Security, Arms Control and Defence Restructuring in East Asia

Bjørn Møller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781138346451
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429793486
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

First published in 1998, this volume examines East Asia, especially Northeast Asia, which has been a region of considerable political security of importance for several key reasons. It features several great and medium powers: China, Japan and Russia, as well as North and South Korea. Even though no arms race is yet discernible among these states (with the partial exception of the two Koreas), it is conceivable that one might commence. If it did, the level of militarization could become quite alarming, if only because of the tremendous and rapidly growing economic potential of the regional states. Even though relations among regional sates (except the two Koreas) are currently peaceful, the region features several unresolved issues (e.g. concerning territory) and a historical legacy of enmity between several states. To prevent such conflicts of interest from erupting into armed conflict is of the utmost importance. A stabilizing factor is that the military potentials in the region are still predominantly defensively oriented, i.e. most states lack the requisite power projection or invasion capabilities to inflict serious harm on each other. However, this might change in the not-so-distant future. Hence the importance of confidence-building measures; of an institutionalization of regional relations; and of a strengthening of commitments to defensive military strategies and postures.

1 Introduction: Defence Restructuring in Asia

BJØRN MØLLER

In this introductory chapter, some of the Western misperceptions of Asia will be criticized, followed by a brief survey of security and defence political trends in ‘Asia’. This ’super-region’ has been subdivided into the regions of North-East, South-East and South Asia, whereas space constraints have precluded an inclusion of both South-West¹ and Central Asia.

‘The West’ Looks at Asia

Asia has been the subject of heated debates in ‘the West’ for several years, both in Western Europe and the United States (where the general understanding of the region is poor) and in Australia, where the understanding is usually much better. Among the disputed issues have been the following:

• Is ‘the West’ heading for a confrontation with ‘the rest’, i.e. an ‘unholy alliance’ between the Confucian and Islamic civilizations, as argued by Samuel Huntington who foretells such a ‘clash of civilizations'²—or are the two parts of the world merely different, but entirely capable of peaceful, perhaps even amicable, coexistence?
• Does the lack of international organizations in Asia imply that the region is a ‘raw’ international anarchy, or are there ‘functional substitutes’ at work—or are international institutions anyhow of negligible importance?³
• Are Asian nations fundamentally bellicose, or at least more inclined to use force than the West—perhaps because of their allegedly lesser respect for human lives?
• Should the West be concerned about the apparent arms build-up in (parts of) Asia, and/or about the risks of a proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, or of ballistic missiles—even though the general level of armaments and means of mass destruction remains inferior to that of the West?
• If so, is the appropriate Western response a compensatory build-up, perhaps accompanied be the adoption of ‘counter-proliferation’ strategies? Or should ‘we’ rather adopt a ‘carrots-and-stick’ approach to the problem (if so it is), for instance in the form of arms control initiatives?

While the present author is strongly inclined to dismiss all of the above myths, some of them need to be taken seriously. If policy-makers in Europe and the United States should share merely some of the concerns voiced by independent analysts, this might well produce a political ‘response’ by the West to which Asian nations would, in their turn, have to react. The ensuing action-reaction chain might be seen as ex post facto validating the original threat perceptions which may thus have an unfortunate propensity to become self-fulfilling prophecies. In the following, I shall therefore take a closer look at each of the above myths.

The West Against the Rest?

The only element worth salvaging from the aforementioned ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis seems to be the notion that civilizations, i.e. cultures (in the widest sense of the term) matter, also for foreign and security policies⁴—a view that contrasts sharply with that of ‘Realism’, which simplistically regards all nations as driven by the same concern for ‘national interest defined in terms of power’. However, not only is Huntington’s concept of ‘civilization’ ill-defined, it is also profoundly xenophobic and eurocentric, especially as far as his prediction of a clash between ‘the West and the rest’ is concerned:

First of all, the West is far more heterogenous than he gives ‘us’ credit for, which is also the case for both the Confucian and the Islamic cultures. Just compare Turkey with Sudan, Malaysia or Indonesia; or China with Singapore. Secondly, the similarities between Confucianism and Islam are much less significant than Huntington seems to think. In fact in many respects Islam resembles Christianity and Judaism much more than it does Confucianism.Thirdly, the empirical evidence of any rapprochement between the two non-western civilizations is very weak, to put it mildly: a few arms sales from North Korea to Iran or from China to Saudi Arabia, which are easily explicable in other terms—say, as simple responses to Western embargoes. Furthermore, these arms deals differ little from, say, American arms sales to both Islamic and Confucian civilizations, such as the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries or Taiwan.

Unless the West thus views Asia as, by its very nature, hostile and responds accordingly there is no reason to expect any clash between the two civilizations. Huntington is simply wrong.

A Raw Anarchy?

There is no disputing the fact that the network of international organizations is far less dense in Asia (and anywhere else, for that matter) than in Europe. However, this does not necessarily make the Asian regional subsystems into ‘raw anarchies’. First of all, there are actually several sub-regional organizations in Asia: in South-West Asia there is the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), albeit unfortunately with neither Iran nor Iraq as members (yet).⁵ In South Asia, there is SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), on which more later. In South-East Asia we have ASEAN with its several ‘affiliates’ or off-shots such as the PMC (Post-Ministerial Conferences) and ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum) as well as a dense network of ‘track two’ institutions (vide infra). The only sub-region without such organizations is North-East Asia, but even from this region several of the countries meet regularly in other settings, inter alia under the auspices of the ARF, or bilaterally.

Secondly, several global organizations comprise most or all of the Asian nations. Nearly all of the latter are thus members of the United Nations (with the exception of Taiwan),⁶ and a growing number of them are members of the WTO (World Trade Organization). Also a number of international organizations transcend the traditional boundaries between regions: a large part of Asia, namely Russia, thus belongs to the OSCE, among other European institutions; others belong to APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation);⁷ some belong to the GCC; and others to the Commonwealth, etc.

Thirdly, one should be careful not to confuse ‘institutions’ in the sense of Hedley Bull ('a set of habits and practices shaped towards the realisation of common goals') with international organizations. It is perfectly conceivable that a region may have ‘institutions’ that provide a degree of order without, or with only few and weak, organizations.⁸ There may thus be functional substitutes, perhaps very informal ones, for international organizations.

Neither is Asia thus a complete institutional vacuum, nor is the relative weakness of international organizations necessarily tantamount to anarchy.

Asian Bellicosity?

The allegations that Asian countries (or even Asians as such) are fundamentally bellicose, and that the absence of international organizations and formal institutions is therefore a cause of concern, seems to be based on a very ahistorical view of the world as well as on xenophobia bordering on racism.

First of all, it is, of course, undeniable that some of the bloodiest wars since 1945 have taken place in Asia, among which the first Indo-Pak war, the Korean War, the Vietnam War(s) and the Iran-Iraq war—in addition to which there have been a number of ’smaller’ wars such as those between India and China, India and Pakistan, China and Vietnam, etc. On the other hand, in terms of wars Asia is rather below than above the world average. In a recent study,⁹ for instance, the author listed the following numbers of wars between Asian states (excluding those fought against European states, the USA or Israel): three out of ten ‘classic invasions’ : (Vietnam/Kampuchea 1978-89, Iraq/Iran 1980-88, Iraq/Kuwait 1990-91); three out of eight ‘postimperial wars’ (India/Pakistan 1947-48, Korean 1950-53, Indonesia/Malaysia 1963-66); three out of twelve ‘continuation wars’ (Pakistanflndia 1965 and 1971, Cambodia 1970-75); three out of nineteen ‘civil wars with international elements’ (China/Tibet 1950, China/Taiwan 1958, Laos 1959-75), one out of twelve wars about ‘maintenance of spheres of influence’ (India/Sri Lanka 1983-90), one out of two ‘neocolonial wars’ (Indonesia/East Timor 1975-83) and five out of 35 instances of ‘limited use of force’ (Thailand/Cambodia 1953-62, Afghanistan/Pakistan 1961, China/India 1962, Laos/Thailand 1975-88, China/Vietnam 1979). If we look further back into history (just beyond 1945), European wars have generally been much more frequent as well as more destructive. Just remember the Thirty Years War and the two world wars in this century.

Secondly, this relative absence of war in Asia is not due to an absence of possible casus belli, as the continent features a wide range of territorial and other potential causes of war. Perhaps analysts should look at the wars that did not take place rather than at those that did. Examples might be the recent non-wars between Russia and China, China and Japan, China and Taiwan, Japan and Korea, etc.

Thirdly, countries such as India and China have a centuries-long history of peaceful relations with their neighbours,¹⁰ and a shared tradition of being at the receiving end of invasions and other forms of aggression. Furthermore, some of the intra-Asian wars have exhibited a remarkable degree of self-restraint on the part of the belligerent sides, hence have produced fairly modest numbers of casualties. This has, for example, been the case of those between India and Pakistan (with the notable exception of the first) as well as of those between India and China, and China and Vietnam).

Fourthly, compared with the great powers of the West, those of the East have generally been far less interventionist. They thus have a much better track record of compliance with international law—notwithstanding the fact that this law has largely been written by ‘us’. Both the United States and the former Soviet Union have, for instance, been far more interventionist during the Cold War than China or India have ever been.

Generally and historically speaking, Asia is thus much less, and the West much more inclined towards war than either is usually given credit for.

Arms Races?

The Western concerns about the (alleged or actual) arms build-up (or even arms race) in Asia also appear exaggerated and based on an application of double standards:

First of all, the general level of armaments in Asia is far below that of Europe and, even more so, the United States (see Table l).¹¹ Each American citizen thus spends sixteen times as much as the average Iranian on ‘his’ military, twenty times as much as the average Chinese, and a staggering 132 times as much as the average Indian. Even though Samuel Huntington refers to the non-Europeans as ‘weapon states’,¹² this label is thus much more appropriately applied to the United States or even to the less militarized countries in Europe.

Table 1: 'Weapon States'?

Secondly, while it is true that most European countries have disarmed somewhat since the end of the Cold War, a few have not (Greece and Turkey, for instance) and those that have have done so from a very high level. On the other hand, several Asian countries (e.g. China and Vietnam) have completed very drastic arms build-downs in recent years (vide infra) which have gone largely unnoticed in the West.

Thirdly, even though the arms expenditures of several Asian countries (ASEAN, China, Japan, for instance) have risen in absolute terms, they have generally not done so as a percentage of GDP—as one would have expected from an arms race. Moreover, where military expenditures have risen, there are often very good and perfectly ‘innocent’ explanations for this, such as a replacement of run-down or obsolete equipment or better renumeration for the soldiers. Generally, there is no solid evidence of arms races (vide infra), with that between the two Koreas representing the only possible exception.

A caveat is, however, in order. Even though the West should not be concerned about ‘excessive’ Asian armaments, several Asian states may have good reasons to take a less sanguine view of the armaments of their respective neighbours. Taiwan or the ASEAN states may thus fear China, Pakistan India, etc.—and often for good reasons. Moreover, precisely because the general level of armaments is relatively low in Asia, even a small increase in a single state’s defence spending may produce significant changes in the balance of power.¹³

Finally, it should also be kept in mind that military spending poses other problems than those related to risks of war. Several Asian states face daunting development tasks, the shouldering of which is hampered by mi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: Defence Restructuring in Asia
• 2 Transparency, Confidence-Building and Security in East Asia
• 3 Arms Control and Disarmament in the Post-Cold War World: A View from India
• 4 International Cooperation in Regional Security: ‘Non-Interference’ and ASEAN Arms Modernization
• 5 Regional Security and Nuclear Weapons in North-East Asia: A Japanese Perspective
• 6 Resolving the Arms Control Dilemma on the Korean Peninsula
• 7 Defence Conversion and Conservation: China’s Ambivalent Military Reform
• 8 Unification of Divided States in East Asia
• 9 Taiwan’s Defence Policy: Threat Assessment and Security Strategies
• 10 Russia’s Security Policy in East Asia
• 11 The US Role in East Asia
• About the Contributors
• Recent Books on Asia
• Acronyms
• Index