202104/1220779.shtml; Liu Xuanzun, “PLA Carrier, Warplanes Surround Taiwan In Drills, In Show of Capability to Cut Off Foreign Intervention,” Global Times, April 6, 2021, https://www.globaltimes.cn /page/202104/1220377.shtml; Kathrin Hille and Demetri Sevastopulo, “Chinese Warplanes Simulated Attacking US Carrier Near Taiwan,” Financial Times, January 29, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/e6f6230c-b709-4b3d-b9a2-951516e52360; Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga and Jessica Drun, “Exploring Chinese Military Thinking on Social Media Manipulation Against Taiwan,” China Brief 21, no. 7 (2021), https://jamestown.org/program/exploring-chinese-military-thinking-on-social-media -manipulation-against-taiwan/. 67.  Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, appendix 1, quotation from p. 72. 68. Xi Jinping, “Working Together to Realize Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation and Advance China’s Peaceful Reunification,” Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, January 2, 2019, http://www.gwytb.gov.cn/wyly/201904 /t20190412_12155687.htm. 69.  Stein Tønnenson, Explaining the East Asian Peace: A Research Story (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2017). 70.  See, for example, “India-Vietnam Relations,” The Diplomat, https://thedip lomat.com/tag/india-vietnam-relations/ (accessed August 29, 2021); “2020 JapanAustralia Defense Ministers Kishi/Reynolds Joint Statement on Advancing Defense Cooperation,” Australian Department of Defense, October 19, 2020, https:// www.minister.defence.gov.au/minister/lreynolds/statements/2020-japan-australia -defense-ministers-kishireynolds-joint-statement; Mico Galang, “Opportunities for the Philippines-Vietnam Strategic Partnership,” Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, May 1, 2020, https://amti.csis.org/opportunities-for-the-philippines-vietnam -strategic-partnership/. 71.  “A Quick Guide to SCO and Its Military Cooperation,” CGTN, June 5, 2018, http://english.scio.gov.cn/infographics/2018-06/05/content_51673238.htm. 72. Ben Wolfgang, “Russia, China, Iran to Hold Massive Joint Military Exercise,” Washington Times, September 10, 2020, https://www.washingtontimes.com /news/2020/sep/10/russia-china-iran-hold-massive-joint-military-exer/; Syed Fazl-e Haider, “The Strategic Implications of Chinese-Iranian-Russian Naval Drills in the



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Indian Ocean,” China Brief 20, no. 1 (2020), https://jamestown.org/program/the -strategic-implications-of-chinese-iranian-russian-naval-drills-in-the-indian-ocean/. On China-Russia joint exercises, see Richard Weitz, “Assessing Chinese-Russian Military Exercises: Past Progress and Future Trends,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 2021, https://www.csis.org/analysis/assessing-chinese-russian -military-exercises-past-progress-and-future-trends. 73. Lyle J. Goldstein and Vitaly Kozyrev, “China-Russia Military Cooperation and the Emergent US-China Rivalry: Implications and Recommendations for US National Security,” Journal of Peace and War Studies, 2nd ed. (2020): 22–48. On the beginnings of China-Russia defense technology cooperation, see Bates Gill and Taeho Kim, China’s Arms Acquisitions from Abroad: A Quest for “Superb and Secret Weapons” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), especially chap. 3.

Chapter Fifteen

Ethnicity, Religion, Gender, and Human Rights in Asian International Relations R ollie L al

The need to be responsive to groups inside each country of Asia has become increasingly important in international affairs and it highlights issues of governance. According to some economists, a country’s per capita income could increase by 300 percent simply by improving governance.1 Yet, how to attain good governance is still a challenge for most Asian governments and societies. For example, countries need to ensure that training judges and police forces will lead to better human rights for minorities and women. What laws and policies exactly need to be incorporated into a constitution in order to ensure protections for citizens? While it may seem theoretical, the debate over which type of path is best for development has had deep implications for human rights internationally. Proponents of one side of the values debate, including China, argue that human dignity is only protected when people enjoy basic provision of food and shelter, or economic rights. In contrast, another camp (shared by the United Nations) argues that a commitment to gender equality, minority rights, and political rights are critical to ensure that governments do not abuse their citizens and that international human rights standards are upheld.2 Asian nations today struggle on a tightrope of balancing these objectives alongside pursuing economic growth and maintaining internal stability. Some countries like China have shown that a strong adherence to stability, order, and property rights represent a path of economic success, yet China remains accused of significant human rights violations. China as well as most countries in Asia (except North Korea) have signed on to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, yet Beijing ignores many of its provisions. Despite this allegiance to “universal” values, all countries in Asia face challenges with some combination of ethnic, religious, or gender rights. 397

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Many of these challenges cross borders or affect their relations with other countries. Ethnic and religious groups with affiliations in multiple countries can pose transnational threats to governments or create separatist demands. Complicating the issue is the fact that these rights often appear to be at odds with one another. In many countries, cultural norms, religious rights, and women’s rights are not being upheld simultaneously. This chapter will highlight some of the key internal issues facing Asian countries today. RELIGIOUS RIGHTS VS. WOMEN’S RIGHTS When discussing human rights, we need to question whose human rights need to be protected? Throughout all of Asia, the populations in question include religious groups, ethnic groups, and women. In pursuing women’s rights, most governments find themselves running afoul of religious groups and cultural norms. Religious codes today often disadvantage women, as they were generally established within patriarchal systems hundreds, or even thousands of years ago when social norms were quite different. In the next few sections I will take a closer look at how these factors have played out in case studies of India, Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia, and China. India and Cultural Norms In India, the Constitution generally supports women’s equality in the civil code. Nonetheless, strong cultural norms supported by religious tradition have created challenges to these ideals. The political trends of Hindu nationalism and Muslim fundamentalism in India have both taken a toll on gender rights. For example, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of Narendra Modi has strong proponents that are powerful in shaping the role of women in India in a conservative direction. These groups push for the government to ensure that women retain “traditional Hindu culture,” reinterpreting ancient Hindu texts to suit their values. This means that women should primarily stay within their roles as mothers and caregivers.3 Women are also expected to be subordinate to their husbands, and enduring suffering is considered admirable: “Women have a special quality: no matter how much they are tortured, the values instilled in them make them treat their husbands as Gods.”4 According to women’s rights NGOs in India, the Hindu nationalist movement is highly patriarchal and a hindrance to the empowerment of women.5 In an example of the gender bias existing within Hindu cultural norms, women have been barred from entering certain Hindu temples to pray in recent years, even though Indian law protects women’s equal right to enter



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and pray. Despite the law, the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala does not allow women of menstruating age to enter, and effectively banned women from the age of ten through fifty from praying in the compound. In defiance of the ban, in 2019 two women in their thirties snuck past men to enter the temple. Fundamentalist Hindus rioted in the streets, saying the government had ignored religious values. Counter protests of hundreds of thousands of women came out in support of women’s rights in Hinduism. Women in India continue to struggle to protect their human rights in the context of cultural and religious norms. Beyond the dominant Hindu community, the challenge exists for Muslim women in India and across Asia. Muslim Women’s Rights in India: The Shah Bano Case The case study of Shah Bano in India highlights the issues surrounding human rights when trying to accommodate both women and religion. The Indian Constitution grants equal protection of the law to all Indian citizens. But the law is unique in that Muslims in India are governed by Muslim Personal Law on issues such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and children’s custody. The purpose of allowing the separate legal code in India was to ensure that different religions in India can each have its own civil code to protect religious rights. In the case, a sixty-two-year-old Muslim woman named Shah Bano filed for support under the Indian Criminal Code from her husband for herself and their five children after he divorced her. Her husband denied the claim by arguing that Muslim Personal Law in India required far less support (the iddat period). His case was supported by the powerful religious lobby, the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB). After extended debate, the case arrived at the Indian Supreme Court by 1985. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Shah Bano and the Criminal Code, and in fact increased the maintenance amount she would be granted. The ruling was considered a milestone for women’s rights in India and established the superiority of civil law over religious law with regard to women’s rights. Justice Y. V. Chandrachud stated in the court’s opinion, “That is the moral edict of the law and morality cannot be clubbed with religion.”6 Muslims in India viewed the decision as an attack on Islam, and riots in the streets erupted. In response, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s government backtracked on the decision by passing the Muslim Women Protection on Divorce Act in 1986. Contrary to its name, the act overturned the Shah Bano verdict and restricted the allowance for Muslim divorced women to the Islamic iddat period (a shorter timeframe of possibly only three months).7 The case highlighted the inequities that can exist for women when governments uphold religious rights.

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Today, the controversy continues in India and across Asia. Until recently, India supported Muslim men divorcing their wives by simply saying (or texting) talaq (divorce) three times—a process called “triple talaq.” Triple talaq is already banned in more than twenty Muslim countries.8 In a sign of changing times, in 2019 India’s Parliament passed a bill criminalizing the practice of triple talaq with three year’s imprisonment. The new move was pushed by the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), a Muslim women’s rights group. Despite the involvement of Muslim women in the fight, the AIMPLB protested the move, saying that the government should stay out of religious affairs.9 According to Muslim women’s rights groups like the BMMA, however, the religious organizations are not moving fast enough to modernize Muslim family law. The issues raised by the Shah Bano case and banning of triple talaq in India reflect the controversies embedded in protecting human rights today. Women’s rights and other gender rights conflict with religious rights in every religion across Asia, not only with Islam. Countries face the sensitive issue of finding a balance where minority religions feel that their rights are being protected, and women also feel that their rights are secure. This section delves into some of these complex narratives across Asia. Pakistan Pakistan’s record on gender rights is poor. Rape, “honor killings,” violence against women, and forced marriage are signs of unequal protection of women and are all serious human rights concerns.10 The so-called honor killings involve the murder of girls and women by their family members or community in response to their social or sexual behavior. This can include activities as diverse as flirting, sex, refusing marriage, and even rape.11 By killing the woman, the family feels that its honor has been reestablished. While the crime exists throughout the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, Pakistan has the highest number of honor killings, with approximately 1,000 per year.12 While the practice has technically been outlawed, the law is poorly implemented, and perpetrators usually avoid punishment. Forced marriage of minority religious groups and child marriage are also endemic problems. An estimated 1,000 Christian and Hindu girls are forced into marriages and religious conversions with Muslim men each year in Pakistan.13 In 2021, Prime Minister Imran Khan stoked international controversy by stating that rape was the fault of women’s behavior. He said that Pakistani women need to remove “temptation” by covering up because “not everyone has willpower.”14 His comments drew such outrage that he subsequently retracted his comments, stating that only the rapist is responsible.15



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In a response to the injustices, Pakistani women have held the Aurat (women’s) March each year since 2018 to celebrate International Women’s Day. In 2021, the march spurred a backlash by the extremist Pakistani Taliban. The Taliban accused the women of “actively spreading obscenity and vulgarity,” and launched a social media disinformation campaign to undermine the women.16 In moves that endangered the women targeted, the Pakistani Taliban accused the Aurat March participants of blasphemy, and posted falsified images and video clips that suggested the women had insulted Islam. Blasphemy carries the death penalty in Pakistan, but many individuals targeted by the accusation are killed by extremist vigilantes.17 After the disinformation campaign, Pakistani police registered a blasphemy case against the organizers of the Aurat March. The marchers also received countless death and rape threats.18 Ultimately, conservative critics of the Aurat March say that feminism and Islam are irreconcilable.19 Women’s rights in Pakistan need consistent political support in order to protect against attacks by the Pakistani Taliban and other conservative religious groups. Thailand and Myanmar Rural poverty in Thailand has pushed women, girls, and boys into the massive commercial sex industry of Thailand where UNAIDS estimates that there are more than 123,530 sex workers, causing a severe transnational human trafficking problem. Of these, thousands are trafficked from Myanmar and other countries in Southeast Asia.20 A job as the lowest sex worker in Thailand is paid ten to twenty times the salary of an unskilled factory job.21 The women working in the industry are often supporting families in the countryside, sending home much of their income and keeping a pittance to survive. Many workers keep their profession from their families and lead a double life in order to continue this existence, as prostitution is illegal in Thailand. While the industry is technically illegal, the government of Thailand benefits greatly from the foreign exchange generated by sex tourism. Data from the International Labor Association (ILO) indicated the sex tourism industry provided 2 to 14 percent of Thailand’s GDP, and about $300 million was transferred to rural families by women.22 In 2015, the Thai sex industry generated $15 billion.23 As a result of the sex industry’s massive role in the economy, official efforts to deal with the trafficking of women are paltry.24 Some of the critical human rights concerns raised by the prevalence of sex work as an industry in Thailand includes the criminalization of women involved. As a result of illegality and the risk of being arrested and fined, women and children are less likely to report violence or predatory financial behavior from clients and pimps. Most of their income was surfeited to

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criminal organizations, and medical care was also not possible, as labor laws did not apply.25 Criminalization further muddied the distinction between trafficked sex workers and voluntary sex workers. While some workers opted to stay in sex work as a profession, the illegal nature of the work and lack of industry standards and labor laws created an exploitative situation for all sex workers.26 In addition, many workers were trafficked and exploited against their will. Law enforcement has not been able to differentiate between coerced workers and those who would like to stay in the industry when all are grouped together and in hiding from the law. Decriminalizing sex work in areas such as Thailand would improve pay and health standards for accredited workers. This would also assist in the tracking of criminal activity and location of coerced labor including exploited children. Exacerbating the policy problems that women face in the sex industry are overarching societal and religious biases against women in Thailand and Myanmar. In Thai interpretations of Buddhism, women are disadvantaged at the outset because “to be born a woman is considered to be the result of previous bad karma.”27 Women need to be reborn as men before achieving enlightenment.28 The karmic implications of being female go even further, as both women and men are encouraged to improve their personal karma through meritorious deeds for their parents. For poor males, this includes the easy option of joining a monastery, even for a few months. Males joining the monastery can expect financial support, a critical factor for poverty-stricken families. Females in Thailand do not have the option of joining a Buddhist order because of opposition to the idea from the male-dominated monasteries. Poor females then have fewer options to provide for their parents. Many girls and women justify joining prostitution as a means to fulfill their obligation to their parents, and the cash generated is doubly useful for donations to the temples.29 Buddhist monastic traditions in Myanmar follow a similar logic as those in Thailand. Neither the Thai nor Burmese interpretations are supported by Buddhist text. Nonetheless, women in the Burmese context also are told that they need to be reborn as a man in order to achieve merit. Impoverished women are susceptible to human traffickers and join prostitution as an alternative to achieve merit for their families through suffering.30 Many even “believe that they are destined to be prostitutes and lower-class citizens because it is their karmic retribution.”31 The gender hierarchy in Myanmar Buddhism is also supported by the growing nationalist movement. Buddhist nationalists in Myanmar pursue similar arguments against women’s rights as Hindu nationalists in India. Buddhist women in Myanmar are expected to be the protectors of racial purity in a highly patriarchal system. Nationalists passed a set of laws in 2014 known as the “Protection of Race and Religion Laws,” which both criminalized po-



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lygamy and required people wishing to convert to obtain official permission. In addition, interfaith marriages would need to pass a public opinion vote to be accepted.32 The underlying philosophy is harshly against women’s rights and claims that women are inherently inferior. According to a nationalist Buddhist, “Our Buddhist women are not intelligent enough to protect themselves.”33 This misogyny drives the control of women and who they choose to marry. An underlying shift in cultural and religious beliefs would be necessary to address issues of gender inequality in Thailand and Myanmar. Indonesia/Malaysia, Gender, and Muslim Law Indonesia faces some of the same challenges with regard to women’s rights and religion as India. The primary difference is that Indonesia is home to the largest Muslim nation in the world, a population of more than 200 million. In addition, Muslims comprise the vast majority of the country, with 86.7 percent of Indonesians identifying as Muslim, a significant minority of Christians (10 percent), and small groups of Hindus and other religions. Until the 1980s, Indonesia was largely secular, and home to a moderate practice of Islam. In recent decades, however, politicians took to using Islamic sentiments to garner support. In recent years, this turn toward more Islamic fundamentalism is clear in the increased interest in control of girls’ bodies and Islamic clothing for women. Approximately half of Indonesian girls have undergone a human rights abuse known as female genital mutilation (FGM). The Indonesian government in 2006 banned this practice but then rescinded its decision as a result of pressure from fundamentalist Muslim groups such as the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI). The MUI contradicted the UN position, instead stating that banning female genital mutilation was against human rights and Shari’a.34 The government went further in institutionalizing the practice by issuing an advisory in 2010 for medical professionals on the “correct” way to perform FGM.35 This position, that religious rights take precedence over women’s rights, is the dominant perspective from Muslim groups across Asia. In addition to FGM, women and girls face unprecedented pressure to wear the jilbab as part of the school uniform and in government offices. The jilbab is a cloth that covers the woman’s head, neck, and chest, and is similar to the hijab.36 Since 2001, local governments have increasingly created regulations to enforce jilbab wearing, so that by 2021 most of Indonesia’s 300,000 state schools required the jilbab for school. According to Human Rights Watch, girls who did not comply with the dress code had been forced to leave school, and female government workers have lost their jobs. Even students of Christian backgrounds and other non-Muslims have been forced to wear the jilbab.37

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Malaysia faces similar challenges, with dominant social rules arguing against gender equality. The powerful political party Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) is vying to have Shari’a as the rule of law in Malaysia. This immediately creates tension with minority religions, as Malaysia is only 61.3 percent Muslim, while Buddhists comprise a very significant 19.8 percent of the population, with Christians (9.2 percent) and Hindus (6.3 percent) also key players. Similar to both India and Indonesia, Shari’a and civil law each have authority, with Shari’a governing personal law for the Muslim population. Shari’a in Malaysia codifies several areas of inequality for women. For example: polygamy is allowed for men; men may marry non-Muslims whereas Muslim women must only marry Muslims; divorce is more difficult for women than men; women can only gain custody of minor children whereas men maintain the childrens’ guardianship.38 Furthermore, FGM is prevalent in Malaysia. In 2009, Malaysia’s National Council of Islamic Religious Affairs issued a fatwa that ruled FGM obligatory for Muslims. A study conducted in rural areas of Malaysia revealed that more than 99 percent of the female population in the study had undergone FGM.39 With regard to the LGBTQ community, Malaysia has taken an increasingly hard stance. In 2021, a government task force proposed amendments to Shari’a law that would “allow action to be taken against social media users for insulting Islam and ‘promoting the LGBTQ lifestyle.’”40 Conservatives had taken offence to social media posts that celebrated Pride Month. The proposed laws were extremely broad and would criminalize a variety of activities considered insulting to Islam, including supporting the LGBTQ community online. China and the Communist Influence on Women’s Rights Historically, women in China were subject to a lower status in society due to the influence of Confucian customs. In this social context, women were mandated to obey their husband, citizens obeyed the ruler, and the young should obey the elderly.41 With the advent of the communist revolution in 1949, Mao Zedong promoted women’s equality. The new Marriage Law stated: The People’s Republic of China shall abolish the feudal system which holds women in bondage. Women shall enjoy equal rights with men in political, economic, cultural, educational and social life. Freedom of marriage for men and women shall be put into effect.42

Communism allowed for radical changes during the 1950s and from 1966 to 1976 with the Cultural Revolution. Childcare became collectivized and al-



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lowed women to move in great numbers into the work force. Women increasingly accessed advanced education. Despite these rapid changes to women’s equality under communism, many signs of their low status remained. When land was redistributed during land reforms, it was distributed to men, not women.43 Domestic chores remained the purview of women.44 Today, Chinese women are still shunted aside in the senior ranks of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At the CCP 19th Congress in 2017, women were only 83 of 938 delegates. Only one woman made it to the twenty-five-person Politburo, and there are no women in the Politburo Standing Committee.45 The reasons for this lack of representation is likely deeply held biases in society that cast women as child-bearers and homemakers. In January 2021, China passed its first Civil Code that systematized some of these gender-based concepts. Among other issues, the code enacted a one-month cooling off period before a divorce is finalized. Chinese feminists have been up in arms about the issue, arguing that the code undermines the freedom to divorce and ignores the concerns of domestic violence victims.46 Analysts state that the law is likely the result of the CCP placing a higher priority on attaining a higher birthrate and throwing women’s rights overboard in that effort.47 China’s one child policy, in effect from 1980 until 2015, had diverse effects on the status of women in China. The policy was meant to control the population as a whole, but cultural norms created incredible pressure on mothers to have a son. As a result, many female fetuses were aborted and babies abandoned or even killed by families in an effort to have the single child be male.48 As expected, this resulted in a hugely lopsided demographic situation,49 and eventually a gap of more than 30 million more males than females in China. The lack of females led to a spike in human trafficking to accommodate the demand. Poor and minority women from Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and other Southeast Asian countries increasingly became commodities for traffickers into both the bride market and the sex trade in China.50 The women enticed to be brides may voluntarily come to China for marriage, but then often become trapped by fake documents and become subject to violence and sexual exploitation.51 While China still has many hurdles to leap in terms of reaching equality for women, it is relatively successful when considering that female literacy is above 95 percent.52 China and South Asia had comparable levels of literacy and development in 1900, but in the intervening century China was able to widen the gap and gain advantages for Chinese women. Part of this story lies in the fact that China’s economic development was rapid and created opportunities for working women.

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ETHNO-RELIGIOUS CHALLENGES IN ASIA AND THE IMPACT ON INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS The rise of ethno-religious tensions across Asia has deep implications for regional stability, and for US relations with its security partners in the region. The dangerous trend across Asia, as in the rest of the world, is the rise of ethno-nationalism. These forces that emphasize the importance of one unifying and dominant ethnicity and religion are incredibly damaging for nations of Asia that are inherently multicultural. The challenge for Asian countries in the coming years will be in how to incorporate diverse minority groups into political systems that respect the human rights of the group and the individual. Ethnic minorities inside countries are generally vying for political or religious autonomy. Inside China, the Uighurs and Tibetans have struggled for rights to practice Islam and Buddhism, and for the right to sustain their culture. These internal issues have impacted China’s foreign relations with the United States, India, and the Muslim world in particular. Similarly, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh’s poor treatment of ethnic minorities, whether Shi’a, Sunni, Hindu, or Christian, has fomented violent activity by terror groups, and riots between ethnic neighbors. The extremist networks of South Asia are mirrored in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. There, the growth of Muslim fundamentalist politics has grown in domestic politics as well as through extremist groups such as the Islamic State and al Qaeda. These troublesome ethno-nationalist trends are not contained to any particular religion. In the majority Buddhist country of Myanmar, the harsh persecution of minority Rohingya Muslims has drawn the attention of human rights groups. Relations of each of these countries with the international community have been impacted by the internal dynamics of ethnoreligious conflict. The ability of each nation to manage internal power struggles between ethnic and religious groups will influence economic growth and global partnerships in the future. China: Xinjiang/Uighurs China’s Muslim minority in the “autonomous region” of Xinjiang has historically had a conflict-ridden relationship with Beijing. The region is populated historically by the Uighurs, an ethnically Turkic group. During the communist revolution, the Chinese Communist Party made strong promises that the Uighurs would be allowed to have self-determination.53 However, soon after 1949 the region began to be forcibly integrated and assimilated into China. Starting in the 1950s, China began a program of mass migration of Han Chinese into the province of Xinjiang. In 1949 Uighurs comprised approximately



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90 percent of Xinjiang. By 2020 they comprised less than half of the population. This ethnic dilution led to a rise in resentment toward Beijing and the CCP.54 Policies such as family planning and oversight on mosques and prayer further inflamed tensions. By the early 2000s, a separatist group known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) formed to fight for independence from the PRC. ETIM planned to form a new state of East Turkestan that would also incorporate the Muslim Turkic peoples from parts of Turkey, the Central Asian states, and Pakistan. China declared the group a terrorist threat, with evidence that Osama bin Laden had stated his support for the group. In 2002, the US Treasury Department listed ETIM as a terrorist organization.55 The group has claimed terror attacks, including bus bombings in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shijiazhuang. Then in 2014, a group of Uighurs attacked crowds with knives in a Kunming train station, killing 31 and injuring 141.56 However, in 2020 the US State Department reversed its policy and removed the terror designation for ETIM, stating that there was no longer any credible threat.57 The Chinese government reacted with ire at what was perceived as hypocrisy (the US government was tough on terror when relevant to US security). The delisting of ETIM was also viewed as a political maneuver by the Trump administration, a sign that he was tough on China. According to economist Weijian Shan, the move was meant to “frame China’s anti-terror measures simply as religious and ethnic persecution.”58 Further afield, Uighurs have connected with the Islamic State, and have been intercepted for joining the fighting in Syria. Estimates are that there were thousands of ETIM fighting in Syria as part of “Katibah Turkestan,” and more than 300 Uighurs involved with the Islamic State by 2015.59 China argued that Islamic State returnees posed a separatist terror threat. The existence of ETIM and terror links created severe complications for the larger Uighur population demanding better human rights conditions and greater sovereignty. The Chinese government used the US-led “war on terror” as an excuse for intense human rights abuses against the Uighurs. In the aftermath of the Kunming terror attack, hundreds of suspects were arrested. Uighurs with no connection to ETIM or separatism faced harsh repercussions for appearing to support any kind of Uighur rights. Muslims who attended mosques were checked and tracked by the authorities, suspected of extremism.60 Officials were not allowed to pray at the mosque, and growing a beard or wearing a headscarf were viewed as signs of extremism.61 In the view of Beijing, any uprisings or unrest in Xinjiang amounted to terrorist activity and resulted in harsh crackdowns. The Chinese leadership feared that any dissent in Xinjiang may attract support from extremist elements abroad. After 2017, China engaged in what has been described as “a systematic and violent dismantling of Uyghur culture and identity that can be unequivocally

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described as cultural genocide.”62 In particular, the government conducted large scale internment of Uighurs and “reeducation” of the minority in order to assimilate them into majority Han society. The PRC constructed a massive database of Uighurs to cross-reference information on individuals, collecting information on their movement, communications, activities, and relationships.63 This database would enable the government to interdict anyone considered religious or improperly political. The reeducation programs incorporated legal education and behavioral correction in large scale internment camps. Chinese language usage was emphasized and use of the Uighur language forbidden. These camps were built as prisons with high walls, barbed wire, monitoring systems, and guarded cells.64 In addition, family separations instilled fear and forced cooperative behavior. Incarceration of one family member would ensure that others in the circle would not deviate from official regulations.65 The internment camps also incorporated forced labor so that rural farmers could be reeducated into factory workers, fundamentally changing the identity of the Uighur society. According to scholar Adrian Zenz, reeducation followed in the steps of Maoist era self-criticism. In one reeducation session that included training in patriotic singing, criminal law, marriage law, and drama, “the whole class rose up and broke up in tears, with participants emotionally announcing that they must ‘repent’ and ‘become new persons.’”66 While the Chinese government has denied the abuses, scholars and journalists have testified to the human rights abuses continuing in Xinjiang. In addition, reproduction policy that emphasizes the decrease of birth rates among Uighurs has been criticized as a possibly ethnic cleansing policy. China: Tibet China’s relations with Tibet show that its Buddhist minority ethnic group has fared as poorly as the Uighurs. After independence in 1949, the PRC quickly invaded Tibet against protests by the Tibetan government. By 1951 Chinese troops had fully occupied Tibet, and immediately moved to suppress religious and political freedom. In 1959 mass uprisings drew a harsh Chinese response. Thousands of people were killed, many more imprisoned, and monasteries bombed. The Dalai Lama fled Tibet for political asylum in India, where he has resided in Dharamsala ever since alongside approximately 150,000 followers. The Tibetans who remained in China have subsequently been subjected to cultural controls similar to what has been described above in Xinjiang. Nomads and farmers were taken in 2019 for “military style” vocational training and then assigned to low-skilled manufacturing jobs, essentially destroying their existing traditional culture.67 They were also subjected to “thought education” and the teaching of



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the Tibetan language has been minimized.68 In 2016, a Tibetan campaigner for language rights was arrested for saying in an interview to the New York Times that there was little access to Tibetan language learning, and “In effect, there is a systematic slaughter of our culture.”69 He was sentenced to five years in prison for “incitement to split the country.” Video surveillance of Tibetans has also been instituted, in order to track people and deter activism. However, China does not heavily use the argument that Tibet is a hotbed of terrorism, as it does with regard to Xinjiang. Rather, the PRC claims that the reeducation and retraining programs are an effort to weed out “backward thinking” and bring poverty alleviation. India While India has been subject to many terrorist attacks over the past few decades caused by extremist Muslim groups, it is the rise of Hindu nationalism that has damaged India’s commitment to democracy and human rights in recent years. The 1993 bombings in Mumbai that killed 257, and the 2008 Lashkar-e-Taiba attack that killed 174, among other attacks, have provided fuel for Hindu nationalist discriminatory policies toward Muslims in India. The Indian Constitution was established as a liberal and democratic document that offered protections for religious groups and disadvantaged minorities. However, many in the Hindu nationalist party (BJP) have strong reservations about the term “secularism” in the Constitution, mainly because of the power that it offers the nation’s Muslim minority. These BJP ministers have even called to eliminate the word from the Constitution.70 The Hindu nationalist discourse casts the Muslim minority as the aggressor, and often takes up arms against both Muslim individuals as well as Muslim homes, shops, and mosques. Hindu nationalists extend their aggression against other minority groups as well, the Dalits (low-caste Hindus), tribal minorities, women, and LGBTQ individuals. Rather than a focus on the religious and spiritual goals of Hinduism, the Hindu nationalists focus on historical revisionism and minority demonization. For example, in 1992 Hindu nationalists destroyed the Babri Masjid, a sixteenth-century Indian mosque. The site had been the focus of religious dispute for hundreds of years, with Hindus claiming that the mosque had been built over a temple to the Hindu deity Ram. The demolishing of the mosque by Hindu extremists caused riots and the deaths of about 2,000 Muslims. Despite the egregious and illegal nature of the destruction, the Indian Supreme Court awarded the land to Hindu groups to build a temple on the site, giving a plot of land miles away to Muslims for the mosque. Then, in 2020 courts acquitted the BJP officials who had provoked the destruction, and Prime Minister Modi even symbolically laid the foundation stone for the Hindu temple.71 The court’s failure to support

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constitutional protections for minority religions reflects the disintegration of religious rights and democracy in India. Muslims in India fear for more than their mosques. Hindu nationalists have dangerously placed additional restrictions on the sale and killing of cows. In a country where Hindus consider cows to be sacred, primarily Muslims and Dalits are engaged in the slaughter of cattle. Many Hindus have formed vigilante cow protection mobs attacking individuals engaged in the cow trade. According to Human Rights Watch, at least forty-four people were killed (including thirty-six Muslims) between May 2015 and December 2018.72 Rather than enforce the law, police have consistently stalled investigations and even been complicit in the crimes or cover-ups. Officials have even gone on record to say that the cow-killers are the priority problem who need to be prosecuted, not the murderers and rioters.73 As a result, the cow killing regulations have essentially weaponized Hindu nationalism to allow officials and vigilantes to persecute any minority at will. Appeals to courts can lead to prosecution of the victims under cow protection laws, and police have even used the National Security Act against those suspected of illegal cow slaughter. In the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir human rights have been a consistent problem over the decades. In an effort to quell unrest, the government has taken harsh measures that have increased tensions between the Muslim and Hindu communities. Historically, India granted special autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir as India’s Muslim majority state. However, in 2019 the government rescinded this status and created the potential for others to settle in the region and change the demographics of the state.74 The Indian government has imposed discriminatory restrictions on Muslim areas of the state. Freedom of speech, access to information, and freedom of movement have all been restricted.75 The media policy allows the government to decide what is fake news or anti-national, and then take punitive action.76 Pakistan and Bangladesh Pakistan has dealt with rising Muslim extremism for decades, a trend that has damaged its record on human rights. In addition to problems with protecting women and children from honor killings and forced conversions, Pakistan has increasingly leaned on anti-blasphemy laws to penalize individuals and groups who are considered not sufficiently Islamic.77 In the 2018 elections, right-wing and extremist Muslim parties increased their presence with more than 1,500 candidates running at the provincial and national level. Parties such as Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) were a major presence and promoted the death sentence for blasphemy. Despite being founded only in 2015, the TLP came in sixth in the elections with 2.2 million votes.78 Other par-



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ties affiliated with the terror groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi put forth hundreds of candidates. While Prime Minister Imran Khan is not a member of these extremist factions, these parties have been influential enough to move legislation and social norms. The popular anti-blasphemy laws are often used to persecute Christians, minority Muslim groups, and Hindus. In 2009, a Christian woman named Asia Bibi found herself a victim of a mob who accused her of blasphemy. The charge led to her death sentence under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, and she remained in prison until her acquittal in 2018.79 The acquittal led to violent protests, and two politicians who had tried to help her were assassinated.80 The TLP rallied behind the killers and threatened further violence. Ultimately, Asia Bibi was forced into hiding from the death threats, and granted asylum in Canada. In 2020, the TLP continued its extremist agenda, triggering a crisis in Pakistan’s foreign relations with France and the European Union. After school teacher Samuel Paty was brutally beheaded in France for showing his students caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed published in Charlie Hebdo, President Macron reaffirmed the freedom of speech in France and the right to show cartoons. This decision caused protests and the killing of ten people in Pakistan where the blasphemy laws have widespread popular support. The TLP demanded the expulsion of the French Ambassador and a boycott of French products. However, doing so would have ended diplomatic relations with France. In response, Prime Minister Imran Khan banned the TLP under the anti-terrorism law, but then backtracked and called on other Muslim countries to lobby Western governments to criminalize blasphemy.81 Pakistan’s inability to contain the extremist elements pushing for Islamic blasphemy laws globally has had ramifications for its relations with other countries. Bangladesh followed a similar trajectory as Pakistan in the growth of Islamic extremist groups. The ruling party of Bangladesh, the Awami League, supported the growth of intolerant groups in the past decade. Hefazat-e-Islam, or “The Protectors of Islam,” took the lead in promoting repressive policies. In 2010 the group gained public support by railing against making inheritance laws more favorable to women. In 2013, the group became even more popular by promoting strict blasphemy laws. Hefazat supporters demanded the hanging of atheist bloggers and new blasphemy laws.82 The government of Bangladesh acceded to demands by the extremists by bringing charges against writers and investigating commentary on Islam. Then in 2016, a group of Islamic militants attacked a café in Dhaka, killing twenty-two people, mainly Italian and Japanese. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.83 The government engaged in a crackdown on terrorists across the country but failed to address the roots of the problem.

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The situation forced the government to take harsh action in 2021, when violence erupted during Indian Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Bangladesh. Thousands of people protested Modi’s poor treatment of Muslims in India, leading to the destruction of a railway station and at least thirteen died. In response, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina arrested 21 top Hefazat leaders and 890 supporters.84 The continued rise of intolerant Islam in both Bangladesh and Pakistan indicates that current policies to curb extremist Islamic ideology and groups are less than effective. Myanmar/Burma Ethnicity and religion combine to create a devastating situation for ethnic minorities such as the Muslim Rohingya and Kachin Christians in Myanmar. The Rakhine State itself is culturally distinct and the Rakhine ethnic group discriminated against inside Myanmar. Historically, the Rakhine were pluralistic and had close ties to Bengali culture across the border in Bangladesh.85 Complicating the situation, the Rohingya Muslim minority group inside the Rakhine State is ethnically and linguistically separate from the Rakhine. They are also religiously distinct: whereas Myanmar is 88 percent Buddhist, only 4.3 percent is Muslim.86 The Rohingya Muslims maintain their own language and customs that separate the group from the Rakhine Buddhists. While hundreds of years ago these differences were accepted as part of the regional milieu, the drawing of post-colonial borders created the Rohingya as a minority inside a minority in Myanmar. The Rohingya have resided in Myanmar from as early as the fifteenth century, with Muslims continuing to arrive in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Despite the long history of Muslims in Myanmar, the government of Burma/Myanmar historically denied their claims as an official ethnic group of Myanmar. The lack of legal designation led to the Rohingya being labeled illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Systemic oppression of the Rohingya led to an increase of tensions between the Rohingya and the Buddhist community in the Rakhine State.87 In 2017, Rohingya militants known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) attacked Myanmar police posts, killing twelve security personnel.88 The government of Myanmar labeled the group as terrorists and responded with disproportionate force against both ARSA and the larger civilian Rohingya population. Human rights organizations accused the government and local men of rapes, crucifixions, and burnings.89 The violence sent hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming into neighboring Bangladesh. In the following weeks and months, the Myanmar Army claimed that it was defending the state against Muslim terrorists. Burmese Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi also refrained from condemning the apparent



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genocide. By 2021, more than 900,000 Rohingya were living in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Another estimated 600,000 remained in Myanmar in the Rakhine State under intolerable conditions.90 As of 2021, the Myanmar government refused to grant the Rohingya citizenship, a decision that made the minority stateless refugees. The growing tensions between the Buddhist and ethnic minority communities in Myanmar can be traced back to a melding of ethnicity, race, and religion during the colonial period. Prior to the coming of the British, ethnicity in Burma was widely perceived as a cultural factor rather than biological. However, Burma quickly adopted British norms, and ethnicity came to be viewed as more of a biological “race” and bloodline, which could then be used officially in the British census.91 This racial definition of ethnicity then gained support among Buddhist monks with political aspirations. These ethno-nationalist monks recast the Buddha as a nationalist religious leader of the Sākiya bloodline (clan). In this rewriting of history, the Myanmar/ Burmese people claimed descent from the Buddha’s Sākiya clan. Burmese women were not to mix blood (intermarry) with others to keep the country strong. The “others” became demonized as a threat to the ethnic and religious purity of the Buddhists.92 The Buddhist nationalist concept has been influential in moving the conversation in Myanmar against Christian minorities as well as Muslims, and ethnonationalist monks have continued to play a key role. The largest Buddhist nationalist organization in Myanmar is known as MaBaTha, the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion. MaBaTha and its successors vie to protect Buddhism against Muslims and Christians. The MaBaTha is also aligned with the military in promoting a unified Buddhist dominance over the country.93 Ethnonationalist perspectives have also created long standing violence against the Christian Kachin community who reside in the north. The Kachin expected to have autonomy after independence. However, the Burmese Army has engaged in what is largely considered ethnic cleansing for many decades instead.94 According to Burma scholar Miemie Byrd, “The military regime is carpet bombing the ethnic minority villages of the Kachin and Karens. They have been doing this since the end of World War II. The Rohingya are oppressed just like any other ethnic minority group. Only the ethnic Burmans escaped.”95 The Buddhist nationalists played upon the fissures between the Buddhist nationalist alliance and Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) for political advantage. Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD did not support the MaBaTha which backed “Protection of Race and Religion Laws” that limited interfaith marriage and religious conversions. MaBaTha retaliated by

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posting doctored photos of Aung San Suu Kyi wearing a hijab online and generally implying that she was pro-Muslim and anti-Buddhist. The extremist group even argued that the NLD was overly strong on protecting human rights, and not tough enough on protecting Buddhists.96 In a self-serving political maneuver, Aung San Suu Kyi then moved closer to the MaBaTha and Myanmar military position. In 2019 at the International Court of Justice she argued that the atrocities against the Rohingya had been exaggerated and were not genocide.97 The overall national discussion had shifted away from the importance of democratic rights, and the Buddhist nationalist movement had maneuvered its ethnonationalist agenda to the center. Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines While Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines have demonstrated tentative adherence to democratic norms, in the past decade all three have endangered ethnic and religious rights with a slide toward nationalist leadership. Religious illiberalism is a rising problem in government policy across the region. In addition, extremist Islam in the form of terrorist groups is another problem that populations in these three countries are facing. Religious intolerance is the trend, and human rights in the region has suffered as a result. Indonesia has seen a shift toward a more orthodox form of Sunni Islam in the past few decades. Historically, the country was home to a wide spectrum of Muslim beliefs, including a significant number of Javanese who held syncretic beliefs and rituals that were not part of mainstream Sunnism. In contrast, more orthodox Sunnis who studied in madrasas were a newer innovation in Indonesian society. Over the decades since independence, syncretic Islam lost support in the population to the spread of Christianity and even more so to the rise of mainstream Sunni Islam.98 Official policies that supported mainstreaming of Islamic belief through mandatory religious education have also led to the rapid decline of the more inclusive form of Islam that existed in Indonesia for centuries. In 2017, a court found Governor Basuki Purnama of Jakarta guilty of blasphemy against Islam and imposed a two-year prison sentence on him. A member of the Christian minority, Purnama had quoted the Qur’an in his political campaign by stating, “his political opponents had ‘lied’ to them by saying that the Qur’an prohibited them from voting for a non-Muslim governor.”99 This led to hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Indonesia to rally and demand his prosecution. Malaysia has seen a similar shift. The ruling parties of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), and Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM) all lead Malaysia toward Malay



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nationalism and Islamic nationalism.100 Unfortunately for the 38 percent of Malaysians who are non-Malay and non-Muslim, policies have been turning in a direction that is intolerant toward minorities. In summer of 2021, a Muslim Malay named Ramli Ibrahim found himself at the end of discriminatory rules when the elite Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) canceled his multicultural program. Ramli, the artistic director of the Sutra Dance Theatre, had intended to speak on “how multicultural performing arts should transcend race.”101 Even discussing increasing Islamic tolerance can run afoul of the religion police in Malaysia. Malaysian authorities detained Turkish scholar Mustafa Akyol for giving a talk on his book promoting liberal Islam. He argued that apostates from Islam (people who abandon Islam as their religion) should be allowed to do so. Officers stated that he could not speak again without official Malaysian permission to teach Islam, and his book was banned for three years.102 The intolerance extends to the form of Islam practiced. Sunni Islam is considered the standard form of Malaysian Islam. Malaysian authorities in most states have issued fatwas stating that Shi’a Muslims are deviant.103 In the Philippines, the fact that more than 90 percent of the population is Christian and predominantly Catholic has many implications for religious and ethnic relations. Muslims comprise only 5 to 6 percent of the country, and this minority group is regionally concentrated in the south, on the islands of Mindanao, Sulu, and Palawan. Most Muslims are also a different ethnic group known as the Moros.104 As a result, Muslim separatist movements such as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have been a challenge for the government of the Philippines for decades. In 2017, a five-month battle occurred between the Philippines armed forces and Islamic State affiliated groups in Marawi city. Islamic State militants targeted Christian civilians in particular, often asking if individuals could recite the Shahada (profession of Muslim faith) before executing those who could not.105 In response to Muslim demands and in order to end tensions, the government created the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Mindanao in 2019.106 Beyond the shift toward intolerant Islam inside regional politics, the spread of terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliates indicate the rise of extremist Islam in Southeast Asia. For example, the Islamic State formed a subsidiary, Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), in Indonesia in 2015. Neighboring Malaysia also faced the threat of Malaysian Islamic State members working abroad and out of reach. Malaysian Islamic State fighters were found to be fighting from the Philippines, Syria, and Iraq between 2014 and 2017.107 The Islamic State increased the linkages between regional terror groups when it announced in 2017 that it had created a province, Wilayat Sharq Asiyya, as a way of merging its Southeast Asian affiliates.108 These cross-cutting

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linkages of Islamic State affiliated groups reveal that analyzing the extremist groups from a national perspective is insufficient. The level of direction that the local groups are receiving from a central Islamic State authority is unclear. However, as the Islamic State expands its influence in the region, Southeast Asian nations will increasingly find that coordination with their neighbors is critical for dealing with these groups that do not recognize borders. CONCLUSIONS The rise in tensions surrounding religion, ethnicity, and gender in Asia points to the increasing influence of ideas in forming identity across borders today. Information flows and exposure to different cultures have raised expectations of women and men that gender equality is a possibility in society. At the same time, nationalist religious ideologies are pushing societies in the opposite direction. In most Asian countries, as in the rest of the world, nationalist groups are defining roles for all citizens by narrowly defined ethnic or religious rules and definitions. It is a trend that is the opposite of the democratic norms promoted by the United Nations and human rights groups. Whether promoted by extra-legal terrorist groups or ultra-conservative political parties, the movement is in the same intolerant direction. It is a movement to compress the rights of the individual. The result is the rise of political tensions inside countries, inside communities, and even inside families. Individuals must decide whether to abide by the rules of the state, of their religious order, or of their conscience. It is unfortunate that all three of these generally do not coincide. At the same time, these conflicting pressures are impacting foreign relations of these countries. The ethnic tensions in Myanmar with the Rohingya have attracted international criticism of both the pre-2021 government of Myanmar and Aung San Suu Kyi. China’s poor treatment of the Uighurs has led multinational corporations to rethink investments and production in the region. At the same time, there are religious and ethnic issues that have not been well studied and deserve attention. The cultural divide between a strongly Christian South Korea and an atheist North Korea increases with each passing year. What complications will this create for unification in the future? Will extremist terror groups continue to extend their internationalist ideologies into the nations of Asia? And how will the nationalist movements that are driving political change in Asia today impact regional tensions and conflict in the coming years? All of these questions are critical to our understanding of how international relations in Asia will develop in the coming decade.



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NOTES 1.  Daniel Kaufman, “Corruption Matters,” IMF Finance & Development 52, no. 3 (September 2015), https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2015/09/kaufmann.htm. 2. Massimo Tommasoli, “Rule of Law and Democracy: Addressing the Gap Between Policies and Practices,” United Nations Chronicle 49, no. 4 (December 2012), https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/rule-law-and-democracy-addressing -gap-between-policies-and-practices. 3.  Henrik Berglund, “Gender Relations and Democracy: The Conflict Between Hindu Nationalist and Secular Forces in Indian Civil Society,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 15, no. 2 (May 2009): 141–59, DOI: 10.1080/13537110902921172. 4.  Berglund, “Gender Relations,” 141–59. 5. Ibid. 6. Bhaswati Chatterjee, “Towards the Uniform Civil Code: A Secular or a Gender-Just Law?” Journal of Liberal Arts and Humanities 1, no. 1 (January 2020): 68–71, https://jlahnet.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/7.pdf. 7.  Bhaswati Chatterjee, “Towards the Uniform Civil Code,” 68–71. 8.  “India’s Muslim Neighbors Among 23 Countries That Have Banned Triple Talaq,” Hindustan Times, September 19, 2018, https://www.hindustantimes.com/india -news/india-s-muslim-neighbours-among-23-countries-that-have-banned-triple-talaq /story-J8b9HkOCwdMAIWyscwxZMK.html. 9.  Danish Raza, “What the Criminalization of Instant Divorce Means for India’s Muslims,” The Atlantic, August 4, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/international /archive/2019/08/india-triple-talaq/595414/. 10. “World Report 2019,” Human Rights Watch, https://www.hrw.org/world -report/2019/country-chapters/pakistan#. 11. Arash Heydari, Ali Teymoori, and Rose Trappes, “Honor Killing as a Dark Side of Modernity: Prevalence, Common Discourses, and a Critical View,” Social Science Information 60, no. 1 (2021): 86–106. 12.  Heydari, Teymoori, and Trappes, “Honor Killing,” 86–106. 13. “Forced Marriages and Forced Conversions in the Christian Community of Pakistan,” Movement for Solidarity and Peace, April 2014, https:// d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/msp/pages/162/attachments/original/1396724215 /MSP_Report_Forced_Marriages_and_Conversions_of_Christian_Women_in_Paki stan.pdf?1396724215. 14. “Imran Khan Criticized for Rape ‘Victim Blaming,’” BBC, April 7, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56660706. 15.  “Pakistan PM Imran Khan Says Never Blamed Rape Victims,” Al Jazeera, July 28, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/28/us-really-messed-up-in -afghanistan-pakistan-pm-khan. 16. Aleena Khan, “Pakistan: A Rising Women’s Movement Confronts a New Backlash,” United States Institute of Peace, March 17, 2021, https://www.usip.org /publications/2021/03/pakistan-rising-womens-movement-confronts-new-backlash. 17. Umar Farooq, “Pakistani Taliban Threaten Organizers of Women’s Day March,” Reuters, March 12, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan

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-womensday-backlash/pakistani-taliban-threaten-organisers-of-womens-day -march-idUSKBN2B42JL?il=0. 18. Asad Hashim, “Pakistan Police File ‘Blasphemy’ Case Against Feminist Marchers,” Al Jazeera, April 16, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/16 /pakistan-police-file-blasphemy-case-against-feminist-marchers. 19.  Khan, “Pakistan.” 20. Rina Chandran, “No Sewing Please, We’re Sex Workers: Thai Prostitutes Battle Stigma,” Reuters, May 15, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-thailand -women-sexworkers/no-sewing-please-were-sex-workers-thai-prostitutes-battle -stigma-idUSKCN1SL2Z0. 21.  Deena Guzder, “The Economics of Commercial Sexual Exploitation, Country: Thailand,” Pulitzer Center, August 25, 2009, https://pulitzercenter.org/stories /economics-commercial-sexual-exploitation. 22. “Sex Industry Assuming Massive Proportions in Southeast Asia,” International Labor Organization, August 19, 1998, https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the -ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_007994/lang—en/index.htm. 23.  “Sex Work as Work,” NSWP Global Network of Sex Work Projects, 2017, https://www.nswp.org/sites/nswp.org/files/policy_brief_sex_work_as_work_nswp _-_2017.pdf. 24.  Bernstein and Shih, “The Erotics of Authenticity.” 25.  Sam Okyere, “When Is Sex Work ‘Decent Work’?” OpenDemocracy, April 9, 2018, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/what -would-make-sex-work-decent-work/. 26.  “Sex Work,” NSWP Global Network of Sex Work Projects. 27.  Lucinda Joy Peach, “Buddhism and Human Rights in the Thai Sex Trade,” in Religious Fundamentalisms and the Human Rights of Women, ed. C. Howland (New York: Springer, 1999), 218. 28.  Sandra Avila, “Buddhism and Its Relation to Women and Prostitution in Thai Society” (MA diss., Florida International University, 2008). 29.  Peach, “Buddhism,” 218. 30.  Grisel d’Elena, “The Gender Problem of Buddhist Nationalism in Myanmar: The 969 Movement and Theravada Nuns” (MA dissertation, Florida International University, 2016). 31.  d’Elena, “Gender Problem.” 32.  Francis Wade, Myanmar’s Enemy Within (London: Zed Books, 2019), 170. 33.  Ibid., 171. 34.  Rachmah Ida and Muhammad Saud, “Female Circumcision and the Construction of Female Sexuality: A Study on Madurese in Indonesia,” Sexuality & Culture 24 (December 2020): 565, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-020-09732-6. 35.  “Medicalization of FGM in Indonesia,” Additional Submission to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child 66th Session, June 2014, https:// tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CRC/Shared%20Documents/IDN/INT_CRC_NGO _IDN_16628_E.pdf. 36. Kathryn Robinson, “Gender and Politics Post-New Order,” in Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Indonesia, ed. Robert W. Hefner (London: Taylor & Francis, 2018), 318.



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37.  “Indonesia: Dress Codes Discriminate Against Women, Girls,” Human Rights Watch, March 18, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/03/18/indonesia-dress -codes-discriminate-against-women-girls. 38. Azza Basarudin, Humanizing the Sacred: Sisters in Islam and the Struggle for Gender Justice in Malaysia (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016), 49. 39.  Abdul Rashid and Yufu Iguchi, “Female Genital Cutting in Malaysia: A Mixed Methods Study,” BMJ Open, April 1, 2019, https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmj open/9/4/e025078.full.pdf. 40. “Malaysia Seeks Stricter Sharia Laws for ‘Promoting LGBT Lifestyle,’” Reuters, June 25, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/malaysia-seeks -stricter-sharia-laws-promoting-lgbt-lifestyle-2021-06-24/. 41. Yuhui Li, “Women’s Movement and Change of Women’s Status in China,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 1, no. 1 (January 2000): 30–40, https:// vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1626&context=jiws. 42.  Li, “Women’s Movement,” 31. 43.  Ibid., 34. 44.  Helen Gao, “How Did Women Fare in China’s Communist Revolution?” The New York Times, September 25, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/opinion /women-china-communist-revolution.html. 45. Erin Hale, “China’s Communist Party at 100: Where Are the Women?” Al Jazeera, June 30, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/30/chinas-commu nist-party-at-100-where-are-the-women. 46. Qi Chen, “China’s New Civil Code Has Angered Feminists—The Chinese Communist Party Is Now Trying to Appease Them,” The Conversation, January 4, 2021, https://theconversation.com/chinas-new-civil-code-has-angered-feminists-the -chinese-communist-party-is-now-trying-to-appease-them-151165. 47. Chauncey Jung, “With New Divorce Rule, China Further Pushes ‘Family Values,’” The Diplomat, June 3, 2020, https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/with-new -divorce-rule-china-further-pushes-family-values/. 48. Sharon K. Hom, “Female Infanticide in China: The Human Rights Specter and Thoughts Toward (An)Other Vision,” Columbia Human Rights Law Review 23, no. 2 (July 1, 1992): 249. 49.  Isabelle Attané, “The Demographic Impact of a Female Deficit in China, 2000– 2050,” Population and Development Review 32, no. 4 (December 2006): 755–70. 50. Laetitia Lhomme, Siren Zhong, and Billie Du, “Demi Bride Trafficking: A Unique Trend of Human Trafficking from South-East Asia to China,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 22, no. 3 (April 2021): 28–39. 51.  Lhomme, Zhong, and Du, “Demi Bride,” 28–39. 52.  “Literacy Rate, Adult Female (% of Females Age 15 and Above),” World Bank Data, September 2020, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.LITR.FE.ZS. 53.  Maria A. Soloshcheva, “The Uyghur Terrorism: Phenomenon and Genesis,” Iran and the Caucasus 21, no. 4 (2017): 415–30. 54.  Soloshcheva, “Uyghur,” 417. 55.  Yee Lak Elliott Lee, “Behaviorist Fundamentalist Turns Radical: ETIM/TIP’s Islamic Fundamentalist Representations and Narratives,” Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (in Asia) 9, no. 4 (2015).

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56.  “Four Sentenced in China over Kunming Station Attack,” BBC, September 12, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-29170238. 57.  “US Removes Group Condemned by China from ‘Terror’ List,” Al Jazeera, November 7, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/7/us-removes-group -condemned-by-china-from-terror-list. 58.  Weijian Shan, “Xinjiang: What the West Doesn’t Tell You About China’s War on Terror,” The South China Morning Post, April 14, 2021, https://www.scmp.com /comment/opinion/article/3129325/xinjiang-what-west-doesnt-tell-you-about-chinas -war-terror. 59.  Soloshcheva, “Uyghur,” 421–22. 60. Carrie Gracie, “The Knife Attack That Changed Kunming,” BBC, July 16, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-28305109. 61.  Soloshcheva, “Uyghur,” 424. 62.  Sean R. Roberts, The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), 200. 63. Roberts, War on the Uyghurs, 202. 64.  Ibid., 212. 65.  Author interview with Uighur refugees, 2020. 66. Adrian Zenz, “‘Thoroughly Reforming Them Towards a Health Heart Attitude’: China’s Political Re-Education Campaign in Xinjiang,” Central Asian Survey 38, no. 1 (March 2019): 102–28. 67. Adrian Zenz, “China Has a New Plan to Tame Tibet,” New York Times, September 24, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/opinion/tibet-china-labor.html. 68.  “China’s ‘Bilingual Education’ Policy in Tibet,” Human Rights Watch, March 4, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/03/04/chinas-bilingual-education-policy -tibet/tibetan-medium-schooling-under-threat. 69. Chris Buckley, “Tibetan Who Spoke Out for Language Rights Is Freed from Chinese Prison,” New York Times, January 29, 2021, https://www.nytimes .com/2021/01/29/world/asia/tibet-china-tashi-wangchuk.html. 70.  Christophe Jaffrelot, Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism Is Changing India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 21. 71.  “Babri Mosque: India Court Acquits BJP Leaders in Demolition Case,” BBC, September 30, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-54318515. 72.  “India: Vigilante ‘Cow Protection’ Groups Attack Minorities,” Human Rights Watch, February 18, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/19/india-vigilante -cow-protection-groups-attack-minorities. 73.  “India: Vigilante,” Human Rights Watch. 74.  “Loss of Autonomy in Indian-Administered Jammu and Kashmir Threatens Minorities’ Rights—UN Independent Experts,” UN News, February 18, 2021, https:// news.un.org/en/story/2021/02/1085112. 75.  “India: Abuses Persist in Jammu and Kashmir,” Human Rights Watch, August 4, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/08/04/india-abuses-persist-jammu-and -kashmir. 76.  “India: Abuses,” Human Rights Watch.



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77.  Kathy Gannon, “Report Gives Pakistan Failing Grade on Human Rights,” Associated Press, May 1, 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/report -pakistan-failing-grade-human-rights-70448697. 78. Ismail Dilawar and Kamran Haider, “Protests Spur Pakistan to Talk with Extremist Group It Banned,” Bloomberg, April 19, 2021, https://www.bloomberg .com/news/articles/2021-04-19/protests-spur-pakistan-to-talk-with-group-it-banned -on-thursday. 79.  “Asia Bibi: Pakistani Christian Woman Breaks Silence in New Book,” BBC, January 30, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51317380. 80.  Saad Sayeed and Drazen Jorgic, “Pakistan Islamists Warn of ‘Terrible Consequences’ of Blasphemy Appeal,” Reuters, October 8, 2018, https://www.reuters.com /article/us-pakistan-blasphemy/pakistan-islamists-warn-of-terrible-consequences-of -blasphemy-appeal-idUSKCN1MI0NP. 81.  Charlotte Mitchell and Reuters, “Pakistan PM Imran Khan Calls for Muslim Countries to Force Western Governments to Criminalize Insulting the prophet and Calls for Trade Boycott,” Dailymail.com, April 19, 2021, https://www.dailymail .co.uk/news/article-9488373/Imran-Khan-calls-Muslim-countries-lobby-West-crimi nalise-insulting-Prophet.html. 82.  “Back in Line,” The Economist 439, no. 9247 (May 29, 2021). 83.  “Holey Artisan Café: Bangladesh Islamists Sentenced to Death for 2016 Attack,” BBC, November 27, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50570243. 84. Asif Muztaba Hassan, “Bangladesh Cracks Down on Hardline Islamist Group,” The Diplomat, May 19, 2021. 85. Wade, Myanmar’s Enemy Within. 86.  “Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar,” Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, September 2018, https://www .ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/FFM-Myanmar/A_HRC_39_64.pdf. 87.  “Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar,” Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. 88. Ibid. 89.  Lara Jakes, “Genocide Designation for Myanmar Tests Biden’s Human Rights Policy,” New York Times, June 30, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/us /politics/biden-genocide-rohingya-myanmar.html. 90. “Rohingya,” Human Rights Watch, https://www.hrw.org/tag/rohingya#. 91.  Niklas Foxeus, “The Buddha Was a Devoted Nationalist: Buddhist Nationalism, Ressentiment, and Defending Buddhism in Myanmar,” Religion, Vol. 49, Issue 4 (2019), 661–90. 92. Ibid. 93. Wade, Myanmar’s Enemy Within, 170. 94. Libby Hogan, “‘Slow Genocide’: Myanmar’s Invisible War on the Kachin Christian Minority,” The Guardian, May 13, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com /world/2018/may/14/slow-genocide-myanmars-invisible-war-on-the-kachin-christian -minority. 95.  Miemie Winn Byrd, professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, interview with the author, September 4, 2021.

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96. Wade, Myanmar’s Enemy Within, 174. 97. “Rohingya Refugees Reject Aung San Suu Kyi’s Genocide Denial,” Associated Press, December 11, 2019, https://apnews.com/article/europe-asia-pacific -religion-genocides-courts-8167ace2d4aa10582730460e29ea9a9c. 98.  Robert W. Hefner, “The Religious Field,” in Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Indonesia, ed. Robert W. Hefner (London: Taylor & Francis, 2018), 217–18. 99.  “Court Sentences Jakarta Governor Ahok to Two Years Jail for Blasphemy,” DW.com, May 5, 2017, https://www.dw.com/en/court-sentences-jakarta-governor -ahok-to-two-years-jail-for-blasphemy/a-38761684; Kate Lamb, “Jakarta Governor Ahok Sentenced to Two Years in Prison for Blasphemy,” The Guardian, May 9, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/09/jakarta-governor-ahok-found-guilty -of-blasphemy-jailed-for-two-years. 100.  James Chin, “Malaysia Takes a Turn to the Right, and Many of Its People Are Worried,” The Conversation, March 4, 2020, https://theconversation.com/malaysia -takes-a-turn-to-the-right-and-many-of-its-people-are-worried-132865. 101.  Marco Ferrarese, “Cancellation Puts Spotlight on Malaysia’s Cultural Conservatism,” Al Jazeera, July 7, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/7 /malaysias-performers-dance-with-conservatism. 102.  Mustafa Akyol, “The Consequences of Speaking Out Against Religious Illiberalism in Malaysia,” Literary Hub, June 22, 2021, https://lithub.com/the-conse quences-of-speaking-out-against-religious-illiberalism-in-malaysia/. 103. Sean Augustin, “Keep Religion and State Separate, Says Scholar,” Free Malaysia Today, July 23, 2021, https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/na tion/2021/07/23/religion-can-become-a-tool-for-the-state-if-not-separated-warns -scholar/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=pmd_434fa4905b60d2a13e0fb2a89d911d4ae64 93a42-1627585577-0-gqNtZGzNAo2jcnBszQii. 104. The Association of Religion Data Archives (The ARDA), “PhilippinesMajor World Religions,” https://www.thearda.com/internationalData/countries/Coun try_178_2.asp. 105. “Philippines: ‘Battle of Marawi’ Leaves Trail of Death and Destruction,” Amnesty International, November 17, 2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest /news/2017/11/philippines-battle-of-marawi-leaves-trail-of-death-and-destruction/. 106. “The Philippines: Militancy and the New Bangsamoro,” International Crisis Group, June 27, 2019, https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia /philippines/301-philippines-militancy-and-new-bangsamoro. 107.  Cristina Maza, “Malaysia’s Reckoning with the Islamic State,” September 3, 2017, The Diplomat, https://thediplomat.com/2017/08/malaysias-reckoning-with -the-islamic-state/. 108.  Amira Jadoon, Nakissa Jahanbani, and Charmaine Willis, “Rising in the East Report,” Combating Terrorism Center, July 2020, https://ctc.usma.edu/wp-content /uploads/2020/07/Rising-in-the-East-Report-1.pdf.

Part Six

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Chapter Sixteen

Asian IR in the 2020s Factors for the Future D avid S hambaugh

No one has a crystal ball to predict the future,1 particularly for a region as complex and with as many moving parts as Asia. What this concluding chapter does, therefore, is to peer into the medium-term future (next five years from 2022–27) and to briefly discuss what I see to be the five main issues that could impact the entire Asian region. The discussion will naturally be conjectural, exploring the different dimensions and implications of each issue. By definition, these issues are not fixed or “static”—rather they are the dynamic ones which will inevitably change. Recognizing this inherent fluidity, any analysis of the future of Asian IR must begin by recognizing the one key variable that will never change: geography. China will remain at the continental center of Asia (bordering fourteen countries by land and five by sea); Taiwan will always remain ninety miles off the coast of China’s mainland; the Korean Peninsula will always be contiguous to China; Japan will always be China’s neighbor (and vice versa); rivals India and Pakistan and China and Vietnam will always share common borders; the high Himalayan mountain range will always separate (and buffer) India from China; the narrow Malacca Strait isthmus will remain the only passageway from the Indian Ocean into the South China Sea; the vast Pacific Ocean will always separate the United States from Asia; and the region will always be divided between continental and maritime Asian states. These geographic factors are not going to change— and they each have implications for regional IR. Also, many of the rivalries in the region are born in part out of close or contiguous geographic proximity and are thus cemented into the regional IR system: China-Japan, China-Vietnam, China-India, Vietnam-Cambodia, China-Taiwan, South Korea–North Korea, South Korea–Japan, MalaysiaSingapore, Indonesia-Malaysia, and India-Pakistan. Thus, to some degree, 425

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in these cases, geography embeds tensions into the regional order. On the other hand, these contiguous neighbors/rivals cannot escape geographic reality, and thus it forces each to have to learn how to coexist without going to war. This reveals rational human agency and argues against geographic or geostrategic determinism—but it also means that many of these rivalries remain on “low boil” beneath the surface, and always have the potential to erupt again. Thus, viewed this way, geography is simultaneously a static and a fluid, volatile, and dynamic factor. ISSUES AFFECTING ASIA’S FUTURE The following five issues represent my own assessment of the main factors and fluid variables that will most impact the evolution of IR in Asia in the medium term (through 2027). Some of these issues are more systemic in nature, while others are potential flashpoints that could suddenly erupt into a catastrophic conflict. China’s Posture toward the Region How China evolves domestically and how it behaves externally will have an outsized impact on the Asian regional order. The future of China may be the most important variable affecting the future of the Indo-Pacific region. This is both because of the sheer magnitude of China across many dimensions— economic, technological, demographic, societal, military—as well its central geographic location. It is also due to the fact that, under its current leader Xi Jinping, the region and the world have witnessed a much more “assertive” China (as discussed in Phillip Saunders’ chapter). This new assertiveness has been evident in the steady but dramatic buildup of its military forces, with increasingly far-flung exercises away from its borders (including in Central Asia, the Mediterranean, Western Pacific, Baltic Sea, Indian Ocean, Gulf of Aden, Arctic Circle, Taiwan Strait, East China Sea, and South China Sea). China’s island-building and military deployments in the South China Sea, and its provocative military aggressiveness (air and naval) against Taiwan are highly destabilizing. China’s assertiveness has also become manifest in Beijing’s increased use of coercive economic statecraft against a variety of countries (e.g., Australia, Japan, Mongolia, the Philippines, South Korea, Sweden, Norway, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Canada, and others). It has also been seen and heard in the increasingly acerbic, angry, nationalistic public diplomacy by Chinese



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official spokespersons and diplomats—which has become known as “wolf warriorism” (so named after the Chinese action film Wolf Warrior 2).2 Chinese official media and tabloids like Global Times have also escalated their nationalistic rhetoric, while popular nationalism is regularly vented on social media.3 The draconian crackdown on Hong Kong’s freedoms following the 2020 adoption of the National Security Law has both silenced the territory and stunned the world (it has also made the 24 million citizens of Taiwan even more resistant to the mainland and has given the lie to the “one country, two systems” framework). China’s assertiveness has also become notable in increasingly pervasive “influence” and “united front” operations worldwide.4 Within Asia there are growing signs that Beijing is trying to create a sphere of influence and co-opt Southeast Asian states in particular into its regional sphere of influence (as discussed in chapters 1, 5, and 8). These elements of Beijing’s external assertiveness have very much been a central feature of Xi Jinping’s rule, as he has buried Deng Xiaoping’s grand strategy to “bide time and hide brightness” (韬光养晦). Thus, as China’s comprehensive power continually grows, and the Chinese Communist Party tightens its grip on power, Beijing is feeling more and more emboldened to assert itself in the region and worldwide. We can therefore expect continued assertiveness, possibly even aggression, in the years ahead. Domestically, it can be anticipated that the Chinese Communist Party will remain in power politically, and it is also likely that (barring a coup, health setback, or black swan event) Xi Jinping will remain in power indefinitely (likely into the 2030s). Xi has fully consolidated his power and appears to be in full command. This is not at all to say that there is not discontent within China (and within the CCP itself) over the nature of Xi’s rule, but discontent is not the same thing as opposition (and certainly organized opposition). Xi and the internal security services have splintered, decimated, and intimidated any potential opposition from coalescing. One should always be careful in making predictions concerning Chinese politics, as there is so much which lies beneath the surface that cannot be seen. Chinese politics also has a long track record of purges (including under Xi). When carried out systemically against large cohorts of people, purges create enemies (who thirst for vengeance). But, at the time of this writing in 2022, Xi seems to be all-powerful and highly likely to stay in power for many years to come, even though he has made many enemies during his decade in power. Economically, China’s incredible growth trajectory can also be anticipated to continue, and this will continue to exert an inexorable gravitational pull toward China from around the region. To be sure, China’s growth rate has been slowing, but it is still strong and the gargantuan size of its economy

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gives China an outsized regional and global impact. China will surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy during this decade (it already has in PPP terms). Even with a low-end projected growth rate of 4 percent, China will have an aggregate GDP of $16.75 trillion by 2025; at 5 percent growth it would total $18.8 trillion; and a robust (but not inconceivable) rate of 6 percent growth would result in a GDP of $19.51 trillion.5 Extrapolated out to 2040, these alternative rates of growth would result in China’s GDP reaching $30.16 trillion, $37.59 trillion, and $46.74 trillion respectively. The world has never witnessed a national economy anywhere near that size. These projected figures will only add to China’s comprehensive power, as they will afford a continually growing revenue base that can be spent on social services, education, technological R&D, and military expenditure. I already noted in chapter 1 the projections for China’s likely spending on science and technology research and development. Chapters 5 and 14, by Phillip Saunders and Bates Gill respectively, discuss the prospects for China’s continued military modernization—and, assuming that China maintains its defense spending at roughly 3 percent of GDP, that would make for an (official) annual military budget in 2025 of $542 billion and $1.12 trillion by 2040. To be sure, all is not rosy as China’s economy does exhibit a number of negative and cautionary features: slowing productivity growth; creeping inflation; demographic changes with increasing numbers of retirees and lowering numbers of people entering the labor force; a severely overleveraged property sector; ballooning private, corporate, and local government debt; bloated state-owned enterprises; inefficient allocation of resources; heavy dependence on imported raw materials and energy inputs; an irrational financial system; a still-subsidized currency; and other maladies.6 These are all serious structural imbalances, to be certain. The debt burden is particularly worrisome—as any time a nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio is more than 200 percent it has entered a danger zone. China’s ratio today is estimated to be 320 percent! As in Chinese politics, one should never assume the status quo economically will last in perpetuity. Yet, the overall size and macro depth of the Chinese economy cannot be disputed. If its 1.5 billion population continues to increase their consumption and consumer spending, with continued world-leading levels of household savings, this will be a powerful engine of domestic and global growth. The Chinese government has also repeatedly demonstrated a capacity for recalibration and course correction. There is no real reason to doubt its continued robust growth and accumulation of national power. As noted above, this will continue to exert an inexorable “pull” effect by China on other national economies in Asia—making them more and more dependent on China, which Beijing will leverage toward its other strategic, diplomatic, and political priorities.



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Flashpoint: Taiwan Taiwan is a ticking time bomb sitting in the middle of East Asia. Unless mainland China (PRC) continues to accept the “status quo” of indefinite “separation” and de facto autonomy for the island, the risks of the bomb detonating are steadily increasing. Unfortunately, Beijing has shown less and less capacity to tolerate the “status quo” and has begun to escalate military pressure against the island. During one four-day period in October 2021, coinciding with its national day, China’s air force flew a record 149 sorties—fighters, bombers, anti-submarine, and airborne reconnaissance aircraft—into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), with a record fifty-six in one day.7 The People’s Liberation Army has also stepped-up mock amphibious landings on Taiwan’s offshore islands, while the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) regularly conducts live-fire exercises in the Taiwan Strait and circumnavigates the island with its ships and submarines. Bates Gill’s chapter notes Pentagon estimates that in China’s military regions opposite Taiwan, the PLA has amassed more than 1,000 land-based ballistic and cruise missiles, some 100 major surface vessels (including one aircraft carrier), 40 submarines, 600 fighter jets, and 250 bombers and ground attack aircraft. Altogether, Beijing has steadily ratcheted up the military pressure on the island since 2020. As a result, it is no longer far-fetched to conceive of a range of higher-escalation military moves against Taiwan, including potential blockades, cyberattacks, missile strikes, even an all-out invasion. It must be understood, however, that this precarious state of affairs is essentially a political problem with military consequences. Its sources lie in the still unconcluded civil war between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan); the PRC’s claim of “one China” (of which Taiwan is a part); the predominant sentiment of 24 million Taiwan citizens that they wish to retain their autonomy (the “status quo”) and want no part of the PRC’s desire for “reunification”; and the growing sentiment for sovereign independence on the island. For its part, Taiwan’s security is de facto unwritten and supported by the United States, which continues to sell significant amounts of weaponry for its “self-defense,” commensurate with the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 (although the TRA does not explicitly commit the US to defend Taiwan). Added to this volatile mix is the sense in Beijing of both impatience with the existing state of affairs combined with a growing confidence and nationalism. This is a toxic cocktail. It has become particularly pronounced in the wake of Xi Jinping’s domination of all political power and the political subduing of Hong Kong since 2020. No specific timeline for Taiwan has been set, but Xi has said that “reunification” cannot be “postponed forever.”

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Thus, after many years of relative dormancy and assumptions that the “status quo” can be sustained indefinitely, now there is a growing sense of uncertainty that Beijing will continue to allow the de facto autonomy of Taiwan to continue. Shelley Rigger’s chapter explores in much greater detail the complexities and difficult balancing act that both Taipei and Beijing are navigating vis-à-vis each other, while Bates Gill’s chapter further unpacks the precarious military balance across the Taiwan Strait. The Impact of the US-China Major Power Rivalry on Regional States The principal systemic feature of current and future international relations in Asia is the accelerating comprehensive rivalry between the United States and China.8 This single feature is overarching and affects the entire region. Every Asian nation is caught in the middle, to greater or lesser extents. Indeed, Sino-American rivalry is a global phenomenon—but it is most acute and intense in Asia, where it is intensifying and will likely be the most influential feature of Asian IR in the years ahead. There are many dimensions to the rivalry. My purpose here is not to discuss these dimensions, as that has been done in detail elsewhere,9 but suffice to say that there is hardly any element of the bilateral US-China relationship that is not characterized by friction and competition: political, ideological, commercial, technological, education and research, military, diplomatic, security, soft power, and other domains. The very fact that the bilateral relationship is so pervasively competitive, and that cooperation between the two sides has become so minimal and dysfunctional, results in frictions and tensions that spill over and affect all other nations—which are all trying to maintain ties with both powers. No Asian country wishes to exclusively “choose” between America and China. Thus, most adopt classic “hedging” strategies that permit maximum independence, maneuverability, and opportunities to benefit from relations with both powers. Cheng-Chwee Kuik’s chapter describes in detail how Southeast Asian states practice this hedging behavior,10 while Scott Snyder’s explores South Korea’s delicate balancing act. Some Asian states, though, are not practicing hedging (essentially an equidistance strategy based on neutralist impulses); rather, they are “tilting,” “aligning,” or “allying” toward one or the other power. Australia and Japan are America’s closest allies in the region, and both have opted to tightly bind their China strategies and policies with their American ally (despite continuing commercial ties with China). However, the other three formal US allies in Asia—South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand— are practicing hedging strategies and are not allying with the US when



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it comes to China (this is a source of growing concern and irritation in Washington). In fact, it is fair to say that, in the case of Thailand, Bangkok is now closer to Beijing than to Washington.11 The same could be said for the Philippines during Rodrigo Duterte’s term as president. Thus, these two US allies are actually aligning with Beijing. South Korea practices more adroit hedging behavior—as Seoul is reluctant to endanger its alliance with the US, which is vital to its security vis-à-vis North Korea—but, nonetheless, South Korea maintains close and extensive ties with China (see Scott Snyder’s chapter for details).12 Then there is the case of Cambodia, which not only aligns with Beijing but has become a virtual client state of China’s. Pakistan is not far behind. India, Vietnam, and Singapore, on the other hand, are strongly aligned with the US, although they are not formal allies. Indonesia hedges.13 Brunei, Laos, and Myanmar tilt toward Beijing. Thus, it is a complex regional chessboard—but every single country feels the pressure from the US-China rivalry. Beyond the pressure and divisive impact on individual Asian states, there is a broader regional systemic dynamic at work—namely, the impact on the seven-decades-long “hub and spokes” alliance system in Asia. The changes in this system are part and parcel of the broader diminution of American power and influence in the region, as discussed in the chapter by Robert Sutter. American power and former primacy are now challenged and diminished, he argues. As just noted, the Thai and Philippine legs of this regional system have been significantly weakened in recent years—while China has both contributed to undermining, and has taken advantage of, these weakened allied relationships. On the other hand, the Australian and Japanese legs remain firm anchors of the US alliance system. They have, in fact, been strengthened. The AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States) defense arrangement announced in 2021 was a significant step forward for Australia, as its relations with China have significantly deteriorated since 2018.14 Thus, there is a de facto “fracturing” occurring among the five American allies—the consequence being a dilution of the system that has undergirded regional security since the 1950s. The activation of the “Quad” among the United States, Japan, Australia, and India has also been a major step toward aligning the major regional powers together in an implicit anti-China grouping. The history of the Quad concept dates to 2007 when then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe coined the term and unveiled the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. The Quad continued in a rather dormant mode until the Biden administration took office in 2021 and reactivated it. The Quad is now a cornerstone of “Indo-Pacific” security cooperation, but also in diplomacy, cultural exchanges, science and medicine, and other spheres.15 As of this writing in 2022, the Quad remains more aspirational

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than an accomplished reality—but it has real potential to supplement, perhaps even supplant, the “hub-and-spokes” US alliance system. Meanwhile, as the United States tries to reorient the Asian region to counter China, Beijing is not sitting idle. It too has been beavering away in both strengthening its own bilateral ties throughout the region, as well as increasing its influence in Asian multilateral organizations. China’s vaunted Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has also been a significant feature of its regional diplomacy and commercial linkages. Through concerted efforts, particularly in Southeast Asia, China has made significant inroads and have expanded China’s regional influence.16 Yet, as Phillip Saunders’ and Cheng-Chwee Kuik’s chapters and other studies suggest,17 China is also meeting with increasing resistance and pushback, while regional perceptions of China have grown increasingly suspicious and negative. This has been particularly notable since 2018 and is evident in regional surveys conducted by the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS)-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. The 2021 annual survey indicated that 72.3 percent of those polled across Southeast Asia were “worried about China’s growing regional economic influence”; 88.6 percent were “concerned about China’s growing strategic clout”; 46.3 percent agreed that “China is a revisionist power with intentions to turn Southeast Asia into its sphere of influence”; while 63 percent had “little or no confidence in China.”18 China may thus be becoming its own worst enemy in the region—through overreaching, overstepping, bullying, and alienating its neighbors. China’s grab for regional hegemony will trigger what I call the “iron law of international relations”: counterbalancing. The more aggressive and expansive a major power becomes, the more others are likely to bond and align together to counterbalance and constrain it. This can occasionally produce some unusual bedfellows (the age-old axiom that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”). As noted above, the United States, Japan, and Australia are showing overt signs of attempting to actively counterbalance China. India and Vietnam are showing strong indications as well. The rise of regional “middle powers” are also obstacles to China extending a sphere of influence over the region.19 While most other countries throughout the region still attempt to “hedge,” and a few are tilting toward Beijing, the growing regional tendency at present is toward “soft counterbalancing.” This will be a key variable to watch in Asian international relations in the future. ASEAN “Centrality” and the Future of Regional Multilateralism As Sino-American strategic competition continues to pull at regional states, their autonomy and agency comes under increasing pressure. This affects



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them not only individually, but also collectively. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Southeast Asia. There, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) cherishes and prizes its vaunted “centrality.” This proclaimed policy and core operating principle means that ASEAN sees itself as the main organizer and driver of regional multilateralism. As Cheng-Chwee Kuik’s chapter elaborates, beginning in 1993, ASEAN began to initiate a series of pan-regional institutions with itself as the facilitator and organizer. This included the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1994, ASEAN+3 (China, Japan, South Korea) in 1997, East Asian Summit (EAS) in 2005, and ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM+) in 2010. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) arrangement, a Free Trade Agreement initiated in November 2020, now includes fifteen members and accounts for 30 percent of global GDP. RCEP was also originally an ASEAN initiative. ASEAN’s multilateral efforts have prized inclusivity and have managed to keep the organization relevant to other states outside of Southeast Asia. As Professor Kuik observes, “In retrospect, such an approach has created an inclusive, institutionalized (as distinct from ad hoc) platform for forging region-wide cooperation, while enabling the regional states to manage their differences and mitigate shared challenges.” Yet, with the intensification of US-China great power competition, and the formation of new ad hoc groupings—most notably the Quad—ASEAN’s centrality is in danger of being significantly diminished.20 Truth be told, ASEAN has long struggled with relevancy. Its internal processes and ways of interacting with other states are laboriously slow and encumbered by an obsession with reaching 100 percent consensus before interstate agreements can be reached—and by the time they are, the language is so watered down and anodyne as to lack substance and relevance. ASEAN-organized meetings drag on for days, often punctuated by rounds of golf and lengthy dinners. Yet, the United States, Canada, the middle powers of the Indo-Pacific region, and even the European Union, all play along and participate. As ineffectual as they are in solving problems, the aforementioned meetings do offer opportunities to declare national positions in a multinational setting, to ameliorate misperceptions and tensions, and for heads of state, and foreign and defense ministers to meet. The East Asian Summit is particularly valuable for providing opportunities for “bilats” (bilateral one-on-one meetings among national leaders). In the 1990s and early 2000s there seemed to be considerable momentum toward regional multilateralism (as discussed in the previous two editions of this volume). In addition to ASEAN-led institutions, the region also witnessed the creation of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM),

$ C

LMI

Japan South Korea

Burma Cambodia Laos

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Source: US Mission to ASEAN, https://asean.usmission.gov/our-relationship/policy-history/.

Pacific Islands Forum Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Lower Mekong Initiative Friends of the Lower Mekong

P C $ S

PIF: SCO: APEC: LMI: FLM:

U.S.-ASEAN

United States

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S Chile Hong Kong, China Chinese Taipei Mexico Peru

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Kiribati PIF $ P S Palau Solomon Islands Nauru Tonga Micronesia Marshall Islands Niue Cook Islands Samoa Vanuatu Tuvalu Fiji

Papua New Guinea

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Acronyms: ASEAN: Association of South East Asian Nations ADMM+: ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Mechanism Plus EAS: East Asia Summit ARF: ASEAN Regional Forum SAARC: South Asia Assciation for Regional Cooperation EAMF: Expanded ASEAN Maritime Forum

P $ C S

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Figure 16.1.  Asia-Pacific Regional Organizations

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North Korea $ C Mongolia Afghanistan ARF Timor-Leste Bhutan P S Maldives EAS P S $ C Bangladesh Nepal EAMF ADMM+ Pakistan P $ S S Sri Lanka

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Asia Pacific Regional Organizations



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the Forum for East Asia–Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC), the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC), the Pacific Island Forum (PIF), the Council on East Asian Community (CEAC), the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD) on Asian security. These organizations began to sprout like bamboo shoots in an Asian monsoon, and many still exist today in a complex overlapping architecture. However, by the second decade of the 2000s, the growth of these organizations had slowed and when they convened their meetings were hardly noticed. As a result, the earlier optimism for Asian multilateralism has diminished. Whether Indo-Pacific states will be able to reinvigorate the existing institutional architecture and breathe new life into these bodies is an open question to monitor over the coming years. For its part, ASEAN itself is also struggling. Its inability to resolve the nettlesome and dangerous South China Sea disputes, the Rohingya persecution and refugee crisis (as discussed in Rollie Lal’s chapter), and the return to repressive military rule in Myanmar following the February 2021 coup d’état, are all glaring examples of the ineffectiveness of ASEAN to keep its own house in order and deal with egregious acts and regional dangers. As I analyzed in my book Where Great Powers Meet: America and China in Southeast Asia, the intensifying US-China rivalry is placing considerable pressure on member states and the institution itself. On the other hand, ASEAN celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2017, it enacted a new charter in 2008,21 and it established the ASEAN community in 2015 (based on the three pillars of the ASEAN Political-Security Community, Economic Community, and SocioCultural Community).22 Indeed, much has been accomplished in its fifty-plus years of existence.23 There remains a commitment among the member states to carry on—mainly because without the organization they would all be left on their own facing even greater vulnerabilities, but also because the founding ideals still resonate among most members. ASEAN is not just a product of geographic proximity, but it is very much driven by a series of post-colonial “constructivist” ideals (as discussed in Amitav Acharya’s chapter). At the end of the day, although Asia’s multilateral architecture remains complicated, rather ad hoc, and has lost some of its earlier momentum, it is still better for regional international relations to have this construct than not. These overlapping institutions may not solve many problems, but they do ameliorate them. They bring nations—and their leaders and senior officials—together. They clarify positions and reduce misperceptions. While primarily serving as convening forums, they can also induce consensus. And they produce constraints on national rivalries and anarchical tendencies in regional IR. Thus, much better to have them than not.

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Flashpoint: The Korean Peninsula Last, but by no means least, when looking over the horizon at possibilities that have potential to disrupt Asia’s future, we must note the continuing— and deepening—dangers of North Korea. Victor Cha and Ellen Kim’s chapter provides a superb overview of the history and current state of North Korea, its repressive regime, and its enigmatic leader Kim Jung-un (Kim 3.0). Scott Snyder’s chapter also provides additional detail and context of South Korea’s constant dilemmas of trying to maintain peace on the peninsula and manage its erratic northern neighbor. Both chapters note the on-again/offagain efforts by Seoul and Washington to engage Pyongyang to freeze and dismantle its nuclear weapons development program, cease its provocative military buildup and other aggressive actions abroad (including kidnappings and assassinations), and to engage peacefully with its neighbors. The Chinese and Japanese governments have also shared these goals. These efforts date back more than two decades to the launch of South Korea’s “sunshine policy” in 1998. American government officials—ranging from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s visit to Pyongyang in 2000 thorough a series of intermediaries and finally to President Donald Trump’s three summits with Kim Jung-un during 2018–19—have also directly engaged with the North Korean regime. Beijing also convened six rounds of the Six-Party Talks from 2003 to 2009. All of these denuclearization and deconfliction efforts have come to naught. Meanwhile, North Korea has continued to build up its considerable conventional military and its inventory of nuclear warheads and ballistic missile delivery systems. In 2018 North Korea was believed to have between twenty and thirty assembled nuclear warheads and enough fissile material for thirty to sixty more, according to an authoritative NGO.24 As of January 2020, it was estimated that its active stockpile of nuclear warheads had grown to thirty to forty.25 In 2017 North Korea tested a thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb with an explosive yield of up to 300 kilotons. The regime has also stockpiled thousands of tons of debilitating chemical and biological agents, which could be delivered from planes, missiles, or long-range artillery. Perhaps most threatening has been the Kim regime’s unrelenting buildup of a range of ballistic missiles (see figure 10.2). These range from short-range Scud missiles, to cruise missiles, a variety of intermediate range ballistic missiles, intercontinental missiles (capable of reaching North America or Europe), and a new hypersonic missile (first tested in 2021). These are solid-fueled missiles mounted on mobile launchers, which can be easily hidden and quickly fired. In addition to annual parades when these weapons and troops are on display, Kim Jung-un oversaw a special exhibition of its



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missiles in October 2021, warning that North Korea now possessed a “world class defense capability.”26 Since coming to power, the Kim regime has been on a sustained course to build up these threatening capabilities, pausing only intermittently during the Trump administration. North Korea also provocatively tests these missiles by firing them into the Sea of Japan and Western Pacific Ocean. The region and the world have grown somewhat accustomed to these highly provocative and dangerous military actions by the Kim regime, inducing a kind of false complacency. North Korea remains an explosive flashpoint in regional security, with devastating potential consequences for Northeast Asia. There is no reason for complacency, and any consideration of possible future variables in Asian international relations must keep a constant eye on North Korea. A DYNAMIC BUT VOLATILE REGION Taken together, these five future variables and the preceding fifteen chapters present a composite picture of an extremely complex and dynamic—but also very volatile and potentially dangerous—region. Indeed, there are many other factors that one could add to the volatile mix: the South China Sea and East China Sea disputes between China and its neighbors; supply chain disruptions in the regional economy (which have global consequences); considerable human rights concerns in a variety of countries (as are discussed in Rollie Lal’s chapter); an aging population in all Northeast Asian countries; the China-Russia partnership; looming leadership transitions in several states; and the constant potential for military accidents occurring among rival militaries. These are also important variables which will impact the region over the medium-term. Understanding the extraordinary complexities in Asian international relations today and into the future thus requires (as I noted in the introductory chapter) a multifaceted, multilevel, and multinational set of analytical perspectives. The region is extremely complex and complicated. Like the proverbial Indian blind men feeling different parts of the elephant, analysts will only see partial elements of the regional system and order depending on their foci. This raises an ongoing concern of mine—namely, how we train students to study Asian IR. Unfortunately, the field of Asian IR is highly “balkanized” and fragmented by national and sub-regional specialists: scholars of Chinese foreign policy, Japanese foreign policy, the two Koreas, Southeast Asia, Australasia, India and South Asia, and so on. This is not a new problem—it dates back decades, but has become worse over time. By “worse” I mean atomized—we have a considerable number of specialists in each of the aforementioned sub-

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areas, but they are subsets of the whole. We have lots of specialists on trees, but not the forest. As a field, we (at least in the United States) are not training regionalists. We have a lot of country specialists but not real regionalists. Moreover, “Asian Studies” has become an amalgam of individual country and sub-regional studies, and the field is not truly regional. Just examine the annual programs of the Association of Asian Studies, book publications, or faculty profiles to validate this observation. I also know enough about the teaching of IR and Asia in other Asian countries to know that this is not a unique American problem (the Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific/Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, and Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University are exemplary exceptions to this general rule). So, in closing this third edition of the International Relations of Asia, I offer a plea to my academic colleagues to reexamine how we think about and teach about Asia—and to get out of our niche country comfort zones and push ourselves (and our students) to wrestle with the extraordinary complexities of the Indo-Pacific and Asian regions. It will be a worthy endeavor. NOTES 1.  As the great American baseball player and pundit Yogi Berra famously and understatedly said: “It’s tough to make predictions—especially about the future.” 2.  See Peter Martin, China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 3.  See Peter Gries, “Nationalism, Social Influences, and Chinese Foreign Policy,” in China and the World, ed. David Shambaugh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 63–84. 4.  See, for example, Clive Hamilton and Mereike Ohlberg, Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping the World (London: One World Publications, 2020); Clive Hamilton, Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia (Sydney: Hardie Grant Books, 2018); Larry Diamond and Orville Schell, eds., Chinese Influence and American Interests (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2019); Anne-Marie Brady, Magic Weapons: China’s Political Influence Activities Under Xi Jinping, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/for_website_magicweaponsanne-mariesbradyseptember2017.pdf. 5.  Calculations based on 2017 GDP of $12.24 trillion. 6.  See Logan Wright, Lauren Gloudeman, and Daniel Rosen, The China Economic Risk Matrix (New York: The Rhodium Group, 2020); https://rhg.com/research/china -risk-matrix/. 7.  See “Too Close for Comfort: China Is Ratcheting Up Military Pressure on Taiwan,” The Economist, October 9, 2021, https://www.economist.com/china/2021/10/09 /china-is-ratcheting-up-military-pressure-on-taiwan.



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8. See Ashley J. Tellis, Alison Szalwinski, and Michael Wills, eds., Strategic Asia 2020: US-China Competition for Global Influence (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2020); David Shambaugh, ed., Tangled Titans: The United States and China (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). 9.  See, for example, Evan S. Medeiros, ed., Managing Strategic Competition: Rethinking US-China Relations in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2022); The Aspen Institute, The Struggle for Power: US-China Relations in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute, 2020). 10.  Also see my Where Great Powers Meet: America and China in Southeast Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). 11.  See Benjamin Zawacki, Thailand: Shifting Ground Between the US and a Rising China (London: Zed Books, 2017). 12.  Some analysts argue that the US-ROK alliance is deeply troubled. See Jennifer Lind and Daryl G. Press, “Five Futures for a Troubled Alliance,” Korea Institute for Defense Analysis, September 2021, https://www.kida.re.kr/frt/board/frtNormal BoardDetail.do?sidx=706&idx=2600&depth=3&searchCondition=&searchKeyword =&pageIndex=1&lang=en. 13.  See Daniel Novotny, Torn Between America and China: Elite Perceptions and Indonesian Foreign Policy (Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2010). 14. “Enter AUKUS,” The Economist, September 2021, https://www.economist .com/briefing/2021/09/25/aukus-reshapes-the-strategic-landscape-of-the-indo-pacific. 15.  Sheila A. Smith, “The Quad in the Indo-Pacific: What to Know,” Council on Foreign Relations, May 27, 2021, https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/quad-indo-pacific -what-know. 16.  See, in particular, the two excellent books by Sebastian Strangio, In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020); and Murray Hiebert, Under Beijing’s Shadow: Southeast Asia’s China Challenge (Lanham, MD, and Washington, DC: Rowman & Littlefield and CSIS, 2020). Also see Lowell Dittmer and Ngeow Chow Bing, eds., Southeast Asia and China: A Contest in Mutual Socialization (Singapore: World Scientific Press, 2017). 17.  See Audrye Wong, “How Not to Win Allies and Influence Geopolitics: China’s Self-Defeating Economic Statecraft,” Foreign Affairs 100, no. 3 (May–June 2021); Luke Patey, How China Loses: The Pushback Against Chinese Global Ambitions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). Also see my Where Great Powers Meet. 18.  ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, The State of Southeast Asia 2021, https://www .iseas.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-State-of-SEA-2021-v2.pdf. 19.  See Bruce Gilley and Andrew O’Neill, eds., Middle Powers and the Rise of China (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014); Ashley J. Tellis, Travis Tanner, and Jessica Keough, eds., Strategic Asia 2011–12: Asia Responds to Its Rising Powers (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2011). 20.  See Richard Javad Heydarian, At a Strategic Crossroads: ASEAN Centrality and Sino-American Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, April 2020): https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04 /fp_20200427_strategic_crossroads.pdf; K. Yhome, “‘ASEAN Centrality’ and the Emerging Great Power Competition,” Observer Research Foundation (New Delhi),

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October 30, 2020, https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/asean-centrality-and-the -emerging-great-power-competition/; Kentaro Iwamoto, “ASEAN Defends Its IndoPacific ‘Centrality’ Between the Quad and China,” Nikkei Asia, June 22, 2021, https:// asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/ASEAN-defends-its-Indo-Pacific-centrality -between-Quad-and-China. 21.  See ASEAN Secretariat, https://asean.org/about-asean/asean-charter/. 22. See ASEAN Secretariat, ASEAN 2025: Forging Ahead Together (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat, 2017); Mari Elka Pangestu and Rastam Mohd Isa, eds., ASEAN Future Forward: Anticipating the Next 50 Years (Kuala Lumpur: Institute of Strategic and International Studies, 2017). 23.  For an excellent account of ASEAN’s first fifty years, see Kishore Mahbubani and Jeffrey Sng, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace (Singapore: Ridge Books, 2017). 24. Arms Control Association, “Arms Control and Proliferation Profile: North Korea,” June 2018, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/northkoreaprofile. 25.  Cited in Choe Sang-Hun, “North Korea’s Arsenal Has Grown Rapidly: Here’s What’s in It,” New York Times, October 14, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/article /north-korea-arsenal-nukes.html. 26.  See Alastair Gale, “North Korea Flaunts Missile Might; Snubs US Talks,” Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2021; Chae Sang-Hun, “North Korea Military Displays Missile Arsenal,” New York Times, October 13, 2021.

Index

Abbott, Tony, 313 Abe, Shinzo, 140–41, 143; on comfort women, 241; globalization and, 153; on Japan military, 145–46; on North Korea, 275; on Quad summit, 148– 49, 431; on South Korea, 241–43; on Taiwan, 294; on Trump, 152 Acharya, Amitav, 44, 210 affluence: of China, 341–43; in East Asia, 341–42 Afghanistan, 434; India and, 170–71, 176; New Zealand in, 323–24; US withdrawal from, 91–93, 100, 105, 108, 321 AFTA. See ASEAN Free Trade Area AIT. See American Institute in Taiwan Alagappa, Muthiah, 14 Albright, Madeleine, 436 Allison, Graham, 15, 47 American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), 287 AMRO. See ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Institute analytical eclecticism, 19, 56–57, 73–76 ANZUS. See Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty APEC. See Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation APSC. See ASEAN Political-Security Community

Ardern, Jacinda, 325–27 ARF. See ASEAN Regional Forum ASCC. See ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community ASEAN. See Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASEAN+: cooperation in, 191, 197, 199, 201; features of, 202–6; as Plus Six, 120; as Plus Three, 67–68, 123, 132, 198, 201–2 ASEAN+3, 67–68, 132, 198, 433, 434; membership of, 201–2; in NEAT, 123; as not regional, 354–55, 362, 384 ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Institute (AMRO), 359 ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), 347– 48, 352, 357 ASEAN-India Free Trade Area, 170–71 ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC), 435 ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF): India in, 170; as multilateral institution, 11, 73, 79n17, 131–32, 202–3, 384, 433, 434; during post-Cold War, 76, 201–2; and security, 61, 127, 201, 204, 215 ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC), 212, 435 441

442

Index

ASEM. See Asia-Europe Meeting Asia. See specific subjects Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), 206, 433–34 Asia IR Big Four, 40 Asian Development Bank, 91, 434 Asian exceptionalism, 58 Asian financial crisis, 147, 296, 323, 344, 354, 359 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), 11, 61, 309, 317, 331n1; Japan and Australia in, 147; neoLiberalism for, 67–68; New Zealand and, 322–23; proposal for, 147, 155, 197, 353; Singapore and, 211; summits of, 48, 96, 354; Taiwan and, 285 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 96, 203; Australia and, 196, 223n18, 317–20; on China, 219–20; China proximity to, 46, 106–7, 116; China trading with, 46, 120, 120, 339, 344; Constructivism and, 67–68; development of, 195, 384–85; economy totals in, 1934; FDI into, 357–58, 361–62; functions and limitations of, 204–5, 435; group unity for, 133, 204; hedging strategies of, 191, 214, 219; India and, 196; Indonesia of, 205–8, 319; institutions of, 433; as intergovernmental, 199; Japan and, 146–47, 196; labor issues and, 8; multilateral architecture of, 205, 432–33, 434-435; NSP and, 296–97; Philippines and, 205, 212–13; production costs in, 351; Quad and, 220, 433; RCEP and, 433; regional centrality of, 61, 70, 73, 197, 198; rise of, 44; on security issues, 61, 200–201, 205; Singapore and, 205, 210–11; sovereignty and, 199–200, 205; on Soviet Union, 200–201; Thailand and, 205, 213–15; trade

and, 347, 347; on US-China rivalry, 208, 219; US interactions with, 93, 106, 203–4; Vietnam of, 205, 215–16 AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States) defense arrangement, 319–20, 374, 431 Aung San Suu Kyi, 192, 217; as Burmese Nobel Laureate, 412–13; on Rohingya atrocities, 413–14, 416 Austin, Lloyd, 100 Australasia, 4; Taiwan and, 299–301, 301 Australia: in APEC, 147; ASEAN and, 196, 223n18, 317–20; in AUKUS, 319–20, 374, 431; on China coercion, 120–21, 312–14, 320, 329; China economic punishment of, 130–31; China trade and, 300–301, 312–13, 316; on COVID, 313, 321, 329–30; economic growth of, 8; foreign policy criticism, 312, 332n10; on immigration, 300, 314; India and, 170, 310–11, 318, 320–21; India ties with, 318, 320–21; on Indonesia, 319; on the Indo-Pacific region, 311–12, 315–20; Japan ties with, 148, 318; military of, 314–15, 374; national interests of, 311–12; New Zealand and, 309–10, 320; NSP and, 296–97; on Pacific Island countries, 3, 309–10, 320, 328–31; population and history of, 310–12; as Quad partner, 317–18, 320–21, 327, 374, 386, 431; on security, 314–17; Solomon Islands and, 320, 323, 328– 29; on Taiwan, 300–301; on trade, 311, 315; on Uighurs/Xinjiang, 301, 313; on US-China rivalry, 300–301, 317, 430; US relations with, 104, 309, 316–17 Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS), 300–301, 316–17, 320, 322, 333 authoritarian leaders: of Asia, 151, 192, 310; China with, 88, 100, 125, 250,

Index 443



313; on growth, 66; Philippines and Marcos as, 91; in Southeast Asia, 192 balance of power: Asia and, 56, 60; balance in, 71, 73–74, 79n10; on China, 315; China on Asia, 118, 132–33; India and, 161–64, 181, 183n2; Japan and, 155, 161; multilateral regional institutions for, 61; as non-military, 221; PLA on, 122; of regional and extra-regional actors, 132; soft or hard balancing in, 161–62, 183n2; Southeast Asia and, 217–18; US on regional, 60–61, 79n10, 87, 97, 101; as zero-sum game, 58 balancing strategies. See hedging strategies Bandung Asia-Africa Conference, 70, 148, 164 Bangladesh, 406, 434; China and, 167–68, 180; immigration and, 176, 412; India and, 167–68, 176, 184n21, 412; Muslim extremism and, 411–12; neighbors and, 410–13; NSP and, 296–97; population of, 6 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI): Australia and, 314; corrupt practices and, 107; India refusing, 180; JBIC exceeding, 149; Malaysia on, 209; New Zealand on, 325; for Southeast Asia, 121, 124, 217, 297, 432; on South Pacific, 329; of Xi, 106, 168, 432 Better Utilization of Investment Leading to Development (BUILD) Act, 96 Bhutan, 117, 130, 169, 184n21, 296–97, 434 Biden, Joseph, 93; on Asia resurgence, 99, 104, 107; on China, 94–95, 97–99; on climate change, 100, 105, 250; on COVID, 98, 100; on FOIP, 144; India and, 179; on military and China, 162; North Korea on, 267;

post-Trump for, 97; Quad grouping and, 97–98, 105, 249–50; on Southeast Asia, 100, 196 BIMP-EAGA. See Brunei DarussalamIndonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area bin Laden, Osama, 407 Blinken, Antony, 98, 100 BREXIT, 153, 196 BRI. See Belt and Road Initiative Britain. See Great Britain Bruce, Frederick, 32 Brunei, 212–13, 217, 219, 434; in ASEAN, 384; China and, 431; GDP of, 193, 194, 340, 341, 343; government of, 192, 195; small industrial capacity of, 192, 194; South China Sea and, 380; TPP and, 352; US and, 386 Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-MalaysiaPhilippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA), 212 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 140 BUILD. See Better Utilization of Investment Leading to Development Burlingame, Anson, 32 Bush, George H. W., 91–92 Bush, George W., 91–94, 103, 145, 179, 269–70, 324 Buzan, Barry, 62 Cambodia: affluence of, 341, 342; China and, 377; democracy in, 66; economic growth of, 7; Pol Pot genocide in, 39, 61; small industrial capacity of, 192, 194 Carter, Jimmy, 90–91 CCP. See Chinese Communist Party Central Asia: exclusion of, 4, 20n1; tsarist Russia and Soviet Union on, 88–89; US withdrawal from, 93, 105 Chen Shui-bian, 288, 291, 296 Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI), 147, 149, 203, 354, 359–60, 362

444

China, 5; Asia presence by, 10, 107, 116, 425; citizens of, 107, 123, 125, 313–14; dominance by, 27, 118; future centrality of, 44; on IR theory, 75–76; official distortion by, 29–31, 50n12. See also Belt and Road Initiative; Xi Jinping; specific subjects China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), 169–70 Chinese (diaspora) citizens: in Asia, 107, 123, 125, 313–14 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 116 Chung, Jae Ho, 45–46 CICA. See Conference of Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia “clash of civilizations” theory, 27 Classical Realism, 59, 60; Moral Realism with, 75, 82n52 climate change: Joseph Biden on, 100, 105, 250; India and, 175; New Zealand on, 326; Pacific Island countries on, 309, 328, 330; Philippines and, 212; South Korea and, 232, 249 Clinton, Bill, 91–92, 179 Clinton, Hillary, 127, 215, 324, 330 CMI. See Chiang Mai Initiative coercion tactics: on Australia, 120–21, 312–14, 320, 329; by China, 115, 118–21, 127, 130, 133, 304 Cold War system: ending of, 42, 76; India and, 181–82; Korea war in, 38–39; over Indochina, 41; Realism and, 62–63; Shigeru and, 139, 141; of US and Soviet Union, 39–40; for US hegemony, 43; Vietnam war in, 38–39, 41 colonial periods: China in, 34, 51n24; of Europe, 13; independent Asian states on, 44–45; of India, 163–64; of Japan and South Korea, 258; on Southeast Asia, 194–95, 217; Western decolonization from, 37–38

Index

comfort women, 48, 54n69, 241, 254n25 Commercial Liberalism, 17–18, 64 communism: in Asia, 63, 65, 87–88, 90, 202, 213; of China, 88, 90, 99, 116, 133, 141, 150, 216, 404–5, 427; China women and, 404–5; Soviet Union and, 40–41; Vietnam and, 13, 192, 200, 215 Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), 11, 197, 309, 331n1; Japan on, 152, 294; South Korea on, 250–51; Taiwan on, 285, 305; US on, 99, 149, 353 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), 166 Conference of Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), 132 Confucius Institutes, 107, 123, 136n29 Consociational Security Order (CSO), 74 Constructivism, 75, 78n1; for ASEANtype analysis, 67–68; Asian and Western scholars on, 71–72, 82n39; on Asian regionalism, 67, 70–71; on Asian security, 70–71, 74; on behavioral norms, 18–19, 71–73; on China, 18–19; definition of, 69, 72; East Asian national identities and, 24n58; as English School, 55, 59, 62, 73–74; IR perspectives and, 57; Katzenstein and, 19, 55, 69, 73, 139; Liberalism overlap with, 73–74; optimism of, 74; as post-Cold War, 69 COVID-19 pandemic: Australia on, 313, 321, 329–30; Joseph Biden on, 98, 100; China and, 95, 125; India and, 172, 185n28; influence of, 46–47, 108; on North Korea, 263–64, 278; South Korea on, 240; Vietnam and, 194. See also pandemic diseases CPEC. See China-Pakistan Economic Corridor



Index 445

CPTPP. See Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for TransPacific Partnership cross-strait relations, 289–92, 381–83 CSO. See Consociational Security Order CTBT. See Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Dalai Lama, 166, 408 Defensive Realism, 58; Robert Jervis and, 49, 60; Jack Snyder and, 60, 66 democracy: in Asian countries, 66, 124; of Australia and New Zealand, 300; India with, 165, 178; Japan on, 148; Laos on, 17, 192, 200; Liberalism and, 68; for Nepal, 169; of Philippines, 66, 212; in Southeast Asia, 192; in Taiwan, 66–67, 286–88, 290; UN promoting, 397, 416; US in Asia, 101, 108 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). See North Korea Deng Xiaoping, 45–46, 290, 427 developed economy status, 7 diplomacy: China bullying in, 125; China with financial, 121, 132; by gunboat, 31–32, 34–35; Japan with, 148–53; minilateralism in, 317–18; by New Zealand, 321; as preventive, 73; Taiwan losses in, 283–84, 287, 289, 292, 305, 382, 394n65; Taiwan ties in, 285, 288, 298–301, 304, 394n65. See also multilateral architecture; Quadrilateral Strategic Dialogue direct investment. See foreign direct investment diversity: Asia defined by, 5–6; with disparity, 45 Dodd, Christopher, 98 Dokdo/Takeshima islands, 150–52, 231 DPRK. See North Korea Dulles, John Foster, 164 Duterte, Rodrigo, 212–13, 217, 219, 375, 431

EAS. See East Asia Summit East Asia: affluence in, 341, 341–42; China in, 28; China imports and exports with, 119–21, 120, 135n13, 135n16; Constructivism and national identities of, 24n58; GDP of, 339; India and, 170; Opium Wars reshaping, 28, 31–34, 51n21 East Asia Summit (EAS), 11, 76; ASEAN+3 with, 355; creation of, 203–4, 209; inclusion and, 384, 433, 434; with major powers, 127–28; summits of, 96, 201; US as member of, 73 East China Sea: China claims on, 130, 162, 365, 378–79; danger of, 437; Japan and US on, 378–79 East Timor, 323, 332n10 East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), 407 economies: ASEAN production costs on, 351; ASEAN total of, 193, 194; of Asia, 44, 62, 361–63; of China, 7–8, 119–21, 120, 132, 339, 361–62, 427–28; China on power and, 46, 95, 119–21, 120, 133; China punishing, 109, 130–31; commercial Liberalism on, 17–18; as developed, 7; growth of, 7, 339, 342; of India, 7–8, 161, 164, 339, 343, 344; of Japan, 8, 43, 139–40, 152–54, 160n45, 339, 343–44, 362; North Korea reform dilemma in, 262–64; of Southeast Asia, 192, 193, 194, 362–63; South Korea on, 8, 229, 250–51; of Taiwan, 283, 286–87, 304; trading and interdependence of, 155; with transnational production, 66; types of, 6; US on China and Japan, 88–89; US on trade and Asian, 97, 101. See also exports electronic connectivity, 9 English School of international relations, 55, 59, 62, 73–74 enmeshment, 19, 201–2, 220–21, 311

446

Index

environmental degradation, 125, 361 ethnic minority population, 5, 117; religions on, 412–14; security challenges and, 406–16 ETIM. See East Turkestan Islamic Movement EU. See European Union Europe: Asia future and past of, 15, 18–19, 27; on idea of “Asia,” 28, 49n6; IR theory in, 55; limited role of, 4; on tribute system, 32–34 European Union (EU): ASEAN as not, 199; Asia trade with, 351–52; FDI into India and, 358, 358; on Southeast Asia, 196 exports: China and, 119–21, 120, 135n13, 135n16, 349, 349–51, 350; by Hong Kong, 8–9; India and, 344, 348, 348–50, 352; Japan and Asia, 344–47, 345, 346, 352; to US, 103 Fairbank, John King, 29 FDI. See foreign direct investment FEALAC. See Forum for East Asia– Latin America Cooperation financial crises: in Asia (1997), 147, 296, 323, 344, 354, 359; global 2008-09), 47, 68, 126, 312, 344, 360 First World War, 37, 66, 91 “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing arrangement, 324, 326 Five Power Defense Arrangements (FPDA), 208, 211, 322 Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (FPPC), 45, 165–66 FOIP. See Free and Open Indo-Pacific Foot, Rosemary, 74 foreign currency: in Asia, 8–9; cooperation in, 359–60 foreign direct investment (FDI): into ASEAN, 357, 357–58, 361–62; in Asia, 8; China and, 121, 135n16, 144, 356; India and, 358, 358; as interregional, 8, 144, 355–56, 358; by Japan, 144, 144, 293, 355, 355–

59; security concerns on, 314–15; by South Korea, 237, 237; Taiwan and, 144, 301 foreign policy: Australia criticism and, 312, 332n10; India and, 180–82; of South Korea, 230–31, 251–52 Forum for East Asia–Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC), 206, 210, 434–35 FPDA. See Five Power Defense Arrangements FPPC. See Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP): India on, 249; Japan on, 143–44, 146, 149, 151, 154, 196; South Korea on, 245–47, 249; of Trump administration, 117, 303, 316 free trade agreements (FTAs), 433; as ASEAN-India Free Trade Area, 170; Bush, G. W., on, 92; China using, 119, 313, 324; Commercial Liberalism and, 18; India and, 168, 171; as outside region, 353, 362; of South Korea and US, 251; Taiwan and, 288–89, 300; as TPP, 92, 149; trade increase from, 347 Friedberg, Aaron, 15, 18–19, 27, 59, 62, 71 FTAs. See free trade agreements Fukuda Takeo, 146–47 Fukuda Yasuo, 143 Fukuyama, Francis, 43 Fukuzawa Yukichi, 37 G7. See Group of Seven G20. See Group of Twenty Gaesong Industrial Complex, 234, 264 Gandhi, Indira, 166 Gandhi, Mohandas (Mahatma), 165, 248 Gandhi, Rajiv, 166 Gao Xingjian, 124 GATT. See General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade



Index 447

GCTF. See Global Cooperation and Training Framework GDP. See gross domestic product GEACPS. See Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 65 Germany, 37, 48, 144, 198 Gillard, Julia, 315 Gilpin, Robert, 62, 80n23 Glaser, Charles, 16 Global Cooperation and Training Framework (GCTF), 288 globalization: financial crises and, 47, 68, 126, 312, 344, 360; on India, 183; Japan and Abe for, 153; trade and forces of, 19 global war on terror, 67, 92, 103, 145, 323 Gluck, Carol, 153 Goh, Evelyn, 74 Goldsmith, Benjamin E., 80n26 GONGOs. See government-operated non-governmental organizations Gorbachev, Mikhail, 43, 147 government: ASEAN as inter-, 199; on intersocietal contact, 19; types of, 6; US success with Asia, 103 government-operated non-governmental organizations (GONGOs), 123 Great Britain: for Asia military, 377; in AUKUS, 319–20, 374, 431; Australia and, 310–11; BREXIT of, 153, 196; FDI of, 144; as hegemon power, 33–34, 36, 154; India and, 163, 358; Japan with, 37, 146; New Zealand and, 321–22; on Southeast Asia, 196; with US, 87, 91, 96, 319–20 Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (GEACPS), 34, 37–38, 146 gross domestic product (GDP): Asia and, 340, 340, 343, 343–44; of Brunei, 193, 194, 340, 341, 343; of China, 340, 340–41; of East Asia,

339; human rights and, 397; of North Korea, 263 Group of Seven (G7): on India, South Africa, Australia, 163; South Korea and, 163, 229 Group of Twenty (G20), 229; with India, 163 Gujral doctrine, 167–68, 184n21 hard balancing, 161–62, 182, 183n2 Harding, Harry, 303 hard power, 172, 176–77 Harris, Kamala, 100 Hatoyama Ichiro, 141, 145 hedging strategies: by ASEAN states, 191, 214, 219; by India, 162, 182; by Japan, 155; by Philippines, 212; Southeast Asia and, 12; of South Korea, 12, 240, 246–47, 431; Taiwan as, 304–5; by Thailand, 191, 214; and US-China rivalry, 106, 217, 304, 430, 432; by Vietnam, 216, 218 hegemony: Asia and, 56; China denying, 118; Cold War system for US, 43; Great Britain and, 33–34, 36, 154; hegemonic inevitability theory in, 15; international stability from, 80n23; US as benevolent, 16–17, 63–65, 68 Hemmer, Chris, 69, 81n31 historical legacies: international relations theories in, 3; as scars, 47–48, 54n69 HIV/AIDS, 7, 401 Hoffman, Stanley, 55 Hong Kong: China and, 107, 117, 143, 313, 326, 356, 383, 429, 434; as exporter, 8–9; GDP of, 340, 341, 342, 343; Taiwan and, 301; US on, 92, 105 Howard, John, 323 Hsü, Immanuel C. Y., 30 Huawei, 96, 124, 130–31, 144, 314, 329 hub-and-spokes alliance system, 14, 39–40, 43, 61, 431–32; of Southeast Asia, 191, 217

448

Index

Hu Jintao, 143 human rights: Biden on China and, 105; China and, 47, 129, 301, 325, 397; India, Pakistan, Bangladesh on, 406; North Korea on, 268–70; per capita income and, 397; US on, 108; women’s rights or religious, 5, 398–406 Huntington, Samuel, 27 IAT. See Interchange Association in Taiwan Idealism, 75 identity conflict, 48 identity formation: of Asia, 29, 48, 56, 57, 68, 70–71, 77, 416; for Australia, 310–12; of China, 30, 40, 45; for India, 164; of Indonesia, 207; for Indo-Pacific, 327, 330; of Japan, 36, 152; of Southeast Asia, 192, 194–95, 220; for South Korea, 152, 156, 229; for Taiwan, 287 Ikenberry, G. John, 56, 68, 77 IMF. See International Monetary Fund immigration: Australia on, 300, 314; Bangladesh and, 176, 412; India and, 168; to Japan, 153; New Zealand on, 300, 327; Philippines and, 212; Southeast Asia and, 191, 195; to US, 89, 101, 103 imperial system, of Japan, 33–38 imports: China and, 119–21, 120, 135n13, 135n16, 349, 349–51, 350; India and, 344, 348, 348–50, 352; Japan and Asia, 344–47, 345, 346, 352 India, 5; Afghanistan and, 170–71, 176; ASEAN and, 196; Asia role for, 132–33, 161; Australia and, 170, 310–11, 318, 320–21; for balance of power, 161–64, 181, 183n2; Bangladesh and, 167–68, 176, 184n21, 412; Bhutan and, 169; China and, 130, 165–67, 171, 180; on China economy, 182; China

hard balancing by, 162, 182, 183n2; climate change and, 175; Cold War and, 181–82; colonial experience in, 163–64; COVID and, 172, 185n28; democracy in, 165, 178; East Asia and, 170; economic growth of, 7–8, 161, 164, 339, 343, 344; exports and imports by, 344, 348, 348–50, 352; FDI and, 358, 358; on FOIP, 249; foreign policy in, 180–82; G20 with, 163; globalization on, 183; Great Britain and, 163, 358; green revolution of, 166; Gujral doctrine of, 167–68, 184n21; hard-balancing strategies by, 182; hedging strategies by, 162, 182; immigration and, 168; “Indic system” of, 12–13, 28–29; Indo-Pacific region and, 170–72; Iran and, 171; Japan ties with, 148, 171–72; on Kargil Hills conflict, 179; Liberalism co-opting, 68–69; on military, 166, 178, 179–80, 182–83, 367, 367–68, 368, 374–75; on Muslims, 409–10; in NAM, 29, 164; Nehru of, 63, 164–66, 172, 175; Nepal and, 169; NSP and, 296–97; on nuclear weapons, 163, 166, 178– 79, 182; Pakistan and, 67, 166, 167, 169, 178; Pakistan partition from, 165; on poverty, 172, 175, 177; as power, 60, 162–63, 172–73, 177–78; in Quad, 180, 248–49; RCEP and, 171, 353; Realism in, 63, 181; softbalancing strategies by, 182; soft power by, 165, 172–73, 177; South Asia and, 167–70; Southeast Asia and, 170; South Korea and, 171, 247–49; on Soviet Union, 164, 166–67, 170, 176, 179, 181–82; Sri Lanka and, 167–68, 176; Taiwan and, 171; territorial disputes of, 165, 167, 180; on Tibet, 166, 180; UN on, 176; UN Security Council and, 163; US relations with, 104, 161, 164, 177–80, 182; on Western influence,



Index 449

181; women and culture in, 398–400; in WTO, 175 “Indic system,” 12–13, 28–29 Indochina, 29, 37, 41, 60, 200–201, 213–15 Indonesia: of ASEAN, 205–8, 319; Australia on, 319; on China, 218; on Chinese minorities, 124; conflicts of, 194–95; economic growth of, 8; with “free and active” doctrine, 206–8; international role for, 207; Muslim fundamentalism in, 414; Southeast Asia top economy as, 192; on sovereignty, 207; women and culture in, 403–4 Indo-Pacific region: of Asia, 5, 190; Australia on, 311–12, 315–16; Biden and US military to, 162; as broad, 6; China and, 426–28; countries in, 117; identity formation for, 327, 330; India and, 170–72; Japan shaping, 146–49; middle powers of, 97, 117, 196, 247, 432–33; New Zealand on, 327; Trump administration on, 94–95; US on, 131, 327–28 influence operations: by China, 125; by Western nations, 55–56, 58, 71, 76–78, 181 innovation and technological advances, 9 intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, 130 Interchange Association in Taiwan (IAT), 292–93, 306n7 interdependence: Liberalism and, 68; for peace, 65–66; as trans-national production, 66 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 65, 91, 147, 359 international political economy (IPE), 58 international relations (IR), 3, 5, 78n8; as global and regional, 11, 76. See also specific subjects IPE. See international political economy IR. See international relations

Iran: India and, 171; US on, 101 Iraq: Bush, G. W., on, 91, 103; US withdrawal from, 92–93, 105 Islamic State, 406–7, 411, 415–16 ISR. See intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions Japan, 5; affluence of, 341, 341–42; ASEAN and, 146–47, 196; Asia imports and exports by, 344–47, 345, 346, 352; Asia IR Big Four with, 40; Asia role for, 132–33, 148; Australia ties with, 148, 318; balance of power and, 155, 161; China and Asia trust of, 13, 150, 154, 159n32; China coercion on, 120–21, 127, 294; China countered by, 140, 148; on China military, 295; China replaced by, 34; China rivalry with, 66, 127, 142–43, 153–54; China trade with, 120–21, 142, 144, 149; China treaty with, 35; colonial period by, 258; on CPTPP, 152, 294; on democracy, 148; diplomacy for, 148–53; on Dokdo/Takeshima islands, 150–52, 231; on East China Sea, 378–79; economic growth of, 8, 43, 139–40, 152–54, 160n45, 339, 343–44, 362; FDI and, 144, 144, 293, 355, 355–59; First World War and, 37; FOIP of, 143–44, 146, 149, 151, 154, 196; GDP of, 340, 341; GEACPS of, 37–38; with Great Britain, 37, 146; hedging strategies by, 155; Huawei barred by, 144; in identity conflict, 48; identity formation of, 36, 152; immigration to, 153; imperial system of, 33–38; India ties with, 148, 171–72; Indo-Pacific and, 146–49; Kim Jong-un and, 275; on Korea, 35, 48, 150–51, 155; Korean War and, 40–41, 141; Meiji Restoration of, 34–35, 37, 150; mercantile realism of, 140; military and, 145–46, 149–50, 156n9, 375; neo-Realism

450

Index

and, 140; Nobusuke of, 41, 145; North Korea and, 151, 274–76; Pax Americana with, 39; power vacuum and, 60; in Quad, 148–49, 431; RCEP and, 148; Russo-Japanese War and, 14, 36, 155, 244; Senkaku Islands and, 66, 117, 130, 143, 298, 378–79; on Southeast Asia, 29; South Korea and, 230–31; Taiwan and, 292–95; tourism and, 242, 293; in TPP, 149; on US-China rivalry, 430; US gunboat diplomacy on, 34; US on economic interests and, 88–89; US orientation from, 87–88, 144; US relations with, 104, 145–48, 153–54, 431; US trading with, 91; for Western decolonization, 37–38; World War II and, 37–38 Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), 149 Jervis, Robert, 49, 60 Jiang Zemin, 143 Johnston, Alastair Iain, 77 Junichiro, Koizumi, 140 Kahn, Herman, 139 Kang, David: on China, 18–19, 28, 55, 59; on hierarchy, 71–72, 74, 77 Kang-Acharya Constructivist debate, 74 Kargil Hills conflict, 179 Karzai, Hamid, 170 Katzenstein, Peter, 19, 55, 69, 73, 139 Kazakhstan, 434 Kennedy, John F., 164, 166 Kim, Samuel, 11–12 Kim Dae-jung, 67, 232, 234, 264 Kim Il-sung, 40, 244, 258–59, 261 Kim Jong-il, 259–64, 275, 276 Kim Jong-un, 265, 278; on family, 273–74; Japan and, 275; Moon and, 235, 273; for nuclear weapons, 260, 277; Panmunjom Declaration and, 234, 266, 273; power for, 259–62; Putin and, 244, 276–77; reform dilemma for, 262–64; on South

Korea, 235; succession of, 260–61; Trump and, 95–96, 152, 266–68, 270–71, 436 Kishi, Nobusuke, 41, 145 Kissinger, Henry, 16, 142 Koizumi, Junichiro, 151; on Bush, G. W., 145; on democracy, 148; Pyongyang Declaration of, 275; on Yoshida Doctrine, 140 Korea, Korean Peninsula: Cold War system on, 38–39; FDI and, 144; in identity conflict, 48; Japan on, 35, 48, 150–51, 155; as model tributary state, 31; Sino-Japanese War and, 35–36; South Korea on, 231–36, 252n5; Taft-Katsura Agreement on, 36; trading on, 234; US and Soviets dividing, 258 Korean War, 39, 63; China superpower status in, 40, 52n47; Japan and, 40–41, 141; Korean Peninsula on, 48, 54n69; New Zealand and, 322; South Korea and, 231, 258, 378; Taiwan and, 284; US into, 258 kyorin, term, 35 Kyrgyzstan, 434 labor issues: ASEAN and, 8; China and, 120, 125, 236, 362, 408, 428; as inexpensive, 342, 355–56; Korean slave labor and, 150–51, 230–31, 241–43; North Korea and, 234, 258– 59, 269, 271, 276–77; Taiwan and, 290, 297; Thailand and, 401–2 Lam Peng-er, 293 Laos, 434; affordable goods for, 124; ASEAN and, 195, 384; China and, 12, 107, 129, 217, 386–87, 431; on democracy, 17, 192, 200; economic growth of, 7; GDP of, 340, 341, 343; small industrial capacity of, 192, 194; Vietnam on, 215 Lee Kuan Yew, 60, 79n10, 210 Lee Myung-bak, 152, 233, 253n10, 264, 272



Index 451

Lee Teng-hui, 142, 288, 290, 292, 294, 296–97 Legvold, Robert, 43 Leifer, Michael, 61, 202, 210 Liao Chengzhi, 142 Liberal institutionalism, 13; neo-Liberal institutionalism and, 65; regional institutions for, 67 Liberalism, 78n1; Asian IR and, 17–18; China and India co-opted by, 68–69; as Commercial, 17–18, 64; Constructivism overlap with, 73–74; as cooperative, 17–18; definition of, 65; IR perspectives and, 57; neoLiberal Institutionalism and, 59; peace and, 68; pillars of, 64–65; US and, 97 life expectancies, 6–7 Macao, 340, 341, 342, 343, 345, 349 MacArthur, Douglas, 40 Made in China 2025 blueprint, 144 Madoka Fukuda, 294–95 Mahathir Mohamad, 147, 192, 209, 354–55 Mahbubani, Kishore, 18 Malaysia: of ASEAN, 205, 208–10; China and, 208–9, 219; on Chinese minorities, 124; conflicts of, 194; economic growth of, 7; India and, 170; Muslim fundamentalism in, 414–15; Southeast Asia top economy as, 192, 193, 194; territorial disputes of, 209; US cooperation and, 128, 208, 219 Maldives, 167–69, 184n21, 434 Manchukuo, 37 Mansfield, Ed, 66 Marcos, Ferdinand, 91 Marx, Karl, 49n6, 62–63, 78n8 Mastanduno, Michael, 13, 56, 68, 77 Ma Ying-jeou, 288–89, 291, 294, 299– 300, 302, 307 MDT. See US-ROK Mutual Defense Treaty

Mearsheimer, John, 15, 17, 58, 59, 60–61, 71 Meiji Restoration Era, 34–35, 37, 150 mercantile realism, 140 middle class, 8 middle powers, 97, 117, 196, 247, 432–33 military: in Asia, 9–11; Asia budgets for, 366, 366–69, 367, 368; Asia on China, 373; Australia on, 314–15, 374; balance of power as not, 221; Biden on China and US, 162; China and Pakistan cooperating, 170, 377; China budget for, 366, 366–69, 367, 368, 373; China cooperation on, 115, 125–26, 330, 377, 386–87; China paramilitary or PLA, 121–23, 129–30, 369, 370, 371–72, 426–27; conflict potential and, 20, 132; coups in Southeast Asia, 192; India on, 166, 179–80, 367, 367–68, 368, 374–75; Japan and, 145–46, 149–50, 156n9, 375; of Myanmar, 17, 73, 99, 368, 377, 414, 435; of New Zealand, 321–25; of North Korea, 257, 259, 264–66, 266; of Pakistan, 169; of Philippines, 375–76; Quad on, 374–75; regional budgets on, 365; South Asia weakness in, 189; on South China Sea, 365, 380–81; South China Sea with US, 96–97, 101, 107–8, 381; of Taiwan, 376, 382; in Taiwan Strait, 365, 381–83; of US and China, 117, 127, 131, 371, 373–74; US-China rivalry spending on, 365, 377; US for Asia, 365, 377; of Vietnam, 376–77 minilateralism, 317–18 Modi, Narendra, 248; Asia and India under, 167, 169, 171, 179–80; Muslims and, 398, 409–10, 412 Mongolia, 37, 120–21, 123, 434 Moon Chung-in, 249 Moon Jae-in, 240, 245, 264, 272; on China, 239; on North Korea, 232–35;

452

Index

Panmunjom Declaration of, 234, 266, 273; on Southeast Asia and South Asia, 230; on Trump and North Korea, 152; to UN, 252n5 Moral Realism, 75, 82n52 Morgenthau, Hans, 63 Muldoon, Robert, 322 multi-dimensional analysis, 19 multilateral architecture: of ARF, 11, 73, 79n17, 131–32, 202–3, 384, 433, 434; of ASEAN, 205, 432–33, 434, 435; of Asia, 11; of Malaysia, 208; NATO and, 38; New Zealand on, 323, 327; Realism on Asian, 61–62; of security, 384, 384–85; of Southeast Asia, 11, 73, 79n17, 131– 32, 202–3, 218, 384, 433, 434; South Korea on, 232 multipolar world order, China for, 116, 118, 137n43 Muslims, 398, 409–12, 414–15 Myanmar, 217, 343; ASEAN and, 384; Bangladesh and, 412–13; China and, 431; conflicts of, 194–95; crisis of, 205, 207; economic growth of, 7; as isolated, 19; military of, 17, 73, 99, 368, 377, 414, 435; on Rohingya Muslims, 73, 195, 406, 412–14, 416, 435; small industrial capacity of, 192, 194; Thailand and, 214–15, 362, 401–3, 405; women and culture in, 401–3 NAM. See Non-Aligned Movement Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 164 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization NEAT. See Network of East Asian Think-Tanks Nehru, Jawaharlal, 63, 164–66, 172, 175 neo-Liberal institutionalism, 57, 65; for APEC, 67–68; definition of, 67; Liberalism and, 59 neo-Realism, 59; Japan and, 140; Waltz and, 58, 60

Nepal: China and, 169; democracy for, 169; India and, 169; NSP and, 296–97 Network of East Asian Think-Tanks (NEAT), 123 newly industrialized country (NIC), 7 New Southbound Policy (NSP): countries in, 296–97; soft power by, 297–98; of Taiwan, 296–98, 301–2 New Southern Policy (NSP),: of South Korea, 245–48; Vietnam and, 246 New Zealand: ASEAN and, 223n18; on Asia trade, 300–301, 322–23; Australia and, 309–10, 320; on BRI, 325; China and, 300–301, 324–27; on climate change, 326; for diplomacy, 321; Great Britain and, 321–22; on immigration, 300, 327; on Indo-Pacific region, 327; military of, 321–25; on multilateral architecture, 323, 327; NSP and, 296–97; on nuclear weapons, 320, 322; on Taiwan, 300–301; on Uighurs/Xinjiang, 301, 326; US and, 309, 324–27; on US-China rivalry, 300–301 NIC. See newly industrialized country Nine-Dash Line, of China, 130, 298–99, 380–81 Nixon, Richard M.: China and, 16, 42; Japan and, 142; 1960s doctrine of, 208 Nobel Prizes, 124, 412 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), 29, 164 non-state actors, 49, 75, 169 non-traditional security (NTS) issues, 200–201 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): Asia multilateral architecture and, 38; Asia without, 69–70, 81n31; as institution, 61–62 Northeast Asia, 4; South Korea on, 232; Taiwan ties with, 292–96; US administrations favoring, 93



Index 453

North Korea, 5, 239; Joseph Biden and, 267; China and, 125, 133, 273–74, 378, 392n48; China trade with, 263, 263; COVID on, 263–64, 278; as flashpoint, 436–37; food shortages of, 259, 269; GDP of, 263; on human rights, 268–70; Japan and, 151, 274– 76; labor issues and, 234, 258–59, 269, 271, 276–77; military of, 257, 259, 264–66, 266; Moon Jae-in on, 232–35; nuclear weapons and, 101, 133, 151–52, 155, 234, 257, 264–67, 266, 277, 436–37; Putin and, 244, 276–77; Pyongyang Declaration with, 275; as Realist, 257; South Korea on, 42–43, 151, 229, 231, 233–36, 271– 73, 436; South Korea trade with, 264, 264; tourism and, 269; UN Security Council and, 233–34, 270–71, 274, 277; US on, 90, 101, 270–71, 436; Xi on, 267, 274. See also Korean War NPT. See Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty NSP. See New Southbound Policy; New Southern Policy NTS. See non-traditional security Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 163, 166 nuclear weapons: China and, 142, 166; India with, 163, 166, 178–79, 182; New Zealand on, 320, 322; North Korea and, 101, 133, 151–52, 155, 234, 257, 264–67, 266, 277, 436–37 Obama, Barack, 103, 145–46, 179, 215; China and, 93–94, 126, 137n43, 302–3, 330, 373; on New Zealand, 324; on North Korea, 270; “pivot to Asia” strategy of, 162, 303; rebalance policy by, 93–94, 117, 128; on Southeast Asia, 196; on TPP, 93, 362–63 Offensive Realism: on China hegemony, 64; Defensive Realism or, 58, 60; neo-Realism as, 59

OIC. See Organization of Islamic Cooperation Olcott, Martha Brill, 20n1 Olympics: China and, 125–26; of PyeongChang, 234, 238, 244, 271–73 “Open Door” policy, 89 Opium Wars, 28, 31–34, 51n21 Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), 209 Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC), 147 Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI), 373–74 Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC), 61, 147, 434–35 Pacific Island countries, 3, 310, 320; Asia engagement by, 328–31; on climate change, 309, 328, 330 Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), 328, 330, 435 Pakistan: Bangladesh and, 410–11; China and, 169–70, 377; China military and, 170, 377; India and, 67, 166, 167, 169, 178; India partition into, 165; on Kargil Hills conflict, 179; military of, 169; Muslim extremism and, 410; NSP and, 296–97; on nuclear arms, 166; terrorism and, 169; women and culture in, 400–401 pandemic diseases: in Asia, 7, 11, 241, 248, 312; cooperation on, 316, 319, 321 Panmunjom Declaration, 234, 266, 273 Papua New Guinea, 311, 320, 328, 340, 341, 343 Park Geun-hye: on comfort women, 241; on Gaesong Industrial Complex, 234, 264; on India, 248; initiatives of, 232; North Korea and, 235–36, 239, 272 Pax Americana, 39 PBEC. See Pacific Basin Economic Council

454

Index

PDI. See Pacific Deterrence Initiative peace: interdependence for, 65–66; Liberalism and, 68; regional institutions and, 61; weak powers and, 62 PECC. See Pacific Economic Cooperation Council People’s Liberation Army (PLA): on balance of power, 122; as China military, 121–23, 129–30, 369, 370, 371–72, 426–27; on Taiwan, 122; UN peacekeeping operations by, 371 People’s Republic of China (PRC). See China Perry, Commodore Matthew, 34 Philippines, 91; of ASEAN, 205, 212–13; China and, 98–99, 212–13; China coercion of, 120–21, 127, 130; climate change and, 212; democracy in, 66, 212; Duterte of, 212–13, 217, 219, 375, 431; economic growth of, 7; hedging strategies by, 212; immigration and, 212; military of, 375–76; Muslim separatists in, 415; Southeast Asia top economy as, 192; Taft-Katsura Agreement on, 36; US and, 212–13; US and VFA with, 375–76 PIF. See Pacific Islands Forum “pivot to Asia” strategy, 162, 303 PLA. See People’s Liberation Army political Liberalism, 17 Pol Pot, 39, 61 Pompeo, Michael, 96 post-Cold War: ARF as, 76, 201–2; Asian discontinuity in, 43–44; China and, 216–17; Constructivism as, 69; cultural and ideational diversity in, 45; Realism on, 60, 63; Robert Ross on stability and, 80n22; Southeast Asia and, 189, 216–17; Southeast Asia shaping, 189, 216–17; US focus after, 92, 216. See also Cold War system

poverty: in Asia, 7; China on, 47, 409; India on, 172, 175, 177; Southeast Asia on, 194; Thailand with, 401–2 powers, 14; China on vacuum and, 60–61; China with economic, 46, 95, 119–21, 120, 133; importance of geo-economic, 46; India as, 60, 162–63, 172–73, 177–78; Kim Jongun and, 259–62; as middle, 97, 117, 196, 247, 432–33; Pacific nations on, 328–31; peace and weak, 62; Realism on, 58; restraining of, 232; smart power and, 149; US-China rivalry of, 433; Xi Jinping on, 162, 236. See also balance of power power transition theory, 15, 44, 61, 71, 76 PRC. See China Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), 206 Putin, Vladimir, 5; China and, 105, 239; Kim Jong-un and, 244, 276–77 Pyle, Kenneth, 153 Pyongyang Declaration, 275 al Qaeda, 406, 415 Qin Yaqing, 45, 75 Quadrilateral Strategic Dialogue (Quad), 64; additional Asia countries in, 105, 319; ASEAN and, 220, 433; Australia and, 317–18, 320–21, 327, 374, 386, 431; Biden and, 97–98, 105, 249–50; on China, 431–32; countries of, 77, 105, 132; India joining, 180, 248–49; Japan in, 148–49, 431; on military, 374–75; Southeast Asia and, 191; South Korea and, 248–49; strengthening of, 162–63 Rao, Narasimha, 167, 170 Rawski, Evelyn, 44 RCEP. See Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership



Index 455

Reagan, Ronald, 91 Realism, 78n1; on anarchy and power interests, 58; Asian IR and, 14–17, 59; on Asian multilateral institutions, 61–62; Asian regional institutions and, 61–62, 79n17; on balance of power, 71, 73–74, 79n10; China and, 63–64; Cold War system and, 62–63; as defensive, 17; Friedberg on, 15, 18–19, 27, 59, 62, 71; importance of, 76–77; in India, 63, 181; IR perspectives and, 57; Mearsheimer on offensive, 15, 17, 58, 59, 60–61, 71; North Korea and, 257; pessimism of, 74; post-Cold War and, 60, 63; with power rivalry and conflict, 14; Rudd on, 16, 312–13; for US, 63–64; White on, 16, 316; Yan on, 63, 75 rebalance policy, 93–94, 117, 128 reform dilemma, North Korea, 262–64 regional actors, 425–26; ASEAN centrality in, 61, 70, 73, 197, 198; balance of power and, 132; on China aggressiveness, 115, 432; economies of, 5; FDI and, 8, 144, 355–56, 358; military budgets of, 365 Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), 11, 204, 250, 309, 331n1, 433; India and, 171, 353; Japan and, 148; Taiwan and, 285 regional institutions: of ASEAN, 11, 73, 79n17, 131–32, 202–3, 384, 433, 434; ASEAN+3 as not, 354–55, 362, 384; of Asia, 72–73, 76–77, 117–18; dynamics of, 3; Realism on, 61–62, 79n17; security dialogue and deterrence by, 383–87, 384; of Southeast Asia, 189, 197, 220; for strategic engagement arenas, 62, 79n17 regional order: of Asian IR, 58; Constructivism and Asian, 67, 70–71; PLA for security and, 121–

22; in post-Cold War Asian system, 44; roles in, 3; security in, 5 religions, 5; in Asia, 6; on ethnic minorities, 412–14; international affairs on, 406, 410; Muslims and, 398, 409–12, 414–15; security challenges and, 406–16; in Southeast Asia, 192; on women’s rights, 399–400, 402–4. See also Rohingya Muslims republican Liberalism, 64 Republic of China (ROC): as noncommunist, 284–87; statehood assertions by, 289–90, 292, 294, 298, 300, 302. See also Taiwan Republic of Korea (ROK). See South Korea ROC. See Republic of China Rohingya Muslims: genocide on, 73, 406, 435; Myanmar on, 73, 195, 406, 412–14, 416, 435; as refugees, 195. See also Aung San Suu Kyi Roh Moo-hyun, 236, 264 Roh Tae-woo, 232, 238–39 ROK. See South Korea Roosevelt, Theodore, 36, 216 Ross, Robert, 80n22 Rossabi, Morris, 30 Rozman, Gilbert, 24n58 Rudd, Kevin, 16, 312–13 Russia: arms sales and energy from, 5; for Asia military, 377; on Central Asia, 88–89; on China tribute system, 31; India and, 180; relevance struggle by, 10; Russo-Japanese War and, 14, 36, 155, 244; Southeast Asia and, 196, 202. See also Soviet Union Russo-Japanese War, 14, 36, 155, 244 SAARC. See South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation sadae chui (term), 35 SAFTA. See South Asia Free Trade Area Sakakibara Eisuke, 147

456

Index

Samuels, Richard, 140 Sanders, Bernie, 94 San Francisco Peace Treaty (1951), 39–40, 176, 322 Sato Eisaku, 141–42 Schumer, Chuck, 99 SCO. See Shanghai Cooperation Organization SEATO. See Southeast Asia Treaty Organization security: ARF for, 61, 127, 201, 204, 215; ASEAN and, 61, 200–201, 205; Australia on, 314–17; China on, 117, 133, 385; Constructivists on Asian, 70–71, 74; dialogue and deterrence on, 383–87, 384; ethno-religious challenges on, 406–16; FDI and concerns on, 314–15; as hostile, 134; IPE and studies of, 58; Liberalism on, 68; multilateral architecture of, 384, 384–85; PLA for regional, 121– 22; PSI for, 206; US basis for Asia, 102–3, 385–86; under US-China rivalry, 386–88 Segal, Gerald, 62 Self-Strengthening Movement, of China, 32–34 Seni Pramoj, 60 Senkaku Islands, 66, 117, 130, 143, 298, 378–79 Shambaugh, David, 56, 73, 107, 190 Shanghai Communiqué (1972), 284, 302, 305n1, 305n6 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), 4, 132; China and, 354, 386; inclusion and, 384, 433; rise of, 44 Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD), 197, 211, 435 Sharif, Nawaz, 169, 179 Shastri, Lal Bahadur, 166 Sil, Rudra, 19, 73 Simon, Sheldon, 204 Singapore: affluence of, 341, 341–42; of ASEAN, 205, 210–11; on China, 219; economic growth of, 7; India and,

170; Lee Kuan Yew of, 60, 79n10, 210; Southeast Asia top economy as, 192, 193, 194; Taiwan and, 297; US cooperation and, 128, 219 Singh, Hari, 165 Singh, Manmohan, 167–68, 170, 179, 181 Sinic system, 11, 13, 28–29, 31, 44 Sino-Japanese relations, 121, 142, 147 Sino-Japanese War: on China, 33, 35–37, 89, 378; as first, 14, 28, 33, 35–36, 89; Korea and, 35–36; scars of, 38, 66, 294; as second, 37; Taiwan and, 36, 292; unraveling from, 14, 28, 155 Sino-Soviet alliance, 42–43 Sino-US relations, 42 SIPRI. See Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Six-Party Consultative Conference for Peace in Northeast Asia, 155, 232; North Korea at, 266–67, 273–74, 278, 436 SLD. See Shangri-La Dialogue smart power, 149 Snyder, Jack, 60, 66 societies: intersocietal relations and, 19; types of, 6–7 soft balancing, 161, 182, 183n2; Quad for, 162–63 soft power, 11–12, 430; by China, 123– 25; by India, 165, 172–73, 177; by South Korea, 229–30; Taiwan and, 289, 297–99 Solomon Islands: Australia and, 320, 323, 328–29; Taiwan and, 299–300, 394n65, 434 South Asia, 4, 230; China into, 168; countries of, 189, 190, 193; India and, 167–70; “Indic system” for, 28–29; military weakness of, 189; Taiwan on, 296–99; trading among, 168; Trump and, 96; on US-China rivalry, 190. See also Association of Southeast Asian Nations



Index 457

South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), 61, 167–68, 384, 433, 434 South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA), 168 South China Sea: Biden on China and, 105; China Nine-Dash Line on, 130, 298–99, 380–81; China on, 98, 100, 107–8, 115, 122, 130, 162, 325, 379–81; danger of, 437; military in, 365, 380–81; US on, 96–97, 101, 107–8, 381 Southeast Asia, 4, 230; ASEAN and, 5; authoritarian rule in, 192; Biden on, 100, 196; BRI and, 121, 124, 217, 297, 432; challenges for, 221; China and, 107, 191, 196; on China diversification, 12; Chinese products in, 124; colonial periods on, 194–95, 217; democracies in, 192; dispute resolution in, 191; diversity and inclusivity of, 195; economies of, 192, 193, 194, 362–63; hedging strategies and, 12; identity formation of, 192, 194–95, 220; immigration and, 191, 195; India and, 170; Japan invasion creating, 29; location of, 190, 196–97; military coups in, 192; as multilateral, 11, 73, 79n17, 131–32, 202–3, 218, 384, 433, 434; post-Cold War by, 189, 216–17; on poverty, 194; on powerful nations, 217–18; Quad partnership with, 191; regional institutions of, 189, 197, 220; religions in, 192; Russia on, 196, 202; Taiwan on, 296–99; trading and, 190–91, 197, 198; on US-China rivalry, 216–17; US hub-and-spoke with, 191, 217; US losing, 106–8; world powers courting, 196–97, 198 Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), 39–40, 213 South Korea, 5, 377; affluence of, 341, 341–42; China and, 230–31, 236–40, 237, 239, 249–50, 252n1;

China coercion on, 120–21; on China diversification, 12; China economic punishment of, 130–31, 238; climate change and, 232, 249; colonial period on, 258; on COVID, 240; CPTPP and, 250–51; democracy in, 66; on Dokdo/Takeshima islands, 150–52, 231; economy of, 8, 229, 250–51; on FOIP, 245–47, 249; foreign policy of, 230–31, 251–52; G20 and G7 for, 229; hedging strategies of, 12, 240, 246–47, 431; identity formation for, 152, 156, 229; India and, 171, 247–49; Japan and, 230–31; Kim family on, 260–64; Kim Jong-un on, 235; on Korean Peninsula, 231–36, 252n5; Korean War and, 231, 258, 378; on North Korea, 42–43, 151, 229, 231, 233– 36, 271–73, 436; North Korea trade with, 264, 264; NSP of, 245–48; PyeongChang Olympics of, 234, 238, 244, 271–73; as regional actor, 10–11; slave labor of, 150–51, 230– 31, 241–43; soft power by, 229–30; Taiwan and, 295–96; tourism and, 234, 242, 253n10; trade of, 236–37, 237; US and, 230–31, 246–47, 249–50, 252n1; on US-China rivalry, 231–32, 240, 249–50, 430–31; on Xi Jinping, 238–40, 272, 274. See also Korean War South Pacific, 285, 309–11, 321, 324– 25, 327–28, 331; BRI on, 329; China and, 320, 329–30. See also Pacific Island countries sovereignty: ASEAN and, 199–200, 205; Asia supporting state, 45; China on, 129; Indonesia on, 207; Ma Yingjeou on Taiwan, 299 Soviet-ROK normalization, 43 Soviet Union: ASEAN on, 200–201; Asia IR Big Four with, 40; on Central Asia, 88–89; Cold War system with US and, 39–40;

458

Index

communism and, 40–41; demise of, 92, 167; Gorbachev and, 43, 147; India on, 164, 166–67, 170, 176, 179, 181–82; on Korea division, 258; power vacuum and, 60; Vietnam and, 41–42, 60, 62, 87–88, 90, 213, 215 space program, of China, 125, 137n36 Sri Lanka, 11, 315, 387, 434; China and, 168, 180, 184n21; India and, 167–68, 176; NSP and, 296–97 stability maintenance: China on, 116, 129; from hegemony, 80nn22–23 Stalin, Joseph, 258, 276 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 122 student exchanges, 238, 239 Suharto regime, 66, 192, 206, 323 Sukarno regime, 200, 322 Sullivan, Jake, 98 Sun Yat-sen, 51n24 swap agreements, 147, 203, 359–60 TAC. See Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia Taft-Katsura Agreement (1905), 36 Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO), 287 Taiping Rebellion, 32 Taiwan, 5; affluence of, 341, 341–42; Asia trade and investment with, 301; Australasia and, 299–301, 301; on China, 287–88, 427, 429–30; China and, 10, 98, 115, 119, 122, 133, 142, 283, 302–4, 425; China cross-strait relations with, 289–92, 381–83; China on reunification and, 284–85, 287–89, 299, 306n12; on CPTPP, 285, 305; democracy in, 66–67, 286–88, 290; diplomatic ties for, 285, 288, 298–301, 304, 394n65; diplomatic ties loss by, 283–84, 287, 289, 292, 305, 382, 394n65; economy and trading of, 283, 286– 87, 304; FDI and, 144, 301; Charles Glaser on China and, 16; as hedge,

304–5; history of, 284; identity formation for, 287; India and, 171; international actions by, 285; Japan and, 292–95; labor issues and, 290, 297; military of, 376, 382; Northeast Asia ties for, 292–96; PLA on, 122; RCEP and, 285; on Singapore and Vietnam, 297; Sino-Japanese War and, 36, 292; soft power, 289, 297, 299; Solomon Islands and, 299–300, 394n65, 434; on South Asia and Southeast Asia, 296–99; South Korea and, 295–96; territorial disputes of, 294, 298–99; on tourism, 291, 293, 297–98, 301, 303; Tsai on independence and, 288–89, 299, 302–4, 382; on UN, 285, 299; US on, 98, 101, 131, 295, 305n1, 305n6, 382, 393n63; US relations with, 104, 126, 283, 301–3; World Health Assembly and, 288–89, 294; in WTO, 285; Xi Jinping on, 289, 302, 383, 429. See also Republic of China Taiwan Strait: China and Taiwan on, 289–92, 381–83; cross-strait relations on, 289–92, 381–83; military in, 365, 381–83; US and, 382–83 Tajikistan, 434 Taliban, 170, 401 Tamil movement, 168 Tanaka Kakuei, 142, 146 Taoism, 6 Tatsunosuke Takasaki, 142 TECRO. See Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), 121, 130–31, 238–39, 272 territorial disputes: China balance on, 118, 132–33; China charm offensive on, 115, 125–26; China hard line on, 128–33, 162, 371, 372, 389n15; India with, 165, 167, 180; internal China on, 126–27; of Japan and Taiwan, 294; of Malaysia, 209; Taiwan with,



Index 459

294, 298–99; of Thailand, 214–15. See also East China Sea; South China Sea; Taiwan Strait terrorism: China on, 117; ETIM and, 407; global war on, 67, 92, 103, 145, 323; Islamic State and, 406–7, 411, 415–16; Pakistan and, 169; al Qaeda, 406, 415; in Southwest Asia, 101; Taliban and, 170, 401 THAAD. See Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense Thailand: in ASEAN, 205, 213–15; China and, 213–14, 377; democracy in, 66–67; hedging strategies by, 191, 214; India and, 170; labor issues and, 401–2; Myanmar and, 214–15, 362, 401–3, 405; with poverty, 401–2; sex tourism in, 401–2; Southeast Asia top economy as, 192, 193, 194; territorial disputes of, 214–15; US and, 213; women and culture in, 401–3 Thucydides Trap, 15, 47, 76 Tiananmen Square incident, 91, 142 Tianxia model, 75 Tibet: China on, 117, 406, 408–9; Clinton, B., on, 92; Dalai Lama of, 166, 408; India on, 166, 180 Timor-Leste, 192, 194, 361 Tito, 164 Tonghak Rebellion, 35 tourism: agreements for, 19; by Chinese, 107, 123, 130–31, 291, 312; Japan and, 242, 293; North Korea and, 269; South Korea and, 234, 242, 253n10; Taiwan on, 291, 293, 297–98, 301, 303; Thailand and sex, 401–2 TPP. See Trans-Pacific Partnership “Track II” policy conferences, by China, 123 trade: ASEAN imports, 347; ASEANIndia Free Trade Area in, 170–71; Asia global volume of, 8; Australia on, 311, 315; Biden on Asia, 99; with China, 46, 120, 120, 339, 344; China and Australia with, 300–301,

312–13, 316; China importance in, 106, 345, 345–47; Chinese brand names in, 124; for economic interdependence, 155; Germany and, 198; as intra-regional, 8, 344–45, 347–48; of Japan and Taiwan, 293–94; New Zealand on Asia, 300–301, 322–23; of North Korea, 263, 263; policy in Asia, 352–55; South and North Koreas with, 234; among South Asia countries, 168; by Southeast Asia, 190–91, 197, 198; of South Korea, 236–37, 237; South Korea and North Korea with, 264, 264; with Sri Lanka, 168; Taiwan with, 283, 286–87, 304; top five partners in, 198; tribute system for, 31; Trump war on, 46, 95, 102, 194, 296; US and India in, 104, 161, 177–80, 182; Western nations on China, 32–33; WTO on global, 352. See also imports Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): for Asia, 352–53; Japan joining, 149; Obama on, 93, 362–63; Sanders on, 94; Trump withdrawal from, 94, 100, 102, 303, 352–53. See also Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership transparency, 213, 246, 383, 385 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC), 201, 323 tribute system: of China, 11–12, 29–33, 50n15, 71; definition of, 30; Opium Wars on, 28, 31–34, 51n21; sadae chui of, 35; for trading, 31 Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group, 152 Trump, Donald, 153; on Asia and Asian countries, 94, 104–5, 316; Biden as after, 97; FOIP of, 117, 303, 316; Jong-un and, 95–96, 152, 266–68, 270–71, 436; South Asia and, 96; on TPP, 94, 100, 102, 303, 352–53;

460

Index

trade war of, 46, 95, 102, 194, 296; on Xi, 95 Trump administration, 93; as aberration, 109, 316; on China, 94, 374; on ETIM, 407; on Indo-Pacific region, 94–95; on Taiwan, 303 Tsai Ing-wen: cross-strait relations decline and, 292, 382; Japan and, 294; NSP of, 296–98, 301–2; on Taiwan independence, 288–89, 299, 302–4, 382 Turkey, 146, 407 Uighurs/Xinjiang: Australia on, 301, 313; China cultural genocide on, 117, 406–9, 416; Indonesia on, 218; Malaysia on, 208–9; New Zealand on, 301, 326 UN. See United Nations UNCLOS. See United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 269 United Nations (UN), 6; on China, 40, 42, 109; democracy promoted by, 397, 416; on gender equality, minority rights, political rights, 397; on India, 176; Moon Jae-in to, 252n5; PLA peacekeeping operations with, 371; Taiwan on, 285, 299 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), 126–27, 130 United States (US), 5; from Afghanistan, 91–93, 100, 105, 108, 321; Graham Allison on China and, 15, 47; ASEAN loss by, 106; Asia decline of, 41, 68, 97, 100, 102, 104, 107; on Asia democracy, 101, 108; Asia government success by, 103; Asia migrants in, 89, 101, 103; Asia NATO lack by, 69–70, 81n31; Asia presence by, 10, 87, 90–91, 132; Asia security from, 102–3, 385–86; Asia shift by, 93; on Asia trade,

97, 101; Asia trade with, 351–52; in AUKUS, 319–20, 374, 431; Australia relations with, 104, 309, 316–17; as benevolent hegemon, 16–17, 63–65, 68; Brunei and, 386; BUILD Act and Indo-Pacific areas, 96; as chief regional balancer, 60–61, 79n10, 87, 97, 101; China and domestic politics of, 95; on China and Japan economic interests, 88–89; China and shortcomings by, 104–6; on China and Uighurs, 406; China military and, 117, 127, 131, 371, 373–74; China rapprochement with, 90; China surpassing, 47; Cold War and hegemony by, 43; on CPTPP, 99, 149, 353; in EAS, 73; on East China Sea, 378–79; exports to, 103; FDI by, 144, 357, 357–58, 361–62; Great Britain with, 87, 91, 96, 319–20; on Hong Kong, 92, 105; hub-andspokes alliance system of, 14, 39–40, 43, 61, 191, 217, 431–32; on India, 164; India relations with, 104, 161, 177–80, 182; on Indo-Pacific region, 131, 327–28; on Iran, 101; Iraq withdrawal by, 92–93, 105; IR social science as, 55; Japan and gunboat diplomacy by, 34; Japan orienting towards, 87–88, 144; Japan relations with, 104, 145–48, 153–54, 431; Japan trading with, 91; Junichiro of Japan allying, 140; into Korean War, 258; Liberalism on hegemonic, 65; Malaysia cooperation and, 128, 208, 219; military ships in South China Sea, 96–97, 101, 107–8, 381; military support by, 365, 377; New Zealand and, 309, 324–27; Northeast Asia favored by, 93; on North Korea, 90, 101, 270–71, 436; on-again, offagain tendency of, 101–2, 108–9, 128; Philippines and, 212–13; postCold War focus by, 92, 216; Realism



Index 461

for, 63–64; rebalance policy by, 93–94, 117, 128; SEATO allies with, 40, 213; on Southeast Asia, 196; Southeast Asia loss by, 106–8; South Korea and, 230–31, 246–47, 249–50, 252n1; on Taiwan, 98, 101, 131, 295, 305n1, 305n6, 382, 393n63; Taiwan relations with, 104, 126, 283, 301–3; Taiwan Strait and, 382–83; on terrorism and Southwest Asia, 101; THAAD by, 121, 130–31, 238–39, 272; Thailand and, 213; Vietnam and cooperation with, 88, 90, 99–100, 105, 128, 131–32, 147, 215–16; on worldwide conflict, 90; WTO by, 148–49 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 397 universalism, 58, 68, 75 UN Security Council, 42, 176; China and, 233; India and, 163; North Korea and, 233–34, 270–71, 274, 277 US. See United States US-China rivalry: ANZUS in, 300–301, 316–17, 320, 322, 333; ASEAN on, 208, 219; Australia on, 300–301, 317, 430; as competition, 10, 15–17, 61, 87, 94–97, 101, 104, 129, 131–32, 134; of great powers, 433; hedging strategies on, 106, 217, 304, 430, 432; hub-and-spokes alliance system in, 14, 39–40, 43, 61, 191, 217, 431–32; Japan on, 430; military spending in, 365, 377; security under, 386–88; South Asia on, 190; Southeast Asia on, 216–17; South Korea on, 231–32, 240, 249–50, 430–31; Vietnam benefiting from, 194 US-Philippine Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), 213, 375–76 US-ROK Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), 231

Vajpayee, Atal Bihari, 166, 170, 181 Vasquez, John, 64 VFA. See US-Philippine Visiting Forces Agreement Vietnam: of ASEAN, 205, 215–16; Biden and, 100; China and, 12, 125, 127, 130, 216, 218; Cold War system on, 38–39, 41; communism and, 13, 192, 200, 215; COVID and, 194; economic growth of, 7, 215; hedging strategies by, 216, 218; military of, 376–77; Southeast Asia top economy as, 192, 193, 194; South Korea and, 246; South Korea NSP and, 246; Soviet Union and, 41–42, 60, 62, 87–88, 90, 213, 215; Taiwan and, 297; US and, 88, 90, 99–100, 105, 128, 131–32, 147, 215–16 Waltz, Kenneth, 58, 60 Warmbier, Otto, 269 Washington Naval Conference, 37 White, Hugh, 16, 316 WHO. See World Health Organization women’s rights, 5, 398, 401, 405–6; religions on, 399–400, 402–4 World Bank, 65, 91 World Health Assembly, 288–89, 294 World Health Organization (WHO), 285 World Trade Organization (WTO), 242; China joining, 92; on global trade, 352; India in, 175; Taiwan in, 285; as US, 148–49 World War I. See First World War World War II, 37–38 WTO. See World Trade Organization Xi Jinping, 9, 47; Australia on, 313, 315; BRI of, 106, 168, 432; China aggressive under, 115, 118–19, 126, 128–29, 133, 426–27; on Deng Xiaoping, 427; diplomatic bullying under, 125; hard balancing and, 161– 62, 183n2; India and, 180; Japan

462

Index

and, 143; New Zealand and, 324; on North Korea, 267, 274; power agenda of, 162, 236; on South China Sea, 380–81; South Korea on, 238– 40, 272, 274; Taiwan and, 289, 302, 383, 429; Donald Trump and, 95 Xinjiang province: Asia on, 208–9, 216, 218, 301, 326; China on, 117, 313, 406–9

Yamagata Aritomo, 150 Yang Jiechi, 127 Yan Xuetong, 63, 75 Yasukuni Shrine, 48, 66 Yoon Suk-yeol, 240 Yoshida Doctrine, 139–40, 145 Yoshida Shigeru, 139, 141, 142, 145–46 Zhao Tingyang, 75

About the Editor and Contributors

ABOUT THE EDITOR David Shambaugh is the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science and International Affairs, and the founding Director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He previously was a non-resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution and Director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has been a Senior Fulbright Scholar in China and visiting professor at universities in Australia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, and Taiwan. Professor Shambaugh also previously held the faculty position of Reader in Chinese Politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where he also served as Editor of The China Quarterly. He has served on the Board of Directors of the National Committee on US-China Relations, Board of Advisors of the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a participant in the Aspen Strategy Group, and other public policy and scholarly organizations. As an author and editor, Professor Shambaugh has published numerous articles and chapters, and more than thirty books including, most recently, China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now (2021); Where Great Powers Meet: America and China in Southeast Asia (2021); China and the World (2020); China’s Future (2016); The China Reader: Rising Power (2016); China Goes Global: The Partial Power (2014); and Tangled Titans: The United States and China (2012).

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About the Editor and Contributors

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Amitav Acharya is Distinguished Professor and the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance at the School of International Service, American University. Previously he was a Professor at York University, Toronto, and University of Bristol, UK. He previously held the inaugural Nelson Mandela Visiting Professorship in International Relations at Rhodes University, South Africa, the Boeing Company Chair in International Relations at the Schwarzman Scholars Program at Tsinghua University, was a Fellow of Harvard’s Asia Center, and a Christensen Fellow at Oxford. He is the first non-Western scholar to be elected (for 2014–15) President of the International Studies Association (ISA), and he has received two Distinguished Scholar Awards from the ISA for his “contribution to non-Western IR theory and inclusion” and for his scholarship on the study of international organizations. His books include The Making of Global International Relations (2019, with Barry Buzan); Constructing Global Order (2018); The End of American World Order (2014, 2018); The Making of Southeast Asia (2013); Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia (3rd ed., 2014); and ASEAN and Regional Order (2021). His articles have appeared in International Organization, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Asian Studies, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Peace Research, International Affairs, and World Politics. Robert Ayson has been Professor of Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) since 2010, where he works in close association with the Centre for Strategic Studies. He has also held academic positions with the Australian National University (ANU), Massey University, and the University of Waikato, and official positions with the New Zealand government. Professor Ayson completed his MA as a Freyberg Scholar to the ANU and his PhD at King’s College London as a Commonwealth Scholar to the UK. His books include Thomas Schelling and the Nuclear Age (2004), Hedley Bull and the Accommodation of Power (2012), and Asia’s Security (2015). He has also published on New Zealand and Australian security policy, nuclear proliferation, and stability and coercion as strategic concepts in a variety of scholarly and policy journals. Victor Cha is Professor of Government and holds the D. S. Song–Korea Foundation Chair in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service (SFS) at Georgetown University. In July 2019, he was appointed Vice Dean for faculty and graduate affairs in SFS. He also serves as Senior Vice President at the Center for Security and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC, and is a non-resident Fellow in Human Freedom at the



About the Editor and Contributors 465

George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, Texas. He left the White House in 2007 after serving since 2004 as Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC), where he was responsible for Japan, the Korean Peninsula, Australia/New Zealand, and Pacific Island affairs. He was also the deputy head of delegation for the United States at the Six-Party Talks in Beijing and received two outstanding service commendations during his tenure at the NSC. He is the author of five books, including the Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States-Korea-Japan Security Triangle (1999), winner of the 2000 Ohira Book Prize; The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (2012), which was selected by Foreign Affairs as a “Best Book on the AsiaPacific for 2012”; and Powerplay: Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (2016). He has published articles on International Relations and East Asia in journals, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, Political Science Quarterly, Survival, International Studies Quarterly, International Journal of the History of Sport, and Asian Survey. Bates Gill is Professor of Asia-Pacific Security Studies and Chair of the Department of Security Studies and Criminology at Macquarie University, Australia. He is also Senior Associate Fellow with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London and inaugural Scholar in Residence with the Asia Society Australia. He has a thirty-plus year career as an institutionbuilder, policy advisor, and scholar—with a focus on Asian politics, foreign policy, and security, particularly with regard to China and US-China relations. In previous positions, Professor Gill was Chief Executive Officer of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, and Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). He also held the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and served as a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies and inaugural Director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies (CNAPS) at the Brookings Institution. He is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of nine books, including Daring to Struggle: China’s Global Ambitions under Xi Jinping (2022), China Matters: Getting It Right for Australia (2017), Asia’s New Multilateralism (2009), and Rising Star: China’s New Security Diplomacy (2007, 2010). Michael J. Green is Senior Vice President for Asia and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Chair in Modern and Contemporary Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy, and Director of the Asian Studies Program at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He previously served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Asian Affairs on the National Security

466

About the Editor and Contributors

Council staff under President George W. Bush, where he was responsible for East and South Asia. He has also held positions in the Department of Defense, Council on Foreign Relations, Institute for Defense Analyses, and the National Diet of Japan. He is also a Senior Advisor to The Asia Group consultancy and serves on the Board of Trustees of The Asia Foundation and is Chairman of the Board of Peacewinds USA, in addition to other advisory and editorial boards. He is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and the Council on Foreign Relations, among other academic and civic organizations. Professor Green’s book By More than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific since 1783, was published in 2017 and won Silver Prize for the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Award for best book in international affairs. His newest book, Line of Advantage: Japan’s Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzo, was published in 2022. Ellen Kim recently received her PhD in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Southern California. Her dissertation, Fear or Greed? The Balance of Relative Interest Under the Dual Hierarchical Order in Asia-Pacific, explains what causes divergent alignment preferences in the context of US-China great power competition. Previously, she was Associate Director of the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Relations (CSIS), where she was also a Fellow. Her research focuses on East Asian security, US grand strategy in Asia, and international political economy. Her work has appeared in Asia Policy and Comparative Connections. She received her Master’s in Public Policy (MIPP) from the Harvard Kennedy School and her BA from Wellesley College. Samuel S. Kim is Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute. He previously taught at Monmouth University, China Foreign Affairs University, Princeton University, and Columbia University. He is the author or editor of twenty-three books on Chinese foreign policy, East Asian international relations, Korean foreign relations, and world order studies—including China, the United Nations, and World Order (1979); The War System: An Interdisciplinary Approach (coeditor, 1980); The Quest for a Just World Order (1984); China and the World (editor, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1998); China’s Quest for National Identity (coeditor, 1993); East Asia and Globalization (editor, 2000); The International Relations of Northeast Asia (editor, 2004); The Two Koreas and the Great Powers (2006); and North Korean Foreign Relations in the Post–Cold War World (2015). He has published more than 200 articles in edited volumes and leading international relations journals, including the American Journal of International Law, China Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Chinese Law,



About the Editor and Contributors 467

Journal of East Asian Studies, Journal of Peace Research, World Policy Journal, and World Politics. Cheng-Chwee Kuik is Associate Professor and Head of the Centre for Asian Studies, Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), National University of Malaysia (UKM). He is concurrently a non-resident Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. Previously, he was a postdoctoral Research Associate in the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program and a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Department of Politics and International Relations. Dr. Kuik’s research concentrates on smaller state external policy, China’s foreign policy, Asian security, and international relations. His publications have appeared in many journals and edited books. His article “The Essence of Hedging” won the Michael Leifer Memorial Prize by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in 2009. He is coauthor (with David M. Lampton and Selina Ho) of Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia (2020) and coeditor (with Alice Ba and Sueo Sudo) of Institutionalizing East Asia (2016). His current projects include: hedging in international relations, elite legitimation and foreign policy choices, and the geopolitics of infrastructure connectivity cooperation. Dr. Kuik serves on the editorial boards of Contemporary Southeast Asia, Australian Journal of International Affairs, and International Journal of Asian Studies. Rollie Lal is an Associate Professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, where she teaches transnational security, foreign policy, and international political economy. She is also CoChair of the Global Affairs and Religion Network (GARNET). Her research focuses on international organized crime, terrorism, religious extremism, and human rights. Previously she was Associate Professor at the US Department of Defense’s Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS) in Honolulu. She also taught at the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School in Gent, Belgium, and St. Petersburg, Russia. From 2002 to 2006 she was a political scientist at the RAND Corporation. She is the author of several books, including Terrorist Criminal Enterprises (2018); Iran’s Political, Demographic, and Economic Vulnerabilities (2008); Understanding China and India (2006); Central Asia and Its Asian Neighbors (2006); and The Muslim World After 9/11 (2004). She was a correspondent for the Japanese newspaper The Yomiuri Shimbun (1993–96). Edward J. Lincoln is a recently retired specialist on the Japanese economy, US-Japan economic relations, and Asian economic issues more broadly.

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About the Editor and Contributors

Much of his career was as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. In addition, he was Director of the Center for Japan-US Business and Economic Studies and Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University, from 2006 to 2011. He has also taught courses on the Japanese economy and the East Asian economies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced Studies (SAIS), Columbia University, and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. In the mid-1990s he served as Special Economic Adviser to Ambassador Walter Mondale at the US Embassy in Tokyo. Dr. Lincoln is the author of nine books and monographs, including East Asian Economic Regionalism (2004), Arthritic Japan: The Slow Pace of Economic Reform (2001), and Troubled Times: US-Japan Trade Relations in the 1990s (1998). He has also published numerous articles and op-ed pieces on Japan, US-Japan economic relations, and East Asian economic issues. Rory Medcalf has served as Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University since 2015. His previous career spanned diplomacy, intelligence analysis, think tanks, academia, and journalism, including as founding director of the international security program at the Lowy Institute. In government, Professor Medcalf was a senior strategic analyst with the Office of National Assessments, Australia’s lead intelligence agency, and a diplomat with service in India, Japan, and Papua New Guinea. He has since played a lead role in Australia’s informal (Track 2 and Track 1.5) diplomacy with many Indo-Pacific countries. He has contributed to three landmark international reports on nuclear arms control: the 1996 Canberra Commission, 1999 Tokyo Forum, and 2009 International Commission on Nuclear NonProliferation and Disarmament. Professor Medcalf is recognized globally as a thought leader on the Indo-Pacific strategic concept, as articulated in his 2020 book Contest for the Indo-Pacific (published internationally as IndoPacific Empire, 2nd ed., 2021). He is a member of the Board of the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations, the Scientific Advisory Council of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, and the editorial boards of Asia Policy and The Australian Journal of International Affairs. He has been a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, and remains a non-resident Fellow with the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia. T. V. Paul is James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He served as the President of International Studies Association (ISA) for 2016–17. He is the founding



About the Editor and Contributors 469

Director of the Global Research Network on Peaceful Change (GRENPEC). Professor Paul is the author or editor of twenty-one books and more than seventy-five scholarly articles/book chapters in the fields of international relations, international security, and South Asia. He is the author of: Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era (2018); The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World (2013); Globalization and the National Security State (with N. Ripsman, 2010); The Tradition of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons (2009); India in the World Order: Searching for Major Power Status (with B. R. Nayar, 2002); Power versus Prudence: Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons (2000); and Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers (1994). He is the lead editor of the Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Change in International Relations (2021). Paul currently serves as the editor of the Georgetown University Press book series South Asia in World Affairs. Shelley Rigger is the Brown Professor of East Asian Politics at Davidson College. Her research specialties are Taiwan’s domestic politics and relations among Taiwan, the United States, and the PRC. She has been a Fulbright Scholar at National Taiwan University, a Visiting Researcher at National Chengchi University (Taiwan), and a Visiting Professor at Fudan University and Shanghai Jiaotong University. She is the author of two scholarly books on Taiwan’s domestic politics: Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy (1999) and From Opposition to Power: Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (2001); and two books for general readers: Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse (2011) and The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China’s Economic Rise (2021); as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. Phillip C. Saunders is Director of the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs and a Distinguished Research Fellow at US National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies. He previously worked at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where he directed the East Asia Non-Proliferation Program at the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies from 1999 to 2003, and he served as an officer in the United States Air Force from 1989 to 1993. Dr. Saunders received an AB in History from Harvard University and an MPA and PhD from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Dr. Saunders is coauthor with David Gompert of The Paradox of Power: Sino-American Strategic Restraint in an Era of Vulnerability (2011). He has edited or coedited eight books on Asian security issues, including The PLA Beyond Borders: Chinese Military Operations in Regional and Global Context (2021), Chairman Xi Remakes

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About the Editor and Contributors

the PLA: Assessing Chinese Military Reforms (2019), and PLA Influence on China’s National Security Policymaking (2015). Scott Snyder is Senior Fellow for Korea Studies and Director of the program on US-Korea Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He specializes in the domestic and international politics of the Korean Peninsula, has provided advice to non-governmental and humanitarian organizations active in North Korea, and serves on the Advisory Council of the National Committee on North Korea and Global Resource Services. Prior to joining CFR, Mr. Snyder was a Senior Associate in the international relations program of the Asia Foundation, where he founded and directed the Center for US-Korea Policy and served as the Asia Foundation’s representative in South Korea (2000–2004). He was also a Senior Associate at Pacific Forum/CSIS in Honolulu, an Asia specialist in the Research and Studies Program of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and served as Acting Director of Asia Society’s Contemporary Affairs Program. He was also a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and Thomas G. Watson Fellow at Yonsei University in South Korea. His publications include: South Korea at the Crossroads: Autonomy and Alliance in an Era of Rival Powers (2018); China’s Rise and the Two Koreas: Politics, Economics, Security (2009); The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States (coauthor, 2015); North Korea in Transition: Politics, Economy, and Society (coeditor, 2012); Global Korea: South Korea’s Contributions to International Security (editor, 2012); and The US-South Korea Alliance: Meeting New Security Challenges (editor, 2012). He currently writes for the CFR blog Asia Unbound. Robert Sutter is Professor of Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of George Washington University. He was previously Visiting Professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University (2001–11). Professor Sutter’s government career spanned 1968 to 2001, during which he served as Senior Specialist and Director of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division of the Congressional Research Service, and as the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and the Pacific on the National Intelligence Council. Professor Sutter has published twenty-two books and hundreds of articles and government reports. His books include: Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy of an Emerging Global Force (5th ed., 2021); US-China Relations: Perilous Past, Uncertain Future (4th ed., 2022); The United States and Asia (2019); Shaping China’s Future in World Affairs: The Role of the United States (2019); Foreign Relations of the PRC (2018); Axis of Authoritarians: Implications of China-Russia Cooperation (2018); and US-China Relations: Perilous Past, Uncertain Present (2017).