International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific

G. Ikenberry, Michael Mastanduno

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9780231500920
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Internationale Beziehungen

What will the Asia-Pacific rim look like in the years ahead? What tools will international relations theorists need to understand the complex relationship among China, Japan, and the United States as the three powers shape the economic and political future of this crucial region?

Some of the best and most innovative scholars in international relations and Asian area studies gather here with the working premise that stability in the broader Asia-Pacific region is in large part a function of the behavior of, and relationships among, these three major powers. Each author analyzes the foreign policy behavior of one or more of these states and/or relations among them in an effort to make claims about the prospects for regional stability. Some of the chapters focus on security relationships, some on economic relations, and some on the interaction of the two. The authors do not promote any particular theoretical perspective, but instead draw on the full diversity of theoretical approaches in contemporary international relations scholarship to illuminate international interactions among the Pacific powers.

The creative collaboration of international relations and Asian studies specialists presents the opportunity to assess the applicability of Western categories of analysis to the beliefs and behaviors of Asian actors. The scholars in this volume share the conviction that a deeper understanding of the effects of cultural divides between Asian and American policymakers is essential if the Pacific rim's economic and regional security is to be safeguarded.

PART I

Security, Identity, and Stability

Chapter 1

CHINA, THE U.S.-JAPAN ALLIANCE, AND THE SECURITY DILEMMA IN EAST ASIA

Thomas J. Christensen

Many scholars and analysts argue that in the twenty-first century international instability is more likely in East Asia than in Western Europe. Whether one looks at variables favored by realists or liberals, East Asia appears more dangerous. The region is characterized by major shifts in the balance of power, skewed distributions of economic and political power within and between countries, political and cultural heterogeneity, growing but still relatively low levels of intraregional economic interdependence, anemic security institutionalization, and widespread territorial disputes that combine natural resource issues with postcolonial nationalism.¹

If security dilemma theory is applied to East Asia, the chance for spirals of tension in the area seems great, particularly in the absence of a U.S. military presence in the region. The theory states that, in an uncertain and anarchic international system, mistrust between two or more potential adversaries can lead each side to take precautionary and defensively motivated measures that are perceived as offensive threats. This can lead to countermeasures in kind, thus ratcheting up regional tensions, reducing security, and creating self-fulfilling prophecies about the danger of one’s security environment.² If we look at the variables that might fuel security dilemma dynamics, East Asia appears quite dangerous. From a standard realist perspective, not only could dramatic and unpredictable changes in the distribution of capabilities in East Asia increase uncertainty and mistrust, but the importance of sea-lanes and secure energy supplies to almost all regional actors could also encourage a destabilizing competition to develop power-projection capabilities on the seas and in the skies. Because they are perceived as offensive threats, power-projection forces are more likely to spark spirals of tension than weapons that can defend only a nation’s homeland.³ Perhaps even more important in East Asia than these more commonly considered variables are psychological factors (such as the historically based mistrust and animosity among regional actors) and political geography issues relating to the Taiwan question, which make even defensive weapons in the region appear threatening to Chinese security.⁴

One way to ameliorate security dilemmas and prevent spirals of tension is to have an outside arbiter play a policing role, lessening the perceived need for regional actors to begin destabilizing security competitions. For this reason, most scholars, regardless of theoretical persuasion, seem to agree with U.S. officials and local leaders that a major factor in containing potential tensions in East Asia is the continuing presence of the U.S. military, particularly in Japan.⁵ The historically based mistrust among the actors in Northeast Asia is so intense that not only is the maintenance of a U.S. presence in Japan critical, but the form the U.S.-Japan alliance takes also has potentially important implications for regional stability. In particular, the sensitivity in China to almost all changes in the cold war version of the U.S.-Japan alliance poses major challenges for leaders in Washington who want to shore up the alliance for the long haul by encouraging greater Japanese burden sharing, but still want the U.S. presence in Japan to be a force for reassurance in the region. To meet these somewhat contradictory goals, for the most part the United States wisely has encouraged Japan to adopt nonoffensive roles that should be relatively unthreatening to Japan’s neighbors.

Certain aspects of U.S. policies, however, including joint research of theater missile defenses (TMD) with Japan, are still potentially problematic. According to security dilemma theory, defensive systems and missions, such as TMD, should not provoke arms races and spirals of tension. In contemporary East Asia, however, this logic is less applicable. Many in the region, particularly in Beijing, fear that new defensive roles for Japan could break important norms of self-restraint, leading to more comprehensive Japanese military buildups later. Moreover, Beijing’s focus on preventing Taiwan’s permanent separation from China means that even defensive weapons in the hands of Taiwan or its potential supporters are provocative to China. Given the bitter history of Japanese imperialism in China and Taiwan’s status as a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945, this certainly holds true for Japan.

In the first section of this article I describe why historical legacies and ethnic hatred exacerbate the security dilemma in Sino-Japanese relations. In the second section I examine Chinese assessments of Japan’s actual and potential military power. In the third section I address how changes in the U.S.-Japan relationship in the post-cold war era affect Chinese security analysts’ views of the likely timing and intensity of future Japanese military buildups. I argue that, for a combination of domestic and international reasons, the United States faces tough challenges in maintaining the U.S.-Japan alliance in a form that reassures both Japan and its neighbors. In the fourth section I discuss why certain aspects of recent efforts to bolster the alliance through Japanese commitments to new, nonoffensive burden-sharing roles are potentially more provocative than they may appear on the surface. In the fifth section I detail how China’s attitudes about Japan affect the prospects for creating confidence-building measures and security regimes that might ameliorate the security dilemma over the longer term. In the sixth section I discuss the relevance of my analysis for U.S. foreign policy in the region and why, despite the problems outlined above, there are reasons for optimism if trilateral relations among the United States, China, and Japan are handled carefully in the next two decades.

WHY CHINA WOULD FEAR A STRONGER JAPAN

Chinese security analysts, particularly military officers, fear that within 25 years Japan could again become a great military power. Such a Japan, they believe, would likely be more independent of U.S. control and generally more assertive in international affairs. If one considers threats posed only by military power and not who is wielding that power, one might expect Beijing to welcome the reduction or even elimination of U.S. influence in Japan, even if this meant China would have a more powerful neighbor. After all, the United States is still by far the most powerful military actor in the Western Pacific.⁶ However, given China’s historically rooted and visceral distrust of Japan, Beijing would fear either a breakdown of the U.S.-Japan alliance or a significant upgrading of Japan’s role within that alliance.⁷ This sentiment is shared outside China as well, particularly in Korea. Although at present Chinese analysts fear U.S. power much more than Japanese power, in terms of national intentions, Chinese analysts view Japan with much less trust and, in many cases, with a loathing rarely found in their attitudes about the United States.

THE HISTORICAL LEGACY

Japan’s refusal to respond satisfactorily to Chinese requests that Tokyo recognize and apologize for its imperial past—for example, by revising history textbooks in the public schools—has helped to preserve China’s natural aversion to Japan.⁸ Chinese sensibilities are also rankled by specific incidents, such as Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto’s 1996 visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, which commemorates Japan’s war dead, including war criminals like Tojo.⁹ Although some fear that Japan’s apparent amnesia or lack of contrition about the past means that Japan could return to the militarism (junguozhuyi) of the 1930s, such simple historical analogies are relatively rare, at least in Chinese elite foreign policy circles.¹⁰

Chinese analysts’ concerns regarding Japanese historical legacies, although not entirely devoid of emotion, are usually more subtle. Many argue that, by downplaying atrocities like the Nanjing massacre and underscoring events like the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese elites portray Japan falsely as the victim, rather than the victimizer, in World War II. Because of this, some Chinese analysts fear that younger generations of Japanese citizens may not understand Japan’s history and will therefore be insensitive to the intense fears of other regional actors regarding Japanese military power. This lack of understanding will make them less resistant to relatively hawkish elites’ plans to increase Japanese military power than their older compatriots, who, because they remember World War II, resisted military buildups during the cold war.¹¹

Chinese analysts often compare Japan’s failure to accept responsibility for World War II to the more liberal postwar record of Germany, which has franker discussions of the war in its textbooks, has apologized for its wartime aggression, and has even offered financial payments to Israel.¹² Now a new unflattering comparison is sure to arise. During their November 1998 summit in Tokyo, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi refused to offer an apology to China’s President Jiang Zemin that used the same contrite wording as the rather forthright apology Japan offered to South Korea earlier in the year. This divergence in apologies will probably only complicate the history issue between Tokyo and Beijing.¹³

It may seem odd to the outside observer, but the intensity of anti-Japanese sentiment in China has not decreased markedly as World War II becomes a more distant memory. There are several reasons in addition to those cited above. Nationalism has always been a strong element of the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and opposing Japanese imperialism is at the core of this nationalist story. As a result, Chinese citizens have been fed a steady diet of patriotic, anti-Japanese media programming designed to glorify the CCP’s role in World War II. Although far removed from that era, most Chinese young people hold an intense and unapologetically negative view of both Japan and, in many cases, its people.¹⁴ As economic competition has replaced military concerns in the minds of many Chinese, China’s basic distrust of Japan has been transferred to the economic realm. Japanese businesspeople are often described as unreliable, selfish, and slimy (youhua). As a result, despite five decades of peace and a great deal of economic interaction, chances are small that new Japanese military development will be viewed with anything but the utmost suspicion in China.

Elite analysts are certainly not immune to these intense anti-Japanese feelings in Chinese society. These emotions, however, have not yet affected the practical, day-to-day management of Sino-Japanese relations. On the contrary, since the 1980s the Chinese government has acted to contain anti-Japanese sentiment in the society at large to avoid damaging bilateral relations and to prevent protestors from using anti-Japanese sentiment as a pretext for criticizing the Chinese government, as occurred several times in Chinese history.¹⁵ But Chinese analysts’ statements about the dangers that increased Japanese military power would pose in the future suggest that anti-Japanese sentiment does color their long-term threat assessments, even if it does not always alter their immediate policy prescriptions. Because they can influence procurement and strategy, such longer-term assessments may be more important in fueling the security dilemma than particular diplomatic policies in the present.

CHINESE ASSESSMENTS OF JAPANESE MILITARY POWER AND POTENTIAL

In assessing Japan’s current military strength, Chinese analysts emphasize the advanced equipment that Japan has acquired, particularly since the late 1970s, when it began developing a navy and air force designed to help the United States contain the Soviet Union’s growing Pacific Fleet. Chinese military writings highlight Japanese antisubmarine capabilities (such as the P-3C aircraft), advanced fighters (such as the F-15), the E-2 advanced warning aircraft, Patriot air defense batteries, and Aegis technology on surface ships.¹⁶ Chinese analysts correctly point out that, excluding U.S. deployments in the region, these weapons systems constitute the most technologically advanced arsenal of any East Asian power. They also cite the Japanese defense budget, which, although small as a percentage of gross national product (GNP), is second only to U.S. military spending in absolute size.¹⁷

Despite their highlighting of Japan’s current defense budget and high levels of military sophistication, Chinese analysts understand that Japan can easily do much more militarily than it does. While they generally do not believe that Japan has the requisite combination of material capabilities, political will, and ideological mission to become a Soviet-style superpower, they do believe that Japan could easily become a great military power (such as France or Great Britain) in the next twenty-five years. For example, although these analysts often argue that it is in Japan’s economic interest to continue to rely on U.S. military protection in the near future, they do not think that significantly increased military spending would strongly damage the Japanese economy.¹⁸ They have also been quite suspicious about the massive stockpiles of high-grade nuclear fuel that was reprocessed in France and shipped back to Japan in the early 1990s. Many in China view Japan’s acquisition of this plutonium as part of a strategy for the eventual development of nuclear weapons, something, they point out, Japanese scientists would have little difficulty producing.¹⁹ Chinese security analysts also have stated that Japan can become a great military power even if it forgoes the domestically sensitive nuclear option. Chinese military and civilian experts emphasize that nuclear weapons may not be as useful in the future as high-tech conventional weapons, and that Japan is already a leader in dual-use high technology.²⁰

In particular, Chinese experts recognize that Japan has practiced a great deal of self-restraint in eschewing weapons designed to project power far from the home islands. For example, in 1996 one military officer stated that despite the long list of current Japanese capabilities mentioned above, Japan certainly is not yet a normal great power because it lacks the required trappings of such a power (e.g., aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, nuclear weapons, and long-range missile systems).²¹ For this officer and many of his compatriots, the question is simply if and when Japan will decide to adopt these system...