The Routledge Handbook of Asian Security Studies [Second ed.] 9781315455655, 131545565X

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THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF ASIAN SECURITY STUDIES

The Routledge Handbook of Asian Security Studies provides a detailed exploration of security dynamics in the three distinct subregions that comprise Asia, and also bridges the study of these regions by exploring the geopolitical links between each of them. The Handbook is divided into four geographical parts: Part I: Northeast Asia Part II: South Asia Part III: Southeast Asia Part IV: Cross-regional Issues This fully revised and updated second edition addresses the significant developments which have taken place in Asia since the first edition appeared in 2009. It examines these developments at both regional and national levels, including the conflict surrounding the South China Sea, the long-standing Sino-Indian border dispute, and Pakistan’s investment in tactical nuclear weapons, amongst many others. This book will be of great interest to students of Asian politics, security studies, war and conflict studies, foreign policy and international relations generally. Sumit Ganguly is Professor of Political Science and holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, USA, and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. His most recent publication is Ascending India and Its State Capacity (with William R. Thompson, 2017). Andrew Scobell is Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation and Adjunct Professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, USA. His most recent publication is PLA Influence on China’s National Security Policymaking (2015). Joseph Chinyong Liow is Dean and Professor of Comparative and International Politics at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His most recent publication is Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia (2016).

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF ASIAN SECURITY STUDIES Second Edition

Edited by Sumit Ganguly, Andrew Scobell and Joseph Chinyong Liow

Second edition published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial material, Sumit Ganguly, Andrew Scobell and Joseph Chinyong Liow; individual chapters, the contributors The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Routledge, 2010 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ganguly, Sumit, editor. | Scobell, Andrew, editor. | Liow, Joseph Chinyong, 1972– editor. Title: The Routledge Handbook of Asian Security Studies / edited by Sumit Ganguly, Andrew Scobell and Joseph Chinyong Liow. Description: Second edition. | New York : Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017027830 | ISBN 9781138210295 (Hardback) | ISBN 9781315455655 (Ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Security, International—Asia—Handbooks, manuals, etc. | National security—Asia—Handbooks, manuals, etc. Classification: LCC JZ6009.A75 R68 2018 | DDC 355/.03305—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017027830 ISBN: 978-1-138-21029-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-45565-5 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

Notes on contributors

viii

Introduction Sumit Ganguly, Andrew Scobell and Joseph Chinyong Liow

1

PART I

Northeast Asia

9

1 Whither China’s 21st century trajectory? Andrew Scobell

11

2 Sino-Japanese rivalry and its consequences for Asia Sheila A. Smith

21

3 North Korea’s nuclear weaponization program: background, context, and trends for the future Bruce E. Bechtol Jr 4 False alarm: Xinjiang and China’s national security Yitzhak Shichor 5 Origins, intentions, and security implications of Xi Jinping’s belt and road initiative Jeffrey Reeves 6 The dynamics of Russo-Chinese relations Stephen Blank

v

38

50

61

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Contents

7 Taiwan’s traditional security challenges as a contested state Ming-chin Monique Chu 8 China’s maritime ambitions Andrew S. Erickson

88

100

PART II

South Asia

115

9 The evolution of India’s nuclear weapons program Dinshaw Mistry

117

10 Pakistan’s nuclear program: laying the groundwork for impunity C. Christine Fair

126

11 Insurgency and counterinsurgency in South Asia Shivaji Mukherjee

140

12 India and Pakistan: persistent rivalry Rajesh Basrur

153

13 China and India: the evolution of a compound rivalry Manjeet S. Pardesi

164

14 Civil-military relations in South Asia Aqil Shah

178

15 Human security in India Swarna Rajagopalan

190

16 India and its great power aspirations William R. Thompson

201

PART III

Southeast Asia

215

17 ASEAN centrality tested Mely Caballero-Anthony

217

18 Genealogy of conflict: the roots, evolution, and trajectory of the South China Sea disputes Richard Javad Heydarian

vi

229

Contents

19 Indonesia as a regional power: a pan-Indo-Pacific worldview Vibhanshu Shekhar

243

20 Terrorism and counterterrorism in Indonesia Susan Sim

255

21 United States’ pivot and Southeast Asia Daniel Wei Boon Chua

268

22 Democratization in Southeast Asia: social, institutional and security considerations Michael Vatikiotis

280

23 Assessing peace processes in Southeast Asia S.P. Harish

290

24 Foreign policy and political changes in post-junta Myanmar Renaud Egreteau

301

PART IV

Cross-regional issues

313

25 The future of great power rivalry in the Indian Ocean Iskander Rehman

315

26 Asian regionalism David Capie

333

27 Anatomy of a rivalry: China and Japan in Southeast Asia Hoo Tiang Boon

345

28 The future of alliances in Asia Andrew O’Neil

357

29 The United States and Asia: following through on the pivot Robert Sutter

372

Index

385

vii

CONTRIBUTORS

Rajesh Basrur is Professor of International Relations at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has authored five books, including (with Kate Sullivan De Estrada) Rising India: Status and Power (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, forthcoming). South Asia’s Cold War (Routledge, 2008) and Minimum Deterrence and India’s Nuclear Security (Stanford University Press, 2006). He has also edited nine books, including (with Bharat Gopalaswamy) India’s Military Modernization: Strategic Technologies and Weapons Systems (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Challenges to Democracy in India (Oxford University Press, 2009). His work focuses on South Asian security, global nuclear politics and international relations theory. Bruce E. Bechtol Jr is Professor of Political Science at Angelo State University and a retired Marine. He was an intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1997 until 2003, including serving as senior analyst for Northeast Asia in the Intelligence Directorate (J2) on the Joint Staff in the Pentagon. He has published six books, including North Korea and Regional Security in the Kim Jong-un Era: A New International Security Dilemma (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Stephen Blank is an internationally recognized expert on Russian foreign and defense policies and international relations and a leading expert on European and Asian security. Since 2013 he has been a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, www.afpc.org. From 1989–2013 he was Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College in Pennsylvania. Dr. Blank’s M.A. and Ph.D. are in Russian History from the University of Chicago. Hoo Tiang Boon is Assistant Professor, China Programme and Coordinator of the M.Sc. (Asian Studies) Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He holds a D.Phil. in International Relations from the University of Oxford. His new book is Chinese Foreign Policy under Xi, (ed.) (New York & London: Routledge, 2017). He has published articles in several peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Strategic Studies, Asian Security, Journal of Contemporary China, St Antony’s International Review, and International Journal of China Studies. viii

Contributors

Mely Caballero-Anthony is Associate Professor and Head of the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research interests include regionalism and regional security in the Asia-Pacific, politics and international relations in ASEAN, non-traditional security as well as human security. She has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals on a broad range of security issues in the Asia-Pacific. Among her latest publications is, An Introduction to Non-Traditional Security (SAGE, 2016). David Capie is Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies and Associate Professor of International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His research focuses on traditional and non-traditional security issues in the Asia-Pacific, defense diplomacy and New Zealand foreign and defense policy. He is a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum Experts and Eminent Persons Group. Ming-chin Monique Chu is Lecturer in Chinese Politics at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Southampton. She earned her Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Cambridge. She’s the author of The East Asian Computer Chip War (2013) and the co-editor of Globalization and Security Relations across the Taiwan Strait: In the Shadow of China (2014). Her current research examines the phenomena of problematic sovereignty on China’s periphery. Daniel Wei Boon Chua is Assistant Professor in the Military Studies Programme and Deputy Head of Graduate Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University. His research focuses on US relations with Southeast Asia and his latest book is US-Singapore Relations, 1965–1975: Strategic Non-alignment in the Cold War (National University of Singapore Press, 2017). Renaud Egreteau is a political scientist whose research focuses on democratization, civil-military relations and the international politics of South and Southeast Asia. He has taught at Sciences Po Paris and the University of Hong Kong, and held fellowships from the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. He was a recipient of a 2015–2016 scholarship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC and recently authored Caretaking Democratization: The Military and Political Change in Myanmar (Oxford University Press and Hurst, 2016). Andrew S. Erickson is Professor of Strategy in, and a core founding member of, the US Naval War College (NWC)’s China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI). He helped to establish CMSI and to stand it up officially in 2006, and has subsequently played an integral role in its development. Since 2008 Erickson has been an Associate in Research at Harvard University’s John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. He runs the research website . C. Christine Fair is a Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Her research focuses on political and military affairs in South Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka). Her most recent book is Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (Oxford University Press). Additionally, she has as authored, co-authored and co-edited several books, including Pakistan’s Enduring Challenges (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), Policing Insurgencies: Cops as Counterinsurgents (Oxford University Press, 2014); Political Islam and Governance in ix

Contributors

Bangladesh (Routledge, 2010); Treading on Hallowed Ground: Counterinsurgency Operations in Sacred Spaces (Oxford University Press, 2008); The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan (USIP, 2008), and The Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States (Globe Pequot, 2008), among others. Her current book project is Lashkar-e-Taiba: In its Own Words. Sumit Ganguly is a professor of political science, holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, Bloomington, and is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy research Institute in Philadelphia. He is a specialist on the international and comparative politics of South Asia and is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of some twenty books on the region. His most recent book (with William R. Thompson) is Ascending India and Its State Capacity (Yale University Press, 2017) S. P. Harish is Assistant Professor in the Government Department at the College of William & Mary. He is also the Associate Director of the Behavioral Laboratory at the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policy. Previously he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Governance in the Institute for the Study of International Development at McGill University. He has published in many leading journals, including American Political Science Review, Terrorism and Political Violence, Science Advances, and Contemporary Southeast Asia. His work has also been featured in popular outlets such as the Economist, The Atlantic, NY Mag, Marginal Revolution and Ideas for India. Harish has a Ph.D. in Political Science from New York University, and a Master’s in International Relations from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. Richard Javad Heydarian is a Manila-based academic, having taught at De La Salle University and Ateneo De Manila University as a political science professor, and is the author of Asia’s New Battlefield: US, China, and the Struggle for Western Pacific (Zed Books, London). He is also a regular contributor to Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC and Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York on Asian geopolitical affairs. Joseph Chinyong Liow is Dean and Professor of Comparative and International Politics at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the author of Dictionary of the Modern Politics of Southeast Asia, 4th edition (Routledge, 2015) and Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, 2016). His research interests are in the fields of Muslim politics and social movements in Southeast Asia and the international politics of the Asia-Pacific. Dinshaw Mistry is Professor of International Relations at the University of Cincinnati. He specializes in international relations, security studies, Asian security, and technology and politics. He has published extensively on the topics of nuclear and missile proliferation and South Asian security. Shivaji Mukherjee completed his Ph.D. in political science at Yale University and teaches courses on South Asian politics, research methods, and civil conflict and violence at University of Toronto. He is currently working on a book on colonial origins of Maoist insurgency in India, which is based on field work in states like Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh, which were affected by Maoist insurgency. He has published in Civil Wars and also has several forthcoming articles on topics related to insurgency and politics and India in journals on conflict. Andrew O’Neil is Professor of Political Science and Dean of Research in the Business School at Griffith University. He is the author of Asia, the United States, and Extended Deterrence: Atomic Umbrellas in the 21st Century (Routledge, 2013) and co-editor (with Bruce Gilley) of Middle x

Contributors

Powers and the Rise of China (Georgetown University Press, 2014). O’Neil’s main areas of academic expertise focus on the geopolitics and economics of Asia, the contemporary nature of security alliances, and the role of nuclear weapons in international relations. Manjeet S. Pardesi is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington. His research interests include Asian Security, great power politics, rivalries, Indian foreign/security policy, and international relations in world history. His articles have appeared in Security Studies, Survival, Asian Security, World Policy Journal, India Review, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Defense and Security Analysis and Air and Space Power Journal. He is a co-editor of India’s Military Modernization: Challenges and Prospects (OUP, 2014). Swarna Rajagopalan trained as a political scientist. She is an independent scholar, writing for both academic research projects and media outlets on issues related to human security, gender and politics. She is also the founder of The Prajnya Trust which undertakes public education work on peace and gender equality. Jeffrey Reeves is Associate Professor in the College of Security Studies with the Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is the author, most recently, of Chinese Foreign Relations with Weak Peripheral States (Routledge, 2015) and co-editor of Chinese-Japanese Competition and the East Asian Security Complex (Routledge, 2017). Iskander Rehman is Senior Fellow for International Relations at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University. Prior to joining the Pell Center, Dr. Rehman was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the International Order and Strategy Program (IOS) at the Brookings Institution. He has also served as a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Stanton Nuclear Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and as a Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, all in Washington, DC. Andrew Scobell is Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation and Adjunct Professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. His publications include PLA Influence on China’s National Security Policymaking (Stanford University Press, 2015), China’s Search for Security (Columbia University Press, 2012) and China’s Use of Military Force (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Scobell earned a doctorate from Columbia University. Aqil Shah is Wick Cary Assistant Professor of South Asian Politics in the College of International Studies at the University of Oklahoma and a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research interests include democratic transitions, military coups and security issues with a regional focus on South Asia. His research and analysis have appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Democratization, Journal of Democracy, Asian Survey, Current History and Foreign Affairs. He is the author of The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan (Harvard University Press, 2014). Vibhanshu Shekhar is currently Adjunct Faculty, ASEAN Studies Initiative, School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC. He is also a Visiting Faculty, Graduate School of Diplomacy, Paramadina University, Jakarta, Indonesia. Dr. Shekhar’s research covers foreign relations of two rising Asian powers (India and Indonesia), critical geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific and ASEAN regionalism and its challenges. His current research focuses on Indonesia’s rise as an Indo-Pacific Power. xi

Contributors

Yitzhak Shichor is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Asian Studies at the University of Haifa and Michael William Lipson Chair Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Former Dean of Students at the Hebrew University and Head of the Tel-Hai Academic College, he is currently fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies and adviser to the Middle East Center, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou. Susan Sim is Adjunct Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and Vice-President for Asia of The Soufan Group, an international strategic consultancy. A graduate of Oxford University, she has been a senior police officer, intelligence analyst and diplomat working for the Singapore Government, and Indonesia Bureau Chief for The Straits Times. Her research interests include terrorism in Southeast Asia and countering violent extremism. She is the author of E.W. Barker, The People’s Minister (Straits Times Press, 2016) and Making Singapore Safe: Thirty Years of the National Crime Prevention Council (Marshall Cavendish, 2011). She is also on the Editorial Board of Police Practice & Research. Sheila A. Smith, an expert on Japanese politics and foreign policy, is a senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (Columbia University Press, 2015) and Japan’s New Politics and the U.S.-Japan Alliance (Council on Foreign Relations, June 2014). She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from the department of political science at Columbia University. Robert Sutter is Professor of Practice of International Affairs at George Washington University with a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has published 21 books, and hundreds of articles and government reports dealing with China, Asia and the United States. In government, he served as Director of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division of the Congressional Research Service, National Intelligence Officer for East Asia, and China Division Director at the State Department’s intelligence bureau. William R. Thompson is Distinguished Professor and Rogers Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. His most recent books include Ascending India and its State Capacity: Resource Extraction, Legitimacy, and Violence Monopoly (co-author, 2016), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Empirical International Relations Theory (editor, 2017) and Racing to the Top: How Energy Fuels Systemic Leadership in World Politics (co-author, 2018). Michael Vatikiotis has worked as a writer and journalist in Southeast Asia for the past thirty years. After training as a journalist with the BBC in London, he moved to Southeast Asia and was a correspondent and then chief editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. He has written three books on the politics of Southeast Asia, the latest of which is Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia. He currently works as a mediator in armed conflict as the Asia Regional Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and lives in Singapore.

xii

INTRODUCTION Sumit Ganguly, Andrew Scobell and Joseph Chinyong Liow

Significant developments across Asia suggest the need for a new edition of the Routledge Handbook of Asian Security. The transformations that have taken place since the publication of the original volume in 2009 can be discussed under three distinct rubrics: regional, national and individual. The changes at all three levels are discussed below. First, at a regional level, a potential power transition is under way in Asia thanks to the dramatic rise of China. Despite its current economic downturn, there is no gainsaying that China is already playing and will continue to play a more assertive role in the region. Simultaneously, against this backdrop of China’s rise there are growing uncertainties, especially amongst the ASEAN states, about US commitment to the region. These doubts concern America’s allies despite the professed American ‘pivot’ to or ‘rebalancing’ strategy toward Asia. Consequently, these new security dynamics need suitable exploration. Second, as a result of these apparently tectonic shifts in aggregate power, particular disputes that had been dormant for considerable periods of time are coming to the fore. The most obvious of these involves maritime issues in the South China Sea. These, however, are not the only disputes that are re-surfacing. The long-standing Sino-Indian border dispute, which had eluded resolution, has again witnessed a series of incidents. More to the point, China has now embarked upon a new strategy to link substantial parts of Central and South Asia under the seemingly innocuous approach of ‘One Belt, One Road’. However, the potential strategic significant of this endeavor has not been lost on other regional powers, most notably India. Third and finally, one corner of the region is witnessing the emergence of an incipient nuclear arms race with significant consequences for the future of strategic stability in the area. Specifically, Pakistan has started to invest in tactical nuclear weapons, while India is enhancing the range of its missiles and also investing in ballistic missile defenses. Meanwhile, China refuses to enter into any discussions of the expanding nuclear gyre in South Asia with India on the grounds that it would legitimize India’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. None of these trends bodes well for long-term strategic stability in the region. Apart from the ramifications of China’s assertiveness, there are other developments at the national level which also hold important implications for the long-term security of Asia. For example, Thailand is now under military rule. Leaving aside the issue of the possible restoration of democracy in the country, it remains to be seen how the military intends to handle the festering insurgency in the southern part of the country. Other domestic developments in Southeast Asia 1

Ganguly, Scobell and Liow

are also of interest. The political order in Myanmar (Burma), which has witnessed an uncertain transition to democracy, nevertheless remains fraught. The rights of minorities within the country remain at risk. Worse still, the plight of the Rohingya Muslims, who are virtually stateless, has attracted much international attention but few efforts to ameliorate their predicament. Malaysia, which was long deemed to be a moderate Muslim state, now seems to be increasingly lurching toward Islamism as a complex array of domestic forces conspire to further undermine minority religious rights. A deepening of these trends could contribute to domestic political instability in the foreseeable future. Such trends, however, are not confined to Southeast Asia. In India, the emergence of a right-wing majority government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has raised important questions about the future of its substantial Muslim minority. The increasing marginalization of Muslims in social, economic and political spheres could contribute to important fissures in Indian society and ultimately contribute to the radicalization of members of the community. Other parts of South Asia also face their fair share of troubles and more. The drawdown of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) from Afghanistan has left the country in considerable peril. The Afghan National Army is not poised to maintain order across the country, the Taliban has steadily regrouped and Pakistan seems unwilling to end its support for the Haqqani network. Consequently, despite US promises to maintain a security presence in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future it is far from clear that the country is out of the woods. Pakistan, despite the presence of a democratic, civilian regime, has seen no change in the structure of its civil-military relations. Instead the military remains primus inter pares. As a consequence, the military establishment maintains a firm grip on Pakistan’s security policies. In that context, it needs to be underscored that it has not, in any fashion, abandoned its use of terrorism as a strategic asset. To that end it maintains clear links with such terrorist organizations as the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Finally, at an individual level, the region has also seen significant changes. In China, the regime of Xi Jinping, while facing significant domestic challenges, has nevertheless demonstrated a considerable propensity to pursue an assertive set of foreign and security policies. Obviously, the material capabilities of China provide the basis for the pursuit of such policies. However, the role of human agency in pursuing certain choices and strategies remains undeniable. Indeed, in that vein, the presence of Shinzo Abe in Japan and Narendra Modi in India, both unabashed nationalists who share anxieties about the rise of China, has already contributed to closer Indo-Japanese security ties. These trends, having been set in motion, are now likely to strengthen. Change has also come to North Korea, but it is not the kind of change that its neighbors or the rest of the world desire. Under 30-something dictator Kim Jong-un, who succeeded his late father Kim Jong-il in December 2011, Pyongyang has doubled down on its nuclear program and presented the world with a greater WMD threat than ever before. Some of these developments had been anticipated in the last edition. Others, obviously, had not been foreseen in any fashion. In any case, sufficiently momentous changes have taken place across Asia to justify a new edition.

Northeast Asia Northeast Asia’s major security challenges continue to be chronic and worrisome. The most notable are specific geographic flashpoints and the overall geopolitical climate in East Asia and the wider region. While Northeast Asia is considered to be at peace, there are significant underlying tensions between the major state actors located in the area, namely China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. The focal points are a set of incendiary hotspots. These regional 2

Introduction

interstate tensions and flashpoints are exacerbated by the contentious relationship between China and the United States. The most severe flashpoint in Northeast Asia is the Korean Peninsula – the location of an unresolved war between North and South Korea. While major combat operations ceased in 1953 with the signing of an armistice agreement, no peace treaty was ever signed. Hostilities persist between the two heavily armed Koreas which remain separated by barbed wire and mine fields. Tensions have run high in recent years as North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs have developed apace and today Pyongyang is widely believed to have a small but potent arsenal of nuclear warheads along with missiles capable of delivering them to targets within Northeast Asia and probably beyond. Tensions have been heightened since the death of former dictator Kim Jong-il in December 2011 when the late Kim was succeeded by his son Kim Jong-un. The younger Kim appears to be intent on accelerating Pyongyang’s strategic programs and more eager to demonstrate Pyongyang’s independence from other capitals. In 2016 North Korea conducted an unprecedented two nuclear tests nine months apart (January 6 and September 9) and, in December 2013, Kim Jong-un executed Jang Song-taek – his own uncle – a man widely viewed as Pyongyang’s key interlocutor with Beijing. As a result of the above actions, North Korea’s relations with China have turned frosty and Beijing has been more willing to criticize Pyongyang and support multilateral sanctions against its truculent neighbor. Beijing’s ties with Seoul have also become prickly and the most recent tension concerns China’s vehement opposition to South Korea deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system. Beijing insists that THAAD threatens its national security while Seoul contends the system is purely defensive in nature and solely intended to protect South Korea from North Korea’s burgeoning arsenal of missiles. The East China Sea is another flashpoint with ground zero being the disputed Senkaku/ Diaoyu Islands which are claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing. Despite the substantial economic intercourse between Japan and China, bilateral relations are bedeviled by mutual suspicions and historical animosities. Beijing has also become more vigorous in asserting its claims over the small uninhabited islands through increased air and sea patrols in their vicinity, often in very close proximity to Japan air and sea craft. Moreover, in November 2013, China formally declared the establishment of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) that includes the airspace over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands as well as broad swaths of the East China Sea some of which overlap with the existing ADIZs of Japan and South Korea. Taken together these developments increase the danger of an incident between the air and/or naval forces of the two countries and the concomitant risk of escalation to armed conflict. Additionally, the Taiwan Strait reemerged in 2016 as a flashpoint in the aftermath of the victory of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Tsai Ying-wen in the island’s presidential election. Beijing considers the DPP to be pro-independence and is wary of a strategic shift by Taiwan after eight years of relative calm across the Strait during the two terms of Kuomintang President Ma Ying-jeou. Tensions did rise in late 2016 following the election of Donald J. Trump in the United States after Tsai made a congratulatory telephone call to the then president-elect. China viewed this communication as a clear violation of the decades-long US ‘one-China’ policy, whereby the United States recognizes the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China and the US Government has no direct official contact with Taiwan’s government. In apparent retaliation, Beijing persuaded the small African state of Sao Tome and Principe to break ambassador-level ties with Taiwan and establish full diplomatic relations with China. This diplomatic action, which further depleted the lineup of less than two dozen micro-states around the world with formal diplomatic ties with Taipei, ends an eight year-long de facto truce in the foreign policy war between China and Taiwan waged in the smallest developing countries of Latin 3

Ganguly, Scobell and Liow

America, Africa and the South Pacific. Then in January 2017, Beijing sought to underscore its displeasure with Taipei with a military show of force on the island’s doorstep by sending China’s sole aircraft carrier steaming through the Taiwan Strait. Lastly, the overall security environment in Northeast Asia is impacted by the unsettled and confrontational climate of relations between the China and the United States. US–China relations are contentious yet cordial containing elements of both competition and cooperation. Both Washington and Beijing recognize that they have nothing to gain from conflict and confrontation – indeed hostile and adversarial relations threaten to have an adverse impact on considerable economic ties. Nevertheless, the list of difficult topics is extensive and involves a wide range of issues, including many that extend well beyond Northeast Asia. For example, one of the most contentious issues in US–China relations in recent years is the South China Sea which centrally impacts the security environment in Southeast Asia (see below) but also squarely impacts the security of East and South Asia. All these challenges are compounded by the significant and enduring underlying suspicion and distrust that colors relations between Beijing and Washington.

South Asia The principal security issues that have troubled South Asia, for the most part, remain enduring. The major security issues that bedevil the region include the persistence of Maoist (Naxalite) violence in significant parts of India, the deterioration of the Indo-Pakistani rivalry, the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, India’s continued pursuit of ballistic missile defense, the Sino-Indian border dispute, growing Sino-Indian competition in South Asia and the uncertain future of Afghanistan. Despite an explicit recognition of its destabilizing potential, the Indian state has yet to devise a coherent, nationwide strategy to deal with the resurgence of Maoist-inspired violence. Significant parts of the country have witnessed a recrudescence of Maoist (Naxalite) violence over the past decade. In the absence of concerted strategy that combines repression with an attempt to address underlying sources of discord, it is unclear that the country will be able to end these insurrections. The Indo-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir, for example, has evinced no sign of abating. On the contrary it has worsened in the wake of the collapse of the ‘composite dialogue’ after the Pakistan-based terrorist attack on Mumbai (Bombay) in November 2008. Subsequent internal developments in India-controlled Kashmir which can be traced to the shortcomings of local governance and Pakistan’s efforts to exploit those fissures, have led to a further deterioration in relations. Furthermore, unlike previous regimes, which had demonstrated greater forbearance, the government of Narendra Modi has proven unwilling to countenance Pakistan’s continuing dalliance with terror. To that end it has postponed the renewal of talks with Pakistan, it has carried out what has been referred to as a ‘surgical strike’ across the Line of Control (the de facto international border) in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir and has indicated that it may wish to revisit the terms of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. Despite these measures there appears to be no particular change in Pakistan’s orientation toward India. Indeed, in late 2016 and in early 2017 Indian authorities claimed that Pakistan-based terrorist groups attacked various sites including a military base. All these developments portend badly for the future of this fraught relationship. In the meanwhile, Pakistan continued to expand the scope and dimensions of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. One of the key developments includes an emphasis on the acquisition and deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. Pakistan’s pursuit of tactical nuclear weapons could prove to be deeply destabilizing as their deployment could lower the nuclear threshold in South Asia. 4

Introduction

India too has been active in its pursuit of ballistic missile defenses. Its interest in developing such capabilities stems, in considerable measure, from its inability to effectively deter or mount a conventional response to Pakistan-based terrorist attacks. It has failed to mount an effective form of deterrence by denial owing to the porousness of the Indo-Pakistani border in certain areas and its unforgiving terrain in others. Also, it has failed to formulate an appropriate conventional military doctrine to tackle Pakistani provocations. This failure, in considerable part, stems from fears of escalation to nuclear weapons. In an attempt to overturn Pakistan’s threat of an early resort to nuclear weapons in the wake of an Indian conventional response to a terrorist attack, India has turned to the development of ballistic missile defenses. Such a capability, if sufficiently reliable and robust, could significantly degrade a Pakistani first-use of nuclear weapons. From an Indian standpoint this may well be a seemingly reasonable panacea to a strategic conundrum. However, from the perspective of Islamabad this quest for ballistic missile defense can be construed as an attempt to acquire first-strike advantages. Pakistan’s quest for tactical nuclear weapons and India’s pursuit of ballistic missile defenses, in tandem, bodes ill for the future of strategic stability in the subcontinent. Apart from these acquisitions and deployments, India is also proceeding apace with its longrange ballistic missile programs. In December 2016, it successfully launched the Agni-V, a ballistic missile that has a range of 5,000 kilometers and thereby capable of striking targets in the heartland of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The growth of India’s ballistic missile capabilities can probably be attributed to two different sources. At one level, it represents a bureaucratic-scientific-technological momentum. At another it may also stem from genuine security concerns about the PRC. Indian security fears about the PRC have worsened in recent years for a number of compelling reasons. Among other matters, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has reportedly made a series of incursions along the disputed Himalayan border. One such movement even took place during the 2015 visit of President Xi Jinping to India much to the embarrassment and shock of his hosts. India’s misgivings about the PRC have also worsened in light of the latter’s increasing involvement within Pakistan including the construction of road, rail and pipeline networks through disputed territory in Jammu and Kashmir. Beyond the immediate confines of South Asia the Sino-Indian rivalry is now beginning to spill over into the Indian Ocean littoral region. India is increasingly concerned about free access to the sea-lanes of communication (SLOC) as the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) expands its reach into the Indian Ocean. In this context, Indian policymakers have expressed growing anxieties about the PLAN’s likely role in the development of the port city of Gwadar in Pakistan and the visits of its naval vessels to the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota. As a new American administration reviews the US involvement in Afghanistan the future of the country remains deeply fraught. Quite apart from the inherent fragility of the regime and the continued threat from the Taliban to its very existence, the country is now also increasingly becoming a site for the Indo-Pakistani rivalry. The Modi regime in India, unlike its predecessors, is more prone to playing an active role within the country. Such a stance, of course, places it on a collision course with Pakistan and its military establishment which views any Indian presence in Afghanistan with concern.

Southeast Asia In 2011, then United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described ASEAN as ‘a fulcrum for the region’s [Asia] emerging regional architecture’. However, in the last few years, ASEAN has faced serious challenges that test its ‘centrality’ and threatened its cohesion as a regional 5

Ganguly, Scobell and Liow

community. Political, economic and security challenges have shaken the confidence of ASEAN as a tight grouping of small and middle power states established to promote peace, security and prosperity in Southeast Asia. Additionally, geopolitical tensions have intensified and that could possibly derail the direction of multilateral cooperation in the wider Asia-Pacific region anchored on shared norms and promoted through ASEAN-led institutional frameworks. At the heart of the issue lies the matter of ASEAN’s centrality in the regional security architecture, which requires closer examination of the role of ASEAN as it navigates through the many challenges confronting it as it seeks to retain a modicum of autonomy in its relations with external powers, of which the United States, China and Japan feature most prominently. Crucial to the discussion of regional autonomy for Southeast Asia is the role of Indonesia, the largest state in the region and one which continues to harbor aspirations to be recognized as a regional power. These aspirations have most recently found expression in an Indo-Pacific strategic outlook that has informed the thinking of the Indonesian foreign policy elite in the governments of the two most recent presidents, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Joko Widodo. This pan-Indo-Pacific projection reflects growing international ambition and a response to the Indonesian state’s perceived status-dissonance in the regional order, as well as confinement within the ASEAN region and the perceived necessity of signaling its status to a bigger audience. Among the security challenges confronting Southeast Asia and ASEAN, it is arguably the South China Sea disputes that have come to dominate the headlines in recent times. The South China Sea disputes represent a ‘triple test’ for the region and the broader 21st century international order. First, they serve as a litmus test of China’s intentions in the near abroad and, more broadly, its trajectory as the next global superpower. Second, the disputes also serve as a test of America’s resolve and wherewithal as the putative anchor of the regional order. Finally, the South China Sea disputes have served as a stress test for not only the regional security architecture, with ASEAN and its values of regionalism at its core, but also international legal regimes, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which governs states’ rights, claims and disputes in the seas. Another challenge that confronts the region is that of transnational terrorism, where Indonesia features prominently, particularly as the influence of the Islamic State of Iraq and as-Sham, or ISIS, increases in the region. Unlike other Southeast Asian countries, there is little public pressure within Indonesia to crack down on ISIS recruitment and mobilization. Instead, pushback against ISIS ideology has come from the al-Qaeda linked Jema’ah Islamiyah (JI). However, JI has also realized the value of Syria as a training ground, sending fighters to fight with the AQ-linked rebel group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra. Some writers have suggested that bringing Islamic groups into the democratic process and co-opting their demand for clean government, coupled with gentler handling of extremists, have robbed the terrorists of their raison d’etre. Others argue that a kinder, gentler Indonesia allowed extremist groups to recruit and mobilize openly. At the end of the day, an endemic subservience to religious piety has led to Indonesia being fertile ground for violent Islamists of all stripes, from the fundamentalists who see all secular governments as thagut (evil) and democracy as a Western conspiracy to oppress Muslims, to the moralistic, vigilante street gangs that now provide ISIS with its most promising recruiting pool. The previous point speaks to a further litany of security challenges confronting Southeast Asian states derived from developments in the arena of domestic affairs. Despite optimism about the prospects for democratization in Southeast Asia since the end of the Cold War, particularly following the collapse of the Suharto regime in Indonesia, the reality is that functional representative democracy has yet to prevail, and the region’s economic and social security is far from assured. Rather, democratization is facing three identifiable obstacles: institutional, societal and geopolitical. In Southeast Asia, both the weakness of political parties and lack of public 6

Introduction

confidence in the judiciary mean that the actual mechanisms of democratic government are hobbled by the inability of people to be fairly represented. This is because democratic government remains the monopoly of a small circle of vested interests. Rapid growth has exacerbated levels of social inequality. This trend has impacted on the political context in contradictory ways: on the one hand, it has generated popular demand for fairer government and social justice; but it has also fueled populist movements that have wielded power in undemocratic ways. Finally, the normative influence of the ‘liberal West’ has been undercut and counterbalanced by the rise of a China whose societal and political norms are antithetic. Another dimension of domestic challenges has found expression in longstanding intrastate conflicts that continue to persist in the region. Despite a checkered record of democratization, political liberalization in Myanmar has arguably provided a silver lining. A gradual opening up of political space that began with general elections in November 2010 culminated in the election of a civilian government led by the democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi, who took office in March 2016. Yet whatever its the system of government, Myanmar must cope with a series of key security challenges, not least because of its geostrategic position between the two emerging giants with global ambitions, China and India. This peculiar geographical situation may present considerable opportunities for regional growth and future development in a country long kept away from global flows and Asia’s economic boom. At the same time, it can also contribute to increased concerns among Burmese ruling elites, including the still-powerful armed forces (or Tatmadaw), over the potential sway that neighboring states, global powers, and international institutions may seek to gain.

7

PART I

Northeast Asia

1 WHITHER CHINA’S 21ST CENTURY TRAJECTORY? Andrew Scobell

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the major power in its neighborhood and an emerging great power on the wider global stage. China’s rise has been underway for almost seventy years, but has occurred in a much more serious and sustained manner since the late 1970s. The PRC’s initial upward trajectory – until the late 1980s – was remarkably restrained and peaceful as the country experienced an unprecedented period of domestic political stability. The first decade following China’s launching of the policy of reform and opening to the outside world was accompanied by a largely moderate foreign policy with limited use of coercion. Moreover, during the 1980s and 1990s China witnessed rapid rates of economic growth along with largely manageable internal political and social transformations with the crisis of 1989 being the glaring exception. However, since the 1990s, the PRC appears to have grown more assertive and belligerent externally, China’s economic growth has slowed, and some observers believe that China may be at greater risk of internal political instability than at any time since 1989.1 Despite presiding over an unprecedented strengthening of China’s hard and soft power capabilities and expansion of these assets, PRC leaders remain deeply insecure.2 Chinese leaders attach greater importance to some geographic zones than others; hence, their insecurities are not evenly distributed. Not surprisingly, they perceive the home front and those areas most proximate to the PRC as being vital to national security and those more distant as less critical. When Chinese leaders gaze out of their office windows in Beijing they see China as the center of a world ringed by four concentric circles. The innermost ring contains all the territory that the PRC controls or claims (including continental and maritime areas); the second ring extends just beyond the periphery of these borders to those countries and areas immediately geographically adjacent to the PRC; the third ring encompasses China’s larger Asia-Pacific neighborhood (comprising the regions of Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania, South Asia, Central Asia); the fourth ring includes the rest of the globe (the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and the Americas). This chapter addresses four questions: • • • •

Is China rising? How assertive is China? How peaceful is China? How stable is China?

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The answers to these questions are frequently assumed to be self-evident. Of course, most scholars and analysts insist China is continuing to rise. Most observers insist that China has become more assertive, and these same voices express grave concerns about a perceived decline in Beijing’s willingness to embrace peaceful means to resolve contentious issues, such as territorial disputes. Furthermore, most observers see China as fundamentally a stable polity under the firm control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Yet these are important questions to ponder. Indeed, China’s leaders themselves do not accept that the answers to these questions are obvious or comforting. What are the underlying assumptions behind these answers and what does a reassessment of conventional scholarly wisdom reveal?

Is China rising? Most observers take it as a given that China’s emergence as the world’s most powerful state is ongoing and inexorable.3 While this outcome is quite possible, it is far from preordained. China’s economic growth has continued from the 1990s and 2000s through the 2010s but the rates of this growth have slowed significantly from the double-digit annual average surge of the 1980s and 1990s to more modest rates of expansion in the 2000s and 2010s. Moreover, other countries are not standing still. The U.S. economy continues to grow albeit sluggishly. Closer to home, many of China’s neighbors are experiencing quite impressive rates of economic growth; these neighbors include India and Southeast Asian states. Moreover, China is facing significant domestic challenges to its economic growth. These include a property bubble, an under-regulated financial sector, serious income inequalities, and uneven regional growth rates. Indeed, Chinese leaders are especially concerned about these problems, fearful that one or more of these problems will derail or even destroy China’s economic vibrancy. A top priority of Chinese leaders is to protect and sustain economic growth.4 This fear is grounded in the assumption that the political legitimacy of CCP rule is closely linked to economic performance. Consequently, Chinese leaders are highly motivated to do whatever it takes to keep the economy growing. These efforts include a sustained initiative to improve the infrastructure in western China and furthering the country’s integration into the global economy. Chinese leaders appear to have concluded that they have no alternative but to embrace the world economic system, despite being extremely worried about China’s vulnerability to a wide range of external threats. PRC leaders have concluded that walling off China from the outside world would undermine the country’s economic growth. Their unofficial mantra has become: “Thinking locally demands acting globally.”5 While China’s economy has demonstrated impressive resiliency in the face of internal or external shocks, credible past performance is no guarantee of strong future growth. Remarkably China was able to weather successive international financial turbulence without much damage; the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 did not hurt China significantly, and a decade later the Global Financial Crisis similarly left China relatively unscathed.6 But it would be dangerous to assume that China would also be immune to the next external economic crisis especially because the country is likely to have far greater international vulnerabilities. Indeed, the PRC is “getting out [into the global economy] by getting deeper in.”7 China is proceeding with the internationalization of the Renminbi and in 2013 the PRC embarked on the highly ambitious “One Belt, One Road” initiative. In the latter effort, President Xi Jinping has promised tens of millions of dollars in investment for infrastructure projects in countries around the world, starting with U.S.$46 billion to Pakistan announced during his visit to Pakistan in April 2015. Furthermore, China has moved to expand its use of credit to 12

Whither China’s 21st century trajectory?

other countries through various development banks and financial entities, notably the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). China is also rising militarily, but this defense buildup is not without its challenges and obstacles.8 PRC defense budgets have grown at a healthy average annual rate of above ten percent since 1990. By other measures too, China’s national defense capabilities are being considerably enhanced. China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), as all branches of the PRC’s military are known, is undergoing comprehensive modernization acquiring a vast array of newer weapon systems, better educated and trained personnel, and overhauling its organizational structure. The PLA has replaced its antiquated aircraft, surface and subsurface vessels, and ground force equipment with more modern and capable systems. This transformation should not be minimized. For example, between 1990 and 2010 the PLA Air Force retired almost 3,500 “obsolete” airframes which comprised some 70 percent of its inventory of combat aircraft.9 The PLA also has more numerous and capable ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. The transformation has not gone unnoticed by China’s neighbors or the United States. The Pentagon has gained new respect for PLA capabilities. This is evident in the use of such terms as “anti-access and area denial” (also known as ‘A2/AD’) and more recently in discussion of the “Third Offset.”10 In terms of technology, despite having an impressive military industrial complex, China is still unable to build an indigenous jet engine, and the PLA is beset by a culture of corruption, excessive bureaucratization, and distracted by internal security missions. Indeed, since 2013 PRC President Xi Jinping has focused efforts on battling corruption, cutting bureaucracy, and reorganizing the PLA to be better postured for warfighting. Chinese men and women in uniform are better trained and educated, but they remain untested in combat. Under Xi hundreds of retired and active duty officers have been purged, military regions have been trimmed from seven to five, several hundred thousand soldiers are to be demobilized, and the PLA is to be more focused on joint planning and operations.11 At the end of the day what these reforms should mean is a PLA that is far more capable and competent operating at, and in close proximity to, China’s borders. Consequently, the PLA is increasingly a force to be reckoned with within the first three rings of China’s security perimeter – armed forces increasingly able to project power in its Asia-Pacific neighborhood and go toe to toe with adversaries. Moreover, the PLA is supported by professional and well equipped paramilitary formations, including maritime security forces, such as the coastguard, and the People’s Armed Police.12 However, in the fourth ring – beyond the Asia-Pacific – the PLA is much less present, let alone capable. The much hyped out of area deployments and employments are noteworthy more because they constitute the exception rather than the rule. Anti-piracy operations since 2008 in the Gulf of Aden, an air force exercise with Turkey in 2010, a noncombatant evacuation of PRC citizens from Yemen in April 2014, a naval exercise with Iran in September 2014, and the establishment of a logistics hub in Djibouti in 2016 are all significant developments, but they are far from heralding the arrival of a new global military power. Moreover, the first ring still exerts a “domestic drag” on the PLA in the sense that internal security remains the primary national security focus of Beijing and corruption undermines mission effectiveness. While the new order of battle for the PLA has yet to emerge completely, it is likely to be very consistent with the previous order of battle with the majority of Group Armies located in eastern China in close proximity to major metropolitan areas rather than near to the PRC’s frontiers.13 In sum, China continues to rise economically but its growth has slowed with significant vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, militarily, China has grown appreciably stronger although important limitations remain. 13

Andrew Scobell

Is China assertive? Has China become more assertive in recent years? The overwhelming majority of foreign observers assume that answer is an unqualified “yes.” There does tend to be a widespread conviction both inside and outside of China that Beijing has adopted a more vigorous defense of its national interests within the Asia-Pacific, outside of the region, as well as vis-à-vis the United States in a broad range of arenas. Certainly China has become more vocal about protecting its so-called “core interests.” This phrase, which enjoys far greater official usage, is code for a set of issues that are of the highest national security priority to PRC leaders, namely territories inside China’s first ring of security: Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang. But a China that talks and acts assertively is not a new phenomenon. PRC political and military leaders have long used harsh and jarring language to address other countries. This was true from the very birth of the People’s Republic. In 1950, Chinese leaders warned that the PRC “would not stand idly by” as U.S. forces advanced northward on the Korean Peninsula.14 And Chinese leaders have repeatedly backed up tough talk with resolute military action: in Korea (1950), against India (in 1962), against Russia (in 1969), against Vietnam (1979).15 Moreover, China has provided significant military troop presences to support allies in Korea (until 1958) and in Vietnam (1965 until 1970). Furthermore, Chinese border forces have engaged in extended small-scale clashes and confrontations with India and Vietnam over disputed land borders.16 Arguably there was a decade-long period in which China exhibited a more accommodating posture to its neighbors and the outside world during what John Garver calls the “happy interregnum” of 1978 to 1989.17 And yet, there were exceptions – notably the 1979 border war with Vietnam, and the 1988 naval clash in Spratlys – also against Vietnam. Indeed, it is not surprising that China is increasingly uninhibited in advancing its interests quite assertively. As China grows stronger economically and militarily it is not only better able to exert itself using more potent instruments of hard power, but also feels more adamantly that Chinese interests should be respected by other states and Chinese preferences should be more accommodated. This development is enshrined in the PRC policy formulation of “new type of major power relations.”18 Empirical examinations of the case for Chinese assertiveness provide a mixed picture. Indeed, one respected scholar insists that the evidence does not support the popular depiction of an increasingly assertive China.19 But what may matter more are perceptions. What is significant is that analysts inside and outside of China seem to believe that China has grown far more assertive since at least 2010.20 While there is a general consensus on this point there is considerable disagreement as to the causes and interpretations of the perceived new found Chinese assertiveness.21 Nevertheless, assertive should not be a pejorative term; indeed, an assertive China is desirable. What is important is to distinguish between positive and negative assertiveness. China’s neighbors and the rest of the world desire a China that is willing and able to contribute to regional and global peace – to take on its fair share of responsibilities rather than remain largely a free rider. Beijing appears to be reluctant to assume greater responsibilities. Of course the world desires a China that asserts itself in constructive rather than destructive ways.22 China’s current wave of assertiveness is geographically concentrated inside the second and third rings and focused on perceived threats to China’s territorial integrity and national sovereignty. China’s greater activism in the Near Seas has been well documented, especially in the East China Sea and South China.23 In the latter location, Beijing formally declared an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) that provocatively overlapped an existing South Korean ADIZ and an existing Japanese ADIZ, including airspace over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.24 14

Whither China’s 21st century trajectory?

By contrast, outside of the Asia-Pacific China has been much less assertive. While China has been far more active, especially economically, in distant continents like Africa and the Americas, Beijing has been relatively modest in terms of diplomatic activity and extremely subdued as far as military involvement. In the fourth ring, China “has become an economic heavy weight, while it persists as a diplomatic lightweight, and is likely to remain a military feather weight.”25 Hence China has become a “partial power” or a regional power albeit with a greater global presence.26 China is very cautious in the fourth ring for fear of over extending itself as well as careful of antagonizing countries. China desires to be on good terms with all countries and seeks to avoid taking siding sides on contentious issues while attempting to take full advantage of every available economic opportunity. In essence, China has adopted what might be called a “Wary Dragon” strategy in the Middle East and elsewhere.27 In sum, China’s record of assertiveness is mixed but the key contours are evident: geographically focused within the Asia-Pacific region and mostly confrontational in nature.

How peaceful is China? To date, according to some scholars, China’s rise has been remarkably peaceful. Nevertheless, this rise has been far from one hundred percent free of military conflict or the use of force.28 China, for example, did launch a major cross-border war against Vietnam in early 1979 and since the 1990s has engaged selectively in more assertive behavior in the Taiwan Strait and East China Sea and South China Sea. Most recently, as noted above, China has been far more willing to be confrontational in the Near Seas. But China does not desire war and generally seems to believe greater assertiveness does not raise the specter of war. However, worries over exacerbating tensions on the Korean Peninsula do appear to be making China reluctant to rock the boat despite the provocations of its supposed ally North Korea. Meanwhile, in the East China Sea and South China Sea, China appears to be confident of not crossing the Rubicon. China is practicing what some have dubbed as “gray zone” activities and “hybrid warfare” in the Near Seas.29 In other words, China is consciously keeping its activities and efforts just below the threshold of what would trigger an outright war. Can China avoid the Thucydides trap? This is unclear. Some scholars within China assert that the PRC is the exceptional power and its rise is fundamentally different to earlier episodes in which a hegemon faced a rising power (see below). Some international relations scholars outside of China, while not necessarily believing that China is an exceptional power, adopt an optimistic view. Many theoretical insights in international relations are based on in-depth research and analysis of the road to World War I. Not only was this conflict a momentous event in the modern history of Europe but scholars were able to access rich data troves in the form of memoirs, press accounts, and archives from an array of countries involved in the war. Moreover, the war has attracted renewed attention because the world is observing its one hundredth anniversary. Some contributors to an edited volume revisiting the lessons of the “Great War” for the rise of China in the contemporary era seem overly optimistic about the prospects for China avoiding the Thucydides trap. Graham Allison suggests that the leaders of China and other states can preclude the trap by “creative thinking,”30 while David K. Richards says contemporary leaders reveal “ability and judgement” which can make all the difference.31 Perhaps the problem lies in perceiving the future of the Asia-Pacific as being undetermined while thinking in highly determinist terms about World War I. The possibility that World War I was not an inevitable conflagration – or at least not on the epic scale it played out – proves to be very difficult for many to imagine ex post facto. A willingness to entertain the possibility that 15

Andrew Scobell

different thinking and different decisions by national leaders at key junctures might have altered the course of world history in 1914 would lead to a rather different perspective on contemporary Asia. World War I was not foreordained if one considers that rigid offensive military doctrines and overbearing and overconfident generals might not have led their countries inexorably into conflict. And, if assumptions about pre-1914 Europe are called into question, then this ought to caution against drawing certain different and rather optimistic assumptions about post-2016 Asia. Might greater consideration of the economic costs of a war in early twentieth century Europe have altered the decision making calculus of national leaders? Perhaps not. After all many elites tended to assume that any war would be relatively short either because victory would be swift or because all sides would soon see the futility of the whole enterprise. Today, some assume that the substantial degree of economic interdependence between China, the United States and other countries would prompt leaders to reject military conflict outright because war would be bad for business. Although the PRC, unlike the USSR, is very much part of the global economic system, the idea of a war between trading partners is not unthinkable – certainly this should be one of the important lessons of the two world wars. Examining situational variables may be more useful than drawing historical analogies or discerning overarching laws of international relations. Rather than engaging in broad brush arguments about whether China is like Wilhelmine Germany, or whether China is a status quo or revisionist power – either highly risk averse or prone to taking risks – it seems likely that the propensity for Chinese risk taking would be contingent upon the context in which a particular decision is made. One recent analysis of Chinese crisis management, building on insights from prospect theory, finds that Chinese behavior is contingent on how Beijing assesses the risk at a particular point in time. If Chinese leaders believe that China has much to lose in a specific situation (i.e. is in the “domain of gains”), then China is likely to be conservative and risk averse. If, however, Chinese leaders see themselves in a situation where things are only getting worse for China (i.e. is in the “domain of losses”), then they are more likely to entertain risk accepting behavior.32 In short, if business is bad, then war might look good. But is China different? There are both ideational and institutional grounds for making this case. As noted above, some scholars and many Chinese make the case that China is culturally distinct. According to this interpretation, unlike many other countries, notably Western ones, China has a peace-loving culture that emphasizes harmony and cooperation over conflict and competition. The PRC, some contend, is heir to a 5000-year-old civilization which is dominated by a distinctly Chinese philosophy of Confucianism that encourages morality, values learning, and looks down on violence and condemns those who pursue war. In short, they argue China’s strategic culture is one of peace and harmony if not outright pacifism.33 This appears to be an inaccurate over-simplification of Chinese cultural traditions.34 Moreover, it clashes with the upheaval that has been a routine occurrence in Chinese history over the centuries and the frequency with which Chinese kingdoms have waged wars with each other and non-Chinese states. Another possibility is that the PRC constitutes a distinct regime type which is prone to respond to crises and tensions in particular ways because of its institutional configuration. The CCP is a Leninist party that came to power through protracted political-military struggle. This highly disciplined revolutionary insurgency transformed itself into a ruling regime. In 1949 the party-military movement became a party-military-state system.35 A defining characteristic of this regime type is its reliance on mass mobilization to achieve policy goals. The appearance of external threats becomes a prime opportunity for the tripartite ruling regime to mobilize the Chinese people in support of the regime. Thus, in the 1950s the United States became, in the words of Thomas Christensen, a “useful adversary” for the ruling CCP.36 Consequently, the Korean War became a full-blown national campaign titled “Resist 16

Whither China’s 21st century trajectory?

America and Aid Korea” – indeed, this was the title given to the Korean conflict by Beijing because the war was intended to serve as a patriotic movement to whip up popular support for the newly established regime. In the era of Mao Zedong, the PRC most closely approximated a totalitarian system in which the regime attempted to remake China in the image Mao desired. The outcome was successive mass movements to mobilize the people of China to attain political, social, and economic goals set by the party-military-state. Although the death of Mao in 1976 heralded the passing of a revolutionary ruling regime and the emergence of a developmental party-military-state, the apparatus that executed these efforts did not simply wither away or disappear. While the revolutionary élan and all-consuming attention to transforming every area of human activity and thought in the PRC was gone, the modes of management and mechanisms of mobilization remained in post-Mao China. And when it came to implementing policies from draconian birth control measures to resettling entire towns and villages to make way for the massive Three Gorges dam, political campaigns and bureaucratic controls reaching down to the grass roots level of every community were activated under Deng Xiaoping and continued to be leveraged under Xi Jinping as he sought to reinvigorate the PRC in the 2010s. Thus it seems appropriate to describe the post-Mao PRC as “post-totalitarianism” – meaning that the regime continues to resort to quasi-Maoist mobilization campaigns to implement a wide range of policies.37 In such a political system, foreign policy crises continue to be prime opportunities for mass mobilization. In 1999, the accidental bombing of the PRC Embassy in Belgrade Yugoslavia by the United States prompted popular outrage in China. The party-military-state permitted the people of Beijing and other Chinese cities to vent their anger at the diplomatic missions of the United States and other NATO countries. In Beijing, for example, patriotic students and others were bused into the central city to demonstrate outside the U.S. Embassy.38 More recently, Beijing has utilized the crisis over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands to mobilize Chinese people.39 In sum, the party-military-state is motivated to manufacture crises periodically in order to mobilize the people to vent their ire against an external threat and express their patriotic fervor.40 Keeping the regime in power – maintaining popular support and public control remains a complex responsibility especially when CCP leaders believe theirs is a regime besieged from without and within.41 While the regime does not desire actual war, the crisis making and hype make for greater hostility and elevated tensions. This in turn increases the potential for unintended conflict.42 Indeed, peace is far from certain in Asia.43

How stable is China? Could China collapse? Certainly China could weaken as a result of economic recession, depression, or worse. In addition to this very big basket of economic woes, one can attach an incredibly long and varied laundry list of very specific challenges Beijing confronts within its borders. These include official corruption, environment pollution, as well as popular discontent and dissent about these issues. Of particular concern to the party-military-state are so-called “mass incidents” across China. These episodes are carefully monitored, dealt with, and statistics are dutifully compiled. Moreover, the phenomenon is studied by scholars so the regime can better respond to future incidents including better trained leaders (see p. 18). Nevertheless, it is axiomatic among most observers and analysts that China is stable. When prominent Sinologist David Shambaugh published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in 2015 suggesting that China was becoming unstable it was highly controversial. Indeed, a careful review of the commentary produces the inescapable conclusion that the evidence presented did not 17

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support the author’s conclusion. One of the most respected scholars of contemporary China, Shambaugh was acting upon his sense that the PRC was in the throes of profound transformation and changes unprecedented in post-Mao China were afoot that threatened to upset the whole apple cart. Driven to extended research and deeper analysis, Shambaugh produced a monograph thoroughly exploring the forces shaping China’s future. The political system he argues is best characterized as “hard authoritarianism.” Although Shambaugh outlines a range of possible political trajectories, he contends that a continuation of hard authoritarianism is the most likely path in the near term. If this continues beyond the next few years then, according to Shambaugh, “protracted political decline” will be the fate of the CCP.44 But if the PRC was becoming more unstable, how would we know it? The collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) caught just about everyone by surprise in 1991 as did the collapse of communist regimes of Eastern Europe two years earlier. CCP leaders are far more savvy, dynamic, and ambitious than their weary Slavic apparatchik counterparts of the late 1980s. The CCP has conducted academic autopsies on the demise of the USSR and are determined that the PRC will avoid its fate. The lessons include not being complacent, being responsive to popular demands, not neglecting economic growth, and delivering material prosperity to the people.45 Important in this effort is to ensure that officials, policemen, and soldiers are both loyal to the CCP and competent and diligent in their duties. To these ends, a vast hierarchy of institutions of higher education and professional academies, along with training programs and refresher courses has been established. Thus, for example, the CCP has its education system with party schools across China and a Central Party School in Beijing while the PLA has a similar network of institutions with the pinnacle being its National Defense University in Beijing.46 However, CCP leaders are not infallible. The range of challenges that the country faces threatens to overwhelm its rulers. Is the CCP up to the challenge? That is the question and to date the answer has been “yes.” Andrew Nathan contends this state of affairs is explained by the regime’s “authoritarian resilience.”47 And yet, Xi Jinping has launched a head-spinning series of domestic and foreign initiatives to shake up the system. It is certainly shaking up the domestic status quo, but might it stress the system and even push it beyond breaking point? This is the fear of some PRC scholars and analysts. Just as Gorbachev unleashed forces beyond his control, so Xi may be uncorking forces that might have unintended consequences and undesired outcomes. The collapse of China or great instability within the country would mean the end of the “rise” but would not necessarily make China less assertive or more peaceful. Moreover, instability in China would be no cause for celebration by China’s neighbors or other major powers including the United States. A China in chaos or China as a failing state would actually be greeted with great alarm by other states in the Asia-Pacific.

Conclusion Economically, China continues to rise but not as rapidly as in the early decades of the post-Mao era. By contrast, militarily China’s rise has accelerated in recent decades but this defense buildup has yet to produce armed forces commensurate with that of a global superpower like the United States or former Soviet Union. China has grown more assertive in both constructive and destructive ways although most of this assertiveness has been manifest within its own neighborhood and this has taken mostly negative forms. While China is relatively peaceful, it has begun acting more belligerently and more threatening. It is noteworthy that China does not seek war but this does not mean it might not stumble into one. China is relatively stable internally but the country 18

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confronts a host of domestic problems that remain unresolved and extremely difficult to manage. The party-military-state presides over all of this and its fate is intimately intertwined with China’s 21st Century trajectory.

Notes 1 For a high profile example, see D. Shambaugh, “China’s Coming Crack Up,” Wall Street Journal March 6, 2015. For a more balanced and thorough assessment, see D. Shambaugh, China’s Future (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2016). See also M. Pei, China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). 2 A. Nathan and A. Scobell, China’s Search for Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 3–7. 3 For one of the best known articulations of China’s predilection for greater assertiveness, see J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001). 4 On the single-minded focus of Chinese leaders on perpetuating economic dynamism, see A. Kroeber, China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 6–9. 5 Nathan and Scobell, China’s Search for Security, p. 35. 6 Kroeber, China’s Economy, pp. 216–218. 7 Nathan and Scobell, China’s Search for Security, p. 254. 8 M. Chase, J. Engstrom, T. M. Cheung, K. Gunness, S. W. Harold, S. Puska, and S. K. Berkowitz, China’s Incomplete Military Transformation: Assessing the Weaknesses of the People’s Liberation Army (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2015). 9 D. Shlapak, “Equipping the PLAAF: The March to Modernity,” in R. Hallion, R. Cliff, and P. Saunders (eds.), Chinese Air Force (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2012), p. 192. 10 On the former concept, see Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2016 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2016), accessed at www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2016%20China%20Military%20Power%20Report.pdf; on latter concept, see the speech by Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, “The Third U.S. Offset Strategy and its Implications for Partners and Allies,” delivered at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. on January 28, 2015, accessed at www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech-View/Article/606641/ the-third-us-offset-strategy-and-its-implications-for-partners-and-allies 11 See, for example, P. Saunders and J. Wuthnow, “China’s Goldwater-Nichols? Assessing PLA Organizational Reforms,” Strategic Forum Vol. 294 (Washington, DC: NDU Press, April 2016), accessed at http:// ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/stratforum/SF-294.pdf and K. Allen, D. Blasko, and J. Corbett, Jr., “The PLA’s New Organizational Structure: What Is Known, Unknown and Speculation (Part 1),” China Brief Vol. 16, no. 3 (Washington, DC: The Jamestown Foundation, February 4, 2016). 12 L. Morris, “Blunt Defenders of Sovereignty: The Rise of Coast Guards in East and Southeast Asia,” Naval War College Review. Vol. 70, no. 3 (Spring 2017), 75-112. 13 On domestic drag and the order of battle, see A. Scobell and A. Nathan, “China’s Overstretched Military,” The Washington Quarterly Vol. 24, no. 4 (Fall 2012), pp. 135–148. 14 A. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968). 15 A. Whiting, The Chinese Calculus of Deterrence (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1975). 16 On India, see G. Gilboy and E. Heginbotham, Chinese and Indian Strategic Behavior: Growing Power and Alarm (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), chapter 3. On Vietnam, see X. Zhang, Deng Xiaoping’s the Long War: The Military Conflict between China and Vietnam, 1979–1991 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 17 J. Garver, China’s Quest: The History of the Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 18 See, for example, K. Brown, CEO, China: The Rise of Xi Jinping (London: I.B. Taurus, 2016), p. 194. 19 A. Johnston, “How New and Assertive Is China’s New Assertiveness?” International Security Vol. 37, no. 4 (Spring 2013), pp. 7–48. 20 A. Scobell and S. Harold, “An ‘Assertive’ China? Insights from Interviews,” Asian Security Vol. 9, no. 2 (2013), pp. 119–121. 21 There are different explanations for what is driving Chinese assertiveness. See, for example, Scobell and Harold, “An ‘Asssertive’ China?” 22 T. Christensen, “The Advantages of an Assertive China,” Foreign Affairs Vol. 90, no. 2 (March–April 2011).

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Andrew Scobell 23 See, for example, R. Kaplan, Asia’s Caldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific (New York: Random House, 2014). 24 One area on China’s periphery where Beijing has been distinctly unassertive is North Korea. 25 While this quote specifically refers to the Middle East it could apply just as well to Africa, Europe, and the Americas. A. Scobell and A. Nader, China in the Middle East: The Wary Dragon (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2016), p. 76. 26 D. Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Nathan and Scobell, China’s Search for Security. 27 Scobell and Nader, China in the Middle East. 28 See A. Scobell, “China’s Rise: How Peaceful?” in S. Ganguly, J. Liow, and A. Scobell (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Asian Security Studies (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 11–22. 29 On the gray zone and hybrid threats, see D. Barno and N. Bensahel “Fighting and Winning in the ‘Gray Zone’,” May 19, 2015, accessed at http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/fighting-and-winningin-the-gray-zone/ 30 G. Allison, “The Thucydides Trap,” in R. Rosencrance and S. Miller (eds.), The Next Great War? The Roots of World War I and the Rise of U.S.-China Conflict (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015), p. 79. 31 D. Richards, “Thycudides Dethroned: Historical Differences that Weaken the Peloponnesian Analogy,” in Rosencrance and Miller (eds.), The Next Great War? p. 89. 32 K. He, China’s Crisis Behavior: Political Survival and Foreign Policy after the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 33 This interpretation is widespread. For a more nuanced overview, see X. Yan, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). 34 A. Johnston, Cultural Realism: Chinese History and Grand Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); A. Scobell, China’s Use of Military Force: Beyond the Great Wall and the Long March (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 35 Nathan and Scobell, China’s Search for Security, p. 57 and A. Scobell, “Making Sense of North Korea: Pyongyang and Comparative Communism,” Asian Security Vol. 1, no. 3 (2005), p. 251. 36 T. Christensen, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947– 1958 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). 37 Scobell, “Making Sense of North Korea,” pp. 246–250. 38 P. Godwin, “Decisionmaking under Stress: The Unintentional Bombing of China’s Belgrade Embassy and the EP-3 Collision,” in A. Scobell and L. Wortzel (eds.), Chinese National Security Decisionmaking under Stress (Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, 2005), pp. 161–190. 39 J. Weiss, Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 40 See for example, A. Scobell and F. Miller, “‘Decisionmaking under Stress’ or ‘Crisis Management’? In Lieu of a Conclusion,” in Scobell and Wortzel (eds.), Chinese National Security Decisionmaking under Stress, pp. 229–248. 41 Garver, China’s Quest; S. Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 42 D. Gompert, A. Cevallos, and C. Garofola, War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2016). 43 J. Holslag, China’s Coming War with Asia (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2015). 44 Shambaugh, China’s Future, pp. 3, 136 45 D. Shambaugh, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaption (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008). 46 See, for example, C. Lee, Training the Party: Party Adaptation and Elite Training in Reform Era China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 47 A. Nathan, “Authoritarian Resilience,” Journal of Democracy Vol. 14, no. 1 (January 2003), pp. 6–17.

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2 SINO-JAPANESE RIVALRY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR ASIA Sheila A. Smith1

Tokyo and Beijing are no longer aiming to forge a “win-win” partnership; increasingly, they are competing for economic, military and diplomatic influence in Asia and beyond. As Japanese and Chinese governments have struggled from one problem to the next over the past decade or more, the bilateral relationship has deteriorated visibly. Popular sentiment in both countries has reflected increasing skepticism and suspicion over the motives of the other, curbing the latitude of diplomats to compromise. Political leaders shifted from talking to each other to advocating their side of the dispute of the moment in regional and global settings. And despite Japan’s longstanding alliance with the United States, China seems intent on overshadowing Japan in the shifting military balance in Asia. But what does this growing rivalry mean for the region? For those who assume China’s rising power will inevitably lead to competition between Asia’s two giants, the answer seems obvious. Only one power can dominate Asia, and Japan and China have never been powerful together thus one will need to come out on top. For others, this new tension in the relationship comes from a more fundamental clash of interests. China’s rising economic influence comes at a price for Japan: it shifts the balance of interests in the regional economy away from Japan and towards China. By its size and its growth rate, the Chinese economy offers far greater opportunities for others than Japan’s slowing economy. This lends Beijing far more strategic and diplomatic influence than it would otherwise have, and tempers the bandwagoning effect that might otherwise affect strategic decisions across the region. Finally, for some the contest is really about which model of government truly suits Asian cultures and histories better: Japan’s postwar democracy or China’s centralized authoritarianism. Of course, Beijing likes to point out that the region has suffered more in the past from Japan’s militarism than it is likely to experience with a newly risen China, while many in Tokyo suggest their postwar democracy and liberal economy offer Asia a better model than the heavy-handed control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In fact, these two Asian giants already coexist in Asia, and as the world’s second and third largest economies, their interests are global. Their ability to compete as well as to cooperate will shape regional relations for the foreseeable future. If this competition were solely over economic influence, others in Asia could be sanguine about their rivalry. But Tokyo and Beijing are now contending militarily across the East China Sea as well potentially in the vast sea lanes that both are dependent upon for their economic survival. Military competition is new to Sino-Japanese relations, and while Tokyo planners have 21

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long assessed China’s growing military capability as a concern for their defenses, the behavior of Chinese military forces in proximity to Japan has become a critical driver of Tokyo’s military planning and of the U.S.–Japan alliance over the last decade. Tensions over their island dispute in the East China Sea have brought the two countries perilously close to the use of force despite protestations by both governments that each has no interest in war. From a seemingly innocuous run in between a Chinese fishing trawler and two Japanese Coast Guard cutters in 2010 to the military standoff that seems to have become a commonplace now across the East China Sea, there is a far greater need to dampen tensions. Repeated incidents between coast guards and military ships and aircraft in and around the waters of the Senkaku Islands (called the Diaoyu Islands by the Chinese) have raised the specter of war. The 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in 2015 amplified these nationalisms. Despite a renewed effort by President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Abe Shinzo to ease tensions, popular antipathy remains high between Japanese and Chinese, and public suspicion has been stoked by a new generation of leaders in both countries who have little interest in the reconciliation diplomacy that normalized and sustained bilateral ties for almost four decades.

Understanding Sino–Japanese rivalry Japan and China are now strategic rivals, competing for resources and partners in Asia and beyond. Little progress has been made since tensions erupted in 2010 on stabilizing bilateral ties. Despite meetings between Chinese President Xi and Japanese Prime Minister Abe, no accommodation on the territorial dispute has been found, and popular sentiments continue to be highly skeptical of each country’s motives. Economic ties with each other remain an important part of the growth strategy for both nations, however, suggesting that economic interdependence continues to be a priority for Xi and Abe. Should Beijing and Tokyo choose to contend openly for dominance in the region, this rivalry would no doubt undermine the commitment to mutual prosperity that has characterized Asia-Pacific regionalism. But could it actually cause war? The alliance between Tokyo and Washington has already been sorely tested by Japan–China tensions; and the prospect for real conflict may come from a competition for the allegiance and protection of the United States.

A decade of weakening bilateralism Troubles in the Sino–Japanese diplomatic relationship have persisted since the early 2000s, and the cumulative effect has been a growing frustration with the traditional bilateral management of the relationships. Whereas the leaders of the CCP and Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) invested in strong personal ties and developed channels outside of the bureaucracies, these ties grew weak by the end of the 1990s. The Sino-Japanese relationship was affected by political change in Japan that brought a new party to power but also made it difficult for Japanese prime ministers to stay in office. Japan’s relationship with China has also been deeply affected by the less rapid but profound leadership transitions in China. Individual Chinese leaders have shifted back and forth between articulating the importance of the Sino-Japanese relationship to openly scolding Japan for its militaristic past in an effort to shore up the CCP’s legitimacy. But it is also true that the issues that gradually took precedence in the relationship grew more complex, and more likely to affect public opinion in both countries. As I argued in my book, Intimate Rivals, elites in Japan could no longer manage the growing complexity of their economic interdependence nor could they ignore the popular salience of the rising military pressures and 22

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sovereignty claims of an increasingly influential China.2 Likewise, China scholars have pointed to the utility of anti-Japanese protests within China to the elite communist party rulers as an instrument of consolidating their power.3 The issues that plagued this bilateral relationship became increasingly difficult to solve, and solutions often required reforms and compromises that were simply too hard politically. The easier answer was to blame the other. For all of the ups and downs in the Japan–China relationship, there were also plenty of creative solutions to their growing problems. Implementing those solutions, however, proved challenging. Diplomatic efforts were made to redefine this new relationship, and the awkward phrase that emerged in 2008 at the successful visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to Tokyo was a “strategic and mutually beneficial relationship.”4 But this slogan did little to cover up the issues that had plagued Sino–Japanese negotiators. Two in particular captured popular attention in Japan: Chinese maritime boundary claims on the East China Sea and the poisoning of Japanese by imported frozen dumplings, or gyoza, from China. Nonetheless, the summit meeting included the results of hard won compromise by both governments on these two issues. A joint energy development plan was hammered out for the East China Sea that would put aside differing claims over their Economic Exclusive Zones (EEZs), and instead forged a mutually agreeable formula for collaboration in extracting oil and gas from the East China Sea seabed.5 Additionally, Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo and President Hu agreed to develop a consultative mechanism for ensuring food security, a mechanism designed to improve transparency over factories in China and also to align regulatory oversight of food exports and imports more effectively. Yet the implementation of both policy improvements faltered, and especially for diplomats who had expected their solution to resolve tensions in the East China Sea, this only added more fuel to the frustration that crept into bilateral talks. While the two governments struggled to find a common cause, a stubborn (and inebriated) fishing trawler captain dealt the relationship a deeper blow. Insistent on his right to fish in the waters off the Senkaku Islands, the captain of the Minjinyu 5179 trawler confronted Japanese Coast Guard (JCG) vessels seeking to remove him from their waters. Competing Chinese and Japanese claims over a small group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, a dispute muffled for the sake of normalization in the 1970s and managed quietly by the two governments ever since, became the tinder that enflamed nationalism in both nations. The captain rammed two JCG vessels, raising the stakes and leading to his arrest and his crew’s detention. A new government in power in Tokyo, angered by the endangerment of its coast guard in the volatile East China Sea, decided to charge the captain for obstructing them in performance of their duty, a relatively minor charge but one that subjected the Chinese captain to Japanese domestic law. After several weeks of intense Chinese pressure and global media attention, Japan decided to release the captain, and he returned home to a hero’s welcome. But in these few weeks, China had imposed an embargo on rare earth materials and arrested four Japanese businessmen in China, charging them with spying on a military installation. For many Japanese, their government had blinked, and the criticism of the Kan Cabinet that followed only deepened the difficulties of repairing bilateral relations. The impact of the island dispute was severe and protracted, and spread from diplomatic tensions to popular antagonisms to a halt or slowdown in trade and capital flows. From 2010, the deep economic ties between the two nations were affected. Economic sanctions by China on rare earth exports to Japan during the fishing trawler crisis, and in 2012, after the Japanese government purchased some of these islands from their owner, Chinese protests damaged longstanding manufactures and retail shops across China. In the aftermath, Japanese foreign direct investment in China slowed dramatically, revealing just how deeply these intense crises were affecting the economic interests of both nations.6 23

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Economic dependence in the face of popular antagonism Economic interdependence had been the ambition of both the CCP and the conservative leaders who governed Japan. At the time of normalization in 1978, elites on both sides saw opportunity in actively fostering economic ties. Deng Xiaoping saw the opportunity to learn how to shift to a market economy, Fukuda Takeo – and many others since – saw their support for China’s economic development as a means to repair the damages wrought by prewar Japan on a weakened China. Deepening economic interdependence was a deliberate strategy for postwar reconciliation, not simply its outcome. It required the conviction in both capitols that this relationship was worth the investment – and occasionally, some political costs. Three decades later, after massive Japanese government and private sector investment in China, Beijing and Tokyo depended heavily on each other for their economic well-being. Trade between the two countries continued to grow. Exports and imports valued at roughly 9.2 billion yen in 2000 had jumped to 26.5 billion yen in 2010, and even through the next five years of tensions, trade between Japan and China was valued at 32.7 billion yen.7 But whereas trade with Japan was the highest percentage of China’s overall trade in 1990, Japan’s share dropped consistently through the following two decades. By 2010, the United States had become China’s largest trading partner, followed by Hong Kong and Japan.8 Moreover, Japan’s own economic growth now depends heavily on trade with China, Japan’s largest export market and largest source of imports. China is less and less dependent on trade with Japan, while Japan is more and more dependent on its China trade.9 While trade volume continues to grow, foreign direct investment flows from Japan to China have fluctuated. In absolute terms, Japan continues to be the third largest source of foreign capital for China, after Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands.10 Yet Japanese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to China has been decreasing; according to Japan’s Ministry of Finance, the most significant annual decrease was in 2013, when it fell by 18%.11 Japan’s Nikkei Shimbun, using Chinese data for actual FDI inflows, reported that Japanese companies were moving away from the China market at a far greater rate, reporting that in 2014 FDI fell at a rate of 38.8%, the sharpest drop since 1985.12 While these figures suggest that new Japanese investments in China are growing at a slower rate, it is not clear whether this is temporary or suggestive of a longer term trend. Nonetheless, China’s slowing economic growth rate suggests that Japanese companies may have both economic and political motives for diversifying their investments.13 Leaders in Beijing and Tokyo have been willing to risk their economic ties as the sovereignty dispute escalated even as the economic stakes in the relationship remain high. Where economic interdependence was once seen as an opportunity for mutual benefit, Sino–Japanese economic ties seem increasingly to bind Beijing and Tokyo in ways that could be costly. Both depend on each other economically, but this dependence has not prevented serious damage to the relationship, including rising military tensions. China’s use of economic instruments to pressure Japan during the 2010 diplomatic crisis and widespread damages to Japanese firms in China caused by the protests in 2012 have given Japanese investors pause. Beijing seems quite willing to use trade and investment as weapons in its relations with weaker states.14 For Japanese businesses, the growing worries about the Chinese economy are coupled with a newfound caution about how political tensions may also raise risk to their businesses in China. For the Chinese government, there are also new dimensions to the economic relationship that must be factored into diplomacy. Chinese investment in Japan is growing.15 Moreover, deepening consumer demand for Japanese goods and for travel to Japan may also contribute to reducing the strain in bilateral diplomacy.16 24

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The consequences of the Sino–Japanese fallout Japan–China relations have suffered, and for many in both capitals there seems little desire to repair the damage. To be sure, Xi and Abe have put the normal government-to-government consultations back on track, and both have emphasized the benefits of their economic ties. Since Xi met with Abe in November 2014 at the APEC meeting, numerous business delegations from Japan have visited China in an effort to restore confidence in Japanese firms. The first was led by Nikai Toshihiro, a senior LDP leader who went on to become the Secretary-General of the LDP in 2016, who was accompanied by a 3,000 member delegation of Japanese corporate executives.17 Even with these traditional approaches to mending fences, there seems little incentive or energy for a dramatic improvement. Skepticism remains high in Tokyo that Beijing is interested in a serious overture to Tokyo; likewise in Beijing, Japan continues to be criticized for its positions on regional issues, especially on maritime tensions in the South China Sea. Rivalry, whether muted or overt, now characterizes this critical Asian relationship, with significant consequences for the behavior of each state in the region.

Who best to lead Asia? The growing discord in the Japan–China relationship has transformed from a bilateral problem to one that has implications for the Asian region. Contention and competition colors the behavior of both Asian powers, and has focused the diplomatic attention of each on competing for influence. Three areas in particular demonstrate this new rivalry in action: the 2015 commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, the effort to invest in regional infrastructure development and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and most recently, the future of maritime cooperation in Asia in the wake of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) arbitration ruling on the South China Sea. First, Japanese and Chinese leaders took their differences over how Asia’s twentieth century history is remembered to the global stage. Conflict over historical memory is not new to Sino– Japanese relations. Indeed, it has been a central theme in bilateral negotiations over a peace treaty, at times set aside for the sake of larger aims but at times reintroduced as a reminder that Chinese grievances and Japanese exacerbation of those grievances can always damage ties. In the 1980s, Yasukuni Shrine visits drew the ire of CCP leaders; in the 1990s, it was revisionist Japanese textbooks; and in the 2000s, Yasukuni returned with a vengeance when Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro insisted on annual visits to the shrine. Today, it is the territorial dispute and Prime Minister Abe’s visit to Yasukuni in December 2013, which returned the controversial shrine and revisionist approaches to Japan’s imperial past to the headlines. Contest over the Senkaku Islands amplified a duel over national identity in the global spotlight, with Chinese diplomats denigrating Japanese behavior in World War II while Japanese diplomats seeking to defend their country by pointing out Japan’s postwar international contributions. In the midst of the territorial dispute in September 2012, leaders of both countries took to the podium at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York to appeal their cause to a global audience.18 In London, the Chinese Ambassador published an op-ed reminding British citizens that it was China that was their country’s ally in World War II and likening Japan to Voldemort in the well-known Harry Potter series with Yasukuni Shrine as the horcrux that channels evil. This provoked a stern rebuttal by the Japanese Ambassador pointing out that it is China challenging international norms, becoming Asia’s Voldemort today.19 In short, the intense diplomatic standoff over the islands shutdown bilateral talks, and instead 25

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diplomats and leaders sought to gain the upper hand for their cause with other countries. The past became an instrument in persuading others of their own country’s moral standing in the international community. But in the current strategic environment, the import of this contest over historical memory took on a new meaning and revealed that the goal of postwar reconciliation in Sino–Japanese relations was no longer of interest to the leaders of either country.20 The various historical commemorations and statements in 2015, the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, made that abundantly clear.21 The statement Japan’s prime minister would make occasioned great concern. Abe’s personal convictions made many inside and outside of Japan worry that he would further damage diplomatic ties not only with China, but also with South Korea. For the first year or more since he took office, Abe had no summit meetings with either leader, and seemed to be chafing under this diplomatic isolation as Seoul and Beijing pursued ever greater cooperation, particularly on issues of wartime legacies and in publicizing Japanese atrocities. His visit to Yasukuni Shrine in December 2013 had prompted sharp rebuke from both neighbors, but also for the first time from Japan’s ally, the United States. Abe convened an advisory group, populated with journalists, scholars and business leaders, to help him craft a statement for August 15, the day Japanese commemorate their defeat. In his statement, Abe acknowledged Japan’s responsibility in the war and expressed his gratitude for the demonstrated “tolerance” by the Chinese people, who despite their suffering took in orphaned Japanese children, as well as by the POWs who suffered at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army. This “tolerance” had allowed Japan to regain its international standing. Yet, he also noted that his generation felt duty bound to end the habit of apologizing so that succeeding generations of Japanese would not inherit that burden. Abe said, “We must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.”22 The time had come to put the legacy of WWII behind them. In China, President Xi took a different tack. He organized China’s first national commemoration of the end of World War II on September 3, and declared December 13, the day associated with Japanese atrocities in Nanjing, as another national holiday. In attendance were only China’s neighbors to the West, and Russian President Vladimir Putin and South Korean President Park Gyeun-hye. The U.S. and European leaders did not attend, nor did Prime Minister Abe. In his speech that day, Xi reminded his countrymen of “the plot of the Japanese militarists to colonize and enslave China,” but he also called world attention to the military might of China. While Xi was demonstrating that today’s China was a power to be reckoned with, his speech also asked younger Chinese not to forget the war as it, reestablished China as a major country in the world and won the Chinese people the respect of all peace loving people around the world. This great triumph opened up bright prospects for the great renewal of the Chinese nation and set our ancient country on a new journey after gaining rebirth.23 Contest between Beijing and Tokyo has long been central to their bilateral relationship, and given the scale of suffering and the atrocities committed, it is unlikely to go away. But this dueling narrative over how the past ought to shape contemporary Chinese and Japanese visions of the future reveals not only a hardening of popular attitudes towards war memory but also demonstrates the growing utility and appeal of war grievances for nationalist leaders seeking to validate their country’s moral authority in Asia.

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A second area where Sino–Japanese rivalry has emerged is over the future of multilateralism in Asia. Several areas of regional governance reveal this tension between Chinese and Japanese leadership. The first is the creation of the AIIB, and the future trajectory of infrastructure and investment flows in Asia. In 2013, the Chinese government announced it would create a new multilateral development bank, the AIIB. While the headlines all translated this into a competition between China and the United States for regional leadership,24 it was Japan’s postwar leadership of regional economic development that was challenged. Japan had long been the source of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) for Asian nations, including China, and had been a leading donor in the Asian Development Bank (ADB). China’s announcement of its new infrastructure and development bank, funded largely by Chinese capital, suggested that Beijing now would compete with Tokyo in setting the agenda and terms for Asia’s development. Development funds and the vision for Asian infrastructure development has largely been an uncontested arena in the regional governance architecture, dominated largely by one financial institution, the ADB. China’s AIIB initiative in effect presents an alternative source of funding. Beijing’s decision to create this new bank opened China to multilateralism and bilateral infrastructure spending across the region. According to the Rand Corporation’s study on Chinese ODA, Chinese aid has risen precipitously, from $2 billion pledged in 2001 to $189 billion in 2011. 40% of aid is for infrastructure and 42% is for resource development projects. Yet of the top ten recipients of Chinese aid, only two countries (Thailand and Indonesia) are in Asia.25 The AIIB thus fills a gap in Chinese economic assistance. Beijing announced a commitment of $100 billion when it began operations in January 2016 for the estimated $1.3 trillion needed for Asia’s infrastructure. With the governance structure ambiguously defined and with a hefty share of the bank’s funds contributed by Beijing, the AIIB initiative at first drew a cautious response. The Obama Administration was largely negative, and reportedly cautioned its allies against involvement.26 But the AIIB began operations with 57 founding members, including some notable U.S. allies. Japan’s response was mixed. The tug and pull of strategic competition and the benefits of financial cooperation were evident. The Ministry of Finance took a more positive view of the AIIB’s potential contributions to regional investment financing, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs largely saw the AIIB as a competitor to U.S. and Japanese interests. Prime Minister Abe also had his own plans for Japanese spending on Asia’s infrastructure, announcing $110 billion as a counter to China’s new initiative.27 Interestingly, it was the ADB President Nakao Takehiko that argued early on against seeing the AIIB as the ADB’s competition. Nakao, a Ministry of Finance expert, had worked closely over his career with Chinese financial experts. Nakao emerged as an influential and constructive voice, arguing that “AIIB President Jin Liqun, himself having worked as the ADB’s deputy, welcomed Nakao’s ideas for how the two regional banks could supplement each other in countries where infrastructure needs were greatest and where funds were badly lacking.”28 Central and South Asia, some of the riskiest locales for investment, may provide common cause for the AIIB and other global lenders. The ADB is not the only multilateral lender that AIIB will work with. In June 2016, when the AIIB announced its first four projects, the influence of these discussions with the ADB and with other regional and global development banks was readily apparent.29 Yet in other efforts at building regional economic institutions, Japan and China have had far less success in finding common ground. Agreement among the 12 nations of the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) was reached in October 2015,30 but strong political opposition in the United States continues to threaten ratification. Japan’s stake in TPP is high, and Prime Minister Abe had been a strong advocate at home, in the region and with the American public. In April 2015, in a speech to the Joint Session of the U.S. Congress, Abe urged American lawmakers

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to embrace and ratify TPP, arguing that “the U.S. and Japan must take the lead” and that TPP “goes far beyond economic benefits. It is also about our security. Long-term, its strategic value is awesome.”31 Japan has much to lose should the United States be unable to ratify the treaty. Moreover, Abe has publicly equated TPP with strategic meaning, repeatedly linking TPP with the future of free trade in Asia, but has said that should China join, it would have even greater strategic significance.32 President Obama too, facing serious criticism at home and concerns about American leadership in Asia, has described the TPP as a response to geostrategic change, stating that if the United States and its TPP partners do not write the rules, China will.33 Even the U.S. Secretary of Defense has argued that “passing TPP is as important to me as another aircraft carrier.”34 Finally, Japanese and Chinese differences over the maritime order in the Asia-Pacific have been far less sanguine. Territorial disputes abound over Asia’s offshore islands, including the major island groups of the Senkakus (Diaoyus), the Paracels (Xisha), and the Spratley Islands (Nansha). Japan’s own clash with Chinese forces over the Senkakus since 2012 heightened regional concerns over Beijing’s intentions in the East and South China Seas, or what Chinese often refer to as their “near seas.” In the South China Sea, claimants are far smaller and less well equipped to cope with China’s growing challenges to sovereignty. In addition, maritime boundaries established as UNCLOS took effect in the 1990s stipulate EEZs across the region, often overlapping with those of neighbors and defining new rights for fishery and seabed resources. While most of the nations of Southeast Asia have peacefully negotiated their differences over the sovereignty of contested islands, and have come to a negotiated solution over maritime boundaries, China remains unwilling to pursue third party settlement options or to agree on mutually acceptable boundaries with maritime neighbors. The South China Sea, according to Beijing, is historically Chinese waters, and China claims a nine-dash line that extends along the outer reaches of the entire sea. While the ASEAN has engaged China in trying to draft a Code of Conduct for managing territorial disputes in Asia’s waters, Japan and China have yet to conclude any similar instrument for reducing tensions in the East China Sea. The introduction of Chinese Coast Guard patrols around the Senkaku Islands in 2012, as well as China’s announcement of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in 2013, has upped the ante for defending Japan’s waters and airspace. In November 2014, when Prime Minister Abe visited Beijing for the APEC meeting, he and President Xi finally sat down for a brief discussion. In the lead up to this diplomatic breakthrough, both governments acknowledged the growing risk of military conflict and agreed to begin discussions on a risk reduction mechanism. Multiple rounds of meetings between a broad array of maritime agencies from both governments have been held since then, but no agreement has been forthcoming.35 Both countries are demonstrating the power of their militaries across the East China Sea. New defense bases in the Ryukyu Islands, or Okinawa Prefecture, now house radar and other installations that help Japan’s Self Defense Force gain better sight of the activities of Chinese near the Senkaku Islands.36 Moreover, more frequent patrols by Japanese maritime and air forces have prompted Chinese fighter jets to scramble. Likewise, Chinese military activity encroaching on Japanese territorial waters has also increased the number of Japanese military scrambles.37 Both militaries operate in ever-closer proximity to each other, and several incidents of dangerous interactions between aircraft have been reported. Japan has also reported a conspicuous increase in the number of Chinese oil rigs, suspected of also serving as radar installations,38 as well as increasingly worrisome patrols by the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in and around the Senkakus.39 Media reports have also suggested that China may be building a new facility closer to the islands to support its presence there.40 28

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Japan is also concerned about Chinese behavior in the South China Sea, especially the rapid construction of what seem to be military facilities on disputed islands in the Spratleys.41 Japanese naval ships regularly transit the South China Sea on their way to the Gulf of Aden for anti-piracy missions, as well as to participate in exercises with the ASEAN nations and India. In June 2015, Admiral Kawano Katsutoshi, Japan’s chief of the joint staff of Self Defense Force (SDF), argued that the Chinese island building activities were worrisome, raising strategic concerns for Japan. He also stated that he would be willing to initiate surveillance of the South China Sea if needed to ensure the safety of Japanese ships. Shortly thereafter, Kawano visited the United Sates at the invitation of Joint Chief of Staff Chief Martin Dempsey to discuss the alliance’s strategic cooperation. But the tensions between Beijing and Tokyo intensified in 2016 as the verdict of the UNCLOS arbitration tribunal, initiated by the Philippines to consider the validity of Chinese claims in the South China Sea, approached. In an interview with the Financial Times, Prime Minister Abe expressed Japan’s “very strong concern” over Chinese island building and called on the international community to “raise its voice” in protest.42 China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson, Hong Lei, responded with a caution to Japan, suggesting Japan ought to do more to enhance mutual trust with its neighbors instead of “sowing discord” in the region.43 Japan’s prime minister continued to urge the members of the G-7 to take up the South China Sea issue during their meeting in Japan in May 2016, drawing criticism in the Chinese media.44 When the G-7 issued its statement on the South China Sea, Chinese officials registered their “strong dissatisfaction,” again accusing Japan of “hyping up the South China Sea issue and fanning the flames of tensions.”45 The decision by the UNCLOS Tribunal issued on July 12, 2016 only intensified Chinese anger towards Japan. President Xi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi openly refuted The Hague’s verdict that Chinese actions in the South China Sea ran counter to international law.46 That very same day, Xinhua ran an editorial asking Japan to “stop interfering in the South China Sea,” accusing the Japanese president of the international tribunal, Yanai Shunji, of “politicizing the tribunal from the outset.”47 Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement supporting the “final and legally binding” nature of the Tribunal’s award in the arbitration, and reiterating Japan’s position on the importance of the rule of law and the use of peaceful means to settle maritime disputes.48 The following day China’s State Council released its own White Paper stating the arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea has no jurisdiction and awards rendered are null and void. But China’s Vice Foreign Minister in his press conference to present the White Paper took particular aim at the Japanese judge’s influence that undermined the awards legitimacy, and identified Yanai as assisting Prime Minister Abe in lifting the ban on collective self-defense, an action that “challenges the postwar international order.” Several days later the Deputy Foreign Ministers of Japan, the United States and South Korea met and announced that The Hague Award was legally binding, but at the ASEM Summit in Mongolia, Japanese and Chinese prime ministers openly contended with the each other on the ruling as European leaders took note.49 The European Union, in fact, took three days of protracted debate to make up its mind on The Hague ruling on the South China Sea; the European Union neither supported nor welcomed the award, but simply acknowledged it while expressing support for UNCLOS.50 Tokyo and Beijing are increasingly at odds in Asia. The longstanding sensitivities over war memory have taken on a new meaning as regional leadership is up for grabs. Both Xi and Abe have attempted to recast the past in order to argue for their nation’s rightful position of Asian leadership. Asia’s economic governance is also showing some strain as new initiatives, supported by each but excluding the other, challenge existing institutions to finance development. Here Japan and China seem to have found some middle ground, albeit it remains to be seen whether they can actually work together within the AIIB. Finally, and perhaps most worrisome 29

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for Southeast Asian states, the inability of Beijing and Tokyo to alleviate their own maritime tensions now threatens to infuse debate over the South China Sea. While seemingly geographically separate, the East and South China Seas are intertwined in a contentious set of sovereignty claims and there is a rising region-wide concern over the willingness of China to use force instead of finding ways of peaceful compromise with its neighbors. Japan refuses to be excluded from discussions of the maritime principles applied in the South China Sea, and China insists that Tokyo is simply trying to cause trouble; the UNCLOS, to which both nations adhere, may now also become victim to the growing rivalry between Asia’s largest powers.

Sino–Japanese rivalry and the U.S. in Asia Japan–China rivalry has deeply affected U.S. policymaking in the region, and the U.S.–Japan alliance has focused on the increasing maritime pressures from China ever since the Chinese fishing trawler incident sparked a diplomatic confrontation. Japanese leaders have repeatedly sought reassurance that the U.S. government remained committed to their defenses. The official U.S. position on the Senkaku Islands, administered by the U.S. after World War II but returned to Japan in 1972, has been that while Washington takes no position on the sovereignty dispute, it does recognize Japan’s administrative control and thus extends U.S. protection of those islands under Article 5 of the U.S.–Japan security treaty. In September 2010, while attending the UN General Assembly meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met privately with Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara to discuss the crisis and to help find a way of alleviating tensions.51 After China decided to deploy its own maritime forces to patrol the Senkakus and after some questionable interactions between the PLAN and Japan’s Maritime Self Defense Force (MSDF), the U.S. Senate also became involved in signaling U.S. interests, stating that it would not accept coercion as a means of changing the status quo on the administration of the islands.52 Four years later, as tensions in the East China Sea continued to rise and as military incidents seemed increasingly possible, President Barak Obama, on a visit to Tokyo, made it very clear that the U.S.–Japan bilateral security treaty would cover the Senkaku Islands should an attempt be made to establish control by force. Also, Japanese and U.S. policymakers revised and upgraded the bilateral defense cooperation guidelines that outlined the military division of labor for the alliance. When announced in 2015, these new guidelines included reference to “grey zone” contingencies, conflicts below the use of military force but which could easily escalate to a military conflict, and introduced a new Alliance Coordination Mechanism designed to manage any regional tensions as they began so as to ensure seamless crisis management cooperation in the alliance.53 The Obama Administration also sought to influence Chinese behavior. Japan was not the only country to be locked in tensions over offshore islands. The Philippines and Vietnam were also increasingly worried about the increasing presence of Chinese law enforcement ships in the waters of their islands. By 2012, two U.S. treaty allies in the Pacific were feeling pressure from Chinese vessels in and around their islands, and Washington policymakers attempted to mediate their differences.54 In his first meeting with Chinese President Xi in Sunnylands, California in June 2013, President Obama raised his concerns over the growing maritime tensions in Asia.55 U.S. worries increased when China declared an ADIZ across the East China Sea over airspace that Japan also maintained as its ADIZ.56 In response U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel stated that “this announcement by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will not in any way change how the United States conducts military operations in the region,” and sent two B-52 bombers into the Chinese ADIZ to demonstrate.57 While Washington and Tokyo consulted closely on how to respond militarily to the growing Chinese pressures in the East China Sea, the U.S. Secretary of Defense also noted in May 2014 that the U.S. would upgrade and improve its 30

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own military presence in the Asia-Pacific, and reiterated plans to operate 60% of U.S. Navy and Air Force forces out of the Pacific.58 Reducing the risk of incidents between the Chinese and U.S. militaries has also been a priority, however. U.S. forces in Asia had run into Chinese ships, aircraft and militia that sought to impede their operations through risky maneuvers. China argued strenuously that U.S. operations off their coastlines were hostile in intent, and would undermine the pursuit of peaceful ties. Chinese participation in the annual Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC) naval exercises, with 27 nations in Asia included, was one such effort. Another was the conclusion of two military-to-military risk reduction agreements, one in 2014 that focused on surface to surface interactions at sea and another that covered air to air interactions in 2015.59 U.S. and Japanese policymakers, confronted by an increasingly assertive Chinese military presence in and around Japanese waters, have largely focused on preventing an incident or miscalculation between maritime law enforcement vessels or between militaries from escalating into a full blown conflict. Continued upgrades to U.S. forward deployed forces in Japan, as well as increased exercising between the SDF and U.S. Forces in the Pacific continue to reassure Japanese of the U.S. commitment to their defense. Japan’s own upgrades in its military preparedness have also reinforced the alliance. In response to the pressures on Japan’s southwestern islands, the SDF has reorganized its capabilities southward, including a new squadron of fighters, improved ISR capability, additional submarines and a new amphibious landing force designed to improve island defenses. The Abe Cabinet’s reinterpretation of its constitution to allow for collective self defense, the ability of the SDF to use force alongside other national militaries in the region, has also gone a long way in communicating Japan’s military readiness. Deterrence and risk reduction have been the primary alliance focus, and yet the political strain of China’s rising influence in the region continues to inform relations between Japan, China and the United States. As China seeks U.S. acceptance of its desire to craft a “new, major power relationship,” Japanese leaders worry about a G-2 agreement that might weaken their alliance with the United States. As the United States seeks to strengthen its cooperation with Japan in building regional maritime cooperation, Chinese leaders chafe against what they perceive as “containment.” As Japan seeks to upgrade its military cooperation with the United States and others across the region, China reminds the region and the world of twentieth century Japanese imperialism and urges Washington not to allow Japan’s return to “militarism.” For some in Washington, the United States is trapped between Tokyo and Beijing in this new era of Sino–Japanese rivalry; for others, the United States is destined one day for a similar experience of contest with a much more powerful China. Managing the trilateral relationship so as to minimize the impulse for strategic competition while at the same time alleviating the real fear of an impending clash between two or more military powers in northeastern Asia presents a significant challenge to all three nations. The crisis between Japan and China in the East China Sea raised the prospect of a rapid and unintended military confrontation in Asia, one that had not been imagined just a few years earlier. China’s growing military power was worrisome, but it is only recently that China’s use of its military or paramilitary forces has occasioned serious concern. Beijing has not been deterred from demonstrating its willingness to risk the use of force with U.S. allies, and this has prompted considerable attention to the policy reforms necessary to ensure close cooperation between Washington and allied governments. Tokyo and Washington have readied their alliance cooperation mechanisms to contend with a crisis, but other allies have not felt a similar level of pressure on their militaries. Moreover, political change in Manila and divisions among elites in Canberra have raised significant questions about just how confrontational U.S. allies want to be with China.60 It remains to be seen whether a sustainable effort at collective action by Asia’s maritime powers can contend with China’s increasing assertiveness on the seas. 31

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Conclusion Diplomatic tensions have characterized Japan–China relations for more than a decade, with increasingly complex consequences for Asia’s regional governance. Bilateral tensions, once attributed to the persistent legacies of World War II, expanded to include trade, food security and eventually defense concerns. A territorial dispute in the East China Sea, once dormant through careful bilateral management, erupted to shake the foundations of this important Asian relationship. Military conflict seemed increasingly possible, despite the repeated assertions by top leaders in Japan and China that they had no interest in going to war with each other. Even the deep economic ties between these two Asian nations seemed to be weakening, adding to the concern that neither government was sufficiently motivated to compromise for the sake of the overall relationship. Japan–China rivalry has tremendous consequences for regional security. Not only have the tensions over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands brought the two militaries into a standoff in the East China Sea, but China’s willingness to threaten military action against Asia’s largest power has shaped perceptions around the region about Beijing’s willingness to use coercive action in pursuit of its interests elsewhere. Moreover, the strategic competition now evident between Tokyo and Beijing in regional security institutions, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum, has raised questions about the viability of the ASEAN-centric multilateralism to ease tensions. But the impact of Japan–China rivalry is most evident in the maritime Asia. Japan has begun to play a more active role in supporting the capacity of other maritime states, including the Philippines, Vietnam and India. The Japanese military is now a far more visible instrument of national influence for Japan across the region. China too now competes for maritime access, both through the building of ports along Indo-Pacific trade routes and in the construction of what appear to be military bases on disputed islands in the South China Sea. For many of Asia’s maritime nations, this competition raises difficult questions about their own defenses but also about the role the United States has long played in dampening Japanese ambitions and in balancing China’s increasingly powerful military. Yet there is still opportunity for diffusing this rivalry. The ambitions of a rising China do not necessarily have to challenge Japanese interests. Likewise, Japan still has strong interests in avoiding an unfettered competition with China for economic and military influence. But the conditions for a bilateral Sino–Japanese rapprochement remain unclear. So long as China’s leaders suggest that their position in the region derives from the moral authority that comes from being a victim of Japanese militarism nearly a century ago, there can be little optimism about compromise and cooperation with Japan. Instead, Beijing may cultivate the nationalism that they decry and fear most in Tokyo. Likewise, Japanese leaders must find a common cause in building regional institutions that will mitigate the growing military tensions in the Asia-Pacific and accommodate China’s growing strategic interests. So long as the U.S.–Japan security treaty remains the foundation of Japanese defenses, however, the United States will need to provide the deterrent necessary to reassure Japanese that China’s growing military power does not undermine their security. This will create new challenges for Washington as it seeks to dissuade coercion and undergird the regional military balance. Bridging the popular antipathy between Japanese and Chinese that has emerged over the past decade will take considerable effort by political leaders, and may in fact prove to be the most difficult task for leaders in Tokyo and Beijing. The growing aspirations of the Chinese people must not come at the cost of the security of Japanese. Likewise, Japanese must continue to find ways to adjust to the growing Chinese influence over their choices. While diplomats and strategists continue to debate the future balance of power in Asia, attention must be given to easing 32

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this growing popular distrust. This will require the demonstrated success of Japan–China cooperation rather than doubling down on the rivalry that has begun to drive Tokyo and Beijing’s approach to the Asia Pacific.

Notes 1 Sheila A. Smith, Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 2 “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, Japan, available at: www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/china/ joint0805.html. 3 See for example, Jessica Chen Weiss, Powerful Patriots (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 4 “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, Japan, available at: www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/china/ joint0805.html. 5 The 2008 Japan-China Joint Press Statement on Cooperation between Japan and China in the East China Sea can be found here: www.mofa.go.jp/files/000091726.pdf. See also Chapter 4. 6 In a far less significant way, the tensions between Japan and China over food security concerns have also been reflected in the agricultural and process food trade. In 2007, the Japanese public boycotted imports of foodstuffs from China when poisoned dumplings made there were found to contain a harmful chemical. See Chapter 5 of Smith, Intimate Rivals. 7 In USD, $85.4 million in 2000 (JPY/USD rate of 0.009280); $302.4 million in 2010 (JPY/USD rate of 0.011413); and $270.2 million in 2015 (JPY/USD rate of 0.008263). Available at: www.usforex.com/ forex-tools/historical-rate-tools/yearly-average-rates. 8 See World Bank data available at: http://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/CHN/ Year/2015/Summary. 9 Since 2000, China’s dependence on exports to Japan dropped from over 15% to around 5% in 2013, and imports from around 20% to less than 10%. In contrast, Japan’s dependence on imports from China has grown from about 15% to over 20% and exports from around 5% to over 15%. See Chi Hung Kwan, “The Rise of China and Transformation of Japan-China Relations: Opportunities and Challenges for Japan,” Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI), available at: www.rieti.go.jp/en/ china/14080501.html (accessed October 17, 2016). 10 The most recent IMF data covers up to 2014, available at: http://data.imf.org/regular.aspx?key= 60562913 (accessed October 19). 11 From 2009, the Japanese Ministry of Finance reports Japan’s outward flow of funds to China from Japan as follows: 6.49 billion yen in 2009; 6.28 billion yen in 2010; 10.05 billion yen in 2011; 10.76 billion yen in 2012; 8.87 billion yen in 2013; 10.94 billion yen in 2014; and 10.73 billion yen in 2015. 12 See Nikkei Shimbun, January 1, 2015, available at: www.nikkei.com/article/DGXLASGM16H6M_ W5A110C1FF2000/ (accessed October 17, 2016). 13 Opportunity elsewhere in Asia is also growing. As the United Nations points out, Asia continues to drawn the bulk of global FDI, but the developing economies are drawing FDI at a higher and higher rate. See World Investment Report 2016. UNCTAD available at unctad.org/en/PublicationsLitewir 2016_en.pdf. 14 Conflict over Scarborough Shoal with the Philippines resulted in an embargo on imports of Philippine bananas and other agricultural produce. Chinese investment in the Philippines also diminished when Manila chose to stand up to Beijing’s claims on their territory. For an assessment of political risk in the economic ties between Beijing and Manila, see Tom Stern, “Chinese Investments in the Philippines,” Journal of Political Risk, June 28, 2016, available at: www.jpolrisk.com/chinese-investments-in-thephilippines/ (accessed October 17, 2016). 15 Direct investment by Chinese firms in Japan has grown, as has Chinese purchase of Japanese government bonds. As of the end of 2013, China held 14.3 trillion yen in these bonds, and is now the largest foreign sovereign holder of JGBs. See Kwan, “The Rise of China and Transformation of Japan-China Relations.” More recently, Chinese tourism in Japan has also been a boon to the economy. In 2015, 4,993,689 Chinese visited Japan, comprising 25.3% of Japan’s overall foreign visitors. Available at: www.jnto.go.jp/jpn/statistics/since2003_tourists.pdf.

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Sheila A. Smith 16 The official data on economic impact by tourists is only available for 2014, but can be found here: www.mlit.go.jp/kankocho/siryou/toukei/kouka.html. But Japanese media has reported a significant upsurge in Chinese visitors to Japan. See Japan Times, August 25, 2015, available at: www.japantimes. co.jp/news/2014/08/25/reference/tourism-emerges-new-economic-driver-japan/#.WAQSEZMrIcg. 17 See www.jata-net.or.jp/membership/topics/2015/150615_ncknkbnkrepo.html (accessed October 19, 2016). Subsequent visits have included Japan-China Economic Association headed by Keidanren President Sadayuki Sakakibara, available at: www.jc-web.or.jp/jcea/publics/index/724/. Moreover, Chinese provincial leaders, hard pressed to find capital at home, have also traveled to Japan to make overtures to firms interested in investing in their regions. “Chuugoku Kousosyo kara saidai kibo no daihyoudan rainichi – Keiki gensoku no naka kyouryoku kyouka ni kitai o shimesu [The biggest delegation visits Japan from China’s Jiangsu Province – Expressing Hopes for Further Cooperation in Time of Economic Stagnation],” NHK, May 12, 2016. For example, see Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, May 15, 2016, available at: www.fmprc.gov.cn/web/gjhdq_676201/gj_676203/yz_676205/1206_676836/1 206x2_676856/t1363439.shtml. 18 China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi introduced the territorial dispute in his remarks available at the UN: https://gadebate.un.org/en/67/china, prompting Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to challenge China’s assertion of sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands available at: https://gadebate.un.org/ en/67/japan. 19 The op-ed of China’s Ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, “Liu Xiaoming: China and Britain Won the War Together,” can be found in The Telegraph, January 1, 2014, available at: www.telegraph.co.uk/ comment/10546442/Liu-Xiaoming-China-and-Britain-won-the-war-together.html. The response of the Japanese Ambassador to the UK, Keiichi Hayashi, was published days later: “China Risks Becoming Asia’s Voldemort,” The Telegraph, January 5, 204, available at: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ asia/japan/10552351/China-risks-becoming-Asias-Voldemort.html. 20 For a discussion of these 70th anniversary commemorations see essays by historians and by political scientists in the Journal of Asian Studies. Carol Gluck, Rana Mitter and Charles K. Armstrong, “The Seventieth Anniversary of World War II’s End in Asia: Three Perspectives,” The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 74, Issue 3, August 2015, pp. 531–537. John Delury, Sheila A. Smith, Maria Repnikova and Srinath Raghavan, “Looking Back on the Seventieth Anniversary of Japan’s Surrender,” The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 74, Issue 4, November 2015, pp. 797–820. 21 The 70th anniversary commemorations included statements by Japan’s Prime Minister Abe on August 14, by South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye on August 15, and by China’s President Xi Jinping on September 3. Full text links here: http://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe/statement/201508/0814statement. html; http://english1.president.go.kr/activity/speeches.php?srh%5Bboard_no%5D=24&srh%5Bpage% 5D=3&srh%5Bview_mode%5D=detail&srh%5Bseq%5D=11748&srh%5Bdetail_no%5D=44; and www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/topics_665678/jnkzsl70zn/t1293415.shtml. 22 For full text of the Abe Statement, see: http://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe/statement/201508/0814statement. html (accessed October 17, 2016). 23 See text of speech at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-09/03/c_134583870.htm (accessed October 17, 2016). 24 Debate over the AIIB and who would participate in it raged for over a year, with many global media reporting this as a contest for Asian influence between Beijing and Washington, pitting China’s new multilateral bank for development against the United States’ trade initiative, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). See, for example, David Pilling, “Round Two in America’s Battle for Asian Influence,” Financial Times, April 1, 2016, available at: www.ft.com/content/fabfd8ac-d6c1-11e4-97c3-00144feab7de. Michael Shuman, “Whose Money Will the World Follow?” Bloomberg BusinessWeek, March 14, 2015, available at: www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-14/u-s-china-rivalry-whose-money-willthe-world-follow-. Gota Nishimura, Beichuu keizai sensou AIIB tai TPP [U.S.-China Economic War AIIB vs. TPP] (Tokyo: Toyokeizai, 2015). 25 See China’s Foreign Aid and Government-Sponsored Investment Activities: Scale, Content, Destinations and Implications, Rand Corporation, available at: www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/ RR100/RR118/RAND_RR118.pdf, pp. 47–50. 26 See New York Times, December 25, 2015, available at: www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/business/ international/china-creates-an-asian-bank-as-the-us-stands-aloof.html?_r=0 (accessed October 27, 2016). 27 On May 21, 2015, Japan announced its new infrastructure fund. Reuters available at: www.reuters.com/ article/us-japan-asia-investment-idUSKBN0O617G20150521.

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Sino-Japanese rivalry 28 “AIIB Should Become Platform for Cooperation Between U.S. and China.” Xinhua. April 26, 2017. Available at: www.news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-04/26/c_136235770.htm. 29 The first four AIIB projects included three that were also being funded by other multilateral lenders: $216.5 million for to improve housing in Indonesia, co-funded with the World Bank; $100 million for a highway in Pakistan, co-funded with the ADB and the UK; and $27.5 million for a border road in Tajikistan, co-funded with Europe’s Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The fourth was a $100 million loan to Bangladesh for a power distribution system. See AIIB announcement link here: http:// euweb.aiib.org/html/2016/PROJECTS_1010/163.html. 30 “Summary of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement,” Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, available at: https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2015/october/summarytrans-pacific-partnership (accessed October 14, 2016). 31 Abe’s full speech can be found at: http://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe/statement/201504/uscongress.html. 32 Linda Sieg and Kaori Kaneko, “Japan’s Abe Says TPP Would Have Strategic Significance if China Joined,” Reuters, October 6, 2015, available at: www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-tpp-abe-idUSKCN 0S004920151006. 33 In a Washington Post op-ed, Obama argued “The world has changed. The rules are changing with it. The United States, not countries like China, should write them.” See: www.washingtonpost. com/opinions/president-obama-the-tpp-would-let-america-not-china-lead-the-way-on-globaltrade/2016/05/02/680540e4–0fd0–11e6–93ae-50921721165d_story.html?utm_term=.2e4919caf6ee (accessed October 17, 2016). 34 Remarks on the Next Phase of the U.S. Rebalance to the Asia-Pacific (McCain Institute, Arizona State University) As Delivered by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, Tempe, AZ, April 6, 2015, available at: www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech-View/Article/606660/remarks-on-the-next-phaseof-the-us-rebalance-to-the-asia-pacific-mccain-instit. 35 Japan and China issued slightly different English translations of their understanding but both recognized the need to reduce the risk of conflict in the East China Sea. See “China, Japan Reach Four-Point Agreement on Ties,” Xinhua, November 7, 2014, available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/ 2014-11/07/c_133772952.htm and “Regarding Discussions toward Improving Japan-China Relations,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, November 7, 2014, available at: www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/c_m1/ cn/page4e_000150.html. The risk reduction talks came just as the U.S. and China were finalizing two military risk reduction agreements, one on the interaction of aircraft and a second on interactions between the naval vessels. Expectations have been that the Japan-China agreement would reference these. The fifth round of meetings for the Japan-China High-Level Consultation on Maritime Affairs was held in September 14–15, 2016, available at: www.mofa.go.jp/press/release/press3e_000071.html. 36 “Establishment of the Coast Observation Unit on Yonaguni Island,” Ministry of Defense, Japan, March 28, 2016, available at: www.mod.go.jp/e/jdf/sp/no76/sp_activities.html#article01. 37 Reports differed on which side caused the encounters with the Chinese government claiming Japanese fighters were to blame, and Japanese government blaming the Chinese military. See: https://news.usni. org/2016/07/05/chinese-japanese-fighters-clash-east-china-sea. 38 “The Current Status of China’s Unilateral Development of Natural Resources in the East China Sea,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, October 12, 2015, available at: www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/c_m1/ page3e_000356.html. 39 MOD reports of Chinese fleet activity around Japan reveal a growing number of exercises with increasingly sophisticated ships and capabilities on display. Most recently, the Japanese MSDF followed a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) frigate that traversed the contiguous waters of the Senkakus, following a similar maneuver by two Russian ships. Announcement by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, available at: www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/release/press4_003377.html. 40 Japanese media reported Chinese authorities stating their intentions to build a military base on the Nanji Islands to facilitate access to the Senkaku Islands, but this has only partially been confirmed. Some building has been observed by satellite, however. See “Is China Building a Base near the Senkakus,” The Diplomat, January 2015, available at: http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/ischina-building-a-base-near-the-senkakus/. 41 For an extensive assessment of the progression of China’s island-building in the Spratleys, see Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. https://amti.cs.is.org. 42 Financial Times, January 16, 2016. 43 “China Urges Japan to be Cautious on South, East China Sea Comments,” Xinhua, January 19, 2016, available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-01/19/c_135024522.htm.

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Sheila A. Smith 44 In an editorial in Xinhua in April 10 argued that, “Japan’s preference for fear-mongering and wedge-driving between China and other regional players” completely contradicts “its effort to present itself as a promoter of peace.” 45 See statement by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying, May 27, 2016, available at: www.fmprc. gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/t1367358.shtml. 46 The Philippines had asked the UNCLOS tribunal to issue a judgment on the land features contested by China in the Spratleys and on Chinese behavior in the Philippine EEZ. A third query to the panel of judges was whether the Chinese claim of maritime rights across the South China Sea, demarcated by the nine-dash-line, were valid. On all three queries, the Tribunal ruled against Chinese stated claims. For a succinct analysis of the content of the Philippine case, see Mira Rapp-Hooper and Harry Krejsa, “Reefs, Rocks, and the Rule of Law,” Center for a New American Security, April 14, 2016, available at: www. cnas.org/publications/reports/reefs-rocks-and-the-rule-of-law-after-the-arbitration-in-the-southchina-sea. etc. For a full rendering of the Tribunal’s award, see: https://pca-cpa.org/wp-content/ uploads/sites/175/2016/07/PH-CN-20160712-Award.pdf. 47 “China asks Japan to stop interfering in South China Sea,” Xinhua, July 12, 2016. Available at: www. news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-07/12/c_135508184.htm. 48 Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ press release is as follows: 1 Today, the Arbitral Tribunal rendered the final award in the arbitral proceedings instituted by the Government of the Republic of the Philippines under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as to the disputes between the Philippines and China regarding the South China Sea. 2 Japan has consistently advocated the importance of the rule of law and the use of peaceful means, not the use of force or coercion, in seeking settlement of maritime disputes. 3 As the Tribunal’s award is final and legally binding on the parties to the dispute under the provisions of UNCLOS, the parties to this case are required to comply with the award. Japan strongly expects that the parties’ compliance with this award will eventually lead to the peaceful settlement of disputes in the South China Sea. Available at: www.mofa.go.jp/press/release/press4e_001204.html. 49 Japan-China Summit Meeting, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, available at: www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/c_m1/ cn/page3e_000509.html (accessed October 19, 2016) and http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/ 2016-07/15/c_135516330.htm. 50 The joint statement stated: “The European Union and its Member States, as contracting parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), acknowledge the Award rendered by the Arbitral Tribunal, being committed to maintaining a legal order of the seas and oceans based upon the principles of international law, UNCLOS, and to the peaceful settlement of disputes.” Full text can be found here: http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/vietnam/press_corner/all_news/ news/2016/20160715_en.htm. See also Theresa Fallon, “The EU, the South China Sea, and China’s Successful Wedge Strategy,” Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 13, 2016, available at: https://amti.csis.org/eu-south-china-sea-chinas-successfulwedge-strategy/ (accessed October 15, 2016). 51 This was first reported by Kyodo Press on September 25, 2016, available at: www.japantimes.co.jp/ news/2010/09/25/national/clinton-senkakus-subject-to-security-pact/ and Japanese MOFA also provided the abstract of the meeting, available at: www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/area/usa/visit/1009_gk.html. The public remarks were made available in the following month, “Joint Press Availability with Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara,” U.S. Department of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton Secretary of State, Kahala Hotel and Resort, Honolulu, HI, October 27, 2010, available at: www.state.gov/secretary/ 20092013clinton/rm/2010/10/150110.htm. 52 Senate Resolution 167 (113th): A resolution reaffirming the strong support of the United States for the peaceful resolution of territorial, sovereignty, and jurisdictional disputes in the Asia-Pacific maritime domains, available at: www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-resolution/167. 53 The U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation Guidelines here: www.mofa.go.jp/files/000078188.pdf (accessed October 18, 2016). 54 Chinese pressures on the Philippine marines near Scarborough Shoal led to an effort to negotiate a resolution, but this failed when Chinese ships ignored the agreement and took advantage of Philippine weakness. 55 See Richard Bush, “Obama and Xi at Sunnylands: A Good Start,” available at: www.brookings.edu/blog/ up-front/2013/06/10/obama-and-xi-at-sunnylands-a-good-start/.

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Sino-Japanese rivalry 56 “Statement by the Government of the People’s Republic of China on Establishing the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone,” Xinhua, November 23, 2013, available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-11/23/c_132911635.htm. “China’s Establishment of an Air Defense Identification Zone in the East China Sea (Protest by Mr. Junichi Ihara, Director-General of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, MOFA, to Mr. Han Zhigiang, Minister of the Chinese Embassy in Japan),” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, November 23, 2013, available at: www.mofa.go.jp/press/release/press4e_000100.html. 57 “Statement by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone,” Press Release No: NR-036–13, U.S. Department of Defense, November 23, 2013, available at: http://archive.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=16392. 58 Since the Chinese announcement of their ADIZ, U.S. Secretary of Defense Hagel annually reminded the participants at the Shangri-La Dialogue of U.S. intentions to modernize its military posture in the Asia Pacific. See “Remarks by Secretary Hagel at Plenary Session at International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-La Dialogue,” U.S. Department of Defense, May 31, 2014, available at: http://archive. defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=5442. 59 President Xi and President Obama agreed to conclude military-to-military confidence building agreements during Obama’s visit to China in November 2014. Both agreed to notify each other of military exercises, and to developing agreements governing air and naval forces. In 2014, priority was given to air-to-air interactions, and the following year the two leaders announced agreement on naval interactions, See FACT SHEET: President Obama’s Visit to China, November 11, 2014, available at: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/11/fact-sheet-president-obama-svisit-china. See “FACT SHEET: President Xi Jinping’s State Visit to the United States,” The White House, September 25, 2015, available at: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/25/ fact-sheet-president-xi-jinpings-state-visit-united-states. 60 The election of President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines has produced a rapid and unexpected about face on U.S. support of Philippine maritime defenses. China’s promise of economic benefits has undermined all that previous Philippine president did to draw international support for China’s maritime challenge. In Australia, efforts by recent governments to strengthen military cooperation with the United States. have not been undone, but revelations of Chinese financing of political elites and of a serious internal debate over the costs and benefits of joint patrols in the South China Sea have complicated alliance cooperation. Benjamin Kang Lim, “Philippines’ Duterte Says South China Sea Arbitration Case to Take ‘Back Seat’,” Reuters, October 19, 2016. David Ignatias, “China’s Rise Presents a Dilemma for Australia,” Washington Post, August 23, 2016. Available at: www.reuters.com/article/us-china-philippines-idUSKCN12J10S and www. washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/chinas-rise-presents-a-dillemma-for-australia/ 2016/08/23/38d8027c-6942-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html?utm_term=.e55c9dab7344.

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3 NORTH KOREA’S NUCLEAR WEAPONIZATION PROGRAM Background, context, and trends for the future Bruce E. Bechtol Jr

North Korea’s nuclear weaponziation program has been an irritant both for the region it sits in and for the international community since the very first nuclear crisis of 1994. Unfortunately, since that time, the threat from North Korea’s nuclear program – both from proliferation and from the threat of Pyongyang initiating a nuclear attack – has not abated since the “solving” of the nuclear crisis in 1994 with the implementation of the Agreed Framework.1 Rather, this threat has continued to grow. In fact, since 1994, North Korea has implemented an increase in this threat by diversifying the types of weapons (now both Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium), and the types of platforms that would carry these weapons (warheads) – with short-range, medium-range, intermediate-range, and potentially intercontinental range ballistic missiles that could bring death and destruction to nation-states far beyond North Korea’s borders.

The development and testing of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program North Korea’s plutonium program is widely thought to have begun sometime back in the 1980s, following the construction of an experimental five Kilowatt graphite reactor at Yongbyon. The Soviet Union built the nuclear facility for the North Koreans. By the very early 1990s, the American intelligence community had assessed that the North Koreans had converted the facility to one that produced nuclear weapons and were on the road to doing so.2 North Korea signed an IAEA safeguards agreement in 1992. But IAEA inspections in 1993 revealed that North Korea had already reprocessed plutonium at least three times. When inspectors asked to look at two sites suspected of holding nuclear waste, Pyongyang declared these sites off limits and kicked out the inspectors – thus kicking off the first “nuclear crisis.”3 Following a resumption of talks and the negotiations (at times led by former President Jimmy Carter), this nuclear crisis ended in 1994 with what was called the “Agreed Framework.”4 Even at the time, there were many who urged caution about the “Agreed Framework.” To quote Korean scholar Scott Snyder, “First, although U.S. officials did convince the North Koreans to can and store their spent fuel, they were unable to persuade them to give up their nuclear components entirely, as they did with Kazakhstan and Ukraine.”5 These issues would be problematic later as we shall see. North Korea’s highly enriched uranium program (HEU) came into existence as a result of an agreement with Pakistan that eventually led to an exchange of ballistic missiles for centrifuges, plans, blueprints, scientific assistance, and other elements of an HEU weaponization program. 38

North Korea’s nuclear weaponization

The agreement began in the mid-1990s as a result of a North Korean desire to continue its nuclear weaponization despite the restrictions of the “Agreed Framework.” To quote high ranking North Korean defector Hwang Jang-yop, who recalled a conversation he had in 1996 with another North Korean high ranking official, “before the fall of 1996, he said we’ve solved a big problem. We don’t need plutonium this time. Due to an agreement with Pakistan, we will use uranium.”6 In the 2001–2002 time frame a great deal of information became available to the Bush administration that definitively proved North Korea was actively pursuing and building an HEU weaponization program. It was because of this information that American Ambassador James Kelly confronted the North Koreans in October of 2002, asserting that they had an active HEU weaponization program. The North Korean delegation – in a startling reply – admitted to the program and then attempted to use it as leverage to gain concessions (which failed). The Bush administration soon released much of the information regarding North Korea’s program (minus sources and methods). Soon thereafter, numerous facts became available to the public showing that Pakistan, led by the efforts of A.Q. Khan, had been supplying North Korea with things such as blueprints and centrifuges and assisting them with their HEU program, as North Korea was assisting Pakistan with its ballistic missile program.7 Many of the details revealed about North Korea’s HEU acquisition program with Pakistan (it can hardly be called anything else) are quite interesting. While some cash was being used (to bribe Pakistani generals as often as not), the focus of the deal was essentially nukes-for-missiles. North Korea supplied Pakistan with Scud and No Dong missiles, technology, and personnel for assistance, and Pakistan did the same for North Korea with its HEU program.8 Ironically, the platforms often used to shuttle the centrifuges and missiles back and forth between Pakistan and North Korea were American made C-130s, typically flying through Chinese airspace. Ironic because China claimed no knowledge of the deal between North Korea and Pakistan at the time.9 Also of interest regarding North Korea’s HEU program, in 2004, the Libyans gave up their HEU program, in an effort where the West agreed to open up diplomatic relations again with the troubled regime. At the time, Ghadafi revealed a great number of things about his nuclear deals with Pakistan that also impacted North Korea. Vice President Cheney spoke of this at the time when he stated, “the Libyans acquired their technical expertise, weapons design and so forth from Mr A.Q. Khan, Pakistan . . . Mr Khan also provided similar capabilities to the North Koreans. So we’re confident that the North Koreans do, in fact, have a program to enrich uranium to produce nuclear weapons.”10 But the most compelling aspect of evidence uncovered in Libya in 2004, was the assertion that Pakistan supplied Chinese originated information (the Chinese assisted Pakistan with their nuclear program) to not only Libya, but also North Korea, that showed how to make an HEU warhead for a ballistic missile. The Libyans turned over detailed technical documents that gave instructions on how to manufacture components for a nuclear warhead and how to place it on a ballistic missile. The documents turned over showed details for blueprints of a 500-kilogram warhead.11 A 500-kilogram warhead is exactly the size that would fit on a North Korean No Dong missile – or the equivalent in Pakistan and Iran. The “replacement” for the “Agreed Framework” as some would call it, became known as the “Six-party talks.” These were initiated by the Bush administration, and of course involved North Korea, as well as China, Russia, South Korea, Japan, and the United States. The talks were aimed at getting North Korea to dismantle – not just freeze – its nuclear weapons program.12 The talks showed complete failure on October 9, 2006, when the North Koreans tested a plutonium nuclear device. The device appeared to be one to two kilotons in strength – in other words, a small yet at least partially successful test of a nuclear device (likely a weapon).13 39

Bruce E. Bechtol Jr

Following North Korea’s first nuclear test, Stanford University scholar Siegfried Hecker visited East Asia and met with both North Korean and Chinese specialists. His report on the trip included a statement from Chinese specialists, “The DPRK aimed for 4 kilotons and got 1 kiloton. That is not bad for the first test. We call it successful, but not perfect.” The same approximation of the strength of the test was reportedly estimated by the U.S. Office of Nuclear Intelligence.14 North Korea’s first nuclear test was important. Oddly, when one looks back, the test seemed to move the United States in the direction of resuming Six-party talks. The United States had been implementing strong sanctions that were putting pressure on North Korea’s finances and this seemed to be working.15 To the surprise of many, in 2007, as a result of the Six-party talks, the North Koreans and the other five parties came to the following agreement (in the initial phase): •

•

•

•

•

“The DPRK will shut down and seal for the purpose of eventual abandonment the Yongbyon nuclear facility, including the reprocessing facility and invite back IAEA personnel to conduct all necessary monitoring and verifications as agreed between IAEA and the DPRK. The DPRK will discuss with other parties a list of all its nuclear programs as described in the Joint Statement, including plutonium extracted from used fuel rods that would be abandoned pursuant to the Joint Statement. The DPRK and the US will start bilateral talks aimed at resolving pending bilateral issues and moving toward full diplomatic relations. The US will begin the process of removing the designation of the DPRK as a state-sponsor of terrorism and advance the process of terminating the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect to the DPRK. The DPRK and Japan will start bilateral talks aimed at taking steps to normalize their relations in accordance with the Pyongyang Declaration, on the basis of the settlement of unfortunate past and the outstanding issues of concern. Recalling Section 1 and 3 of the Joint Statement of 19 September 2005, the Parties agreed to cooperate in economic, energy and humanitarian assistance to the DPRK. In this regard, the Parties agreed to the provision of emergency energy assistance to the DPRK in the initial phase. The initial shipment of emergency energy assistance equivalent to 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil (HFO) will commence within next 60 days.”16

The parties also agreed that the following working groups would be formed: 1 2 3 4 5

“Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula Normalization of DPRK-US relations Normalization of DPRK-Japan relations Economy and Energy Cooperation Northeast Asia Peace and Security Mechanism”17

Among the key demands that North Korea called for in coming to the agreement was that funds frozen in a bank in Macao known as “Banco Delta Asia” be released – which would effectively ease the pressure (because of the snowball effect) on North Korea’s illicit financial networks. The Bush administration did this.18 On June 26, 2008, the Bush administration met the other key demand the North Koreans had called when they “announced the lifting of the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) with respect to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea), and notified Congress of his intent to rescind North Korea’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST).”19 Nevertheless, after many exchanges of papers and samples and stonewalling on the part of North Korea, near the end of the Bush administration, in December 40

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of 2008, after four days of talks, it came to light that North Korea had simply refused to key verification initiatives that would prove it was dismantling its program. The North Koreans threw up road blocks that essentially made it impossible to verify their claims of dismantlement, not the least among them the refusal to allow soil samples to be taken out of the DPRK. Thus, in the end, Washington and the other parties walked away from the talks – entirely because of North Korea’s refusal to follow verification protocols.20 The year 2009 was special for a couple of reasons. The first reason was because more definitive evidence came to light proving North Korea had an HEU weaponization program – and had for some time. Pakistani scientific leader A.Q. Kahn confessed in that year that he had toured a facility in North Korea that had more than 3,000 centrifuges. Kahn also stated that Pakistan had assisted North Korea with blueprints, key machinery, and technical advice for at least six years. Kahn disclosed that high ranking political and military officials were involved in the nuclear deal between the two nations – thus (at the time) providing yet more evidence that the North Koreans had developed an HEU weaponization program.21 The second reason that 2009 was a special year was because the DPRK conducted its second nuclear test. On May 25, 2009, only a few months into the Obama administration (and thus ending any hopes for early talks), North Korea conducted its second nuclear test.22 According to most analysts at the time, this test was around four times larger than the first test (around four kilotons) – a weapon capable of killing tens of thousands of people.23 According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “The U.S. Intelligence Community assesses that North Korea probably conducted an underground nuclear explosion in the vicinity of P’unggye on May 25, 2009. The explosion yield was approximately a few kilotons. Analysis of the event continues.”24 In 2010, the North Koreans definitively proved to the whole world what smart analysts had assessed (and claimed) since 2003 – they had a nuclear HEU program. It was then that Dr. Siegfried S. Hecker of Stanford University and Mr. Jack Pritchard, at the time the President of the Korea Economic Institute, who were in North Korea on a visit, were (much to their surprise) given a tour of a North Korean HEU facility containing more than 2,000 centrifuges. Hecker said in part in a report he published later, that “At the fuel fabrication site, we were taken to a new facility that contained a modern, small industrial-scale uranium enrichment facility with 2,000 centrifuges that was recently completed and said to be producing low enriched uranium (LEU) destined for fuel for the new reactor.” Dr. Hecker went on to provide even more definitive evidence when he further stated, “Nevertheless, the uranium enrichment facilities could be readily converted to produce highly-enriched uranium (HEU) bomb fuel (or parallel facilities could exist elsewhere) and the LWR could be run in a mode to produce plutonium potentially suitable for bombs, but much less suitable than that from their current reactor.”25 American Envoy to the IAEA Glynn Davies confirmed soon thereafter that the North Koreans likely had other HEU facilities as well as the one that they showed to Hecker and Pritchard.26 During February of 2013, the North Koreans conducted their third nuclear test. This was once again the largest ever, with the ROK Ministry of National Defense assessing the test to be around six kilotons. This test was more of an enigma than the previous two because of suspicions that it was an HEU device – but no particles were captured as with the previous two tests and thus there was no definitive proof.27 There was some evidence that suggests the third test was of an HEU device. High ranking Iranian officials were reportedly present for the test – and were charged millions of dollars to be there by the North Koreans.28 Another key to the puzzle was that the North Koreans claimed the test was of a “miniaturized and lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force than previously.”29 This would, most likely be an HEU device if the North Korean claim is to be believed. Thus, based on the reports that Iranians were present (Iran has an 41

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HEU weaponization program closely matching that of North Korea), the fact that the North Koreans went to so much trouble to keep particles from escaping that could be analyzed by the international community, and the claim by the North Koreans that it was of a “miniaturized and lighter nuclear device,” it seems very possible that the third North Korean nuclear test could have been of an HEU device – though no definitive evidence has yet been uncovered. North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test during January of 2016. This test was unique because the DPRK claimed it was of a hydrogen weapon. While most believe this is unlikely, there may have been new technology involved in the test (which was of comparable size to the test conducted in 2013). To quote a report written after the test by the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis, “Judging by the seismic data, the yield of the nuclear explosion was similar to that of the third test carried out in 2013, a far cry from the power of a hydrogen bomb, which ranges from hundreds of kilotons to tens of megatons. Therefore, it is highly likely that this test was not a hydrogen bomb test or even a failed one, contrary to what the North says. Another possibility is that North Korea tested a boosted fission weapon, using deuterium and tritium, which is a technology essential for increasing its yield and reducing the size of a nuclear warhead in order to allow such a warhead to be mounted on a missile, in addition to being an intermediate process in the development of a hydrogen bomb.”30 The previous nuclear tests North Korea conducted were in 2006, 2009, 2013, and 2016. Thus, there were several years between each test. This trend ended in 2016. On September 9, 2016, North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test. There were several notable things about this test. First of all, it was the largest nuclear test yet, measuring at least 10 kilotons in size, but perhaps as large as 12 to 15 kilotons (or larger). Such a weapon could kill 200,000 people or more if detonated in a large city. Also important about this test, the North Koreans asserted that they tested a weapon designed to be put on a ballistic missile (compelling if true). Finally, this test was conducted months – not years – after the previous test (and appeared to be successful), thus showing that North Korea has been accelerating the testing and capabilities of its nuclear program to match the rapid acceleration noted since 2013 in North Korea’s ballistic missile programs – several of which are assessed to be capable of carrying nuclear warheads.31

Platforms for North Korea’s nuclear weapons One very likely candidate for carrying a nuclear warhead is the No Dong. North Korea sold No Dong missiles to Pakistan as Pakistan was selling them HEU technology. The technology included blueprints for mounting a 500 kilogram warhead on a missile – likely the No Dong (this technology was revealed when Libya turned over all of its nuclear weaponization technology to the U.K. and the U.S. in 2004). North Koreans were present at Pakistani No Dong testlaunches, and it is likely the two nations exchanged technology on how to equip a No Dong with an HEU warhead.32 The No Dong has the range to hit Tokyo and other key nodes in Japan.33 Another very intriguing and very possible platform for a nuclear warhead is the missile known as the Musudan. The Musudan is a missile made in North Korea based on the Soviet SS-N-6 design, but land-based and with a longer range. The Soviet SS-N-6 carried a nuclear warhead, so it is likely the North Korean land-based version can also carry a nuclear warhead (albeit smaller because of increased range). The Musudan comes on a transporter-erector-launcher and would be difficult to attack using a pre-emptive strike. It has the range (now proven) to hit Guam (where there are 165,000 U.S. citizens).34 The Taepo Dong missile also likely has the capability to carry a nuclear warhead. It potentially has the range to target Alaska, Hawaii, and even the west coast of the U.S.35 But the Taepo Dong takes weeks to set up and could likely be destroyed on the launch pad if the United States felt an imminent threat.36 42

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Of the missiles described thus far, only one has the range (potentially) to hit any of the 50 states within the U.S., and it takes so long to set up that it could likely be destroyed before launch. But the North Koreans are in the process of testing and deploying a ballistic missile that can both hit the west coast of the United States and be deployed on a transporter-erector-launcher. While this missile has not yet been deployed, it would be a clear threat to the U.S. once it is – including the west coast. The United States has designated this missile the “KN-08.” Senior American officials have publicly assessed that this missile is equipped with a nuclear warhead.37 During July of 2017 North Korea twice successfully tested an ICBM that they called the “Hwasong-14.” This missile is assessed to have the capability to hit at least Alaska and Hawaii and perhaps cities on the west coast of the United States depending on the size and weight of the nuclear payload.38 Thus, the North Koreans have a static missile with the range to target the continental United States, and a road mobile missile with the same capabilities. But in a key effort to diversify its nuclear strike capability, North Korea is in the process of fielding a submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM). The missile has undergone testing since at least 2014, and in 2016 was launched to a range of 500 kilometers.39 Combined with the capability of the submarine the missile comes with, it is my assessment that once operational it has the potential to hit either Hawaii or Guam (depending on the range of the submarine).40 There are other possibilities. The North Koreans could possibly use their H-5 light bombers to drop a nuclear bomb.41 They could also use a cargo vessel or container ship, sailing it into any harbor (in Japan, South Korea, or the United States to use a few examples), and detonating a nuclear device. North Korean ships often get past sanctions by sailing under the flags of other nations. They could use this same method to get past allied defenses.42

Nuclear proliferation to other rogue states: a red line? In 2007, Israeli Air Force jets destroyed what rumors released to the press described as a plutonium nuclear reactor, built by the North Koreans, to produce fissile material (and bombs) for the Syrian military. But there were no definitive information sources released to the public until the Office of National Intelligence gave a formal briefing to the press in 2008 (interested readers can read the entire briefing as seen in the endnotes for this chapter). According to the very detailed briefing, the facility was identified at an isolated area in Syria in 2006, and closely resembled the North Korean facility at Yongbyon. In 2007, intelligence collected revealed key aspects of the facility. A thin roof and curtain walls were added to the facility after completion to mask the outline closely resembling the North Korean facility (probably fooling no one). Of interest, North Korean officials began visiting Syria as early as 2001 (though evidence suggest 1997 or before was when this whole project began). Among key officials was Chon Chi-bu, one of North Korea’s most important nuclear scientists. To quote one of the briefers, “our information shows that Syria was building a gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor that was nearing operational capability in August 2007. The reactor would have been capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. It was not configured to produce electricity and was ill-suited for research.” The official finalized this statement by saying, “Only North Korea has built this type of reactor in the past 35 years.”43 According to Ali Reza Asghari, a former General in the Iranian Republican Guard Corps, and former deputy defense minister, “Iran spent up to $2 billion dollars to finance Syria’s North Korea built facility. He made the allegations after defecting from Iran.”44 Thus, it appears possible, perhaps even likely, that Iran was looking to go “offshore” by developing a plutonium program in Syria to augment their existing HEU weaponization program. Reportedly, North Korea and Iran likely intensified or began their nuclear weaponization cooperation during 2003. It was then that long time reporter Douglass Frantz wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times that stated, “a three-month investigation by The Times – drawing on 43

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previously secret reports, international officials, independent experts, Iranian exiles and intelligence sources in Europe and the Middle East – uncovered strong evidence that Iran’s commercial program masks a plan to become the world’s next nuclear power.” He further commented, “Technology and scientists from Russia, China, North Korea and Pakistan have propelled Iran’s nuclear program much closer to producing a bomb than Iraq ever was.” Frantz concluded that, “North Korean military scientists recently were monitored entering Iranian nuclear facilities. They are assisting in the design of a nuclear warhead, according to people inside Iran and foreign intelligence officials. So many North Koreans are working on nuclear and missile projects in Iran that a resort on the Caspian coast is set aside for their exclusive use.”45 According to Jane’s Defence Weekly, North Korea built around 10,000 meters of underground infrastructure for Iran’s nuclear facilities. These facilities included “bunker buster” resistant construction. One of North Korea’s leading underground facilities experts (Myong Lyu-do) came to Iran to lead North Korea’s assistance to that country. This activity appears to have occurred around the 2006 time frame.46 According to the European press, in 2011, the North Koreans supplied the Iranians with a computer program (which reportedly was originally manufactured in the U.S.) that simulated neutron flows. The program is said to be crucial in developing nuclear weapons technology.47 According to Joby Warrrick, of the Washington Post, “Crucial technology linked to experts in Pakistan and North Korea also helped propel Iran to the threshold of nuclear capability.” He further commented, “Iran relied on foreign experts to supply mathematical formulas and codes for theoretical design work – some of which appear to have originated in North Korea, diplomats and weapons experts say.”48 As stated earlier in this chapter, Iranians (high ranking officials) have reportedly been present at North Korean nuclear tests. And even since 2015, nuclear experts in the region and dissident groups continue to make assertions that North Korea is assisting Iran’s nuclear program. These assertions include evidence that Iran is actually housing nuclear materials in North Korea, and reports of continuous exchanges of experts, engineers, and scientists.49

Policy options for the North Korean nuclear threat Clearly, North Korea has presented huge foreign policy challenges for the international community and especially for those nation-states that have significant interests in Northeast Asia. The questions that are often raised address whether the United States and its allies should use the “carrot” or the “stick.” An analysis of events since the very first “solution” was reached in 1994 (the Agreed Framework), until now, makes it clear that diplomacy and coercion have both failed. Thus, we are faced with the problem of a rogue state, with growing capabilities, showing no signs of giving up its nuclear weapons, and no clear path to containment. While most have called sanctions failures, is this really true? As of 2016 North Korea sits under some of the most severe economic sanctions in the world.50 Since these sanctions are among the toughest in the world, one wonders why they are not working as many hoped when they were initiated. The answer is simple: enforcement. North Korean sanctions and even American unilateral actions such as those that come under the Patriot Act can truly coerce the North Korean government and create containment scenarios that will slow down its nuclear programs.51 In fact, as analysis has revealed, the sanctions already in place by 2016 were and are enough to put extreme pressure on North Korea – if truly enforced. Has this ever happened and what made it work? The answer is yes, with the now famous “Banco Delta Asia” sanctions and accompanying enforcement actions that occurred between 2005 and 2007. Banco Delta Asia was a small bank in Macao that did business with North Korean entities. Essentially, North Korea was (and this has been proven) using the bank as a money laundering concern. In 2005, North Korea was officially sanctioned by the Treasury Department. But this 44

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time, funds were frozen and it was made clear that anyone doing business with North Korea was not going to be allowed to do business with the United States. Between 2005 and 2007, these actions created a snowball effect with North Korean concerns being kicked out of banks all over Asia because of fears that American interests would pull their money out. In fact, other nations followed suit, and by 2007, North Korea had almost no place to put its money (or to be more exact, to launder it). This may have brought the regime down or at least to its knees. But offers of new talks caused the United States to cancel the important “Banco Delta Sanctions.”52 Since that time, no action that is even closely similar has been enforced.53 In addition, North Korea has diversified its money laundering of illicit funds (a key part of its economy), so efforts would likely be very resource intensive. Nevertheless, this methodology has been proven to work, and thus, when one is looking for a solution other than watching North Korea constantly testing nuclear weapons (and the missiles that would carry them), or ineffective talks, it is my assessment that renewed “Banco Delta Asia style” (broadly diversified) enforcement could be very effective – though this time the challenges would be even greater than 2005–2007 because of Pyongyang’s diversification.

Conclusion North Korea’s nuclear weaponization program that Kim Il-sung dreamed of has come to fruition. It has grown from a small, experimental reactor in the 1980s, to a highly diversified, two-track program, capable of being launched using a variety of methods should North Korea choose to initiate hostilities. North Korea’s nuclear weapons development truly picked up steam under Kim Jong-il, but it became intensified and development appeared to speed up, under Kim Jong-un. It should be noted that because this nuclear program has passed from father to son to grandson, it is now a legacy of the regime and considered one of the key factors in maintaining the power of the Kim family in North Korea.54 Because of the various factors that exist in North Korea, it is my assessment that North Korea will never willingly give up its nuclear weapons. These weapons are considered a bulwark of the state, and to give them up would be a sign of weakness. Thus, a realistic option for the international community is to enforce containment options (such as strong action through financial sanctions). While on the surface diplomacy may seem very attractive, past precedent shows us that North Korea simply uses this to gain concessions, and then the paper any agreement is written on proves to be worthless. This has happened over and over again. By using strong measures and sticking to them, the international community can contain North Korea’s rogue nuclear weapons activities, and force the regime to look for other ways to create instability and tensions within the region.

Notes 1 For background on the Agreed Framework, what analysts disagree on about its accomplishments, and the parameters of what made it go wrong, See: Olly Terry, “What Can the U.S. Learn from the Agreed Framework?” International Policy Digest, January 15, 2015, URL: http://intpolicydigest. org/2015/01/15/can-u-s-learn-agreed-framework/. James Goodby, “North Korea: The Problem That Won’t go Away,” Brookings Institution, May 1, 2003, URL: www.brookings.edu/articles/north-koreathe-problem-that-wont-go-away/ 2 See: Larry Niksch, “North Korea’s Weapons of Mass Destruction,” North Korea: The Politics of Regime Survival, eds. Young Whan Kihl and Hong Nack Kim (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2005), 99–101. 3 See: “North Korea Profile: Nuclear Overview,” The Nuclear Threat Initative, September, 2005, URL: www. nti.org/e_research/profiles/NK/Nuclear/ 4 For a detailed chronology of the events surrounding the Agreed Framework and leading up to the crisis of 2002, See: “Kim’s Nuclear Gamble: A Chronology,” FRONTLINE, URL: www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/ frontline/shows/kim/etc/cron.html

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Bruce E. Bechtol Jr 5 Scott Snyder, “The Fire Last Time,” A Book Review on Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, eds. Joel S. Wit, Daniel B. Poneman and Robert L. Gallucci (Washington: Brookings Institution Press), Foreign Affairs, July/August 2004, URL: www.foreignaffairs.org/20040701fareviewessay83415/ scott-snyder/the-fire-last-time.html 6 “Defector: North Korea Has Uranium Program,” Associated Press, February 8, 2004, URL: www.nuclear policy.org/NewsArticlePrint.cfm?NewsID=1276 7 Mitchell B. Reiss and Robert L. Galluci, “Red Handed,” Foreign AffairsOnline, March/April, 2005, URL: www.foreignaffairs.org/20050301faresponse84214/mitchell-b-reiss-robert-gallucci/red-handed.html 8 David E. Sanger and James Dao, “U.S. Says Pakistan Gave (Nuclear) Technology to North Korea,” New York Times, October 18, 2002, URL: http://membres.lycos.fr/tthreat/article24.htm 9 “High Stakes on the High Seas in Korean Blockade,” Sydney Morning Herald, July 12, 2003, URL: www. smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/11/1057783354653.html 10 Richard Cheney, Vice President of the United States, “Vice President Speaks at China’s Fudan University April 15,” Speech given at Fudan University, China, April 15, 2004, URL: http://helsinki.usembassy. gov/servlet/PageServer?Page=today2.html 11 See: Joby Warrick and Peter Slevin, “Libyan Arms Design Traced Back to China: Pakistanis Resold Chinese-Provided Plans,” Washington Post, February 15, 2005, URL: www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/ wp-dyn/A42692-2004Feb14?language=printer “U.S. Intelligence Concludes Iran, N. Korea Have Chinese Nuke Warhead Design,” East-Asia-Intel, August 9, 2006, URL: www.east-asia-intel.com/eai/ 12 See: Simon Elegant, “Why the Six Party Talks Failed,” Time, December 23, 2006, URL: http://content. time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1572764,00.html 13 “North Korea Claims First Nuclear Test,” The Guardian, October 9, 2006, URL: www.theguardian.com/ world/2006/oct/09/northkorea 14 Siegfried S. Hecker, “Report on North Korean Nuclear Program,” Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, November 15, 2006, URL: https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/sites/default/ files/DPRK-report-Hecker-06-1.pdf 15 Jay Solomon and Neil King Jr., “How U.S. Used a Bank to Punish North Korea,” Wall Street Journal, April 12, 2007, URL: www.wsj.com/articles/SB117627790709466173 16 “North Korea – Denuclearization Action Plan: Initial Actions for the Implementation of the Joint Statement,” U.S. Department of State, February 13, 2007, URL: http://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ ps/2007/february/80479.htm 17 “North Korea – Denuclearization Action Plan: Initial Actions for the Implementation of the Joint Statement,” U.S. Department of State, February 13, 2007, URL: http://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ ps/2007/february/80479.htm 18 See: “Frozen N. Korean Funds Released,” Irish Times, June 14, 2007, URL: www.irishtimes.com/news/ frozen-n-korean-funds-released-1.808252 19 This is a direct quote from a U.S. State Department Fact Sheet. For more details on the lifting of sanctions and the intent to rescind North Korea’s status as a state sponsor of terrorism contained in the Fact Sheet, See: “North Korea: Presidential Action on State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) and the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA),” Statement by the United States Department of State, June 30, 2008, URL: www. nautilus.org/fora/security/08050DoS.html 20 For details on how the nuclear talks collapsed in 2008, See: Steven Lee Myers, “In Setback for Bush, Korea Nuclear Talks Collapse,” New York Times, December 12, 2008, URL: www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/ world/asia/12korea.html 21 See: R. Jeffrey Smith and Joby Warrick, “Pakistani Scientist Depicts More Advanced Nuclear Program in North Korea,” Washington Post, December 28, 2009, URL: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2009/12/27/AR2009122701205_pf.html “N. Korea Had Enriched Uranium in 2002,” Chosun Ilbo, December 29, 2009, URL: http://english. chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/12/29/2009122900357.html 22 See: “North Korea Conducts Nuclear Test,” BBC News, May 25, 2009, URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/ hi/asia-pacific/8066615.stm 23 See: Sam Kim, “N. Korean Nuclear Blast Probably Less Powerful Than Hoped for: Yale Scholar,” Yonhap, May 28, 2009, URL: http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2009/05/28/0200000000 AEN20090528007400315.HTML Kim Su-jeong and Yoo Jee-ho, “Expert: North’s Test Not a Surprise, More to Come,” Joongang Ilbo, June 1, 2009, URL: http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view. asp?aid=2905533

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North Korea’s nuclear weaponization 24 “Statement By the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on North Korea’s Declared Nuclear Test on May 25, 2009,” Office of the Director of National Intelligence, June 15, 2009, URL: www.dni.gov/ press_releases/20090615_release.pdf 25 For Siegfried Hecker’s complete report and further analysis, See: Siegfried S. Hecker, “Special Report: A Return Trip to North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Complex,” Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, November 20, 2010, URL: www.keia.org/Communications/Programs/Hecker/ Hecker%20Program_KEI%20Posted%20Paper.pdf To confirm that Mr. Pritchard was also present, See: John M. Glionna, “North Korea Building Light Water Reactor, U.S. Experts Say,” Los Angeles Times, November 20, 2010, URL: www.kentucky.com/2010/11/20/1534141/north-korea-building-lightwater.html 26 See: “NK May Have Built Other Uranium Enrichment Facilities,” KBS News, December 3, 2010, URL: http://world.kbs.co.kr/english/news/news_In_detail.htm?No=77668 27 For key data and analysis on the third nuclear test, see Song Sang-ho, “North Korea Conducts 3rd Nuclear Test,” Korea Herald, February 12, 2013, URL: http://nwww.koreaherald.com/view. php?ud=20130212000883; and Choi He-suk,“Estimates Differ on Size of N.K. Blast,” Korea Herald, February 14, 2013, URL: http://my.news.yahoo.com/estimates-differ-size-n-k-blast-041003243.html For information regarding the collection of intelligence (or lack thereof ) and other information following the nuclear test, see: Mark Hosenball, “Spy Agencies Scrounge for Details on North Korean Nuclear Test,” Reuters, February 20, 2013, URL: www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/20/us-korea-north-nuclearusa-idUSBRE91J1CY20130220 For analysis about successful DPRK efforts regarding containment of the blast so that foreign intelligence agencies could not determine the type of weapon, see Jung-ha Won, “Lack of Data Shrouds Nature of N. Korea Nuclear Test,” AFP, February 14, 2013, URL: www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gj_QgeYYUBzIqCWhzpOHLJ7ESrLQ?docId= CNG.464e2be3b8023ccfe02bede099a1bdce.351 28 For reports that Iranians were present at the nuclear test, reports regarding payments made to North Korea by Iran for the right to attend the test, and analysis suggesting that the test was of a miniaturized warhead, see “Report, Iranians at N. Korea Nuclear Test,” UPI, February 15, 2013, URL: www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2013/02/15/Report-Iranians-at-N-Korea-nuclear-test/UPI22931360904909/ “Fears Rise about Iran-North Korea Nuclear Connection,” NKNews, February 18, 2013, URL: www.nknews.org/2013/02/fears-rise-about-iran-north-korea-nuclear-connection/ “Iran Paid Millions for Ringside Seat at N. Korean Nuke Test,” Chosun Ilbo, February 18, 2013, URL: http:// english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/02/18/2013021801176.html “Iranian Nuclear Chief Observed Korean Nuke Test,” Jerusalem Post, February 17, 2013, URL: www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/ News/Article.aspx?id=303499 Lee Sang-yong,“Evidence of Iranian Test Involvement Mounts,” Daily NK, February 19, 2013, URL: www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00100&num=10327 “NK Nuke was Bought and Paid for by a Key End-User: Iran,” Korea Times, February 20, 2013, URL: www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2013/02/511_130797.html; and Vincent Pry, “Understanding North Korea and Iran,” Missile Threat.com, February 26, 2013, URL: http://missilethreat.com/ understanding-north-korea-and-iran/ 29 See: Mary Beth Nikitin, “North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons: Technical Issues,” Congressional Research Service, February 12, 2013, URL: www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL34256.pdf David E. Sanger and Choe Sanghun, “Defying U.N., North Korea Confirms Third Nuclear Test,” AsianTown.net, February 12, 2013, URL: http://news.asiantown.net/r/28361/defying-un–north-korea-confirms-third-nuclear-testprompting-emergency-un-meeting 30 See: Cheon Myeong-guk and Lee Sang-min, “Enhancement of North Korea’s Nuclear and Missile Capabilities and Related Strategic Challenges,” ROK Angle: Korea’s Defense Policy, Issue 130, March 24, 2016, 2. 31 For analysis on the fifth nuclear weaponization test and the North Korean claims of the capabilities they now have with their nuclear weapons program, See: Foster Klug and Kim Tong-Hyung, “Rhetoric or Real? N. Korea Nuclear Test May be a bit of Both,” Washington Post, September 11, 2016, URL: www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/rhetoric-or-real-n-korea-nuclear-test-may-be-a-bit-ofboth/2016/09/11/2263a208–77ed-11e6–9781–49e591781754_story.html Kang Jin-kyu and Kang Chan-su, “North Korea’s Fifth Nuclear Test Strongest Yet,” Joongang Ilbo, September 10, 2016, URL: http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=3023659 32 See: Sharon A. Squassoni, “Weapons of Mass Destruction: Trade between North Korea and Pakistan,” Congressional Research Service, Report for Congress, November 28, 2006, URL: www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/ RL31900.pdf

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Bruce E. Bechtol Jr 33 See: “Pyongyang Uses Advanced Tech to Extend Range of No Dong Missile,” World Tribune, June 8, 2004, URL: www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2004/ea_nkorea_06_08.html 34 See: Choe Sang-hun, “North Korea’s Successful Missile Test Shows Program’s Progress, Analysts Say,” New York Times, June 22, 2016, URL: www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/world/asia/north-korea-missiletest.html?_r=0 “R-27 / SS-N-6 SERB,” Federation of American Scientists, July 13, 2000, URL: http://fas.org/nuke/ guide/russia/slbm/r-27.htm 35 For more on Taepo Dong range and capabilities, See: Vice Admiral J.D. Syring, USN, Director, Missile Defense Agency, Testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, April 13, 2016, URL: www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Syring_04-13-16.pdf 36 See: “U.S. Can Neutralize North Korean Missile,” Newsmax, July 9, 2006, URL: www.newsmax.com/ Pre-2008/U-SCan-Neutralize-North/2006/07/09/id/687153/ 37 See: Jeremy Bender, “Top Norad General: North Korea Has a Nuclear-Capable Missile That Can Hit the US,” Business Insider, April 10, 2015, URL: www.businessinsider.com/us-general-north-koreahas-nuclear-capable-missile-that-can-hit-us-2015–4 38 For detailed analysis of the North Korean mobile ICBM launch of July 28, 2017, See: Michael Elleman, “Early Observations of North Korea’s Latest Missile Tests,” 38 North, July 28, 2017, URL: http:// www.38north.org/2017/07/melleman072817/ “Kim Jong Un Attends Second Hwasong-14 Missile Test,” North Korean Leadership Watch, July 29, 2017, URL: http://www.nkleadershipwatch.org/2017/07/29/kim-jong-un-attends-second-hwasong14-missile-test/ David Sanger, Choe Sang-hun, and William J. Broad, “North Korea Tests a Ballistic Missile That Experts Say Could Hit California,” New York Times, July 28, 2017, URL: https://www.nytimes. com/2017/07/28/world/asia/north-korea-ballistic-missile.html Colin Dwyer, “North Korea Says Successful ICBM Test Shows U.S. Is In Striking Distance,” NPR, July 28, 2017, URL: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/28/540008218/northkorea-h-ballistic-missile-seoul-and-the-pentagon-say Leah Crane, “North Korea launches ICBM with potential to reach New York,” New Scientist, July 28, 2017, URL: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2142224-north-korea-launches-icbmwith-potential-to-reach-new-york/ 39 For analysis of the August 2016 launch of the DPRK SLBM, its range, where it landed, and the pontifications of pundits and analysts, see: Kang Jin-kyu and Jeong Yong-soo, “North Korea’s SLBM Succeeds, Can Fly 2,000 km,” Joongang Ilbo, August 25, 2016, URL: http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/ Ju-min Park and Jack Kim, “North Korea Fires Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile towards Japan,” Reuters, August 24, 2016, URL: www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-idUSKCN10Y2B0 For compelling analysis on the capabilities of the new missile and where it came from, in addition to an in-depth interview with one of the most important experts in the field, see: Tal Inbar, The Fisher Center for Air and Space Strategic Studies, Israel, Email interview conducted on August 29, 2016. 40 See: Sean Gallagher, “North Korea Brags Some More about Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile,” ARS Technica, July 2, 2015, URL: http://arstechnica.com Bill Gertz, “North Korean Submarine Damaged in Missile Test,” Washington Free Beacon, December 8, 2015, URL: http://freebeacon.com Bill Gertz, “North Korea Conducts Successful Submarine Missile Test,” Washington Free Beacon, January 5, 2016, URL: http://freebeacon.com Jack Kim and Ju-min Park, “North Korea Says Submarine Ballistic Missile Test ‘Great Success’,” Reuters, April 24, 2016, URL: www.reuters.com 41 See: “H-5 [Il-28 BEAGLE (ILYUSHIN)],” Global Security.org, July 17, 2006, URL: www.globalsecurity. org/military/world/china/h-5.htm “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” Rice University, Military Forces Factsheet: North Korea, Spring, 2010, URL: http://es.rice.edu/projects/Poli378/Korea/Korea.North.html 42 See: Matthew Gianni, “Real and Present Danger: Flag State Failure and Maritime Security and Safety,” World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF, International Transport Workers’ Federation, I T F, June, 2008, URL: http:// assets.panda.org/downloads/flag_state_performance.pdf 43 “Background Briefing with Senior Intelligence Officials on Syria’s Covert Nuclear Reactor and North Korea’s Involvement,” Office of the Director of National Intelligence, April 24, 2008, URL: www.dni.gov/ interviews/20080424_interview.pdf 44 Caroline Glick, “Column One: Israel and the Axis of Evil,” Jerusalem Post, May 27, 2009, URL: www. jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Column-One-Israel-and-the-Axis-of-Evil

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North Korea’s nuclear weaponization 45 Douglass Frantz, “Iran Closes in on Ability to Build a Nuclear Bomb,” Los Angeles Times, August 4, 2003, URL: http://articles.latimes.com/2003/aug/04/world/fg-nuke4 46 See: Robin Hughes, “Tehran Takes Steps to Protect Nuclear Facilities,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, January 25, 2006, 4–5. 47 For analysis detailing the software the DPRK allegedly sold to Iran to support its nuclear weapons program, See: “North Korea Supplied Nuclear Software to Iran: German Report,” Reuters, August 4, 2011, URL: www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/24/us-nuclear-northkorea-iran-idUSTRE77N2FZ20110824 48 Joby Warrick, “IAEA Says Foreign Expertise Has Brought Iran to Threshold of Nuclear Capability,” Washington Post, November 6, 2011, URL: www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iaeasays-foreign-expertise-has-brought-iran-to-threshold-of-nuclear-capability/2011/11/05/gIQAc6h jtM_story.html 49 For more on allegations that Iran may be housing nuclear materials in North Korea – an allegation that is interesting, but has not been proven to date – See: Adam Kredo, “Experts: Iran Housing Nuke Materials in North Korea, Syria,” Washington Free Beacon, March 31, 2015, URL: http://freebeacon.com/ national-security/experts-iran-housing-nuke-materials-in-north-korea-syria/ For reports of exchanges of high-ranking nuclear officials, and technicians, scientists, and engineers going back and forth between North Korea and Iran, See: John Irish, “North Korean Nuclear, Missile Experts Visit Iran – Dissidents,” Reuters, May 28, 2015, URL: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/28/ uk-iran-northkorea-dissidents-idUKKBN0OD08020150528 Alireza Jafarzadeh, “Iran’s Cooperation with North Korea Includes Nuclear Warhead Technology,” The Hill, June 3, 2015, URL: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/ 243787-irans-cooperation-with-north-korea-includes-nuclear Kellan Howell, “Iran Working with North Korea to Thwart UN Nuclear Inspections: Report,” Washington Times, September 4, 2015, URL: www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/4/iran-workingnorth-korea-thwart-un-nuclear-inspect/?page=all “Iran: Nuclear Cooperation between Iran Regime & North Korea, NCRI Reveals,” National Council of Resistance of Iran, August, 2015, URL: www.ncr-iran.org/en/media-gallery/187-irannuclear-cooperation-between-iran-regime-north-korea-ncri-reveals 50 See: “North Korea Sanctions,” United States Department of the Treasury, August 1, 2016, URL: www.treasury. gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/pages/nkorea.aspx 51 For an example of the U.S. government using the Patriot Act to sanction North Korea, See: “Treasury Takes Actions to Further Restrict North Korea’s Access to the U.S. Financial System,” United States Department of the Treasury, June 1, 2016, URL: www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/ jl0471.aspx For excellent analysis on how sanctions can be fully enforced, See: Joshua Stanton, “North Korea: The Myth of Maxed-Out Sanctions,” Fletcher Security Review, Vol. 2, No. 1 (January 21, 2015), URL: www. fletchersecurity.org/stanton 52 See: Sonni Efron, “Smart Sanctions Vs. Dumb Bombs,” Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2007, URL: www.latimes.com/opinion/la-oew-efron27feb27-story.html David Lague and Donald Greenlees, “Squeeze on Banco Delta Hit North Korea Where It Hurt,” New York Times, January 18, 2007, URL: www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/world/asia/18iht-north.4255039. html?_r=0 “Treasury Designates Banco Delta Asia Primary Money Laundering Concern under USA Patriot Act,” United States Treasury Department, September 15, 2005, URL: www.treasury.gov/press-center/ press-releases/Pages/js2720.aspx “Treasury Finalizes Rule Against Banco Delta Asia BDA Cut Off from U.S. Financial System,” United States Treasury Department, March 14, 2007, URL: www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/ hp315.aspx 53 For analysis on the USA relooking the use of Banco Delta Asia style enforcement (much of it very debatable), See: Christopher Hill, “The Elusive Vision of a Non-Nuclear North Korea,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 36 (Spring 2013), URL: https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/ legacy_files/files/publication/TWQ_13Spring_Hill.pdf 54 See: Fiona Cunningham, “KJI Won’t Take His Nukes to the Grave,” The Interpreter, December 19, 2011, URL: www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2011/12/19/KJI-wont-take-his-nukes-to-the-grave.aspx

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4 FALSE ALARM Xinjiang and China’s national security Yitzhak Shichor

A remote region in Western China usually avoided by foreigners, and even by Chinese, Xinjiang has reached the headlines over the last two decades. International media, also underscored by Beijing’s, have created the impression that Xinjiang is in a state of war, undergoing unrest and a series of violent clashes between the authorities and rebellious Uyghurs. Whereas Beijing attributes Uyghurs unrest primarily to separatism and “pursuit of independence”, its response is also induced by “religious extremism” and “terrorism” that Beijing associates with Uyghurs. And this is not just an internal threat. It is believed to be fed by external sources in Central Asia and the Middle East – and on the Internet. These threats are supplemented by unsettled problems with neighboring countries, like the border conflict with India, competition with Russia over Central Asia, the continued US military presence in Afghanistan and Beijing’s perceived US (and Turkish) support for Uyghur separatism. Real or fantasized, these intertwined threats assume greater proportions given Beijing’s sensitivity in Xinjiang. Ostensibly, this region is potentially more vulnerable than other Chinese provinces given its huge territory, the length of its borders, its remoteness, its ethnic and religious composition and its military and economic significance. Beijing’s nuclear test bases and missile ranges are still located in Xinjiang which is also becoming not just China’s main energy (oil, gas and coal) source but also a strategic junction for the flow of energy into China from Central Asia and western Siberia – as well as for China’s trade with the Middle East and West Europe as a part of Xi Jinping’s One Belt One Road initiative. Considering these sensitivities and potential threats, what have been their actual effects on China’s security? What measures Beijing adopts to cope with these threats? And what have been their implications for China’s security, domestically and regionally? These are the main questions discussed in this chapter in historical and contemporary perspectives.

Weaknesses and vulnerabilities Potentially, Xinjiang has all the reasons to be sensitive in security terms. Being China’s largest administrative unit, 1.66 million square km (over 17 percent of China’s territory), Xinjiang could have ranked the world’s 17th biggest country, larger than Germany, Spain and France combined. Bordering on eight countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Mongolia and Russia), more than any Chinese province, Xinjiang’s frontiers are the longest of 50

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all Chinese provinces’, over half of China’s land borders. Most of this border is open. Nearly 30 land ports along the border are fenced on each side but only for a short distance; otherwise no man-made obstacles exist. Though a rugged terrain, it can be illegally crossed by smugglers and saboteurs and thus a cause for security concern. It could hardly be monitored, least of all defended, by the 13 Border Defense Regiments of the Xinjiang Military District Command. This huge and inhospitable territory is inhabited by one of China’s smallest populations of some 23 million – 1.7 percent of China’s total. Population density is approximately 13 per square km, the lowest among all Chinese provinces – except for Tibet and Qinghai – and one of the lowest in the world. Moreover, non-Chinese outweigh the Han. When the Communists seized Xinjiang in late 1949, the share of Han Chinese was about 5 percent. Although Beijing has succeeded in offsetting the demographic balance gradually through settlement, Han are still less than half the population, around 42 percent (0.75 percent of the total). Muslim nationalities are still the majority in Xinjiang, including Hui, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uyghurs who are, at over 11 million, the largest group. Yet, Uyghurs do not have a homeland across the border like other Turkic nationalities in Xinjiang. Whereas Uyghur unrest is occasionally attributed to separatism, it is fed also, or mostly, by other grievances. Uyghur unrest in Xinjiang is also a source of sensitivity due to its presumed association with Islamic radicalization and terrorism. These phenomena have increased following the Soviet collapse; the independence of the Central Asian republics; and the reopening of the borders that facilitated a flow of people, weapons, Islamic literature and subversive ideas reinforced by advanced media, through the use of smartphones, Internet networks, websites and blogs. Beijing is also concerned about the proliferation of Uyghur associations overseas and especially by the foundation of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) in 2004 which is perceived as a source of anti-Chinese “propaganda” and “terrorist” activities. Some WUC leaders were officially condemned by Beijing as “terrorists”, with no evidence. Uyghurs, in fact, were used and trained by Beijing to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan along with the Mujahedeen.1 Xinjiang’s energy infrastructure is another cause for anxiety. As China’s eastern oilfields are about to dry, Xinjiang is anticipated to become China’s main onshore source of crude oil, as well as gas and coal. Oil attracts most attention, though it supplies only 18 percent of China’s energy consumption mix (and only 1–2 percent of its power generation). Coal is still China’s main energy source (about 70 percent, and nearly 80 percent of its power generation). Xinjiang will become China’s main source of coal which is easier and less expensive to mine (around one third of Shanxi’s and nearly half of Inner Mongolia’s).2 Already saturated, most of Xinjiang’s energy flows to the east by railroads, pipelines and cables – which are vulnerable to terrorist attacks.3 Furthermore, Beijing’s investments in Central Asia’s oilfields facilities and pipelines (and in Western Siberia), make Xinjiang a junction for transporting energy to the rest of China. This will continue, and even expand, thereby increasing Beijing’s security headaches. Xinjiang is also sensitive because of its Lop Nor nuclear testing facilities, although no tests have been undertaken since late July 1996, after the Chinese signed (but not yet ratified) the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Xinjiang still maintains a missile range and an active missile test complex (e.g. in Korla).4 It also holds about 16 percent of China’s uranium deposits – the largest capacity among China’s six uranium production centers.5 Xinjiang’s security sensitivity is exacerbated by its remoteness. Air travel distance from Beijing to Kashgar is over 3,400 km, about the distance from Moscow to Madrid. In case of security emergency, internal or external, an instant deployment of troops from afar is practically impossible. Until early 2016, when the PLA was reorganized into five theater commands (or “battle zones”) – the Xinjiang Military District belonged to the Lanzhou Military Region whose headquarters had been over 1,900 km east of Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, and 3,100 km of Kashgar. Now, both the Lanzhou and Chengdu Military Regions were combined in the Western Theater 51

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Command (xibu zhanqu). In addition to Xinjiang it incorporates Guizhou, Yunnan, Chongqing, Sichuan, Tibet, Qinghai, Ningxia, Shaanxi and Gansu. This is the largest of the five commands, covering over 50 percent of China’s territory, though only about 22 percent of its population – some 300 million. Shifted from Lanzhou to Chengdu, its headquarters is now farther from Xinjiang, about 2,870 km from Urumqi, or about four hours’ flight. A Chengdu-Kashgar flight takes about eight hours (over 4,060 km, the length of a transatlantic flight), and 46 hours by train. In terms of territory, the Western Command would have ranked the 7th largest country in the world, larger than the European Union and much larger than India, while in population terms it would have ranked 3rd – about the size of the United States. Commanding such a huge territory with China’s longest borders (including the 4,057 km line of actual control with India) must be a formidable task – and the ability to move forces in case of emergency would be greatly circumscribed. Xinjiang’s security is also related to economics, as a key for trade with Central Asia. In 2015 Xinjiang’s share in China’s exports to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan was 62.3, 74.7, and 76.7 percent, respectively. Central Asia is less important as an exporter to China, except for energy: 46 percent of China’s natural gas comes from Turkmenistan; 2–4 percent of crude oil comes from Kazakhstan. Thus, Xinjiang is a junction for energy, both domestic and imported. Two of China’s leading strategic petroleum reserves (58 million barrels) are in Xinjiang. From 2005 to 2016, China invested about $40 billion in Central Asia, of which over 70 percent in Kazakhstan alone, mostly in energy; over $42 billion were invested in Pakistan, nearly $19 billion in Iran and over $3 billion in Afghanistan.6 These assets need protection. Furthermore, Xinjiang is a crucial link in Xi Jinping’s One Belt One Road initiative. Once its implementation begins, Beijing could not afford unrest in Xinjiang that threatens its continental bridge to Europe, disrupts its growing trade and undermines its investments in infrastructures. Roads, railroads, pipelines and electricity transmission lines are highly vulnerable to terrorist attacks and sabotage, undoubtedly a major security concern. Military service in Xinjiang is like a mission abroad – or even in an unsafe colony. PLA recruits stationed in Xinjiang display distress related to geographical and social isolation and harsh climate conditions; inhospitable living environment and monotony; intensity of training; tough discipline; high-level standards – and the requirement “to perform special missions” (zhixing teshu renwu) e.g. suppressing ethnic unrest. Unable to communicate, they are unfamiliar with the culture, feel intimidated by Islam and threatened by violence and terrorism. These erode military effectiveness and morale and occasionally result in mental illnesses. And, according to PLA conscription rules, one quarter to one third of its troops are first-year soldiers, with little experience, training and self-confidence.7 Finally, in 1884 Xinjiang was one of the last regions officially incorporated as a province in the Chinese Empire, for only 27 years (of 1,132 years of imperial history). Republican rule over Xinjiang (1912–1949) was superficial and from 1944 its northwestern part was ruled by the Eastern Turkestan Republic (ETR) – a coalition of Turkic nationalities under Soviet auspices – until the region was “peacefully liberated” by Chinese Communism in late 1949 (with Moscow’s intervention). This also explains Beijing’s sensitivity and its effort to change the demographic balance in favor of Han Chinese. Xinjiang’s potential vulnerability is, therefore, a combination of all the problems mentioned above, reflecting potential and actual threats and risks.

Threats and risks Today, much of Beijing’s perceived threats and risks in and around Xinjiang are still fed by historical precedents: US subversive encroachments in the late 1940s and early 1950s; the residues of the ETR and increasing ethnic discontent; instability during the Hundred Flowers campaign, the 52

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Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; and tension and confrontation with India and the Soviet Union. These threats began to subside since the early 1970s, for a number of related reasons. Most important is the demise of radicalism and the following Sino–US thaw. The Soviet threat that culminated with the December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, China’s backyard, was removed by February 1989 thanks to the Mujahedeen’s insurgency, the transformed Soviet political leadership and, not less important, the US–China collaboration. Since the early 1990s, the map of external and internal threats facing Xinjiang has been redrawn, not only because of Beijing’s remarkable military modernization but mainly as a result of the Soviet collapse and the resumed Sino–Russian partnership. Still, today’s partnership is nothing like the earlier Sino–Soviet alliance. Beijing is no longer a second fiddle to Moscow but an equal partner, still weaker militarily, but stronger economically. Given Russia’s economic stagnation and demographic deterioration, a Russian military threat to China seems unlikely although their relations are by no means smooth. Behind the façade of friendship and collaboration – mutual suspicions, tensions, disagreements, criticism and unsolved problems are hidden.8 For now, these problems are brushed aside but still persist. These are not just problems of unsettled border issues (although proper treaties have been duly signed) but also problems of competition for hegemony in Central Asia.9 Russia, the former hegemon, still has a military advantage but is lagging far behind China economically and historically. Unlike China, Russia – and the Soviet Union – had a solid presence in Central Asia for over a century, leaving bad memories. Put differently, there could be a potential threat of a future Sino–Russian confrontation, especially if the Chinese resume their unofficial alliance with Washington that prospered in the 1970s and 1980s, against Moscow. Although this confrontation does not have to be military – there is no reason to underestimate Russia’s military power today, or tomorrow. Other regional prospective threats are even lower. Of all countries around Xinjiang, India is the only one with which China has not yet reached a final border settlement although a number of agreements were signed. This, however, does not insinuate that India has any aggressive contingencies that could jeopardize northwest China’s security. Beijing’s and Delhi’s mutual threat perceptions have always reflected a consistent asymmetry. Whereas Beijing has never seemed to take the “India threat” too seriously, Delhi could hardly hide its obsession with the “China threat”. And, although in recent years India’s economy has been growing fast and great efforts and investments have been made to upgrade its armed forces, the gaps between the two are expected to stay, making a future confrontation over Xinjiang highly unlikely. Likewise, no Central Asian country could undermine northwestern China’s security in the future. Nonetheless, non-traditional threats – for example, sharing regional water resources10 – which have been brewing in Central Asia can, and do, affect Xinjiang’s security. This brings us to internal threats, which seem, though not necessarily are – more challenging than external ones. Increased Uyghur unrest in Xinjiang is undoubtedly related to the Soviet collapse and the independence of the Central Asian republics, but also to the Western promotion of human rights and democracy, the introduction of advanced communication technologies and the Internet, and to Beijing’s post-Mao reforms. These, and the priority given to growth, had led to reopening the borders – despite the anticipated risks to Xinjiang’s internal stability. Gaining or regaining independence, Central Asia’s republics have now provided a model for Uyghurs who had sought “independence” from China. Dormant for many years, these aspirations have now been resuscitated providing Beijing with an excuse to crackdown on Xinjiang’s Uyghurs. Marginal even in Mao’s time, use of the Uyghur language has been curtailed in the education system; assimilation attempts have been undertaken; religious prohibitions have been imposed; and discrimination – economic, political, social, cultural and religious – has become widespread. These, much more than visions of independence, have triggered Uyghur unrest, occasionally leading to violent clashes. 53

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Inflated out of proportion by all parties concerned,11 these clashes have kept nurturing the perception of Xinjiang’s crumbling security. Western public opinion has, willingly or not, contributed to this perception by promoting democracy and attacking human rights abuse in China. The growing sophistication of communication technologies and accessibility to the media, not to mention the Internet, and even Beijing itself have also contributed to this perception by exaggerating the implications of these incidents – not necessarily because these have been harmful to security but to legitimize its crackdown of Uyghurs. Actually, Uyghur unrest in Xinjiang has never threatened China’s security, not only because of the Chinese response (to be discussed on p. 57–8) but also, and primarily, because most Uyghurs have no interest, wish, let alone ability, to promote independence. Moreover, as China is becoming more powerful and influential in the world – that overwhelmingly recognizes the PRC’s territorial integrity including Xinjiang – the chances of Uyghur independence diminish and in fact evaporate. Occasional Uyghur–Han clashes may of course continue, mainly driven by religious, social, cultural and economic grievances (rather than a quest for independence) – yet with little or no effect on China’s security. Occasionally, Muslim organizations and (much less) governments have criticized China’s treatment of its Muslims, especially Uyghurs,12 urging Beijing to improve the conditions of its Muslims and grant its Uyghurs “religious freedom”. Yet, no mufti or other religious figure has ever dared issuing a fatwa (religious ruling) against China.13 No government or international organization, Muslim or otherwise, would endorse Uyghur independence or separatism. The only backing for Uyghur demands comes from radical Muslims, located in Central Asia and the Middle East. These groups declare jihād against Beijing, criticize its anti-Muslim and antiUyghur policy, incite China’s Muslims to actively fight Beijing and offer them funds, ideas and guidebooks and instruction in the use of arms. They also claim responsibility for violent incidents against the Chinese and for supplying weapons, and “document” assaults against Chinese security forces creating an impression that these were initiated by jihādi groups. They reiterate that East Turkestan (i.e. Xinjiang) used to be an integral part of the Muslim nation and blame Beijing for attempting to obliterate the region’s Islamic character and to get rid of its Muslim communities. “Communist China”, they promise, would collapse just like the Soviet Union did. Online journals published by the defunct East Turkestan Islamic Movement and its reincarnation, the TIP (Turkestan Islamic Party), warn the Chinese that “Allah’s cavalry will soon fall upon you” and incite “the brave mujahedeen” to “kill the Communist Chinese wherever you find them”.14 However, most, if not all, of these jihādi claims are baseless, a figment of imagination. “There is no evidence that TIP has ever carried out a successful attack in China”,15 and Beijing has never provided evidence of involvement of jihādi units let alone of Diaspora Uyghur organizations, in Uyghur (or any other) assaults on Chinese forces and facilities. These jihādi publications appropriated incidents that had taken place in China, probably without external input. If there is a battlefield at all, it is a virtual one and exists only on jihadi networks and whatever support is offered to the Uyghurs has been rhetorical. At best, this is no more than a marginal threat to China’s security. In fact, both the Taliban and al-Qaeda have tended to avoid confronting China, which they regard as a potential ally against the US, the real enemy.16 Indeed, Beijing may be concerned about the future impact of Uyghurs who reportedly joined the struggle against the Russians in Chechnya and later ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) when they return to Xinjiang. Whereas foreign media claim that “hundreds” (or 300) of Uyghurs joined ISIS – the most precise and reliable figure is 114. Furthermore, though called “fighters”, most of them have no military experience; are usually older than other “volunteers”; tend to bring their families; and, being quite poor, have no intention of returning home given the prohibitive cost. A few Western observers noted that Beijing regards these Uyghurs as a security risk,17 but this is doubtful. Even if they try to return, an unlikely possibility, the Chinese authorities must be aware of 54

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their provenance, address and relatives,18 so that there are little, if any, prospects of their promoting jihād in Xinjiang. As usual, Beijing uses them to manipulate other governments and to justify and further legitimize its crackdown at home.

Forces and contingents “Peacefully liberated” in October 1949, Xinjiang’s reincorporation into “China” reflected the Communists’ ability to neutralize the two hostile forces there: the Guomindang army and the Yili National Army of the now defunct ETR. Around 150,000 troops, both armies surrendered to the Communists (thanks to Soviet intervention). Quickly swallowed by the Red Army (renamed the PLA), most of them, PLA units included, were ordered to settle in Xinjiang as a land reclamation quasi-military division, named the Xinjiang Production-Construction Corps, or were incorporated in the PLA as independent divisions. Given the Sino–Soviet alliance, there was no need for a large-scale military deployment in Xinjiang. The PLA was stripped of its authority to handle social and ethnic unrest not only in order to underline its “professionalization” but also to erode emerging “regionalist” trends. But in 1966 – probably in response to the growing Soviet threat, and the security implications of internal upheavals related to Mao’s Cultural Revolution – public security forces were reintegrated into the army as “independent” units, restoring responsibility for coping with unrest to the PLA,19 in addition to its national defense duties – until the early 1980s. By that time Mao, and his policies, were no longer alive. His reformist successors, led by Deng Xiaoping, began to introduce reforms, including in the military. These aimed at the improvement of PLA efficiency by reducing its size through demobilization, and by the reallocation of its internal security missions to other organizations, so that the PLA would concentrate on external contingencies with US backing – at least for a while. The origins of the Sino–US collaboration go back to the late 1960s’ Soviet aggression against China, a strategic miscalculation. By the early 1970s Washington had begun to provide Beijing with intelligence on Soviet troops along its Central Asian borders. Moreover, when Deng Xiaoping visited the US in early 1979, the two sides decided to build joint electronic and seismic facilities in Xinjiang to monitor Soviet nuclear tests and missile launches, as well as air force and commercial flights and military communications. By the fall of 1981, two bases had been built in Korla and Qitai, incorporating American technology. They served the security interests of both Washington, which had lost two monitoring stations in Iran, and Beijing – which now faced Soviet military presence in Afghanistan. Apparently, the Soviet collapse and the deteriorating US–China relations have ended the collaboration and have made these bases superfluous. It appears, however, that they are still operative (perhaps also against India). Moreover, Beijing built – or upgraded – additional SIGINT stations in Xinjiang (e.g. at Hami, Dingyuanchen and Changji).20 China and the US (the CIA) also collaborated (together with other countries, including Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.21 China’s contribution to this effort had started long before by arming Pakistan, by training the Afghan Mujahedeen in Xinjiang bases and by using its Uyghurs to provide them with light arms across the mountainous border. Whatever the reason for the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the outcome was that the most serious and immediate threat to China’s northwest security – which had lasted for around 30 years – was removed. This explains the shallow PLA deployment in Xinjiang. Defense of China’s northwest – a huge area – is commissioned by one combined arms rapid reaction division (the 4th) and three motorized divisions (the 6th, the 8th and the 11th), altogether about 60–70,000 troops. There are also around seven brigades, including artillery, army aviation (helicopters), air defense, and light mechanized; a number of regiments (communications, transportation, engineering, 55

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mechanized, motorized and border), and several reserve and logistics units. About 15 Air Force bases are located in Xinjiang equipped with outdated J-7II, J-7G and J-8F fighter jets. They are spread all over the region, primarily in Urumqi and Korla but also in Aksu, Kashgar, Khotan and Altay. Intended to cope mainly with external threats, these, and air transport divisions, had been deployed long before the recent eruption of ethnic unrest in Xinjiang.22 Since 1982, internal security duties have been gradually yet systematically taken from the PLA and allotted to new and upgraded organizations. This policy began to gather momentum not because of increased unrest in Xinjiang (there was hardly any) but as a part of the demobilization of 1.7 million PLA troops, many (or most) of them assigned to the newly established People’s Armed Police Force (PAPF).23 Although different entities, many PAPF troops were trained in the PLA and some high-ranking officers have regularly been exchanged between the two. Moreover, some PLA units were transferred in toto to the PAPF (e.g. the 21st PLA Army 63rd Division became the 63rd Armed Police Mobile Division based in Pingliang, Gansu Province; the Xinjiang Military District PLA 7th Division became the 7th Armed Police Mobile Division based in Xinjiang’s Yili-Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture).24 Designated “the state’s backbone and shock force in handling public emergencies” by China’s National Defense White Paper 2010, the PAPF is trained to handle counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, rapid reaction and special operations. It commands fourteen detachments (regiments) in Xinjiang.25 The number of PAPF troops in Xinjiang is estimated at over 15,000, about one percent of the estimated total (1.5 million) or 2.3 percent of the official figure (666,000). This moderate percentage, which roughly reflects Xinjiang’s share in China’s total population – yet not its size and potential internal “risks” – indicates that Beijing is not that concerned about unrest there. If Xinjiang’s PAPF could not handle a crisis, PAPF troops are summoned from other provinces – as far away as Jiangsu, Fujian and Henan. This is what happened in the July 2009 Urumqi riots. Two days after the hostilities had subsided, 13,000 PAPF troops were airlifted, a transfer accomplished after one day. This transfer may have been undertaken not to so much in order to pacify the scene (already under control) but as an opportunity to exercise troop deployment from a distance.26 Other units occasionally sent to Xinjiang include the PAPF’s 3rd Group, 13th Detachment, known as the Snow Leopard Commando (xuebao tujidui) anti-terrorism outfit also called Snow Wolf Commando Unit, and SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics Teams – tejing zongdui – “special police units”) under the Public Security Bureau.27 On May 22, 2010, Xinjiang’s Urumqi Police Bureau launched a new special anti-riots police squad, “Flying Tiger Commando” ( feihudui), aimed at dealing with local violence and terrorist attacks,28 together with Police and Public Security troops, the militia and the Xinjiang Production-Construction Corps (XPCC, known as Bingtuan). Incorporating demobilized soldiers in 1954, the quasi-military XPCC has been engaged primarily in economics – initially in agriculture, later in industry and more recently also in trade and business, transforming the Corps into a Corp. But its secondary function has been in defense and security missions, both along the border and internally.29 Following its meddling in the Cultural Revolution in Xinjiang on behalf of the radicals, in 1975 the XPCC had been stripped of its military mission but in late 1981 Deng Xiaoping revoked this decision calling the XPCC “a key force in the stability of Xinjiang; therefore, it must be reestablished.”30 Restored as a military organization (in addition to its civilian duties), the XPCC was instructed to maintain “military” vigilance, especially along the borders, given the Soviet threat. Ten years later the Soviet Union was gone and while the external threat had diminished, internal threats have increased. As a quasi “military” organization, the XPCC is funded by the Central Government and takes part in “maintaining stability”, collecting intelligence and suppressing insurgencies, along with the 56

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PLA, the PAPF and the militia (termed the Four-in-One System, sizu yidui: “four organizations in one force”). To perform its duties the XPCC has its own Armed Police Headquarters, formed in 1984, and its own militia. By late 2010, the XPCC had formed over 20 “key militia emergency battalions”.31 Still, and despite references to the XPCC as “the foundation of stability in Xinjiang”, its role in suppressing ethnic unrest is marginal – also because of its increased preoccupation with economics which by necessity erodes its “military” capacities. In fact, since its 1981 reincarnation, the XPCC is no longer subordinate to the Xinjiang Military District.32 Finally, the Xinjiang Militia is an additional force whose mission is “to assist” Public Security units in “exposing reactionary elements” and maintaining “social law and order”.33 Blurred boundaries and ill-defined responsibilities among these too many units create confusion during emergencies and reduce effective response.

Response and activities China’s response to Xinjiang’s unrest in the 1950s reflected the experience of pre-modern China: relative tolerance for different social, ethnic and religious traditions – yet none for political disobedience. China’s new leaders repressed local and isolated riots in Xinjiang, where communist rule was perceived as relatively weak,34 not only for achieving stability and safeguarding CCP predominance but also, and no less important, as an educational lesson for deterring and preventing future cases of insurgency. Gardner Bovingdon listed 34 cases of unrest in Xinjiang from late 1949 to the mid-1970s.35 Termed “insurgencies”, “armed rebellions”, “revolts”, or “armed uprisings” – none posed a real threat to Chinese security. Moreover, given Xinjiang’s enormous size, 34 incidents, some admittedly small, over a quarter of a century are not a serious security threat. All clashes in Mao’s Xinjiang and after, were relatively brief and limited, and all were extinguished without exception although none really undermined the regime. To diffuse actual and potential threats to its northwest, Beijing has also used other means. One of the most significant, a departure from China’s earlier international behavior, was the formation of regional organizations, such as the Shanghai Five (in 1996), renamed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 2001. Initially, the SCO was meant to deal with the Three Evils – terrorism, separatism and religious (Islamic) extremism – as well as hegemonism (US presence – not specifically mentioned). All of these targets represent Beijing’s security concerns which the Chinese wanted to share with other SCO partners. In 2004, a Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) was formed for these purposes. A few military exercises were held but much of its activity has been virtual. Beijing’s response to potential risks in the northwest also includes preemptive measures, especially since the beginning of post-Mao reform – reminding of Zuo Zongtang’s 19th century policy that combined military, social and economic programs.36 One example is China’s Great Western Development Strategy (Xibu Dakaifa),37 which was launched in January 2000. Among other goals (e.g. closing gaps between rich and poor provinces) it followed the assumption that improvement in the standard of living and economic growth would diminish potential unrest and Uyghur grievances. A decade and a half later it may still be too early to judge, but similar assumptions may have guided Beijing’s initiatives in Central Asia such as the SCO, which reflect a combination of security and economic objectives, and even more so Xi Jinping’s 2013 One Belt One Road vision. While most attention is focused on its economic and infrastructure investments, one should not ignore its muted aim to tie OBOR countries to China in such a way as to make any challenge to China’s security undesirable and very costly. By the early 21st century, reduced external security risks and the growth in internal unrest had necessitated a change in the allocation of funds. Until 2010, annual military budgets approved 57

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by the National People’s Congress (NPC) did not differentiate between national defense and internal security appropriations. Possibly to downplay allegations that China was increasing its defense expenditures, in 2010 Beijing announced – for the first time – that over half the military budget, 548.6 billion yuan, would be spent on internal security, and only 532.1 billion yuan on national defense. This ratio remained, and even increased in the next years: in 2011, 624.4 billion yuan for internal security but only 601.1 billion yuan for national defense; in 2012, 701.8 billion yuan to 670.3 billion yuan and in 2013, 769 billion to 720.2 billion.38 This created an impression that China was facing mounting unrest and, consequently, since then Beijing did not disclose the respective figures. Even without them it is obvious that, at least in the northwest, Beijing is concerned more about internal threats than about external ones. Since China’s regional commands reorganization in early 2016 is determined primarily by national defense considerations, what can the new Western Theater Command inform us about China’s northwestern security? Designating Chengdu as its headquarters – rather than Urumqi or Lanzhou – reflects Beijing’s revised threat perception: externally, India is considered a more serious long run threat than Central Asia; internally Tibet – because of its association with India – is perceived as a more serious long-run threat than Xinjiang. Chengdu is closer to both albeit far away from Central Asia (and Xinjiang). So, for all of Beijing’s rhetoric about unrest in Xinjiang, in practice it is a threat that local forces, PLA, PAPF and others, can contain.

Conclusion Throughout Chinese history, Xinjiang has played a marginal role in imperial security. In national defense terms, China has never been conquered – or even seriously threatened – from the northwest. It was occupied twice, by the Mongols in the 13th century and by the Manchus in the 17th century from the north and the northeast. Occasionally, parts of the empire were seized from the north and the northeast (by nomads and by Japan) and from the south (by Western colonialism) – but rarely from the northwest. Thus, Xinjiang – or the Western Regions – have provided an effective buffer zone whose desert, mountains and huge territory deterred potential invasions. Sino–Soviet border clashes in the 1960s were limited and Moscow ultimately did not dare to launch a surgical strike on Xinjiang’s nuclear facilities, or to invade the region – assaults that had been contemplated. Its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan failed. Since its collapse, and given the Sino–Russian “partnership”, there has been no military threat from Central Asia and – despite Sino–Russian mutual suspicions and anxieties – it is unlikely that there will be. This was the lesson the Chinese had painfully learned in the 19th century when the Western military-naval incursion from the south underscored that this was the main security threat – rather than from the north-west. Huge investments in Xinjiang’s defense undercut the Qing effort to build a navy that could stop the Western encroachment.39 Beijing learned the lesson: while the Soviets fortified their border with Xinjiang, China did not, and most of its armed forces have been concentrated in the south-east – and, of course, around the capital. But internal security is a different story, or so Beijing wants us to believe. “Strike Hard” campaigns, directed since 1983 against “criminals” all over China, have also been used against Uyghur “terrorists”. Yet, only part, probably a small part, of Uyghur protests are motivated by political, nationalist or “separatist” agendas. If at all, only a tiny minority of Uyghur activists believe that independence could be achieved by force – or even without. Uyghurs appear to be much more concerned about their socio-economic discrimination, cultural prohibitions and religious persecution. Therefore, China’s crackdown activities – which have nothing or little to do with real security threats – tend to exacerbate Uyghur concerns and undermine regional stability. If Beijing is “alarmed” by unrest in Xinjiang, it is to a large extent its own doing – and a false alarm.40 58

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Notes 1 S. M. Ali, US-China Cold War Collaboration, 1971–1989 (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2005), pp. 166–208. 2 Collins, Gabe and Andrew Erickson. “Xinjiang Poised to Become China’s Largest Coal Producer,” China SignPost, no. 65 (20 September 2012). 3 S. G. Serebryakov, “The Problem of Oil and Natural Gas Pipeline Security,” in G. E. Schweitzer (Rapporteur), Countering Terrorism: Biological Agents, Transportation Networks, and Energy Systems (Washington, DC: The National Academic Press, 2009), Vol. 39, no. 3 pp. 150–9; G.C.K. Leung, “China’s Energy Security: Perception and Reality,” Energy Policy, no. 39 (2011), pp. 1330–7. 4 Hoppler, David E. http://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/10STATE2126_a.html, and J. Lewis, “Korla Missile Test Complex,” 14 August 2014, www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/207415/korla-missiletest-complex/ (both accessed 30 August 2016). 5 Data from H. Zhang and Y.S. Bai, China’s Access to Uranium Resources (Cambridge, MA: The Project on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, May 2015). 6 Data from “China Global Investment Tracker” (The American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, 2016), www.aei.org/china-global-investment-tracker/2016 (accessed 2 September 2016). 7 K. Ding, C.H. Lin, X.Z. Meng and X.G. Hu, “Zhujiang moubu xinbing ying dui fangshi diaocha” [Investigation of Coping Style of New Army Recruits Stationed in Xinjiang], Jiefangjun Yufangyin Xuezazhi [PLA Journal of Preventive Medicine], vol. 30, no. 3 (June 2012), pp. 187–90. See also J.T. Dreyer, “The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang,” The Pacific Review, vol. 7, no. 1 (1994), p. 48; J.C. Mulvenon, “The PLA Army’s Struggle for Identity,” in S. J. Flanagan and M. E. Marti (eds.), People’s Liberation Army and China in Transition (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 2003), p. 123. 8 The Chinese never forget the past. See: G.F. Cao and J.J. Yang, “Yuanzhu, haishi juequ? 1933–1942 nian Sulian dui Xinjiang zhi zhengce shilun” [Aid or Sntach? Statement and Comment on the Soviet Policy on Xinjiang between 1933 and 1942], Beijing Keji Daxue Xuebao (shehui kexue ban) [Beijing University of Science and Technology Journal, Social Science Edition], vol. 19, no. 4 (2003), pp. 52–7. 9 J. Farchy, “China’s Great Game: In Russia’s Backyard,” Financial Times, 14 October 2015; “Rising China, Sinking Russia,” The Economist, 14 September 2013; C. Michel, “Putin’s Eurasian Union Doomed to Irrelevance by China’s Silk Road,” World Politics Review, 5 October 2015; C. Putz, “China’s Silk Road Belt Outpaces Russia’s Economic Union,” The Diplomat, 10 March 2016. 10 E. Weinthal, “Water Conflict and Cooperation in Central Asia,” Occasional Paper, no. 32 (UNDP: Human Development Report Office, 2006); E. W. Sievers, “Water, Conflict, and Regional Security in Central Asia,” N.Y.U. Environmental Law Journal, vol. 10 (2002), pp. 356–402. 11 Y. Shichor, “Blow Up: Internal and External Challenges of Uyghur Separatism and Islamic Radicalism to Chinese Rule in Xinjiang,” Asian Affairs, vol. 32, no. 2 (Summer 2005), pp. 119–35. 12 Y. Shichor, “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil: Middle Eastern Reactions to Rising China’s Uyghur Crackdown,” Griffith Asia Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 1 (January 2015), pp. 62–85. 13 N. M. Al-Tamimi, China-Saudi Arabia Relations, 1990–2012: Marriage of Convenience or Strategic Alliance? (London: Routledge, 2014), p. 92. 14 Quoted in Shichor, “See No Evil,” p. 72. 15 J. Zenn, “Jihad in China? Marketing the Turkistan Islamic Party,” Terrorism Monitor (The Jamestown Foundation), vol. 9, no. 11 (17 March 2011), p. 7. 16 B. Fishman, “Al-Qaeda and the Rise of China: Jihadi Geopolitics in a Post-Hegemonic World,” The Washington Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 3 (2011), pp. 47–50. 17 For example: P. Meyer, “China’s De-Extremization of Uyghurs in Xinjiang,” New America Foundation Policy Paper (June 2016), www.newamerica.org/international-security/policy-papers/china-deextremization-uyghurs-xinjiang/ (accessed 15 September 2016). 18 N. Rosenblatt, “All Jihad Is Local: What ISIS’ Files Tell Us about Its Fighters”, New America Foundation Policy Paper (July 2016), pp. 26–8. Data for mid-2013 to mid-2014. 19 X.Z. Guo, China’s Security State: Philosophy, Evolution, and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 187–220. See also: D. L. Shambaugh, Modernizing China’s Military: Progress, Problems, and Prospects (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), p. 170. 20 For more data and sources, see Y. Shichor, “The Great Wall of Steel: Military and Strategy in Xinjiang,” in F. A. Starr (ed.), Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2004), pp. 148–9. 21 For more details, see: Ali, US-China Cold War Collaboration, pp. 166–208. 22 Shichor, “The Great Wall”; See also: www.sinodefence.com/army/organisation/army-orbat.asp (accessed 24 August 2012); www.webspawner.com/users/andrewkc/ (accessed 13 June 2001); www.

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china-defense.com/orbat/pla_div_list_rev34/lanzhou_mr.html (accessed 30 July 2001); Air Power Australia, “People’s Liberation Army Air Force and Naval Air Arm Air Base Infrastructure,” 27 January 2014, www.ausairpower.net/APA-PLA-AFBs.html (accessed 23 September 2016); R. Kamphausen and A. Scobell (eds.), Right-Sizing the People’s Liberation Army: Exploring the Contours of China’s Military (Carlisle, PA: Army War College, 2007), pp. 364–5. Y. Shichor, “Demobilisation: The Dialectics of PLA Troop Reduction,” The China Quarterly, no. 146 (June 1996), pp. 336–59. China’s armed forces reflect a triangular structure: the PLA, the PAPF and the Militia. Y. Shichor, “Worst Case Scenario: The Paradox of PLA Response to Major Ethnic Unrest,” CAPSRAND-CEIP-NDU PLA Conference on Contingency Planning, PLA Style, Arlington, VA, 30 November–1 December 2012, unpublished paper. “Beijing Deploys More Armed Police Power in Xinjiang,” China Military News, 10 February 2010. For more information on the PAPF, see Guo, China’s Security State, pp. 221–55. Shichor, “Worst Case Scenario.” “Thousands of Special Police Transferred to Urumqi,” People’s Daily, 24 November 2011; R. Wubuli, “Qian ming tejing chongshi wu shi jiceng paichusuo” [A Thousand Special Police Enrich Urumqi Municipality’s Grassroots Police Stations], Xinjiang Ribao, 24 November 2011. “Elite Police Squad Marks 1st Anniversary,” China Daily, 23 May 2011. This paragraph draws on Y. Shichor, “Company Province: Civil-Military Relations in Xinjiang,” in Nan Li (ed.), Chinese Civil-Military Relations: The Transformation of the People’s Liberation Army (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 135–50. People’s Daily, 5 March 1998. Jiefangjun Bao, 3 December 2010. T.J. Yue, “Xinjiang shenchan jianshe bingtuan he xinjiang junqu lishu guanxi kao” [Investigation of the Subordinate Relationship between the XPCC and Xinjiang Military Region], Shihezi daxue xuebao (zhexue shehui kexueban) [Shihezi University Journal (Philosophy and Social Sciences)], vol. 21, no. 2 (April 2007), pp. 36–8. Regulations on Militia Work (Beijing: Ministry of National Defense, 1978), in Issues and Studies (February 1980), p. 76. For a historical study, see: R. L. Worden, Chinese Militia in Evolution (Washington, DC: Defense Intelligence Agency, 1980); T. C. Roberts, The Chinese People’s Militia and the Doctrine of People’s War, National Security Affairs Monograph Series no. 83–4 (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 1983). J. C. Strauss, “Paternalistic Terror: The Campaign to Suppress Counter-Revolutionaries in the People’s Republic of China, 1950–1953,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 44, no. 1 (2002), pp. 80–105; K.S. Yang, “Reconsidering the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries,” China Quarterly, no. 193 (2008), pp. 102–21. G. Bovingdon, The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 174–90. See also Y.X. Zhang, “Xinjiang jiefang yilai fandui minzu fenliezhuyi de douzheng ji qi lishi jingyan” [The Struggle against National Separatism since Xinjiang’s Liberation and Its Historical Lessons], in F. R. Yang (ed.), Fan Yisilanzhuyi, fan Tujuezhuyi yanjiu [Research on Pan-Islamism and Pam-Turkism] (Urumqi: Xinjiang shehui kexue yuan [Xinjiang Institute of Social Sciences], 1994), pp. 331–63. Y. Shichor, “Crackdown: Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in China,” in B. Heuser, E. Shamir and E. Inbar (eds.), National Experiences with Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies (London: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 95-112. L. Ding and W.A.W. Neilson (eds.), China’s West Region Development: Domestic Strategies and Global Implications (Singapore: World Scientific, 2004); Y. M. Yeung and J.F. Shen (eds.), Developing China’s West: A Critical Path to Balanced National Development (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2004); Q.J. Tian, “China Develops Its West: Motivation, Strategy and Prospect,” Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 13, no. 41 (2004), pp. 611–36; D.S.G. Goodman (ed.), China’s Campaign to ‘Open Up the West’: National, Provincial and Local Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Buckley, Chris, “China Internal Security Spending Jumps Past Army Budget,” Reuters, 6 March 2011; Yu, Miles, “Inside China: Security Spending Tops Defense,” Washington Times, 7 March 2012; M. Singh, “China’s Defence Budget: 2013–2014,” IDSA Comments, Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (India), 18 March 2013. I.C.Y. Hsü, “The Great Policy Debate in China, 1874: Maritime Defense vs. Frontier Defense,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 25 (1965), pp. 212–28. See also: A. Scobell, E. Ratner and M. Beckley, China’s Strategy toward South and Central Asia: An Empty Fortress (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2014).

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5 ORIGINS, INTENTIONS, AND SECURITY IMPLICATIONS OF XI JINPING’S BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE Jeffrey Reeves

Since 2013, the Xi Jinping administration’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ concept – or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – has emerged as China’s principal foreign policy directive. Chinese senior leaders and diplomats now regularly cite the BRI as both the model and rationale for China’s engagement with states as near abroad as Mongolia and as far afield as the United Kingdom. China’s primary foreign policy institutions, including the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), and the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), have also internalized BRI engagement in their developmental and outreach models, per President Xi’s directives. In parallel, the BRI has become the focal point of a flood of Chinese and English language scholarship and media reporting on China’s foreign affairs. The BRI, in short, has assumed its place in the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) pantheon of foreign policy engagement strategies, alongside such concepts as Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Reform and Open’ policy and Hu Jintao’s ‘Peaceful Rise/Development’ strategy. Like these past foreign policy strategies, however, the BRI remains a largely elastic policy concept that expands or contracts depending on its situational application. In its most inclusive form, the BRI is China’s 21st century grand strategy; a comprehensive framework for global engagement with the country’s near- and distant-abroad. In its more parochial form, the BRI is an engagement strategy aimed first and foremost at leveraging China’s bilateral relations with its peripheral states to ensure the country’s continued economic growth. One can view this policy ambiguity in the Xi administration’s official announcements, state-backed media publications, and policy speeches. One gets an even clearer picture of discontinuity in the BRI’s formulation and intent, however, through examination of Chinese and English language scholarship, which often presents a muddled, fragmented account of the concept largely detached from BRI’s actual component parts. From a policy perspective, the Xi administration’s loose application of the BRI to its foreign relations has strategic advantage. Conceptual ambiguity within a state’s foreign policy and/or grand strategy, for instance, allows it the flexibility to execute policy and to respond to changing geopolitical and economic conditions as needed.1 This ambiguity, however, complicates public understanding of the BRI’s scope and leads to uncertainty over China’s policy intentions.

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Regional uncertainty over China’s motivations, in turn, has the potential to undermine China’s BRI-related messaging as Asian states (or the societies within those states) become apprehensive over the BRI’s inherently expansionist nature.2 As such, the BRI remains a critically misunderstood concept both in its intentions and in its potential implications to Asian regional security. This chapter contributes to scholarship on the BRI in two critical respects. It undertakes a concise analysis of key Chinese policy documents and Chinese and English language scholarship on the BRI’s intellectual origins, Beijing’s BRI policy intentions, and the BRI’s underlying engagement strategy, to provide a comprehensive overview of the BRI as a concept. It then considers the effect the BRI has on Asian security, with a particular focus on emerging economies, which BRI engagement specifically targets.

The BRI’s conceptual origins Any comprehensive account of the Xi administration’s BRI strategy must first consider the initiative’s conceptual origins. In a country of China’s size, however, it is impossible to identify all the academic and policy inputs that may have informed Chinese senior leadership as they developed the BRI approach. The best one can hope for is to identify sample material that can serve as a symbolic point of analytic departure. Scholarship and policy writings by Lin Yifu and Wang Jisi of Peking University – both high-profile, influential Chinese academics with established government ties – are ideal in this respect.3 While certainly not alone in their influence on BRI development, both Lin and Wang wrote widely on the need for a BRI ‘type’ foreign policy in the years immediately preceding the Xi administration’s adoption of the initiative. Lin and Wang’s well-established influence within Chinese policy circles also suggests the two men are particularly apt for treatment as BRI thought entrepreneurs.4 As early as 2012, for instance, Lin Yifu argued forcefully for China to adopt a more activist foreign policy as a means to alleviate the country’s domestic economic challenges. In a book entitled From the Western Tide to the Eastern Wind, Lin called on Beijing to develop a robust foreign engagement strategy based on the expansion of overseas foreign direct investment, on the development of overseas markets, and on the augmentation of export driven growth.5 Lin specifically proscribed a “Keynesian plus” engagement strategy where China would invest in fixed assets such as roads and rail in emerging economies (and countries with large sovereign debt) to stimulate their economies and to increase their demand for Chinese manufactured goods.6 Lin called the program a China-type “Marshall Plan” and argued it would provide a means to deal with China’s domestic overcapacity, to create a profitable outlet for the country’s sizable foreign currency reserves, and to increase China’s standing within the regional and global economies.7 Wang Jisi made a similar point in 2012, writing that China must ‘go west’ as a means to ensure the country’s economic growth and to achieve its political and security aims.8 Wang argued that by shifting its geo-economic orientation toward Central and South Asia, China could increase its access to natural resources in its near-abroad, could establish overland trade routes that could integrate China’s impoverished western provinces into the global economy, and could strengthen China’s fight against instability in the Xinjiang Uyghur’s Autonomous Region (XUAR). Wang specifically referenced China’s ancient Silk Road route – which he identified as extending from China through Central and South Asia to the Middle East and Eurasia – as the essential model for China’s future ‘go west’ engagement. Wang also argued that the ‘go west’ strategy would increase China’s regional and international influence, particularly once its partner states benefited from greater economic and political cooperation with China.9 Differing in their precise policy recommendations, Lin and Wang shared an understanding of the structural conditions within China that constituted the need for policy realignment under the 62

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Xi administration. The men saw, for instance, that China’s export and domestic investment-led economic development model had, after three decades, reached a point of diminishing returns. In line with the 2012 Development Research Center of the State Council and World Bank’s ‘China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative Society’ report, Lin and Wang agreed that China needed to reform its economic development model to ensure continued high-quality growth and to capitalize on China’s excess capital and capacity.10 For both Lin and Wang, the answer to China’s economic malaise lay in the country’s use of its export capital to develop external markets in emerging economies that could absorb its domestic surplus. As such, Lin and Wang’s policy recommendations were both novel means forward for Chinese leadership and a continuity of China’s past foreign policy initiatives aimed at fostering relations between China and the developing world. Specifically, one can rightly view the BRI as a logical progression of China’s ‘good neighbor policy’ approach, its ‘south-south cooperation’ scheme, and its ‘go out’ directive, among others. Importantly, Lin and Wang also shared the belief that China could use its foreign economic engagement to increase Chinese strategic influence at the regional and global level. For both men, this strategic enhancement was a secondary order effect to economic integration but a primary outcome in terms of desirability. Wang, in particular, wrote that China should capitalize on its increased economic centrality for strategic ends. As outlined below, this understanding of the linkage between China’s economic strength and its strategic value is central to the Xi administration’s BRI formulation.

The Xi administration’s BRI: policy development and evolution In its most basic form, the BRI consists of two core initiatives: the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR), or the ‘belt’ and ‘road’. President Xi initially presented the two concepts as separate, sub-regional initiatives aimed at expanding China’s economic presence in Central Asia and Southeast Asia, respectively, and only later identified them as components of a larger strategic concept. In October 2013, President Xi introduced the SREB concept during a speech to Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University, where he called on Central Asian states to increase their economic cooperation and integration with China’s western-most provinces. Xi pledged Chinese investment and financing to the region’s emerging economies for infrastructure development that would, in turn, facilitate intra- and inter-regional trade.11 In November 2013, President Xi unveiled the MSR concept during a speech to the Indonesian Parliament. In the speech, President Xi pledged Chinese financing, expertise, and labor to the construction of an infrastructure web linking China to Southeast Asia.12 As with the SREB, Xi referenced a linkage between infrastructure development in emerging economies and expanded Chinese trade. By the end of the year, Chinese senior leadership had come to conflate the two concepts into the BRI. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, for instance, referenced the SREB and the MSR as the BRI in a widely publicized speech on Chinese diplomacy in the People’s Daily in December 2013.13 From this point onward, the two separate regionally based initiatives became linked in a larger strategic concept that would, as outlined below, expand overtime to become a global grand strategy. Before considering the concept’s evolution, however, it is necessary to first examine the context and timing in which the Xi administration announced the BRI. In choosing October and November 2013 to introduce the SREB and MSR initiatives, the Xi administration made certain the policies would be seen in light of China’s plans for fundamental domestic economic reform, as outlined in the November 2013 3rd Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China 63

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(CPC) Central Committee (‘Third Plenary’ hereafter). More specifically, the BRI’s component parts accorded closely with the Third Plenary’s key reform goals of allowing market conditions to determine resource allocation and capital investment. The BRI also supported the Third Plenary’s call for the construction of free trade areas between China and its neighboring states and the relaxation of border controls to allow great outbound investment and trade flows.14 More directly, Foreign Minister Wang specifically identified the BRI as China’s means of economic diplomacy to support the Third Plenary reform goals in late 2013.15 The BRI’s introduction also coincided with the October 24–25 2013 CPC forum on Chinese peripheral diplomacy, which marked a turning point in the Xi administration’s foreign policy orientation towards regional diplomacy. Examined in parallel, one can discern linkages between the SREB’s and the MSR’s policy intentions of Sino–centric regional economic integration and the forum’s stated objectives of enhanced Chinese cultural influence, greater regional economic interconnectedness, and enhanced political trust between China and its neighboring states.16 Viewed in line with the Third Plenary and Forum on Peripheral Diplomacy, one can see the BRI, in its nascent phase, was primarily a regionally focused economic policy formulated to push China along a domestic reform path. Shortly after the BRI’s introduction, however, the Xi administration began to use the concept as shorthand for China’s overseas economic engagement writ large. By 2014, for example, the Xi administration had included its bilateral and multilateral engagement with Pakistan, Mongolia and Russia, and India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh into the BRI framework as a ‘three corridors’ component to the existing model. This gradual expansion demonstrated the Xi administration’s willingness to use the BRI to encapsulate new developments in China’s foreign relations, such as Chinese, Russia, and Mongolia ‘trilateralism’, and its willingness to retroactively include initiatives, such as the Sino–Pakistan economic corridor, under the policy’s auspices. As a parallel development, Chinese state-controlled media started to present the BRI as China’s comprehensive economic approach to more than 100 states, ranging from Asia to Africa, from the Middle East to the European Union. In 2014, for instance, Xinhua published a statement calling the BRI the world’s longest economic corridor, thereby expanding the concept from a regionally focused economic engagement strategy to a globally oriented grand strategy.17 A flood of media and official commentary on the BRI’s focus similarly argued that the concept’s component parts, particularly the SREB and MSR, were inherently oriented toward the country’s distant abroad. This reorientation of the BRI’s scope led some Chinese and Western analysts to identify any and all Chinese foreign investment, acquisitions, aid, or bilateral economic exchange – whether in the Middle East or Africa – as part of BRI engagement.18 The BRI’s focus also changed in 2014, moving to incorporate finance, which was a secondary economic concern alongside investment and trade in the concept’s initial phase. Most notable in this respect was the Xi administration’s inclusion of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) into the BRI. While an inherent part of the Xi administration’s peripheral diplomacy approach in October 2013 and MSR proposal in November 2013, the Xi administration did not initially reference the AIIB as a financial mechanism for the BRI until around April 2014.19 The Xi administration also announced the development of a USD40 billion Silk Road Fund and a sovereign wealth fund funded MSR Bank in November 2014 to finance project development within the BRI’s framework.20 As with its inclusion of the Sino–Pakistan economic corridor, the Xi administration also retroactively included the New Development (BRICs) Bank as part of the BRI, albeit with a degree of ambiguity considering the fund’s multinational ownership. In 2014, the Xi administration also introduced a normative component to the BRI that was absent from the initiative’s earlier conceptualizations. Specifically, President Xi and other senior Chinese leaders worked to link the domestically oriented China Dream and Rejuvenation of the 64

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Chinese Nation ideational concepts to the country’s foreign relations as manifest in BRI engagement.21 In addition, President Xi built on the idea of BRI engagement to argue for a Community of Shared Destiny in Asia and an Asian Security Concept centered on BRI-led interconnectivity at both the 2014 and 2016 ‘Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building in Asia’ (CICA) summits.22 President Xi also incorporated the past ‘Friendly, Secure, and Prosperous Neighborhood’ policy (睦邻安邻富邻) and his neo-Confucian concept of ‘amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness’ (亲诚惠容) to BRI relations starting in late 2014.23 By early 2015, discourse on the BRI’s scope and intention – both official and unofficial – had developed to the point where the initiative began to lose value as a strategic framework. What had started as two clear, separate regional initiatives had grown into a sprawling global engagement design more notable for what it excluded than what it included. The Xi administration responded to this confusion by releasing what to date remains the most definitive account of the BRI in March 2015, the NDRC, MOFA, and MOFCOM joint publication, ‘Push Forward the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Economic Road’s Common Vision and Operation’. The statement built on the SREB and MSR concepts to include the state’s policy innovations, thereby replacing the original BRI framework with a more complicated multi-level, multi-directional model. The statement described the BRI as a comprehensive topdown and bottom-up, whole of government initiative to grow China’s economy through economic integration with emerging and developed economies and to advance China’s regional and global relations and reputation through economic exchange.24 The statement outlined a five-part approach to BRI engagement including the establishment of linkages between China’s policy, facilities, trade, capital, and social sectors and those of its partner state. Rather than providing clarity on the BRI’s scope and intentions, however, the 2015 statement raised uncertainties about its limitations and goals. On the one hand, the statement highlighted the SREB and MSR’s centrality in the BRI, suggesting the initiative remained primarily regionally focused. On the other hand, the statement’s inclusion of China’s political, economic, security, and cultural exchange within the BRI framework suggested the initiative had become China’s primary organizing principle for all its foreign engagement. It is unsurprising, therefore, that scholars who examine the BRI in line with China’s foreign and security policy remain confused as to the initiative’s boundaries and the Xi administration’s intentions. Indeed, as one can see in the following section’s summary of Chinese and Western writing on the BRI, fundamental differences remain among experts as to what the BRI precisely is and what the BRI precisely does.

Understanding the BRI: Chinese and Western viewpoints By 2015, the BRI had grown from a regionally-based economic policy aimed at integrating China with Central and Southeast Asia to a globally-oriented grand strategy with financial mechanisms worth hundreds of billions of dollars, a geographic scope that included Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Eurasia, and Europe, and a population focus of 4.4 billion people. In line with this expansion of scope and focus, the BRI’s mandate also grew from managing peripheral diplomacy to ordering China’s global foreign relations.25 Understandably, the concept’s expansion has caused confusion among scholars, particularly Western academics who do not speak or read Chinese, as to the BRI’s conceptual demarcations. Within Chinese scholarship, for instance, there is a clear division between analysts who argue the BRI maintains a predominately regional orientation and those who assert the BRI is a global strategy. Those who view the initiative as regionally based tend to write in line with Lin and Wang, arguing that the BRI’s primary purpose it to establish linkages between China and Central and Southeast Asia to facilitate the country’s economic growth and economic restructuring. 65

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This body of scholarship argues the BRI is primarily concerned with investment in China’s peripheral emerging economies where interest rates allow for profitability (as opposed to China’s fatigue-ridden domestic economy) and where expanded infrastructure linkages facilitate external market development and expand Chinese exports.26 Scholars writing within this approach also argue that regionalization is central to the BRI’s priorities, including internationalization of the RMB through currency swaps and trade financing and the alleviation of China’s excess capacity through expanded trade.27 For scholar advocates of this regional-centric model, the Xi administration has also formulated the BRI to secure China’s access to natural resources in its near abroad including oil, gas, and minerals.28 For Chinese scholar advocates of a globally oriented model, conversely, the BRI is more than an economic initiative in that it is less concerned with profitability and more concerned with China’s regional and global influence. These writers view the BRI as a strategic tool the Xi administration can use (and is using) to challenge the existing ‘Western-led’ international order, both in terms of economics and security.29 Within this model, the BRI is a grand strategy with material and normative elements aimed at expanding China’s influence through the development of ‘representative’ financial institutions and through the expansion of the China Dream and China Rejuvenation concepts.30 In its most cosmopolitan form, the BRI is the Xi administration’s approach to the effective establishment of a Sino-centric community of shared destiny in Asia, which will serve as a springboard for China’s eventual global centrality.31 Within this globally oriented model, the BRI is a strategic policy that leverages China’s economic strength for strategic effect. One can similarly categorize Western scholarship on the BRI between that which looks at the initiative as a purely economic policy, that which takes a ‘middle ground’ approach, and that which argues the BRI is China’s revisionist grand strategy. Overlaying this categorization, one can see linkages between industries and perspectives with media preferring an economic interpretation, academia preferring a middle approach, and policy taking a more cynical interpretation. While there is a large body of work that transcends these admittedly simplistic categories, their analytic value comes from their ability to account for a substantial majority of published Western work on the BRI. In media writing on the BRI, for instance, analysis is largely limited to the initiative’s financial and commercial outcomes and the implications BRI engagement has for China’s and its partner states’ economic development. Such analysis tends to appear in newspapers like the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and Financial Times (FT), both of which approach news analysis through an economic lens as a matter of course.32 These papers (and others like them) present the BRI as an entirely instrumental initiative concerned with profitability and physical interconnectivity rather than a political or strategic strategy to advance China’s global presence. Whatever strategic implications stem from BRI engagement – and there are certainly many – reporting in Western media presents them as natural byproducts of state engagement and globalization, not the result of a Chinese policy agenda. One sees more centrist views of the BRI within Western academic writings, as scholars devote more time and space to their analysis than their media counterparts. Although the approach and methodology is divergent, Western scholars do tend to view the BRI as an economic and strategic policy with diverse aims ranging from economic integration to cultural diplomacy.33 Within this centrist model, the BRI is a comprehensive policy tool to effect state relations across multiple sectors including economics, politics, and security. As such, this academic/centrist interpretation closely accords with the Xi administration’s official presentation of the BRI, as outlined above. In contrast, much of Western policy writing (from government-affiliated think tanks, for instance) argues the BRI is fundamentally a grand strategy for Chinese revisionism and 66

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expansionism at the global and regional levels.34 In direct juxtaposition to the view the BRI is an economic policy with secondary strategic and security outcomes, this interpretation of the BRI sees the initiative as a political tool formulated to ensure Chinese interests abroad and to challenge the United States at the global level.35 Among other contentions, the ‘grand strategy’ approach holds the BRI is China’s comprehensive response to the US ‘rebalance’ to Asia.36 The BRI, from this perspective, is more about informal alliance and spheres of influence than it is about profitability. Indeed, a common theme among ‘grand strategy’ writings is the Xi administration’s willingness to endure financial loss through BRI exchange to achieve China’s strategic ends. In addition to these perspectives, one can observe something of a geographic divide within Western writing on the BRI between European analysts, who tend to argue the BRI’s more virtuous traits, and US analysts, who are more concerned with the BRI as a strategic-level challenge to US interests and positions abroad. With the necessary caveat that there are, of course, exceptions to this generalization, one can see the tendency within European media (FT, for instance) and scholarship to treat the BRI as an opportunity while one can equally see the trend in US newspapers (WSJ) and among US scholars to view the BRI with suspicion and cynicism. To parse all the reasons for this geographic bifurcation in perception is beyond this chapter’s mandate and would, indeed, require a more rigorous course of comparative analysis. It is, however, useful to highlight the most immediate reason for disparity between EU and US interpretations of the BRI: the fact that the EU is included in the BRI’s scope as a target area for Chinese investment and trade and the United States is not. One important reason, therefore, why EU based analysts would view the BRI as beneficial is that EU member states do, in fact, stand to benefit from the initiative.37 The United States, conversely, remains entirely outside the BRI’s framework. One commonality among the otherwise divergent viewpoints on the BRI is that the initiative will have significant impact on Asia’s geopolitical landscape. While opinion differs as to whether the impact will be net positive or negative, Chinese and Western scholars largely agree that the BRI has the potential to fundamentally transform Asian states’ domestic sectors and regional institutions. To further understanding of the BRI’s security implications, the remaining chapter examines the initiative’s actual and potential outcomes for stability/instability with the emerging economies in Central, South, Southeast, and Northeast Asia.

The BRI and Asia: security and insecurity Chinese engagement with the emerging states and economies in Asia through the BRI’s framework has clear security outcomes, particularly when one views the states’ security in line with widened definitions to include economic, political, social, environmental, and military security. The BRI’s influence on Asian security is particularly significant if one adopts the Xi administration’s application of the concept to China’s economic, political, and social exchange, as described in the 2015 NRDC statement. Even as a purely economic strategy, however, the BRI has an outsized influence on Asian security, serving as the epicenter of a larger ripple effect throughout the region. Five characteristics of BRI engagement, in particular, are useful in conceptualizing the initiative’s influence on regional security. First, the BRI largely employs a ‘one size fits all’ approach to economic state engagement, where priority is given to investment in infrastructure construction, extractive industries’ access, and external market development.38 The underlying logic for this singular approach is that all BRI partner states will benefit from greater economic engagement with China and that the quantity of investment is more important than the quality.39 While BRI engagement does unquestionably benefit some states, the initiative’s current failure to account for local contingencies, however, is a source of actual and/or potential instability.40 67

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On the positive side, the BRI’s focus on investment in fixed assets such as roads and rail can expand its partner states’ interconnectivity with China, decrease the states’ transportation costs, increase the states’ commodity exports’ competitiveness, and contribute to the states’ manufacturing and employment growth. These benefits are particularly clear for China’s Central Asian neighboring states, which are otherwise dependent on Russian markets for their trade. Similarly, China’s BRI investment in extractive industries has been a boom for states such as Mongolia, Tajikistan, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Lao PDR, all of which remain among the poorest countries in the world.41 The BRI’s establishment of economic corridors for development has also benefited states like Pakistan, which view China’s willingness to invest in the country’s troubled energy and transport sectors as an economic windfall. On the negative side, the BRI’s singular approach to economic exchange can, and does, lead to uneven growth, economic underdevelopment, and/or sizable debt in Asian emerging economies. BRI investment in states like Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan, for example, is almost exclusively in the countries’ extractive industries, which diverts the state’s resources and shapes the state’s priorities away from growth in more pro-poor economic sectors such as services and agriculture.42 Chinese BRI investment in and construction of infrastructure in states such as Lao PDR and Indonesia, for instance, exposes them to significant debt burden and vulnerability to debt default.43 Chinese attempts to develop overseas markets in states like Kazakhstan and Vietnam has also undermined local manufacturing and retail sectors and led to charges of dumping.44 BRI influence over these developing states’ domestic economic structures is, therefore, a source of instability with significant secondary effects for human security and political stability, among others. The second characteristic of BRI engagement that influences Asian security is its inherently asymmetric nature. As China’s economy and resource base is so much larger than any other Asian state (with the exception of Japan), all its BRI partnerships result in disproportionate Chinese influence over the smaller states’ domestic institutions and/or policy priorities.45 This imbalance can have a positive effect on states’ security as Chinese involvement with an emerging economy can significantly spur economic and employment growth. Analysts estimate Chinese financing and construction of the Sino–Pakistan economic corridor, for example, could contribute up to 70,000 new jobs in Pakistan and contribute 5.3 percent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth. BRI originating economic growth, in turn, has stabilizing effects on Pakistan’s domestic security environment, which is a source of instability for China’s western provinces as well as Central and South Asia as a whole46 Conversely, asymmetry in China’s relations with BRI partner states can also have a destabilizing effect as China often fails to understand the extent of the influence it gains from its engagement. Routine investment or a standard infrastructure development project for a Chinese bank or state-owned enterprise, for example, can come to define a smaller state’s domestic economy and deeply influence its political and/or social stability. Chinese investment in Myanmar’s and Nepal’s hydropower sectors, Pakistan’s energy sector, and Lao PDR’s hydropower and agricultural sectors through the BRI, for instance, while unquestionably contributing to the states’ energy security and further economic growth, has also triggered secondary effects that lead to insecurity and instability for the states. China’s dam building in Myanmar, Nepal, and Lao PDR, for example, has caused environmental degradation and social dislocation within the states’ riparian areas while Chinese BRI investment along the Sino–Pakistan economic corridor has contributed to political instability and state/society conflict within the state.47 China’s BRI engagement with Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, and Vietnam – relatively insignificant economic partners for Beijing – has also lead to localized conflict between political elite aligned with China and populations opposed to China’s political and economic influence. 68

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Third, and closely related, is the effect economic dependency resulting from China’s BRI engagement has on security in Asia. Economic dependency occurs when one state becomes disproportionately reliant on another state for economic growth and stability, whether through investment, access to financing, infrastructure, and/or trade. As the Xi administration specifically conceptualized the BRI as a policy tool to expand Chinese overseas investment and trade with emerging economies, it is clear the initiative is predicated on the deepening of dependency between China and its BRI partner states. Through dependency, as with asymmetry, a dominant state can gain direct and indirect power over a dependent state’s domestic structures, whether or not it is the state’s intention to do so.48 Economic dependency also creates relationships predicated on benefits and risk, with corresponding implications for security. One can observe economic dependency’s effect on security most clearly in the resource dependent states on China’s periphery. The BRI’s post-2013 focus on investment in and development of extractive industries in states throughout Northeast, Central, South, and Southeast Asia led to a commodities boom which, in turn, led to increased government spending on mining and non-mining related projects. In Mongolia, for instance, Chinese investment in and demand for coal, copper, and gold singularly contributed to the country’s 11.6 and 7.9 percent growth in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Drop in demand for these natural resources due to China’s own economic slowdown starting in 2014, however, led to a dramatic drop in overall growth in the country to less than 1 percent in 2015 and 2016.49 Mongolia, as a result, experienced a sovereign debt and currency crisis in 2016 with severe implications for human security and political stability in the country.50 A drop in Chinese demand for oil and gas – both sectors targeted by BRI investment – has led to similar economic stagnation in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, where local governments increased spending in line with Chinese investment only to see funding disappear from 2015 onward.51 In addition to Asian commodities exporters, dependency on China for trade and investment has led to opportunity and vulnerability for Asian states including Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, according to a 2016 Asian Development Bank economics working paper.52 These states have seen an annual aggregated one-third of a percentage point decline in growth due to China’s domestic economic slowdown since 2015 and are expected to continue this dependency-driven decline into 2017. As the BRI seeks to expand regional dependency on Chinese financing and trade, it is now clear that such dependency, while providing opportunities for growth during economic boom cycles, is a source of instability in times of economic austerity. While dependent states can reduce their vulnerability through political maneuvering, to effectively accomplish this the state must have developed and legitimate political institutions and strong political/social relations. The absence of this type of political stability in China’s Asian emerging state partners is the fourth defining characteristic of BRI engagement with regards to regional security. Indeed, if the emerging economies in Asia share one characteristic, it is the absence of political stability and/or legitimacy, most tellingly observable through poor state/ society relations within the state, corruption among the state’s political elite, and failure by the state to establish control over the country’s domestic sovereignty.53 Of the Asian states this article examines, all are include in the Fund for Peace’s Fragile State Index 2015 in ‘high alert’, ‘alert’, or ‘warning’ categories, largely because of conditions resulting from lack of democracy, state/ society tensions, and weak state legitimacy. Most of China’s developing peripheral states also have authoritarian modes of government or underdeveloped/ineffective ‘democratic’ systems that lend themselves to ineffective rule and corruption. China’s peripheral states almost all scored within the bottom percentile of the World Bank’s 2015 worldwide governance indicators, for example, which measure such governance dimensions as voice and accountability, political stability, 69

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government effectiveness, rule of law, and corruption. In addition, many of China’s peripheral states are politically and/or geographically isolated, which further contributes to their accessibility and vulnerability to Chinese influence. While an external condition to the BRI, the issue of governance is relevant for discussion of the initiative’s influence on Asian security as 1) China relies substantially on elite relations for BRI engagement and 2) such reliance results in greater Chinese influence over domestic issues within its Asian neighbors to include political stability and/or instability and state/society relations. Under the BRI’s auspices, for instance, the Xi administration has provided direct financial support through foreign direct investment, currency swaps, and loans to the Mongolian, Kazak, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Afghan, Pakistani, Nepalese, Myanmarese, Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese governments for the sake of stability maintenance, to varying degrees.54 BRI support of this type has helped certain governments, such as Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev regime and Tajikistan’s Rahmon regime, to overcome social opposition to perceived corruption and mismanagement, and enabled other governments, such as Nepal’s Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist, Cambodia’s Hun Sen regime, and Vietnam’s Communist Party, to maintain firm holds on power. As such, the BRI’s use of economic support to effect political stability is a source of regional stability in that it contributes to regime stability. From a critical perspective, however, the Xi administration’s use of the BRI to effect regime stability is a source of societal instability as it ensures the continuation of political and elite institutions that local populations either view as illegitimate and/or corrupt. As a direct result, BRI support for political stability also enables states throughout the Asian region to ignore external pressure to deal with issues such as political repression, human rights abuses, and ethnic discriminatory policies. States like Cambodia, Lao PDR, Vietnam, and the Philippines, for instance, are far less pervious to threats of suspended trade and/or sanctions with the surety that Chinese support will continue to arrive under the BRI framework.55 The fifth BRI characteristic that influences Asian security is the palpable concern among China’s neighboring states’ societies that greater economic integration with China will lead to suboptimal outcomes such as environmental degradation, political corruption, poor ethnic relations, and/or growing income inequality. Difficult to quantify, and therefore circumstantial in nature, one can observe growing opposition to China’s economic exchange, as described in the BRI, in local media, scholarship, and within opposition party statements on the negative effect Chinese money has on political trust in states as diverse as Nepal and Australia. In Mongolia, for instance, there are large and vocal anti-Chinese groups that engage in behavior ranging from outright criminality against Chinese nationals in the country to political activism aimed at limiting Mongolia’s vulnerability to Chinese influence.56 Throughout Central Asia, local populations have similarly mobilized against Chinese interests, attacked Chinese workers at mining sites, targeted Chinese visiting dignitaries with violence and protest, and even, in extreme instances, used terrorist tactics against Chinese embassies and facilities within their countries.57 In Myanmar, anti-Chinese sentiment has grown in parallel with Chinese firms’ expanding presence in the country, and in Lao PDR, social opposition to Chinese control over large-scale agricultural development – a BRI priority – has expanded.58 In all the above instances, social opposition to China’s economic penetration not only targets China, but also the state, which the groups tend to view as beholden to China. Regional anti-Chinese sentiment stemming from BRI economic engagement not only presents a challenge to Chinese investments within Asia but weakens the very authoritative governments on which Beijing depends. More than any other indicator, growing anti-Chinese sentiment in Asia clearly highlights the self-defeating components within the BRI. 70

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Conclusion These five points, taken together, provide an outline for how the BRI influences stability and security within Asia, particularly within the region’s emerging economies, which the initiative specifically targets. As demonstrated above, the BRI has the potential to contribute to regional stability by driving economic growth within emerging economies, strengthening otherwise weak political systems through targeted investment and political support, and creating network linkages through China that states could theoretically draw upon for greater regionalization. Equally, however, the BRI’s mode of engagement creates vulnerabilities within its developing state partners by shaping their priorities in ways that benefit China but not necessarily the state itself, by leading to economic imbalance in its partner states, by undermining political legitimacy, and by exacerbating state/society tensions within its partner states. It is important, however, not to over ascribe the BRI with the ability to drive regional security. Asian security institutions and dynamics exist in myriad ways that supersede and precede BRI engagement. Analysis that suggests the BRI alone is shaping Asian security, as such, is not only factually wrong but analytically shortsighted. This chapter will conclude, therefore, with the caveat that BRI engagement is but one strand of Asian security and must be seen as such for a correct account of Asian security to emerge. The BRI is significant, nonetheless, in that it is China’s contemporary, comprehensive engagement strategy and, as such, represents the actions and intentions of Asia’s traditional and potentially future hegemon. As a standalone initiative, moreover, the BRI does represent a concerted attempt by the region’s predominant power to shift material resources and garner regional influence in ways unprecedented. The chapter’s singular focus is, therefore, justified within its admitted analytical confines.

Notes 1 Williamson Murray, Richard Hart Sinnreich, and James Lacey, The Shaping of Grand Strategy: Policy, Diplomacy, and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 8; William C. Martel, Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice: The Need for an Effective American Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 100. 2 Gao Ke, “’‘一带一路’战略面临的挑战与应对策略,” Renmin Forum, 16 April 2016, www.cssn.cn/zzx/ gjzzx_zzx/201604/t20160426_2983797.shtml 3 Huo Mojing, “创造条件也要上的中国’一带一路,” Financial Times, 8 June 2015. 4 Cheng Li, “China’s New Think Tanks: Where Officials, Entrepreneurs, and Scholars Interact,” China Leadership Monitor 29: 2009. Pp 1-21. 5 Lin Yifu, 从西潮到东风 (Beijing: Zhongxin Publishing House, 2012). 6 Lin Yifu, “世界需要新“马歇尔计划,” Caijin, 18 September 2012, http://economy.caixin.com/201209-18/100438902.html 7 “林毅夫 第一个提出“中国版马歇尔计划”的人,” Cathay Times, 6 November 2014, http://finance. ifeng.com/a/20141106/13251700_0.shtml 8 Wang Jisi, “王缉思：“西进”：中国地缘战略的再平衡,” Aisixiang, 19 October 2012, www.aisixiang. com/data/58232.html 9 Bao Beibei, “王缉思：西进，是还中国以“中国”的地位,” New York Times Chinese, 20 March 2013, http://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/20130320/cc20wangjisi/ 10 World Bank, China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative Society (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013). 11 “习近平发表重要演讲 吁共建“丝绸之路经济带”,” Xinhua, 7 September 2013. 12 “国家主席习近平在印度尼西亚国会发表演讲’,” China News, 3 October 2013, www.chinanews. com/gn/2013/10-03/5344133.shtml 13 Wang Yi, “中国特色大国外交的成功实践,” Renmin Ribao, 19 December 2013, http://cpc.people. com.cn/n/2013/1219/c64102-23883752.html

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Jeffrey Reeves 14 “Communiqué of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China,” China.org.cn, 15 January 2014, www.china.org.cn/china/third_plenary_session/2014-01/15/ content_31203056.htm 15 Wang Yi, “中国特色大国外交的成功实践,” Renmin Ribao, 19 December 2013, http://cpc.people. com.cn/n/2013/1219/c64102-23883752.html 16 Michael D. Swaine, “Chinese Views and Commentary on Periphery Diplomacy,” China Leadership Monitor 44: 2014. Pp 1-43. 17 Wan Yuhang, “一带一路：世界跨度最长的经济走廊,” Xinhua, 8 July 2014. 18 “一图看懂“一带一路”框架思路,” Xinhua, 28 March 2015; Jacopo Dettoni, “Silk Road Revival Drives Chinese Investment Push,” Financial Times, 8 August 2016. 19 According to Google Trends, which measures the frequency of search terms over a five year period, the Chinese terms一带一路 and 亚洲基础设施投资银行 did not regularly appear together until early 2015, with their earliest mention together taking place in March 2014. 20 Li Hang, “中国将出资4百亿美元成立丝路基金,” BBC Chinese, 11 August 2014; “金融加码支持一 带一路:海上丝绸之路银行正筹建,” Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China, 13 November 2014, www.mof.gov.cn/zhengwuxinxi/caijingshidian/zgzqb/201411/t20141113_1158211.html 21 “习近平外交元年：“中国梦”引领中国外交,” Sina, 9 January 2014, http://news.sina.com.cn/c/ sd/2014-01-09/110729197024.shtml 22 Hua Xia, “Xi Proposes to Build Security Governance Model with Asian Features,” Xinhua, 29 April 2016. Available at: www.ecns.cn/2016/04-29/208650.shtml . 23 Feng Bing, 一带一路”：全球发展的中国逻辑 (Beijing: China Democracy and Law Publishing House, 2015); Neil Thomas, “Rhetoric and Reality – Xi Jinping’s Australia Policy,” The China Story, 15 March 2015, www.thechinastory.org/2015/03/rhetoric-and-reality-xi-jinpings-australia-policy/ 24 “推动共建丝绸之路经济带和21世纪海上丝绸之路的愿景与行动,” National Development and Reform Commission, 28 March 2015, www.ndrc.gov.cn/gzdt/201503/t20150328_669091.html 25 Stephen S. Roach, “AIIB’s Founding Members, Led by China, Could Develop New Standards for Global Governance,” YaleGlobal Online, 9 June 2015, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/china%E2% 80%99s-global-governance-challenge 26 James Kynge, “As China Nears Exhaustion Investors Must Look Elsewhere,” Financial Times, 24 August 2016; Zha Daojiong, ““一带一路”框架下境外能源投资逻辑,” School of International Studies, Peking University, 2 April 2015, www.sis.pku.edu.cn/cn/ResearchManagement/ResearchNews/0000000052/do 27 Xu Zheng and Wu Dongfeng, “一带一路”塑就新经贸关系与三个新常态研究,” Huaqiao University Journal 2: 38–44, 2015. 28 Zha Daojiong, ““一带一路”框架下境外能源投资逻辑,” School of International Studies, Peking University, 2 April 2015, www.sis.pku.edu.cn/cn/ResearchManagement/ResearchNews/0000000052/do 29 Li Yihu, “对“一带一路”的国际政治考察,” China Review 209: 2015. 30 Wei Jingguo, “一带一路离不开金融创新,” Study Times, 6 August 2015. 31 Tian Huimin, Tian Tian, and Zheng Wanyun, “中国“一带一路”战略研究,” China Market 21, 836: 10–12, 2015. 32 Charles Hutzler, “China Lays Out Path to Silk Road,” Wall Street Journal, 28 May 2015; Raffaello Pantucci and Anna Sophia Young, “Xinjiang Trade Raises Doubts over China’s ‘Belt and Road’ Plan,” Fiancial Times, 10 August 2016. 33 Moritz Rudolf, “MERICS China Mapping,” Mercator Institute of China Studies, December 2015. 34 Christopher K. Johnson, President Xi Jinping’s ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative (Washington, DC: CSIS, 2016); Dean Cheng, “America Needs a Comprehensive Strategy for Countering China’s Expanding Perimeter of National Interests,” Heritage Foundation, 28 April 2015, www.heritage.org/research/ reports/2015/04/america-needs-a-comprehensive-strategy-for-countering-chinas-expandingperimeter-of-national-interests; David Dollar, “China’s Rise as a Regional and Global Power: The AIIB and the ‘One Belt, One Road’,” Brookings, 15 July 2015, www.brookings.edu/research/ chinas-rise-as-a-regional-and-global-power-the-aiib-and-the-one-belt-one-road/ 35 Shuaihua Wallace Cheng, “China’s New Silk Road: Implications for the US,” YaleGlobal Online, 28 May 2015, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/china%E2%80%99s-new-silk-road-implications-us 36 Elizabeth Economy, “Objectives and Future Direction for Rebalance Economic Policies,” Council on Foreign Relations, 31 March 2016. Available at: www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Elizabeth% 20Economy%20March%2031%202016%20Congressional%20Testimony.pdf 37 Gisela Grieger, “One Belt,One Road (OBOR): China’s Regional Integration Initiative,”European Parliament, July 2016, www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2016/586608/EPRS_BRI(2016)586608_EN.pdf

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Xi Jinping’s belt and road initiative 38 Zhu Feng, “不仅要从中国看世界 更要从世界看中国,” Suzhou Ribao, 11 March 2016. 39 Jia Qingguo, ““一带一路”亟待弄清和论证的几大问题,” Renmin Ribao, 30 March 2015. 40 Di Kun, “共建“一带一路”可借力“发展＋”模式推动合作,” School of International Studies, 14 December 2015, www.sis.pku.edu.cn/cn/ResearchManagement/ResearchNews/0000000125/do 41 ASEAN Secretariat and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, ASEAN Investment Report 2015: Infrastructure and Connectivity (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat, 2015), 3. 42 Evelyn Goh, Rising China’s Influence in Developing Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 43 Roseanne Gerin, “Laos And China Come to Terms on Loan Interest Rate for Railway Project,” Radio Free Asia, 4 January 2016; Chris Brummitt, “Jokowi Leans on China, Central Bank to Revive Indonesia GDP,” Bloomberg, 11 February 2016. 44 Nguyen Hoai, “Vietnam Imposes Safeguard Tariffs on Steel Imports to Block Chinese Products,” VN Express, 19 July 2016, http://e.vnexpress.net/news/business/markets/vietnam-imposes-safeguardtariffs-on-steel-imports-to-block-chinese-products-3438681.html 45 Brantly Womack, Asymmetry and International Relationships (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 10. 46 Daniel S. Markey, “Behind China’s Gambit in Pakistan,” Council on Foreign Relations, 12 May 2016, www. cfr.org/pakistan/behind-chinas-gambit-pakistan/p37855 47 Jeffrey Reeves, Chinese Foreign Relations with Weak Peripheral States: Asymmetrical Economic Power and Insecurity (London: Routledge, 2015). 48 Albert O. Hirschman, National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), ix. 49 “Mongolia: Economy,” Asian Development Bank, 2016, www.adb.org/countries/mongolia/economy 50 Rhiannon Hoyle, “Mongolia: Land of Lost Opportunity,” The Wall Street Journal, 21 March 2016. 51 “External Shocks Hurt Growth in Caucasus, Central Asia,” International Monetary Fund, 25 April 2016, www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2015/09/28/04/53/socar042516d 52 Minsoo Lee, Donghyun Park, and Arief Ramayandi, How Growth Deceleration in the People’s Republic of China Affects Other Asian Economies: An Empirical Analysis (Japan: Asian Development Bank, 2016). 53 Jeffrey Reeves, Chinese Foreign Relations with Weak Peripheral States: Asymmetrical Economic Power and Insecurity (London: Routledge, 2015). 54 Chu Shulong, “中亚政治稳定是一带一路战略推进的一个重要因素,” Caijing, 30 August 2016, http://economy.caijing.com.cn/20160830/4170042.shtml 55 Joel Brinkley, “Chinese Investment Ensures Human Rights Remain Low Priority in Cambodia,” Asia Society, 14 December 2012. Available at: http://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/chinese-investment-ensureshuman-rights-remain-low-priority-cambodia; “中国驻菲律宾大使：中菲良好互动取得积极成果,” China News, 29 September 2016. 56 Han Bochen, “The Trouble with China-Mongolia Relations,” The Diplomat, 18 December 2015. Available at: http://thediplomat.com/2015/11/the-trouble-with-china-mongolia-relations/ 57 “Suicide attack targets Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan,” Al Jazeera, 30 August 2016. Available at: www. aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/explosion-reported-chinese-embassy-in-kyrgyzstan 58 Arnaud Dubus, “The True Cost of Laos’ Banana Plantations,” The Globe, 10 February 2016; Beth Walker, “Anti-Chinese Sentiment on Rise in Myanmar,” China Dialogue, 13 May 2014.

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6 THE DYNAMICS OF RUSSO– CHINESE RELATIONS Stephen Blank

A proper understanding of Russo–Chinese relations requires us to grasp the continuing dynamism of this relationship since the 1980s.1 It has evolved from a relationship of more or less equals in the 1990s to one where Russia’s rising dependence on China and economic inferiority has become increasingly visible. Aleksandr’ Gabuev of the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow now characterizes the relationship as one of asymmetric interdependence, if not an alliance, where Moscow depends more on Beijing than Beijing depends on Moscow.2 This can only lead, ceteris paribus, to a relationship where, in Bismarck’s metaphor, China is the rider and Russia, the horse. Russo–Chinese relations are also among Asia’s most constitutive relations, i.e. they help constitute or define the nature of Asian interstate relations. Therefore, they materially affect the relationships among Japan, the two Koreas, India, Pakistan, and Southeast and Central Asian states to Russia and China, to the U.S., and to each other. Lastly these relations comprise part of the well-known strategic triangle comprising Russia, China, and the U.S. Therefore, they constantly play a critical role in shaping both of global relationships between China, the U.S., and Russia, and Russo–Chinese interaction throughout Asia. Indeed, according to Gilbert Rozman, Russian and Chinese leaders first assess the U.S. and each other before embarking on a new strategy and view the so-called strategic triangle among these three states as a kind of frame-setting process for their larger strategies.3 Thus we must understand this relationship in terms of Sino–Russian bilateral ties, regional relationships across Asia, and globally vis-à-vis the U.S. Accordingly, these relations have evolved considerably since 1991. Unlike most Western analysts, I argue that these relations are not and will not be for the foreseeable future an “axis (or marriage) of convenience.”4 Rather their heightened intimacy expressed as a “comprehensive strategic partnership” bespeaks a profound ideological, geopolitical, and even domestic political “elective affinity” that has evolved over time towards an anti-American alliance that challenges U.S. policy, power, and values. Furthermore, China increasingly dominates this alliance. While this relationship could deteriorate over time; neither government can afford a permanently estranged neighbor across their huge and now largely undefended borders. Moreover, both governments believe the Sino–Soviet enmity of 1956–82 to have been a costly and major strategic mistake or distraction. Although nothing is certain, this affinity will probably continue as long as both states’ ruling systems endure in their present form. Thus, this affinity stems from a common presentation of their national identity to their domestic and foreign audiences and a shared ideological-political approach to the issues of organizing a government and neo-imperial state 74

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(since both think of themselves in those terms) as much as from shared strategic assessments of international relations and of their geopolitical identity.5 China became Russia’s primary Asian partner in 1992 when Russia opted for partnership with it over Japan, a decision stemming as much from an anti-Japanese and anti-Western antipathy among Russian political and military elites and an affinity for Chinese authoritarianism as it did from geopolitical interests.6 It already signified a turning away from the U.S. and the West. Analyses of Russo–Chinese relations have generally overlooked the fact that Russia’s rapprochement with China has also been a fundamental pivot in Russian domestic politics since 1992.7 Domestic political and ideological as much as geostrategic factors drive this partnership as much if not more than geostrategic ones. Indeed, and crucially, both states regard internal and external security as inextricable because they both regard their domestic systems as being under perpetual Western threat. This common perception is critical to understanding this relationship’s ongoing trajectory.8 Initially, Russian reformers condemned the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, stressed rapprochement and unity with the West, and asserted that China was of secondary importance to Russian policy. Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev even talked about raising human rights issues vis-à-vis China. However, already in 1992 as the conservative trend in Russian politics emerged, military men and conservatives successfully blocked rapprochement with Japan. They asserted the need for the primacy of China in Russia’s Asian policy; a point Kozyrev had to accept formally in the 1993 Foreign Policy Concept.9 And they strongly protested any concern for human rights in Russian foreign policy, emphasizing instead the traditional Realpolitik approach of basing policy on classical conceptions of national interest. As these trends have continued to prevail, Sino–Russian relations have continued to evolve to their present status. This policy perspective harmonized with Beijing’s approach. China had recognized the anti-Yeltsin coup plotters in 1991 as the Soviet government, manifested alarm about the domestic impact of Soviet disintegration, particularly as regards Central Asia and Xinjiang, and feared that a democratically oriented Russia would join the general Western condemnation of Chinese policies at that time.10 Furthermore, both sides clearly recognized that the Sino–Soviet enmity of 1956–82 had damaged them both and should never be repeated. Thus gradually China came to be Russia’s principal interlocutor in Asia. Indeed, for several years China was Russia’s gateway into Asia, demonstrating the insufficiency of Russia’s Asian policies till about 2008.11 Certainly Japan’s inept and inflexible approach to relations with Russia in 1992 was of considerable importance in frustrating a Russo–Japanese rapprochement, but the decisive factors were shrewd Chinese diplomacy, China’s stunning economic progress, and Moscow’s retreat from reforms that began in 1992, has intensified since then, and now betokens another period of domestic stagnation.12 Both China and Russia have continued to see this partnership as an ideological and strategic partnership against American liberalism and democracy, not just U.S. power and policy. Therefore, the danger is that this ideological-strategic rivalry will harden into a polarized, bilateral, and hostile division of Asia into blocs based on a Sino–Russian bloc confronting a U.S. alliance system led by alliances with Japan, South Korea, and Australia. Scholars have long recognized that a true Sino–Russian alliance represents one of the greatest imaginable threats to U.S. interests globally, not just in Asia.13 Indeed, some observers have already warned about the consequences of strategic bipolarity in Asia. South Korean columnist, Kim Yo’ng Hu’i, wrote in 2005 that, China and Russia are reviving their past strategic partnership to face their strongest rival, the United States. A structure of strategic competition and confrontation between the United States and India on the one side, and Russia and China on the other is unfolding in the eastern half of the Eurasian continent including the Korean peninsula. 75

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Such a situation will definitely bring a huge wave of shock to the Korean peninsula, directly dealing with the strategic flexibility of U.S. forces in Korea. If China and Russia train their military forces together in the sea off the coast of China’s Liaodong Peninsula, it will also have an effect on the 21st century strategic plan of Korea. We will now need to think of Northeast Asia on a much broader scale. The eastern half of Eurasia, including Central Asia, has to be included in our strategic plan for the future.14 Similarly Lyle Goldstein and Vitaly Kozyrev wrote that, If the Kremlin favors Beijing, the resulting Sino-Russian energy nexus – joining the world’s fastest growing energy consumer with one of the world’s fastest growing producers – would support China’s growing claim to regional pre-eminence. From Beijing’s point of view, this relationship would promise a relatively secure and stable foundation for one of history’s most extraordinary economic transformations. At stake are energy reserves in eastern Russia that far exceed those in the entire Caspian basin. Moreover, according to Chinese strategists, robust Sino-Russian energy links would decrease the vulnerability of Beijing’s sea lines of communication to forms of ‘external pressure’ in case of a crisis concerning Taiwan or the South China Sea. From the standpoint of global politics, the formation of the Sino-Russian energy nexus would represent a strong consolidation of an emergent bipolar structure in East Asia, with one pole led by China (and including Russia) and one led by the United States (and including Japan).15 Arguably, that alliance is happening now or at least is consolidating itself. This is visible in bilateral economic relations, arms sales, and regional security approaches in East Asia where Russia, against its will and perhaps better judgment, is being gradually swept into acquiescence to Chinese policies. In the past several years China has been able to induce Russia to retreat from several formerly held policy precepts to its benefit. It now gets better quality Russian arms than India, it is making serious inroads now that Russia now welcomes into equity ownership of Russian energy companies, including those in the Arctic, has eclipsed Russia as a competitor in Central Asia, and it can increasingly restrict Russia’s independent relations with Japan, ASEAN, and the two Koreas as shown on pg. 82–83.16 Already by 2008 the strategic partnership reflected an unusually intimate and regular bilateral dialogue. The scale of cooperation between Russia and China is reflected in the extensive infrastructure of dialogue between the two states. Regular contacts are maintained at nearly all levels of central Authority. Political dialogue takes place within an extensive framework for bilateral consultations, including meetings of Heads of State held several times a year (at least once a year on a bilateral basis, and also during several multilateral meetings); meetings of prime ministers and foreign ministers; consultations on strategic stability (at the level of deputy foreign ministers); consultations on military cooperation (at the level of defense ministers); and consultations on security issues (between national security advisors since 2005).17 Since then the relationship has become ever more intimate. Both states regularly proclaim a growing identity of views on major world issues and there are many more examples of international cooperation on economics and defense and security issues. This trend, despite hiccups, has 76

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steadily deepened over a decade and there are no signs of any foreseeable change. Moreover, even though both sides say they are not seeking an alliance, Russia certainly has sought an alliance with China, undoubtedly due to its isolation since its 2014 invasion of Ukraine. In November 2014 Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, said in Beijing that Russia and China confront not only U.S. threats in the Asia–Pacific but also U.S.-orchestrated “color revolutions” and Islamic terrorism. Therefore, “The issue of stepping up this cooperation [between Russia and China] has never been as relevant as it is today.”18 Specifically this means his advocacy of enhanced Sino–Russian security cooperation (through unspecified means) both bilaterally and within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.19 Shoigu included not only Central Asia but also East Asia, as did his Deputy Minister Anatoly Antonov. Both men decried U.S. policies that were allegedly inciting color revolutions and support for Islamic terrorism in Southeast and Central Asia. Shoigu further stated that, “In the context of an unstable international situation the strengthening of good-neighborly relations between our countries acquires particular significance. This is not only a significant factor in the states’ security but also a contribution to ensuring peace throughout the Eurasian continent and beyond.”20 This overture to China apparently marked a fundamental reversal of past Russian policy to keep the Chinese military out of Central Asia and retain the option of military intervention there as an exclusively Russian one and could signify Russia’s growing dependence on China in Central Asia and elsewhere under mounting Western and economic pressure. But the details remain to be seen. Such an alliance would also mark a reversal of Chinese policy that has heretofore shunned military involvement in Central Asia but there are some straws in the wind suggesting that Beijing is rethinking this position. On the one hand, China’s Ministry of Defense spokesman, at an international press conference on November 27, 2014, went out of his way to deny that an alliance with Russia existed and said that, I need to emphasize here, though, China and Russia adhere to the principle of no alliance, no confrontation, and not targeting a third party in military cooperation, and therefore it will not constitute threats to any country. It is inappropriate to place normal military cooperation between China and Russia in the same category as the U.S.-Japan military alliance.21 On the other hand, however, on December 16, 2014, right after Shoigu’s visit, Prime Minister Li Keqiang, speaking in Astana, proposed that that the SCO become the “guardian of Eurasia.” Obviously, this stems from concern over Beijing’s showcase policy project of a new silk road through Afghanistan and Central Asia to Europe that would come under severe pressure if Afghanistan collapsed. In this vein, there are also occasional signs that China might actively contribute to the struggle against ISIS (The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) with support for coalition air strikes even if it does so independently and apart from the U.S. coalition.22 This too would mark a revision of past Chinese policies and could betoken movement towards a genuine Sino– Russian military-political alliance in Central Asia against terrorism and Islamism in all its forms. Still more recently China has launched an apparent trial balloon on forming its own Central Asian security organization with local governments, immediately arousing Russian suspicions.23 Obviously, continuation of this trend, if it materializes would profoundly affect world affairs far beyond Central Asia. Moreover, Russia’s new 2014 defense doctrine proposes to “coordinate efforts to deal with military risks in the common space “of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).”24 It also provides for creation of joint missile defense systems. While Moscow has pursued this with the West in the past, this could also be a warning or offer to go with China to create such systems. 77

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Shoigu clearly advocated enhanced Sino–Russian security cooperation (through unspecified means) both bilaterally and within the SCO. Shoigu also stated that, “During talks with Comrade Chang Wanquan, we discussed the state and prospects of the Russian-Chinese relations in the military field, exchanged opinions on the military-political situation in general and the APR in particular.” —“We also expressed concern over US attempts to strengthen its military and political clout in the APR,” he said. “We believe that the main goal of pooling our effort is to shape a collective regional security system.” If this is not an offer for an alliance then we must redefine the term. Certainly, this goes far beyond an “axis of convenience.”25 And at least some Chinese scholars are advocating moving away from non-alignment to a formal alliance with Russia.26 Moreover, China since 2012 has increasingly solicited Russian support for its positions regarding the contemporary Asian security agenda so the reality if not the name of alliance is apparently materializing.27

Dimensions of cooperation and dependence Russia’s pivot to Asia began, not in 2014 but in 2008. Yet despite much diplomatic activity it has only progressed significantly in China.28 There are also mounting critiques of this pivot’s failure inside Russia but the failure to make real progress with Seoul and Tokyo as well as Putin’s obdurate refusal to reform means not just an excessive “tilt” towards China, but also endangers the revival of the Russian Far East (RFE), the indispensable foundation for any serious Russian power presence in East Asia.29 But Russia has not just advocated an alliance with China; it now shows overt manifestations of economic-political dependence upon China and signs that China can induce Russia to reverse past policies to China’s advantage. Two causes stand out. One is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that precipitated severe sanctions and diplomatic isolation concurrent with collapsing energy prices. These events greatly accelerated Moscow’s Ostpolitik and benefitted China because the profound East–West antagonism distracts Washington from Asia and embodies the principle of barbarians fighting barbarians. But the deeper cause is Russia’s utter failure and unwillingness to reform its economy. That last failure has two other critical consequences for this relationship. As Russia retreats from reform so too has China to the point where Xi Jinping’s rule increasingly looks like either Putin’s embrace of autocracy or a return to Maoist modes of rule.30 Thus both governments’ entrenchment of reaction as a policy further cements their mutual identity and affinity identity. Second, stagnation prevents Russia from being able to compete with China in Eurasia, forcing it into greater dependence upon Chinese largesse and political support. Falling energy prices, Western sanctions, and quasi-isolation have all led Russia to seek what can only be called an alliance with China. Shoigu and Antonov’s appeals in Beijing are only part of this dynamic process that is occurring throughout the Russian leadership. Putin’s most recent remarks state that, As we had never reached this level of relations before, our experts have had trouble defining today’s general state of our common affairs. It turns out that to say we have strategic cooperation is not enough anymore. This is why we have started talking about a comprehensive partnership and strategic collaboration. “Comprehensive” means that we work virtually on all major avenues; “strategic” means that we attach enormous inter-governmental importance to this work.31 This is too close for advocacy of an alliance to be coincidental. Putin, if not his colleagues, clearly deny a potential China threat. Putin has also spoken of Russia catching the wind of China’s growth in its sails and derided the China threat theory.32 Putin also indicated recently that Russia 78

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and China would begin discussing a vast “Eurasia project,” presumably comprising both China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) and Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).33 Presumably these talks are based upon China’s earlier assent to the idea of linking Russia’s plans for integrating Eurasia through the EEU to the OBOR project.34 Actually, that episode underscores Russia’s growing weakness vis-à-vis China. Sergei Ivanov, Putin’s Chief of Staff, may claim that the OBOR will link to Russia’s Baikal-Amur and Trans-Siberian railroads and then have a great potential by connecting East and Southeast Asia with Europe.35 Yet this sequence displays China’s victory over Russia and Russia’s inability to compete with China. Russia now is merely a “junior brother” in such endeavors. Typically, China graciously but decisively punctured Russia’s grandiloquent Eurasian and great power pretensions. And Russia’s recklessness and failure to reform greatly assisted in this process. Given the expansive geostrategic benefits that China will obtain while realizing its OBOR vision, the evolving bilateral relationship on this issue portends a massive and decisive Russian strategic defeat in Eurasia rendering it here, as in energy, China’s raw materials appendage.36 Furthermore because the EEU had as one of its original purposes restricting Chinese trade in Central Asia, China’s integrating of Russia’s project to its own subordinates Russia’s program to China’s vision and undermines one of its founding rationales.37 Second, despite Russia’s grandiose visions, China has been unwilling to invest in Russia to anywhere near the degree that Russians have expected or hoped for, both because of China’s economic downturn and because Chinese investment agencies will not run afoul of U.S. banking sanctions and are quite disenchanted with Russia’s failure to fulfill the terms of previous economic agreements such as those from 2009.38 Consequently many Russian analysts have admitted that the so called pivot to Asia is more talk than action and this pivot in reality is a rather ungratifying pivot only to China. As a result, Moscow depends more on Beijing than it should.39 Nevertheless some analysts still extol China’s willingness to participate with Russia in this vast yet unfocused plan for a Eurasian bloc even if almost nothing has happened since 2015 on the ground. Yet no analyst can overcome the fact that Eurasian countries’ trade with Russia, including China’s, has steadily fallen along with Russian investment.40 Similarly there are those analysts who, following Putin, have proclaimed the SCO a paradigm of successful cooperation when it has still done nothing visible or tangible to promote regional security and its achievements (whatever they may be) remain quite obscure.41 These contending assessments are important if Russia is truly losing out to China in Central Asia and cannot compete practically with China in organizing a genuine Eurasian economic community (not the formal organization so entitled but a genuine community) then Russia cannot compete as a truly independent and great Asian power. For, as Valery Kistanov has written, a precondition of achieving this critical policy goal is consolidating a continental bloc of former Soviet republics around Russia. Since China, but not Russia, is doing this, the chances for any success in Russia’s “grand strategy” regarding Asia diminish commensurately.42 Yet that has not stopped policymakers from openly advocating an alliance, going beyond the official terminology, and describing bilateral ties as a comprehensive strategic partnership with China. In 2014 Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that, I can’t fail to mention Russia’s comprehensive partnership with China. Important bilateral decisions have been taken, paving the way to an energy alliance between Russia and China. But there’s more to it. We can now even talk about the emerging technology alliance between the two countries.43 Lavrov immediately followed by observing that “Russia’s tandem with Beijing is a crucial factor for ensuring international stability and at least some balance in international affairs.”44 And as 79

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Shoigu and Antonov were advocating an alliance, Moscow was selling China crown jewels of Russian defense production like the S-400 air defense system and the Su-35 fighter plane and the Amur-class submarine. Moreover, regular joint naval exercises have taken place, not only in the Far East but also in the Mediterranean, signifying Russian acceptance of China’s interests there and desire to lean on Chinese power in the Levant. Indeed, as a result of these exercises, including the most recent ones, “Aerospace Security-2016” Russia may now sell China the nuclear capable Kalibr’ cruise missile for use on Russian made Kilo class diesel-electric submarines even as Russia, for its own purposes, continues the ongoing combined arms build up of its Far Eastern Military District (FEMD) and overall military buildup.45 The Russian Pacific Fleet also joined with the PLAN recently to sail into the disputed Senkaku/ Diaoyu islands provoking a significant Japanese response, an action that appears senseless unless the military and the government are trying to intimidate Japan into an agreement with Russia.46 Yet Russia backed out of selling highly capable rocket engines to China, something that had hitherto not been the case. So there may be some second thoughts in Russia about this alliance.47 Nevertheless a recent Russo–Chinese aerospace simulation of a joint response to a ballistic missile attack drill clearly intended against the U.S. indicated “a new level of trust” between these governments by sharing highly sensitive information as missile launch warning systems and ballistic missile defense that “indicates something beyond simple cooperation” according to Vasily Kashin.48 And as of this writing Moscow is planning joint naval maneuvers with China in the South China Sea, a most inauspicious signal to ASEAN given the recent Hague Permanent court of Arbitration decision against China.49

Economics and development of the Russian Far East The intended outcome of Russia’s overall pivot to Asia is Asian assistance in developing the RFE that would help provide an economic-technological base for Russia to assume a great power role in Asia. However, that outcome has not materialized. This represents another example of how Russia’s economic pivot to Asia amounts essentially to a pivot to China that merely reinforces its mounting dependence on China. Although Russia craves foreign investments and goes throughout Asia to obtain them, it is not succeeding.50 Aleksandr’ Gabuev reports that, “in 2015, Russian companies did not carry out a single public offering or debt placement on Asian exchanges.”51 Moreover, in 2015 trade with China, Japan, and South Korea collapsed and is unlikely to recover because the driving factors were China’s slowdown, the collapse of commodity prices that hit Russia particularly hard because of its dependence on energy exports, and the devaluation of the ruble that forced a drop in purchasing power and imports.52 Neither will Chinese banks lend money to Russia and risk running afoul of the stringent penalties imposed by Washington on banks doing business with Russia. Moreover, Chinese firms are tough negotiators and clearly skeptical about Russian economic conditions.53 In addition the returns on investment in the EU and the U.S. are far greater than in Russia, so Chinese banks, who are the primary if not main source of hope for relief from sanctions for Moscow, are de facto complying with the sanctions regime and constricting any hope for major investment in Russia in general and the RFE in particular.54 Japan will not undertake major investments in the RFE until and unless the territorial issues between Russia and Japan are resolved and the Japanese government endorses such investment. And while South Korea might be willing to help, first it cannot match the scope of Chinese or Japanese investment and second, North Korea and the new sanctions imposed on the DPRK, thanks to its reckless policies, have stalled implementation of major infrastructural projects like a trans-Korean gas pipeline tied to RFE and Siberian gas or a Trans-Korean railroad tied to the 80

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Trans-Siberian railroad. Those projects, as Western and Russian analysts admit, lie at the core of Russia’s Korean policies and efforts to involve both Korean states in the regeneration of the RFE.55 Yet both of them are now stalled. Meanwhile Russian diplomatic support for North Korea plays badly in Seoul. Thus the pivot to Asia has become a pivot to nowhere. China’s own slowdown also affects Russia negatively as it makes lending to and investing in Russia riskier and less likely or feasible. Not only does this fact reflect dependence on China, it also highlights the utter futility of new Russian efforts to build an autarchic economy and retreat from globalization. While a recent Russo–Chinese agreement on Chinese investment in the RFE has aroused a lot of unfavorable domestic Russian commentary; there is no choice. Russia needs the investment and China has been searching for ways to relocate its overproducing factories that are producing excessive amounts of low profit and less technologically-intensive goods to places with potential for local market growth, and cheap labor. While environmental enforcement is lax; there is scant hope for local market growth and the area is by no means a cheap labor platform, probably quite the opposite. Thus it is quite unlikely that massive Chinese investment will regenerate the RFE.56 But it is also no more likely that anyone else, including Moscow, can or will invest there and thus the entire pivot to the East and its strategic rationale are compromised at the source. In this context much of the commentary from officially connected think tanks like the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy (www.svop.ru) concerning Russia’s need to emancipate itself from international economic globalization (which alone can generate investment funds for the RFE and Russia) because it entails a loss of sovereignty appears to be quite delusional if not a statement that is imposed on its authors.57 In fact, as Gabuev makes clear, Asian business and government does not invest in Russia in general because of the terrible state of the economy and because they recognize that, rhetoric aside, Asia is actually a rather low priority for the Russian bureaucracy.58 Indeed, not even Putin will put in the investment of time necessary to convince Asian governments or investors of the positive benefits awaiting them from such investments despite his many articles on the subject.59 Indeed, this connects to the second reason for the failure of plans for the RFE. Both from the domestic and from the foreign standpoint, this second reason must be found in the nature of the state and its bureaucracy. Bureaucrats are sabotaging plans for major bilateral projects invoking the Chinese threat or the time-honored dodges of Russian bureaucracy, much to China’s anger.60 Meanwhile because foreign Asian investment in the RFE is a matter largely of state firms in China if not elsewhere, these projects are inherently politicized from their inception and any project takes 5–7 years of preparation before it moves forward. The energy pipelines to China and the aforementioned projects regarding Korea exemplify such delays.61 While Moscow formally welcomes foreign investment, its leaders are clearly ambivalent about it regarding it as a potential threat to Russia’s sovereignty or interests. Gabuev notes that Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov’s team fought hard to overcome resistance to Russia’s joining in China’s Asian Investment and Infrastructure Bank (AIIB). Yet even though the government decided to join two weeks before the bank was launched the government failed to win a role for Russia among the bank’s senior officialdom.62 Likewise, despite the grandiose plans to connect with China’s OBOR plan to transform Central Asia and bind it to global infrastructure, trade, and investment networks, “nothing has been really achieved”63 since the agreement with China was signed. Therefore we should be skeptical about such programs as calls for setting up an economic space including ASEAN, the SCO, and the EEU.64 Indeed, the EEU is itself in great difficulties because of the devaluation of the ruble that has forced further devaluations across Central Asia and trade rows among the members. So this union is hardly a panacea for retrieving Russia’s position, economic or political, either in Central Asia or the RFE.65 81

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Yet it is precisely such proposals that Putin advanced in 2015 as ways of overcoming the economic crisis and the political isolation imposed upon Russia due to its aggression in Ukraine.66 In other words, Russia could not even effectuate Putin’s own proposals. This failure epitomizes not just the unwillingness of the bureaucracy to prioritize Asia as discussed here and in earlier articles by Gabuev but also fundamental pathologies of the state administration that preclude a major developmental advance either from external stimulus or from internal stimulation of the RFE.67 As described by Alexander Etkind, the unreformed natured of Putin’s governance that has relapsed into traditional Russian patterns of imperial and Soviet rule is a fundamental source of the ongoing under or even mis-development of the RFE. Consequently officials relate to their territories through the phenomena of internal colonialism atavistic fears of China and traditional bureaucratic evasions.68 Etkind observed that the history of Russian governance throughout both the Russian Federation’s current borders and the historic borders of Tsarist and Soviet Russia is one of internal colonialism.69 Russian rulers related and still relate to their subjects as if they were the masters of a colonial government ruling over subjects who were both alien to them and not to be regarded as autonomous human beings.70 Consequently those practices have consistently blocked inclusive political institutions and imposed extractive ones on Russia, an imposition that can only be sustained by force at the price of continued backwardness, misrule, and so on.71

Chinese views and trends in East Asian security Meanwhile President XI Jinping is clearly pressing to obtain even more Russian support for China’s positions in Asia and is prepared to bribe Russian elites to win support and keep Russia as a dependent ally.72 Russian analysts may pretend that Russia can somehow exploit Sino–American rivalry for its own benefit because of the threat that it might defect to the U.S. but Washington ignores Russia as an Asian player and U.S–Russian ties are so bad, and will be for some time to come, that such defection is utterly implausible.73 Instead we see growing pressure on Russia not only to not criticize China but also to side with it on key Asian security issues. Russo–Chinese naval exercises in the South China Sea suggest, if anything, a retreat from Russia’s previous somewhat exposed position in Southeast Asia. Therefore its inhibitions regarding China are now preventing it from making progress on its Asian pivot in Southeast Asia if not elsewhere. At the Shangri-La conferences in 2015–16 Antonov criticized Washington for its missile defenses in Asia that allegedly threaten both Russia and China. He also attacked U.S. policies as representing a “systematic containment” of both Russia and China. And finally he even attacked Washington for its pressure on Vietnam to prevent Russia from basing long-range aircraft there from where they flew rather provocative missions against the U.S. and Japan.74 More recently Russian officials reiterated that while they want the South China Sea issues to be decided peacefully and that Russia is neutral, only those states who share a border with the sea should decide the question, i.e. the U.S. should be excluded.75 This is Beijing’s line regarding that issue and shows again the increasing inclination to a pro-Chinese stance on Asian security issues even if that stance clashes with traditional Russian interests. These remarks show Moscow’s anti-Americanism and desire to reinforce common threat assessments and interests against Washington with Beijing. But they also display Russia’s alarm that Washington could successfully pressure Vietnam to remove its long-range aircraft even though Vietnam is its main partner in ASEAN. Indeed, some Western scholars believe that Vietnam may well have discounted Russia’s willingness and ability to help it in anything more than a limited way because of its growing dependence on China. Hence talk of Vietnam and American 82

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being natural partners and of future defense sales and cooperation all suggest that Vietnam is reorienting its perspectives towards cooperation with Washington as its priority, not Moscow.76 While opinions differ regarding the extent of the U.S.–Vietnam relationship and its specifically military character; nobody doubts that expanded U.S.–Vietnamese relations in general and military cooperation in particular would come at Russia’s expense, not least because it has had to choose China over everyone else in Asia.77 In regard to North and South Korea Russia’s position is similarly slipping. Lavrov recently proclaimed an identity of views with China on North Korea that it should stop nuclear testing but that it is Washington’s fault that North Korea tests. Moreover, both sides signed a joint agreement on regional strategic stability earlier in 2016 opposing the U.S. missile defenses for South Korea as a threat to their interests and this strategic stability.78 Moscow’s previous independent initiative towards North Korea seems to have reached a dead end (mainly thanks to Pyongyang), and in any case although China may be competing for influence in Pyongyang, Russia cannot keep up there with China.79 Furthermore Moscow has announced that North Korean missile and nuclear tests do not threaten it so these positions are steadily undermining its formerly benign relationship with South Korea just as China’s efforts to court and threaten South Korea not to accept missile defenses have gone awry.80 Similarly, the difficult effort to affect a rapprochement with Japan will be constrained by China’s strong opposition to it as well as the fact that Russian military and political leaders adamantly refuse to make any concessions regarding the Kurile Islands to Japan and are even building new bases there.81 Moscow may believe it can intimidate or bludgeon Japan, whom it wrongly thinks needs Russia more than Russia needs it, into a rapprochement. But any move towards Japan now risks severe Chinese displeasure that will be turned into action against Russian interests.82

Conclusions Thus, while friendly ties with China are essential to Russia, its refusal to reform, ideological and domestic posture, and international aggressiveness have led it into increasing dependence upon and in search of an alliance with China. China appears all too happy to pocket Russian concessions but will only give Russia as little as it needs to keep it happy while reaping whatever rewards this dependence offers to it. And given the concessionary terms China demands for its large-scale energy purchases and other acquisitions, this relationship does appear to look something like the old tributary ones of the past. Yet China cannot carry Russian demands for subsidies and bribes, to call them what they are, if its economy continues to slow down.83 Moreover, Beijing’s increasingly aggressive policies towards Japan and ASEAN risk drawing Moscow into unrewarding and potentially dangerous confrontations with states who could otherwise be valuable partners for it and would seize the opportunity if it presented itself. And these two governments’ support for North Korea increasingly gives Pyongyang reason to believe that the old Northern alliance is still in being and it can behave provocatively without running undue risks.84 Thus, this relationship is increasingly becoming something of a straitjacket for Russia and is undermining any hope of its reforming its economy and finding the great power footing that it craves in Asia. But as long as Putin reigns the domestic foundations of Russian security policy cannot and will not change, and Russia will fall into growing dependence on China even if Russia increasingly resents it. Most Western writers see Russo–Chinese ties as a dysfunctional relationship that will ultimately break apart. But if we consider the driving domestic and ideological factors despite the irritations that both sides endure, that outcome is by no means foreordained. Moreover, both sides regard mutual enmity as a major liability of the Cold War. This may be an alliance with a high degree of mutual frustration but it is as likely as not to persist if not become 83

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even more of an alliance as time goes on and as long as both systems remain unreformed because that state of being unreformed drives their elective affinity. Whatever that might mean for China, it does consign Russia’s great power project in Asia to failure and that failure will likely have not only regional, but also internal and global repercussions.

Notes 1 Sergei Radchenko, Unwanted Visionaries: The Soviet Failure in Asia at the End of the Cold War, (Oxford Studies in International History) 1st edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014; Elizabeth Wishnick, Mending Fences: The Evolution of Moscow’s China Policy from Brezhnev to Yeltsin, paperback edition, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014; Jeanne Wilson, Strategic Partners: Russian-Chinese Relations in the Post-Soviet Era, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe Co. Inc., 2004. 2 Alexander Gabuev, Friends with Benefits: Russian-Chinese Relations after the Ukraine Crisis, http://carnegie endowment.org/files/CEIP_CP278_Gabuev_revised_FINAL.pdf, 2016. 3 Gilbert Rozman, The Sino-Russian Challenge to the World Order: National Identities, Bilateral Relations, and East vs. West in the 2010s, Washington, DC and Stanford, CA: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press, 2014. 4 Bobo Lo, Russia and the New World Disorder, London and Washington, DC: Chatham House and Brookings Institution, 2015; Bobo Lo, Axis of Convenience: Moscow, Beijing, and the New Geopolitics, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008. 5 Ross Terrill, The New Chinese Empire and What It Means for the United States, New York: Basic Books, 2003 6 Stephen Blank, “We Can Live without You: Dialogue and Rivalry in Russo-Japanese Relations,” Comparative Strategy, XIV, No. 1, 1993, pp. 173–198; Stephen Blank, “Diplomacy at an Impasse: Russia and Japan in a New Asia,” Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, V, No. 1, Spring/Summer, 1993, pp. 141–164; “Yeltsin Okays Russian Foreign Policy Concept,” Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press (Henceforth CDPP), XLV, No. 17, May 26, 1993, p. 15; Yuri S. Tsyganov, “Russia and China: What Is in the Pipeline,” in Gennady Chufrin, Ed., Russia and Asia: The Emerging Security Agenda, Oxford: Oxford University Press for SIPRI, 1999, pp. 301–303. 7 Stephen Blank, “We Can Live without You: Dialogue and Rivalry in Russo-Japanese Relations,” Comparative Strategy, XIV, No. 1, 1993, pp. 173–198; Stephen Blank, “Diplomacy at an Impasse: Russia and Japan in a New Asia,” Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring/Summer, 1993, pp. 141– 164; “Voyennaya Doktrina, Rossiiskoi Federatsii-Proekt,” Krasnaya Zvezda, October 9, 1999, pp. 3–4; Moscow, Nezavisimoye Voyennoe Obozreniye, January 14, 2000, FBIS SOV, January 14, 2000; Moscow, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, April 22, 2000, FBIS SOV, April 24, 2000; “Yeltsin Okays Russian Foreign Policy Concept,” p. 15; Evgeny Bazhanov, “Russian Perspectives on China’s Foreign Policy and Military Development,” in Jonathan D. Pollack and Richard H. Yang, Eds., In China’s Shadow: Regional Perspectives on Chinese Foreign Policy and Military Development, Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1998, pp. 71–76; Tsyganov, “Russia and China,” pp. 301–303. 8 Rozman, The Sino-Russian Challenge to the World Order; Jeanne L. Wilson, “Cultural Statecraft in the Russian and Chinese Contexts, Domestic and International Implications,” Problems of Post-Communism, LXIII, No. 3, May–June, 2016, pp. 135–150; Geir Flikke, “Sino-Russian Relations: Status Exchange or Imbalanced Relationship,” Problems of Post-Communism, LXIII, No. 3, May–June, 2016, pp. 159–170. 9 “Yeltsin Okays Russian Foreign Policy Concept,” p. 15; Tsyganov, “Russia and China,” pp. 301–303. 10 Ibid. 11 Gaye Christoffersen, “Russia’s Breakthrough into the Asia-Pacific: China’s Role,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, X, No. 1, 2010, pp. 61–92; Stephen Blank, “Is Russia a Great Power in Asia?,” in Aharon Klieman, Ed., Great Powers and Geopolitics: International Affairs in a Rebalancing World, Heidelberg and New York: Springer International, 2015, pp. 161–182. 12 Ibid. 13 Robert Jervis, “U.S. Grand Strategy: Mission Impossible,” Naval War College Review, Vol. 51, Summer 1998, pp. 22–36; Richard K. Betts, “Power, Prospects, and Priorities: Choices for Strategic Change,” Naval War College Review, Vol. 50, Winter 1997, pp. 9–22; John C. Gannon, “Intelligence Challenges Through 2015,” http://odci.gov/cia/publicaffairs/speeches/gannon_speech_05022000.html 14 Kim Yo’ng Hu’i, “The Relevance of Central Asia,” Seoul JoongAng Ilbo Internet Version, in English, July 11, 2005, FBIS SOV, July 11, 2005.

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Dynamics of Russo–Chinese relations 15 Lyle Goldstein and Vitaly Kozyrev, “China, Japan and the Scramble for Siberia,” Survival, XLVIII, No. 1, Spring 2006, pp. 175–176. 16 Wendell Minnick, “Time Running Out for Taiwan if Russia Releases S-400M,” www.defensenews.com May 25, 2013; Manoj Joshi, “Now a Chinese Pivot to Russia,” India Today, April 1, 2013, http://indiatoday. intoday.in/story/now-a-chinese-pivot-to-russia-manoj-joshi/1/260112.html; Vladimir Radyuhin, ‘The Dragon Gets a Bear Hug,” The Hindu, March 8, 2013, www.thehindu.com/opinon/op—ed; Stephen Kotkin, “The Unbalanced Triangle: What Chinese-Russian Relations Mean for the United States,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 88, no.5 (September-October 2009). Cited in Johnson’s Russia List, November 25, 2009. Available at: www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65230/stephen-kotkin/the-unbalanced-triangle . 17 Marcin Kaczmarski, An Asian Alternative? Russia’s Chances of Making Asia an Alternative to Relations with the West, Centre for Eastern Studies, Warsaw, www.osw.waw.pl, 2008, pp. 35–36. 18 Moscow, Interfax, in Russian, November 18, 2014, FBIS SOV, November 18, 2014. 19 Ibid. 20 Moscow, Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, in Russian, November 18, 2014, FBIS SOV, November 18, 2014; Moscow, Nezavisimaya Gazeta Online, in Russian, November 20, 2014, FBIS SOV, November 20, 2014; FBIS SOV, November 27, 2014. 21 Beijing, Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China, in Chinese, November 27, 2014, FBIS-CHI, November 27, 2014. 22 Najmeh Borgozmehr and Lucy Hornby, “China Offers to Help Iraq Defeat,” Financial Times, December 12, 2014, www.ft.com 23 Stephen Blank, “Is China about to Make Military Moves in Central Asia?,” Central Asia Caucasus Analyst, May 9, 2016. Available at: https://cacianalyst.org/publications/analytical-articles/item/13358-is-chinaabout-to-make-military-moves-in-central-asia?.html . 24 Voyennaya Doktrina Rosssiiskoi Federatsii, www.kremin.ru, December 26, 2014. 25 Bobo Lo, Russia and the New World Disorder; Bobo Lo, Axis of Convenience. 26 Alexander Korolev, “The Strategic Alignment between Russia and China: Myths and Reality: The Asan Forum,” April 30, 2015, www.theasanforum.org/the-strategic-alignment-between-russia-and-chinamyths-and-reality/ 27 Beijing, Xinhua, in English, 8 January 2013, FBIS CHI, 8 January 2013; “Moscow, Beijing, Reconnect as Reset with US Fizzles”, Russia Today, 9 January 2013, www.rt.com 28 Gabuev, Friends with Benefits; Pavel Kokshin “Here Is Why Russia’s Pivot to the East Still Hasn’t Taken Place,” www.russia-direct.org, June 4, 2016. 29 Renssalear Lee and Artyom Lukin, Russia’s Far East: New Dynamics in Asia Pacific and Beyond, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2015. 30 Willy Wo-Lap Lam, Chinese Politics in the Era of Xi Jinping: Renaissance, Reform, or Retrogression?, London: Routledge, 2015. 31 “Interview to the Xinhua News Agency of China,” June 23, 2016, http://en.kremlin.ru 32 Vladimir Putin on Foreign Policy: Russia and the Changing World, www.valdaiclublcom, February 27, 2012, http://valdaiclub.com/politics/39300.html 33 Vladimir Putin, “Plenary Session of St Petersburg International Economic Forum,” http://en.kremlin. ru/events/president/transcripts/52178; “Interview to the Xinhua News Agency of China.” 34 Beijing, Xinhua Asia-Pacific Service, in Chinese, February 6, 2014, FBIS SOV, February 6, 2014. 35 Moscow, Interfax, in English, July 9, 2014, FBIS SOV, July 9, 2014. 36 Kent E. Calder, The New Continentalism: Energy and Twenty-First-Century Eurasian Geopolitics, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. 37 Iwona Wisniewska, Eurasian Integration: Russia’s Attempt at the Economic Unification of the Post-Soviet Area, Warsaw: OSW Studies, Centre for Eastern Studies, 2013, p. 15; Jeffrey Mankoff, Eurasian Integration: The Next Stage, Central Asia Policy Brief, Elliott School of international Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., 2013, p. 2; Askar Beshimov, Project Manager, Fund, “Project of the Future” Oktyabr Abdykamov, Expert Fund “Project of the Future” Salika Sultanalieva, Expert, Economic Consequences of the Customs Union for the Kyrgyz Republic, Phase II Final Report, Prepared for the Ministry of Economic Regulation, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, November 30, 2010, p. 12; Mesut Yilmaz and Kairat Moldashev, “The Possible Effects of the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia on Development of Kazakhstan Economy,” 2009, http://horizonresearch.kz/index.php/en/analytics/regionalintegrations/75-cu-effects;Kairat Moldashev, “Joining the Customs Union:The Dilemma of Kyrgyzstan,” http://horizonresearch.kz/index.php/en/analytics/regional-integrations/74-kyrgyzstan-cu, 2011;

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Maria Teploukhova, “Russia and International Organizations in the Asia-Pacific: Agenda for the Russian Far East,” Security Index, XVI, No. 2, 2010, p. 83. Alexander Gabuev, “A Pivot to Nowhere: The Realities of Russia’s Asia Policy,” www.carnegie.ru, April 22, 2016; Alexander Gabuev, “Should Russia Be Afraid of Chinese Plans in the Far East?,” www. carnegie.ru, June 7, 2016; Kokshin “Here Is Why Russia’s Pivot,”; Vasily Kashin, “Why Russia’s ‘Pivot to China’ Was All Talk and Little Action,” The Moscow Times, June 1, 2016. Ibid. Sergei Karaganov, “Russian Foreign Policy Finding New Bearings,” http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/print/ pubcol/Russian-Foreign-Policy-Finding-New-Bearings-18203 “Interview to the Xinhua News Agency of China,” Indeed, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev has just warned that it is danger of becoming a purely abstract organization. “Tamara Vaal”, “Nazarbayev Prizval Ne Delat’ SHOS Amorfnoi, Biurokraticheskoi, I Bumazhnoi Organizatsiei,” www. vlast.kz, June 23, 2016. Valery Kistanov, “The APR on the Threshold off the 21st Century: Going Along the ‘Asian Road’ towards Pacific Cooperation,” Far Eastern Affairs, Vol. 1, 1998, p. 32. Ministry of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the XXII Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Moscow, November 22, 2014, www.mid.ru/brp-4.nsf/O/2445A08D48F695EC257D9A004 . . . , p. 7. Ibid. Richard Weitz, “Russia’s Pacific Power Pivot,” Second Line of Defense, June 10, 2016, www.sldinfo.com Katsujni Nakazawa, “Takeaways from a Nighttime Naval Chase in the East China Sea,” Nikkei Asian Review, June 23, 2016, http://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20160623-SHOWN-the-DOOR/PoliticsEconomy/Takeaways-from-a-nighttime-naval-chase-in-the-East-China-Sea Yu Bin, “China-Russia Relations:H-Bomb Plus THAAD Equals Sino-Russian Alliance?,”Comparative Connections, Vol. 18, May, 2016. Available at: http://cc.csis.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1601qchina_ russia.pdf. Charles Clover, “Russia and China Eye Each Other as Brothers in Arms,” Financial Times, June 24, 2016, ww.ft.com, p. 6. Ankit Panda, “Russia Plans South China Sea Naval Exercise with China in 2016,” www.thediplomat. com, June 1, 2015; Alexander Gabuev, “The Silence of the Bear: Deciphering Russia’s Showing at Shangri-La Dialogue,” http://carnegie.ru/eurasiaoutlook/?fa=60263, June 1, 2015. Stephen Blank, “Russia’s Failure in Asia,” UNISCI Discussion Papers, No. 24 (October 2010), pp. 1-22. Gabuev, “A Pivot to Nowhere.” Ibid. Kokshin “Here Is Why Russia’s Pivot.” Gabuev, “A Pivot to Nowhere.” Alexander Vorontsov and Georgy Toloraya, Military Alert on the Korean Peninsula: Time for Some Conclusions, Carnegie Moscow Center, www.ceip.org, June, 2014; Victor Cha, The Impossible State: North Korea Past and Future, New York: Harper Collins Books, 2013, pp. 345–369. Gabuev, “Should Russia Be Afraid.” Fyodor Lukyanov, “Will Russia Integrate into the Western World, Post-Sanctions?,” www.gazeta.ru and Russia Beyond the Headlines, June 7, 2016. Gabuev, “A Pivot to Nowhere”; Andrew Higgins, “An Unfinished Bridge, and Partnership between Russia and China,” New York Times, July 17, 2016, available at: www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/…/ unfinished-bridge-russia-china-amur-river.html . Gabuev, “A Pivot to Nowhere.” Higgins, “An Unfinished Bridge, and Partnership between Russia and China.” Kashin, “Why Russia’s ‘Pivot to China’.” Alexander Gabuev, “Why Did It Take Russia So Long to Join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank?,” http://carnegie.ru/commentary/?fa=59554, March 30, 2015. Ibid. “Russia Proposes Broader Asia Trade Space,” Interfax, May 24, 2016, Retrieved from BBC Monitoring, May 24, 2016. Sibren De Jong, “Why Countries Are Not Rushing to Join Putin’s Union,” www.euobserver.com, May 27, 2016; “Is Kazakhstan Getting Eurasian Union Blues?,” Eurasia Insight, March 9, 2016, www. eurasianet.org “Plenary Session of the 19th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum: Speech by President Vladimir Putin at the Plenary Session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum,” www.kremlin.ru, June 19, 2015.

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Dynamics of Russo–Chinese relations 67 Gabuev, “The Silence of the Bear.” 68 Alexander Etkind, Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience, London: Polity Press, 2011; Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002. 69 Etkind, Internal Colonization. 70 Ibid. 71 Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty: New York Crown Business Books, New York, NY, 2012. 72 Alexander Gabuev, “China’s Pivot to Putin’s Friends,” http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/25/ chinas-pivot-to-putin-friends-xi-russia-gazprom-timchenko-sinopec/, June 25, 2016. 73 Ivan Timofeev, “World Disorder: An Advantage for Russia?,” www.valdaiclub.org, June 30, 2016. 74 Aaron Mehta, “Vietnamese Leader Predicts Closer US Military Ties,” www.defensenews.com, July 8, 2015; Cuong T. Nguyen, “The Dramatic Transformation in US-Vietnam Relations,” www.thediplomat. com, July 2, 2015. 75 “Briefing By Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova,” ww.mid.ru, July 14, 2016. 76 Conversations with Pavel Baev of the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Washington, DC, July 8, 2015. 77 Cuong T. Nguyen and Shawn W. Crispin, “Limits of US-Vietnam Relations Revealed in Communist Party Leader Visit,” ww.thediplmoat.com, July 10, 2015; Ton Nu Thi Ninh, “The Right Way to Read US-Vietnam Relations Today,” www.thediplomat.com, July 6, 2010. 78 “Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s Statement and Answers to Media Questions at a Joint News Conference Following Talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Moscow, March 11, 2016, www.mid.ru; “Russian Press Focuses on Benefits of START Extension for Russia,” BBC Monitoring, July 12, 2016. 79 Vorontsov and Toloraya, Military Alert on the Korean Peninsula. 80 “N Korea Missile Launches No Threat to Russia-Experts,” BBC Monitoring, July 9, 2016. 81 Vladimir Isachenkov, “Russian Military Plans Buildup from West to Pacific,” Associated Press, March 25, 2016. Available at: www.military.com/daily-news/2016/03/25/russian-military-plans-buildup-westpacific.html . 82 Stephen Blank, “Sino-Russian Relations and the Failure of Russo-Japanese Relations,” The Asan Forum, III, No. 6, November–December, 2015, www.theasanforum.org 83 Gabuev, “China’s Pivot to Putin’s Friends.” 84 Seongji Woo, “Pyongyang and the World: North Korean Perspectives on International Relations under Kim Jong-Il,” Pacific Focus, XXXVI, No. 2, August, 2011, p. 196.

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7 TAIWAN’S TRADITIONAL SECURITY CHALLENGES AS A CONTESTED STATE Ming-chin Monique Chu

After the return of Hong Kong (HK) and Macau to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the 1990s, Beijing sees Taiwan as the last piece of the jigsaw needed to bring about its long-cherished aspiration to reunify China. After all, Taiwan has been the site of the Republic of China (ROC) since the 1949 Nationalist (or KMT) retreat to the island following its defeat during the Chinese civil war; it is the only territory of the self-defined Chinese state that Beijing does not control. Moreover, its democratic transformation contrasts sharply with the PRC on the mainland as a one-party state. Since its inception, the PRC has vowed to “solve” the Taiwan problem by force, if necessary. However, the world would be a different place if one day the PRC invaded and occupied Taiwan to fulfil such an aspiration. This chapter examines traditional security challenges Taiwan faces against the backdrop of changes at the external and internal levels of analysis. The term security, as used in the paper, is defined through a realist lens to refer to the basis of the existence of a state and the prerequisite for the achievement of all other objectives. Traditional security challenges, as opposed to non-traditional ones, involve those that threaten the state’s territorial integrity and survival.1 The essay is composed of four sections. The first examines why Taiwan matters to the PRC. The second explains why Taiwan’s status as a contested state has structurally limited its ability to strengthen its military capabilities. The third explores three inter-related traditional security challenges Taiwan faces today; they include the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) modernization and the resultant changing military balance across the Taiwan Strait, the uncertain quasi-alliance relationship with the United States (U.S.), and Taiwan’s struggling defense reforms with its tight purse strings. The concluding part summarizes the key arguments and outlines policy options for Taiwan.

The relevance of Taiwan to the PRC The Taiwan Strait has remained a flashpoint in world politics since 1949, as evidenced by the three major crises. For decades, the KMT aspired to retake the mainland by force, whereas the mainland sought to “liberate” Taiwan. The U.S. was caught in the middle. The heightened military confrontations in the 1950s culminated in the first and second crisis, prompting Washington to consider using nuclear weapons to end the conflict. 88

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The third crisis occurred in 1995 and 1996, after Washington granted Lee Teng-hui, the then president of Taiwan, a visa to facilitate his visit to his alma mater, Cornell University. Beijing regarded the U.S. move as conveying “a great degree of official recognition of Taiwan than the U.S. had displayed” since the derecognition of Taiwan in 1979.2 It staged military exercises and missile tests in the waters of Taiwan. In the run-up to the island’s first direct presidential election in 1996, Beijing took similar actions to intimidate voters. To deter the Chinese aggression, Washington dispatched two aircraft carrier battle groups to skirt the Strait;3 it was the largest naval force deployed by the U.S. in the region since the Vietnam War. The missile crises demonstrate that the Cross-Strait dispute might have erupted into war, potentially escalating into a devastating armed conflict involving the world’s strongest military clout and other regional powers. The prevailing explanations of the PRC’s motivations to subordinate Taiwan to its sovereignty focus on Beijing’s intent to conclude the civil war, its commitment to defending territorial integrity, to ensure the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) regime legitimacy, and to prevent Taiwan’s autonomy from generating a domino effect on China’s restive periphery.4 However, the perceived geostrategic importance of Taiwan to Beijing is another main motivation. Alan Wachman contends that “Taiwan in the hands of a power other than China has functioned as a real and potential threat to China . . . The U.S., which has deterred a PRC assault on Taiwan since 1950, has likewise been perceived by Beijing as a rival.”5 Similarly, Nathan and Scobell assert that “Taiwan is always in a position to threaten the mainland . . . Chinese leaders are determined to prevent Taiwan from once again becoming a rival power’s strategic asset.”6 The PLA strategic thought reflects that the mainland has salient strategic interests in controlling Taiwan because of its undertaking to develop greater sea power since the 1980s. According to Luo Yuan, a senior colonel at the World Military Affairs Research Department of the PLA’s Academy of Military Sciences, “Only the seas to the east of Taiwan allow China direct access to the great strategic passage of the Pacific. If this opening to the sea is controlled by other countries, China’s maritime development strategy will be severely hampered. However, if the two sides of the Strait unify . . . it will prompt speedy progress toward the Pacific so that China’s maritime development strategy will vigorously flourish and rise.”7 As PLA strategists from the Academy of Military Sciences contend, “If Taiwan should be alienated from the mainland . . . China will forever be locked to the west side of the first chain of islands in the West Pacific.”8 Since sea power became a major factor in the politics of East Asia, “the island of Taiwan has had a vital strategic significance.” Beijing’s aspiration to develop greater sea power signifies the re-emergence “of the historical pattern of strategic competition between a dominant continental power [the PRC] and the pre-eminent sea power [the U.S.].”9 Hence, the role of geopolitics and Beijing’s anxiety about the U.S. encirclement should not be under-estimated when assessing the importance of Taiwan to the PRC.

Taiwan’s structural constraint as a contested state Since its loss of its United Nations seat as “China” in 1971 and replaced by the PRC, Taiwan has been structurally constrained to strengthen its military capabilities because of its status as a contested state. Contested states lack sufficient international recognition, although some possess a certain degree of statehood by viably ruling their domestic constituents.10 Taiwan has had partial trappings of state sovereignty as a contested state.11 Its international legal sovereignty is deficient because only two dozen states grant it diplomatic recognition, whereas the rest accept in principle Taiwan as part of Chinese territory because of their “One China” policy. But Taipei’s semi-official ties with major countries have compensated for its insufficient international 89

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recognition. Crucially, its Westphalian and domestic sovereignty have remained intact. Its authority structure has prevented external interference from disrupting its control of internal affairs, as the PRC jurisdiction has never reached Taiwan despite its pertinent sovereignty claim. Moreover, its authority structure has effectively controlled affairs within its territory demonstrating domestic sovereignty.12 Lastly, Taiwan’s transition to a democracy has strengthened the legitimacy of its domestic sovereignty, and won sympathy from liberal Western states helping Taipei gain de facto recognition from these countries. Unlike a normal state, Taiwan as a contested state has limited options in resorting to the triple measures of alliance building, acquisition of foreign arms, and the consolidation of indigenous military production with foreign assistance to improve its military capabilities. Since the late 1970s, Taiwan has no formal military alliance with any major powers. Nor has it gained a variety of access to foreign weapons. The European Union (EU) arms sales to Taipei dried up by the mid-1990s.13 In 2000–10, arms sales from the EU constituted less than six percent of Taiwan’s arms imports, whereas those from the U.S. accounted for 94 percent of the total.14 Taiwan’s development of a viable indigenous defense industrial base has also been constrained by its limited access to foreign technologies. Overall, Washington remains the only external actor that partly acts as Taiwan’s security guarantor through its involvement in these triple dimensions of defense initiatives.

Taiwan’s deepening traditional security challenges Traditional security challenges Taiwan faces today are three-fold: the shifting military balance across the Strait in Beijing’s favor, the uncertain quasi-alliance ties between the U.S. and Taiwan, and problems in Taipei’s defense reforms with its dwindling defense investments.

Shifting military balance across the Strait Taiwan deems the PRC as its major security threat, and the PLA cemented build-up around its capability to place Taiwan in threat and to attack that liberal democracy if its rulers declared formal independence has accentuated Taiwan’s sense of insecurity. The PLA’s overarching strategic priority remains Taiwan, although its modernization has expanded to also ensure its maritime security, to increase its nuclear deterrence capabilities, and to flex its military muscles on the global stage.15 The continuous centrality of Taiwan to the PLA posture accounts for its dual-missions. The first is to introduce weapons and capabilities that would develop its new coercive capacities to deter a perceived threat of Taiwan independence, a move that would provide credibility to the Chinese policy assertions regarding the use of force against Taiwan. The second is to strengthen its Anti-Access/Area-Denial (A2/AD) capabilities to deter, delay, or deny any military intervention by a third party on Taiwan’s behalf during a Cross-Strait contingency. The U.S. involvement in the 1995–96 crises reinforced the PLA’s resolve to pursue the latter. The PLA’s modernization, supported by its double-digit defense budget growth per annum in recent decades, has improved its capabilities in both arenas in qualitative and quantitative terms, tilting the military balance across the Strait in Beijing’s favor in terms of ground, naval, and air forces.16 It has also augmented its Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) as well as its unconventional war-fighting capabilities concerning information warfare. Particularly noteworthy are improvements in its capabilities in five major areas in preparation for an attack on Taiwan. First, its Second Artillery has built up its deployment of short-range 90

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ballistic missiles (SRBMs) opposite Taiwan since 1998. Despite the détente policy introduced by the then Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou since 2008, which had lowered military tension across the Strait, the PLA has not cut back its SRBM deployment opposite Taiwan; by December 2012, the number of SRBMs deployed stood at more than 1,100.17 While some had questioned the accuracy of China’s ballistic missiles necessary for precision targeting,18 a growing consensus is that the PLA has fielded highly accurate ballistic-missile warheads. One study in 2005 concluded that China was producing ballistic missiles with circular error probability (CEP) of forty meters.19 According to Jane’s Weapons: Strategic 2015–2016, China has created an increasing number of ballistic missiles with improved CEPs over time. The Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) DF-25, which entered operational service in 2008, has a ten-meter CEP.20 As Taiwan’s 2013 Quadrennial Defense Review states, “Tactical ballistic missiles and cruise missiles deployed by the PLA are all capable of reaching Taiwan with greater accuracy and manoeuvrability.”21 Second, air superiority remains critical in any large-scale use of force over the Strait, whether Beijing’s objective is invasion, occupation, or coercion. The Chinese air force has arguably already gained air superiority over the Strait.22 Shlapak et al. alert that this would permit the Chinese to shower Taiwan with air-delivered precision-guided munitions either as a coercive bombardment or in preparation for an invasion. The Chinese missile threat to the U.S. military bases in Okinawa, combined with other factors, implies that the air war for Taiwan could be over before the U.S. air forces have fired a shot.23 Lostumbo et al. (2016) argue that China’s fighter aircraft capabilities have been such that now China may crush all of Taiwan’s aircraft at their bases within hours of a war.24 Third, the Chinese navy has already possessed the capability to impose “a partial blockade on Taiwan.”25 A blockade could produce economic shock and a siege mentality to force capitulation in the short run,26 and harm trade further by pressuring Taiwan to unconditional surrender in the medium term. Glosny’s study shows that the Chinese navy, given a relatively large fleet of submarines and Taiwan’s geographical proximity, could impose costs on Taiwan through a submarine blockade.27 In addition, the Chinese navy is acquiring “additional attack submarines, multi-mission surface combatants, and fourth-generation naval aircraft . . . to achieve sea superiority within the first island chain as well as to deter and counter any potential third party intervention in a Taiwan conflict.”28 Fourth, the PLA has improved its C4ISR29 force integration operations over time.30 This will advance its pursuit of information superiority over its enemies and contribute to the performance of its military systems increasing its traditional war-fighting capabilities. Fifth, the PLA’s information warfare capacity as part of its unconventional war-fighting abilities has also strengthened as part of its plan to fully use technologies to win “limited local wars under high-tech conditions” including a Taiwan conflict.31 Its information warfare units develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks and improve measures to protect friendly information systems and networks. Even during peace time, the PLA has frequented cyber warfare against Taiwan’s military and civilian information systems, as evidenced by its attack on the website of the Taiwanese National Security Bureau more than 3 million times in 2012.32 Despite various challenges the PLA modernization program faces,33 its improvements in these five arenas have deepened threats to Taiwan’s conventional security.

The uncertain quasi-alliance with the U.S. The uncertain quasi-alliance relationship between Washington and Taipei since 1979 has further complicated the PLA threat to Taiwan’s security. Four factors combined have complicated the durability and effectiveness of the U.S. security guarantee to Taipei. They include problems 91

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pertaining to U.S. arms sale to Taiwan, the ambiguity of the U.S. security commitment to Taiwan, the alliance security dilemma therein, and Washington’s self-interest calculation pertaining to China. Washington changed its containment calculation because of the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 and brought Taiwan into its larger security strategy in Asia. Based on the U.S.ROC Mutual Defense Treaty of 1954, Taiwan was a forward base for the U.S. forces in the region and a base from which to spy on the PRC. However, the U.S. derecognition of Taipei in 1979 led to the termination of the treaty, and the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) was enacted to ensure the post-1979 substantive bilateral ties, including authorizing the sales of defensive weapons to Taiwan. Since the 1995–96 crises, the Pentagon has strengthened military coordination with Taiwan to prepare for a bilateral cooperation in a war with China, because when the U.S. deployed two aircraft carrier groups during the crises, the poor channels of bilateral communications would pose serious problems if fighting were to occur.34 The two militaries have increased the level of military logistics, planning, training, coordination, and strategic thinking among units. The Pentagon has also participated in Taiwanese war games and exercises.35 Moreover, beginning with the 1992 U.S. sale of F-16s to Taipei, the quality and quantity of U.S. arms transfers to Taiwan has violated the 1982 Communiqué that highlights Washington’s commitment to China to limit arms sales. It has largely adhered to Washington’s “Six Assurances” to Taipei instead, including assurances that Washington had not agreed to set a date for ending arms sales to Taiwan nor to consult with Beijing on arms sales.36 Moreover, Washington’s definition of what constitutes “defensive” weapons that can be sold to Taipei has loosened over time. Besides, the U.S. Congress in the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for fiscal year 2003, which was signed into law in 2002, for the first time described Taiwan, for the purposes of arms sales, as the “equivalent of a major non-NATO ally.” This provided Taipei with status like that given to Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina, and allowed “much closer military cooperation, including the sale of specific weapons normally off limits to most other countries.”37 Taiwan was the top recipient of U.S.-made arms in 1995–99, and the fifth largest recipient in 2011–15.38 However, the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan have generated security problems for Taiwan. Washington has restricted any dealing with Taipei “that might suggest steps towards a renewed military alliance” to avoid provoking Beijing.39 It has held back on selling Taiwan the most advanced weapons systems and provided Taiwan with those “that are nearing the end of their serviceability, roughly 15 years into the usual 20-year life cycle.”40 Besides, the fear of U.S. military technology flow to China through illicit channels because of the increasing operations of Chinese spies in Taiwan has partly accounted for U.S. restrictions on military technology transfers to Taiwan.41 In addition, at times Taipei has sought weapons as a symbolic indicator of U.S. support, rather than focusing on whether the military could absorb diverse arms systems purchased or integrate them into a complete defense strategy.42 Moreover, Washington is under no legal nor treaty obligations to defend Taiwan during a Chinese attack, and the pertinent TRA wording has been kept intentionally ambiguous. Section 2 declares that the U.S. expects the “future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means,” and that “any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means . . . [is] a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area.”43 Section 3 requires that the U.S. President should “inform the Congress promptly of any threat to the security or the social or economic system of the people on Taiwan and any danger to the interests of the United States arising therefrom.” Then the “President and the Congress shall determine, in accordance with constitutional processes, appropriate action by the United States in response to 92

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any such danger.” Military intervention on Taiwan’s behalf is not specified as a required action during a Cross-Strait conflict. Furthermore, typical alliance security dilemma of abandonment and entrapment has at times destabilized the semi-alliance relationship. Taiwan’s sense of abandonment has deepened because of the assertions in the U.S. that Washington should give up Taiwan to avoid a great-power war and to develop an amicable tie with Beijing because of its need for the Chinese cooperation in coping various challenges.44 Some of these contentions are advanced partly because of the U.S. dissatisfaction with Taiwan’s dwindling investments in improving its eroding defense capabilities, as will be detailed later, as well as doubts about the strategic value of Taiwan. So far, the abandonment school of thought has not affected the pertinent U.S. policy, and it has been countered by arguments that emphasize the shared values of democracy between Washington and Taipei, the strategic importance of Taiwan, and the credibility and reputation costs the U.S. abandonment may incur.45 However, it is uncertain whether it will change the U.S. policy in the future. Washington has worried about being dragged into a direct military confrontation with China because of Taiwan. In the U.S. Congress in 1979, its fear of entrapment had partly driven the sentiment to keep the language of the TRA pertaining Washington’s action in a Taiwan conflict rather ambiguous.46 In 1999, President Lee asserted that ties with the mainland were “special state-to-state relations.” During President Chen Shui-bian’s reign, Washington strongly opposed his move to hold referenda, his plan to introduce a new constitution, and his “two-state theory.” The U.S. dreaded that Lee’s and Chen’s actions to move away from the idea of “One China” could be construed by Beijing as preludes to de jure Taiwan independence, creating a pre-text for Chinese coercion or attack.47 If the president of Taiwan decides to change the status quo of the contested state, the U.S. fear of entrapment will deepen accordingly. Lastly, the U.S. national interest calculation has shaped its policies of strategic ambiguity and dual deterrence designed to maintain stability across the Strait. Washington insists on the peaceful resolution of the conflict deterring any Chinese attack against Taiwan, although it does not specify what it would do to enforce its requirement of a peaceful resolution. The TRA stresses that the U.S. would help Taipei resist coercion by Beijing through defensive arms sales and possible U.S. military action in a Taiwan conflict, but Washington remains unclear if and how it would intervene in such a conflict. Its policy of dual deterrence, developed after the 1995–96 crises, means that while Washington attempts to deter any Chinese move to take Taiwan by force, it keeps Beijing guessing how much coercion would result in a U.S. military response. While Washington aims to deter Taiwan from moving towards formal independence, driven by its fear of entrapment, it keeps Taipei speculating whether it would let Taipei face the consequences of formal independence alone. Although some have criticized the U.S. longstanding policy of strategic ambiguity as being morally flawed and strategically problematic,48 this policy will not change overnight. Even if it is going to change, it will be based on U.S. calculations of self-interest and its threat perception of China.

Taiwan’s struggling defense reforms Problems in Taiwan’s defense reforms have complicated the island state’s security challenges. Given the huge disparity in size and resources between China and Taiwan, and the PLA’s enlarging advantages, some have questioned Taipei’s ability to deter any Chinese aggression, and failing that, its capability to resist the Chinese coercion in a Taiwan contingency.49 Others have outlined alternative strategies to deter any Chinese attack.50 93

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Taiwan has endeavored to address its declining defensive capabilities, including efforts to improve its joint operations and crisis response capabilities, and to transition to an all-volunteer military to create a small yet smart and strong force.51 Despite the U.S. reservations,52 Chen’s administration had promoted the idea of Taiwan developing offensive missile capability, including the deployment of Hsiung-Feng III cruise missile systems, to strike the mainland to deter any Chinese attack.53 Moreover, Taiwan is integrating “innovative and asymmetric” measures into its defense planning that could be game-changers deterring any Chinese attack.54 These asymmetrical and innovative systems include mine warfare, cruise missiles, multiple rocket launchers,55 offensive unmanned aviation vehicles (UAVs), and mission-oriented small submarines.56 Taiwan has also attempted to revamp its defense sector to mitigate security risks arising from its overt reliance on the U.S. for arms procurement. The Article 22 of National Defense Act aims to develop a self-reliant defense industry. Chung-Shan Institute of Science & Technology (CSIST), as Taiwan’s major military research and development institution, has developed various types of weaponry, including advanced missile systems and dual-use technologies. In the 1990s, the Aerospace Industry Development Corp. has produced the Indigenous Defense Fighter with foreign assistance. In May 2015, Tsai Ing-wen, the then chairperson of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and now the incumbent Taiwanese president, highlighted the urgency to strengthen Taiwan’s defense industry in the face of increased difficulty in future arms procurement because of China’s obstruction.57 The current focus of Taiwan’s defense industrial base includes building a new fleet of diesel submarines,58 developing UAVs, enhancing missile capabilities through foreign assistance, and improving information security through the reliance on resources in the domestic high-tech sector. However, three major challenges lie ahead. First, assistance from foreign weapons contractors may not be forthcoming for highly desirable projects, such as advanced fighter aircrafts and diesel submarines,59 because of Taiwan’s status as a contested state. The second concerns the issue of brain drain.60 For example, the CSIST has lost some of its highly skilled engineers to the South Korean defense industry in pursuit of better salary, who subsequently helped the Koreans develop their first indigenous supersonic aircraft, KAI T-50 Golden Eagle. Third, the lack of scale because of the small size of Taiwan’s defense market and the difficulty in exporting Taiwan-made defense systems to the international market may hinder the effort to indigenously develop military systems.61 Various internal factors have further obstructed Taiwan’s defense reforms, including sharp inter-service rivalries,62 divisive domestic politics,63 and defense budgetary constraints.64 In particular, the share of Taiwan’s defense budget as a percentage of GDP has fallen below three percent since 2000 (Figure 7.1). Aside from economic downturn, democratization has partly accounted for this worrisome trend. Democratically elected politicians in Taiwan tend to be short-sighted preferring to please their constituents by allocating or approving government budgets for social welfare and infrastructure projects rather than defense schemes. The former often gives the constituents tangible benefits in the short term, which can help these politicians win the next election, whereas the latter does not. However, outside observers regard the trend as a function of the Taiwanese’s lack of understanding of the Chinese military threat or their overt confidence in the U.S. intervention on Taiwan’s behalf.65 Such a trend is detrimental to Taiwan’s security. If the military imbalance across the Strait proves to be irreversible, a military that is too weak can invite aggression, and the use of force may become a more realistic policy option for Beijing than in the past. Further, Taipei’s deteriorating military capabilities may weaken its bargaining position in any political negotiations with Beijing. 94

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450

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Figure 7.1 Taiwan’s defense budgets, 1994–2014 Source: Kan, Taiwan’s Major U.S. Arms Sales since 1990

Conclusions To conclude, the PRC’s desire to retake Taiwan stems from its concerns over territorial integrity, the CCP’s regime survival, as well as Beijing’s perception of the geostrategic importance of Taiwan. Nevertheless, Taiwan’s survival as a contested state since 1971 has constrained its ability to strengthen its military capabilities. Taiwan’s traditional security challenges have deepened over time primarily because of the slanting military balance across the Strait following the PLA’s ambitious modernization. The PLA has obtained ground, air, and naval superiority over its Taiwanese counterpart and improved its C4ISR, information warfare, and A2/AD capabilities. The uncertain semi-alliance relationship with the U.S. and pitfalls in Taiwan’s defense reforms have complicated these deepening security threats from across the Strait. The grueling national security tests Taiwan faces today are onerous. Until the Deus ex Machina descends to interfere with Taiwan’s national security, Taipei should consider the following policy options. Internally, Taiwan needs to continuously identify innovative and asymmetrical strategies to deter or delay any Chinese invasion, and to maintain a reasonable level of defense investment to support related initiatives. Moreover, its high-tech firms may help advance the indigenous defense capability. For instance, Taiwan has been one of the world’s semiconductor powerhouses and some of its semiconductor firms have engaged in production activities for the U.S. and domestic military market.66 Because semiconductors are building blocks of modern defense electronics systems, some of these firms can improve the pertinent indigenous defense industrial base. Besides, Taiwan should strengthen its democratic institutions to enhance its Westphalian and domestic sovereignty, although its international legal sovereignty remains constrained. The consolidation of Taiwan’s democracy can increase the value of preserving Taiwan’s autonomy for U.S. policymakers, because Taiwan may become a model for the PRC’s future democratization. 95

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Although the U.S. will not change its one China policy overnight, the shared experience as democracies can continue to be the bedrock of the support for Taiwan in the U.S. Externally, Taiwan needs to continuously persuade Washington of its geostrategic importance for the U.S. at a time when China increases its aggression in the region pertaining to issues of the South China Sea and the East China Sea. As the International Institute for Strategic Studies states, “the long-term US interest in balancing Beijing’s growing military presence in the Western Pacific and particularly with the first island chain has increased rather than decreased Taiwan’s strategic importance for the US.”67 For instance, Taiwan’s central position in the first island chain can be pivotal to the Pentagon’s Air-Sea Battle operational concept designed to counter the A2/ AD strategies of potential U.S. adversaries, including China, in future conflicts.68 Should Taiwan demonstrate its capabilities to provide the U.S. with access and situational awareness about Chinese military operations in all domains, it will assist Washington and its formal allies to deny the PLA control of the seas in the Strait and beyond. Lastly, Taipei should skillfully broaden its quasi-security alliances, where possible, with likeminded democracies in the region that either aspire to balance China’s military capabilities or have inherent interests in preventing the annexation of Taiwan by Beijing. In its 2013 White Paper, Japan acknowledged a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan as one of the contingencies leading to Japan’s conflict with China.69 The deepening U.S.–Japan defense tie assures that result; in 2015, the new U.S.–Japan defense guidelines committed Japan to defend U.S. forces under attack, which could happen in a Taiwan contingency. The strengthening of the U.S.– Japan military cooperation with Taiwan can counterbalance growing threats from China.70 Upgrading the current track-two level trilateral security dialogue may be a way forward. Tokyo can transfer military technology to Taipei in the areas of high-class diesel submarines and advanced robotics to help Taiwan develop its diesel submarines and advanced UAVs. Such defense cooperation with Taiwan will match the rationale that underpins recent changes in Japan’s defense postures, driven by Tokyo’s concerns over the rise of China as a military challenger in the region.71 As a young democracy living under the shadow of the undemocratic PRC, Taiwan needs to do whatever it takes to ensure its national security. After all, the price to pay may turn out to be too high to bear if one day the PLA occupies Taiwan to fulfil its “China Dream.”

Notes 1 For studies of Taiwan’s non-traditional security challenges, see J. P. Cabestan, ‘Cross-Strait Integration and Taiwan’s New Security Challenges,’ in G. Schubert (ed.) Taiwan and the “China Impact”: Challenges and Oportunities (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 291–7. M. Chu, The East Asian Computer Chip War (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 233–75. J. Hastings, ‘Globalization, Ma YingJeou, and the Future of Transnational Criminal Networks,’ in M. Chu and S. Kastner (eds.) Globalization and Security Relations across the Taiwan Strait (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 135–57; P. Bolt and B. Shearn, ‘Cyberpower and Cross-Strait Security,’ in M. Chu and S. Kastner (eds.) Globalization and Security Relations across the Taiwan Strait (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 158–82. 2 J. Mann, About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1999). 3 J. Garver, Face Off: China, the United States, and Taiwan’s Democratization (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997); R. Ross, ‘China as a Conservative Power.’ Foreign Affairs, 76, 2 (1997), pp. 33–44. 4 M. Swaine and J. Mulvenon, Taiwan’s Foreign and Defense Policies: Features and Determinants (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001), pp. 4–5; Ross, ‘China as a Conservative Power.’; A. Nathan and A. Scobell, China’s Search for Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), p. 212. 5 A. Wachman, Why Taiwan? Geostrategic Rationales for China’s Territorial Integrity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), p. 36. 6 Nathan and Scobell, China’s Search for Security, p. 213.

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Taiwan’s traditional security challenges 7 D. He, W. Chao and H. Tan, ‘Taihai guancha: “Taidu” – xueruo liang’an huyi de Zhongguo haifang [Taiwan Strait Observation: “Taiwan Independence” – Weakens Both Sides of China’s Coastal Defense].’ People’s Daily Online [Online] (2002). Available: www.people.com.cn/GB/shizheng/ 18/20/20020311/684029.html. 8 G. Peng and Y. Yao (eds.), The Science of Military Strategy (Beijing: Military Science Publishing House, 2005), pp. 442–3. 9 P. Howarth, China’s Rising Sea Power: The PLA Navy’s Submarine Challenge (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 174. 10 D. Geldenhuys, Contested States in World Politics (Houndmills, Basingstoke, HA and New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 11 M. Chu, ‘No Need to Beg China? Taiwan’s Membership of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation as a Contested State.’ China Quarterly, 225 (2016), pp. 169–70. For definitions of international legal sovereignty, domestic and Westphalian sovereignty, see S. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 3–4. 12 Such a territory was redefined in 1991 through the amendment of the ROC constitution to include only Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu as the actual areas under its control. The constitution still includes mainland China and Mongolia as part of the ROC territory. 13 K. Hille and R. Kwong, ‘Taiwan Helicopter Deal Tests Sino-EU Ties: Muted Reaction from China to $111m Order.’ Financial Times (2010). 14 O. Bräuner,‘How Europe Shies from Taiwan.’ The Diplomat [Online] (2012). Available: http://thediplomat. com/2012/03/how-europe-shies-from-taiwan/. 15 M. Fravel,‘China’s Search for Military Power.’ The Washington Quarterly, 31, 3 (2008), pp. 125–41; Richard A. Bitzinger, ‘Modernizing China’s Military, 1997–2012.’ China Perspectives, 4 (2012), pp. 7–15. 16 Y. Chen, ‘A New Imbalance in the Equation of Military Balance across the Taiwan Strait,’ in P. Chow (ed.) The “One China” Dilemma (New York: Palgrave, 2008), pp. 275–89; Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2010 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2010). 17 Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2013 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2013), p. 5. 18 M. O’Hanlon, ‘Why China Cannot Conquer Taiwan.’ International Security, 25, 2 (2000), p. 57. 19 J. Hill, ‘Missile Race Heightens Tension across the Taiwan Strait.’ Jane’s Intelligence Review (1 January 2005), pp. 44–5. 20 J. O’Halloran (ed.), Jane’s Weapons: Strategic 2015–2016 (Coulsdon: IHS Jane’s, 2015). 21 National Ministry of Defense, 2013 Quadrennial Defense Review, the Republic of China (Taipei: National Ministry of Defense, 2013), p. 19. 22 M. McDevitt, ‘Alternative Futures: Long-Term Challenges for the United States,’ in R. Cliff, P. Saunders and S. Harold (eds.) New Opportunities and Challenges for Taiwan’s Security (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2011), p. 101; D. Shlapak, D. Orlesky, T. Reid, M. Tanner and B. Wilson, A Question of Balance: Political Context and Military Aspects of the China-Taiwan Dispute (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2009); M. Lostumbo, D. Frelinger, J. Williams and B. Wilson, Air Defense Options for Taiwan: An Assessment of Relative Costs and Operational Benefits (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2016). 23 Shlapak, et al., A Question of Balance. 24 Lostumbo, et al., Air Defense Options for Taiwan. 25 National Ministry of Defense, 2013 Quadrennial Defense Review, p. 21. 26 Garver, Face Off, p. 118. 27 M. Glosny, ‘Strangulation from the Sea? A PRC Submarine Blockade of Taiwan.’ International Security, 28, 4 (2004), pp. 125–60. 28 Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2016 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2016), p. 90. 29 Since the early 1990s, the PLA’s understanding of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and lessons from the First Gulf War have partly driven its modernization undertakings. See P. Dombrowski and E. Gholz, Buying Transformation: Technological Innovation and the Defense Industry (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), pp. 4–6. C4ISR is part of the backbone of the RMA. 30 J. Mulvenon, ‘The Digital Triangle’: A New Defense-Industrial Paradigm,’ in E. Medeiros, R. Cliff, K. Crane and J. Mulvenon (eds.) A New Direction for China’s Defense Industry (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2005), pp. 205–51. 31 The State Council Information Office, China’s National Defense in 2008 (Information Office of the State Council, Beijing, China, 2009).

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Ming-chin Monique Chu 32 ‘Committee Record,’ Legislative Yuan Bulletin, 102, 12 (2013), p. 291. 33 A. Erickson,‘China’s Military Modernization: Many Improvements, Three Challenges, and One Opportunity,’ in J. deLisle and A. Goldstein (eds.) China’s Challenges (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), pp. 196–200. 34 S. Goldstein and R. Schriver, ‘An Uncertain Relationship: The United States, Taiwan and the Taiwan Relations Act,’ The China Quarterly, 165 (2001), p. 162. 35 A. Johnston, ‘Is China a Status Quo Power?’ International Security, 27, 4 (2003), p. 51. 36 Mann, About Face, pp. 127–8; A. Huang, ‘The United States and Taiwan’s Defense Transformation.’ Taiwan-US Quarterly Analysis [Online] (2010). Available: www.brookings.edu/opinions/the-unitedstates-and-taiwans-defense-transformation/. 37 Johnston, ‘Is China a Status Quo Power?,’ p. 51. 38 C. Brown, R. Browne and Z. Cohen,‘Here’s Who Buys the Most Weapons from the U.S.’ CNN [Online] (2016). Available: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/24/politics/us-arms-sales-worldwide/; SIPRI Yearbook 2000: Armaments, Disarmament, and International Security (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 2000). 39 Goldstein and Schriver, ‘An Uncertain Relationship,’ p. 162. 40 T. Ferry, ‘The Future of Taiwan’s Defense Industry Part 1: Politics, Aircraft, and Missiles.’ Topics [Online] (2016). Available: http://topics.amcham.com.tw/2016/02/future-of-taiwan-defense-industry-part-1/. 41 Cabestan, ‘Cross-Strait Integration,’ p. 286; W. Minnick, ‘Chinese Spies Expand Operations in Taiwan.’ Defense News 24 January 2015; interview with J. Mulvenon, Deputy Director for Advanced Studies and Analysis at Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis at Defense Group Inc., 21 January 2005, Alexandria, VA, USA. 42 Goldstein and Schriver, ‘An Uncertain Relationship,’ p. 162. 43 For the text of the TRA, see www.ait.org.tw/en/taiwan-relations-act.html. 44 B. Gilley, ‘Not So Dire Straits: How the Finlandization of Taiwan Benefits U.S. Security.’ Foreign Affairs, 89, 1 (2010), pp. 44–60; C. Glaser, ‘Will China’s Rise Lead to War? Why Realism Does Not Mean Pessimism.’ Foreign Affairs, 90, 2 (2011), pp. 80–93. 45 S. Rigger, ‘Why Giving Up Taiwan Will Not Help Us with China.’ Asian Outlook, 3 (2001), pp. 1–9; N. Tucker and B. Glaser, ‘Should the United States Abandon Taiwan?’ Washington Quarterly, 34, 4 (2011), pp. 23–37. 46 Goldstein and Schriver, ‘An Uncertain Relationship,’ p. 151. 47 Beijing responded to Chen’s undertakings with the PLA drills at Dongshan Island in July 2004 and the enactment of the anti-succession law in 2005. 48 A. Nathan, ‘What’s Wrong with American Taiwan Policy.’ The Washington Quarterly, 23, 2 (2000), pp. 91–106; N. Tucker, ‘Strategic Ambiguity or Strategic Clarity?’ in N. Tucker (ed.) Dangerous Strait: The U.S.-Taiwan-China Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 186–211. 49 T. Christensen, ‘Posing Problems without Catching Up: China’s Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy.’ International Security, 25, 4 (2001), pp. 5–40; Bernard D. Cole, Taiwan’s Security: History and Prospects (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). 50 Lostumbo, et al., Air Defense Options for Taiwan; William S. Murray,‘Revisiting Taiwan’s Defense Strategy.’ Naval War College Review, 61, 3 (2008), pp. 13–38. 51 In 2008, President Ma Ying-jeou launched a related initiative. However, Ma and his successor Tsai Ingwen have delayed until at least 2017 the transition to an all-volunteer military. 52 Murray, ‘Revisiting Taiwan’s Defense Strategy.’; D. Roy, ‘Taiwan Perilously Ponders Its Strategic Missile Force.’ China Brief [Online], 6, 20 (4 October 2006). Available: https://jamestown.org/program/ taiwan-perilously-ponders-its-strategic-missile-force-3/; R. Bush, ‘Security Policy,’ in G. Schubert (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Taiwan (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 529–43. 53 Cole, Taiwan’s Security, pp. 63–4. 54 Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2014 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2014), p. 57. 55 National Ministry of Defense, 2013 Quadrennial Defense Review, pp. 28, 31, 33. 56 Interview with Andrew Yang, former Taiwanese minister of national defense, 26 August 2016, Taipei. 57 New Frontier Foundation Defense Policy Advisory Committee, ‘Preparing the Development of Indigenous Defense Industry,’ Defense Policy Blue Paper No. 12 (Taipei New Frontier Foundation, Taipei, Taiwan, 2015), p. 1. 58 W. Minnick, ‘Taiwan Establishes Submarine Development Center.’ Defense News, 3 August 2016. Available at: www.defensenews.com/naval/2016/08/03/taiwan-establishes-submarine-development-center/. 59 Ferry, ‘The Future of Taiwan’s Defense Industry Part 1.’

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Taiwan’s traditional security challenges 60 Interviews with several former presidents of CSIST, 14 July 2005 and 9 August 2005, Taipei, Taiwan. 61 Ferry, ‘The Future of Taiwan’s Defense Industry Part 1.’ 62 T. Ricks, ‘Taiwan Seen Vulnerable to Attack.’ The Washington Post (31 March 2000); interview with Andrew Yang (see note 56). 63 M. Chase, ‘Taiwan’s Arms Procurement Debate and the Demise of the Special Budget Proposal.’ Asian Survey, 48, 4 (2008), pp. 703–24. 64 Swaine and Mulvenon, Taiwan’s Foreign and Defense Policies, p. 12; S. Kan, Taiwan’s Major U.S. Arms Sales since 1990 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2014), pp. 32–5; Glaser and Anastasia, ‘Taiwan’s Defense Spending.’ 65 Murray, ‘Revisiting Taiwan’s Defense Strategy.’; B. Glaser and A. Mark, ‘Taiwan’s Defense Spending: The Security Consequences of Choosing Butter over Guns.’ (CSIS, 2015). Available: https://amti.csis.org/ taiwans-defense-spending-the-security-consequences-of-choosing-butter-over-guns/. 66 Interview with the president of an integrated circuit (IC) design house that has sold a wireless communications chip to the Taiwanese military, 5 July 2005, Taipei, Taiwan; interview with the president of an IC design firm involved in a project to improve the guidance system of an indigenous missile, 19 August 2005, Hsinchu, Taiwan. 67 The International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment 2016: Key Developments and Trends (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2016), p. 19. 68 Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2010), pp. 32–3; S. Lee and B. Schreer, ‘The Taiwan Strait: Still Dangerous.’ Survival, 55, 3 (2013), pp. 55–62. In 2015, the concept was replaced by Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons. 69 Ministry of Defense, Defense of Japan 2013 (Tokyo: Ministry of Defense, 2013). 70 J. Bosco, ‘Watch Out, China: Taiwan and Japan Are Teaming Up.’ The National Interest [Online]. Available: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/watch-out-china-taiwan-japan-are-teaming-16358. 71 S. Romaniuk and T. Burgers, ‘Time to Reset Japan-Taiwan Security and Defense Relations.’ Geopolitical Monitor (2016). Available: www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/time-to-reset-japan-taiwan-security-anddefense-relations/.

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8 CHINA’S MARITIME AMBITIONS Andrew S. Erickson

Introduction Maritime forces are on the leading edge of China’s military modernization, both programmatically and geographically. They offer vital tools for achieving progressively diminishing ripples of control in the Near Seas (Yellow, East, and South China Seas), influence in the Indo-Pacific “Two Oceans” region, and reach across the seas beyond.1 China’s People’s Armed Forces (PAF) include three principal sea forces. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the world’s largest, is second only to the U.S. Navy in aggregate capabilities. The China Coast Guard (CCG) is the world’s largest civil maritime force. Finally, the PAF Maritime Militia (PAFMM) is the world’s largest irregular sea force, and virtually the only one tasked with involvement in sovereignty disputes. This chapter surveys the underlying dynamics, structural trends, and future outlook for these forces.

Strategy China has long pursued a relatively consistent hierarchy of national security interests and priorities.2 What has varied most is how far down the hierarchy China’s leaders are able to extend concerted efforts without risking the maintenance of higher priorities. Formation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), followed by the easing of the Chinese Civil War and Cold War tensions as well as three-plus decades of meteoric national growth, now allow Beijing to focus efforts further down the list of objectives than ever before.3 Home to all of China’s unresolved feature and maritime claims, the Near Seas is now a core focus of its military development. Coupled with the world’s second largest economy and defense budget, these factors have directly informed the current leadership vision. Xi Jinping’s “China dream” promises national rejuvenation led by a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) firmly in charge. He calls for a strong country with strong armed forces to safeguard stability at home as well as to command both regional preeminence and respect, influence, and deference to China’s interests abroad. As part of this ambitious effort, Xi is building on his predecessor’s efforts to transform China into a great “maritime power.”4 Unlike his predecessors, he is devoting considerable focus and energy to leading a thorough Chinese maritime transformation. He has prioritized “rights protection” over regional maritime stability, and specifically called for “strategic management of the sea,” apparently a comprehensive state effort to achieve and maintain dominance over the Near Seas in peacetime.5 100

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Doctrinal directions To implement Xi’s vision, China is pursuing an updated military strategy. China’s 2015 Defense White Paper (DWP), conveys its latest Military Strategic Guideline, the PRC’s ninth ever. This national military strategy represents authoritative guidance from the Central Military Commission (CMC) concerning all aspects of PLA combat-related activities.6 China’s military modernization emphasis has shifted from “winning local wars under conditions of informatization” to “winning informatized [network-centric] local wars, highlighting [and preparing for] maritime military struggle” (放在打赢信息化局部战争上, 突出海上军事斗争和军事斗争准备). As part of a more integrated, networked, flexible approach, integrated joint operations (一体化联 合作战) are replacing previous combined arms operations. The maritime domain is increasingly prioritized. As China’s lead sea force, the PLAN is charged with Near Seas Defense (近海防御) as its primary effort; but also – for the first time – with adding a less-intense but growing outer layer of Far Seas Protection (远海护卫). As for geographical grounding, the PLA’s main “strategic direction” remains Taiwan, with additional areas of focus including the East and South China Seas. Beyond the DWP, broader maritime development efforts, including measures to bolster the CCG and PAFMM, are prioritized in China’s latest Five Year Plan.7 In keeping with evolving ways of war, China is thus pursuing a military strategy of “active defense” to ensure it can “win informatized local wars” (打赢信息化局部战争). This strategy privileges “non-linear, non-contact, and asymmetric” (三非) operations. It seeks to match key Chinese strengths against the weaknesses of the U.S. and other potential opponents. Long enshrined in major PLA strategy documents, as well as China’s National Security Law of 2015, active defense is a concept of reacting to threats to China’s inherently defensive strategic goals (such as protecting China’s maritime periphery) in a manner that may be proactive or even offensive operationally (i.e., by using a ship-launched missile to target a U.S. carrier strike group dispatched to preclude China from coercing Taiwan). “Local informatized war,” the sort Chinese strategists believe their nation must prepare for as a worst case scenario vis-à-vis disputed claims in the Near Seas, is limited in length, geography, and means but involves multiple domains. Non-linear operations involve launching attacks from multiple platforms in unpredictable fashion that range across the enemy’s operational and strategic depth. Non-contact operations entail targeting the enemy with precision (e.g., missile, electromagnetic) attacks from a beyond-horizon distance sufficient to potentially preclude direct retaliation. Asymmetric operations involve exploiting inherent physics-based limitations to match Chinese strengths against an opponent’s weaknesses in an effort to change a potential opponent’s policy in peacetime or achieve early war termination on favorable terms. This involves the employment of “assassin’s mace weapons” (杀手锏武器) stemming from Jiang Zemin’s 1999 injunction: “That which the enemy fears most, that is what we must develop.”8

Organizational Reform Acutely aware of the PLA’s remaining weaknesses,9 Xi is pursuing sweeping military reforms – possibly China’s most ambitious ever. His goal: a PLA that is more modern, competent, joint, and capable of winning wars; in short, leaner and meaner. In the PLA’s eleventh reduction in history, 300,000 troops will leave its books (some will work elsewhere in the PAF, some will retire, and some will find civilian work). Already, 7 Military Regions (MRs) have become 5 joint command “theaters of operations.” Of greatest relevance to high-intensity maritime operations, the Eastern Theater oriented toward the East China Sea, the Southern Theater toward South China Sea. There is now a clearer division of labor, in which theater headquarters command operations and services focus on force management issues. Informatized operations involving networking 101

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and command operation may circumvent some previously sclerotic bureaucratic layers.10 This rebalancing is already yielding increased status and prioritization for the PLAN. Its 235,000 personnel may even increase as other services, particularly the PLA Army (PLAA), shed billets. Its higher-ranking officers will likely enjoy a level of representation in the theater headquarters that they never had in the ground force-dominated MRs. Ongoing integration since 2013, while complex and painful, is making the CCG a far more capable force. Following a multi-decade history of serving on the front lines of Chinese maritime claims, leading PAFMM units are undergoing unprecedented professionalization and militarization.

Forces: hardware and software As throughout the PAF more generally, in China’s maritime forces “hardware” (ships and related equipment) is improving rapidly while “software” (the organizations and personnel that utilize them) tends to lag in some areas. Many areas of unevenness remain. Even in hardware, for instance, some electronics and weapons systems retain significant limitations.11 Nevertheless, when viewed over time, there is significant progress virtually across the board.

Plan Hardware China’s naval hardware modernization effort stands at twenty-five years and counting. Design work on newer ships began in the late 1980s, just as China was opening back up to the world and seaborne trade was beginning to power rapid economic growth.12 Following the end of the Cold War, Taiwan’s democratization, and related mainland security concerns, by the mid-1990s a build-out began that persists to the present. To date, growth has been more qualitative than quantitative, with major advances in ships’ size, missions, sensors, and weapons. China’s conventional submarine fleet, long prioritized, has become relatively quiet. China’s nuclear-powered submarines remain noisier because of propulsion technology challenges. Developing a credible nuclear dyad by adding a sea leg is both a priority and a long-term effort. Deterrence options will increase as China moves from the Type 094 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) to a possibly quieter Type 096 variant, and from the JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) to a longer-range JL-3. China’s surface fleet is being transformed by the serial production and deployment of larger, more capable multirole vessels, as indicated in Figure 8.1 (pg. 103). Major improvement in shipboard air defense allows protection of vessels when operating further from shore-based defenses. The PLAN remains focused on anti-surface warfare, to dramatic effect. Most platforms are outfitted with increasing load-outs of advanced, high-speed, long-range cruise missiles. Of particular note over the coming decade will be the Type 055 guided-missile cruiser, and the Type 095 nuclear-powered attack submarine that will succeed the presently-deployed 093. As a seabased land-attack mission emerges during that time, land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs) will be loaded on such ships as the Type 052D destroyer.13 Long-range targeting remains an area for improvement, but growing utilization of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will join land-based over-the-horizon radars and burgeoning constellations of satellites to enhance the relevant C4ISR. While power projection capabilities lag, China has refitted a former-Ukrainian starter carrier and is now building at least one additional hull.14 “We use the Liaoning to test the reliability and compatibility of systems on carriers, and to train personnel. The second carrier will mainly do what a genuine aircraft carrier is supposed to do: running combat patrols and delivering humanitarian 102

China’s maritime ambitions

Type Aircraft Carriers Modified Project 1143.5 001A Liaoning class Cruisers 055 (Renhai) Destroyers 051/D/Z (Luda I) 051G (Luda III) 051DT (Luda IV) 052 (Luhu) 051B (Luhai) Project 956E (Sovremenny) Project 956EM (Sovremenny) 052B (Luyang I) 052C (Luyang II) 051C (Luzhou) 052D (Luyang III)

IOC Displacement (tons)

SAM

ASCM

2010 2015 2017 2020

2016 55,000– 60,000 Est 55,000– 2020 60,000

HHQ-10

None

NA

NA

1

1

HHQ-10

None

NA

NA

NA

1

?

Est 12,000

HHQ-9A/B YJ-18 HHQ-10

NA

NA

NA

1

1971 1989 1990 1994 1999 2000

3,670 3,700 3,700 4,800 6,600 7,940

NA HHQ-7 HHQ-7 HHQ-7 HHQ-16 SA-N-7A

YJ-83/C802A YJ-83/C802A YJ-83/C802A YJ-83/C802A YJ-83/C802A SS-N-22

12 2 1 2 2 2

3 2 1 2 2 2

2 2 1 2 2 2

0 2 0? 2 2 2

2004 7,940

SA-N-7B

SS-N-22

2

2

2

2

2004 2005 2006 2014

SA-N-7B HHQ-9 SA-N-20 HHQ-9A HHQ-10

YJ-83/C802A YJ-62/C602 YJ-83/C802A YJ-83/C802A

2 2 2 0

2 6 2 3

2 6 2 6

2 6 2 13

SY-1/2 30 YJ-8A/C801 YJ-83/C802A 4 YJ-83/C802A 10 YJ-83/C802A 2 YJ-83/C802A 6 YJ-18 NA

18

17

10

0 10 2 18 NA

0 10 2 22 NA

0 10 2 30

16

31

43

83

83

83

6,300 6,800 7,300 7,000

Frigates 053H/H1/H2 (Jianghu I-V) 053H2G (Jiangwei I) 053H3 (Jiangwei II) 054 (Jiangkai I) 054A (Jiangkai II) 054B

1975 1,660–2,100

NA

1992 1999 2005 2008 ?

HQ-61 HHQ-7 HHQ-7 HHQ-16 HHQ-16 HHQ-10

Corvette 056/056A (Jiangdao)

2013 1,440–1,500

HHQ-10

YJ-83/C802A

Missile Patrol Craft 022 (Houbei)

2004 225

NA

YJ-83/C802A 60+

2,400 2,400 3,900 4,050 Est 5,000

0

?

Figure 8.1 Major PLAN surface combatants15

aid,” states Naval Research Institute analyst Sr. Capt. Zhang Junshe. “The PLA needs at least three aircraft carriers . . . one can be on duty, one can train personnel, and one can receive maintenance.”16 These long-term efforts, combined with significant improvements in PLAN aircraft, are making Chinese air and sea power more far-ranging and sophisticated than ever before. 103

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Software Fueled by heightened resources, and more flexibility to accept and motivate technologically-savvy talent, the PLAN is recruiting and retaining more standout officers and specialists. It is taking in fewer enlisted lacking potential for sophistication or retention. As one of previous PLAN Commander Admiral Wu Shengli’s priorities, PLAN education is being consolidated and reorganized. In a sea change that he considers to be imperative for a world-class navy, PLAN education is transitioning from technocratic, balkanized Soviet model to an integrated, interdisciplinary American model. Emphasized by Xi himself, training is undergoing a similar renaissance. Exercises involve larger, more complex, more mobile and far-reaching joint operations. Increasing realism is facilitated by incorporating electronic warfare, using land-based simulators, employing advanced mobile targets with passive and active jammers, and engaging opposition forces.17

CCG The CCG is rapidly increasing both its “rights protection” responsibilities and capabilities. Of China’s three sea forces, vis-à-vis its goal capabilities of “safeguarding maritime rights and interests,” however, it faces the greatest degree of software lagging hardware. A fleet buildup perhaps matched in degree by no other maritime force in the world is yielding greater numbers of larger, more capable vessels. Over the past five years, China’s civil maritime forces added more than 100 ocean-going patrol ships. Now, even as quality improves across the board, a further 25% quantitative force increase is underway.18 To be sure, the CCG remains quite limited in aviation, and likely requires a considerable increase in helicopters and fixed-wing maritime patrol aircraft to achieve its desired maritime domain awareness.19 But it is in software that the greatest challenges remain. Overcoming national-local disconnects to achieve full organizational consolidation and integration will require an agency-wide personnel system, standards, and practices – perhaps facilitated by the passage of long-anticipated China’s Maritime Basic Law.20 On the positive side, the CCG established a command center in 2014 and has achieved a unified command. “Chinese leaders now have their fingers on the pulse of all rights protection operations in Chinese-claimed waters,” although “tactical-level coordination is likely quite poor.”21 The CCG is increasing patrols and exercises, including more training with the PLAN and PAFMM. Its struggle “to form a fist out of formerly ineffectual fingers” continues.22

PAFMM The maritime subset of the third component of China’s armed forces after the PLA and People’s Armed Police (PAP), the PAFMM is an armed mass organization of primarily civilian-economy mariners who are trained and mobilized to implement China’s national maritime strategy and advance its maritime territorial claims.23 Leading elements of the force are increasingly professionalized and militarized.24 Its personnel are organized and commanded directly by the PLA’s local military commands. Elite PAFMM units are entrusted with maritime “rights protection” activities, including deliberate participation by PAFMM forces in international sea incidents ranging from the 1974 Battle of the Paracels to the 2014 HYSY-981 Oil Rig Incident. Such frontline activities occur directly under the PLA chain of command. Thanks to their utility in upholding and advancing contested Chinese claims in the East and South China Sea, elite units are enjoying significant qualitative and quantitative growth. They are receiving larger, more capable vessels, and training more frequently with the CCG and PLAN.

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Operations and scenarios DoD assesses that capabilities under development “could permit the PLA to achieve sea control within . . . the ‘near seas,’ as well as to project limited combat power into the ‘far seas.’”25 In pursuing Near Seas Active Defense, China is developing a comprehensive counter-intervention approach to increase its chances for achieving sea control in a variety of contingencies. Foremost in the mind of Chinese strategists and planners, their potential opponents, and interested observers alike is a simple question: how well would China’s sea forces perform in the potential scenarios for which they are being developed and trained? Unfortunately, the complex, multivariate, evolving equations are extremely difficult to assess with public information. The best approach is a probabilistic assessment based on rigorous methodology, which is beyond the scope of this chapter. As the next best alternative, within a means (force structure)-ways (operational scenarios)-ends (achieving campaign objectives) framework, it will survey leading publicly available assessments. U.S. government reports offer a reliable overview, data, and foundation. Non-official studies from government-affiliated research organizations such as RAND, as well as their former employees, offer more detailed, versatile assessments that are useful for informing scenario analysis. When carefully vetted, leading Chinese-language publications offer important context, texture, and trends in specific (“gray”) areas. The key is to extract “wheat” from overwhelming, contradictory “chaff.” For the majority of major combat operations scenarios that might involve China, China’s ends-ways-means are largely consistent. The ends are achieving (degree, duration, location variable with campaign objective) control in/under/over the Near Seas and immediate approaches in order to uphold or advance contested sovereignty claims, as outlined in the section on strategy on pg. 100. The ways involve a combined operational approach that Chinese sources term “Controlling seas by relying on land, and controlling oceans by using seas” (倚陆制海, 以海制洋).26 The means involve developing, deploying, and employing capabilities that are advantageously asymmetric vis-à-vis potential opponent(s), as outlined in the previous section on force structure. Here, the focus is on the ways that China will try to achieve control.

Control China’s choice of control as a way for Near Seas campaigns has clear theoretical advantages. It is most amenable to PRC use of military force, with manifold opportunities to use asymmetric weapons. It poses the greatest challenge to opponents, including U.S. Execution, of course, is more difficult in practice. Figure 8.2 (pg. 106) outlines the principal aspects of potential Chinese efforts for achieving control. As the following specific examples illustrate, even the most adept Chinese effort necessitates an important choice: large-scale, visible preparations to maximize mobilization, signaling, and strategic flexibility; or smaller covert preparations to maximize surprise and operational and tactical flexibility?

Taiwan scenario: leading high-end contingency PLA efforts remain focused. Cross-Strait relations are currently relatively stable, but this could change rapidly. The January 2016 election that returned the DPP to power is but one manifestation of growing Taiwanese disenchantment and concern. Meanwhile, Mainland sensitivity, confidence, impatience is pacing rapid improvement in both relative and absolute PLA capabilities. DoD assesses that “The PLA is capable of increasingly-sophisticated military actions against Taiwan.”27

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Mission

Goals

Operations

Capabilities

Systems

Near Seas CounterIntervention/ A2-AD

Recover Taiwan, other claimed territories. Deter/frustrate enemy interference by conventional and nuclear means. Sea/air control for certain time in certain area(s) of Near Seas to achieve fait accompli vis-à-vis Taiwan/ Spratlys before U.S. intervenes.

• Defensive/ • Regional C4ISR/ offensive Maritime naval, air domain • Offensive awareness missile salvos • Short-range • Precision strike amphibious • Opposed assault intervention • Island/reef seizure • Securing high-value assets

Pursued 1987-present. All major capabilities to support, but no guarantee of overcoming U.S./allied countermeasures.

Extended Blue Water A2/AD

Higher probability of achieving above objectives by holding opposing forces at risk throughout China’s periphery out to 1,000+ km from territorial waters/airspace. Defend major wartime SLOCs.

All the above, at greater distance, intensity, and duration

Possibly achievable by ~2020

• Ground-/ sea-based ISR • Landline/ line of sight communications • Land-based/ coastal defense • Conventional submarines • Ballistic and cruise missiles • Land-based fighter/ strike aircraft • AEW • Amphibs • Special forces • Coast Guard • Militia • Longer-range • Longervariants of the range, more above, potentially robust based further expression of the above forward • Additional air-/ • Possible space-based ISR strategic • Bombers? bombing

Status

Figure 8.2 Elements of control29

These could entail several major types of operations or some combination thereof. Two options might lack a significant maritime component. First, targeted coercion efforts could involve Special Forces launching attacks on infrastructure or leadership. Second, an air/missile campaign could likewise involve high-priority targets, or a more general threat as posed by the 1958–78 Jinmen Bombardment and missile strikes offshore as during the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait Crisis. The latter is already viable, with operational advantages; yet highly escalatory and possibly limited in what it could achieve alone. Most of China’s Taiwan coercion options would require significant PLAN involvement. A maritime quarantine/blockade could take manifold forms from merchant traffic diversion to inspection or transshipment requirements to military port closure to “war at sea.”28 Such actions area already viable absent U.S. intervention – the key swing factor. While offering the theoretical possibility of escalation control, even an operationally successful blockade might not guarantee a desired political end state. Some form of amphibious invasion could accompany a blockade, or be executed independently. As detailed in the PLA’s Joint Island Landing Campaign and practiced in joint landing 106

China’s maritime ambitions

exercises, such an operation is inherently complex and difficult. China has many options for invading nearby offshore islands, exploiting proximity, numbers, and a full spectrum of forces, supported by a land-based missile/air backstop. “The PLA is capable of accomplishing various amphibious operations short of a full-scale invasion of Taiwan,” DoD judges.30 Outlying islands are highly vulnerable: “With few overt military preparations beyond routine training, China could launch an invasion of small Taiwan-held islands in the South China Sea such as Pratas or Itu Aba. A PLA invasion of a medium-sized, better-defended island such as Matsu or Jinmen is within China’s capabilities.”31 Doing so would risk (geo)politically Pyrrhic victory: galvanizing Taiwanese and international opposition without ensuring a permanent resolution in Beijing’s favor. Invading Taiwan proper, even absent American intervention, remains extremely difficult. Robust terrain in the form of extensive mud flats, complex tide sequences, few favorable landing points, and impediments to overland passage offer a strong foundation for island defense. In a maximal Taiwan campaign, China might also seek to combine elements of the above. Objectives could include achieving information dominance and air/sea superiority to create conditions for negotiated political settlement. Phases might include pre-positioning submarines/sea mine barriers, launching missile/air strikes on key targets, and surging amphibious landing force with naval escorts. To date, however, such an operation likely faces too many limiting factors to succeed. As Figure 8.3 documents, this includes an insufficient amphibious fleet that is not growing rapidly. In the assessment of Roger Cliff, who is exceptional in his publication of a unified campaign model, “it does not appear that China in 2020 will have reason to be confident of successfully

Type

IOC

Tons

Troops

Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) 081 2017?

900?

Landing Platform Dock (LPD) 071 (Yuzhao) 2008 Landing Ship, Medium (LSM) 073-II (Yudeng) 1994 074 (Yuhai) 1995 073A (Yunshu) 2004 Landing Craft, Utility (LCU) 074A (Yubei) 2004 Landing Ship, Tank (LST) 072/-IIG (Yukan) 072-II/III (Yuting I) 072A (Yuting II) LCUA Pomoronik (“Zubr”)

1980 1992 2003

Armored Fighting Vehicles

Number in Inventory 2010

2015

2017

?

0

0

2

600

15

1

3–4

5

180 250 500

6 2 6

1 13? 10

1 6 10

1 6 10

200

10

?

3

3

200 250 250

10 10 10

7 10 11

7 9 11

6 9 11

?

4

4

3

3

Hovercraft/Landing Craft, Air Cushioned (LCAC) 726 (Yuyi) 2008 Figure 8.3 PLAN amphibious landing ships34

107

2020

4

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invading Taiwan if the United States intervenes on Taiwan’s side.”32 While emphasizing that Taiwan is becoming increasingly difficult for the U.S. to defend, RAND largely concurs: “a war for Taiwan would be a short, sharp, probably desperate affair with significant losses on both sides.”33 Taiwan has a small but fairly capable military and its value to Beijing lies largely in its politically vital main island, whose preservation as a democratic society is of vital importance to Washington and of concern to powerful members of the international community, including Japan. In practice, this means that among military and paramilitary options, only high-intensity operations, or at least the threat of them, could hope to resolve sovereignty issues in Beijing’s favor – and this remains largely aspirational. The PLAN could not hope to act alone, and China’s other maritime forces would be unlikely to have a role at all.

South sea contingency Scenarios in the South China Sea, by contrast, center on small, hard-to-defend features of less inherent political concern to the U.S. and other influential powers. While Washington and Manila maintain an alliance, its precise application to certain features remains unclear, particularly given the recent statements and actions of President Duterte. Within this more permissive environment, Beijing has a wider range of military and paramilitary options for advancing its sovereignty claims; a larger percentage of which it would execute primarily with one or more of its maritime forces. A high-end scenario in the South China Sea is conceivable, primarily concerning a Sino– Philippine dispute over a Spratly feature (perhaps following a Philippine attempt to repair or replace its grounded vessel-outpost on Second Thomas Shoal following a typhoon) in which the U.S. intervened. A combination of distance from mainland bases and Chinese desire to avoid a prolonged, visible buildup would place a premium on in-theater assets, primarily those in the Southern Theater Command. China might attempt to parlay its relative power into information dominance, air/sea superiority, seize claimed features, and negotiate a political settlement. To compensate for disadvantages in distance, communications, strike, transit, and fuel, China might pre-position submarines/sea mine barriers, launch missile/air strikes on key targets, and surge an amphibious landing force with naval escorts. Roger Cliff ’s assessment here is more encouraging for China than for a Taiwan scenario: if Beijing could maintain an element of surprise, it could possibly achieve a fait accompli that would leave Washington with unpalatable options.35 “Through 2017, the U.S. military will almost certainly continue to enjoy the upper hand in most areas, though the degree of advantage will continue to erode,” RAND judges, adding: “In the maritime realm, both sides may be able to target the other’s surface warfare forces in the confined spaces of the South China Sea.”36 As with other scenarios, it is possible that China’s deterrence and risk calculus are changing. Not only are related Chinese activities more assertive than previously, Chinese sources also suggest that it may become somewhat more risk acceptant regarding crises that might ensue.37 But Beijing is already advancing multifarious South Sea claims, and asserting its claim to the Senakaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, by easier, more gradual, less risky means. What Chinese sources term “war without gun smoke,” DoD terms “low-intensity coercion . . . a progression of small, incremental steps to increase [China’s] effective control over disputed areas [while] avoid[ing] escalation to military conflict.”38 To execute such salami slicing, Beijing has employed all three major sea forces. Working together, their collective actions are termed “Naval, Coast Guard, and Maritime Militia Joint Defense” (军警民联防).39 Three-force coordination occurred in the 2009 Impeccable Incident and 2014 HYSY 981 Oil Rig Incident.40 While the PLAN did not participate directly in the 2012 Scarborough Reef Incident, frontline action by the CCG and PAFMM wrested the 108

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feature from the Philippines.41 Ongoing Paracel and Spratly “island” construction and fortification affords the CCG and PAFMM even more persistent, flexible presence. In the Near Seas, Beijing is pursuing a high-low approach. At the high end, while still inadequate to guarantee its objectives, China’s relative capabilities are improving rapidly, potentially undermining U.S. deterrence. During the 2020s, Cliff forecasts, China will gain “the capability to, at a minimum, contest control of [regional] seas and airspace . . . an attempt to oppose a Chinese use of force will be dangerous and costly for any country, including the United States.”42 Similarly, RAND projects that for the next 5–15 years, U.S. forces could still prevail in protracted war in such areas, but victory would be far costlier in the past as the PLA might achieve temporary local air and naval superiority at the outset.43 Meanwhile, at the low end, China is gradually accruing peacetime gains without substantial American countermeasures.

Influence While it continues to prepare for intense Near Seas operations, the PLAN is also adopting a more diffuse range of missions around the world with little or no CCG or PAFMM participation. Safeguarding growing overseas interests, including the safety of citizens and assets and security of seaborne energy/resource imports, promotes gradual development along a continuum of operational capabilities. From modest beginnings, its force posture advances along a spectrum defined by the ability to sustain higher intensity combat under increasingly contested, uncertain conditions ever farther from Mainland China. Distance from land-based defenses and “work arounds” and relying more extensively on long-range C4ISR imposes new challenges. To support these unprecedented activities, for instance, China is developing a network of overseas access points for logistics and intelligence. Within this Far Seas zone, China is pursuing an inner layer of influence and an outer layer of reach. The inner layer constitutes the “Two Oceans region” (两洋地区) spanning the Western Pacific, Indian Ocean, and surrounding seas.44 To the extent that such efforts (outlined in Figure 8.4, below) are relevant to a Near Seas scenario, they would involve pushing the culminating point out, and distracting a U.S. mobilization and logistics train.

Reach In addition to controlling the Near Seas and influencing the Two Oceans region, China aspires to access all other seas around the globe as needed with its maritime forces. Such efforts (outlined in Figure 8.5 on pg. 110) have little direct relevance to Near Seas scenarios, for which China would likely recall forces homeward; doing so in peacetime might foreshadow operational plans.

Conclusion: key dynamics and trends China is achieving rapid but uneven military-maritime development. Geography matters tremendously. Close to home, China’s military and paramilitary capabilities are strong and well-tailored. For the PLAN, short-range opportunities, including “work arounds” to mitigate weaknesses, help pose tremendous challenges to their American counterparts without approaching their absolute capabilities. This affords China strategic defensive posture along interior lines, rendering opposing forces inherently vulnerable. Additionally, Beijing’s other two sea forces offer manifold cost-effective, escalation-limiting options. Long-range challenges, by contrast, continue to loom imposingly. China is making much slower progress, from a much lower baseline, farther away. Its 109

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Mission

Operations

Capabilities

Systems

Status

Limited Ability to Expeditionary conduct maritime interdiction operations and highlevel NEO, when necessary beyond East Asia

• Securing important assets overseas • Defense of sea lanes, by denial if necessary • Counterterrorism strikes

• All the above, at greater distance, intensity, and duration • Joint forcible entry operations • Long-range amphibious assault • Long-range denial/control of specific air/sea/ littoral space

• Extra-regional PNT/space, communications, surveillance network • Carrier groups • Aviation • UAVs • Replenishment ships/aircraft • Advanced special forces • Undercover PAP/ private security contractors • Longer-range versions of above • More forward basing/ deployment • CSGs • Long-range missiles in surface fleet? • SSNs • AWACs • Helicopters/ VTOL

Low end already achieved. More robust capabilities achievable by 2030.

Blue Water Some form Expeditionary of global presence even if thin. Ability to surge combat-ready forces in/ above core strategic overseas areas. Ability to seize, attempt to hold small overseas features.

• Extra-regional C4ISR/MDA • Coordination • Overseas sea/ air lift • Long-range air/sea power projection • Opposed intervention • Self-defense • Deep water ASW • AAW Sustainment • Longer range, more robust expression of above • Cuing from wide area sensors (hydrographic arrays, satellites) • Combat air patrol • Overseas facilities access (particularly dedicated airfields) • Overseas repair

Figure 8.4

Goals

In progress. Full capacity by 2030 at earliest.

Elements of influence45

forces face military limitations and vulnerabilities in distant seas, and are far from being able to conduct high intensity kinetic operations against capable forces there. The more China strives to become a great maritime power far beyond its shores, the more it will face the great costs of sea power. Manifold factors will increase costs and technological requirements, rendering China less asymmetric and exceptional. The closer China’s navy approaches leading-edge capabilities, the more expensive and difficult it will be for it to advance further, or even to remain in a given position vis-à-vis the global capabilities frontier. Weapons systems and associated infrastructure will be progressively-more-expensive to build, operate, and maintain than their less-advanced predecessors. China’s cost advantages decrease as military equipment becomes less labor-intensive and more technology- and materials-intensive. The more sophisticated and technology-intensive PLAN systems become, the less relative benefit China derives from acquiring and indigenizing foreign technologies, and the less cost advantage it will have in producing and maintaining them.47 110

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Mission

Goals

Operations

Capabilities

Systems

Status

Global Expeditionary

Ability to send combat-ready naval/air forces to all major strategic regions of the world

• Presence • FONOPS • Peacekeeping/ stabilization operations • Major HA/DR • NEO Other public goods/nontraditional security provision (chemical weapons escort, missing airliner search, etc.)

• Global C4ISR/ MDA • Global sea/ air lift • Global air/sea power projection • Global ASW/ AAW • Sensor cuing • Combat air patrol • Robust sustainment • Overseas sea/ air facilities network • Remote repair capability

• Global PNT/space, communications, surveillance network • SSNs • CSGs • Other large surface combatants • Amphibs • Hospital ships • Extensive forward basing/ deployment • Long-range, high-speed oilers/ replenishment ships • Field hospitals • Cargo aircraft • Tanker aircraft • Bombers • Long-range air defense systems • Helicopters/ VTOL • Tenders • Rapid deployment troops (~U.S. MEU)

Extremely long, nuanced capability spectrum. Ability to send very limited forces into non-contested areas around the world already achieved. Timeline for high-intensity opposed capacity uncertain.

Figure 8.5 Elements of reach46

Meanwhile, structural and organizational reform will require increased investment and impose associated demobilization costs. As with Western maritime forces, rising salaries and benefits to attract, educate, train, and retain technologically-capable professionals with private sector alternatives will consume an increasing portion of the budget. Growing entitlements will likewise cause a strain, particularly as increasing numbers of retirees draw benefits. Marshalling considerable historical data, Philip Pugh demonstrates that while countries tend to spend a constant percentage of their economy on defense over time, the cost of ships and weapons outpaces inflation – typically at 9%. At 2% inflation, this would compound to costs doubling each decade. Even 2% naval budget growth per annum – excessively optimistic for most developed Western nations – would tend to require an annual average 3.5% reduction in fleet numbers. By shifting given missions to smaller platforms, navies can innovate and economize; but constant cost growth challenges ultimately forces major numbers reductions.48 As history 111

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warns, many European naval challenges of yesterday and American naval challenges of today will be China’s tomorrow. Xi is fortunate that – barring major economic disruption – the majority of problems will emerge after he retires.

Notes 1 Peter Dutton, “Three Disputes and Three Objectives: China and the South China Sea,” Naval War College Review 64.4 (Autumn 2011): 58, www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/feb516bf-9d93-4d5c-80dcd5073ad84d9b/Three-Disputes-and-Three-Objectives—China-and-the. 2 Michael D. Swaine and Ashley J. Tellis, Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000), www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1121.html. 3 Andrew S. Erickson, “China’s Near-Seas Challenges,” The National Interest 129 (January–February 2014): 60–6, http://nationalinterest.org/article/chinas-near-seas-challenges-9645. 4 Rear Admiral Michael McDevitt, USN (Ret.), Becoming a Great ‘Maritime Power’: A Chinese Dream (Arlington, VA: CNA Corporation, June 2016), www.cna.org/cna_files/pdf/IRM-2016-U-013646.pdf. 5 Ryan D. Martinson, “Jinglue Haiyang: The Naval Implications of Xi Jinping’s New Strategic Concept,” Jamestown China Brief (9 January 2015), https://jamestown.org/program/jinglue-haiyang-thenaval-implications-of-xi-jinpings-new-strategic-concept/#.VMZ0I4rF8me. 6 M. Taylor Fravel, “China’s New Military Strategy: ‘Winning Informationized Local Wars’,” Jamestown China Brief 15.3 (2 July 2015), https://jamestown.org/program/chinas-new-military-strategy-winninginformationized-local-wars/. 7 苏向东 [Su Xiangdong], 责任编辑 [Editor], “中国国民经济和社会发展第十三个五年规划纲要 (全文)” [China’s Five Year Plan for Social and Economic Development (Full Text)], 新华网 [Xinhua] (17 March 2016), www.china.com.cn/lianghui/news/2016-03/17/content_38053101.htm. 8 Zhang Wannian, “敌人害怕什么, 我们就发展什么” [We Must Develop for Ourselves That Which the Enemy Fears], speech delivered 5 November 1999, in Zhang Wannian, 张万年军事文选 [Selected Military Writings of Zhang Wannian] (Beijing: PLA Press, 2008), 733. 9 Michael S. Chase et al., China’s Incomplete Military Transformation: Assessing the Weaknesses of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2015), www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/ RR893.html. 10 Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2016, Annual Report to Congress [Hereafter: DoD (2016)], 63, www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2016%20China%20 Military%20Power%20Report.pdf. 11 Andrew S. Erickson, “Steaming Ahead, Course Uncertain: China’s Military Shipbuilding Industry,” The National Interest (19 May 2016), http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/steaming-ahead-courseuncertain-chinas-military-shipbuilding-16266. 12 Ronald O’Rourke, China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities – Background and Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 17 June 2016), 5, https://fas.org/ sgp/crs/row/RL33153.pdf. 13 DoD (2016), 66–7. 14 Andrew Scobell, M. McMahon, C. Cooper III, and A. Chan, “China’s Aircraft Carrier Program: Drivers, Developments, Implications,” in Andrew S. Erickson, ed., Chinese Naval Shipbuilding: An Ambitious and Uncertain Course, pp. 249-260 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2016). 15 “China People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA(N)) and Maritime Law Enforcement (MLE) 2015 Recognition and Identification Guide,” current as of February 2015, www.oni.navy.mil/Intelligence_Community/ china_media/posters/PLA_Navy_Identification_Guide.pdf; Andrew S. Erickson, “Evaluating China’s Conventional Military Power: The Naval and Air Dimensions,” in Jae Ho Chung, ed., Assessing China’s Power (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 71; Eric Heginbotham et al., The U.S.-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the Evolving Balance of Power, 1996–2017 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2015), 177–8, www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR300/RR392/RAND_RR392.pdf; 2020 figures from Roger Cliff, China’s Military Power: Assessing Current and Future Capabilities (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 193. 16 Zhang Tao, “2nd Aircraft Carrier to Have Military Focus,” China Daily (4 January 2016), http://english. chinamil.com.cn/news-channels/pla-daily-commentary/2016-01/04/content_6842431.htm. 17 The PLA Navy (Suitland, MD: Office of Naval Intelligence, 9 April 2015), 25, www.oni.navy. mil/Portals/12/Intel%20agencies/China_Media/2015_PLA_NAVY_PUB_Interactive.pdf?ver= 2015-12-02-081058-483.

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China’s maritime ambitions 18 DoD (2016), 69. 19 Ryan D. Martinson, “From Words to Actions: The Creation of the China Coast Guard,” a paper for the “China as a ‘Maritime Power’ Conference,” CNA Corporation, Arlington, VA, 28–29 July 2015, 46–8, www.cna.org/cna_files/pdf/creation-china-coast-guard.pdf. 20 Ibid., 1–52. 21 Ibid., 44. 22 Ibid., 49. 23 For a comprehensive compendium of research on the PAFMM, see Andrew S. Erickson, “U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Scott Swift on China’s Maritime Militia,” China Analysis from Original Sources (22 November 2016), www.andrewerickson.com/2016/11/u-s-pacific-fleet-commanderadmiral-scott-swift-on-chinas-maritime-militia-lets-acknowledge-that-its-there-lets-acknowledgehow-its-being-comma/. 24 Conor M. Kennedy and Andrew S. Erickson, “Riding a New Wave of Professionalization and Militarization: Sansha City’s Maritime Militia,” Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC) (1 September 2016), http://cimsec.org/riding-new-wave-professionalization-militarization-sansha-citys-maritimemilitia/27689. 25 DoD (2016), 61. 26 军事科学院军事战略研究部 [Academy of Military Science Military Strategic Research Department], 战略学 [The Science of Military Strategy] (Beijing: Military Science Press, 2013), 98–102. 27 DoD (2016), 88. 28 Ibid., 88–9. 29 Ely Ratner et al., More Willing and Able: Charting China’s International Security Activism (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, May 2015), 31–42, https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/ documents/CNAS_ChinaMoreWillingAndAble_Final.pdf; Christopher D. Yung et al., China’s Out of Area Naval Operations: Case Studies, Trajectories, Obstacles, and Potential Solutions, National Defense University Institute for National Strategic Studies China Strategic Perspective 3 (December 2010), 30–50, http://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/stratperspective/china/ChinaPerspectives-3.pdf. 30 Ibid., 89–90. 31 Ibid., 90. 32 Cliff, China’s Military Power, 221. 33 Heginbotham et al., The U.S.-China Military Scorecard, 332. 34 “China People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA(N)) and Maritime Law Enforcement (MLE) 2015 Recognition and Identification Guide”; Erickson, “Evaluating China’s Conventional Military Power,” 72; Erickson, unpublished research; Heginbotham et al., The U.S.-China Military Scorecard, 203. 35 Cliff, China’s Military Power, 241–43. 36 Heginbotham et al., The U.S.-China Military Scorecard, 341. 37 Timothy R. Heath et al., The PLA and China’s Rejuvenation: National Security and Military Strategies, Deterrence Concepts, and Combat Capabilities (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2016), www.rand.org/pubs/ research_reports/RR1402.html. 38 DoD (2016), 13. 39 “中国武装力量的多样化运用” [The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces] (Beijing: Information Office of the State Council, 16 April 2013), www.mod.gov.cn/affair/2013-04/16/content_ 4442839.htm. 40 Andrew S. Erickson and Conor M. Kennedy, “China’s Daring Vanguard: Introducing Sanya City’s Maritime Militia,” CIMSEC (5 November 2015), http://cimsec.org/chinas-daring-vanguard-introducingsanya-citys-maritime-militia/19753; Conor M. Kennedy and Andrew S. Erickson, “From Frontier to Frontline: Tanmen Maritime Militia’s Leading Role – Part 2,” CIMSEC (17 May 2016), http://cimsec. org/frontier-frontline-tanmen-maritime-militias-leading-role-pt-2/25260. 41 Conor M. Kennedy and Andrew S. Erickson, “Model Maritime Militia: Tanmen’s Leading Role in the April 2012 Scarborough Shoal Incident,” CIMSEC (21 April 2016), http://cimsec.org/ model-maritime-militia-tanmens-leading-role-april-2012-scarborough-shoal-incident/24573. 42 Cliff, China’s Military Power, 246. 43 Heginbotham et al., The U.S.-China Military Scorecard, xxxi, 321–42. 44 The Science of Military Strategy, 247 (see note 26). 45 Ratner et al., More Willing and Able, 31–42; Yung et al., China’s Out of Area Naval Operations, 30–50. 46 Ibid. 47 For details, see Andrew S. Erickson, “‘Rich Nation, Strong Army’? Resource Inputs for PLA Modernization,” Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Panel II:

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Andrew S. Erickson “Inputs to China’s Military Modernization,” “China’s Military Modernization and Its Implications for the United States” hearing, Washington, DC, 30 January 2014, www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/ Andrew%20Erickson_testimony1.30.14.pdf. 48 Philip Pugh, The Cost of Seapower: The Influence of Money on Naval Affairs from 1815 to the Present Day (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1986), 143–51, 272–7.

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PART II

South Asia

9 THE EVOLUTION OF INDIA’S NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM Dinshaw Mistry

India’s Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) is responsible for two nuclear programs. First, its civilian energy program involves several nuclear power reactors that supply 2–3 percent of India’s electricity. Second, its military program, based on two research reactors and related reprocessing plants, produces weapons-grade plutonium for India’s strategic nuclear forces. The Cirus reactor, that began operating in 1960, produced plutonium for about two nuclear weapons per year and was shut down in 2010; the Dhruva reactor, operational since 1986, produces plutonium sufficient for about five nuclear weapons annually; and a third research reactor with capabilities similar to Dhruva could be operational in the late 2010s. Thus, by the mid-2010s, these reactors had produced weapons-grade plutonium for an estimated 120–130 nuclear weapons. These weapons are delivered by a force of ballistic missiles, developed by the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO). This chapter examines the evolution of India’s nuclear weapons program from the 1940s to the present. Briefly summarized, India began a small civilian nuclear program in the 1940s, and, following its 1962 war with China and Beijing’s 1964 nuclear test, embarked upon a subterranean nuclear explosive project.1 New Delhi then remained outside the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and tested a nuclear device in 1974, thereby obtaining a non-weaponized nuclear option. Since the late 1980s, following military crises with Pakistan, Pakistan’s own nuclear advances, and no positive superpower response to the Rajiv Gandhi action plan for nuclear disarmament, New Delhi more actively worked on and acquired a weaponized nuclear option. It also rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996. Yet Indian governments headed by the Congress party and by centrist coalitions did not conduct further nuclear tests and did not formally declare that India had or needed nuclear weapons – as late as 1996, New Delhi continued to officially maintain that “we do not believe that the acquisition of nuclear weapons is essential for [India’s] national security.”2 In May 1998, however, just weeks after it was elected to office, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) authorized a series of nuclear tests and formally declared India to be a nuclear weapons power. Subsequently, India enlarged its nuclear stockpile, developed better missile delivery systems, and clarified elements of its nuclear deterrent strategy.

The beginnings From the 1940s to the early 1960s, India established the organizational foundations for a nuclear program and acquired basic nuclear capabilities, though it did not seek to build nuclear explosives. Thus, the Indian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was created in 1948 and the Department of 117

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Atomic Energy (DAE) was established in 1954. Scientist Homi Bhaba, AEC chair from 1948–66, who studied nuclear physics at Cambridge in the 1930s, persuaded Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that atomic energy would help India’s economic development, and was instrumental in setting up India’s nuclear infrastructure. Given the limitations of India’s domestic industry, India’s early reactors were imported.3 The prevailing international economic environment, which encouraged science and technology cooperation to promote development, facilitated such imports. Thus, partially financed by the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic Development in South and Southeast Asia, Canada provided the 40 megawatt Cirus research reactor to India in 1956 (the reactor went critical in 1960). Subsequently, after India’s 1960 announcement that it would import power reactors, Canada supplied two 100 megawatt Candu reactors to India, partly financed by the Canadian Export Credit Insurance Corporation – the reactor contract was signed in 1963 and the first Candu began operating in 1973. And, guided by its “Atoms for Peace” initiative of civilian nuclear cooperation, as well as to strengthen political ties with India, the United States supplied heavy water for the Cirus reactor, and also provided two light water power reactors located at Tarapur – a US team visited India to explore reactor sales in 1960, the Tarapur reactor contract was signed in 1963, and the first reactor started operating in 1969. While India’s power reactors did not have military applications, the Cirus research reactor, and a reprocessing plant whose construction began in 1961, did. Still, influenced by ideologies opposing the use of force in world politics, and by the foreign policy of nonalignment, Nehru refrained from authorizing the building of nuclear weapons. He also spoke out against the superpower nuclear arsenals and was active in international diplomatic efforts for nuclear disarmament, such as by proposing a test ban treaty in 1954.

The road to the 1974 nuclear test From the mid-1960s onward, India used elements of its nuclear infrastructure – the Cirus research reactor and a reprocessing plant – to build a nuclear device, and it conducted its first nuclear test in 1974. A number of international and domestic events influenced New Delhi’s nuclear decisions in this phase. First, India’s security concerns related to China increased after the October 1962 Sino–Indian war, and, more significantly, after China’s October 1964 nuclear test. Some of India’s political and scientific leaders then more publicly proposed acquiring nuclear weapons, though Prime Minister Shastri still argued against them.4 Second, India’s political leaders initially sought to offset the Chinese nuclear threat through a superpower guarantee. In a December 1964 press conference, Prime Minister Shastri noted that India was seeking a nuclear guarantee from the nuclear weapons states.5 This approach would enable India to refrain from building nuclear weapons and thereby maintain a prominent role in the global nuclear disarmament campaign. Also, given its nonaligned status, New Delhi sought a guarantee from both Moscow and Washington, and while both superpowers considered the issue, they eventually did not give such a guarantee to India. Third, additional events contributed to a deteriorating security environment in the mid1960s – continued border skirmishes with China, the 1965 war with Pakistan, a developing Sino–Pakistan strategic nexus, worsening relations with the US over the Vietnam War and over the reliability of US economic assistance, and China’s 1967 thermonuclear test.6 Influenced by these considerations, New Delhi stayed out of the NPT in 1968 and thereby kept open its nuclear weapons option. Thus, New Delhi initially sought to offset any Chinese nuclear threat through international institutions – Prime Minister Nehru promoted nuclear disarmament efforts, and India was active 118

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in NPT discussions. Eventually, when the emerging NPT would not constrain nuclear weapons advances in the states that had nuclear weapons, and would not halt China’s nuclear program, New Delhi revived an earlier attempt to secure a nuclear guarantee from the superpowers. When this approach did not succeed either, Indian leaders opted to not sign the NPT.7 Officially, New Delhi (like other non-nuclear and non-aligned countries) objected to the NPT because the treaty discriminated between the nuclear haves and have nots.8 It still took six additional years to conduct a nuclear test. In technological terms, India’s plutonium-reprocessing plant began operations in February 1964 (this was prior to China’s October 1964 test), and India began acquiring weapon-usable plutonium in early 1965. India’s nuclear weapons option then advanced through a subterranean nuclear explosives project (SNEP) – in late 1964 Prime Minister Shastri approved a request by AEC Chairman Homi Bhaba to begin such a project, which would give India the ability to detonate a nuclear device within six months of a political decision to do so.9 However, in 1966, with a change of political and scientific leadership, this project slowed. Shastri and Bhaba both died in January 1966, and the new AEC chairman, Vikram Sarabhai, halted SNEP; in a June 1 1966 speech, Sarabhai also spoke against nuclear weapons. Still, India’s nuclear scientists continued producing weapon grade plutonium and, since early 1968, began developing the expertise to fabricate plutonium metal into core devices.10 After Sarabhai’s death in 1971, India’s nuclear scientists worked more actively on a nuclear explosive – they developed a basic design by late 1971, began work on a device in May 1972, the prime minister authorized the fabrication of a nuclear explosive in September 1972, a nonnuclear explosives system was tested in March 1973, and preparation of a test site began in September 1973.11 The eventual decision to conduct a nuclear test was taken in early 1974 (a time when the prime minister faced domestic political challenges), in meetings involving Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and a small circle of personal advisers and scientists, but with no involvement of the Indian military nor of senior defense and foreign affairs officials.12 It is also worth noting that the 1974 nuclear device weighed about 1 ton and was too heavy and cumbersome to be delivered by aircraft; it was not, therefore, usable as a military weapon. Further, the 1974 nuclear test was declared to be a peaceful nuclear explosion, and, although the international community did not accept this explanation, both superpowers had, in the 1960s and 1970s, conducted some nuclear tests to explore civilian applications for nuclear explosives (such as moving earth and digging canals and harbors).13 In addition, in 1969, India began obtaining designs for fast-breeder reactors from France, giving it a civilian justification for the weapons-grade plutonium it was stockpiling from its reprocessing plant – plutonium that was eventually used for the 1974 nuclear test.14

Post-test restraint and subsequent nuclear advances From 1975 to 1980, India did not advance its nuclear program. The strong international condemnation of its 1974 nuclear test dissuaded India’s political leadership from further nuclear testing; Prime Minister Morarji Desai, in power from 1977–80, opposed nuclear weapons; and India’s strengthened strategic ties with the Soviet Union offered an implicit umbrella versus Chinese nuclear weapons.15 In the 1980s, however, influenced by Pakistan’s nuclear advances and military crises with Islamabad, Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi (1980–84) and Rajiv Gandhi (1984–88) authorized small nuclear advances. Thus, in 1981, when press reports and US senators noted that Pakistan was excavating a nuclear test site, India began preparing a test site to respond quickly to any Pakistani nuclear test. Also, from late 1980 onward, BARC stepped up the development of components needed for a 119

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nuclear device and prepared 12 kg of plutonium for machining into an explosive core.16 By 1982, India’s nuclear scientists had produced a design for a nuclear device weighing 170–200 kg (much lighter than the 1,000 kg device tested in 1974), and had also developed a boosted fission device that they wanted to test in early 1983. At a late 1982 or early 1983 meeting, India’s scientists made the technical case for a nuclear test, and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi tentatively approved the same but reversed her position within 24 hours of the meeting.17 In the late 1980s, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi authorized incremental advances in India’s nuclear program. In 1985, he formed a small group to consider India’s nuclear options – the group included military officers such as then army vice chief, General K. Sundarji, the navy chief and vice chief, strategic affairs expert K. Subrahmanyam, and AEC chairman Raja Ramanna.18 The group recommended that, similar to a suggestion in Sundarji’s 1983 master’s thesis, India should develop 70–100 nuclear weapons, but India’s political leadership did not act on this suggestion. A year later, in 1986, during a crisis with Pakistan related to a military exercise (Operation Brasstacks), when it was clear that Islamabad had, or had almost, acquired nuclear weapons, the prime minister authorized DRDO to start developing rugged and miniaturized components and subsystems for a nuclear weapon, so as to “keep the country’s nuclear capability at least at a minimum state of readiness.”19 He still did not authorize the building of a nuclear weapon or its integrating with a delivery platform. Eventually, in 1989, after the failure of his global disarmament plan and March 1988 intelligence reports that Pakistan had at least three 15–20 kiloton nuclear devices, the prime minister approved nuclear weaponization.20 Still, he restricted this to building air-deliverable devices and certifying an air-delivery platform. Thus, in 1988–1990, India’s nuclear scientists developed an estimated two dozen nuclear devices for quick assembly and potential dispersal to air bases.21

The 1990s and the 1998 nuclear tests A few significant international and domestic developments in the 1990s led to India’s 1998 nuclear tests. At the international level, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 increased India’s security concerns in three ways – through the loss of Soviet veto support in the UN on the Kashmir issue; an end to a favorable arms-transfer relationship that had enabled India to acquire advanced Soviet military hardware; and the loss of a counterweight to the Chinese nuclear threat.22 A second international development concerned the adoption of the nuclear test ban treaty. In 1994, when CTBT negotiations began, New Delhi supported this treaty. After the 1995 NPT Review Conference, however, when the NPT was indefinitely extended without extracting strong time-bound commitments to nuclear disarmament, New Delhi began seeking such commitments in the CTBT. When the eventual CTBT, signed in 1996, did not include such commitments, New Delhi stayed out of the treaty and thereby kept open the option to conduct nuclear tests. Domestically, while the CTBT was being negotiated, India’s government, led by the Congress party, faced pressure for testing from its nuclear establishment. India’s nuclear scientists argued that nuclear tests were necessary to perfect and demonstrate new technological innovations, especially a new thermonuclear device. On December 15, 1995, the New York Times exposed test preparations at India’s nuclear test site. In the spring of 1996, US intelligence detected further activity at this site. And closer to or during the time of India’s April-May 1996 elections, Indian scientists may have placed at least one nuclear explosive in the test shaft.23 But President Clinton called Prime Minister Rao to urge restraint from testing. India’s finance ministry also cautioned that India could lose a few billion dollars in foreign aid due to sanctions. These factors dissuaded the Indian government from conducting nuclear tests. Thus, in 120

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mid-1996, India’s government essentially made a deal with Indian nuclear scientists to the effect that while it would not allow the scientists to conduct nuclear tests, it would also not foreclose the option to test – it would not sign the CTBT.24 After the Congress party lost power in India’s elections, a weak coalition government, in office from June 1996 to March 1998, maintained this approach. However, the right-wing BJP, that considered nuclear testing when it briefly held office between May 18–31, 1996, authorized nuclear tests in May 1998, just weeks after it was elected to office. In subsequent years, India enlarged its stock of nuclear warheads (its Cirus and Dhruva reactors produced plutonium for five to seven warheads per year), developed better missile delivery systems, and clarified its nuclear doctrine and its command and control mechanisms. These were part of the consolidation phase of its nuclear strategy. Overall, India’s nuclear strategy comprised a creeping phase from 1948–89, represented by ambivalence toward the role of nuclear weapons in its foreign and defense policy; a phase of confusion from 1989–2003, initially over the question of whether to become an overt nuclear weapons power, and thereafter, over how extensively to develop and what to do with India’s nuclear weapons, and a consolidation phase since 2003, of establishing the capabilities, organizations, and procedures to manage nuclear forces and operationalize them toward minimum deterrence and assured retaliation against Pakistan and China.25

Nuclear delivery missiles India’s nuclear weapons are delivered by a force of ballistic missiles. India’s missile program evolved in four phases. First, in the 1970s, DRDO worked on “Project Devil,” a short-range missile with 3 ton engines drawn from the Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile. DRDO built two such liquid fuel engines by 1974, but the project was cancelled in 1978 after prototype failures.26 Second, during the 1970s and 1980s, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) built a medium-range space launcher, the SLV-3. This 17-ton rocket had a 9 ton solid fuel first stage. Third, during the 1980s and 1990s, DRDO worked on an Integrated Guided Missile Development Project to build the short-range Prithvi and the medium-range Agni missiles. The 4.5 ton Prithvi employed liquid fuel propulsion from Project Devil. The Prithvi-1, first tested in 1988, had a 150 km range with a 1 ton payload, while the Prithvi-2, first tested in 1996, had a 250 km range with a 500 kg payload. The Agni used the SLV-3’s 9 ton solid fuel engine for its first stage – it was tested in 1989, 1992, and 1994, and then upgraded into the Agni-1 and Agni-2 in the fourth phase of India’s missile program. Fourth, India considerably expanded its missile activity in the 2000s and 2010s by developing nine ballistic missiles. These included two short-range missiles, the Prithvi and Prahaar; five land-based medium-range and intermediate-range missiles: the 12 ton 700 km range Agni-1, 16 ton 2,000 km range Agni-2 (a two-stage version of the Agni-1), and 17 ton 4,000 km range Agni-4 (which was a modified Agni-2 using a lighter airframe); and the much heavier and wider-diameter 48 ton 3,000 km range Agni-3 and 50 ton 5,000 km range Agni-5 (a three-stage version of the two-stage Agni-3), which were initially tested with single warheads but could potentially carry multiple warheads. India also built two submarine-launched ballistic missiles, the 6 ton 700 km range K-15 and 20 ton 3,500 km range K-4. These missiles were initially tested from underwater pontoons in the late 2000s and early 2010s, before India’s nuclear-powered submarine began sea-trials in late 2014; submarine-launched tests of the K-15 occurred in late 2015 and the K-4 in early 2016.27 121

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Overall, India’s armed forces fielded five main nuclear-delivery missiles in the 2000s and early to mid-2010s – the Prithvi, Agni-1, and Agni-2 (that were deployed by the early 2000s), the Agni-3 (inducted in the early 2010s), and the Agni-4 (deployed in the mid2010s). Three additional nuclear-delivery missiles had not been deployed with India’s armed forces by 2016 – the K-4 and Agni-5 had each gone through one to three development tests and required further testing, while the K-15 had not been fielded on India’s nuclear submarine since it was still undergoing sea-trials – though all these missiles could enter service in the late 2010s. One further point is worth noting – during the 1980s and 1990s, Indian air force Mirage2000s rather than ballistic missiles were India’s main nuclear delivery system. As noted above, India decided to build weaponized nuclear devices in 1989, though the process of integrating them with Mirage-2000 aircraft was not complete until 1994–95; and even thereafter, the Indian government did not establish an organizational capacity to authorize these aircraft for nuclear delivery missions until the summer 1999 Kargil war with Pakistan.28

Doctrines and command and control While New Delhi developed small and recessed nuclear weapons capabilities in the 1980s and 1990s, it did not clarify how it would use these capabilities – in part because it never officially declared that it had such capabilities. Instead, New Delhi mainly sought to retain a nuclear “option” versus China and Pakistan, and declared that it had “exercised” its option with its 1998 nuclear tests. Subsequently, within days of its May 1998 nuclear tests, India announced two principles of its nuclear doctrine: (1) that it only sought a minimum nuclear deterrent; and (2) that it would adopt a policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons against nuclear armed states and non-use against non-nuclear states. In August 1999, India announced an unofficial draft nuclear doctrine, developed by a 22-person National Security Advisory Board (NSAB). It essentially reiterated existing government pronouncements, stating that India should adopt a no-first-use policy and that it should have a credible minimum nuclear deterrent. The board also noted that India should retain civilian control of nuclear weapons, with the prime minister or a designated successor retaining nuclear release authority.29 On January 4, 2003, India’s Cabinet Committee on Security officially clarified India’s nuclear doctrine. It confirmed that India sought a “credible minimum deterrent.”30 New Delhi has still not specified the number of nuclear weapons that would be sufficient for a minimum deterrent. Further, the January 2003 statement reiterated but diluted India’s no-first-use policy, noting that, “in the event of a major attack against India, or Indian forces anywhere, by biological or chemical weapons, India will retain the option of retaliating with nuclear weapons.” It also mentioned that India would have a Nuclear Command Authority. This comprised a Political Council, chaired by the prime minister and including ministers from the Cabinet Committee on Security, which authorizes nuclear use; and an Executive Council, chaired by the national security advisor, that includes the chiefs of the army, navy, and air force, and the military commander of the Strategic Forces Command (SFC). By the mid-2000s, some of India’s missile groups, combat aircraft, and naval vessels were designated to the SFC, and, in the 2010s, India augmented its command and control mechanisms. For example, it established an alternate authority to assume nuclear command if its existing command structure became inoperable, and SFC also began conducting drills to examine escalatory scenarios, surprise attack scenarios, and no-first-use responses.31 India’s command and control system still had weaknesses. Illustrating this, the three service chiefs were not part of the Political 122

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Council, and therefore military inputs in any crisis would only indirectly, through the national security advisor, reach the political leadership.32

Future developments By the mid-2010s, India had developed a strategic nuclear force with an estimated 100 or more nuclear warheads, several types of missile delivery systems, and a command and control authority. Still, it did not have an overarching body coordinating the activities of its major nuclear stakeholders: DAE that produces weapons-grade plutonium and nuclear warheads; DRDO that builds India’s missiles; India’s armed forces and the SFC that take possession of the missiles (without their nuclear warheads) after DRDO completes their developmental tests; and India’s political leadership that authorizes the use of nuclear weapons.33 As a result, DAE could produce greater volumes of fissile material – for example if it completes a second Dhruva-type reactor and a breeder reactor that could become operational in the late 2010s – and, from this material, could build perhaps 175–200 nuclear warheads by 2020 and 250–300 warheads by 2025. Any erosion of the international moratorium on nuclear testing could also give India the opportunity to test and develop new types of warheads, especially lighter 150–300 kg 100–200 kiloton warheads (in 1998, India successfully tested a 15–20 kiloton fission device, and only partially succeeded in its test of a 43 kiloton boosted-fission device which could be scaled up to 200 kilotons). Eventually, the number of missiles and warheads built by DAE and DRDO may be too large for SFC to handle, especially if it designates and trains only a small number of personnel for nuclear operations. Further, the introduction of new delivery systems (nuclear-armed submarines, and land-based missiles with multiple-warheads) could give rise to additional challenges for SFC.34 In this situation, political decisions over how to employ these systems during times of war would be complicated. A second political challenge relates to developing an appropriate nuclear strategy once India acquires greater numbers and new types of warheads and delivery systems, as well as better space and missile defense capabilities.35 On this point, Indian decision makers have, for years, grappled with the question of how their nuclear and conventional forces could deter or respond to nuclear, conventional, and subconventional (mass-casualty terrorist incident) provocations from Pakistan. One approach, explored but not officially adopted in the mid-2000s, was “Cold Start,” where India’s nuclear forces would deter Pakistan from using nuclear weapons, and India would then quickly mobilize its conventional armored divisions for strikes against Pakistan.36 This, however, gave Pakistan a justification to develop very-short-range tactical ballistic missiles against India’s conventional forces, which increased the dangers of a conventional skirmish escalating to the nuclear level. Other approaches that have been debated versus both Pakistan and China include moving away from no-first-use, and replacing a declared position of massive retaliation with flexible response to any nuclear strike by an adversary. A further approach involves escalation dominance – by the early 2020s, India may acquire “escalation dominance” capabilities whereby it could conduct counterforce strikes with multiple-warhead missiles against Pakistani nuclear assets, and could also absorb some Pakistani nuclear retaliation through missile defenses.37 Thus, India’s political leaders would eventually have to decide whether and how to incorporate the above approaches – Cold Start, no-first-use, flexible response, and escalation dominance – into India’s overall nuclear strategy. To conclude in the coming years, India’s nuclear and missile programs will continue to advance technologically; firmer political control of these technological advances, and of India’s overall nuclear strategy, will be necessary to ensure that technological developments do not undermine nuclear deterrence stability in South Asia. 123

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Notes 1 For the development of India’s nuclear program, see George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999); Ashley Tellis, India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000); Bharat Karnad, India’s Nuclear Policy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008); Verghese Koithara, Managing India’s Nuclear Forces (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2012). 2 Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, Statements by India on Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) 1993–1996 (New Delhi: Ministry of External Affairs, 1996), p. 98. 3 In nuclear energy plans of 1954 and 1961, India aimed to have 600 megawatts of nuclear power by 1970 (by that year, it actually had a capacity of just 320 megawatts, provided by two US-supplied reactors at Tarapur), and 8,000 megawatts by 1980. A revised plan in 1970 called for 2,700 megawatts by 1980, which would be just sufficient to fuel one breeder reactor (eventually, by 1980, India’s reactors had a total capacity of only about 700 megawatts). 4 In the 1964 Pugwash conference, AEC Chairman Homi Bhaba made the case for an Indian nuclear deterrent, arguing that a state could acquire absolute deterrence, even against another state with a much larger nuclear force, through nuclear weapons. And, in a 1966 book chapter, strategic analyst Sisir Gupta argued that China could subject a non-nuclear India to periodic blackmail and thus achieve without a war its political and military objectives in Asia. 5 A. G. Noorani, “India’s Quest for a Nuclear Guarantee,” Asian Survey, vol. 7, no. 7 (July 1967), pp. 490–502. 6 Jayita Sarkar, “The Making of a Non-Aligned Nuclear Power: India’s Proliferation Drift, 1964–1968,” The International History Review, vol. 37, no. 5 (2015). 7 Andrew Kennedy, “India’s Nuclear Odyssey: Implicit Umbrellas, Diplomatic Disappointments, and the Bomb,” International Security, vol. 36, no. 2 (Fall 2011), pp. 120–153. 8 New Delhi argued that the NPT “stopped the dissemination of weapons to non nuclear-weapon states without imposing any curbs on the continued manufacture, stockpiling and sophistication of nuclear weapons by the existing nuclear weapon states,” and it did not do away “with the special status of superiority associated with power and prestige conferred on those powers which possess nuclear weapons.” These remarks were made by Indian Ambassador Azim Hussein before the United Nations First Committee on May 14, 1968. 9 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 140 10 In 1968, the design of the device used in the 1974 test was initiated, and nuclear scientist R. Chidambaram (a future AEC chairman) began recruiting individuals to design components for the chemical high explosive mechanism required to implode the fissile core of a device. Thus, Indian nuclear scientists did preparatory work on a nuclear device without explicit political authorization. Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 146. 11 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 172–174. 12 Scott Sagan, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of a Bomb,” International Security, vol. 21, no. 3 (Winter 1996–1997), pp. 54–86. 13 Richard Dean Burns and Philip Coyle, The Challenges of Nuclear Nonproliferation (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), p. 14. 14 Sarkar, “The Making of a Non-Aligned Nuclear Power.” 15 Kennedy, “India’s Nuclear Odyssey.” 16 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 229. 17 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 242. 18 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 275. 19 Gaurav Kampani, “New Delhi’s Long Nuclear Journey: How Secrecy and Institutional Roadblocks Delayed India’s Weaponization,” International Security, vol. 38, no. 4 (Spring 2014), pp. 79–114. 20 Kargil Review Committee, From Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Review Committee Report (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000), p. 190. 21 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 292. In 1988, scientists and engineers at DRDO and BARC labs continued to refine nuclear weapons designs to reduce the size of fission devices, increase their explosive yield, and develop boosted-fission weapon capability. The prime minister approved and also gave scientists the proper authority for major steps – the preparation of ready-to-assemble devices, the number of such devices, and the movement of weapon components within the country. The scientists felt this was within their authority to develop these advanced capabilities as long as they did not assemble nuclear weapons.

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India’s nuclear weapons program 22 Sumit Ganguly, “India’s Pathway to Pokhran II: The Prospects and Sources of New Delhi’s Nuclear Weapons Program,” International Security, vol. 23, no. 4 (Spring 1999), pp. 148–177. 23 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 365. 24 Jonathan Schell, The Gift of Time: The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons Now (New York: Metropolitan, 1998), p. 99. 25 Vipin Narang, “India’s Nuclear Weapons Policy,” in Sumit Ganguly, ed., Engaging the World: Indian Foreign Policy Since 1947 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 448–469. 26 Raj Chengappa, Weapons of Peace (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2000). 27 Hemant Kumar, “Maiden Test of Undersea K-4 Missile from Arihant Submarine,” New Indian Express, April 9, 2016. 28 Kampani, “New Delhi’s Long Nuclear Journey.” 29 P. R. Chari, “India’s Nuclear Doctrine: Confused Ambitions,” The Nonproliferation Review, vol. 7, no. 3 (Fall/Winter 2000), pp. 123–135. 30 Government of India, “The Cabinet Committee on Security Reviews Operationalization of India’s Nuclear Doctrine,” January 4, 2003. 31 Shyam Saran, “Weapon That Has More Than Symbolic Value,” The Hindu, May 4, 2013. 32 Richard White, “Command and Control of India’s Nuclear Forces,” Nonproliferation Review, vol. 21, no. 3 (September–December 2014), pp. 261–274. 33 Verghese Koithara, Managing India’s Nuclear Forces (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2012). 34 On multiple warheads, see Rajesh Basrur and Jaganath Sankaran, “India’s Slow and Unstoppable Move to MIRV,” in Michael Krepon, Travis Wheeler, and Shane Mason, eds., The Lure and Pitfalls of MIRVs: From the First to the Second Nuclear Age (Washington, DC: The Henry L. Stimson Center, 2016), pp. 119–148. 35 Sumit Ganguly, “India’s Pursuit of Ballistic Missile Defense,” Nonproliferation Review, vol. 21, no. 3 (September–December 2014), pp. 373–382. 36 Walter Ladwig, “A Cold Start for Hot Wars? The Indian Army’s New Limited War Doctrine,” International Security, vol. 32, no. 3 (Winter 2007/08), pp. 158–190; Jaganath Sankaran, “Pakistan’s Battlefield Nuclear Policy: A Risky Solution to an Exaggerated Threat,” International Security, vol. 39, no. 3 (Winter 2014/15), pp. 118–151. 37 Vipin Narang, “Messanine-Level Nuclear Powers and the Continued Hunt for Stability in South Asia,” Nonproliferation Review, vol. 22, no. 2 (June 2015), pp. 113–117.

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10 PAKISTAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM Laying the groundwork for impunity C. Christine Fair

Contemporary analysts of Pakistan’s nuclear program speciously assert that Pakistan began acquiring a nuclear weapons capability after the 1971 war with India in which Pakistan was vivisected. In this conventional account, India’s 1974 nuclear tests gave Pakistan further impetus for its program.1 In fact, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first popularly elected prime minister, initiated the program in the late 1960s despite considerable opposition from Pakistan’s first military dictator General Ayub Khan (henceforth Ayub). Bhutto presciently began arguing for a nuclear weapons program as early as 1964 when China detonated its nuclear devices at Lop Nor and secured its position as a permanent nuclear weapons state under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Considering China’s test and its defeat of India in the 1962 Sino–Indian war, Bhutto reasoned that India, too, would want to develop a nuclear weapon. He also knew that Pakistan’s civilian nuclear program was far behind India’s, which predated independence in 1947. Notwithstanding these arguments, Ayub opposed acquiring a nuclear weapon both because he believed it would be an expensive misadventure and because he worried that doing so would strain Pakistan’s western alliances, formalized through the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). Ayub also thought Pakistan would be able to buy a nuclear weapon “off the shelf ” from one of its allies if India acquired one first.2 With the army opposition obstructing him, Bhutto was unable to make any significant nuclear headway until 1972, when Pakistan’s army lay in disgrace after losing East Pakistan in its 1971 war with India. Bhutto seized the reins of Pakistan’s remnants and began the program, which gained more widespread report in the wake of India’s oddly appellated 1974 “Peaceful Nuclear Explosion.” Yet Bhutto’s tenure at the helm of Pakistan’s budding nuclear program would be shortlived. After General Zia ul Haq’s 1977 coup ousted Bhutto and culminated in his execution, the army seized control of the program. Despite establishing the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), an ostensibly inter-agency organization erected after the 1998 reciprocal nuclear tests by India and then Pakistan, the army retains control over the program for most intents and purposes. While there are numerous histories of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program available,3 in this chapter I make two modest interventions to the existing corpus. First, whereas conventional scholarship4 presumes Pakistan to be a covert nuclear power since 1990, I argue that Pakistan has been a covert nuclear power for much longer, perhaps since as early as 1979. Second, marshalling evidence from the U.S. National Security Archives, I show that India was very much aware of Pakistan’s nuclear developments throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These admittedly reserved 126

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alterations of the conventional wisdom imply that scholars should reconsider how they view earlier conflicts between India and Pakistan such as Operation Brasstacks throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Whereas Cohen and others argue that Brasstacks was not a nuclear dispute because “Pakistan had not yet acquired a nuclear weapon,” the evidence I put forward here suggests that this crisis was, in fact, a nuclearized crisis.5 The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows. I first review the history of Pakistan’s program, focusing upon the early years of inception, in hopes of persuading scholars to re-examine Pakistan’s nuclearization timeline as an independent variable to explain Pakistan’s increasing risk acceptance with respect to initiating conflict with India.6 Second, I briefly survey the progress that Pakistan made between 1990 and 2016 with respect to the development of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles. Third, I review doctrinal evolution and the ways in which Pakistan uses its nuclear weapons to deter India from responding to Pakistan’s various terrorist and other outrages; to avert the international community from enforcing punitive measures; and to extract economic rents from the United States and other bilateral and multilateral actors. I conclude with a summary of the arguments advanced here and the implications that they afford.

Becoming a covert nuclear weapons state: hook or by crook Whereas India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chairman Homi Bhaba “sought to win for their country all the prestige, status, and economic benefits associated with being a nuclear power, including the option of building ‘the bomb,’” prior to India’s 1947 independence, Pakistan’s nuclear program did not begin until the mid1950s under the Atoms for Peace Initiative begun by U.S. President Eisenhower.7 While Pakistan established the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) in 1956, at that time its chairman reported to a “relatively junior officer in the Ministry of Industries and had no direct access to the chief executive,” and the civilian bureaucracy “had an apathetic attitude” towards the initiative.8 Pakistan’s civilian nuclear program received a fillip in 1958 when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto became the Minister of Fuel, Power and Natural Resources and remained in this capacity until 1962, after which he assumed the role of Minister of Foreign Affairs. During his tenure, Bhutto promulgated the Pakistani Institute of Nuclear Sciences and Technology (PINSTECH), and began arguing that Pakistan should develop a nuclear weapons capability after China’s 1964 test in Lop Nor.9 Bhutto’s unwavering advocacy for a nuclear weapon was further confirmed by the events pertaining to Pakistan’s 1965 war,10 which Bhutto believed would enable Pakistan to seize the portion of Kashmir under India’s administration. Bhutto misjudged and Pakistan failed to win the war it had initiated. Bhutto drew three conclusions from this episode. First, Pakistan’s military capabilities were woefully limited. Second, Pakistan’s participation in the CENTO and SEATO treaties would not bring its allies to its defense in a war with India. (Note that those treaties specifically pertained to wars with communist powers, not neighborhood actors responding to Pakistan-initiated hostility.) Third, it would be perilous should Pakistan not secure a nuclear deterrent. In 1965 Bhutto declared that “Pakistan will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry” to acquire a nuclear weapons capability.11 Ayub, then head of Pakistan’s armed forces, eschewed Bhutto’s nuclear vision, arguing that it would be a costly boondoggle and that it would estrange Pakistan’s western allies who were needed to help Pakistan build up its conventional armed forces. Moreover, Ayub believed Pakistan would be able to obtain a nuclear weapon from the United States or another ally should India develop one, thereby eliminating the need for Pakistan to attain this capability independently.12 Some of Ayub’s subordinates shared Bhutto’s assessments of India. For example, Major M. Zuberi opined in The Pakistan Army Journal, that once India, with its preexisting conventional 127

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advantages, acquired a nuclear weapon, “Pakistan would be reduced to a status of an innocuous spectator . . . A nuclear India would automatically claim the right for leadership of areas in her immediate vicinity if not the entire non-communist Asia and Africa.”13 Given that Pakistan was firmly under the thumbs of Generals Ayub (1958–1969) and then Yahya Khan (1969–1971), Bhutto’s vision for a nuclear Pakistan remained deferred until 1972. By the time Yahya Khan resigned in ignominy on December 20, 1971, the entire army was viewed with contempt both because it lost the 1971 war and because it had disingenuously claimed that it had been winning the war.14 Bhutto, whose party had won the most seats in West Pakistan in the 1970 elections, became Pakistan’s president, commander in chief, and first civilian Chief Martial Law Administrator. He immediately prioritized Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program both because he believed doing so was required to secure Pakistan’s interests vis-à-vis India and he wanted Pakistanis to believe that a civilian – not the army – could bequeath to Pakistan the ultimate guarantor of its security.15 In January 1972, Bhutto convoked several dozen of Pakistan’s nuclear scientists at a meeting in Multan and tasked them with producing a nuclear bomb within five years.16 Bhutto placed Munir Ahmad Khan as the head of the PAEC and instructed him to report directly to Bhutto.17 Like neighboring India’s corollary body, the PAEC initially focused upon harvesting weapons-grade plutonium both because M.A. Khan was a plutonium expert and because Pakistan could recover and reprocess existing plutonium from its civilian reactor, the Karachi Nuclear Power Plan (KANUPP).18 Several challenges became apparent with this option. First, KANUPP was inefficient and under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. Second, as Pakistan emerged as a proliferation risk, western states began restricting access to reprocessing technology. With the plutonium route becoming ever-more problematic, Pakistan diversified its options by following a “less technically efficient, but more discreet, highly enriched uranium (HEU) route.”19 Two events increased the allure of this alternative. First was India’s so-called “Peaceful Nuclear Explosion” of May 1974. Second was a September 1974 letter to Bhutto from a previously-unknown Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan (A.Q. Khan) in which he, impelled by India’s test, offered to help his native Pakistan acquire a nuclear weapon. A.Q. Khan had obtained his PhD in metallurgy from a Belgian university and was working for a Dutch member of the Urenco enrichment consortium, where he had translated a German report on centrifuge technology, among other tasks. Bhutto requested that Khan remain in the Netherlands so that he could access more technical knowledge, but he fled to Pakistan in 1975 with stolen centrifuge designs when he attracted the suspicion of the Dutch government. Dissatisfied with PAEC’s abysmal progress, Bhutto emplaced A.Q. Khan in direct control of the centrifuge project.20 By the time A.Q. Khan arrived in Pakistan, the asymmetry in power with India was too clear to ignore, and the country’s military was fully on board with developing a nuclear weapon.21 Given that the SEATO and CENTO treaties specifically excluded aiding Pakistan in a conflict with India, Pakistan’s army began to distrust their utility.22 Finally, India’s 1971 intervention in what had been a civil war in East Pakistan coupled with its nuclear test in 1974 provided further evidence for the army’s perduring beliefs about “India’s hegemonic designs” in South Asia.23 In 1977, Zia ul Haq (henceforth Zia) deposed, imprisoned, and later executed Bhutto. While in jail, Bhutto drafted an autobiography-cum-manifesto defending his actions and policies titled If I am Assassinated, in which he exposits that he – not the army – conferred to Pakistan a nuclear weapons capability. Bhutto declared braggadociously that when he became President, Pakistan’s nuclear program lagged India’s by two decades, but by 1977, Pakistan was on the threshold of possessing a nuclear capability. While Christian, Jewish, and Hindu civilizations, as well as the 128

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Communist powers, had acquired a nuclear weapons capability, he blustered that it was he who delivered this capability to the entirety of Islamic civilization.24 Pakistan’s nuclear program was an issue that President Jimmy Carter took up when he became president in early 1977. In fact, Pakistan’s successful pursuit of a nuclear arsenal was “the most significant frustration for the Carter administration’s nonproliferation policy.”25 Curiously, despite Bhutto’s proclamation in 1965 that Pakistan would eat grass if needed to acquire a nuclear weapon, U.S. intelligence did not seriously consider the possibility that Pakistan would seek this capability until India tested in 1974.26 After the French deal fell through under considerable U.S. pressure, the CIA assessed that the “available data points to a judgment that even a very crude Pakistani nuclear device is probably many years away. A mix of shortcomings in scientific know how, likely difficulty in acquiring or developing critical reprocessing facilities capable of producing usable plutonium, domestic financial problems . . . all increase the odds against Pakistan going nuclear – perhaps for the next decade or even longer.”27 By August 1978, the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, David Newsom, was considering various concerns pertaining to the language and intent of the Glenn Amendment, triggered by the French transfer of reprocessing technology. The cancellation of the French deal dispensed with the transfer of technology issue, but it did not alleviate concerns about Pakistan’s intention to develop such a capability indigenously. Newsome raised these issues with Yaqub Khan, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, and discussed with him the desirability for a written statement that Pakistan would not pursue such an indigenous reprocessing technology. Khan balked and bluntly explained to Newsome that such a request was “not realistic because if Pakistan really wanted to go ahead with reprocessing it would not matter how many assurances Pakistan provided.”28 Pakistan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Agha Shahi, on another occasion similarly maintained that even private assurances were not possible.29 Later that year, Zia further told a Saudi newspaper that “if Pakistan possesses such a weapon it would reinforce the power of the Muslim world” because no other Muslim country had such a weapon.30 Nonproliferation proponents in the U.S. Congress were growing increasingly wary of Pakistan and were not enthusiastic about resuming aid to Pakistan unless Islamabad could lay to rest any suspicions about developing a reprocessing capability. Pakistani officials refused to give such assurances. Shahi, for example, told Undersecretary Newsom that it was “impossible for the [Government of Pakistan] to provide public or private assurances” on Pakistan’s intentions for reprocessing.31 Moreover, he asserted that Pakistan “has the unfettered right to do what it wishes and will retain all its options.”32 We now know that U.S. intelligence did not thoroughly understand the options that Pakistan had cultivated. Even as the afore-noted CIA study was being written, A.Q. Khan had already established his secret procurement network and was making considerable headway in acquiring technology required to construct a centrifuge facility. Moreover, neither the CIA nor the U.S. Department of State was aware of the preexisting extent of Chinese-Pakistani cooperation. In an August 1975 meeting, Hummel met with the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan, Lu Weizhao. He reported his satisfaction over the apparent credibility of Chinese assurances that it would not help Pakistan. Nuclear expert Robert Galluci responded to Hummel’s assertion in his own cable, pointing out that Beijing did have the expertise to build a reprocessing plant, albeit less sophisticated than that of France, and that the Chinese could help the Pakistanis extract plutonium from the KANUPP plant.33 As the regional situation deteriorated in Afghanistan and in Iran, the United States still wanted to find a way to provide military sales and increased development aid despite Pakistan’s recalcitrance on the nuclear issue. By December of 1978, it became clear how little the United States knew about the progress Pakistan was making when the CIA learned from European intelligence 129

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that Pakistan was constructing a uranium enrichment plant, a possibility the organization had not previously considered in its April 1978 assessment. A subsequent report assessed that “Pakistan’s efforts to acquire foreign equipment for a uranium enrichment plan now under construction have been more extensive and sophisticated than previously indicated. Despite the best efforts of nuclear supplier states to thwart these activities, Pakistan may succeed in acquiring the main missing components for a strategically significant gas centrifuge enrichment capability.”34 This revelation had implications for India’s own nuclear program, as the report suggested that there were “signs of heightened concern” in India.35 The early months of 1979 proffered more revelations about the progress of Pakistan’s nuclear program, and “unspecified intelligence going back to 1977 on Pakistan’s attempts to ‘import critical components’ had also surfaced.”36 A cable dated January 1979 reveals curious information about the Indians’ assessment of Pakistan’s program. In that cable, an Indian official referred to as “Shankar” averred that Pakistan could weaponize within two to three months.37 The State Department sought to assure India that the United States was “watching the Pak situation very closely” and “that, even with a priority effort, it would take the Paks a number of years [three to five], and that we are taking steps to try to dissuade them from any efforts at acquiring such capabilities.”38 In February 1979, the United States confronted Zia with photographic information about the facility at Kahuta, which Zia rubbished as “ridiculous.” Ambassador Hummel warned Zia that the divergence between what the United States was learning about Pakistan’s program and Pakistan’s official statements increased the likelihood that Symington Act sanctions, which prohibited most forms of U.S. assistance to any country that traffics in nuclear enrichment technology or equipment outside of international safeguards.39 The United States tried, but failed, to persuade Pakistan through an “audacious buyoff ” to abandon its nuclear push.40 By March 1979 the United States learned Pakistan had acquired critical technologies for its enrichment program. The Department of State assessed that Pakistan was rapidly building a “secret uranium enrichment plant which by 1983 will begin to yield sufficient quantities of fissile materials to support a nuclear weapons program.”41 When confronted, Zia confirmed the status of the enrichment program, and the United States was left with no option but to apply Symington sanctions in April 1979. Initially, the Americans did not want this decision to be known publically; Washington did not even officially notify Islamabad that the United States had terminated aid programs or address the issue of their future continuation.42 Meanwhile, the Indian and British media became aware of Pakistan’s progress in reprocessing technology.43 One Department of State memo suggested that though Indian and British media were aware of the sanctions decision, State believed it was best to “continue to deal with this matter on a confidential basis for as long as possible.”44 Documents from this period demonstrate Indian knowledge of Pakistan’s progress. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance wrote to President Carter urging him to personally intervene to manage the diplomatic fallout over the imposition of sanctions. In this letter, Vance explained to Carter that “India has detailed knowledge of the Pakistani enrichment program, and [Prime Minister Morarji] Desai has written Zia of his concern about Pakistani nuclear activities.”45 American efforts to shield their policy decisions from the media were obviated by India’s “persistent efforts to stimulate international public attention to Pakistan’s weapons-related programs” by writing editorials and news stories publicizing Pakistan’s progress in centrifuge enrichment.46 In October of 1979, the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi cabled the Secretary of State to describe a private meeting between (presumably) the U.S. Ambassador and India’s Prime Minister Desai. When asked what he planned to do about the danger posed by Pakistan, Desai responded “should the Pakistanis develop an explosives capability . . . [or] if he discovered that Pakistan was ready to test a bomb or if it exploded one, he would act at [once] to ‘smash it.’”47 By June of 1979, State reported rumors about a potential nuclear test in 1979.48 130

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With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Zbigniew Brzezinski – President Carter’s national security advisor – told Carter that Washington needed Pakistan’s support to oust the Red Army from Afghanistan. Doing so would “require . . . more guarantees to [Pakistan], more arms aid, and, alas, a decision that our security policy cannot be dictated by our nonproliferation policy.”49 The Carter administration suspended its proliferation concerns and proposed a $400 million aid package (divided equally between economic and military assistance) to Zia. Zia rebuffed the offer as mere “peanuts” and waited for Ronald Reagan to win the election. Upon assuming office in January 1981, he agreed to provide $3.2 billion dollars in military and economic aid over five years.50 Before Zia accepted the assistance, he requested the Reagan administration to explicate its position on his country’s nuclear program, which Zia averred was a sovereign right. In turn, Secretary of State Alexander Haig, made it clear that the nuclear issue would not be the ‘centerpiece’ of [the] US–Pakistan relationship. He did, however, strike a note of caution, that in case Pakistan were to conduct a nuclear test, the Congress would not allow the Reagan administration to cooperate with Pakistan in the manner in which it was intended.51 In essence, the Pakistani and American governments tacitly agreed that “the Reagan administration could live with Pakistan’s nuclear program as long as Islamabad did not explode a bomb.”52 This understanding became U.S. law when the U.S. Congress passed Reagan’s assistance plan, which included a six-year waiver of the 1979 Symington Amendment sanctions and simultaneously banned economic and military assistance to any country that exploded a nuclear device.53 Nonetheless, discomfiture about Pakistan’s intentions and capabilities persisted among American anti-proliferation proponents in the U.S. Congress, Department of Defense, and intelligence agencies.54 A December 1982 Newsweek article detailing Pakistan’s covert nuclear reprocessing technology procurements alleged that China supplied Pakistan with uranium and blueprints for a nuclear bomb and asserted that a Pakistani scientist had stolen enrichment technology from Holland. By June 1983, the Department of State declared “There is unambiguous evidence that Pakistan is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons development program” and confidently claimed that Pakistan’s significant progress was due to generous assistance from China.55 A.Q. Khan further vexed American nonproliferation advocates in April 1984 when he disclosed to the Nawaii-Waqt (an Urdu-language Pakistani newspaper) that Pakistan could produce weapons-grade enriched uranium. In June of that same year, U.S. Senator Alan Cranston declared that Pakistan could produce “several nuclear weapons per year” and rebuked the State Department for its insouciance about Pakistan’s program.56 Despite the increasingly negative international attention, Pakistan remained a vital component of the Reagan White House’s efforts to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan. To assuage concerns in Congress, the Reagan Administration fashioned a new compact with Zia, extracting from him an assurance that Pakistan would not develop a nuclear weapon as long as he was in power. Vice President George Bush explained to Zia that “‘exploding a device, violating safeguards, or reprocessing plutonium would pose a very difficult problem for the Reagan administration’ and that the nuclear issue continued to be a very sensitive topic in the United States.”57 It appeared as if the “Americans knew about Pakistan’s enrichment effort, and were prepared to live with it, if Pakistan did not detonate a nuclear explosive device.”58 Despite Zia’s assurance, the media continued to report upon Pakistan’s progress in developing a bomb, which prompted President Reagan, in September 1984, to exhort President Zia of serious consequences should Pakistan enrich beyond five percent.59 This was the first time that Washington offered a clear read line. Zia remained evasive.60 131

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In the fall of 1984, the Reagan administration sought Congressional approval for yet another aid package of 4 billion dollars over six years. This time, nonproliferation proponents such as Senator John Glenn repudiated the administration for continuing to believe Zia’s blatant mendacities.61 To resolve this impasse between the Reagan administration and the U.S. Congress, the White House, working with the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and key members of Congress passed the Pressler Amendment in July 1985.62 The Amendment required the U.S. President to certify both that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear weapon as a pre-condition for security assistance.63 The legislation essentially moved the U.S. red line from an enrichment threshold – which Pakistan had likely already surpassed – to possession of an actual nuclear weapon. However, Brig. (Retd) Feroz Khan, formerly of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, reported that by the time the Pressler Amendment was passed, Pakistan already possessed a nuclear device. As early as 1984, Pakistan had a “large bomb that could be delivered . . . by a C-130.”64 This assessment roughly coincides with earlier statements by Abdul Sattar, a former foreign minister, who claimed that Pakistan developed nuclear device as early as 1983.65 In the spring of 1988, the United States and the Soviet Union brought an end to the Afghan war with the Geneva Accords. Pakistan was no longer indispensable to U.S. strategic interests, and American presidents found it increasingly difficult to justify continued security assistance to the country that had frustrated it for so long. In November 1988, Reagan did in fact make the certification necessary for continued aid, but he wrote in his letter that “as Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities grow, and if evidence about its activities continue to accumulate, this process of annual certification will require the President to reach judgments about the status of Pakistani nuclear activities that may be difficult or impossible to make with any degree of certainty.”66 One year later, President George Bush wrote to the U.S. Congress that he had “concluded that Pakistan does not now possess a nuclear explosive device” but warned that Pakistan persisted with “its efforts to develop its unsafeguarded nuclear program.”67 To Pakistan’s amazement, President Bush declined in October 1990 to make the certification, thereby invoking sanctions that had been deferred since 1982.68

Transitioning from a covert to an overt nuclear weapons state While under sanctions from the United States throughout the 1990s, Pakistan continued to make progress in developing both nuclear weapons themselves and the aircraft and missile vehicles with which to deliver them. On May 11 and 13, 1998, India detonated several nuclear devices in the Pokhran desert. On May 28, Pakistan reciprocated with its own nuclear tests in Balochistan’s Chagai hills. These tests rendered both India and Pakistan de facto, although not jure, nuclear weapons states.69 Since 1998, Pakistan has worked to develop its command and control infrastructure (i.e. Strategic Plans Division) and its nuclear doctrine.70 Oddly, the much-anticipated nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan did not materialize. In fact, India has been so slow to develop its nuclear arsenal that Perkovich and Dalton caution India to close this emerging gap but assert that India lacks the political attention required to overcome the numerous bureaucratic problems that have undermined its much-discussed but yet to be implemented defense modernization. Instead, India has focused upon developing its conventional capabilities enabled by its sustained economic growth over the last 25 years.71 As of November 2016, experts believe that Pakistan has a stockpile of 130–140 warheads and has plans to continue growing its arsenal with four plutonium production reactors and ever-expanding uranium enrichment facilities. Kristensen and Norris predict that Pakistan’s arsenal may grow to 220–250 by 2025, which would render Pakistan the world’s fifth-largest nuclear weapons state.72 Pakistan is also developing several land-based mechanisms to deliver warheads, which will join nuclear-capable aircraft (modified F-16s and Mirage Vs) in Pakistan’s existing 132

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weapons delivery vehicle cache. Pakistan’s ballistic missile arsenal includes the longer-range, solid-fueled Shaheen-III, with an estimated range of 2,750 km and 1,000 kg payload. This missile can target all of mainland India as well as Indian-controlled islands in the Bay of Bengal. This is in addition to the two-staged, solid fuel Shaheen-II, Ghaznavi (est. 2,000 km range, 1,000–1,100 kg payload); the solid-fueled Ghaznavi (est. 290 km range, 800 kg payload); and the liquid fueled Ghaur (est. 1,300 km range, 700 kg payload). Pakistan is also continuing its development of the Babur nuclear-capable cruise missile fired from a multi-launch vehicle with an estimated 700 km range and 300 kg payload. Pakistan tested its Ra’ad, an air-launched cruise missile purported to have a range of 350 km with a payload of 350 kg, in January 2016, and it may also seek to develop sea-launched versions of the Babur and Ra’ad.73 Pakistan’s most worrisome recent behavior is its much-publicized pursuit of so-called theater ballistic nuclear weapon (or tactical nuclear weapon), ostensibly in response to India’s putative Cold Start doctrine.74 In 2011, the country’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) division announced that Pakistan had successfully developed and tested a “Short Range Surface to Surface Multi Tube Ballistic Missile Hatf IX (NASR).” According to the ISPR press release, the NASR will “add deterrence value to Pakistan’s Strategic Weapons Development program at shorter ranges. NASR, with a range of 60 km, carries nuclear warheads of appropriate yield with high accuracy, shoot and scoot attributes. This quick response system addresses the need to deter evolving threats.”75 Yet apart from Pakistan’s claims, little is known about the actual recent progress made in miniaturizing the warheads for deployment.76

Coercing the world with nuclear weapons The international community at large and the United States fears that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, materials, or technology may fall into the hands of non-state actors. These fears may be overblown in some measure.77 Since the 1998 tests and the revelations of A.Q. Khan’s black market entrepreneurialism, Pakistan has undertaken important efforts to bolster its nuclear command, control, and security arrangements, which most of the well-rehearsed doomsday scenarios fail to consider. In 2000, President Musharraf promulgated the so-called National Command Authority along with the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), the NCA’s secretariat, and the specialized strategic forces.78 The SPD’s principle brief is protecting Pakistan’s strategic assets both from internal and external threats. After all, if terrorists can infiltrate Pakistan’s program, so could hostile state agencies (i.e. India, the United States, Israel). SPD has a three-tiered security perimeter for nuclear facilities; systems for investigating and monitoring personnel, developing and deploying physical counter-measures, and fielding counter-intelligence teams meant to identify potential threats.79 While these developments are encouraging, one should remember that the United States Air Force lost track of half a dozen nuclear war heads for 36 hours in August 2007, despite decades of work on command, control, and security arrangements.80 Most of these enhancements offer protection from theft during peacetime, when the weapons themselves are neither assembled nor mated to their delivery vehicles. However, Goldbern and Ambinder’s reporting has raised concerns. The authors claimed that SPD routinely moves its nuclear weapons among the fifteen or more facilities where they are maintained. Sometimes this movement occurs for maintenance reasons. Sometimes it occurs to complicate foreign intelligence efforts to identify their peace-time locations. They also assert that on occasion weapons components are moved via helicopter or road. Furthermore this report claims that Pakistan does not employ well-defended convoys or armored vehicles to transport these assets. Instead, SPD opts to “move material by subterfuge, in civilian-style vehicles without noticeable defenses, in the regular flow of traffic. Per both Pakistani and American sources, vans with a modest security profile are sometimes 133

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the preferred conveyance.”81 Quoting a senior U.S. intelligence official, they report that SPD also began “using this low-security method to transfer not merely the ‘de-mated’ component nuclear parts but ‘mated’ nuclear weapons.”82 Given Pakistan’s ever-degrading security environment, this report aggravates American fears about non-state actors being able to acquire the weapons. Security of the nuclear weapons and their components is also exacerbated during periods of conflict with India when Pakistan (and probably India as well) is thought to assemble the warheads and mate them with their delivery systems. As the conflict intensifies, Pakistan may forward deploy these assembled and mated weapons, both for potential employment and to guarantee a retaliatory capacity. During these periods, apprehensions about theft or other unauthorized transfer of weapons or components are more plausible than when they are in garrison, as Clary notes. Equally discomfiting, when the assembled and mated nuclear weapons are forward deployed, the “two-man” rule may be insufficient to prevent accidental or unauthorized launch amidst the heightened strain of emergency.83 Doctrinally, Pakistan deliberately cultivates ambiguity about the conditions under which it would use its nuclear weapons against India. It is this strategic instability that Pakistan cultivates that allows it to use its proxy actors in India and elsewhere with impunity (the so-called “instability-instability paradox.”84 Pakistan relies on nuclear weapons to restrain India, both by raising the costs of Indian action against Pakistan and by bringing in the United States and other actors to dampen and then roll-back the conflict once it commences. The United States and other international actors are motivated to intervene for two reasons. First, preventing an Indo– Pakistan conflict that could potentially escalate to a nuclear confrontation remains an important U.S. objective. The resulting devastation would be unprecedented, and few countries other than the United States would be positioned to conduct the humanitarian disaster relief that would follow. Pakistan’s proliferation of theater nuclear weapons will shorten the timelines of international intervention because these foreign actors will want to mobilize before Pakistan can begin assembling, mating, and forward deploying its nuclear weapons. Pakistan therefore uses these risks to catalyze foreign intervention before India can effectively mobilize to inflict conventional damage to Pakistan. In other words, this international action serves to shield Pakistan from the consequences of its egregious behavior. Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere, Pakistan benefits directly from the pervasive concerns about non-state actors acquiring its nuclear materials because these apprehensions empower Pakistan to extract rents from the United States and large multi-lateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund who fear that Pakistan is simply too dangerous to fail. After all, if Pakistan was not plagued with Islamist militants and if there were no nuclear weapons that could be stolen, the United States and others would be more willing to explore negative inducements to compel Pakistan to cease using terrorists as tools of foreign policy. Instead, the United States and other countries and institutions continue to support Pakistan through economic and security assistance, which in turn enables Pakistan to continue investing in the very assets (nuclear weapons and terrorists) that so discomfit the international community in the first place. Unless the international community were to remove itself from Pakistan’s coercion mechanism, it is likely to continue engaging Pakistan in this way.85

Conclusions and implications In this chapter I make several arguments, some of which have not been made explicitly before. First, nuclear weapons have figured in the Pakistan army’s strategic culture since the 1970s, even though Z.A. Bhutto prioritized them much earlier.86 Once the army endorsed nuclear weapons, Pakistan could further innovate at the lower ends of the conflict spectrum as others have noted.87 134

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Second, I argue that scholars should begin to reconsider their timeframe for the “nuclearization of the subcontinent.” Whereas most scholars treat Pakistan as a “nuclear state” as late as 1990, I argue that we should consider Pakistan as a “nuclear state” much earlier. It is not unreasonable to use 1979 as the last year when we could consider Pakistan to truly be non-nuclear.88 By this time, Pakistani writers were already arguing that Pakistan’s nuclear program conferred to Pakistan some form of existential deterrence. Notably, in the late 1980s General Zia-ul-Haq opined “that ambiguity is the essence of deterrence.”89 Beg also exposited that a “state of uncertainty and ambiguity . . . serve[s] as a meaningful deterrence.”90 Cultivating this ambiguity, and thus strategic instability, is a central element of what Paul Kapur describes as the “instability-instability paradox” that characterizes Indo–Pakistan security competition and allows Pakistan to rely on nonstate actors to conduct attacks in India with impunity.91 Finally, as I have documented extensively elsewhere, Pakistani defense writers understood that their nuclear capabilities would allow Pakistan to employ low-intensity conflict with greater impunity.92 Cohen also observed Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities “would provide the umbrella under which Pakistan could reopen the Kashmir issue” as well as neutralize “an assumed Indian nuclear force.”93 Third, I also present evidence that India was aware of these developments as early as the late 1970s. Prime Minister Desai seemed to have begun “tak[ing] the Pakistan nuclear explosive program more seriously, and that the Indians might take action to deal with it, either before or after a test.”94 It is difficult to argue that subsequent Indian leadership would not be forced to consider Pakistan’s nuclear progress and status. Taken together this information should force scholars of South Asian security to reexamine assumptions about the nuclear nature of crises that took place prior to 1990. The best candidate for such a re-evaluation is the so-called Brasstacks crisis of 1986–1987. Although a thorough investigation of this question is beyond the scope of this chapter, the evidence I marshal suggests that it likely was indeed a confrontation influenced by nuclear considerations. As Pakistan’s program has evolved, its nuclear arsenal has ceased to simply serve only as a means to counter India’s conventional superiority and to undermine potential doctrinal evolution. Today and in the recent past, Pakistan explicitly uses and has used these weapons to catalyze international activity immediately after a Pakistan-sponsored terror attack, thereby shielding the nation from the consequences of its action.95 The conjoined specter of nuclear weapons and Islamist terrorists is also part of Pakistan’s strategy to extort rent from the international community, which has been persuaded that the consequences of Pakistan’s failures would be catastrophic. The implications of this analyses strongly suggest that the long-warn U.S. approach to managing Pakistan through lucrative allurements has failed to retard Pakistan’s behaviors even modestly since the United States elected to waive nuclear-related sanctions when President Reagan assumed the White House. During the 1980s, Pakistan continued developing its arsenal while working closely with the United States. More recently, despite high-levels of American investments in Pakistan since 9/11, Pakistan has pursued battle-field nuclear weapons. It is difficult to not conclude that American financial and security assistance has underwritten these developments while providing the United States little meaningful leverage to influence Pakistani behavior. The evidence I present here strongly suggests the United States requires a new policy approach towards Pakistan’s nuclear activities. Left to its own devices, Pakistan will continue to persist with a suite of dangerous policies that have long served its purposes.

Notes 1 George Perkovich and Toby Dalton, Not War, Not Peace? Motivating Pakistan to Prevent Cross-Border Terrorism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016); Toby Dalton and Michael Krepon. “A Normal Nuclear Pakistan,” Report of the Stimson Center and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2015. Available at http://carnegieendowment.org/files/NormalNuclearPakistan.pdf.

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C. Christine Fair 2 Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, If I Am Assassinated (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Private Limited, 1979); Feroz Khan, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012). 3 Bhutto, If I Am Assassinated; Khan, Eating Grass, Feroz Khan, Pakistan: Political Transitions and Nuclear Management. Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, 2012. Online. Available at www.npolicy.org/ article_file/Pakistan-Political_Transitions_and_Nuclear_Management.pdf; International Institute for Strategic Studies, Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan, A.Q. Khan and the Rise of Proliferation Networks (London: IISS, 2007); Gordon Corera, Shopping for Bombs: New Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of the A.Q. Khan Network (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Adrian Levy and Catherine ScottClark, Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons (New York: Walker and Company, 2007); Naeem Salik, The Genesis of South Asia Nuclear Deterrence: Pakistan’s Perspective (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2009). 4 Paul Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007). 5 Stephen P. Cohen, The South Asia Papers: A Critical Anthology of Writings by Stephen Philip (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2016). 6 Ashley J. Tellis, C. Christine Fair, and Jamison Jo Medby. Limited Conflicts under the Nuclear Umbrella – Indian and Pakistani Lessons from the Kargil Crisis (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001). 7 George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), p. 13. 8 Khan, Eating Grass; Khan, Pakistan. 9 International Institute for Strategic Studies, Nuclear Black Markets; Khan, Eating Grass; Khan, Pakistan; Kamal Matinuddin, The Nuclearization of South Asia (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002). 10 For differing accounts of this war, see inter alia Sumit Ganguly, Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions Since 1947 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001); Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars within (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Mahmud Ahmed, Illusion of Victory: A Military History of the Indo-Pak War – 1965 (Karachi: Lexicon Publishers, 2002). 11 Matinuddin, The Nuclearization of South Asia, p. 83; International Institute for Strategic Studies, Nuclear Black Markets, 15. 12 Stephen P. Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004); Khan, Eating Grass; Khan, Pakistan; Salik, The Genesis of South Asia Nuclear Deterrence. 13 Muhammad Aslam Zuberi, “The Challenge of a Nuclear India,” Pakistan Army Journal, Vol. 13 (June 1971), pp. 22–23. 14 Nawaz, Crossed Swords. 15 Khan, Eating Grass; Khan, Pakistan. 16 For a critique of the historical interventions attempted by F. Khan, see C. Christine Fair, “Review of Feroz Hassan Khan’s Eating Grass,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 36, no. 4 (July 2013), pp. 624–630. 17 Khan, Eating Grass; Khan, Pakistan; Salik, The Genesis of South Asia Nuclear Deterrence; International Institute for Strategic Studies, Nuclear Black Markets. 18 International Institute for Strategic Studies, Nuclear Black Markets. 19 International Institute for Strategic Studies, Nuclear Black Markets, p. 17. 20 International Institute for Strategic Studies, Nuclear Black Markets; Khan, Eating Grass; Khan, Pakistan; Matinuddin, The Nuclearization of South Asia. 21 A. Z. Hilali, “Pakistan’s Security Problems and Options,” Pakistan Defence Review, Vol. 2 (Dec. 1990), pp. 46–68. 22 Zuberi, “The Challenge of a Nuclear India.” 23 A. Z. Hilali, “Strategic Dimensions of Pakistan’s Nuclear Program and Its Command and Control System,” in Nuclear Pakistan: Strategic Dimensions, ed. Zulfiqar Khan, pp. 189–224 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2011); See also Masood Navid Anwari, “Deterrence-Hope or Reality,” Pakistan Army Journal, Vol. 29 (March 1988), pp. 45–53; Ghulam Sarwar, “Pakistan’s Strategic and Security Perspectives,” Pakistan Army Journal, Vol. 36 (Autumn 1995), pp. 63–74; Asad Durrani, “Total Security-A Concept for Pakistan,” Pakistan Defence Review, Vol. 1, no. 1 (1989), pp. 10–27. 24 Bhutto, If I Am Assassinated; Khan, Eating Grass; Khan, Pakistan. 25 National Security Archive. 26 NIE 4–1–74, “Special National Intelligence Assessment: Prospects for Further Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” 1974. Online. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB240/snie.pdf. 27 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, “Pakistan Nuclear Study,” 26 April 1978. Online. Available at http:// nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb333/doc05.pdf, pp. 6–7.

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Pakistan’s nuclear program 28 U.S. Department of State, “State Department Cable 191467 to Embassy Islamabad, ‘Pak Ambassador’s Call on Undersecretary Newsom’,” 1 Aug. 1978. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ ebb333/doc08.pdf, p. 3. 29 U.S. Department of State, “U.S. Embassy Paris Cable 24312 to State Department, ‘French Go Public (Partly) on Reprocessing Issue with Pakistan’,” 3 Aug. 1078. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/ nukevault/ebb333/doc10.pdf. 30 Husain Haqqani, Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding (New York: Public Affairs, 2013). 31 U.S. Department of State, “State Department Cable 205550 to Embassy Islamabad, ‘Discussion between under Secretary Newsom and Pakistan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Agha Shahi on the Reprocessing Issue’,” 14 Aug. 1978. Online. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb333/doc13. pdf, p. 1. 32 U.S. Department of State, “State Department Cable 205550 to Embassy Islamabad, ‘Discussion between under Secretary Newsom and Pakistan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Agha Shahi on the Reprocessing Issue’,” 14 Aug. 1978. Online. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb333/doc13. pdf, p. 4. 33 U.S. Department of State, “State Department Cable 216584 to Embassy Islamabad, ‘PRC Assistance to Pakistan in Reprocessing’,” 25 Aug. 1978. Online. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ ebb333/doc16.pdf. 34 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, “John Despres, National Intelligence Officer for Nuclear Proliferation via Deputy Director for National Foreign Assessment [and] National Intelligence Officer for Warning to Director of Central Intelligence, ‘Monthly Warning Report – Nuclear Proliferation’,” 5 Dec. 1978. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb333/doc21.pdf, p. 2. 35 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, “John Despres,” p. 2. 36 National Security Archive. “The United States and Pakistan’s Quest for the Bomb: National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 333,” 21 Dec. 2010. Online. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu. edu/nukevault/ebb333/. 37 The cable provides no useful information that allows us to identify who this “Shankar” person was. It may have been Shankar Bajpai. During this period, he was the High Commissioner to Pakistan and remained one of the experts on Pakistan within India’s bureaucracy. 38 U.S. Department of State, “Department of State Cable 22212 to Embassy New Delhi, ‘Ad Hoc Scientific Committee and Related Topics’,” 27 Jan. 1979. Online. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/ nukevault/ebb333/doc24.pdf, p. 2. 39 The Symington Amendment was adopted in 1976 to amend the Arms Export Control Act, which was previously known as Section 669 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. This legislation prohibits U.S. assistance to any country that is found to be trafficking in either nuclear enrichment technology or equipment. In contrast to Pakistani arguments that this legislation was promulgated to punish Pakistan, it was actually enacted in response to the Indian test in 1974. U.S. Department of State, “Presidential Review Committee [Sic] Meeting, 9 March 1979. Online. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ ebb333/doc29.pdf; U.S. Department of State, “Herbert J. Hansell through Lucy Wilson Benson to Mr. Newsom, ‘Pakistan and the Symington Amendment’,” 17 March 1979. Available at http://nsar chive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb333/doc30.pdf; Salik, The Genesis of South Asia Nuclear Deterrence; Robert M. Hathaway, “Confrontation and Retreat: The U.S. Congress and the South Asian Nuclear Tests,” Arms Control Today (Jan./Feb. 2000). Online. Available at www.armscontrol.org/act/2000_01-02/rhjf00. 40 National Security Archive, U.S. Department of State, “Steve Oxman to Warren Christopher, 5 March 1979, enclosing memorandum from Harold Saunders and Thomas Pickering through Mr. Newsom and Mrs. Benson to the Secretary, ‘A Strategy for Pakistan’,” 5 March 1979. Online. Available at http:// nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb333/doc28.pdf. 41 U.S. Department of State, “Ambassador Pickering, Paul Kreisberg, and Jack Miklos through Mr. Newsom and Mrs. Benson to the Secretary,‘Presidential Letter to President Zia on Nuclear Issues’,” 21 March 1979. Online. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb333/doc31.pdf. 42 U.S. Department of State, “Herbert J. Hansell through Lucy Wilson Benson to Mr. Newsom, ‘Pakistan and the Symington Amendment’,” 17 March 1979. Online. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/ nukevault/ebb333/doc30.pdf; U.S. Department of State, “Ambassador Pickering.” 43 U.S. Department of State, “Ambassador Pickering.” 44 U.S. Department of State, “Harold Saunders, Thomas Pickering, and Paul H. Kreisberg through David Newsom and Lucy Benson to the Deputy Secretary, ‘PRC Meeting on Pakistan, Wednesday, March 28,

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45 46

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3:00 P.M.’,” 27 March 1979. Online. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb333/doc32b. pdf. U.S. Department of State, “Ambassador Pickering,” p. 5. U.S. Department of State, “Anthony Lake, Harold Saunders, and Thomas Pickering through Mr. Newsom and Mrs. Benson to the Deputy Secretary,‘PRC Paper on South Asia’,” enclosing Interagency Working Group Paper, “South Asian Nuclear and Security Problems, Analysis of Possible Elements in a U.S. Strategy,” 23 March 1979. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb333/doc32a.pdf, p. 8. U.S. Department of State, “U.S. Embassy New Delhi Cable 9979, ‘India and the Pakistan Nuclear Problem’,” 7 June 1979. Online. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb333/doc35b. pdf, p. 2. U.S. Department of State, “Gerard C. Smith, Special Representative of the President for Non-Proliferation Matters, to the President, ‘Nonproliferation in South Asia’,” 8 June 1979. Online. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb333/doc36.pdf. Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), p. 51. This aid did not begin until 1982 because Reagan had to work with congress to obtain relief from the sanctions imposed during Carter’s tenure. See Salik, The Genesis of South Asia Nuclear Deterrence. Salik, Genesis of South Asia Nuclear Deterrence, p. 98. Salik, The Genesis of South Asia Nuclear Deterrence. Hathaway, “Confrontation and Retreat.”; Salik, The Genesis of South Asia Nuclear Deterrence. Dennix Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000: Disenchanted Allies (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2001). U.S. Department of State, “State Department Briefing Paper:‘The Pakistani Nuclear Program’,” 23 June 1983. Online. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB6/docs/doc22.pdf, p. 1. U.S. Department of State, “U.S. Embassy India Cable 14048 to State Department, ‘News Reports of Pakistan Nuclear Capabilities’,” 22 June 1984.” Online. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/ NSAEBB/NSAEBB114/chipak-14.pdf. Salik, The Genesis of South Asia Nuclear Deterrence, p. 106. Salik, The Genesis of South Asia Nuclear Deterrence, p. 106. Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000, p. 276. Salik, The Genesis of South Asia Nuclear Deterrence; Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000. Richard P. Cronin, K. Alan Kronstadt and Sharon Squassoni, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Proliferation Activities and the Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission: U.S. Policy Constraints and Options,” Congressional Research Service Report, 25 Jan. 2005. Online. Available at www.nti.org/media/pdfs/95d. pdf?_=1318531939. Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000; Husain Haqqani, “Pakistan Crisis and U.S. Policy Options. Speech at the Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC,” 27 Nov. 2007. Online. Available at www.heritage.org/events/2007/11/pakistan-crisis-and-us-policy-options. Howard B. Schaffer and Teresita C. Schaffer. How Pakistan Negotiates with the United States (Washington, DC: USIP, 2011). Khan, Eating Grass, p. 189. Abdul Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy 1947–2005 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2007). Michael Gordon, “Nuclear Course Set by Pakistan Worrying U.S,” New York Times, 12 Oct. 1989. Online. Available at www.nytimes.com/1989/10/12/world/nuclear-course-set-by-pakistan-worrying-us. html. Gordon, “Nuclear Course Set by Pakistan.” Schaffer and Schaffer, How Pakistan Negotiates. C. Christine Fair, “Learning to Think the Unthinkable: Lessons from India’s Nuclear Test,” India Review, Vol. 4, no. 1 (2005), pp. 23–58; Ganguly, “India’s Pathway to Pokhran II.” ; Khan, Eating Grass. C. Christine Fair, Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Khan, Eating Grass. Perkovich and Dalton, Not War, Not Peace?. Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, “Pakistani Nuclear Forces, 2016,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1 Nov. 2016. Online. Available at http://thebulletin.org/2016/november/pakistani-nuclearforces-201610118. Jonathan Mc Claughlin, “Pakistan Missile Update-February 2016,” Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. Available at www.wisconsinproject.org/countries/pakistan/PakistanMissileUpdate-2016.html;

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77 78 79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

Nuclear Threat Initiative, “Pakistan Missile Chronology,” Updated 11 May 2011. Online. Available at www.nti.org/media/pdfs/pakistan_missile.pdf?_=1316466791. Ladwig, “A Cold Start for Hot Wars?” ISPR (Inter Services Public Relations). 2011. Press Release No. PR94/2011. 19 April. Online. Available at www.ispr.gov.pk/front/main.asp?o=t-press_release&id=1721. For a review of Pakistan’s presumed doctrine for using theatre nuclear weapons, see Sankaran, “Pakistan’s Battlefield Nuclear Policy.; C. Clary, G. Kampani & J. Sankaran, “Correspondence: Battling over Pakistan’s Battlefield Nuclear Weapons,” International Security, Vol. 40, no. 4 (2016), pp. 166–177. Clary, “Correspondence.” Clary, “Correspondence.”; Khan, Smoking Grass; Khan, Pakistan. Clary, “Correspondence.”; Khan, Smoking Grass; Khan, Pakistan. Richard Weitz. “Repercussions from Air Force Nuclear Weapons Incident Continue,” World Politics Review, 15 Sep. 2007. Online. Available at www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/1174/repercussionsfrom-air-force-nuclear-weapons-incident-continue. Lt. Gen. Kidwai, now retired from the Army but still the head of SPD, estimated that some 70,000 people work in Pakistan’s nuclear complexes. This figure includes some 7–8,000 scientists, of whom perhaps 2,000 possess critical knowledge. As Clary notes, Pakistan has also adopted measures, such as the equivalent of a two-man rule and some crude but functional versions of permissive action links, to protect against accidental use of weapons (Clary). Locks are used to prevent unauthorized activation of a nuclear weapon. Until the 1960s, mechanical combination locks were used. Since then, “permissive action links” (PAL), electronic devices that require operators to enter the correct codes, have increasingly been used. Typically, a “two-person rule” is used, requiring two different codes to be entered either simultaneously or nearly so. This rule makes it nearly impossible for a weapon to be detonated by one individual. For more details on PALS and the two person rule, among other aspects of nuclear command and control, see Peter D. Feaver, “Command and Control in Emerging Nuclear Nations,” International Security, Vol. 17, no. 3 (1992/93), pp. 160–187. Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder, “The Ally from Hell,” The New Republic, 28 Oct. 2011. Online. Available at www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/12/the-ally-from-hell/308730/. Goldberg and Ambinder, “The Ally from Hell.” Clary, “Correspondence.” Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent; Fair, Fighting to the End. C. Christine Fair, “A New Way of Engaging Pakistan,” Lawfare, 11 Apr. 2016. Online. Availalble at https://lawfareblog.com/new-way-engaging-pakistan. Fair, “A New Way.” Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent; Fair, Fighting to the End. Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent. Gregory F. Giles and James F. Doyle. “Indian and Pakistani Views on Nuclear Deterrence,” Comparative Strategy, Vol. 5, no. 2 (1996), pp. 135–159. Giles and Doyle, “Indian and Pakistani Views,” p. 147. “Documentation: General Mirza Aslam Beg’s Major Presentations,” Defense Journal, Vol. 17 (June/July 1991), p. 42. Fair, Fighting to the End. Stephen P. Cohen, The Pakistan Army (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). U.S. Department of State. “U.S. Embassy New Delhi Cable 9979.” In 1999, Indian forces discovered that Pakistani regular troops invaded Indian-administered Kashmir in the sectors of Kargil and Dras. However, Pakistan disguised those troops as non-state actors. This incursion evolved into the limited-aims war Kargil War of 1999. While that conflict was ostensibly “conventional,” due to Pakistan use of subterfuge it has subconventional qualities. Scholars tend to argue that while nuclear weapons embolded Pakistan to undertake this risky gambit, nuclear weapons also worked to ensure that the conflict remains limited both by constraining escalation and by catalyzing nearly immediate international intervention (see inter alia Tellis, Fair and Medby; Paul Kapur, “Ten Years of Instability in a Nuclear South Asia,” International Security, Vol. 33, no 2 (2008), pp. 71–94; Sumit Ganguly, “Nuclear Stability in South Asia,” International Security, Vol. 33, no 2 (2008), pp. 45–70.

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11 INSURGENCY AND COUNTERINSURGENCY IN SOUTH ASIA Shivaji Mukherjee

Introduction India is unique because it continues to be the world’s largest democracy, in spite of having experienced multiple insurgencies. There are both leftist ideological types like the FARC in Colombia and the Shining Path in Peru, as well as the ethnic secessionist variety like the IRA in the United Kingdom or the LTTE insurgency in Sri Lanka. The Naxalite or Maoist insurgency in India claims to fight for subaltern groups like lower castes and excluded tribes and is one of the longest running leftist ideology based insurgencies today. India also has a long history of ethnic insurgencies which want to secede because of perceived ethnic or political grievances. The longest lasting is the Naga insurgency in the Northeastern state of Nagaland which started in 1948 soon after Indian independence, and has been in a period of protracted ceasefires between the most powerful rebel group, the NSCN-IM, and the Indian government since 1996. The most well-known of these secessionist insurgencies is the one which erupted in the northern state of Kashmir in 1989 and continues at a low level of intensity even today, and demands autonomy or secession from India. This chapter provides brief histories of these different insurgencies, and tries to analyze the proximate causes which led to conflict onset, and also deeper structural causes. The scholarship on civil war onset using cross national datasets suggests that rebel opportunity in terms of weak state capacity or access to natural or other resources, or rebel grievances in the form of ethnic exclusion or inequalities tend to explain why rebellion occurs.1 This chapter tries to analyze if these theories of civil war onset are useful in explaining the onset of these different types of insurgencies in India. It also describes how the state responded to these different insurgencies. The rest of the chapter is as follows. The next section outlines the two main types of insurgency in India – ethnic secessionist and left wing ideological. It then briefly outlines variation in their duration and intensity patterns. Following this, Section 3 provides brief histories of these insurgencies, as well as their causes. Section 4 concludes by synthesizing the various explanations for onset of insurgency in India, to see what broad lessons can be taken to the larger literature on civil war onset, and also if secessionist insurgencies have very different causes from the Maoist insurgency.

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Insurgencies in India – ethnic secessionist vs. center seeking leftist types This section briefly presents the multiple insurgencies that have occurred in India. It is possible to simplify and categorize them by rebel goal into (a) the left wing ideological type which represents the Maoist insurgency, and (b) the ethnic secessionist insurgencies, whether those based on religion like the Sikh insurgency in Punjab, and the Kashmir insurgency which demands a separate state for Muslims, or the purely ethnic/tribal ones in Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram in the North East.2 There are three types of outcomes to these insurgencies in India. The first category is those insurgencies which have been defeated by the use of police/military force. Among ethnic secessionist insurgencies, the insurgency in Punjab (1984–93) led by various groups claiming a separate state of Khalistan, was ended successfully through the use of police force in 1993. Recently, the efficient use of State police force has led to eliminating insurgents in Tripura, similar to the Punjab model. For the Maoist insurgency, the initial phase in 1967–73 was crushed by the ruthless use of police and military force by the central and state governments. A second pattern of insurgency is where the insurgents have negotiated a peace agreement and given up arms. The most successful example is the Mizo National Front (MNF) insurgency from 1966–86 which ended with the former rebel leader Laldenga actually joining electoral politics and winning elections in Mizoram. Among left wing insurgencies, the CPI-ML Liberation faction of the Maoist groups has also rejoined electoral politics in 1990s and some of their candidates have even won seats in State Assembly elections in Bihar. These are unique and interesting cases of incorporation of former rebels into normal electoral politics in the world’s largest democracy. However, most insurgency cases have neither led to military victory, nor have they ended through peace agreements. Instead the large majority of insurgencies in India fall in the category of low intensity long duration conflicts.3 Some scholars of insurgency in India like Baruah (2005) have categorized these insurgencies as durable disorder, and some like Staniland (2012) have explained these persistent conflicts as the result of shadowy bargains that the state strikes with different rebel groups to contain them, instead of trying to defeat them militarily.4 Examples are the Naga insurgency in Nagaland led by the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak Muivah (NSCN-IM), the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) led insurgency in Assam, the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) and PREPAK led insurgencies in Manipur, that have not ended through either coercion or negotiations. While recently some of these groups have been negotiating peace agreements, like the ULFA in Assam, and the NSCN-IM in Nagaland, these agreements have not yet been finalized and the conflicts are in a frozen state. Regarding the Maoist insurgency, the CPI-Maoist have refused to give up armed revolution, and ceasefires with the PWG failed in 1992 and 2004 in Andhra Pradesh.

Political histories of insurgencies in India Punjab insurgency The secessionist insurgency for a separate state of Punjab or Khalistan, was fueled by deeper ethnic demands of autonomy by the Sikhs which had remained unfulfilled since independence. According to Brass, it was change in the central Congress leadership’s ability to manage demands for Sikh autonomy that resulted in the insurgency in 1980s.5 In the 1960s, the Congress used to win elections in Punjab and the main Sikh ethnic party Akali Dal could never win on its own and

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had to ally with the Jan Sangh/ BJP to form coalition governments. However, during the Emergency Period in 1975–77 the Akali Dal had agitated against Indira Gandhi’s non-democratic tactics, and in 1977 State Assembly elections in Punjab, the Akali Dal won a large percent of votes and was able to form their own government from 1978–80. This made Indira Gandhi feel insecure, and the Congress government at the center allied with a radical preacher, Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale to try and break the Jat Sikh vote base of the Akali Dal, and he initially campaigned for the Congress in elections.6 However, he soon became very radical, and started targeting Hindus and Sikh groups, and by 1984 had collected a large number of supporters and arms inside the Golden Temple in Amritsar, and continued to defy the central government. In response, Prime Minister Gandhi authorized Operation Blue Star in June 1984, in which the army attacked the Sikh militants hiding in the Golden Temple, and was forced to use tanks which resulted in destruction of the temple property.7 This angered the Sikh community which considered this attack on their holiest shrine as sacrilegious. The result was that Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards in October 1984. Anti-Sikh riots took place in New Delhi, with the tacit support of some Congress leaders. This causes increased grievances among Sikhs and various groups got radicalized. The new Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi tried to negotiate an agreement with the Akali Dal Chief Minister Longowal in 1985, to give some of the long term demands of the Sikhs. However these were not fulfilled as Rajiv Gandhi soon got distracted with other issue. The Akali Dal led government in Punjab vacillated and did not initially take a strong stance against increasing insurgency, and released some insurgents from jail, who entered the Golden Temple and fortified it again. This time Operation Black Thunder was carried out in May 11–16, 1988 by the Punjab Police and NSG commandoes, and not involving the army, and was more effective.8 However, various insurgent groups emerged and initially the morale of the Punjab police force was low and they were not effective at counter insurgency. It is only after 1988, that the police force slowly began to challenge the insurgents, and in July 1988, some top insurgent leaders were killed, and by January 1989, the insurgents had been pushed into the border districts of Gurdaspur, Amritsar and Ferozepur, and the counter insurgency campaign seemed to be winning.9 However, elections in 1989 brought the Janata Dal coalition government to power in the Center, and Prime Minister V.P. Singh was soft on the terrorists, and paramilitary troops were removed because insurgency had also started in Kashmir at this time. This led to a resurgence of the insurgency by 1990–91. The level of violence escalated in 1990 and 1991, and according to Gill, “Between 1978 and 1989, there were 5070 civilian casualties; in 1990 and 1991, they were 5058.” The conflict had spread to most districts in 1991–92, from the 3–4 districts in which it was concentrated earlier.10 The Congress won the national elections in 1991 riding a sympathy wave for the death of Rajiv Gandhi, and Narasimha Rao became the PM. The new Congress government at the center cancelled the state elections in Punjab, and brought K.P.S. Gill back as the police chief of Punjab, and gave the counter insurgency political backing. In November 1991, a renewed and ruthless counter insurgency strategy was launched which had a unified command structure for police, army and paramilitary units, with high levels of coordination and information sharing. This had significant impact on the insurgency movement. Under heavy security cover, state elections occurred in Punjab in February 1992, and was boycotted by the insurgents. This turned out to be a strategic blunder because the public were tired of violence and voted the Congress back to power, thus delegitimizing the insurgents.11 Following the Assembly elections, the insurgents escalated violence against police, political leaders and government officials. However, the coordinated counter insurgency campaign responded with a three pronged strategy – killing those who committed terrorist attacks, selectively targeting insurgent leaders in their home areas, and using Operation Night Dominance, 142

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in which senior police officers took personal charge of operations at night, to counter most insurgent attacks.12 Also, during this last counter insurgency phase, Taran, Majitha and Batala, the worst affected areas were given district status for better delivery of essential services, and the more affected revenue districts of Amritsar and Gurdaspur were divided into five police districts to facilitate administration and counter insurgency. The police strength was increased in the state through more recruitment, and police weaponry was upgraded. All this led to more successful counter insurgency, and broke the morale of the insurgents. Around 139 hardcore terrorists were arrested or killed in 1992. The leaders of the Babbar Khalsa group, as well as the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF) and Khalistan Liberation Front (KCF) fled to Pakistan.13 Causes for onset of insurgency: What were the causes behind the Punjab insurgency? Some scholars propose that the excessive centralization and interference by the Central government in the politics of Punjab in 1980s was the immediate cause which explains the timing of onset of the insurgency.14 A similar interpretation is provided by Kohli who theorizes that such attempts to split the Sikh vote and weaken the Akali Dal’s electoral prospects had been happening from an earlier period in the 1960–70s, and not just during the 1980s.15 Other explanations focus on socio-economic conditions, for example, Gill & Singhal argue that the Green revolution increased class tensions between the lower caste majhabi Sikhs who were agricultural laborers who became poorer, and the capitalist peasant Jat Sikh farmers who became richer. Also, the capitalist Jat Sikh farmers wanted to reduce the power of the urban Hindu trader class who were Congress supporters. So these increasing economic tensions between different groups got mapped onto a political battle between the Jat Sikh supported Akali Dal and the Congress.16

Kashmir insurgency The Kashmir insurgency, along with the ones in the North East, is one of the longest running insurgencies in India, which started in 1989. Kashmir has always been a contentious issue between India and Pakistan, being both symbolically and strategically important for both countries. The very first conflict between India and Pakistan occurred soon after independence in 1947, when the Hindu Maharajah, Hari Singh, of the princely state of Kashmir, who ruled over a Muslim majority population, was forced to sign the instrument of accession to join India, when his state was attacked by Pakistan supported militias from North West Frontier province in 1948. While the Indian army was able to stop the infiltrators from taking over Kashmir, part of Kashmir remained with Pakistan, with a Line of Control between the Indian and Pakistan occupied parts.17 The National Conference under Sheikh Abdullah’s leadership had been allied with the Congress during the independence movement, and won the first elections in Kashmir state in 1952. However, both Nehru’s suspicion and opposition by Hindutva forces to Sheikh Abdullah for wanting special autonomy status for Kashmir, resulted in him getting jailed in 1953. In 1965, Pakistan started a war against India with the goal of encouraging a rebellion in Kashmir. However, the war ended in a stalemate, but the Kashmiris did not rebel in 1965, thus belying Pakistan’s expectations. Then following the 1971 secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan, the position of Kashmiri nationalists was weakened and Sheikh Abdullah was released from jail. He immediately became leader of the National Conference party and won elections in Kashmir in 1977, and remained the Chief Minister till his death in 1982.18 Following his death, his son Farooq Abdullah succeeded him and in elections in 1983 won the state elections, defeating the Congress. The Prime Minister Indira Gandhi interfered with Kashmiri politics and unfairly dismissed Farooq’s National Front government in 1983, which started creating discontent and alienation among the Muslim youth. Following Indira Gandhi’s 143

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assassination in 1984 by her Sikh bodyguards, her son and new PM Rajiv Gandhi allied with Farooq Abdullah. Even though the Congress-National conference combine won the elections of 1987, it was considered rigged and Farooq Abdullah lost all legitimacy among Kashmiris as he was seen as compromising with the Congress central government. A new Islamic coalition called Muslim United Front (MUF) had tried to oppose the Congress-National Conference alliance, and they were not allowed to freely participate in elections, and these separatists now criticized Farooq Abdullah.19 Many of these frustrated Muslim youth, who had seen the electoral manipulation in 1987 firsthand, decided to take up arms and rebel against the Central government in Kashmir in 1988–89. There were increasing mass protests in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir valley. Two main insurgency groups emerged in Kashmir in early 1990s, though there were a lot of other, smaller groups. The first was the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) which was created out of the core group of Kashmiri youth who had been frustrated with the 1987 elections, and they wanted Kashmiri nationalism and independence, and had a lot of support from the Muslim masses. The other important insurgent group was the Hizbul Mujahideen (HuM) which was built by members of the socio-religious organization, the Jammat-e-Islami, and its goal was to join Pakistan. This group was supported by the Pakistani intelligence services, and was less popular with the masses. The JKLF soon became fractionalized, many of its leaders were killed or jailed by the security forces, and by 1995 one faction gave up armed rebellion. In contrast, the HuM was more cohesive, and continued its violent activities after 1995.20 There are two explanations for this variation in cohesiveness. One theory suggested by Staniland is that the JKLF did not have high levels of horizontal linkages between the different leaders, and also lacked vertical linkages between the leaders who were based in urban areas, and the rural people. In contrast, many of the leaders of the HuM were drawn from the preexisting Jamaat-e-Islami network and had strong horizontal ties and also had strong vertical linkages to a core group of Islamic followers.21 Another explanation is by Blom, who suggests that when the JKLF started to push for a pro-independence of Kashmir agenda, the Pakistan ISI decided to launch the HuM to push for a pro-Pakistan agenda, and increased funding for the HuM and used it to target and eliminate the JKLF.22 This view is supported by Marwah, who writes that the JKLF was marginalized by “the withdrawal of support by its patron, Pakistan. The ‘Kashmir card’ had served its purpose and the ISI had no qualms in dumping the JKLF and shifting its support exclusively to HuM.”23 In the second half of 1990s, the Pakistan army tried to create other groups which were entirely based in Pakistan, like the Harkat-ul-Ansar, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and later Jaish-e-Mohammad. The reason for this was the experience with the Hizbul Mujahideen, which had been targeted by Indian forces using information from the renegades or Ikhwanis, thus destroying the networks on which the HuM was based.24 In 1999, conflict broke out between Pakistan and India in Kargil in Kashmir. Post Kargil, the nature of the insurgency changed and between mid-1999 and the end of 2002 the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad carried out at least 55 fidayeen or suicide attacks against police, military, and army targets.25 Post the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in the U.S. by the Al Qaeda, the U.S. asked Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to stop supporting cross border insurgency to India from Kashmir, and while levels of violence continued, they have been at a reduced and stalemated level since 2005. The Indian security forces continued to maintain their heavy presence, but there was more of a stalemate and lower levels of conflict since 2005. Since 2010, a new generation of Kashmiri youth have become frustrated with Indian military presence in Kashmir, but are also critical of Pakistan’s role. They seem different from the previous generation, since they tend to use novel forms of protest like mass participation in prayers for 144

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the death of militants and throwing stones at security forces instead of using guns.26 Also, the “decision by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which won the December 2015 elections in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, to form a coalition with India’s ruling Hindu nationalist BJP which performed well in the neighboring Hindu majority region of Jammu” has angered the Kashmiri youth, and some of those who campaigned for the PDP have recently joined the insurgency.27 Recently in July 2016, one of the most charismatic leaders of the HuM, Burhan Wani, was killed by security forces, and this led to an outpouring of protests and violence.28 Causes for onset of insurgency: What were the causes behind the Kashmir insurgency? One explanation is provided by Ganguly (1996) who argues that there was increasing literacy, education and political participation by the younger generation in Kashmir by 1980s, and this could not be channelized into representation due to lack of development of adequate political institutions and parties since the National Conference party under Abdullah had stifled all opposition.29 A second explanation for the Kashmir insurgency focus on socio-economic factors. For example, Praveen Swami discusses that the initial group of insurgents who formed the JKLF often came from the “non-reform economy of artisans, orchard-owners, and small businessmen” who faced declining economic opportunities, like decline in exports of fruits and lowering tourism, and had not benefited from the land reforms carried out by Sheikh Abdullah’s National conference which benefited small peasants who produced paddy, wheat and maize which flourished.30 A third explanation by Varshney focuses on three competing visions of nationalism – “religious nationalism represented by Pakistan, secular nationalism epitomized by India, and ethnic nationalism embodied in what Kashmiris call Kashmiriat (being a Kashmiri).”31

Insurgencies in India’s North Eastern states The region collectively called India’s North East, comprises seven states, which are ethnically quite different from mainstream Hindu India – Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. Other than Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, all the other states have suffered from ethnic secessionist insurgencies and inter-ethnic conflict, making it one of the most conflict affected areas in India. Nagaland: The first insurgency to break out in the Northeast, was in Nagaland in 1951, under the leadership of Phizo who created the Naga National Council (NNC), and claimed that with the end of British rule, the Naga Hills should not be part of India. In response, the Indian army was induced to fight the NNC in 1956, and there were allegations of human rights violations. The NNC got initial support from Pakistan and Chinese intelligence. Nagaland was made a state in 1963, and a Peace Mission tried to negotiate between the two sides, but it failed. Following this insurgency intensified, and finally after the 1971 secession of Bangladesh and weakening of the position of the insurgents, successful negotiations were concluded with the NNC insurgents and the Indian government in November 1975, known as the Shillong Accord. However, it was repudiated by some NNC members who had gone to China for training, and this group formed the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, which continued operations and levels of violence against security forces increased in 1980s.32 Following a clash between the different ethnic Naga sub-tribes in 1988, the NSCN split into the NSCN-IM (Isaak Muivah), which was stronger in the Naga areas in Nagaland and Manipur, and the NSCN-K (Khaplang) which was stronger in the Naga areas in Myanmar. The central government started negotiating with the more powerful NSCN-IM faction in 1997, and kept providing ceasefire extensions. The NSCN-IM did not want the rival NSCN-K to be part of this ceasefire agreement, and the center had to strike a separate agreement with the NSCN-K in 2001. However, due to this rivalry, the peace process has not been entirely successful, and 145

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killings between these two NSCN factions continue. Also, both NSCN factions demand a greater Nagalim consisting of areas inhabited by Nagas in the neighboring states of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, which is strongly opposed by these other states, and acts as a non-negotiable point which prevents the peace agreement from being concluded.33 These ceasefires have lowered violence by insurgents against state forces, and most of the violence is now inter-ethnic conflict between different Naga groups. Recently, the new BJP government signed a historic peace accord in August 2015 with the NSCN-IM to bring the conflict to an end, based on a breakthrough formula which does not require redrawing of state borders, and the peace process is continuing.34 Mizoram: The insurgency in Mizoram started in 1966. The tensions building up to rebellion started with the Congress party losing District Council elections in 1952 to the more popular Mizo Union, and beginning to interfere with and weakening the ability of the Mizo Union to function properly. This led to grievances which were further intensified during the infamous bamboo famine (mautam) in 1959–60 and the lack of effort from the Assam government to release funds. The Mizo Famine Front (MFF) was formed under Laldenga to organize famine relief. Later this was converted into the Mizo National Front (MNF) and in March 1966, Laldenga declared independence of Mizoram, and MNF militants overran capital city Aizwal.35 The Indian army had to resort to air raids to drive the MNF out of Aizawl. The Army also tried the Malaysian model of regrouping of villages, but it led to more suffering and grievances for the Mizos. The MNF set up a provisional government in East Pakistan, and the insurgency continued. In January 1975, several senior police officers were killed by the MNF insurgents, and in response the Indian security forces intensified counter insurgency.36 The MNF entered negotiations with New Delhi and a Peace Accord was signed on June 30, 1986, and Mizoram was given statehood in August 1986. In the following elections, the MNF won and formed government in Mizoram, bringing an end to the conflict. It is one of the few successful cases of political incorporation of former rebels into the democratic process leading to enduring post conflict peace.37 Manipur: Manipur was a princely state that saw onset of insurgency with the emergence of the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) in 1964 to support demands by the majority ethnic Meitei population who lived in the valley areas, against preferences and special rights in land given to the Naga and Kuki tribes who tend to live in the hills. The Meiteis felt threatened by other ethnic minorities like the Nagas and Kukis, and wanted to continue to dominate politics and jobs in the state, and preserve their ancient history where Meitei rulers uses rule over Naga and Kuki hill areas.38 It is similar to a sons of the soil type insurgency where an autochthonous group feels threatened by outsider ethnic groups (see below on Assam). The UNLF was repressed by the Indian state in 1960s, but reemerged as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 1978. Other Meitei insurgent groups that emerged were the People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK) in 1977, and the Kangleipak Communist Party in 1980.39 There were high levels of counter insurgency which weakened the PLA and PREPAK by end of the 1980s, but the PLA re-emerged in 1992 along with a reincarnation of the UNLF. Peace deals with the various Meitei rebel groups have not been successful, partly because the Central government is keen to negotiate a peace deal with the NSCN factions in Nagaland, and the Naga insurgents want to take parts of Manipur territory and this is violently opposed by the Meitei insurgent groups.40 The army is allowed to operate under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), and has often been accused of human rights violations and rapes, and there are several powerful women-led organizations like the Meira Paibis which oppose the Indian state for such violations. Assam: Assam was the largest state in the North East before other states like Nagaland, Manipur or Mizoram were carved out of it. It saw the emergence of an insurgency in the 1980s, based on 146

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grievances against outsiders in a typical sons of the soil dynamic, as suggested by Weiner.41 The Assamese had protested against the dominance of the bureaucracy in British times by educated Hindu Bengalis, and later there was immigration of unskilled laborers from Bihar and Orissa in the tea plantations, as well as illegal immigration of Bengali Muslims from Bangladesh.42 The United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) was formed in 1979, during agitations against illegal immigrants led by the All Assam Students Union (AASU). The student leaders formed the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) party which won elections in 1985, but was unable to provide good governance and deport illegal immigrants. As the AGP got discredited, support for the ULFA increased, and it intensified levels of violence by late 1980s. By November 1990, President’s Rule was imposed in Assam, and the Army launched Operation Bajrang, but it failed partly because the AGP government leaked information about the impending counter insurgency operation to ULFA. Later, from September 1991–January 1992, with a new Congress government under Hiteshwar Saikia as Chief Minister in power, the army launched Operation Rhino, which was more successful.43 Operation Rhino resulted in many hardcore ULFA cadres being arrested, and the army destroying 15 ULFA camps. However, the ULFA survived, restored its organizational strength and established a chain of training camps across Myanmar and Bhutan. In the 1996 elections, the AGP again returned to power in Assam. Counter insurgency operations continued and a Unified Command Structure was set up in January 1997, which finally weakened ULFA and much of its senior leadership went into exile in Bangladesh. Levels of violence have since decreased, but the insurgency became extortion based, and the ULFA lost its earlier ideological bent.44 The ULFA has continued its operations, though it slowly lost popular support. Since 2011, the ULFA split and there emerged a moderate faction under Chairman Arobindo Rajkhowa which agreed to peace talks with the government, but was opposed by another faction led by Paresh Baruah, which is opposed to talks.45 Currently, peace talks are continuing with the ULFA moderate faction leaders.46 Tripura: Tripura was a princely state which has seen insurgency led by the indigenous Tripuri tribes against Bengali migrants, since the 1970s. Like the Assam insurgency, it is a sons of the soil insurgency, and the root cause has been largescale migration of Bengali Hindus from East Pakistan after communal riots in late 1940s. This was followed by Bengali Muslim migrants from Bangladesh. In 1978, the Tripura National Volunteers (TNV) started inter-ethnic attacks against outsiders, and there was extensive army led counter insurgency. In 1988 a ceasefire led to splintering of the TNV, and different insurgents groups like the All Tripura Tribal Front (ATTF) and the National Liberation Front (NLFT) were formed, which took up armed rebellion.47 There were major counter insurgency successes between 2004–2006 led by a re-organized State police force rather than the Army or the CRPF, as is the case in most other North Eastern counter insurgencies. In the mid-2000s, the state police “established a remarkable Police presence, with 736 Policemen per 100,000 population and 261 Policemen per 100 square kilometers (according to Bureau of Police Research & Development data).”48 This led to the elimination of the insurgent groups and a return to peace in Tripura by 2006, though chances of return to militancy always remains.

Maoist or Naxalite insurgency Unlike the secessionist insurgencies in Punjab, Kashmir and North East, the Maoist or Naxal insurgency claims to fight for subaltern groups like lower castes and scheduled tribes who have been socially, politically and economically deprived in certain rural regions along the central eastern corridor of India. It tries to mobilize deprived ethnic groups to take up armed rebellion with the official goal of overthrowing the Indian state, and not seceding from it. 147

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The first phase of the movement started in the state of West Bengal in 1969, and developed out of the ideological differences within the broader leftist movement in India. While the Communist Party of India-Marxist had formed a coalition government in West Bengal in 1960s, the more radical elements within the CPI-Marxist were disgruntled and believed that they had not fulfilled the goal of land reforms. In this political climate, there was an incident of tribal backlash against police in the village of Naxalbari in northern West Bengal, which sparked off a country wide movement of radical mobilization under the aegis of the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) (CPI-ML). The main ideologue of the movement was Charu Mazumdar, but there were a lot of other ideologues and local leaders. The movement spread rapidly to other states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Punjab.49 This initial phase was crushed by the central and provincial governments by 1973, and following the arrest and death of Charu Mazumdar in police custody, the movement collapsed. During the Emergency period of 1975–77, many of the remaining Naxal leaders either went underground or were jailed. Following the end of Emergency in 1977, the Naxal leaders were released from jail. Many of the leaders re-thought their ideological positions, and there was a lot of ideological fermentation.50 Out of this process emerged a few main groups which later consolidated themselves in the 1980s to become the new face of the Maoist/Naxalite movement. The main groups were the Dakshin Desh, under the leadership of Amulya Sen and Kanhai Chatterjee, which changed its name to become the Maoist Communist Center (MCC). This group became strong in the plains of central Bihar and later Jharkhand. Another group which emerged was the People’s War Group (PWG), under the leadership of Kondapalli Sitaramaiah, which initially developed its strongholds in the northern Telangana districts of Andhra Pradesh. A third strand which emerged was the CPI-ML (Liberation), which gave up armed struggle and decided to take part in electoral politics, and was strong in Bihar.51 There was significant factional in-fighting in the 1990s with the MCC and PWG cadres sometimes fighting with each other, and both these groups killed members of the CPI-ML which had decided to fight elections and were considered revisionist by the more radical PWG and MCC groups. This was later referred to as a “black chapter” in the history of Maoist movement by the MCC and PWG.52 The MCC and PWG had been trying to overcome their factional conflict, and after several failed attempts at unification they finally merged in 2004, to form the unified Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist). Their ideological differences were resolved, with Maoism prevailing, in the words of PWG Andhra Pradesh State “‘Secretary,” as “the higher stage of the M-L (Marxist-Leninist) philosophy.”53 With the formation of the CPI-Maoist, the movement rapidly spread to more districts, and the level of violence escalated. An estimate based on the number of districts to be included in the Security Related Expenditures (SRE) scheme of the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs, shows 55 districts around 2003, 77 districts in 2005, 83 districts in 2012, and 106 districts currently in 2016.54 There were different reasons for this escalation in violence. One reason was changes in the strategy and tactics of the Maoists, with a decision to move to a “mobile warfare” phase.55 The second reason for the increase in violence from 2005–2012, was that some of the state governments as well as the central governments escalated counter insurgency, taking the Maoist movement as a serious threat for the first time. Earlier the newly elected Congress government in Andhra Pradesh, following the failure of the peace negotiations in 2003–2004, escalated counter insurgency and used the famous Greyhounds to strategically target Maoist leaders and cadres, which negatively affected the ability of the PWG Maoists in Andhra Pradesh to sustain their operations.56 As a result, many of the Maoist leaders relocated to the Dandakaranya forested zone in Bastar and Dantewada districts of Chhattisgarh state. In response, the BJP state government in Chhattisgarh indirectly abetted the vigilante Salwa Judum movement from 2005–2009 which 148

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tried to use tribal civilians and underage youth employed as Special Police Officers (SPOs) to target the Maoists.57 At the central level, in a major departure from usual “soft” government attitude which long considered the Maoists as a state level law and order problem and a movement for misguided youth and leftist intellectuals, the Congress government under former Home Minister Chidambaram launched Operation Green Hunt. This was a massive operation that coordinated police forces across all states with the central paramilitary forces, with the goal of eliminating Maoist control in their core areas in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. However, following a big Maoist ambush on a CRPF battalion on April 6, 2010, at Chintalner, Dantewada district, there was a lot of civilian and political uproar, and Operation Greenhunt lost political consensus and slowly petered out.58 Following this, since the election of the new Narendra Modi led BJP government at the center since 2014, the conflict is at a stalemate, and the Maoists seem to have reduced their level of activity.59 Causes for onset of Maoist insurgency: K. Balagopal (2006) suggested that the PWG Maoists provided protection and also other public goods like increasing the price of tendu leaves and some basic medicines to the Gond tribes in Chhattisgarh.60 In contrast, Alpa Shah suggests that the MCC in Jharkhand tended to collaborate with state officials, use state patronage, and engage in more corrupt behavior.61 This suggests that there is a lot of variation between the different Maoist groups operating across different states in India. Recent district dataset based econometric analyses of the Maoist insurgency have tried to generalize across India, and there are some interesting new findings. A recent paper by Dasgupta, Gawande and Kapur find that those districts where the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) were rolled out tended to see a reduction in level of Maoist violence.62 Other papers by Gawande, Kapur and Satyanath and Oliver Vanden Eynde have similar findings that negative rainfall shocks increase Maoist violence against civilians, through opportunity cost and possibly grievance mechanisms.63 Another paper by Hoelscher, Miklian & Vadlamannati finds that districts with more scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs), and districts with higher forest cover, and prevalence of conflict in neighboring districts tend to have higher Maoist violence, thus suggesting that both opportunity to rebel as well as possible grievances among deprived castes and tribes results in Maoist recruitment.64 In a study focusing on historical legacies, Mukherjee (2018) finds that different forms of colonial indirect rule in India, whether through zamindari land tenure in Bihar/Bengal, or through princely states in Chhattisgarh/Andhra Pradesh, created long term structural conditions of state weakness and ethnic/land inequalities, which were later successfully exploited by the Maoist rebels.65

Comparing across causes of these insurgency movements It would be theoretically fruitful from the view point of the literature on civil wars to compare the causes and dynamics of the Maoist insurgency and the many ethnic secessionist insurgencies. Sambanis (2001) suggested that secessionist and ideological insurgencies should have different causes, yet comparison of these two different types of insurgencies in India may suggest that they share similar root cases.66 For example, in the case of Assam, besides the colonial legacy of migration and dominance of Bengalis in Assam, the ULFA has also termed the “relationship between New Delhi and Assam as colonial” and in one of ULFA’s pamphlets, it is said that “Assam, which was a ‘hinterland’ under British rule, became even more so in the hands of the postcolonial Indian state” and that the Indian state has exploited the economic and natural resources of Assam like tea plantations and oil, but not given back adequate levels of development and infrastructure to the region. This 149

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could be considered a form of internal colonialism.67 It is similar to the historical legacies of indirect rule through princely states in Hyderabad and Bastar areas which created weak state capacity and land inequalities that resulted in the Maoist insurgency in Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.68 It shows that some of the ethnic insurgencies in the North East, the Kashmir insurgency, and the Maoist insurgencies in central eastern India, are all affected by long term colonial legacies which have left behind structural conditions of exploitation and inequalities, which later gave rise to grievances and led to insurgencies. Another similarity between the Maoist insurgency in central eastern parts of the country and the many ethnic insurgencies in various peripheral states is that there are sons of the soil grievances against outsiders in several cases. Assam, Manipur and Tripura in the North East, as well as the PWG led insurgency in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand have dynamics of anti-outsider sons of the soil logic, though the exact mechanisms may differ from case to case. Future research could compare the different dynamics of sons of the soil based motivations between these different types of insurgency, thus further building on the research of Myron Weiner.69

Notes 1 See Lars-Erik Cederman, Andreas Wimmer, and Brian Min, “Why Do Ethnic Groups Rebel? New Data and Analysis,” World Politics, Vol. 62, No. 1 (2010), pp. 87–119; Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” Oxford Economic Papers, Vol. 56 (2004), pp. 563–595; James Fearon and David Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 1 (2003), pp. 75–90. 2 See Nicholas Sambanis, “Do Ethnic and Non-Ethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes?,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 45, No. 3 (2001). 3 See Shivaji Mukherjee, “Why Are the Longest Insurgencies Low Intensity?,” Civil Wars, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2014), for why the longer duration insurgencies are also relatively low levels of violence. 4 Sanjib Baruah, Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005); Paul Staniland, “States, Insurgents, and Wartime Political Orders,” Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012), pp. 243–64. 5 Paul Brass, “The Punjab Crisis and Unity of India,” in Atul Kohli (ed.), India’s Democracy: An Analysis of Changing State-Society Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 212. Also see Paul Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison (New Delhi: Sage, 1991). 6 Gurharpal Singh, “Punjab since 1984: Disorder, Order and Legitimacy,” Asian Survey, Vol. 36, No. 4 (1996), p. 411. 7 Mark Tully and Satish Jacob, Amritsar: Mrs. Gandhi’s Last Battle (London: J Cape, 1985), pp. 108–109. 8 Christine Fair, “The Golden Temple: A Tale of Two Sieges,” in Christine Fair and Sumit Ganguly (eds.), Treading on Hallowed Ground: Counterinsurgency Operations in Sacred Spaces (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 9 K.P.S. Gill, “Endgame in Punjab, 1988–1993,” in K.P.S. Gill (ed.), Terror and Containment (New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 2001). 10 K.P.S. Gill, “Endgame in Punjab, 1988–1993.” 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ved Marwah, India in Turmoil: Jammu and Kashmir, the Northeast and Left Extremism (New Delhi: Rupa, 2009), pp. 278–286. 14 Brass, “The Punjab Crisis and Unity of India,” p. 212. 15 Atul Kohli, Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 358. 16 Sucha Singh Gill and K. C. Singhal, “Farmers’ Agitation: Response to Development Crisis of Agriculture,” Economic and Political Weekly, October 6, 1984, pp. 1728–1732. 17 See Sumantra Bose, Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 18 Ashutosh Varshney, “India, Pakistan, and Kashmir: Antinomies of Nationalism,” Asian Survey, Vol. 31, No. 11 (1991), p. 1014.

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Insurgency and counterinsurgency 19 Ved Marwah, India in Turmoil, p. 45. 20 Paul Staniland, “Organizing Insurgency: Networks, Resources and Rebellion in South Asia,” International Security, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Summer 2012), p. 158. 21 Paul Staniland, Networks of Rebellion (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), pp. 83–90. 22 Amelie Blom, “A Patron-Client Perspective on Militia-State Relations,” in Gayer & Jaffrelot (eds.), Armed Militias of South Asia (Hurst and Company, 2009), p. 138. 23 Ved Marwah, India in Turmoil, p. 64. 24 Scott Gates and Kaushik Roy, Unconventional Warfare in South Asia (Ashgate: 2014), pp. 101–102. 25 Bose, Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace, pp. 140–146. 26 Sumantra Bose, “The Evolution of Kashmiri Resistance,” Al Jazeera, August 2, 2011. 27 Shujaat Bukhari, “Why the Death of Militant Burhan Wani Has Kashmiris Up in Arms,” July 11, 2016, BBC News, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-36762043 28 Praveen Swami, “Decoding Burhan Wani’s Death: As Rage Gets Younger, New Hotspots Emerge in Valley’s Islands of Calm,” The Indian Express, July 26, 2016. 29 Sumit Ganguly, “Explaining the Kashmir Insurgency,” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1996), p. 104. 30 Praveen Swami, “Terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir in Theory and Practice,” in Sumit Ganguly (ed.), The Kashmir Question, p. 73. 31 Ashutosh Varshney, “India, Pakistan, and Kashmir,” pp. 997–1019. Also, in Ashutosh Varshney, “Three Compromised Nationalisms: Why Kashmir Has Been a Problem,” in Raju Thomas (ed.), Perspectives on Kashmir: Roots of Conflict in South Asia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992). 32 Ved Marwah, Uncivil Wars: Pathology of Terrorism in India (Rupa: New Delhi, 2009), pp. 270–277. 33 Bethany Lacina, “The Problem of Political Stability in Northeast India,” Asian Survey, Vol. 49, No. 6 (2009), pp. 1014–1015. 34 Amitabh Sinha and Praveen Swami, “PM Narendra Modi Announces Historic Peace Deal with Naga Insurgents,” Indian Express, August 4, 2015. 35 Sanjoy Hazarika, Strangers of the Mist (New Delhi: Viking, 1994), pp. 114–115. 36 Ved Marwah, India in Turmoil, p. 212. 37 Lacina, “The Problem of Political Stability in Northeast India,” p. 1011. 38 Ved Marwah, India in Turmoil, pp. 204–205. 39 Ved Marwah, India in Turmoil, p. 203. 40 Bethany Lacina, “Does Counterinsurgency Theory Apply in Northeast India?,” India Review, Vol. 6, No. 3 (2007), p. 169. 41 For the classic study of migration and conflict between migrants and sons of the soil in India, see Myron Weiner, Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). 42 Sanjib Baruah, India against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 49–68. 43 Ved Marwah, India in Turmoil, pp. 194–197. 44 SATP, “Assam Backgrounder,” www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/assam/backgrounder/ index.html 45 www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/assam/terrorist_outfits/ulfa.htm 46 “Modi Government Is Not Interested in ULFA Talks: Assam CM,” Shillong Times, May 15, 2016, www. theshillongtimes.com/2016/05/15/modi-government-is-not-interested-in-ulfa-talks-assam-cm/# MMT1vZXsTGduBhzQ.99 47 Lacina, “Does Counterinsurgency Theory Apply in Northeast India?,” p. 172. 48 “Tripura Assessment, 2016,” www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/tripura/index.html 49 For details of this initial phase of the Naxalite movement, see Sumanta Banerjee, In the Wake of Naxalbari: A History of the Naxalite Movement in India (Calcutta: Subarnekha press, 1980). Also see a more recent book by Trinath Mishra, Barrel of the Gun: The Maoist Challenge and Indian Democracy (New Delhi: Sheriden Book Company, 2007). 50 See Rajat Kujur, “Naxal Movement in India: A Profile,” IPCS Research Papers (New Delhi: Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, 2008). Also see Prakash Singh, The Naxalite Movement in India (New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 1995) for more details of different Maoist groups. 51 “Echoes of Spring Thunder,” Report by Left Wing Extremist Cell, Special Branch, West Bengal Police, p. 30. 52 Central Committee (P) CPI-Maoist, We Humbly Bow Our Heads – Self-Criticism of the MCCI and the CPI-(ML) [PW] On Strained Relations, pp. 6–7.

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Shivaji Mukherjee 53 www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/terroristoutfits/CPI_M.htm 54 The Security Related Expenditures (SRE) scheme is a funding scheme used by the Central government to fund state government expenses regarding anti Naxal counter insurgency and surrender scheme. The recent 2016 data is at http://mha.nic.in/sites/upload_files/mha/files/NM-SRE-Scheme_160614.pdf 55 Political Organization Review of CPI (Maoist) (Passed in the Unity Congress-9th Congress in January, 2007), p. 30. 56 K. Balagopal, “Maoist Movement in Andhra Pradesh,” Economic and Political Weekly, July 22, 2006, pp. 3183–3187. 57 Human Rights Watch, Being Neutral Is Our Biggest Crime, July, 2008, pp. 109–110. 58 Soutik Biswas, “Scores of Indian Soldiers Killed in Maoist Ambushes,” BBC World News, April 6, 2010. 59 Fakir Mohan Pradhan, “Maoists: Tactical Retreat,” South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR), Vol. 11, No. 36 (March 11, 2013). 60 Balagopal, “Maoist Movement in Andhra Pradesh.” 61 Alpa Shah, “In Search of Certainty in Revolutionary India,” Dialectical Anthropology, Vol. 33 (2009), pp. 225–251. 62 Aditya Dasgupta, Kishore Gawande and Devesh Kapur, “(When) Do Anti-Poverty Programs Reduce Violence? India’s Rural Employment Guarantee and Maoist Conflict,” Forthcoming in International Organization. 63 See Kishore Gawande, Devesh Kapur and Shanker Satyanath, “Renewable Natural Resource Shocks and Conflict Intensity: Findings from India’s Ongoing Maoist Insurgency,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Forthcoming, Online Pre-print. doi: 10.1177/0022002714567949. Also see Oliver Vanden Eynde, “Targets of Violence: Evidence from India’s Naxalite Conflict,” Manuscript, November 15, 2015, Forthcoming in Economic Journal. 64 Kristian Hoelscher, Jason Miklian and Krishna Vadlamannati, “Hearts and Mines: A District-Level Analysis of the Maoist Conflict in India,” International Area Studies Review, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2012). 65 See Shivaji Mukherjee, “Colonial Origins of Maoist Insurgency in India: Historical Institutions and Civil War”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming 2018. 66 Sambanis, “Do Ethnic and Non-Ethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes?” 67 Baruah, India against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality, pp. 150–151. 68 Mukherjee, “Colonial Origins of Maoist Insurgency in India.” 69 Weiner, Sons of the Soil.

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12 INDIA AND PAKISTAN Persistent rivalry Rajesh Basrur

The prolonged rivalry between India and Pakistan has produced a substantial body of scholarship over the decades – a flow which has remained sizable in recent years.1 Most have been pessimistic and the relationship, centred on their dispute over Kashmir since they gained independence from British rule in 1947, has been widely viewed as an “enduring” rivalry.2 This chapter attempts to identify the origins of this rivalry, trace its path up to the present, and assess the prospects for its termination. The next section focuses on the sources of India–Pakistan conflict, particularly the systemic and national-level factors that have shaped its course. Thereafter, the patterns that made up the first phase of the conflict – during the period from 1947 to the mid-1980s – are identified. This was an era during which classic power politics were manifest. In the third section, it is shown that the pattern changed when both states developed nuclear weapons, at first covertly (from the mid-1980s to 1998) and then overtly after both carried out nuclear tests in 1998. The possession of nuclear weapons by the rivals at once constrained traditional balance-of-power politics and generated increased mutual hostility. The analysis concludes with a consideration of the prospects for the termination of the rivalry by assessing the possibilities at the systemic, state, and individual levels of analysis.

Sources of the India–Pakistan conflict The longstanding rivalry between the two countries has two main sources: the Kashmir dispute and the politics of identity and state formation surrounding it, and the distribution of power between India and Pakistan, which has produced distinct and opposed patterns of strategic behaviour on the part of the two nations.

Partition, Kashmir, and identity As British rule wound down in the first half of the twentieth century, tensions between Hindus and Muslims in undivided India over post-independence state formation began to grow. The Muslim League led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah eventually succeeded, amidst rising Hindu-Muslim and Sikh-Muslim violence, in obtaining the consent of a reluctant Congress party to the bifurcation of the emergent political entity into two states. Pakistan was carved out of the eastern and western extremities of colonial India as a separate Muslim-dominated state in August 1947, 153

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though a large proportion of Muslims remained in independent India. The separation necessitated the mass migration of people in both directions, a turbulent process that aggravated frictions and led to unprecedented violence.3 Some 12–15 million people were displaced and two million killed.4 The public memory of Partition remains powerful in both countries and has been sustained through wars, crises, education systems, and public discourse. Its lingering symbolic power is sustained by the dispute over Kashmir, which erupted immediately after independence, remains divided between them ever since, and stands at the heart of their differing identities. For Pakistanis, Kashmir represents the “unfinished business” of Partition, since they find it intolerable that a Muslim-majority area should stay out of the country.5 It is just as incomplete for India, for its organising principle – that of a heterogeneous secular state – could be questioned if Kashmir were to go to Pakistan.6 The problem is complicated by the difficulties both countries have experienced with state formation. Aspirations to nation-statehood have been periodically subject to severe turbulence. India has faced difficulties in Jammu and Kashmir (the portion of Kashmir it controls), Punjab and several states in the Northeast. Pakistan lost its eastern half, now Bangladesh, in 1971 and is challenged by the Taliban along the border with Afghanistan and by nationalists in Balochistan province. For both, the potential loss of Kashmir threatens the edifice of national solidarity. But their political trajectories have diverged over time.7 The Indian experiment with democracy, despite significant flaws, has gradually generated greater national confidence, and hence the desire to get back the portion of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan since 1948 has dissipated. India has thus become a status quo-oriented state. In contrast, Pakistan has faced serious difficulties and has been buffeted not only by the loss of Bangladesh, but also by incessant sectarian violence – of which the rise of the Taliban is only one manifestation – and the dominance of the military in politics. This has made it an irredentist state deeply dissatisfied with the status quo. Herein lies the fundamental source of continuing conflict between the two countries. Furthermore, the embedded power of the Pakistani military, which has from time to time made common cause with religious extremism, has complicated matters.8 The generals who control foreign policy in Islamabad have an interest in perpetuating tensions with India in order to justify their power.

Power distribution and its effects: conventional and nuclear International politics is driven in fundamental ways by the relative power of interacting states. Strong and weak states display very different strategic preferences. The essence of their relationship is frequently one of hegemony and challenge and displays certain characteristic features.9 First, strong states try to sustain the existing distribution of power and if necessary counter challenges to it, whereas weak states try and offset their limitations in this respect by internal balancing (arming) and by external balancing (seeking allies). Second, strong states prefer to resolve their disputes through bilateral bargaining, where they have an advantage, while weak states try to compensate for their bargaining difficulties by inviting third parties to become involved, which by extension involves a preference for multilateral solutions. Third, strong states encourage closer economic relationships with small neighbours as this gives them greater leverage; but the latter resist this for precisely the same reason. And fourth, the strong tend to flex and utilise their muscle as and when the opportunity arises, while the weak resist as best they can, usually by maximising all of the first three strategies. This is not to say that strong states alone are aggressive. Weak states have the option of low-cost strategies that place the strong under pressure without necessarily inviting a powerful response, since the latter may not find this optimal politically. The India–Pakistan relationship till the 1990s displayed a typical strong versus weak state pattern. For instance, Indian military spending in 1998 (the watershed year in which both 154

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countries officially went nuclear) was US$ 13,780 million while Pakistan’s spending that year was US$ 3,920 million. The major indicators of military power were skewed in India’s favour. Its active armed forces numbered 1,173,000 against Pakistan’s 587,000, an imbalance also reflected in their respective major military capabilities: main battle tanks (3,414 and 2,320), major naval combat ships (42 and 18), and combat aircraft (853 and 296).10 The fact of unequal power distribution by no means ensures that a stronger power always gets its way. On the contrary, big powers do from time to time suffer severe reverses against small ones, as the United States experienced vis-à-vis Vietnam. India, too, fared poorly against a relatively small non-state entity, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in Sri Lanka during the later 1980s. What is undeniable is that the distribution of power produces broad strategies of the kind identified above. These will be discussed in the next section. The advent of nuclear weapons in any bilateral relationship has profound effects on power distribution as well as on behaviour. Foremost, it makes states exceedingly cautious about the use of military power. To avert nuclear war, from which no state can emerge a winner and all participants are likely to be losers, nuclear-armed rivals not only eschew the use of nuclear weapons, but avoid major conventional conflict as well.11 If the utilisation of military power is no longer meaningful, it follows that the distribution of that power is irrelevant. Once South Asia went nuclear, the distribution of military power ceased to matter because of the equalising effect of atomic weapons. The strategic impact of this transformation of the power equation was to alter the pattern of the relationship between India and Pakistan. Though some features of the conventional era continued – for instance, the Indian insistence on bilateral resolution of disputes as opposed to the Pakistani preference for multilateralising the Kashmir issue – the main focus shifted to the political dynamics of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons have two important effects on strategic rivals. First, they sharply raise tensions as threat perceptions are exacerbated by the dramatic rise in destructive capabilities. Thus, even as the weapons induce caution, there is a tendency toward crisis because of the fear of a surprise attack or because one or the other – or sometimes both – of the rivals tests the limits to how far it can go to apply pressure on its adversary. This can lead to crisis or limited armed combat. These phenomena occurred from time to time during the Cold War, for instance when the United States and the Soviet Union faced off over Berlin in 1961 and Cuba in 1962, and Soviet and Chinese forces fought a series of skirmishes along their border in 1969. In strategic parlance, it is often referred to as the “stability/instability paradox.”12 What this means is that since the risk of nuclear war prevents states from crossing the nuclear threshold, lower levels of conflict can occur. In practice, though, all nuclear rivalries have been marked by the absence of full-scale conventional war and only marginal armed conflict has occurred – and that, too, rarely – as in the 1969 example above. A more common phenomenon has been the use of proxies to fight against a nuclear adversary or its client state, e.g. American support to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s and American and Soviet support for opposing forces in the Angolan civil war in the 1970s and 1980s. A second effect of nuclear weapons is that they tend to produce direct confrontation between status quo and revisionist powers. The Cuban crisis was a classic example. The US was the status quo-oriented power which dominated global politics, whereas the Soviet Union – the challenger – sought to redraw the map, as it were, by spreading its influence everywhere. One such arena of confrontation was Cuba, where Moscow decided to deploy nuclear weapons, which precipitated the crisis. In the next section, these two distinctive patterns are examined in the context of India– Pakistan relations: the conventional era from 1947 to the mid-1980s and the nuclear era from then on. 155

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Confrontations in the conventional and nuclear eras The boundaries between the two periods are somewhat fuzzy for two reasons. First, India tested a nuclear device in 1974, which made it technically a nuclear power. But this was offset by Mrs. Gandhi’s decision not to build an arsenal. Second, during the 1980s, both countries became covert nuclear powers, which meant there was a degree of ambiguity about the status of their programmes and considerable uncertainty in their perceptions about each other. Despite this ambiguity, the beginnings of a pattern of strategic behaviour typical of nuclear-armed rivals became apparent from the mid-1980s. Hence the period around 1985–86 is a reasonable dividing line between the conventional and nuclear periods in contemporary subcontinental history.

Conventional confrontation After independence, the two states acted in accordance with the strong/weak state strategies outlined on pg. 154–5. Using strong state strategy, India consistently sought to build closer economic and cultural relations with Pakistan. Accordingly, it pressed for higher levels of trade, granted Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to Pakistan in 1995, and welcomed Pakistani cultural figures into India. Pakistan, on the other hand, resisted trade with India, which had declined precipitously from 32 percent of its imports and 56 percent of its exports in 1948–49 to a “mere trickle” by the early 1950s.13 Official trade, though supplemented by indirect trade and smuggling, was kept to a very low level. By the late 1990s, Pakistan’s exports to India were just 0.42 percent of its total exports and its imports from India only 1.22 percent of its total imports.14 In consequence, India’s capacity to influence Pakistan was kept to the minimum. Cultural links were also shunned. Hindi films and music, popular in Pakistan, were not given access to the Pakistani market.15 Indian bilateralism on Kashmir contrasted with Pakistan’s preference for a multilateral approach. India sought to restrict the scope of a possible resolution of the Kashmir question to bilateral negotiations, laying much stress on the Simla Agreement of 1972, which it viewed as a mutual commitment to bilateralism. Pakistan, on the other hand, consistently attempted to drum up support from the United Nations, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, and individual states, notably the United States and China. On the military front, periodic wars occurred. In the early decades after independence, though India was the much bigger power, its military capabilities were still limited and Pakistan, as the revisionist power seeking to detach Kashmir from Indian control, resorted to the use of force. The Pakistani military had an exaggerated perception of its relative strength vis-à-vis India.16 This gave Pakistan the “false optimism” that caused it to initiate war twice in the expectation of extracting Kashmir by force.17 The first war, fought in 1947–48, at least partly justified Pakistani optimism, for it left Pakistan in control of about a third of Kashmir. Pakistan’s confidence was boosted by its membership of the Cold War alliance system of the United States. It became a member of the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) in 1954 and the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in 1955, which enabled it to obtain American tanks and fighter aircraft. Its success in external balancing did appear to have given it a fleeting advantage. In the wake of India’s poor performance in its 1962 war against China, Pakistan was emboldened to attempt another military venture in 1965, but this time without success. The post-war Tashkent Agreement (January 1966) confirmed the 1948 division of Kashmir. In the early 1970s, as Washington sought to build bridges with Beijing via Islamabad, India’s structural position became uneasy, but it countered by signing a “friendship treaty” with the Soviet Union in August 1971. Its confidence buoyed, India took advantage of a violent civil war between East and West Pakistan by intervening militarily. The December 1971 India–Pakistan 156

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war led to the creation of an independent Bangladesh. In 1972, the two sides signed the Simla Agreement, under which India sent back 93,000 prisoners of war and the two countries agreed on resolving their differences bilaterally. The agreement also incorporated the demarcation of a Line of Control (LoC) defining the boundary between the territory held by the two sides in divided Kashmir. India’s position was further bolstered by its 1974 nuclear test. The relative calm that followed did not alter the interactive dynamic between India and Pakistan. The relationship conformed to the strong state/weak state pattern. Notwithstanding the Simla Agreement, Pakistan continued to appeal to the international community for support on its position with regard to Kashmir, though with very little success. The delineation of the LoC generated a fresh problem. The line had not been fully drawn: its eastern extremity had been left incomplete for technical reasons – it was based on earlier identified ceasefire positions, which did not go beyond a point in what is a desolate mountain area.18 This led to an armed contest over the Siachen glacier, which fell under Indian control in 1984 and has remained a bone of contention since then.19 Above all, it sharpened the confrontation between India, the status quo-ist state, and Pakistan, the revisionist one. This was to take a more dangerous and intense form with the transformation of the relationship into a nuclear rivalry.

Confrontation in a nuclearised relationship From the mid-1980s, the advent of nuclear weapons dramatically altered the India–Pakistan relationship, generating a surge of hostility between them. As information of Pakistan’s pursuit of nuclear capability in earnest reached India, Indian forces in 1986 began a major military exercise – Operation Brasstacks – that was designed to conduct war in a nuclear weapons environment. In the meantime, Pakistani fears of a possible Indian “decapitating” strike to destroy their country’s fledgling capabilities had already raised anxieties in Islamabad. The result was a crisis in 1986–87, the first of a series of nuclear-era crises.20 A second crisis occurred in 1990. Accusing Pakistan of backing terrorists attacking Indian targets, India began to build up troops along the LoC while Pakistani forces, having completed a major military exercise, Zarb-i-Momin, lingered in the area fearing an Indian attack. Ultimately, both crises subsided, but by this time two aspects were notable: both sides were aware of emerging nuclear risks despite their covert nuclear status, and the United States became active in what was to become a recurrent pattern of involvement designed to ensure stability.21 The central impact of the open nuclearisation of the India–Pakistan rivalry following their matching tests in 1998 was to accentuate the status quo/revisionist tension between the two states. As a status quo state, India had enjoyed an advantage during the conventional era: it had had the option to employ force against Pakistan and had done so to its emphatic gain in 1971. The equalising effect of nuclear weapons took away this advantage. On the other hand, Pakistan stood to benefit significantly not only because the power balance was nullified, but because it now had a nuclear “shield” which enabled it to exploit the stability/instability paradox. As the United States had done by supporting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, Pakistan was able to employ an “asymmetric” strategy by backing extremist groups targeting India in a campaign that initially embodied Kashmiri nationalism, but quickly came under the control of committed jihadis bent on spreading their fundamentalist Islamic ideology in the region.22 Pakistan’s revisionist strategy generated a number of crises. In 1999, barely a year after the 1998 tests, Pakistani troops in the guise of Mujahideen occupied positions along the LoC in the Kargil region of Kashmir, which Indian troops had vacated for the winter. This time, fighting occurred over several weeks from May to July, but both exercised restraint at considerable cost. India refrained from crossing the LoC, though this hamstrung its use of air power and slowed 157

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down its counterattack. Pakistan, still claiming that the intruders were “freedom fighters,” did not back up its troops when they were forced into a costly retreat. Both sides took care not to escalate. The Kargil crisis was counter-productive as, notwithstanding the claim that “freedom fighters” had launched the attack, Pakistan’s role was quickly exposed. Thereafter, Pakistan has confined itself to backing Islamist jihadis, though it is not clear how much control the government in Islamabad has over them. The pattern of peaks of high tension interspersed with periods of relative calm continued. In December 2001, yet another crisis broke out when Pakistan-based terrorists attacked India’s Parliament and an angry India threatened limited war. Both sides mobilised fully along the entire border and resorted to nuclear signalling by carrying out missile tests. The crisis eventually petered out, but left behind a sense of exhaustion. Another crisis followed in late 2008, when a small group of Pakistan-based terrorists ran amuck in Mumbai city, killing some 170 people with small arms. Since then, periodic terrorist attacks have occurred. In January 2016, a terrorist assault on an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot led to at least a dozen fatalities (attackers included). In September that year, a bigger attack on an Indian Army brigade headquarters in Uri, near the LoC, resulted in 23 deaths (attackers included). Both sides made some gains from the recurring confrontations. India drew the world’s attention to Pakistan’s risk-taking and its support for terrorism, while Pakistan compelled India to think beyond its status quo approach on Kashmir and come to the negotiating table. Both also saw the limits of their strategies: cross-border terrorism and limited war threats were high-risk gambits that could trigger nuclear war. From this perspective, compromise appeared an acceptable option. In January 2004, India and Pakistan agreed to begin a “composite dialogue” on a range of issues, including terrorism, nuclear risk reduction, and Kashmir. Most remarkably, they began to think out of the box on Kashmir, abandoning mutually exclusive claims and focusing on the softening of the LoC, expanding communication links between the divided portions of Kashmir and enhancing trade.23 Yet the underlying problem remained, particularly after the peace process collapsed with the fall of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who seemed to have brought his army on board the negotiating process. Successive Indian governments struggled to counter the Pakistani strategy, which had bled India over the years. New Delhi’s main response, apart from attempting to tighten border controls, was to threaten a limited conventional response. The Kargil conflict appeared to have demonstrated that limited war under the shadow of nuclear weapons is feasible, but India’s “victory” was limited to driving Pakistani forces out and did not extend to stemming the flow of terrorists or its violent consequences. But the threat of some unspecified form of limited war failed to bring results in 2001–02, when India initiated a massive conventional force mobilisation known as “Operation Parakram” because New Delhi, facing the very real prospect of armed conflict, found itself unable to carry out the threat.24 Under pressure from both India and the United States, Pakistan reigned in the terrorists based on its soil, but the attacks subsequently resumed. New Delhi persisted with a strategy of compellence. Indian military strategists began to reconfigure their forces and plan for high-speed attacks to occupy limited slices of territory by means of a strategy known as “Cold Start.”25 However, this in turn produced new complications. Pakistan responded with the introduction of tactical nuclear missiles and nuclear cruise missiles into its armoury, which in effect lowered the nuclear threshold in the event of an outbreak of combat. It also created a fresh problem for India, bringing up the question of whether to respond in kind by developing and deploying tactical nuclear weapons.26 Thus far, it appears to have refrained, but the possibility that operational thinking will influence the introduction of tactical weapons remains. The consequence of such a development would be to heighten the risks attached to an already unstable relationship. 158

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Following the Pathankot and Uri attacks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government appeared to change tack and take a more aggressive line of response. In October 2016, it was announced that the Indian Army had launched “surgical strikes” against terrorist camps inside Pakistan-held territory. Details were withheld, which raised speculation about their effectiveness, and there was considerable debate in India on the subject, but it is too early at the time of writing (May 2017) to assess the effects of this strategy. It was later revealed that this was not the first time Indian forces had taken such action, which suggests that the strategy may not bring substantial change.27 The Modi government’s vigorous response was the logical consequence of an under-appreciated fact: India’s repeated failure to respond to Pakistan’s asymmetric strategy had made it a “revisionist” state as well and it was determined to alter the terms of the on-going duel.28 This had first become apparent when, in the wake of the attack on India’s parliament, Indian leaders asserted that there was space for “limited war” in a nuclearised environment. As we have seen, the threat posed by Operation Parakram did not yield results. Various options such as “Cold Start,” air strikes and special operations were aired, but without being followed up by action. Over time, India too became an increasingly dissatisfied state determined to find a way out of the constraints imposed by the existence of nuclear weapons. Modi’s “surgical strike” option appeared to be part of a wider strategy to employ diverse – some old and some new – approaches to putting pressure on Pakistan. The old aspects included global diplomacy and continuing compellence threats of an unspecified nature. On the novel side, the emphasis on “surgical strikes” opened up the possibility of other similar military moves. Simultaneously, Modi obliquely opened another door by publicly speaking about the fight for “freedom” in Balochistan, which could be Pakistan’s weak underbelly.29 It was followed by the announcement that the state-owned All India Radio would expand its Baloch-language broadcasts and by Indian criticism of Pakistan’s Balochistan policy in the United Nations. The implication was clear: Modi was ready to respond to Pakistan’s asymmetric strategy by, in effect, initiating one of his own, thereby producing a strategic symmetry of competing subconventional approaches. In effect, both India and Pakistan had become dissatisfied states searching for ways to extract political concessions from the other under the shadow of nuclear weapons. Pakistan was dissatisfied because it wanted to acquire all of Kashmir, whereas India was dissatisfied because it was unable to escape the straitjacket of constraints imposed by the presence of nuclear weapons. For India, it is unlikely that direct military action will yield results, which makes subconventional options more attractive. The aftermath of the change in Indian strategy was the escalation of tensions along the LoC, with frequent firing and fatalities on both sides. Where the process might go remains unclear at the time of writing. Is this another cycle of peak and trough; or will things get worse? Commentators were prone to ask: where will it end? The next section will attempt a brief assessment of the prospects for the termination of the rivalry.

Prospects An enduring rivalry that is deeply embedded in a history of conflict arising from a territorial dispute, identity differences and domestic political interests cannot be expected to end easily. It will almost certainly require a mix of external and internal change, plus reciprocal efforts to alter the dynamics of the relationship.30 Though an external shock could be a strong driver of change, it is not a prerequisite for substantial change: the end of the Cold War was the result of external factors pertaining to the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, but it did not stem from an external shock.31 159

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Let us try and examine the possible sources of rivalry termination systematically without necessarily specifying specific outcomes. One way of doing this is to identify the potential for transformation of the India–Pakistan relationship at each of three levels of analysis: the systemic, the state-level, and the individual/small group (i.e. leadership) level.

The system level One extreme possibility is that one or the other or even both the two states might collapse, akin to what happened when the disintegration of the Soviet Union ensured the end of the Cold War (though the process began earlier). With India consolidating its democracy along with economic growth, it is a very unlikely candidate for this. Could Pakistan fall apart because of its constant turbulence? After all, it did break into two when Bangladesh became independent in 1971. That example is instructive because there is no similar phenomenon – or even the seeds of it – visible today. For all its internal problems, Pakistan is likely to stay unified. Besides, even if, say, Balochistan were to become independent, India would still have to deal with a smaller but largely similar Pakistan. An alternative prospect is that a common and bigger threat might have a unifying effect as the Soviet threat did for France and Germany during the Cold War. However, this too seems unlikely. There is no semblance of a common threat from any state on the horizon. The two countries do face similar threats from non-state actors, but there is little commonality in these threats. On the contrary, for India, the chief threat emanates from Pakistan’s backing of terrorist groups, whereas for Pakistan it stems from domestically based groups. A third possibility is that the growing gap between India and Pakistan might cause the leadership in the latter to consider throwing in the towel.32 This is precisely what prompted Mikhail Gorbachev to end the Cold War. It is certainly possible, but for this to happen, the entrenched interests of the military in Pakistan would have to be overcome, which will be difficult, though not impossible. Fourth, the forces of globalisation provide strong incentives for cooperation. In a world that is both highly competitive and integrated, an enduring rivalry prevents India and Pakistan from reaping the benefits of economic exchange. As one study has noted, the potential for trade between them is as much as ten times what it is now.33 But this has not happened so far because politics has trumped economics and there is no sign that it will stop doing so. Fifth, recurring crises might push the relationship out of its rut and bring about a serious rapprochement. It is worth bearing in mind, though, that major crises have brought enduring rivals to the negotiating table, but not ended their hostilities, as with the United States and the Soviet Union after their 1961 and 1962 crises and with India and Pakistan after the crises of 1999 and 2001–02. An extreme event such as the outbreak of nuclear hostilities might, however, be a tipping point for peace, though it could equally be a tipping point for catastrophe.

The state level As we have seen, state-level politics lie at the heart of India–Pakistan enmity. The key factors are identity and state formation. If we go to basics, we might consider whether it is possible for Kashmir to cease to be central to the national identities of the two states in the same way that Alsace-Lorraine, long at the centre of a tug-of-war between France and Germany, is no longer an impediment to their warmth. The European case cannot be wholly emulated here because that transformation was induced by the Cold War and the emergence of a common adversary, which – as we have seen – is unlikely in South Asia. And yet there remains a similarity – the 160

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binding impact of the Cold War occurred along with the growth of another common factor: the democratisation process in Europe. The fact remains that there are no serious territorial rivalries between states with strong democratic systems.34 Might we see the emergence of a “democratic peace” in the subcontinent? The possibilities are certainly there, but not in the near term. The theory requires that states be advanced democracies as well as developed capitalist economies in order to be peacefully inclined toward each other. Neither India nor Pakistan is close to being either an advanced democracy or a developed capitalist state. Of the two, Pakistan appears to face greater problems as its military is firmly ensconced in power. The likelihood of its military returning to the barracks in the near term is uncertain at best.

The individual level A glance back at the Cold War tells us that individual leadership was a key factor in unravelling the Cold War. The primary initiative was taken by the Soviet Union’s Gorbachev, but this would have not made a difference had it not been reciprocated by US President Ronald Reagan. There is some evidence of leadership initiatives in the present context. India’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and Modi all made significant efforts to reach out. On the Pakistani side, where the military matters most, the most significant effort was made by President and former army chief Musharraf. Notably, the possibility of a breakthrough was strongest following the crises of 1999 and 2001–02, when the “composite dialogue” led to the partial softening of the LoC with the enhancement of trade and transport links. But individuals can craft change only when the larger political dynamics allow them to. Musharraf ’s domestic political star declined just as a major transformation in the relationship seemed imminent (though how big and sustained the change might have been remains unclear); with his fall, the prospect of peace receded. This brief discussion identifies the factors at work. It is for the reader to decide which combination might produce what result.

Notes 1 Stephen P. Cohen, Shooting for a Century: The India-Pakistan Conundrum (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013); Sumit Ganguly, Deadly Impasse: Indo-Pakistani Relations at the Dawn of a New Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Husain Haqqani, India v/s Pakistan: Why Can’t We Just Be Friends? (New Delhi: Juggernaut, 2016); Moeed Yusuf and Jason Kirk, “Keeping an Eye on South Asian Skies: America’s Pivotal Deterrence in Nuclearized India-Pakistan Crises,” Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 37, no. 2 (9 May 2016), pp. 246–272. 2 See esp T. V. Paul, ed. The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 3 Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007). 4 Ishtiaq Ahmed, “The 1947 Partition of India: A Paradigm for Pathological Politics in India and Pakistan,” Asian Ethnicity, vol. 3, no. 1 (March 2002), pp. 9–28, at p. 9. 5 Ashutosh Varshney, “India, Pakistan, and Kashmir: Antinomies of Nationalism,” Asian Survey, vol. 31, no. 11 (November 1991), pp. 997–1019, at p. 1001. 6 Varshney, “India, Pakistan, and Kashmir,” p. 1002. 7 Christophe Jaffrelot, “India and Pakistan: Interpreting the Divergence of Two Political Trajectories,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol. 15, no. 2 (July 2002), pp. 251–267. 8 Irm Haleem, “Ethnic and Sectarian Violence and the Propensity toward Praetorianism in Pakistan,” Third World Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 3 (June 2003), pp. 463–477; Husain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 2005). 9 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Michael Mandelbaum, The Fate of Nations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

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Rajesh Basrur 10 International Institute of Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 1999–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 11 Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989); Kenneth N. Waltz, “Nuclear Myths and Political Realities,” American Political Science Review, vol. 84, no. 3 (September 1990), pp. 731–745. 12 Michael Krepon and Christopher Gagné, eds. The Stability-Instability Paradox: Nuclear Weapons and Brinkmanship in South Asia (Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, 2001); Glenn H. Snyder, “The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” in Paul Seabury, ed. The Balance of Power (San Francisco: Chandler, 1965). 13 R. Gidadhubli, “India-Pakistan Trade: Problems and Prospects,” in P. M. Kamath, ed. India-Pakistan Relations: Courting Peace from the Corridors of War (New Delhi: Promilla and Company, in association with Bibliophile Asia, 2005), p. 135. 14 International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics Yearbook 1998 (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 1998). 15 Maneesha Tikekar, “Cultural Idiom in the Indo-Pak Conflict,” in P. M. Kamath, ed. India-Pakistan Relations: Courting Peace from the Corridors of War (New Delhi: Promilla and Company, in association with Bibliophile Asia, 2005). 16 Stephen P. Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 103. 17 Sumit Ganguly, Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions since 1947 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 7–8. 18 R. Baghel and M. Nüsser, “Securing the Heights: The Vertical Dimension of the Siachen Conflict between India and Pakistan in the Eastern Karakoram,” Political Geography, vol. 48 (September 2015), pp. 24–36. 19 V. R. Raghavan, Siachen: Conflict without End (New Delhi: Viking, 2002). 20 P. R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema and Stephen P. Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process: American Engagements in South Asia (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007); Sumit Ganguly and Devin T. Hagerty, eds. Fearful Symmetry: India-Pakistan Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005). 21 Chari, Cheema and Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process; Yusuf and Kirk, “Keeping an Eye on South Asian Skies.” 22 Carlotta Gall, The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001–2014 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014); Zahid Hussain, Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Bruce Riedel, Avoiding Armageddon: America, India, and Pakistan to the Brink and Back (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013); Ayesha Siddiqa, “Pakistan’s Counterterrorism Strategy: Separating Friends from Enemies,” Washington Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 1 (Winter 2011), pp. 149–162. 23 Verghese Koithara, “The Advancing Peace Process,” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 41, no. 1 (6–12 January 2007), pp. 10–13. 24 “Parakram” is best translated as “valour.” 25 Walter C. Ladwig III, “A Cold Start for Hot Wars? The Indian Army’s New Limited War Doctrine,” International Security, vol. 32, no. 3 (Winter 2007/08), pp. 158–190. 26 Toby Dalton and George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Options and Escalation Dominance (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2016), available at http://carnegieendowment.org/files/ CP_273_India_Nuclear_Final.pdf; Frank O’Donnell, “Reconsidering Minimum Deterrence in South Asia: Indian Responses to Pakistan’s Tactical Nuclear Weapons,” Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 38, no. 1 (2017), pp. 78–101. 27 “Operation Ginger: Tit-for-Tat across the Line of Control,” Hindu, 3 November 2016, available at www. thehindu.com/news/national/operation-ginger-titfortat-across-the-line-of-control/article9202758. ece. 28 I am grateful to Michael Krepon for drawing my attention to this. 29 Suhasini Haidar, “In Policy Shift, Narendra Modi Brings Up Balochistan Again,” Hindu, 16 August 2016, available at www.thehindu.com/news/national/in-policy-shift-narendra-modi-brings-upbalochistan-again/article8991513.ece. 30 Karen Rasler, William R. Thompson and Sumit Ganguly, How Rivalries End (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 31 Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “Power, Globalization and the End of the Cold War,” International Security, vol. 25, no. 3 (Winter 2000/01), pp. 5–53; Margarita H. Petrova, “The End of the

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India and Pakistan Cold War: A Battle or Bridging Ground between Rationalist and Ideational Approaches in International Relations?” European Journal of International Relations, vol. 9, no. 1 (2003), pp. 115–163; Robert S. Snyder, “Bridging the Realist/Constructivist Divide: The Case of the Counter-Revolution in Soviet Foreign Policy at the End of the Cold War,” Foreign Policy Analysis, vol. 1, no. 1 (March 2005), pp. 55–71. 32 Ganguly, Deadly Impasse, pp. 127–128. 33 Sujay Mehdudia, “Study Pitches for Treaty to Promote Investment in India and Pakistan,” Hindu , 2 February 2013, available at www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/india-pakistan-trade-potential-is198-bn-icrier-article4365501.ece. 34 Allan Dafoe, John R. O’Neal and Bruce Russett, “The Democratic Peace: Weighing the Evidence and Cautious Inference,” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 1 (2013), pp. 201–214; “Nils Petter Gleditsch: Pioneer in the Analysis of War and Peace,” SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice, vol. 29, pp. 61–70 (2015), available at http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-03820-9_4.

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13 CHINA AND INDIA The evolution of a compound rivalry Manjeet S. Pardesi

Introduction China and India have been locked in an intense strategic rivalry since their emergence as modern states in the late 1940s.1 The Sino–Indian rivalry is a “compound” strategic rivalry as there are at least two fundamental issues at stake here – a positional rivalry for leadership in Asia and a spatial rivalry over their disputed border territories in the Himalayas.2 China and India are also in the early stages of a commercial rivalry for access to investments, markets, and resources to power their large and rapidly growing economies.3 The possibility of an ideological rivalry as a result of their differing political systems in the future cannot be ruled out, especially if China and India continue on their path to rapid economic development. In spite of this complexity, China and India are locked in an asymmetrical rivalry.4 While China remains India’s principal albeit long-term rival, India ranks lower on the list of China’s rivals after the United States and Japan.5 The remainder of this chapter traces the evolution of the Sino–Indian rivalry from its origins to the present. The next section of this chapter is thematically organized and explains the positional, spatial, and commercial dimensions of the Sino–Indian rivalry. This is followed by a detailed empirical analysis of the military and foreign policy issues under contention in the Sino–Indian relationship. The military dimension focuses on the Sino–Indian conventional military balance as well as on the nuclear issue. The foreign policy dimension analyzes the salience of Tibet, Pakistan, the rise of China in South Asia/Indian Ocean, India’s “Look/Act East” policy, and the United States as they pertain to Sino–Indian relations. The chapter concludes by arguing that even as rivalry escalation (to a militarized crisis or war) is not necessarily preordained, the Sino–Indian rivalry itself is showing no signs of amelioration.

Sino–Indian strategic rivalry The positional dimension A strategic rivalry is a political process (as opposed to an event) that begins when at least one state in a dyad identifies the other as a competitor, as militarily threatening, and as an enemy. By the late 1940s, Chinese and Indian political leaders had identified each other as positional rivals for status and influence in Asia. The Chinese Nationalist leader Jiang Jieshi’s 1942 visit to India during World War II “marked China’s first wartime gesture as a great power” as he sought (British) 164

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India’s help and even advocated for India’s freedom with Britain and the United States.6 In 1945, China’s membership as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council institutionalized its position as a great power in Asia. While the Nationalists subsequently lost the ensuing Chinese Civil War, the Communist leader Mao Zedong was convinced that China was Asia’s leading great power. India’s first ambassador to Communist China, K. M. Panikkar, noted Beijing’s patronizing attitude towards New Delhi. According to him, China approached India as an elder brother and that “it was understood that China as the recognized Great Power in the East after the war expected India to know her place.”7 However, India, which became independent in 1947 was also convinced of its own greatness in Asia, especially because of the important role that (British) India had played during World War II in the East, as “it was Indian soldiers, civilian laborers and businessmen who made possible the victory of 1945”8 in Southeast Asia. For Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s second-most important nationalist leader after Mahatma Gandhi (and soon to be first Prime Minister), India was one of the “four great powers” of the postwar world along with the United States, the Soviet Union, and China (but Britain without India’s resources was not).9 Although Nehru wanted to create a postwar order in Asia together with China, the Chinese leadership was not interested in sharing leadership in Asia with India. Therefore, China, which was in the midst of its Civil War was unhappy when Nehru’s India organized the Asian Relations Conference – the first international conference of Asian states and colonial territories – on the eve of India’s independence in March– April 1947, especially because India had also invited the Tibetan delegation in addition to inviting China’s Nationalist and Communist leaders. The Chinese Nationalist leadership complained about India’s ambitions in Tibet because India became the only postcolonial and postwar state in Asia with its own protectorates in Bhutan, Sikkim, and Nepal after treaties with these Himalayan states in 1949–50.10 At the same time, Mao’s China accused India of contemplating an “Asiatic Military Alliance” after New Delhi organized conferences to deal with the political and strategic issues facing Indonesia and Burma in early 1949.11 India’s retention of the services of Hugh Richardson – the British Indian representative in Lhasa – as the representative of independent India even after the creation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) raised suspicions in China, especially because India had also retained the services of many senior British military officers in the Indian armed forces after independence.12 Therefore, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) invaded and annexed Tibet in 1950–51 – after the creation of the PRC in 1949 – under the political rhetoric of “liberating” Tibet from Indian, British, and American influence.13 Consequently, Nehru’s India became suspicious of China’s ambitions and even contemplated armed intervention in Tibet in addition to being the only foreign power to officially protest against the Chinese invasion of Tibet.14 Nehru also believed that the Chinese invasion of Tibet meant that the two millennia long “tussle” between the Chinese and Indian civilizations “in Central Asia, Tibet, Burma, and the whole of South-East Asia” had resumed.15 While the status of Tibet was strategically important for India, it had political and strategic value for China. India’s strategic elite were aware that Britain had used India as a base to project power from the Middle East to East Asia by creating a ring of “buffer states” on the periphery of British India.16 More importantly, Panikkar had noted that it was not the Himalayan barrier that guaranteed India’s security, but the creation of a buffer zone in the Tibetan plateau which was itself surrounded by mountains on all sides.17 Panikkar believed that only this would allow India to develop its defense capabilities and project power in Asia. However, the Chinese leadership (Nationalist and Communist) believed that China’s “century of humiliation” at the hands of the western powers and Japan would only end after the new Chinese state had restored all major territories of the former Qing dynasty and reversed all unequal treaties within that realm.18 China 165

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could not restore its erstwhile great power status until this process was complete. Therefore, the incorporation of Tibet was crucial for the leaders of the PRC.19 It was also understood that this vast Tibetan zone would act as a buffer between the Han-majority regions of China and any hostile power in the Indian subcontinent.20

The spatial dimension The Tibetan factor was not only central to the Sino–Indian positional rivalry, it was also crucial for their spatial rivalry. The Sino–Indian border is essentially the Tibetan–Indian border.21 At the time of the departure of the British from the Indian subcontinent in 1947, there was no agreed upon border between India and Tibet. While the British had proposed at least three important lines as the border between India and Tibet in Ladakh in the western sector, there was neither any internal (British) consensus on it nor any bilateral understanding/agreement with Tibet. However, in the eastern sector (between Bhutan and Burma), the British had negotiated a boundary – the McMahon Line – as the border between British India and Tibet in 1913–14. However, this border has not been acceptable to any post-imperial Chinese government as the Chinese position is that Tibet could not enter any agreement with a foreign power since it was an integral part of China. Therefore, with the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950–51, the entire Sino/Tibetan–Indian border became unmarked (and remains the world’s longest unmarked and disputed border). However, this is not merely an issue of border delineation as the status of large chunks of territory is at stake. In the western sector, India claims Aksai Chin (an extension of the Tibetan plateau with an area of 38,000 square kilometers) that has been under Chinese occupation since the 1950–51 Chinese invasion of Tibet. In the eastern sector, China claims the region corresponding more or less with the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh south of the McMahon Line (with an area of 90,000 square kilometers) that had been agreed as the boundary between British India and Tibet in 1913–14. The 1959 Lhasa Revolt and the consequent Chinese military crackdown in Tibet that led to the Dalai Lama’s dramatic escape into India brought the spatial and the positional dimensions of the Sino–Indian rivalry to the fore simultaneously.22 The Dalai Lama quickly declared a Tibetan government-in-exile in India even as New Delhi did not recognize it and formally treated the Dalai Lama as an honored cultural guest (as opposed to a political actor). At the same time, the two sides began to simultaneously militarize their ill-defined boundary – which also saw the influx almost 80,000 refugees from Tibet into India.23 It was under these conditions that the Indian army’s ill-defined and ill-conceived “forward policy” was erroneously interpreted by the Chinese leadership as India’s politico-military strategy to restore Tibet to its pre-1950–51 status as a buffer state that led to China’s decision to attack India (as the only all-weather road connecting any part of China – Xinjiang – with Tibet passed through the disputed Aksai Chin region during these years).24 India’s humiliating defeat in the 1962 Sino–Indian War during which it sought and received military support from the United States relegated India to the status of a regional power in South Asia for the remainder of the Cold War even as India continued to think of itself as a major power in Asia.25 However, there was no significant change in the Sino–Indian boundary after 1962 even as Chinese forces had reached their claimed positions in both the eastern and western sectors before declaring a unilateral ceasefire and restoring status quo ante. While bilateral ties were often cold and hostile in the 1960s and the 1970s, China and India resumed border talks in the 1980s. In spite of several rounds of bilateral talks and negotiations since then, no progress has been made on resolving the Sino–Indian border dispute. In fact, the two sides even disagree on the length of their common border.26 At the same time, the Tibet issue 166

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remains unresolved, at least for China even as India officially recognizes Tibet as a part of China. More than 150 Tibetans have self-immolated since 2008 as a form of protest against Chinese oppression.27 At the same time, China continues to blame the India-based Dalai Lama (and the Tibetan diaspora in India) for these acts.28 China has also ruled out the Dalai Lama’s demand for Tibetan autonomy as “independence by stealth.”29 It is not lost on the Chinese leadership that any such autonomy – which would entail only a symbolic Chinese military presence in Tibet – would be strategically advantageous to India. Arguably, it is not in China’s interests to resolve the border dispute with India until the Tibetan issue has also been resolved to the satisfaction of China. The positional and spatial dimensions of the Sino–Indian rivalry are interlinked with Tibet acting as a nexus between the two.30

The commercial dimension Although military defeat in 1962 had removed India from the larger Asian strategic theater, it was only after the simultaneous launch of its economic reforms and “Look East” policy in 1991 – after the end of the Cold War – that East Asian states slowly began to view India as a candidate for great power status in Asia again.31 However, India’s economic reforms began more than a decade after the initiation of Chinese economic reforms in 1978. At the same time, the Chinese economy has grown much faster than the Indian economy in the post-reform period until recently.32 China is currently the second-largest global economy while India is the world’s seventh-largest economy.33 But India is expected to emerge as the world’s third-largest economy by 2030 as China emerges as the world’s largest economy.34 In fact, India is expected to grow at a slightly faster pace than China in the coming decade.35 Although India’s faster expected growth needs to be understood as the more rapid expansion of a much smaller economy, faster growth – even by a small margin over several years – will be of geopolitical consequence. Since China is expected to grow faster than the United States, Japan, and all other major economies in the coming years, India will be the only major power in Asia that will be narrowing the relative power gap with China. By contrast, in all other major power dyads involving China (such as US–China and China–Japan relationships), relative power is expected to continue to shift in China’s favor. Therefore, it is not surprising that the United States and Japan have now begun to factor India in the emerging balance of power in Asia.36 Nevertheless, the Sino–Indian economic relationship as well as the levels of economic development in China and India have strategic implications. First, Sino–Indian trade is imbalanced in China’s favor. In the fiscal year 2015–2016, China enjoyed a trade surplus of $52.7 billion.37 More worryingly for New Delhi, while India imports manufactured goods from China, its major exports to China are raw materials. India’s disadvantage is rife with strategic implications given the nexus between manufacturing prowess and technological capabilities even as the overall trend in Sino–Indian bilateral trade is upwards.38 Second, China and India are also competing over access to energy and natural resources in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa for their rapidly growing economies.39 However, given China’s vast foreign exchange reserves as a result of trade surpluses with India and other major economies such as the United States, China has been able to outbid India in a large number of cases. China’s more advanced technological capabilities have also allowed Beijing to enter into long-term contracts with suppliers by investing in railways and other infrastructure projects in many energy and natural resource rich states. Consequently, China has begun investing in power projection capabilities to secure its investments and trade routes. Indeed, China has already established its first overseas military base in Djibouti (in the context of anti-piracy operations).40 The entry of the Chinese navy in the Indian Ocean on a more sustained basis will further intensify the Sino–Indian rivalry. 167

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In sum, we are witnessing the addition of a commercial dimension to the Sino–Indian positional and spatial rivalries. The Sino–Indian compound rivalry is becoming more complex with the addition of new issues which are interlinked across these domains. For example, Tibet as well as the levels of economic and technological development of China and India cut across the positional, spatial, and commercial dimensions of their rivalry. While China is clearly the stronger power in this relationship for now, the Sino–Indian rivalry is asymmetric but not onesided. Given its more advanced power attributes and different history, China is more concerned about its competition with the United States and Japan even as India suffers from an acute “status anxiety” vis-à-vis China.41 However, the Sino–Indian rivalry remains important even for China given India’s power potential and the issues dividing Asia’s rising giants. We now turn to a detailed empirical analysis of the military and foreign policy issues under contention in the Sino–Indian relationship.

Sino–Indian military tensions The conventional dimension The conventional military dimension of Sino–Indian tensions revolves around three major issues – the Sino–Indian border dispute, the Sino–Pakistani entente and the possibility of a two-front war with India, and Sino–Indian competition in the maritime realm. In recent years, the Sino–Indian border has become rife with border intrusions and transgressions for two significant reasons. First, China and India have different perceptions regarding their common borders in the Himalayas. Second, both the countries are rapidly modernizing their conventional military forces. Although China and India’s defense expenditure was roughly equal in 1989 (US$11.4 billion and US$10.6 billion respectively), they spent US$214.8 billion and US$51.3 billion respectively in 2015.42 In China’s case, this massive jump in spending has also been accompanied with rapid qualitative and technological advances, especially in Tibet, including the high-speed Qinghai-Tibet railroad.43 Two high-profile border intrusions by Chinese forces into territory under Indian administration that coincided with the visits of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and President Xi Jinping to India in 2013 and 2014 respectively have raised doubts in New Delhi about China’s long-term intentions. At the same time, the growing gap between Chinese and Indian military budgets is also leading to a change in India’s conventional military strategy vis-à-vis China. Ever since the 1962 Sino–Indian War, India’s security planners had adopted a defensive military strategy to meet the Chinese challenge. The Indian political establishment had deliberately left the Himalayan region under Indian administration under-developed out of the irrational fear that it would help a Chinese offensive against India.44 The Indian military had heretofore been preparing to fight a defensive war against Chinese forces on territory claimed by India. While such a defensive strategy might have worked if the Sino–Indian military power was relatively balanced, this strategy is no longer viable given that China spends nearly five times as much as India does on its military forces. Consequently, India is in the process of adopting a deterrence by denial strategy against China to respond to the changing strategic balance.45 Indian forces can no longer hope to fight and win a purely defensive war against a determined Chinese advance. Instead, Indian forces aim to take the offensive into China/Tibet itself at the theater level to deny China its battlefield objectives (of conquering any territory controlled by India). In particular, New Delhi is concerned about Chinese claims over Tawang, a sliver of territory in Arunachal Pradesh to the immediate east of Bhutan.46 China’s control over Tawang would be deleterious for Indian 168

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security (especially in the northeast) as it would allow China a military presence to the south of the Himalayas for the first time in the history of these ancient civilizations. Indian security planners fear that China is preparing for a hi-tech limited war to quickly grab territory in the Himalayas and humiliate India.47 India is learning from the Vietnamese experience of the 1979 Sino–Vietnamese War as it prepares to deter (and defeat) any military adventurism on the part of a more powerful foe.48 As such, India has begun the process of building roads and upgrading/activating its airfields along the Sino–Indian border since 2006. In the following years, India began deploying its Su-30 MKI fighter aircraft as well as the BrahMos cruise missiles in Arunachal Pradesh. Notably, in 2013, India began the largest peacetime expansion of its armed forces after 1962 by allocating US$15 billion for military contingencies involving China.49 India plans to raise two new mountain divisions (60,000 troops) and one mountain strike corps (30,000 troops) to meet the Chinese challenge. Although time and budgetary constraints may lead India down the path of several smaller rapid reaction forces instead of a large mountain strike corps, the Indian military seems to be developing offensive military power vis-à-vis China at the theater level.50 In addition to the purely bilateral aspect of the military challenge along the Sino–Indian border, India is also concerned about the military implications of the Sino–Pakistani entente. Ever since the 1962 Sino–Indian War when New Delhi deployed more than half of its forces facing Pakistani troops,51 India has had to factor in two-front contingencies involving China and Pakistan simultaneously. The Sino–Pakistani entente has its origins in their common rivalry with India.52 China had threatened New Delhi with a second-front during the 1965 India–Pakistan War as well as during the 1971 Bangladesh War.53 During the 1999 Kargil War, Chinese troops made threatening military maneuvers along the eastern and western sectors of the Sino–Indian border in addition to providing logistics assistance to Pakistan.54 Although the probability of an overt Chinese military intervention in an India–Pakistan War is low, New Delhi cannot rule out the possibility of Chinese logistics assistance to Pakistan, airspace violations against India, threatening military maneuvers (and localized clashes) along the Sino–Indian border, cyberattacks against Indian computer networks, and other forms of assistance to help Pakistan against India during any India–Pakistan conflict.55 Since 2010, India has officially begun preparing for a twofront contingency involving China and Pakistan simultaneously.56 In recent years, a maritime component has been added to the Sino–Indian conventional military competition. Throughout the Cold War, there was limited naval interaction between China and India as the Chinese navy was largely confined to coastal defense and for contingencies involving Taiwan, while the Indian navy was also largely limited to the Indian Ocean. In fact, their navies played no role in the 1962 Sino–Indian War (nor was the Indian navy expanded to meet the Chinese challenge in its aftermath even as India undertook army and air force modernization).57 However, China’s rapid naval rise (since the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait Crisis) is fast transforming the Chinese navy into a two-ocean navy (as a Pacific and an Indian Ocean power).58 Although this transformation is largely driven by China’s growing reliance on foreign trade and imported energy, this development is rife with security implications for India as China undertakes the development of (commercial) ports and port management in the countries surrounding India (such as Gwadar in Pakistan) and as Chinese warships and submarines start appearing in the Indian Ocean. In fact, as China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative takes shape, the PLA Navy is likely to be present in the Indian Ocean region on a more continuous basis.59 Although there is some debate on whether or not India should try to make-up for its Himalayan vulnerabilities against China by raising the ante in the Indian Ocean given India’s geographical advantage near the Strait of Malacca because of its military facilities on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, such a strategy 169

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is not viable.60 China’s long-distance precision-guided weapons (that allow China to hit the Strait of Malacca from China’s interior provinces) as well as artificial islands in the South China Sea (which are being rapidly militarized) make such a strategy highly suspect.61 Nevertheless, the naval arena is fast-emerging as a new theater of Sino–Indian competition, and the Indian navy is preparing for a deterrence by denial strategy in the Indian Ocean in order to deny China its naval objectives vis-à-vis India in the Indian Ocean and to raise the costs of any Chinese adventurism.62

The nuclear dimension India began its nuclear program in late 1965, almost a year after China’s first nuclear test of October 1964. However, the trigger was not the Chinese nuclear test itself. Instead, it was the Chinese (conventional) threat to open a second-front against India during the 1965 India–Pakistan War soon after going nuclear which was interpreted in India as a Chinese “ultimatum.”63 From the very beginning, the Indian nuclear weapons program was meant as a form of political insurance against nuclear blackmail by a more powerful adversary.64 Later, China responded to India’s first nuclear test in 1974 by providing nuclear and missile assistance to Pakistan, India’s subcontinental rival.65 China’s decades-long strategic assistance to Pakistan is a low-cost strategy to balance India by keeping New Delhi tied to the strategic affairs of the subcontinent. Not surprisingly, India’s decision to weaponize its nuclear program was only taken in the late 1980s – in the face of Chinese strategic assistance to Pakistan (and Pakistan’s consequent sabre rattling).66 However, the Sino–Indian nuclear relationship is politically stable for two main reasons.67 First, China has never openly threatened India with nuclear weapons. Second, the slow pace of India’s nuclear modernization program, including the absence of an assured second-strike capability vis-à-vis Beijing, has resulted in a low-key direct Chinese response thus far. However, both technological and political developments will put some stress on the Sino–Indian nuclear relationship in the coming years. At the technological level, India’s gradual development of an assured second-strike capability is bound to elicit some response from China. India is in the process of developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of targeting any part of China, including Beijing. India is also in the process of developing a sea-based deterrent capability.68 Furthermore, China’s response to the United States’ ballistic missile defense program in East Asia as well as advanced conventional weapons such as the Prompt Global Strike system (that blur the boundary between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons) will further complicate the Sino– Indian nuclear equation (as India begins to respond to China’s response to these America-led technological developments).69 Nevertheless, their overall nuclear relationship is expected to remain stable since both China and India view nuclear weapons as political (as opposed to military) tools in their bilateral relationship. An emerging political factor in the Sino–Indian nuclear equation is the nascent US–India strategic partnership, especially the US–India civil nuclear agreement.70 China is already responding to this development by pursuing a similar bilateral deal with Pakistan.71 Clearly, there is a continuity between the military and foreign policy issues dividing China and India.

Foreign policy issues Tibet In recent years, India has been slowly playing the Tibet card in its rivalry with China even as New Delhi officially recognizes Tibet as a part of China and does not recognize the Tibetan government-in-exile based in India (by treating the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan diaspora in India 170

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as cultural guests/exiles as opposed to political refugees). In spite of this, elections have been taking place in the Tibetan diaspora in India (and abroad) since 2001 to elect a Prime Minister and other government officials.72 In 2004, the Indian government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh quietly institutionalized an annual dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the Indian foreign secretary.73 In 2011, the Dalai Lama officially gave up his political role to a democratically elected government-in-exile headed by Prime Minister-in-exile Lobsang Sangay, who was re-elected in 2016.74 Not only does China not recognize the India-based Tibetan government-in-exile, but the Chinese state-controlled media has also referred to Lobsang Sangay as a “terrorist.”75 Lobsang Sangay was present during the swearing-in ceremony of India’s current Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with the leaders of other Southern Asian states in 2014.76 Although India needs to rethink its long-term Tibetan strategy given the Dalai Lama’s advanced age,77 Tibet continues to remain an important factor in Sino–Indian relations. Given the compound nature of the Sino– Indian rivalry discussed above, the Tibet factor is not politically distinct from the Sino–Indian border dispute even as these issues may be separated for analytical purposes.

Pakistan According to Garver, “China’s cooperative relation with Pakistan is arguably the most stable and durable element of China’s foreign relations.”78 However, there are three elements of the Sino–Pakistani entente that have concerned New Delhi in recent years. First, the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) through which China has promised investments amounting to US$46 billion in Pakistan through infrastructure and industrial projects passes through Gilgit-Baltistan, a region administered by Pakistan but claimed by India as a part of Kashmir.79 Seen from New Delhi, China is no longer a neutral party on the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan (indeed if China ever was).80 In addition to the geopolitics of Kashmir, the CPEC also has implications for India’s military security. The Indian security services have already noted the presence of Chinese military forces in Pakistan-administered Kashmir (arguably for infrastructure-related projects).81 More recently, Pakistan is raising a security force of over 10,000 personnel to guard China’s interests and investments along the CPEC.82 It has also been speculated in the Pakistani media that China will deploy up to 500 security personnel in Pakistan “for capacity-building” of this newly raised Pakistani security force.83 The presence of Chinese forces in Kashmir or elsewhere in Pakistan will heighten India’s security concerns. Second, India has noted that China has become more overt about its support for Pakistan in recent years instead of taking a more low-key behind-the-scene approach that was dominant until now. For example, China has blocked India’s efforts at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to impose sanctions against the Pakistan-based Masood Azhar, the chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) responsible for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.84 China blocked India’s efforts against Azhar again at the UNSC after the terror attacks launched by the JeM on the Indian air force base at Pathankot in early 2016.85 China has also stalled India’s efforts at the UNSC for sanctions against the Pakistan-based terrorist Syed Salahuddin of the Hizbul Mujahidden.86 In other words, the Pakistani dimension of the Sino–Indian rivalry has now spilled over into multilateral fora instead of remaining a bilateral issue between China and India. Third, India is concerned about the strategic implications of China’s involvement in Pakistan’s Gwadar port located at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. China had provided the initial funding, approximately US$250 million, for the construction of this commercial port. While a Singaporean firm was initially involved with the management of this strategically located port, Pakistan transferred the management rights to a Chinese firm in 2015 for 40 years.87 Furthermore, the CPEC is expected to extend all the way to Gwadar. These developments signal a deepening 171

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Chinese commitment to Pakistan. Not surprisingly, some of China’s most prominent international relations scholars have begun to refer to Pakistan as China’s only real “ally.”88

China in South Asia/Indian Ocean The phenomenal economic and military rise of China has led to China’s emergence as an economic and military power in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, a region that India traditionally regards as its own sphere of influence. Given the nature of regional geopolitics in South Asia, India’s South Asian neighbors have exploited the Sino–Indian rivalry in the pursuit of their own national interests.89 China has already displaced India as Bangladesh’s largest trading partner and is fast-closing the gap with India in other states like Sri Lanka and the Maldives.90 Similarly, more than two-thirds of China’s weapons exports are destined for India’s immediate neighbors with 41% going to Pakistan and another 28% headed to Bangladesh and Myanmar.91 China is also involved with building several commercial ports in India’s neighborhood (in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Myanmar), and China’s OBOR initiative will likely entrench China’s strategic power in the region, much to India’s detriment.92 The relatively closed nature of the Indian economy, poor physical connectivity between India and its immediate neighbors, and the nature of center-state relations in India and their impact on India’s foreign policy in the ethnically contiguous regions of South Asia mean that India needs to radically reorient its economics and politics to compete effectively with China in its own home region.

India’s “Act East” policy and US–India relations In its attempt to counter what New Delhi perceives as Chinese encirclement in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, India has begun to purposefully engage the Southeast Asian states, Japan, and the United States. PM Singh who was one of the architects of India’s “Look East” policy in 1991 (as PM Narasimha Rao’s Finance Minister) has noted that this policy “was not merely an external economic policy, it was also a strategic shift in India’s vision of the world and India’s place in the evolving global economy . . . India’s destiny . . . [is] linked with that of Asia and moreso [sic] South East Asia.”93 PM Modi recently upgraded the “Look East” policy to “Act East” policy. In particular, India is increasing its economic and strategic engagement with Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. India is also trying to enhance its physical (overland and maritime) connectivity with Myanmar and Thailand.94 In this regard, India–Japan relations have received a significant boost as Japan emerges as a “normal” great power in its own right. Japan has expressed an interest in coordinating its policies with India to enhance India’s centrality in South Asia and the Indian Ocean,95 while also promoting connectivity between South and East Asia through an economic corridor.96 Japan has the capital and technology to help transform India, especially in the context of the rise of China to help build a stable balance of power in Asia.97 Japan signed a civil nuclear agreement with India in 2016, making India the first state with which Japan will engage in civil nuclear commerce outside of the framework of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty even as India has an active nuclear weapons program.98 Most significantly, the United States and India are in the process of developing a close strategic partnership. As early as 2007, Ronen Sen, the Indian ambassador to the United States noted that the “Pacific facet of the United States should . . . be factored into India’s Look East policy.”99 The 2008 US–India civil nuclear deal was an important trust-building agreement between the two countries. The United States and India now conduct more military exercises with each other than either country conducts with any other country.100 India has also emerged as the 172

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second-largest recipient of American military hardware in recent years.101 The US Pentagon also sees “a strategic convergence between India’s ‘Act East’ policy and the U.S. rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region.”102 New Delhi’s vision of India as a “net provider of security” in the Indian Ocean Region “and beyond,”103 has also been reciprocated by the US Department of Defense.104 Not surprisingly, the Chinese media has already warned India against a closer embrace of the United States and Japan.105

Conclusion China and India are engaged in a complex rivalry with multiple interconnected issues – quest for leadership in Asia, a border dispute, and a commercial rivalry. Furthermore, the Sino–Indian contest over these issues is being played out in several avenues – in the conventional military and nuclear realms, in Tibet, Pakistan, South and Southeast Asia, Japan, the United States, and even at the United Nations. Given China’s complicated history with Japan and the United States, the Chinese state and society are more concerned about Beijing’s rivalry with Tokyo and Washington than with New Delhi. Nevertheless, China has always paid due attention to its rivalry with India even as New Delhi pays far more attention to Beijing. Furthermore, given the global economic projections of China and India as the world’s largest and third-largest economies respectively over the next decade, some analysts have even argued that “China’s biggest foreign policy challenge in the future will be India.”106 The intensity of the Sino–Indian rivalry will also be determined by whether China, as the already established Asian great power, will act as a gatekeeper to check a rising India’s ambitions.

Notes 1 On strategic rivalries, see Michael Colaresi, Karen Rasler, and William Thompson, Strategic Rivalries in World Politics: Position, Space, and Conflict Escalation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 2 Rivalries that entail multiple issues – positional, territorial/spatial, ideological, and commercial – become complex because of their “compound” nature as the issues at stake become interlinked across these domains. 3 On commercial rivalries, see Jack Levy, “The Rise and Decline of the Anglo-Dutch Rivalry, 1609– 1689,” in William Thompson, ed., Great Power Rivalries (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999). 4 John Garver, “Asymmetrical Indian and Chinese Threat Perceptions,” Journal of Strategic Studies 25:4 (2002): 109–34. 5 However, this asymmetry should not be confused with one-sidedness as China has always been concerned about India as explained in this chapter. 6 Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), Kindle edition, Location 4323. 7 K. M. Panikkar, In Two Chinas: Memoirs of a Diplomat (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955), 26–7. 8 Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: Britain’s Asian War and the War with Japan (London: Penguin, 2005), Kindle edition, Location 378. 9 “Science in War and Peace,” 19 October 1946, in S. Gopal, ed., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series,Volume I (New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1984), 311. 10 Yang Tianshi, “Chiang Kai-shek and Jawaharlal Nehru,” in Hans van de Ven, Diana Lary, and Stephen MacKinnon, eds., Negotiating China’s Destiny in World War II (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). 11 “Asian Conference and Asia’s Future,” China Digest, 8 February 1949, 13. 12 Hugh Richardson, Tibet and Its History (Boulder: Shambhala, 1984). 13 Melvyn Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 14 B. N. Mullik, My Years with Nehru: The Chinese Betrayal (New Delhi: Allied, 1971), 80–1. 15 Mullik, My Years with Nehru, 177–82. 16 Alex McKay, Tibet and the British Raj: The Frontier Cadre, 1904–1947 (Surrey: Curzon, 1997).

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Manjeet S. Pardesi 17 K. M. Panikkar, “The Himalayas and Indian Defence,” India Quarterly III:3 (1947): 233–8. 18 Joseph Esherick, “How the Qing Became China,” in Joseph Esherick, Hasan Kayali, and Eric Young, eds., Empire to Nation: Historical Perspectives on the Making of the Modern World (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). 19 An analysis of the historical status of Tibet vis-à-vis China is beyond the scope of this chapter. Suffice it to say that it cannot be understood in Westphalian terms. Under the Qing, the Dalai Lama had a relationship with the Machu emperor of China (as opposed to a direct relationship with Han China) on an equal footing based on the priest-patron relationship. See Elliot Sperling, “The Tibet-China Conflict: History and Polemics,” East-West Center Policy Studies, No. 7, Washington, 2004. 20 Hsiao-ting Lin, Tibet and Nationalist China’s Frontier: Intrigues and Ethnopolitics, 1928–49 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006). 21 Sumit Ganguly, “India and China: Border Issues, Domestic Integration, and International Security,” in Francine Frankel and Harry Harding, eds., The India-China Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004). 22 Jianglin Li (translated by Susan Wilf), Tibet in Agony, Lhasa 1959 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016). 23 Dawa Norbu, “Tibet in Sino-Indian Relations: The Centrality of Marginality,” Asian Survey 37:11 (1997): 1078–95. 24 John Garver, “China’s Decision for War with India in 1962,” in Alastair Johnston and Robert Ross, eds., New Directions in the Study of China’s Foreign Policy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). 25 Bruce Riedel, JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA, and Sino-Indian War (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2015). 26 While the Indian leadership believes that the border is 3,488 km long, the Chinese state-controlled media refers to border as 2,000 km long. Although the exact reason for this discrepancy is not known, the difference could be a result of the discounting of the border in Kashmir by the Chinese media (because of the China-Pakistan relationship discussed below). See “Chinese Media Knocks Off 1,600 km from China-India Border,” Times of India, 19 December 2010. 27 Tsering Woeser (translated by Kevin Carrico), Tibet on Fire: Self-Immolations against Chinese Rule (London: Verso, 2016). 28 “Dalai Lama: ‘Cultural Genocide’ Behind Self-Immolations,” BBC News, 11 November 2011, available: www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-15617026 (accessed: 8 November 2016). 29 Barry Sautman, “The Tibetan Impasse,” South China Morning Post, 11 September 2010. 30 The Sino-Indian rivalry is not Tibet-centric. Tibet is not a cause but a symptom of the Sino-Indian rivalry. 31 Manjeet S. Pardesi, “Is India a Great Power? Understanding Great Power Status in Contemporary International Relations,” Asian Security 11:1 (2015): 1–30. 32 Pranab Bardhan, Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). 33 GDP Ranking, The World Bank, available: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/GDP-ranking-table (accessed: 8 November 2016). 34 “The World in 2050: Will the Shift in Global Economic Power Continue?,” PricewaterhouseCoopers, February 2015. 35 Luis Enriquez, Sven Smit, and Jonathan Ablett, “Shifting Tides: Global Economic Scenarios for 2015– 2025,” McKinsey, September 2015. 36 For example, see “Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds,” National Intelligence Council, December 2012. 37 For the trade data, see the website of the Ministry of Commerce & Industry (India), www.commerce. nic.in/eidb/. 38 John Garver, “The Emerging International China-India Division of Labor and India’s Quest for Status Parity and Security with China,” in Sudhir Devare, Swaran Singh, and Reena Marwah, eds., Emerging China: Prospects for Partnership in Asia (New Delhi: Routledge, 2012). 39 Lam Peng Er and Lim Tai Wei, eds., The Rise of China and India: A New Asian Drama (Singapore: World Scientific, 2009); Marlène Laruelle, Jean-François Huchet, Sébastien Peyrouse, and Bayram Balci, eds., China and India in Central Asia: A New ‘Great Game’? (New York: Palgrave 2010); Geoffrey Kemp, The East Moves West: India, China, and Asia’s Growing Presence in the Middle East (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2012); and Fantu Cheru and Cyril Obi, eds., The Rise of China & India in Africa (London: Zed Books, 2010).

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China and India 40 Jeremy Page, “China Builds First Overseas Military Outpost,” Wall Street Journal, 19 August 2016. 41 Sumit Ganguly quoted in Esther Pan, “Q&A: India, China, and U.S.,” New York Times, 1 March 2006. 42 SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, available: www.sipri.org/databases/milex (accessed: 14 November 2016). 43 Monika Chansoria, “China’s Infrastructure Development in Tibet: Evaluating Trendlines,” Manekshaw Paper, Center for Land Warfare Studies, Number 32, 2011. 44 Although India had launched Operation Falcon in 1981 to build infrastructure along the Sino-Indian border, this project was abandoned after the 1986–87 Sumdorong Chu crisis. See “China was the real concern: In Conversation with General K. V. Krishna Rao,” Force, December 2004, 30–31. 45 Manjeet S. Pardesi, “India’s Conventional Military Strategy,” in Sumit Ganguly, Nicolas Blarel, and Manjeet S. Pardesi, eds., Oxford Handbook of India’s National Security (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). 46 China has been referring to Tawang as “South Tibet” since 2006. 47 Suman Sharma, “China’s War Plan,” Open, 10 April 2010. 48 Shishir Gupta, The Himalayan Face-Off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Response (Gurgaon: Hachette, 2014), 226–7. 49 Rajeev Sharma, “How India Is Preparing to Counter the Chinese Threat,” FirstPost, 16 February 2013. 50 Sanjeev Miglani, “India Scales Back Army Corps Facing China, Pours Funds into Carrier,” Reuters, 15 May 2015, available: http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-india-defence-idUKKBN0O01CM20150515 (accessed: 14 November 2016). 51 Charles Heimsath and Surjit Mansingh, A Diplomatic History of Modern India (Calcutta: Allied, 1971), 171. 52 Andrew Small, The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 53 John Garver, Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 187–215. 54 General V. P. Malik, Kargil: From Surprise to Victory (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2006), 298. 55 General V. P. Malik, “A Comprehensive Response Strategy and Collaborative Threat from China and Pakistan,” 30th USI National Security Lecture, 3 December 2014, available: http://indianarmy.nic.in/ WriteReadData/Documents/national%20Security%20Lecture%202014.pdf (accessed: 14 November 2016). 56 India is also concerned about Pakistani intervention during a Sino-Indian conflict. See Sandeep Unnithan, “The ChiPak Threat,” India Today, 23 October 2010. 57 Lorne Kavic, India’s Quest for Security, Defense Policies: 1947–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). 58 Mohan Malik, ed., Maritime Security in the Indo-Pacific: Perspectives from China, India, and the United States (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). 59 Morgan Clemens, “The Maritime Silk Road and the PLA,” A Paper for China as a Maritime Power Conference, CNA Conference Facility, Arlington VA, 28–29 July 2015, available: www.cna.org/cna_ files/pdf/maritime-silk-road.pdf (accessed: 14 November 2016). 60 Shashank Joshi, “The Future of Indian Sea Power: Navalists versus Continentalists,” RUSI Commentary, 15 August 2013. 61 Mark Stokes, “The Second Artillery Force and the Future of Long-Range Precision Strike,” in Ashley Tellis and Travis Tanner, eds., Strategic Asia 2012–13: China’s Military Challenge (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2012); and Eric Heginbotham et al., The US-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the Evolving Balance of Power, 1996–2017 (Santa Monica: RAND, 2015). 62 Manjeet S. Pardesi, “The Indian Navy’s Doctrinal Evolution,” in Harsh Pant, ed., Handbook of Indian Defense Policy (New York: Routledge, 2016). 63 Manjeet S. Pardesi, “China’s Nuclear Forces and Their Significance to India,” The Nonproliferation Review 21:3–4 (2014): 337–54. 64 Sumit Ganguly, “Review Essay: Behind India’s Bomb: The Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Deterrence,” Foreign Affairs 80:5 (2001). 65 T. V. Paul, “Chinese-Pakistani Nuclear/Missile Ties and Balance of Power Politics,” The Nonproliferation Review 10:2 (2003): 21–9. 66 In the late 1980s, the Indian Defense Ministry complained about the Sino-Pakistani nuclear nexus. See “Documentation: China and South Asia,” China Report 22 (November 1986): 549. The former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is believed to have taken the decision to weaponize India’s nuclear

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67 68

69 70 71 72 73 74

75 76 77

78 79

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

90 91 92 93 94 95 96

program in 1988/89. See Amit Baruah, “Rajiv Gandhi Ordered Nuke Weaponization, Says Brajesh,” Hindustan Times, 7 May 2008. Pardesi, “China’s Nuclear Forces and Their Significance to India”. Gaurav Kampani, “India: The Challenges of Nuclear Operationalization and Strategic Stability,” in Ashley Tellis, Abraham Denmark, and Travis Tanner, eds., Strategic Asia 2013–14: Asia in the Second Nuclear Age (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2013). Christopher P. Twomey, “Asia’s Complex Strategic Environment: Nuclear Multipolarity and Other Dangers,” Asia Policy 11 (January 2011). Sumit Ganguly and Dinshaw Mistry, “The Case for US-India Nuclear Agreement,” World Policy Journal 28:2 (2006): 11–19. Ashley Tellis, “The China-Pakistan Nuclear ‘Deal’: Separating Fact from Fiction,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Policy Outlook, 16 July 2010. Stephanie Roemer, The Tibetan Government-in-Exile: Politics At Large (London: Routledge, 2008). Gupta, The Himalayan Face-Off, 215. Harmeet Shah Singh, “Dalai Lama Gives Up Political Role, Remains Tibetan Spiritual Leader,” CNN, 31 May 2011, available: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/31/india.dalai.lama/ (accessed: 15 November 2016). Li Hongmei, “Terrorist Poised to Rule ‘Tibetan Government-in-Exile?’,” People’s Daily Online, 22 March 2011, available: http://en.people.cn/90002/96417/7326988.pdf (accessed: 15 November 2016). Indrani Bagchi, “Tibetan Leader at Modi’s Swearing in Irks China,” Times of India, 5 June 2014. Brahma Chellaney, “Tibet after the Dalai Lama,” Project-Syndicate, 1 July 2015, available: www. project-syndicate.org/commentary/tibet-after-the-dalai-lama-by-brahma-chellaney-2015-07 (accessed: 15 November 2016). Garver, Protracted Contest, 187. Emphasis original. Shannon Tiezzi, “China, Pakistan Flesh out New ‘Economic Corridor’,” The Diplomat, 20 February 2014, available: http://thediplomat.com/2014/02/china-pakistan-flesh-out-new-economic-corridor/ (accessed: 15 November 2016). John Garver, “China’s Kashmir Policies,” India Review 3:1 (2004): 1–24. “Chinese Army Troops Spotted Along LoC in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir,” Hindustan Times, 13 March 2016. Xu Wang, “Pakistan Sets Up 10,000-Man Force to Protect Chinese Interests,” China Daily, 3 February 2016. Zahid Gishkori, “Economic Corridor: Pakistan-China Agree to Four-Layer Security,” The Express Tribune, 1 November 2015. “China Blocks Sanctions Aginst JeM Chief,” NDTV, 12 August 2009, available: www.ndtv.com/indianews/china-blocks-sanctions-against-jem-chief-399657 (accessed: 15 November 2016). “At UN, China Blocks India Bid to Ban JeM Chief Masood Azhar,” Indian Express, 1 April 2016. Suhasini Haidar, “China Stalls India’s Moves on Salahuddin: Officials,” The Hindu, 26 May 2015. “Pakistan Approves Gwadar Port Transfer to China,” Dawn, 30 January 2013; and “China Gets 40-Year Management Rights on Gwadar Port, Access to Arabian Sea,” The Express Tribune, 15 April 2015. Yufan Huang, “Q. and A.: Yan Xuetong Urges China to Adopt a More Assertive Foreign Policy,” New York Times, 9 February 2016. Teresita Schaffer, “India Next Door, China over the Horizon: The View from South Asia,” in Ashley Tellis, Travis Tanner, and Jessica Keough, eds., Strategic Asia 2011–12: Asia Responds to Its Rising Powers – China and India (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2011). For details, see The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, available: www.cia.gov/library/ publications/the-world-factbook/ (accessed: 15 November 2016). Charles Clover, “Chinese Arms Sales Surge 143% in 5 Years,” Financial Times, 16 March 2015. For example, see Wade Shepherd, “Sold: Sri Lanka’s Hambantota’s Port and the World’s Emptiest Airport Go To the Chinese,” Forbes, 28 October 2016. Make 21st Century Truly an Asian Century: PM, Prime Minister’s Office, 12 December 2005, available: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=14102 (accessed: 15 November 2016). Ted Osius and C. Raja Mohan, “Enhancing India-ASEAN Connectivity,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 2013. Jonathan Eyal, “Japan-India: An Alliance with a Difference,” The Straits Times, 7 November 2016. Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury, “India, Japan Plan to Develop ‘Pacific, India Ocean’ Corridor,” The Economic Times, 6 November 2016.

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China and India 97 Manjeet S. Pardesi, “India’s Relations with Japan and South Korea,” in Sumit Ganguly, ed., Engaging the World: Indian Foreign Policy since 1947 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016). 98 “India, Japan Sign Landmark Civil Nuclear Deal,” The Indian Express, 11 November 2016. 99 Ambassador Ronen Sen’s Address at the CSIS – JIIA Conference “Building Strategic Asia – The United States, Japan, and India,” Embassy of India, Washington, DC, 28 June 2007, available: www.indian embassy.org/archives_details.php?nid=877 (accessed: 2 June 2016). 100 Richard Armitage, R. Nicholas Burns, and Richard Fontaine, “Natural Allies: A Blueprint for the Future of US-India Relations,” Center for a New American Security, October 2010, 5; and Testimony of Nisha Desai-Biswal before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 24 May 2016, 5, available: www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/052416_Biswal_Testimony.pdf (accessed: 29 August 2016). 101 Natalie Pearson and NC Bipindra, “India Surges to Second-Biggest US Weapons Buyer,” Bloomberg, 28 September 2015, available: www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-27/india-surges-to-secondbiggest-u-s-weapons-buyer-as-china-rises (accessed: 15 November 2016). 102 Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy, US Department of Defense, 2015, 28, available: www.defense. gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/NDAA%20A-P_Maritime_SecuritY_Strategy-08142015-1300FINALFORMAT.PDF (accessed: 2 June 2016). 103 Vinay Kumar, “India Well Positioned to Become a Net Provider of Security: Manmohan Singh,” Hindu, 24 May 2013. 104 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, US Department of Defense, February 2010, 60. 105 “Is India Heading Toward Alliance with US?,” Global Times, 30 August 2016; and “India to Suffer Losses If It Joins Japan on SCS: Global Times,” The Hindu, 9 November 2016. 106 Odd Arne Westad, Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750 (New York: Basic, 2012), 746.

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14 CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS IN SOUTH ASIA Aqil Shah

Introduction When Pakistan and India gained independence from British rule in 1947, the two ex-colonial siblings had differences as well as commonalities. While they were dissimilar in geography, the size of the population, and the dominant religion, their colonial institutional inheritance was strikingly similar. The two new states were born with a common constitutional framework, the civil service, the judiciary, and the military. In fact, the two militaries inherited the same organizational structure, bureaucratic norms, fighting doctrines, training methods, and above all, an apolitical professional ethic from their colonial predecessor. Seventy years later, the Pakistani and Indian militaries have evolved as radically different institutions with regard to their political roles. More specifically, the Pakistani military poses an almost permanent problem for democracy, whereas the military in India has almost never threatened the survival and stability of democratic institutions in that country. Over time, the Pakistani armed forces have emerged as the country’s foremost “power elite,” ruling directly for more than three decades, and wielding decisive behind the scenes influence in politics and national security policy the rest of the time. Not only does the military claim a large chunk of the national budget, it has acquired effective veto powers over an expansively defined national security arena that includes military budgets, arms procurement, force structure, nuclear doctrines, intelligence gathering, and economic enterprises. To say the least, the military’s long lasting and prominent political role has proven harmful to democracy. Until 2013, Pakistan had not experienced even one peaceful transfer of power as a result of free and fair elections, with all of its previous democratic transitions aborted by military coups. In fact, the country seemed stuck in a state of almost permanent oscillation between military intervention and civilian rule. In contrast, India has experienced continuous democratic government between 1947 and 2016, which was briefly interrupted by the civilian authoritarian rule during the Emergency period (1975–77). From the beginning, the size of the military was contained, military personnel did not play a prominent role in civilian politics, and there were no military interventions. The Indian military has rarely exceeded the limits of constitutional propriety, or subverted democratic controls over national security policy, even though Indian military officers have long harbored concerns about the adverse impact of inefficient and obstructive “bureaucratic” rather than political control on its combat preparedness. The strategic significance of the armed forces has 178

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grown because of India’s aspirations to become a global player. However, India’s soldiers remain resolutely apolitical, almost permanently relegated to the bottom of a state executive hierarchy led by democratically elected civilians. From strategic decisions of war and peace to nuclear weapons command and control, the India military has virtually no role in policymaking. Civilians make policy and the military carries it out. This chapter interprets and investigates the origins of the Pakistani military’s institutional involvement in civilian politics with comparisons to the military in India. In doing so, it makes two arguments. First, the origins of the current structure of civil-military relations in these two South Asian polities lie in the formative decade after independence which provided the earliest possible chance for major decisions and initiatives since political and institutional arrangements were still in relative flux. Hence, choices made during that critical juncture produced lasting institutional arrangements and normative commitments. Second, I emphasize the neglected role and importance of military institutional norms, defined as collective expectations of appropriate behavior in a given community of actors,1 in conditioning the nature and extent of the generals’ political influence over civilians. While existing studies have compared the different civil-military trajectories of Pakistan and India,2 they tend to privilege structural or non-military factors, such as social class coalitions, colonial legacies, and political party institutionalization. However, as Steven Wilkinson has claimed in his fine recent book on the Indian Army, it is far from clear how these structural factors are linked to specific outcomes of civil-military relations.3 In his own analysis, Wilkinson links civilian control in India to the use of “coup proofing” techniques undergirded by the legitimacy and strength of the Congress Party. However, Wilkinson too ignores military institutional factors when explaining military behavior. The surprising fact in India is not just the absence of coups, but the lack of even attempted coups. Through a careful historical examination, this chapter shows that the Pakistani military’s sustained political interventions and its differences with the Indian military stem from differences in the normative structure of each military, forged during each military’s formative post-independence experience and shaped by both domestic politics and international influences. Exclusionary nationalism, and the perceived threat from India, created the context in which the Pakistani military developed a praetorian professionalism supportive of expansive military tutelage of government and control over national security affairs. A less existentially threatening external security environment, combined with more inclusive nation-building policies predicated on a federal parliamentary system, fostered in its Indian counterpart a democratic professionalism committed to unconditional acceptance of civilian supremacy. In spite of the Indian army’s frequent involvement in internal security missions which are known to have fomented interventionist tendencies in other contexts, the military’s constitutional convictions have exerted a conservative influence on its political behavior. The internalization of these norms, reinforced by civilian institutional checks and balances, has created what Huntington described as “objective civilian control,” or a “distribution of political power between the military and civilian groups which is most conducive to the emergence of professional attitudes and behavior amongst members of the officer corps.”4

Pakistan: denying diversity At independence, Pakistan lacked the Rustowian background condition that makes democracy (and, by implication, civilian democratic control of the military) possible: national unity.5 In the words of Christophe Jaffrelot, Pakistan’s was a “nationalism without a nation.”6 Pakistan emerged from British colonial rule with a deep ethnic diversity that overlapped with its geographic 179

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division into two wings, West Pakistan and East Pakistan. West Pakistan (or, more precisely, the Urdu-speaking migrants or Muhajirs from northern and western India and the Punjabis) dominated the central government and its institutions, while East Pakistan had a territorially concentrated Bengali majority that was excluded from the armed forces and the civil bureaucracy.7 This colonially inherited ethnic imbalance in the military further exacerbated the sense of Bengali exclusion.8 Before independence, the Punjab accounted for more than 77 percent of military recruitment from the areas that became Pakistan, the North-West Frontier Province for 19.5 percent, and the Bengalis for less than 5 percent.9 After independence, the composition of the army remained unchanged. But the Bengalis were intensely proud of their linguistic heritage and had an established tradition of seeking cultural autonomy through agitational politics.10 Independence provided “a brief moment of political unity.”11 However, the West Pakistani elites’ desire to integrate the Bengalis and other smaller West Pakistani ethnic groups (Pashtuns, Sindhis, and the Baloch) into the nation-state while denying the legitimacy of all claims for political representation, and regional autonomy based on subnational identities led to the centralization of power, which decreased provincial autonomy and further strained the internal cohesion that can facilitate the crafting of democratic institutions. Ethnic divisions between West and East Pakistan (as well as within West Pakistan) raised fears among civilian and military governing elites that external enemies could exploit internal disunity, which spurred the imposition of emergency measures, especially in East Pakistan, to maintain what they perceived to be national security, which in turn alienated the Bengalis and ultimately led to the breakup of the state in 1971. Political scientists have long considered strong political parties crucial to regime stability and consolidation. In particular, parties with stable societal support and robust organizational structures have the capability to moderate and mediate social conflict peacefully.12 The weaknesses of the Muslim League, including its lack of social and organizational roots in Pakistan society, have been well documented. Led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan, the party leadership and support base was mostly derived from areas of British India that became part of independent India.13 Hence, the logic of political survival and state consolidation dictated that these migrant League elites curtail representative government, or risk losing state power to better organized and more popular “autonomist” regional parties, such as the Awami League (AL) representing the Bengali majority of East Pakistan. In other words, the leadership’s ability to govern by consent was complicated by the existential political threat stemming from the numerical logic of electoral democracy that favored the majority Bengalis.14 Rather than pursuing “state-nation policies” that could help the development of “multiple and complementary identities” and accommodate distinct ethnic and cultural groups within a democratic federal framework, Pakistan’s politically insecure founding elites followed “nation-state” policies designed to create a single nation congruent with the political boundaries of the state.15 However, this national unification project only exacerbated “the chasm between the ideology and sociology” of Pakistan, especially by politicizing Bengali identity.16 For instance, even though almost 98 percent of the majority Bengalis (54.5 percent of the total population) spoke Bengali, the central government denied that language the national status it deserved and imposed Urdu (the first language of roughly 4 percent of the total population) as the sole state language immediately after independence, thus sparking a language movement in East Pakistan as early as 1948. Jinnah and his successors found a ready-made governing formula in the iron fist of “viceregalism.”17 Backed by the military, the viceregal executive sacked noncompliant civilian cabinets (1953), delayed constitution making, disbanded the central legislature (Constituent Assembly) when it crafted a federal democratic constitution (1954), removed an elected government in East Pakistan (1954), and ultimately amalgamated the provinces of West Pakistan into what is called 180

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“One Unit” to create parity with East Pakistan (1955–1956). As governmental legitimacy was eviscerated under the heavy burden of authoritarian centralization, especially in East Pakistan, the emerging guardians of national security in the military developed serious doubts about the appropriateness and feasibility of parliamentary democracy in a fragile polity threatened by external threat and internal dissension. By the early-1950s, the military under its first Pakistani commander in chief, General Ayub Khan, had dropped its pretense of political neutrality and was no longer concerned merely with protecting its autonomy or budgets. Instead, the generals (and influential civilian bureaucrats) began to envisage a new form of “controlled” democracy “suited to the genius” of the Pakistani people.18

Losing control Because of the bitter rivalry in the decade before independence, Jinnah and the League leadership suspected that the Congress government of India viewed the creation of Pakistan as a “temporary recession of certain territories from India which would soon be reabsorbed.”19 The early onset of the territorial conflict between the two countries over the princely state of Kashmir, which sparked military hostilities in 1947–1948, turned this suspicion into deep insecurity, further complicated by irredentist Afghan claims on Pakistan’s northwestern territories.20 Combined with the elite mismanagement of ethnic identity politics, the conflict with India shaped the initial trajectory of Pakistan’s civil-military relations.21 It spurred the militarization of the Pakistani state in the early years and provided the context in which the generals could increase their influence in domestic politics and national security policy while at the same time formally observing constitutional procedures. As state building and survival became synonymous with the war effort, it enhanced the military’s institutional importance at the expense of civilian institutions. The civilian leadership diverted scarce resources from development to defense22 and abdicated its responsibility of oversight over the military, thereby allowing the generals a virtual free hand over internal organizational affairs and national security management. Relatedly, institutional developments within the military had important consequences for civilian politics because they reinforced the officer corps’ emerging tutelary mentality. Starting in the early 1950s, the military underwent a formative process of institutional transformation from an ex-colonial army into a national army with its own corporate identity and ethos. This process of institutional development was further spurred by military training, expertise, and armaments Pakistan received for allying with the United States to contain the threat of Soviet expansionism.23 This rapid military professionalization also conflicted sharply with the perceived failure and instability of civilian politics, especially the inability of politicians to craft an appropriate political system that would ensure national harmony and economic development. The high command believed that only a united and prosperous Pakistan could stand up to India and blunt the chances of the external (Indian) abetment of internal strife. Thus, American Cold War security assistance contributed to fanning the army’s tutelary ambitions by rapidly modernizing it. This modernization reinforced the soldiers’ belief in the superiority of their skills over those of civilian politicians and was crucial to the high command’s decision to expand into an array of civilian roles and functions. After Pakistan’s first constitution came into force in March 1956, the military feared that it was only a matter of time before national elections installed a government of autonomist Bengalis and their West Pakistani allies.24 In October 1958, the military under General Ayub Khan seized power in a coup to rescue Pakistan from what he described as irrational and selfish politicians, and to set Pakistan on the path of modernization. The over a decade of subsequent military rule under Ayub Khan cemented the soldiers’ belief that military skills and solutions were applicable to political problems that the politicians neither had the capacity nor the willingness to resolve. 181

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Civil-military relations since 1971 After Ayub left power amidst widespread protests against his rule, the next military government of General Yahya Khan (1969–1971) organized Pakistan’s first universally enfranchised elections in 1970. The Awami League (AL) swept the election in East Pakistan, winning a comfortable majority (167 seats of 313) in the National Assembly, but none from West Pakistan. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto secured a majority from the provinces of West Pakistan by bagging 81 of the 138 seats, mostly from the Punjab and Sindh. The popular vote was thus clearly divided along ethno-regional lines and “demonstrated the failure of national integration in Pakistan.”25 Instead of allowing the AL to assume power, Yahya deployed the army to crush Bengali nationalism. The army’s ensuring civil war with Bengali nationalists resulted in its catastrophic defeat after India invaded East Pakistan to aid the rebels. The military’s disgraceful defeat created an opportunity to depoliticize the officer corps. The country’s parliament crafted a constitution in 1973 which outlawed military intervention in politics. Bhutto also fixed the tenure of the service chiefs redesigned them as chiefs of staff, and created a Joint Staff Headquarters. But these civilian constraints proved insufficient to tame the generals. After a post-election crisis in 1977 led to street agitation by the Islamist-led opposition Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), and Bhutto involved the military in suppressing the protest, the army under General Ziaul Haq carried out a coup to restore “genuine” democracy. Bhutto’s attempts to keep the military at bay failed in part because the military had not fully accepted the legitimacy of democratic institutions, including the constitution. With their presumptions of impunity re-enforced by Bhutto’s amnesty for the 1971 war, the military’s entrenched norms of guardianship meant that its members would see a military coup as the only feasible resolution to the political crisis. Zia ruled ruthlessly for eleven years. After his death in 1988, Pakistan made a short-lived transition to democracy which the military under General Pervez Musharraf (1999–2008) terminated in 1999 only to put the military back into power for eight years. During the civilian interregnum of the 1990s, successive elected governments of the PPP under Benazir Bhutto and the PML-N under Nawaz Sharif were prematurely dismissed by military-backed civilian presidents endowed with constitutional coup powers during the Zia period. Elections held in 2008 brought a PPP-led coalition government which completed its tenure and handed over power to the PML-N which had won the 2013 election, the first such transfer of power in the country’s history. While elected governments have been marred by allegations of corruption, civilian rule continues to be seriously curtailed by the military’s domineering influence over foreign policy (including Pakistan’s relations with India, Afghanistan, and the United States) and internal security, including the fight against Taliban terrorists. In other words, Pakistan has morphed into a hybrid regime in which the military does not seize direct power but formally exercises its authoritarian prerogatives as part of the functioning of formal democracy.

India: democratic civilian supremacy In India, less intense geopolitical threats from a militarily weaker Pakistan (and later, China) and a considered “third way” of nonalignment in the bipolar cold war itself partly predicated on a different security environment, helped reduce the importance of military might to state survival, thus restricting the space for military influence over civilian affairs. In other words, Indian political leaders had relatively more latitude to restrain the military because of the country’s more benign threat environment. Besides, given its origins in the British Indian Army (BIA), the military was hardly in a position to challenge the popular Congress party under leaders of world historic significance like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Within this fortuitous 182

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context, the political leadership used it initial advantage over the military, to firmly lay down the broad principles of state policy. The nationalist elite, especially Nehru, viewed the military with deep suspicion, and made sure that the Indian army was effectively subordinated to and integrated in the civilian state.26 For example, on August 13, 1947, he overruled the army’s decision to block the public from the national flag hoisting ceremony, and bluntly reminded the then British C-in-C, General Rob Lockhart, that the army’s job was to follow policies laid down by the government: In any policy that is to be pursued, in the Army or otherwise, the view of the Government of India and the policy they lay down must prevail. If any person is unable to carry out that policy, he has no place in the Indian Army or the Indian structure of government. I think this should be made perfectly clear at this stage . . . the Government of India is going to be . . . a democratic government . . . responsible to the Indian people . . . make this clear to the British officers, who have perhaps not realized, that a big change is taking place in India.27 By virtue of his unchallenged supremacy over the Congress party, especially after the death of the more hawkish Sardar Patel in 1950, Nehru’s views of the nature of the international state system also played an important role in formally demilitarizing Indian foreign policy. Through non-alignment, for instance, he sought to seek a middle path in the bipolar cold war rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. As Rudolph & Rudolph have argued, “by stressing diplomacy over force as the driver of international relations, non-alignment reduced the probability of the military appropriation of state power.”28 In addition, India’s founding leaders did not take their “nationalist legitimacy” for granted like the Muslim League did in Pakistan. Instead, they sought to anchor it in a competitive democratic system. The enactment of the constitution within three years of independence in 1950, swiftly established a federal parliamentary system. From the standpoint of civilian supremacy, the constitution vested executive authority over the military in the prime minister as head of government (through a titular President subject to cabinet advice), thus formally circumscribing the military to “a subordinate position in a pyramid of authority culminating in a single civilian head.”29 Still, the mere presence of legal statutes cannot compel military allegiance to the political leadership. From Latin America to Southeast Asia, militaries have ripped to pieces democratically crafted constitutions at will. The Indian constitution, and the civilian-supremacy it embodied, needed mass ratification to endow the Congress leadership with a democratic mandate to govern India.30 In contrast to Pakistan, where no national elections could be organized until 1970, India’s first, universally enfranchised national elections were held in 1952. The Congress party won a comfortable majority at the center and all but three states, thereby converting its nationalist legitimacy into electoral legitimacy. Scholars of democracy view founding national elections as critical to the consolidation of democracy, because they “help create agendas, actors, organizations, and most importantly, legitimacy and power.”31 Founding elections may not be sufficient conditions for democracy, but they do signal to all important political protagonists, including the military the onset of new rules of the political game. When they are organized during formative periods in national history, such as the transition from colonial rule to sovereign statehood in India, they can credibly demonstrate a permanent shift from authoritarian colonial rule to democratic governance, and help close the window on non-democratic alternatives. The Congress party’s democratic mandate was subsequently renewed through victories in free and fair ballots held at regular five-year intervals – in 1957, 1962, after Nehru’s death (1964) in 183

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1967, and 1971. Elections also helped create mass legitimacy for India’s political processes, vividly reflected in the steady rise in levels of voter participation, from 46 percent in 1952 to 61 percent in the 1967 elections. With majorities at the center and in most state assemblies, the Congress party under Nehru was able to create a stable political system, while at the same time, channeling and accommodating a diverse array of social, economic, and political interests both within and outside the Congress Party.32 Put differently, early democratic institutionalization lent traction and strength to the efforts of civilians to subordinate the military. During the critical years following independence when democracy gradually struck its roots in India, the military had to accept, whether it liked it or not, that its institutional well-being and interests were dependent on its loyalty and support to a popular and legally constituted government, which created an institutional incentive for the military to play by the rules and norms of constitutional government.

Managing diversity In contrast to the Muslim League, the Congress part was as much an anticolonial nationalist movement as it was a “nation-building movement.” Under the popular leadership of Gandhi and Nehru, the party mobilized and deepened mass support throughout India between the 1920s and 1940s, and in the process “turned regionally and locally oriented folk into Indians.”33 In other words, India was better positioned in the pro-democratic background condition of national unity. However, the idea of India was far from universally shared across the country, and the process of Indian nation building was not wholly peaceful (e.g., the Indian military occupied the princely state Hyderabad in 1948. Unlike Pakistan, where Jinnah imposed a virtually alien language on a multi-ethnic country, the Congress Party’s responsive choices in relation to the language question helped contain potential ethnic conflict. The Indian constitution crucially recognized fourteen languages as national and delayed the recognition of Hindi as the sole official language in view of India’s sub-national diversity, expressed in violent agitation for linguistic autonomy in the South, such as Tamil Nadu.34 Although, Nehru was initially reluctant to concede to demands for autonomy, he was sanguine enough to realize that a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society like India could not be governed “through coercion or personal charisma,” and required a democratic political system to forge national unity.35 Hence, in 1952, Nehru allowed the creation of the new state of Andhra Pradesh, out of the Telagu-speaking areas of Madras in the wake of violent protests for state autonomy. In 1955, the government set up a special commission on the reorganization of states on linguistic basis, which eventually resulted in the creation of twenty additional states in India. More than Nehru’s political flexibility, the need for democratic management of diversity was driven by political necessity. The Congress Party’s polity wide mass base and organizational structure which was critical to winning national and state elections meant that Nehru could not simply ignore ethno-regional demands for autonomy emanating from states like Tamil Nadu.36 Hence, unlike the Pakistani state’s political exclusion of the Bengalis in East Pakistan, the Congress party coopted disaffected subnational elements into the political mainstream by officially recognizing and accommodating religious and linguistic diversity. This “state-nation” approach, as opposed to Pakistan’s nation-state approach, helped cement the mass “we-feeling” that is necessary for democracy to take root. Ultimately, the Congress government’s delicate balancing act between central and state power helped provide broad national legitimacy both to the party and the federal union of India, thus depriving the military and other rebellious groups of the pretext for challenging or seizing the state. 184

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Crafting civilian control of the military In his classic work on the Indian Army, Stephen P. Cohen attributes the origins of civilian supremacy in India to the creation of a “three-cornered” civil-military relationship marked by an alliance between the politicians and the civil service against the military, specifically designed for casting the military off from the main centers of the national decision-making process.”37 This was achieved through a politically directed system of checks and balances; a cabinet level defense committee headed by the PM formulated the goals of national defense policy and a civilian-controlled Ministry of Defense (MoD) oversaw military spending. Prior to 1947, authority over the British Indian military was vested in the powerful Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C), who was also a member of the viceroy’s executive council, with a feeble Defense Department. After independence, the C-in-C was made responsible to the defense minister, and military headquarters were relegated to the status of an “attached department” or adjunct of the MoD. Under this new institutional setup, the civilian defense secretary, a member of the elite Indian Administrative Service (IAS), became the principal military accounting authority and chief civilian advisor to the defense minister. In addition to overall expenditures, policy matters that required a government decision, including weapons acquisition, and officer promotions above the rank of major, had to be approved by the MoD, thus curtailing the generals’ autonomy in institutional affairs. Equally, if not more important, was the delegation of the crucial task of both external intelligence as well as monitoring of the military to the civilian Intelligence Bureau (IB), in contrast to Pakistan where military intelligence services dominate the internal and external intelligence sectors of the state.38 Before independence, the Commander in Chief (C-in-C) was the administrative head of all the three military services. This superior status of C-in-C was reduced by the creation of separate C-in-Cs for the air and naval forces. The decision to dethrone the C-in-C was ostensibly taken to equalize the status of the three services and to make each chief independently accountable to the government.39 The C-in-Cs were designated as chiefs of staff in 1955, thus stripping the service chiefs of the mystique and power conjured up by the colonial nomenclature. Military officers were also downgraded in the official warrant of precedence.40 Even though the military accepted these changes begrudgingly,41 their overall effect was a swift and substantial redirection of power and authority away from the military institution at the outset of independence. Over time, these institutional rules and procedures became self-reinforcing by socializing both military officials and civilians into a normative commitment to democratic civil-military relations. One credible account of the evolution of India’s security policies during the first fifteen years following independence described it as “a stable subordination of the military establishment to the civil power.”42

Threats to Indian civil-military relations The 1962 war with India The first major crisis in civil-military relations centered around the 1962 Sino–Indian border conflict. Given the low priority of defense amongst national priorities and the absence of international alliances that the military could use to increase its political might, civilian policymakers were able to keep military budgets low. Nehru viewed high military spending as harmful to both economic development and civilian supremacy. Moreover, the generals were prevented from defining national security threats or responses to military buildups and provocations from China. In fact, Nehru and his close associate, Defense Minister Krishna Menon (1957–1962)43 firmly believed that China would not attack India, even as India pursued a “forward policy” of 185

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building military posts in the contested Aksai Chin region. The result was India’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chinese in October 1962. Before the war, Menon had already irked the army with his brisk treatment of service chiefs, his strategy of exploiting inter-service rivalries over resources,44 and his downright contempt for military discipline and hierarchy, ostensibly expressed in his personal cultivation of favored junior officers.45 Both Nehru and Menon are believed to have blatantly interfered in tactical military operations during the war. Despite these hard blows to its corporate interests and autonomy, the Indian army remained stoically quiet because respect for constitutional authority had become the only game in town. After the war, India undertook a major military modernization program. One result of the conflict was the understanding between the politicians and the military to accord greater operational autonomy to the armed forces.

The Emergency, 1975–77 In 1977, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency citing imminent threats to internal security. During the eighteen-month period in which the Emergency was in force, Gandhi incarcerated her political opposition, cracked down on the press, packed the civil service with loyalists and subdued the judiciary. Beyond the immediate political circumstances, including the prime minister’s disqualification from public office for electoral misconduct by the Allahabad High Court, the Emergency represented the culmination of a decade long process of political instability in post-Nehru India which was marked by the erosion of state capacity and the decline of the Congress party – factors generally considered conducive to military intervention in politics. Organizational factors encouraging military forays into politics, such as the Indian army’s extensive involvement in internal security missions, accompanied this process of political decay. Noted scholars of India have argued that the period before and during Emergency was the only occasion in India’s post-independence history when the legitimacy of the political leadership and the government was seriously impaired.46 Yet, India did not succumb to a military coup (or even attempts to increase military influence) at least in part because the generals did not deem it appropriate to intervene in civilian affairs. PM Gandhi’s flirtation with civilian authoritarianism could have ended rather differently if the Indian military had jumped in the middle of the political skirmishing between the government and the opposition. In other words, the professional self-image and political restraint of the military played an important role in preserving the civil-military status quo relations even when India’s broader constitutional scaffolding cracked.47

The Sikh insurgency In the 1970s and 1980s, Sikh separatists had launched an insurgency against the Indian state. In 1984, several thousand Sikh soldiers mutinied over the Indian army’s assault on their coreligionist insurgents hiding in the Golden Temple in Amritsar. While the rebellion was quickly contained, some 100 soldiers were reportedly killed in the clashes between the mutineers and regular troops. While this was an isolated incident, it revealed the importance of prudently and peacefully managing religious and ethnic diversity in India. Since the 1980s, civil-military relations in India have followed the stable democratic path charted in the first decade after independence. Debates over civil-military relations seem to focus on questions of the appropriate level of military influence over the higher management of defense. Military officers have long resented the lack of military professionals in the MoD and the ministry’s cumbersome procedures as a threat to military effectiveness, exemplified by inordinate delays in weapons acquisition. Both defense analysts and retired officers have expressed 186

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concerns about the slow pace of military modernization due to ossified as incommensurate with India’s aspirations of becoming a great power. A related problem is the lack of a coherent defense strategy planning and coordination, rooted in the lack of proper interface between the political leadership and military. Pressure for defense reforms increased in the aftermath of the Kargil war of 1999 which highlighted key deficiencies in India’s defense management and preparedness for war. The Kargil Review Committee of 2000, as well as the subsequent Group of Ministers (GoM) report, had recommended a significant change in the command structure of the military by creating a Chief of Defense Staff (CDS) who could act as a source of single point military advice to the government and thus address the problem of poor inter-service coordination. However, the political leadership’s fear of the “men on horseback, the bureaucracy’s interest in maintaining its exclusive influence over the MoD, and the two smaller services” (Air Force and the Navy) insecurity vis-à-vis the Army mean that the proposal is unlikely to be implemented.48 Despite these professional concerns, the military has continued to function within the institutional framework of civil-military relations. From the standpoint of civilian control, it could be argued that the seemingly antiquated system of buffering of military interaction with political authorities by a permanent civilian bureaucratic layer has helped shape military behavior by socializing the soldiers into a “logic of appropriateness” that makes existing norms and expectations seem right and natural.49

Conclusion Despite their initial start as the two legatees of the British Indian Army, the militaries of India and Pakistan have followed sharply divergent trajectories that are traceable to the foundational period following decolonization. Over time, the Pakistan military’s prominent and long-lasting role in politics has dealt major blows to the process of democratization in Pakistan. The generals have either directly intervened to overthrow governments or have limited the authority and autonomy of elected governments. Military coups and rule have deepened the country’s structural problems – from weak state capacity to economic underdevelopment – by preventing solutions through the political process. Until 2013, Pakistan seemed stuck in a recurrent authoritarian trap, briefly interrupted by formally elected governments. The first democratic transfer of power in May 2013, if followed by subsequent transitions, could well hold the key to a more democratic future for the country, one in which the military accepts the rules of the constitutional game. Besides, democracy might have a better chance of consolidation if elected governments can deliver on public expectations, and together with the opposition, respect democratic and constitutional norms in both rhetoric and practice. While the military does not seem inclined to seize power after Musharraf ’s rule, the generals can use their allies amongst the political elite (e.g., rightwing parties such as Imran Khan’s Tehrike-e-Insaaf) to destabilize elected governments that challenge its prerogatives. Military rule has never emerged as a viable political formula in India in part because democratic rule quickly became the only game in town. The almost continuous operation of legitimate political institutions, anchored in a democratic constitution accommodative of ethno-linguistic demands for autonomy, have added force, certainty, and stability to civil-military relations and, in the process, socialized political, bureaucratic, and military elites into democratic rules and norms. Within this larger context, the Indian military has evolved a democratic professionalism marked by political aloofness, and respect for the constitution. This “compliance out of commitment” has facilitated democratic control of the soldiers because civilian political elites can rely on the military to enforce their policies and decisions without the fear of resistance or rebellion. 187

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Notes 1 Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 22. 2 See, for instance, Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 1995); Philip Oldenburg, India, Pakistan, and Democracy: Solving the Puzzle of Divergent Paths (London: Routledge, 2010); Maya Tudor, The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 3 Steven Wilkinson, Army and Nation: The Military and Indian Democracy since Independence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 14–15. 4 Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957), 83. 5 See Dunkwart Rustow, “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,” Comparative Politics, 2. 3 (April 1970), 350. 6 Christophe Jaffrelot, ed., Pakistan: Nationalism without a Nation (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002). 7 For instance, only 1 of the 133 Indian Civil Service Indian Political Service officers who opted for Pakistan was a Bengali. Ralph Braibanti, Research on the Bureaucracy of Pakistan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1966), 49. 8 This ethnically skewed recruitment was the legacy of the colonial policy of military recruitment from the martial races of North India, such as the Punjabis and the Pashtuns. See Stephen P. Cohen, The Pakistan Army (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 41–44. 9 Ibid. 10 Rounaq Jahan, Pakistan: Failure of National Integration (Cambridge: Columbia University Press, 1972), 20. 11 Yunas Samad, A Nation in Turmoil: Nationalism and Ethnicity in Pakistan, 1937–1958 (New Delhi: Sage, 1995), 90. 12 The linkage between institutions, especially political parties, and political stability is the central theme of Samuel Huntington’s seminal Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968). 13 The demand for a separate state of Pakistan was primarily articulated by elites from Muslim-minority areas who feared the economic, political, and cultural domination of the Hindus in a united India. See D. A. Low, “Provincial Histories,” in D. A. Low, ed., The Political Inheritance of Pakistan (London: Macmillan, 1991), 7–8. 14 Jahan, Failure of National Integration, 24. 15 Juan Linz, Alfred Stepan, and Yogendra Yadav, Crafting State-Nations: India and Other Multinational Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 1–38. 16 Jaffrelot, Nationalism without a Nation, 18. 17 The concept of viceregalism is elaborated in Khalid Bin Sayeed’s excellent book, Pakistan: The Formative Phase (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 259–260, 279–300. 18 Mohammad Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters: A Political Autobiography (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1967), 217. 19 Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, The Emergence of Pakistan (Lahore: Research Society of Pakistan, University of the Punjab, 2001), 175. 20 Pakistan’s Pashtun majority North-West Frontier Province (presently known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) was part of Afghanistan until the British annexed it in the nineteenth century. 21 Hasan-Askari Rizvi, The Military and Politics in Pakistan, 1947–1997 (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 2000), 56. 22 Jalal, The State of Martial Rule, the Political Economy of Defense in Pakistan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 49–51. 23 Major General Fazal Muqeem Khan, The Story of the Pakistan Army (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1963), 159. 24 Jahan, Failure in National Integration, 53. 25 G. W. Choudhury, Pakistan: Transition from Military to Civilian Rule (Essex: Scorpion, 1988), 8. 26 The Indian Army was one of the main instruments of colonial repression, which Nehru viewed as “an army of occupation whose chief function is to coerce the Indian people” and which has been “employed with deadly effect to crush in us the spirit of resistance.” See Jawaharlal Nehru, Toward Freedom: The Autobiography of Jawaharlal Nehru (New York: The John Day Company, 1941), 380. 27 See Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to General Rob Lockhart, 13 August 1947, General. K. M Cariappa Papers, Group XXI, Serial No. 2 (a), National Archives of India, New Delhi. 28 Lloyd Rudolph and Susanne Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi, the Political Economy of the Indian State (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 23.

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Civil-military relations in South Asia 29 Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 163. 30 Gupta, “Democratic Becoming,” 93. 31 On the significance of electoral sequences in democratic consolidation, see Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, “Political Identities and Electoral Sequences: Spain, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia,” Daedalus, 121. 2 (Spring 1992), 126. 32 On the integrative role of the Congress, see Rajni Kothari’s seminal work, Politics in India (Boston: Little Brown, 1970). 33 Ashutosh Varshney, “Why Democracy Survives in India,” Journal of Democracy, 9. 3 (1998), 3; On India’s subnational, fissiparous tendencies at the time, see Selig Harrison, India: The Most Dangerous Decades (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960). 34 According to the 1951 census, Indians spoke a staggering total of 845 languages and dialects. 87 percent of the total Indian population spoke the 14 ‘national’ languages identified in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian constitution. See Jyotindra Das Gupta, Language Conflict and National Development in India: Group Politics and National Policy in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 31–39. 35 Sumit Ganguly, “Explaining India’s Transition to Democracy,” in Lisa Anderson, ed., Transitions to Democracy (Columbia University Press, 1999). 36 Wilkinson, Army and Nation, 17–20. 37 Cohen, The Pakistan Army, 171. 38 Stephen P. Cohen, The Indian Army and Its Contribution to the Development of a Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971). 39 Minutes of the Defense Committee Meeting, 17 February 1948, File. No. 46, Roll 2, Mountbatten Papers, NMML. 40 For instance, secretary to the Government of India was made equivalent to a full general, when under colonial rule he ranked below even a lieutenant general. See Cohen, The Indian Army, 172–173. 41 One senior former British army officer warned the Indian government in 1949 of his deep apprehension of certain military chiefs’ “attempt to become all-powerful” and the danger this non-cooperation posed to stable civil-military relations.” Excerpt from letter by the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Indian Air Force, Air Marshal Sir Thomas Walker Elmhirst to General Sir Roy Bucher encl. in General Roy Bucher to Noel Baker, 31 July 1949, p. 1, File No: 979-01-87-31, Bucher Papers, National Army Museum, London. 42 Kavic, 1967, p. 141. 43 From 1947 to 1952, the defense portfolio was held by Baldev Singh who was not reappointed because of “Nehru’s desire to shift the post away from the representative of an important military class and from the volatile Punjab.” Nehru held the defense portfolio himself from 1953 to 1955. See Lorne Kavic, India’s Quest for Security, Defense Policies 1947–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 147. 44 Kavic, India’s Quest for Security, 157. 45 Then U.S. Ambassador to India, John K. Galbraith, described the mood in the army during the conflict with China, thus: Menon is “held to have played politics in the army, failed to provide supplies, created dissension among the officers, and damaged morale.” See his Ambassador’s Journal: A Personal Account of the Kennedy Years (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1969), 381. Kavic endorses this view, see India’s Quest for Security, 95–96. 46 See Stephen P. Cohen, “The Military,” in Henry Hart, ed., Indira Gandhi’s India: A Political System Appraised (Boulder: Westview Press, 1976), 208. See also Paul Brass, The Politics of India since Independence, 2nd edition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 62. 47 I explain the the lack of military role expansion in India in 1977 despite the presence of conducive factors in Aqil Shah, “The Dog that Did not Bark: The Army and the Emergency in India,” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 2017, 55.4, pp. 1–19. 48 For a succinct discussion of India’s higher defense organization problems, see Anit Mukherkee, et al., “A Call for Change: Higher Defense Management in India,” IDSA Monograph No. 6 (July 2012). 49 See James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life,” The American Political Science Review, 78 (1985), 734–749.

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15 HUMAN SECURITY IN INDIA Swarna Rajagopalan

What is the human security prognosis for India, home to well over a billion people who bring together every kind of diversity we know – gender, race, ethnicity, caste, class and lifestyle? India persuasively illustrates the limits of a state-centred view of security; the everyday insecurities and anxieties of most of its citizens are quite distant and distinct from those of the Indian state. The Committee on Human Security defined it thus: to protect the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfillment. Human security means protecting fundamental freedoms – freedoms that are the essence of life. It means protecting people from critical (severe) and pervasive (widespread) threats and situations. It means using processes that build on people’s strengths and aspirations. It means creating political, social, environmental, economic, military and cultural systems that together give people the building blocks of survival, livelihood and dignity.1 The 2005, “In Larger Freedom,” a progress report on the Millennium Development Goals, was divided into three parts – freedom from want (a commitment to the Goals); freedom from fear (a new security consensus) and freedom to live in dignity (human rights and the Responsibility to Protect).2 This chapter calls attention to the most pervasive of the threats faced by Indians. The impact of climate change is already being experienced in the accelerated frequency of disasters across ecological zones in India. India’s development choices have affected the homes, lives and livelihoods of countless citizens. From decisions about land use and land acquisition to the construction of large projects with ecological and health consequences, apparently rational decisions have created great insecurity for communities across the country. Displacement is one consequence, and internal displacement is a reality evident in most Indian cities. India also hosts refugees whose presence and concerns play a part in domestic politics. However, this paper will argue, just addressing climate change, development and displacement will not substantially ameliorate the human security outlook. Inequality exacerbates the impact of these three threats by creating dramatically different survival chances between sections of the population. Patriarchy (and thus gender inequality) sets up a ubiquitous social hierarchy that manifests in violence, lack of access and diminished humanity, and affects not just women and 190

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gender and sexual minorities, but ultimately also men. Finally, where states and non-state actors both regard the democratic public sphere as undesirable obstacles and seek to limit civil liberties and freedoms, policy-making on climate change, development and displacement is likely to be exclusionary and based on incomplete understanding, and the results ultimately counter-productive and unsustainable.

Three human security challenges Climate change Climate change refers to a long-term change in climate, be it warming or cooling. Global warming in this instance is responsible for changing weather patterns around the world and along with that, habitation, livelihood and survival chances. Outlining the relationship between climate change and human security, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrote that climate change will undermine livelihoods and force people to migrate.3 The Panel’s experts saw greater vulnerability to climate change consequences among those who live in conflict zones, and at the same time, foresaw that poor mitigation or adaptation might increase the risk of violence. This makes it one of the most important human security threats anywhere, and India, where a large percentage of population is already at risk due to poverty, must certainly contend with this.4 A 2013 study commissioned by the World Bank identified the consequences of climate change in India.5 India is experiencing hotter and longer summers than before, with consequences for agriculture in western and southern India. Indian cities will trap heat and urban planning will have to contend with this. Monsoons will become unpredictable, resulting in more frequent drought and flooding. Drought will become more common in North India with extreme heat drastically diminishing crop yield. Already low groundwater levels are expected to drop further. Water scarcity is already acute in many parts of the Deccan.6 Urbanisation, population growth and growing demand could exacerbate this scarcity manifold. Melting Himalayan glaciers will alter the flow of major river systems in the Indian subcontinent causing havoc for food security, livelihoods and settlements. Rising sea-levels put densely populated coastal cities like Mumbai and Kolkata at risk, especially Mumbai which is built in large part on reclaimed land. This study anticipates that water scarcity, rising temperatures and intrusion of sea water will threaten rice and wheat yields. Water scarcity and heat will affect the production of both hydroelectric and thermal power. Heat wave deaths, malnutrition and vector-borne diseases are likely to be on the rise, and India’s poor will be disproportionately affected. Displacement due to climate change is inevitable as life becomes untenable, and some of this displacement will take across borders, given that South Asia’s ecological regions and political borders are not coterminous. Farmer suicides epitomise this human security crisis. In 2014, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported the occurrence of 5650 farmer suicides, of which half took place in Maharashtra. About 72% of these were small and marginal farmers.7 NCRB reports that about 20% of farmer suicides follow bankruptcy and about 16% are because of crop failure – surely a cause of bankruptcy. In a reply to Parliament in April 2016, it was reported that there had been 116 farmer suicides due to “agrarian reasons”.8 Landlessness complicates vulnerability and resilience.9 It is hard for the landless to get crop insurance or access government programmes to offset losses or to adapt to climate change. They do not invest in improving land that does not belong to them through soil conservation or afforestation, making it attractive to others. Occasionally, an entire family commits suicide, but for the most part there are survivors who have to build their lives against odds that have just been raised. Land titles are usually in men’s names, leaving women vulnerable with the demise of the title-holders. Adult women inherit the burdens of debt and 191

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ecological damage along with responsibility for the household, a responsibility made impossible by social restrictions on their mobility (access to livelihood) outside the home.10

Development strategies UNDP’s 1994 Human Development Report first elucidated the idea of human security. A UNDP Guidance Note tells us that while human development is about expanding choices and freedoms, human security is about protecting people’s freedom to exercise those choices and protecting their opportunities.11 Ironically, what we came to understand as “development” in the 20th century involved too many trade-offs between a rise in our incomes (personal or national) and our well-being as a society. India’s choice in 1947 of a planned, industry-led development path included large irrigation and infrastructural projects as well. Despite changing technological and global economic realities, three (not unrelated) strands persist as sources of insecurity to ordinary Indian citizens: the question of land; the impact of large infrastructural projects and the need for energy security. The 118.6 million land-owning cultivators counted by the 2011 Census make up 10% of India’s population and around 24% of its workforce,12 and 144.3 million work as landless agricultural labourers.13 What does it mean to be without land? Bina Agarwal writes: There is also a strong correlation between landlessness and rural poverty. Even a small plot can protect a family from destitution by providing supplementary income. Secure land access reduces the risk of poverty and enhances food security. Also, those owning some land can negotiate a higher wage in the labour market, since they have something to fall back on and hence greater bargaining power than the landless.14 Since independence, the right to property has been limited by social justice imperatives and land redistribution (through land gifts, for instance) and land ceiling were widely accepted and promoted ideals. With liberalisation, since the 1980s, the accent has shifted from redistributing land to the landless to the acquisition of land for agro-business, infrastructure and industry. Now, private businesses or public-private collaborative ventures are also acquiring land. Indian villagers have taken on the state and its corporate partners in long-drawn out battles, sometimes in court, sometimes violent. Resistance against land acquisition in Nandigram and Singur, West Bengal and in Jagatsinghpur and the Niyamgiri Hill district in Odisha, illustrate. The issues are alienation of traditional – sometimes sacred – land, loss of livelihood security, displacement and arbitrary action by the state first to acquire land and then to enforce that decision. In each instance, the immediate threat posed to villagers is complicated by escalating violence (on all sides) and by the climate of political and economic uncertainty created. The campaigns against large infrastructural and manufacturing projects like the Sardar Sarovar Project and the Tehri Dam argue that the ecosystem of the basin is suffering damage, that people dependent on it have been rendered destitute, that resettlement has neither been just nor adequate, and that ultimately, the return on the investment will not equal the damage to people’s lives.15 Concerns about displacement are central to both contexts. In 2000, India’s Supreme Court ruled that the benefits of the Sardar Sarovar Dam far outweighed the costs in displacement and environmental damage, and that without the dam, the scale of deprivation would cause far greater harm in the long run. In a Working Paper for the World Commission on Dams, authors list eleven common problems arising from dam construction at various sites around India.16 These include: failure to be consulted and informed; absence of advance and comprehensive planning for rehabilitation; 192

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undervaluation of compensation; inability of the recipients to handle cash compensation; failure to acquire alternate cultivable lands; traumatic forced and delayed relocation; problems at resettlement sites; multiple displacements; failure to provide alternate livelihoods; problems posed by host communities and the special vulnerabilities of certain groups (and this study points to the fact that 40% of those displaced by such projects are from tribal communities). In the quest for energy security, though solar and wind energy are now catching on, nuclear energy has been a favourite for its ability to deliver electricity in large quantities. For decades, there have been reports of leaks from the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station17 and the Kalpakkam nuclear plant.18 These, and the streaming visuals from the Fukushima accident in March 2011, reinforced the anxiety of those living near the Jaitapur and Koodankulam projects. The Jaitapur plant places an untested nuclear reactor design in a seismically and ecologically sensitive zone on the Maharashtra coast.19 In Koodankulam’s neighbourhood, villagers ask questions about nuclear waste and disbursement of extremely hot waste water into the sea, destroying marine life – their livelihood.20 They worry about health risks to future generations from the contamination caused by other waste materials. For their protests, the Koodankulam villages have been charged with sedition, illustrating how development is securitised by the state. Protest does not negate the importance of development work, but shows that in certain circumstances, development strategies can engender as much insecurity as they seek to eliminate. Displacement, environmental damage including increased likelihood of disasters, health concerns and livelihood and food insecurity are common themes in the stories of these protest movements. The use of coercive means by either side – whether as civil rights violations or the use of force – blurs the line between human and traditional security in these situations. In 2008, an Expert Group of the Planning Commission underscored this connection in a report on development challenges in extremist-affected areas, found some common factors in areas affected by insurgency such as low literacy, high infant mortality, greater forest cover, low urbanisation, dependence on agriculture with low yields, landlessness and marginal farming, forcible land acquisition and few roads or banks.21

Displacement Disasters, conflict and development are the three main push-factors for displacement. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) estimated that about 3.65 million Indians were internally displaced in 2015 due to disasters, approximately the size of Montreal, Melbourne and Pusan.22 Also according to IDMC, the 612,000 conflict-displaced in India in 2015 include 1000 new conflict IDPs. Disasters are already the most important cause of displacement in India, and the impact of ignored or unmanaged climate change will exacerbate that. IDMC estimates that China, India and the Philippines are the worst-affected in these terms, and floods, storms, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions (not in India) are the most common causes.23 Repeated displacement within the same areas points both to people’s vulnerability and poor disaster mitigation practices. Post-disaster displacement is usually protracted and over time, the displaced drop “off the radar,” the report warns. Invisible, their access to relief, resources and opportunities is negligible. Disempowered by nativist politics, IDPs are nobody’s constituency to defend and protect. According to IDMC, conflict displacement has happened in Assam, Nagaland and Jammu and Kashmir.24 People are displaced after incidents that range along the conflict spectrum from land disputes, communal violence, election-related violence, ethnic violence, insurgency (and counter-insurgency operations) or clashes between non-state actors. Secessionist movements, identity-based autonomy movements (and ethnic cleansing) and localised violence like riots or 193

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nativist pressures are three of the main causes of internal displacement in India.25 India has also hosted refugees for over thirty years from Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Somalia, raising politically sensitive questions about foreign policy and citizenship rights and entitlements, especially when the refugees remain for over a generation.26 The third category of IDPs in India is that of those displaced by development projects. A study devoted to development displacement in India says that displacement can take place at any time, starting from when people hear about a project to much later when the impact of the project changes their quality of life and forces them to move.27 Such displacement is enabled by the government’s exploitation of the land acquisition process, which allows officials to define public interest and then act accordingly.28 Lack of transparency and corruption characterise land deals. International standards require public consultations prior to eviction as well as a participatory design of resettlement; this rarely happens. Having the police enforce evictions and the lack of accountability for collateral damage underscore the power asymmetry between officials and affected communities. Protests are dealt with forcefully. Tribal rights are rarely respected. All displaced communities suffer the erosion of their social support networks.29 They are impoverished, almost never living as well as they did prior to relocation, each subsequent move more degrading. Sub-optimal resettlement conditions mean deteriorating access to amenities, opportunities and livelihoods and greater vulnerability of women and transgendered persons. Resettlement, for instance, rarely provides for transgendered persons so that, already socially isolated, they are left to fend for themselves in open spaces, without shelter, without access to toilets, compensation or protection.30 In sum, the displaced rarely enjoy freedom from fear, freedom from want or freedom to live in dignity.

Structures deepen the human security challenges Solutions begin where denial ends. However, technocratic solutions to each of these challenges will not suffice. The 2015 Chennai floods illustrated how human security in India is a composite of external problems with everyday consequences and profound structural problems that can no longer wait. In November-December 2015, Chennai and much of Tamil Nadu experienced torrential rains and flooding thrice within four weeks.31 The third round of rains lasted four days and resulted in destruction and disruption, not to mention trauma from which Chennai residents have not fully recovered at the time of writing in July 2016. There has been speculation that the heavy rains were in part due to climate change.32 As early as the first round of rains, urban and environmental activists were pointing to the adverse impact of development choices in the city – thoughtless construction over reclaimed catchment areas and marshlands to accommodate both housing and industry.33 This construction essentially meant there were few natural drainage areas left and water was bound to accumulate easily. As the Chembarambakkam reservoir which supplies water to the city approached the overflow mark, the city decided to release water into the Adyar river. This caused unprecedented flooding, and as water entered homes in central Chennai localities far from the reservoir, families lost their hard-earned homes and were displaced.34 The Chennai floods affected localities across the city, sparing no one, but predictably, socio-economic class did mediate the experience and affluent and upper middle class Chennai residents experienced great inconvenience and anxiety but not the scale of devastation and loss that the working class, poor and migrant labourers experienced.35 The 2015 floods affected Chennai as even the tsunami, its impact confined to coastal neighbourhoods, had not – a glimpse into the future for the rest of India. 194

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90% of the property, livestock and crops destroyed in Cuddalore belonged to Dalits whose homes and lands are often in the low-lying areas on the periphery of the village.36 But upper caste groups insisted that relief trucks visit them first before visiting Dalit settlements. Suffering the greatest devastation, Dalits had to wait their turn for help.37 In some cases, they were even denied access to clean drinking water. Relief-workers hesitated to reach out to Chennai’s marginalised transgender community and their social location made it hard for them to reach for help beyond a few small local organisations that work for their welfare.38 Lack of gender sensitivity meant, for instance, that it was hard to understand how the loss of clothes deepened their vulnerability. Thousands of women were part of the relief operations, both digital and on-ground. Some volunteers reported sexual harassment even in that situation, such as abuse of phone numbers posted to facilitate relief work.39 Post-floods, Chennaiites have complained that the public is never taken into confidence on critical infrastructural and environmental questions and there is no accountability.

These snapshots illustrate how inequality, patriarchy and a democratic deficit compound a human security crisis. As a corollary, addressing climate change, development failures and displacement without addressing them head-on is to take action, not find solutions.

Inequality Inequality was both a polemical and policy concern for Indians in the first decades after independence but as Indians earned more and spent more, and the Indian middle class was growing fast and drawing global attention, inequality and equity dropped out of the discourse. In the last two years, inequality has regained the attention of development practitioners and scholars. The 2014 Oxfam Report sees extreme economic inequality as a barrier to growth, driving inequalities “in health, education and life chances,” reinforcing gender inequality and trapping families in poverty for generations.40 Inequality is associated with public health concerns – the poorest everywhere are the most susceptible to epidemics with the least access to health care. Inequality has also been associated with rise in violent crime. A 2016 International Monetary Fund study of inequality in Asia found that not only does India have one of the highest levels of income inequality but that the gap was widening very fast.41 Gains from growth are accruing to the middle class but not reaching the poorer sections of society. Inequality of educational opportunity reinforces inequality, and gender, caste and religion determine school attendance and attainment. The study faults India’s service delivery, revenue collection and financial inclusiveness. Inequality is insecurity. Resentment and conflict fester when one ethnic or other social group feels consistently disadvantaged by another or some are unable to access opportunities that seem to come easily to others. However, far more fundamentally, inequality is insecurity because it translates into unequal survival chances; educational opportunities; access to health care and nutrition; the difference between livelihoods and professions; scarcity and abundance in everyday life; and finally, political influence. To illustrate: the infant mortality rate averages 1 in 20 children nationally, but 1 in 18 in rural areas and 1 in 29 in urban areas.42 Unequal access to a good quality of life, health care and nutrition, as also the mother’s age, education and pre-natal care, alter a baby’s survival chances. 195

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The consequences of climate change, development and displacement tend to reflect and reinforce existing social and economic inequalities. A secure environment for all citizens comes when compliance with international conventions and regulation take into account the differentiated impact of these problems and when equity and equality are considered integral elements of a solution. Thus, a food and water truck in a disaster zone would go first to the worst hit neighbourhood and not to those with the power and privilege to command services.

Patriarchy Most Indian communities are patriarchal; men are privileged and preferred and authority and ownership pass through the male line. The Indian state institutionalises patriarchy in countless ways from the routine insistence on listing father’s or husband’s names to court judgments that advise marriage between rapist and victim because wrongdoing lies in the diminution of marriage prospects. To speak of patriarchy is to acknowledge the incomplete nature of our perspective on the world and its security. Patriarchy determines, power relationships, access and resources across the length of the gender spectrum, producing a wide variety of human experiences that include both vulnerability and agency. For instance, if strictures on women’s dress and mobility make it hard for them to escape, as with the 2004 tsunami, they have also learnt not just to redesign and rebuild their communities but to teach others. Similarly, if men hold resources and property in a community, they are also disadvantaged by the expectation that they will be active in the public sphere, which means they are more likely to be killed in violent conflict. Those whose gender and sexual identities are harder to identify, are more vulnerable to abuse, including violent abuse, because of the fear and anxiety that others feel towards them, and to being overlooked in relief and resettlement programmes. India underperforms on virtually every indicator related to gender equality. The sex ratio is just 940 women per 1000 men, and the child sex ratio even more ominously just 914.43 As of 2014, for every 100 men, only 33.8 women are part of the work force.44 The Maternal Mortality Rate is 181 deaths for every 100,000 live-births (compared to the Sustainable Development Goal of 70). Women average about 10–12% in legislatures. But each of these statistics has consequences for men and others in society. Parts of India with an extremely low sex ratio are faced with a shortage of brides who then have to be purchased from other places. This has resulted in a rise in polyandry and sexual slavery as families are unable to purchase more than one wife for all their sons. If women are such a small part of the work-force, the burden of supporting the family and community falls disproportionately on the shoulders of men. For India, it is a loss of talent and productivity, and for families, it is the loss of another earning member. High maternal mortality figures mean pregnancy is not safe, in part because of the quality of care, and in turn that means anaemic or low birth-weight children who cannot easily fulfil their potential as humans. The lack of gender diversity in political decision-making means policies are based on incomplete information about stakeholders. Patriarchy skews our reading of situations in favour of a small group of privileged men, while the experiences and needs of the majority are invisible. A gendered analysis starts to put names, faces and stories to the impersonal lists of good practices that global technocrats have placed in the policy domain. Solutions are sustainable when the process by which they are devised is inclusive and sensitive to reconciling everyone’s needs. Gender inequality cuts across and reinforces all other kinds of socio-economic and political inequality. At this oppressive intersection of caste, class and gender in India, violence is pervasive, though diverse. The fear of violence justifies exclusion – whether as access to common resources, as punishment for crossing group lines, simply drawing attention on the way to college or in a 196

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hostile working environment – and over time, exclusion leads to invisibility. The lives and physical integrity of women and gender and sexual minorities in the socio-economic groups at the bottom of the pyramid virtually have no value.

Democratic deficit Indians proudly describe themselves as the world’s largest democracy and India’s elections are considered evidence. However, India inherited and retained several structures and laws of the colonial state, intended to restrain rather than make room for popular participation. India’s federal structure, its emergency laws, its penal code and the structure of its civil services allow a government to decentralise or centralise its functions and resources. Colonial sedition laws remain and new laws that buttress official impunity have been added. Fundamental rights – equality, speech, assembly, conscience, mobility and constitutional remedies – are guaranteed, subject to riders that can greatly curtail them. In other words, the sanctity of India’s constitutional vision depends on the politics of the ruling government. On the other hand, Indians have famously been described as “argumentative.”45 Indians have questioned, debated and challenged at every turn government decisions that affect them directly. Protest campaigns have sustained long enough to be characterised as people’s movements. In Kudankulam, charged with sedition, the villagers continue to petition and ask questions of decision-makers. In spite of mounting pressure, NGOs asking questions about the environmental impact of large industrial projects persist. In virtually all cases, those who actively throw down the gauntlet of questions are “ordinary people.” A certain tension defines the relationship between state and civil society whose function is to enforce accountability. Defensive governments react disproportionately to criticism and questioning, deploying all means to suppress dissent including censorship, tax laws, sedition laws, enforcement and intelligence mechanisms or more recently, social media defamation wars. Willingness to listen, openness to debate, reaching to include all points of view and all experiences and seeking active public engagement on issues important to stakeholder groups are prerequisites for workable and sustainable solutions. Responsiveness, accountability and transparency depend on governments being willing to communicate with citizens (individually or collectively). Elections apart, such democracy creates the conditions for human security – freedom from fear, freedom from want and freedom to live in dignity.

In sum What stares us in the face are massive problems relating to climate change, to following a development course that is inclusive and sustainable and to helping people find safer and better lives at home or wherever they find themselves. Over the decades, experts around the world have found ways to fix these problems – from controlling emissions to looking for alternative fuels to minimising the practical impact of displacement with solutions like schools in refugee camps. What we know however, is that these remain incomplete fixes. Despite investing time and resources, the problems remain. Abiding, pervasive inequality that is intersected and reinforced by patriarchy and misogyny, and a climate where every interface between the state, groups and citizens borders on the antagonistic make it impossible to arrive at the solutions that serve everyone’s needs and harm no one. Far from doing no harm, inequality, patriarchy and the democratic deficit complicate questions of voice and access in any situation and deepen vulnerability to violence and human rights infractions. Without facing up to these harmful structural realities, human security in India will remain an elusive, impossible dream. 197

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Notes 1 Commission on Human Security, Human Security Now, New York, 2003, at www.un.org/humansecurity/ sites/www.un.org.humansecurity/files/chs_final_report-_english.pdf (accessed July 5, 2016). 2 United Nations, “In larger freedom: Towards development, security and human rights for all, report of the secretary-general,” March 21, 2005, at www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/59/2005 (accessed July 5, 2016). 3 W.N. Adger, J.M. Pulhin, J. Barnett, G.D. Dabelko, G.K. Hovelsrud, M. Levy, Ú. Oswald Spring, and C.H. Vogel, “Human security,” in Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, in Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects: Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by C.B., V.R. Barros, D.J. Dokken, K.J. Mach, M.D. Mastrandrea, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L.White Field, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 2014, pages 755–791; Ben Wisner, Maureen Fordham, Ilan Kelman, Barbara Rose Johnston, David Simon, Allan Lavell, Hans Günter Brauch,Ursula Oswald Spring, Gustavo Wilches-Chaux, Marcus Moench, and Daniel Weiner, “Climate change and human security,” Radix – Radical Interpretations of Disaster, Disaster Diplomacy and Peace Research and European Security Studies (AFES-PRESS), April 15, 2007, at www.afes-press.de/pdf/ClimateChange_and_HumanSecurity (accessed July 6, 2016). 4 W.N. Adger et al., “Human security,” page 762. 5 World Bank, “India: Climate change impacts,” June 19, 2013, at www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/ 2013/06/19/india-climate-change-impacts (accessed July 6, 2016). 6 A.A.K., “The economist explains: Why India has a water crisis,” May 24, 2016, at www.economist.com/ blogs/economist-explains/2016/05/economist-explains-11 (accessed July 7, 2016). 7 National Crime Records Bureau, “Accidental deaths and suicides in India 2014,” Ministry of Home Affairs, 2015, at http://ncrb.gov.in/StatPublications/ADSI/ADSI2014/chapter-2A%20farmer%20suicides. pdf (accessed July 7, 2016). 8 PTI, “116 farmers committed suicide in 2016: 10 states reeling under drought,” April 28, 2016, at www.hindustantimes.com/india/116—committed-suicide-in-2016–10-states-reeling-under-drought/ story-mi8vmvvZOFwoB2gdKYy8jN.html (accessed July 7, 2016). 9 Chris Jochnick, “Secure land rights and climate change resilience go hand in hand: Here’s why,” June 2, 2016, at http://news.trust.org/item/20160602085914-nfeqd/ (accessed July 7, 2016). 10 Ranjana Padhi, “On women surviving farmer suicides in Punjab,” Economic and Political Weekly, XLIV, no. 19 (May 2009): 53–59. 11 Oscar A. Gomez and Des Gasper, Human Security: A Thematic Guidance Note for Regional and National Human Development Report Teams, 2013, at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/human_security_ guidance_note_r-nhdrs.pdf (accessed July 10, 2016). 12 P. Sainath, “Over 2,000 fewer farmers every day,” The Hindu, May 2, 2013. 13 Prachi Salve, “How many farmers does India really have?” Hindustan Times, August 11, 2014. 14 Bina Agarwal, “A home of her own,” December, 2012, at http://infochangeindia.org/agenda/genderbias/a-home-of-her-own.html (accessed July 12, 2016). 15 Friends of River Narmada, “A brief introduction to the Narmada issue,” at www.narmada.org/ introduction.html (accessed July 13, 2016). Also, Todd Nachowitz, “The Tehri Dam, India – stumbling towards catastrophe,” Cultural Survival Quarterly, 12, no. 2 (1988), at www.culturalsurvival.org/ publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/tehri-dam-india-stumbling-toward-catastrophe (accessed July 13, 2016). 16 Ravi Hemadri, Harsh Mander, and Vijay Nagaraj, Dams, Displacement, Policy and Law in India, World Commission on Dams, Thematic Review I.3: Displacement, Resettlement, rehabilitation, reparation and development, 1999, pages vii–xxiv, at http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/articles/ncsxna/ art_dam.pdf (accessed July 13, 2016). 17 Mohammed Iqbal, “Activists cast doubts over IAEA review of Rajasthan atomic power plant,” The Hindu, November 11, 2012. 18 Roshen Chandran, “Underplaying Kalpakkam safety concerns,” April 15, 2012, at www.thehoot.org/ story_popup/underplaying-kalpakkam-safety-concerns-5865 (accessed July 13, 2016). 19 Greenpeace India, “Jaitapur nuclear power plant,” at www.greenpeace.org/india/en/What-We-Do/ Nuclear-Unsafe/Nuclear-Power-in-India/Jaitapur-nuclear-power-plant/ (accessed July 13, 2016). 20 S. Anitha, No echoes Koodankulam, Trivandrum: Fingerprint Series, 2012.

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Human security in India 21 Richard Mahapatra, “Green reasons for red rage,” May, 2008, at http://infochangeindia.org/environment/ analysis/green-reasons-for-red-rage.html (accessed July 13, 2016). Also see, Report of an Expert Group to Planning Commission, Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas, New Delhi: Government of India, 2008. 22 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, “India: Country information,” 2015, at www.internaldisplacement.org/database/country?iso3=IND (accessed July 4, 2016). 23 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, “Global estimates 2015: People displaced by disasters,” July, 2015, at www.internal-displacement.org/assets/library/Media/201507-globalEstimates-2015/20150713global-estimates-2015-en-v1.pdf (accessed July 16, 2016). 24 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, “India IDP figures analysis, 2015,” at www.internal-displacement. org/south-and-south-east-asia/india/figures-analysis (accessed July 16, 2016). 25 Mahendra Lama, “Internal displacement in India: Causes, protection and dilemmas,” Forced Migration Review, 8 (2000): 24–25. 26 Akshaya Nath, “The ignored plight of Sri Lankan refugees in Tamil Nadu,” India Today, June 9, 2016. 27 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, “Pushed aside: Displaced for ‘development’ in India,” July, 2016, at www.internal-displacement.org/assets/publications/2016/201607-ap-india-pushed-aside-en. pdf (accessed July 16, 2016), pages 12–13. 28 “Pushed aside: Displaced for ‘development’ in India,” pages 17–21. 29 “Pushed aside: Displaced for ‘development’ in India,” pages 21–24. 30 Chaman Pincha, “Gender differential impacts of the 2004 tsunami,” in Women and Disasters in South Asia: Survival, Security and Development, edited by Linda Racioppi and Swarna Rajagopalan, London and New York: Routledge, 2016, pages 24–63; and Swarna Rajagopalan, “Gender violence, conflict, internal displacement and peacebuilding,” Peace Prints: South Asian Journal of Peacebuilding, 3, no. 1 (Spring 2010), at http://wiscomp.org/pubn/wiscomp-peace-prints/3-1/Swarna.pdf (accessed July 16, 2016). 31 Anjali Vaidya, “Unnatural disaster: After the Chennai floods,” April 22, 2016, at www.dissentmagazine. org/online_articles/after-chennai-floods-development-disaster-climate-change-democracy (accessed July 16, 2016). 32 Zia Haq, “Tamil Nadu deluge climate change trailer, matches global warming signs,” The Hindustan Times, November 19, 2015, at www.hindustantimes.com/india/tamil-nadu-deluge-a-trailer-of-climatechange/story-X3MvFnaG94uOuTiU6es1rM.html (accessed July 5, 2016); PTI, “Chennai rain result of global warming: Indian experts,” Indian Express, December 2, 2015, at http://indianexpress.com/ article/india/india-news-india/chennai-rain-result-of-global-warming-indian-experts/ (accessed July 5, 2016); K.S. Rajgopal, “Chennai floods due to climate change?” The Hindu, December 14, 2015, at www. thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/chennai-floods-due-to-climate-change/article 7980332.ece (accessed July 5, 2016). 33 Nityanand Jayaraman, “Chennai floods are not a natural disaster – they’ve been created by unrestrained construction,” Scroll, November 18, 2015, at http://scroll.in/article/769928/chennai-floodsare-not-a-natural-disaster-theyve-been-created-by-unrestrained-construction (accessed July 5, 2016); T.K. Smitha, “Human negligence cause Chennai flood carnage, say urban planning experts,” NDTV. com, December 11, 2015, at www.ndtv.com/chennai-news/human-negligence-cause-chennai-floodcarnage-say-urban-planning-experts-1253954 (accessed July 5, 2016); Deepak Vijayaraghavan, “Manmade mistakes responsible for recent Chennai floods, says former TN Secretary,” January 4, 2016, at www.orfonline.org/research/man-made-mistakes-responsible-for-recent-chennai-floods-says-formertn-secretary/ (accessed July 5, 2016). 34 Dhanya Rajendran and Ramanathan S., “Chennai floods: What happened at Chembarambakkam, negligence or nature’s fury?” The News Minute, December 9, 2015, at www.thenewsminute.com/article/ chennai-floods-what-happened-chembarambakkam-negligence-or-nature’s-fury-36675 (accessed July 5, 2016); Sandhya Ravishankar, “How official negligence turned a natural crisis into a human-made catastrophe,” The Wire, December 9, 2015, at http://thewire.in/16938/how-official-negligence-turned-a-naturalcrisis-into-a-human-made-catastrophe/ (accessed July 5, 2016). 35 Concerned Citizens, “Chennai floods impact survey reveals extent of damage,” Countercurrents, January 16, 2016, at www.countercurrents.org/cc160116.htm (accessed July 5, 2016); Swarna Rajagopalan, “Notes from the Chennai floods: Better off than most,” DNA India, December 5, 2015, at www.dnaindia. com/india/comment-notes-from-the-chennai-floods-better-off-than-most-2152691 (accessed July 5, 2016); Express News Service, “Two million people affected in Chennai flood,” New Indian Express, December 5, 2016, at www.newindianexpress.com/states/tamil_nadu/Two-Million-People-Affectedin-Chennai-Flood/2015/12/05/article3162078.ece (accessed July 5, 2016); K. 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rains paralysed India’s Chennai,” BBC, November 19, 2015, at www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india34856162 (accessed July 5, 2016). Salma Rehman, “Murky floodwater mixes with casteism: Dalits refused relief in Cuddalore,” Catchnews, December 10, 2015, at www.catchnews.com/social-sector/chennai-s-darkest-moment-yet-dalits-inflood-hit-cuddalore-denied-drinking-water-shelter-1449558126.html (accessed July 16, 2016). Sruthisagar Yamunan, “Caste rears its ugly head in calamity,” The Hindu, December 10, 2015, at www. thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/caste-raises-its-ugly-head-in-calamity/article7968093.ece (accessed July 16, 2016). Janani Sampath, “Transgenders say they have been shunned by relief groups,” DT Next, December 13, 2015, at www.dtnext.in/News/City/2015/12/13175213/Transgenders-say-they-have-been-shunnedby-relief.vpf (accessed July 16, 2016). R. Vasundara, “Even during Chennai floods, men harass women volunteers!” iDiva.com, December 11, 2015, at www.idiva.com/news-work-life/even-during-chennai-floods-men-harass-women-volunteers/ 15121118 (accessed July 16, 2016). Oxfam, “Even it up: Time to end extreme inequality,” 2014, at www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/ files/file_attachments/cr-even-it-up-extreme-inequality-291014-en.pdf (accessed July 19, 2016). Sonali Jain-Chandra, Tidiane Kinda, Kalpana Kochhar, Shi Piao, and Johanna Schauer, “Sharing the growth dividend: Analysis of inequality in Asia,” IMF Working Paper WP/16/48, March 2016, at www. imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp1648.pdf (accessed July 19, 2016); Manas Chakravarty, “Just how high is income inequality in India?” LiveMint, May 23, 2016, at www.livemint.com/Opinion/ JKZYjYjixRipa95tw2AOXK/Just-how-high-is-income-inequality-in-India.html (accessed July 19, 2016); Sumit Mishra, “Why worry about inequality in India?” LiveMint, November 15, 2016, at www. livemint.com/Sundayapp/dLBvWrnA7Kk6FDZgsuV0nI/Why-worry-about-inequality-in-India.html (accessed July 19, 2016). Office of Registrar-General, “Maternal & child mortality and total fertility rates: Sample Registration System (SRS),” July 7, 2011, at http://censusindia.gov.in/vital_statistics/SRS_Bulletins/MMR_release_ 070711.pdf (accessed July 19, 2016). Census of India, “Final population totals census 2011,” at http://censusindia.gov.in/2011census/census infodashboard/index.html (accessed July 21, 2016). World Bank, “Gender data portal: India,” at http://datatopics.worldbank.org/gender/country/india (accessed July 21, 2016). Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian, New Delhi: Picador India, 2006.

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16 INDIA AND ITS GREAT POWER ASPIRATIONS1 William R. Thompson

Is India a great power? If not now, will it become one? Or, is it a regional power, a major power, a leading power, a world power, an emerging power, or a global power?2 If not, will it achieve one or more of these statuses? As India’s rank in economic and military size and capability improves, these are natural questions. Marked improvements in relative capability unsurprisingly raise questions of whether an ascending state has achieved, is acquiring, or some day might attain elite status in world politics. International relations have always had a bias toward elite states. The metaphor comparing states to elephants and grass is apt in this respect. A few states are like elephants capable of dealing with other states as if they were grass to be trampled on when the elephants feel so predisposed. The metaphor is assuredly extreme but the traditional reflex to talk about great and small powers is well ingrained in our discourse. Some powerful states are more likely to get what they want while others are forced to accept their relative weakness and bow to the inevitable – at least some of the time. Of course, it does not always work out that way – mice can roar and scare the elephants away. Still, ascending states would rather be compared to elephants than mice, and who can blame them. So, is India a great power or might it become one? This question has been around for some time. Pardeesi relates how Indian foreign policy under Nehru was oriented towards demonstrating India’s great power status from independence, eschewing alignment and establishing a leadership role for what was later to be called the Global South.3 Defeat by China in 1962 punctured this balloon and led to a de facto alliance with the Soviet Union and a more subordinated status. However, five or six decades later, significant gains in nuclear weaponry, economic growth, and conventional military capability have brought about a re-emergence of the great power status question. The discussion over the last two decades is not characterized by consensus. Different terms are used. Great powers and major powers are synonymous. Regional powers are not the same thing but there is little question that India is and has long been the leading regional power of South Asia. Most analysts, however, do not equate regional power status with great or major power status, implying that the latter two statuses are not conditioned by regional constraints or boundaries. Leading, world, and global powers are something else. These statuses suggest a rank beyond great power, either because the world has changed radically since the avowedly Eurocentric great power label made most sense before 1945 or because some additional capability is now expected of great powers if they are to operate in a genuinely global milieu. Hence, France may retain important roles in western Europe and parts of sub-Saharan Africa, thereby contributing to its image as a traditional great power, but can it exert much clout beyond its home and immediately 201

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adjacent regions? Can it claim and project influence around the world, as implied by a “global” or “world” adjective? Interestingly, these analytical distinctions show up in Indian foreign policy maker discourse as well. For instance, prior to the advent of the Modi regime, statesmen displayed their aspirations to great power status. Then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh freely acknowledged as much in a U.S. television interview in 2006.4 More recently, however, the BJP framing of the issue is stated in terms of aspiring to be “a leading power, rather than just a balancing power.”5 Ashley Tellis interprets this aspiration as symbolizing the desire to be a traditional great power but it may well represent something more.6 The BJP prime minister and foreign secretary, in aspiring to become something more than merely serving as a convenient contributor to a containment coalition in Asia, appear to be seeking a more independent and genuine extra-regional or global role.7 Whether this implies an aspiration escalation of the long running Indian search for higher rank remains to be seen. In the interim, the expanding literature on India’s once and future elite rank is characterized by a literal host of factors or possible factors. Nayar and Paul lead the pack with as many as ten different foci that could be significant for upward status mobility but most authors stress only a few factors.8 All point to India’s growing wealth and population size. India’s present and immediate future gross domestic product, a high economic growth rate, and its expected movement into the position of the world’s largest population currently held by China give India a bulk claim to elite status.9 Political-military factors that are sometimes stressed include the possession of nuclear weapons10; a high and increasing share of the world’s military expenditures11; greater/lesser assertiveness in foreign policy12; soft power13 and the expansion of India’s strategic frontiers and increased out of region activity.14 Support from the United States for higher rank is often stressed as well, although such support can be expected to be met with corresponding hostility from China and Russia for that and other reasons.15 At the same time, there are political-military factors that might seem to hold India back from promotion to higher rank, including being bogged down in the feud with Pakistan16, the very strong dependency on foreign arms suppliers,17 the lack of a strategic culture,18 and the history of the “historical weight of a national identity” that does not seem to translate into a vigorous foreign-military policy.19 Whether a permanent seat on the UN Security Council is a prerequisite or a bellwether of improved rank is less clear (Carranza, 2016).20 A less concrete meme that shows up frequently and tellingly is an emphasis on Indian selfconfidence/ambivalence that is no doubt related to the previously mentioned national identity burden.21 It shows up clearly in the boxing metaphor that pops up now and then. For instance, Indian national security advisor Ajit Doval had this to say in 2015: India has a mentality to punch below its weight. We should not punch below our weight or above our weight, but improve our weight and punch proportionately.22 A last strong emphasis is that a long list of domestic economic and political liabilities could also hold India back from attaining its status goals. An agrarian political-economy, inequalities, energy source dependency and lack of diversification, economic infrastructural deficiencies, inadequate reform of markets, productivity, and institutional provision of public goods could well handicap any movement up the status ladder.23 Yet one of the curious features of most aspiring great power discussions is that they proceed as if we have no information on how great powers have emerged in the past.24 While there is not a perfect consensus on dating the rise and fall of elite powers in the last half century, substantial efforts to codify their coming and going have been put forward. One of the more useful depictions has been put forward by Jack Levy and is outlined in Table 16.1.25 202

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Table 16.1 Levy’s great power schedule Century

In

Late 15th

France, England, Austria, Spain, Ottoman Empire Netherlands (1609), Sweden (1617)

Early 17th Late 17th Early 18th Early 19th Second half 19th Early 20th Mid 20th

Out

Russia (1721), Prussia (1740) Italy (1861), United States (1898) Japan (1905) China (1949)

Ottoman Empire (1699) Netherlands (1713), Sweden (1721) Spain (1808) Austria-Hungary (1918) Japan (1945)

Source: based on Jack S. Levy, War in the Modern Great Power System, 1495–1975. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983, p. 48.

Underscoring the Eurocentric nature of the enterprise, most of the actors identified have home bases in Europe. Two of the states identified prior to the 19th century (the Ottoman Empire and Russia) possessed territory well outside of Europe but their elite status was predicated on their activities that impinged on European power distributions. For that matter, England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands controlled territory outside of Europe as well. While colonial possessions were certainly not unimportant to their European activities, elite status was not predicated directly on imperial holdings located away from the western end of Eurasia. European states without colonies (Sweden, Prussia, Austria) could be considered great powers. European states with colonies (Portugal) did not necessarily count as great powers. Powerful states located outside of Europe (China, Mughal India) were not considered great powers. All of these features merely emphasize the initial regional nature of the status. This is a problem that has never been resolved. That is, great power status was once regionally-bound in a part of the world that became increasingly central to world politics over the past 500 years. It has been assumed that a European great power was automatically a great power throughout the global system when that was hardly the case if some of the European great powers lacked any capability to act outside of the region. As a consequence, the discourse on great power status has been muddled more than a bit by the peculiar history of elite status in international relations. Then again, there is also the question of what to do with regions outside of Europe? Should we count states that are leading powers in their own home regions as great powers just as the European once did? Yet all regions are not equally important. Is it likely that the leading power in Central Asia or East Africa would make the great power cut? Or, was the United States promoted to great power in 1898 because it had established its predominance in North America? The answer is probably not, because U.S. predominance in North America had been established long before 1898. Moreover, the defeat of Spain, long since removed from the great power club, was largely a matter that was somewhat peripheral to North American power distributions. Alternatively, the control of Cuba was hardly a central question to which states mattered most in North America. Similarly, if the emergence of Japan as a great power was signified by its defeat of China in 1895 or its stalemate with Russia in 1905, does that mean that we should have been looking at East Asian great powers all along – presumably, China, Russia, and Japan although Britain, France, Germany, and the United States were also quite active there as intrusive powers. 203

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There are points in time when great power status is more debatable than at others. Did the significance of the Ottoman Empire disappear at the end of the 17th century? How long did Dutch power persist into the 18th century? After the conclusion of World War II, there is even more controversy. Germany, Japan, and Italy are usually thought to have lost their elite status due to their complete defeats in the war and, in two cases, military occupation and extreme disarmament. Levy thinks otherwise. The Correlates of War Program, in contrast, takes a different approach and has Germany and Japan dropping from the elite ranks only to return after 1990 on the basis of their strong economic positions. But what of some of the erstwhile winners of the war? How long did British elite status persist after World War II? Could France really return to a great power position after its initial defeat, dismemberment, and occupation during World War II? These states retain a UN Security Council veto and possess some nuclear missiles but never were in the same league as the Cold War superpowers. What about China? Did it win its great power spurs when it resisted the threat of an U.S. invasion in the Korean War? Yet it remains, militarily, largely a regional power in the first two decades of the 21st century, some 70 years later. Even Russia could not afford to maintain its global power projection capabilities for a decade or more after the demise of the Soviet Union. While the U.S.S.R.’s own claim to a genuinely global position was debatable during much of the Cold War, Russia has only recently re-emerged as something more akin to a regional power.26 Does that suffice for great power status? If it does, why do observers suggest that the basic motivation for Putin’s foreign policy is to regain some semblance of the elite status the Soviet Union had eventually won?27 Thus, there are two major problems in discussing the chances of India ascending to great power status any time soon. One is that the long running preoccupation with European international relations over the past half-millennium left a track record that is difficult to interpret. Some European great powers were even relatively weak within the regional context while others loomed large as global players. The heterogeneity and ambiguity only compounds the difficulty associated with attempting to discern some pattern in which states ascend to elite status – the second major problem. What do the data suggest? Of course, it depends on which data are examined. Table 16.2 adapts a popular Correlates of War indicator that combines six demographic, military, and economic indices. In brief, the scores have some comparative utility but they also suggest a number

Table 16.2 Shares of combined power attributes for selected states Year

US

UK

France

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2007

.284 .215 .180 .132 .139 .143 .142

.061 .042 .029 .025 .025 .022 .021

.033 .033 .024 .024 .022 .021 .019

Germany

Russia

China

.040 .035 .031 .024 .028 .024

.181 .172 .173 .170 .124 .050 .039

.118 .119 .112 .118 .106 .156 .199

Japan

India

.036 .053 .053 .056 .055 .043

.050 .046 .052 .051 .059 .067 .073

Note: World shares of total population, urban population, iron and steel production, energy consumption, military personnel, and military expenditure are aggregated and divided by six. Source: Scores are reported in the National Capabilities data set found at www.correlates of war.org/ data-sets/national-material-capabilities. The data set has not yet been updated beyond 2007.

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of things that are most unlikely. Some of the rough comparisons are acceptable. The United States leads all of the other states in 1950, albeit not always by that much. Some evidence for bipolarity is demonstrated but it is never as symmetrical as the table hints. The table shows the United States and the Soviet Union substantially ahead of Britain, France, Germany, and Japan after World War II. That Japan fairly quickly jumps ahead of the other three states might seem surprising. It is the transition in power positions that are least tenable though. Table 16.2 has the Soviet Union bypassing the United States by 1980 and China bypassing the United States by 2000. Neither power transition possesses much in the way of face validity. Even odder is that the same data have India bypassing Britain, France, Germany, and Japan by 1960 and Russia by 2000. If these scores determined which states were deemed to be elites, India would have joined the top 4 in 1990 and the top 3 in 2000. Needless to say, those outcomes probably did not happen either. To highlight the absence of clear status prerequisites for ascending to great power status we need merely to consider how recent upward mobile, elite states have been characterized in terms of more specific relative capabilities.28 Starting with population, Figure 16.1 demonstrates the ambiguities associated with this particular attribute.29 While movement towards increasing population sizes is discernible, little else is clarified. The Italian and German cases involved the amalgamation of multiple, smaller states around core centers. Is it the larger population numbers that are important or the creation of new, more powerful states? In the U.S. case, one also had an expanding population residing in an expansive state incorporating new territory far beyond what the initial colonies possessed, thanks in part to high, mainly European, immigration rates. The only example of declining population size is found in the Japanese case. Still, no overt benchmark for relative population size can be observed. With the exception of the Chinese case, the apparent range stretches from less than 10 percent for Italy to nearly 20 percent for the United States. The perennially large Chinese population, however, illustrates dramatically the lack of predictability with an emphasis on population size.

0.3

0.25

% Share

0.2 US 0.15

GER ITA

0.1

JPN

0.05

0 1800

1820

1840

1860

1880

1900 Year

Figure 16.1 Great power population shares

205

1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

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0.3

0.25

% Share

0.2 US% 0.15

GER% ITA%

0.1

JPN%

0.05

0 1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020 Year

Figure 16.2 Great power military personnel shares

Scrutinizing indicators of military power (Figure 16.2) leads to similar conclusions. No obvious threshold pattern emerges. Italy, the United States, and Japan initially possessed only very minor shares of pooled great power military personnel. Germany was a different story in that its force levels were more competitive. All of these states were able to expand their armies and navies to millions in the global wars of the 20th century. In that respect, they all possessed some potential for considerable military capability but it is doubtful that decision-makers were fully cognizant in the late 19th century or early 20th century of the size of armed forces that were to come. Calculations of potential lead quickly to economic/technological prowess. Examining shares of energy consumption per capita (Figure 16.3) as a technologically-flavored version of gross domestic product per capita, the outcome continues to be uneven in terms of looking for criteria of great powerhood. Germany and the United States, of course, were rivals with each other and with Britain as potential successors to the lead industrial economy status. But, in energy consumption terms, the United States exhibited a much stronger potential even before petroleum developed its full economic significance. Japan and Italy held relative positions that were much less impressive. If China is counted as a great power from 1950 on, it was not done on the basis of economic prowess or even potential at that point.30 Industrialization must have had something to do with calculations of who could prevail in increasingly industrialized warfare but, as in the other candidate indicator cases, no clear hints about who might be selected and when for elite status is evident. Iceland, Panama, and Sierra Leone all seem unlikely prospects to become great powers. At the very least, they are too limited in demographic, military, and economic capability – either realized or potential. Thus, it is likely that population, armed forces size, and technological capability have something to do with differentiating elite states from the rest. Unfortunately, it is not clear 206

India and its great power aspirations

1 0.9 0.8

% Shares

0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 1800

1850

1900

1950

2000

2050

Year US%

UK%

GER%

ITA%

JPN%

CHN%

Figure 16.3 Great power share of energy consumption per capita

just what package of material resources qualify candidates for higher status in the world system. Predicting the rise of the United States to elite status is one thing. Explaining why Italy or Japan would join when they did is a different matter. Perhaps the most likely answer is that there is no set of capabilities that are necessary and sufficient to guarantee great power status. There is, of course, another possible route to elite distinction – one earned on the battlefield. Various authors have claimed that great power candidates have had to have the ability to withstand attacks from the other great powers or, at least, to be able to hold their own in great power warfare. Yet it is not clear that any great power could ever literally live up to the first part of this claim – that is, the ability to withstand an opposing coalition composed of all other great powers. Nor is there any empirical evidence that any state ever possessed such a clear edge over the other elite states in the system. The ability to be at least competitive with other great powers on the battlefield is a more attractive indicator. Germany demonstrated this quite vividly in 1866 and 1870–71 defeating Austria-Hungary and France in two different wars. Japan had defeated first China, then clearly not a great power but certainly possessing one of the larger military forces in East Asia, and then defeated Russia, albeit less decisively. So far, this is a convincing record for establishing one’s own state as a military contender. Yet the United States only defeated Spain, Italy could not fight in Europe without a great power ally and had problems fighting outside Europe, and China was able to hold off what it perceived as a threatened U.S. invasion only as long as the United States preferred not to escalate the intensity of the Korean War. Yet, apparently, victory is not required. Nor must a state demonstrate its military prowess against another great power, if we take the historical record as given. We are left with the impression that some capabilities are desirable and it does not hurt if one shows that they can be applied in battle. But exactly what capabilities are desirable, how much one has to possess, and how they need to be applied remains tricky or open to interpretation. Thus, attaining great power status 207

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remains a subjective enterprise. Who is admitted to the elite club depends to some extent on the whims of the incumbent members. Not unlike private clubs, new members are likely to be sponsored by old members. The motivations of the old members in sponsoring new members may vary from time to time. In some cases, the claims for membership are fairly obvious because the candidates have made it clear that they need to be consulted on important matters; in others, the claim is less clear.31 The ambiguity of the historical record in revealing the secret qualifications of great power is matched by the paucity of the theoretical arguments developed to explain ascent in the system. Zakaria summarizes the realist offerings in putting forward two alternatives.32 Defensive realism stipulates that actors become more active in international relations as they become more insecure. In classical realism, actors expand their activities in response to increases in their own relative power.33 Choucri and North’s lateral pressure theory is similar in emphasis.34 States that grow in population and technology will expand their energy and resource demands domestically as much as they can but eventually will need to satisfy their demands abroad. There, they will need to compete with other actors with similar demands. The problem with these theories is that they tell us that some states are driven to be more active externally than others. They imply that some of these more active states will be more successful than others. But, unfortunately, they do not tell us how to predict who will be more successful in terms of achieving at least their status aspirations – or when they will be admitted into the great power club. Perhaps identification and timing is really too much to ask of theory. It should suffice if we are told, in general, which candidates are most likely to move up in the ranking system. For such an undertaking, we can rely on a modified version of Choucri and North’s lateral pressure theory. Cutting a lot of corners to summarize briefly this perspective, actors make resource demands of their environment to satisfy perceived needs. The greater the number of people making the demands, the greater the volume of demands. The greater the technological level of the society, the greater the scale and scope of the resources needed. The volume, scope, and scale of resource demands is mediated by capabilities and also the extent of the home resource endowment. If local resources are inadequate and capabilities permit/encourage, actors will expand their international activities. Actors who persuade others that they are (or are likely to be) unusually successful in their international influence and resource acquisition activities are more likely to be promoted to elite status.35 For the most part, states cannot do a great deal to enhance their population size and national resource endowments. On occasion, population and endowments can be seized (Prussia acquiring Silesia in 1741, Japan in Manchuria) but these types of activities have become increasingly less common over time. Time and technological innovation have also made the need for some types of foreign resources less critical. Technological development is different. It must be constructed. Facilitative political leadership and state institutions are necessary to construct conducive contexts for ascent. Decisions have to be made on which development paths to pursue or, at least, to favor. Economic infrastructure must be built. Obstacles to economic ascent such as low education levels, inequality, and health and sanitation levels must be reduced. Conflicts among rich, poor, and marginalized groups must be managed. Foreign investment needs to be encouraged and energy sources must be acquired. The potential for increased conflict with neighbors and established major powers must also be managed, lest these potential diversions become constraints on further economic development. Whereas once it was possible to entertain expanded foreign policy ambitions with either large population size or impressive technological innovation, it is now probably an interactive function of possessing both ingredients. Large states with numerous population but limited technological 208

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innovation are seriously handicapped in international competition. Small states with limited population but strong technological innovation were once competitive in international conflict but have become less so as states with both large populations and technology have eclipsed them.36 The most significant constraint on this process of status mobility in international relations is the hierarchical resource and capability distribution. A period of high concentration is least likely to encourage status mobility. Periods of power de-concentration and low concentration are much more apt to reward aspirants with increased rank. There are several reasons for this basic constraint. Previously powerful states, by definition, are weakening in terms of their control over resources and capabilities. Presumably, their ability to withstand or to discourage increased international activity by non-elite states is waning. Formerly less powerful states are improving their own control of resources and capabilities. Even if their ability to expand their influence and activities does not proceed smoothly, the ambitions of some to do so are expanding if only because discouragement from stronger states is perceived to be decreasing. These dynamics were most prominent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. France moved into Southeast Asia. Italy expanded in Ethiopia and Libya. Germany moved eventually toward naval and colonial expansion. Despite a very long resistance to expanding into the Caribbean, the United States demonstrated little reluctance in seizing control over Cuba and the Philippines. Japan sequentially took on China and secured control of Korea and Manchuria. Britain, the leading industrial and maritime power, meanwhile, was engaged in reducing its rivalries with France, the United States, and Russia in order to concentrate on the state that was perceived to constitute the greatest threat to its European and Afro-Asia positions, Germany.

India and great power status If there does not seem to be any concrete threshold for great power attainment, what should we make of the argument that India must first reform its multiple liabilities, ranging from poverty and inequality to a less-than-strong state? Using the same historical approach adopted earlier, it would appear that manifest domestic weaknesses can be expected to handicap both economic ascent and foreign policy successes. Elite rank, nonetheless, can still be within reach. It just means that the exercise of Indian great power would be constrained by its various liabilities at home. Nayar and Paul list ten factors that they believe are essential for claiming the rank of major power in the contemporary era.37 Four “hard power” resources (military, economic, technological/ knowledge, and demographic) and six “soft power” resources (norms, international institutional leadership, culture, state capacity, strategy/diplomacy, and national leadership) are listed. It’s a useful list but it leaves the items on the list unconnected. National resources and capabilities surely provide some foundation for assuming the great power mantle. A competitive military and economy combined with a strong technological base are certainly helpful. We can assume that the stronger the foundation, the better are the chances for status mobility without considering them to be necessary conditions. State capacity, a soft power attribute, could be listed as a hard power component. National leadership utilizing their strategies make use of state strength to convert resources into governmental problem solving. State capacity or strength, in turn, encompasses extraction capability, governmental legitimacy, and a monopoly on violence in the domestic arena. Yet even in the context of state capacity, there is no reason to assume that would-be great powers must have strong states to qualify for their elite status. Previous elite states only developed their strong states in the crucible of wars fought after the attainment of high rank. Once again, weaknesses in state capacity are a disadvantage, not a disqualifier. 209

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Much of the current enthusiasm for higher rank for India is predicated on its recent gains in economic growth, indicating that India is moving up the income hierarchy from its long-held position near the bottom of the ladder. Movement up this economic ladder is not unprecedented. China is doing it now just as Japan did it before. Even the United Kingdom and the United States once had underdeveloped economies. But movement up the economic hierarchy in terms of size and average income does not guarantee elite status. A middle-income trap awaits developing late comers. Medium incomes can be attained by replacing agrarian labor with industry and technology. But the replacement process has its limitations. Emulating what has gone on before needs to be replaced itself by the development of an indigenous technological innovation base. Not all, perhaps even the majority of developing economies, have been able to make this technological transition.38 India has already had problems in developing a manufacturing base. Bangalore and sending rockets into space are at best a start at developing advanced technology. They will not suffice. But economic growth successes are no more a sure ticket to higher rank than anything else. States with relatively underdeveloped economies have been promoted before. Finally, there is certainly an additional shift in addition to rapid economic growth that lends itself to great power considerations. India’s strategic ambitions are embracing if not an alternative mission to the Kashmir and northern boundary issues a second one that stretches potentially across the southern Eurasian littoral. To become an important actor/policeman in the Indian Ocean (and perhaps beyond into the South China Sea) requires the acquisition of a much larger navy and air force capability. Along these lines, Pardesi argues that states must demonstrate interests and capabilities outside the home region to deserve the great power appellation.39 in order to be accorded the status of a great power, a given state must have security-related and economic interests in a world region outside of its home region, it should have the capabilities to promote those interests in this region outside of its home region, and that it must only seek the status of a great power in that region, but it must also be accorded that status by the other great powers active in that region as well as the regional states concerned. Pardesi thinks India has satisfied these requirements in Southeast Asia and therefore is already a great power. But while the interest and some capability have been demonstrated, the power projection capabilities needed to be a contender in the Indian Ocean, let alone in Southeast Asia, have some way to go. Joshi, after an extensive review of Indian power projection capabilities, concludes that “India has acquired the nucleus of a substantial capability, but it remains limited in number and in terms of specific enablers.”40 That is to say, the sea and air arms of the Indian fleet, the heavy-weight influence enablers, are short on vehicles, weapons platforms, and experience using them. Conceivably, the shortages can be overcome with time and a very large commitment of rupees but they will not disappear quickly. Interests and power projection capability outside the home region are undoubtedly crucial to making a strong case for great powerhood. Just how much one needs remains elusively ambiguous.

Conclusions India seeks great power status and can claim a number of attributes associated with previous great powers. What it might take to achieve a promotion to the elite club is less clear. The lack of clarity has less to do with India’s mixed bag of strengths and weaknesses and much more to do with the historically hazy process of acquiring major power rank. When we look back at how great power spurs were won in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there is no evident 210

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pattern in who is allowed into the club and when. It certainly helps to have land, population and economic size. It helps even more to have a technologically innovative society and economy. The ability to project power and influence over long distances is also highly appreciated. It might be better not to have major domestic liabilities that detract from and distract attention from foreign ambitions. But states have become great powers in the past with mixed packages of assets and liabilities. Some of them were able to reform domestic weaknesses only after they became elite players in world politics. Thus, one cannot rule out India becoming a great power. It may even be a strong possibility. But neither can one say just when that might happen and what it will take to bring it about. One factor that is clear is that we are embedded in a period of global power deconcentration that seems likely to persist and even intensify. As that condition progresses, the odds of new great powers emerging become even greater. The systemic timing is therefore fortuitous for India.

Notes 1 This chapter is based in part on arguments found in Sumit Ganguly and William R. Thompson, Ascending India: Extraction, Legitimacy, and Violence Monopoly. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016. 2 Compare, among others: Stephen P. Cohen, India: Emerging Power. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001; Sumit Ganguly, “Introduction,” in Sumit Ganguly, ed., India as an Emerging Power. London: Frank Cass, 2003; Balder Raj Nayar and T.V. Paul, India in the World Order: Searching for Major Power Status. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; George Perkovich, “Is India a Major Power?” Washington Quarterly 27,1 (2003–04): 129–144; Samir Amin, “India, a Great Power?” Monthly Review 56,9 (2005): 1–13 at monthlyreview.org/2005/02/01/india-a-great-power/; Siddharth Mallavarapu, “Globalization and the Cultural Grammar of ‘Great Power’ Aspiration.” International Studies 44,2 (2007): 87–102; Walter C. Ladwig, III, “India and Military Power Projection: Will the Land of Gandhi Become a Conventional Great Power?” Asian Survey 50,6 (2010): 1162–1183; Rajesh Basrur, “India: A Major Power in the Making,” in Thomas J. Volgy, Renato Corbetta, Keith A. Grant, and Ryan G. Baird, eds., Major Powers and the Quest for Status in International Politics: Global and Regional Perspectives. New York: Palgrave, 2011; Mohan Malik, China and India: Great Power Rivals. Boulder, CO: First Forum Press, 2011; David Malone, Does the Elephant Dance? Contemporary Indian Foreign Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011; David Brewster, India as an Asian Pacific Power. London: Routledge, 2015; Klaus Julian Voll and Karnakshi Nanda, “India- Great Power on Shaky Feet?” Foundation for European Progress Studies. New Delhi, July, 2012 at www.feps-europe.eu/assets/068db88c-3b3f-45fd-a687-8d0c6c44c896/ india.pdf; Munir Akram, “India’s Great Power Game.” Dawn September 28, 2014 at www.dawn.com/ news/1134772; Bharat Karnard, Why India Is Not a Great Power (Yet). New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015; Manjeet S. Pardesi, “Is India a Great Power? Understanding Great Power Status in Contemporary International Relations.” Asian Security 11, 1 (2015a): 1–30; Ashley J. Tellis, India as a Leading Power. Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2016a. Obviously, this question is not likely to go away any time soon. It offers too good an opportunity to critique Indian foreign policy and its decision-makers. 3 Pardesi, “Is India a Great Power?” See also Chris Ogden, “Great Power Aspiration & Indian Concepts of International Society, 2012 at www.risingpowersglobalresponses.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/ Ogede-Great Power-Aspiration-and-Indian-Conceptions-of-International-Society-1.pdf. 4 “Charlie Rose Interviews PM Manmohan Singh.” Council on Foreign Relations, Februrary 27, 2006 at https: //secure.www.cfr.org/publication/9986/charlie_rose_interview_india-pm_manmohan_singh. html. 5 Indian Press Information Bureau, Prime Minister’s office, “PM to Heads of Indian Missions,” press release, February 7, 2015 at http://pub.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=115241 and Subrahmanyan Jaishankar, “IISS Fullerton Lecture by Dr. S. Jaishankar, Foreign Secretary in Singapore” (speech presented at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Singapore, July 20, 2015). 6 Ashley Tellis, “India’s Great Power Aspirations.” LiveMint April 5, 2016 at http://livemint.com/opinion/ LgqZJEXQfNf3ad8FpyCyTL/Ind. See, as well, Jon Huntsman, Jr. and Bharath Gopalaswamy, “Transforming India from a Balancing to a Leading Power.” The National Interest April 14, 2015 at nationalinterest. org/feature/transforming-india-balancing-leading-power-12624.

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William R. Thompson 7 In this instance, the regional context is Asian as opposed to South Asian. The need to clarify the nature of the observation illustrates two further confounding aspects of the status game. On the one hand, there are a number of nested sub-Asian regions (for example, south, southeast, central, northeast/east). If India is clearly a regional power in South Asia, does that qualify it for being a regional power in greater Asia? In various past years this question would not have mattered as much because the sub-regions have displayed variable autonomy. But they seem to be merging into one super region that only complicates the question of relative capability and status. 8 Nayar and Paul, India in the World Order. 9 See Harsh V. Pant, “A Rising India’s Search for a Foreign Policy.” Orbis 53,2 (2009): 250–264; Ahkilesh Pillalamarri, “Can India Ever Become a Great Power?” The Diplomat April 13, 2016 at http://thediplomat. com/2016/04/can-india-ever-become-a-great-power/; Shivshankar Menon, “India Will Not Become a Great Power by Loudly Proclaiming Its Intentions.” The Wire November 22, 2015 At http://the wire. in/16049/india-will-not-become-a-great-power-by-loudly-proclaiming-its-intentions/. 10 See, for instance, Bharat Karnard, “A Thermonuclear Deterrent,” in Amitabh Mattoo, ed., India’s Nuclear Deterrent: Pokhran II and Beyond. New Delhi: Har-Anand, 1999. 11 For example, Deba R. Mohanty, “Budget 2016: Why India’s Great Power’s Ambition Cannot Do without Focus on R & D.” First Post February 26, 2016 at www.firstpost.com/business/budget-2016-whyindias-great-power-ambition-cannot-do-without-focusu-onrd2645084.Htm. 12 Karnard, Why India Is Not a Great Power (Yet); and Menon, “India Will Not Become a Great Power by Loudly Proclaiming Its Intentions.” 13 Nicolas Blarel, “India’s Soft Power: From Potential to Reality?” in India, the Next Superpower? London School of Economics, IDEAS Special Report, 2012 at www.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/publications/ reports/pdf/SR010/blarel.pdf; Sudha Ramachandran, “India’s Soft Power Potential.” The Diplomat May 29, 2015 at thediplomat.com/2015/05/indias-soft-power-potential/; Ahkilesh Pillalamarri, “5 Ways India Can Become a Soft Power Superpower.” The Diplomat July 6, 2016 at thedipolomat. com/2016/07/5-ways-india-can-become-a-soft-power-superpower/. 14 See John Ciorciari, “India’s Approach to Great Power Status.” Fletcher Forum January 20, 2011 at www. fletcherforum.org/2011/01/20/ciorociari/; David A. Robinson, India’s Rise as a Great Power, Part One: Regional and Global Implications. Dalkeith, Australia: Future Directions International at www.future direction.org.au/publication/indias-rise-as-a-great-power-part-one-regional-and-global-implications; and Pardesi, “Is India a Great Power?” 15 See, for instance, Mussarat Jabeen, “Indian Aspiration of Permanent Membership in the UN Security Council and American Stance.” South Asian Studies 25,2 (2010): 237–253; Ciorciari, “India’s Approach to Great Power Status”; Robinson, India’s Rise as a Great Power”; Mario E. Carranza, “Rising Regional Power and International Relations Theories: Comparing Brazil and India’s Foreign Security Policies.” Foreign Policy Analysis published online, 2016 at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/fpa12005; and Tellis, India as a Leading Power. 16 As found in, for example, Cohen, India: Emerging Power; Akram, “India’s Great Power Game”; Walter Russell Mead, “The Seven Great Powers.” The American Interest at www./the-american-interest. com/2015/01/04/the-severn-great-powers; and Carranza, “Rising Regional Power and International Relations Theories.” 17 Usman Ghani and Khalid Chandro, “Indian Great Power Aspirations: An Analysis.” Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) Journal 13,2 (2013): 112–120 and Richard A. Bitzinger, “India vs. China: The Great Arms Contest.” Asia Times April 18, 2016 at http://atimes.com/2016/04/india-vs-chinathe-great-arms-contest/. 18 The Economist, “Can India Become a Great Power? The Economist March 30, 2013 at www.economist. com/news/eaders/21574511-india-lack-a-strategic-culture-hobbles-its-ambitions-be-force-can-indiabecome-a-great-power. 19 Deepu M. Ollapally, “India’s National Identity and Its Impact on Security Policy under Modi.” Asan Forum, 2015 at www.theasanforum.org/indias-national-identity-and-its-impact at www.risingpowersinitiative.org/rpi-scholar-degree-ollapally-indias-national-identity-and-its-impact-on-securitypolicy-under-Modi. 20 Carranza, “Rising Regional Power and International Relations Theories.” 21 See Pant, “A Rising India’s Search for a Foreign Policy”; Karnard, Why India Is Not a Great Power (Yet); Ashok K. Mehta, “The Reluctance of a Can-be Great Power.” The Pioneer May 25, 2016 at www. dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/the-reluctamce-of-a-can-be-great-power; and Tellis, “India’s Great Power Aspirations.”

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India and its great power aspirations 22 Quoted in Srinath Rao, “NSA Ajit Doval Underlines Use of Power: India Should Stop Punching Below Its Weight.” The Indian Express August 5, 2015 at indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/ agi-doval-underlines-use-of-power-india-should-stop punching-below-its-weight. 23 See Robinson, India’s Rise as a Great Power; Tellis, India as a Leading Power; Carranza, “Rising Regional Power and International Relations Theories”; and W.P.S. Sidhu, “No More Great Power Speed Dating.” India Today June 20, 2016 at http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/brexit-india-missile-tech.org. These liabilities are discussed in some detail in Ganguly and Thompson, Ascending India but not as factors necessarily holding back India’s great power promotion. 24 Pardesi, “Is India a Great Power?” is the most obvious exception to this generalization. 25 Jack S. Levy, War in the Modern Great Power System, 1495–1975. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983. 26 The Soviet Union quickly developed some nuclear capability but it took much longer to develop an ability to deliver missiles with nuclear warheads to American soil. 27 Of course, one easy answer is that Russia wants to regain its former superpower status, not merely a great power position. But that begs the question of whether Russia is currently a regional power or a great power. 28 To render these calculations comparable, all great power capabilities are pooled for the entire period, not just the years in which they were accorded great power status. But since we are focusing on the new great powers of the 1860–1905 class, we exclude Chinese capabilities which would overwhelm the comparison. 29 That China’s very large size prior to 1950 did not matter much when it came to determining which states were great powers underscores the subjectiveness of the status allocations. 30 In this figure, Chinese capabilities are included because energy consumption per capita is very low in the period that we are examining. 31 For a more systematic approach to identifying major power status in the post-World War II era, see Thomas J. Volgy, Renato Corbatta, Keith A. Grant, and Ryan G. Baird, “Major Power Status in World Politics,” in Thomas J. Volgy, Renato Corbatta, Keith A. Grant, and Ryan G. Baird, eds., Major Powers and the Quest for Status in International Politics: Global and Regional Perspectives. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011, 1–26. 32 Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. 33 One could add the offensive realist position that states are always seeking ways to expand their relative position but that is hardly helpful in distinguishing who wins and loses at the process. 34 Nazli Choucri and Robert North, Nations in Conflict: National Growth and International Violence. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1975, 1. 35 Choucri and North’s lateral pressure theory is oriented to explaining increases in conflict due to increased clashes as multiple states expand and engage in their international activities. The modified version of their theory cuts out the conflict preoccupation in order to focus on great power promotion. 36 A good example is Sweden, a formidable power prior to the emergence of Russia and Prussia. Another case is seventeenth century Netherlands. Britain and France are more recent examples in the twentieth century. 37 Nayar and Paul, India in the World Order, 32. 38 See, for instance, Homi Kharas, “Realizing the Asian Century: Mega Challenges and Risks,” in Harinder S. Kohli, Ashok Sharma, and Anil Sood, eds., Asia 2050: Realizing the Asian Century. New Delhi: Sage, 2011. See, as well, Harinder Kohli and Anil Sood, eds., India 2039: An Affluent Society in One Generation. New Delhi: Sage, 2010. 39 Pardesi, “Is India a Great Power?” 23. 40 Shashank Joshi, “Indian Power Projection: Ambition, Arms and Influence.” Whitehall Paper 85, 2015. Milton Park, Oxford: Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, 140.

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PART III

Southeast Asia

17 ASEAN CENTRALITY TESTED Mely Caballero-Anthony

Introduction The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) turned 50 years old in 2017. As the organisation prepares to celebrate its progress over the last half century, one key feature that often stands out which is seen to reflect its success as a regional organisation is its ‘centrality’. ASEAN officials, scholars and commentators within Southeast Asia and beyond have appropriated the concept of ‘ASEAN centrality’ to describe its achievement through the years in having earned a prominent place in the international stage and as a premier institution in the Asia Pacific. One the best examples of this type of compliment given to ASEAN was the statement of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who described ASEAN as ‘a fulcrum for the region’s [Asia] emerging regional architecture’.1 Much has happened since that generous accolade was given in 2011. In the last few years, ASEAN has had to face serious challenges that test its ‘centrality’ and have threatened its cohesion as a regional community. A number of political, economic and security challenges have emerged that have shaken the confidence of ASEAN as a tight grouping of small and middle power states established to promotes peace, security and prosperity in Southeast Asia. Additionally, geopolitical tensions have intensified that could possibly derail the direction of multilateral security cooperation in the wider Asia-Pacific region anchored on shared norms and promoted through ASEAN-led institutional frameworks. Thus, the extent to which these challenges become divisive so as to render ASEAN ineffective and irrelevant need to be examined and assessed, particularly in a rapidly changing regional order. Against this backdrop, the aim of this chapter is to examine the challenges to ASEAN’s centrality and assess the place and role of ASEAN as it responds and navigates through the many challenges confronting it. The chapter starts with revisiting the evolution of ASEAN’s centrality and examines how this concept has captured the different phases of ASEAN’s development from an inward-looking organisation to one that is seen as being ‘at the driver’s seat’ of building the regional security architecture. This is followed by a discussion of some of the key challenges that test ASEAN’s centrality and ends with some reflections on what ASEAN could look like as it moves ahead with its vision of an ASEAN community.

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ASEAN centrality revisited A number of works on ASEAN centrality have focused on two essential issues. First, is the ability of ASEAN, as a group of small and middle powers, to assume leadership of the wider Asia-Pacific region which includes the major global powers (US, China, Japan and Russia). Second, is the capacity of ASEAN to do so given its own internal constraints within and outside the organisation. While the issues above are indeed important, it can be argued that any assessment of ASEAN’s centrality can be misplaced unless a clearer idea of what ‘centrality’ actually means is established. So far, ASEAN centrality is often associated with terms such as: [being] ‘at the driver’s seat’,‘a fulcrum of regional institutions’, ‘first builder’ and ‘convenor’ of multilateral institutions in Asia.

What does ASEAN centrality mean? The notion of ASEAN centrality can be traced to its root in the mid-1990s with ASEAN’s turn to multilateralism and its establishment of so-called ASEAN-led multilateral institutions like the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1995, the Asia-Europe Summit (ASEM) in 1996 and the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) in 1999. However, it was not really until the adoption of the ASEAN Community in 2003 when this concept gained much traction. The vision of establishing an ASEAN Community in 2015, anchored on the three pillars of: ASEAN Political – Security Community (APSC), ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC) generated significant interest within and particularly outside the wider East Asian region. The overarching goal of establishing an ASEAN Community was to ensure ‘durable peace, stability and shared prosperity in the region’.2 The declaration of an ASEAN Community not only led to a proliferation of blueprints and action plans that outlined the measures to achieve the goals of the three communities, but also to the establishment of regional frameworks and mechanisms that were geared toward achieving its vision of an ASEAN Community that is, ‘rules based with shared values and norms; a cohesive, peaceful, stable and resilient region with shared responsibility for comprehensive security and a dynamic and outward-looking region in an increasingly integrated and interdependent world’.3 The most significant of these mechanisms is the ASEAN Charter, adopted in 2007, which codified the rules, norms and values of ASEAN and encapsulated what ASEAN meant for the member states and societies of the region. These norms are further reflected in the establishment of other regional mechanisms like the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, ASEAN Commission on Women and Children, and the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting, among others. Similarly, other ASEAN-led multilateral frameworks were also established in line with ASEAN’s vision of a dynamic and outward-looking region. The latest of these multilateral frameworks was the East Asia Summit (EAS) founded in 2005, which brought together the 10 countries of ASEAN with China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India. The US and Russia joined the EAS in 2011 during the 19th ASEAN Summit held in Bali, Indonesia. It was during that period when discourses about ASEAN centrality reached its apex, with former President of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was then ASEAN’s Chair, declaring that ‘ASEAN centrality has been maintained’.4 Implicit in this declaration of centrality is ASEAN’s ability to convene and create institutions and lead the direction of multilateral cooperation in the wider East Asian region.

Centrality as leadership Recent studies have sought to operationalise ASEAN’s centrality with the idea of leadership. Richard Stubb’s work on ASEAN leadership in East Asian regionalism conceptualises ASEAN leadership as its ability to lead the establishment of infrastructure for regional consultation and 218

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influence, and/or shape the way issues are discussed.5 It complements Lee Jones’ earlier work which defines ASEAN’s leadership in terms of its ability to influence events, which is also dependent on the ability of ASEAN members to reach consensus and mobilise resources.6 One would note the obvious that ASEAN claims leadership to these regional institutions despite its lack of material power. See Seng Tan notes that the conception of ASEAN centrality in regionalism is not due to its combined material or structural power of its member states, but more in terms of the organisation’s work as a convenor and/or facilitator of East Asian regionalism and its ability to provide ‘an assortment of multilateral consultative mechanisms . . . which bring together the major and great powers, regional powers, and small and/or weak states in East Asia for regular dialogue and deliberations’.7 Tan’s depiction of ASEAN as a convenor closely hews with many of the pronouncements from ASEAN officials. Former ASEAN Secretary General, Rodolfo Severino had once referred to ASEAN as the first mover in regional institution building. Thus, ASEAN’s record as a convenor and leader in the wider Asian region can be seen as an ‘anomaly’. As noted by Amitav Acharya, Asia is the only region in history where the strong lives in the world of the weak, and the weak lead the strong.8

Centrality as the primary node of network of networks The other way of conceptualising ASEAN centrality – which could also explain the anomaly described above – is its strategic position in the density of networks that allows it to exercise both leadership and influence. Seen from the prism of the social network approach (SNA), Caballero-Anthony argues that ASEAN’s centrality is derived not because of just its material power or lack thereof, but more from its close and dense ties with other actors in the network of institutions in East Asian regionalism. This centrality is seen from ASEAN’s structural position wherein it sits at the core in the web of networks, and enables it to extend linkages with other networks. ASEAN’s centrality is from its being situated in between, being closely connected to and being in a number of networks in the wider East Asian institutional landscape. ASEAN’s position as a primary node in the dense web of networks helps explain why it is seen as the driver of and a fulcrum for the evolving regionalism institutions in Asia.9 The perspective of ASEAN centrality derived from its structural position within and between networks has also been applied in the study of economic integration in East Asia. Economists who see deeper intra-ASEAN integration as a necessary pre-condition for a broader East Asian integration point to the critical function of ASEAN as a hub with ‘linkages or spokes to countries (the dialogue partners)’, and providing a platform for networks of production involving all countries connected through the hub.10 Accordingly, ASEAN centrality in East Asian economic integration is depicted in its being a regional hub for free trade agreements (FTAs) given its FTAs with various East Asian countries. How these different conceptualisations of ASEAN centrality are exemplified throughout ASEAN’s history is discussed in the next section of this paper.

ASEAN centrality demonstrated Whether from the perspective of displaying leadership and/or from its being at a vantage position as the node of various networks in East Asia, ASEAN has been able to best demonstrate its centrality through its role as the convenor and ‘builder’ of multilateral regional institutions. ASEAN has continued to play this role as it engages with its dialogue partners and others to join its networks such as the expanded ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus established in 2010. Its role as the first architect or builder of regional security community institutions in Asia has enhanced and reinforced its centrality, allowing its ‘higher betweenness’ to act as a bridge between the ARF, 219

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APT and EAS, and to facilitate the access of one node to another – e.g. ARF to EAS and in the process allow for the intersection of political, economic and security cooperation in the region.

Centrality in political and security cooperation in East Asia ASEAN’s role in the formation of the ARF in 1994 can be considered as the first demonstration of its centrality. The ARF is Asia’s first region-wide security institution that brings together all the major powers (the United States, China, Japan and Russia), some middle powers (such as the European Union [EU], Canada and Korea) and small powers (such as the ASEAN member states). As the convenor of this Forum, ASEAN has not only shaped the institutional design of the ARF but has also been critical in defining the nature of multilateral security cooperation in the region to one that is inclusive and grounded on diplomacy, dialogue and confidence building, and at a pace comfortable to all members.11 As conceived, the ARF’s agenda would proceed along three stages – from confidence building, preventive diplomacy and elaboration of approaches to conflict.12 Since its establishment, ASEAN’s leadership in the ARF has prevailed. Although one could argue that its leadership was by default since none of the major powers – China, India, Japan or the United States would have tolerated any one of them to take the lead – they have nonetheless continued to support ASEAN leadership. As explained by a seasoned diplomat, ‘unlike the major powers, [ASEAN] is militarily weak, neutral and objective . . . it is strategically located, but is no threat to anyone’.13 With these attributes, ASEAN has been able to maintain its position unchallenged, despite its lack of material power. It should be noted however that ASEAN’s leadership in regional institutions is not without its critics. Over the years, many scholars have questioned the work and relevance of the ARF given its emphasis on dialogue and consensus.14 Criticisms have often centred on the ARF’s lack of progress in preventive diplomacy and conflict resolution. A review of ARF’s work would support the observation of the lack of progress in the two agendas. Nonetheless, the critiques must be compared with the gains made by the ARF in promoting functional cooperation among member states. Some of the most significant and practical co-operation has been in area of Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR). Humanitarian assistance had long been on the ARF agenda, but it was only following the 2004 tsunami that HADR co-operation became a key priority. As the Asia-Pacific is one of the most natural disaster-prone regions in the world, the ARF with its wide geographical footprint has become a natural platform for strengthening multilateral security cooperation in HADR in the Asia-Pacific and this it has done with the series of military-to-military and civilian-to-military exercises and operations in the region. After the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that hit parts of Southeast Asia in 2004, the ARF began developing and organising a series of HADR joint operations and co-operation frameworks, culminating in the first HADR Desktop Exercise co-hosted by Indonesia and Australia in 2008. Following that exercise, four ARF Disaster Relief Exercises (ARF DiREx) were held in 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2015. As an example of the expansive co-operation, the 2015 ARF DiREx, co-hosted by Malaysia and China in May, brought together over 3,000 participants from 21 ARF member states, including the US, Japan, South Korea, Russia and India, and eight international and regional organisations. Thus, while the ARF may not be able to directly solve delicate and sensitive regional security issues such as maritime disputes and nuclear proliferation, the forum has played an important role in building regional co-operation and trust and has helped strengthen the regional security landscape.15 ASEAN’s centrality is also demonstrated in its role in establishing the EAS in 2005. In fact, it is at the EAS where one can hear the loudest pronouncements and iteration of ASEAN centrality 220

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and where the dynamics of ASEAN centrality are more clearly played out.16 Unlike the ARF which already has 27 members, the EAS’ configuration of the 10 ASEAN countries plus the three East Asian states (China, Japan and South Korea) plus another three nations (Australia, New Zealand and India) reflects the nature of power dynamics in the region. ASEAN’s inclusion of a relatively big power like India as well as an assertive Australia was indicative of ASEAN’s attempt to manage the changing power dynamics in the region and to ward off potential for dominance or hegemony by China. Mindful that cooperative security in Asia to address regional challenges would require the inclusion of the big powers such as the United States and Russia, it was logical that these two countries should join the EAS but only after they had agreed to meet the membership requirement of being signatory to ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC). Before 2010, there appeared to be hesitation on the part of the United States to sign on to the TAC. For one thing, the United States had reservations about being tied to a regional treaty that eschews the use of force in settling disputes. The eventual signing of the TAC by the United States carried much symbolic significance, representing as it does a superpower being enmeshed in a normative security framework defined by a group of small and militarily weak states. What ASEAN has accomplished in the ‘TAC-isation’ of the EAS is the region-wide acceptance of its normative foundations of regional inter-state conduct, which in turn helps shape the regional security order.17 The security dimension of ASEAN centrality is being driven by the ASEAN Defence Ministerial Meeting (ADMM). The ASEAN Political Security Community (APSC) Plan of Action, adopted at the 10th ASEAN Summit, held in Vientiane in 2004, stipulates that ASEAN shall work towards the convening of an annual ADMM. Against this background, the Inaugural meeting of the ADMM was held in Kuala Lumpur in 2006. The ADMM is the highest defence consultative and cooperative mechanism in ASEAN. The ADMM aims to promote mutual trust and confidence through greater understanding of defence and security challenges as well as enhancement of transparency and openness.18 Cooperation in the ASEAN defence sector has grown steadily since its inception in 2006. In particular, cooperation in the issue of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) has been progressing significantly in the ADMM. The ASEAN Defence Ministers have adopted concept papers to advance the cooperation in this area and conducted a series of activities including Workshops on the ASEAN Defence Establishments and CSOs Cooperation in Non-Traditional Security and a Table-Top Exercise on HADR.19 The ADMM has also worked at promoting greater transparency, confidence building and understanding of regional security challenges and perceptions in Southeast Asia through enhanced information sharing. To this end, one of the mechanisms that the ADMM has agreed to adopt is the publication of an annual ASEAN Security Outlook (ASO) in 2013. The ASO is the result of four years of discussion and planning and responds to the importance stressed at the 2013 ASEAN Summit of ‘promoting greater transparency, confidence and understanding of regional defence policies and security perceptions among ASEAN Member States and their regional partners’.20 ASEAN expanded the ADMM to establish the ADMM-Plus in 2010. The ADMM-Plus is a platform for ASEAN and its eight Dialogue Partners to strengthen security and defence cooperation for peace, stability and development in the region. Since its establishment in 2010, the ADMM-Plus has made significant progress in facilitating strategic dialogue between defence officials as well as practical cooperation between militaries. This has helped to build confidence and promote stable military-to-military relations in the region.21 At the Inaugural ADMM-Plus, the Defence Ministers agreed on five areas of practical cooperation to pursue under this new mechanism, namely maritime security, counter-terrorism, 221

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humanitarian assistance and disaster management, peacekeeping operations and military medicine.22 ADMM-Plus Experts’ Working Groups (EWGs) were established to carry out military-to-military exercises in line with the areas outlined in the ADMM-Plus workplan. Table-top exercises on military medicine and maritime security were held in 2012 and 2013. And in 2014, the ADMM-Plus cooperation was further enhanced when for the first time the military of ASEAN and the Plus countries joined together to conduct practical exercises in the areas of HADR, military medicine, counter-terrorism and maritime security.23 The ADMMPlus HADR/MM Exercise saw the deployment of approximately 3200 personnel, seven ships, 15 helicopters as well as military medical, engineering and search and rescue teams and assets from the 18 nations in scenarios relating to collapsed buildings, landslide and flash flood. The multi-national forces exercised the evacuation of casualties and displaced personnel, as well as the delivery of aid to affected communities. This has helped to build confidence and promote stable military-to-military relations in the region.24 That ASEAN has been able to play a central role through its deftly structured network of institutions and having positioned itself as the node – in terms of its ‘betweenness’25 and closeness with other states outside the region, be it the ASEAN Plus One, APT, ARF or EAS – has further allowed the organisation to advance regional agendas and strategies that stamped its imprint in the regional security architecture. This ASEAN’s centrality which has been nurtured through the years through skilful diplomacy has extended to economic cooperation.

Centrality in economic cooperation Achieving economic development has always driven ASEAN centrality in regional economic institutions and comprehensive economic partnerships with economic powerhouses. The twin goals of economic prosperity and regional security are integral to ASEAN’s strategies on regionalism in Southeast Asia. In 1992, ASEAN adopted the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) which commits member states to establish a free trade area by 2008 by means of a Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) scheme.26 AFTA was aimed at gradually reducing tariffs on capital goods, manufactured products and processed agricultural goods. ASEAN’s efforts in tariff reductions to enhance trade laid the foundations of establishing an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2020. The idea of an AEC was first proposed by then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong in 2002 ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. AEC is set to deliver ‘a stable, prosperous and highly competitive ASEAN economic region in which there is a free flow of goods, services, investment and a freer flow of capital, equitable economic development and reduced poverty and socio-economic disparities in the year 2020’. These are to be achieved by making ASEAN a ‘single market and production base’ and a ‘more dynamic and stronger segment of the global supply chain’.27 The 12th ASEAN Summit in January 2007 agreed to advance the achievement of AEC from 2020 to 2015, and it was widely accepted that ASEAN’s commitment to deeper and well-encompassing integration measures is likely to generate more welfare gains than were achieved through the tariff liberalisation initiatives of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) in the 1990s.28 Apart from the economic rationale, the AEC was also seen as a strategic means to help member states pursue their national interests. Economic cohesion is expected to help the 10 small economies during times of economic vulnerabilities, to deliver on a bigger market space of 600 million people to attract FDI, and to play the role of a ‘hub’ in the larger Asian region. The AEC’s achievement as a strategic project is vividly reflected in ASEAN states’ increasing level of FDI; cooperative stance during the 2008 crisis; positive behaviour in dealing with the international community; and increasing belief in maintaining centrality. An economically cohesive Southeast 222

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Asia region is expected to strengthen the member states’ bargaining power in WTO and in their collective negotiating position for FTAs and other strategic matters.29 Consistent with its goal of maintaining its centrality, the ASEAN Leaders announced the formation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) 2012. The RCEP is expected to bring together all five of the ASEAN+1 FTAs into an integrated regional economic framework: (1) ASEAN- China FTA (2) ASEAN-Japan FTA (3) ASEAN-India FTA (4) ASEAN South Korea FTA (5) ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand FTA. Through RCEP, ASEAN positions itself as the ‘hub’ in the bigger regional economic architecture. The RCEP is also seen as means to entrench ASEAN centrality against the challenges posed by other regional economic cooperation initiatives like the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the China-Japan-Korea Trilateral FTA.30

ASEAN centrality tested ASEAN’s vision of a peaceful, economically prosperous and caring ASEAN Community was supposed to have been formally established in 2015. However, at the 27th ASEAN Summit held in Kuala Lumpur in 2015, the leaders of ASEAN acknowledged that ‘ASEAN Community building is an on-going process’ and agreed to ‘further consolidate ASEAN as a politically cohesive, economically integrated and socially responsible Community for the wellbeing of our peoples’.31 The ASEAN leaders’ statement, given at the culmination of an auspicious event, was a clear admission of the many multidimensional challenges confronting the organisation that hinders it from becoming a full-fledged community. Some of these are highlighted below.

Centrality vis-à-vis South China Sea disputes As discussed in the previous section, one of the key elements of centrality is the ability of ASEAN to lead, and implicit in this leadership is being able to forge a common position on critical issues affecting regional security. ASEAN’s unity has been severely tested in the case of the South China Sea disputes. A clear example of this lack of consensus on the issue was the failure of the ASEAN foreign ministers to issue a joint statement at the conclusion of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers in Cambodia in 2012. During that meeting, the Philippines and Vietnam pushed for the inclusion in the joint communique ASEAN’s concerns about the aggressive action of China in the disputed territories of the South China waters. When ASEAN failed to issue a joint communiqué for the first time in 45 years, many were quick to point their finger at Cambodia, which was the ASEAN Chair at that time, accusing its leaders of putting their interests ahead of ASEAN’s unity and centrality. On 22 January 2013, the Philippines instituted arbitral proceedings against the People’s Republic of China under Annex VII to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (the ‘Convention’). The arbitration concerned the role of historic rights and the source of maritime entitlements in the South China Sea, the status of certain maritime features in the South China Sea, and the lawfulness of certain actions by China in the South China Sea that the Philippines alleged to be in violation of the Convention. China adopted a position of non-acceptance and non-participation in the proceedings. In a Note Verbale to the PCA on 1 August 2013, and throughout the arbitration proceedings, China reiterated ‘its position that it does not accept the arbitration initiated by the Philippines’.32 ASEAN member states did not openly support the action of the Philippines nor did ASEAN have a collective position on the case. As the case was being heard in the Permanent Court of Arbitration, China was actively constructing artificial islands over shallow reefs and shoals in the South China Sea. It was not 223

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until 2015 when ASEAN finally articulated a common position at the 48th ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – but not after overcoming internal tensions. In fact, the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ joint communique was only issued at the eleventh hour, narrowly averting a repeat of the non-issuance of a communique in July 2012. The statement was instructive of the differences among ASEAN members. It said that the ministers ‘took note of serious concerns expressed by some Ministers on the land reclamations . . . which have eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions and may undermine peace’ in the South China Sea. This falls short of calls by the Philippines for all claimants to adopt the United States’ proposal for ‘three halts’, of reclamation, construction and militarisation, of land features in the sea. And when the PCA finally ruled in July 2016 that ‘there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the ‘nine-dash line’’ in the South China Sea (PCA 2016), there was no mention of this ruling in the ASEAN Leaders’ joint statement at the ASEAN Summit in Laos in September 2016. The silence on the PCA ruling indicated the lack of consensus among member states on the implications of the ruling on the South China Sea disputes. As noted by some analysts. ASEAN’s failure to come up with a meaningful statement on the tribunal ruling can mean that the group is increasingly irrelevant on the South China Sea issue.33 And as China directly negotiates with individual member countries, not the group as a whole, this would disadvantage the small claimant states in the region.34

Changing relations with major powers The changing dynamics of great-power politics in Asia, coupled with the changes in the global strategic environment are also putting pressures on ASEAN. China’s growing military assertiveness in the South China Sea, Japan’s moves to reinterpret its constitution, and India’s growing military presence and assertive diplomacy may all press upon ASEAN’s foreign policy choices in the region. There are also the uncertainties of the future US ‘rebalancing strategy’ in Asia as a consequence of the election of the new President of the United States, Donald Trump, who unlike his predecessor, has not shown any interest in Southeast Asia/ASEAN. If Mr Trump’s election pronouncements were to be a harbinger of things to come, his more muscular foreign policy and more demanding treatment of long-term allies like Japan and South Korea, urging them to do more and even raising the possibility for the allies to ‘go nuclear’ would have significant repercussions on ASEAN’s preferred security order. ASEAN’s efforts at assiduously building an inclusive, multilateral security cooperation framework that is underpinned by the norms of mutual respect and peaceful resolution of conflict could be at risk of being eroded against increased tensions in the region. Moreover, Mr Trump’s perceived closer affinity to Russia and hostility toward China could undermine much of the groundwork laid by ASEAN in building trust and confidence among the major powers in the region. Further, a more insular Trump could also signal a return to a ‘benign neglect’ of US policy toward Asia. This provides less incentive for the US leader to support the ASEAN-led East Asia Summit and would impact the progress made by the EAS in advancing the multifaceted strategic cooperation and security governance in Asia.

Shifts in ASEAN member states’ foreign policy As an organisation that had made it a principle not to take sides in major power competition, the current proclivity of ASEAN states like the Philippines and even Malaysia in moving closer to China presents another test to ASEAN centrality and unity. 224

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The Philippines assumes ASEAN chairmanship in 2017, but it is already ruffling feathers within the regional organisation with its pronouncement of a strategic shift towards China and away from the United States. Speaking at a Philippine-China business forum in Beijing on Oct 20, 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte shocked the region when he announced the Philippines’ realignment with China’s ‘ideological flow’. He further declared that he would ‘go to Russia to talk to (President Vladimir) Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world – China, Philippines and Russia’. The Philippines’ explicit and very public pronouncement of its alignment with China, and possibly Russia as well – compromises ASEAN’s principle of neutrality that has allowed ASEAN to have a credible voice in the international community. This fundamental ASEAN principle has also enabled the member states to engage in mutually beneficial relations with all the major powers without the hindrances of their competition. As Chair of ASEAN, the Philippines’ apparent favour towards one dialogue partner over others can generate distrust and weaken ASEAN’s centrality. As pointed out by Tang Siew Mung, who heads the ASEAN Studies Centre in Singapore, ASEAN can be effective in playing the delicate role of managing major-power relations only as long as it is able to maintain its impartiality and commitment to keeping the region open and inclusive. The Philippines’ realignment to China ‘serves to turn Asean centrality on its head’.35 While one could argue that Philippines’ rapprochement with China is a positive development for Manila and the region as this would actually pave the way for the lowering of tensions and de-escalate the conflict, as the Chair of ASEAN however, the Philippines has the responsibility to uphold regional commitments. Manila therefore should not lose sight of ASEAN’s overriding interest in preserving and upholding the sanctity of international law as the governing principle of international affairs.36 Developments in Malaysia’s relations with China also raise questions about the direction of its foreign policy and its implications on ASEAN. China’s robust engagement with ASEAN member states is currently reflected in its offering attractive military and economic deals to ASEAN states. The visit of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to China in October 2016 saw Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pledging to enhance the close ties between China and Malaysia. Following the visit, it was reported that Malaysia would buy a fleet of Chinese fast patrol boats that can carry missiles, a deal which will further bolster Malaysia’s fledgling security ties with China. Although the Chinese and Malaysian militaries started holding joint drills in 2015, the Malaysian military has been heavily equipped by the United States, particularly its air force, and the United States and Malaysia have built close defence and security cooperation.37 China is also heavily investing in Malaysia’s infrastructure and other development projects. How Malaysia calibrates its relations with both the US and China is important and whether it is able to maintain its declared ‘equidistant relationship’ with these two powers would have significant implications on how ASEAN as a group manages major power competition.38

Challenges to its economic community ASEAN’s progress in achieving the AEC is an important factor in ASEAN centrality. According to an ASEAN Secretariat monitoring report, AEC 2015 has achieved 92.7 per cent – 469 of 506 – of its prioritized measures.39 But what this figure actually means in achieving the aims of the AEC is unclear. So far, assessments on the actual progress of the AEC have been mixed. According to a study by the Asian Development Bank, while the AEC is self-assessed to have achieved a high level of accomplishment, success has been distinctly uneven.40 On trade, ASEAN still faces barriers in trade in sensitive goods, like agriculture, steel and motor vehicles. Non-tariff barriers (NTB) are hard to identify, given different and evolving definitions of these; the private sector 225

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will be needed in NTB identification. The rule of origin (RoO) is likewise difficult to implement given the extent of regional fragmentation in product development, and high costs for proving RoO.41 For instance, the share of ASEAN’s goods in fragmented trade was at 69.5%.42 This is high, compared to the global average of 50%. As such, this shows how large a share of ASEAN trade is potentially contentious, or which can be delayed by negotiations on RoO assessment. The implementation of trade liberalisation policies in AEC is also lagging because of the ‘ASEAN-X’ flexibility clause, wherein countries are able to implement policies at their own pace. Services trade liberalisation is moving faster through Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs) on a bilateral basis than through the regional AEC framework, for the same reason. On investments, it has been observed that domestic hurdles in liberalising investments remain. This is in part because ASEAN has yet to achieve the objective of becoming truly a single market and production base, including the improvement of the business climate. Bhaskaran notes that the ability to reduce the ease of doing business influences FDI inflows; yet, ASEAN has diverse scores in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Rankings, with large rifts, with Singapore ranking 2nd Globally, and Myanmar ranking 170th. The inability to address these differences in regulatory practice thus poses barriers to ASEAN’s ability to benefit from investment liberalisation.43 On the other hand, liberalisation of the services sector has also been slow. One study identified the following sectors which have lagged behind and their respective issues: service restrictiveness in healthcare and logistics sectors; non-tariff barriers in automotives; FDI restrictions in e-commerce and ICT (collectively referred to as E-ASEAN), and telecommunications and labour mobility in health care. On top of these, there are no mutual recognition agreements in air travel, e-commerce, logistics, finance and telecommunications. Last, but certainly not least, is the issue of freer movements of labour. There are challenges to attaining free movement of labour, from the viewpoint of protecting migrant workers, as well as making effective use of labour migration for economic development. So far, ASEAN discussions on freer movements of labour are limited only to unskilled and semi-skilled labour. While there have been large flows of less skilled labour construction, domestic help and food processing involving source countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, changing economic climate and domestic regulations may place further restrictions on these kinds of labour movements.

Concluding thoughts As ASEAN moves into its next phase of consolidating the ASEAN Community, the need to maintain its centrality within and beyond the grouping and within the wider East Asian region becomes more critical than ever. As the previous section has discussed, the headwinds facing ASEAN in steering its centrality appear to be getting stronger over the last two years. To be sure, more challenges are expected to confront ASEAN, not least of these are the significant changes expected to take place in Washington with the election of a new president. It cannot be overemphasised that ASEAN’s central position in the regional architecture is made possible because of the support given to it by the major powers. Without their support and the support of other middle powers in the region, ASEAN centrality is vacuous. That said, there is currently no alternative to ASEAN’s convening power in Asia. The Asia-Pacific’s great powers are not capable of leading Asian regional institutions because of mutual mistrust and a lack of legitimacy. As Amitav Acharya argued, renewed great-power competition actually supports ‘ASEAN centrality’. According to him, ‘if unity holds and it scales back its ambitions, ASEAN can survive and [still] play an effective role in managing great-power competition, at least in Southeast Asia’.44 What this means now and how this assertion will play out in the next five years under changing circumstances are certainly worth paying closer attention to. 226

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Notes 1 Hillary Clinton’s Speech on America’s Engagement in the Asia-Pacific, 28 October 2010, Council on Foreign Relations. Available at www.cfr.org/asia-and-pacific/clintons-speech-americasengagement-asia-pacific-october-2010/p23280. Accessed on 8 November 2016. See also Hillary Clinton, “America’s pacific century.” Foreign Policy, November 2011. 2 Declaration of ASEAN Concord II (Bali Concord II), Bali, 7 October 2003. Available at http://asean. org/?static_post=declaration-of-asean-concord-ii-bali-concord-ii 3 ASEAN Secretariat, APSC Blueprint 2009. Available at http://asean.org/wp-content/uploads/images/ archive/5187-18.pdf. Italics added for emphasis. 4 Antara New Agency. “ASEAN centrality maintained says Yudhoyono.” 19 November 2011. 5 Stubbs, Richard. “ASEAN’s leadership in East Asian region-building: Strength in weakness.” The Pacific Review 27, no. 4 (2014): 523–541. 6 Jones, Lee. “Still in the ‘driver’s seat’, but for how long? ASEAN’s capacity for leadership in East Asian international relations.” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 20, no 3 (2010): 95–113. 7 Tan See Seng. “Rethinking ‘ASEAN centrality’ in the regional governance of East Asia.” The Singapore Economic Review 63, no. 1 (2016), pp. 721-740 8 Acharya, Amitav. “ASEAN can survive great-power rivalry in Asia.” East Asia Forum, 4 October 2015. Available at www.eastasiaforum.org/2015/10/04/asean-can-survive-great-power-rivalry-in-asia/. Accessed on 9 November 2016. 9 For more discussion on the application of the SNA framework in conceptualising ASEAN Centrality, see Mely Caballero-Anthony. “Understanding ASEAN centrality: Bases and prospects in an evolving regional architecture.” Pacific Review 27, no. 4 (2014): 563–584. 10 Narjoko, D. “Why Indonesia needs to lead in economic integration.” East Asia Forum, 3 March 2014. Available at www.eastasiaforum.org/2014/03/03/why-indonesia-needs-to-lead-in-economic-integration. Accessed on 10 November 2016, quoted in Tan, 2016. 11 ARF grew out of ASEAN’s relations with its 10 dialogue partners (Japan, South Korea, China, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, the EU and India) whom ASEAN meets with annually during the Post-Ministerial Conferences (PMCs) held after the grouping’s annual post-ministerial meetings. With the institutionalised PMCs, it was easier for ASEAN to establish the ARF and later on expand to 27 members spanning a wide footprint in the Asia Pacific. 12 See ASEAN Regional Forum Concept Paper, ASEAN Secretariat, 1995. 13 Kesavapany, K. “Special lecture on ‘ASEAN centrality in regional integration’.” (Presented in Bangkok, 26 February 2010). Available at www.iseas.edu.sg/aseanstudiescentre/asco07-10.pdf. Accessed on 24 June 2010. 14 See for example, Heller, Dominik. “The relevance of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) for regional security in the Asia-Pacific.” Contemporary Southeast Asia, vol. 27, no. 1, (2005): 123–145. 15 Berger, Blake. “The critical role of the ASEAN Regional Forum in building co-operation and trust.” Europe’s World, 7 August 2010. Available at http://europesworld.org/2015/08/07/critical-role-aseanregional-forum-building-co-operation-trust/#.WB_nqaOd58c. Accessed on 7 November 2016. 16 Caballero-Anthony, Mely. “Understanding ASEAN’s centrality: Bases and prospects in an evolving regional architecture.” The Pacific Review 27, no. 4 (2014): 563–584. 17 Ibid. 18 ADMM. “About the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM).” 2014a. Last updated on 13 July 2014. Available at https://admm.asean.org/index.php/about-admm/2013-01-22-10-51-17.html 19 Ibid. 20 ASEAN Security Outlook. 2013. Available at www.asean.org/images/2013/resources/publication/ asean%20security%20outlook%202013.pdf 21 ADMM. “About the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM-Plus).” 2014b. Last updated on 28 March 2014. Available at https://admm.asean.org/index.php/about-admm/about-admm-plus. html. Accessed on 9 November 2016. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 For more on the concept of betweeness see, Borgatti, Stephen P. and Everett, Martin G. “A graph-theoretic perspective on centrality.” Social Networks 28, no. 4 (2006): 466–484. 26 Singapore Declaration of 1992, Singapore, 28 January 1992. Available at http://asean.org/?static_post= singapore-declaration-of-1992-singapore-28-january-1992

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Mely Caballero-Anthony 27 Declaration of ASEAN Concord II (Bali Concord II), Bali, 7 October 2003. Available at www.asean. org/news/item/declaration-of-asean-concord-ii-bali-concord-ii 28 Das, Sanchita Basu. “The ASEAN economic community: An economic and strategic project.” ISEAS Perspective, 29 January 2015. Available at www.iseas.edu.sg/images/pdf/ISEAS_Perspective_2015_4. pdf. Accessed on 8 November 2016. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 ASEAN Secretariat. “Chairman’s statement of the 27th ASEAN Summit Kuala Lumpur.” Kuala Lumpur, 21 November 2015. Available at www.asean.org/wp-content/uploads/images/2015/ November/27th-summit/statement/Final-Chairmans%20Statement%20of%2027th%20ASEAN%20 Summit-25%20November%202015.pdf 32 Permanent Court of Arbitration. The South China sea arbitration (The Republic of Philippines v. The People’s Republic of China). 2016. Available at www.pcacases.com/web/view/7 33 Carl, Thayer. “After the ruling: Lawfare in the South China sea.” The Diplomat, 3 August 2016. Available at http://thediplomat.com/2016/08/after-the-ruling-lawfare-in-the-south-china-sea/. Accessed on 9 November 2016. 34 Goh Sui No. “ASEAN after the tribunal ruling.” The Straits Times, 9 August 2016. Available at www. straitstimes.com/opinion/asean-after-the-tribunal-ruling. Accessed on 10 November 2016. 35 Tang Siew Mun. “The Duterte challenge for ASEAN.” The Straits Times, 28 October 2016. Available at www.straitstimes.com/opinion/the-duterte-challenge-for-asean. Accessed on 9 November 2016. 36 Ibid. 37 Perlez, Jane. “Leader of Malaysia, miffed at U.S., visits China with a deal in mind.” The New York Times, 31 October 2016. Available at www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/world/asia/malaysia-china.html. Accessed on 10 November 2016 38 Oh Ei Sun and David Han. “Malaysia’s relations with the major powers: China and the United States.” Malaysia Update, 1 March 2016. Singapore: RSIS. Available at www.rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/ uploads/2016/03/Malaysia-Update-March-2016_Copy_Finalised.pdf. Accessed on 9 November 2016. 39 ASEAN Secretariat. ASEAN Economic Community 2015: Progress and Key Achievements, 2015. Jakarta: The ASEAN Secretariat. 40 “Realizing an ASEAN economic community: Progress and remaining challenges.” ADB Economics Working Paper Series No. 432, May 2015. 41 Ibid. 42 Athukorala, P. C. “Production networks and trade patterns in East Asia: Regionalization or globalization?” Asian Economic Papers 10, no. 1 (2011): 65–95 in “Realizing an ASEAN economic community: Progress and remaining challenges.” ADB Economics Working Paper Series No. 432, May 2015. 43 Bhaskaran, M. “The ASEAN economic community: The investment climate.” In S. Das, J. Menon, R. Severino, and O. Shresta, eds. The ASEAN Economic Community: A Work in Progress. Manila: ADB and Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2013; and Das, Sanchita Basu. “The ASEAN economic community: An economic and strategic project.” ISEAS Perspective, 29 January 2015. Available at www. iseas.edu.sg/images/pdf/ISEAS_Perspective_2015_4.pdf. Accessed on 8 November 2016. 44 Acharya, Amitav. “ASEAN can survive great-power rivalry in Asia.” East Asia Forum, 4 October 2015. Available at www.eastasiaforum.org/2015/10/04/asean-can-survive-great-power-rivalry-in-asia/. Accessed on 9 November 2016.

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18 GENEALOGY OF CONFLICT The roots, evolution, and trajectory of the South China Sea disputes Richard Javad Heydarian

Few regional disputes have so rapidly risen from the shadows of obscurity and been catapulted into the global geopolitical spotlight. Over the past few years, the South China Sea disputes have dominated global headlines, major international fora, and policy discussions among scholars and defense officials. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a London-based firm, identified the maritime conflict as one of the ten risks facing the world in 2016.1 If anything, a growing number of experts and policy-makers have come to believe that the next great power clash could very well take place in this body of waters, as the United States also begins to assert its strategic foothold in the Western Pacific. As one astute Asian diplomat observer put it, the South China Sea is “where the parameters of US–China competition and their interests are most clearly defined.”2 Global concerns over the disputes is not entirely unwarranted, since the South China Sea is broadly considered as the world’s most important waterway, hosting four times more oil trade than the Suez Canal, a third of global maritime commercial traffic (values at $5 trillion), and a tenth of global fisheries stock. Without a question, it is a vital sea line of communications (SLOC), which is integral to the global economy and dietary needs of hundreds of millions of people.3 No longer just an artery of global trade, the waterway increasingly resembles a battlefield hosting a burgeoning network of military garrisons and fortifications, large-scale naval exercises by claimant states as well as external powers, and regular patrols by an ever-larger flotilla of (mainly Chinese) para-military and fishermen-cum-militia forces.4 Only a decade ago, however, many observers presumed the disputes to be largely contained, thanks to low-key negotiations among key claimant states, some of which even contemplated the prospect of joint development agreements (JDAs) to permanently settle the issue.5 Yet, it didn’t take long before the region experienced, beginning in 2009, a rude awakening, as the South China Sea disputes precipitously took a dangerous turn – pitting a rising China against not only its weaker neighbors, but also a resurgent America intent on reasserting its leadership in the Asia-Pacific theatre. Thanks to China’s massive reclamation activities in recent years, what were previously a “bunch of rocks”6 have now been turned into large-scale artificial islands hosting dual-purpose (military and civilian) facilities, which have raised fears of full-scale militarization of the disputes. China has reportedly reclaimed more than 2,900 acres (1,170 hectares) of land between December 2013 and June 2015. This means, in less than two years, China has reclaimed seventeen times more land than all other claimants combined over the past four decades (Reuters 2015). In response, other claimant states have doubled down on their strategic footprint in the 229

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area, upgrading their military facilities in disputed features (Taiwan and Vietnam), conducting joint-patrols with America (the Philippines), engaging in smaller-scale reclamation activities (Vietnam), and upgrading their naval firepower (Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines).7 Now, almost all claimant states maintain some element of military presence in the Spratly chain of islands, while Vietnam continues to contest China’s occupation of the Paracel chain of islands. Existing diplomatic channels have also come under tremendous stress. Shunning traditional diplomatic channels, the Philippines, beginning in 2013, went so far as launching legal warfare against Beijing, hoping to leverage international legal instruments to defend its maritime interests.8 In macro-strategic terms, the South China Sea disputes represent a “triple test” with far-reaching geopolitical significance, not only for the region but also the broader 21st century international order. First, they serve as a litmus test of China’s intentions in its near abroad and, more broadly, its trajectory as the next global superpower. For decades, scholars and policy-makers have been debating whether China’s rise is peaceful or revisionist, whether it will facilitate a smooth transition towards a global multipolar order or instead trigger the next great power conflict. The regional maritime spats are testing China’s strategic intensions more than anytime in the postCold War period. Second, the disputes also serve as a test of America’s resolve and wherewithal as the putative anchor of the regional order. Many wonder whether America can manage to preserve public goods such as freedom of navigation (FON) and freedom of overflight (FOO), mobilize regional support to protect the existing order, and rein in China’s maritime ambitions in the Western Pacific through a combination of diplomatic, political, and military measures.9 Finally, the South China Sea disputes have served as a stress test for not only the regional security architecture, with the ASEAN and its values of regionalism at its core, but also international legal regimes, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which governs states’ rights, claims, and disputes in the seas. Before prognosticating on the trajectory of the disputes, however, it is imperative to first dissect the anatomy of the South China Sea spats, identifying broader structural factors (e.g., shift in balance of power), inflection points (e.g., submission of claims to international bodies), and proximate causes (e.g., resource competition), which have contributed to their marked deterioration over the years.

Anatomy of a crisis The South China Sea disputes is where every claimant state presumes moral high ground, yet hardly any of them can either claim strategic innocence10 or present an incontrovertible evidence to demonstrate its sovereignty over all claimed resources and land features per modern international law. Territory, in historical terms, can be acquired in five different ways: occupation of “empty land” (terra nullius); conquest through the forcible acquisition of specific territory already occupied or claimed by others; cessation, when one party, under a formal agreement and usually after a military defeat, surrenders claim over specific territory; accretion, when a party expands its existing territory through reclamation and similar measures; and prescription, when a party gains the acquiescence and recognition of its claim over a specific territory.11 In the South China Sea, most land features are either already occupied or actively claimed/ administered by various claimant states, therefore only a few, if any, are considered as terra nullius. The Paracel chain of islands, in the northern portions of the South China Sea, is currently under the administration of China. Taiwan, which China considers as a renegade province that should be eventually re-incorporated into Greater China, controls the Pratas chain of islands in the northeastern portions of the disputes waters as well as the Itu Aba, the biggest naturally-formed land feature in the Spratly chain of islands. Vietnam leads the way in the Spratlys, occupying around 29 land features, followed by the Philippines (8–9), China (7–8), and Malaysia (3–5).12 230

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Brunei occupies no land features, while more than 30 others are unoccupied as of this writing. The fiercest clashes have been between Vietnam and China, though recent years have seen bitter diplomatic showdown between the Philippines and China, especially since the mid-2012 naval standoff over the Scarborough Shoal. Historically, China and Malaysia have managed their disputes in a quieter and less confrontational way. Brunei, meanwhile, is a dormant claimant state, having refused to actively pursue its claims to avoid the risk of confrontation with its bigger neighbors. By some estimates, there are as many as 97 land features (e.g., sand bars, reefs, rocks, atolls, proto-islands) in the area.13 China lays claim to practically all land features in the area, but multiple countries contest its claims over the Paracel and Spratly chain of islands, hence prescription seems to be largely out of question. And so far, all parties contend that there has been no case of cessation (although Beijing maintains that Hanoi during the Cold War period relinquished its claims to the Paracels). In recent years, China has been engaged in accretion through massive reclamation activities, although other claimant states like Vietnam have also been accused of engaging in similar behavior. The greatest concern among weaker claimant states, however, is potential Chinese occupation of land features, which are already under the administration of smaller claimant states. On multiple occasions, China has reiterated its right to declare an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the contested areas, purportedly for defensive purposes and a demonstration of what it considers as its “inherent and indisputable” sovereignty over the adjacent waters. Having built a sprawling network of military facilities across the South China Sea, and well-positioned to deploy fighter jets and advanced weapons systems to its artificially-built islands in the Spratlys and Paracels,14 China may soon be in a position to impose a de facto “exclusion zone” in the area, giving it the ability to cutoff the supply-lines and reconnaissance missions of other claimant states, which have stationed personnel in territories under their occupation.15 Almost all active claimant states have adopted a “historical” narrative as a justification for their claims in the area. Under its “historic rights” doctrine, Beijing claims the South China Sea as its “blue national soil” based on the argument that ancient Chinese fishermen have straddled the waters over the centuries.16 According to the Chinese historical narrative, their ancestors “discovered” uninhabited land features in the area dating as far as back as 23–220 AD, during the Han dynasty. Beijing contends that during the Middle Age, China consolidated its claims in the area thanks to the massive naval prowess of the Ming Dynasty, arguably the most maritime-oriented rulers of ancient China. China’s “nine-dashed-line” claims, which covers much of the South China Sea, dates to as far back as 1914, with the publication of the New Geographical Atlas of the Republic of China, drafted by nationalist cartographer Hu Jinjie. Over the next decades, succeeding governments under Kuomintang as well as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) adopted the nine-dashed-line as the demarcation of their national claim to the South China Sea. Archipelagic Southeast Asian claimant states, however, claim that their historical presence in the area is as, if not even more, ancient as China’s, dating back to maritime communities such as the Badjaos (Philippines), Bajaus (Malaysia), and Orang Laut (Indonesia, specifically from the Riau islands), who actively exploited marine resources across the South China Sea for centuries. In more modern times, post-colonial Southeast Asian nations, from the Philippines to Vietnam and Malaysia, have traced their claims back to European colonial powers, from Spain to France and Britain, which laid claim to and arguably exercised some element of control over some of the land features in the area. In fact, many of the land features’ names are derived from European colonial officials who straddled and carefully surveyed the area. It was not until the 20th century, however, that newly established and independent littoral states began to officially lay claim to the contested waters.17 Throughout the Cold War period, China and Vietnam engaged in a series of bloody skirmishes over disputed land features in the area. In 1974, China took control of Crescent group of islands 231

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on the western tip of the Paracels at the expense of a withering South Vietnam. By 1988, China moved ahead with consolidating its claims in the Spratly chain of islands, culminating in the victorious 1988 naval battle against (unified) Vietnam over the Johnson South Reef.18 By 1994, China pushed into the Philippines’ 200 nautical miles Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), now occupying the Mischief Reef. In all instances, China opportunistically upped the ante just when its Southeast Asian rivals were effectively abandoned by strategic patrons, whether America in the case of South Vietnam (early 1970s) and the Philippines (early 1990s) or the Soviet Union in the case of unified Vietnam (late 1980s). Yet, throughout all these events, China managed to prevent all-out war and the full internationalization of the disputes, keeping America and international arbitration bodies out of the picture. To assuage regional anxieties, it also agreed to a non-binding document, the Declaration on the conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), with the ASEAN in 2002. Throughout much of the first decade of the 21st century, the disputes seemed firmly under control, while China’s relations with its neighbors were on a constructive trajectory. In the mid-2000s, the three most pro-active claimant states, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines, experimented with a Joint Maritime Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) agreement, a potential prelude to long-term JDAs in the contested areas. The seemingly peaceful trajectory of the South China Sea disputes back then couldn’t be separated from a broader qualitative shift in China’s relations with its near neighborhood. After all, this was during what many experts consider as China’s golden age of modern diplomacy, characterized by consultations, multilateral engagement, mutual-respect, sensitivity to development priorities of neighboring states, and flexibility, particularly vis-à-vis territorial spats. Leveraging its increasingly professionalized diplomatic core, China constantly emphasized its “peaceful development,” underplayed its rapid ascent to the apex of the regional pecking order to avoid unnecessary panic among rivals, and touted the prospect of long-term “win-win” cooperation with its Asian neighbors.19 The first decades of the 21st century also witnessed a dramatic expansion in China’s trade and investment relations with Southeast Asia. Between 2001 and 2011, China’s cumulative pledges in foreign development assistance (FDA) reached almost $700 billion, with major ASEAN countries of Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia among key beneficiaries.20 In terms of China’s trade with ASEAN counties, it expanded more than six-fold in the 2003 to 2012 period, transforming the country into the biggest trading partner of almost all Southeast Asian nations, while Chinese investments in the region topped $100 billion.21 With China rapidly emerging as the leading economic partner of its neighbors, many regional leaders were more than eager to set aside zero-sum sovereignty disputes in exchange for positive-sum economic interaction. Outside the policy elite circles, the broader public also began to adopt a more sympathetic view of China. A growing number of countries came to view China in an increasingly more positive light.22 The ASEAN, meanwhile, remained optimistic in its ability to “socialize” great powers such as China into internalizing regionally-accepted norms, embodied by the 1976 Treaty of Amity (TAC) and the DOC, both of which emphasize the centrality of shunning coercive, unilateral behavior in favor of peaceful, rule-based dialogue to resolve inter-state disputes. Soon, the region was in the grips of “econophoria” – the belief that deeper economic engagement will inevitably assuage territorial anxieties and geopolitical tensions among states.23 To be sure, the mid-2000s were not free of low-intensity confrontations between China and Vietnam. For instance, in January 2005 Chinese forces killed nine Vietnamese fishermen in Hanoi-claimed waters. In 2007 and 2008, Beijing threatened to sanction two major global oil companies, British Petroleum and Exxon Mobil respectively, if they moved ahead with joint exploration ventures with Hanoi in the South China Sea.24 The upsurge in the territorial disputes, however, could be traced back to May 2009, the fateful year when several claimant countries, 232

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particularly Malaysia and Vietnam, effectively “internationalized” the disputes by submitting their extended continental shelves claims to the United Nations. In their joint submission to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), which was vigorously opposed by China, the two Southeast Asian countries significantly expanded their claims across the South China Sea and well beyond their EEZs. In response, Beijing submitted a Note Verbale, arguing that Hanoi’ and Kuala Lumpur’s submissions infringed upon Beijing’s territorial rights in the South China Sea. This was followed by China’s formal release of the “nine-dash-line,” which encompassed much of the contested area. Simultaneously, Beijing was also incensed by what it perceived as the unilateral decision of the Philippines and Vietnam to push ahead, shortly after the expiration of the JMSU in June of 2008, with exploration of natural resources in areas claimed by China. From China’s point of view, Southeast Asian claimant states effectively abandoned an implicit understanding to (i) shun any internationalization of the disputes and (ii) to maintain bilateral negotiations and consultations before pushing ahead with any exploration activities in the South China Sea. In contrast, Southeast Asian claimant states such as Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines maintained that it was perfectly within their rights to clarify their claims in the area, in accordance to the UNCLOS, and/or exploit resources within their EEZs and continental shelves. The mutually irreconcilable positions were bound to have direct repercussions on the ground. Soon China began to push the envelope, now more aggressively disrupting efforts by littoral states, particularly Vietnam and the Philippines, to access resources within their claimed waters. In April 2010, China moved ahead with declaring a unilateral fishing ban in the South China Sea, reinforced by the Hainan local government’s declaration of similar measures in November 2010 and January 2014.25 By early 2011, there were five incidents involving Chinese vessels sabotaging either Vietnamese or Philippine energy exploration activities within its EEZ. Territorial tensions reached a denouement during the naval standoff between Beijing and Manila over the Scarborough Shoal in mid-2012. China eventually wrested control of the contested feature, which is located within the Philippines’ EEZ but lies more than 600 nautical miles from China’s southernmost coastline. The episode reinforced simmering anxieties among smaller claimant states that China was bent on coercively occupying contested features across the area.26 But what are the underlying forces that are driving the disputes? This chapter argues that though the disputes are neither new nor completely unique, their ferocity and increasingly explosive character marks the convergence of three inter-related factors in recent decades: resource competition, particularly over fisheries stocks and hydrocarbon deposits; a Kantian deficit, that is to say the weakness of the ASEAN and international law to promote rule-based resolution of the disputes and keep nationalistic fervor in check; and the “Thucydides trap,”27 particularly the emerging Sino–American rivalry for regional hegemony that has further complicated the territorial disputes.

Resource competition Though the South China Sea is often compared to the Persian Gulf, a deeply contested waterway that is also responsible for the bulk of global energy supply and transport, it is first and foremost rich in fisheries stock, which is crucial to the livelihood and survival of hundreds of millions of people in the region and beyond. It boasts the world’s most bio-diverse marine life, ten percent of global fisheries stock, and 40 percent of the world’s tuna supply, not to mention a whole range of precious species such as sea turtles, which are on the verge of extinction. Decades of overfishing, particularly in areas close to Chinese coastlines, have rapidly depleted fisheries stock in the area, sparking a Darwinian struggle for diminishing resources across the contested waters. And an abrupt spike in domestic fish consumption, especially in China, hasn’t helped: Today, 233

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China’s per capita fish consumption (35.1 kilograms) is twice the global average (18.9 kilograms), with demand for exotic marine species reaching astronomical levels, thanks to the growing and diversified appetite of China’s burgeoning middle class.28 A similar dynamic, though on a far smaller scale, has also taken hold among other littoral states such as the Philippines, which have experienced a combination of demographic bulge and rapidly growing economy. Thus, a growing number of artisanal fishermen and commercial fishing vessels have begun to venture into the high seas, often well into the EEZ of other littoral states.29 In a worrying turn of events, Chinese fishermen, who are primarily interested in preserving their livelihood, have become an integral component of Beijing’s broader efforts to dominate what it considers as its traditional fishing grounds. Local government units (LGUs), which have a substantial fisher folk population and rely on extractive marine economics, have joined the fray. In China, the Hainan government has proactively encouraged and supported its fishermen to venture well beyond China’s immediate waters, both for economic as well as strategic (i.e., national territorial claim) purposes. As a result, Chinese fishermen have ventured up to 670 nautical miles deep into the southern portions of the South China Sea. Larger fishing vessels receive fuel subsidies (US$320 – US$480 per day), while fishing companies enjoy renovation grants of up to US$322,500 for their larger boats. Smaller fishermen have also benefited from cutting-edge technology, with the Chinese government providing home-grown Beidou satellite system to around fifty thousand Chinese fishing boats, who could call for support if and when they face the threat of apprehension by law enforcement agencies of other claimant states.30 The result is a burgeoning fishermen-cum-militia force, which has been on the forefront of China’s emerging “people’s war at sea” offensive. Unable to freely operate within their traditional grounds, Vietnamese fishermen have also been forced to venture into the high seas and the EEZ of other claimant states, including the Philippines and Indonesia. As Erickson and Kennedy explain: “Fishing vessels also draw much less attention politically than navy or coast guard vessels . . . Such maritime militia activities are growing along China’s southern coast; with cities and counties in Guangdong, Fujian, and Guangxi Provinces all experimenting with and strengthening paramilitaries under close supervision of local party, government, and military officials.”31 Thanks to what Holmes & Yoshihara calls China’s “small-stick diplomacy,” law enforcement agencies from other claimant states often think twice before apprehending Chinese fishermen straddling into their jurisdiction, since this runs the risk of confronting an armada of Chinese coast guard forces, not to mention naval forces lurking just over the horizon.32 Thus, the Chinese fishermen, some even armed, represent the outer layer of China’s so-called “cabbage strategy,” with paramilitary vessels serving as the intermediate layer while the People’s Liberation Army Navy, particularly the South Sea Fleet, serve as the innermost core of China’s muscular push into the South China Sea. Already in the possession of the world’s largest coast guard fleet, the last three years saw China expanding its patrol vessels fleet by 25 per cent, building as many as sixty patrol vessels in 2014 alone.33 China’s rapidly expanding para-military and military presence in the area also strengthens its ability to assert claim over substantial hydrocarbon reserves in the area. The U.S.’ Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 11 billion barrels of oil spread across the South China Sea, with a significant amount lying within the Philippines EEZ, particularly the Reed Bank. According to a 2015 report by the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation, roughly 11 percent of the country’s total hydrocarbon reserves is located in the contested waters.34 Intent on developing hydrocarbon reserves within their EEZs, energy insecure claimant states such as the Philippines and Vietnam have sought to sign up the assistance of major global companies. Beijing’s growing energy security considerations are a byproduct of its deepening dependence on energy imports amid sustained economic growth. 234

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Since 1993, China has become a net oil importer. In the first decade of the 21st century, China accounted for 51 percent of the growth in world energy demand, consuming a tenth of global oil supply.35 As the world’s leading commercial power, China is also increasingly concerned with the security of its energy transportation linkages, particularly in the South China Sea, where more than 80 percent of its oil imports passes through. Since the early-2000s, beginning with the Hu Jintao administration, China has paid greater attention to the necessity for building a stronger naval fleet, particularly the South Sea Fleet, to defend its energy security in adjacent waters and SLOCs stretching all the way to West Asia.36 Overall, concerns over fisheries stocks as well as energy security have encouraged not only China, but also other claimant states to more pro-actively assert their claims in the South China Sea. In recent years, both the Philippines and Vietnam have solicited the assistance of global energy companies to develop hydrocarbon resources in their EEZs, but these efforts have been hampered by China’s vehement opposition, harassment, and sometimes even direct challenge, as was the case when Beijing deployed a giant oil rig (Haiyang Shiyou 981) to Vietnamese-claimed waters in 2014 and 2016.37

The Kantian deficit In theory, inter-state competition over finite, and rapidly diminishing, resources shouldn’t necessarily lead to conflict. And this is precisely where regional institutions, internationalization of pacifist norms, and existing international legal regimes can play a central role in ensuring a peaceful, rule-based resolution of disputes. From its humble beginning in the furnace of the Cold War, the ASEAN has come a long way over the past few decades. It is largely considered as one of the most successful experiments in regional integration in the developing world. Despite its limited resources, mandate, and bureaucratic capacity, especially when compared to more institutionalized organizations such as the European Union (EU), the ASEAN has had a stellar record in facilitating security cooperation and ever-deepening economic integration among a diverse collection of Southeast Asian nations. The creation of the regional grouping not only placed a definitive end to the Konfrontasi among archipelagic Southeast Asian nations, but also prevented any large-scale conflict among an ever-expanding pool of member nations. In more recent years, it played a critical role in mediating interstate disputes such as the Thailand – Cambodia border dispute, which was eventually submitted for international arbitration.38 The regional grouping has also made major contributions to the formation of a more inclusive and stable pan-regional security architecture in East Asia, with the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus), and the East Asia Summit serving as an indispensable platform for institutionalized dialogue across a whole range of strategic concerns among great powers and the ASEAN. Within the ambit of the ASEAN Plus Three (ASEAN + 3) mechanism, Southeast Asian countries have also deepened their trade and investment ties with Asia’s leading economies, China, Japan, and South Korea. Yet, the South China Sea disputes have painfully exposed the inherent weaknesses of the regional body, which broadly operates on a consensus-based decision-making procedure that gives each and every member nation a de facto veto power. The end of the Cold War provided a unique opportunity for the ASEAN to provide a workable framework to peacefully manage and, if possible, resolve the conflicting maritime claims in the South China Sea. In the 1992 ASEAN Declaration on the South China Sea, then member nations, mainly composed of founding nations plus Brunei, invoked the TAC by calling upon all parties (including China) to “exercise restraint with the view to creating positive climate for eventual resolution of all disputes,” discouraging claimant states from “resort[ing] to the use of force.”39 A decade after, an expanded ASEAN (now including 235

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Indochinese nations) together with China adopted the DOC, which invoked not only the TAC, but also the UNCLOS, the UNC Charter, and China’s Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.40 Both the 1992 and 2002 declarations, however, lacked a legally binding character, and were in response to a perceived rise in Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. Declared plans for negotiating a legally-binding Code of Conduct (COC), however, fell victim to strategic complacency (on the part ASEAN nations) and systematic foot-dragging (on the part of China). Without a question, there were moments of hope and potential breakthrough. In 2010, under Vietnam’s chairmanship, the ASEAN recognized the gravity of the territorial disputes and the necessity for a rule-based approach to their management. In July 2011, under Indonesia’s chairmanship, the ASEAN declared it had arrived at an agreement with China to negotiate Guidelines for the Implementation of the DOC. But the following year, under the chairmanship of Cambodia, a close Chinese partner, the regional grouping failed to even agree on discussing the disputes. As a result, the regional grouping, for the first time in its history, failed to issue a joint communiqué during the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Phnom Penh. Laudable efforts to ensure the disputes remain at the center of regional discussions, particularly the Six Points Principles advocated by Indonesia, have so far failed to create any diplomatic breakthrough. Beyond expressing “serious concern” over the disputes, without ever naming China in particular, and having on-and-off discussions on a potential China-ASEAN “hotline” and a legally binding COC, the regional grouping has fallen short of adopting any coherent and unified approach on the issue. Two factors explain the ASEAN’s meek response. First is the subordination of longterm regional integration goals to more immediate national interest calculations. As Alagappa (2015) explains: “The foremost priority for ASEAN national leaders in the foreseeable future will be making strong nations and states at home to preserve their hold on power. Regional community building will be lower priority and likely to succeed only when it can contribute to or does not hinder realization of the primary national objectives of incumbent leaders.” Second, and more worryingly, is the ability of external partners, particularly China, to influence and shape the ASEAN’s agenda and undermine its internal unity. As veteran diplomat Barry Desker laments, “As China exerts its influence on ASEAN members to prevent any decisions which could affect its preference for bilateral negotiations, it will be increasingly difficult to reach an ASEAN consensus.”41 The Philippines’ decision to take its disputes with China to arbitration bodies under the aegis of the UNCLOS was partly born out of its frustration with the lack of tangible support in the ASEAN. In 2012, when China coercively wrested control of the Philippine-claimed Scarborough Shoal, the ASEAN, as a regional body, couldn’t even build a consensus on discussing the South China Sea disputes. Even when the Philippines managed to secure a landmark victory at The Hague, when an arbitral tribunal (constituted under Article 287, Annex VII of the UNCLOS) nullified the bulk of Chinese “historic rights” claims, the ASEAN as a whole shunned even mentioning the final award. With China vehemently opposing the arbitration proceedings and the final award, ASEAN unity on the necessity to comply with UNCLOS-based arbitration outcomes was of utmost salience. Since the UNCLOS is a legal framework for determination of maritime entitlement claims, nature of disputed land features in high seas, sovereign rights in EEZs and continental shelves, and joint exploitation of resources in areas of overlapping claims, it serves as an indispensable reference point for a rule-based resolution of the South China Sea disputes. Yet, at most the ASEAN statements vaguely mentioned “legal processes” and only made standard references to the UNCLOS and international legal regimes as a basis to peacefully resolve the disputes.42 Meanwhile, nationalistic passions have taken over not only China but also other claimant states, particularly Vietnam and the Philippines. With the weakening appeal of communist ideology, ruling parties in China as well as Vietnam have increasingly adopted a nationalistic narrative, 236

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which has only minimized room for compromise, hardened the position of various claimant states, and exacerbated tensions in the South China Sea.43 In 2014, for instance, when Beijing deployed an oil-rig into Hanoi-claimed waters, there was an immediate explosion of deadly antiChina riots across Vietnam, underscoring the dangers of popular nationalism amid territorial disputes (Dou, 2014). In the Philippines, a staunch American ally, tensions in the South China Sea have rekindled deep-seated prejudice and antipathy towards China. Latest surveys suggest a growing number of citizens in Vietnam and the Philippines holding unfavorable views of China and vice-versa, with a significant majority of people in multiple Asian countries fearing outright war in the disputed waters.44 In Asia, rapid growth, the spread of democratic values, and deeper trans-border economic engagement hasn’t necessarily led to the creation of a Kantian “perpetual peace” based on amity, conflict-avoidance, and cosmopolitanism.45 Nor have we seen the fruition of China’s concept of “peaceful development” and “win-win” cooperation based on the thesis that “China’s continued development will contribute to international peace, security, and prosperity.”46 If anything, what we are witnessing is instead intensified territorial tensions and heightened sense of nationalism, particularly among key rivals states in the South China Sea. Shortly after the end of the Cold War, Bzrezinski presciently identified the combustible cocktail of rapid economic growth and rising nationalism in a region that lacks a robust security architecture: “Although surpassing Europe in economic development, Asia is singularly deficient in regional political development. It lacks the cooperative multilateral structures that so dominate the European political landscape and that dilute, absorb, and contain Europe’s more traditional territorial, ethnic, and national conflicts.”47

Thucydides trap “The vast Pacific Ocean has enough space for two large countries like the United States and China,” claimed Chinese President XI Jinping during his intimate getaway with his American counterpart at the Sunnylands estate in California in 2013. Encouraged by the Obama administration’s constant characterization of Sino–American relations as “the most important bilateral relationship in the world,” the Chinese leader advocated for a “new model of great power relations.” While it isn’t clear what the Chinese leader had specifically in mind, some point at the November 2009 joint US–China statement, where “The two sides agreed that respecting each other’s core interests is extremely important to ensure steady progress in U.S.-China relations,” as a potential clue. The problem, however, is that China has progressively defined the South China Sea as one of its “core interests.” Thus, it has repeatedly sought to keep America out of the disputes and even challenge its longstanding military presence in the area. While the U.S. has expressed “neutrality” vis-à-vis the sovereignty disputes in the area, it has consistently underscored its commitment to preserving FON and FOO in the area.48 And more recently, has openly supported efforts by countries such as the Philippines to settle the maritime disputes under the aegis of international law, particularly the UNCLOS. Beginning in 2010, when then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explicitly identified FON in the South China Sea as an American “national interest,” the U.S. has steadily deepened its military footprint in the area, negotiating access to new bases in Singapore, Australia, and the Philippines and expanding military facilities in Guam and the Pacific. Under its Pivot to Asia strategy, which was formally declared by President Obama in November 2011 before the Australian Parliament, Washington has pledged to concentrate 60 percent of its overall naval assets in the Pacific theater by 2020. And since October 2015, the U.S. has also commenced so-called FON operations, deploying naval assets to challenge China’s perceived excessive maritime claims in the Spratly chain of islands and beyond. The Obama administration is engaged in what Segal called a “constrainment strategy,” whereby America, 237

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in tandem with its regional partners, mobilizes a combination of military, politico-diplomatic and, if possible, economic pressure to deter Chinese adventurism in adjacent waters.49 China has responded by accusing America of interfering in regional affairs, undermining its national sovereignty, and engaging in a Cold War-style containment strategy to encircle Asia’s rising power.50 Accordingly, China has conducted ever-larger naval exercises in the area; deployed increasingly sophisticated military assets to its newly built facilities in the area; commenced joint drills with Russia; and upgraded its overall anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities. As a result, the South China Sea disputes have been overlaid by an emerging great power rivalry, which has raised the stakes even higher.51 As White (2014) argues, what is fundamentally at stake is the regional order, since the question now is whether Washington is “willing to use ‘all the elements of American power’ to resist China’s challenge to the regional status quo based on US leadership in Asia. This is, after all, precisely what the pivot is all about.” As Kissinger points out,52 the coherence of an existing order – defined by a set of commonlyaccepted rules that govern relations among certain states – is challenged by “either a re-definition of legitimacy or a significant shift in the balance of power.” In the South China Sea, Beijing is not only leveraging a favorable shift in balance of power, as it extends its edge over smaller claimant states and closes both the qualitative and quantitative military gap with America, but also challenging the legitimacy of the existing order, which has been undergirded by ubiquitous American naval presence across the Western Pacific. As a leading commercial power, China obviously has little incentive in undermining FON in the South China Sea per se, but it has sought to constrain freedom of military navigation for external powers, particularly the U.S. As Andrew S. Erickson and Emily de La Bruyere explain: “In a string of incidents since 2001 – including the highly publicized March 2001, March 2009, and May 2009 confrontations with the USN ships Bowditch, Victorious, and Impeccable – Chinese vessels and aircraft have harassed American surveillance ships operating, legally, in China’s EEZ.”53 This is a challenge to the existing order, since the U.S. has largely served as the anchor of FON across the Western Pacific since the end of World War II. The 2001 Hainan incident, involving a collision between an American surveillance aircraft (EP-3) and a Chinese fighter jet, marked the beginning of a pattern wherein Beijing has actively interpreted its own EEZ as a no-go zone for foreign military powers. But as leading legal experts such as Beckman (2014) point out, “In the EEZ, other states (including states who are not parties to UNCLOS) enjoy the freedoms of navigation and overflight and of the laying of submarine cables and pipelines, and other internationally lawful uses of the sea relating to these freedoms. These include uses associated with the operation of ships, aircraft and submarine cable and pipelines.” More recently, in August 2014, a Chinese J-11 jet fighter reportedly performed a cavalier aerobatic maneuver to intercept a U.S. Navy P-8 patrol aircraft and a P-3 anti-submarine aircraft flying 220 kilometers east of Hainan Island, rekindling concerns over a possible repeat of the 2001 incident. China’s challenge to American military primacy in Asia has extended to the undersea.54 Recent years have seen the expansion of a submarine base in Hainan and China’s successful launch of “boomer”-type submarines, which have the capability to launch nuclear missiles from the sea, with a range that extends all the way to continental America and Alaska.55 In the South China Sea, China and America are caught in a dangerous dynamic, a Thucydides Trap, whereby a “rising power’s growing entitlement, sense of its importance, and demand for greater say and sway” confronts the established power’s “fear, insecurity, and determination to defend the status quo,” which, in turn, can “initiate a cascade of reactions that, in turn, produce outcomes none of the parties would otherwise have chosen.”56 China’s rising assertiveness is part of a broader two-fold great transformation. First is China’s transformation from a continental to a maritime powerhouse, which sees the “First Island Chain” – an area that stretches from Japan in the north to the Philippines in the south, and covers both 238

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East and South China Seas – as its natural backyard.57 Having secured much of its land borders, particularly with Russia, in the past two decades, China “is now free to work at building a great navy,” but still “an insecure sea power” thanks to the presence of massive American naval power in the area, “it thinks about the ocean territorially.”58 The second transformation is the rapid shift in the balance of economic and military power between America and China, particularly since the 2008 Great Recession, which severely undermined the economic foundations of American power. This is precisely what has given Beijing the added strategic confidence to up the ante in adjacent waters in recent years, raising the prospects of an (unwanted) collision between the rising (China) and status quo (America) powers.59

Conclusions Despite a flurry of warnings, threatening statements, and low-intensity skirmishes, all claimant states in the South China Sea have, so far, avoided a full-scale military conflict. This underscores their shared antipathy for direct confrontation as well as shared interest in preserving a semblance of stability in the region amid deepening economic integration between China and the ASEAN. Yet, there is no room for strategic complacency. A precarious combination of intensified resource competition over finite fisheries and hydrocarbon resources; the fragility of existing regional institutions (ASEAN) and limited utility of international legal regimes (UNCLOS); and deepening Sino–American rivalry in the high seas is eroding the foundations of the Asia-Pacific security architecture. Given the complexity of the disputes and the zero-sum nature of territorial conflicts, dispute management rather than resolution seems to be the default policy option for the foreseeable future. Both bilateral as well as multilateral diplomacy are essential to the effective management of the disputes, or at least keeping them just below the threshold of outright war. Bilateral negotiations could be a basis for establishment of JDAs, which are crucial to addressing the zero-sum resource competition in the area. The election of a pragmatic leadership in the Philippines, under President Rodrigo Duterte, has reinforced prospects for such arrangements between Beijing and Manila.60 Although China has officially rejected the arbitration award at The Hague, the verdict as well as relevant provisions of the UNCLOS could still serve as a point of reference in negotiation of JDAs, delineation of areas of overlapping claims, and determination of sovereign rights and maritime entitlement claims among claimant states. The ASEAN, meanwhile, can provide an overall framework for peaceful management of the disputes among competing claimant states by finalizing a legally binding COC with China. Both bilaterally as well as under the aegis of the ASEAN, competing claimant states should institutionalize confidence-building measures and emergency “hotlines” to prevent any unwanted escalation in the area. Ultimately, the South China Sea disputes also demand a modus vivendi between the U.S. and China. For its part, Beijing will have to reassure Washington that freedom of navigation and overflight, both civilian and military, will not be undermined by China’s expanding strategic footprint across the disputed waters. In return, the U.S., currently under the Donald Trump administration, will have to maintain credible neutrality vis-à-vis the sovereignty disputes, encourage and support bilateral and multilateral efforts at peacefully managing the disputes, and refrain from any provocative military buildup and/or diplomatic statements, which reinforce fears of encirclement in Beijing. The international community, under American leadership and in accordance to principles of international law, will have to adopt a goldilocks combination of engagement and constrainment vis-à-vis China’s maritime assertiveness. Without a doubt, this is easier said than done, but the two protagonists run the risk of sleepwalking into a great power conflict if they fail to do so. No less than the post-Cold War order in Asia, characterized by regional economic integration and a measure of stability on the high seas, hangs in the balance. 239

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Notes 1 Global Forecasting Service. Global Risk. The Economist Intelligence Unit. October 2016, accessed December 216, https://gfs.eiu.com/Archive.aspx?archiveType=globalrisk 2 Bilahari Kausikan, “Pavlovian conditioning and ‘correct thinking’ on the South China Sea”, The Straits Times, April 1, 2016, accessed April 4, 2016, www.straitstimes.com/opinion/pavlovian-conditioningand-correct-thinking-on-the-south-china-sea 3 Hannah Beech, “Inside the international contest over the most important waterway in the world”, TIME, May 26, 2016, accessed May 27, 2016, http://time.com/4348957/inside-the-international-contestover-the-most-important-waterway-in-the-world/ 4 See, for instance, Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative https://amti.csis.org 5 See “Anatomy of a Crisis” section. 6 The is the dismissive term U.S. President Barack Obama used to described contested land features in the South China Sea during his 2014 state visit to the Philippines, see Christian Esquerra and T. J. Burgonio, “No firm commitment from US to defend PH”, Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 29, 2014, accessed June 1, 2015, http://globalnation.inquirer.net/103033/no-firm-commitment-from-us-to-defend-ph 7 For detailed explanation and satellite imageries, see Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative https://amti. csis.org 8 Jay Batongbacal, “Arbitration 101: Philippines v. China”, Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, January 21, 2015, accessed January 21, 2015, https://amti.csis.org/arbitration-101-philippines-v-china/ 9 Evelyn Goh, The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy & Transition in Post-Cold War East Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013; also see, Hugh White. “Why Obama should abandon the pivot”, East Asia Forum, May 4, 2014, accessed June 1, 2015, www.eastasiaforum. org/2014/05/04/ why-obama-should- abandon-the-pivot/ 10 Practically all claimant states have used their armed forces to exert control over and administer previously unoccupied land features in the South China Sea, while violating the spirit of the DOC by engaging in various forms of unilateral actions, including reclamation activities, upgrading of military facilities, and deployment of military assets to the area. See, for instance, Mora Rapp-Hooper, “Before and after: The South China Sea transformed”, Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, February 18, 2015, Retrieved from https://amti.csis.org/before-and-after-the-south-china-sea-transformed/ 11 Bill Hayton, The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia. London: Yale University Press, 2014. 12 Given the constant jostling among claimant states, and the tenuous nature of their administrative occupation/control over a whole range of low-tide elevations, the exact number of land features occupied/administered by specific claimant countries is disputed, but in all estimates, Vietnam leads the pack by far, while Taiwan only occupies one land feature, Itu Aba, which is the biggest naturally-formed island-sized rock in the area. The numbers above are based on the latest data shared by experts such as Jay Batongbacal of the University of the Philippines, see https://web.facebook.com/photo.php? fbid=10155234167419485&set=a.103442459484.90800.829674484&type=3&theater, and the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, see https://amti.csis.org, and veteran journalist Ellen Tordesillas, see verafiles.org/magdalo-rep-scores- neglect-of-ph-occupied-territories- in-spratlys/#sthash.lRJ7nu6W. dpuf 13 For instance, see Ellen Tordesillas, “Magdalo Rep scores neglect of PH-occupied territories in Spratlys”, Verafiles, August 29, 2014, accessed December 1, 2015, verafiles.org/magdalo-rep-scoresneglect-of-ph-occupied-territories- in-spratlys/#sthash.lRJ7nu6W.dpuf.; and, also see, International Crisis Group, “Stirring up the South China Sea (I): Regional responses”, International Crisis Group, April 23, 2012, January, accessed July 1, 2014, www. crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/asia/north-eastasia/223-stirring-up-the- south-china-sea-i.pdf 14 See latest analysis by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative here https://amti.csis.org/chinasbig-three-near-completion/ 15 Ankit Panda, “Is China really about to announce a South China Sea air defense identification zone? Maybe”, The Diplomat, June 1, 2016, accessed June 1, 2016, http://thediplomat.com/2016/06/ is-china-really-about-to-announce-a-south-china-sea-air-defense-identification-zone-maybe/ 16 James Holmes, “The commons: Beijing’s ‘blue national soil’”, The Diplomat, January 3, 2013, accessed January, 5, 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2013/01/a-threat-to-the-commons-blue-national-soil/ 17 Bill Hayton, The South China Sea, 7–45. 18 John W. Garver, “China’s push through the South China Sea: The interaction of bureaucratic and national interests”, China Quarterly, 132 (1992): 999–1028.

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Genealogy of conflict 19 See Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm-Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World. New York: Yale University Press, 2007; also see, Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 20 Charles Wolf, Jr., Xiao Wang, and Eric Warner, China’s Foreign Aid and Government-Sponsored Investment Activities: Scale, Content, Destinations, and Implications. Washington, DC: Rand Corporation, 2013. 21 Prashanth Parameswaran, “Beijing unveils new strategy for ASEAN–China relations”, The Jamestown Foundation, 13(21), October 24, 2013, accessed October 27, 2014, www.jamestown.org/single/?tx_ ttnews[tt_news]=41526&no_cache=1#.VK6ZM3uGPT8 22 Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm-Offensive, 4. 23 Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal, “Rethinking east asian security”, Survival, 36 (1994): 3-21; Klare, M. and Chandrani, Y. (Eds.), World Security: Challenges for a New Century. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. 24 Raul Pedrozo, “Beijing’s coastal real estate”, Foreign Affairs, April 9, 2017, accessed April 9, 2017, www. foreignaffairs.com/articles/east-asia/2010-11-15/beijing-s-coastal-real-estate 25 Taylor Fravel, “Hainan’s new fishing rules: A preliminary analysis”, The Diplomat, 10 January, 2014, accessed January 11, 2014, thediplomat.com/2014/01/hainans-new-fishing- rules-a-preliminary-analysis/ 26 International Crisis Group, “Stirring up the South China Sea (II): Regional responses’, International Crisis Group, July 24, 2012, accessed January 1, 2014, www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/files/asia/ north-eastasia/229-stirring-up- the-south-china-sea-ii-regional- responses.pdf 27 Graham Allison, “The thucydides trap: Are the U.S. and China headed for war?”, The Atlantic, September 24, 2016, accessed October 21, 2016, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/ united-states-china-war-thucydides-trap/406756/ 28 Underscoring its growing interest in the fisheries stock in the South China Sea, as well as the political imperative to preserve the livelihood of its citizens, China finalized a comprehensive fisheries survey across the contested area, with the most recent study estimating between 73 million and 172 million tons of mesopelagic fishery reserves, see Business Standard, www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/ china-survey-finds-huge-fishery-reserves-in-s-china-sea-115022301047_1.html 29 John Ruwitch, “Satellites and seafood: China keeps fishing fleet connected in disputed waters”, Reuters, July 27, 2014, accessed July 28, 2014, www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-china-fishinginsight-idUSKBN0FW0QP20140728; Nina Hachigian, “The other problem in the South China Sea”, The Diplomat, April 8, 2015, accessed May 1, 2015, thediplomat.com/2015/04/the-other-problemin-the-south-china-sea/; and also see, Hannah Beech, “Inside the international contest over the most important waterway in the world”. 30 The Hainan authorities, led by Liu Cigui (former State Oceanic Administration Director) and Luo Baoming (First Director of Hainan’s National Defence Mobilization Committee), have played a critical role in shoring up Chinese fishing presence across the area. In 2013, the Hainan government allocated US$4.5 million to the cause, a number that is bound to increase over the years. See Andrew S. Erickson and Connor M. Kennedy, “China’s Island Builders”, Foreign Affairs, July 2017. Available at: www. foreignaffairs.com/articles/east-asia/2015-04-09/china-s-island-builders. 31 Andrew Erickson, and Emily de La Bruyere, “China’s RIMPAC maritime-surveillance gambit”, The National Interest, July 29, 2014, accessed July 29, 2014, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/china’srimpac-maritime-surveillance-gambit-10970 32 James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, “Small-stick diplomacy in the South China Sea”, The National Interest, April 23, 2012, accessed July 11, 2014, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/ small-stick-diplomacy-the-south-china-sea-6831 33 Jane Perlez, “Beijing, with an eye on the South China Sea, adds patrol ships”, New York Times, April 10, 2015, accessed April 12, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/04/11/world/asia/china-is-rapidly-addingcoast-guard-ships-us-navy-says.html 34 Angela Yu, “Chinese rig finds huge gas reserve in South China Sea”, IHS Maritime 360, February 9, 2015, accessed February 11, 2016, www.ihsmaritime360.com/article/16545/chinese-rig-finds-huge-gasreserve- in-south-china-sea 35 Andrew Kennedy, “Rethinking energy security in China”, East Asia Forum, June 6, 2010, accessed June 7, 2010, www.eastasiaforum.org/2010/06/06/rethinking-energy-security-in-china/; also see, James Tang, “With the grain or against the grain? Energy security and Chinese foreign policy in the Hu Jintao era”, Brookings Institution, October 1, 2006, accessed 1 January 2014, www.brookings. edu/fp/cnaps/papers/ tang2006.pdf 36 Nan Li, “Chinese civil–military relations in the post-Deng era: Implications for crisis management and naval modernization”, US Naval War College, January, 2010, accessed March 6, 2014, www.usnwc.

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edu/Research--Gaming/China-Maritime-Studies-Institute/Publications/documents/China-MaritimeStudy-No-4-January-2010.aspx Mike Ives, “Vietnam objects to Chinese oil rig in disputed waters”, The New York Times, January 20, 2016, accessed January 22, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/world/asia/south-china-sea-vietnamchina.html K. Kesavapany, “ASEAN and the Cambodia–Thailand conflict”, East Asia Forum, March 1, 2011, accessed July 1, 2014, www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/03/01/asean-and-the-cambodia-thailand-conflict/ “National University of Singapore, Centre for International Law”, last modified July 22, 1992, https:// cil.nus.edu.sg/1992/1992-asean-declaration-on-the-south-china-sea-signed-on-22-july-1992-in-manilaphilippines-by-the-foreign-ministers/ Evelyn Goh, The Struggle for Order, 118–159. Barry Desker, “Defusing tensions in the South China Sea”, RSIS Commentaries, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, 3 December, 2012. Richard Javad Heydarian, “Asean fails to rise to the occasion”, The Straits Times, July 28, 2016, accessed July 29, 2016, www.straitstimes.com/opinion/asean-fails-to-rise-to-the-occasion Suisheng Zhao, “A state-led nationalism: The patriotic education campaign in post-Tiananmen China”, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 31 (1998): 287–302. Pew Research Center, “How asian view each other”, Global Attitudes and Trends, July 14, 2015, accessed August 7, 2015, from www.pewglobal.org/2014/07/14/chapter-4-how-asians-view-each-other/ Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays. New York: Hackett, 1795 (1983). Matt Ferchen, “China keeps the peace”, Foreign Affairs. April 9, 2017, accessed April 9, 2017, www. foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2016-03-08/china-keeps-peace Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. New York: Basic Books, 1998, 153. Thomas J. Christensen, “Obama and asia”, Foreign Affairs. Accessed April 9, 2017, www.foreignaffairs. com/articles/asia/obama-and-asia Gerald Segal, “East asia and the ‘constrainment’ of China”, International Security, 20 (1996): 107–35. Minxin Pei, “How China and America see each other”, Foreign Affairs, April 9, 2017, accessed April 9, 2017, www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/how-china-and-america-see-each-other Robert S. Ross, “The problem with the pivot”, Foreign Affairs, April 9, 2017, accessed April 9, 2017, www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2012-11-01/problem-pivot; also see, Robert D. Kaplan, “The geography of Chinese power”, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2010, accessed April 9, 2017, www.foreign affairs.com/articles/china/2010-05-01/geography-chinese-power; Robert D. Kaplan, Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific. New York: Random House, 2014. Henry Kissinger, World Order. New York: Penguin, 2014, 365. Andrew Erickson, and Emily de La Bruyere, “China’s RIMPAC maritime-surveillance gambit”. Charles Hutzler, “Beijing denies fighter flew dangerously close to U.S. patrol plane”, Wall Street Journal, April 23, 2014, accessed April 24, 2015, www.wsj.com/articles/china-denies-fighter-flew-dangerouslyclose-to-u-s-patrol-plane-1408810331 Jeremy Page, “Deep threat: China’s submarines add nuclear-strike capability, altering strategic balance”, Wall Street Journal, October 24, 2014, accessed October 24, 2014, www.wsj.com/articles/chinassubmarine-fleet-adds-nuclear-strike- capability-altering-strategic-balance- undersea-1414164738 Graham Allison, “Thucydides Trap”. James Holmes, “What makes China ‘Mahanian’?”, The Diplomat, November 18, 2011, accessed December 1, 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2011/11/what-makes-china-mahanian/ Robert D. Kaplan, “The Geography of Chinese Power”. Michael Pillsbery, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. Henry Holt: New York, 2015. Richard Javad Heydarian, “Duterte’s geopolitical game-play”, Observer Research Foundation, February 9, 2017, accessed March 1, 2017, www.orfonline.org/research/dutertes-geopolitical-game-play/

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19 INDONESIA AS A REGIONAL POWER A pan-Indo-Pacific worldview Vibhanshu Shekhar

Introduction At the epicentre of the Indo-Pacific region lies Indonesia – the largest archipelagic state in the world, the fourth most populous country in the world, the fifth largest (in Asia) and ninth largest (in the world) economy in PPP terms, a leading power in Southeast Asia and an important civilizational, moderate and democratic force in the world. During the past fifteen years, Indonesia has transitioned from an authoritarian regime to the third largest democracy and the largest Muslim democracy in the world. The country has gained various labels during the last five years – a country with ‘great power aspirations,’ a ‘maritime power,’ ‘Asia’s third Giant,’ ‘a reluctant giant,’ ‘a rising power,’‘a global swing state,’‘one of Asia’s leading powers,’‘an emerging democratic power,’ ‘a regional pivot,’ ‘the next China,’ a new Asian powerhouse’ and probably ‘the world’s first Muslim and democratic superpower.’1 These expressions highlight a changing character of the global discourse on Indonesia and the country’s growing significance in the regional and global order. As the global discourse on Indonesia is changing, the country is signaling an upward status while positioning itself as an emerging power in an uncertain strategic environment of the Indo-Pacific region. Its pan-Indo-Pacific projection is a reflection of growing international ambition and a response to the state’s perceived status-dissonance in the regional order, confinement within the ASEAN region and the perceived necessity of signaling its status to a bigger audience. The upward status signaling has produced four key characteristics in Jakarta’s pan-Indo-Pacific posturing – (a) broader geopolitical projection, (b) power projection as a part of internal balancing, (c) leadership projection and (d) leveraging power politics by combing the strategies of alignment and autonomy. They collectively represent a fundamental reset in Indonesia’s international ambition and behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region. Before discussing Indonesia’s upward status signaling and pan-Indo-Pacific projection, two clarifications are made. First, the rise of Yudhoyono and Widodo, offer two critical junctures in an otherwise continuous process of Indonesia’s rise as an emerging power during the last decade. Their divergent styles – Yudhoyono’s normative, multilateralist and globalist approach and Widodo’s utilitarian, hard power-centric and regionally oriented approach have laid down multiple facets of Indonesia’s international ambition and foreign policy goals. These two presidencies are not antithetical, rather complementary to each other. Both of them have bolstered the Indonesia rising narrative and laid down basic parameters within which Indonesia’s foreign policy is being 243

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situated and discussed. As this paper unfolds, one can see that many of these narratives, such as maritime modernization, post-ASEAN foreign policy and the Indo-Pacific narrative, which are finding full-scale expression during the Widodo presidency, were taking shape during the Yudhoyono presidency. Second, the last two years of the Widodo presidency have invited varied interpretations on its foreign policy. Some have called it assertive and internationalist (Afro-Asian Conference, Indian Ocean, executions, crackdown against illegal fishing).2 Some have viewed it as an expression of great power aspirations.3 And some have found it inward-looking and shrinking (de-emphasis on ASEAN).4 In fact, they all represent some parts of the truth of the Indonesian foreign policy representing multiple directions of the foreign policy as Widodo’s Indonesia tries to put together an ambitious foreign policy paradigm. As President Widodo consolidates power domestically and gets comfortable internationally, his foreign policy trajectories are getting clearer and more assertive.

The Indo-Pacific Region: Indonesia’s New Regional Canvas Emerging Indonesia’s regional worldview is expanding from Southeast Asia to the Indo-Pacific region. The quest for a broader canvas has formed an important domestic debate on Indonesia’s foreign policy and regional diplomacy in the 21st century. The first decade of the 21st century saw Indonesia’s increasing emphasis on East Asia and the Asia-Pacific and its support for various ASEAN plus three and ASEAN plus Six groupings. By the end of the first decade, ASEAN had begun to be seen as a confinement for Indonesia and the latter was being seen as outgrowing the regional grouping.5 Experts began to argue that Indonesia should, instead of considering itself a Southeast Asian power, begin to treat itself as an Asia-Pacific power.6 Others said ASEAN was always small for Indonesia.7 Successive governments during the last three years have underscored Indonesia’s strategic stakes in the Indo-Pacific region. Indonesia officially endorsed the Indo-Pacific narrative in May 2013 when the then Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa, declared that ‘the future course of the Indo-Pacific region was in our profound interest’ and called upon neighbouring countries to build an Indo-Pacific Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation as a means of creating what he termed the ‘Pacific Indo-Pacific’ region.8 Minister Marty was followed soon by the country’s then Vice-President Boediono, and Defense Minister, Purnomo Yusgiantoro. They identified the Indo-Pacific region as the geopolitical canvas of Indonesia’s maritime worldview.9 The Widodo presidency popularized the Indo-Pacific debate by introducing the term into the national electoral discourse and declaring it as a new geopolitical canvas of the country’s ambitious maritime strategy of Poros Maritim Dunia (Global Maritime Fulcrum/Axis). The 2015 Annual Press Statement of Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, mentioned that the Indonesian diplomacy would ‘show its character as a maritime nation and take advantage of its strategic position between the Indian and the Pacific Oceans.’10 The 2015 Defense White Paper refers to the Indo-Pacific region as a priority area for monitoring and improving the country’s maritime security.11 The Indo-Pacific region is not a new template for strategic posturing rather a reflection of its archipelagic reality and its long-standing ‘two-continent (Asia and Australia) and two-ocean’ (Indian and Pacific Ocean) worldview. Indonesia’s 17,500 islands, various Straits (of Malacca, Sunda, Lombok and Makassar), and three Archipelagic Sea lanes (known as ALKI I, II and III) are situated across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, projecting Indonesia as a bridge between the two oceans.12 This cross-road (Pasisir-Silang) worldview has anchored Indonesia’s maritime philosophy of Wawasan Nusantara (Archipelagic Outlook).13 According to Dino Patti Djalal, Indonesia’s 244

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former Ambassador to the US and deputy Foreign Minister,‘Indonesian elites are long-accustomed to call upon the fact that their country is located between the Indian and the Pacific Oceans and between the Asian and Australian continents.’ Indonesia Defense White Papers of 2008 and 2015 used the same ‘two-continent and two-ocean discourse,’ though with varying degree of focus. The Indo-Pacific narrative has come to inform the country’s key strategic debates based on four principal understandings. First, the Indo-Pacific region provides Indonesia probably the most relevant geostrategic canvas for its emerging power status projection. The region houses Indonesia’s principal strategic partners, major sources and destinations of trade and investment, principal economic partners and competitors, and majority of its security challenges. Moreover, it has various unresolved boundary issues with nine out of its ten maritime neighbours. Similarly, Indonesia’s primary initiatives for regional cooperation – both ASEAN-led or non-ASEAN are situated in this region. Second, Widodo’s Indonesia has sought to reinforce the Indo-Pacific discourse by connecting it to the country’s mandala (concentric circle) approach. President Widodo’s election manifesto of May 2014 identified the Indo-Pacific region as a new regional concentric circle. These concentric circles have provided Indonesia a multi-layered and multi-focal worldview to define its strategic interests, security doctrine, threat environment and important relationships.14 The coupling of these two foreign policy frameworks provides strategic depth and historical outlook to emerging Indonesia’s expanded canvas of regional diplomacy. It also implies that Jakarta is defining its short-term and grand visions of regional diplomacy – key security and economic interests – and will be concentrating its military capability and diplomatic resources within its new concentric circle. The new mandala of the Indo-Pacific region seems to have grown on the back of two concentric circles – East Asia and the Asia-Pacific – that were added during the first decade of the 21st century.15 Third, Indonesia’s Indo-Pacific narrative reiterates the primacy of the Pacific Ocean in the country’s strategic calculus. This is evident in the country’s innovative PasIndo approach, as articulated by Rizal Sukma, a noted Indonesian expert on strategic affairs.16 Major threats to and actual violations of Indonesian sovereignty have involved the Pacific waters. Indonesia’s two somewhat explosive boundary contestations – with Malaysia in the Ambalat waters and China in the Natuna Sea – are located in the Pacific Ocean. The epicenter of maritime piracy seems to have shifted from the Strait of Malacca towards the eastern Islands and the South China Sea. Moreover, Indonesia’s key economic partnerships are located in Pacific Asia. Indonesia’s Defense White Paper of 2015 mentions ‘Samudera Pasific dan Hindia’ (Pacific and Indian Oceans), instead of using the generic Indo-Pacific term. Finally, the Indian Ocean is gaining prominence in Indonesia’s pan-Indo-Pacific worldview. A government official called upon to designate the Indian Ocean as Indonesia’s ‘front yard;’ and a senior journalist suggested the remaking of the Indian Ocean as ‘Samudera Indonesia’ (Indonesian Ocean).17 Indonesia’s current role as the IORA (Indian Ocean Rim Association) Chair, the Widodo government’s current emphasis on maritime resources and inter-island connectivity and the emerging Sino–Indian great power dynamic have pushed Indonesia to focus on the third largest ocean. The Indian Ocean has, according to Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, emerged as ‘one of the main crossroads of global trade, investment and energy flows’ that ‘will define the future of global cooperation.’ Laying emphasis on the resource dynamic of the Indian Ocean, an Indonesian official at the Office of the Coordinating Maritime Affairs, Safri Burhanuddin, declared that it was time for Indonesia to ‘shift the country’s development orientation from Sumatra’s east coast and Java’s north coast to the Indian Ocean, where 50 percent of the world’s natural resources and one-third of its population (or about 2 billion of people) were located.’18 However, Indonesia is yet to develop a comprehensive policy or roadmap on the Indian Ocean. 245

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The spatial framing of Indonesia’s Indo-Pacific debate remains ambiguous as it continues to float between (a) the narrower canvas of the eastern Indian Ocean and western Pacific Ocean and (b) the broader canvas of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Minister Marty outlined the region as ‘a triangular (space) spanning two oceans, the Pacific and Indian Oceans, bounded by Japan in the north, Australia in the South-east and India in the south-west, notably with Indonesia at its centre.’19 This is a narrower, power-centric and focused geopolitical canvas comprising the eastern Indian Ocean and the western Pacific. On the contrary, the Widodo government has followed a general and broader canvas, simply pitting together the two oceans.

An uncertain Indo-Pacific and Indonesia’s strategic hedging Too many powerful changes are happening too quickly in an ever-shrinking geostrategic landscape of the Indo-Pacific region. These trends have brought with them many possibilities and challenges. Though a substantial inventory of the writings has come up explaining strategic trends in the Indo-Pacific region, many of them concur that the region remains in flux and its exact nature is yet to unfold.20 This strategic flux can be attributed to various factors, such as an unstable multipolar power structure, emerging great power rivalries in the region, an uncertain and assertive rise of China, perceived relative decline in the US power, unresolved territorial disputes, and a weak ASEAN-led regional order. Faced with an uncertain geostrategic environment, emerging Indonesia has adopted a hedging strategy that is generally understood as a type of state behaviour between two broad spectrums of assertive approach of balancing and accommodative approach of bandwagoning. Within this broad binary, hedging has come to represent one or mixed meaning of – internal balancing, engagement, indirect balancing, soft balancing, institutional balancing, binding, enmeshment, risk-diversification, mixed strategy, multialignment, equidistant engagement, indecision, non-commitment, non-zero sum approach and so on.21 How is Widodo’s Indonesia hedging against prevailing uncertainty in the Indo-Pacific region? The Widodo government has added two important characteristics to its regional diplomacy – an assertive maritime strategy and a utilitarian economic diplomacy. The first element has led Indonesia to focus on building Indonesia’s naval capability and developing an assertive force posture. Together they represent Indonesia’s efforts towards internal balancing, a key element of Indonesia’s strategic hedging during the Widodo presidency. On the other hand, the emphasis on economic diplomacy has led the Widodo government to build stronger economic engagement with major powers and focus on securing tangible contributions from the latter to the development of the maritime infrastructure. In other words, Widodo’s Indonesia has sought to strengthen strategic partnerships and economic engagement with major players. These two elements of internal balancing and engagement are undergirded by Indonesia’s long-standing quest for strategic autonomy. These three elements of strategic hedging – internal balancing, engagement and autonomy – explain emerging Indonesia’s status projection in the Indo-Pacific region.

Indonesia as a maritime power: towards internal balancing Indonesia’s maritime discourse during the last fifteen years has shifted from its emphasis on archipelagic identity to a maritime power identity with the focus on building naval capability and developing an assertive maritime strategy. The most comprehensive and forceful maritime narrative came in June 2014 when then presidential candidate, Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, launched a new five-pronged maritime worldview of Indonesia as a Poros Maritim Dunia (Global Maritime Fulcrum – GMF).22 The Widodo government is at an advanced stage of 246

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developing a blueprint for the government to follow. The vision is also listed as a priority agenda in the 2015 and 2016 Annual Press Statements of Indonesia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Retno Marsudi. She has promised to implement the vision through the ‘enforcement of sovereignty, security and prosperity.’23 The new vision spurred the process of the modernization of the Indonesian navy by laying emphasis on the protection of its resources, territory and boundaries through an assertive force posture. These issues are discussed below.

Quest for a ‘reliable and respected’ Navy24 The last ten years have seen a steady push in augmenting Indonesia’s maritime capability that had been languishing for decades. The Yudhoyono government adopted in 2008 an ambitious twenty-year military modernization program (2005–2024), known as Kekuatan Pokok Minimum (Minimum Essential Force – MEF). The MEF is widely regarded as the brainchild of Indonesia’s former Defence Minister, Juwono Sudarsono, who served during both the Megawati and Yudhoyono presidencies. The initiative set forth the goal of transforming the Indonesian navy (Tentara Nasional Indonesia – Angkatan Laut or TNI AL) into a ‘green water’ navy comprising of 274 vessels, 137 aircraft and 10 submarines with striking, patrolling and supporting capabilities by 2024.25 The Indonesian navy is reportedly well on track in terms of the completion of the MEF projections. The general assessments have varied between 35–50 percent in 2014. A senior Indonesian navy official, Untung Suropati, stated that the Indonesian navy was ‘making good progress in improving manpower capabilities and strengthening its weapons-based capacity.’26 By 2015, Indonesian navy had 88 patrol and coastal combatant vessels, 26 amphibious vessels and 32 supportive vessels.27 The country has increased the number of navy personnel by more than half from 40,000 in 2001 to 65,000 in 2015. Similarly, the Indonesian navy has added significant aviation capacity to its firepower during the last fifteen years. The maritime modernization discourse has shifted during the last five years from building a ‘green water’ navy to becoming a ‘world class navy,’ revealing a sustained increase in the ambitions and pathways of the Indonesian navy. The idea of a ‘world class navy’ has been developed by the former navy chief, Admiral Marsetio.28 He has identified three roles of a world class navy – military, diplomatic and constabulary and the Indonesian navy is seen and playing its role as an instrument of war, maritime security and international diplomacy.29 The Indonesian navy appears to have adopted the idea as the homepage of its official website keeps flashing the term ‘world class navy.’

Assertive force posture and muscle flexing in the South China Sea The modernization of the Indonesian navy has been accompanied and partly driven by an assertive maritime strategy. The Indonesian navy’s assertive force posture is also manifested in the strategy of ‘sea control’ and ‘sea denial.’30 The idea of sea control entails ability to secure bordering maritime areas, contested and disputed border areas, critical sea lanes of communication, important straits and three Archipelagic Sea Lanes (ALKI I, II and III). The strategy of sea denial relates to Indonesian navy’s ability of preventing the opponent from using Indonesian maritime space and resources for strategic purposes and threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country. Jakarta’s tough instance against foreign fishing boats, naval mobilization and assertive posture against the Chinese nine-dash line and historical fishing rights are a part of its strategy of establishing control over its maritime space. A new assertiveness defines Indonesia’s maritime behaviour and ambitions in the 21st century. 247

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The assertive force posture entails forward deployment and ‘zero disturbance to the country’s security and national interests at sea.’31 The strategy of forward deployment has led to creation of new commands and bases in the border areas, and the deployment of sophisticated weaponry at the forward bases. The Indonesian navy is adding six new naval bases in the border areas to its two existing naval fleet – Western Fleet (Armada Barat or Armabar), headquartered in Jakarta, and Eastern Fleet (Armada Timur or Armatim), headquartered in Surabaya.32 Indonesia is also planning to set up a third fleet, known as Central Fleet (Armada Tengah or Armateng) that will be based in Makassar, South Sulawesi. The addition of the third fleet is expected to be followed by an expansion of existing marine corps into three commands.33 The Makassar fleet will be reinforced by the newly-created Palu submarine base in the central Sulawesi. Together they can make Indonesia a formidable naval force in the maritime Southeast Asia and help the country in establishing control over the vital sea lanes and straits and its unsettled northern and eastern maritime borders. Indonesia’s maritime strategy is shifting its focus from major islands (Pulau Besar) to the maritime borders and the outermost small islands (Pulau Pulau Kecil Perbatasan). There are 92 outermost islands in the country’s bordering waters, out of which 12 islands have drawn special attention from the Indonesian navy for their strategic location as they form outermost border points with other countries.34 They are also viewed as potential flashpoints or conflict zones.35 The TNI Chief, Commander Gatot Nurmantyo stressed the need to increase defence capability in order to ‘have eyes and ears on outer islands.’36 The Indonesian navy has developed 117 border posts and deployed naval units that conduct border security operations throughout the year.37 Indonesia’s current crackdown against illegal fishing and the ‘burn and sink the ships’ strategy underscores the country’s assertive maritime posture, rooted in the policy of zero tolerance against external presence in the Indonesian waters. Indonesia has caught nearly 500 trespassing foreign fishing boats and ships during the last five years and sunk more than 200 of them during the last two years on various occasions – December 2014, May 2015, August 2015, October 2015, January 2016, August 2016. Those ships have belonged mainly to four ASEAN countries (Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam) and China. Similar assertiveness is seen in Indonesia’s South China Sea strategy as it embarks on strengthening military presence in and around the Natuna archipelago. Indonesia’s former Defence Minister, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, highlighted the urgency to ‘secure the territories that border the South China Sea’ given the regional tension.38 President Widodo’s maritime focus has given a fresh push toward security of maritime outposts and areas of strategic interest. The Sino–Indonesian altercation off the Natuna archipelago in the South China Sea in March and May 2016 has not only raised nationalistic sentiments in Indonesia but also pushed the Widodo government to strengthen naval deployment in the Natuna Sea, raise the defense budget and enhance the budgetary allocation for the Indonesian navy.39

Leveraging great power politics: alignment and autonomy A fundamental feature of the Indo-Pacific region is the rise and growing prominence of the great power politics. Emerging Indonesia has responded to this trend by positioning its relations in a manner whereby it benefits from its full-scale engagement with them without being betrothed to a specific great power. In other words, it has sought deeper engagement with all the major powers and greater autonomy in its international behaviour. Jakarta is trying to optimize strategic gains, diversify risks and minimize uncertainty. Indonesia’s current debate on leveraging its great power relations has occurred along three aspects of the great power politics – the rise of China, the dynamic of Sino–US relationship and an emerging multipolarity. Beijing has emerged not only as one of the largest investors and 248

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trading partners of Indonesia but also the most powerful potential threat to Indonesia’s territorial sovereignty and integrity. Indonesia’s strategic partnership with China in 2005, its participation in the Chinese initiatives of One Belt, One Road (OBOR) and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and its military consolidation around the Natuna archipelago highlight the former’s cautious and ambiguous approach towards the latter. The rise of China has complicated the great power politics and put considerable pressure on Indonesia’s relations with other great powers, such as the US, Japan and India. For instance, both the Sino–Indian and Sino–Japanese rivalries have gained salience during the last ten years. Their strategic competition and rivalries are no longer confined to their traditional areas of influence, rather spread to the entire Indo-Pacific region. As a result, Jakarta is having to deal with multiple great power dyads, such as the Sino–US, the Sino–Japanese and the Sino–Indian equations. These dyads have accentuated the regional uncertainty and given salience to escalating major power rivalries. The doctrine of ‘global maritime fulcrum’ appears to rest on the same logic of balancing alignment with autonomy that has characterized Marty’s doctrine of the ‘dynamic equilibrium.’ Both of them have sought alignment with major powers, project Indonesia’s pivotal position in the regional order, limit the side-effects of the great power rivalries, avoid the preponderance of any regional power and, above all, maintain peace and stability in the region. The idea of dynamic equilibrium entails less control on the part of the protagonist (Indonesia) on the situation and therefore it is more normative and aspirational in character. Marty explained the doctrine of dynamic equilibrium as a ‘situation where not one country is preponderant in our region,’ but ‘more countries engaged in multisectoral issues,’ such as security, political, environmental, economic and social-cultural.40 On the other hand, the idea of fulcrum is predicated on an active participation of the state in question as fulcrum. While equilibrium is situational or structural, fulcrum is positional and behavioural. The Widodo government has continued the policy of building strategic partnerships with major powers and players. It upgraded strategic partnership with China to ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’ in March 2015 and its comprehensive partnership with the US to strategic partnership in October 2015. The idea of building strategic partnerships was put in place during the first decade of the 21st century as a means of developing multi-faceted engagement with important players and stakeholders in the region. Outside ASEAN, Indonesia has signed partnerships with Australia (2008), China (2005), India (2005), Japan (2006), South Korea (2006), and USA (2010). Within ASEAN, Indonesia has signed strategic partnership with Vietnam in 2013. By the end of 2014 Indonesia had signed such agreements with 18 countries, including all the major powers.41 These partnerships are viewed as a part of the trend away from alliances and towards a more generic expression of ‘alignment’ as ‘a state of shared agreement or accord on one or more significant issues.’42 They have gained prominence in Indonesia’s strategic thinking as they reflect ‘Jakarta’s desire to shape a regional order where powers other than the US and China can also have a role to play.’43 Yudhoyono identified three main functions of Indonesia’s partnership diplomacy – redefine and upgrade relations between the partners, reveal positive strategic intention and open up new possibilities for dispute management.44 Marty has posited SPs as an anti-thesis of trust-deficit and viewed it as a trust-building instrument.45 The Widodo government has sought to insulate economic incentives from geostrategic anxieties. The underlying logic appears to be that economic interests can be pursued without compromising security interests and Indonesia can and should do business irrespective of security challenges posed by any country. The Sino–Indonesian Maritime Partnership is an important indicator of balancing economic interests with security concerns. Indonesia has signed maritime partnership with China and claimed mutual complementarity with the Chinese initiative 249

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of Maritime Silk Route. Indonesia has also signed a detailed MoU with the US, reaffirmed its support to the US rebalancing strategy and declared its intent to join the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership, the most important economic component of the US rebalancing strategy. President Widodo has also sought greater role of Japan in building the maritime infrastructure and capability. President Widodo’s visits to China (March and May 2015), Japan (April 2015) and the US (October 2015) indicate a continuity in Indonesia’s pursuit of multi-faceted alignment with multiple strategic partners. Though Jakarta has sought deeper engagement with all major powers, it has continued to seek strategic autonomy in its international behaviour and great power engagement. Its quest for autonomy has been one of the fundamentals of Indonesian foreign policy, shaped by the long-standing principles of ‘free and active’ (bebas dan aktif ) foreign policy, ‘rowing between the two reefs’ (mendayung antara dua karang) and the non-alignment. Jakarta does not want to privilege its relations with one great power at the expense of its relations with other great powers.46 While engaging China and the US, Indonesia has tried to dissociate itself with the strategic narratives of any side and from what it perceives as policies inimical to regional peace and stability. Indonesia remains wary of the destabilizing impact of the enhanced rhetoric of the Sino–US rivalry in the region.47 Jakarta has challenged not only Beijing’s assertive foreign policy behavior in South China Sea but also what it perceives as destabilizing elements of Washington’s rebalancing strategy. Indonesia has expressed concerns over the potential negative impact of the US FONOPs (Freedom of Navigation Operations) in the South China Sea. The utilitarian nature of the Widodo government’s foreign policy with its emphasis on economic diplomacy and tangible gains has made Indonesia’s great power relations somewhat more transactional. It has introduced a greater degree of autonomy and distancing in the Indonesian international behaviour. President Widodo’s decision to cut short his visit to the US in October 2015, abstain from the APEC summit in Manila in November 2015 and to conduct a cabinet meeting aboard a warship in the Natuna sea indicates that he means business and professes little attachment. Indonesia’s quest for autonomy and strategy of distancing is best explained by Rizal Sukma when he states that ‘it would be foolish for Indonesia to become a pawn in the game of great powers’ rivalries and quest for influence’ given the current environment of strategic uncertainty.’48

An ASEAN-plus approach: logics of status and leadership Similar quest for broader regional involvement and posture can be seen in Indonesia’s approach to regional cooperation – decouple regional interests from ASEAN and focus on an ASEAN-plus approach. At the heart of Indonesia’s ASEAN-plus approach, there lies a perception that the country’s Southeast Asia-centric and ASEAN-centric worldview does not appropriately represent emerging Indonesia’s regional status. A glimpse into the increasingly downplayed position of ASEAN in the emerging Indonesia’s strategic thinking came from Endy Bayuni, a noted Indonesian journalist. He wrote, ‘Under Jokowi, Indonesia is becoming more assertive, and perhaps a little too confident for its own good. And it is going it alone without ASEAN . . . While ASEAN remains important, Indonesian diplomats today are no longer proclaiming that ASEAN is the cornerstone of the country’s foreign policy.’49 However, this desire to transcend ASEAN confinement is not restricted to experts like Rizal Sukma alone. In fact, Prabowo Subianto, who contested as a presidential candidate against the current President, identified ASEAN regionalism in his election manifesto as ‘an artefact in Indonesia’s diplomatic history.’50 While downplaying the importance of ASEAN, a few Indonesian experts have underscored the strategic importance and necessity of the EAS (East Asia Summit) as a viable regional mechanism 250

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for cooperation. Quite remarkably, President Joko Widodo chose the East Asia Summit in Myanmar and APEC in Beijing in November 2014 to spell out his maritime vision. A group of Indonesian scholars have pushed the primacy of the EAS in Indonesia’s role in building regional cooperative architecture given the strength of its membership composition. A noted Indonesian expert, Jusuf Wanandi, maintains that ‘the EAS has to become not only an ASEAN-based regional institution, but also a wider regional one.’51 Following the logic of ASEAN confinement, Indonesian political elite have turned their attention toward ASEAN plus initiatives, such as EAS (East Asia Summit), ADMM plus (ASEAN Plus Defence Ministerial Meeting), APEC, (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation), Afro-Asian Conference, and IORA (Indian Ocean Rim Association). Having performed remarkably as ASEAN Chairman in 2011, Jakarta won accolades for hosting one of the best summits in the history of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in October 2013. Jakarta successfully hosted more than 100 leaders of Asia and Africa to celebrate the seven decades of Afro-Asian solidarity in April 2015. Similarly, it expects to play an active role as the Chairman of Indian Ocean Rim Association of Regional Countries (IOR-ARC) for two years (2015–2016). Indonesia intends to use these ASEAN-plus cooperative processes to position itself as a key facilitator of cooperation in the larger geopolitical setting of the Indo-Pacific region.

Conclusion An emerging Indonesia and extremely complex Indo-Pacific has reset basic thrusts of Indonesia’s regional diplomacy. This reset is taking shape in the form of various elements of transition – Southeast Asia to Indo-Pacific, underbalancing to internal balancing, ASEAN to ASEAN-plus and, above all, a middle power to an emerging power. This process of transition is driven internally by key debates on status-signaling in the form of entitlement and status-consistent behaviour, and regionally through its focus on management of relations with major powers by leveraging its pivotal position in the region. The narratives of ‘equilibrium’ and ‘fulcrum’ not only highlight the country’s attempts to deal with the fast-changing regional geopolitical realities but also show how Jakarta is graduating from a wary spectator to a pivotal player in the region. Jakarta is emerging, assertive, confident and ‘going it alone without ASEAN.’52

Notes 1 Greg Fealy and Hugh White, “Indonesia’s Great Power Aspirations: A Critical View,” Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 92–100; Vikram Nehru, “Indonesia: The Reluctant Giant,” in Ashley J. Tellis, Alison Szalwinski and Michael Wills (eds.), Strategic Asia 2015–16: Foundations of National Power in the Asia-Pacific (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2015), pp. 191–222; Geoffrey Till, “Indonesia as a Growing Maritime Power: Possible Implications for Australia,” Soundings Papers (Sea Power Centre, Australia), no. 4 (May 2015), www.navy.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/Soundings_No_4.pdf (accessed on September 10, 2016; Amitav Acharya, Indonesia Matters: Asia’s Emerging Democratic Power (New York: World Scientific, 2014); Richard Fontaine and Daniel M. Kliman, “International Order and Global Swing States,” The Washington Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1 (Winter 2013), pp. 93–109; Anthony Reid (ed.), Indonesia Rising: The Repositioning of Asia’s Third Giant (Singapore: ISEAS, 2012); Joshua Keating, “The Stories You Missed in 2010,” Foreign Policy Special Report, November 28, 2010, http://foreign policy.com/2010/11/28/the-stories-you-missed-in-2010/ (accessed on September 12, 2016) (accessed on November 12, 2014); Ted Piccone, “Global Swing States and the Human Rights and Democracy Order,” GMF Global Swing States Working Paper, November 2012, www.brookings.edu/wp-content/ uploads/2016/06/27-global-swing-states-piccone.pdf (accessed on September 30, 2016). 2 Endy Bayuni, “Is Indonesia Punching above Its Weight?,” The Straits Times, May 13, 2015; Juwana Hikmahanto, “Insight: Jokowi’s Foreign Policy: Assertive or Nationalistic?,” The Jakarta Post, June 25, 2015, p. 7.

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Vibhanshu Shekhar 3 Greg Fealy and Hugh White, “Indonesia’s Great Power Aspirations: A Critical View,” Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 92–100. 4 Donald E. Weatherbee, “The Incredible Shrinking Indonesia,” CSIS PacNet Newsletter, no. 64, September 23, 2015, https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/legacy_files/files/publication/Pac1564. pdf (accessed on September 20, 2016). 5 Rizal Sukma, “A Post-ASEAN Foreign Policy for a Post-G8 World,” The Jakarta Post, October 5, 2009; Barry Desker, “Is Indonesia Outgrowing ASEAN?,” RSIS Commentary, no. CO10125, September 29, 2010. 6 Rizal Sukma, “A Post-ASEAN Foreign Policy for a Post-G8 World,” op.cit. 7 Dewi Fortuna Anwar, Interview with the author in December 2015 in Jakarta, Indonesia. 8 Marty Natalegawa, “An Indonesian Perspective on the Indo-Pacific,” The Jakarta Post, May 20, 2013. 9 Opening Remarks by H.E. Dr. Boediono, the Vice President of the Republic of Indonesia at the Fourth Jakarta International Defense Dialogue (JIDD) 19 March 2014. 10 “Annual Press Statement of the Indonesian Minister for Foreign Affairs 2015,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Indonesia, January 2015. 11 Indonesia’s Defense White Paper 2015 (Jakarta: Ministry of Defense, Republic of Indonesia, 2015), pp. 54–55. 12 Mohammad Hatta, Indonesia’s former Vice-President and an architect of Indonesian foreign policy coined the ‘two-continent and two-ocean worldview. For details see Mohammad Hatta, “Indonesia’s Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs: An American Quarterly Review, vol. 31, no. 1/4 (1952/1953), p. 450. 13 Dino Patti Djalal, “Geopolitical Concepts and Maritime Territorial Behaviour in Indonesian Foreign Policy,” M.A. Thesis submitted to Simon Fraser University, October 1990, p. 164. 14 For details of discussion on mandala, see Benedict R. O’G. Anderson, Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 43–44; Nicholas Tarling, Status and Security in Southeast Asian State Systems (Oxon: Routledge, 2013), pp. 20–24. 15 Dewi Fortuna Anwar, “Megawati’s Search for an Effective Foreign Policy,” in Hadi Soesastro, Anthony L. Smith and Mui Ling Han (eds.), Governance in Indonesia: Challenges Facing the Megawati Presidency (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2003), pp. 78–79. 16 Rizal Sukma, then foreign policy advisor to the President Jokowi identified his regional worldview as ‘PasIndo’ approach during a book discussion at the Indonesian Embassy on December 10, 2014. 17 Sukarno had called the Indian Ocean ‘Samudera Indonesia’ (Indonesian Ocean). “Indian Ocean Should Become RI’s ‘Front Yard’,” The Jakarta Post, March 12, 2015; Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, “Look West, Making the Indian Ocean Our Own,” The Jakarta Post, February 25, 2015. 18 “Indian Ocean Should Become RI’s ‘Front Yard’,” ibid. 19 Marty Natalegawa, “An Indonesian Perspective on the Indo-Pacific,” op.cit. 20 Mohan Mallik (ed.), Maritime Security in the Indo-Pacific (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014); Carlyle Thayer, “New Strategic Uncertainty and Security Order in Southeast Asia,” in Elena Atanassova-Cornelis and Frans-Paul van der Putten (eds.), Changing Security Dynamics in East Asia: A Post-US Regional Order in the Making? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 127-146; Nick Bisley, Sumit Ganguly, Joseph Chinyong Liow and Andrew Scobell (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Asian Security Studies (Oxon: Routledge, 2010); Willian T. Tow, Asia-Pacific Strategic Relations: Seeking Convergent Security (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 21 John Mearsheimer, “False Promise of International Institutions,” International Security, vol. 19, no. 3 (Winter 1994/1995), pp. 5–49; Alstair Iain Johnston and Robert S. Ross (eds.), Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power (New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 284; Evan A. Medeiros, “Strategic Hedging and the Future of Asia-Pacific Stability,” The Washington Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 1 (2005), p. 147; Amitav Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?,” International Security, vol. 28, no. 3 (Winter 2003– Spring 2004), p. 153; Van Jackson, “Power, Trust, and Network Complexity: Three Logics of Hedging in Asian Security,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, vol. 14, no. 3 (2014), pp. 331–356. 22 They are maritime culture, maritime connectivity, maritime economy, maritime diplomacy and maritime security. 23 “Annual Press Statement of the Indonesian Minister for Foreign Affairs 2015,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Indonesia, January 2015; “Annual Press Statement of the Indonesian Minister for Foreign Affairs 2016, Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Republic of Indonesia, January 7, 2016; Bagus B.T. Saragih, “FM to Realize Jokowi’s Maritime-Axis Vision,” The Jakarta Post, October 30, 2014. 24 The official website of the Indonesian navy identifies its vision as being a reliable and respected navy. “Visi dan Misi TNI Angkatan Laut,” The Indonesian Navy, Republic of Indonesia, www.tnial.mil.id/ Aboutus/VisiMisi.aspx (accessed on September 30, 2016).

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Indonesia as a regional power 25 For details on Minimum Essential Force, see Koh Swee Lean Collin, “What Next for the Indonesian Navy? Challenges and Prospects for Attaining the Minimum Essential Force by 2024,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, vol. 37, no. 3 (2015), pp. 436–439. 26 Yeremia Sukoyo, “Navy Says World Class Status Just a Year Away,” The Jakarta Globe, July 6, 2013, http://jakartaglobe.id/news/navy-says-world-class-status-just-a-year-away/ (accessed on September 19, 2016). 27 The Military Balance (London: IISS, 2016), p. 258. 28 Dr. Marsetio, A World Class Indonesian Navy: The New Paradigm (Jakarta: Indonesian Navy Headquarters, 2014); “Taking the Stage: Indonesia Envisions a ‘World Class Navy’, Jane’s Navy International, www. janes360.com/images/assets/021/45021/Indonesia_envisions_a__world-class_navy_.pdf (accessed on September 22, 2016). 29 Dr. Marsetio, Indonesian Sea Power (Jakarta: Indonesia Defense University, 2014), p. 104. 30 Dr. Marsetio, “Strategi TNI Angkatan Laut Dalam Pengamanan Batas Maritim NKRI: Kajian Historis-Strategis,” Jurnal Sejarah Citra Lekha, vol. 17, no. 1 (February 2013), p. 1. 31 Dr. Marsetio, A World Class Indonesian Navy, op.cit., p. 13. 32 Nani Afrida, “Navy Awaits Jokowi’s Nod on Central Region Armada Command,” The Jakarta Post, February 17, 2015, p. 3. 33 “Taking the Stage: Indonesia Envisions a ‘World Class Navy’,” Jane’s Navy International, www.janes360. com/images/assets/021/45021/Indonesia_envisions_a__world-class_navy_.pdf (accessed on September 22, 2016). 34 Koesworo Setiawan and Gerard Arijo Guritno, Buku Putih Keamanan Laut 2007, Bakorkamla (Jakarta: Kayla Pustaka, 2007), p. 98. 35 Evan A. Laksmana, “Rebalancing Indonesia’s Naval Force: Trends, Nature and Drivers,” in Geoffrey Till and Jane Chan (eds.) Naval Modernisation in South-East Asia: Nature, Causes and Consequences, (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 186. 36 Ayomi Amindoni, “TNI to Build New Bases in Eastern Indonesia,” The Jakarta Post, February 24, 2016. 37 Dr. Marsetio, “Strategi TNI Angkatan Laut Dalam Pengamanan Batas Maritim NKRI,” op.cit., pp. 1-18. 38 “Indonesia to Build Military Base in Natuna,” Tempo English Online, September 10, 2014, http:// en.tempo.co/read/news/2014/09/10/055605767/Indonesia-to-Build-Military-Base-in-Natuna (accessed on June 12, 2015). 39 Tabita Diela, “Indonesia Raises Defense Spending, Despite Budget Cuts, Following Natuna Incident,” The Jakarta Globe, June 24, 2016 http://jakartaglobe.id/business/indonesia-raises-defense-spendingdespite-budget-cuts-natuna-incident/ (accessed on Auguts 15, 2016); Hidayat Setiaji and Agustinus Beo Da Costa, “With Eye on China, Indonesian Parliament Approves Higher Defense Spending,” Reuters, June 28, 2016, www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-economy-budget-defence-idUSKCN0ZE113 (accessed on September 22, 2016). 40 “A Conversation with Marty Natalegawa,” Council on Foreign Relations Transcript, September 20, 2010, www.cfr.org/indonesia/conversation-marty-natalegawa/p34820 (accessed on October 1, 2016). 41 Annual Press Statement 2015, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Indonesia, www.kemlu.go.id/ Documents/PPTM%202015/PPTM%202015%20ENG%20FINAL%20PDF.pdf (accessed on July 18, 2015). 42 Thomas Wilkins, “‘Alignment’, Not ‘Alliance’: The Shifting Paradigm of International Security Cooperation: Toward a Conceptual Taxonomy of Alignment,” Review of International Studies, vol. 38 (2012), p. 56. 43 Rizal Sukma, “Indonesia and the Emerging Sino-US Rivalry in Southeast Asia,” The New Geopolitics of Southeast Asia, LSE Special Report, no. 15, November 2012, www.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/publications/reports/ pdf/SR015/SR015-SEAsia-Sukma-.pdf (accessed on June 20, 2015). 44 Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, “An Architecture for Durable Peace in the Asia-Pacific,” Shangri La Dialogue Keynote Address, June 1, 2012, www.iiss.org/en/events/shangri%20la%20dialogue/archive/sld1243d9/opening-remarks-and-keynote-address-9e17/keynote-address-7244 (accessed on June 30, 2016). 45 “Address by H.E. Dr. R. M. Marty M. Natalegawa Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia,” Mcquarie University, Sydney, July 15, 2013, http://kemlu.go.id/Documents/Remarks%20 Menlu%20di%20Sydney/Remarks%20Dr.%20Marty%20Natalegawa.pdf (accessed on September 26, 2016). 46 Vibhanshu Shekhar, “Jokowi’s U.S. Visit Builds on Mutual Interests, Expectations and Challenges,” The Brookings Institution Op-Ed, October 21, 2015, www.brookings.edu/opinions/jokowis-u-s-visitbuilds-on-mutual-interests-expectations-and-challenges/ (accessed on September 29, 2016).

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Rizal Sukma, “Indonesia and the Emerging Sino-US Rivalry in Southeast Asia,” op.cit. Rizal Sukma, “Insight: Is Indonesia tilting toward China?,” The Jakarta Post, December 11, 2015. Endy Bayuni, “Is Indonesia Punching above Its Weight?,” op.cit. Hadianto Wirajuda, “The Prospects for Indonesian Foreign Policy,” The Jakarta Post, May 30, 2014. Jusuf Wanandi, “Prospects for Southeast Asian Security Cooperation,” The Jakarta Post, July 8, 2015. Evelyn Goh, “Going It Alone,” New Mandala, July 3, 2015, www.newmandala.org/going-it-alone/ (accessed on September 23, 2016); Endy Bayuni, “Is Indonesia Punching above Its Weight?,” op.cit.

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20 TERRORISM AND COUNTERTERRORISM IN INDONESIA Susan Sim

The lure of the caliphate When the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) released a video in November 2014 to announce the executions of American hostage Peter Kassig and 18 captured Syrian officers, one face among the row of knife-wielding ISIS fighters caused much excitement among Southeast Asian sympathisers. Within hours, Indonesian jihadists were posting screen shots of an Asian face on their Facebook pages, jubilant that “a brother from the Nusantara is among the lions of the Caliphate”.1 The ISIS fighter was quickly identified as Khairul Anuar, an Indonesian “mujahid”. But it was not a face or name familiar to Indonesia’s elite counterterrorism police, Densus 88 (Detachment 88). Was the fighter in fact Filipino?2 Or was he Malaysian, as suggested by the Facebook postings of one Khairul Anuar whose profile photo matched the ISIS executioner?3 Importantly, did ISIS choose Khairul Anuar for the propaganda video because he looked prototypically Southeast Asian? That same month, Dabiq, the official ISIS magazine, finally announced that it was accepting the pledges of allegiance from groups in Indonesia and the Philippines, among other countries, and held out the prospect of ISIS provinces or wilayah in these countries.4 More than two years later, the much-anticipated announcement of an ISIS wilayah in Abu Sayyaf-held territory in southern Philippines has still not materialized although a June 2016 propaganda video named Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon “the mujahid authorised to lead the soldiers of the Islamic State in the Philippines”.5 The three most important ISIS boosters in Indonesia – Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, Aman Abdurrahman and Santoso – were not mentioned, perhaps because none of them controlled any territory, the first two having pledged their fealty from the prisons of Nusakambangan while the third was then being hunted down in the jungles of Sulawesi. If the ISIS leadership has not done much to appeal to Indonesia’s 210 million Muslims, it is perhaps because Southeast Asia remains under-represented in the caliphate’s global workforce – about 500 from Indonesia,6 110 from Malaysia, 100 from the Philippines7 and a handful from Singapore and Cambodia, for a total of barely 700 – compared to the Middle East (8,240), the Maghreb (8,000), Western Europe (5,000), former Soviet Republics (4,700) and the Balkans (875).8 The other key holdout is South Asia, which has sent even fewer fighters to Syria, despite accounting for 30% of the world’s Muslims.

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That relatively few Indonesians, on a per capita basis, have joined ISIS has led some in the West to wonder if the country with the largest Muslim population in the world has become immune to the type of violent extremism that afflicts other Muslim populations. Or to use the more colourful words of one writer: Has “Indonesia crushed and co-opted its Islamic extremists” by killing them with kindness?9 Indonesians themselves are not as concerned about religious militancy as those in other Muslim majority countries. A 2015 Pew Research Centre global poll found only 20% of Indonesians “very concerned” about the rise of Islamic extremism in Indonesia compared to a median of 42% across 10 countries with Muslim populations of around half or more in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Not surprisingly, only 25% of Indonesians said they were very concerned about the ISIS threat, compared to 48% in Malaysia (although only 26% of Malaysians were very concerned about rising Islamic extremism in their country).10 Yet, there is no doubt that the existence of ISIS has, as Indonesia watcher Sidney Jones noted, “given a new boost to jihadism in Southeast Asia, raising fears of more violence, a possible shift in targeting and new cross-border alliances”.11 Singapore and Kuala Lumpur have clamped down hard, arresting self-styled jihadists and former detainees attempting to travel to Syria to join an apocalyptic battle for Islam.12 Seeing in the ISIS call for attacks at home an existentialist threat to its multi-ethnic society, Singapore, an island state sandwiched between Indonesia and Malaysia, started a national movement in early 2016 to prepare its citizens for the day they come under a terrorist attack.13 Malaysia too announced publicly that it was girding itself not only for lone wolf attacks at home but also the return of battle-hardened foreign fighters to the region.14 The upshot is that while neighbouring governments are very concerned about a renewed risk of terrorist attacks in Southeast Asia – particularly given the existence of a Malay-speaking military unit within ISIS known as the Katibah Nusantara or Archipelago Group – there is little public pressure within Indonesia to crack down on ISIS recruitment and mobilisation. President Joko Widodo’s relatively low-key response to an attack claimed by ISIS in central Jakarta in January 2016 – he urged the people not to be afraid as “it is all controllable” – was noted more for what he did not say. Unlike President Francois Hollande’s reaction to the ISIS attacks in Paris two months earlier, Widodo did not declare Indonesia to be at war with ISIS.15 But then the Jakarta attack was long on audacity – four men threw grenades and shot up a Starbucks and a police post a few blocks from the Presidential Palace on a Thursday morning – and short on sophistication – over 25 minutes, two blew themselves up, killing three bystanders, and the other two were shot dead by an off-duty police officer. Within hours of the attack, the street vendors were back on the scene and the hashtag “#KamiTidakTakut” (#We are not afraid) was trending on Twitter. The strongest pushback against the ISIS ideology has come instead from the al-Qaeda linked Jema’ah Islamiyah (JI), which is being revived as a younger generation of members refuse to cede leadership of the jihadi movement to pro-ISIS usurpers. The rise of ISIS, while lowering the bar for admission into what used to be an exclusive club of violent extremists prepared to die in a quest for life under a caliphate, has also widened schisms within the jihadi community. Where JI used to prize family antecedents and personal loyalty, and subjected potential members to lengthy vetting and ideological indoctrination, ISIS lets one and all proclaim themselves members with one raised index finger and a social media account. Yet documents seized by Indonesian police in late 2015 showed the total number of pledged ISIS members, supporters and sympathisers in Indonesia to be about 1000,16 a far cry from the thousands JI commanded in its heyday. Convicted terrorists who left JI and its affiliates after prison believe that only about 20% of the jihadi fraternity have pledged allegiance to ISIS. The majority are vehemently anti-ISIS, they say.17 256

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While ISIS has changed the threat landscape with its calls for lone wolf attacks using easily available tools like knives and axes,18 it is by no means the only terrorist threat. As it has since it orchestrated bomb attacks on churches across the Indonesian archipelago on Christmas Eve 2000, and recovered from a foiled plot to launch seven suicide truck bombs in Singapore in late 2001 by carrying out Indonesia’s first suicide bombings in Bali in October 2002, JI remains a long term threat to regional security. Despite the arrests post-Bali, and the jailing of much of the JI leadership for much of the last decade, it has been “recruiting, training and consolidating”, the United Nations Security Council 1267 Committee reported in July 2015, citing a member report.19 Indeed JI was the first Indonesian group to realise the value of the Syrian conflict as training ground. It acted so stealthily that there are no firm estimates on how many people JI sent to Syria to fight with the AQ-linked rebel group formerly known as Jabhat Al Nusra. In the early years of the conflict, several of the Indonesians sent by JI-linked boarding schools to study in Yemen, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan posted updates on their social media accounts that indicated they were fighting with rebel groups in Syria. Using these early pathfinders, JI began sending senior cadres for short stints with Jabhat Al Nusra to acquire war fighting experience under the guise of “humanitarian missions”, of which a dozen were dispatched between late 2012 and July 2014 by a Solo-based group called HASI led by a JI sympathiser named Bambang Sukirno. HASI and Sukirno, who funded the missions through public donations, were designated “foreign terrorist fighter facilitators” by the US Treasury in September 2014, eventually forcing HASI to shut down the missions. Not surprisingly, the 1267 Committee arrived at this assessment: “A revived JI, with its long-established networks, could pose a significant long-term threat to the region”. The Widodo government is aware of the threat. In the aftermath of the January 2016 attack in Jakarta, it has been trying to revise anti-terrorism legislation, first passed in the wake of the 2002 Bali bombings, to target those who have undertaken militant training or participated in terrorist acts in a foreign country (i.e. joined ISIS or Jabhat Al Nusra), as well as empower the police to take pre-emptive action against those planning terrorist attacks, including using electronic communications, intelligence reports and financial transactions as evidence in court against suspects.20 The bill has been languishing in Parliament, stymied apparently by fears that a clause to allow preventive detention of up to 90 days instead of the current seven days would bring up echoes of abuses during the Suharto years. The Indonesian military’s lobbying to be given similar powers as the police for counter-terrorism operations has not helped allay fears. Meanwhile, the Indonesian Police is unable to detain returning foreign fighters or those deported by Turkey unless they have committed other criminal offences. Some writers have suggested that by bringing Islamic groups into the democratic process and co-opting their demand for clean government, coupled with gentler handling of extremists, the Indonesian governments post-Suharto have robbed the terrorists of their raison d’etre. Others would argue that their kinder, gentler Indonesia allowed extremist groups to recruit and mobilise openly, earning some legitimacy as the hired militia wings of political interests using race and religion to discredit rivals and retain privileges. The reality is Islamists in Indonesia have long survived state suppression, co-optation and betrayal, and are now variously courted and denied. Another reality: the majority of Indonesians have always subscribed to a syncretic Islam that is tolerant of all faiths, with polls showing that most Indonesians do not want to live under Sharia law.21 However, an endemic subservience to religious piety – conditioned in many Indonesians who see themselves as unschooled in Islam, which is the majority – has led to Indonesia being fertile ground for violent Islamists of all stripes, from the fundamentalists who see all secular governments as thagut (evil) and democracy as a Western conspiracy to oppress Muslims, to the moralistic, vigilante street gangs that now provide ISIS with its most promising recruiting pool. 257

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The roots of terrorism in Indonesia Dreaming of the Daulah Islamiyah Modern Indonesia has always had a problem with Islamic extremism, unresolved from when secular nationalists and Christian leaders agreed that Indonesians should believe in God but refused to allow Islamic groups to retain seven words – “dengan kewajiban menjalankan syari’at Islam bagi pemeluk-pemeluknya” (Indonesian for “with the obligation to implement the sharia (Islamic law) for adherents of Islam”) – originally contained in the Indonesian Constitution (the “Jakarta Charter”) adopted at the declaration of independence on 17 August 1945.22 Thwarted from declaring Indonesia an Islamic state, leading Islamic clerics nonetheless issued fatwas declaring a holy war against the Dutch when the former colonial masters returned at the end of World War II. Ironically, it was Indonesia’s largest traditionalist, and most tolerant, Islamic movement, Nahdladtul Ulama, that issued the Jihad Resolution – a fatwa declaring that war to preserve independence was jihad fi sabilillah (jihad in the path of Allah) and fard al-ain (obligatory for all Muslims) – which still resonances to this day among extremist groups that believe the struggle to free Indonesia from enemy forces has not ended. One such extremist group was Darul Islam, whose founder, Sekarmadji Maridjan Kartosuwirjo, mounted a rebellion in 1948 against the Indonesian government as the war of independence against the Dutch entered its final year. The next year, the self-declared Imam of Darul Islam (abode of Islam) proclaimed his base in West Java to be the Negara Islam Indonesia (NII), the Islamic State of Indonesia. His rebellion spread to Aceh and South Sulawesi as local leaders became aggrieved with Jakarta, before sputtering to an end in 1962 with his capture by the Indonesian army and execution. Kartosuwirjo, despite believing in Islamic mysticism like many traditional Muslims in West Java, introduced his followers to concepts of takfir (the declaration of a Muslim as apostate) and hijrah (the Prophet Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina to establish a secure base) paired with jihad as fard al-ain. War against an apostate government, which he defined as a government that did not implement Islamic law, was obligatory, and terrorism against civilians who did not support their movement was legitimate. These ideas were embraced by a group of DI remnants in the 1970s to justify terrorist attacks and robberies to raise funds (which they defended as fa’i), and further entrenched by the Salafi Jihadism that arrived in Indonesia in the 1990s with the return of the Afghan mujahidin.23 The roots of terrorism in Indonesia were in that sense planted with the founding of Darul Islam at the country’s independence, nurtured by the Afghan conflict and revitalised by the creation of Jema’ah Islamiyah in 1993 and its adoption of al-Qaeda’s global jihad agenda to fulfill a vision of a Daulah Islamiyah (Islamic state) encompassing much of Southeast Asia. The Afghan conflict provided Southeast Asia with a new generation of trained terrorists and bomb makers; between 1986 and 1995, Darul Islam sent 10 batches of some 197 recruits to Afghanistan, not to fight the Soviets, but for military training at the academy set up for foreign mujahidin.24 A graduate in the 4th batch was an Indonesian who became better known as Hambali, who later took money and orders from 911 architect Khalid Sheik Mohammad to launch AQ operations in Southeast Asia. When the Afghan training camps were shut down in 1995, a splinter of Darul Islam calling itself Jema’ah Islamiyah parleyed the bomb-making expertise of its Afghan veterans into sanctuary in southern Philippines to begin a training camp there for a second generation of terrorists. Camp Hudaibiyah was for the best JI cadres from Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, who also gained direct military experience from fighting with the Moro fighters in Mindanao against the Philippines military. Between 1995 and 2002, some 111 JI 258

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members were trained in Mindanao, including Malaysians Noordin Top and Dr Azahari Husein. To seal the budding links with al-Qaeda, 20 JI members were also sent from 1999 to 2000 to AQ’s Camp Faruq in Afghanistan for specialised military training. The trainees included Azahari Husein, who made the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) for Noordin Top’s suicide bombings in Jakarta and Bali between 2003 and 2005. JI’s adoption of the AQ agenda was more contentious among its leaders and rank and file, especially after the 2002 Bali bombings created a groundswell of public revulsion against terrorism that allowed Jakarta to go from denying the existence of JI when first exposed by Singapore the previous year, to creating a special counter-terrorism police unit trained and initially funded and equipped by Western governments.

Empowering the disgruntled amateur: laskars, thugs and Aman Abdurrahman If the Darul Islam dream of an Indonesian caliphate owes its resilience to a conception of the Indonesian identity that both empowers the disenfranchised and holds them subservient to the myth of the Imam Mahdi – the waiting Imam or the Messiah – who will save them from a godless, secular government, the rise of the laskars (Islamic militias) in the post-Suharto era is the result of ad hoc alliances between generals, politicians and conservative Islamists seeking leverage amidst uncertainty by manipulating the urban poor. When communal conflicts broke out in the Maluku islands and Poso between 1999 and 2001, these alliances harnessed the anger of a frustrated segment of society by urging them to defend Islam as a moral imperative, funnelling volunteers first into militias such as Laskar Jihad, and then paying them to join vigilante groups like Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders’ Font) or FPI. Unknown to the generals and politicians, JI also sent fighters to the conflict zones, and with its long term vision of a Daulah Islamiyah in mind, set up training facilities in both provinces, training more than 400 people, mostly locals aggrieved by personal losses. One of them was a Poso native named Santoso, who was to later set up his own terrorist group, the East Indonesia Mujahidin, and pledge allegiance to ISIS before being killed by the Indonesian military in July 2016. The FPI, which first rose to notoriety in 2000 for recruiting thugs to raid pubs and restaurants suspected of selling alcohol, and other dens of iniquity, has since graduated to vetting politicians for their Islamic credentials, or lack thereof. Since Joko Widodo became President, the FPI has been trying to unseat his replacement as Jakarta governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian better known by his nickname Ahok, because of “his ethnicity, religion and controversial statements”.25 In a massive show of strength not seen in Jakarta since the 1998 anti-Suharto demonstrations, the FPI turned out an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 protestors to demand Ahok’s jailing for blasphemy on 4 November 2016 after he told a group of fishermen not to allow themselves to be lied to by those citing a verse in the Koran warning Muslims against taking Christians and Jews as allies.26 The FPI’s “defend Islam” card also tapped into genuine disgruntlement among Jakarta’s poor with Ahok’s policies, but it was also clear to observers that it was a useful proxy for political interests seeking to damage his prospects in the April 2017 gubernatorial contest.27 That Ahok not only lost that election, but was in May 2017 also found guilty of blasphemy by a Jakarta court and sentenced to two years imprisonment although prosecutors had asked for two years’ probation,28 has been widely viewed as a victory for intolerance that would only embolden extremist groups. Powerful political interests, governed more by ambition and expediency than ideological affinity with radical Islam, are a reason why the government is often slow to curb extremism, allowing a permissive environment that has not just empowered “moralistic thugs”, but also 259

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enabled pro-ISIS boosters to recruit and openly accept pledges of allegiance in mosques and prisons all over the country. The rise of Aman Abdurrahman as leading ISIS provocateur in Indonesia is an example of how this reluctance to confront violent ideology extends even to prison, where a jailhouse ideologue – with his sermons live-streamed, for a while, from maximum security prison in Nusakambangan29 – has now graduated to issuing orders for terrorist attacks and yet will soon be eligible for early release. An armchair jihadist arrested by accident in 2004 when the house in which he was giving a sermon blew up during a bomb making class being given by someone else, Aman began translating the seminal works of Arabic jihadi theologians while in prison. His handwritten translations were smuggled out and posted online by friends, then compiled into books and widely disseminated. In the barren intellectual field of Indonesian jihadism, Aman Abdurrahman became an immediate star, and he hit the lecture circuit on his release. Back in jail a second time, for giving money to a lintas tanzim (multi-party) terrorist training camp in Aceh disrupted by police in 2010, Aman wrote several more takfiri tracts and his blog Tauhid Wal Jihad is still the go-to-resource for amateur jihadists, although Aman has himself never seen any action or undergone any training. But he filled a need, as one follower now in jail for taking part in an attack on a police mosque in 2011 said in an interview: We liked Aman’s simple and straightforward message to challenge the authorities. At a time when most of the jihadists linked to JI were laying low out of fear of arrest by the Indonesian police, Aman was like water in the desert.30 Since pledging allegiance to ISIS from his prison cell in Nusakambangan, Aman has not only exhorted his followers to go to Syria to join ISIS, but also called for terrorist attacks at home. The Jakarta Four who carried out the January 2016 attack were responding to his instruction, transmitted from prison, that “it was time to do the amaliyah (action)”. Aman has also been in regular contact with the Indonesian leaders of the Katibah Nusantara unit in Syria, which has been recruiting for ISIS from among the clusters of Aman acolytes throughout the country, and through social media platforms, instigating, planning and funding terrorist attacks. A network in the fishing village of Lamongan in East Java, for example, sent within 18 months some 20 members of its FPI branch to Syria to join ISIS while another nine, including two wives, were stopped and deported from Turkey.31 Indonesian Police were, however, more successful in stopping the members of another anti-vice vigilante group named Laskah Hisbah who were taking orders from a Katibah Nusantara leader to mount a series of attacks in late 2015. Amateurs with little to no military training, these aspiring terrorists were learning to assemble improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from recipes taken from the Internet and shared on social media platforms. The radicalisation trajectory of most Aman followers did not, however, begin with him; many were already with Laskah Hisbah or FPI when they began attending Aman’s road shows. His takfiri ideology is wildly popular with young thugs because he speaks to their desire for change. Unhappy with their status at the bottom of the social pyramid, they are eager to accept Islam as a force that will improve their lives. Noor Huda Ismail, an Indonesian terrorism researcher and producer of the documentary Jihad Selfie about the Indonesians attracted to ISIS, explains the centrality of religion in the lives of ordinary Indonesians this way: They look up to anyone who has religious knowledge, addressing them as Tok Guru (the teacher). These religious figures enjoy a high social status in society because critical thinking skills and exposure to the outside world are limited. As long as you can cite a Quranic verse and explain it well to the people, you earn social respect in cities like Bima (in eastern Indonesia).32 260

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This subservience to religious piety is compounded by the benign tolerance for radical Islam traditionally exhibited by mainstream organisations like NU and Muhammadiyah, even when radical preachers spew conspiracy theories against Christians, Jews, Shias and the West and urge action be taken against minority communities. The silence of the mainstream allows hate groups to blur the boundary between “Islamic activities” that help individuals to become good citizens, and those that are platforms for turning them into violent actors. Indeed, in the royal city of Solo, where President Joko Widodo was Mayor from 2005 to 2012, the absence of strong countervailing voices has allowed the growth of at least 10 laskars within the small population of half a million people. Defending Islam against increasing Christianisation is also a widely accepted war cry in much of Indonesia. In several cities, this has taken the form of refusing to allow churches to be rebuilt following destruction. In areas where political parties are in contestation, vigilante groups often find moral and financial support for protests against Christian officials even when their activities transgress into thuggery. The members of the laskars and vigilante groups are, in the words of a radical cleric brought up in a JI family, “clueless about Islam but very passionate about jihad”.33 Or in other words, groups of angry young men in search of a cause. At the moment, that cause is ISIS’ caliphate project in Syria, which according to Aman Abdurrahman, is an “Islamic state that has been hoped for by the ummah for a very long time . . . built based on the prophet’s guidance”. Accordingly, “all Muslims wherever they are must support and defend ISIS . . . so that Islam will be victorious and feared by its enemies”. Those who are against ISIS’s existence are infidels, he declared.34

Disruption in the jihadi industry: the freelance jihadist If self-taught theologians like Aman Abdurrahman represent a disruption – to use a buzzword in the business world – of the DI-JI terrorist model, the arrival of ISIS has further accelerated the transformation of the Indonesian jihadi industry. In the last decade, as JI languished in the jihadi imagination while its leaders quietly bided their time in prison and left their second-tier successors to consolidate their grip on remaining loyalists, the more dedicated of Indonesia’s aspiring terrorists have taken to calling themselves “freelance jihadists”. Bomb-maker Nazarudin Mukhtar alias Abu Gar arrived at this epiphany while serving time in Porong Prison in Surabaya for concealing information about an armed attack on police in East Kalimantan in 2005 that killed five police officers. In an interview soon after his release in early 2014, he declared proudly: I consider myself a freelance fighter. I don’t believe in big jihadi groups like JI or JAT. They are very bureaucratic and not progressive. They are only interested in ‘talking’ about jihad, while I am interested in ‘doing’ jihad. Any groups who are still active in jihad will be mine.35 JAT is Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid, the openly jihadi group set up in 2008 by Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, who after succeeding Abdullah Sungkar, the charismatic founder of JI, in late 1999, surprised his members by creating a public front, the Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (MMI), the next year. Often portrayed as a weak leader who allowed the more ambitious Hambali to hijack JI and set it on a course of action more in keeping with Osama bin Laden’s global jihad, Ba’asyir can be said to have caused the first disruption in the Indonesian jihadi industry with his attempts to transform JI from a clandestine network into a public advocate of jihadi ideology while equivocating on the use of violence. The creation of MMI also allowed him to tap into the international fund-raising networks set up by rich donors in the Gulf to finance radical causes. When Indonesian prosecutors were finally able to convince the courts to give him a 15-year jail sentence for promoting 261

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terrorist activity – an aide testified that he gave money to the Aceh terrorist training camp – he turned maximum security prison into his bully pulpit, preaching not only to fellow prisoners, but also to groups of 10 visitors twice a week, with an aide recording and transcribing his words for further dissemination. The visitors included aspiring jihadists looking for guidance as well as experienced mujahidin and terrorist convicts on parole seeking his blessing to travel to Syria. In July 2014, a photo of Ba’asyir pledging allegiance to ISIS with fellow prisoners in Nusakambangan leaked, sending shock waves through JI and JAT. None were, however, more upset than his sons, who described his actions as unduly influenced by his cell mates, lobbied for him to be moved to a prison on mainland Java and split JAT into pro- and anti-ISIS factions. Ba’asyir’s tenure at the apex of the Indonesian jihadi community might be waning, but as its public face for much of the last one and a half decades, he normalised the idea of jihad, using his status as an elder cleric to persuade his audience that the establishment of an Islamic state is the solution to all their problems. After an earthquake in Java, he preached that God was punishing the people because they did not want to live under Islamic sharia. “Please go back to the ruler of the nature so that He can elevate us from this disaster,” he told the victims. Inspired by his example, and encouraged by the government’s lack of action, the jihadi industry began pushing the legal boundaries in 2006, the year the Jibril brothers set up arrahmah.com, the first online jihad site in Indonesia to claim to provide Islamic news. Their media company also started a glossy magazine called Jihadmagz in 2008, filling it with conspiracy theories about the repression of Muslims worldwide and articles on use of weapons such as AK47 rifles. Jihadi tracts soon began to be sold openly in radical mosques and on street corners, and on the Internet, Indonesian-language blogs and news sites proliferated, offering an alternate reality where slain terrorists are lionised as heroes and al-Qaeda and ISIS propaganda are translated into Indonesian and given prominence. The push to create what a slain JI activist once called the new JI – “Jamaah Internet”36 – came about the same time that JI was moving towards a decision to disengage from violence in Indonesia on the grounds that it lacked a secure base, a crucial element of the tactical strategy it developed in the late 1990s. The shift became inevitable after it lost its last training centre in Poso after a fire-fight with police in January 2007. An attempt was made in 2009 by a former JI leader, Dulmatin, who returned secretly from Mindanao in southern Philippines where he had fled to escape arrest in 2003, to create a secure base in Aceh where all extremist organisations could send their members for military training. This lintas tanzim camp could have been a game changer had it succeeded, representing a serious effort by the various jihadi groups to come together to acquire the skills required for sustained warfare against the state. But it was discovered, by accident, and the police swooped in, arresting more than 100 participants. Several key players were killed in shoot-outs with the police, while Ba’asyir and Aman were hauled off to prison. With easier access to websites and publications urging them to wage jihad, but no battleground or clear leadership, the jihadi community in Indonesia began splintering further as disgruntled members left to form their own direct action groups. Many of the Poso fighters regrouped as the military wing of JAT in late 2010, but Santoso, whose family members were killed in the 2007 police raid, then left to form his own band of fighters to take revenge on the Indonesian Police, and to run a training camp in the Sulawesi jungles that attracted jihadists from Java and eastern Indonesia. The arrival of ISIS has exacerbated personal and tactical differences within the jihadi community – organisationally, JI, MMI and the offshoot of JAT started by Ba’asyir’s sons, remain loyal to AQ – but the lure of the caliphate also provides a unifying goal. The part of JAT that still acknowledges Ba’asyir as amir has been trying to create an overarching platform to mobilise in 262

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support of ISIS. But the field operators who have proved most effective in recruiting Indonesian fighters for ISIS are those who trained within mainstream jihadi organisations like JI but left to engage in what they call “concrete jihad” – the self-styled freelance jihadists. The freelance jihadist is not a lone wolf. Indeed, Indonesia has seen few lone wolf attacks because it is easy enough to connect with an extremist group that no aspiring terrorist needs to act alone. And despite the personal or group differences, the larger jihadi community sees itself as under siege by the police and thus protects all who invoke jihad. This sense of fraternal brotherhood and protection was extended to Noordin Top, a Malaysian JI cadre who was able to recruit operatives, plan attacks and hide in plain sight in Indonesia for six years between 2003 and 2009 despite a massive manhunt. The JI leadership did not want to be associated with his suicide bombings because they killed too many Muslims, but it was not about to disavow him either. While JI has a long term game plan – which even independent operators like Noordin Top shared – the freelance jihadist is opportunistic, driven largely by access to resources and personal recognition. He might link up with fellow former prisoners or people he fought or trained with in Poso or Ambon, connect with Aman Abdurrahman followers on Facebook, and together carry out instructions sent on Telegram by Katibah Nusantara leaders in Syria. He might not even carry out attacks himself; Abu Gar, for instance, recruited and equipped the men who staged the Jakarta attack in January 2016 after being sent funds by an Indonesian fighting with ISIS in Syria.37 By making it possible for amateurs to fulfill their dream of joining an army of holy warriors that would otherwise not have them, the freelance jihadist has changed the terrorist landscape in Indonesia in a way that is disconcerting even for established groups like JI. The influence of the freelance jihadist can be seen in the make-up of Indonesian foreign fighters with ISIS. Data collected by ISIS between early 2013 and late 2014 showed the average Indonesian foreign fighter to be 31–32 years old when he first arrived in Syria, about 5 years older than the average age for all the 70 nationalities that signed up during that period.38 Of the 79 Indonesians whose data forms were among those leaked by a defector, only 3 volunteered for suicide missions. At barely 4%, this was far fewer than the 12% for all recruits. Otherwise, the Indonesian fighter was indistinguishable in profile from most ISIS fighters outside of Saudi Arabia, with little education, low job prospects and a rudimentary knowledge of Islam. This too is the profile of the average Indonesian street thug looking for adventure, significance and a better life. If they survive ISIS and coalition attacks, will these fighters return to Indonesia as the caliphate shrinks? Now truly jihadists in the eyes of their peers, will they become career mujahidin in search of another battlefield?

A new age of JI? As of mid-2017, there seems little doubt that the days of ISIS are numbered, and not in the spectacular end-of-days doomsday scenario it has been promising its supporters. The caliphate’s army, including what is left of the 30,000-odd foreign fighters, will likely disperse, many to return home and others to seek safe haven elsewhere. To governments, the returnees will represent a pool of potential terrorists, inured to violence, trained to inflict damage, and a demonstrated will to kill in the name of their cause. Even if they do not take up arms, they will always be a pool of potential trainers and advisers, with the skills and networks useful to any extremist group. Since the 2002 Bali attack forced the Indonesian security services to quickly ramp up their capabilities, the Indonesian National Police in particular has exceeded all expectations with Detachment 88 able to disrupt terrorist cells through arrests and convictions in court and by encouraging defectors to collaborate. Prisons and border security, however, remain weak links 263

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and a broader strategy to prevent violent extremism has yet to overcome history, politics and organisational rivalries. One key rivalry has been that between the national police and the Indonesian military (better known by its acronym TNI). Typical of most intra-government turf battles, this is on one level about budgets. Underfunded for decades as a wing of the TNI in the Suharto years, the police came into its own only after Western donors decided to pump counter-terrorism funds into the police to create Detachment 88 after the 2002 Bali bombings. Forced to retreat to the barracks by domestic politics, the TNI has been looking for opportunities to regain its pre-eminence, and a larger slice of the national budget. It has been making a case for its greater involvement in fighting terrorism. For operations involving jungle warfare and the security of the archipelagic nation’s maritime borders, there is an undeniable role for the TNI, as it displayed in its successful manhunt and killing of Santoso, then Indonesia’s most wanted terrorist, in the Sulawesi jungle in July 2016. The TNI will indeed have to transform into a major counterterrorism force if returned foreign fighters congregate in Mindanao in Southern Philippines, as some analysts expect, and use it as a base to train and mount attacks on neighbouring countries. Critics, however, fear that allowing the TNI a larger role in internal security issues is merely the sharp end of a widening wedge to legitimise its return to domestic politics. The key lesson from Santoso’s rise, however, risks being missed in this debate. Santoso was a legacy of Jemaah Islamiyah’s long term planning at a time when political turmoil allowed radical Islam to grow unhindered. JI used communal conflict in Poso to give its fighters operational experience, to put into practice their ideology of violent jihad, allowing them to forge alliances with locals by exploiting local grievances, and building Islamic schools to create the next generation of militants even as they used social media to further widen their appeal. Unless the Indonesian government deals with this dynamic, Santoso’s death will not end the threat of terrorism in Poso, or anywhere in Indonesia where JI has been exploiting local grievances to grow its networks, and where its schools continue to propagate jihadism and leverage the webs of personal relationships created over the last two decades. The rise and fall of ISIS may in the end be the push that JI requires to move to a different phase. Younger JI cadres with some combat experience in Ambon or Moro – a group Detachment 88 dubbed “Jemaah Islamiyah Baru” or Neo-JI – raced to be the first to carry out terrorist attacks after learning that Aman Abdurrahman had instructed his followers to conduct attacks on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day 2016. Neo-JI was anxious not to be eclipsed by the pro-ISIS activists, but ended up losing its leader and several members instead when they were arrested for possession of weapons and explosive materials. In many ways, ISIS has had the appeal it had in Indonesia largely because JI and its public counterpart, JAT, are seen to be “NATO” – “no action, talk only”. In Malaysia, and to some extent Singapore, ISIS appealed to individuals with no prior connections to the jihadi fraternity except for an addiction to jihadi news on social media because the JI networks in both countries had already been dismantled. The first Malaysians to leave for Syria in 2013 were former JI members who received training in Afghanistan or at Camp Hudaibiyah in the 1990s. They joined al-Qaeda-linked rebel groups and for a while, other Malaysians followed their lead, before some defected to ISIS when it proclaimed its caliphate. In Indonesia, however, ISIS and its call for action enjoyed instant resonance with impatient jihadists and ideologues seeking relevance. They acted as boosters, defecting from JI with their social networks and dipping into different sub-sets of violent actors aspiring to be mujahidin. With the demise of ISIS, these defectors are likely to return to JI, offering their skills and networks to the only game in town. The alternative would be to seek to recreate the caliphate in an ungoverned space like Mindanao. That would, however, require negotiating with either

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the various Abu Sayyaf factions or the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and pledging allegiance to their leaders. If Mindanao is allowed to become a secure base for returning foreign fighters and other regional jihadists, it might then be a matter of time before JI reaches out to its traditional allies there to re-establish training bases and safe haven. A resurgent JI with a battle-hardened army of trained fighters will be a nightmare scenario for Southeast Asia.

Notes 1 Posted in Indonesian language by a known ISIS sympathiser using the name “Castiglione Reva” on 16 November 2014. 2 Alexis Romero, “ISIS study website: Pinoy part of beheading team”, The Philippine Star, November 20, 2014. 3 Public pages accessed by the author, 18 November 2014. The language and syntax of the posts was more Malay than Indonesian and among the many Malaysian friends listed was an officer in the Malaysian Armed Forces. 4 Dabiq Issue 5, “Remaining and expanding”, 1436 Muharram (November 2014), p. 24, noted: “. . . a number of groups in Khurasan, al-Qawqaz, Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, and elsewhere had pledged their allegiance to the Khalifah, and continue to do so daily. The Islamic State announced the acceptance of the bay’at from all of these groups and individuals . . . but delayed the announcement of their respective wilayah . . .” 5 When the ISIS central media outlet al-Furqan Media released a video on the “Structure of the Caliphate” to mark the start of the holy month of Eid on 21 June 2016, it named 35 “wilayahs” (provinces), of which 16 were outside of Iraq and Syria, but none in Southeast Asia. Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, noting that the last real expansion by ISIS on the international level was the Caucasus wilayah in 2015, believes that dissent within ISIS leadership led to greater caution in translating allegiance pledges into the creation of new provinces because the foreign wilayah projects had thus far proved disastrous for the group’s credibility. See Al-Tamimi, “Observations on the new Islamic State video ‘structure of the Caliphate’”, Middle East Forum, July 6, 2016, www.meforum.org/blog/2016/07/observations-structure-of-caliphate-video, accessed July 8, 2016. 6 This is the number usually cited by Indonesian Police officers when asked about the Indonesians fighting with ISIS, but when a deputy chief of the Indonesian National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) testified in Parliament in September 2016 that a total of 531 Indonesian jihadists were fighting or had fought in Syria and Iraq, he said they were with ISIS and Jabhat al Nusra. Of these, 69 had been killed. Analysts like Sidney Jones have pointed out that almost 45 per cent of the Indonesians with ISIS are women and children. This author does not believe they should be separated out from foreign fighter totals since the women who travelled to Syria with their husbands usually believe in the ISIS project and their children receive indoctrination and military training as cubs of the Caliphate. They are technically capable of fighting for ISIS too. 7 The Philippines government has no official statistics on the number of foreign fighters with ISIS. This figure was taken from the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime website: www.unodc.org/south eastasiaandpacific/en/what-we-do/terrorism-prevention/index.html, accessed November 8, 2016. 8 Regional statistics are from The Soufan Group report, Foreign Fighters: An Updated Assessment of the Flow of Foreign Fighters into Syria and Iraq, issued in December 2015. 9 Jonathan Tepperman, The Fix: How Nations Survive and Thrive in a World in Decline, New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2016. 10 Jacob Poushter, Extremism Concerns Growing in West and Predominantly Muslim Countries, Pew Research Centre, www.pewglobal.org/files/2015/07/Pew-Research-Center-Extremism-Concern-Report-FINALJuly-16-2015.pdf, accessed July 21, 2015. 11 Sidney Jones, “Understanding the ISIS threat in Southeast Asia”, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute Regional Outlook Forum, January 12, 2016. Jones has studied Islamic radicalism in Indonesia since 2002. Her reports on Jemaah Islamiyah and its operations in Indonesia and the Philippines for the International Crisis Group and, since 2014, on the ISIS presence in Indonesia for the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), offer some of the most detailed analysis of violent extremism in Indonesia.

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Susan Sim 12 See, for example, media reports of arrests in July and August 2016: “Malaysia rounds up more than 200 terror suspects”, The Straits Times, July 14, 2016; “2 Singaporeans planning to join ISIS detained, 2 others on restriction orders: MHA”, The Straits Times, August 19, 2016. 13 Called SGSecure, the national movement aims to “sensitise, organise, train and exercise Singaporeans to better protect themselves from a terrorist attack”. 14 “M’sia warns South-East Asia to be on alert as offensive begins in IS-controlled Mosul”, Today, October 18, 2016. 15 Uri Friedman, “One president’s remarkable response to terrorism”, The Atlantic, January 15, 2016, www. theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/joko-widodo-indonesia-terrorism/424242/, accessed September 8, 2016. 16 Cited by Jones, “Understanding the ISIS threat in Southeast Asia”. 17 Field interview by Noor Huda Ismail in March 2016, cited in Noor Huda Ismail and Susan Sim, The Arc of Terrorism in Indonesia, unpublished paper, 2016. 18 See, for example, Alexandra Sims, “Indonesia church attack: Would-be ‘ISIS’ suicide bomber attacks priest with axe”, Independent, August 28, 2016. 19 Letter dated 16 June 2015 from the Chair of the Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 1267 (1999) and 1989 (2011) concerning Al-Qaida and associated individuals and entities addressed to the President of the Security Council (S/2015/441). 20 Agustinus Beo Da Costa and Kanupriya Kapoor, “Indonesia plans tougher anti-terrorism laws after Jakarta attack”, Reuters, February 16, 2016, www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-security-exclusiveidUSKCN0VP1LS, accessed September 8, 2016. 21 In a 2015 Pew Research Centre survey on the relationship between the tenets of Islam and national laws, 68% of the Indonesian respondents said the laws in their country should not strictly follow the teachings of the Quran. Only 22% supported strict adherence, compared to 52% in Malaysia. See Jacob Poushter, The Divide over Islam and National Laws in the Muslim World: Varied Views on Whether Quran Should Influence Laws in Countries, Pew Research Centre, www.pewglobal.org/files/2016/04/Pew-Research-CenterPolitical-Islam-Report-FINAL-April-27-2016.pdf, accessed April 29, 2016. 22 Greg Fealy and Virginia Hooker, eds., Voices of Islam in Southeast Asia: A Contemporary Sourcebook (Singapore: ISEAS Publications, 2006), page 209. 23 Solahudin’s The Roots of Terrorism in Indonesia: From Darul Islam to Jema’ah Islamiyah (translated by Dave McRae, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2013) provides a well-researched history of the Darul Islam movement and its successors. 24 The statistics on JI personnel trained at various facilities between 1986 and 2002 are from a presentation by Detachment 88 seen by the author. 25 “FPI protests against Ahok”, Jakarta Globe, November 10, 2014, http://jakartaglobe.id/eyewitness/ fpi-protest-ahok/, accessed November 10, 2016. 26 Joe Cochrane, “Islamists march in Jakarta, demanding christian governor be jailed”, New York Times, November 4, 2016. 27 See commentaries by Noor Huda Ismail, “How Jakarta’s first Chinese Indonesian governor became an easy target for radical Islamic groups”, The Conversation, November 7, 2016, https://theconversation. com/how-jakartas-first-chinese-indonesian-governor-became-an-easy-target-for-radical-islamicgroups-68178, accessed November 7, 2016; and Sidney Jones, “Why Indonesian extremists are gaining ground”, The Interpreter, November 1, 2016, www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/why-indonesianextremists-are-gaining-ground, accessed November 1, 2016. 28 Francis Chan, “Jakarta governor Ahok jailed two years for blasphemy, ordered to serve term immediately”, The Straits Times, May 9, 2017. 29 Nusakambangan is an island off the southern coast of central Java, accessible only by ferry from a controlled terminal outside the town of Cilacap. There are seven prison compounds on Nusakambangan, all but one designated maximum security. Aman Abdurrahman is being held in Kembang Kuning Prison while Abu Bakar Ba’asyir was in Pasir Putih Prison before his transfer to Bogor Prison in April 2016. 30 Cited in Ismail and Sim, The Arc of Terrorism in Indonesia. 31 For an analysis of how support for local jihadi struggles in the East Java town of Lamongan transformed into support for ISIS, see the report by Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, Indonesia’s Lamongan Network: How East Java, Poso and Syria Are Linked (Jakarta, 2015). 32 Communication with author, April 1, 2016. 33 Cited in Ismail and Sim, The Arc of Terrorism in Indonesia.

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Terrorism, counterterrorism in Indonesia 34 Written by Aman Abdurrahman, using the name Syech Abu Sulaiman Al Arkhabily, in a brochure distributed at a street rally in central Jakarta in March 2014 to declare Indonesian support for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syam (ISIS). 35 Cited in Ismail and Sim, The Arc of Terrorism in Indonesia. 36 Interviewed in 2009. 37 Abu Gar was convicted by a Jakarta court in late November 2016 of “assisting in the act of terror” and sentenced to nine years imprisonment. (Francis Chan, “Key player in Jakarta attack gets 9 years’ jail”, The Straits Times, 24 November 2016.) 38 These statistics are from Brian Dodwell, Daniel Milton and Don Rassler, The Caliphate’s Global Workforce: An Inside Look at the Islamic State’s Foreign Fighter Paper Trail (New York: Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, United States Military Academy, 2016).

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21 UNITED STATES’ PIVOT AND SOUTHEAST ASIA Daniel Wei Boon Chua

The pivot In a 2011 Foreign Policy article, then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outlined the Barack Obama administration’s foreign policy objective of deeper engagement with Asia, and with the phrase “the United States stands at a pivot”, US policy towards Asia acquired a name.1 The “pivot”, occasionally referred to as the “rebalance”,2 raised questions about US commitments in Europe and the Middle East, but was by and large welcomed in the Asia-Pacific. This chapter examines the thinking behind the pivot, Asia’s general response to this US initiative and surveys its impact on some Southeast Asian states, namely the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. The rationale behind the United States’ focus on the Asia-Pacific is apparent. Assistant Secretary for Asia and the Pacific from 2009–2012, Kurt Campbell, explains that “the pivot is premised on the idea that the Asia-Pacific region not only increasingly defines global power and commerce, but also welcomes US leadership and rewards US engagement with positive returns on political, economic, and military investments”.3 In 2010, 23.5 percent of US exports flowed to Asia while 32.2 percent of imports entering the US came from Asia.4 These are significant trade flows that are set to increase. Clinton argues that harnessing Asia’s growth and dynamism is central to American economic and strategic interests and a key priority for President Obama . . . Our economic recovery at home will depend on exports and the ability of American firms to tap into the vast and growing consumer base of Asia. Strategically, maintaining peace and security across the Asia-Pacific is increasingly crucial to global progress, whether through defending freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, countering the proliferation efforts of North Korea, or ensuring transparency in the military activities of the region’s key players.5 The aim, according to then-National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, “is to promote US interests by helping to shape the norms and rules of the Asia-Pacific region, to ensure that ‘international law and norms be respected, that commerce and freedom of navigation are not impeded, that emerging powers build trust with their neighbors, and that disagreements are resolved peacefully without threats or coercion’”.6 By building upon preceding policy innovations and 268

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elevating Asia’s place in US foreign policy, the pivot combines the use of military, diplomatic and economic instruments of statecraft.7 In practice, the pivot requires Washington to strengthen traditional alliances, forge new partnerships, engage regional institutions, diversify the military, defend democratic values, apply economic diplomacy and develop a comprehensive approach towards China.8 During the Obama administration, US strategic and economic engagement with Southeast Asian states combined traditional alliances formed during the Cold War, as well as “loose, structured and multifaceted framework of cooperation” called strategic partnerships.9 Such partnerships enabled the US to “enlist target countries to share the burden in addressing common challenges and to institutionalise and structure its relationships with Asia-Pacific countries”.10 Compared with traditional alliances, strategic partnerships are less binding and focused on common interests instead of countering a particular country or group. Being “goal-driven”, rather than “threat-driven”, makes strategic partnerships more attractive to the US and its target countries.11 Sometimes called “comprehensive partnership” in order to assuage a target country’s domestic resistance against the American military, the US entered into Comprehensive Partnerships with Indonesia in 2010, Vietnam in 2013 and Malaysia in 2014. The US also signed an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with the Philippines and Singapore in 2014 and 2015, respectively. These Comprehensive Strategic Partnerships, together with Mutual Defense Treaties between the US and Thailand and the Philippines, form a web of US engagements in Southeast Asia. In addition, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar possess bilateral trade relations with the US and conduct dialogues involving senior officials from both Washington and the governments of these countries. On 21 November 2015, President Obama and the Heads of Government from ASEAN jointly declared the ASEAN-US Strategic Partnership and the adoption of the Plan of Action to Implement the ASEAN-United States Strategic Partnership (2016–2020). The Plan aimed to enhance cooperation in five areas: economic integration, maritime cooperation, transnational challenges including climate change, emerging leaders and women’s opportunities.12

Strategic dimensions of the pivot Strategically, the United States had announced rotational troop deployments to Australia, enhanced military cooperation with Singapore and the Philippines. These strategic initiatives aimed to provide a flexible approach, where US deployments will be “smaller, more agile, expeditionary, self-sustaining, and self-contained”.13 The enhancement of defence cooperation with traditional US allies and the expanded strategic partnerships with regional countries reflect the importance of the Asia-Pacific region to the US. Announced in June 2011 by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, the United States would deploy four Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) to Singapore on a rotational basis.14 The first LCS, USS Freedom, arrived at Singapore in 2013 and was deployed for five months. Subsequently, USS Fort Worth arrived in November 2014 and served a sixteen-month deployment. The rotation of the LCS included stops at the Philippines, Vietnam, the Republic of Korea and Japan, where the vessels participated in exercises with regional navies. The Obama administration also made other strategic moves in the Asia-Pacific. In November 2011, President Obama announced the deployment of 2,500 Marines to Australia on rotation for training, with the initial 200 arriving in April 2012.15 Because the United States has been extracting a large proportion of its forces from Japan and South Korea since the 2000s while strengthening symbolic strategic commitments in Southeast Asia, Christian Le Mière observes that the US might be “attempting to avoid aggravating China”.16 269

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Economic dimensions of the pivot Although the military aspect of the pivot captured significant coverage in the media, US political and economic engagement with the Asia-Pacific had been equally substantial during the Obama administration. Having already signed the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in 2009, the US joined the East Asia Summit in 2011. The Obama administration also sent senior delegations to regional dialogues such as the ASEAN Regional Forum. In July 2009, Secretary Clinton met the Foreign Ministers of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam to establish the Lower Mekong Initiative (LMI), aimed at enhancing environmental, healthcare, educational and infrastructural development in these Southeast Asian countries. Myanmar subsequently joined the LMI in 2012.17 The conclusion of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the Republic of Korea in 2009 is further evidence of deepening US economic cooperation in Asia. Of the economic initiatives implemented by the Obama administration, America’s signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) forms the “economic centerpiece” of the US pivot to the region.18 The TPP is an FTA signed on 4 February 2016 by 12 Asia-Pacific countries, namely Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam. Once in force, the TPP would be the largest US FTA by trade flows and would eventually remove tariffs on manufactured goods and most agricultural products, commit parties to protect Intellectual Property Rights, and provide transparency and reporting requirements to ensure State-Owned Enterprises adhere to non-discriminatory practices.19 The entry of Japan into the TPP in 2013 became a significant impetus for US participation in the Agreement. Designed to be a living agreement, the TPP is able to admit more members and incorporate new issues in the future.20 Since signing the deal, the Obama administration has not been able to secure Congressional approval to implement legislation for the TPP to enter into force in the US. Supporters of the Agreement argue that the deal will boost economic growth and increase jobs through trade and investments that constitute up to 37 percent of total US trade. Because of its scale, the TPP would also allow the US to lead in the establishment of norms in international trade practices, and exercise economic leadership. Opponents of the TPP, however, warned of possible job losses and competition in import-sensitive industries, as well as restrictions on the US government’s ability to regulate its own economy.21 Despite the TPP’s economic and strategic significance and US commitment to partners in the Asia-Pacific, President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Agreement on 24 January 2017, the first working day of his presidency.

The Philippines Among Southeast Asian countries, the Philippines has a long history and the deepest ties with the United States. As a consequence of the “complicated history” shared by both countries, Filipinos view relations with the US with “a mixture of respect and nationalistic wariness”.22 According to Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes and Trends survey, the percentage of Filipino respondents having a “favorable” view of the US was 85, 92 and 92 percent in 2013, 2014 and 2015 respectively.23 Yet the history of US–Philippine relations remain fraught with difficulties. The US annexed the Philippines after defeating Spain in 1898 and exercised colonial control over the territory until 1946, a year after the end of the Second World War. The Military Bases Agreement (MBA) signed between Washington and Manila in 1947 allowed American troops to be based in 23 military facilities, leased to the US government for 99 years without rent. US–Philippine strategic relations became closer after the signing of the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty. In 1966, with a view to enable the Philippine military to become self-sufficient, Philippine 270

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Foreign Secretary Narsico Ramos and US Secretary of State Dean Rusk signed the Ramos-Rusk Agreement, which shortened the tenure of the MBA to end after another 25 years, bringing its expiration to 1991. When the MBA expired in 1991, the Philippine Senate voted not to extend US military presence for ten more years, resulting in American military withdrawal from the Philippines in 1992. Although American military deployment in the Philippines was discontinued, the Mutual Defense Treaty remained in place. After the departure of US troops from Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base, two of the largest American military bases outside the US, the Philippines clashed with China over the Mischief Reef at the South China Sea in 1995. Unable to match China’s naval capabilities, the Philippines realised the importance of US military presence in the region. Under President Joseph Estrada, ironically one of the senators who voted against the extension of the MBA in 1991, Manila signed the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with Washington in 1998. Under the VFA, US troops, ships and aircraft were again allowed to visit the Philippines for training and other joint activities.24 Sino–Philippine relations deteriorated further after China seized Scarborough Shoal at the South China Sea in 2012 and embarked on large-scale island-building of seven features since 2013, creating great anxiety among Filipinos over the maritime disputes.25 In 2013, Manila challenged China’s claims over the majority of the South China Sea through an international arbitral tribunal constituted under Annex VII of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Nevertheless, when the tribunal awarded the case in favour of the Philippines in July 2016,26 the Philippine government under the newly elected President, Rodrigue Duterte, decided to adopt a muted response to the legal victory.27 As part of the Obama administration’s pivot to Asia, Washington aimed to strengthen relations with the Philippines. This effort culminated in the signing of the EDCA in 2014. The Agreement allowed the US to increase the deployment of troops and military ships and aircraft to the Philippines on a rotational basis, enhance the military infrastructure in the Philippine bases to support the increase and station equipment in the Philippines to respond to Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) operations.28 Almost two years after its signing, in January 2016, the Supreme Court of the Philippines ruled that the EDCA had not violated the 1987 constitution and did not require ratification by the Philippine Senate.29 The US–Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty and the EDCA form crucial strategic links between the two countries and contribute to the management of security threats arising from external maritime disputes, internal terrorist attacks in the southern region and natural disasters faced by the Philippines. Nevertheless, during his first year in office, President Duterte has signaled a desire to improve relations with China, somewhat at the expense of US–Philippine ties.30

Thailand Thailand was the first Asian country to establish formal diplomatic relations with the US, dating back to President Andrew Jackson (1829–37). It is also America’s oldest Asian ally and fought alongside American troops during the Korean War, Vietnam War and two Iraq Wars.31 Both countries were allies under the 1954 Manila Pact, which created the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). Although SEATO became defunct after 1976, the commitment to act together against common threats remains in force between Thailand and the US.32 The Thanat-Rusk communiqué of 1962 further enhanced US–Thailand security relations during the Cold War. As an ally, the US military is given access to Thailand’s military facilities in exchange for US aid and purchases of American military equipment. In 2003, US–Thailand relations were strengthened when President Bush designated Thailand as a Major Non-NATO Ally.33 US–Thailand defence 271

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relations were updated within the following decade under the 2012 Joint Vision Statement for the Thai–US Defense Alliance.34 Throughout the long history of US–Thailand strategic relations, both countries have worked closely to enhance regional and global security, such as to curb illicit trafficking and transnational crime. Thailand and the US have also developed a joint military exercise program that involves all services from each country and averages close to 40 joint exercises annually. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, intelligence cooperation between the two countries increased significantly, culminating in the setting up of the Counter Terrorism Intelligence Center (CTIC). The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its Thai counterparts worked closely to track operatives from terrorist groups and successfully arrested the suspected Jemaah Islamiyah leader Hambali in 2003.35 Bilateral ties were strained after the Thai military ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra through a coup in 2006, and went into “deep freeze” after another coup in 2014 to depose Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra.36 After the 2014 coup, the Obama administration suspended US$4.7 million in security assistance funds and cancelled a series of military exercises and visits.37 Nevertheless, the US continued its participation in Exercise Cobra Gold, which is one of the largest in the Asia-Pacific involving 13,000 troops from 24 countries, albeit with a reduction in the number of US troops from 4,300 in 2014 to 3,600 in 2015.38 Negative US responses to the military coups not only stressed US–Thailand relations but also drew Bangkok closer to Beijing, as reflected by the procurement of three submarines from China in 2015.39 Deteriorating US– Thailand relations reached another low when US Ambassador to Thailand Glyn T. Davies was investigated by Thai police for allegedly violating the lèse-majesté law when he spoke out against “lengthy and unprecedented prison sentences” handed down by the military courts to individuals convicted of offending the Thai monarchy.40 Despite a cooling of strategic relations, economic cooperation between the US and Thailand remains strong. Formal US–Thailand economic relations began in 1833 with the establishment of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and were updated in 1966 when both countries signed the Treaty of Amity and Economic Relations. During the Obama administration, economic ties were further enhanced with the signing of the Thai–US Creative Partnership in 2011 and an agreement on science and technology cooperation entered into in 2013.41 These agreements aim to deepen collaboration in innovative industries and joint research programs. As an outcome of the robust economic relationship between both countries, the US is Thailand’s third largest trading partner, with bilateral trade amounting to US$47.4 billion in 2014. On the other hand, Thailand is the 25th largest market for US exports. Thailand also attracts more than US$15.3 billion of foreign direct investments (FDI) and imports machinery, aircraft, gold, medical goods and agricultural products from the US.42

Indonesia Relations between the United States and Indonesia went through a cool period in the 1990s because of human rights concerns and only became warmer after the George W. Bush administration declared the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Considered by Washington to be a vital partner in counterterrorism efforts in Southeast Asia,43 US–Indonesian military ties resumed in 2005. President Bush removed restrictions on programs such as the International Military Education and Training (IMET), Foreign Military Financing (FMF) and Foreign Military Sales (FMS) for Indonesia.44 Between 2001 and 2004, the US government also provided Indonesia with US$23.2 million in general economic assistance, which partially funded efforts to strengthen Indonesia’s security forces.45 272

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During President Obama’s visit to Jakarta in 2010, he and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced a US–Indonesian Comprehensive Partnership.46 The partnership includes high-level dialogues and a plan of action involving 54 items across three categories – political and security cooperation; economic and development cooperation; and sociocultural, educational, science and technology and others. For the United States, a relationship with Indonesia is premised on the need for the US to engage with a significant power that has emerged as a prominent player in both regional and global affairs. In this respect, both countries also support Indonesia’s expanding role in international and Southeast Asian multilateralism.47 The US and Indonesia share significant common interests in the region and have cooperated in counterterrorism, HADR and maritime security. In 2013, there were about 200 military-to-military engagements between the US and Indonesia, including US support for the Indonesian Peace and Security Center, joint maritime exercises such as Cooperation Afloat and Readiness Training (CARAT) and submarine exercise, and cyber and space cooperation. Reflecting the growth of US–Indonesian military cooperation during the Obama administration, annual FMS agreements with Indonesia increased from US$14 million in 2006 to US$700 million in 2012. Assistance under IMET rose from US$721,000 in 2005 to US$2 million in 2012. Non-military aid for programmes involving nonproliferation and counterterrorism, anti-narcotics and refugee assistance amounted to US$145 million in 2010.48 US military and economic cooperation with Indonesia has not gone unnoticed among the Indonesian population. In an Indonesia poll conducted by Lowy Institute for International Policy in 2012, respondents ranked the US third for being trusted to act responsibly in the world.49 According to the 1,289 Indonesians polled, 58 percent supported the US to be the leading military power in the next 20 years, while 25 percent expected China to lead.50 More than half (56 percent) felt that China was likely to be a military threat to Indonesia in the next 20 years.51 Although Australia was the largest aid donor to Indonesia (US$324 million), 33 percent mistakenly named the US (US$263 million) as the largest provider of aid.52 Based on the institutionalized structures of military and economic cooperation between the US and the perceptions of the Indonesian people, the pivot has been effective in enhancing American interest in Southeast Asia.

Malaysia Malaysia established formal diplomatic relations with the US in 1957 when the Southeast Asian state became independent from British colonial administration. Relations between both countries had been close during the Cold War period but were occasionally strained when Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad (1981–2003) was in office, especially during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.53 Under the leadership of Prime Ministers Abdullah Badawi and Najib Razak, however, US–Malaysian bilateral ties improved steadily. In 2014, President Obama became the first US President to visit Malaysia since President Lyndon Johnson made an official visit almost fifty years ago in 1966. President Obama’s visit strengthened US–Malaysian relations and led to the signing of a Comprehensive Partnership. The United States and Malaysia share three broad interests in Southeast Asian security: counterterrorism, resolving the South China Sea disputes, and promoting ASEAN unity.54 Since the 2000s, the United States has been working closely with Malaysia in counterterrorism efforts in Southeast Asia. Malaysia plays a key role in providing a moderate Muslim voice against violent Islamic extremism, and in 2003, established the Southeast Asia Regional Centre for Counter-Terrorism. The US supports these counterterrorism efforts through collaboration in information sharing and funding assistance.55 Building on existing US–Malaysian military cooperation, the Obama administration introduced initiatives to bolster bilateral strategic relations. 273

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Since 2010, the navies of both countries have participated together in the multilateral “Rim of the Pacific” (RIMPAC) exercises. Both countries have also cooperated in peacekeeping, counterpiracy and reconstruction operations around the world.56 In 2013, the US and Malaysia were involved in more than 75 security cooperative activities together. In November 2015, Washington announced US$2.5 million in assistance to improve Malaysia’s maritime domain awareness and maritime law, further bolstering US–Malaysian strategic relations under the pivot. In 2014, Malaysia was the 19th largest trading partner, while the US was Malaysia’s 4th largest trading partner.57 Malaysia reported a trade surplus with the US in 2014,58 and records published by the United States Census Bureau reflect a consistent surplus since 1985.59 Major US exports to Malaysia included electrical machinery and equipment, aircraft and aircraft parts, and machinery and mechanical equipment. The top Malaysian exports to the US include machinery and mechanical appliances; optical, photographic, cinematographic, medical or surgical instruments and apparatus; and rubber and rubber articles. More than 600 US companies have operations in Malaysia, contributing US$14.4 billion worth of FDI to the country in 2014. Meanwhile, Malaysia’s FDI in the US amounted to US$809 million that year.60 As a demonstration of close economic ties, the US and Malaysia started negotiations for a bilateral trade agreement in 2006; discussions have become subsumed into the TPP after Malaysia joined the group in 2010. US– Malaysia trade could significantly benefit the US in several ways, especially by providing greater protection for intellectual property rights and lower Malaysia’s tariffs that currently exceed international norms.61

Singapore The United States established formal relations with Singapore in 1966, shortly after the city-state separated from the Malaysia in 1965. During the height of the Cold War in Asia, Singapore provided a strong voice advocating the importance of American presence in Southeast Asia.62 As a non-aligned country, Singapore maintains its preference for a balance of power in the region after the Cold War ended. For more than fifty years, both countries have developed strong bilateral ties through strategic and economic cooperation that are premised on mutual interests. Although Singapore is not a treaty ally of the US, it possesses one of the strongest defence relationships with the US in Southeast Asia. The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) conducts training in US training locations in Luke and Mountain Home Air Force Bases, Silverbell Army Heliport and Grand Prairie, Texas.63 Both countries have been conducting bilateral exercises since 1980, the longest being Exercise Tiger Balm between both armies. Their air forces have participated in joint exercises together since 1990 under Exercise Commando Sling and their navies since 1995. After US bases moved out of the Philippines in November 1992, the logistics headquarters of the US Seventh Fleet relocated to Singapore under an arrangement made possible by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Singapore and the US in 1990. Aimed at facilitating US presence in Southeast Asia, the MOU granted access to military facilities in Singapore and expanded with the signing of an Addendum in 1998. Both countries have also established close working relations in research and development of defence technology. After the Bush administration declared the GWOT, counterterrorism became a common focus in US–Singapore strategic partnership. Singapore provided logistics support for US operations in Iraq in 2003–05 and participated in peace support operations in Afghanistan with NATOled International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in 2007–13.64 Indeed, strategic cooperation between the two countries deepened during the rise of terrorism in the region, culminating in the 2005 Strategic Framework Agreement.65 In April 2013, USS Freedom, a US Navy Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), began rotational deployment to Singapore, marking the first of four such 274

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deployments in the region.66 Building on existing robust defence relations, Singapore and the US signed an enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) in 2015, strengthening cooperation in HADR, cyber defence, biosecurity and public communications.67 In 2003, Singapore became the first Asian country to sign a bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US. Under the US–Singapore FTA, which came into force in January 2004, both countries committed to keeping their markets open and imposing no discrimination between foreign and local businesses.68 Since the establishment of the 2004 USSFTA, bilateral trade volume has increased over 50 percent, reaching US$47 billion in 2015. The US is also Singapore’s largest source of foreign investments, pouring over US$288 billion of capital into Singapore in 2015.69 Singapore is also one of the four founding partners in the TPP, which the Obama administration signed with eleven other countries in February 2016 but was reduced from 12 to 11 members after the Trump administration withdrew the US from the Agreement. Although a TPP without America is significantly less attractive than before, US–Singapore bilateral trade based on the USSFTA has not been affected.

Vietnam From the end of the Vietnam War to the mid-1990s, relations between the US and Vietnam were distant. Since the Clinton administration, however, bilateral ties have normalised and gotten closer due to shared concerns about China’s rise in the region. Vietnam’s competing territorial claims against China at the South China Sea and its growing role in ASEAN have made it an attractive partner for US engagement in Southeast Asia. In 2013, President Obama and Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang launched the US–Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership, which introduced key initiatives involving maritime capacity building, economic engagement, climate change and environmental issues, education, and promoting respect for human rights. Both countries have also increased the number of high-level visits and dialogues.70 Security cooperation between Vietnam and the US had expanded significantly since 2014, enhancing cooperation through training and exercises in areas such as HADR and maritime security. The US government provided more than US$45.7 million since 2014 to assist Vietnam’s improvement in maritime security capabilities, including the provision of 18 Metal Shark 45-foot patrol boats and training.71 Vietnam also benefits from regional initiatives such as the Department of Defense’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and Maritime Security Initiative (MSI) funding, which amounts to US$425 million pledged over five years.72 During the Obama administration, US–Vietnam trade tripled, reaching almost US$45 billion in 2016. Vietnam was America’s fastest growing export market among the top 50 US trade partners, while the US remained Vietnam’s largest export market.73 Vietnam is a signatory of the TPP and also a member of the LMI, where the US government assists countries in the Lower Mekong region to develop sustainable approaches for environmental management and water resources.

Assessing the pivot The US pivot to Asia has attracted mixed responses from Asia. Whereas most Asian nations welcome increased strategic, economic and political attention from the United States, China views it with suspicion. Some in China would go to the extent of describing the pivot as a strategy aimed at containing China. Nevertheless, economic interdependence between the two countries compels Washington and Beijing to work together. China is America’s second-largest trading partner, its third-largest export market, and the largest foreign holder of US government bonds.74 Under 275

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the leadership of President Xi Jinping, China endeavours to develop “a new type of great-power relationship”.75 China’s ambassador to Washington Cui Tiankai elaborates that In the past, when one big country developed very fast and gained international influence, it was seen as being in a kind of a zero-sum game vis-à-vis the existing powers. This often led to conflict or even war. Now, there is a determination both in China and in the United States to not allow history to repeat itself. We’ll have to find a new way for a developing power and an existing power to work with each other, not against each other . . . In many respects, we still have a long way to go before we can really be seen as on par with the United States. As for whether we are trying to change the rules of the game, if you look at recent history since China reformed and opened up, there has been a clear integration of China into the existing global order.76 When asked about China’s view of the US pivot to Asia, Ambassador Cui commented that “the United States never removed its bases from the region, so it doesn’t need to pivot”.77 As part of the pivot, the TPP possesses both strategic and economic significance to US influence in Southeast Asia. When visiting Washington in August 2016, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong stressed to members of the US Chamber of Commerce and US-ASEAN Business Council that “ratifying TPP is a litmus test of [US] credibility and seriousness of purpose”.78 Yet Donald Trump’s victory during the 2016 Elections marked the end of American membership in the TPP. Calling the Agreement “a rape of our country” during his campaign speech,79 Trump made clear in a video clip outlining policy plans for his first 100 days that he would issue a note of intent to withdraw from the TPP “from day one”, a promise he kept.80 Failure to implement the TPP in the US signalled a decline in American interest and leadership in the Asia. In a time where China is asserting economic and political leadership in Asia, perceived American disinterest would clear the way for China to establish new norms through Beijing’s economic diplomacy.81 As a comprehensive approach that incorporates strategic, economic and political instruments, the US pivot to Asia has significantly improved US strategic and political position in Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, by blurring the lines between economics and security, Washington risked losing more than a trade deal when the TPP fell through. As feared by the critics of the pivot, the lack of follow-through after the Obama presidency has threatened to unravel the gains made by Washington since the 2011 pronouncement of the strategy.82

Notes 1 Hillary Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century”, Foreign Policy, no. 189 (November 2011): 56–63. 2 Kurt Campbell explains that “pivot” had been the term used by the State Department at the beginning of the outset and “rebalance” was the “moniker more to the liking of the National Security Council at the White House”. For consistency, this chapter uses ‘pivot’. See Kurt Campbell, The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia (New York: Twelve, 2016), p. 29. 3 Ibid., p. 1. 4 Mark E. Manyin, Stephen Daggett, Ben Dolven, Susan V. Lawrence, Michael F. Martin, Ronald O’Rourke and Bruce Vaughn, Pivot to the Pacific? The Obama Administration’s “Rebalancing” toward Asia (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 28 March 2012), p. 7. 5 Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century.” 6 Manyin, et al., Pivot to the Pacific?, p. 1. 7 Campbell, The Pivot, p. 3. 8 Ibid., p. 6. 9 Prashanth Parameswaran, “Explaining US Strategic Partnerships in the Asia-Pacific Region: Origins, Developments and Prospects”, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 36, no. 2 (2014): 262–89, p. 263.

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United States’ pivot in Southeast Asia 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., pp. 264–5. 12 Office of the Press Secretary, “Joint Statement on the ASEAN-U.S. Strategic Partnership”, 21 November 2015, The White House. www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/21/joint-statement-aseanus-strategic-partnership accessed 18 October 2016. 13 Manyin, et al., Pivot to the Pacific?, p. 11. 14 Robert M. Gates, “Emerging Security Challenges in the Asia-Pacific.” 4 June 2011. Presented at The 10th IISS Asian Security Summit, The Shangri-La Dialogue, Singapore. 15 Christian Le Mière, “America’s Pivot to East Asia: The Naval Dimension”, Survival, 54, no. 3 (2012): 81–94, p. 82. 16 Ibid., pp. 82 & 89. 17 Office of the Spokesperson, “Lower Mekong Initiative Launches ‘Sustainable Infrastructure Partnership’”, 25 July 2016, U.S. Department of State. https://2009-2017.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2016/07/260436. htm accessed 16 August 2017. 18 Ian F. Fergusson, Mark A. McMinimy and Brock R. Williams, The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): In Brief (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 9 February 2016), p. 1. 19 Ibid., pp. 2–13. 20 Indonesia, the Philippines and South Korea have expressed interests to be a member of the TPP. See ibid. p. 1. 21 Ibid., pp. 1–2. 22 Campbell, The Pivot, p. 223. 23 Pew Research Center. “Opinion of the United States: Do You Have a Favorable or Unfavorable View of the U.S.?” www.pewglobal.org/database/indicator/1/survey/all/ accessed 14 October 2016. 24 Murray Hiebert, Phuong Nguyen and Gregory B. Poling, Building a More Robust U.S.-Philippines Alliance (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) & Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), p. 6; “Philippines Amphibious Landing Exercise 33”, 24 September 2016, U.S. Embassy in the Philippines. https://ph.usembassy.gov/philippines-amphibious-landing-exercise-33/ accessed 16 August 2017. 25 Hiebert, et al., Building a More Robust U.S.-Philippines Alliance, p. 9. 26 Thomas A. Mensah, et al., “The South China Sea Arbitration”, 12 July 2016, PCA Case No. 2013–19, The Hague. 27 “Statement of the Secretary of Foreign Affairs”, 12 July 2016, Department of Foreign Affairs, Republic of the Philippines. https://www.dfa.gov.ph/documents-on-the-west-philippine-sea accessed 16 August 2017. 28 Hiebert, et al., Building a More Robust U.S.-Philippines Alliance, p. 1. 29 “Full Text: Supreme Court’s Decision on EDCA,” 18 January 2016, Rappler.com; Renato Cruz de Castro, “Supreme Court Approves EDCA: Unlocking the Door for the Return of U.S. Strategic Footprint in Southeast Asia”, 1 February 2016, Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). http://www.rappler.com/nation/119210-full-text-supreme-courtdecision-edca accessed 16 August 2017. 30 Trefor Moss, “Duterte Signals Shift in U.S.-Philippine Military Alliance”, 13 September 2016, The Wall Street Journal, www.wsj.com/articles/duterte-signals-shift-in-u-s-philippine-military-alliance1473774873 accessed 16 August 2017; Michael Peel, Charles Clover and Robin Harding, “Duterte to Test South China Sea Waters”, 17 October 2016, Financial Times, www.ft.com/content/bc86c49c-93a3-11e6a1dc-bdf38d484582 accessed 16 August 2017; “Americans in Philippines Are Jittery as China-Bound Duterte Rails against United States”, 18 October 2016, South China Morning Post, www.scmp.com/news/ asia/southeast-asia/article/2029057/americans-philippines-are-jittery-china-bound-duterte-rails. 31 Campbell, The Pivot, p. 227. 32 Emma Chanlett-Avery, Ben Dolven and Wil Mackey, Thailand: Background and U.S. Relations (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 29 July 2015), p. 6. 33 “U.S. Relations with Thailand”, 6 November 2015, U.S. Department of State. www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/ bgn/2814.htm accessed 25 October 2016. 34 Chanlett-Avery, et al., Thailand: Background and U.S. Relations, p. 5. 35 Ibid., p. 8. 36 Ernest Z. Bower and Murray Hiebert, “Revisiting U.S. Policy toward Post-Coup Thailand”, 25 June 2015, Commentary, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). www.csis.org/analysis/revisitingus-policy-toward-post-coup-thailand accessed 25 October 2016.

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Chanlett-Avery et al., Thailand: Background and U.S. Relations, p. 2. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 11. Thomas Fuller, “Thai Police Investigates U.S. Ambassador on Suspicon of Insulting King”, 9 December 2015, The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/world/asia/thailand-lese-majeste.html?_ r=0 accessed 25 October 2016. “U.S. Relations with Thailand”, 6 November 2015. Chanlett-Avery et al., Thailand: Background and U.S. Relations, p. 9; “U.S. Relations with Thailand”, 6 November 2015. Murray Hiebert, Ted Osius and Gregory B. Poling, A U.S.-Indonesia Partnership for 2020: Recommendations for Forging a 21st Century Relationship (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) & Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, September 2013), p. x. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., pp. ix & 8. Ibid., pp. 1 & 12. Ibid., p. 10. Fergus Hanson, Lowy Institute Indonesia Poll 2012: Shattering Stereotypes, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy (Sydney: Lowy Institute for International Policy, 2012), p. 12. Ibid., p. 36. Ibid., p. 37. Ibid., pp. 11 & 29. Ian E. Rinehart, Malaysia: Background and U.S. Relations (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Services, 19 November 2015), p. 4. Pamela Sodhy, “U.S.-Malaysia Relations on the Security Front”, 13 April 2015, NBR Analysis Brief, The National Bureau of Asian Research. www.nbr.org/publications/analysis/pdf/brief/031315_Sodhy_ Malaysia.pdf accessed 25 October 2016. Rinehart, Malaysia: Background and U.S. Relations, p. 15. Ibid., pp. 15–16. “U.S. Relations with Malaysia”, 25 February 2016, U.S. Department of State. www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/ bgn/2777.htm accessed 25 October 2016. It is important to note that trade figures reported by Malaysian official sources contrast significantly against US official data. Whereas the trade surplus with the US reported by Malaysia stood at US$3.7 billion in 2014, the US reported a trade deficit of US$17.3 billion with Malaysia that year. See Rinehart, Malaysia: Background and U.S. Relations, pp. 7–8. “Trade in Goods with Malaysia”, United States Census Bureau. www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/ c5570.html accessed 26 October 2016. Rinehart, Malaysia: Background and U.S. Relations, p. 8. Ibid., p. 9. Daniel W.B. Chua, “Becoming a ‘Good Nixon Doctrine Country’: Political Relations between the United States and Singapore during the Nixon Presidency”, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 60, no. 4 (2014): 534–48. Daniel W.B. Chua, “Singapore-US Defence Relations: Enhancing Security, Benefiting Region”, 9 December 2015, The Straits Times, www.straitstimes.com/opinion/singapore-us-defence-relationsenhancing-security-benefiting-region accessed 27 October 2016. Evelyn Goh and Daniel W.B. Chua, Singapore Chronicles: Diplomacy (Singapore: Institute of Policy Studies & Straits Times Press, 2015), p. 62. “Factsheet: The Strategic Framework Agreement”, 12 July 2005, Ministry of Defence, Singapore. www.mindef.gov.sg/imindef/press_room/official_releases/nr/2005/jul/12jul05_nr/12jul05_fs.html accessed 27 October 2016. Emma Chanlett-Avery, Singapore: Background and U.S. Relations (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 26 July 2013), p. 4. “Singapore, US Step Up Defence Cooperation”, 8 December 2016, Ministry of Defence, Singapore. www.mindef.gov.sg/imindef/press_room/official_releases/nr/2015/dec/08dec15_nr.html#. WBFdImOxrOQ accessed 27 October 2016. Ye Kung Ong, “An Intuitive Guide to the Services Chapter of the United States-Singapore Free Trade Agreement,” in Economic Diplomacy: Essays and Reflactions by Singapore’s Negotiators, ed. C.L. Lim and Margaret Liang (Singapore: World Scientific, 2011), p. 171.

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United States’ pivot in Southeast Asia 69 “U.S. Relations with Singapore”, 14 October 2016, U.S. Department of State. www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/ bgn/2798.htm accessed 27 October 2016. 70 Office of the Spokesperson, “U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership”, 16 December 2013, U.S. Department of State. www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2013/218734.htm accessed 19 October 2016. 71 Office of the Press Secretary, “FACT SHEET: United States-Vietnam Relations”, 23 May 2016, The White House. www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/23/fact-sheet-united-states-vietnamrelations accessed 19 October 2016. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid. 74 Manyin, et al., Pivot to the Pacific?, p. 8. 75 “Beijing’s Brand Ambassador: A Conversation with Cui Tiankai”, Foreign Affairs, 92, no. 4 (15 May 2013) , p. 10. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. 78 “PM Lee Hsien Loong at US Chamber of Commerce/US-ASEAN Business Council”, 1 August 2016, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore. www.pmo.gov.sg/mediacentre/pm-lee-hsien-loong-us-chambercommerceus-asean-business-council accessed 27 October 2016. 79 Cristiano Lima, “Trump Calls Trade Deal ‘A Rape of Our Country’ ”, 28 June 2016, Politico, www. politico.com/story/2016/06/donald-trump-trans-pacific-partnership-224916 accessed 6 December 2016. 80 Nicky Woolf, Justin McCurry and Benjamin Haas, “Trump to Withdraw from Trans-Pacific Partnership on First Day in Office”, 22 November 2016, The Guardian, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/ nov/21/donald-trump-100-days-plans-video-trans-pacific-partnership-withdraw accessed 6 December 2016; Demetri Sevastopulo, Shawn Donnan and Courtney Weaver, “Trump Pulls Out of Pacific Trade Pact”, 24 January 2017, Financial Times, www.ft.com/content/cc7742a4-e17e-11e6-84059e5580d6e5fb accessed 23 May 2017. 81 Fergusson, et al., The Trans-Pacific Partnership ( TPP): In Brief, p. 3. 82 Campbell, The Pivot, pp. 25–9.

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22 DEMOCRATIZATION IN SOUTHEAST ASIA Social, institutional and security considerations Michael Vatikiotis

With the end of the Cold War in 1989, there was a strong belief in academic and global policy circles that democracy as a system of governance would prevail and that the authoritarian systems that lingered in Asia would soon disappear. Writing in 1991, Clark Neher argued that the transformation of the bipolar world of contest between the United States and the Soviet Union opened a vista of change, with democratization the welcome byproduct of a world in which ‘economic as opposed to security considerations’ would dominate.1 Thus for the past three decades, the assumption was that progressive democratization in Southeast Asia would help reinforce social and economic security. When the Arab Spring erupted in 2011, Larry Diamond, writing in the Atlantic, argued that democracy had a better chance of progressing in East Asia because of the stronger, more stable basis of development achieved by most countries of the region. He pointed to signs of democratic progress in Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar and Singapore and argued that they ‘cannot keep moving forward to the per capita income, educational, and informational levels of a middle-income country without experiencing the pressures for democratic change.’2 The reality towards the end of the second decade of the 21st century is that fully functional representative democracy has yet to prevail in Southeast Asia, and the region’s economic and social security is far from assured. A working paper published by the Council of Foreign relations in 2014 argued that ‘Southeast Asia’s democratization has stalled and, in some of the region’s most economically and strategically important nations, gone into reverse.’3 Taking a snapshot in mid-2016, there are serious concerns about the credibility of the electoral process in Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia and Vietnam, according to the Electoral Integrity Project organized by Harvard University, which conducted a survey based on public perception.4 The rest of Southeast Asia registered only moderate electoral integrity and in Thailand elections were suspended from 2014 to 2018 because of a military coup. Even in situations where democracy has made progress, the shortcomings of democratic change, as well as persistent setbacks, has generated violence and instability. The past five years alone have seen tensions erupt in two of the countries deemed to have made the most progress towards democratization – Thailand and Malaysia. Elsewhere in the region, democratization has provided an outlet for illiberal, destabilizing social forces to generate conflict that has led to violence. 280

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Whether it is the failure of democratic reform or the by-product of democratization itself, there is clearly no evidence as yet of a firm correlation between democratization and security. To better understand why, here it will be argued that democratization is facing three identifiable obstacles. The first is institutional, the second is societal and the third geo-political.

Indonesia Western scholars tend to view – and judge – the process of democratization through an institutional lens. Political systems that progressively modernize, hold regular elections that are free and fair, and develop mechanisms to ensure transparency and accountability, are regarded as successfully democratizing. Indonesia is seen as the classic example of a country that has democratized through a process of institutional reform and change. True, there have been regularly held free and fair elections that have ensured peaceful transitions of power at the executive level; progressive decentralization since 1999 has empowered elected representatives at the district and provincial level, fostering a strong sense of autonomy. Meanwhile, demands for greater transparency and accountability in government were met by the establishment of an anti-corruption commission with powers of arrest that sent dozens of officials, as senior as ministers, to jail. Indonesia’s journey to a free democracy, writes Harold Crouch ‘is in great part a success story.’5 However, the problems attending democratization in Indonesia can mostly be attributed to the failure to strengthen supporting institutions. The primary weakness is in the political party system, which although an important component of the democratic process, is characterized by weak organizational and programmatic coherence. Political parties remain hostage to the personalities who lead them, who in turn use the parties as vehicles for mobilizing resources to support special interests and a monopoly on power. This has bred endemic levels of corruption, which in turn alienate the popular base of support. Another institution that has undermined democratic progress in Indonesia is the judiciary. In 2013, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index showed that Indonesians consider the judiciary one of the most corrupt institutions. According to Todung Mulya Lubis, a prominent Indonesian human rights lawyer, ‘the judiciary in Indonesia is called a “court mafia.” It is a mafia consisting of judges, prosecutors, police and lawyers who obstruct justice and the due process of law.’6 This so-called ‘judicial mafia’ undermines legal certainty by using bribery and corruption to subvert the law. This effectively means that those whose services can be bought for a fee interpret the law. Both the weakness of political parties and the lack of public confidence in the judiciary effectively means that while democracy is ‘performed’ once every five years to elect a president, the actual mechanisms of democratic government are hobbled at a basic level by the inability of people to have their grievances fairly represented or acted upon. This state of affairs basically persists because democratic government remains the monopoly of a small circle of vested interests, usually defined as an oligarchy. The most emblematic example of this problem is the Golkar party. Golkar was established in the 1970s as the New Order government’s vehicle for mass mobilization in elections that were largely symbolic rather than representative. After the fall of former President Suharto’s New Order in 1998, Golkar survived and in fact prospered as a platform for officials and representatives of the old order who presented themselves as reformers. Instead of establishing a grass roots programme with policies aimed at helping people, Golkar adapted machinery designed to secure bureaucratic support to focus instead on providing a platform for wealthy corporate players eyeing political power. The newly elected head of Golkar 281

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in 2016, Setya Novanto, who was speaker of the Indonesian parliament, was forced to step down after it emerged that he was recorded on tape asking the Indonesian subsidiary of Indonesia’s largest mining operation, Freeport, for kickbacks.7

Malaysia Even in situations where the institutions underpinning representative democracy are supposedly strong and independent, we see a deterioration of both the quality and independence of these bodies and thus of democracy. Malaysia’s political landscape is dominated by the United Malays Nationalist Organisation (UMNO), which leads a coalition of mostly racially defined parties under the banner of the National Front (Barisan Nasional). The National Front has never been out of power, although in recent elections its margins of victory have been significantly reduced and it lost the two-thirds majority it once commanded in parliament in 2008. In the 2013 General Elections, an opposition coalition of similarly racebased parties, including the Islamic party or PAS, almost unseated the National Front by winning the majority of the popular vote in peninsular Malaysia. Nevertheless, the National Front clung to power by managing to win the majority of seats in parliament with support from the East Malaysian States of Sabah and Sarawak. To help shore up its sagging popularity, the National Front has resorted to what the opposition alleges is effective gerrymandering. In 2016 the government launched a re-delineation exercise that was expected to redraw the boundaries of parliamentary and state assembly seats in opposition areas to the benefit of the National Front. The opposition accused the government of having the Election Commission bundle areas dominated by opposition supporters into super constituencies of 100,000 voters. The government denied these claims.8 In both Indonesia and Malaysia, the structural problems of democracy stem from institutional weakness and neglect reinforced by selfish elite behaviour. People appreciate and understand the meaning of elections, and there is a long history of holding them. But the choices they are given mean that their vote rarely counts for much beyond electing a leader and waiting another five years before going through the process again. Society’s response to sub-standard democracy is a controversial aspect of the weak state of democratization in Southeast Asia. The past three decades of rapid economic development has greatly increased levels of economic growth and investment in infrastructure, but has in fact exacerbated levels of social inequality. Put simply: the rich have gotten richer and while extreme levels of poverty have declined, a whole lot more people are poorer in relative terms, as measured by the Gini coefficient.9 This alarming trend towards greater social inequality has impacted the political context in contradictory ways; on the one hand it has generated popular demand for fairer government and social justice. But it has also fueled populist movements that have risen and wielded power in thoroughly undemocratic ways. Thailand is an excellent example of the social dilemmas confronting democratization in Southeast Asia.

Thailand When former Police officer turned telecoms tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra first entered politics in the mid-1990s it was almost certainly with a view to shore up his burgeoning business empire. He was first elected Prime Minister in 2001. By turning to a group of former left-wing activists for political advice, he ended up with a recipe for populism that won his Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai) Party an overwhelming majority of seats in the 500-seat national assembly when he 282

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was re-elected in 2005, enabling him to become Prime Minister without being encumbered by a fractious coalition of other weaker parties. Thaksin delivered what many Thais in rural areas far from the glitz and growth of Bangkok wanted: a measure of welfare and a path to wealth creation. He provided a cheaper healthcare scheme and village funds and loans that targeted the upcountry poor. These schemes made him wildly popular, and meant that people turned a blind eye to the more undemocratic means by which he shored up his power. ‘The healthcare scheme is credited with moving several hundred thousand households over the poverty line by reducing household expenditure on health,’ wrote Pasuk Pongpaichit and Chris Baker, ‘Thakisn was rewarded with high popularity, and people told surveys and interviewers that they gave him loyal support because of the impact of these measures.’10 This loyalty enabled Thaksin to acquire considerable power, often at the expense of the quality of democracy. The build-up of resentment in the conservative establishment, which felt threatened, and Thaksin’s selfish abuse of power (for which he was repeatedly indicted and convicted), culminated in a lost decade of perpetual protest, disrupting the democratic process and the imposition of military rule. Like Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, Thaksin equated his wealth and success in business with a mandate to rule as he pleased. As early as 2002 during his first term as prime minister, Thaksin bridled at any suggestion he could do wrong. On his regular radio talk show, he railed against rumour-mongers and worried about gossiping tax drivers; he made no bones about his admiration of the soft authoritarian styles of prime ministers Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia or Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore. By the time he started to face serious resistance among the conservative palace establishment, which considered Thaksin a threat to the privileged elite that controlled the army and the bureaucracy in Thailand, his popular base in rural Thailand could see him doing no wrong. The dilemma in terms of democratic development was that on the one hand Thaksin delivered tangible benefits to the masses, for which he or his party led by other family members have been elected with sizable majorities until the last election held in 2013. On the other hand, Thaksin’s uncompromising determination to hold onto power and fight the conservative establishment ranged against him (albeit without the popular backing he enjoyed), has resulted in waves of protests that have killed more than 200 people and left Thailand in the grip of military rule. It is easy to cast the blame for Thailand’s lost decade (2006–2016) on the selfish behavior of the conservative palace establishment who regarded Thaksin as a threat. In reality, both sides in the extremely polarized politics of Thailand have exploited social demands for welfare and security using platforms that were neither inclusive nor representative – in fact, they could be seen as representing only narrowly defined interest groups drawing on a support base that was either fooled or paid. As Pasuk and Baker aptly put it: ‘Democratic institutions alone are not enough. At present (in Thailand) there is no mechanism for converting mass sentiment into policy.’11

The Philippines The way that popular concerns about law and order and livelihoods affect the quality of democracy are most acutely seen in the case of the Philippines. For much of the initial period of political campaigning ahead of presidential elections in May 2016, voters were presented with a conventional crop of politicians mostly drawn from the landed elites that have monopolized power in the Philippines since independence. The sudden rise of Rodrigo Duterte, a rough-hewed lawyer turned city mayor from Davao in Mindanao, turned the contest on its head. Duterte hit a chord with voters for his foul-mouthed contempt for imperial Manila. He promised to crack down on crime and drugs and to compel the government to deliver services without demanding bribes. 283

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No one seemed perturbed by the methods he boasted of using – including the extra-judicial killing of drug peddlers and petty criminals. He was elected by a landslide. In his first few months in office, Duterte, who had asked if the lives of ten criminals really mattered, fulfilled his pledge. By 2017 more than eight thousand alleged drug pushers and users were found shot on the streets of cities in the Philippines; reporters witnessed gangs of motorcycle borne masked men cruising Manila’s slum areas, whilst witnesses told them that men simply walked into their shacks and shot people as they lay in bed.12 As the world expressed horror and the United Nations sent in a team of investigators, there wasn’t any polling evidence to suggest that the killings were denting Duterte’s popularity. For the victims, however, there was no hint of any due process to determine their guilt; a senate inquiry into the legality of these actions was overridden after Duterte accused key legislators of corruption. There was even a discussion on the possibility of waiving habeas corpus rights, which would effectively mean the return of martial law.13

Myanmar Myanmar is in many ways a counter point to this otherwise bleak narrative of democratization in Southeast Asia. Both in institutional and social terms, the country made democratic progress in leaps and bounds in the second decade of the 21st century. Skepticism prevailed when a mild-mannered former army officer, Thein Sein, assumed the role of President in 2010 after a long drawn out constitution-drafting process that generated a charter enshrining the military’s paramount role in politics. The generals presented a roadmap that would lead to freely contested elections. But the international community was doubtful, not least because the army bridled at suggestions that pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi would be allowed to assume the presidency if she won the elections, which were eventually set for November 2015. Few in the region expected either a peaceful or decisive outcome to the poll. Those who witnessed the historic event marveled at the discipline and patience that ordinary Myanmar citizens displayed as they lined up in the early hours of 8 November to vote. Even compared with countries where regular elections are held, such as Indonesia, Malaysia and until recently Thailand, the voting was smooth and astonishingly free.14 The scene was repeated up and down the country. There was a subdued air of apprehension. People could scarcely believe they were being given a chance to choose who would governed them. And when the first results were announced, it was clear that Myanmar had voted for a complete change. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won just under 80% of the contested seats in the parliament. The government-backed USDP party was virtually wiped out. For other members of ASEAN, the election was a wake-up call and a much-needed boost for democracy. In countries like Cambodia and Malaysia, the opposition struggles to make a dent on long term power holders, even when they do well in the polls. In Thailand, the military has put democratic politics in the deep freeze since a coup in 2014. So, when the opposition won as it did in Myanmar and the military establishment accommodated a peaceful transfer of power, it sent a powerful message to neighbouring countries. Up to this point, Indonesia was the only example in the region of a peaceful transition from authoritarianism. However, the NLD’s sweeping victory was only a partial transition. Under the 2008 constitution, despite efforts at amending it, the army retains 25% of the seats in parliament. Aung San Suu Kyi was unable to assume the Presidency, becoming a powerful ‘State Councillor’ instead. Also unchanged was the unitary, racially defined basis of the state that has compelled Myanmar’s sizable ethnic minority communities to engage in some of the world’s longest-running civil wars. In the new spirit of democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi made a formal dialogue on a future federal 284

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union her new government’s sole priority in its first months in office. The process looked certain to be long-drawn out, as the powerful military stood firm on some of the key issues the ethnic groups wanted reformed, such as the composition of the army itself, which is almost exclusively led by ethnic Bamar.

The return of military rule in Thailand Meanwhile, in neighbouring Thailand, the military was back in power, having mounted the second coup d’etat within a decade in 2014. Emulating Myanmar’s army, the Thai generals promised fresh elections after a new constitution had been drafted and passed into law. There were two attempts to draft a new charter, neither was inclusive, and the drafters were mostly conservative lawyers and academics with a low regard for politicians. Finally, in August 2016, a draft constitution, which few people read, was put to a popular referendum. It passed with a modest majority of 61% of the 59% of voters who turned up to vote, in part analysts said, because many Thais believed that it would combat corruptions and pave the way to fresh elections. In fact, the new constitution, which is Thailand’s 20th, seriously constricts representative democracy. With the electoral system being the mixed member proportional system (MMP), a coalition government is likely, thereby precluding the possibility of a single party government. It also provides for a mostly unelected senate, which critics fear could pave the way to the appointment of an unelected Prime Minister. Those involved in drafting the document, believed that they needed to create a stable environment by using a strictly centralized system and a form of guided democracy in order to secure the arrangements for the royal succession. As the Economist noted: ‘If the purpose of a Thai coup is to turn back the clock, the point of the constitution that follows is to freeze the hands in place.’15 Even though the military used temporary detention without trial and the threat of prosecution in military courts to stifle dissent, and there were accusations of the use of torture, it was nonetheless remarkable how acquiescent Thai society seemed to the deconstruction of what was, at the start of the 21st century a vibrant parliamentary democracy. As Thai academic Kasian Tejapira noted: ‘A remarkable feature of the ongoing power shift in Thailand is the ironic reversal of political stance and role of the established urban middle class, who have turned from the erstwhile vanguard democratizers of the previous power shift into latter-day anti-democratizers.’16 In some part, this seemed to reflect a collective anxiety about the imminent royal succession, a process Thai history has shown is often marked by uncertainty and violence. King Bhumibol Adulyadej died in October 2016 and was succeeded by his son Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn. As soon as he ascended the throne, the new King set about strengthening the power of the throne and acquiring more autonomous power to govern palace affairs under the new constitution. Some leading politicians also reflected on their own failure to overcome conflict and polarization, which they said had bred deep mistrust in the ability of politicians to provide security, especially for urban elites.17 In short, Thailand has embraced a modern form of soft authoritarian government, or guided democracy, that had been made popular in the 1950s and 60s by an earlier generation of military strongmen such as Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat in Thailand and later Suharto in Indonesia.

Cambodia Next door, in Cambodia, Southeast Asia’s longest serving Prime Minister, Hun Sen, has presided over a form of democracy that can at best be described as personalized. He wields power through the Cambodian People’s Party, originally a Marxist-Leninist platform that assumed power after 285

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the departure of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. The party transformed itself in the Cambodian People’s Party in the 1990s after the UN-supported transitional process led to multi-party elections. There was a brief period of coalition government after elections supervised by the United Nations. By 2008, after winning a landslide election victory, Hun Sen was the country’s undisputed paramount leader. The image he projected was eerily similar to the Khmer kings of old. He travelled the country dispensing patronage, building Buddhist temples and schools. He always made sure the people saw him giving and paying. ‘I don’t give you air promises,’ he said: ‘I give you reality.’18 Hun Sen’s image of himself as the embodiment of his country’s security and welfare collided with a new reality in the 2013 elections, when the opposition supported by younger voters interested in change almost won a majority in the national assembly. This result speaks to something also evident in Myanmar’s November 2015 election; the determined manner in which younger voters voted for change. More than a third of the electorate in 2013 was aged between 18 and 30 years, and more than 15% were voting for the first time. According to Strangio (2014), this new demographic ‘meant that the CPP’s old political formula – liberation from the Khmer Rouge plus stability plus basic economic development – had lost much of its potency.’19 At first, Hun Sen flirted with reforms. But this modern impulse to respond to what voters wanted was soon replaced by a more arcane intuitive one to crush his foes. In the wake of the 2013 polls there have been several outbreaks of violence where state-backed elements have beaten up or shot at opposition politicians and protestors. Taking a leaf out of Malaysia’s book, Hun Sen tried using the courts to muzzle free speech and the opposition. The intimidation at first cowed the opposition – the leader of the main opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party, Sam Rainsy fled back into exile in France. His deputy, Kem Soukha took refuge in the party headquarters to evade arrest on charges of adultery. But all this did was inflame popular opinion. When an unknown assailant gunned down popular commentator Kem Lay as he drank a morning coffee in July 2016, more than two million people attended his funeral. ‘Many Cambodians believe Kem Ley died for his political beliefs, and few have much faith in the investigation the government has promised to conduct, wrote Mu Sochua, a member of the national assembly for the CNRP. ‘Whatever the truth behind Kem Lay’s death, the event already seems to mark a point of no return in public opinion: The fracture between the people and the government may now be irrevocable.’20

Delusions of democracy With the exception of Myanmar, the contemporary prospects for democratization in Southeast Asia look uncertain or bleak. Perhaps the most disappointing situation is in Indonesia, where real progress has been made since the fall of the authoritarian President Soeharto in 1998. Yet while elections are held regularly, and there have been three peacefully held direct elections for the presidency, and one untroubled transfer of power from one directly elected president to another, what is troubling is the painfully evident institutional weaknesses that hold back the proper development of political parties, a properly functioning parliament and perpetuate the politics of personality and prejudice. The path of democratic reform in Indonesia is littered with trade offs that well-meaning leaders like incumbent President Joko Widodo and his predecessor Bambang Yudhoyono were forced to make with conservatives in order to survive. Those who expected President Joko Widodo, elected on a populist ticket in 2014, to spearhead advocacy of human rights and transitional justice to address past incidents of injustice and oppression were sorely disappointed. Instead of living up to promises to address Indonesia’s violent authoritarian past, Joko Widodo 286

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has promoted hard line elements of the army, some of whom are culpable for incidents of violence and oppression. Rather than fight corruption and promote genuinely capable people to serve the people, he has mastered the political game of controlling competing elites, which involves coopting rather than punishing those with dark reputations. ‘Instead of changing the game as he promised voters,’ said one commentator, ‘Jokowi has begun to master it.’21 Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, there has been little change to the strictly controlled communist systems of Vietnam and Laos, where highly centralized party structures perpetuate one party rule, occasionally demonstrating a pragmatic responsiveness to what the public wants and ensuring that policies are implemented. During the last election held for Vietnam’s 500-member national assembly in May 2016, for example, there was an expectation that, as in Cambodia, the younger generation would assert their views through the ability to self-nominate independent candidates.22 In the end only 21 of the less than 100 candidates who stepped forward were elected. Singapore’s highly managed semi-democratic system has responded judiciously but cautiously to popular concerns in the electorate that have fueled support for weak opposition parties. There was a palpable sense of shock and surprise in the 2011 election, when the ruling People’s Action Party saw a 6.5% swing against it, reducing its share of the popular vote, at 60%, to the lowest since independence. Nine opposition MPs took their seats in parliament. There was a lot of handwringing in PAP circles, but the fact was that Singaporean voters were concerned about bread and butter issues they thought the government was not responding to such as immigration and increasing inequality. So they did what voters do in a democracy, they punished the government by voting for the opposition. The PAP government was chastened, and when the next election rolled around it did a better job of showing that it was listening. The 2015 election saw the PAP regain a healthy 69% of the popular vote. The opposition Worker’s Party was left with six seats in parliament. On balance, the only real positive here was that instead of using repressive measures, which a battery of laws would support to thwart the opposition, Singapore’s leaders have opted to respond to what voters want and try harder to deliver, even if they do so from an overwhelming position of power.

Geo-political currents External pressure was in the past a significant factor driving democratization in Southeast Asia, particularly in the wake of the Cold war as indicated at the start of this article. But in recent years, the influence of the liberal West has been somewhat undercut and counter-balanced by the rise of a not so liberal China. The changing geo-political landscape has impacted on the process of democratization. When Thailand’s military government was shunned by the US and EU after 2014, the generals pro-actively reached out to Beijing to discuss arms and infrastructure deals. The Chinese government publicly expressed confidence in the new military regime. By 2016, Chinese officials reported that China was the third largest investor in Thailand, stressing that ‘many Thais are of Chinese descent and Thailand is a doorway to Southeast Asia’s 600 million consumers.’23 Across Southeast Asia, Chinese companies, pulling thousands of migrant workers in their wake, have used state-backed initiatives to embark on ambitious infrastructure projects. They are less concerned about transparency and institutional probity than Western corporate counterparts. They are unlikely to become skittish because democratic reform moves flounder or go in reverse. The Chinese government is nonetheless interested in stability, and is not averse to counseling its allies in the region on the advisability of reforms to address popular unrest – as was the case in Cambodia after the 2013 elections. China is also learning to grapple with situations where democracy fuels demands for greater corporate responsibility as in Myanmar. 287

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But for the most part, cash is king. When Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak needed a bail out of the troubled 1MDB financial investment, which was threatening to undermine his position as Prime Minister, China came to the rescue. In 2016 a Chinese state-owned enterprise paid US$2.3 billion dollars for the power-generation assets of 1MDB, giving China a major foothold in Malaysia’s energy sector, and significantly helping to liquidate some of the estimated US$9 billion dollars in debt accrued by 1MDB. The government insisted the deal was commercially sound. Earlier, another Chinese company had invested US$1.7 billion in a 1MDB-owned property development. Both deals made China by far the largest investor by value in Malaysia in 2016 and set the stage for securing a stake in the construction of high-speed railways worth billions of dollars.24 Meanwhile, the United States Justice Department announced it was investigating several individuals close to 1MDB to recover assets – one of them was labeled ‘Malaysian Official One.’ Like the United States in the early years of the Cold War, China is using a mixture of financial inducement and hard power to build support for its strategic goals in Southeast Asia. And like the US in that earlier era, which blindly supported dictators and autocrats to keep communists at bay, for China the imperative of preventing containment and securing strategic access to the sea makes it blind, perhaps willfully so, to the dynamics of democratization. In any case, with so much riding on the US–Philippines security relationship with regard to addressing China’s claims in the South China Sea, Washington’s main response to the extra-judicial killings of 4,000 or more people under President Rodrigo Duterte’s watch has been muted expressions of concern followed by louder assurances of an iron-clad security relationship. Geo-political and security considerations have therefore become a significant obstacle to political progress in Southeast Asia. All the same, the inability of elected leaders to execute the changes voters want, speaks to the gaping void between popular aspiration and political reality that persists in Southeast Asia. Social and economic empowerment and the remarkable penetration of social media has nevertheless opened people’s eyes to the folly of leaders governing using archaic practices designed to sustain the power and privilege of the few. Missing is an effective platform for mobilizing these forces for change and then rallying together at election time. Regressive governments of the region can rely on societies, divided by class, race and religion. They harness crude nationalism and jingoism to keep the international community at bay. The answer is for people in these countries to seize the initiative and forge popular movements that unite weak progressive civil society groups and enlightened political actors.

Notes 1 Clark D. Neher, “Democratization in Southeast Asia,” Asian Affairs, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Fall, 1991), pp. 139–152. 2 Larry Diamond, “Why East Asia–Including China–Will Turn Democratic within a Generation,” The Atlantic, January 24, 2012, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/why-east-asiaincluding-china-will-turn-democratic-within-a-generation/251824/ 3 Joshua Kurlantzick, Southeast Asia’s Regression from Democracy and Its Implications: A Council of Foreign Relations Working paper, 2014. 4 The Electoral Integrity Project, 2016, https://sites.google.com/site/electoralintegrityproject4/home 5 Harold Crouch, “Problems of Democratisation in Indonesia,” 2016, www.insideindonesia.org/problemsof-democratisation-in-indonesia 6 Noelan Arbis, “An Interview with Todung Mulya Lubis,” in the National Bureau of Asian Research, May 13, 2014, www.nbr.org/research/activity.aspx?id=449 7 Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja, “Ex-Speaker Is New Golkar Party Chairman”, The Straits Times, May 18, 2016, www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/ex-speaker-is-new-golkar-party-chairman 8 Melissa Goh, “Malaysia Government Accused of Gerrymandering,” Channel NewsAsia, September 22, 2016, www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/malaysia-government-accused-of-gerrymandering/ 3147532.html

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Democratization in Southeast Asia 9 Ravi Kanbur, Changyong Rhee and Juzhong Zhuang, Inequality in Asia and the Pacific: Trends, Drivers, and Policy Implications, 2014, www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/41630/inequality-asia-andpacific.pdf 10 Pasuk Pongpaichit and Chris Baker (eds.), Unequal Thailand, NUS Press: Singapore, 2016, p. 11. 11 Ibid., p. 26. 12 Lindsay Murdoch, “Duterte’s Drug Crackdown Hits Home as Man Shot Dead in Front of His Pregnant Wife, Family”, The Age, September 26, 2016, www.theage.com.au/world/dutertes-drug-crackdownhits-home-as-man-shot-dead-in-front-of-his-pregnant-wife-family-20160925-gro8df.html 13 Tarra Quismundo, “Gordon: Give Duterte Power to Suspend Writ of Habeas Corpus,” Inquirer.net, September 8, 2016, http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/813820/gordon-wants-to-give-duterte-power-to-suspendwrit-of-habeas-corpus 14 Michael Vatikiotis, “Myanmar Is a New Beacon of Democracy,” Nikkei Asian Review, November 16, 2015, http://asia.nikkei.com/Viewpoints/Viewpoints/Myanmar-is-a-new-beacon-of-democracy 15 “Why Does Thailand Keep Changing Its Constitution?,” The Economist, September 12 2016, www. economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2016/09/economist-explains-4 16 Kasian Tejapira, “The Irony of Democratization and the Decline of Royal Hegemony in Thailand,” http://englishkyoto-seas.org/2016/08/vol-5-no-2-kasian-tejapira/ 17 Author’s interviews with political leaders of the Democrat and Pheu Thai Party, August 2016. 18 Sebastian Strangio, Hun Sen’s Cambodia, Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, 2014, p. 111. 19 Ibid., p. 259. 20 Mu Sochua, “Cambodia at a Point of No Return,” The New York Times, July 20, 2016, www.nytimes. com/2016/07/20/opinion/cambodia-at-a-point-of-no-return.html 21 John Chalmers, “Indonesia’s Widodo Masters the Politics, but Reform Agenda Fades,” Reuters, August 31, 2016, www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-president-idUSKCN11607X 22 Shawn W. Crispin, “The Truth about ‘Democracy’ in Vietnam Today,” The Diplomat, March 25, 2016, http://thediplomat.com/2016/03/the-truth-about-democracy-in-vietnam-today/ 23 Martin Lowe, “China Now Thailand’s Third-Largest Investor,” CCTV.com, September 23, 2016, http:// english.cctv.com/2016/09/23/VIDEwvEGb99w4yroaar6iTLd160923.shtml 24 Stories detailing China’s investment in 1MDB assets: Liew Chin Tong, “1MDB Sales to China May Undermine Malaysian Neutrality,” MalaysiaKini, January 1, 2016, www.malaysiakini.com/news/325170; “China Firm Denies 1MDB Bailout Plot,” FMT News, August 1, 2016, www.freemalaysiatoday.com/ category/nation/2016/08/01/china-firm-denies-1mdb-bailout-plot/; Amy Chew, “China’s Investment in Embattled 1MDB Throw Malaysian Prime Minister a Lifeline–but Carry a Hidden Price Tag”, South China Morning Post, January 12, 2016, www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/ 1900056/chinas-investment-embattled-1mdb-throw-malaysian-prime; “Outrage! Najib’s Secret Deal with China to Pay off 1MDB (and Jho Low’s) Debts! Shock Exclusive,” Sarawak Report, July 26, 2016, www.sarawakreport.org/2016/07/outrage-najibs-secret-deal-with-china-to-pay-off-1mdb-andjho-lows-debts-shock-exclusive/; Jon Fernquest, “New Wave of Chinese Coming to Live in Thailand, Bangkok Post, September 23, 2016, www.bangkokpost.com/learning/advanced/1093148/new-waveof-chinese-coming-to-live-in-thailand

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23 ASSESSING PEACE PROCESSES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA S.P. Harish

Introduction In August 2016, the Colombian government and the country’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), announced a peace deal to end more than five decades of war. The final agreement, reached after four years of negotiations in Cuba, allowed for economic reform and investment in rural areas of the country as well as the disarmament and reintegration of former combatants. However, the peace treaty fell short of a final hurdle. The agreement had to pass a nation-wide referendum in October 2016 but despite promising polling numbers, failed narrowly at the ballot box. This has created an atmosphere of uncertainty about the future trajectory of the conflict. Despite this setback, the peace process itself was remarkable: at its core was an understanding by the Colombian government that a military solution was neither desirable nor feasible, and that a negotiated settlement was necessary for lasting peace. Such an attitude towards insurgents and separatists is rare. States are usually reluctant to engage in a peace process with domestic armed groups, especially separatist organizations. This lack of enthusiasm arises from a perception that negotiating with a rebel outfit would make the state appear weak, set a precedent for other armed organizations and also give dissident groups a certain legitimacy previously denied to them. This is certainty the case in Southeast Asia, where many countries have had experience with armed separatist groups, communist insurgencies and terrorist organizations. Despite attempts to militarily quell rebellions, many governments increasingly find themselves in a position where they realize that some form of political agreement is ultimately necessary for peace. In this chapter, I present a comparative analyses of peace processes in Southeast Asia.1 I discuss some hypotheses about peace processes and use them as a framework to compare and contrast between different attempts to broker peace in the region. Specifically, I draw from the experience of the Philippines with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the communists, Indonesia with Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM) as well as more recent attempts by Thailand and Myanmar.

Assessing peace processes There is no consensus on the definition of a peace process and for the purposes of this chapter, I define a peace process as a sustained dialogue between contending parties to a conflict with an intention to quell the violence and an agreement to negotiate the central issues of the dispute.2 Based on the above 290

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definition, the peace talks between GRP and MNLF will need to be considered as two separate peace processes. The first concerns attempts to achieve peace by the Marcos government and MNLF (hereafter the Marcos-MNLF peace process). The second refers to efforts by the Ramos government and MNLF (hereafter the Ramos-MNLF peace process). A similar distinction is also necessary for the peace process in Aceh. The peace attempts between the two sides from mid2000 through May 2003 will be referred to as the first GOI-GAM peace process, whereas the talks from December 2004 through August 2005 will be referred to as the second GOI-GAM peace process. Where applicable, I will also discuss more recent peace attempts between the Philippines and the Communist rebels, between Myanmar and its various ethnic groups, and between the Thai government and the Malay-Muslim rebels in the southern provinces. Gauging the success of a peace process is inherently problematic. At one end of the spectrum, it is possible to argue that a peace process is in itself a success since it provides a forum for armed adversaries to negotiate. At the other end of the spectrum, a peace process can never be considered a success because it is not possible to achieve a Pareto-optimal outcome for all actors. Depending on the analyst’s predisposition, it is also possible to view any peace process as either a success or failure. Given this subjective minefield, in this chapter actions taken within the context of a peace process will be considered effective if they contribute to a more peaceful outcome compared to the status quo. Before discussing the hypotheses under consideration in this chapter, it is necessary to acknowledge that peace processes are inherently political. Whether it is the government, the rebel group or the mediator(s), the decision to participate in a peace process is a strategic move and dependent on their expected gain from the process. So to claim that ‘political will’ or ‘serious give-and-take on both sides’ is necessary for a successful peace process is almost stating the obvious. What makes the study of peace processes useful and relevant is about the steps that advance the negotiations towards resolution. With that preamble, we can turn to hypotheses that will lay the foundation for assessing peace processes.

Hypothesis 1: ceasefires with monitoring and enforcement mechanisms at the beginning of a peace process are effective Ceasefires are typically the first step within a peace process. Before discussing substantive issues, both sides call for a pause in the fighting, either to deliver humanitarian aid or a sign of good will. They help build trust between all actors and allow them to focus on more substantive issues, and are among the best predictors of advancing peace negotiations.3 Of course, when ceasefire agreements break down there is return to violence. This is sometimes viewed as a setback or a failure. However, this belies an important function of ceasefire agreements – it is a credible signal of control. When governments and rebel groups decide to participate in a peace process, the issue of control is almost always the first hurdle that needs to be crossed. From the perspective of a rebel group, they want to know whether the government has sufficient control over the military and police. Similarly, the government want to know whether the rebel group leadership is able to command its foot soldiers. In other words, both sides want to know that they are negotiating with people who can actually control events on the ground. Ceasefires are a useful tool to credibly signal your authority to the other side. If the ceasefire agreement fails, then it is a sign that there are ‘spoilers’ in the peace process4 and that there exists either armed forces or rebel group personnel who are willing to defy their leadership. During the Ramos-MNLF peace process, the interim ceasefire agreement was instrumental in concluding substantive negotiations between the two sides. One of the key agreements of first 291

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round of formal talks was an Interim Ceasefire Agreement (ICA). As a formalized version of the agreed ceasefire between ex-President Corazon Aquino and Nur Misuari, it provided for the creation of a Joint Ceasefire Committee (JCC) with representatives from the OIC supervising the implementation of the ceasefire. In contrast, the Tripoli agreement that was part of the earlier Marcos-MNLF peace process served as a way to address substantive issues as well as a broad ceasefire agreement. The two sides did not seek to broker a ceasefire agreement initially, and when the Tripoli agreement collapsed it led to a resumption of fighting between the two sides. During the first GOI-GAM peace process, a ceasefire termed as Humanitarian Pause for Aceh was signed in May 2000. It is noteworthy that GOI did not want this interim agreement to be called a ceasefire, as this would make GAM an ‘equal belligerent’.5 While this pause was received well internationally, it faced a lot of criticism within Indonesia. Soon enough violence escalated and this contributed towards the collapse of the peace negotiations. In contrast, the second GOIGAM peace process implemented a monitoring mechanism for the ceasefire. Known as the Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM), it comprised of the European Union and five ASEAN countries. They were allowed unrestricted access in the province, ability to adjudicate on breaches and neither party could override any AMM operations.6 This feature of the second peace process reinforced the ceasefire agreement and paved the way for more substantive peace negotiations. The issue of control within the rebel organization was also critical in the peace talks between the Thai government and the rebels in its southern provinces. Rivalry between different armed groups in the region made it difficult to determine the appropriate negotiating partners. During the 2013 Kuala Lumpur dialogue process, there was a proposed 40-day ceasefire during Ramadan, but it soon became clear that neither the government negotiators nor the rebel group representatives had control over the activities of the Thai military and the militants respectively.7 Without any monitoring or dispute resolution mechanism, the ceasefire agreement disintegrated and the violence quickly spiraled to pre-negotiation levels. Effective ceasefire agreements are also harder to establish in Myanmar where the government is engaged in a peace initiative with multiple ethnic groups. Some of the large armed groups in the country are yet to sign on to a 2015 nationwide ceasefire agreement. The rebel groups are waiting for a credible signal from State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi that she has established civilian control over the military while the government wants assurances on control in the rebel territory.8 Moreover, monitoring of the ceasefire becomes difficult when some ceasefire agreements have been signed with only some of the rebel groups.

Hypothesis 2: the effectiveness of a mediator depends on the amount of leverage it has over the disputants Another important issue that both negotiating parties need to decide is whether to use a mediator. The aim of international mediation is to help antagonists achieve settlement to a conflict that is satisfactory to all parties without the use of military force.9 Mediators usually try to achieve this objective by increasing incentives of arriving at a peace agreement and decreasing inducements of prolonging the conflict. For instance, they can set the discussion agenda and also serve as an important communication channel between the adversaries. Mediators can be states, even superpowers or they can be international organizations like the United Nations. Increasingly, non-governmental organizations like HDC have taken on the role of mediator. While mediation by non-governmental organizations is sometimes viewed as beneficial,10 the effectiveness of a mediator depends on the amount of leverage that it has over the disputants. Leverage here refers to the ‘the ability of the mediator to alter the objective environment of the disputants: in particular, the capacity of the parties to prosecute the war, the tangible rewards of 292

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choosing peace, and the provision of personnel and services to reduce the risks of settlement’.11 While all mediators have some leverage, states do have a considerable advantage over NGOs in mediation.12 First, they have a lot more leverage, which allows them to persuade and at times coerce the disputants to reach a settlement. In highly asymmetric conflicts where the government is militarily powerful, states can exert their influence in favor of negotiations. Second, states can sway decisions taken by international organizations. For example, the removal of a rebel group from a terrorist list is best achieved via a state mediator. Third, they also have much greater funding and resources that may be required during a protracted peace process. This is not to say that NGOs are not effective as an intermediary. If they are in possession of similar leverage as states, they too can effective mediators. During the Marcos-MNLF peace process, the MNLF had also aroused the interest of the Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC) and other Arab governments. The decision by the OIC to impose an oil embargo coupled with Saudi Arabia’s threat to cut off oil supplies to the Philippines13 was crucial in getting Marcos to negotiate with the MNLF. Marcos appeased the OIC by condemning the Israeli occupation of Arab land and managed to get the oil embargo lifted. Soon after, the first round of negotiations with the MNLF were conducted in the office of the OIC Secretary General in Jeddah. Among the OIC countries, Libya took the lead in compelling both sides to negotiate. The GRP negotiators had no misgivings about the Libyan threat to escalate the problem to the UN Security Council and proceeded to negotiate with the MNLF in Tripoli in December 1976. As conference chairman, Libyan Foreign Minister, Abdelsalem Ali Treki dominated the negotiations, while Nur Misuari was acquiescent to Treki. The other members of the OIC who were present were also passive to Libya’s whims.14 Nearly sixteen years after the signing of the Tripoli agreement, President Fidel V. Ramos decided to launch another peace initiative with the MNLF. Before entering into negotiations, President Ramos clearly understood the crucial role of Libya and the influence it had over the MNLF. Even prior to becoming President, Ramos undertook a secret visit in February 1992 to meet the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli.15 The discussion with Gaddafi was successful with Libya guaranteeing ‘support for, and assistance to, the peace process’.16 The MNLF was also willing to negotiate, as it was able to portray itself as more legitimate than other rebel groups in the southern Philippines. So as in the case of the Marcos – MNLF Peace Process, the role of the mediator proved critical. Libya kept a close watch on the negotiations and was instrumental in inducing both sides back to the negotiating table when violence threatened to derail the peace process. During the first GOI-GAM peace process, the mediator HDC overextended its resources by trying to play the roles of a mediator, facilitator as well as the guarantor of a ceasefire.17 It came under increasing criticism for failing to deliver on the Humanitarian Pause but chose to remain as an intermediary and may have inadvertently contributed to the extension of the conflict.18 The HDC also refrained from reprimanding GOI for violence committed by the TNI because it risked eviction from the conflict. Indeed, HDC did not have any such leverage on GOI or GAM. Its position as an intermediary was weak as GOI could expel it at any time. HDC was left a bystander when violence on the ground continued after the signing of the humanitarian pause and COHA. It was powerless when the TNI overtly used military measures to destroy GAM early on during the peace process. In short, HDC’s primary deficiency was that ‘it lacked the power usually available to states who attempt to mediate in similar conflicts’.19 The second GOI-GAM peace process that concluded in August 2005 after just seven months of negotiations did use a non-governmental organization, the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), as a mediator. Led by the former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, the mediator was able to exert leverage on both parties. Ahtisaari’s access to UN secretary general and the European 293

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Union high representative for foreign and security policy allowed CMI to play the role of an authoritative mediator.20 They were able to influence both GAM and GOI to compromise on their initial hardline positions. For GAM this meant giving up its separatist stance and choosing autonomy within Indonesia, and for GOI this meant blocking any tsunami aid from the international community.21 Taken together, CMI’s leverage over the negotiating parties was crucial for the success of the talks. Malaysia has acted as a facilitator (but not officially as a mediator) in peace talks between the Thai government and the Malay-Muslim rebels. Given that it is a Malay majority state and borders the violent provinces, Malaysia has some leverage over both parties. Moreover, many thousands of Malay-Muslims in the border regions are known to illegally hold both Thai and Malaysian citizenship.22 Currently the group considered responsible for a majority of the armed attacks in the southern provinces, Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), is not part of the MARA Pattani alliance involved in the negotiations, and they have also publicly called for the involvement of additional international actors as mediators.23 Whether Malaysia will use its clout to break the current deadlock in the negotiations remains to be seen.

Hypothesis 3: peace zones are more effective if they involve the local populace As with ceasefires, the establishment of peace zones is a credible signal that all parties want to achieve a negotiated settlement. A peace zone can be defined as a geographically bound area whose inhabitants are secure from violence. It can also be a political process where it is an imposition by the state authorities, usually as part of a peace process. By prohibiting arms within the peace zone, it serves for the commencement of rehabilitation, humanitarian and disarmament efforts. Involving the local populace in the creation and maintenance of peace zones helps achieve multiple objectives. It helps the efficient delivery of humanitarian aid and also makes it more likely for the local populace to support any eventual peace agreement. During the Ramos-MNLF peace process, peace zones in southern Philippines were created as a grassroots initiative. Community leaders in various areas negotiated a deal between the various warring factions. The Dungos Peace Pact is a case in point. Signed in 1995 between envoys of the Christian and the Muslim Barangay, the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the MNLF, it served as an inspiration for the creation of various other peace zones.24 One of the chief achievements of these peace zones was that no armed groups were allowed to enter the peace zone without the explicit request of its inhabitants. The Ramos government recognized the role of such peace zones and consulted with communities in Mindanao, Visayas and Cordillera during the formulation of a peace strategy.25 Many of these zones were also designated as Special Development Areas (SDA) and given development assistance. The inclusion of the local population in the creation of peace zones allowed for greater trust between the two sides. It also proved that inhabitants of a conflict zone need not wait for the government to institute peace zones.26 The local population can collaborate with NGOs for instance, in establishing peace zones. Second, it is an attestation to the fact that unarmed residents can negotiate with armed combatants and establish zones of peace.27 During the first GOI-GAM peace process, peace zones were established to facilitate disarmament and delivery of humanitarian assistance. The first peace zone was set up in Indrapuri in Aceh Besar but ‘there seems to have been no dialogue between the Joint Security Council (JSS) and the local population’ and ‘there was little interaction’ between the different parties.28 Despite this gulf, additional peace zones were setup in other parts of the province. While they initially helped to reduce violence, the lack of involving the local populace resulted in their 294

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collapse within a few months. Violations of the peace zones by both sides resulted in the JSS overwhelmed in dealing with the breaches. The frustration of the local population began to show when they allegedly attacked the offices of the JSS for their ineffectiveness to keep the peace.29 The JSS teams were soon withdrawn from the field and the peace zones soon collapsed. Given that the insurgencies in Thailand and Myanmar have a territorial component, the establishment of peace zones would have to be integral to any future peace agreement. Talks between the Thai government and the southern rebels have included some talks of ‘safety zones’ but the extent to which the local population is involved in establishing and maintaining these areas is not yet clear.30

Hypothesis 4: peace processes are more effective if re-integration of the rebel organization into the political and economic mainstream is given at least the same weight as disarmament and demobilization of the insurgent army31 Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration are usually chief elements of conflict reduction strategies. Disarmament is ‘the collection, control and disposal of small arms, ammunition, explosives and light and heavy weapons of combatants and often also of the civilian population’32 while demobilization is much broader and identifies ‘the formal disbanding of military formations and, at the individual level, as the process of releasing combatants from a mobilized state’.33 Reintegration refers to ‘assistance measures provided to former combatants that would increase the potential for their and their families’ economic and social integration into civil society’.34 The primary aim of disarmament and demobilization is to reduce the ability of the warring parties to return to armed conflict. It seeks to create a stable environment that will allow for negotiations on substantive issues of the conflict and allow for humanitarian efforts to proceed in parallel. There are two key problems over the reduction of arms and personnel. First, given the deep sense of distrust between the government and the armed rebels, it is natural for both parties to be reluctant to disarm and demobilize. The ability to return to armed violence is the biggest bargaining chip of the armed rebels. This dilemma is further compounded by the fear of cheating by the other side. Second, no one knows the initial number of arms and personnel to begin with. While an end date to complete disarmament may seem feasible, it is not practical as the fear of cheating is still prevalent during the disarmament period. In spite of these predicaments, disarmament and demobilization are usually seen as precursors to the creation of a new assimilated army and in general to reintegration of the armed rebels into mainstream society.35 It is assumed that there is a ‘natural continuum . . . [w]here disarmament terminates, demobilization begins and where demobilization ends, reintegration commences’.36 This mistaken view has led many peace processes to only first focus on disarmament and demobilization. Reintegration of ex-combatants is critical since it incentivizes rebel group members to participate in the formal economy. It gives them the necessary work skills required to get adequate jobs to support themselves and their families. When reintegration is not emphasized within a peace process, it can lead to recidivism where some rebel group members might choose to take up arms again. Sometimes past levels of separatist violence is also associated with future election-related violence – Harish and Toha argue that past separatist violence creates a pool of fighters and without successful reintegration, they revert back to taking up arms but within the context of elections.37 During the Ramos-MNLF peace process, emphasis was placed on the integration of MNLF personnel into mainstream society.38 First, this practice served as a confidence building measure as it clearly showed that the GRP was more interested in pushing the political negotiations than 295

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disarming and disbanding the MNLF. Second, Ramos believed that demobilizing the MNLF would only lead to a loss of face.39 This went against his strategy for finding peace while maintaining the dignity of the MNLF cadres. The Final Agreement between the GRP and MNLF provided explicitly for incorporation of MNLF fighters into the PNP and AFP. The GRP also agreed to allocate 1500 vacancies in the PNP and integrate 5700 MNLF members into the AFP.40 Provision was also made for the creation of a Special Regional Security Force (SRSF) with a MNLF member as Deputy Commander. In addition, MNLF cadres and their families were given access to education, technical and livelihood training that would enable them to assimilate easier with mainstream Philippine society. In direct contrast, the first GOI-GAM peace process emphasized the disarmament and demobilization of GAM. Offers of amnesty had little effect on the violence on the ground and were insignificant in building trust between the two sides. Both sides learnt from this experience and the second GOI-GAM peace agreement included provisions for reintegration, especially the right to establish local political parties. In the peace dialogue between the Thai government and MARA Patani, the focus of the Thai negotiating team seems to be on the disbandment of the rebel group even before the start of the official peace process.41 Without political re-integration like in the case of Aceh, it is unlikely that the process will yield a peace dividend.

Hypothesis 5: the greater the extent of human rights abuses in a conflict before or during a peace process, the higher the need to include human rights provisions as part of a peace agreement The notion of human rights has gained salience in violent conflicts over the last decade. Its role in peace processes is more recent and is usually elucidated in a peace agreement. I refer to human rights components as those mechanisms that are in place to deal with past human rights violations.42 These include prisoner releases, amnesties, independent authorities to investigate alleged breaches and a reconciliation process.43 The extent to which human rights is a part of a peace process usually depends on the degree to which the populace in the conflict area have been affected by the violence. Addressing human rights issues in peace processes helps not only to build a sense of trust for the rebels, but also to provide a certain degree of security to the people in the affected area. Peace agreements that ignore human rights protection are not durable. Once human rights violations come to the forefront, the peace process will run the risk of slipping back into violence. The biggest human rights abuse committed by the Philippines government before the launch of the Marcos-MNLF peace process was the Jabaidah massacre. This incident was a catalyst to the formation of the MNLF. In response, the Tripoli agreement incorporated elements that addressed human rights issues: amnesty in autonomous zones, release of political prisoners and return of all refugees.44 Similarly, in the on-going peace process between the Philippines government and the communist rebels, President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration has said that they will consider releasing political prisoners. In contrast, there have been extensive human rights violations in Aceh committed by both GAM and the Indonesian military. After Aceh was turned into a Military Operations Zone (DOM) in 1990, the military was given a free hand to annihilate GAM. One estimate puts the total number of people killed and missing at more than 4400,45 with more than 1000 casualties in the first three years.46 Apologies for human rights abuses under DOM in addition to guarantees of prisoner releases by General Wiranto and President Habibie, were seen as mere rhetoric and had no effect on the behavior of the TNI. Human rights abuses continued to plague Aceh even after the GOI-GAM peace process commenced. The assassination of local GAM commander 296

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Abdullah Syafi’ie as well as the arrest of local GAM negotiators before the final talks in Tokyo contributed to the failure of the first GOI-GAM peace process. Human rights abuses in Aceh have continued after the collapse of the peace process in May 2003.47 In the second GOI-GAM peace agreement, there were provisions for amnesty, a human rights court as well as a Commission for Truth and Reconciliation. These stipulations went a long way in concluding a successful peace agreement.

Hypothesis 6: symbols play an important role in a peace process Symbols can be defined as objects, tangible or otherwise, which are attributed to group identity. These include flags, colors, language or even venues. Symbols during a conflict can sometimes be identified by the choice of targets. For instance, an insurgent group may attack a building or a person if it sees them as symbols of state identity. During a peace process, antagonists use symbols to define their own identity. Symbols have high significance during a peace process and yet, this aspect has not been dealt with at length in the existing literature.48 This dearth is due to the perception that symbols are just poignant elements and its ‘irrational’ nature fails to addresses anything substantive to a conflict. On the contrary, symbols are highly significant and can direct the successful or unsuccessful outcome of a peace process. Venues for negotiations are usually a point of contention in a peace process. On one hand, a state might prefer to hold the negotiations within the country since they usually perceive the insurgency as a local problem. On the other hand, the rebel organization would favor a venue outside the country since it might be concerned about the use of violence by the state if negotiations are held within the country. Moreover, a foreign venue would help internationalize their cause. In the event negotiations are held where the mediator is based, the stature of the person chairing the sessions also plays a symbolic role. Ramos’ strategy in negotiating with the MNLF took into account the importance of symbols.49 He agreed to initial negotiations to be held in Libya and Indonesia. The initial dates proposed by the Indonesians fell during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and Ramos recognized that holding negotiations during this period would not be fair to the MNLF.50 Ramos also foresaw that negotiations could take place within the Philippines only if there was sufficient local expertise to achieve the task.51 This confidence building measure proved a success as the government negotiating team managed to hold the subcommittee meetings within the country. This tussle over symbols can also be witnessed during the first GOI-GAM peace process. In the signing of COHA, GAM insisted that the spelling of the name of the Aceh province be spelt as ‘Acheh’. GOI, on its part, insisted on including the name Indonesia next to Acheh to signify the territorial integrity of Indonesia. The tussle over symbols can continue even after the signing of the agreement as part of the second GOI-GAM peace process. In March 2013, the Acehnese legislature adopted GAM’s banner as its provincial flag.52 The flag was a powerful mobilization tool during the insurgency and its symbolic use continues to raise tensions. These incidents point to the importance of symbols within the context of the peace process. During the September 2016 Panglong Conference in Myanmar, the participation of the most powerful rebel group, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), was only confirmed after Aung San Suu Kyi lobbied China’s support for the process. However, when representatives of UWSA turned up at the conference, they were only given ‘observer’ and not ‘speaker’ passes and this led to their storming out of the venue. Myanmar’s peace commission had to send a written apology to the UWSA for the mistake but this incident made clear that such seemingly simple symbolic issues can have large consequences on the final outcome of a peace process. 297

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Hypothesis 7: a public peace process is more durable than one that is not Sometimes governments choose to pursue a peace process in secret. They do so because of possible political cost: a failure to reach an agreement could be viewed as a failure, or even the fact that they would choose to negotiate with armed rebels could have unfavorable political consequences. Such fears can also hold true on the side of the rebel group: negotiating with the government could be viewed by the rank-and-file members as disconnected from their recruitment strategies. While pursuing secret negotiations (and making it public only if an agreement is reached) might be ex-ante useful, it is a short-sighted strategy. When the agreement is eventually made public, it could lead to more spoilers and a rejection of the terms of the agreement making the entire exercise futile. A durable peace process is one where the government and rebel groups are open about their interest in pursuing a negotiated settlement. Once an agreement is reached, it is then put up for ratification by all citizens of the country, an approach adopted in the recent Colombian peace process. An alternative to the referendum is to ratify the agreement in parliament but this has the drawback that any political party opposed to the agreement today could try and revoke it in the future when they form the government. A referendum has the legitimacy that it is approved directly by the people who live both within and outside the conflict zone. While the Colombians narrowly rejected the proposed peace agreement with FARC, the intention behind the plebiscite was right. The collapse of the Tripoli agreement was over Article 16 that wanted the GRP to ‘take all necessary constitutional processes for the implementation of the entire Agreement’.53 While the MNLF inferred this clause to be a decree from President Marcos, the GRP wanted to hold a referendum. This impasse continued for many months after which President Marcos unilaterally decided to hold a referendum despite MNLF opposition. The MNLF did not want the plebiscite to be held as it could mean an erosion of their legitimacy in those areas. The importance of a public peace process is heightened in Thailand, especially given that the current peace dialogue is taking place with the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), the group that came to power during a May 2014 military coup. Even if a peace agreement is reached, it will have a lower legitimacy than when dealing with a democratic government. In that sense, a peace process in Myanmar is more promising as long as the country is able to consolidate its democratic transition in the coming years.

Conclusion Concluding a peace agreement between governments and armed rebels is an arduous task. When both adversaries have been engaged in battle for decades, the prospects of both sides negotiating a peace treaty are very low. So when governments and rebels initiate a peace process, it is usually viewed with a lot of optimism. It is in this context that this chapter has attempted to analyze peace processes in Southeast Asia. Practically every country in the region has witnessed armed internal conflicts and many of them have attempted to quell them through a peace process. By comparing these different endeavors, I have laid out seven hypotheses that can make a peace process more effective. Specifically, I have argued that (1) ceasefires with monitoring and enforcement mechanisms at the beginning of a peace process are effective; (2) the effectiveness of a mediator depends on the amount of leverage it has over the disputants; (3) that peace zones are more effective if they involve the local populace; (4) peace processes are more effective if re-integration of the rebel 298

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organization into the political and economic mainstream is given at least the same weight as disarmament and demobilization of the insurgent army; (5) the greater the extent of human rights abuses in a conflict before or during a peace process, the higher the need to include human rights provisions as part of a peace agreement; (6) Symbols plays an important role in a peace process; and (7) a public peace process is more durable than one that is not. These are neither necessary nor sufficient for a successful peace agreement but should be viewed as elements that can help with shaping a peaceful outcome.

Notes 1 A previous version of this chapter was made available as S.P. Harish, “Towards Better Peace Processes: A Comparative Study of Attempts to Broker Peace with MNLF and GAM,” Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies Working Paper No. 77, May 2005. 2 For similar definitions with slight modifications, see Cynthia J. Arnson, ed., Comparative Peace Processes in Latin America (California: Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 1 and John Darby and Roger Mac Ginty, eds., Contemporary Peacemaking: Conflict,Violence and Peace Processes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 2. It is sometimes also useful to distinguish a peace process from a peace initiative which is just an attempt to get opposing parties in the dispute to explore ways to resolve the problem through discussion. 3 Michael J. Quinn and Madhav Joshi, “Give Peace Talks a Chance,” Foreign Affairs, May 2013. URL: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2013-05-21/give-peace-talks-chance 4 Kelly M. Greenhill and Solomon Major, “The Perils of Profiling: Civil War Spoilers and the Collapse of Intrastate Peace Accords,” International Security, 31, no. 3 (Winter 2006/07): 7–40. 5 Edward Aspinall and Harold Crouch, The Aceh Peace Process: Why It Failed (Washington, DC: East West Center, 2003), p. 15. 6 Edward Aspinall, The Helsinki Agreement: A More Promising Basis for Peace in Aceh?, Policy Studies Series No. 20 (Washington: East West Center, 2005), p. 46 7 Duncan McCargo, “Southern Thailand: From Conflict to Negotiations?,” Lowy Institute for International Policy, April 2014, p. 10. 8 “A Long Road,” The Economist, September 2016. URL: https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21706535myanmars-new-government-sets-about-making-peace-its-many-ethnic-minorities-long-road 9 Saadia Touval and William I. Zartman, “International Mediation in the Post-Cold War Era,” in Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing International Conflict, ed. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2001), p. 427. 10 Scott Sigmund Gartner and Jacob Bercovitch, “Overcoming Obstacles to Peace: The Contribution of Mediation to Short-Lived Conflict Settlements,” International Studies Quarterly, 50, no. 4 (November 2006): 819–40. 11 Stephen John Stedman, “Negotiation and Mediation in Internal Conflict,” in The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict, ed. Michael E. Brown (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996), p. 358. 12 Konrad Huber, The Hdc in Aceh: Promises and Pitfalls of Ngo Mediation and Implementation (Washington, DC: East West Center, 2004). 13 Ivan Molloy, “The Decline of the Moro National Liberation Front,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 18, no. 1 (1988): 61–2. 14 Rodil, Kalinaw Mindanaw: The Story of the Grp-Mnlf Peace Process, 1975–1996, 1st AFRIM ed. Davao City, Philippines: Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao, pp. 45–6. 15 The visit to Tripoli was only made public in 1996. 16 Ramos, Break Not the Peace: The Story of the Grp-Mnlf Peace Negotiations, 1992–1996 (Philippines: Friends of Steady Eddie, 1996), p. 4. 17 Huber, The Hdc in Aceh: Promises and Pitfalls of Ngo Mediation and Implementation, p. 10. 18 See Sultan Barakat, David Connoly, and Judith Large, “Winning and Losing in Aceh: Five Key Dilemmas in Third-Party Intervention,” Civil Wars, 5, no. 4 (2002): 1–29. 19 Huber, The Hdc in Aceh: Promises and Pitfalls of Ngo Mediation and Implementation, p. 3. 20 Edward Aspinall, The Helsinki Agreement: A More Promising Basis for Peace in Aceh?, Policy Studies Series No. 20 (Washington: East West Center, 2005), p. 19.

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S.P. Harish 21 Bidisha Biswas, “Can’t we Just Talk? Reputational Concerns and International Intervention in Sri Lanka and Indonesia (Aceh),” International Negotiation, 14, no. 1 (2009): 121–47. 22 McCargo, “Southern Thailand: From Conflict to Negotiations?,” p. 9. 23 Anthony Davis, “Southern Thai Insurgents Stake Out Peace Terms,” Nikkei Asian Review, 11 October 2015. URL: https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Southern-Thai-insurgentsstake-out-peace-terms 24 Rodil, Kalinaw Mindanaw: The Story of the Grp-Mnlf Peace Process, 1975–1996, pp. 146–7. 25 Ramos, Break Not the Peace: The Story of the Grp-Mnlf Peace Negotiations, 1992–1996, p. 108. 26 Rodil, Kalinaw Mindanaw: The Story of the Grp-Mnlf Peace Process, 1975–1996, p. 148. 27 Ed Garcia, “Filipino Zones of Peace,” Peace Review, 9, no. 2 (1997): 2. 28 Pushpa Iyer and Christopher Mitchell, “The Collapse of Peace Zones in Aceh,” in Zones of Peace, ed. Landon Hancock and Christopher Mitchell (Kumarian Press), Bloomfield, CT (2007): pp. 137–66. 29 Ibid., p. 153. 30 International Crisis Group, “Southern Thailand’s Peace Dialogue: No Traction,” 21 September 2016. 31 This proposition overlaps and further refines Proposition 5 put forward by Darby and Mac Ginty. See Darby and Mac Ginty, eds., Contemporary Peacemaking: Conflict,Violence and Peace Processes, p. 268. 32 United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration of Ex-Combatants in a Peacekeeping Environment: Principles and Guidelines (New York: United Nations, 1999), p. 15. Available at www.un.org/Depts/dpko/lessons/DD&R.pdf, accessed on March 8, 2005. 33 Mats R. Berdal, “Disarmament and Demobilization after Civil Wars,” Adelphi Paper, no. 303 (1996): 39. 34 United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration of Ex-Combatants in a Peacekeeping Environment: Principles and Guidelines, p. 15. 35 Joanna Spear, “Disarmament and Demobilization,” in Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements, ed. Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothchild, and Elizabeth M. Cousens (London: Lynne Rienner, 2002), p. 145. 36 United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration of Ex-Combatants in a Peacekeeping Environment: Principles and Guidelines, 16. 37 S.P. Harish and Risa Toha, “Why Target Candidates, Not Voters: Pre-Election Violence in Indonesia,” Working Paper, October 2016. 38 See Memorandum of Instructions, Article 3.1 available at Ramos, Break Not the Peace: The Story of the Grp-Mnlf Peace Negotiations, 1992–1996, p. 193. 39 Ibid., p. 87. 40 See Final Agreement between the GRP and MNLF, Articles 19a,e. 41 International Crisis Group, “Southern Thailand’s Peace Dialogue: No Traction,” 21 September 2016. 42 For a broad scope of human rights within peace agreements, see Christine Bell, Peace Agreements and Human Rights (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 43 Christine Bell, “Human Rights and Minority Protection,” in Contemporary Peacemaking: Conflict, Violence and Peace Processes, ed. John Darby and Roger Mac Ginty (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 165–6. 44 Tripoli Agreement, Article 12a, 12b and 12c. 45 International Crisis Group, Aceh: Why Military Force Won’t Bring Lasting Peace (Jakarta/Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2001), p. 3. 46 Human Rights Watch, Aceh under Martial Law: Inside the Secret War (Human Rights Watch, 2003), 8. 47 See Amnesty International Press Release, “Indonesia: Human Rights Sacrificed to Security in Nad (Aceh),” Amnesty International, 11 May 2004. 48 For an exception see Roger Mac Ginty, “The Role of Symbols in Peace Making,” in Contemporary Peacemaking: Conflict, Violence and Peace Processes, ed. John Darby and Roger Mac Ginty (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003): 235–244. 49 Ramos called this the shifting venue’ concept. See Ramos, Break Not the Peace: The Story of the Grp-Mnlf Peace Negotiations, 1992–1996, p. 18. 50 Ibid., 14. 51 Rodil, Kalinaw Mindanaw: The Story of the Grp-Mnlf Peace Process, 1975–1996, p. 112. 52 International Crisis Group, “Indonesia: Tensions over Aceh’s Flag,” 7 May 2013. 53 Tripoli Agreement, Article 16.

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24 FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL CHANGES IN POST-JUNTA MYANMAR Renaud Egreteau

Introduction Because of its geostrategic position and whatever the system of government in place, Myanmar must cope with a series of key security challenges.1 The country is sandwiched between two emerging giants with global ambitions, China and India. It boasts a 2,000km-long coastline opened to the Indian Ocean, through which a large part of the world’s seaborne commerce transit. It offers a gateway to, and from, continental Southeast Asia. In the twenty-first century, this peculiar geographical situation may present considerable opportunities for regional growth and future development in a country long kept away from global flows and Asia’s economic boom.2 But it can also contribute to increased concerns among Burmese ruling elites, starting with the armed forces (or Tatmadaw), over the potential sway neighbouring states, global powers and international institutions may seek to gain in a region known for its abundance of underexploited natural resources.3 In March 2011, the junta formed after the last coup d’état staged by the Tatmadaw in 1988 was disbanded. A startling transition to a semi-civilian administration followed.4 The five-year presidency of ex-general Thein Sein (2011–2016) marked a first phase in this post-junta transitional moment. Under the impetus of a handful of retired high-ranking military officers, Myanmar started to liberalise its polity, returned to a parliamentary form of elected government, allowed its pro-democracy opposition forces to join the political game, and gradually re-engaged with the world, particularly the West. After years of diplomatic isolation and international condemnations led by the United States and the European Union, most sanctions imposed against the country since the 1990s were suspended, then lifted, between 2012 and 2016. Even more, the landslide victory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) in the legislative polls held in November 2015 and the subsequent formation of an NLD government further rekindled hopes for a gradual, yet palpable, democratisation. But if dramatic changes surprisingly unfolded in the early 2010s, the country still faces key enduring regional and transnational strategic stakes, as this chapter shows. First, post-junta Myanmar under Thein Sein presidency painstakingly attempted to re-join the world and burnish its international image. For the new government this meant moving away from the unapologetically authoritarian military rule, designing a set of progressive reforms, while negotiating with all key opposition actors of the domestic political landscape. In doing so, Thein Sein’s administration 301

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allowed the removal of most policies of international sanctions against Myanmar. The NLD government inherited the difficult task of consolidating, and furthering, the good will already showed. Second, Thein Sein and his NLD successors since 2016 have demonstrated that, despite the willingness to open-up to the world, and in particular the West, the successive post-junta leaderships have shared a common reluctance to see Myanmar being dragged into great power politics. Rebalancing the Sino–Myanmar partnerships without becoming a stake in the rising contention between the U.S. and China in Southeast Asia has proved an essential and enduring foreign policy goal of the country. Myanmar’s strategic thinkers have recently shown their eagerness to revert to a traditional policy of diplomatic equidistance between India and China. Third, the country in a post-junta era still needs to pacify its domestic politics in order to restore comity with its immediate neighbours. To bring about stability and enable a pacified development of its national economy, Myanmar must put an end to its multiple, decade-long insurgencies and communal tensions, which have all been fuelled, if not supported, by sympathies found across borders with China, Thailand, India, and Bangladesh. Lastly, the government formed by Aung San Suu Kyi in March 2016 – and its future successors – will have to increasingly deal with a state within a state. The Burmese armed forces, through constitutional prerogatives and a lingering, if not decisive, control over policymaking, remains a key government actor with essential strategic and foreign policy views not necessarily aligned with that of the new, and future, civilian leaderships. A fine balance will have to be found, thanks to a constant civil-military dialogue to avoid having the Tatmadaw going its way and define a parallel diplomacy for the late 2010s and beyond.

Opening doors In March 2011, the military regime that had ruled Myanmar for twenty-three years was dissolved, and a new state leadership was sworn in. The semi civilian administration that took power after the elections controversially held in November 2010 soon initiated a startling, yet partial, liberalisation of Myanmar’s socio-economic and political spheres. The impetus came from the former prime minister of the junta himself, ex-general Thein Sein, as well as a few other retired Tatmadaw officers such as Thura Shwe Mann, the former Joint-Chief of Staff of the armed forces. Thein Sein was elected president of the Union in February 2011 and tasked to lead the republic into its first five years of “post-junta” political order, as defined by the Constitution written by military thinkers and adopted in 2008.5 His government soon outlined reformist pieces of legislation and abolished state censorship, while reaching out to the ethnic armed and pro-democracy oppositions, including Aung San Suu Kyi herself. International and domestic observers alike have since been puzzled by the rapid transformations taking place in the country.6 Most startlingly, after having spent some fifteen years under house arrest in Yangon since 1989, the Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi could return to the forefront of politics and was elected to parliament in April 2012. This sparked a fundamental change in the foreign policy approach towards Myanmar of key regional states, global powers as well as international organisations. The international diplomatic community gradually reopened its doors to a Burmese state long treated as a pariah. Western governments, starting with the United States under the Obama Administration, began to review their policy of sanctions designed against the country after the 1998 coup. Liberalisation initiatives long promised during the military regime (1988–2011) but never fulfilled, were finally decided upon in the early 2010s. Major international financial institutions thereafter progressively re-entered the country in an attempt to reintegrate Myanmar’s economy, still underdeveloped, into world trade and global flows. In June 2013, the country welcomed a thousand international delegates of the World Economic 302

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Forum (WEF). In December the same year, the organisation of the 27th Southeast Asian Games in Naypyitaw, Myanmar’s national capital since 2005, offered the new government another opportunity to show its ability to hold prestigious international events.7 In 2014, Myanmar finally presided over the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). In the midst of renewed sanctions eight years before, the former military regime had been obliged to forgo its turn for chairmanship. But the good faith demonstrated by Thein Sein’s administration and the electoral victory of the NLD in the by-elections held in April 2012 encouraged the other ASEAN members and their international partners to offer Myanmar the rotating chairmanship of the association. For a full year as ASEAN Chair, Naypyitaw succeeded in conducting a tactful regional diplomacy, avoiding in particular the regional association to be dragged into the South China Sea conundrum.8 Under the first post-junta administration, Myanmar thus appeared eager to finally normalise its international relations. A global euphoria even emerged, not only among Yangon’s political and diplomatic community, but also among potential foreign investors. Many an observer has argued that the swift political mutations at work during Thein Sein’s presidency were motivated by strategic motivations, particularly the urge to back away from China’s waxing sphere of influence in Southeast Asia.9 One of the earliest decisions marking a fundamental foreign policy rethinking in Naypyitaw was indeed the suspension in September 2011 of a massive Chinese-funded dam project. Located in Myanmar’s northern Kachin State, at the start of the Irrawaddy River that both economically and symbolically nourishes the country, the multi-billion dollar Myitsone project has generated a strong local resistance since it was inked between the junta and the China Power Investment Corporation in 2006. In face of the many relocations of Kachin villagers living on the land where the dam was to be constructed and the direct environmental threats to a region treasured by Burmese culture, various Kachin, Burmese and transnational organisations started to mobilise against it. They were encouraged by lingering popular anti-Chinese sentiments widespread throughout Myanmar.10 Departing from his former mentors, President Thein Sein decided in September 2011 to suspend the construction for the duration of his five-year presidency. At the same time, Myanmar’s growing ties in the early 2010s with Japan and its attempt to restore comity with the West, and notably the United States, soon gave the impression that China was rapidly losing its dominance over its southern neighbour after two decades of close, yet unbalanced, relationship.11 Beijing seemed visibly unprepared for this type of policy change in Naypyitaw and has since struggled to rebuild confidence with Thein Sein’s administration.12 Many a foreign dignitary, including U.S. President Barack Obama and the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, paid landmark official visits to Myanmar to congratulate the new leadership in 2012 and 2013; and at the same time express their support to the iconic opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. The American government in particular, long openly hostile to Myanmar’s military establishment, has launched a multi-faceted rapprochement with Thein Sein’s government, although the first diplomatic move had been initiated during the late junta rule in 2009.13 The subsequent reversal of U.S. policy approach under the Obama Administration has proved a catalyst for the improvement of Myanmar’s international standing.14 It opened the door to the gradual lifting of U.S. and international sanctions from April 2012, and allowed the return of international organisations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Asian Development Bank.15 Along with Japanese, Indian, and South Korean firms, European companies soon re-entered into the Burmese market following the suspension, and then lifting, of EU sanctions in April 2013. Myanmar’s political elites have found themselves increasingly talking about territorial connectivity, cross-border commerce initiatives, in a clear attempt to position the country not only as a new economic frontier for distant foreign investors, but also a geo-economic crossroads at the heart of Asia.16 303

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Yet, by the end of Thein Sein’s five-year presidency, the euphoric moment seemed to have promptly died out. Rising communal tensions between Burmese Muslim and Buddhist mobs, enduring obstacles in the internal peace process aimed at securing new agreements between the post-junta central government and several ethnic armed groups, as well as continuing human rights abuses in the country’s conflict-ridden areas all have illustrated how intricate, and above all incomplete, the transitional process has proved since 2011. The probability of a government change after the elections scheduled for November 2015 and rising expectations about the possibility of Aung San Suu Kyi taking power in 2016 pushed foreign investors, international donors, and the diplomatic community to adopt a more prudent approach as early as 2014. All remained expectant until the NLD effectively won the second post-junta polls held in November 2015.

Avoiding great power politics Three months after the resounding electoral victory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the second postjunta Union legislature convened in Naypyitaw in February 2016. The new bicameral parliament picked its two new speakers from the ranks of the NLD and in March elected as president of the Union, and successor to Thein Sein, a confidant to Aung San Suu Kyi, Htin Kyaw.17 With 58 percent of the seats in the two houses, the NLD has discovered the benefits of being in position to ram legislation through – with the exception of constitutional reforms where a supermajority of more than 75 percent of the Union legislators is needed. Since the 2008 Constitution reserves a quarter of all parliamentary seats to the armed forces, the latter hold a decisive veto. However, the military representatives cannot block basic legislation, where a simple majority is required. This relative marginality of the armed forces in parliament was best illustrated in March 2016 when the NLD submitted the State Counsellor Bill. The bill, opposed by the military legislators, created a special governmental position, that of “state counsellor”, not envisioned by the constitution. Designed for Aung San Suu Kyi, the new position has bestowed upon her a series of key policy powers. Furthermore, Aung San Suu has also taken the new government’s foreign affairs portfolio. This second ministerial position has allowed her to take a seat at the National Defence and Security Council (NDSC), an 11-member council outlined by the constitution – six of its members are high-ranking serving military officers. Aung San Suu Kyi has gradually tested her newly acquired powers through a careful dialogue with the Tatmadaw leadership, especially the army supremo since 2011, Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing. Six months after having formed her governmental team, officially led by President Htin Kyaw, Aung San Suu Kyi was however acknowledged, at home and abroad, as Myanmar’s core leader responsible for the day-to-day administration of the country. There have thus been massive expectations of her as the new top policymaker from the Burmese people and international community. Not only has she been expected to boost democratisation domestically and expand a liberalisation process initiated by her predecessor, Thein Sein – a process, which was increasingly perceived as burdened by vested interests and the continuing influence of the old military guard during the second half of his presidency. But Aung San Suu Kyi also has been expected to address daunting foreign policy challenges. The main one has remained the pursuit of a policy of non-alignment to avoid being dragged into great power politics – be it in a resurgent Cold War context or a rising Sino–Indian regional rivalry. Tactfully positioning Myanmar between regional and world powers vying for influence has been a constant foreign policy postures of the country’s successive post-independence governments.18 Only the military junta borne out of the 1988 coup d’état had strategically moved towards China in the 1990s to counter the international isolation imposed by Western and regional powers after the military’s crackdown on the Burmese pro-democracy movement in 1988.19 304

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Thein Sein’s presidency (2011–2016) was characterised by a visible attempt to move away from this two decade-long Chinese dependence and get closer to the United States in order to lift most international sanctions against Myanmar. Surfing on anti-Chinese popular feelings, the government led by the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) not only began to review China’s policy of investments in the country but also started to court potential foreign investors in position to balance China’s economic, but also strategic, dominance in Myanmar. This raised increased concerns in Beijing.20 Moreover, through twenty years of pro-democracy and human rights struggle publicly supported by Western governments, as well as a personal story much linked to Western Europe (educated at Oxford, she was married to a British scholar and lived in London), Aung San Suu Kyi has long been perceived by most Chinese observers as a “Darling of the West”.21 Nevertheless, with an increased probability of seeing the Nobel laureate take power after the 2015 polls and with the continuing difficulties faced in the restoration of cordiality in the Sino–Myanmar relationship during the second half of Thein Sein’s presidency, Beijing initiated a successful rapprochement with the NLD leader. After Aung San Suu Kyi took the foreign affairs portfolio in 2016, her first major diplomatic trip abroad was to China in August 2016, then to Washington a month later. She was welcomed with open arms in Beijing by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. Her main objective, since her inaugural China visit as opposition leader in June 2015, was to reassure Beijing that the latter’s core economic interests in her country would not be threatened further.22 The suspension of the Myitsone dam project in 2011 had indeed left deep scars and the Chinese government has since the advent of the NLD administration pushed for a resumption of negotiations in order to either resume the construction, relocate the dam, or be compensated if the project was to be definitely cancelled by the NLD. A study commission to assess all dam projects set up in Myanmar since the 2000s was formed under Aung San Suu Kyi’s supervision in July 2016. The NLD leader has also taken great care, either by shrewdness or basic diplomatic necessity, of not offending Beijing by publicly supporting the “One China Policy”, dodging the Tibetan and Taiwanese issues, and tactfully avoiding taking a partisan stance in the South China Sea conundrum or supporting her fellow Nobel Laureate, Liu Xiaobo. Moreover, reassurance was given to the Chinese authorities about the viability of the oil and gas pipelines built by the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) between Yunnan and the deep-sea port of Kyaukphyu, on Myanmar’s Rakhine coast. Yet, if Aung San Suu Kyi’s initial diplomatic moves signalled that the second post-junta civilian government led by the NLD was willing to restore ties with China, the Nobel Laureate also indicated early on that the strengthening of the bilateral relationship would not be made at the detriment of other strategic interactions with the NLD, such as the ones established with India, Japan, and the West.23 Neither would Myanmar’s growing ties with Washington be aimed at countering China’s influence and morph the country under the NLD into another strategic ally, if not “Trojan Horse”, of the U.S. in Southeast Asia.24 China has remained Myanmar’s largest trade partner even after the lifting of most international sanctions and Aung San Suu Kyi has not proved inclined to welcome U.S. strategic interests with open arms. Unlike the Tatmadaw leadership and various American military circles since the restoration of diplomatic dialogue between Washington and Naypyitaw in 2012, she has for instance proved quite reluctant to embrace a return to closer military-to-military cooperation between the two countries. Her prestige and the admiration she has aroused in America has nonetheless given her the key to a complete lifting of U.S. sanctions against her country.25 Her election to parliament in 2012 and then the outstanding victory of her party in the general polls held in 2015 were catalysts to Washington’s reversal of policy approach.26 But the U.S. have long favoured an ambiguous policy towards Myanmar and there seems to be a rising consensus among Burmese civilian and military 305

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elites that post-junta Myanmar should avoid becoming too decisively aligned towards Washington, where the Congress and the White House have often been at odds in diplomatic matters.27 In the past, whether under Premier U Nu or General Ne Win’s socialist regime, Myanmar has kept on playing the neutrality card in a Cold War context. This is the stance Aung San Suu Kyi appears to be willing to defend on the regional and international scenes during the second half of the 2010s. The NLD government has clearly stated it needed to bring the community of international and regional donors as well as foreign investors back in, whoever they are, for long-term engagement, so that, it is argued, growth and development foster stability and peace in Myanmar.28 But this must not be traded with a loss of sovereignty and independence towards any regional or global power.

Internal issues, regional stakes The matter of sharing Myanmar’s political power and economic resources between a myriad of ethno-linguistic minority groups (about one third of the 52-odd million strong Burmese population in 2016) and the ethnic Bamar majority (the remaining third) has been the source of violent conflicts unresolved since independence was won from the British in 1948. Most rebel groups fighting against Myanmar’s successive central governments have benefited from Myanmar’s neighbouring states’ financial support, political sympathies, and tacit acceptance of their cross-border and underground activities.29 China, Thailand, and to a lesser degree India and Bangladesh, have indeed long had a stake in these interethnic disputes and the transborder instability and opportunities they have generated since the 1940s. Naga, Kachin, and Chin insurgents have found political support across the border with India; Shan, Wa, and Kokaung armed outfits have long used the Sino– Myanmar borderlands as a safe haven; Karen, Shan, and Mon insurgents groups have established crucial connections with the Thai military and border forces throughout decades of rebellion. Both the government headed by Thein Sein from 2011 and its NLD successor since 2016 have considered the resumption and consolidation of inter-ethnic peace parleys as a testimony that a post-junta regime could bring about peace in a country plagued by an endless civil war. Critical ceasefire talks with insurgent groups were promoted by a team of negotiators chosen by Thein Sein himself as soon as 2011. A series of historical ceasefires were thereafter signed between his government and various Karen, Shan, Mon, Naga, and Chin ethnic rebel groups. However, no agreement could be reached with the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), and a low-intensity guerrilla insurgency was revived near the Chinese borders in June 2011. Palaung, Shan, and Kokang militias also continued their armed struggle against the Tatmadaw in Myanmar’s northern territories. This led to the forced displacement of about 140,000 Kachin and Shan refugees in the borderlands of China’s Yunnan province. After four years of peace parleys however, a nationwide ceasefire accord was reached in October 2015, at the end of President Thein Sein’s tenure. The agreement remained partial, with only eight signatories, although an earlier draft prepared in March had gathered the approval of 16 armed groups – including the KIO. Thein Sein needed to have Myanmar’s neighbours on board for these peace negotiations, Thailand and China in particular. Several rounds of talks were therefore held under the mediation of both countries, either in the cities of Chiang Mai and Mae Sot (Thailand) or Ruili in Yunnan. Despite a long-standing official rhetoric based on a non-interference policy in the internal affairs of their neighbours, China and Thailand have openly displayed their support to Myanmar’s internal peace process. Beijing even publicly encouraged the Wa and Kokang militias to join a new round of talks held under the aegis of Aung San Suu Kyi in September 2016 – the “21st century Panglong Conference” – as the NLD leader continued the negotiation process initiated by Thein Sein five years earlier. 306

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The relative pacification of Myanmar’s eastern borders engaged in 2011 with new cease-fires signed between Naypyitaw and the Karen National Union (KNU) or the Shan State Army – South (SSA-S) especially has helped smoothen the Thai–Myanmar bilateral relationship. Military relations have particularly improved between the two countries since the early 2010s.30 Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing visited Bangkok thrice, in January 2012, July 2014, and May 2016. The Royal Thai Army has long been concerned with the regular incursions into and shelling of Thai territory by Tatmadaw troops hunting down Karen, Mon, and Shan insurgents. But the last border clashes between Myanmar and Thai armed forces date back to 2001. But still, several unresolved issues remain, starting with unbalanced economic relations and the presence in Thailand of some 120,000 political refugees from Myanmar – mostly ethnic Karen (Kayin) and Karenni (Kayah).31 India has also tentatively grabbed the opportunity to strengthen its relations with the first post-junta administration. President Thein Sein visited Delhi as early as October 2011 and the bilateral interactions soon grew richer and more diversified. In May 2014, the advent of a regionally-oriented government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi further boosted India’s presence in Myanmar.32 Lauding the potential benefits for Myanmar of India’s revamped “look east, act east” policy under his aegis, Premier Modi has failed to consolidate a credible security partnership with the Tatmadaw. Indian armed forces and intelligence units have indeed continued to hunt Naga and Manipuri rebels on their own, sometimes even on Myanmar soil, without much cooperation from local Burmese authorities. Besides, when compared to China, Thailand, and even Japan, India still appeared to lag behind in Myanmar in terms of trade and foreign investments. Bilateral commerce, still heavily dominated by agricultural products, has only reached $2 billion in the 2015–16 fiscal year. On her side, Aung San Suu Kyi returned to India for the first time in 25 years in November 2012, but it was President Htin Kyaw and Senior General Min Aung Hlaing who made the most commanded official visits to India after Myanmar’s governmental change in 2016. Domestic communal tensions and Buddhist-Muslim social conflicts have offered a different geopolitical challenge for Myanmar than cross-border insurgency. But these tensions have become a source of much concern inside the country as well as in neighbouring capitals. Since 2012, several riots have broken out between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Myanmar’s western territories bordering Bangladesh and in the country’s central plains. Tensions have flared up in particular between the Rakhine Buddhist ethnic population and the one-million strong Muslim minority known since the 1950s as Rohingya.33 The violence has spread eastward to the country’s interior, and in the mid-2010s affected other Muslim communities, including those of Chinese origins. Bangladesh, but also the countries bordering the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea such as Indonesia, Thailand, and India, have received thousands of Rohingya boat people since the early 2010s. The Muslim world and the international community, particularly in the West, have been dismayed by the appalling treatment this minority has been the object of in Myanmar. Considered outsiders by the authorities, but also the country’s Buddhist-dominated society, the Rohingya have faced decades of administrative segregation, political discrimination, and cultural alienation from Myanmar’s society. Two massive exoduses to Bangladesh occurred in 1978 and 1991, and since 2012, renewed waves of forced displacement have been observed. The relative passivity of Thein Sein’s government and the predicament the latter found itself in since 2011, wishing to break with old despotic habits and brutal repressive tools to make a good impression on the international community, have perhaps contributed to the resumption of communal unrest. President Thein Sein himself was once allegedly quoted in favour of the United Nations’ resettlement of the Rohingya populations outside Myanmar. A government-appointed commission of experts 307

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was nevertheless tasked to shed light on the reasons for the violence and assign responsibilities for the 2012 riots in Rakhine State.34 The report was however much criticized at home and abroad for its allegedly biased analysis of the unrest. The NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi have shown themselves reluctant to tackle head-on the conundrum, including once in power. The party did not present any Muslim candidate to the 2015 legislative elections, a strategy condemned worldwide. Aung San Suu Kyi herself has been regularly criticized for delaying her government’s involvement in the matter since 2016. Frequently accused of not living up to her democratic credentials, as Nobel Peace Laureate and long-standing champion of civil liberties and human rights in Myanmar, she however formed in August 2016 an advisory commission tasked with proposing concrete measures to prevent communal violence, secure peace and development and bring about reconciliation in Rakhine State, the most affected region. A former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, was appointed as the commission’s chair – signalling the NLD’s acceptance of international voices on the Rohingya question. Yet, the continuing discontent expressed by Rakhine Buddhist politicians and various civil society groups, as well as the reluctance of the Tatmadaw leadership to see further unrest unfold in a region bordering Bangladesh, Myanmar’s only Muslim neighbour, have all pointed to the difficulties the NLD will encounter in its dealing with the issue, both internally and on the regional scene. Furthermore, if the ASEAN has welcomed a new, more liberal Myanmar under Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership, most diplomats in the region seem convinced that the pro-democracy icon will not push for a broader democratisation beyond Myanmar, having too much to deal with at home.35

Dealing with a state within a state There is another great unknown in the definition of Myanmar’s relations with the outside world in a post-junta context, particularly under a NLD-led government: the trajectory of its civilmilitary relations. The 2008 Constitution has bestowed upon the Tatmadaw a guardianship role, and a full autonomy vis-à-vis the civilian governmental power. While the NLD has clearly been allowed by the Tatmadaw to oversee the day-to-day administration since 2016, neither the government, nor the legislature or the judiciary can be in position to check and oversight the military’s activities. A civilian control remains not only impractical but also unthinkable under the 2008 Constitution. A closer look at the constitutional text also reveals that the Tatmadaw can still influence much of the foreign policy decision. Three significant ministries in the Union cabinet are left under its sole authority (Home Affairs, Defence, and Border Affairs) and all are essential to the definition of any type of foreign relations. In that respect, the Tatmadaw can not only keep an eye on Myanmar’s foreign policymaking, but also formulate independently its own diplomatic and strategic objectives. Whether the NLD and the Tatmadaw leadership can reach common strategic goals for the late 2010s, and beyond, will thus indicate whether Myanmar can establish pacified relations with its neighbours and the global powers. Indeed, the Tatmadaw leadership continues to insist – and this is a key element of every official speeches, statements, or pamphlets released by the military institution – on the multifaceted threats to the “state security” and “national security” of the country that still exist, well into the 2010s.36 Thorny decolonisation processes and the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of ethnic and communist insurrections, more or less linked to the country’s immediate neighbours or the United States, have strongly influenced the Tatmadaw’s early strategic perceptions.37 The latter often differed from that of the civilian administration in the 1950s, and can potentially remain at odds with the diplomatic views of the post-junta governments of the 2010s. 308

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Regular military-cum-diplomatic trips carried out by General Ne Win in the 1950s and all his successors until Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing in the early 2010s, have consolidated the Tatmadaw’s sway over the definition of Myanmar’s postcolonial foreign affairs, and helped the institution build its own international security partnerships. Commander-in-Chief since 2011, Min Aung Hlaing, has asserted himself as a free electron in the post-junta political scene. In 2016, he remained at his post despite having reached the official age of retirement, fixed at 60 years old. He has accumulated an impressive number of foreign trips, traveling to Russia, Belarus, Israel, Thailand, Germany, and India, among others, to acquire new weaponry for the three forces of the Tatmadaw and secure novel military support and training for the troops.38 The strategic partnership with Moscow in particular, built in the heydays of Western sanctions against Myanmar, has been visibly strengthened under his leadership.39 Furthermore, since 2016 and the swearing of Htin Kyaw’s government, Min Aung Hlaing has systematically received all foreign dignitaries, whether civilian of military, visiting Naypyitaw. One full page of Myanmar’s main state-run newspaper, the New Light of Myanmar, has detailed on a daily basis all his domestic and international activities ever since. The traditionally highly nationalist Tatmadaw remains an opaque institution with its own vested economic and strategic interests built through decades in power. Its handling of ethnic conflicts along the Sino–Myanmar borders responds to its own interests and has frequently angered Beijing. To correct this, Aung San Suu Kyi has sought to restore comity with China since 2015. But despite regular dialogue and meetings, Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD leadership have too little access to a Tatmadaw establishment they cannot hope to seriously influence. Likewise, the armed forces have clearly sought to build confidence with the United States to recover an international reputation long lost. The senior officer corps of the Tatmadaw is keen on having all U.S. sanctions and arms embargoes removed. But the Burmese military establishment may soon prove at odds with an NLD leadership quite reluctant to see military-to-military interactions growing without its consent, while former top junta leaders are being “absolved” by the West after years of ostracisation.40

Conclusion Myanmar has startlingly re-entered regional and global politics since the junta was disbanded in March 2011. Under the first post-junta government headed by President Thein Sein until March 2016, the country chaired the ASEAN, saw most international sanctions imposed against it twenty years earlier being removed while foreign, including Western, investors piled in. Five years after the start of the transition, the new administration led by Aung San Suu Kyi’s party seemed bound to continue to cautiously broaden Myanmar’s international ties, albeit still selectively. The need to work on restoring ties with the United States but also China, upset at seeing its influence in Myanmar being challenged during Thein Sein’s presidency, while coping with a fully autonomous military institution which still has its own strategic goals, will dominate the foreign policy agenda of the second post-junta administration. But getting international donors and financial institutions more efficiently involved inside the country, while dealing with neighbours and having them involved in Myanmar’s inter-ethnic conflict resolution process will also be major foreign policy imperatives. Yet, beside a legacy of distrust of the outside world traditionally promoted by Myanmar’s ruling political and military elites since the country won independence from Britain seventy years ago, the country’s geographical situation at the crossroads of emerging Asian giants and a still volatile Southeast Asian region might in the end prove a commanding obstacle to more openness and liberalisation in Myanmar in the 2010s and beyond. 309

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Notes 1 Myanmar is the country’s post-1989 official appellation. However, for linguistic simplicity, the adjective “Burmese”, instead of the vernacular and less inclusive “Myanmar”, refers in this chapter to the citizenship and common language of the people of present-day Myanmar, while “Burman” more specifically designates the ethnic Bamar majority of the country, where non-Burman ethnic minorities, such as the Karens and Kachins, also dwell. 2 Thant Myint-U, Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012). 3 R. Egreteau and L. Jagan, Soldiers and Diplomacy in Burma: Understanding the Foreign Policies of the Burmese Praetorian State (Singapore: NUS Press, 2013), and B. Lintner, Great Game East: India, China, and the Struggle for Asia’s Most Volatile Frontier (Revised Edition) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). 4 M. Bunte, “Myanmar’s Protracted Transition: Arenas, Actors and Outcomes”, Asian Survey Vol. 56, no. 2 (2016), pp. 369–391, and R. Egreteau, Caretaking Democratization: The Military and Political Change in Myanmar (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016). 5 Ibid. 6 D. I. Steinberg (ed.), Myanmar: The Dynamics of an Evolving Polity (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 2014). 7 S. Creak, “National Restoration, Regional Prestige: The Southeast Asian Games in Myanmar, 2013”, Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 73, no. 4 (2014), pp. 853–877. 8 T. Wilson, “Strategic Choices in Myanmar’s Transition and Myanmar’s National Security Policies”, Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies Vol. 3, no. 1 (2016), p. 61. 9 M. Pedersen, “Myanmar’s Foreign Policy in a Time of Transition”, in M. Caballero-Anthony et al. (eds.), Myanmar’s Growing Regional Role (Seattle, WA: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2014), pp. 53–74, and M. Bunte and J. Dosch, “Myanmar: Political Reforms and the Recalibration of External Relations”, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs Vol. 34, no. 2 (2015), pp. 3–19. 10 Min Zin, “Burmese Attitude towards Chinese: Portrayal of the Chinese in Contemporary Cultural and Media Works”, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs Vol. 31, no. 1 (2012), pp. 115–131. 11 Yun Sun, “China’s Strategic Misjudgement on Myanmar”, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs Vol. 31, no. 1 (2012), pp. 73–96. 12 M. A. Myoe, “Myanmar’s China Policy since 2011: Determinants and Directions”, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs Vol. 34, no. 2 (2015), pp. 21–54. 13 D. I. Steinberg, “Myanmar and the United States: Closing and Opening Doors: An Idiosyncratic Analysis”, Social Research Vol. 82, no. 2 (2015), pp. 427–452. 14 Pedersen, Myanmar’s Foreign Policy, p. 65. 15 R. H. Taylor, “Myanmar’s Pivot toward the Shibboleth of ‘Democracy’”, Asian Affairs Vol. 44, no. 3 (2013), pp. 392–400, J. Haacke, Myanmar’s Foreign Policy under President U Thein Sein: Non-Aligned and Diversified (Singapore: ISEAS Trends in Southeast Asia No. 4, 2016), and M. A. Myoe, “Myanmar’s Foreign Policy under the USDP Government: Continuities and Changes”, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs Vol. 35, no. 1 (2016), pp. 123–150. 16 Chaw Chaw Sein, “Myanmar Foreign Policy under New Government: Changes and Prospects”, in Li Chenyang, Chaw Chaw Sein and Zhu Xianghui (eds.), Myanmar: Reintegrating into the International Community (Singapore: World Scientific, 2016), pp. 27–40. 17 Aung San Suu Kyi was constitutionally barred from the presidency because her sons are foreign citizens. 18 Egreteau and Jagan, Soldiers and Diplomacy in Burma. 19 D. I. Steinberg and F. Hongwei, Modern China-Myanmar Relations: Dilemmas of Mutual Dependence (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2012). 20 Y. Sun, “China’s Strategic Misjudgement on Myanmar”, and Myoe, “Myanmar’s China Policy since 2011”. 21 A. Zaw, “As Suu Kyi Eyes Election Win, Beijing Goes Courting”, The Irrawaddy, 10 July 2015. Available at: www.irrawaddy.com/news/politics/as-suu-kyi-eyes-election-triumph-beijing-goes-courting.html. 22 K. Yhome, “Why Aung San Suu Kyi Will Not Abandon China for the U.S.”, The Wire, 12 April 2016. Available at: https://thewire.in/27629/myanmars-new-government-foreign-policy-challengesand-options/. 23 R. Pederson, “Burma in Play”, The American Interest Vol. 10, no. 6 (2015). Available at: www.the-americaninterest.com/2015/06/09/burma-in-play/. 24 Steinberg, “Myanmar and the United States”. 25 Only a few sanctions remained in place in 2016: Gwen Robinson, “US Move on Myanmar Sanctions Sparks Jubilation, Dismay”, Nikkei Asian Review, 16 September 2016. Available at: http://asia.nikkei.

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com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/US-move-on-Myanmar-sanctions-sparks-jubilationdismay. The policy change under President Obama was carried out too fast, continues to argue a strong pro-sanctions lobby in the U.S.: see Matthew Smith and Tom Andrews, “This Is Not the Time to Ease Up on Burma”, Foreign Policy, 19 May 2016. Available at: http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/19/ this-is-not-the-time-to-ease-up-on-burma-myanmar/. K. Clymer, A Delicate Relationship: The United States and Burma/Myanmar since 1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). International Crisis Group (ICG), Myanmar’s New Government: Finding Its Feet? (Yangon/Brussels: Asia Report No. 282, 2016), and Li Chenyang, Chaw Chaw Sein and Zhu Xianghui (eds.), Myanmar: Reintegrating into the International Community (Singapore: World Scientific, 2016). Egreteau and Jagan, Soldiers and Diplomacy in Burma. Ibid., pp. 352–356. In particular in nine refugee camps run by the United Nations. Updated figures are available at www. unhcr.org/pages/49e489646.html [accessed on September 20, 2016]. R. Bhatia, India-Myanmar Relations: Changing Contours (New Delhi: Routledge, 2015). Human Rights Watch (HRW), ‘All You Can Do Is Pray’: Crime against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s Arakan State (Washington, DC: HRW Publications, 2013). International Crisis Group (ICG), The Dark Side of Transition:Violence against Muslims in Myanmar (Yangon/ Brussels: Asia Report No. 251, 2013), pp. 8–10. Nicholas Farrelly, “ASEAN is adapting to a democratic Myanmar”, Nikkei Asian Review, 22 June 2016. Available at: http://asia.nikkei.com/Viewpoints/Viewpoints/Nicholas-Farrelly-How-ASEAN-is-adaptingto-a-democratic-Myanmar. M. P. Callahan, “National Security and the Military in Post-Junta, Constitutional Myanmar”, in n.a. (ed.), The United States and Japan: Assisting Myanmar Development (Washington, DC: Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, 2015), pp. 47–48. Egreteau and Jagan, Soldiers and Diplomacy in Burma, pp. 50–54. K. Yhome, “Myanmar’s Military Diplomacy”, The New Indian Express, 9 August 2012. L. Lutz-Auras, “Russia and Myanmar: Friends in Need?”, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs Vol. 34, no. 2 (2015), pp. 165–198. William C. Dickey, “The U.S. Should Reach Out to Myanmar’s Military”, Nikkei Asian Review, 3 August 2016. Available at: http://asia.nikkei.com/Viewpoints/Viewpoints/William-C.-Dickey-TheUS-should-reach-out-to-Myanmar-s-military.

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PART IV

Cross-regional issues

25 THE FUTURE OF GREAT POWER RIVALRY IN THE INDIAN OCEAN Iskander Rehman

In 2009, Robert D. Kaplan, a well-known journalist and strategic commentator, published a widely-read article on the Indian Ocean, which he predicted would emerge as the “center-stage” for great powers rivalries in the 21st century.1 In particular, Kaplan envisioned the emergence of a maritime variant of the “Great Game”, whereby Asia’s two great rising powers, India and China, would vie for control over access to energy supplies and sea lines of communication, and engage in a shadowy struggle for influence amongst small archipelagic and littoral Indian Ocean states. The United States, he predicted, would need to act shrewdly to forestall conflict, both cushioning the effects of its own relative decline, and supporting India’s emergence as a major naval actor, without unduly antagonizing an increasingly resource-starved and powerful China. Close to a decade later, however, it remains unclear whether the center of gravity for strategic competition has truly drifted west of the Malacca Strait. The focus of both China and the U.S.’s operational planning and force deployments has remained centered on the Northeast Asian theater – and on the increasingly contested waters of the South and East China Seas in particular. Some analysts have noted that even though Chinese naval forces have become a more regular presence in the Indian Ocean, Beijing’s entry into the region has thus far been more tentative and incremental than initially anticipated.2 What should one make of these seemingly contradictory prognoses? Were the dire predictions of taut geopolitical rivalries, nervous naval jostling, and silent sparring for influence, overblown, misplaced, or simply premature? If so, this would not be the first time. During the latter half of the Cold War, U.S. analysts grew concerned over the possibility of U.S.–Soviet naval competition spilling into the Indian Ocean, and sought to draw attention to the renewed importance of a region many had long considered to be something of a backwater.3 After the Iranian revolution and the 1979 energy crisis, the Carter Administration decisively refocused America’s attention on the Persian Gulf and Western Indian Ocean, with National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski famously observing that an “arc of crisis stretched along the shore of the Indian Ocean”.4 The Soviet Union, for its part, also frequently debated intensifying its naval operations in the Indian Ocean, not only to ensure the safety of its sea-lanes of communication (SLOCs), but also to prevent the Indian Ocean from becoming its soft maritime underbelly. Indeed, many Soviet strategists were concerned that, at the time, the United States and its allies might attempt to “outflank” the Soviet Union by unleashing nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) capable of targeting the Soviet mainland from the depths of the Indian Ocean.5 315

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By the early 1980s, however, many Western analysts were already downplaying the extent of the Soviet naval presence in the region, noting that the principal loci of great power naval competition had remained elsewhere.6 Despite the fevered predictions of the 1970s, the Indian Ocean had been a maritime theater of largely secondary importance. One might thus posit that there is something of a circular quality to the West’s periodic “rediscovery” of the geopolitical salience of the region.7 Throughout history, the Indian Ocean seems to have ebbed and flowed in perceived importance, as great powers have pondered the nature of their security commitments and debated the extent of their strategic perimeters.8 The main question this chapter will attempt to answer is the following: are we in the process of witnessing a different – and more enduring – strategic transformation of the Indian Ocean, or is the region destined to remain, yet again, on the periphery of world affairs? What are China’s intentions in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR)? Can one point to a coherent, structured, Chinese grand strategy, or is Beijing’s policy toward the region pursued on an ad-hoc basis, at the risk of being simply “randomness parading as design”?9 Meanwhile, how does the Indian Ocean factor into the U.S.’ s operational planning, and what role do planners in Washington see New Delhi playing in its wider maritime environs? Last but not least, how does New Delhi view its role in the IOR? Are Indian security managers truly concerned about China’s entry into the Indian Ocean, and if so, what steps are they taking in order to mitigate these strategic anxieties? The chapter is divided into three main sections. First, it analyzes the drivers and implications of China’s slowly growing presence in the Indian Ocean. The chapter then explores how the United States, which remains the region’s preeminent naval power, views both the Indian Ocean and India’s naval rise. It is argued that an intensification of Sino–U.S. military rivalry in the Western Pacific could have deleterious “spillover effects” in the Indian Ocean, and drastically transform India’s maritime security environment. As the international relations theorist William Thompson has noted, the extant security studies literature frequently fails to take into account the existence of what he refers to as “entangled rivalries”, rivalries that extend beyond dyadic models of great power competition.10 It is therefore necessary to take into account the complex strategic geometry of the region, which is increasingly defined by the growth of intra-Asian security ties, and which ties the evolution of U.S.–India strategic interactions to the steady calcification of the Sino–U.S. rivalry. A third and final section examines the potential ramifications of these developments for India’s own security, particularly as New Delhi begins to expand its influence and naval reach throughout the Indo-Pacific, and briefly summarizes how New Delhi envisions its role within a rapidly changing maritime environment.

China and the Indian Ocean Slow but steady – China’s graduated entrance into the Indian Ocean An incremental growth in activity Since its initial counter-piracy operation in the Gulf of Aden in 2008, Beijing has deployed over 21 (at the time of writing) different naval task forces, and the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has become a regular presence in the Western Indian Ocean. Some of these deployments have spanned eight months, which is longer than many U.S. surface patrols, showcasing Beijing’s ability to sustain extended and continuous extra-regional naval operations. While these deployments have been framed primarily as custodial operations, they have also enabled previously unseasoned Chinese mariners to become more seasoned in the conduct of blue-water operations.11 At the same time, they allowed Chinese naval intelligence units to better map littorals 316

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and archipelagic regions, while expanding their knowledge of complex underwater topography and bathymetric conditions.12 According to the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, the PLAN first began in 2012 to formally and regularly deploy maritime intelligence collection vessels in the Indian Ocean.13 Chinese nuclear attack submarines have since embarked on extended patrols in the Indian Ocean, and both nuclear and conventional diesel-electric submarines (SSKs), along with their accompanying tenders, have begun to utilize ports in IOR states such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan for berthing and replenishment.14 By and large, however, China’s naval presence in the Indian Ocean has – until now – been relatively limited in scale, and a far cry from some of the more alarmist predictions in the Indian and American press. China seemed, until recently, to have opted for a strategy of “places rather than bases”, multiplying port calls in countries as varied as Yemen, Iran, and the Seychelles, amongst others.15 In November 2015, however, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the opening of a major new overseas base in the Eastern African state of Djibouti. At the time of writing, construction on the 200-acre site was nearing completion, with China having despatched its first troop contingent of PLAN marines to the newly operational facility.16 Historically, Chinese strategists had argued that establishing foreign military bases – or cementing formal alliance structures – would be a departure from the PRC’s tradition of “anti-hegemonic” foreign policy.17 Over the past few years, however, it has become increasingly evident that China’s strategic community is shedding its reservations with regard to overseas basing and expeditionary operations.18 As Beijing’s interests around the world continue to grow, and the PLAN’s deployments become increasingly extended, some Chinese analysts have begun to advocate a more sweeping revision of Beijing’s current basing policy.19 The shaping of China’s future military presence in the Indian Ocean is, naturally, closely tied to this debate. Already, there appears to be a more concerted call for a stronger Chinese naval presence in the region.20 This can partially be explained by the arguments laid out in China’s more recent Defense White Papers, which regularly lay emphasis on protecting overseas energy resources and Chinese nationals abroad, the latter of which is now defined as one of the PLA’s major military missions.21 The 2015 White Paper, for example, distinguishes in-between two broad naval missions, “offshore waters defense”, and “open seas protection”, which applies to more distant oceanic theaters.22 As we shall see on pg. 321, this evolution can also be attributed to certain ongoing trends in the Sino–U.S. rivalry. In 2016, Beijing issued a formal statement describing its intention to up its level of naval involvement in the Indian Ocean.23 This was followed by the establishment of an Overseas Operation Office.24 Officials and Chinese military analysts have since hinted that more bases would follow.25 Although the PRC has argued that the Djibouti installation will serve primarily as a logistical hub for the PLAN, there are some indications that China's more permanent military presence on the African continent is already generating compulsions for mission creep.26 As one recent report by the Center for Naval Analyses notes, China's new naval support facility in Djibouti will have the capability to support at least five mission areas: counterpiracy, non-combatant evacuation operations, peacekeeping operations, and – perhaps more controversially – counterterrorism and intelligence collection.27 There is already a voluminous literature on China’s involvement in a bevy of portuary infrastructure projects around the Indian Ocean basin, in places such as Chittagong in Bangladesh, Hambantota in Sri Lanka, or Kyaukphyu in Myanmar.28 In order to bound the analysis, this chapter will not provide yet another comprehensive catalogue of China’s infrastructural undertakings in the Indian Ocean, or a detailed account of China’s “One Belt One Road” (OBOR) or “Maritime Silk Road” (MSR) strategies.29 Rather, it will seek to better understand the strategic and economic imperatives driving such investments. 317

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Energy and commodity security are quite evidently key drivers in this regard. Chinese leaders are particularly concerned over the “Malacca Dilemma” – the fact that the geography of the Indian Ocean basin funnels the flow of seaborne trade to and from China through a few chokepoints at which it could (theoretically) be interdicted with relative ease.30 In 2013, China overtook the United States, and became the world’s first oil importer. 43% of China’s energy imports flow out the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, while fully 85% transit the heavily trafficked Strait of Malacca.31 Projected growth in the volume of crude oil and other trade transiting the Indian Ocean will increase the strategic importance of the Indian Ocean for energy and commodity security. This will be especially true for China, which will see its demand for oil grow from 11 to 21 million barrels per day by 2030.32 Oil import dependence is expected to rise from 59% in 2014 to over 76% in 2035.33 As is currently the case, most of China’s oil imports will be sourced from the Persian Gulf and East Africa and transit the IOR in tankers.34 As China’s portion of arable land continues to dwindle, due to rampant desertification and a growing paucity in fresh water supplies, its dependence on imported food products is also likely to grow.35

The importance of Africa in China’s strategic calculus Another driver, which is sometimes overlooked, is China’s growing presence in Africa, and in the Eastern and Central portions of the continent, in particular. As a 2014 RAND report rightly noted, foreign analyses of China’s involvement in Africa are frequently somewhat reductionist, viewing the relationship as little more than a rapacious Chinese grab for resources. It is certainly true that China relies increasingly on African natural resources to fuel its growing economy, and that decision-makers in Beijing are acutely aware of the fact that oil and gas production in Africa is expected to grow faster than in other parts of the world.36 As a result, China is investing heavily in oil extraction in countries such as Sudan, Angola, and Nigeria. Beijing’s focus on Africa is not solely guided by a voracious appetite for resources, however, but also by the fact that the continent provides a huge, and growing, market for the absorption of Chinese goods.37 Since 2000, trade between Africa and China has been multiplied by twenty, skyrocketing from around ten billion dollars in 2000 to over two hundred billion dollars in 2013.38 China is clearly thinking long-term, and laying the groundwork for an enduring presence on the continent. Although Beijing has often been accused, and for good cause, of a callous disregard for human rights and of a depressingly mercantilist approach to arms sales, it also began to demonstrate over recent years a growing commitment to African stability, contributing heavily to UN peacekeeping operations.39 Beijing is also investing in infrastructure projects in East African Indian Ocean states, signing a deal to develop the Kenyan port of Lamu, and formalizing an agreement to develop a vast railway network stretching from Kenya to South Sudan.40 Lamu will eventually be expanded into a deep-sea port, with safe anchorages deep enough for vessels of up to 100 meters, and, potentially, berthing points for Chinese submarines.41

Enabling China’s go-west strategy For more than a decade, China’s leadership has striven, under the aegis of the Grand Western Development Program, to better connect its more impoverished and restive western hinterlands to the rest of Asia.42 By pouring funds and infrastructural efforts into the development of a transportation “circulatory system” across South and Central Asia, Beijing hopes to provide a greater degree of trade and connectivity to provinces remote from the nation’s east-facing strategic centers, such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Yunnan, while circumventing narrow and heavily trafficked chokepoints.43 318

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A core component of this effort is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a hugely ambitious, 62 billion U.S. dollar project which aims to promote trade and infrastructural connectivity across Pakistan.44 In 2014, for example, China and Pakistan signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the development of Phase II of the Karakorum Highway project, which plans to stretch the road network another 487 km, from Raikot to Islamabad. Pakistani press reports at the time noted that, Under the project, Raikot-Islamabad Highway will start off from Pak-China border and will connect to the existing Karakoram Highway and reach Islamabad and will be further extended to Gwadar in the near future. Chinese ships will use this route as a trade corridor for their world trade through sea because the Kashgar-Gwadar route is much shorter than Kashgar-Beijing route, and by taking on this route, the ships will save their travel time by two weeks.45 It remains to be seen, however, how China’s ambitious highway, and associated oil and gas pipelines projects, will fare when Chinese laborers begin construction deeper in the troubled state of Baluchistan.46 Chinese engineers, workers, and civlians have already been targeted by insurgents in the past, and Baluchi nationalist leaders have openly stated that they would seek to detonate any future Chinese pipelines.47

China’s naval expansion The rise of China’s navy has attracted much attention. Until relatively recently, China was perceived as being, first and foremost, a continental power, whose prime strategic exigencies were on land, rather than at sea.48 And indeed, barring a few parenthetic bursts of naval activity, China’s martial history largely unfolded ashore.49 For much of the Cold War, China’s strategic attention was captured by the long, desolate frontier with the Soviet Union, with whom it fought a brief border war in 1969. The end of the Cold War and the resolution of territorial disputes with Russia have, however, led to a drastic dilution of China’s continental threat perception. While one could reel off a plethora of additional economic and geopolitical factors driving China’s turn seaward, there is little doubt that the alleviation of the bulk of China’s continental concerns has played an enormous role in China’s maritime transformation, enabling a greater degree of maritime focus than ever before. Chinese naval pundits regularly emphasize China’s perceived need for a two ocean, Indo-Pacific navy, and China’s most recent defense white paper stresses that “the traditional mentality that land outweighs sea (sic) must be abandoned”.50 The PLA Navy (PLAN) now boasts by far the largest fleet in Asia, with over 300 surface combatants, a submarine force projected to grow to over 75 by 2020, and a multitude of smaller missile-equipped boats.51 The PLAN’s amphibious component is also witnessing an impressive expansion, while Beijing seems intent on floating a force of several carrier strike groups within the next two decades.52 China’s rapidly expanding fleet, which in times of war would operate under the protective dome of an increasingly formidable land-based reconnaissance-strike complex, has raised concerns over the ability of the U.S. to preserve a stabilizing balance of forces in the region.53 These concerns have been compounded by continued fiscal uncertainty, which has led to the grounding of fighter squadrons and resulted in a decline in the availability of “surge forces” – naval amphibious or carrier task forces available to deploy rapidly and on short notice.54 The gradual erosion of the U.S.’s conventional edge in China’s near waters may already be revealing its insidious effects, 319

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as Beijing increasingly feels emboldened to assert dubious legalistic claims and engage in acts of coercive maritime maneuvering. China’s renewed assertiveness, when combined with the steady erosion of American conventional military superiority, has led many to assume that the East Asian maritime theater will become the future epicenter of great power rivalry.55

Chinese perceptions of India’s naval rise The complexity of the Sino–Indian relationship is partially reflected in the seeming heterogeneity of views regarding India’s naval rise within China’s strategic community. This author has found that in the course of many discussions with Chinese academics and policymakers, issues pertaining to India’s naval modernization were often summarily dismissed with a mixture of indifference and/or disdain. In some cases, these sentiments appeared real, in some cases they appeared feigned – and in many instances it was difficult for the author to ascertain. This impression has been shared by other observers of Sino–Indian relations, such as Jeff Smith, who has noted in a recent study of the bilateral relationship that “Chinese perceptions of India appeared to be colored by two distinct themes – disdain and disinterest.”56 Meanwhile, Georgetown professor Oriana Skylar Mastro, who has conducted research on both nations’ threat perceptions, has identified what she qualifies as a “strangely insecure superiority complex,” amongst certain Chinese elites.57 This perspective, however, is far from universal. Indeed, there is a vocal body of Chinese navalists that appears a lot less sanguine and dismissive of India’s naval prospects. These hyperrealist thinkers frequently draw attention to India’s naval expansion, which they almost systematically equate with New Delhi’s alleged “hegemonistic” tendencies.58 Commentators often seem preoccupied by India’s military presence on the Andaman and Nicobar islands, which, while presently minimal, could conceivably play a future role in denying Chinese ingress into the Bay of Bengal.59 Perhaps most intriguingly, CSBA's Toshi Yoshihara has identified a tendency amongst this body of thinkers to view India’s growing naval presence in the South China Sea as forming part of an elaborate “diversionary strategy”, designed to prevent, or delay China, “in its search for diversified strategy pathways, from entering the Indian Ocean”.60 Chinese analysts appear singularly aggravated by India’s decision to take a firmer stance on issues related to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.61 Under the premiership of Narendra Modi, India has indeed become much more vocal on such issues, and more critical of the PRC’s coercive behavior in the South and East China Seas.62 The issue that concerns China the most, however, is India’s development of naval ties with other democratic nations in the region – not only the U.S., but also Australia, and, increasingly, Japan.63 Indeed, although most Chinese commentators appear to agree that India poses little threat alone, many view it as a critical “swing state” that could lend considerable power to any anti-Chinese coalition including the United States, Japan, or smaller nations.64 Beijing has also long been watchful for any hint of the formation of an “Asian NATO”, and famously issued a demarche the first time India, the United States, Japan, and Australia explored the possibility of establishing a formalized quadrilateral security dialogue in 2007.65 To Beijing’s dismay, however, intra-Asian security ties have continued to grow over the past few years, partly as a reaction to China’s military rise and growing assertiveness.66 These overlapping webs of defense cooperation increasingly enmesh U.S. partners, such as India, along with traditional treaty allies, such as Japan.67 In 2015, a trilateral security dialogue was thus established between Tokyo, New Delhi, and Washington, and the Japanese Navy now regularly takes part in joint naval exercises with its Indian and U.S. counterparts. India has also bolstered its defense ties with Canberra, 320

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and China reacted with muted hostility to a new U.S. push to revive the quadrilateral security dialogue first mooted in 2007.68

Sino–U.S. rivalry and the Indian Ocean For the past few years, Washington has accentuated its efforts to “pivot” or “rebalance” towards the world’s new center of economic and geopolitical gravity, viewing American power as being “underweighted” in Asia, while “overweighted” in regions such as Europe and the Middle East.69 In 2007, the U.S. Navy announced that while it would remain a two ocean Navy, its focus would shift from the Atlantic and Pacific to the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Official documents have enshrined this reorientation in writing, announcing that 60% of American military air and naval assets will be shifted to the Asian theater by 2020 and explaining that, while the U.S. military will continue to contribute to security globally, [the United States] will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.70 Building a more solid partnership with India, and with the Indian Navy, in particular, is viewed as forming a key enabler of the U.S. pivot to Asia.71 Within the United States, a number of strategic observers have suggested that, due to rising fiscal pressures and continued global commitments, the U.S. should more actively pursue the empowerment of regional, democratically minded, actors such as India.72 In effect the Obama Administration had repeatedly, and occasionally quite vigorously, expressed its support for India’s naval ambitions, and its desire to see India emerge as a net security provider, not only in the Indian Ocean, but also beyond.73 The Trump Administration appears – for its part and for the time being at least – to have approached the U.S.–India relationship with a greater desire for continuity than for many of its other bilateral relationships. Most notably, it would appear that the U.S. remains solidly committed to the principles and goals laid out in the 2015 U.S.–India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region.74 Despite Washington’s recognition of the Indian Ocean as a zone of growing strategic import, it remains unclear, however, whether the United States has truly developed a coherent strategic framework for the Indian Ocean. In a much discussed article in Foreign Policy, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, recognized that, How we translate the growing connection between the Indian and Pacific oceans into an operational concept is a question that we need to answer if we are to adapt to new challenges in the region.75 As of now, this intellectual process remains something of an ongoing effort.76 Part of the challenge, notes Ashley Tellis, is that the Indian Ocean has traditionally been viewed more as a zone between regions, or an “inter-region” by American strategic planners, than a truly unified area of operations. A second way to think about the Indian Ocean, he suggests, is to employ the Mahanaian metaphor of the ocean as a great highway, or as a wide common, where “day to day interactions in the Ocean are struggles . . . along the highway, as opposed to struggles for control of the highway”.77 The difficulties that American strategic planners encounter when trying to devise a more coherent strategic construct for the IOR are only magnified by the U.S. government’s bureaucratic fracturing of the region. This is true both at the Department of Defense, where the Indian Ocean is segmented between CENTCOM, PACOM, and now, since 2007, AFRICOM; and at the State Department, where the Indian Ocean is split between the Bureau of South and Central 321

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Asian Affairs, the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Michael Green and Andrew Shearer have aptly summarized the complexity of Washington’s perception of the Indian Ocean, noting that it “would be a major error to apply a Pacific Ocean template” to such a vast and heterogeneous region, and that the most important objective for U.S. planners should be to maintain the Indian Ocean as a secure highway for international commerce, particularly between the oil-rich Gulf States and an economically dynamic East Asia.78 In order to better secure these objectives, the United States is enhancing its military footprint on the island base of Diego Garcia, as well as along the western coast of Australia.79 Indeed, one of Australia’s greatest assets is its strategic depth, due to its distance from continental China, as well as its location between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. As American forward bases in the western Pacific become increasingly vulnerable to Chinese missile threats, the Australian continent, with its solid infrastructure and local technical expertise, could fulfill an important role as a logistical hub and bastion for U.S. forces. The growing range of China’s anti-access inventory and the heavy emphasis given in Chinese military doctrine on missile intimidation and saturation campaigns suggest that Australia’s role as a supportive sanctuary to U.S. forces will only continue to grow.80 Despite these recent initiatives, the U.S.’s strategic attention – and increasingly finite military resources – are likely to remain heavily focused on the waters and airspace east of the Malacca Strait. As incidents of friction and brinkmanship continue to roil the waters of the South and East China Seas, the Indian Ocean risks falling even lower in Washington’s hierarchy of strategic priorities. As a result, some strategic thinkers have envisaged some form of grand “division of labor” in the future, whereby India would ensure freedom of navigation and the continuous flow of seaborne trade in its own wider maritime backyard, while the United States would be free to deploy its forces elsewhere.81 In a perfect world, such a division of labor could no doubt function, releasing the United States from strenuous commitments in the Indian Ocean, and insulating, to a certain extent, India’s maritime environs from Chinese encroachment by refocusing the minds of Chinese planners on the U.S.-led alliance system circling its periphery. In reality, however, it is highly unlikely that such a strategic compartmentalization will occur, as both China and the United States will seek to apply strategies of defense-in-depth and expand their military rivalry into the Indian Ocean. Indeed, as China continues to erect an increasingly broad and robust A2/AD system of systems (SOS), an animated debate has emerged in Washington over the nature and direction of U.S. defense strategy in the region. Over the past decade, the Pentagon has begun to explore operational concepts, such as AirSea Battle – subsequently folded into the Joint Operational Access Concept or JOAC – that aim at rapidly overcoming hostile battle networks and restoring freedom of maneuver within heavily contested environments.82 A number of analysts have also called for more “indirect approaches”, such as Offshore Control, or Maritime Denial, which choose to forgo potentially escalatory counter-attacks on the Chinese mainland, to focus on alternative lines of operation.83 Where all putative concepts of operation seem to concur, however, is on the advantages to be drawn though engaging in extended maritime interdiction and horizontal escalation in the Indian Ocean. Indeed, while some strategic pundits have chosen to somewhat artificially dichotomize concepts such as AirSea Battle, and Offshore Control, in reality both operational constructs call for peripheral campaigns in the wider Indian Ocean.84 This debate has naturally been carefully scrutinized and dissected in Beijing. The net result has been a heightened Chinese paranoia over the security of their sea-lanes of communication, particularly those stemming from the Indian Ocean basin. As Aaron Friedberg has noted, even if such debates had not occurred with such virulence in the American public domain. 322

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Simply by virtue of its size, capabilities and patterns of deployment, the U.S. Navy poses a threat to China’s energy supply lines. Even if it wanted to, Washington could not convince Beijing that it would never, under any circumstances, try to take advantage of this potential vulnerability.85 It is in this light that one must view certain training exercises conducted by the Chinese Navy in the eastern Indian Ocean. In January 2014, over a period of twenty-five days, a Chinese surface action group (SAG) composed of two guided missile destroyers (DDG), and one amphibious transport dock (LPD), escorted by an unreported number of submarines, conducted a series of what was described by the Chinese state press as “exercises for joint submarine-ship breakthrough of enemy blockade zones” through the Sunda, Lombok, and Makassar Straits.86 As China’s naval planning increasingly focuses on chokepoint control and blockade disruption, it may seek to extend the frequency of such operations along its western, as well as along its southern axes of approach. This might lead to much greater friction with Indian naval units in the Bay of Bengal, which is increasingly viewed by Indian naval planners as their future SSBN bastion.87 Growing fears over U.S.-sponsored interdiction operations in the Indian Ocean could also convince formerly recalcitrant Chinese planners of the need to forward deploy naval platforms in the Western Indian Ocean or Arabian Sea, with all the attendant implications this might have for India’s own maritime security.

India in the Indian Ocean As the Asian maritime theater becomes increasingly rivalrous and contested, how will the Indian Navy respond? Should it continue to seek to become a Pan-Asian maritime actor, or would its interests be better served by focusing primarily on consolidating its strength in the Indian Ocean region, which, for the time being at least, remains a relatively peripheral theater for great power rivalries? There is a sense, in some quarters, that the Indian Navy is playing against time, and that the peace dividend it has enjoyed over the past few decades may be drawing to a close.88 Indeed, since the end of the Cold War, an increasingly capable Indian Navy has been at the vanguard of the democracy’s regional diplomacy. It has taken part in an ever growing array of bilateral and multilateral naval exercises, and has projected soft power across the Indo-Pacific via custodial missions – such as anti-piracy operations – or by engaging in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR).89 In 2015, alone, the Indian Navy sent vessels on port calls to more than forty different nations.90 This nautical feat, which was widely relayed, along with accompanying maps, throughout the Indian press, appeared emblematic of the service – and wider nation’s – growing military prowess and self-confidence. Behind the scenes, however, there is a swell of disquiet over the progressive darkening of India’s maritime security environment. As China has rapidly extended its military reach over large tracts of the South China Sea – greatly facilitated by its ongoing massive land reclamation projects – India’s security managers have grown increasingly concerned.91 As one longtime observer of Sino–Indian relations aptly noted, India’s primary advantage vis-à-vis the PLA is the tyranny of distance hobbling China’s capabilities in the Indian Ocean region, but that tyranny of distance is gradually being diminished, if not yet overcome, by China’s assertion of military control in the South China Sea.92 The Indian Navy’s unease over the expansion of the PLAN’s Southern Fleet was perhaps first publicly articulated in 2012, in the course of a debate following an alleged incident involving Indian and Chinese vessels in the South China Sea (the circumstances of which have remained somewhat murky).93 Following the purported confrontation, India’s vibrant media clamored 323

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for a vigorous response and/or show of force from the India Navy. A widely respected former Indian Navy Chief, Admiral Arun Prakash, responded by penning a thoughtful article, warning the Indian Government and Navy of strategic overreach, stating that, “a distant location like the South China Sea is hardly an ideal setting to demonstrate India’s maritime or other strengths.”94 India may, indeed, consider it wise to more closely conform to some hawkish Chinese analysts’ perceptions by pursuing a “diversionary” – rather than a forward-leaning – strategy in the South China Sea. India’s growing proclivity for discreet, extra-regional balancing seems evident in its dealings with Vietnam, a longstanding partner with whom India has steadily expanded its defense cooperation over the past decade, training Vietnamese submariners, and providing generous credit lines for defense cooperation and the purchase of Indian patrol boats.95 Recent reports have also suggested that New Delhi may finally proceed to export BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles to Hanoi, a capability which could allow Vietnamese forces to hold Chinese surface ships at risk.96 Going forward, India may choose to provide similar forms of assistance to weaker littoral states such as the Philippines, which are also susceptible to Chinese coercion or aggression. For the time being, such indirect approaches have been privileged over more robust forms of military signaling in the South China Sea. New Delhi’s recent discomfort at the suggestion of conducting joint Freedom of Navigation patrols with the United States provides a clear indicator of India’s continued reluctance to overtly challenge Beijing east of the Malacca Strait.97 Within the Indian Ocean itself, however, India’s behavior has been more assertive. New Delhi has been vocal in its dissatisfaction over China’s growing naval presence and occasional lack of transparency in its naval deployments. As a precautionary measure, it has also moved to strengthen its defense cooperation with some of its smaller littoral and archipelagic neighbors, placing a particular emphasis on maritime domain awareness (MDA) and hydrographic intelligence sharing.98 Although segments of the Indian press frequently report on a hypothetical Chinese “string of pearls”, much of this commentary is excessively alarmist, and does not necessarily constitute an adequate representation of the Indian Navy’s mindset. In the course of conversations with this author, Indian naval officials appeared relatively sanguine over the issue – at least for the short to medium term.99 Indeed, Indian military planners do not seem unduly concerned over the prospect of Chinese SAGs or CSGs more regularly traversing the Indian Ocean. Indeed, due to India’s peninsular geography and the presence of Indian land-based airpower, air defenses, and missile systems, New Delhi appears confident that the localized correlation of naval forces will remain in its favor.100 As one excellent study of past rivalries has noted, great powers who suddenly extend their military and commercial interests have often had to contend with two major challenges101: • •

They offer many points for foes to threaten and attack. Their capacity to project military strength to the edges of their zone of interest is diminished the further the contested area is from the core of their power.

In the minds of many Indian analysts, this “loss of strength gradient” would be the principal strategic and operational quandary faced by China, were it to attempt to establish a more robust naval presence in the Northern Indian Ocean.102 The issue of submarine deployments, however, is a different matter. Indeed, the real concern for India is not so much long-distance Chinese surface deployments, but rather whether China will one day choose to permanently forward-deploy submarines in India’s maritime backyard. Some Chinese military analysts have openly stated that “it is only a matter of time” before the PLAN turns the port of Gwadar into a “military foothold” in the Indian Ocean.103 A natural deep-sea port located on a narrow spit of land, Gwadar is vulnerable to missile bombardment, 324

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thus rendering it a less than ideal location for China to station large surface vessels in the event of conflict with India.104 A small, forward-deployed, submarine force, however, particularly if Pakistan chose to provide it with hardened underwater berthing structures, could amount to a serious threat to India’s merchant trade and energy imports, the bulk of which transits via the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea.105 Chinese SSKs could also be rotated through Karachi, where facilities would already exist to support future, Chinese-designed, Pakistani submarines. Diesel-electric submarines could prove difficult for the Indian Navy to detect and prosecute, particularly if they loitered within Pakistan’s cluttered littoral waters.106 Last but not least, the issue of SSK sales and transfers has the potential to gravely exacerbate competitive dynamics in the Sino–Indian maritime relationship. For instance, Pakistan’s planned acquisition of eight Chinese Yuan class submarines could severely erode the Indian Navy’s ability to exert sea control along the Makran coastline.107 Bangladesh’s ambition to develop its own small Chinese-designed Ming class submarine arm does not present a similar threat, but could still complicate Indian operational planning, and potentially frustrate its designs to transform the Bay of Bengal into an uncontested bastion for its SSBN forces.108 Beijing’s deepening involvement in South Asian submarine sales will eventually lead to the semi-permanent deputation of Chinese naval personnel in both Pakistan and Bangladesh – an outcome likely to cause much discomfort in New Delhi.109

Conclusion Ever since Alfonso de Albuquerque first attempted to transform the Indian Ocean basin into a Portuguese mare clausum, the world’s third largest ocean has witnessed periodic spurts of great power rivalry.110 From the battles opposing the fleet of the Admiral de Suffren to the ships of the British East Indies, to the tense naval jostling between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the balmy waters of Indian Ocean have occasionally been buffeted by fierce gusts of contestation. Invariably, however, these cycles of competition have subsided, to be replaced by more continentally driven, sub-regional rivalries. This chapter has demonstrated that, although certain recent prognoses of the Indian Ocean may have proven premature, they were not necessarily inaccurate. The Indian Ocean is, indeed, in the midst of a strategic transformation, and one that could prove far more enduring, and geopolitically consequential, than those experienced in past eras. The concurrent rise of India and China, two traditionally continental powers investing in blue-water navies, has given birth to new forms of maritime friction. As both nations continue to develop their nuclear attack submarine forces, along with the sea-based leg of their triads, there will increasingly be a nuclear dimension to this naval competition.111 Meanwhile, the horizontal extension of Sino–U.S. military rivalry to the maritime highway of the Indian Ocean – via the adoption of strategies of defense-in-depth – promises to add an extra layer of complexity and tension to regional security dynamics. Last but not least, the incremental growth of the Indo–U.S. naval partnership, while providing the hope of a more stable balance of power, also more closely ties the future of the IOR to that of an increasingly rivalrous East Asia. In short, this century’s arena for great power competition is becoming ever more Indo-Pacific in nature.112

Notes 1 Robert D. Kaplan, “Center Stage for the 21st Century: Power Plays in the Indian Ocean,” Foreign Affairs, 88, No. 3, March/April 2009, pp. 16-32. 2 Nilanthi Samaranayake, “The Indian Ocean: A Great Power Danger Zone?,” The National Interest, May 30, 2014, available at http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-indian-ocean-great-power-danger-

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zone-10568?page=show Meanwhile, in 2014 Kaplan released a book entitled Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific, which now made the bold claim that it was the South China Sea, rather than the Indian ocean, which would “constitute the military front line of the coming decades”. Sew Robert D. Kaplan, Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific (New York: Random House, 2014), p. 16. See, for example, Anthony Harrigan, “Security Interests in the Persian Gulf and the Western Indian Ocean,” in Patrick Wall (Ed.) The Indian Ocean and the Threat to the West: Four Studies in Global Strategy (London: Stacey International, 1975), pp. 20–22. Quoted in “Iran: The Crescent of Crisis,” Time Magazine, January 15, 1979, available at http://content. time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601790115,00.html Selig S. Harrison and K Krishnaswami Subrahmanyam (Eds.) India, the United States and Superpower Rivalry in the Indian Ocean (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). See Geoffrey Jukes, “Soviet Naval Policy in the Indian Ocean,” in Larry W. Bowman and Ian Clark (Eds.) The Indian Ocean in Global Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981), pp. 176-179. Iskander Rehman, “Arc of Crisis 2.0?,” The National Interest, March 7, 2013, available at http://national interest.org/commentary/arc-crisis-20-8194 For a discussion of the challenges innate to categorizing areas of strategic priority, see Michael C. Desch, “The Keys that Lock Up the World: Identifying American Interests in the Periphery,” International Security, 14, No. 1, 1989, pp. 86–121. Steve Yetiv wryly observes that, “Randomness all too often parades as design. It may become a historical truism that great powers start with great ideas, but end up with a high dose of reality. Alas, they may strike up notions of grand strategy and get struck down by the caprice endemic in the human condition.” See Steve Yetiv, The Absence of Grand Strategy: The United States in the Persian Gulf, 1972–2005 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), p. 197. William R. Thompson, “Why Rivalries Matter and What Great Power Rivalries Can Tell Us About World Politics,” in William R. Thompson (Ed.) Great Power Rivalries (Columbia, SC: South Carolina Press, 1999), pp. 7–8. See Andrew S. Erickson and Austin M. Strange, Six Years at Sea . . . and Counting: Gulf of Aden Anti-Piracy and China’s Maritime Commons Presence (Washington, DC: Jamestown Foundation, 2015), and Kristen Guiness and Sam Berkowitz, “PLA Navy Planning for Out of Area Deployments,” in Andrew Scobell, Arthur S. Ding, Philip C. Saunders, and Scott W. Harold (Eds.) The People’s Liberation Army and Contingency Planning in China (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2015), pp. 321–349, available at http://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/Books/PLA-contingency/PLA-ContingencyPlanning-China.pdf For more on the military implications of Chinese naval activities in the Indian Ocean, see Iskander Rehman, “Tomorrow or Yesterday’s Fleet? The Indian Navy’s Emerging Operational Challenges,” in Anit Mukherjee and Raja Mohan (Eds.) India’s Naval Strategy and Asian Security (New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 37–65. The PLA Navy: New Capabilities and Missions for the 21st Century (Washington, DC: Office of Naval Intelligence, 2015), available at www.oni.navy.mil/Intelligence-Community/China/ See Rahul Bedi, “India Reacts Cautiously to PLAN Submarine Visit to Sri Lanka,” Jane’s Navy International, October 1, 2014, and Fahran Bokhari et al., “Chinese Type 041 Makes Karachi Port Visit,” Jane’s Navy International, July 2, 2015. Daniel J. Kostecka, “Places Rather Than Bases: The Chinese Navy’s Emerging Support Network in the Indian Ocean,” Naval War College Review, 64, No. 1, 2011, pp. 59–78. See Andrew Tate, "China Sends First Troop Contingent to Djibouti Base," Jane's Defense Weekly, July 12, 2017, available at www.janes.com/ and Andrew Jacobs and Jane Perlez, "U.S. Wary of its New Neighbor in Djibouti: A Chinese Naval Base," The New York Times, February 25, 2017, available at www.nytimes.com/2017/02/25/world/africa/us-djibouti-chinese-naval-base.html Oriana Skylar Mastro, “A Global Expeditionary People’s Liberation Army: 2025–2030,” in Roy Kamphausen and David Lai (Eds.) The Chinese People’s Liberation Army in 2025 (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Press, 2015), p. 212. See Ibid., and Christopher D. Yung et al., “Not an Idea We Have to Shun”: Chinese Overseas Basing Requirements in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2014), available at http://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/stratperspective/china/ChinaPerspectives-7.pdf For a good summary of some of the debates currently underway, see Mathieu Duchatel, Oliver Brauner and Zhou Hang, Protecting China’s Overseas Interests: The Slow Shift Away from Non-Interference (Stockholm: SIPRI, 2014), available at http://books.sipri.org/product_info?c_product_id=479

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The future of great power rivalry 20 In June 2013, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released a Blue Book, that contained chapters on India’s “Look East Policy”, and the “U.S.-India Axis of Relation in the Indian Ocean Region.” The Blue Book noted that, “In the past, China’s Indian Ocean strategy was based on moderation and maintaining the status quo, but the changing dynamics of international relations necessitates China play a more proactive role in the region.” See D.S. Rajan, “China’s Unfolding Indian Ocean Strategy-Analysis,” Eurasia Review, February 12, 2014, available at www.eurasiareview. com/12022014-chinas-unfolding-indian-ocean-strategy-analysis/ 21 See The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces (Beijing: Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2013). 22 See China’s Military Strategy (Beijing: The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, 2015), English translation available at www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-05/26/ content_20820628.htm, and Michael McDevitt, China’s Far Seas Navy: The Implications of the Open Seas Protection Mission (Arlington, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, 2016), available at www.cna.org/ cna_files/pdf/China-Far-Seas-Navy.pdf 23 Ridzwhan Rahmat, “PLAN to Deploy Range of Warships in the Indian Ocean, Says China’s Defense Ministry,” Jane’s Navy International, January 30, 2015, available at www.janes.com/ 24 Andrew Tate, “China Establishes Overseas Operations Office,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, March 29, 2016, available at www.janes.com/ 25 Ankit Panda, “After Djibouti Base, China Eyes Additional Overseas Facilities,” The Diplomat, March 9, 2016, available at http://thediplomat.com/2016/03/after-djibouti-base-china-eyes-additional-overseasmilitary-facilities/ 26 For example, China recently suggested that it might deploy additional peacekeeping forces to help secure the disputed Djibouti-Eritrea border. See Liu Zhen, "China Offers to Mediate Djibouti-Eritrea Border Row as it Expands Military Presence in Africa," South China Morning Post, July 25, 2017, available at www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2103947/china-offers-mediatedjibouti-eritrea-border-row-it 27 Erica Downs, Jeffrey Becker and Patrick DeGategno, China's Military Support Facility in Djibouti: The Economic and Security Dimensions of Chinas First Overseas Base (Arlington, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, July 2017), available at www.cna.org/CNA_files/PDF/DIM-2017-U-015308Final2.pdf 28 For a study of the nature and meanings of these developments, see Raja Mohan, Samudra-Manthan: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2012), especially Chapters 7 and 8. 29 For an excellent primer on China’s new “Silk Road” initiative, see Nadege Rolland, China’s New Silk Road (Seattle, WA: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2015), available at http://nbr.org/research/ activity.aspx?id=531 30 In reality, large-scale maritime interdiction operations and distant blockades would be fraught with numerous challenges. See Gabriel S. Collins and William S. Murray, “No Oil for the Lamps of China,” Naval War College Review, 61, No. 2, 2008, pp. 49–95, and Evan Braden Montgomery, “Reconsidering a Blockade of China: A Response to Mirski,” The Journal of Strategic Studies, 36, No. 4, 2013. pp. 615–623. 31 EIA International Energy Outlook, 2015 (Washington, DC: U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2015), available at www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/ 32 Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2013), Appendix III, Figure 2, p. 80. 33 BP Energy Outlook: China (London: British Petroleum, 2016), available at www.bp.com/content/dam/ bp/pdf/energy-economics/energy-outlook-2016/bp-energy-outlook-2016-country-insights-china.pdf 34 Zhao Daojinag and Michael Meidan, China and the Middle East in a New Energy Landscape (London: Chatham House, 2015), available at www.iberchina.org/files/ChinaMiddleEastEnergy.pdf 35 See “China Needs to Import More Food to East Water, Energy Shortages: Official,” Reuters, July 28, 2014, available at www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/28/us-china-environment-idUSKBN0FX0S 520140728 36 Oil reserves in Africa grew by over 25% over the past decades, while natural gas grew by over 100%, and oil production is expected to continue to rise at an average rate of 6% per year for the foreseeable future. See Larry Hanauer and Lyle J. Morris, Chinese Engagement in Africa: Drivers, Reactions, and Implications for U.S. Policy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2014), p. 5. 37 Ibid. See also Mark Esposito and Terence Tse, “What Does China’s Role in Africa Say About Its Growing Global Footprint,” The Conversation, November 20, 2015, available at http://theconversation.com/ what-does-chinas-role-in-africa-say-about-its-growing-global-footprint-49474

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Iskander Rehman 38 “China-Africa Economic and Trade Cooperation (2013),” People’s Daily Online, August 29, 2013, available at http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/102774/8382258.html 39 See Kossi Ayenagbo, Tommie Njobvu, James V. Sossou, and Biossey K. Tozoun, “China’s Peacekeeping Operations in Africa: From Unwilling Participation to Responsible Contribution,” African Journal of Political Science and International Relations, 6, No. 2, February 2012, pp. 22–32, and Michael Martina and David Brunnstorm, “China’s Xi Says to Commit 8,000 Troops For UN Peacekeeping Force,” Reuters, September 28, 2015, available at www.reuters.com/article/us-un-assembly-china-idUSKCN0RS1Z 120150929 40 For the Lamu deal, see George Mwangi, “Chinese Firm Signs 478.9 Million Kenya Lamu Port Deal,” The Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2014, available at http://blogs.wsj.com/frontiers/2014/08/03/chinesefirm-signs-478-9-million-kenya-lamu-port-deal/, and “The Race to Become East Africa’s Biggest Port,” BBC World, June 7, 2016, available at www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36458946 For more details on China’s railway projects in East Africa, see “China to Build New East Africa Railway Line,” BBC News, May 12, 2014, available at www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27368877 41 Author’s conversation with U.S. defense official, Washington, DC, March 2016, and Pheobe Parke, “Kenya’s 13 Billion Railway Project Is Taking Shape,” CNN, May 15, 2016, available at www.cnn. com/2016/05/15/africa/kenya-railway-east-africa/ 42 Wang Jisi, “China’s Search for a Grand Strategy: A Rising Great Power Finds Its Way,” Foreign Affairs, 90, No. 2, 2011, p. 78. 43 Gurpreet S. Khurana, “China in the Indian Ocean: Foreign Policy and Maritime Power,” in Vijay Sakhuja and Kapil Narula (Eds.) Maritime Dynamics in the Indo-Pacific (New Delhi: Vij Books, 2016), pp. 120–136. 44 See Daniel S. Markey and James West, Behind China’s Gambit in Pakistan (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2016), available at www.cfr.org/pakistan/behind-chinas-gambit-pakistan/p37855, and Andrew Small, The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 93–117. The 62 billion dollar figure dates from April 2017. It is possible that it will balloon even further. See Salman Siddiqui, "CPEC Investment Pushed From $55b to $62b," The Express Tribune, April 12, 2017, available at https://tribune.com.pk/story/1381733/cpec-investment-pushed-55b-62b/ 45 See, “NHA Plans to Reconstruct 230kms of Karakorum Highway under New Design,” Pamir Times, May 21, 2014, available at http://pamirtimes.net/2014/05/21/nha-plans-reconstruct-230kms-karakoramhighway-new-design/. See also “China, Pakistan to Accelerate Economic Corridor Construction,” Xinhua, February 21, 2012, available at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-02/21/c_133131361. htm 46 For a good study of unrest in Baluchistan, see Frederic Grare, Baluchistan: The State Versus the Nation (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2013). 47 See Nisar Baluch’s comments to Robert Kaplan, in Robert D. Kaplan, “Pakistan’s Fatal Shore,” The Atlantic, May 1, 2009, available at www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/pakistans-fatalshore/307385/2/ 48 Michael D. Swaine and Ashley J. Tellis, Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2000). 49 For a fascinating account of China’s short-lived naval expansion in the early fifteenth century, see Louis Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne (New York: Oxford Paperbacks, 1996). 50 China’s Military Strategy (Beijing: Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2015), available in its English translation at www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-05/26/ content_20820628.htm On the need for China to develop a two-ocean navy, see You Ji, “China’s Emerging Indo-Pacific Naval Strategy,” Asia Policy, 22, 2016, pp. 11–20. 51 Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2015 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2015), available at www.defense.gov/Portals/1/ Documents/pubs/2015_China_Military_Power_Report.pdf 52 Ronald O’Rourke, China’s Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities-Background and Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2016), available at www.fas.org/ sgp/crs/row/RL33153.pdf, and Andrew Scobell et al., “China’s Aircraft Carrier Program: Drivers, Developments, Implications, Naval War College Review, 69, No. 4, 2015, pp. 65–79. 53 The most detailed recent study of the Sino-U.S. military balance in Asia has been compiled by the RAND Corporation. See Eric Heginbotham et al., The U.S.-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the Evolving Balance of Power 1996–2017 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2015).

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The future of great power rivalry 54 Sandra I. Erwin, “For the Navy, Sequester Equals Fewer Ships at Sea,” National Defense Magazine, July 27, 2013, available at www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=1208 See also Statement of Rear Admiral Michael C. Manazir Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Systems on Aviation Readiness (Washington, DC: House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Readiness, July 6, 2016), available at http://docs.house.gov/meetings/AS/AS03/20160706/105159/HHRG114-AS03-Wstate-ManazirM-20160706.pdf 55 Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011). 56 See Jeff M. Smith, Cold Peace: China-India Rivalry in the Twenty-First Century (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), p. 7. 57 See Oriana Skylar Mastro’s remarks at “Regional Perceptions of India’s Naval Rise,” event held at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, June 11, 2013, audio recording available at http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/06/11/regional-perceptions-of-india-s-naval-rise/g82l 58 Following the launch of India’s first indigenous carrier, the INS Vikrant, in August 2013, Zhang Junshe, a senior researcher at the People’s Liberation Army Naval Military Studies Research Institute, warned that, “India’s first self-made carrier, along with reinforced naval strength, will further disrupt the military balance in South Asia.” See Pu Zhendong, “Launches Highlight India’s Sea Ambitions,” China Daily, August 12, 2013, available at http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2013-08/12/content_16886378.htm 59 On the many shortcomings of India’s Andaman and Nicobar Command, see Anit Mukherjee, India’s Joint Andaman and Nicobar Command Is a Failed Experiment (Washington, DC: East West Center, 2014), available at www.eastwestcenter.org/system/tdf/private/apb289.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=34843 60 Toshi Yoshihara, “Chinese Views of India in the Indian Ocean: A Geopolitical Perspective,” Strategic Analysis, 36, No. 12, 2012, pp. 489–500. 61 Ankit Panda, “China’s Not Happy about the US-India Statement on the South China Sea,” October 10, 2014, available at http://thediplomat.com/2014/10/chinas-not-happy-about-the-us-indiastatement-on-the-south-china-sea/ 62 On India and China’s growing normative divergences with regard to freedom of navigation, see Iskander Rehman, India, China and Differing Conceptions of the Maritime Order (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, June 2017). 63 For a good overview of the upwards trajectory of the India-Japan relationship, see Dhruva Jaishankar, India and Japan: Emerging Indo-Pacific Security Partnership (Singapore: RSIS Commentary, May 30, 2016), available at www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/rsis/co16130-india-and-japan-emerging-indopacific-security-partnership/#.V-q6xyErKCg 64 On the concept of swing states in the international system, see Richard Fontaine and Daniel M. Kliman, “International Order and Global Swing States,” The Washington Quarterly, 36, No. 1, 2013, pp. 93–109. 65 Siddharth Vardarajan, “Four-Power Meeting Drew Chinese Demarche,” The Hindu, June 14, 2007, available at www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/fourpower-meeting-drew-chinese-dmarche/ article1856019.ece 66 Victor D. Cha, Powerplay: The Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), p. 216. 67 Rory Medcalf and C. Raja Mohan, Responding to Indo-Pacific Rivalry: Australia, India and Middle Power Coalitions (Sydney: The Lowy Institute, 2014), available at www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/ responding-to-Indo-Pacific-rivalry 68 See Ananth Krishnan, “China Warning on U.S. Push for Asian Quadrilateral Security Dialogue,” India Today, March 3, 2016, available at http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/china-warningon-us-push-for-asian-quadrilateral-security-dialogue/1/610963.html 69 Former National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, quoted by Ryan Lizza, “The Consequentialist: How the Arab Spring Remade Obama’s Foreign Policy,” The New Yorker, May 2, 2011, available at www. newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/02/the-consequentialist 70 Defense Strategic Guidance: Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 2012), p. 2. 71 The most recent iteration of the National Security Strategy states the following, “We see a strategic convergence with India’s Act East policy and our continued implementation of the rebalance to Asia and the Pacific.” See National Security Strategy (Washington, DC: The White House, February 2015), available at www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2015_national_security_strategy.pdf

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Iskander Rehman 72 Evan Montgomery has suggested that leading states are more willing to accommodate rising regional powers when the ascent of emerging power in question contributes to counterhegemonic balancing, and to a more enduring stability of the existing regional order. See Evan Braden Montgomery, In the Hegemon’s Shadow: Leading States and the Rise of Regional Powers (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). 73 Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates famously stated in 2009 that the U.S. looked to “India to be a partner and net provider of security in the Indian Ocean and beyond.” See his speech in Singapore on May 30, 2009, available at www.iiss.org/en/events/shangri%20la%20dialogue/archive/ shangri-la-dialogue-2009-99ea/first-plenary-session-5080/dr-robert-gates-6609 74 On the U.S.-India relationship under the Trump Administration, see Dhruva Jaishankar, "On China, Modi Won Unexpected Support From Trump," (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, June 29, 2017), available at www.brookings.edu/opinions/on-china-modi-won-unexpected-support-from-trump/ 75 Hillary Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century,” Foreign Policy, October 11, 2011, available at www. foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/11/americas_pacific_century 76 For some theorists such as Barry Buzan, the Indian Ocean does not qualify as a regional security complex, but rather forms a disparate assemblage of sub-regions. See Barry Buzan, “Naval Power, the Law of the Sea, and the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace,” Marine Policy, 5, No. 3, 1983, pp. 194–204. 77 Ashley J. Tellis, “The Indian Ocean and U.S. Grand Strategy,” Keynote Speech, organized by the National Maritime Foundation, at the India International Center, New Delhi, January 17, 2012, transcript available at www.maritimeindia.org/Eminent%20Person/Lecture-by-Ashley.html 78 Michael J. Green and Andrew Shearer, “Defining U.S. Indian Ocean Strategy,” The Washington Quarterly, 35, No.2 (2012), p. 178. 79 Walter Ladwig III, Andrew. S. Erickson, and Justin D. Mikolay, “Diego Garcia and American Security in the Indian Ocean,” in Carnes Lord and Andrew S. Erickson (Eds.) Rebalancing U.S. Forces: Basing and Forward Presence in the Asia-Pacific (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2014), pp. 131–181. 80 Iskander Rehman, Zack Cooper and Jim Thomas, Gateway to the Indo-Pacific: Australian Defense Strategy and the Future of the Australia-U.S. Alliance (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2013), p. 13. 81 David Brewster, India’s Ocean: The Story of India’s Bid for Regional Leadership (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 166. 82 Joint Operational Access Concept (JOAC) Version 1.0 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 2012), available at www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/JOAC_Jan%202012_Signed.pdf 83 For an overview of these debates, see Aaron Friedberg, Beyond Air-Sea Battle: The Debate over U.S. Military Strategy in Asia (London: Institute for International Strategic Studies, 2014). 84 The first publicly known variant of the AirSea Battle Concept, published in 2010 by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, mentions the possibility of carrying out “peripheral operations to secure rear areas,” and implementing distant blockaded west of the Malacca Straits, well out of range of the PLA’s A2/AD systems. See Jan Van Tol et al., Air-Sea Battle: A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2010), p. 77. 85 Aaron Friedberg, Beyond Air-Sea Battle: The Debate over U.S. Military Strategy in Asia (London: Institute for International Strategic Studies, 2014), p. 55. 86 For a detailed description of this exercise, see China’s Navy Extends Its Combat Reach to the Indian Ocean (Washington, DC: U.S-China Economic and Security Review Commission Staff Report, 2014), pp. 2-4, available at http://origin.www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/Staff%20Report_ China’s%20Navy%20Extends%20its%20Combat%20Reach%20to%20the%20Indian%20Ocean.pdf 87 This is discussed in greater depth in Iskander Rehman, Murky Waters: Naval Nuclear Dynamics in the Indian Ocean (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2015), pp. 10–11, available at http://carnegieendowment.org/files/murky_waters.pdf 88 See, for example, Sunil Khilnani et al., Nonalignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the Twenty First Century (New Delhi: Center for Policy Research, 2012), p. 13, and Harsh V. Pant and Yogesh Joshi, “The American Pivot and the Indian Navy: It’s Hedging All the Way,” Naval War College Review, 68, No. 1, 2015, pp. 47–66. 89 For an overview of the role of the Indian Navy in India’s grand strategy, see Iskander Rehman, “India’s Fitful Quest for Seapower,” India Review, 16, No.2, 2017, pp. 226-265. 90 Manu Pubby, “From Iran to Saudi Arabia and Israel, Indian Navy Pulls Off Visits to 40 Nations,” The Economic Times, September 15, 2015, available at http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/

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defence/from-iran-to-saudi-arabia-and-israel-indian-navy-pulls-off-visits-to-40-nations/article show/48963735.cms For a sobering analysis of the military implications of Chinese land reclamation projects, see Thomas Shugart, “China’s Artificial Islands Are Bigger (And a Bigger Deal) Than You Think,” War on the Rocks, September 21, 2016, available at http://warontherocks.com/2016/09/ chinas-artificial-islands-are-bigger-and-a-bigger-deal-than-you-think/ John W. Garver, “Diverging Perceptions of China’s Emergence as an Indian Ocean Power,” Asia Policy, 22, 2016, p. 60. Indrani Bagchi, “China Harasses Indian Naval Ship on South China Sea,” The Times of India, September 2, 2011, available at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/China-harasses-Indian-naval-ship-onSouth-China-Sea/articleshow/9829900.cms See Admiral Arun Prakash (Retd.), “India Must Pause before Venturing into Choppy Waters,” Rediff News, September 26, 2011, available at www.rediff.com/news/column/column-india-must-pausebefore-venturing-into-choppy-waters/20110926.htm C. Raja Mohan, “Getting Real with Hanoi,” The Indian Express, November 19, 2013, available at http:// indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/getting-real-with-hanoi/2/, and Ho Binh Minh, “India Offers $500 Million Defense Credit as Vietnam Seeks Arms Boost,” Reuters, September 3, 2016, available at www.reuters.com/article/us-vietnam-india-idUSKCN11905U Sanjeev Miglani, “India Plans Expanded Missile Export Drive with China on Its Mind,” Reuters, June 8, 2016, available at www.reuters.com/article/us-india-missiles-idUSKCN0YU2SQ Sushant Singh and Pranav Kulkarni, “Question of Joint Patrolling With the U.S. Does Not Arise: Parrikar,” The Indian Express, March 5, 2016, available at http://indianexpress.com/article/india/indianews-india/question-of-joint-patrolling-with-the-us-does-not-arise-need-to-cut-the-flab-from-themilitary-parrikar/ India signed a Trilateral Maritime Security Cooperation Agreement with Sri Lanka and the Maldives in 2014, which has since been extended to other Indian Ocean island states, such as Mauritius, Madagascar, and the Seychelles. See Sandeep Dikshit, “Seychelles, Mauritius Join Indian Ocean Maritime Security Group,” The Hindu, March 7, 2014, available at www.thehindu.com/ news/national/seychelles-mauritius-join-indian-ocean-maritime-security-group/article5758402. ece, and C. Raja Mohan, “Modi and the Indian Ocean: Restoring India’s Sphere of Influence,” Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, June 18, 2015, available at https://amti.csis.org/modi-and-theindian-ocean-restoring-indias-sphere-of-influence/ There is serious concern, however, over the long-term effects of enhanced levels of subsurface deployments in the Indian Ocean. See Rahul Singh, “China’s Submarines in Indian Ocean Worry Indian Navy,” Hindustan Times, April 7, 2013, available at www.hindustantimes.com/delhi/china-s-submarinesin-indian-ocean-worry-indian-navy/story-0Fjcrc7s9jlHwg1ybpiTsL.html David Brewster, “An Indian Ocean Dilemma: Sino-Indian Rivalry and China’s Strategic Vulnerability in the Indian Ocean,” Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, 11, No. 1, 2015, pp. 48–59. James G. Lacey (Ed.) Enduring Strategic Rivalries (Arlington, VA: Institute for Defense Analyses, 2014), pp. 1–16, available at www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA621612 On the loss of strength gradient, see Kenneth Boulding, Conflict and Defense: A General Theory (New York: Harper, 1962), pp. 245–247. You Ji, China’s Military Transformation (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2016), p. 215. See James Holmes, China’s Energy Consumption and Opportunities for U.S.-China Cooperation to Address the Effects of China’s Energy Use, testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 110th Cong., 1st sess., 14 June 2007, available at www.uscc.gov/ Indeed, one could argue that India, which imports approximately 80% of its crude oil requirements, faces a “Hormuz Dilemma” of its own. See Sudheer Pal Singh, “Can India Halve Oil Import Dependence by 2030?,” The Business Standard, April 8, 2015, available at www.businessstandard.com/article/economy-policy/can-india-cut-down-its-oil-import-dependence-by-ahalf-by-2030–115040800227_1.html See Iskander Rehman, “The Indian Navy Has a Big Problem: The Subsurface Dilemma,” The National Interest, November 4, 2014, available at http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-indian-navy-has-bigproblem-the-subsurface-dilemma-11598 See Usman Ansari, “Pakistan, China Finalize 8-Sub Construction Plan,” Defense News, October 11, 2015, available at www.defensenews.com/story/defense/naval/submarines/2015/10/11/pakistanchina-finalize-8-sub-construction-plan/73634218/

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Iskander Rehman 108 As one Australian naval analyst notes, “Apart from continuing Beijing’s long-term arms sales relationship with Bangladesh and augmenting its influence with the Bangladeshi Navy, complicating India’s naval environment in this way must create a constraint on the Indian Navy’s effort to look east to the South China Sea.” See James Goldrick, “Opening Gambit? Bangladesh’s Planned Submarine Program May See Shift in Indian Ocean Strategic Balance,” Jane’s Navy International, February 6, 2014, at www. janes.com/ 109 Author’s conversation with Bangladeshi officials, Dhaka, December 14, 2015. 110 On Portuguese naval expansion into the Indian Ocean, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500–1700: A Political and Economic History (Oxford, UK: John Wiley and Sons, 2012). 111 See Iskander Rehman, “The Subsurface Dimension of Sino-Indian Maritime Rivalry,” in David Brewster (Ed.) India and China at Sea: Strategic Competition in the Maritime Domain (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2017). 112 On the (originally Australian) concept of the Indo-Pacific, see Rory Medcalf, “The Indo-Pacific: What’s in a Name?,” The American Interest, 9, No.2, 2013, available at www.the-american-interest. com/2013/10/10/the-indo-pacific-whats-in-a-name/

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26 ASIAN REGIONALISM David Capie

The old saying about East Asia during the Cold War was that it was ‘a region without regionalism’.1 Writing in 1992, Albert Fishlow and Stephen Haggard could confidently argue that ‘the puzzle with reference to the Pacific is not to explain the progress of regional initiatives but to explain their relative weakness.’2 In 1994, the paucity of regional institutions in East Asia even led Aaron Friedberg to worry that the region was ‘ripe for rivalry’ and at serious risk of war.3 Today, the claim that Asia has too little regionalism and too few regional institutions is unlikely to be heard. Alongside the fifty-year old Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) there is a plethora of regional and sub-regional groups with overlapping memberships and mandates. Central among these are arrangements that have evolved out of ASEAN, including the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF, formed in 1994), ASEAN-Plus-Three (APT, formed in 1997), the East Asia Summit (EAS, formed in 2005), and the ASEAN Defence Ministers-Plus process (formed in 2010). ASEAN itself holds some 1400 meetings a year. It has grown from five original members to ten (with an eleventh, Timor Leste seeking to join), and sustains active diplomacy with dialogue partners from across the world. Yet despite this remarkable growth, Asia’s regionalism has made an uneven contribution to regional security. Although there has not been a war between states in East Asia since 1979, few analysts attribute this peace directly to the role of regionalism.4 Criticisms have grown about the ability or willingness of regional organisations to confront some of the most pressing security issues, such as disputes in the South China Sea. But these brickbats notwithstanding, regionalism is generally regarded as a positive contribution to peace and there is little interest in shuttering any of Asia’s regional groups. Asia’s regionalism continues to evolve and move in new directions, but for the most part it is doing so incrementally, growing out of existing arrangements. This chapter explores Asia’s burgeoning regionalism. It is split into four parts. It opens with an overview of the broad theoretical approaches to the study of regionalism in Asia. Second, it provides a summary of the development of regional arrangements in Asia since World War II, focusing in particular on the institutionally rich sub-region of Southeast Asia and from there outwards to the wider ‘Asia-Pacific’. Third, it examines why regionalism has not taken root in Northeast Asia. Finally, it looks ahead to imagine what new patterns of regionalism might emerge as a result of the growing power and influence of China.

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Theorising Asian regionalism Theories of international politics take sharply different views on the salience and drivers of regional cooperation. For realists, regionalism, like all forms of cooperation, is a means used by self-interested states to advance their national goals. This kind of cooperation is limited in scope and the relationships rarely go beyond what John J. Mearsheimer describes as ‘marriages of convenience’.5 While they vary in their assessment of its utility, realists are clear that regionalism does not represent a paradigm shift in international relations in which national interests become subordinated to some shared sense of collective identity. A common theme of all realist scholarship is insecurity and realists see one important driver of regional cooperation as the identification of a shared external threat. In Asia, perceptions of the growing threat posed by communism during the 1950s and 1960s, was one factor in pushing states to join regional arrangements like the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and later to form the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). As Donald Hellman noted in a paper written in 1966, the year before ASEAN was formed, ‘actual and potential security threats . . . rather than common cultural heritage . . . have laid the foundation for a sense of regional identity.’6 However, unlike Cold War Europe, Asia never had a single external threat that served to push regional states together. Some states were primarily concerned about the Soviet Union. Others worried more about China, Vietnam, or the United States. Threat perceptions varied greatly, in part explaining why Asia never successfully developed a single regional alliance like NATO. If realists agree that external threats can be a push factor for regional cooperation, those who focus on systemic explanations, such as the overall distribution of power, are divided on the conditions in which regionalism is likely to emerge. Some argue that a dominant hegemonic actor is needed that is willing to provide public goods that will encourage smaller states to join a group. Others look at the same asymmetrical distribution of power and conclude it creates an incentive for smaller states to collaborate to constrain the hegemon. This leads some to suggest an American post Cold War ‘unipolar’ moment was important in facilitating regionalism, while other realists argue the opposite – that too large a power gap between Washington and its Asian partners during the Cold War actually made bilateralism a more attractive strategy.7 Among the scholars who have closely examined the workings of Asia’s regional institutions, the work of Michael Leifer on ASEAN sits well with this realist perspective.8 Unlike many realists, Leifer did not dismiss regionalism, but rather viewed it as something dependent on the wider balance of power. In assessing regional security arrangements like the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), Leifer observed that to be viable the ARF was ‘dependent on the prior existence of a stable balance of power, but is not really in a position to create it.’9 In contrast to realists, liberal, institutionalist, and functionalist theorists are more optimistic that economic and practical forms of interaction among states that can ‘spill over’ to create deeper patterns of regional political and security cooperation.10 The creation of shared habits, rules, and formal and informal groups (or ‘regimes’) can help states to overcome the worst excesses of anarchy and allow them to advance common goals. In Asia, there have been a host of efforts to build economic arrangements on a regional and sub-regional basis. From the late 1970s onwards, ASEAN increasingly took on an economic focus, developing its own Free Trade Area, and later proclaiming the goal of an ASEAN Economic Community. In 1989, Australia and Japan successfully pushed for the creation of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), a trans-Pacific group of economies that would pursue trade liberalisation and development goals. But arguably the most successful regional links have been the webs of commercial transactions and cross-border supply chains that have created 334

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a sense of regional connectedness from the bottom up. This process is sometimes referred to as regionalisation or ‘the expression of increased commercial and human transactions in a defined geographic space’.11 In contrast, regionalism is usually understood as a top down process that adds formal levels of intergovernmental cooperation, often but not always, in the form of an international organisation or group. In this latter sense, Asia’s economic regionalism has progressed at a faster rate than its security arrangements. With the exception of ASEAN, multilateral institutions are rarely tasked to address both economic and security issues, and some of the larger groups like APEC have eschewed a security mandate. But this formal divide notwithstanding, there are strong connections between economic and security cooperation at the regional level. Asian states typically understand their security in comprehensive terms, underpinned by economic resilience and improving levels of development. They also understand that one of the conditions in which growth and investment is possible is a peaceful and stable security environment. Initiatives such as proposals for regional free trade areas also reflect states’ broader security interests and ambitions. Rival visions for regional economic cooperation have been a feature of Asia’s diplomacy in recent years, with Japan pressing a Comprehensive Economic Partnership for East Asia (CEPEA), China preferring to see an FTA based around ASEAN-Plus-Three (APT), and the Obama administration advancing its own twelve nation model of cooperation under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). While all of these are essentially about economic cooperation, they also reflect underlying preferences about how best to structure the regional security order. Advancing economic welfare and development goals has been a critical driver of regional cooperation in East Asia.12 But the claim made by functionalists, that closer commercial links will generate warmer political and security relations, is still highly questionable in East Asia. For example, the very deep trade and investment ties that exist between states in Northeast Asia or between China and the United States have not been enough to overcome the mistrust and rivalries among them. A third cluster of theories that have come to the fore in recent years examines Asian regionalism through the lens of identity. Social constructivists argue that regions themselves are not natural features of world politics but rather are ‘social constructs’, the product of shared understandings and ideas. In contrast to realists and liberals who stress the persistence of ‘taken for granted’ national interests and the role of material incentives, constructivists emphasise the role of ideas and norms. They start by asking: where do interests come from? Their answers draw attention to the role of a state’s sense of itself, or in other words its identity. They argue some notion of collective identity is therefore a crucial requirement for regional collaboration. Trying to account for the absence of regional multilateral structures during the Cold War in Asia, Christopher Hemmer and Peter Katzenstein point to the lack of shared identity between the United States and its would-be partners.13 Given that Asia is so linguistically, culturally, politically, and economically diverse, how can it have a common identity that could provide the basis for regionalism? In his influential work on Southeast Asia, Amitav Acharya points to the shared norms of ‘the ASEAN way’ – informality, consensus, and non-interference in internal affairs – as the basis for cooperation. He argues that together these norms represent a long-term process of interaction and adjustment, a diplomatic culture that shapes state behaviour. Collectively a sense of regional identity had seen to the creation of a nascent Southeast Asian security community, in which states are confident that all members of the community will resolve their differences peacefully.14 Critics have responded strongly to claims about ASEAN as a security community, however, and in his more recent work Acharya himself has conceded the group has failed to live up to its promise. 335

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General characteristics of Asian regionalism In addition to these distinct theoretical approaches, we can make a number of other general comments about Asian regionalism. First, compared to European efforts at regional integration, Asian regionalism gives greater emphasis to state sovereignty. The norm of non-interference in member states’ domestic affairs is religiously recounted, although it is sometimes honoured in the breach.15 Asian regionalism is also institutionally ‘thin’. There is little interest in supranationalism or pooling sovereignty and a strong reluctance to see power transferred to a regional secretariat. In 2012, the ASEAN Secretariat employed just 300 people – of whom 70 were professional staff – and had a budget of $16 million. The European Commission by contrast had a budget of $4.5 billion and around 34,000 personnel.16 Second, Asian regionalism has developed on the basis of pragmatic and incremental learning.17 Ambitious goals are sometimes announced even in the recognition that not all members will be able to meet them and that some backsliding is likely. Most institutions work on the basis of consensus, as opposed to majority voting, and so to some extent progress depends on the comfort level of the least ambitious member. This has proved a frustration for some participants, but although some have suggested modifying the consensus rule it has proved persistent. Third, although great powers have exercised a significant influence over the shape of regional projects, the most successful instances of Asian regionalism today reflect a compromise in which the most powerful allow weaker states to play a central role. While China, Japan, and the United States all have leadership ambitions in Asia, ASEAN currently represents the only leader acceptable to them all, hence the importance of ‘ASEAN centrality’ in most of Asia’s regional institutions. How long this will continue to be the case remains to be seen, but ASEAN’s driver’s seat role has been more resilient than many critics might have expected.18 Finally, patterns of Asian regionalism have been influenced in important ways by external events and crises. In some cases Asian states have attempted to emulate regional projects that have developed elsewhere. The Japanese government’s 1965 proposal for a Pacific Free Trade Area, for example, was directly inspired by the formation of the European Common Market. An example of a more defensive response is the creation of APEC in 1989, which reflected growing concerns in Asia and the Pacific about the push for a European Single Market and a North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). The feeble response of the United States and international financial institutions to the Asian Financial Crisis helped provide an important rationale for deeper cooperation on an East Asian basis after 1997.

Asian regionalism: the historical experience What then has been the historical trajectory of regionalism in Asia? At risk of simplification, it can be divided into four phases: a period between the end of the Second World War and the late 1960s in which regionalism struggled to take hold. A second period from the late 1960s until the end of the Cold War in which ASEAN was created and the seeds of wider regional cooperation were planted; third, a period of dynamic ‘Asia-Pacific’ regionalism from 1990–1997; and finally a fourth period in which regional projects became increasingly contested, and where China’s role in regional cooperation has become more and more important. In the period after World War II, there was interest in the creation of regional groups in particular among Asia’s anti-communist states. Inspired by the conclusion of the Atlantic Pact which led to the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1948, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan began to press for a Pacific Pact, which they believed would help provide for their defence. Initially the United States was wary, fearing overcommitting to a part of the world it regarded as much less important than Europe. But the victory of communists 336

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in the Chinese civil war and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 led to a change of heart, and Asia began to be seen as a key theatre in the Cold War struggle. Initially, however, the US preference was to organise its defence ties on a ‘hub and spokes’ bilateral basis, with the only exception the trilateral alliance with Australia and New Zealand (ANZUS). But by the middle of the 1950s, with communism perceived to be ‘on the march’, the US returned to the idea of collective defence, albeit with only limited success.19 The 1954 Manila Pact, which created the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), had eight members, but only two (Thailand and the Philippines) were from within Southeast Asia itself. But if Thailand and the Philippines were willing to join a regional defence arrangement, the leaders of many of the other of the region’s newly independent states looked on with considerable wariness. Amitav Acharya argues that these proposals for collective defence arrangements were seen as incompatible with anti-colonialism and the new and evolving norm of non-interference. For example, Burma’s leader U Nu told a US audience that ‘an alliance with a big power immediately means domination by that power. It means the loss of independence.’ Nehru called states that were prepared to join these arrangements ‘camp followers’ and it said it deprived them of their ‘freedom and dignity’. One of the outcomes of the 1955 Asia–Africa Conference at Bandung was to call for the ‘abstention from the use of arrangements of collective defence to serve any particular interests of the big powers’.20 If efforts to build a region-wide security framework proved impossible or unappealing, there were attempts to do so on a sub-regional basis in Southeast Asia. The Malayan Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman had suggested the creation of a Southeast Asian group as early as 1958, but it was not until 1961 that the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA) was formed, with Thailand, Malaya, and the Philippines as its members. It focused on small, practical instances of cooperation that were designed to support national economic goals, and a key motivation was the strong sense of anti-communism on the part of the Malayan and Philippines leaders. The fact two of its members were also part of SEATO, however, led other Southeast Asian nations, including Indonesia, to regard it with suspicion. It collapsed in 1963 following the Philippines assertion of a claim to Sabah, which the British colonial authorities intended to include in the new Federation of Malaysia.21 MAPHILINDO (Malaya-Philippines-Indonesia) was formed in August 1963, and was the first regional organisation Indonesia agreed to join. But the group was almost immediately dealt a fatal blow when the Federation of Malaysia was created by the United Kingdom. Indonesia saw this as a colonial power imposing its will on the region and launched its policy of Konfrontasi (Confrontation) against Malaysia (and Singapore after it was expelled from the Federation) that lasted until 1966. The Philippines and Malaysia were still at odds over Sabah. Given these divisions, it is not surprising that almost nothing practical resulted from MAPHILINDO.22 What explains the failure of regionalism in this first period? One reason is that while Asian governments may have invoked the rhetoric of post-colonial fraternity, they were still primarily focused on national development and did not see regional cooperation as an important way to advance their domestic agendas. Second, a plethora of historical and contemporary disputes, including over ideological alignment in the wider Cold War struggle, made it difficult to find common ground. Third, the external powers that could have helped provide a push for regional cooperation were distracted by events elsewhere, or in the case of Japan, still recovering from the war. But by the late 1960s, Bernard Gordon had detected three changes that made regional cooperation seem more attractive.23 First, established ‘efficient’ states such as Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines were interested in finding ways to work together. Second, with the replacement of the nationalist President Sukarno by Suharto in 1966, Indonesia moved from being an opponent 337

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of regionalism to seeking to reduce intra-regional tensions. This meant there was the potential to include Indonesia and to make any new Southeast Asian group truly regional. Third, external powers such as Japan and the United States were supportive and well placed to provide material assistance for any efforts at regionalism. Indeed, in a speech in April 1965, President Lyndon Johnson had offered up to $1 billion to support the countries of Southeast Asia were they to ‘associate themselves in a greatly expanded cooperative effort for development.’24 This new environment would pave the way for the creation of Asia’s most successful regional arrangement, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ASEAN was founded on 8 August 1967 with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand as its members. In formal terms, it was not intended to be a security organisation. The founding Bangkok Declaration stated that its main purposes were to: ‘accelerate economic growth, social progress, and cultural development in the region’ and to ‘promote regional peace and stability’. But the original ASEAN-5 were all anti-communist, and security matters were of critical importance to leaders, though they avoided presenting themselves as a security bloc in order to ‘avoid the polarizing effects of such a position on the other states of the region.’25 ASEAN developed slowly after 1967, focused primarily on finding ways to promote economic development to undercut the appeal of communism. The group had a loose organisational structure and heads of state did not meet collectively until the convening of the Bali Conference in 1976. This saw the conclusion of two important agreements: the Declaration of ASEAN Concord and the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC). The former set out areas for economic cooperation, including energy and food security, industrial development, trade, and approaches to the outside world. The TAC focused more on security, with the goals of promoting ‘perpetual peace, everlasting unity and cooperation among the people which would contribute to their strength, solidarity and closer relationship.’ The TAC provided for accession by external powers, obliging all its signatories to resolve their differences peacefully.26 By the 1980s, ASEAN had become an established part of regional diplomacy, but its membership was still limited to the five original ‘like-minded’ states. Indeed, a key shared goal for all five members was their staunch opposition to Vietnam’s invasion and occupation of Cambodia. Brunei became a member in 1984 but it was not until Hanoi’s withdrawal of its forces from Cambodia in 1989, that steps were taken to move ASEAN towards its professed goal of representing ‘One Southeast Asia’. Vietnam was admitted in July 1995 and Laos and Myanmar joined two years later, as the group marked its 30th anniversary in Kuala Lumpur. Cambodia’s membership was delayed until 1999 after a coup in that country, a decision that showed that ASEAN’s non-interference principle was more malleable that might have been thought the case. Expansion to ten members had pluses and minuses for ASEAN. On the one hand the fact all states had acceded to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation improved the prospects for dealing with intra-regional disputes and differences. It encouraged economic cooperation and improved the group’s influence on the wider international stage. But expansion also brought serious complications. Among the new members, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia were so poor as to raise the prospect of a ‘two tier’ ASEAN. It also raised challenges for the group’s dealings with the outside world: relations with the European Union were damaged by the admission of Myanmar’s military government and the inclusion of Vietnam drew ASEAN into the longstanding Sino–Vietnamese rivalry.27

From the ASEAN way to the Asia-Pacific way? With the end of the Cold War, some began to worry that the absence of region-wide security arrangements would mean Asia would struggle to deal with the changing balance of power and emerging transnational threats. Australia and Canada advanced proposals for a new regional 338

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multilateral grouping, pointing to the OSCE in Europe as a potential model. The ‘European’ experience did not find favour with an Asian audience, however, who were quick to note that Asia had never been divided as clearly as Western and Eastern Europe, and who disliked the emphasis on formal, intrusive confidence building measures. The United States also objected, fearing multilateral institutions would undermine its bilateral alliance strategy. US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific Richard Solomon famously dismissed the Canadian and Australian proposals as ‘solutions in search of a problem’.28 But with careful advocacy by non-governmental track two elites in Southeast Asia, the idea of a security forum for the wider Asia-Pacific region eventually found supporters in ASEAN. In 1994 the ASEAN Regional Forum was launched as a ‘dialogue forum’ where states could come together to discuss and address regional security concerns. It was deliberative, inclusive (membership included rivals such as the US, Russia, China, and Vietnam) and its modalities were based on the norms of the ASEAN way, meaning domestic security issues were off-limits and all agreements had to be based on the consensus rules. ASEAN was acknowledged as sitting in the ‘driver’s seat’, with an ASEAN state chairing each meeting, and playing a crucial role in setting the agenda and drafting agreements. The ARF was envisaged as working in three phrases, with an initial focus on confidence building between member states. This would in turn give way to preventive diplomacy, before a third phase of conflict resolution could begin. But although the forum quickly developed a busy inter-sessional agenda, with groups that addressed issues such as maritime security, non-proliferation, counter-terrorism, and disaster relief, it has struggled to progress beyond confidence building. Critics charge that the ARF has become a ‘talk-fest’ that has a strategy of ‘managing problems rather than solving them’.29 The ARF process provided a way for foreign ministers and their officials to come together to discuss security concerns, but it was not until 2006 that a parallel regional arrangement for defence ministers was created in Southeast Asia. The ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM) broke with a longstanding norm against multilateralising defence cooperation in ASEAN.30 In 2010 it was further expanded to include eight ASEAN dialogue partners (China, Japan, ROK, India, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, and the United States) under the banner of the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM) Plus. In contrast to the ARF, ADMM-Plus is focused on ‘practical cooperation’ rather than simply dialogue. Its inter-sessional work programme includes Expert Working Groups devoted to maritime security, peacekeeping operations, counter-terrorism, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR), humanitarian demining, cyber-security, and military medicine. Although ADMM-Plus faces many of the same problems that stand in the way of progress in the ARF, it has at least been responsible for some landmark instances of military cooperation. In May 2016, for example, thousands of troops, 18 vessels, and 26 aircraft took part in a multilateral maritime security and counter-terrorism exercise, which included sailing through the South China Sea.

Asia-Pacific or East Asian regionalism? If the 1990s were a period of remarkable institutional innovation and growth based around ASEAN, the decade ended amidst a sense that regionalism had stalled or was in decline.31 In 1997, East Asia was hit by a financial crisis that saw the collapse of a number of currencies and caused regional stock markets to plunge. Indonesia’s economy shrank 13.5% in 1998 and the rupiah fell 80% against the US dollar. Governments from South Korea to Thailand suddenly found themselves wrestling with surging levels of debt and a huge number of people falling below the poverty line. Amidst this turmoil, regional groupings had their own problems. ASEAN was 339

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struggling to adapt to the challenge posed by the admission of its newest, much poorer members. The ARF had failed to make much headway on the most serious security issues facing the region and was already being referred to as a ‘talk shop’, and hopes that APEC would usher in a bold era of trans-Pacific trade liberalisation had faded after 1995. This disillusionment might have been expected to lead to a contraction in regional institution-building or at least a focus on consolidating what was already in place. But on the contrary, as the region struggled to overcome the financial crisis, a raft of new regional initiatives was advanced. These did not focus on trans-Pacific connections, but rather proposed cooperation on an East Asian basis. East Asian regionalism had been proposed earlier in the decade by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed, in his 1990 call for an East Asian Economic Group (EAEG) that would bring together a group of ‘Asian’ states, but notably excluded the US. This proposal was strongly and successfully opposed by Washington and ultimately the group became a modest caucus inside APEC. The idea of East Asian regional cooperation would not go away, however, and the Asian Financial Crisis provided a midwife for new forms of regionalism. The ASEAN Plus Three (APT) process began in modest circumstances when the foreign ministers of China, Japan, and South Korea were invited to join their ASEAN counterparts on the sidelines of a meeting in Bangkok in 1996. In 1997, heads of states met as part of the 30th anniversary of ASEAN in Kuala Lumpur. At that meeting Korean president Kim Dae-jung proposed the formation of an East Asian Vision Group (EAVG) to draw up a roadmap for cooperation on an East Asian basis. Much of the early focus was on functional cooperation and non-traditional or ‘soft’ security issues, but by the early 2000s, significant progress had been made on a regional financial arrangement known as the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI).32 Analysts were quick to herald ‘the beginning of a new era of regionalism’.33 Functionalist theories would explain the rise of APT as a natural accompaniment to growing levels of economic interdependence. But as John Ravenhill has pointed out, intra-regional trade among East Asian states actually declined after 1995, leading him to argue that East Asian regionalism was not driven by growing integration but rather was a calculated response to the economic crisis that had interrupted regional integration. In this sense APT reflected a desire to hedge against developments elsewhere, including a closer European Union and a potential Free Trade Area of the Americas.34 But if East Asian states saw a greater incentive to cooperate in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis, underlying geopolitical tensions remained. In particular, Japan and some of the ASEAN states worried that China would be able to easily dominate a group of thirteen countries. They began to push for a larger group that would also include India, Australia, and New Zealand, and in 2005 the sixteen nations came together to form the East Asia Summit (EAS). This group was based around ASEAN and followed its model of consensus decision making and minimal institutionalisation – Donald Emmerson described it as ‘dinner followed by sixteen speeches’. In 2009, the group was expanded to include the United States and Russia, meaning for the first time Asia had a regional group that met at leaders level, that could address the whole range of political, economic or security issues.

Northeast Asia’s ‘stunted regionalism’ One sub-region stands in stark contrast to the dense economic and political regionalism that has emerged out of Southeast Asia in the last two decades, and that is Northeast Asia. Although China, Japan, the Republic of Korea (and in some conceptions of the region, Russia) are deeply connected in terms of trade and finance, they have struggled to create formal groupings that might advance shared goals. There are several reasons for the absence of regionalism in Northeast 340

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Asia. First is the hold of nationalism, in particular strongly anti-Japanese sentiment, which has at different times been highly salient in Chinese and South Korean domestic politics. This mistrust has led China to oppose Japanese initiatives (and vice-versa). Indeed, one reason ASEAN has found itself in ‘the driver’s seat’ of East Asian regionalism, is that it is the only leader acceptable to both Northeast Asia’s great powers. Second, and related, is the strongly negative inter-state security picture. North and South Korea, and Japan and Russia are yet to formally sign peace treaties to mark the end of the Second World War. There are numerous territorial disputes, including between China–Japan over Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, Japan–ROK over Tokdo/Takeshima, and Russia–Japan over the Kuriles. This of course begs the question why states have not been able to put aside their differences and find common interests around which to collaborate. Gilbert Rozman argues the answer lies in what he calls ‘modernization with insufficient globalization’. He claims that patterns of economic development going back many decades have left ‘domestic interests in each country unusually resistant to important manifestations of openness and trust to the outside.’ Regionalism requires states to be committed to bold strategies of cooperation, but elites prefer to focus instead on ‘symbols of perceived unfairness or humiliation.’35 This is not to suggest there have been no efforts to build regional arrangements in Northeast Asia. A Canadian-sponsored North Pacific Cooperative Security Dialogue (NPCSD), which ran from 1991 to 1993, was one of the first attempts to bring together officials and academics from the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, Canada, and the United States for two tracks (official and non-official) of security dialogue. The Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) also sustained these connections through its North Pacific Working Group. Yet track two initiatives did not lead to breakthroughs at the official level. The only important inter-governmental security mechanism was the Six Party Talks, which held six rounds of dialogue from 2003 to 2009. It was focused on North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes and the talks broke down in 2009 after North Korea declared it would no longer participate in the talks nor be bound by any of the commitments previously agreed. There have been nascent efforts at formalising political and economic connections in Northeast Asia, particularly on a triangular China-Japan-Korea (‘CJK’) basis. At the ASEAN-Plus-Three meeting in 2002 the ‘Plus Three’ leaders issued a Joint Declaration on Promoting Trilateral Cooperation. An annual summit of leaders was first proposed by South Korea in 2004 and the three leaders met for the first time in 2008. In 2011 a Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat was set up in Seoul, but progress has been slow and meetings have tended to be shaped by the pressing global issues of the moment, including the Global Financial Crisis and the response to the Fukushima disaster in 2011. Summits did not take place in 2013 and 2014 because of disputes between the nations over territorial and historical issues. They resumed in 2015, but a proposed 2016 summit had to be delayed following the impeachment of Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Regionalism with Chinese characteristics? As was noted above, the United States has historically played an important role in shaping regionalism in Asia. US objections to many proposals for multilateralism during the Cold War meant that ASEAN was one of the few groups to flourish. After the Cold War, the US eventually became a strong supporter of the ASEAN-centred arrangements like the ARF and ADMMPlus, seeing them as a useful complement to its bilateral alliances and economic arrangements like APEC. But as the regional balance of power has shifted, China has become an increasingly important player in Asian regionalism. Since the early 1990s China had gone from being suspicious 341

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of regional arrangements and largely reactive when it had been a member of regional groups, to seeking to design and lead its own regional projects, including formal institutions. In 2013, President Xi Jinping officially launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which is intended to fund infrastructure projects across the region. The US and Japan opposed the initiative, arguing it would weaken governance standards around development projects and also undercut the Japanese-led Asian Development Bank (ADB). Washington lobbied US allies including Australia and South Korea not to join, but without success. Indeed, as of late 2016, more than fifty countries had signed up to join the AIIB. Beijing has also pressed its ambitions through its twin proposals for a ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ and ‘Twenty-First Century Maritime Silk Road’, together known as One Belt One Road (OBOR). These vague initiatives ‘aim to promote joint development, common prosperity and cooperation between China and countries across Asia.’36 China has also worked to build regional security arrangements. While it professes strong support for ‘ASEAN centrality’ at the track one level, Beijing has fostered and supported numerous forums where Chinese views on regional security can get a sympathetic hearing. In 1996 China was one of the founders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a grouping focused on Eurasian political and security concerns that included Russia, and four central Asian states, with India, Pakistan, and Iran also involved. The SCO has been seen as an effort to build a counterweight to Western alliances such as NATO, but the primary focus of the group’s activities are countering-terrorism and separatism. In 2007 China launched the Xiangshan Forum, which it hopes it will compete with the annual track 1.5 Shangri-La Dialogue held in Singapore, which Beijing regards as too critical of China. Yet, to date at least, China’s plans for security regionalism are still to generate widespread support. Comparatively few defence ministers attend the Xiangshan Forum for example, although this may change over time. But the rise of Chinese power may have another, unintended, impact on Asian regionalism. As well as being an active proponent for its own regional groups, China’s more assertive actions in the region in the last decade have had the result of pushing some states closer together. In 2007, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called for the creation of a Quadrilateral Security Dialogue including Australia, India, Japan, and the United States. The move was greeted with strong opposition from China, which saw it as a vehicle for containment, and Australia subsequently announced its withdrawal. But if the ‘Quad’ did not fly, however, a Trilateral Security Dialogue (TSD) has continued between Australia, Japan, and the United States. It remains to be seen if shifts in the balance of power will lead states to embrace new Beijing-centred frameworks for regional cooperation, or conversely to form new blocs to try and balance against China. For the time being, Asia’s regionalism is a multi-layered economic and security structure that reflects both cooperative and competitive impulses. Regionalism is not sufficient to ensure the peace, and multilateral organisations have many critics, but there are few voices arguing Asia would be better off without the multitude of regional arrangements that currently exist.

Notes 1 Zhongqi Pan, ‘Dilemmas of regionalism in East Asia’, Korea Review of International Studies (November 2007), no. 4, pp. 17–29. 2 Albert Fishow and Stephen Haggard, The United States and the Regionalization of the World Economy (OECD, Paris: 1992). 3 Aaron Friedberg, ‘Ripe for rivalry: Prospects for peace in a multipolar Asia’, International Security, vol. 18, no. 3 (Winter 1993–94), pp. 5–33. 4 For a good discussion see Muthiah Alagappa, ‘A changing Asia: Prospects for war, peace and cooperation’, Political Science, vol. 63, no. 2 (December 2011), pp. 155–185.

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Asian regionalism 5 John J. Mearsheimer, ‘The false promise of international institutions’, International Security, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 5–49. 6 Donald C. Hellman, ‘East Asia: The evolving postwar international order’, Paper presented to the 19th Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, New York City, 6 April 1966. 7 Contrast for example, Donald Crone, ‘Does hegemony matter? The reorgnaization of the Pacific political economy’, World Politics, vol. 45, no. 4 (1993), pp. 501–525, and Joseph Grieco, ‘Systemic sources of variation in regional institutionalization in Western Europe, East Asia and the Americas’, in Edward Mansfield and Helen Milner (eds.) The Political Economy of Regionalism (Columbia University Press, New York: 1997), pp. 164–187. 8 For an excellent collection of essays reflecting on Leifer’s work, see Joseph Chingyong Liow and Ralf Emmers (eds.) Order and Security in Southeast Asia: Essays in Memory of Michael Leifer (Routledge, London: 2006). 9 Ibid., p. 5. 10 For a discussion of liberal and functionalist views on the links between security and economic interdependence, see Hadi Soesatro, ‘Economic integration and interdependence in the Asia-Pacific: Implications for security’, Paper presented to the Eighth Asia-Pacific Roundtable, Kuala Lumpur, 5–8 June 1994. 11 Paul M. Evans, ‘Between regionalism and regionalization: Policy networks and the nascent East Asian institutional identity’, in T. J. Pempel (ed.) Remapping East Asia: The Construction of a Region (Cornell University Press, Ithaca: 2005), p. 196. 12 Miles Kahler, ‘Institution-building in the Pacific’, in Andrew Mack and John Ravenhill (eds.) Pacific Cooperation: Building Economic and Security Regimes in the Asia-Pacific Region (St. Leonnards, NSW, Allen & Unwin: 1994), pp. 27–43. 13 Christopher Hemmer and Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Why is there no NATO in Asia: Collective identity, regionalism and the origins of mulitlateralism’, International Organization, vol. 56, no. 3 (2002), pp. 575–607. 14 Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order (Routledge, London: 2001). 15 Lee Jones, ‘ASEAN’s unchanged melody? The theory and practice of “non-interference” in Southeast Asia’, The Pacific Review, vol. 23, no. 4 (2010), pp. 479–502. 16 Asian Development Bank Institute, ASEAN 2030: Towards a Borderless Economic Community (ADBI, Tokyo: 2014), p. 201. 17 Yuen Foong Khong and Helen E. S. Nesadurai, ‘Hanging together, institutional design and cooperation in Southeast Asia: AFTA and the ARF’, in Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnton (eds.) Crafting Cooperation: Regional International Institutions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 2007), pp. 32–82. 18 David Capie, ‘Explaining ASEAN’s resilience: Institutions, path dependency and Asia’s emerging architecture’, in Ralf Emmers (ed.) ASEAN and the Institutionalization of East Asia (Routledge, London: 2012), pp. 168–179. 19 John Foster Dulles, ‘Security in the Pacific’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 30, no. 2 (January 1952), pp. 175–187. 20 Amitav Acharya, Whose Ideas Matter? Agency and Power in Asian Regionalism (Cornell University Press, Ithaca: 2009), pp. 44–60. 21 Shaun Narine, Explaining ASEAN: Regionalism in Southeast Asia (Lynne Rienner, Boulder: 2002), p. 11. 22 Bernard K. Gordon, ‘Regionalism and instability in Southeast Asia’, in Joseph S. Nye (ed.) International Regionalism (Little Brown and Company, New York: 1968), p. 120. 23 Ibid., pp. 120–123. 24 President Lyndon B. Johnson, ‘Peace without Conquest’, speech at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 7 April 1965. 25 Narine, Explaining ASEAN, p. 15. 26 Ibid., pp. 21–22. 27 Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia, pp. 120–123. 28 Cited in Kai He, Institutional Balancing in Asia Pacific: Economic Interdependence and China’s Rise (Routledge, London: 2009), fn. 74. 29 Michael Smith and David Martin Jones, ‘Making process not progress: ASEAN and the evolving East Asian regional order’, International Security, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 148–184. 30 David Capie, ‘Structures, shocks and norm change: Explaining the late rise of Asia’s defence diplomacy’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, vol. 35, no. 1 (2013), pp. 1–26.

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David Capie 31 Douglas Webber, ‘Two weddings and a funeral? The ups and downs of regionalism in East Asia and the Asia-Pacific after the Asian crisis’, The Pacific Review, vol. 14, no. 3 (2001), pp. 339–372. 32 Richard Stubbs, ‘ASEAN Plus 3: Emerging East Asian Regionalism?’, Asian Survey, vol. 42, no. 3 (May/ June 2002), p. 445. 33 Dieter and Higgott cited in Webber, ‘Two weddings and a funeral’, p. 341. 34 John Ravenhill, ‘A three bloc world? The new East Asian regionalism’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, vol. 2, no. 2 (2002), pp. 167–195. 35 Gilbert Rozman, Northeast Asia’s Stunted Regionalism: Bilateral Distrust in the Shadow of Globalization (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 2004), p. 3. 36 Wenjuan Nie, ‘Xi Jinping’s foreign policy dilemma: One belt, one road or the South China sea?’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, vol. 38, no. 3 (2016), p. 423.

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27 ANATOMY OF A RIVALRY China and Japan in Southeast Asia Hoo Tiang Boon

A keen observer of East Asia’s international relations, Michael Yahuda, describes the strategic dilemma confronting China and Japan as essentially that of “two tigers sharing a mountain”.1 This chapter teases out the complexities of this dynamic, with particular focus on the two powers’ engagement in Southeast Asia. This has not been a mutually-voluntary sharing of influence. As the chapter shows, an evolving state of cool rivalry marks the relationship of China and Japan in Southeast Asia.2 There is a growing Sino–Japanese rivalry in that region, evident in all three domains of economics, politics and security. At the same time, this has not been an overt, hard competition in that while China and Japan take each other’s Southeast Asia policy into account, this contest is unlikely to turn into a vortex of conflict. The one conceivable exception is the intensifying Sino–Japanese discord over the South China Sea disputes, where the potential exists for a more militarily “normalized” Japan to be drawn into the larger and more precarious Sino– American security competition there. This chapter contributes to existing literature in the following ways. First, most accounts of the China–Japan rivalry focus on the broader currents of the bilateral relationship, without necessarily focusing on their entanglement in Southeast Asia. But among those studies that delve into their rivalry there, they have tended to focus on particular areas of the contest, for example, the maritime domain or regional ASEAN-centric institutions.3 There is a lack of a more holistic account of the China–Japan rivalry that assesses the full dimensions of their competitive engagement in Southeast Asia. This study attempts to fill this gap, addressing as well some of the newer developments. And in doing so, second, it attempts to provide a more exact understanding of the nature of this rivalry. The political and security tensions have tended to dominate narratives of the two East Asian powers’ relationship (both broadly and in Southeast Asia). While such tensions are real, they should not be essentialized. The chapter examines the factors that also restrain this rivalry, even as the Sino–Japanese regional competition is becoming increasingly sharpened. The chapter is organized as such: the next section briefly sketches the postwar history that has contextualized the evolution of the Sino–Japanese rivalry in Southeast Asia. The third section, divided into three parts, fleshes out this developing rivalry as is contested in the arenas of economics, politics and security. In the fourth section, we look at some factors that help bridle this rivalry. The last section makes a concluding assessment.

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Brief history of a (non-)competition Southeast Asia had loomed large in the strategic imaginations of China and Japan during the Cold War years. For the latter, the region beckoned as a natural source of resources, production base and market for its economic-centered foreign policy. The seminal Yoshida Doctrine had recast economics as the solution to Japan’s postwar rejuvenation, but it was arguably the later, more Asian-centric Kishi Policy that placed a greater emphasis on Southeast Asia in Japan’s export-oriented economic plans.4 By the 1970s, the narrative was that rising economies such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, followed by developing Southeast Asian states like Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, would become part of a Japan-led “flying geese” network of regional integration and development. Yet, perceptions of Japan’s “mercantilist” approach, alongside the residual regional memories of its unsavory WWII history, had meant that the country was not always a welcome presence and in 1974 Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka’s tour of Southeast Asia was greeted by anti-Japanese demonstrations in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta.5 This was the context that culminated in the defining 1977 pronouncements by Prime Minister Takeo Fukada that set the terms for Japan’s engagement of Southeast Asia: (i) Japan would eschew from becoming a military power; (ii) it would pursue a “heart-to-heart” relationship with Southeast Asian countries; and (iii) it would strengthen regional peace and security through serving as a bridge between communist Indochina and ASEAN. Becoming the relatively nascent regional institution’s dialogue partner that year, these principles (the so-called Fukada Doctrine) were aimed at reassuring ASEAN states of Tokyo’s benign motivations and affirmed its intention of playing a larger stabilizing role in the region.6 Japan was not the only East Asian power seeking to assume a more active profile in Southeast Asia, however. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) had also heightened its involvement in Southeast Asian affairs, particularly by the late 1970s. Its earlier involvement in the 1950–60s had been more indirect, mainly limited to its revolutionary-inspirational role and support for regional communist factions (although it did extend material and logistical assistance to the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War). But in 1972, a major change in the Cold War context emerged – the Sino–American rapprochement – and the PRC became the United States’ “tacit” ally, aligned against the Soviet Union.7 This development did not mean that the region’s inherent distrust of the PRC dissipated, but it did compel ASEAN states to reassess their relations with China in light of a more withdrawn US role in Southeast Asia. Ergo, by 1975, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia had normalized relations with Beijing, while Singapore expanded its unofficial ties with the latter. The subsequent US–China normalization of relations in 1978–79 would further signal to ASEAN states that Beijing’s Southeast Asia policy had the “official or unofficial sanction” of the United States.8 Those were the times when China and Japan were in effect nominal allies, united with the US and ASEAN against the Soviet Union and its regional proxies, representing an unusually warm phase in their contentious history. A common strategic interest in containing the Soviet threat had earlier prompted Chairman Mao to “forgive” Japan for its past transgressions and Premier Zhou Enlai to waive Chinese reparation demands; while in Japan, most people welcomed the normalization in bilateral relations as expectations of tapping into the potentially vast Chinese market burgeoned. In 1978, both sides signed the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, and Japan would become the first developed country to send development aid to the PRC. This trend of overall friendly Sino–Japanese relations continued into the 1980s, a process facilitated by Deng Xiaoping’s opening-up policies as well as Tokyo’s calculation that supporting Chinese economic reforms would serve Japanese and Western interests.9 346

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Everything considered, for much of the Cold War, one would be hard-pressed to say that China and Japan were “competing” in Southeast Asia. Certainly, during the 1950–60s, Beijing had tried to export its brand of Maoist-Leninism to Southeast Asia, and China and Japan found themselves on opposite sides of the Cold War structure. Nevertheless, because the insular PRC was effectively isolated from Southeast Asia (notwithstanding some involvement in Indochina) during this period, it was hardly in the race for regional leadership. As much as there had been misgivings over perceived Japanese economic domination, the mostly staunchly anti-communist ASEAN governments felt more menaced by the threat of Maoist ideals (with Chinese chauvinist overtones) to foment domestic instability in their countries. The Sino–American rapprochement would later fundamentally alter the strategic context, and Beijing would begin tentative steps, especially after its opening-up policies, to develop its official/partial engagement of ASEAN states. In fact, by the 1980s, Deng’s China behaved like a mini Japan, at least in terms of pursuing ASEAN markets, resources and investment. But overall this was a China coming to grips with normal relations and modern economic diplomacy, and compared to the grudging influence that Japan had accumulated, it was only just starting to build up its political mileage in the region. The geopolitical portrait would again re-calibrate drastically from the 1990s. Vietnam’s earlier withdrawal from Cambodia, the Tiananmen incident which led to a momentary falling-out between China and the Western bloc (including Japan), the unexpected end of the Cold War and uncertainties regarding American involvement – produced new questions for Southeast Asia. They would also mark the start of China and Japan’s rivalry in that region.

Dimensions of an evolving rivalry The contours and content of Sino–Japanese rivalry in Southeast Asia can be seen through the competition of both powers in three inter-related domains: economics, politics and security. This section unpacks this dynamic and its evolution, addressing as well some of the more recent developments. It necessarily focuses on the issues that are related to this rivalry in the specific geography of Southeast Asia, rather than the broader Sino–Japanese rivalry as such.

Economics The economic contest is not explicitly articulated or immediately apparent, but is discernible through the “posture, profile and persistence” of Chinese and Japanese actions in Southeast Asia.10 That economics would be at the forefront of Sino–Japanese regional competition is perhaps not surprising, especially given the emergence of two parallel but divergent trends in the 1990s: the PRC’s surfacing as a global economic force and the beginning of Japan’s economic decline. For one, it meant the gradual replacement of Japan as the “hub of the Asian production network” by China and the end of the Japan-centric flying geese regional integration model.11 Beijing saw Southeast Asia as its traditional trading periphery, and naturally turned towards it for the additional resources, markets and investments needed to fuel its rise. Japan, on the other hand, was already tapping into that region for largely the same economic benefits, but now faced a much bigger competitor for the Southeast Asian economic gravy that had become more important in view of its recession. By the late 1990s, China was showing clear signs that it was ready to usurp Japan’s economic leadership position in East Asia. A major catalyst was the 1997–1998 Asian Financial Crisis. Beijing’s response to the crisis – including eschewing (surprisingly) competitive devaluation of its currency and committing aid packages of US$1 billion to the most affected ASEAN economies of Thailand and Indonesia – was well-received and earned it praise as a “responsible” power.12 347

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It was thought that China’s policies had been instrumental in stabilizing the crisis in Southeast Asia, leading one Thai leader to opine that “only China” had really assisted Thailand and then ASEAN secretary-general Rodolfo Severino to say that Beijing had emerged from the crisis with huge credibility.13 This contrasted with regional perceptions of Tokyo, whose crisis response was either seen to be not entirely coherent, or worse, too closely associated with the harsh economic prescriptions from Washington and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that had not gone down well in ASEAN capitals.14 Regional confidence towards China would grow further in the wake of the 2002 ASEANChina agreement to establish a joint free trade area (FTA). The China-ASEAN FTA blindsided Japan, not least because it was among the earliest to become ASEAN’s dialogue partner (in 1977) and had expected to be a first mover in Southeast Asia’s regionalism.15 The shock was sufficient enough to galvanize Tokyo, despite domestic inhibitions on opening up some of its economic sectors, to begin pursuing its own FTA with ASEAN that same year. Japan’s eventual FTA with ASEAN came into effect earlier than China’s, but the sheer disparity in market sizes meant that since 2009, the latter had eclipsed it to become ASEAN’s largest trading partner.16 The more profound psychological blow to Japan would come in 2010 when the PRC overtook it to become the world’s second largest economy, having weathered the 2008–2009 Global Financial Crisis better than most developed countries. This “status” imparted greater confidence to Beijing to assert a more active leadership role in shaping the regional (and global) economic order.17 Thus, in 2013, President Xi Jinping announced the creation of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road initiatives (the “One Belt, One Road” or OBOR) to boost economic integration, trading networks and infrastructure connectivity among countries – with China as the focal point – that span from Asia to parts of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. One half of the OBOR initiative, the Maritime Silk Road, envisions Southeast Asia as a key cog and it was no coincidence that Xi would first enunciate this plan during his visit to Indonesia. While not necessarily direct competitors or mutually exclusive, China’s ambitious OBOR plan juxtaposes it with the US-led and Japan-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, lending to suggestions that “alternative spheres of economic influence” with potentially different rules are being built.18 For Tokyo, it sees the TPP accord as a strategic priority as it believes the pact will (i) help better connect Japan to ASEAN’s growing economy through Southeast Asia’s TPP members, i.e. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore; and (ii) more importantly, help balance China’s regional weight through the US economic umbrella.19 At a more direct level, infrastructure financing and/or construction has become a key area of tussle between China and Japan, with Southeast Asia seen as a prime market given its still considerable development gaps and needs. This has led to the establishment of the US$100 billion capitalized, China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) that has been successful in attracting 37 regional states as founding members, including all 10 ASEAN countries.20 Around six months after the AIIB’s launch, Beijing would further pledge US$10 billion in infrastructure financing to (specifically) ASEAN states, augmenting its already substantial preferential loans to Southeast Asia that include US$20 billion for connectivity construction. Japan’s answer has been to come up with its Partnership for Quality Infrastructure (PQI) initiative that promises US$110 billion in regional infrastructure funding, dispersed in part through the Japan-led Asian Development Bank. It also agreed to “drastically” cut short the processing time for these loans as well as make case-specific exemptions for government guarantees. The emphasis on “quality” projects is Tokyo’s unsubtle attempt to underline that it has a “better record than China in terms of quality, safety, social and environmental protection.”21 One particular infrastructure that has seen heated Sino–Japanese competition over its construction/financing is railway systems. Beijing edged Tokyo to secure the right to build the 348

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Jakarta-Bandung high-speed train network in Indonesia; while in Laos, it is constructing the rail link from Vientiane to Luang Namtha. Japan, meanwhile, has clinched projects to develop the Bangkok-Chiangmai high-speed rail and the Manila-Malolos rail connection in Thailand and the Philippines respectively. At the time of writing, both sides are sparring for the right to build the Singapore-Kuala Lumpur high-speed rail, a contest that has brought considerable Chinese “muscle” including a personal appeal from Premier Li Keqiang to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.22 A degree of Sino–Japanese economic competition is also visible in both powers’ engagement of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). Beijing sees this subregion, comprising countries along Mekong River i.e., Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand, as a resource-rich backyard, connected to China through the contiguous Yunnan province. Proclaiming to “lead” the GMS towards “sustainable development,” Beijing believes the progress of this subregion will concomitantly spur the growth of China’s less prosperous south-west, and vice-versa.23 To this end, it has promoted the development of the so-called North-South Economic Corridor, with particular emphasis on improving the transportation networks that link (i) Kunming, Yunnan’s capital to Bangkok via north-eastern Myanmar and north-western Laos; and (ii) Kunming to Vietnam’s Haiphong port through Hanoi.24 China’s economic presence has been especially pervasive in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos; in the latter country, for example, it co-established the Mohan-Boten Economic Cooperation Zone, its first transborder economic cooperation zone in Southeast Asia.25 Japan’s relative disadvantage in the GMS is that it does not have direct geographical access to the subregion. However, this has not prevented Tokyo from assuming a leading capacity as well as challenging China’s leadership there. As opposed to the Chinese emphasis on the GMS’s vertical connectivity, Tokyo has paid attention to its horizontal linkages, driving the development of the East-West Economic Corridor that connects Myanmar’s Mawlamyine port to Vietnam’s port of Hai Van through Thailand and Laos. Tokyo also promoted a Green Mekong Initiative to differentiate its more environmentally-conscious investment approach from the Chinese model; as well as inaugurated an annual Mekong-Japan summit from 2009 to institutionalize its leading role among the Mekong Five countries.26 At the 2015 summit, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged loans/aid up to 750 billion Yen, its biggest amount offered in development assistance to the Mekong countries.27 Not about to be left behind, in 2016, Beijing introduced its own dedicated GMS forum, the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) Leaders’ Meeting to, in its own words, “forge a new paradigm for subregional cooperation . . . and unite the region into a closer community of common destiny.”28 Ostensibly, this is a destiny without Japan in mind.

Politics China and Japan’s engagement of a “GMS plus one” model that excludes each other, reflects the broader Sino–Japanese political tussle in Southeast Asia. Similar to the economic competition, this contest for influence is not overtly conspicuous but is perceptible through the “underlying tone” of both powers’ interactions in, and engagement of, regional ASEAN-centric mechanisms.29 One of the earlier sites of such contestation is the security-focused ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), formed in 1993. Tokyo had been active in the ARF creation process as well as its initial evolvement, in part because, like other regional states, it saw value in enmeshing the PRC in regional multilateral arrangements to both constrain and socialize the latter. Yet its vision of cooperative security, one which sought to better address Japanese security concerns such as China’s military transparency and modernization, jars with Chinese preferences that have been more comfortable with keeping the ARF to primarily confidence-building measures or non-traditional 349

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security issues. Moreover, Beijing energetically opposes discussion of issues that it deems sensitive (e.g. the South China Sea disputes and the Taiwan question), diluting the effectiveness of the ARF to address security matters that are part of Tokyo’s concerns.30 Coupled with its own domestic and bureaucratic constraints that drained Japanese regionalism efforts, Japan’s experiences in the ARF – where it endured “abortive” efforts to shape the agenda – have proven to be largely frustrating.31 This is not to say that China necessarily finds the ARF process to be conducive to its interests. Although Beijing gradually shed its initial inhibitions to play a more active and leading role in the forum, the American involvement alongside Japan and actors such as the European Union, India and Australia, are countervailing presences that check Chinese influence. In recent years, China has become wary of what it sees as US and/or Japan-driven attempts to internationalize the South China Sea disputes at the ARF (e.g. the 2010 Hanoi and 2012 Phnom Penh summits). From the Chinese perspective, therefore, there is certain value in having a more limited regional architecture that keeps out the US and other external powers. This thinking informs the stronger Chinese enthusiasm over the ASEAN Plus Three (ASEAN + China, Japan and South Korea) framework, which Beijing sought on several occasions to position as the core bloc and focus of East Asian regionalism. China sees the ASEAN+3 as an easier platform for it to play a decisive regional role given its relative size advantages in that setup. This upper-hand is not lost on Japan, which often finds itself marginalized by Seoul’s proclivity to lean towards Beijing in that forum as well as most ASEAN states’ preference to avoid overt opposition towards China.32 Those concerns were present during earlier tentative discussions about evolving the ASEAN+3 into a more consolidated structure known as the East Asia Summit (EAS) in the early 2000s. Japan saw an opening to put forward its own ideas about regionalism, and it promulgated a vision of an East Asian Community premised on a broader Asia-Pacific arrangement that included Australia, New Zealand and India, underpinned by “universal” ideals such as democracy, rule of law and human rights. Along with demonstrating Japan’s thought leadership, a regional design with a wider membership would help mitigate China’s influence by diluting the latter’s ability to dominate the EAS. Unsurprisingly, Beijing opposed the Japanese proposal, arguing that a bigger grouping would make it more difficult to find consensus and create a hamstrung EAS. But by the time of the EAS’s first meeting in 2005, it had become clear that ASEAN (with the exception of Malaysia) leaned towards the idea of a more inclusive institution and the summit included the participation of India, Australia and New Zealand. China’s response was to contend that the EAS “should be led only by East Asian countries” and to that end, it counter-proposed a differentiation of the EAS into two groups, with the ASEAN+3 as the core club leading discussions while others formed a secondary bloc. The eventual outcome was a mixed one for Beijing. While it was agreed that the ASEAN+3 should be “a vehicle” for pursuing community building in East Asia, the EAS process would be primarily driven by ASEAN, with future meetings hosted in Southeast Asia together with the ASEAN summit. Subsequently, Beijing changed tack and called for an even more open membership – a move seen by some analysts as attempting to “neutralize” the EAS’s value (especially for Japan) by turning it into a pale imitation of more established architectures such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the ARF.33 The ensuing version of the EAS resembles that of an ASEAN+8, with the addition of the US and Russia in 2011. The ASEAN Defense Ministerial Meeting Plus (ADMM+) operates on a similar ASEAN+8 setup but is functionally separate from the EAS. Here, Sino–Japanese diplomatic jostling has appeared to be more tentative, in part because thus far the ADMM+ has mostly focused on less sensitive security concerns such as humanitarian aid and disaster relief, peacekeeping and counter-terrorism, and also because the institution is relatively newer, with both sides adopting a “wait-and-see” outlook.34 At the same time, this rivalry has been partially obscured by the larger 350

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Sino–American politicking in the ADMM+ where, in general, Tokyo has tended to follow the US’ lead in regional security deliberations. But Japan is changing – and particularly since the second Abe administration, a Japan with a more “normalized” security policy is emerging. How this stirs the security dynamics with the PRC in Southeast Asia is discussed next.

Security Perhaps the most visibly contentious aspect of the Sino–Japanese rivalry in Southeast Asia relates to their growing contest in the security arena, in particular, the South China Sea (SCS) disputes. Japan is not a direct party to the disputes, but since around the early 1990s when Chinese activities in the SCS aroused regional alarm, Tokyo has cast a wary glance towards the issue. A primary Japanese interest is to see freedom of navigation (as defined by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) upheld in the SCS. The sea is a key waterway for global trade, of which around 80% of Japan’s crude oil imports pass through. Tokyo’s worry (as with those in Washington and several ASEAN capitals) is that China’s increasingly muscular assertion of its maritime rights in the SCS – including land reclamation/ occupation, building of facilities with potential dual military uses, installation of military systems, and maritime patrols – may give the latter de facto control of the critical sea lanes of communication there. This connects to its another key concern: Chinese assertiveness in the SCS may translate, or is already leading to, similar expansionary tactics in the East China Sea where both powers have increasingly clashed and seen a heightening of tensions over competing territorial claims. A third concern relates to a potential escalation of events in the SCS that may provoke a US–China armed confrontation. This scenario would not only jeopardize regional stability but may potentially lead to a more direct Japanese involvement under the aegis of the US–Japan security alliance.35 Japan, of course, is still very much constrained by its postwar Constitution while most Japanese remain attached to their nation’s pacifist orientation. That said, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s leadership, Japan has been pursuing a more expansive interpretation of its pacifist Constitution. In 2015, the Diet passed unprecedented legislation that will allow the country more options to mobilize its armed forces for overseas missions.36 This, according to Yoji Koda, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese navy, means that the “possibility of JSDF military operations in the South China Sea . . . will become greater than before.”37 The more flexible scope for military deployment is part of what Abe has cast as Japan’s “proactive pacifism.” Together with its growing security concerns, this doctrine has prompted a more involved Japanese role in maritime Southeast Asia. It stepped up its strategic port calls, making stops in Malaysia’s Sepanggar Naval Base, Vietnam’s Cam Ranh Bay and the Philippine’s Subic Bay. It strengthened its support for the maritime capacity building of Vietnam and the Philippines, providing both with high-speed patrol vessels and maritime law-enforcement training, with the additional transfer of surveillance aircraft for the latter. Japanese strategic attention is not only limited to those claimant states that have seen more troubled relations with China.38 Recognizing Jakarta’s weight in Southeast Asian affairs, Tokyo has pursued stronger security relations with it, including enhancing cooperation that has involved capacity assistance to the Indonesian navy in nautical charting; and the creation of bilateral platforms such as the Japan–Indonesia Maritime Forum and the Japan–Indonesia Foreign and Defense Ministerial Consultation.39 But perhaps most provocative from China’s perspective is the ongoing or planned expansion of Japan’s joint military activities in the SCS. On at least two occasions in 2015, the Japanese navy conducted joint exercises with the Philippine navy, with one exercise taking place in waters near the disputed (Chinese-occupied) Scarborough shoal.40 In 2016, Defense Minister Tomomi Inada announced that the JSDF will “increase its engagement in the South China Sea” through, among others, participating in joint training patrols with the US Navy.41 351

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China is certainly suspicious of Japanese actions in the SCS, and has accused Tokyo of meddling in what it contends is essentially a bilateral issue with individual claimant states. Xi himself has warned that Japan should “exercise caution in its words and deeds” ( jinyan shenxing) on the SCS disputes.42 Chinese strategic writings have placed blame on Japan on exacerbating regional tensions, arguing that the Abe government’s real intentions are to: (i) exploit the SCS issue (and more broadly, the China threat) as an excuse to move Japan away from its postwar pacifism; (ii) further embroil China in the SCS conflict so as to divert its attention from the East China Sea dispute which is more vital to Japanese national interests; and (iii) reinforce the US rebalance to Asia, with the principal aim of containing China.43 More significantly, Chinese narratives (both official and semi-official) are increasingly depicting the SCS issue as, or relating to, the nation’s “core interests.” To be seen as compromising on China’s core interests would raise questions of political legitimacy for any Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership, and the implication is that these are the interests which the CCP would be willing to resort to force to defend (albeit a possible last option). It is this imagined sacrosanct nature of the core interests that has compelled Beijing to “harden” its responses on the SCS disputes, even if they incur reputational costs. In addition to its robust ground actions in the SCS, this response has included exercising Chinese influence over certain ASEAN states (notably Laos and Cambodia) to forestall a unified ASEAN front on the dispute.44

Mitigating factors In highlighting the competitive aspects of the Sino–Japanese engagement in Southeast Asia, it is important to keep in perspective the extent of this rivalry. While things can change, fundamentally, China and Japan are unlikely to go to war over their interests in Southeast Asia. To some extent, the economic and political competition between the two (even if growing) is not unusual given today’s globalized and more multipolar, post-Cold War order. For some ASEAN states, they may even welcome some level of competition between the two powers if they profit from being courted by both.45 The one caveat is the intensifying security contest between China and Japan in maritime Southeast Asia. While an asymmetry in security interests exists – the SCS involves China’s core interests but it is comparatively less critical for Japan who is principally more concerned about the East China Sea – under a less restrictive interpretation of its Constitution and the dictates of a consolidated US–Japan alliance, Tokyo may find itself drawn into a potential Sino–American armed conflict over the South China Sea disputes.46 This points to an important intervening factor sometimes taken for granted: that the Sino– Japanese rivalry in Southeast Asia is taking place against the backdrop of the larger, more competitive US–China rivalry in the region. To a considerable degree, this rivalry is beholden to the strategic currents of US–China relations. It is no coincidence that Japan normalized its relations with China only after the US–China rapprochement, and that the more amicable phase in Sino–Japanese relations in the 1970s-80s occurred when Beijing was a quasi-ally of the United States. In other words, the Sino–Japanese rivalry can be exacerbated or mitigated by developments between the US and China. It is not wrong to say that the American rebalance has partially pushed Japan to adopt a stronger regional position against China. Equally, it is not inconceivable that Washington may step in to help mediate an escalation of the Sino–Japanese rivalry that threatens to imperil regional stability. The US–Japan relationship, while stronger in recent years, is not without its own set of frictions and Washington is not always partial to Japanese interests. Abe’s 2013 visit to the Yasukuni war shrine, for example, drew public American admonition. A third key factor is that the Sino–Japanese rivalry in Southeast Asia is intimately connected to the broader kinetics of their bilateral relations. Due to a complicated history, “ill will runs deep” 352

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between China and Japan and the potential for miscalculation, leading to armed conflict, is real.47 That said, both governments (even the more nationalistic Xi and Abe regimes) retain a degree of pragmatism in their strained relationship. Much as China is increasingly seen as a primary security threat, second only to North Korea, Japanese policymakers recognize that Japan “needs to increase its business ties with China to secure its own economic growth.”48 The post Cold-War geopolitical and security competition between the two has not prevented bilateral trade from ballooning to become the world’s third-largest. Both economies also share huge complementarities: Japan is among the biggest investors in China, while China is Japan’s top export market and its largest trading partner. This interdependence extends to both powers’ economic engagement in Southeast Asia where, despite the rising competition, both countries are part of an intra-regional supply chain and production network.49 On the Chinese side, the Xi leadership is not unaware that an unnecessary military clash with Japan, one drawing in American participation, has the capacity to potentially derail China’s rise. These are among the reasons that have compelled Beijing and Tokyo to thaw the nadir in their relations in 2012–2013 – a nascent warming that saw the formulation of the 2014 Four-point Consensus; the start of negotiations to establish a maritime and aerial hotline mechanism; and three Xi-Abe talks. At their most recent meeting at the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, Xi specifically indicated to Abe that China desired to bring relations with Japan back on a “normal development track.”50 Fourth, the Sino–Japanese rivalry has not precluded some modest level of cooperation when their interests converge in Southeast Asia. China and Japan have cooperated in multinational maritime security, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, military medicine and counter-terrorism exercises under the aegis of the ADMM+ framework; as well as in UN peacekeeping activities in East Timor and Cambodia. Both countries are also open, if conditions permit, to cooperation between the China-led AIIB and the Japan-led ADB, especially given the financing and infrastructural shortfall in Southeast Asia; indeed, one of the earliest tranches of loans disbursed by the AIIB is co-financed with the ADB. In the Mekong subregion, China and Japan (through the ADB) continue to be involved in the GMS Economic Cooperation Program, even if both sides now have their own “GMS plus one” mechanisms.

Conclusion A commonly overlooked, historical watershed happened in October 1978. That month, the then Chinese Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping became the first Chinese leader to visit Japan in more than 2000 years of history of contact between the two nations. Speaking to the press after talks with Japan’s Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, he said: If our generation do not have [sic] enough wisdom to resolve this issue [the Senkaku/ Diaoyu islands territorial dispute], the next generation will have more wisdom, and I am sure they can find a way acceptable to both sides to settle this issue.51 Looking at today’s deteriorating security discord between China and Japan, Deng Xiaoping may have been overly optimistic. An increasingly adversarial dynamic has come to characterize the Sino–Japanese relationship, a rivalry that has extended to both countries’ engagement of Southeast Asia. This chapter examines the extent of the rivalry in that region and how it has played out. A growing economic and political competition that, while not immediately apparent, can be discerned and is spoken through the posture and actions of the two powers in Southeast Asia. The security rivalry, on the other hand, is more palpable and intense, and is primarily expressed 353

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through their differences and responses over the South China Sea disputes. The SCS issue is more important for China than it is for Japan, but the asymmetry in security interests has not prevented a nascent security dilemma from emerging, where what one actor perceives as a defensive, selfhelp action – e.g. Japan’s military activities in the SCS or China’s growing physical presence there – is seen by the other as a corresponding reduction in its security. Indeed, as noted, this appears to be one area in the Sino–Japanese competitive engagement in Southeast Asia that has the potential to plummet the rivalry to more destabilizing circumstances involving the US military. We should not exaggerate this rivalry of course and in the larger scheme of things, Beijing and Tokyo are unlikely to go to war over their interests in Southeast Asia. But whether they are wise enough to address some of the fundamental problems holding back the overall relationship is another matter altogether. That particular wisdom that Deng spoke about may take a longer time to come.

Notes 1 Michael Yahuda, Sino-Japanese Relations after the Cold War: Two Tigers Sharing a Mountain (London and New York: Routledge, 2013). 2 The term ‘cool rivalry’ is adapted from Noah Feldman’s notion of a cool war. See Noah Feldman, Cool War: The Future of Global Competition (New York: Random House, 2013). 3 See, for example, Renato Cruz De Castro, “China and Japan in Maritime Southeast Asia: Extending Their Geo-Strategic Rivalry by Competing for Friends”, Philippine Political Science Journal, Vol. 34, No. 2 (2013), pp. 150–169; Chien-Peng Chung, “China and Japan in ‘ASEAN Plus’ Multilateral Arrangements: Raining on the Other Guy’s Parade”, Asian Survey, Vol. 53, No. 5 (2013), pp. 801–824; Takashi Terada, “Forming an East Asian Community: A Site for Japan-China Power Struggles”, Japanese Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2006), pp. 5–17. Singh, Teo and Ho focus on the Sino-Japanese rivalry from the lens of Southeast Asian elites. See Bhubhindar Singh, Sarah Teo and Benjamin Ho, “Rising Sino-Japanese Competition: Perspectives from Southeast Asian Elites”, Australian Journal of International Affairs (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2016.1157849 4 Gilbert Rozman, “Japan’s Approach to Southeast Asia in the Context of Sino-Japanese Relations”, The Asan Forum, 17 October 2014, pp. 1–15. 5 Lam Peng Er, “Japan and China in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia: Competition and Cooperation”, in Lam Peng Er and Victor Teo, eds., Southeast Asia between China and Japan (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), pp. 48–63. 6 Sueo Sudo, “Japan-ASEAN Relations: New Dimensions in Japanese Foreign Policy”, Asian Survey, Vol. 28, No. 5 (1988), pp. 509–525; Ibid. 7 Evelyn Goh, Constructing the US Rapprochement with China: 1961–1974: From ‘Red Menace’ to ‘ Tacit Ally’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 8 Alice Ba, “China and ASEAN: Renavigating Relations for a 21st-Century Asia”, Asian Survey, Vol. 43, No. 4 (2003), pp. 622–647. 9 Watanabe Tsuneo, “Japan’s Security Strategy towards the Rise of China: From a Friendship Paradigm to a Mix of Engagement and Hedging”, The Tokyo Foundation, 6 April 2015, pp. 1–12. 10 Wen Jin Yuan and Melissa Murphy, Regional Monetary Cooperation in East Asia: Should the United States Be Concerned (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2010), pp. 1–12. 11 Lam, “Japan and China in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia”. 12 Wang Hongying, “A Responsible Great Power? China’s International Image Management in the 1990s”, East Asia Institute Working Paper, No. 44 (July 2000), pp. 13–18. 13 Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 36. 14 Saori Katada, Banking on Stability: Japan and the Cross-Pacific Dynamics of International Financial Crisis Management (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), pp. 172–207. 15 Ma Ying, “‘东盟 + 日本’ 合作机制的发展'” [The Evolution of the ‘ASEAN + Japan’ Cooperation Mechanism], 和平与发展 [Peace and Development], Vol. 4 (2012), pp. 25–29. 16 Yul Sohn, “Japan’s New Regionalism: China Shock, Values, and the East Asian Community”, Asian Survey, Vol. 50, No. 3 (2010), pp. 479–519. 17 Ming Wan, “The Great Recession and China’s Policy toward Asian Regionalism”, Asian Survey, Vol. 50, No. 3 (2010), pp. 520–538.

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Anatomy of a rivalry 18 Ben Bland, “Japan and China Step Up Fight for ASEAN Infrastructure Contracts”, Financial Times, 22 November 2015, www.ft.com/content/f20f9fec-90f4-11e5-bd82-c1fb87bef7af. 19 Stephen Nagy, “Revealed: Japan’s New China Strategy Has Ancient Roots”, The National Interest, 6 June 2016, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/revealed-japans-new-china-strategy-has-ancientroots-16478. 20 Bland, “Japan and China Step Up Fight for ASEAN Infrastructure Contracts”; Michael Holtz, “ChinaJapan Rivalry: Who Will Be Asia’s Master Builder?”, Christian Science Monitor, 18 January 2016, www. csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2016/0118/China-Japan-rivalry-Who-will-be-Asia-s-masterbuilder. 21 Ibid.; See “The Partnership for Quality Infrastructure: Investment for Asia’s Future”, Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 21 May 2015, www.mofa.go.jp/policy/oda/page18_000076.html. 22 Holtz, “China-Japan Rivalry”; Leslie Lopez, “China, Japan Jostle for Lead Role in Singapore-KL Rail Project”, The Straits Times, 12 April 2016, p. 10. 23 “Interview: China to Lead GMS towards Inclusive, Sustainable Development”, Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, 19 December 2014, http://english.mofcom.gov.cn/article/zt_likeqiangvisits kazakhstan/news/201412/20141200847912.shtml. 24 Chien-Peng Chung, “Japan’s Involvement in Asia-Centered Regional Forums in the Context of Relations with China and the United States”, Asian Survey, Vol. 51, No. 3 (2011), pp. 407–428. 25 “China and Laos Sign the Joint General Scheme of Mohan-Boten Economic Cooperation Zone”, Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, 1 September 2015, http://english.mofcom.gov.cn/ article/newsrelease/significantnews/201509/20150901109922.shtml. 26 Huong Le Thu, “An Opportunity, a Challenge and a Threat: An Assessment of the Sino-Japanese Competition in CLMV”, in Sarah Teo and Bhubhindar Singh, eds., RSIS Policy Report on the Impact of the Sino-Japanese Competitive Relationship on ASEAN as a Region and Institution (Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, 2014), pp. 9–11. 27 Wang Wenwen, “Japan Is Trying to Court Influence in Southeast Asia through ODA”, Global Times, 8 July 2015, www.globaltimes.cn/content/930920.shtml. 28 “Li Keqiang and Leaders of the Five Countries along the Mekong River Meet Press Together, Introducing Outcomes of the 1st Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Leaders’ Meeting”, Foreign Ministry of the People’s Republic of China, 24 March 2016, www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/ceph/eng/chinew/t1350729.htm. 29 Chung, “China and Japan in ‘ASEAN Plus’ Multilateral Arrangements”. 30 Ibid. 31 Takeshi Yuzawa, “Japan’s Changing Conception of the ASEAN Regional Forum: From an Optimistic Liberal to a Pessimistic Realist Perspective”, The Pacific Review, Vol. 18, No. 4 (2005), pp. 463–497. 32 Chung, “China and Japan in ‘ASEAN Plus’ Multilateral Arrangements”. 33 Ibid.; Mohan Malik, “China and the East Asian Summit: More Discord than Accord”, Asia-Pacific Center for Security-Studies, February 2006, pp. 1–6; Sohn, “Japan’s New Regionalism”. 34 Chung, “China and Japan in ‘ASEAN Plus’ Multilateral Arrangements”. 35 Singh, Teo and Ho, “Rising Sino-Japanese Competition”;Yoji Koda, “Japan’s Perception of and Interests in the South China”, Asia Policy, Vol. 21 (2016), pp. 29–35. 36 “Japan to Allow Military Role Overseas in Historic Move”, BBC News, 18 September 2015, www.bbc. com/news/world-asia-34287362. 37 Koda, “Japan’s Perception of and Interests in the South China”. 38 Outside of Southeast Asia, Japan has also focused on augmenting its strategic relations with India. See Hoo Tiang Boon, “The Hedging Prong in India’s Evolving China Strategy”, Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 25, No. 101 (2016), pp. 792–804. 39 Tomohiko Satake, “Japan’s Defence Diplomacy with ASEAN Member-States”, The Japan Times, 30 August 2016, www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/08/30/commentary/japan-commentary/ japans-defense-diplomacy-asean-member-states/#.WXbgvWfXwYY; Michael Mazza, “China and Japan’s Battle for Influence in Southeast Asia”, The National Interest, 5 October 2015, http://national interest.org/feature/china-japans-battle-influence-southeast-asia-14006; Singh, Teo and Ho, “Rising Sino-Japanese Competition”. 40 Tim Kelly and Manuel Mogato, “Japan, Philippines to Hold First Naval Drill in South China Sea”, Reuters, 8 May 2015, www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-philippines-japan-idUSKBN0NT11J20150508 41 David Brunnstrom and Idrees Ali, “Japan to Boost South China Sea Role with Training Patrols with US: Minister”, Reuters, 16 September 2016, www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-japan-patrolsidUSKCN11L2FE

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Hoo Tiang Boon 42 Fang Yibo and Hou Lijun, “习近平会见日本首相安倍晋三”[Xi Jinping Meets Shinzo Abe], Xinhua News, 5 September 2016, http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2016-09/05/c_1119515029.htm 43 See, for example, Zhu Haiyan, “日本介入南海问题的动向及影响” [The Direction and Impact of Japan’s Intervention in the South China Sea Question], 国际问题研究 [China International Studies], Vol. 2 (2016), pp. 126–138; Zhu Qingxiu, “深度介人南海争端: 日本准备走多远?” [Getting Deeply Involved in the South China Sea Dispute: How Far is Japan Prepared to Go?], 亚太安全与海洋研究 [Asia-Pacific Security and Maritime Affairs], Vol. 4 (2015), pp. 27–39. 44 Hoo Tiang Boon, “Hardening the Hard, Softening the Soft: Assertiveness and China’s Regional Strategy”, The Journal of Strategic Studies (2016) , Vol. 40, No. 5 (2017), pp. 639-662. 45 Lam, “Japan and China in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia”. 46 American policy analysts have started debating the scenario of US-China armed confrontation in the South China Sea. See, for example, Bonnie Glaser, “Armed Clash in the South China Sea”, Council on Foreign Relations: Contingency Planning Memorandum, No. 14 (April 2012), pp. 1–8. 47 Odd Arne Westad, “In Asia, Ill Will Runs Deep”, The New York Times, 6 January 2013, p. 19. 48 Tsuneo, “Japan’s Security Strategy towards the Rise of China”. 49 Peter Drysdale, “The Geo-Economic Potential of the China-Japan Relationship”, East Asia Forum, 28 September 2015, www.eastasiaforum.org/2015/09/28/the-geo-economic-potential-of-the-chinajapan-relationship/ 50 “习近平会见日本首相安倍晋三”[Xi Jinping Meets Shinzo Abe]. 51 “搁置争议，共同开发” [Put Aside Dispute, Pursue Joint Development], Foreign Ministry of the People’s Republic of China, 2003, www.mfa.gov.cn/chn//gxh/xsb/wjzs/t8958.htm

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28 THE FUTURE OF ALLIANCES IN ASIA Andrew O’Neil1

Introduction Alliances remain one of the most important features of Asia’s contemporary security architecture. They perform a dual function in the region by reassuring anxious small and medium sized states they have a major power ‘safety net’ should their security situation deteriorate, as well as providing institutional ballast that promotes an important degree of predictability in interactions between states. Alliances fill a gap where multilateral institutions struggle to shape state behaviour. They can also contribute to strategic equilibrium at the regional level by fashioning incentives for restraint among junior partners, who might otherwise be tempted to substantially increase military spending when faced with rising security threats. This can, over time, dampen the prospects for an action-reaction cycle of weapons acquisitions among states that leads to arms racing. Yet, despite the evident benefits of alliances, there is a persistent ambivalence in the United States and among some of its alliance partners about the value of alliances in the twenty-first century. As a Republican Presidential candidate, Donald Trump pointedly characterized America’s NATO, Persian Gulf, and Asian allies as ‘free riders’, noting that unless they contributed more financially, he would think twice about defending them.2 As President, Trump has not been as blunt in his public assessments, but he has nevertheless drawn a strong link between the value of individual allies and their willingness to share financial costs. This was underscored in a landmark speech at NATO headquarters in May 2017 when President Trump emphasised ‘chronic underpayments’ to the alliance by European members while at the same time refusing to pledge his administration’s commitment to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty.3 Among some US allies, including those in Asia, there is a debate about the merits of being tied to the United States in the long term as China’s influence becomes more prevalent. Even in Australia, one of America’s most loyal allies since 1945, there is an ongoing debate over whether policy makers need to ‘choose’ between China and the US during what some argue is an unprecedented power transition in the Asia-Pacific.4 This chapter analyzes the likely future of US security alliances in Asia with an outlook to 2030. This timeframe is sufficiently long-range to be ambitious, but not excessively distant as to be meaningless. It is an opportune time to look over the strategic horizon in light of the Trump administration’s emerging track record on alliance management and the perspective we now have on the impact of the Obama administration’s rebalance to Asia. Contrary to traditional realist 357

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explanations, alliances are not merely transactional arrangements. Nor are they institutions that are focused simply on aggregating capability among parties. Alliances over time acquire normative characteristics that serve to bind members, even as external security threats decline. Despite widespread predictions of its imminent demise after the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO has not only continued as an alliance, it has broadened its membership base in no small part because of its appeal to pan-Europeanism and democratic principles. This chapter begins with a discussion of the changing security landscape in Asia. This is important for any analysis of the future of alliances because while domestic politics play a role in shaping how they are managed, international security developments – and how allies perceive these developments – remain the independent variables in shaping the evolution of alliances. In the Asian context, it is impossible to grasp the underlying dynamics of America’s key alliances without understanding the impact of China’s strategic ascent and the advent of North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. Increasingly central to these dynamics is also how allies regard America’s longer-term resolve and capability to maintain its status as the pre-eminent strategic power in Asia. In the second section of the chapter, I evaluate the two most substantial alliances in Asia: the US–Japan alliance and the US–South Korea alliance. Looking forward to 2030, I argue that although both of these bilateral alliances contain a unique set of political and security dynamics that will continue to shape how they evolve, several common factors will shape each alliance over the next thirteen years: relations with China and perceptions surrounding Beijing’s strategic intent; North Korea’s conduct and capabilities as a nuclear weapons state; and leadership preferences in alliance capitals, including Washington. Overlaying these factors will be the pervasive influence of the alliance security dilemma. Put forward by Glenn Snyder, the alliance security dilemma acknowledges the inherent risks in alliance relationships for stronger and weaker parties with respect to entrapment and abandonment.5 The more dependent one side feels on the other for its security, the more vulnerable it will feel to being abandoned. The intrinsic dilemma is that if the ally demonstrates excessive loyalty to mitigate the risk of abandonment, it risks entrapment in the other state’s policies and priorities, but if it strives for autonomy, it risks abandonment.

Asia’s evolving security landscape Despite routinely being labelled ‘fluid’ and ‘unstable’, Asia has been conspicuously free of largescale conflict since the end of the Cold War. As Muthiah Alagappa points out, pessimistic predictions in the 1990s stated that Asia would replicate the nineteenth century European experience and be engulfed by armed conflict have been spectacularly off base; indeed, reaching as far back as the 1970s, Asia has ‘witnessed a substantial reduction in the number of major and minor interstate wars’.6 This has occurred in spite of significant power shifts in the region, most notably the rapid raise of China and a major realignment of US strategic commitments following the end of the Cold War. Often on the receiving end of high-handed lectures from European elites about the need for greater regional integration, Asian policy makers can point to their own ‘long peace’ as evidence the region does not need to import European-style security measures. However, the long peace in Asia remains tenuous. The region is home to the world’s pre-eminent major power rivalry between China and the United States, which is acquiring a sharper edge as Beijing appears increasingly confident in its ability to project hard and soft power and as Washington becomes more determined to maintain its military and economic superiority in Asia. Despite President Trump’s keenness to reach out to Beijing in an endeavour to manage North Korea and other security challenges in the region, his cabinet secretaries have been less enthusiastic. Indeed, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has condemned China’s conduct in the 358

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South China Sea, pointing to its ‘blatant disregard for international law and its contempt for other nations’ interests’.7 This follows the Pentagon’s approval for the first US freedom of navigation operation (FONOPS) in the South China Sea under the Trump administration.8 This confirms the administration’s continuation of its predecessor’s approach, which was to actively assert the position that the disputed region remains international waters, not Chinese territory.9 This rivalry is accompanied by buoyant grass-roots nationalism in Asia’s domestic polities, and the region houses some of the most acute territorial disputes in contemporary international relations. The Obama administration’s rebalance, or ‘pivot’, to Asia announced in 2011 reflected this sentiment, notwithstanding the Bush administration’s ‘military-diplomatic reorientation toward Asia’ from 2004 onwards.10 China’s hostile reaction to the US rebalance, which Beijing has characterized as a form of neo-containment, mirrors a well-founded concern that Washington is unwilling to negotiate power transition arrangements in the Asia-Pacific that accommodate China’s emergence as a major power with significant strategic influence underpinned by growing military and economic clout. It appears that Chinese policy makers simultaneously exaggerated the US domestic economic malaise following the 2008 Global Economic Crisis while underestimating the Obama administration’s resolve to assert American authority in Asia. For their part, US policy makers have probably underestimated China’s determination to be acknowledged as Asia’s pre-eminent indigenous power. As Thomas Christensen has written,‘the US-Chinese security relationship and the Asia-Pacific region in general are far more tense today than they were at the start of 2009’.11 While Beijing and Washington have successfully cooperated on policy issues at the global level, especially climate change, their bilateral relationship in Asia has a sharper zero-sum edge. It is difficult to think of any single security issue in Southeast Asia or Northeast Asia today that Washington and Beijing does not think of through a zero-sum prism. Reinforcing this is the growing risk of misperception and miscalculation in the bilateral relationship. As Hugh White argues, policy makers in Washington and Beijing seem to share one key assumption: that if they stand firm in any crisis, the other side will back down and that the other side understands the depth of their resolve to stand firm.12 Asia’s tenuous security situation is encapsulated in continuing tensions over the various territorial claims in the South China Sea and the East China Sea. The Senkaku/Diaoyu islands dispute is driven largely by nationalist pressures in China and Japan, as well as an appreciation among Japanese policy makers in particular that the territorial dispute is a test case for how regional countries deal with China’s increasing influence in Asia.13 Similarly, the primary impetus for tensions in the South China Sea lies in strong nationalist sentiment among claimant states, as well as a sense among non-claimants – including the US, Japan, and Australia – that the South China Sea remains a critical test case for how the region deals with Beijing’s attempts to extend its strategic reach in Asia at the expense of other states. The region’s leading multilateral forum, ASEAN, has been essentially sidelined as a mediation option given that many of its members are themselves territorial claimants while others have been unwilling to challenge China’s so-called ‘nine-dash line’ claim, which has itself provoked regional anxiety about Beijing’s long term intentions.14 A growing willingness on the part of middle powers to push back against China in these disputes and China’s increasingly strident approach in the South China Sea in particular, has the potential to trigger escalation to armed conflict in the region. While remote, the danger of full-scale war over competing territorial claims is less remote than it has been in the past, and the profound consequences of a US–China armed conflict is being canvassed in serious policy circles to a far greater extent than it has ever been.15 In this context, strategic uncertainty will persist, and demand from US allies for reassurance is also likely to intensify. Overlaying this dynamic is what 359

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John Ikenberry has termed Asia’s ‘dual hierarchy’: a security hierarchy with the United States at the apex, and an economic hierarchy dominated by China: The dual hierarchy that today increasingly marks the region has the potential to be quite durable. No one hegemonic state will be able to dominate the region. With the rise of China and the ongoing economic integration of the region, the United States cannot play its old hegemonic role. And if China tries to “push” itself into a position of leading regional military power, the weaker and secondary countries will try to “pull” the United States ever more tightly into the region.16 If we accept Ikenberry’s portrayal of the region’s overarching balance of power, achieving a form of strategic equilibrium over time will be acutely challenging. Moreover, the viability of this dual hierarchy will ultimately depend on the willingness of China and the United States to perform their assigned roles in the region, which is far from guaranteed. The intersection between US–China rivalry, growing nationalism, and territorial disputes is also evident in continuing tensions on the Korean peninsula. This was evident in the April-May 2017 Korean crisis that appeared to contain the seeds for a rapid escalation to armed exchange between US and North Korean forces. President Trump’s high-profile attempt to persuade Beijing to ‘rein in’ Pyongyang during the crisis, including via his preferred medium of Twitter, yielded mixed results. Indeed, most of China’s public commentary focused on the need for the US to de-escalate tensions and for Washington not to react to North Korean provocations.17 This suggests both that China exercises limited leverage over Pyongyang and that despite Trump’s exaggerated praise for Xi Jinping during the crisis,18 Beijing has no intention of making life easier for the US and its allies in Northeast Asia. North Korea is on a well-established path towards being a fully-fledged nuclear power with an operational capability that can strike all countries in Asia and the continental United States. The DPRK’s fifth nuclear test in September 2016 was by all accounts its most sophisticated yet, and builds on Pyongyang’s stated intention to develop a large-scale weapons program with long-range strike assets.19 Former director of the Los Alamos laboratory, Siegfried Hecker, has attested that North Korea has developed a uranium enrichment program to complement its proven plutonium program.20 Although the fissile material source for North Korea’s two nuclear tests in 2016 remains unknown – and experts are divided on whether the earlier 2013 test was powered by highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium – the 2006 and 2009 tests were plutonium-based. This means that if HEU has fuelled the more recent tests, North Korea has in all likelihood successfully acquired a dual-track fissile program.21 The implications of this are far-reaching because a dual-track capability would provide the regime in Pyongyang with options for future nuclear warhead development on a scale of that could resemble Pakistan’s substantial inventory.22 The tempo and nature of the explicit nuclear threats emanating from Pyongyang over the past several years confirm that the regime sees nuclear weapons as enhancing coercive leverage against North Korea’s adversaries. Major advances in the country’s space launch vehicle program that includes successful launches of the Unha-3 and Kwangmyongsong-4 ‘satellites’ signals an ambition to acquire an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability that can reach the United States.23 The eventuation of the latter would inevitably influence how Washington approached future crises on the Korean peninsula. Any indication, no matter how slight, that a future US administration was weakening in its resolve to deter North Korea from undertaking coercive or destabilizing activity would have consequences for how America’s allies in Asia perceive the nuclear option for themselves. Discussion of the pros and cons of an indigenous nuclear program 360

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routinely surface in South Korea following each successive DPRK nuclear test,24 and Japan persists with a nuclear hedging strategy in which North Korea’s program, along with China’s military modernization efforts, is a significant variable.25

Shadow of the future: US alliances in Asia International relations experts generally have a poor track record of forecasting change. In his forensic analysis of the failure of international relations theory to foreshadow the Cold War’s demise, John Lewis Gaddis pointed out that no theoretical approach pinpointed any of the causal factors that precipitated the tectonic shift of 1990–91. As Gaddis noted, ‘one might as well have relied on stargazers, readers of entrails, and other pre-scientific methods for all the good our “scientific” methods did’.26 It seems that many analysts have sought to compensate for this previous lack of foresight by predicting (albeit without timeframes attached) China’s internal collapse via the demise of the Communist Party, while others who are equally qualified have argued the Communist Party’s internal authority will be strengthened further over time.27 Given our poor track record in predicting change, on what grounds can we look forward to the development of alliances in Asia to 2030? A potentially useful approach to thinking about future developments is distinguishing trend-based markers of change from discontinuity-based markers of change. Trend-based markers cover developments that are essentially linear in orientation. Asia’s rise in terms of increasing prosperity and growing material capabilities among major powers is an unmistakable trend, but it has been evident since the 1970s. The assumption that Asia’s rise will continue well into the twenty-first century is based on an established trend. As a groundbreaking National Intelligence Council report has observed: ‘The diffusion of power among countries will have a dramatic impact by 2030. Asia will have surpassed North American and Europe combined in terms of global power, based upon GDP, population size, military spending, and technological investment’.28 Assuming Asia can avoid major armed conflict over the next thirteen years, this outcome will almost certainly take place. If it does come to pass, it will be the consequence of a linear process of change that has evolved since the 1940s. Discontinuity-based change, by contrast, represents a sharp break with an established path of development in international relations. In addition to the end of the Cold War, examples of discontinuity-based change include the Asian economic crisis of 1997–98 and the mass casualty terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001. These shocks triggered rapid, and sweeping, change within individual states across many regions, as well as a reordering of regional dynamics in a compressed timeframe. If we look back thirteen years, to 2004, the US was perceived as being on the defensive in Asia. Washington was becoming increasingly embroiled in the geopolitics of the Middle East following the Iraq invasion, and China was achieving traction in converting its material power into strategic influence in Asia. North Korea had yet to conduct its first nuclear test – although it had already expelled all UN inspectors from its territory – and by the end of the year, the region had been engulfed by the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, which killed almost a quarter of a million people. Each of these factors shaped subsequent developments in US alliance relations in Asia; the response to the tsunami was characterized by close humanitarian/logistical cooperation between the US and its allies, which in turn reinforced familiarity in operational planning. Since 2004, alliances have become more important to US strategy in Asia and America’s allies themselves value the US regional presence more than ever. This was certainly not predicted in 2004. Writing that year, one of America’s leading Asia experts, Kurt Campbell, lamented that: ‘Once considered force multipliers, some now see [alliance] arrangements as deadweight anchors that effectively slow US response time to urgent challenges and reduce US freedom of movement in 361

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the international arena in the post-September 11 environment. This view has led to increasingly frequent arguments that the post-World War II US alliance system is in fast decline, if not already dead’.29 After what can be described as something of ‘lost decade’ for the US in Asia between 2001 and 2011, the past six years have seen a reassertion of US regional primacy. This has been mirrored in more explicit attempts to reassure Japan and South Korea in particular that US extended deterrence remains robust and credible, but also in Washington’s attempts to reassure other partners in the region that the US is committed to pushing back against China’s maritime territorial claims. While somewhat ambivalent in its approach to NATO, the Trump administration was careful to systematically reassure its key Asian allies in the first half of 2017. This occurred through declaratory extended deterrence commitments, the rotational deployment of naval and air assets to the region, and high-level visits, including a regional tour by US Vice President Mike Pence.30 The remainder of this chapter does not attempt to predict how America’s most important Asian alliances will evolve to 2030. Instead, it discusses the probable causal factors that will drive this evolution.

The Japan–US alliance The alliance between the United States and Japan is enshrined in the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Security and Cooperation and the Mutual Defence Guidelines, promulgated in 1978 and subsequently revised in 1997 and 2015. These formal commitments are supported by a web of bilateral arrangements, including regular Joint Security Consultative Committee (‘2+2’) meetings between foreign and defence ministers and detailed basing agreements that provide the framework for the US military presence on Japanese soil. These basing arrangements are often fraught with respect to shared cost and local resentment (especially in Okinawa) over the permanent stationing of American forces on Japanese soil.31 Statements during the 2016 US election campaign by Donald Trump that Tokyo should pay ‘the ‘full costs’ for supporting US forces based in Japan underscored the continuing sensitivity of the issue in the bilateral relationship,32 although as President, Trump’s approach to Japan has been far more conciliatory than his attitude towards NATO. In his White House meeting with Shinzo Abe in February 2017, Trump reportedly made no reference to burden-sharing and praised ‘the ever crucial alliance with Japan’.33 In its depth and breadth, the Japan–US alliance today is virtually unrecognizable when compared to its early phases. In its first four decades, until the 1990s, the alliance tended to be characterized by a strict patron client mentality in which Japan was content to buck pass to the United States on security issues, with Washington content to play the role of major power guarantor. This began to change rapidly once Japan emerged as a serious economic rival to the US in the 1980s and as the Cold War ended in the early 1990s. The catalytic event for a shift towards a more symmetrical alliance dynamic was the fallout following Japan’s refusal to provide combat support to the US-led military intervention in Iraq in 1991. It was at this point that elites in Washington and Tokyo realized the alliance required redefinition if it was to survive beyond the twentieth century.34 The 1997 revision of the Mutual Defence Guidelines was a major step towards providing Tokyo with greater scope to contribute militarily to the alliance, which followed the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crisis, sparking serious tensions between Washington and Beijing. The 1998 flight of the North Korean Taepodong missile over Japanese territory triggered a further reassessment of Japan’s contribution to the alliance. North Korea’s breakout from the non-proliferation regime and its nuclear testing program that commenced in 2006, coupled with rising tensions from the mid-2000s between Tokyo and Beijing over territorial claims in the East China Sea, have increased Japan’s sense of vulnerability. 362

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Chinese military modernization and Beijing’s apparent unwillingness to place meaningful pressure on North Korea for the latter to cease its nuclear weapons program are of concern to Japanese policy makers who have become increasingly sensitive to any sign the US might be pulling back from extended deterrence commitments in Asia, including the nuclear umbrella. Receiving specific nuclear assurances from Washington have become more important to Japanese policy makers in recent years, and the Obama administration’s decision in 2010 to consult more closely with Japan (as well as South Korea) on the US nuclear force planning process should be seen in this light.35 Despite a brief deterioration in bilateral relations in 2009–2010 under the Hatoyama government, the US–Japan alliance has been strengthened significantly over the past thirteen years. This is far removed from the pessimistic forecasts thirteen years ago when one analyst observed pessimistically that ‘the eventual demise of the US-Japan Security Alliance is not a foregone conclusion’.36 Strengthening of the alliance can be attributed mainly to a shared determination in Washington and Tokyo to exercise more effective alliance management through the regular ‘2+2’ meetings.37 Moreover, the scope and purpose of the alliance has expanded beyond the simple defence of Japan, to encompass more ambitious regional and global objectives. This has been supplemented by the development of strategic dialogues with other like-minded US allies in the region. While sustaining a trilateral dialogue between the US, Japan, and South Korea has proved difficult (more on this below), the operation since 2006 of the US–Japan– Australia Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) has been a notable success story for ‘minilateralism’.38 The TSD has portrayed its role as contributing to the region through security capacity building in developing countries, although much of its focus has been on projecting like-minded security concerns regarding China’s conduct and North Korea’s nuclear program.39 Militarily, the US and Japan have moved closer in recent years. As one study has recently noted: ‘The “operational density”, or the extent to which the US and Japanese defense establishments are integrated and participate in exercises together, has steadily grown stronger over the course of the alliance’.40 Indeed, US Navy officials claim a closer day-to-day operational relationship with Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force than with any other navy worldwide.41 An important milestone in fusing more intimate military cooperation was Operation Tomadachi in response to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that saw the single largest US–Japanese military mission in history.42 How will the US–Japan alliance evolve over the next thirteen years? If we exclude discontinuitybased changes – which, by definition, cannot be anticipated – the trend-based factors that will likely continue to shape the alliance between now and 2030 are: relations with China; North Korea’s conduct and capabilities; leadership preferences in Tokyo and Washington; and generic alliance apprehension over entrapment and abandonment. It should be emphasized that these factors are highly interdependent and will intersect over time. For example, Japanese perceptions of the risk of abandonment will be highly contingent on the nature of political leadership in Washington and how elites in Tokyo assess threats from North Korea and China at any given time. Equally, potential US apprehension regarding entrapment will be strongly influenced by assessments of leaders’ preferences in Tokyo and the behaviour and capabilities of China and North Korea. Judging by linear trends, however, the single most important factor will be relations with Beijing. Japanese elites remain preoccupied with China’s rapid military modernization programmes in the conventional, cyber, and nuclear spheres. This is not only in relation to what these advances mean for Japan’s own capabilities relative to those of China, but also what they mean for US relative power and the capacity for China to deter the US from intervening in future regional crises.43 In this sense, a critical test over the next thirteen years will be how the US seeks to deal with China over its territorial claims in the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Despite the 363

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dismissal in 2016 by the Permanent Court of Arbitration of China’s expansive claims over the South China Sea, Beijing’s comprehensive rejection of the ruling means that China is unlikely to alter its strategic posture in the region.44 Notwithstanding the higher profile accorded to the South China Sea in recent years, tensions in the East China Sea between Tokyo and Beijing continue to simmer with China authorizing increasingly frequent military operations near Japanese territory in the wake of Beijing’s 2013 declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone in the region.45 Although the Obama administration affirmed in 2014 that US extended deterrence under the alliance with Japan covers the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, Washington was reportedly concerned about being entrapped in an escalating crisis and exerted discreet pressure on Tokyo to engage with Beijing diplomatically on the issue.46 More than any other US ally in Asia, or worldwide for that matter, Japan is highly sensitive to any indication Washington may be hedging its bets with respect to security commitments. In this respect, Japanese policy makers are likely to be concerned at the mercantilist tone of President Trump’s approach to NATO and wary that this may come to distinguish his approach to all US alliances over time. Tokyo’s fear of abandonment has been well canvassed elsewhere,47 but what is often overlooked is the nuance underpinning Japan’s strategic perspective on the alliance. Aside from the most paranoid Japanese strategists, very few genuinely fear the US will abandon the alliance altogether. Rather, the concern tends to be that the United States will gradually loosen its commitment over time as Washington’s resolve to uphold alliances dissipates. This has led to a view, which has enjoyed strong currency under the Abe government, that Japan should be more pro-active in supporting US attempts to maintain and bolster its military capabilities in Asia more generally. Much has been made of China’s widening combat radius in the Western Pacific, and the extent to which Beijing’s anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) strategy will inhibit the US military’s future freedom of manoeuvre. However, one recent detailed study that looks out to 2040 concludes that ‘this threat’s magnitude is smaller than often assumed, and it will be very difficult for China to extend A2/AD’s effects over distances great enough to threaten most US allies if China’s opponent’s take reasonable precautions’.48 In this respect, it is likely that Japanese elites will be looking for further opportunities to work with US forces in the region to constrain China’s ability to control critical maritime zones. Indications that Japan is keen to explore joint operations in the South China Sea with the US and other allies such as Australia could be a sign of things to come.49 In some respects, North Korea will pose a greater challenge for the management of the US– Japan alliance than the implications of China’s growing strategic influence in the region. Barring an internal collapse, by 2030 North Korea will be an established nuclear power with an inventory potentially numbering in the hundreds of warheads. This will be complemented by long-range and increasingly mobile land- and sea-based missile forces capable of striking inter-continental targets, including the US west coast and potentially the east coast. This will introduce a degree of uncertainty for Japan (as well as South Korea) over whether Washington will think twice about the benefits of intervening to protect allies against threats from Pyongyang if it risks a North Korean nuclear strike against the United States.50 For Japan, anxiety over the risk of strategic ‘decoupling’ – where the US increasingly treats its security separate from that of its allies – is longstanding. Any perception, no matter how slight, that the United States is weakening in its resolve to deter North Korea by exposing the US itself to strategic risk will trigger more focused discussion within Japan on the nuclear weapons option. Japanese policy makers are no doubt aware of this, and will be looking to Washington for greater reassurance through alliance mechanisms such as the bilateral Extended Deterrence Dialogue that the nuclear umbrella is credible and that this is being conveyed clearly to North Korea and China. A conversation over whether 364

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Japan should itself go nuclear is not one that Japanese elites want to have, and a strong US alliance will remain crucial to averting this.

The South Korea–US alliance While the alliance between the United States and South Korea is a product of the Korean War, deterring another North Korean invasion constituted one of several motives underlying the negotiation of the 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty between Seoul and Washington. From the outset, alliance dynamics were distinguished by a competing tension between entrapment and abandonment concerns. For Seoul, the primary motive in allying formally with the United States was to lock the latter into a commitment to defend South Korea and avoid a repeat of June 1950 when America and its allies had to scramble to counter North Korea’s blitzkrieg invasion and rapid occupation of large swathes of South Korean territory. For Washington, the alliance with South Korea was seen initially as a way of controlling the mercurial government of Syngman Rhee, which had sought to sabotage armistice negotiations between the UN and Pyongyang with a view to continuing to prosecute armed conflict against North Korea.51 Concerns over future entrapment ran so deep in Washington that the US Senate inserted a formal caveat into the Mutual Defense Treaty,‘Understanding of the United States’, which specified that ‘nothing in the present treaty [can] be construed as requiring the United States to give assistance to [South] Korea except in the event of an armed attack against territory which has been recognized by the United States as lawfully brought under the administrative control of the Republic of Korea’.52 From the 1950s until the 1990s, the alliance was characterized by a dual theme: underlying tensions over a lack of political consultation by Washington, and an increasingly close strategic and military-technical bilateral relationship. Indeed, as recently as 1993–94, Seoul was excluded from negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang over the latter’s nuclear program. Although the South Koreans were consulted on technical details, as one author notes, ‘the American side rejected the notion of autonomous decision making in Seoul, and regarded the contacts as tools for aligning the country’s policy with American plans’.53 South Korea had provided the largest troop contribution of any US ally during the Vietnam War, yet was not consulted by Washington over such major issues as the Nixon rapprochement with China, the withdrawal of a large number of US ground forces from South Korea in 1970, and the announcement in 1977 (subsequently shelved) that the US would withdraw all ground forces and tactical nuclear weapons by 1982.54 These events occurred in a context where North Korean provocations were becoming increasingly aggressive and the Park Chung-hee government’s sense of international isolation more pronounced. South Korea’s anxiety regarding potential abandonment by the US was reflected in its development of its own nuclear weapons program, and it was not until Washington provided extended deterrence reassurance, combined with sustained diplomatic pressure against Seoul, that this program ceased in the mid-1970s.55 However, over this same period, a series of formal consultative processes were instituted, notably the Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) which included a Military Committee Meeting (MCM). The latter was accompanied by the formation of Combined Forces Command (CFC) in 1978. Remarkably, until the creation of CFC, South Korea had been effectively excluded from allied military planning on the Korean peninsula.56 Under the new arrangements, the US retained operational control of allied forces in wartime, although peacetime operational control of ROK forces was transferred to South Korea in 1994.57 Discussions continue over complete operational control transfer to South Korea, but North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons appears to have dulled Seoul’s appetite to risk any dilution of US alliance leadership.58 Today, along with the SCM, the ‘2+2’ meetings between ROK and US defence and foreign ministers 365

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remain the key coordinating mechanism of the alliance, which is supported by regular leadership meetings between the countries’ presidents. Supplementing these high-level arrangements are mid-level security consultations in fora such as the Korea-US Integrated Defense Dialogue and the Extended Deterrence Policy Committee.59 Since the 1990s, South Korean policy makers have sought to raise the country’s global profile as an activist middle power and invested significant diplomatic resources designed to broaden the ROK’s footprint in multilateral affairs.60 This has been accompanied by growing emphasis on South Korea as a globally engaged power with major interests beyond Northeast Asia. The country’s carefully cultivated middle power profile has included many of the classic themes associated with states claiming this status in international relations, such as bridge building and mediation, as well promoting an international order conducive to the interests of states that are not major powers. Yet, rather than witness a drift away from the alliance with the US, South Korea’s commitment to broadening the alliance has grown. The landmark 2009 US-ROK Joint Vision Statement endorsed an explicitly global role for the alliance that included a major contribution to international security in areas as diverse as battling organized crime, counter-terrorism, and addressing epidemic disease.61 The strategic focus of the alliance, however, remains squarely on Northeast Asia, and Seoul is preoccupied with deterring, and if necessary defeating militarily, North Korea. ROK policy makers also see the alliance as a hedge to safeguard against future coercion from Beijing. While sharing an intimate economic and cultural relationship with China, in strategic terms South Korea is wary of its great power neighbour. This suspicion has been accentuated with growing resentment in South Korea over what many see as Beijing’s unwillingness to use its strategic and economic muscle to restrain North Korea from accelerating its nuclear and missile programs. This led to an agreement with the US in 2016 to deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) on South Korean territory that could conceivably be used against Chinese forces in any conflict.62 While the advent of the liberal Moon Jae-in administration (which favours closer ties with Beijing and a return to the ‘sunshine policy’ towards North Korea) has delayed the operation of THAAD, there are no signs at the time of writing that the new government in Seoul intends to break the existing agreement on deployment with Washington.63 Excluding discontinuity-based changes from the analysis, three main factors will shape the evolution of the South Korea–US alliance to 2030: North Korea’s conduct and capabilities; leadership preferences in Seoul and Washington; and China’s approach to Korean peninsula issues. While there are parallels with the projected dynamics underlying the US–Japan alliance, the US– ROK alliance has some key differences. The most obvious is that policy makers in Seoul are less concerned than their counterparts in Tokyo about China’s conduct in the wider Asian region. In contrast to Japan, South Korea has kept a low profile on the South China Sea issue, despite much of the country’s trade traversing this maritime zone.64 It is likely that South Korean elites are conscious that publicly criticizing China over something as crucial to Beijing as territorial sovereignty would probably result in China making life more difficult for the ROK on the Korean peninsula. Longer term considerations regarding a potential inter-Korean peace settlement and reunification on the peninsula loom large for Seoul, and a key theme among South Korean security experts is that China’s cooperation will be a pre-requisite to negotiating an ‘endgame’. For South Korea, the alliance with the US has strong operational relevance in deterring North Korea, but is almost certainly regarded as a safety net in dealing with China over the future of the Korean peninsula. Assuming the regime in Pyongyang remains in place in 2030 – and despite periodic rumours of instability under Kim Jong-un, there are few grounds to assume the regime will not survive – North Korea will remain the single biggest security challenge facing the US–ROK alliance. 366

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Like Japanese policy makers, the government in Seoul will be sensitized to any indication that the growing radius of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is inhibiting Washington’s resolve to deter DPRK coercion in Northeast Asia. This perception may be encouraged by North Korea having acquired nuclear weapons in spite of Washington’s rhetoric since the early 2000s of ‘red lines’ and ‘consequences’ for Pyongyang, which have not materialized.65 Such doubts have probably been reinforced by the inconsistent response from the Trump administration to North Korea’s flurry of missile tests in the first half of 2017, tests that indicated real progress on its ICBM aspirations.66 There have already been calls for South Korea to review its non-nuclear status, and these have grown with each successive North Korean nuclear test since 2006. One former senior South Korean government official recently observed that while the Park Geun-hye publicly ruled out acquiring nuclear weapons,‘With each nuclear test, the government is more receptive to listening to arguments put forward by nuclear advocates’.67 The dilemma for Washington is that extended deterrence for South Korea has never been more important, but the credibility of US assurances will become harder to sustain as the DPRK doubles down on bringing the continental US within range of North Korean nuclear-armed missiles. Like the US–Japan alliance, leadership preferences will remain important in shaping the US– ROK alliance. In the short term, the election of Moon Jae-in as South Korean President raises the prospect of growing tensions with the Trump administration in light of differing policy preferences in Washington and Seoul over how best to engage North Korea and China.68 Leadership preferences will be more of a factor in the US–ROK alliance due to the greater influence of grass roots nationalism on South Korean foreign and strategic policy decisions. A perennial frustration for US policy makers is resistance in Seoul to closer trilateral coordination on strategic matters between South Korea, Japan, and the United States.69 A recurring theme in South Korean nationalism is anti-Japanese sentiment, which makes it difficult for governments in Seoul to ‘sell’ closer defence cooperation with Tokyo, even when this makes sense from a pragmatic perspective. Governments in Seoul, including the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations, have not been above leveraging anti-Japanese sentiment for narrow domestic purposes. At times this has backfired, as in 2012 when a landmark security and intelligence agreement between Japan and the ROK was stymied at the eleventh hour due to major domestic opposition in South Korea.70 A trilateral agreement to promote the sharing of intelligence on the North Korean missile and nuclear programs has been in place since 2014, but Washington performs an essential mediating role because of continuing tensions between Seoul and Tokyo.71 In light of the limited progress in trilateral cooperation between the US, South Korea, and Japan – notwithstanding North Korea’s acceleration of its nuclear program, ongoing provocations and threats from Pyongyang, and shared concerns over China’s strategic conduct in Northeast Asia – there are few grounds for believing further initiatives in the trilateral domain over the next thirteen years will encounter any more success than those since 2004.

Conclusion America’s alliances with Japan and South Korea are not the only alliances in Asia, but they remain the most important for two key reasons. The first is that the depth of the normative ties and operational commitment underpinning both alliances is arguably only surpassed by the institutional depth of NATO. The second reason is that both of these US allies confront serious, and immediate, threats to their security from the world’s newest nuclear power, which also happens to be one of the world’s most aggressive and unpredictable states. In addition to the North Korean threat, Japan and South Korea both have complex and edgy relations with China. Tokyo’s relationship with Beijing is tense, but Sino–Japanese economic interdependence 367

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encourages both sides to work at defusing tensions when they escalate. Equally however, Japanese policy makers are increasingly frank about what they see as China’s revisionist intentions in Asia and the importance of containing Beijing’s territorial ambitions in the region. Indeed, in many ways, Japanese policy makers are more forthright than their US counterparts in this respect. For their part, South Korea policy makers are increasingly resentful of China’s inability/unwillingness to restrain North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, but at the same time realize that sound relations with Beijing are a pre-requisite for any long-term settlement on the Korean peninsula. Written off in some quarters thirteen years ago as outmoded, the importance of America’s alliances in Asia have made a comeback since the United States sought to ‘pivot’ back to the region under the Obama administration. Despite Trump’s personal ambivalence about the ‘return on investment’ from alliances, his administration has thus far reassured America’s Asian allies of its commitment to their security. Washington has regarded Japan and South Korea (along with Australia) as key players in America’s strategy of constraining China’s great power ambitions in Asia and maintaining if not US primacy then at the very least US leadership in the region after something of a ‘lost decade’ between 2001 and 2011. For America’s allies, the US strategic presence in Asia is a sine qua non, not just for their own security under the terms of the bilateral alliance they have with the US, but also in terms of the strategic equilibrium an active US presence promotes in Asia. However, even if we discount the possibility of discontinuity-based ‘shocks’ in Asia between now and 2030 (e.g. another regional economic crisis, the collapse of North Korea, war in the South China Sea), the US–Japan and US–ROK alliances will confront growing challenges in the years ahead. Differences over how to deal with growing Chinese territorial claims, changing and potentially unpredictable leadership preferences in alliance capitals, and perennial anxieties over entrapment and abandonment will all feature. As I have argued, the most prominent challenge will be the growth of North Korea’s nuclear and missile forces and the increasing vulnerability of the continental US to a nuclear strike from the DPRK. The growing threat is clear, but it is less clear how the US and its allies will respond. The literature tells us that junior alliance partners will inevitably demand greater reassurance as threats multiply, but there is no guarantee that major alliance partners will provide reassurances that align with this demand. And even if they do, these reassurances may not be deemed credible by insecure allies. In the final analysis, the future of America’s major alliances in Asia may well be contingent on the extent to which US administrations themselves are convinced that the security of America’s allies is indivisible from the security of the United States. Given the mixed track record of sustained US engagement in Asia, and the reassertion under the Trump administration of US nationalism that is weary of the ‘burden’ of offshore commitments, policy makers in Tokyo and Seoul, as well as those in other Asian capitals, could be forgiven for being skeptical on this score.

Notes 1 The author thanks Kate Grayson for research assistance in the preparation of this chapter. 2 David Sanger and Jim Yardley,‘In Donald Trump’s Rise, Allies See New American Approach’, The New York Times, May 5, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/world/europe/donald-trump-foreign-policy.html 3 Daniel Boffey and Jennifer Rankin, ‘Trump Rebukes NATO Leaders for Not Paying Defence Bills’, The Guardian, May 26, 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/25/trump-rebukes-nato-leadersfor-not-paying-defence-bills 4 For the most prominent example, see Hugh White, The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2012. 5 Glenn Snyder, Alliance Politics, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1997, pp. 180–199. 6 Muthiah Alagappa, ‘International Peace in Asia: Will It Endure?’, The Asan Forum, December 19, 2014, www.theasanforum.org/international-peace-in-asia-will-it-endure/

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The future of alliances in Asia 7 Dan Lamonthe, ‘In Asia, Mattis Addresses Concerns About North Korea and China – and Trump’s Agenda’, The Washington Post, June 3, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/ 06/03/in-asia-mattis-addresses-concerns-about-north-korea-and-china-and-trumps-agenda/?utm_ term=.c5cb66fe38bb 8 Jeremy Page, ‘Beijing Protests US Patrol in South China Sea’, The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2017, www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-protests-u-s-patrol-in-south-china-sea-1495715897 9 FONOPS are designed to challenge Beijing’s assertion that land reclamation of the type being undertaken by China creates a territorial EEZ. 10 Nina Solve, ‘The Pivot before the Pivot: US Strategy to Preserve the Balance of Power in Asia’, International Security, 40(4), 2016, pp. 45–88. 11 Thomas Christensen, ‘Obama and Asia: Confronting the China Challenge’, Foreign Affairs, 28, September–October 2015, p. 28. 12 Hugh White,‘Lines in the Sand: The US and China’s Struggle for Power in Asia’, The Monthly, September 2015, www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/september/1441029600/hugh-white/lines-sand 13 On the role of nationalism in stoking Sino-Japanese tensions over territorial issues, see Giulio Pugliese, ‘The China Challenge, Abe Shinzo’s Realism, and the Limits of Japanese Nationalism’, SAIS Review, 35(2), Summer–Fall 2015, pp. 45–55. 14 Manuel Mogato, Michael Martina, and Ben Blanchard, ‘ASEAN Deadlocked on South China Sea, Cambodia Blocks Statement’, Reuters, July 26, 2016, www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasearuling-asean-idUSKCN1050F6 15 This was reflected in the title of a major Rand Corporation study released in 2016. See David Gompert, Astrid Cevallos, and Christina L. Garafola, War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable, Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, 2016. 16 G. John Ikenberry, ‘Between the Eagle and the Dragon: America, China and Middle State Strategies in East Asia’, Political Science Quarterly, 31(1), Spring 2016, pp. 40–41. 17 Chris Buckley, ‘China’s Leader Urges Restraint on North Korea in Call with Trump’, The New York Times, April 24, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/world/asia/north-korea-trump-china-xijinping.html 18 ‘Donald Trump Praises Xi Jinping’s Efforts to Curb North Korea’, The Australian Financial Review, April 30, 2017, www.afr.com/news/world/asia/donald-trump-praises-xi-jinpings-efforts-to-curb-northkorea-20170430-gvvkna 19 Michael Forsythe, ‘North Korea’s Nuclear Blasts Keep Getting Stronger’, The New York Times, September 9, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/09/10/world/asia/north-korea-nuclear-weapons-tests.html?_r=0 20 Siegfried Hecker, ‘Redefining Denuclearization in North Korea’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 20, 2010, http://thebulletin.org/redefining-denuclearization-north-korea-0 21 For discussion, see Andrew O’Neil,‘North Korea’s Fourth Nuclear Test: More Bark . . . and More Bite?’, North Korean Review, 12(1), March 2016, pp. 101–106. 22 To put this in perspective, Pakistan tested its first nuclear device in 1998 and today is estimated to possess between at least 110 and 130 nuclear weapons. See Paul Kerr and Mary Beth Nikitin,‘Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons’, Congressional Research Service Report, RL34248, August 1, 2016, p. 6. 23 See Michael Elleman and Emily Werk,‘Can a North Korean ICBM be Prevented?’, Arms Control Association, May 2016, www.armscontrol.org/ACT/2016_05/Features/Can-a-North-Korean-ICBM-Be-Prevented 24 For the most recent example, see Julian Ryall, ‘Calls Grow for South Korea to Consider Deploying Nuclear Weapons’, Deutsche Welle, September 13, 2016, www.dw.com/en/calls-grow-for-south-korea-toconsider-deploying-nuclear-weapons/a-19547289 25 Richard Samuels and James Schoff, ‘Japan’s Nuclear Hedge: Beyond Allergy and Breakout’, Political Science Quarterly, 130(3), Fall 2015, pp. 475–503. 26 John Lewis Gaddis, ‘International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War’, International Security, 17(3), Winter 1992/93, p. 18. 27 For two recent contrasting perspectives, see David Lampton, ‘China: Challenger or Challenged?’, and Minxin Pei, ‘The Beginning of the End’, both in The Washington Quarterly, 39(3), Fall 2016, pp. 107–119 and pp. 131–142. 28 National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, December 2012, https:// globaltrends2030.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/global-trends-2030-november2012.pdf 29 Kurt Campbell, ‘The End of Alliances? Not So Fast’, The Washington Quarterly, 27(2), Spring 2004, p. 151. 30 See Justin McCurry, ‘Mike Pence Warns North Korea: Do Not Test Trump’s Resolve’, The Guardian, April 17, 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/17/mike-pence-north-korea-missile-nuclear-

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strategic-patience-is-over; and Reiji Yoshida, ‘Visiting Pence Calls US-Japan Alliance a “Cornerstone” for Peace in region Amid North Korea Threat’, The Japan Times, April 18, 2017, www. japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/04/18/national/politics-diplomacy/visiting-pence-calls-u-s-japanalliance-cornerstone-peace-region-amid-north-korea-threat/ Emma Chanlett-Avery and Ian Rinehart, ‘The US-Japan Alliance’, Congressional Research Service Report, RL33740, February 9, 2016, pp. 21–24. Hitoshi Tanaka, ‘Trump and the Future of the US-Japan Alliance’, East Asia Forum, July 13, 2016, www. eastasiaforum.org/2016/07/13/trump-and-the-future-of-the-us-japan-alliance/ Steve Holland and Kiyoshi Takenaka, ‘Trump Says US Committed to Japan Security, in Change from Campaign Rhetoric’, Reuters, February 11, 2017, www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trumpjapan-idUSKBN15P17E For discussion, see Kent Calder, Pacific Alliance: Reviving US-Japan Relations, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009, chapter 5. Brad Roberts, The Case for US Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2016, chapter 7. William Rapp, ‘Past Its Prime? The Future of the US-Japan Alliance’, Parameters, 34(2), Summer 2004, p. 118. For analysis on this point, see Nick Bisley, ‘Securing the “Anchor of Regional Stability”? The Transformation of the US-Japan Alliance and East Asian Security’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 30(1), April 2008, pp. 73–98. William Tow and Satu Limaye, ‘What’s China Got to Do with It? US Alliances, Partnerships in the Asia-Pacific’, Asian Politics and Policy, 8(1), January 2016, p. 19. See the statement resulting from the most recent annual TSD meeting: US Department of State, ‘Joint Statement of the Japan-United States-Australia Trilateral Strategic Dialogue, July 25, 2016’, www.state. gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2016/07/260442.htm John Allen and Benjamin Sugg, ‘The US-Japan Alliance’, Brookings Institution Asian Alliances Working Paper Series, Paper 2, July 2016, p. 2. Emma Chanlett-Avery and Ian Rinehart, ‘The US-Japan Alliance’, p. 18. Beina Xu, ‘The US-Japan Security Alliance’, Council on Foreign Relations Brief, July 1, 2014, www.cfr. org/japan/us-japan-security-alliance/p31437 See Christopher Hughes, ‘Japan’s “Resentful Realism” and Balancing China’s Rise’, The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 9(2), 2016, pp. 136–139. Tom Phillips, Oliver Holmes, and Owen Bowcott, ‘China Rejects Tribunal’s Ruling in South China Sea’, The Guardian, July 13, 2016, www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/12/philippines-wins-southchina-sea-case-against-china Jesse Johnson, ‘Chinese Air Force Announces “Regular” Exercises Flying through Key Entryway into Western Pacific’, The Japan Times, September 14, 2016, www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/09/14/ asia-pacific/chinese-air-force-announces-regular-exercises-flying-key-entryway-wester npacific/#.V_7UIJN97UI Jane Perlez, ‘China and Japan, in Sign of Thaw, Agree to Disagree on a Disputed Island Group’, The New York Times, November 7, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/11/08/world/asia/china-japan-reachaccord-on-disputed-islands-senkaku-diaoyu.html The best analysis can be found in Victor Cha, Alignment Despite Antagonism: The US-Korea-Japan Security Triangle, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1999. Stephen Biddle and Ivan Oelrich, ‘Future Warfare in the Western Pacific: Chinese Antiaccess/Area Denial, US AirSea Battle, and Command of the Commons in East Asia’, International Security, 41(1), Summer 2016, p. 41. ‘Japan to Boost South China Sea Role with Training Patrols with US: Minister’, Reuters, September 16, 2016, www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-japan-patrols-idUSKCN11L2FE For more detailed discussion, see Andrew O’Neil, ‘The Strategic Challenges of a Nuclear North Korea’, IAPS Dialogue Analysis, April 10, 2017, https://iapsdialogue.org/2017/04/10/the-strategicchallenges-of-a-nuclear-north-korea/ Victor Cha, ‘Powerplay: Origins of the US Alliance System in Asia’, International Security, 34(3), Winter 2009/10, pp. 173–177. ‘Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Republic of Korea’, October 1, 1953, http:// avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/kor001.asp

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The future of alliances in Asia 53 George Ehrhardt, ‘The Evolution of US-ROK Security Consultation’, Pacific Affairs, 77(4), 2004/5, p. 677. 54 Han Sungjoo, ‘South Korea and the United States: The Alliance Survives’, Asian Survey, 20(11), November 1980, pp. 1075–1086. 55 Peter Hayes and Chung-In Moon, ‘Park Chung Hee, the CIA, and the Bomb’, Global Asia, 6(3), Fall 2011, pp. 46–58. 56 Sungjoo, ‘South Korea and the United States’, p. 1085. 57 GlobalSecurity.org, ‘OPCON Transfer’, www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/dod/usfk-opcon.htm 58 Mark Manyin, Emma Chanlett-Avery, Mary Beth Nikitin, Ian Rinehart, and Brock Williams,‘US-South Korea Relations’, Congressional Research Service Report, R41481, April 26, 2016, p. 22. 59 ‘Full Text of the 48th ROK-US Communiqué’, Washington, DC, October 20, 2016, www.defense.gov/ Portals/1/Documents/pubs/USROKSecurityJointCommunique2016.pdf 60 This paragraph draws on Andrew O’Neil,‘South Korea as a Middle Power: Global Ambitions and Looming Challenges’, in Scott Snyder (ed.), Middle Power Korea: Contributions to the Global Agenda, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 2015, pp. 75–89. 61 The White House, ‘Joint Vision for the Alliance of the United States of America and the Republic of Korea, June 16, 2009’, www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/joint-vision-alliance-united-states-americaand-republic-korea 62 Alastair Gale, ‘South Korea Pleads with China Over Missile Shield as North Fires Again’, The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2016, www.wsj.com/articles/north-korea-fires-missiles-as-beijing-and-seouldiscuss-nuclear-threat-at-g-20–1473052182 63 ‘THAAD Deployment Faces Delay Due to New Environment Assessment’, Yonhap News Agency, June 6, 2017, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2017/06/06/0200000000AEN20170606001600315.html 64 Van Jackson, ‘The South China Sea Needs South Korea’, The Diplomat, June 24, 2015, http://thediplomat. com/2015/06/the-south-china-sea-needs-south-korea/ 65 See Michael Auslin, ‘Will South Korea Go Nuclear?’, The Wall Street Journal, February 15, 2016, www. wsj.com/articles/will-south-korea-go-nuclear-1455559107 66 Jack Kim and Ju-min Park, ‘North Korea’s Latest Missile Launch Suggests Progress toward ICBM: Experts’, Reuters, May 15, 2017, www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-idUSKCN18A12B 67 Author interview in Seoul, April 26, 2016. 68 A number of President Moon’s senior national security and foreign policy advisers (like Moon Jae-In himself) have close connections with the former Roh Moo-hyun government, which found itself frequently at odds with the Bush administration between 2003 and 2008 in relation to North Korea policy. 69 For an excellent analysis of the complex dynamics underlying relations between South Korea and Japan, see Brad Glosserman and Scott Snyder, The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States, Columbia University Press, New York, 2015. 70 Seongho Sheen and Jina Kim,‘What Went Wrong with the ROK-Japan Military Pact?’, East-West Center Asia-Pacific Bulletin, 176, July 31, 2012. pp 1-2. 71 Chanlett-Avery and Rinehart, ‘The US-Japan Alliance’, p. 10.

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29 THE UNITED STATES AND ASIA Following through on the pivot1 Robert Sutter

The administration of President Barack Obama had considerable success in implementing the various security, economic, diplomatic and political elements of what was initially called the pivot to Asia and was soon re-labeled the U.S. rebalance policy in Asia. The policy approaches seen in the rebalance policy were considered by Obama government officials from the outset of the administration and were initiated in a series of speeches and announcements in late 2011 and early 2012. The record showed that the main initiatives of the rebalance policy were followed by the Obama administration. Incoming President Donald Trump ended the rebalance policy amid policy controversy and uncertainty with potentially negative consequences for U.S. standing in Asia. The Obama rebalance policy also was criticized. It was seen as too weak to deal with the challenges posed by China. And growing American opposition eventually blocked approval of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the economic center piece of the rebalance policy. China’s Communist party leader and President Xi Jinping (2012-) departed from past pragmatic Chinese cooperation with the United States in carrying out often bold and disruptive policies that notably came at the expense of China’s neighbors and U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific region. How to deal with rising China figured prominently in the American rebalance policy from the start. The Obama administration adjusted the policy to take account of Chinese concerns and to more effectively manage growing Chinese challenges. Critics said that the rebalance framework needed strengthening in order to protect American interests in the face of Chinese and other challenges. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump promised harsh measures to counter Chinese unfair economic practices and he strongly opposed the TPP. He had little to say about the security and political aspects of U.S. policy toward China while his avowed policy toward Asian allies undercut the emphasis on strengthened U.S.-allied cooperation in the rebalance policy.

The rebalance policy – a multifaceted and evolving balancing act The evolving and varied elements in the rebalance policy were in line with the interests of most Asian Pacific governments, though China objected, sometimes strongly. From the outset, the initiatives reinforced longstanding U.S. priorities in Northeast Asia involving China, Japan and Korea, while they increased the American priority to the broad expanse of the Asia-Pacific 372

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ranging from India to Japan to New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. The United States adjusted the emphasis in the policy – at first (2011–2012) it focused on strategic initiatives, which were particularly controversial in China. It shifted in late 2012 to greater emphasis on economic and diplomatic initiatives, though security dimensions continued to develop. As China’s challenges have grown recently, the Obama government toughened its public posture toward China and deepened regional involvement to counter adverse Chinese behavior. The initiatives often were extensions of longstanding trends in U.S. policy and practice; they built on and called greater attention to the positive advancements of American interests in the region by George W. Bush and earlier administrations.2 Security aspects of the rebalance included: •

•

•

•

The Obama government avowed priority attention to the Asian-Pacific region following U.S. military pullbacks from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Asia-Pacific’s economic and strategic importance was said to warrant heightened U.S. policy attention even as America withdrew from Southwest Asia and appeared reluctant to intervene militarily in other world conflicts. The Obama government pledged to sustain close alliance relationships and maintain force levels and military capabilities in the Asian-Pacific region despite substantial cutbacks in overall U.S. defense spending. If needed, funding for the Asia-Pacific security presence was said to come at the expense of other U.S. military priorities. U.S. officials promoted more widely dispersed U.S. forces and basing/deployment arrangements which indicated rising importance of Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific in tandem with strong continuing support of longstanding American priorities, notably those in Northeast Asia. The advances involved developing deployment arrangements or supporting and supply arrangements in Australia, the Philippines, Singapore, and India among others. The dispersal of U.S. forces and a developing U.S. air/sea battle concept3 were viewed as means to counter growing “area denial” efforts in the Asia-Pacific region, mainly by China.

Economic aspects of the rebalance involved strong emphasis on U.S. pursuit of free trade and other open economic interchange. President Obama and his economic officers stressed that American jobs depended on freer access to Asia-Pacific markets. Against the backdrop of stalled World Trade Organization talks on international liberalization, the United States devoted extraordinary attention to the multilateral Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) arrangement involving 12 Asian and Pacific countries in order to promote freer market access for American goods and services. The TPP was seen to pose a challenge to China and, if successful, it might bring about a change in Chinese neo-mercantilist policies and practices that grossly disadvantage American sales to China and competition with China in international markets. Political and diplomatic aspects of the rebalance were manifest in significantly enhanced and flexible U.S. activism and engagement both bilaterally and multilaterally in pursuing American interests in regional security and stability, free and open economic exchange, and political relations and values involving the rule of law, human rights and accountable governance. The Obama government markedly advanced U.S. relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and with the various regional groups convened by ASEAN. The U.S. engagement showed sensitivity to the interests of so-called third parties, notably China’s neighbors, when pursuing bilateral U.S. relations with China. The U.S. rebalance demonstrated how the United States adapts to and works constructively with various regional multilateral groupings, endeavoring overall to build a regional order supported by the rule of law, good governance and other accepted norms. 373

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While the rebalance enhanced U.S. competition with China and American challenges to China’s area denial security strategy and its neo-mercantilist economic policies and practices, the rebalance also strongly emphasized enhanced American engagement with China. Thus, the greater U.S. engagement with Asia seen in the rebalance included greater U.S. engagement with China. Examples of such enhanced engagement were the remarkable in-depth discussions seen in the informal summit between the Chinese and U.S. presidents in California in June 2013 and in their later summit meetings. The greater Sino–American engagement was designed to reassure not only China but also China’s neighbors that U.S. efforts to compete for influence and to dissuade China from taking assertive and disruptive policies toward its neighbors were done in ways that did not result in major friction or confrontation with China, which was at odds with the interests of almost all of China’s neighbors. In effect, the rebalance involved a delicate “balancing act” of American resolve and reassurance toward China that seemed to work reasonably well until China’s coercive expansionist efforts in disputed areas of the East China Sea and the South China Sea, along with other adverse behavior prompted a toughening in the Obama government’s posture toward China.

Implementing security elements of the rebalance Sustaining and advancing America’s security commitments to the Asia-Pacific under terms of the rebalance represented by far the most costly and potentially dangerous aspects of the policy.4 The United States planned to deploy 60 percent of U.S. naval capabilities in the broad Asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific region, instead of 50 percent at the start of the rebalance policy. This involved a net increase of one carrier, seven destroyers, ten Littoral Combat Ships, and two submarines. The U.S. Air Force had already allocated 60 percent of its overseas-based forces to the Asia-Pacific region. U.S. actions indicate a broader and more flexible distribution of forces in the Asia-Pacific region. This trend accelerates changes underway since the Bush Administration to make the U.S. defense posture in Asia more broadly distributed, particularly by strengthening the U.S. military presence in the southern part of the western Pacific. The shift in focus toward the south involves smaller, more agile, expeditionary, self-sustaining and self-contained deployments. In contrast to a reliance on large permanent bases in Japan and South Korea, U.S. forces in the south carry out operations mainly through rotation of military units to different parts of the region. Measures to sustain the U.S. presence include a substantially expanded array of naval access agreements; expanded training exercises with other countries; and other, diverse means of engagement with foreign militaries. The new approach seeks to avoid large expenditures on permanent new bases. The U.S. rebalance saw new, significant military connections with Australia, Singapore and the Philippines. Simultaneously, the Obama administration expanded the Bush administration’s push to diversify the range of U.S. partners to include India, New Zealand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia. A corollary effort under the rebalance was strengthening the independent security capacities of key “partner states” through more flexible security assistance mechanisms and through cooperative counter-terrorism, counter-drug and counter-insurgency operations. There was an increase in training and joint exercises with allies and new military partners, in order to “ensure collective capability and capacity for securing common interests.”5 Meanwhile, U.S. military commanders were in the lead in seeking greater engagement with their Chinese counterparts. U.S. military commanders and civilian officials recognize that U.S. military rebalancing could lead to frictions with China that could, in turn, disrupt regional stability. As a result, the U.S. Department of Defense increased efforts to engage its Chinese counterpart on issues of defense. For many years, U.S. defense leaders stressed their belief that Washington’s increased engagement as part of the rebalance could promote regional stability and 374

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deepen Sino–U.S. ties. Central to this ambition is a more integrated U.S.–China military relationship.6 It has not been clear exactly why Chinese military leaders, long suspicious of interchanges with the United States, adopted a more positive approach to military-to-military dialogue which has led to agreements on avoiding confrontation as the Chinese and U.S. militaries patrol along China’s rim.7 The Defense Department’s implementation of these security elements received close attention by congressional oversight committees. Those committees mandated independent reviews of implementation that were conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2012 and 2015. The CSIS study in 2012 made a variety of recommendations to strengthen military aspects of the U.S. rebalance.8 The 2015 CSIS study said many of the recommended steps had been implemented, adding that the Pacific Command has “fully embraced the rebalance.”9 Nonetheless, it warned that the administration’s rebalance efforts may not be enough to secure American interests. The incoming Donald Trump administration gave strong support to strengthening U.S. forces in Asia. And President Trump proposed significant increases in defense spending. How far the initiatives will go in actually expanding U.S. presence in the region will depend on administration and congressional willingness to modify or end the ongoing sequestration limiting defense and other discretionary government spending.10

Xi Jinping’s challenges to America Security issues of concern to American interests in Asia have been at the heart of Chinese policy and behavior under the rule of President Xi Jinping. The Chinese leader has made repeated choices that have placed other foreign and domestic priorities above his avowed but increasingly hollow claims to seek a positive relationship with the United States. These actions made it increasingly clear that in Xi’s view, positive U.S. ties would come on condition of America avoiding opposition to new priorities in Chinese foreign relations under President Xi. Those priorities focused notably on Asia where China’s rising prominence seemed to provide a basis for more assertive actions challenging the United States.11 By putting the United States “on notice” that it is the United States that has to give way to China’s practices at odds with U.S. interests, the Xi government prompted President Obama and his government to become much more vocal in issuing often strident complaints. As President Xi ignored the complaints, leaving it to the foreign ministry to reject them, frustration within and outside the U.S. government grew. There was toughening of behavior in some areas, with tensions rising in nearby Asia in particular.12 Xi Jinping began the process of changing Chinese policies with major implications for the United States as he prepared to take control of the Communist party and state power in 2012. The caution and low profile of the previous leaders were viewed with disfavor. Chinese policies and practices became much more active, assertive and bold. Xi received enormous publicity from Chinese propaganda and media outlets; his image as a decisive leader prepared to act strongly in the face of American and other criticism was welcomed by Chinese public opinion and elite opinion. Chinese reassurance and restraint in dealing with the United States and others were played down; officials in China said they had conveyed Chinese weakness to Asian rivals and the United States. The Chinese actions and initiatives were truly impressive:13 •

The government orchestrated the largest mass demonstration against a foreign target ever seen in Chinese history (against U.S. ally Japan over disputed islands in September 2012). It followed with intense political, economic and security pressure on Japan unseen since World War II, eventually prompting strong push back from the Obama government. 375

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•

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•

China used coercive and intimidating means to extend control of disputed territory at neighbors’ expense. Chinese officials dismissed and rebuffed U.S. and other complaints that their actions upset regional stability. China used its large foreign exchange reserves and trading capacity to develop international banks and to support often grandiose Chinese plans for Asian and global investments, loans and trade areas that excluded the United States and countered American initiatives and support for existing international economic institutions. The Chinese advances were supported by ever expanding Chinese capabilities backed by the impressive and growing economic and military power of China. The Chinese military capabilities were arrayed against and focused on the American forces in the Asian Pacific region.

Meanwhile, related to the above challenges to the U.S. in Asia were the following: •

•

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Despite increasing U.S. complaints, the new Chinese government continued manipulative economic practices, cyber theft, and reluctance to contribute regional and global common goods. Russian President Putin’s shift against the United States and the West coincided with Xi’s rise to power. The Russian and Chinese leaders increasingly converged most prominently on the desire to serve as a counterweight to perceived U.S. preponderant influence and to constrain U.S. power.14 Xi Jinping tightened political control domestically in ways grossly offensive to American representatives seeking political liberalization and better human rights conditions in China.

Xi Jinping’s outwardly dismissive treatment of U.S. complaints added to his image in China as a decisive and forceful leader. But it reinforced American suspicion and strengthened resolve to counter Chinese advances. It was no coincidence that China’s influence in Japan, Taiwan, parts of Southeast Asia, Australia and India declined as the United States enhanced ties with countries along China’s rim concerned with Xi’s assertiveness. Overall, the Obama government’s rebalance policy and recent American practice meshed well with the interests of many Asia-Pacific governments. By contrast, China’s mix of demands and self-serving and repeatedly unimplemented economic initiatives had more negatives than positives for several Asia-Pacific governments.15

Obama’s measured resolve President Obama rarely criticized China publicly during his first six years in office. However, he became outspoken in 2014 about Chinese behavior and continued such criticism in later years. As noted above, President Xi ignored the complaints, which were dismissed by lower-level officials. As he did in his March 31, 2016 summit meeting with President Obama, Xi emphasized a purported “new model of major country relations” with the U.S. American critics increasingly saw Xi playing a double game at America’s expense. Following a strained U.S.–China summit in Washington in September 2015, Obama had less to say about China. Rather, he and his administration took stronger actions. For example: • • •

Much stronger pressure than seen in the past to compel China to rein in rampant cyber theft of American property. Much stronger pressure than seen in the past to compel China to agree to international sanctions against North Korea. China’s continued militarization of disputed South China Sea islands followed President Xi’s seemingly duplicitous promise made during the Obama-Xi September 2015 summit not to 376

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•

•

•

do so. In tandem came much more active U.S. military deployments in the disputed South China Sea, along with blunt warnings by U.S. military leaders of China’s ambitions. More prominent cooperation with allies Japan, the Philippines and Australia along with India and concerned Southeast Asian powers strengthened regional states and complicated Chinese bullying. U.S. action in March 2016 halted access to American information technology that impacted China’s leading state-directed electronics firm ZTE. The company reportedly had earlier agreed under U.S. pressure to halt unauthorized transfers to Iran of U.S.-sourced technology and then clandestinely resumed them. The U.S. rebuked negative Chinese human rights practices in an unprecedented statement to the UN Human Rights Council in March 2016 that was endorsed by Japan, Australia and nine European countries.16

However, the impact of the actions was less than appeared at first. The public pressure regarding cyber theft and Chinese support for sanctions against North Korea subsided once bilateral talks on cyber theft began and China went along with tougher UN sanctions against North Korea. Cutting off ZTE was reversed after a few days of secret consultations, though in 2017 ZTE had to pay a big fine. The rebuke in the Human Rights Council turned out to be a one-time public occurrence. Meanwhile, the so-called Taiwan issue in Sino–American relations became more sensitive following the landslide election in January of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Tsai Ing-wen and a powerful majority of DPP legislators. Avoiding actions that might cause more uncertainty in the delicate cross-strait relationship, the Obama government carefully eschewed controversy and emphasized constructive dialogue between Beijing and Taipei.17 In mid-2016, the Obama government’s greater resolve against China’s challenges seemed to focus on the South China Sea disputes and related American maneuvering with Japan, Australia, India and some Southeast Asian nations to respond to China’s destabilizing and coercive measures. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Pacific Commander Admiral Harry Harris repeatedly spoke of China’s “aggressive” actions and what Harris calls Chinese “hegemony in East Asia.” They and others pointed to U.S. military plans “to check” China’s advances through deployments, regional collaboration and assistance to Chinese neighbors. Beginning in April 2016, American private warnings and patrols with armed attack aircraft over the disputed Chinese occupied Scarborough Shoal near the Philippines appeared to have dissuaded China at least for now from carrying out on that shoal island building leading to construction of airstrips and other facilities for military use that Beijing has carried out in seven other South China Sea locations over the past two years despite strenuous American complaints. American officials also expected a Chinese defeat in a ruling in 2016 at the Arbitral Tribunal affiliated with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague considering a case brought by the Philippines that challenged the broad and vague Chinese claims used to justify expansion in the South China Sea. The tribunal ruled against China’s claims, marking the most serious international legal rebuke of the Chinese Government since the Cold War. As expected, China ignored the ruling. The United States and other concerned powers reacted mildly in the interests of avoiding major controversy.18

Prospects Looking out, continued opportunistic and incremental Chinese expansion in the South China Sea seems likely. The benefits of Xi’s challenges appear to outweigh the costs. Notably, President Xi appears in China as a powerful international leader while President Obama has appeared weak. China’s probing expansion and intimidation efforts in the East China Sea have run up against 377

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firm and effective Japanese efforts supported strongly by the United States; and they have been complicated for Beijing by China’s inability to deal effectively with provocations from North Korea. The opportunities for expansion in the South China Sea are greater given the weaknesses of governments there. And the case at The Hague may have incentivized Chinese expansion. The Obama government’s efforts to counter China in the South China Sea were significant. However, they were carefully measured to avoid serious disruption in the broader and multifaceted U.S.–China relationship. The Obama government signaled that measured resolve would continue. It favored transparency and predictability in Sino–American relations. Unpredictability was generally not favored. Unfortunately, smooth policy management seen fostered by the predictability and transparency of Obama policy allowed the opportunistic expansionism of China to continue without danger of serious adverse consequences for Chinese interests. China at first was optimistic that it could deal effectively with an avowed pragmatic businessman U.S. President Donald Trump. President-elect Trump soon upended these sanguine expectations with a few gestures, comments and tweets. He accepted a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen. When China complained, he criticized Chinese economic policies and military advances in the South China Sea. He questioned the need to support a “one China” policy. President Trump eventually was persuaded to endorse – the traditional American view – the “one China” policy. His informal summit meeting with President Xi Jinping in early April went well, though it sandwiched his surprise announcement of 59 U.S. missiles striking a Syrian airfield used to carry out a widely condemned chemical weapons attack. Overall, the U.S. leader put his Chinese counterpart on the defensive. He made clear how quickly he could take a wide range of surprise actions with serious negative consequences for China. Beijing was compelled to prepare for contingencies from a U.S. president who values unpredictability and tension in achieving goals. Such calculations may have reinforced China’s moderate approach toward the South China Sea disputes in 2017.19

Implementing economic elements of the rebalance The U.S. rebalance included an array of economic initiatives. This reflects the recognition in the United States that Asia is and will continue to be a vital economic region for decades to come. Close American economic interaction and integration with Asia’s growing economies and its burgeoning economic multilateral groupings will be essential for the health of the U.S. economy. Much of the public discussion has focused on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a set of multilateral negotiations that involved 12 countries, including Japan, Canada, and Mexico.20 The United States is also in the process of increasing its foreign aid to the Asia-Pacific region by seven percent.21 Projections indicate that the greater Asia-Pacific region (including India) is rising in importance in the global economy and world trade. The ten Southeast Asian countries in ASEAN are collectively the United States’ fourth-largest trading partner, with GDP growth that has exceeded the global average every year for the past 15 years. Trade in goods expanded five percent in 2015 and now tops $226 billion. During the Obama Administration, trade in goods with ASEAN countries expanded by 55 percent. More than 500,000 American jobs are now supported by trade in goods and services with ASEAN. With a stock of over $226 billion, U.S. FDI in ASEAN has nearly doubled since 2008. FDI from ASEAN countries in the United States was $24.2 billion in 2014.22 The Asia-Pacific region played a crucial role in the President’s National Export Initiative: four of the ten emerging export markets targeted in the 2011 National Export Strategy – China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam – are part of the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, heightened U.S. 378

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economic engagement – for instance, through the TPP – demonstrated that the United States wanted to remain a major force in the region’s economic and geopolitical integration. Elements of the Obama administration’s trade policy in the region were broadly consistent with and build on policies of the Clinton and Bush administrations. Both of these administrations supported the granting of normal trade relations (NTR) and membership in the World Trade Organization to China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Vietnam. In addition, President Clinton elevated the importance of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in 1993 and initiated free-trade negotiations with Singapore that eventually were concluded under the Bush administration. President Bush concluded a similar agreement with Australia, initiated ultimately unsuccessful FTA negotiations with Malaysia and Thailand, signed an FTA with South Korea and announced the intent to enter into talks with the existing TPP. The Obama administration’s decision to pursue the South Korea–U.S. FTA (which was successful, after some negotiated modifications) and the TPP showed a great deal of continuity in U.S. trade policy in Asia. The United States also worries about the impact that maritime territorial disputes and infringements on freedom of navigation will have on the vast and internationally important commerce that crosses the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific Ocean. These are areas where the U.S. Navy has played a leading role in enforcing stability for decades.23

China’s responses Regional governments face a choice that will likely determine how well or poorly future regional economic integration supports U.S. interests. American involvement in the TPP negotiations supported a path of regional economic integration consistent with a U.S.-style free-trade agreement (a binding, comprehensive agreement that liberalizes trade and investment to parties to the agreement). The U.S. approach stood in contrast with efforts supported by China. Beijing’s approach involves agreements that are narrower in scope, open to certain Asian countries while often excluding the United States, and more lax in requiring free trade in services as well as goods, free investment, market access and protection of intellectual property rights.24 For years, China has favored regional economic and other groups that focus on Asian participants and simultaneously exclude the United States. The China-fostered Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) included China, Russia and four Central Asia governments as members and several regional observer states. India and Pakistan joined as SCO members in 2016. The SCO repeatedly makes statements and adopts policies that oppose U.S. goals in the region. In eastern Asia, China has favored groups centered on the ten ASEAN countries plus China, Japan and South Korea – known as ASEAN Plus 3. A new stage of Sino–American competition over Asian regional economic groups emerged with China backing a new regional body known as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The RCEP excludes the United States while including all ASEAN Plus 3 states as well as India, Australia and New Zealand. Chinese and other commentators see the RCEP competing with the more demanding standards of the TPP favored by the United States. China has also expressed concern about the Obama administration’s efforts to reach free-trade agreement with the European Union along with TPP. Such large agreements could establish international economic standards that China is reluctant to meet. A highlight of the China-hosted APEC leaders’ meetings in November 2014 was Beijing’s proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, which allowed U.S. participation but was widely seen as designed to overshadow and undermine the U.S.-backed TPP.25 Concurrently, the Xi Jinping government announced ambitious Chinese – led investment and international finance arrangements, including China’s “Silk Road Fund” and the China initiated Asian Infrastructure 379

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Investment Bank, that focused on neighboring Asian countries and challenged American-backed international bodies involved in Asia.26 The United States and China remain far apart on the critical issue of intellectual property rights protection. As noted earlier, the Obama administration strongly criticized Chinese use of cyber technology to steal valuable intellectual property from more developed countries. China has agreed to talk with the United States on this issue, but the chasm is wide.

Prospects The decision of the Donald Trump government to not join the TPP undermines this salient element of the previous rebalance policy and adds to considerable uncertainty in U.S. trade and other economic relations with Asia. Achieving a unified and sustained position on U.S. economic and trade issues promises to be difficult. Key appointees have records very much at odds with one another. Some strongly identify with the president’s campaign rhetoric pledging to deal harshly with states that ‘treat the United States unfairly’ and ‘take jobs’ from American workers. Others stick to conservative Republican orthodoxy in supporting free trade. Reports of political alliances in the White House have been widespread, often with presidential advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner and Economic Council Director Gary Cohn on one side and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer on the other. The president chose these officials and has a long record of welcoming sharply alternative views among his staff. Where Trump himself will come down in this debate and whether he will stick with a position is very unclear.27 How much influence the United States will lose or gain in these uncertain surroundings remains to be seen. Much will depend on how China ‘fills the gap’ caused by drifting American policy. Challenges are posed by China’s Silk Road Fund, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and other funding efforts designed to open more foreign opportunities for China’s enormous overcapacity in constructing infrastructure and producing industrial goods. However, it remains unclear how ambitious Chinese plans actually materialize; large Chinese investment schemes since 2000 have amounted to much less than anticipated and recent difficult economic circumstances suggest less generous terms for Chinese transactions abroad.28

Implementing diplomatic and political elements of the rebalance The rebalance entailed significant enhancement of U.S. diplomatic activism in the region. The Obama administration was much more engaged at the presidential and cabinet levels, its engagement was intense and sustained, and its efforts saw a range of bilateral and multilateral efforts. U.S. goals included regional security and stability, free and open economic exchange, and political relations and values involving human rights, accountable governance and rule of law. The Xi Jinping government’s coercive and intimidating efforts to expand Chinese control of disputed territories at neighbors’ expense were accompanied by strong emphasis by the Obama government on a “rules-based regional order.”29 Insufficient U.S. engagement would run the risk that Asia-Pacific states and regional groups would fail to create and sustain norms consistent with the inclusive, transparent and liberal international order long fostered by the United States that emphasizes collective security, free trade and open societies. Misaligned U.S. engagement would run the risk of regional states, most of which closely watch American involvement in the region, will view U.S. policy as focused excessively on competition with China and deterrence of Chinese assertiveness and expansion, or focused excessively on accommodation with China at the expense of other regional states and 380

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their interests. The ability of the United States to strike the right balance in relations with China has implications that extend far beyond the U.S.–China relationship.30 The strong record of Obama administration diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region involved strengthening U.S. alliances. With the Philippines, this involved increasing cooperation through the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement and assistance designed to upgrade the Philippines’ maritime capabilities. With Australia, advances included various Force Posture Initiatives and increased bilateral and multilateral exercises and training. With Japan, the alliance was transformed based on new Defense Guidelines. With the ROK, both sides modernized alliance capabilities and strengthening allied ability to address threats from North Korea. In Thailand, U.S. leaders encouraged the military government to restore democratic governance and civil liberties while maintaining our long-standing alliance. The Obama government moved beyond the “hub and spokes” model of the past, toward a more networked architecture of cooperation among U.S. allies and partners – including through expanded trilateral cooperation frameworks and frameworks of cooperation between and among U.S. allies and partners that do not involve the United States directly – built on shared values and interests. Such synergy is seen to support more efficiently U.S. regional goals of stability, development and progressive governance. Of often equal importance were Obama administration efforts to: •

•

• •

Deepen partnerships with Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and India, and strengthen U.S. unofficial relationship with the people of Taiwan. Secretary of State Clinton made far more visits to countries in East Asia and the Pacific than her three predecessors. Her successor, John Kerry continued this level of diplomatic activism. Strengthen the region’s institutional architecture to reinforce a rules-based order. Clinton, Kerry and other U.S. Cabinet secretaries accompanied and supplemented President Obama’s personal efforts which expanded and upgraded U.S. participation in multilateral Asian and Asia-Pacific institutions. Those institutions include the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), a regular security dialogue among 27 nations, and the East Asia Summit (EAS) involving 18 Asia-Pacific states. As noted earlier, China has made concerted efforts to develop regional groupings in ways that exclude the United States. Through the rebalance and the focus on multilateral regional institutions, the administration sought to advance America’s role in discussions over a broad range of issues, from maritime security and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, to the liberalization of trade and investment across the region. Moreover, leaders in the region, particularly in Southeast Asia, generally prefer that U.S. engagement in the Asia-Pacific be anchored in a strong U.S. commitment to the region’s multilateral institutions. In this important respect, the new U.S. approach was very much in line with the preferences of every regional power – except China and arguably North Korea.31 Support Burma’s ongoing transition to democracy and a closer relationship with the United States. Against this background, the U.S. government emphasized fostering a more durable and productive relationship with China, defined by expanded areas of practical cooperation on global challenges, and constructive management of differences.

China’s response and prospects As Beijing opposes many U.S. efforts to strengthen alliance relations, it competes actively with the United States for influence with regional governments and for influence within the various regional multilateral groups regarding security, economic or political matters. The U.S.-backed “rules-based regional order” is depicted as biased in favor of the United States and the West and 381

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opposed to China’s sovereignty and security. Beijing repeatedly urges its Asian neighbors in joining together with China in regional groupings excluding the United States and thereby to pursue what China calls “Asia for Asians” regional strategies.32 U.S ability to compete with China was weakened by Donald Trump’s demands in the election campaign for greater allied burden sharing. In office, President Trump has played down stress on burden sharing with Asian allies. He also seems much less committed to concerns over human rights and democratic governance that led to President Obama’s differences with authoritarian governments. Overall, President Trump’s Asia diplomacy remained seriously muddled in mid-2017. There was a keen preoccupation with stopping North Korea’s nuclear weapons development and encouraging China to use its influence to do that. Elsewhere, U.S. regional policy at best reflected belated and episodic attention based on a poorly staffed administration with no coherent strategic view. Only very recently have they begun to take steps to show interest in positive diplomatic engagement with Southeast Asia, with notable invitations for White House visits for leaders of the Philippines and Thailand who were kept at arm’s length by the Obama government on account of human rights and democratic governance concerns. It remains to be seen whether such occasional high-level treatment will suffice in meeting the yet to be determined objectives of the Trump administration in the Asia-Pacific region.

Conclusion The Obama government followed through strongly on the pivot but America is losing ground in the face of China’s steadily growing challenges. Donald Trump as president promises to reverse key elements of the rebalance policy which will weaken America’s engagement in regional affairs and may facilitate greater Chinese influence adverse to American interests. The ability of the U.S. president to advance engagement and influence in Asia also remains contingent on serious domestic priorities and at least for now more important foreign policy concerns involving international terrorism, the Middle East and Russia. As a result, the most likely scenario for the next year is an uncertain degree of U.S.–Chinese competition over regional security, economic and political matters, with the United States continuing to lose ground in the face of Chinese leadership’s determination to advance its control and influence to secure sovereignty and security around China’s rim and to pursue economic and other policies at odds with American interests in the region and elsewhere. Longer term forecasts will depend on a variety of hard-to-predict elements, notably including the political and economic stability of the People’s Republic of China and America’s domestic economic strength and political coherence in support of international interests in the Asia-Pacific.

Notes 1 By Robert Sutter, Professor of Practice of International Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA. 2 Mark E. Manyin, Stephen Daggett, Ben Dolven, Susan V. Lawrence, Michael F. Martin, Ronald O’Rourke and Bruce Vaughn, Pivot to the Pacific? The Obama Administration’s ‘Rebalancing’ Toward Asia (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service Report 42448, March 28, 2012); Philip Saunders, The Rebalance to Asia: U.S.-China Relations and Regional Security (Washington, DC: National Defense University, Institute for National Security Studies, 2012); Robert Sutter, Michael Brown and Timothy Adamson Balancing Acts: The U.S. Rebalance and Asia Pacific Stability (Washington, DC: George Washington University, Elliott School of International Affairs, 2013); Timothy Adamson, Michael Brown and Robert Sutter, Rebooting the U.S. Rebalance to Asia (Washington, DC: George Washington University, Elliott School of International Affairs, 2014). For a book-length compendium on the rebalance, see Hugo Meijer, ed., Origins and Evolution of the U.S. Rebalance toward Asia: Diplomatic, Military and Economic

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3

4 5

6 7

8 9 10 11

12

13

14 15 16

Dimensions (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). For an authoritative account of a key U.S. official, see Kurt Campbell, The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2016). For an overview of recent U.S. relations with allies and partners in Asia, see Ashley Tellis, Abraham Denmark and Greg Chaffin, eds., Strategic Asia 2014–2015: U.S. Alliances and Partnerships at the Center of Global Power (Seattle, WA: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2014). For an in-depth assessment foreseeing gradual American decline in Asia, see Xenia Dormandy and Rory Kinane, Asia-Pacific Security: A Changing Role for the United States (London: Chatham House The Royal Institute of International Affairs, April 2014). This concept dropped from use in 2015 as it was incorporated into the Defense Department’s Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons https://news.usni.org/2015/01/20/ pentagon-drops-air-sea-battle-name-concept-lives For a detailed analysis of the security, as well as other elements of the U.S. Asia-Pacific rebalance, see: Mark E. Manyin et al., Pivot to the Pacific?, and Saunders, The Rebalance to Asia. U.S. Department of Defense, Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for the 21st Century Defense, January 2012, p. 2, www.defense.gov/news/defense_strategic_guidance.pdf, U.S. Department of Defense, The Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy: Achieving U.S. National Security Objectives in a Changing Environment, 2015, www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/NDAA%20A-P_Maritime_SecuritY_Strategy08142015-1300-FINALFORMAT.PDF Leon Panetta, Speech to the PLA Engineering Academy of Armed Forces, September 19, 2012, cited in Sutter, Brown and Adamson, Balancing Acts, p. 13. James Kraska and Raul Pedrozo, “The U.S.-China Arrangement for Air-to-Air Encounters Weakens International Law,” Lawfare, March 9, 2016, www.lawfareblog.com/us-china-arrangementair-air-encounters-weakens-international-law David Berteau and Michael Green, U.S. Force Posture in the Asia-Pacific Region: An Independent Assessment (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2012). Michael Green et al., Asia-Pacific Rebalance 2025: Capabilities, Presence and Partnerships (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2016). Robert Sutter, “Trump and China: Implications for Southeast Asia,” East Asia Forum Quarterly. Vol. 19, no. 2 (April-June 2017), pp. 21-24. Assessments of U.S.-Chinese relations in this period include Bader, Obama and China’s Rise; Martin Indyk, Kenneth Lieberthal and Michael O’Hanlon, Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2012), pp. 24–69; Aaron Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011); Kenneth Lieberthal and Wang Jisi, Addressing U.S.-China Strategic Distrust (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2012); Andrew Nathan and Andrew Scobell, China’s Search for Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012); Denny Roy, Return of the Dragon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013); Nina Hachigian, ed., Debating China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Lyle Goldstein, Meeting China Halfway (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015); and Thomas Christensen, The China Challenge (New York: W.W. Norton, 2015); Campbell, The Pivot; See also David Shambaugh, ed., Tangled Titans (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012); Robert Blackwill and Ashley Tellis, Revising U.S. Grand Strategy toward China (Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, 2015); Robert Sutter, U.S.-Chinese Relations (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013); and Robert Sutter, The United States and Asia (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). Shannon Tiezzi, “American Government Torn on How to Handle China,” The Diplomat, August 4, 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/08/americas-government-is-torn-on-how-to-handle-china/; and Robert Sutter, “Americans Speak to U.S.-China Policy: Let’s Be Frank,” National Bureau of Asian Research, September 18, 2015, http://xivisit.nbr.org/2015/09/18/americans-speak-to-u-s-china-policyrobert-sutter/ Reviewed in Sutter, The United States and Asia, pp. 307–314. See also more extensive treatment in Robert Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy since the Cold War (fourth edition) (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). Article by Robert Sutter in forthcoming compendium on Russia-China relations published by National Bureau of Asian Research, Seattle WA. See coverage of these issues in Sutter, The United States and Asia, pp. 120–126. Reviewed in Robert Sutter, “Obama’s Cautious and Calibrated Approach to an Assertive China,” YaleGlobal Online, April 19, 2016, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/obamas-cautious-and-calibratedapproach-assertive-china

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Robert Sutter 17 Ibid. 18 Bonnie Glaser and Alexandra Viers, “US-China Relations: Navigating Friction, Forging Cooperation,” Comparative Connections Vol. 18, No. 1, May 2016, pp. 25–33; “Philippines Seeks Talks with China Amid South China Sea Tensions: Ramos,” Reuters, August 12, 2016, www.reuters.com/article/ us-southchinasea-ruling-philippines-idUSKCN10N0CS 19 Robert Sutter and Satu Limaye, Washington Asia Policy Debates: Impact of 2015–2016 Presidential Campaign and Asian Reactions (Washington, DC: East-West Center Washington, October 2016); Sutter, “Trump and China: Implications for Southeast Asia.” 20 Brock Williams, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Countries: Comparative Trade and Economic Analysis (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service Report R42344, June 10, 2013). 21 Zachary Keck, “U.S. Reduces Security Assistance to Asia,” The Diplomat, June 20, 2014, http://thediplomat. com/2014/06/us-reduces-security-assistance-to-asia/ 22 The White House, Fact Sheet: Unprecedented U.S.-ASEAN Relations, February 12, 2016, www.white house.gov/the-press-office/2016/02/12/fact-sheet-unprecedented-us-asean-relations 23 Sutter, Brown and Adamson, Balancing Acts, p. 14. 24 For supporting information, see Susan Lawrence, U.S.-China Relations: Overview of Policy Issues (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service Report R41108, August 1, 2013), pp. 18–20; and Wayne Morrison, China’s Economic Rise (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service Report RL 33534, October 21, 2015), pp. 42–44; Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations, pp. 59–84. 25 Joe McDonald and YouKyung Lee, “Asia-Pacific Leaders Endorse Working toward China-Backed Free Trade Pact,” AP, November 11, 2014, www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2014/11/11/ china-wins-support-for-asia-pacific-trade-proposal 26 Morrison, China’s Economic Rise, p. 43. 27 Sutter and Limaye, Washington Asia Policy Debates; Sutter, “Trump and China: Implications for Southeast Asia.” 28 Lingling Wei, “China Sharpens Efforts to Halt Money Outflow,” The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2016, www.wsj.com/articles/china-sharpens-efforts-to-halt-money-outflow-1453898254 29 The White House, Fact Sheet: Advancing the Rebalance to Asia and the Pacific, November 16, 2015, www. whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/16/fact-sheet-advancing-rebalance-asia-and-pacific 30 Sutter, The United States and Asia, pp. 85–86. 31 In particular, China has vehemently opposed efforts by the United States to use ASEAN as a forum for the resolution of sovereignty debates in the South China Sea. At the ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting, in July 2012, and again at the East Asia Summit the following November, Beijing was reported to exert pressure on host Cambodia – a long-time recipient of large Chinese aid – to keep territorial and maritime disputes off the agenda. Beijing continues to insist its sovereignty disputes be resolved bilaterally, where it believes it can exert greater leverage over fellow claimants, making incremental gains. According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the reputations of both Cambodia and China “took a beating as a result.” Ralph Cossa and Brad Glosserman, ‘Regional Overview: US Rebalances as Others Squabble,’ Comparative Connections Vol. 14, No. 2, September 2012, p. 2, www.csis.org/ pacfor 32 Curtis Chin, “Xi Jinping’s‘Asia for Asians’Mantra,”South China Morning Post, July 14,2014,www.scmp.com/ comment/insight-opinion/article/1553414/xi-jinpings-asia-asians-mantra-evokes-imperial-japan

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INDEX

Abdullah, Farooq 143–144 Abdullah, Sheikh 143, 145 Abdurrahman, Aman 255, 259–261, 263 Abe Shinzo: regionalism and 342; Sino-Japanese rivalry and 22, 26–29, 31, 351, 353; Trump and 362 Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM) 292 Acharya, Amitav 219, 337 Afghanistan: Mujahideen in 155, 157–158; Soviet invasion of 53, 131 Africa and China 318 Agarwal, Bina 192 Ahtisaari, Martti 293–294 Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) 231 Alagappa, Muthiah 236, 358 Albuquerque, Alfonso de 325 All Assam Students Union (AASU) 147 alliances in Asia: evolving security landscape and 358–361; future of U.S. 361–369; introduction to 357–358 Allison, Graham 15 All Tripura Tribal Front (ATTF) 147 al-Qaeda 6, 144, 256; avoidance of confronting China 54 Ambinder, Marc 133 Anaur, Khairul 255 Annan, Kofi 308 Antonov, Anatoly 77–78, 80, 82 Arab Spring, 2011 280 ASEAN (Association of East Asian Nations) 1, 226, 239; Asian regionalism and 333–339; centrality and cohesion of 5–6; centrality as leadership 218–219; centrality as primary node of network of networks 219; centrality defined 218; centrality demonstrated 219–220; centrality in economic cooperation 222–223; centrality in political and security cooperation

in East Asia 220–222; centrality tested 223–225; challenges to its economic community 225–226; changing relations with major powers 224; Defence Ministerial Meeting (ADMM) 221–222, 235; Indonesia and 244, 250–251; introduction to 217; Myanmar and 303; Political Security Community (APSC) 221; Regional Forum (ARF) 235; shifts in member states’ foreign policy 224–225; Sino-Japanese rivalry and 28, 348; Trans-Pacific Partnership and 378–379; U.S. rebalance policy and 270, 373, 381 Asghari, Ali Reza 43 Asia, current regional security challenges and changes in 1–2; BRI and 67–70; evolving landscape of 358–361; Northeast 2–4; South 4–5; Southeast 5–7 Asian Development Bank (ADB) 27, 225 Asian Financial Crisis, 1997 12 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) 13, 27, 29, 81, 249, 342 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum 379 Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) 147 Assam, India 146–147, 149 Association of Southeast Asia (ASA) 337 Association of Southeast Asian Nations see ASEAN (Association of East Asian Nations) Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) 127 Aung San Suu Kyi 7, 284, 292, 297, 301–302; avoidance of great powers politics 304–306; and beginning of changes in Myanmar 302–304; internal issues, regional stakes in Myanmar and 306–308; Tatmadaw and 309 Awami League (AL) 180, 182 Ayub Khan, General 126–128, 181 Azhar, Masood 171

385

Index Ba’asyir, Abu Bakar 255, 261–262 Badawi, Abdullah 273 Baker, Chris 283 Balagopal, K. 149 Banco Delta Asia 40, 44–45 Ban Ki-moon 303 Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) 294 Bayuni, Endy 250 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) 1, 12, 52, 61–62, 71, 169, 249, 348; Chinese and Western viewpoints on 65–67; conceptual origins 62–63; effects on security and insecurity in Asia 67–70; policy development and evolution 63–65; regime stability through 69; scope and intention 65; Xinjiang and 50, 52, 57 Berlusconi, Silvio 283 Bhaskaran, M. 226 Bhindranwale, Sant Jarnail Singh 142 Bhumibol Adulyadej, King 285 Bhutto, Benazir 182 Bhutto, Zulfiqar Ali 126–129, 134–135, 182 Blom, Amelie 144 Brass, Paul 141 Brzezinski, Zbigniew 131, 315 Burhanuddin, Safri 245 Bush, George H. W. 132 Bush, George W. 373–374, 379; China and 359; Global War on Terror and 272; Six-party talks 39 cabbage strategy 234 Cambodia: ASEAN and 338; democratization in 285–286 Campbell, Kurt 268, 361 Canadian Export Credit Insurance Corporation 118 Carter, Ashton 377 Carter, Jimmy 38, 315; Pakistan and 129, 131 ceasefires at beginnings of peace processes 291–292 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) 375 center seeking leftist insurgents 141 Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) 126, 128, 156 Chang Wanquan 78 Chatterjee, Kanhai 148 Cheney, Dick 39 Chennai, India 194–195 China 1, 11–12, 18–19, 202; Africa and 318; aid to Pakistan 131; assertiveness of 14–15; cabbage strategy 234; Cultural Revolution 53, 55; Economic Exclusive Zones (EEZs) 23, 28; go-west strategy 318–319; Great Leap Forward 53; Indian Ocean and 316–321; influence on Asian regionalism 341–342; Pakistan and 171–172; as peaceful 15–17; People’s Armed Police Force (PAPF) 56–57; People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 13; perceptions of India’s naval rise 320–321; relations with India 164–173; as rising 12–13; Shanghai Cooperation Organization

(SCO) 77–79, 342, 379; small-stick diplomacy 234; stability of 17–18; stunted regionalism and 340–341; Tiananmen Square massacre, 1989 75; Tibet and 165–166, 170–171; U.S. rebalance policy and 372–382; Xinjiang 50–58; see also South China Sea China’s National Defense White Paper 56 Chon Chi-bu 43 Choucri, Nazli 208 Christensen, Thomas 16–17, 359 Chung-Shan Institute of Science & Technology (CSIST) 94 civil-military relations in South Asia: crafting civilian control of the military and 185; democratic civilian supremacy in India and 182–184; denying diversity in Pakistan and 179–181; government losing control and 181; introduction to 178–179; managing diversity in 184; since 1971 182; threats to Indian 185–187 Cliff, Roger 107 climate change 191–192 Clinton, Bill 379; India and 120 Clinton, Hillary 5, 237, 321, 381; on pivot to Asia 268; Sino-Japanese rivalry and 30 Cohen, Stephen P. 127, 135, 185 Cohn, Gary 380 Cold War, the 155–156, 160, 230, 288, 333; China and India during 169; end of 280, 361; South China Sea and 231 Colombia 290, 298 Communism in India 148–149 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty 51 contested states 89–90 Corruption Perception Index 281 Council on Foreign and Defense Policy 81 Cranston, Alan 131 Crisis Management Initiative (CMI) 293–294 Crouch, Harold 281 Cuba 155 Cui Tiankai 276 Dalai Lama 170–171 Daulah Islamiyah 258–259 Davies, Glynn 41 defensive realism 208 democratization 280–281; Cambodia 285–286; delusions of 286–287; geo-political currents 287–288; Indonesia 281–282; Malaysia 282; Myanmar 284–285; Philippines 283–284; Thailand 282–283, 285 Dempsey, Martin 29 Deng Xiaoping 24, 55–56, 346–347, 353 Desai, Morarji 119, 130, 135 Desker, Barry 236 Diamond, Larry 280 Donilon, Tom 268 Doval, Ajit 202

386

Index DPRK see North Korea Dulmatin 262 Duterte, Rodrigo 225, 271, 283–284, 288

Hellman, Donald 334 Hizbul Mujahideen (HuM) 144 Hoelscher, Kristian 149 Holmes, James 234 Hong Kong 88 Hong Lei 29 Htin Kyaw 304, 307, 309 Hu Jinjie 231 Hu Jintao 23, 61 Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) 220, 271, 273, 275 human security: climate change and 191–192; democratic deficit and 197; development issues 192–193; displacement and 193–194; in India 190–197; inequality and 195–196; patriarchy and 196–197; provisions in peace processes 296–297; in Russo-Chinese relations 75; structures deepening the challenges to 194–197 Hummel, Arthur W. 129 Hun Sen 285–286 Husein, Azahari 259

East Asia Summit (EAS) 350–351 Eastern Turkestan Republic (ETR) 52 Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) 229 Eisenhower, Dwight 127 Emmerson, Donald 340 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) 269, 271, 381 Estrada, Joseph 271 ethnic secessionists 141 Etkind, Alexander 82 Europe, great powers of 203–209 Fishlow, Albert 333 France 160 Frantz, Douglass 43–44 freelance jihadists 261–263 Friedberg, Aaron 322 Gaddafi, Muammar 39, 293 Gaddis, John Lewis 361 Galluci, Robert 129 Gandhi, Indira 119–120, 156; civil-military relations under 184, 186; insurgencies under 142–144 Gandhi, Mahatma 182 Gandhi, Rajiv 117, 119–120, 142, 144 Ganguly, Sumit 145 Garver, John 171 Gates, Robert 269 Geneva Accords 132 Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM) 290–291 Germany 155, 160; as great power 204–207 Gill, K.P.S. 142 Glenn, John 132 Global South 201 Goldberg, Jeffrey 133 Goldstein, Lyle 76 Gorbachev, Mikhail 160–161 Gordon, Bernard 337 go-west policy, China’s 318–319 Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) 349 great powers: defensive realism and 208; dynamics of 202–209; future in the Indian Ocean 315–325; Myanmar and 304–306; populations of 208–209; rise and fall of specific 204–208; status of India 209–211 Guam 42 Hagel, Chuck 30 Haggard, Stephen 333 Haig, Alexander 131 Harris, Harry 377 Hecker, Siegfried 40–41, 360

Ikenberry, John 360 India: “Act East” policy and relations with the U.S. 172–173; Assam 146–147, 149; beginnings of nuclear weapon program 117–118; Chennai 194–195; Chinese perceptions of naval rise of 320–321; climate change in 191–192; confrontations with Pakistan in the conventional and nuclear eras 156–159; crafting civilian control of the military in 185; democratic civilian supremacy in 182–184; democratic deficit in 197; Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) 117–118, 123; doctrines and command and control 122–123; future developments 123; great power status and 209–211; human security in 190–197; in the Indian Ocean 323–325; inequality in 195–196; insurgencies in 140–150; managing diversity in 184; Manipur 141, 146; Mizoram 141, 146; Myanmar and 307; Nagaland 145–146; 1990s and the 1998 nuclear tests 120–121; nuclear delivery missiles 121–122; nuclear weapons program evolution 117–123; patriarchy in 196–197; post-test restraint and subsequent nuclear advances 119–120; power distribution and its effects on relations with Pakistan 154–155; prospects for peace with Pakistan 159–161; pursuit of ballistic missile defenses 5; relations with China 164–173; rivalry with Pakistan 4–5, 127, 153–161; road to 1974 nuclear test in 118–119; Sikh insurgency in 186–187; tensions between Hindus and Muslims in 153–154; threats to civil-military relations in 185–187; Tibet and 165–166, 170–171; Tripura 147, 150 Indian Ocean, the 315–316, 325; China and 316–321; India in 323–325; Sino-U.S. rivalry and 321–323

387

Index Indonesia 6, 243–244; ASEAN-plus approach 250–251; assertive force posture and muscle flexing in the South China Sea 247–251; Daulah Islamiyah in 258–259; democratization in 281–282; freelance jihadists in 261–263; ISIS and 255–257; laskars, thugs and Aman Abdurrahman in 259–261; leveraging great power politics 248–250; as maritime power 246–247; military and police handling of terrorism in 263–265; quest for reliable and respected navy 247; regional canvas 244–246; roots of terrorism in 258–261; strategic hedging and uncertain Indo-Pacific region 246–247; terrorism and counterterrorism in 255–265; U.S. pivot to Asia and 272–273 inequality and human security 195–196 insurgency and counterinsurgency in India: comparing across causes of 149–150; introduction to 140; Kashmir 143–145; Maoist or Naxalite 147–149; in North Eastern states 145–147; political histories of 141–149; Punjab 141–143; Sikh 141–143, 186–187; see also peace processes Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 191 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) 193 International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) 38, 41, 128 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 195, 348 Iran 43–44, 315 ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) 6, 255–257; Aman Abdurrahman and 260–261; China’s efforts against 77; decline of 263; Uyghurs and 54 Islamism 2 Ismail, Noor Huda 260 Jabhat al-Nusra 6 Jackson, Andrew 271 Jaffrelot, Christophe 179 Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) 144 Japan 14; ASEAN and 224; Coast Guard 23; as great power 204–207; North Korea and 362–365; relations with Russia 75, 80, 83; stunted regionalism and 340–342; Trans Pacific Partnership and 270; U.S. alliance with 362–364 Jemaah Islamiyah see Indonesia Jiang Jieshi 164–165 Jin Liquin 27 Jinnah, Mohammad Ali 180–181, 184 Johnson, Lyndon 273 Kantian deficit 235–237 Kaplan, Robert D. 315 Kartosuwirjo, Sekarmadji Maridjan 258 Kashin, Vasily 80

Kashmir: Indian-Pakistan conflict over 4, 127, 153–161; insurgency 143–145, 150; tensions over partition and 153–154 Kasian Tejapira 285 Kassig, Peter 255 Kawano Katsutoshi 29 Kelly, James 39 Kem Lay 286 Kem Soukha 286 Kerry, John 381 Khan, A. Q. 39, 41, 128–129, 131, 133 Khan, Feroz 132 Khan, Liaquat Ali 180 Khan, M. A. 128 Khan, Munir Ahmad 128 Khan, Yahya 128, 182 Khan, Yaqub 129 Khmer Rouge 286 Kim Jong-il 3 Kim Jong-un 3, 366 Kim Yo’ng Hu’i 75–76 Koizumi Junichiro 25 Korean War 337 Kozyrev, Andrei 75 Kozyrev, Vitaly 76 Kristensen, Hans M. 132 Kushner, Jared 380 lateral pressure theory 208 Lavrov, Sergei 79, 83 Lee Hsien Loong 276 Lee Kuan Yew 283 Lee Teng-hui 89, 93 Leifer, Michael 334 Le Mière, Christian 269 Levy, Jack 202 Libya 39, 293 Lighthizer, Robert 380 Li Keqiang 77, 349 Lin Yifu 62–63 Liu Xiaobo 305 Lockhart, Rob 183 Lostumbo, M. 91 Luo Yuan 89 Lu Weizhao 129 Macau 88 Malaysia 2; democratization in 282; peace process 294; U.S. pivot to Asia and 273–274 Manipur, India 146 Maoist insurgency, India 147–150 Mao Zedong 17, 55, 165 maritime forces, Chinese see People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Maritime Silk Road (MSR) 63 Marsudi, Retno 244–245, 247 Marty Natalegawa 244, 246, 249

388

Index Mastro, Oriana Skylar 320 Mattis, Jim 358–359 Ma Ying-jeou 3, 91 Mazumdar, Charu 148 Mearsheimer, John J. 334 mediators, peace process 292–294 Menon, Krishna 185–186 Miklian, Jason 149 Millennium Development Goals 190 Min Aung Hlaing 307, 309 Misuari, Nur 293 Mizo National Front (MNF) 141, 146 Mizoram, India 146 Modi, Narendra 2, 159, 161, 202, 307 Mohamad, Mahathir 283, 340 Mohammad, Khalid Sheik 258 Mongolia 69 Moon Jae-in 366 Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) 290–292; see also peace processes Mujahideen 155, 157–158 Mukhtar, Nazarudin 261 Musharraf, Pervez 133, 144, 161, 182 Muslim United Front (MUF) 144 Mu Sochua 286 Myanmar 2, 7, 309; avoiding great power politics 304–306; BRI and 69; dealing with a state within a state 308–309; democratization in 284–285; internal issues, regional stakes in 306–308; introduction to security challenges in 301–302; opening doors to new leadership and policies in 302–304; peace process 292, 297; peace zones 295 Nagaland, India 145–146 Nakao Takehiko 27 Nathan, Andrew 18, 89 National Intelligence Council 361 National Liberation Front (NLFT) 147 National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) 149 National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak Muivah (NSCN-IM) 141 Naxalite insurgency, India 147–149 Nayar, Balder Raj 202, 209 Neher, Clark 280 Nehru, Jawaharlal 118–119, 127, 165, 182–186 New Geographical Atlas of the Republic of China 231 Ne Win 306 Newsom, David 129 Norris, Robert S. 132 North, Robert 208 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 336 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 336, 357

North Korea 45, 360, 362–363; designated a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) 40; development and testing of nuclear weapons program 38–42; highly enriched uranium program (HEU) 38–39, 41–42; Iran and 43–44; Japan and 364; nuclear proliferation as a red line with 43–44; platforms for nuclear weapons 42–43; policy options for nuclear threat from 44–45; relations with South Korea 3; Russian Far East and 80–81, 83; succession of Kim Jong-un in 3 Novanto, Setya 282 nuclear weapons programs: China 170; confrontations between Pakistan and India and 157–159; India 117–123; North Korea 38–45, 360; Pakistan 126–135 Nurmantyo, Gatot 248 Obama, Barack: Japan and 364; meeting with Xi Jingping 30; Myanmar and 302–303; North Korea and 41; pivot to Asia 359; rebalance policy in Asia 268–269, 372–382, 373; SinoJapanese rivalry and 30; South China Sea and 237–238; Trans Pacific Partnership and 28, 270, 372–373, 378–379; Vietnam and 275; visit to Indonesia, 2010 273; visit to Malaysia, 2014 273 Operation Black Thunder 142 Operation Blue Star 142 Operation Green Hunt 149 Operation Night Dominance 142–143 Operation Parakram 159 Operation Rhino 147 Oxfam 195 Pakistan 126–127, 134–135; -based terrorist attacks 5; becoming a covert nuclear weapons state 127–132; coercing the world with nuclear weapons 133–134; confrontations with India in the conventional and nuclear eras 156–159; crafting civilian control of the military in 185; denying diversity in 179–181; Iran and 44; managing diversity in 184; North Korea and 39, 41–42; nuclear program 126–135; power distribution and its effects on relations with India 154–155; prospects for peace with India 159–161; rivalry with India 4–5, 127, 153–161; Sino-Indian relations and 171–172; transitioning from covert to overt nuclear weapons state 132–133; see also civil-military relations in South Asia Panikkar, K. M. 165 Pardesi, Manjeet S. 201 Park Chung-hee 365 Park Geun-hye 367 Patel, Sardar 183 patriarchy 196–197 Patriot Act 44 Paul, T. V. 202, 209

389

Index peace processes 298–299; assessing 290–291; ceasefires with monitoring and enforcement mechanisms at beginning of 291–292; effectiveness of mediator depending on amount of leverage it has over the disputants in 292–294; introduction to 290; need to address human rights abuses in 296–297; peace zones in 294–295; public 298; re-integration of rebel organization into political and economic mainstream in 295–296; symbols playing important role in 297 peace zones 294–295 Pence, Mike 362 People’s Armed Forces (PAF) 100 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 13, 165 People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) 100, 169–170; CCG 104; doctrinal directions 101; hardware 102–103; Indian Ocean and 316–319, 324–325; influence 109–110; key dynamics and trends 111; operations and scenarios 104–110; organizational reform 101–102; PAFMM 104; reach 110; software 103–104; South Sea contingency 108; strategy 100–101; Taiwan scenario 105–107 People’s Republic of China (PRC) see China People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK) 141, 146 Philippines, the: ASEAN and 224–225; concern over Chinese law enforcement ships 30; democratization in 283–284; Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) 269, 271, 381; Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement and 381; pivot to Asia and 270–271; see also South China Sea pivot to Asia 268–269, 359; assessing the 275–276; economic dimensions of 270; Indonesia and 272–273; Malaysia and 273–274; the Philippines and 270–271; Singapore and 274–275; strategic dimensions of 269; Thailand and 271–272; Vietnam and 275 Pongpaichit, Pasuk 283 Prakash, Arun 324 Pritchard, Jack 41 Pugh, Philip 111 Punjab insurgency 141–143 Purnama, Basuki Tjahaja 259 Putin, Vladimir 26, 78–79; the Philippines and 225; Russian Far East development and 82 Rahman, Tunku Abdul 337 Rajkhowa, Arobindo 147 Ramanna, Raja 120 Ramos, Narsico 271 Rao, P. V. Narasimha 120, 142, 172 Ravenhill, John 340 Razak, Najib 225, 273, 288, 349 Reagan, Ronald 131–132, 161

rebalance policy, U.S.: BRI and 67; China’s responses to 379–382; implementing diplomatic and political elements of 380–381; implementing economic elements of 378–379; implementing security elements of 374–375; as multifaceted and evolving balancing act 372–375; Obama’s measured resolve in 376–377; prospects for 377–379; rationale for 268–269; security aspects of 373; strategic dimensions of 269; Trump and 224; Xi Jinping’s challenges to 375–376 rebel organizations, re-integration of 295–296 Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) 379 regionalism, Asian 333; from the ASEAN way to the Asia-Pacific way 338–339; AsiaPacific or East Asian 339–340; with Chinese characteristics 341–342; general characteristics of 336; historical experience 336–338; stunted Northeast 340–341; theorising 334–335 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) 290, 298 Richards, David K. 15 Richardson, Hugh 165 Rohingya Muslims 2 Ross, Wilbur 380 Rozman, Gilbert 74, 341 Rudolph, Lloyd 183 Rudolph, Susanne 183 rules-based regional order 380–381 Rusk, Dean 271 Russia: Chechnya and 54; invasion of Ukraine 78; North Korea and 80–81, 83; the Philippines and 225; relations with Japan 75, 80, 83; Russian Far East 80–82 Russo-Chinese relations 74–78, 83–84; Chinese views and trends in East Asian security and 82–83; dimensions of cooperation and dependence in 78–80; economics and development of the Russian Far East and 80–82; Western views of 75–76 Sambanis, Nicholas 149 Sangay, Lobsang 171 Santoso 255 Sarabhai, Vikram 119 Sattar, Abdul 132 Scobell, Andrew 89 Sen, Amulya 148 Sen, Ronen 172 Senkaku Islands 22, 28, 30, 32 Severino, Rodolfo 348 Shahi, Agha 129 Shambaugh, David 17–18 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) 77–79, 342, 379 Sharif, Nawaz 182

390

Index Shastri, Lal Bahadur 118–119 Shoigu, Sergei 77–78, 80 Shunji Yanai 29 Shuvalov, Igor 81 Sikh separatists 141–143, 186–187 Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) 63 Simla Agreement of 1972 156–157 Singapore 274–275 Singh, Hari 143 Singh, Manmohan 161, 202 Singh, P. M. 172 Singh, V. P. 142 Sino-Indian rivalry: China in South Asia/Indian Ocean and 172; commercial dimension 167–168; conventional dimension 168–170; foreign policy issues 170–172; India’s “Act East” policy and U.S.–India relations and 172–173; introduction to 164; nuclear dimension 170; Pakistan and 171–172; positional dimension 164–166; spatial dimension 166–167; Tibet and 165–166, 170–171 Sino-Japanese rivalry 21–22, 32–33, 345, 353–354; brief history 346–347; consequences of fallout in 26–31; decade of weakening bilateralism in 22–23; dimensions of evolving 347–352; economic dependence in face of popular antagonism 24–25; economics of 347–349; mitigating factors 352–353; politics of 349–351; security and 351–352; understanding 22–25; and the U.S. in Asia 30–31 Sino-Vietnamese War, 1979 169 small-stick diplomacy 234 Smith, Jeff 320 Snyder, Glenn 358 Snyder, Scott 38 Solomon, Richard 339 South China Sea 15, 29–30, 172, 229–230, 239, 359, 377–378; anatomy of crisis in 230–233; ASEAN centrality vis-à-vis disputes over 223–224; Indonesia’s assertive force posture and muscle flexing in 247–251; Kantian deficit and disputes over 235–237; People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) contingency 108; resource competition 233–235; Russia and 82; Thucydides trap 237–239; see also China South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) 126, 128, 156, 271, 334, 337 South Korea: relations with China 14; relations with North Korea 3; stunted regionalism and 340–341; U.S. alliance with 365–367 Soviet Union, the 201, 280, 315–316; Cold War and 155, 160–161; collapse of 18, 75; India’s friendship treaty with 156–157; invasion of Afghanistan 53, 131; see also Russia Strangio, Sebastian 286 Subianto, Prabowo 250 Sudarsono, Juwono 247

Sukarno, President 337 Sukma, Rizal 250 Sundarji, K. 120 symbols in peace processes 297 Symington Amendment 131 Taiwan 3–4, 88, 95–96; Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 3; relevance to China 88–89; scenario and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) 105–107; shifting military balance across the strait 90–91; structural constraint as contested state 89–90; uncertain quasi-alliance with the U.S. 91–93 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), 1979 92 Takeo Fukuda 353 Taliban 54 Tang Siew Mung 225 Tatmadaw (Myanmar) 308–309 Tellis, Ashley 202, 321 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system 3, 366 terrorism: al-Qaeda 6, 54, 144, 256; and counterterrorism in Indonesia 255–265; freelance jihadists and 261–263; ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) 6, 54, 77, 255–257 Thailand: democratization in 282–283; peace zones 295; return of military rule in 285; U.S. pivot to Asia and 271–272 Thaksin Shinawatra 282–283 Thein Sein 284, 309; internal issues, regional stakes under 306–308; opening to change in Myanmar and 301–305 Thucydides trap 237–239 Thura Shwe Mann 302 Tiananmen Square massacre, 1989 75 Tibet 165–166, 170–171 Todung Mulya Lubis 281 Tomomi Inada 351 Top, Noordin 259, 263 Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) 40 Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP): Asian regionalism and 335; Japan and 27–28, 348; Obama and 28, 270, 372–373, 378–379; Trump and 276, 380 Transparency International 281 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) 221, 270, 272, 338 Treki, Abdelsalem Ali 293 Tripura, India 147, 150 Troung Tan Sang 275 Trump, Donald: on alliances and burden sharing 357; ASEAN and 224; Asian alliances and 362; China and 358–360; demands for greater allied burden sharing 382; Japan and 362; nationalism and 368; South China Sea and 239; Trans Pacific Partnership and 276, 380; U.S. rebalance policy and 372, 375, 378 Tsai Ying-wen 3, 378

391

Index Ukraine 78 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) see Soviet Union, the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) 141, 147, 149 United Malays Nationalist Organisation (UMNO) 282 United National Liberation Front (UNLF) 141, 146 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 6, 25, 28–29, 230, 236, 239 United Nations Development Programme 192 United States, the: aid to Pakistan 129–131, 134; alliance with Japan 362–364; alliance with South Korea 365–367; Cold War and 155–156, 161, 280; Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with the Philippines 269, 381; future of alliances in Asia 361–369; as great power 203–207; nationalism in 368; policy options for North Korean nuclear threat 44–45; quasi-alliance with Taiwan 91–93; relations with China regarding the South China Sea 237–238; relations with India 172–173; relations with Vietnam 82–83; Sino-Japanese rivalry and 30–31; Sino-U.S. rivalry and the Indian Ocean 321–323; viewpoint on BRI 65–67 U Nu 306 U.S.-ROC Mutual Defense Treaty, 1954 92 Uyghur separatism 57–58

Weiner, Myron 147 Western viewpoint on BRI 65–67 White, Hugh 238, 359 Widodo, Joko 6, 243–244, 250, 259, 261; ASEAN and 251; delusions of democracy 286–287; Indo-Pacific discourse under 245; maritime policies 246–248; see also Indonesia Wilkinson, Steven 179 World Bank 63, 69, 191 World Economic Forum (WEF) 302–303 World Trade Organization 373 World Uyghur Congress (WUC) 51 World War I 15–16 Wu Shengli 103

Vadlamannati, Krishna 149 Vajpayee, Atal Bihari 161 Vance, Cyrus 130 Vietnam: concern over Chinese law enforcement ships 30; as main partner of Russia in the ASEAN 82; relations with the U.S. 82–83, 275; see also South China Sea

Yeltsin, Boris 75 Yoji Koda 351 Yoshihara, Toshi 234, 320 Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang 6, 218, 243, 247; delusions of democracy and 286–287; Obama and 273 Yusgiantoro, Purnomo 244, 248

Wachman, Alan 89 Wang Jisi 62–63 Wang Yi 29, 63–64 Warrick, Joby 44

Zhang Junshe 103 Zhou Enlai 346 Zia ul Haq 126, 128–132, 135, 182 Zuberi, M. 127–128

Xi Jingping: focus on battling corruption, cutting bureaucracy, and reorganizing the PLA 13, 17–18; on investments in infrastructure projects 12; meeting with Obama 30; Myanmar and 305; People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and 100–101; Russia and 78, 82; Sino-Japanese relations and 22, 26, 353; on the South China Sea 237; Trump and 360; U.S. rebalance policy and 275–276, 372–382; visit to India, 2015 5; see also China Xinjiang province 50, 58, 62; China’s response and activities 57–58; forces and contingents 55–57; threats and risks 52–55; weaknesses and vulnerabilities 50–52

392