Strategy and Security in the Asia-Pacific

Global and regional dynamics

Robert Ayson, Desmond Ball, Desmond Ball, Robert Ayson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000247473
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'armée et de la marine

From the war on terror to the rise of China, this book unlocks the major strategic themes and security challenges of the early twenty-first century. Strategy and Security in the Asia-Pacific provides the analytical frameworks needed to make sense of this complex but exciting strategic universe. Offering a unique mix of global strategic thinking and Asia-Pacific security analysis, this book is for readers from Sydney to Seoul who want to put their own local security challenges in a wider regional and global context. It is also for North American and European readers requiring an understanding of the dynamic security developments in the Asia-Pacific region around which so much of global strategy is increasingly based. The really vital questions facing the international community are dealt with here: Why do governments and groups still use armed force? Has warfare really changed in the information age? Why should we be concerned about non-traditional security challenges such as water shortages and the spread of infectious disease? Is a great clash imminent between the United States and China? What are the prospects for peace on the Korean peninsula and between India and Pakistan? Can Southeast Asia survive the challenges of transnational terrorism? What does security mean for the Pacific island countries and for Australia and New Zealand? With contributions from leading commentators and analysts, Strategy and Security in the Asia-Pacific offers a comprehensive and authoritative introduction to the field.

Strategy and security today

1
Studying strategy today

HUGH WHITE

People have been writing about war for centuries. But the systematic analysis of war and its place in international affairs really took off in the tense decades leading up to the First World War, as people wrestled with the nature of the forces which were building up in the international system. It gained new momentum in the aftermath of that war when people, appalled by what had happened between 1914 and 1918, sought to understand what had caused the war and what could be done to stop it happening again. After the Second World War a new generation grappled with the terrifying challenge of maintaining peace in an era of nuclear weapons. At the same time, decolonisation was changing the global map, complicating international affairs and provoking conflicts in many places and in many ways. It was to address these challenges that Strategic Studies evolved as a distinct discipline. Now we are facing what may come to be seen as a third wave, as the international community wrestles with the demands of keeping the peace in what is still, after 15 years, a strange and confusing world that has emerged since the end of the Cold War.

STRATEGIC STUDIES IN A NEW ERA

At first it may have seemed that the end of the Cold War would see the study of strategy and security decline as the threat of global conflict, which had been its mainspring for half a century, suddenly wound down. But this was not to be. The risk of a major conflict breaking out between the old superpowers in Europe or Asia and quickly escalating into an intercontinental nuclear exchange had clearly diminished. Yet by the early 1990s, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the tragedies in Somalia, Rwanda and the Balkans, and the opportunities for international action to solve longstanding problems in places like Namibia and Cambodia made it clear that the role of armed force was going to remain a major preoccupation for national governments. Indeed, it quickly became evident that they were going to be using their armed forces more frequently, and for new kinds of tasks, than they had for much of the later years of the Cold War.

All these trends were amplified by the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, which seemed to confirm the view among many strategic thinkers that, in the post-Cold War world, the focus of strategic issues would move from conflicts involving states to those involving sub-state and non-state actors. The unique demands of these conflicts and the complex questions about how they should be responded to have become important growth areas in the discipline. So instead of stagnating, strategic studies has benefited from an intense demand for fresh and clear thinking about these new issues and challenges.

The discipline has also helped to remind policymakers that, although some of the parameters that shaped strategic competition between major powers in the Cold War have passed, many of the more traditional concerns of strategic studies remain relevant to understanding a world in which economic growth is producing new distributions of power, and new technology is producing new ways to fight wars. Rising powers and emerging technologies have created strategic instability and caused wars in the past, and may do so again.

The Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (SDSC) at The Australian National University, where many of the scholars whose work appears in this collection are based, has been looking at some of these issues for a long time. The SDSC was established in 1966 at a time when Australia’s Southeast Asian neighbourhood was just beginning to climb out of its Cold War crises. The Vietnam War would continue for another decade, but Indonesia was being stabilised under General Suharto’s New Order, and Malaysia and Singapore were recovering from their earlier traumas and getting down to the business of nation building. Within a few years the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) would be established, the United Kingdom would withdraw east of Suez and the United States would annunciate the Guam Doctrine, limiting its strategic commitments to Asian allies.

By 1970, Australia would start to abandon its characteristic Cold War strategic posture of forward defence and to build instead what was to become at least the first draft, and perhaps the enduring foundation, of its post-Cold War strategic posture—self-reliance focused on the defence of Australia, an active role in promoting stability in its neighbourhood, as well as a strong alliance with the United States. By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Australia was the only Western ally whose strategic posture and force structure was not attuned primarily to the demands of global superpower conflict. In some ways Australia was already prepared for the post-Cold War transition to a more regional strategic focus, and to the conduct of lower level operations against lightly armed forces in the complex and ambiguous political situations of our own region.

But if some aspects of the strange new world of the post-Cold War era seemed a little less foreign to Australian strategists than to some others, it has nevertheless thrown up exceptional and demanding challenges to strategic policymakers and scholars alike. This volume aims to continue the tradition of work launched by our predecessors almost 40 years ago, by exploring a wide range of issues that bear upon the study of strategy and the development of policy in the new century.

TRENDS, CONCEPTS AND STRUCTURES

The first section of this book provides a survey of some of the key conceptual, thematic and structural questions that have arisen in strategic studies in recent years.

The essential foundation for this collective enterprise is to comprehend the global power structures and systems which have emerged since the end of the Cold War. Such questions require a long historical perspective, which is provided by Coral Bell, who has herself been an astute observer of these issues throughout the life of the SDSC and, indeed, for some time before. She writes in her chapter about the nature of power in a world which is in many ways unipolar, with the United States enjoying and exercising a global preponderance of power perhaps unmatched in history.

Comprehending the nature of strategic issues in this new world requires us to both adopt and adapt the powerful conceptual instruments which were developed in the very different circumstances of the Cold War. Robert Ayson’s chapter explores the classical concepts of strategy as they apply to today’s strategic issues.

Several chapters examine specific new, or newly prominent, aspects of the contemporary security environment. Alan Dupont’s chapter looks in detail at the very critical question of the salience of transnational security threats in the post-Cold War era. Clive Williams’ chapter looks at the central problem of terrorism. Ramesh Thakur, who has served on the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General’s advisory committee on the subject, lays out new approaches to the question of when it is legitimate, or imperative, for the international community to intervene to prevent major violations of human rights. This is a key issue in a world in which the threshold for the use of force seems to have been lowered sharply, and resorting to force to achieve what are sometimes loosely described as humanitarian ends has become increasingly common.

Another group of chapters explore the ways in which new technologies, modes of organisation and types of operation are affecting how wars are fought, and the implications of these developments for nations’ strategic postures. Alan Stephens and David Connery examine the transformation of military organisations to take advantage of new information technologies, and Michael Evans looks at the new kinds of military operations that are emerging as governments seek to use their militaries in what sometimes seem novel situations to achieve new types of objectives. Christian Enemark examines the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction—one of the key trends in current strategic affairs.

At a deeper conceptual level, Anthony Burke reviews in his chapter some of the enduring and emerging questions about the concepts of security and strategy, and how they can shape and distort political discussion and policy outcomes. These are important issues at a time when security is central to political debate, where emotions often run high and where somewhat dubious logic can become engaged.

Brendan Taylor and Bruce Luckham consider how the traditional nexus between economics and security is evolving in today’s world. As they point out, economics and strategy have been linked since the days of Socrates and Sun Tzu, but new forms of economic activity, producing new forms of interdependence and competition, may be reshaping the nexus in important ways.

ASIA-PACIFIC DYNAMICS

It is in the Asia-Pacific region that economics is having the biggest impact on strategic affairs today. History may well judge that economic growth in China and India over the past 15 years has been the key development in the post-Cold War strategic landscape. It may even judge that the key development of the past few years has not been the emergence of al-Qaeda as a global threat after 11 September 2001, but the assumption by China of a measure of regional leadership in Asia while the attention of the United States has been focused on the ‘war on terror’. Only time will tell.

Certainly the unprecedented scale and pace of China’s economic growth in recent years, if it can be sustained, will pose a severe test for the international community, and the Asia-Pacific in particular. Can the regional and global international systems accommodate China’s growing power without violent disruptions? Many find unconvincing the determinist view that, historically, major conflict is the inevitable result of the emergence of a major new power like China. But if history does not repeat itself, it does, as Mark Twain said, rhyme. It would be as unwise to assume that China’s rise will be peacefully accommodated as to assume that it will not be. And it takes some imagination to see just how serious the consequences of failure could be. Careful policies by many countries will be needed if major conflict is to be avoided.

The biggest responsibility lies, of course, with the United States. Paul Dibb examines both the unique power of the United States today, and the tensions and dilemmas in the policy principles that guide the preservation and application of that power in the Asia-Pacific. US policymakers are starting to recognise the complexity and urgency of the strategic challenges they face in Asia. As the shock of al-Qaeda’s attacks fades, US strategists may come to think that a nation of 1.2 billion people with decades of economic growth in double digits, a deepening technological base, growing military capabilities, and formidable diplomatic and political skills poses a more durable and substantive threat to US global primacy than Osama bin Laden does in his cave, or Saddam Hussein did in Baghdad. How the United States responds is perhaps the biggest single determinant of the Asia-Pacific’s future security environment.

The stage on which this drama will most likely be played out is Northeast Asia, where the power and interests of China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States coincide, and—potentially—collide. Ron Huisken explores in his essay this volatile region where economic integration and strategic competition impose competing pressures on relations between these great powers, and where North Korea’s nuclear program and Taiwan’s status complicate the management of those pressures. Sandy Gordon examines the trends in South Asia. Nuclear weapons on both sides have raised the stakes and changed the dynamics of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. But India’s impressive economic growth and the strategic weight of its nuclear arsenal ensures that in future it will be an increasingly important element of the wider Asia-Pacific strategic picture as well. How India manages its sub-regional security challenges, and how it develops and defines its wider regional strategic role, will be critical factors in the years ahead.

In Southeast Asia these traditional strategic questions about the wider regional power balance coincide with a complex range of intrastate and transnational security problems. A number of countries face deeply entrenched separatist insurgencies, endemic transnational crime and serious terrorist threats. They are hampered by weak institutions of governance. These issues are discussed by David Wright-Neville in Chapter 14. David Hegarty and Anna Powles look at the unique security challenges of the Southwest Pacific, where complex geographic, historical, political and economic factors pose special problems for the development of stable and effective governments able to manage the challenges of tiny states in a globalised world.

Robert Ayson looks at how all these diverse issues impact on the security environments and strategic policies of Australia and New Zealand. Much can be learned about the security approaches of both countries by considering them together; the comparisons and contrasts between their, in some respects, surprisingly different strategic perceptions and responses bring out much that is notable and characteristic in each. Through their different geographical and historical lens they both look out on the same world, and both need to find ways to respond to a set of demanding security challenges: weak governments in their shared Southwest Pacific backyard, endemic intrastate and transnational security problems in Southeast Asia, and unresolved questions about the strategic balance in the wider Asia-Pacific.

Finally Desmond Ball—who is one of the doyens of both the practice as well as the study of regional security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific—reviews in conjunction with Brendan Taylor the progress and prospects in this important area. Part of the answer to all of the regional security issues in the region must be closer cooperation, both within sub-regions and across the wider Asia-Pacific. Progress over the years since the end of the Cold War has been valuable and in some areas impressive, but much more needs to be done. It has long been recognised that institutional blueprints imported from other parts of the world do not work well in Asia. There is no alternative but to design and build our own regional institutions and practices. This is a key part of the regional security agenda for policy-makers and scholars alike.

KEEPING PERSPECTIVE

The range and scope of work in this volume provides a panoramic snapshot of the variety of issues now confronting strategic studies, and the seriousness and complexity of those issues suggests why the academic study of strategic policy is as vibrant today as it has ever been. Governments and people all over the world—and especially in the Asia-Pacific—face complex ‘new security’ challenges from intrastate and transnational problems, as well as deep-seated old security challenges to the stability of the strategic balance between major powers. In some parts of the region issues arise from the growing power of states, in others they arise from increasing national weakness.

Some of the tasks and instruments of policy are also changing rapidly. Armed forces are being used more often and for a wider range of tasks. New technologies are offering at least the prospect of substantial changes to the ways in which armed forces are trained, equipped and organised, and the ways in which wars are fought. New norms concerning the use of force are evolving. Finding our way through all this requires conceptually oriented, rigorously argued, evidence-based and independent analysis of strategic issues.

2
Concepts for strategy and security

ROBERT AYSON

Strategic studies is not commonly known as an introspective field of study which is preoccupied by theoretical questions. On the contrary, it seems so focused on the challenges facing policymakers in an often violent world that the study of strategic concepts would seem to be an unaffordable luxury. But this only increases the importance of understanding some of the key concepts that underlie strategic and security analysis. Policy-oriented writers who regard theory as an indulgence may be relying on a series of theoretical assumptions which need to be recognised and tested, not least because their recommendations may well involve the use of deadly force. This chapter introduces and examines some of the most important concepts for this area of study. Readers will hopefully find a number of these ideas useful as they seek to build analytical frameworks to help them make sense of what can otherwise seem...