The Emerging Middle East-East Asia Nexus

Anoushiravan Ehteshami, Yukiko Miyagi, Anoushiravan Ehteshami, Yukiko Miyagi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138017801
• eBook ISBN: 9781317701705
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As the economies of East Asia grow ever stronger, their need for energy resources increases, which in turn compels closer relations with the countries of the Middle East. This book examines the developing relations between the countries of East Asia, especially China and Japan, with the countries of the Middle East. It looks at various key bilateral relationships, including with Iran and Syria, discusses the impact on the United States' hegemony in both regions, considers whether the new relations represent a contribution to, or a threat to, peace and stability, and assesses the implications of the changes for patterns of regional and global international relations systems.

1 The MENA–EA nexus Introduction and conceptual framework

Yukiko Miyagi

DOI: 10.4324/9781315780177-1

This book aims to contribute to the literature on the emerging Middle East– East Asia nexus. This topic is of growing importance. East Asia (EA) is the centre of world manufacturing power and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) is the centre of world hydrocarbon resources, the global strategic commodity upon which East Asia's dynamic economies’ energy security depends. The Middle East is also, owing to the explosive combination of oil and enduring regional conflicts, an epicentre of world instability. Astride the two regions, operates the US global hegemon. The next global conflicts, Henry Kissinger predicted, would be about world energy resources, while others see the rising Chinese challenge to US hegemony as the most dangerous flashpoint; the two converge in US hegemony over MENA and EA's growing ties to MENA.

The book explores a number of issues of importance not just to the MENA–EA relationship but to the features of contemporary world politics and debates in international relations (IR) theory: whether increased economic and security inter-dependence is generating cooperation between the two regions as liberal analysis would expect; whether this cooperation is increasing the autonomy and security of the two regions; whether the US hegemon's role between the two regions delivers public goods or not, and whether the rise of China in MENA is likely to bring confrontation with the USA, for example over Iran; and what factors shape similarities and differ-ences between China and Japan in their foreign policies toward MENA, allowing understanding of how differences in states shape different responses to similar systemic situations.

The book makes several distinctive contributions to the literature on the topic. First, it brings together a group of international scholars, some from the regions, others specialists on the topic from outside the regions; also contributions by a number of the most prominent specialists on the relationship are complemented by new research by more junior scholars providing fresh empirical data and case studies on the relationship. Second, the book locates the empirical studies within a three levelled theoretical framework that tries to grasp the totality of the relationship.

A framework of analysis for understanding inter-regional relations

A framework of analysis that can adequately capture the complex dynamics of the MENA–East Asia relations has to operate on three levels, the inter-regional, the global and the state levels.

Inter-regional relations: complex interdependence and regional security

The starting point must be the inter-regional level, the dense network of trans-state and state-to-state ties between the regions, from labour migration to diplomacy. Most basic is the economic interdependence that is increasingly linking the Middle East and East Asia. For example, in the decade of the 2000s, about 60 per cent of oil movements from the Middle East were Eastward, compared to 13 per cent to the USA and 21 per cent to West Europe, a reversal of the trend of the previous 100 years.¹ Most East Asian energy needs are met by the Middle East; and in return, massive revenues are flowing into the Middle East from East Asia. Middle East oil exporters are also investing a greater part of their surplus capital in East Asia, especially in Japanese and Chinese down-stream energy industries. One can say that this re-orientation of Middle East economic relations toward East Asia is the material foundation for a shift in the global balance of power.

The most appropriate paradigm for conceptualizing the inter-regional relation is arguably Keohane and Nye's notion of complex interdependence which argued that trans-national economic integration generated shared interests in cooperation which, in turn, facilitated the trust that allowed actors to collaborate in seeking gains for all, rather than only narrowly defined, short-term self-interests.² Moreover, trans-national ties penetrated states, linking them at the level of bureaucracies, corporations and NGOs. Finally, writers such as Rosecrance³ posited that economic competition was eclipsing military rivalry since power and influence now came, not from territorial conquest, but economic and technological prowess. As a result, a new breed of ‘trading state’ had emerged that eschewed the realist game of power politics.

There is much evidence that the MENA–EA relationship resembles complex interdependence, which ties the regions at a multitude of levels, not just in state-to-state terms, but importantly via energy firms. Each needs something from and benefits from the relationship with the other and the growing density of ties is such that each is affected by developments in the other, for example variations in oil prices and demand for oil. Such economic interdependence already shows signs of ‘spill over’ at the political level in increased consultations, cooperation and trust over security issues in the Gulf.

However, benefits in any relationship may not be balanced, and there is also the potential when interdependence is asymmetrical, for the stronger party to use it to exercise leverage over the weaker party, potentially generating conflict. To the extent this is the case, relations might become securitized. Indeed, matters of energy are often securitized, as manifest, for example, in the common references to energy security. In this regard, realists have seen international economics and trade, not as a positive sum game in which all benefit, but as a relative gains game in which each fears the other side will benefit more from economic cooperation and hence achieve a power advantage. However, the security concerns linked to proximity are absent in relations between our two distant regions, mitigating this potential.

Rather what we see is not inter- but intra-regional rivalry, making each region a regional security complex.⁴ A major geopolitical factor which affects Middle East–East Asian relations is regional insecurity. For decades, the sense of military threat from neighbours has prevailed in both East Asia and the Middle East. States lacking sufficient defence capability in both regions became dependent on the USA for security against neighbours, notably Saudi Arabia and Japan, which have traditionally bandwagoned with the USA in order to balance against regional threats, for example from Iran and Iraq in Saudi Arabia's case, and from China and North Korea in Japan's case. Yet, other states, notably China and Iran, seeing this US involvement as a threat, have sought cross-regional alliances in order to balance against the USA; for instance Iran has tried to use relations with China and Japan to buffer US pressures, while China has sought relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran to redress its vulnerability to the USA over its energy security. As MENA states seek to draw in competing EA (e.g. China and Japan) states to diversify their security dependencies, the latter try to exploit MENA regional insecurity to establish privileged positions in MENA states’ oil industries in rivalry with each other.

Thus, while economic interdependencies between the regions generate interests in cooperation, rivalries among actors over security, notably energy security, leads actors to realist balancing and bandwagoning behaviour. These dynamics will interact in complex unpredictable ways.

US hegemony and MENA–EA relations

At the global level, the MENA–EA relationship has become an issue between great powers, including the world hegemon, the USA, and China, the rising number two power. MENA and East Asia are key sites for both the reproduction of and resistance to post-Cold War US hegemony. The role of the US hegemon is framed by the debates within Hegemonic Stability Theory (HST), regarding the roots and consequences of hegemony. Liberals⁵ root US hegemony in legitimacy from its provision of global public goods while realists ⁶root it in superior US military power and assume it is used to serve US interests. Geopolitics approaches anticipate rising conflict between the hegemon and other great powers, which will balance against the hegemon. ⁷Against this, some see US military dominance as unchallengeable⁸ and expect that in a unipolar world all powers will be bandwagoning with the USA to prevent it siding with their rivals. ⁹

For Buzan and Weaver,¹⁰ what makes the US hegemon unique and gives it a major advantage over other great powers is that as the ‘swing superpower’, alone engaged in all regions, it is able to play off states within regions as ‘off-shore balancer’ and also play off regions through both threats of intervention and withdrawal. US imperium, according to Katzenstein,¹¹ rests on its unique ability to penetrate, via leading regional states, the world's key economic regions; the USA penetrates both MENA, with its hydrocarbons and financial capital, and EA with its manufacturing prowess and financial capital.

The USA has established a sort of protectorate over Middle East oil as a result of its military dominance in the region and its strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia, the swing producer, with the world's largest reserves. But US hegemony is not wholly benign from the point of view of the two regions. US relations with the Middle East have often been conflictual and the USA has sought to force East Asian states to follow its line there. Therefore, East Asian states have been caught between US demands and Middle East opinion on conflicts and security issues in the Middle East, such as the Arab–Israeli conflict, the Iraq war and Iran's nuclear development. The USA also has gained special bene-fits from its dominance in the Middle East, specifically, the re-cycling of petro-dollars to the US economy, through US banks, companies and arms sales that has bolstered US economic advantage over its East Asian economic competitors. As the first, second and third largest oil consumers, the USA, China and Japan are inevitably locked into a triangular competitive relationship over oil. East Asian states are increasingly concerned about energy security. China's ‘Go-Out’ strategy seeks to exchange access for Middle East investors to China's vast market for deals with producer states guaranteeing China's oil supplies. Japan's New National Energy Strategy calls for strengthening relations with energy rich countries, building up Japan's own energy firms and increasing their role in oil importation, in order to reduce dependence on the oil market.

While the USA has long enjoyed a privileged relationship with Middle East oil producers, the post-9/11 US hostility to the Islamic world, made Middle East investors and governments increasingly wary of putting their money in the USA and they started re-directing it to East Asia. Under the Bush presidency even US allies in the Middle East began seeking to reduce their security dependency on Washington as the de-stabilizing effect of US policy, including the threats made against America's own Saudi ally, and its invasion of Iraq, made the USA appear more of a threat to, rather than the defender of regional stability and of world oil markets. This gave states in both regions a common interest in constraining the USA. While under Obama, US MENA policy reverted to off-shore balancing in MENA, refusing to intervene in the Syrian civil war and also exploring a resolution of the Iran nuclear crisis after the election of moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, this further cost it the confidence of its Saudi ally, which continued to seek ways of lessening its dependence on Washington. Obama's ‘pivot to Asia’, together with the ‘shale revolution’ in the USA sparked alarm among US MENA allies that its commitment to them was unreliable. Yet they have no real alternative. No East Asian state will be able to replace the USA as the dominant military power in the Middle East for decades. However, they will have more options now that East Asian states are involved in and have an energy stake in the region, although in calculating their roles there Japan and China will have to balance their Middle East interests with those tying them to the USA. Still, in the long term, the potential competition posed to US finance capital in the combination of Asian productive prowess and MENA hydrocarbon reserves and financial liquidity could shift the global power balance against US hegemony.

Foreign policy analysis

There is no uniform response by states to either US hegemony or to inter-regional interdependence between the regions. To understand the specific and varying responses to these structural levels by key states in our regions, we need to turn to foreign policy analysis.

In the paradigm of foreign policy analysis, the external structure represents the challenge, threats and opportunities confronted by policy-makers; their responses, however, are shaped by factors such as their unique power position in the world system, the foreign policy role or identity of the country, the perceptions and goals of decision-makers and the efforts of interests to affect their decision-making process, including the often competing branches of the foreign policy bureaucracies – transnational corporations and investors, especially for our purposes, hydrocarbon companies, and finally public opinion. All these factors are seen at work, for example, in explaining Japan's MENA policy and in explaining the quite different approaches of Japan and China to the US hegemon's region-spanning role.

Each of the four main regional actors treated in this book has different interests and policies. Iran was put on a distinctive tangent by its anti-Western Islamic revolution. Iraq and the USA were its main threats and China and Japan were seen as friendly states. During the Iran–Iraq war, China provided arms, and Japan's purchase of oil provided revenues needed for the war effort. After the war, Iranian leaders sought to involve both East Asian states in Iran to evade US efforts to isolate the country; Japan was Iran's preferred partner to develop its biggest oil field but when Japan's deferred to US sanctions, Iran turned to China to escape America's drive to isolate it.

By contrast to Iran, Saudi Arabia historically bandwagoned with the USA for protection from Iran and Iraq. But Saudi Arabia started to look for alternative partners in East Asia to the extent that the USA did not meet its needs. When the USA declined to provide it with missiles it turned to China in the mid-1980s. After 9/11, US hostility to Saudi Arabia and the invasion of Iraq led the Saudis to diversify their dependence by involving both China and Japan in economic relations, for example, by investing in the down-stream oil industry in these states.

On the East Asian side of the relationship, the two main states, Japan and China, are in some ways opposites similar to Iran and Saudi Arabia. Japanhas been traditionally caught between its need for the US security alliance and for Middle East energy supplies. After the 1973 oil embargo, Japan became conscious of the need to placate Arab opinion, on issues such as the Palestinians, and it acquired an interest in maintaining relations with Iran, despite US–Iranian hostility. Later, however, as the oil price boom turned into an oil glut in the mid-1980s, and as Japan feared US abandonment in East Asia after the end of the Cold War, Tokyo tilted toward the USA in the Middl...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• 1 The MENA–EA nexus Introduction and conceptual framework
• 2 Middle East–East Asia relations Between geopolitics and globalization
• 3 Gulf–East Asian relations From economic interdependence to strategic cooperation
• 4 East Asia and the Middle East Inter-regional dynamics and American hegemony
• 5 Japan's energy policy and energy diplomacy in the Gulf
• 6 Japan in the Gulf Between intra-bureaucratic politics and inter-Asian rivalry
• 7 China's energy diplomacy towards the Middle East
• 8 Sino–Iranian relations since the Cold War
• 9 China's policy towards Saudi Arabia Searching for a reliable partner
• 10 American hegemony (and hubris) The Iranian nuclear issue, and the future of Sino–Iranian relations
• 11 China and the USA in the Middle East and Islamic world
• 12 Conclusion Asianization and systemic shift
• Index