LiberaltheoryandthepoliticsofsecurityinNortheastAsia

Paper prepared for the Ford Foundation Project on Non-Traditional Security,Seoul, South Korea, 30 January 2004Liberal Theory and the Politics of Securityin Northeast AsiaG. John Ikenberry and Andrew MoravcsikG. John Ikenberry is Peter F. Krogh Professor of Geopolitics and Global Justice at Georgetown University. During 2002-04 he is a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Andrew Moravcsik is Professor of Government and Director of the European Union Program at Harvard University, and Visiting Research Professor at Princeton University. More information and publications, including those cited here, are available at www.people.fas.harvard.edu/moravcs/. Please request an updated copy of this paper from the authors before citing. Please address comments to moravcsfas.harvard.edu and ikenberr.East Asia is a challenging region in which to deploy international relations theory. A more varied and dynamic tangle of economic, political, and cultural relationships can scarcely be imagined. Economies in East Asia range from advanced to developing, from high growth to no growth, and from capitalist to socialist to Stalinist. Controversies over territoryand the terms of interstate sovereignty itselfremain unresolved across the Taiwan Straits and on the Korean peninsula. China is a rising power and Japan is in long-term relative decline. Almost all the countries in the region are engaged in debates about their fundamental political identities. The United States remains an uncertain but integral geopolitical presence, anchoring the security order through a series of bilateral alliances. New challenges associated with globalization, arms proliferation, immigration, and environmental degradation add even greater uncertainty. In all these respects, the contrast with Western Europe and North Americafar more homogenous and orderly in almost every respectis striking.International relations scholars look at the region and ask basic questions about the sources of conflict and cooperation, and about the resulting prospects for peace and stability. Three sorts of general questions are often posed. For a survey of how international relations scholars theorize East Asia, see G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno, eds., International Relations Theory and the Asia Pacific (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). One is fundamental and straightforward, namely the sources of conflict and stability within the region. Many specific questions follow. How “ripe for rivalry” is East Asia? Will the rise of China generate the sort of “power transition” that, in other eras and places, has triggered great power conflict and hegemonic war? How do growing trade and investment flows impact conflict and cooperation? All these questions relate to the structural circumstances of states, the changing character of these structures, and their impact on state behavior. The security dilemmawhere the anarchically conditions in which states calculate their security interests can trigger spirals of conflictis the ever-present background condition that makes cooperation and stability problematic.A second set of questions deals with the internal character of the states in the region and the influence of these factorfor example, interest groups, strategic cultures, historical memories, economic transitions, and national values on foreign and security relations. This is a huge area of inquiry where the focus is on how domestic variables shape and constrain foreign policy. Scholars want to know about how states think about their interests and formulate policy preferences. Is nationalism in China, Japan, and Korea rising or falling? What is the impact of Japanese economic decline on its commitment to open trade and multilateral cooperation? How does generational turnover in South Korea influence the countrys view of China and the United States?A third cluster of questions deals with the interaction between economic, political, and security issues. Some have posed these questions in terms of the interaction between “high politics” i.e., issues of national security and “low politics” i.e., issues of trade, environment, and social relations. This is also where scholars debate the impact of “track two” and other transnational interactions on strategic cooperation and conflict in the region. These areas of inquiry overlap, but scholars do tend to deploy different theories in each research area. Realists have focused their theoretical efforts on structural questions of war and peace. Liberals also make structural arguments but focus more attention on the interaction between domestic interests and preferences and foreign relations. They also focus on the impact of transnational relations on foreign policies. Most of the theoretical work on East Asia is also explicitly comparative, either comparing East Asia with other regions (particularly Western Europe) or comparing states or cases within the region.This paper will survey liberal international relations theories as they relate to East Asia. In doing so, it will evaluate the usefulness of one alternative perspective: the work of the so-called “Copenhagen School” led by Barry Buzan and Ole Waever and others, on “securitization” of inter-state relations.Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, Co.: Lynne Reiner, 1998). These scholars advance three distinct claims. The first claim we shall briefly mention here and set asidesince in our view it is essentially rhetorical. This is the claim that what counts as “security” in the security studies literature needs to be expanded beyond the traditional issues of war and the use of force. In this regard, Buzan, et al, indicate that their book sets out a “new and comprehensive framework for the analysis of security studies.” Buzan, et al, Security, p. vii. This is a conversation within the security studies discipline about what they should study, but it is unclear whether the semantic distinction has real conceptual and theoretical utilityparticularly if we look at the field of international relations as a whole, which does study these “alternative” areas. Moreover, to the extent we are interested also in the essential questions about traditional military security posed above, which are hardly insignificant in the world today, does the merging of “traditional” and “new” security threats into a single conceptual framework offers interesting insights or just muddy the water? Is the elaboration and testing of international relations theory is advanced or hindered by this move? We doubt that much is gainedexcept perhaps for those engaged in funding and hiringby lumping all sources of tension in international politics, from Hitlers aggression to the UN program for the eradication of smallpox, under the label, concept or theory of “security”. This is a curious notion that runs against almost everything that scholars have learned about international relations over the past 50 years. And even if there is a common framework, terming it “security” is largely a semantic matter of little interest to those engaged in serious scholarly or policy analysis.Of far greater interest are two substantive claims advanced by the Copenhagen School, which we shall consider in more detail. One is that how states identify “security threats” is variable and socially constructed in important respects. What a state considers to be a matter of high-state survival is not necessarily given, particularly in an age when, for example, SARS and terrorism pose deadly threats to entire populations. This is an important question. Whereas international relations theory has arguments on how and when threats (military or otherwise) are perceived and acted upon, they are scattered. The other is that “securitization” is a desirable development in world politics and, by extension, in East Asia. That is, when states define environmental or health issues as “national security” challenges, they tend to mobilize resources and attack the problems with greater determination. To “securitize” issues is to free them of the interest group politics and incremental policy making of routine government. This is really an empirical claim, and one worth debatingand challenging.Our argument is that liberal international theory would be most useful in exploring these claims. Whereas the Copenhagen School has advanced rather simple claimsthe perception of security threats varies, and “securitization” is a means to focus government attentionliberal theory predicts that these tendencies will vary greatly and, in the case of “securization” leading to more effective policies, is actually a rare and dangerous exception. On these questions, as on many other basic issues in international relations namely, the sources of war, peace, stability, cooperation, etc. liberal theory offers a rich array of theories and arguments. As we shall see these are theories and arguments that are quite helpful in exploring international relations within East Asia. But liberal theory tends to identify interests, processes, mechanisms, and so forth, that deepen, relativize and, in many cases, challenge the basic implications of the “securitization” literature. For example, liberal theory maintains that peace and stability are at least as likely to be advanced when issues and relations are pushed downward into society and community as when they rather than pushed up into the national security state. Functional integration, transnational relations, complex interdependence, international regimes, and security community all these areas of liberal theory argue directly or indirectly that peace and stability among states is advanced not by the activation of the “security state” but the opposite, by the reduction of state autonomy and preeminence. The logic of “securitization” seeks the triumph and expansion of the state; liberal theory anticipates and welcomes the triumph of society.IR THEORY AND EAST ASIAIt is useful to situate liberal theory in the context of academic debates about East Asia. To begin, the most vigorous debates today deal with traditional realist questions about the distribution and manipulation of coercive power, and its relations of war and peace, alliance partnership, balance of power, and force and statecraft. The Asia-Pacific is a mosaic of divergent cultures and political regime types, historical estrangements, shifting power balances, and rapid economic change. Consequently, it is not surprising that some scholars find the international relations of the Asia-Pacific as “ripe for rivalry.” It is plausible to imagine security dilemmas, prestige contests, territorial disputes, nationalist resentments, and economic conflicts swelling up and enveloping the region. Will Europes past be Asias future? Aaron Friedberg posed this question in an article in 1993/94 and essentially answered in the affirmative. Aaron Friedberg, "Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia," International Security, (Winter 1993/94), vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 533. He argued that Asia lacked many of the characteristics, present in Europe, that could lead to stability after the Cold Warnotably widespread commitments to democracy, socioeconomic equity, postnationalist political cultures, and robust regional institutions. Asia, as opposed to Europe, seemed far more likely to emerge as the "cockpit of great power conflict.” Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry,” p. 7. Friedberg, in effect, suggests that late twentieth century Asia may be understood in much the same way as late nineteenth century Europe, with traditional great powers conducting economic and strategic rivalries in a multipolar setting. This thesis is not uncontroversial, and has its supporters and detractors. Richard K. Betts, “Wealth, Power, and Instability: East Asia and the United States after the Cold War,” International Security, Vol. 18 (Winter 1993/94); Gerald Segal, “East Asia and the Constrainment of China,” International Security, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Spring 1996), pp. 107-35; and Robert S. Ross, “The Geography of the Peace: East Asia in the Twenty-First Century,” International Security, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Spring 1999), pp. 81-119.Other realists are less worried about regional conflict generated by shifts in power. Avery Goldstein, referring back to late nineteenth century great power politics in Europe, argues that China is developing a grand strategy similar to that practiced by Bismarck an effort to engage and reassure other major powers in order to provide space for Chinese development as a great power without alarming or provoking more powerful rivals, individually or collectively. Chinese elites, in Goldsteins account, are striving less for Chinese hegemony and more to temper U.S. preponderance and bring about a peaceful transition from a U.S.-dominated order to one that is more genuinely multipolar. Avery Goldstein, International Security.Other theorists wielding liberal and constructivist ideas suggest that Western balance of power or hegemonic transition theories cannot explain the sources of stability and change in East Asia. Thomas Berger, for example, argues that national identities are critically important in shaping how shifting power balances are perceived and acted upon. Thomas Berger, “The Construction of Conflict and the Prospects for Conflict and Reconciliation in East Asia,” in Ikenberry and Mastanduno, eds., International Relations Theory and the Asia Pacific. Liberals and some realists argue that the danger of armed conflict in East Asia at least among the major states is rooted in the dynamics of the security dilemma. China, Japan, and the United States can be driven by insecurity and uncertainty to bolster their defenses and, as an unintended result, trigger defensive actions by the other major states that lead to arms racing and risk taking. On the security dilemma, see Robert Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics, 1985. But this is not inevitable in East Asia. Some scholars argue that the American security presence in the region serves to dampen security dilemma dynamics by allowing Japan to forsake nuclear weapons and traditional great power military capacity. This is the argument of Ikenberry and Mastanduno in International Relations Theory and the Asia Pacific.Polarity and power balancing is one way to think about the stability of the Asia-Pacific; hegemony is another. The region is marked by a variety of sharp power asymmetries, and whatever future political order emerges in the region will be one that is at least partly defined by the divergent political capabilities of the states within the region. Theories of hegemony tell us a great deal about the underlying logic and motivations of hegemonic leadership. A hegemonic state, with a preponderance of power and a long-term view of its interest, has both the capacities and incentives to create and manage a stable political order. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). But, hegemonic theories also acknowledge that the distinctive internal characteristics of the hegemon itself - its political institutions, culture, and historical experiences - will inevitably shape the ways in which the hegemon builds political order. John Ruggies often cited counterfactual observation that a postwar order organized under German hegemony would have looked very different from the order actually organized under U.S. hegemony is apt. John Gerard Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,” in Stephen Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983. U.S. hegemony is already manifest in the region and it reflects a distinctive national style. Overall, American hegemony can be characterized as reluctant, open, and highly institutionalized.G. John Ikenberry, “Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Persistence of the American postwar Order,” International Security (Winter 1998/99); and Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). The reluctance is seen in the absence of a strong impulse to directly dominate or manage weaker and secondary states within the American order. The United States wanted to influence political developments in Europe and Asia after 1945, but it preferred to see the postwar order operate without ongoing imperial control. In the early postwar years, the United States resisted making binding political and military commitments, and although the Cold War drew the United States into security alliances in Asia and Europe, the resulting political order was in many respects an “empire by invitation.” Geir Lundestad, The American “Empire” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). The remarkable global reach of postwar U.S. hegemony has been at least in part driven by the efforts of European and Asian governments to harness American power, render that power more predictable, and use it to overcome their own regional insecurities.Likewise, American hegemony has been relatively open. The United States is a large and decentralized democracy, which provides transparency and “voice opportunities” to other states in the order. This creates possibilities for political access, incentives for reciprocity, and the potential means for partner states to influence the way hegemonic power is exercised. There are many moments when Asian and European allies have complained about the heavy-handedness of U.S. foreign policy, but the open character of the American political system reduces the possibilities of hegemonic excess over the long term. The United States has also sought to build its hegemonic order around a dense set of international and intergovernmental institutions. These institutions reduce the implications of sharp power asymmetries, regularize cooperation and reciprocity, and render the overall hegemonic order more legitimate and stable. For a contrasting view of American hegemony that emphasizes its exploitive and domineering character, see Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000).Another line of debate focuses on theories of regionalism, again often making explicit comparisons with the Western Europe. One of the most striking aspects of the Asia-Pacific region is the absence of well-developed, multilateral institutions. It is not that regional institutions dont promote stability, it is that the region doesnt seem to promote international institutions. John Duffield attempts to explain the puzzle of why European states have spent the better part of fifty years intensively creating an increasingly dense and multifaceted array of regional economic and security institutions, while Asia remains largely bereft of such institutions. He offers and combines several explanations for this contrast, including China's role in Asia during the Cold War; the absence of equal sized Asian great powers intent on mutually constraining each other; the U.S. inclination in Asia toward exercising hegemony through bilateral alliances; and the legacies of estrangement and stubborn antagonisms between Japan, Korea, and China. John Duffield, “Asia-Pacific Security Institutions in Comparative Perspective,” in Ikenberry and Mastanduno, eds., International Relations Theory and the Asia Pacific.The conventional view is that the East Asian region is “underdeveloped.” That is, there are few institutions or agreed upon mechanisms for coordinating policies in the region. The absence of comparable sized states with a common regional vision