Climate Change: Impacts and Responses: Indo-Pacific Grand Strategy

VOLUME 11 ISSUE 2
The International Journal of
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Climate Change:
Impacts and Responses
__________________________________________________________________________
Indo-Pacific Grand Strategy

Power Politics and Sustainable Development
BENEDICT E. DEDOMINICIS
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Michel Gueldry, Middlebury Institute of International Studies, USA
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Indo-Pacific Grand Strategy:
Power Politics and Sustainable Development
Benedict E. DeDominicis,1 Catholic University of Korea, South Korea
Abstract: The neoclassical realist theoretical paradigm emphasizes the importance of analyzing the unique complexity of
state polity composition to analyze foreign policy behavior. Promotion of sustainable development generates
opportunities for enhancing government bargaining leverage in international diplomacy by acquisition of international
high-profile leadership roles in supporting global sustainable development in the midst of climate change adaptation.
States acquire opportunities to increase their international influence amidst trends in global governance to address these
sustainable development challenges. Promoting multilateral treaty framework initiatives and their implementation
increases their bargaining leverage. Accelerating national sustainable development reflects awareness globally of
economic interdependence. Prior to the Trump administration, the United States and China competed for influence partly
by contending for leadership in global initiatives for sustainable development in the post-Cold War era. Indo-Pacific
state political responses require the analysis of the nature of these states themselves to adequately comprehend this
competition for influence. Nation-states demonstrate significantly different patterns of policy goal behavior than non-
nation, multiethnic states. Most Indo-Pacific states are postcolonial, multiethnic states. Atypical Vietnam is much more
resistant to Chinese claims in the South China Sea. Vietnam is a nation-state; consequently, it is more likely to perceive
challenges and display nationalist behavior patterns. The Philippines have moved to improve relations with China.
Relative predisposition toward nationalistic state behavior is a critical factor shaping Indo-Pacific responses to
sustainable development challenges.
Keywords: Climate Change, Nationalism, Sustainable Development

“We understand the science; we understand the effects of climate change. But we don’t understand
how to bring countries together.” (Yale economist William D. Nordhaus, quoted in Applebaum 2018)
Introduction
T his study explores how to conceptualize China’s policy commitment to asserting its
sovereignty over the South China Sea so as to generate leverage in diplomatic bargaining
in pursuing its state motivational drives and policy objectives. The article underscores
sustainable development’s functional role in influencing competition within the context of great
power strategy amidst Indo-Pacific interaction between the US, China, and their respective
clients and allies. The concept of sustainable development is contested partly on the basis of the
different worldviews and motivations of the actors engaged in this discourse. Among the
magnitude of sustainable development challenges and the burdens they may pose, potentially
conflicting motivations exist for individual and group political behavior that shape respective
policy advocacy positions. For example, “weak” sustainability policies, i.e. capital generation-
oriented, focus on producing new economic resources in the exploitation of existing ones, while
“strong” sustainability policies focus on existing ecosystem preservation (Holden, Linnerud, and
Banister 2014, 132). This article proposes that nationalistic values are also critical differentiating
motivations driving the policy responses to national, regional, and global sustainable
development challenges. The implications of nationalistic behavior and the conditions under
which nationalistic behavior manifests itself are considered here. The relative intensity or
weakness of a polity orientation toward nationalistic behavior has implications for organizing
national, regional, and the global communities to meet development challenges amidst global
climate change.
1
Corresponding Author: Benedict E. DeDominicis, 43 Jibong-ro, 150th Anniversary Building, International Studies
Department, Catholic University of Korea, Bucheon, Gyeonggi-do, 14662, South Korea, email: bendedominicis@gmail.com
The International Journal of Climate Change: Impacts and Responses

Volume 11, Issue 2, 2019, https://on-climate.com
© Common Ground, Benedict E. DeDominicis, Some Rights Reserved,
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ISSN: 1835-7156 (Print)
https://doi.org/10.18848/1835-7156/CGP/v11i02/1-20 (Article)
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATE CHANGE: IMPACTS AND RESPONSES
Some argue that the challenges to global cooperation for sustainable development are so
great that a paradigm shift is necessary, i.e. “resilience” should replace “sustainability”
(Dernbach and Cheever 2015, 280). The policy focus should be on community adaptation to
global ecosystem degradation rather than on cooperative global policy regulation; this global
ecosystem degradation is purportedly irreversible and accelerating (Dernbach and Cheever
2015). In any case, this study proposes that any discussion of the patterns and effects of
mobilization of state power capacities should include a discussion of parameters and
characteristics of state resource mobilization. Predisposition toward nationalism as a polity
foreign policy motivation is a critical factor shaping this mobilizational capacity behavior. Corry
(2010, 173, quoting Buzan [2004, 111]) notes that “a polity gains its identity as a polity by a set
of actors sharing not values or ‘agreed arrangements concerning expected behaviour (norms,
rules, institutions)’—but merely by them recognising the existence and importance of an object
of governance of some kind” [sic]. A national polity definitionally recognizes a territorially
defined state community as this object of governance. “A polity may be viewed as a network of
social, political, and economic relationships molded by the exercise of differential power through
hierarchies, corporate organization, or other types of…structures” (Rogers 2017, 1335). Existent
so-called national polities display variations of nation-state, multinational, or multiethnic ideal-
type representational categories (Cottam and Cottam 2001). A nation-state polity is a type of
national polity. In a nation-state, the modal citizen is a nationalist whose primary intensity,
terminal in-group self-identity tends to correspond with the community whose territorial

boundaries generally correspond with the state’s boundaries. This study shows that a nation-state
polity displays significantly different patterns of foreign policy (as well as domestic policy)
behavior relative to multinational and multiethnic state polities. Illustrating this impact of
nationalism, or relative weakness of it, as a polity motivation is the case of the Chinese nation-
state twenty-first century grand strategy toward the so-called developing South China Sea littoral
states.
Global Sustainable Development
The seminal 1987 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, Our
Common Future, declares,
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains
within it two key concepts: the concept of “needs,” in particular the essential needs of
the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and, the idea of
limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the
environment’s ability to meet present and future needs. (United Nations 1987, emphasis
added)
The theme of this study is that one key limitation imposed is the nature of state actors in the
Indo-Pacific region in terms of their social organization. Specifically, the extent to which an
Indo-Pacific state tends to differentiate itself from the ideal typical characterization of
constituting a nation-state is a critical factor. It is a necessary issue explaining their respective
political strategic policies responses to Chinese influence expansion in the region. It is an
important aspect determining their respective responses to Great Power competitive offers to
cooperate more closely with Beijing and Washington to achieve sustainable development goals.
The post-Cold War international political environment accelerated the elevation of anthropogenic
global climate change within the global development policy agenda that intensified within the
post-1945 nuclear setting (Pearce 2012).
The authors of the late Cold War-era, 1987 Brundtland report affirmed that “we came to see
that a new development path was required, one that sustained human progress not just in a few
2
DEDOMINICIS: INDO-PACIFIC GRAND STRATEGY
pieces for a few years, but for the entire planet into the distant future. Thus ‘sustainable
development’ becomes a goal not just for the ‘developing’ nations, but for industrial ones as
well” (United Nations 1987, 12). This formative definition of sustainable development implies
significant soft power aggregation potential for Great Power actors that aid lesser powers to meet
this challenge. China actively promotes its “development model” to legitimate internationally its
“rising power” (Hayden 2017, 346). The challenges that increasing public awareness and
reaction to global interdependency pose to achieving development goals significantly shape the
efficacy of sustainable development aid as diplomatic bargaining leverage (Cottam and Gallucci
1978). The intensity of a Great Power polity’s focus on competition for international influence
with other Great Powers significantly determines its intensity of interest in the foreign policies of
lesser, third-party target actors (Cottam 1967). The lesser power targets of their foreign policies
strive for sustainable development in the midst of anthropogenic global climate change. These
polities display differentiating behavioral patterns in responding to perceived opportunities and
threats that this Great Power competitive international political context provides. As noted, their
responses depend significantly upon the nature of their respective internal state polity structures.
The member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Indo-
Pacific states generally are a focus of Chinese strategy for their role as a main political
battleground for influence with the US. Sustainable development imperatives are most dire in
world regions already long struggling with poverty. The consequences of human-induced global
climate change have magnified these development challenges. The 2015 Paris Agreement

mandates that industrialized states reduce their carbon greenhouse gas emissions from 2020
before developing countries are mandated to begin reducing theirs. Its predecessor, the 1997
Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC),
terminates in 2020. The twenty-first Conference of Parties to the UNFCC adopted the Paris
Agreement as the latest development in a formal process that began immediately after the end of
the Cold War. The UNFCC emerged out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment
and Development in Rio de Janeiro, the so-called Earth Summit, entering into force in 1994
(Erbach 2016). Chinese officials have reiterated their commitment to launching a nation-wide
emissions trading scheme after launching seven regional schemes in 2018 (Zhang, Liu, and Xu
2018). Incheon, South Korea was the setting for high-profile global climate change international
cooperation. The forty-eighth session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
on October 6, 2018 adopted the “Summary for Policymakers.” It highlighted the historically
unprecedented requirements for global cooperation to limit greenhouse gas emissions to contain
global warming to 1.5 C to avoid dire global consequences (IPCC 2018).
The input of this case study on China and US competition for influence in postcolonial Asia
includes different facets. First, it particularizes the concept of hedging by lesser powers as they
soft-balance in response to the rise of China within a postwar regional and global security and
political economic architecture that the US still dominates (Pempel 2010; Scott 2010, 88). The
study’s spotlight on the nature of postcolonial target states of Washington-Beijing competitive
interference provides an elaboration upon the conception of so-called hedging as a behavior
pattern. Second, it thereby develops the characterization of postcolonial states as so-called
developing states while Great Powers competitively deploy ideational and positional power
(Becker 2010). It elaborates the political strategic implications of sustainable development aid
through relating this goal to a theoretical formulation focusing on the strategic development of
bargaining leverage in international diplomacy. Third, the study thus elucidates the significance
of critical components in Hans J. Morgenthau’s germinal clarification of the tenets of realist
theory in regard to the theorization of nationalism and its relationship to the state in the form of
national morale (Morgenthau 1978; Cottam and Cottam 2001). Morgenthau’s realist theory of
power and influence with its intriguing but underdeveloped concept of national morale
encompasses liberal/idealist stresses upon collaboration as it supports contemporary
constructivist emphases on ideational influence.
3
This article postulates that nationalism is a predisposition behavioral tendency deriving from
relatively intense in-group versus out-group differentiation, correlating with regular identifiable
behavioral patterns. These behavioral patterns reflect group categorization as critical aspects of
the cognitive and affective environment of government shaping policy making (Brubaker,
Loveman, and Stamatov 2004; Herrmann 2017). The study presents a theory of nationalism not
as ideology but as particular patterns of foreign policy and political behavior more broadly that
emerge when particular political environmental conditions are met (Cottam and Cottam 2001).
These conditions are the extent to which a particular state is a nation-state. It then applies this
theoretical framework to the postcolonial, multiethnic states of South and Southeast Asia, i.e. the
Indo-Pacific region, to analyze the vulnerabilities these states display as targets of influence by
Great Powers. It then highlights the significance of competitive interference by external actors
occurring within the postwar nuclear setting. This setting also includes complete mass political
mobilization incorporating demands for national self-determination and development. It then
focuses on Washington and Beijing’s post-Cold War grand strategy in the Indo-Pacific,
specifically to comprehend the significance of China’s territorial claim to the entirety of the
South China Sea. It concludes with a call to conceptualize nationalism to integrate the foreign
policies of initiator states with the development policies, sustainable or otherwise, of
postcolonial, multiethnic target states in the nuclear era.
International Relations Theory and Nationalistic State Behavior

This article’s analysis fits within the neoclassical realist paradigm because of its emphasis on
nationalism or relative lack of it as a component of state-type driving a state’s international
behavior. It draws on subsequent contributions in the theoretical literature, emphasizing state-
level factors of analysis for state foreign policy. It focuses on the state’s relationship with the
national self-identity of its citizenry. A nation is the largest shared identity community among the
citizenry to which the latter grants primary loyalty, conceived as founded on shared racial,
sectarian, territorial, and ethnic community bases as so self-perceived (Cottam and Cottam 2001,
2–3). As Cottam and Cottam highlight, state authorities benefit from a prevailing societal
attitudinal predisposition that they represent the citizenry as self-identified members of a nation.
A nation-state contains a population in which the overwhelming majority of the state’s citizens
share the same primary terminal self-identification community. The authorities of such nation-
states have a mobilizational power resource advantage. They are relatively more empowered to
translate state power potential capabilities into foreign policy organizational instruments and
resources, ceteris paribus. A disadvantage is that leaders of nation-states are also more prone to
overestimate their relative power capabilities in international relations. Concurrently, they are
more prone to perceive and stereotype challenges to the state in the external international
environment (Cottam and Cottam 2001, 3–4).
An individual’s cultural identity “provid[es] an environment of shared expectations and
values, imposes a certain consistency on social reinforcement and the development of
cognition…. By understanding the role of culture, we may increase our understanding of the
common variance in motives shaped by the context in which reinforcement occurs” (Bernard et
al. 2005, 133). An axiom in this study is that parallel processes occur at the collective, group
level of motivation and behavior particularly in nationalistic sovereign communities, i.e. nation-
states.
The focus on the impact of the nature of the state in its foreign policy-making process in
interpreting and responding to the international environment places this study within the
paradigmatic perspective of neoclassical realism. It relies on the Cottam and Cottam (2001, 3–4)
theoretical conceptualization of the relationship of a state to its community basis from the
perspective of relative predisposition toward nationalistic behavior as they define the latter. The
critical general independent variable consists of the community’s characteristics in terms of its
shared citizenry national self-identity. National self-identity here is defined as the self-identity in-
4
group with which a citizen may share at the most intense level of intensity in terms of concern
for its well-being broadly understood, including sovereignty. The relative intensity of self-
identification is reflected in the predisposition of an individual or group to sacrifice other values
to devote resources for the sovereignty of the nation against perceived challenges. An individual
sacrificing personal career wealth and freedom to enlist in the US military after the September
11, 2001 attacks displayed a nationalist behavior pattern that was observable on an individual
level. A feature of individual values is that their relative importance to an individual actor may
not be evident to him or her until a crisis event stimulates such a difficult choice. A difficult
choice is one that requires sacrificing an intensely held value in order to protect or promote a
more intensely held value. Participating in national self-defense by joining the military in
response to a national crisis requires sacrificing other values, e.g. a highly valued civilian career
position. US professional football player Pat Tillman’s sacrifice of his highly lucrative career to
risk (and lose) his life through military service in response to the 9/11/01 attacks is a high-profile
individual example (Bernard et al. 2005, 168).
National self-identity as a primary-intensity value is differentiated from familial identity
because the former is the largest such community with which an individual tends to assume his
or her personal fate is ultimately bound. A person’s national identity is that largest self-identity
in-group with which a person self-identifies at a primary and the primary intensity level. A
nationalist is an individual who sees himself/herself as a member of a large group of people who
constitute a community that is entitled to independent statehood and who is willing to grant that

community a primary and the primary terminal loyalty (Cottam and Cottam 2001, 2).
A shared, primary-intensify self-identification among the citizenry with the community
bounded by the territorial boundaries of the state may vary in its pervasiveness. The state as
represented by its governmental apparatus may be de facto perceived as representing this nation.
A nation-state is a state in which the overwhelming majority of citizens show their primary self-
identification with the territorial community within the state through favoring it more above any
other identity group or community. Examples include the United States, Russia, Iran, China,
Japan, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and others. If so, then the more the state’s foreign policy will
demonstrate behavioral patterns that Cottam and Cottam (2001) identify as nationalistic.
Intense emotional affect associates with stereotypical image formation (Cottam and Cottam
2001, 99–105). Actors more inclined to nationalistic behavior are more prone to stereotyping and
emotional affect, ceteris paribus (Cottam and Cottam 2001, 105–21). According to Cottam and
Cottam, nationalistic behavior patterns may be summarized. First, nation-states (and core
communities aspiring to nationhood) will show a stronger inclination to see a threat from others
and a greater tendency to see the actor which is perceived as threatening in stereotypical terms
which show a high degree of simplification. Second, a greater likelihood exists that the leaders of
a nation-state will advance and consider seriously the option to expand state influence at the
expense of other actors. Third, a greater tendency will exist among the publics of nation-states to
show a motivational preoccupation with the objective of in-gathering communities, i.e.
irredentism. Fourth, the public in nation-states will display a greater concern with maintaining
face and dignity. They will also show a greater willingness to support action to rectify the affront
which they perceive. Fifth, the public of a nation-state will show a greater likelihood to be
susceptible to national grandeur interests and goals, i.e. displays of national military prowess
over perceived adversaries. Sixth, in order to enhance the power of the state, effective appeals by
state leaders to the citizenry to make sacrifices may occur and leaders of nation-states will show
greater effectiveness in their appeals in this regard. These sacrifices include a willingness on the
part of the citizenry to become part of the armed forces. Seventh, the commitment of the military
to the defense of the state will be more intense. Eighth, the citizenry of a nation-state will
demonstrate a greater likelihood to grant state leaders greater decisional latitude in defending
state interests. Finally, however, the citizenry will show a lesser likelihood of granting them the
decision latitude to accept defeats or the loss of face (Cottam and Cottam 2001, 3–4).
5
The domestic political difficulty that the US had in extracting itself from its Vietnam War
illustrated the last point and is relevant today for the US in its wars in the Middle East. In sum,
nation-states are more likely to change the international status quo, with its formal expression in
international treaty agreements, to expand their respective influence. The other political actors
which are targets of this expansion will likely view the nation-state’s expansionist action as
disregarding the formal explicit and informal customary agreements among them. These
agreements constitute international law (Cassese 2005, 31). Such patterns appear if the modal
citizen in any state is a nationalist in terms of primary self-identification with the community
whose territorial boundaries generally correspond with the state boundaries. If the state is widely
perceived as having been imposed on the community by an alien actor controlling the state, then
the state will be less prone to display nationalistic foreign policy behavior patterns. South Korea
is not a nation-state; the Korean nation is bifurcated into two states. South Korean political
behavior displays stark divergences from nationalistic patterns of behavior, e.g. it allows the US
to maintain crisis command control over its military (Lee 2018).
Multinational states, such as the old Soviet Union and Yugoslavia as well as Iraq, are not
nation-states. Neither are multiethnic states nation-states. Examples of the latter include most
postcolonial African and many postcolonial Asian states including India. Non-nation-states and
multinational states in particular are subject to centrifugal political forces among ethnic groups
seeking national secession and self-determination to varying degrees of intensity. These
centrifugal forces make maintenance of liberal democratic political regimes highly problematic

insofar as democratic elections produce ethnic nationalist leaders seeking self-determination. The
communities of the old Yugoslavia as well as of the old Soviet Union continue to deal with such
minority secessionist and irredentist nationalist forces. Multinational states, while relying upon
coercion beyond a tertiary level to suppress these centrifugal forces, generate concurrently a
ruling apparatus. The totalitarian Communist party itself developed its own primary intensity
self-identification among its modal membership (Vujačić 2003, 376). This ruling identity
community in this authoritarian state may display nationalistic behavior patterns in international
relations, e.g. socialist Yugoslavia’s claim to leadership of the global non-aligned movement
(Grlica and Šoba 2010). Their substantive reliance upon political coercion to suppress nationalist
centrifugal political tendencies would limit their capacity to mobilize state power potential
resources (Brady 2011, 32, 42). The downgrading of reliance upon Soviet domestic coercion,
rapidly accelerated under Gorbachev, would lead to multinational state disintegration of the
USSR (Edele 2017, 101). Their legacy includes local, national, and transnational networks of
grey and black economic and political activity with the long-term decline of Communist party
nomenklatura systems beginning long before 1989 (Tymiński 2017; Derluguian and Zhemukhov
2013; Sutherland 2015).
The above depictions of state behavior conform to the neoclassical realist development of
classical realism. The latter’s focus on human nature is evident in the focus on nationalism as a
predisposition among collective homo sapiens when certain political conditions prevail. Its roots
lie ultimately in the predisposition of individuals to form in-groups versus out-groups. According
to one scholarly observer, tragedy in international relations is a component part of the classical
realist tradition (Sears 2017, 27). The comparative predisposition to stereotype and the intense
emotions that associate with this decision-making pathology supply plenty of it. The foreign
policy decisional failures and terrible collective behavioral bloodshed that associate with
nationalism and stereotyping constitute the stuff of historical and quite possibly future tragedy.
In crisis decision-making contexts, non-nation-states will demonstrate substantive
differences in the domestic control strategy patterns that authorities display in regard to their
respective publics than nation-state authorities. As the above summary of nationalistic behavior
patterns implies, nation-state authorities during international political crises will display less
susceptibility to economic interest group lobbying pressure. The leaders of non-nation-states will
respond to external influence efforts with behavior patterns that tend to differ significantly from
6
those of nation-states. They will tend to show a greater likelihood to be motivated in their
interaction with external actors by a stronger concern with the economic utilitarian interests of
particular organizational constituencies. These interests are rooted in the vested governmental
and business-vested interests of the control apparatus of the multiethnic state. Competitive
influence generation efforts by the US and China over the foreign and domestic policies of these
target states will exploit their comparatively lower salience and intensity of nationalistic public
opinion. This greater tolerance of external interference is due to the relative weakness of
propensity toward nationalistic behavior, i.e. sensitivity to intervention in the internal affairs of
the national in-group and more intense resistance to it. Multiethnic states are more vulnerable to
external economic inducements appealing to particular constituencies and groups within the
polity. Its most unfortunate form is extensive, systemic bribery and corruption as a means by
which external actors influence the target state’s foreign policy. The scandal regarding the
1MDB Malaysian development fund and China’s role in it illustrates this pattern (Juego 2018,
71–72). The ideal-typical multiethnic ASEAN state “has been characterized as ‘bureaucratic
polity,’ a political system in which all meaningful political decisions are made within the
bureaucracy, which includes the armed forces, the civil administration, and the police, but not
political parties, parliament, charismatic leaders, or mass organizations … [and which] are
largely impervious to the currents in their own societies and may be more responsive to external
pressured emanating from the international arena” (Barker and van Klinken 2009, 21).
Cottam and Cottam note that differential power and competition between groups for scarce

resources characterizes multiethnic and multinational states encompassing at least two primary,
terminal self-identity groups. Often, geographic concentration characterizes the two groups. Non-
nation-states include multiethnic states that have a predominant ethnic core group that dominates
the state and which systemically attempts to force the assimilation of the other groups. In all
three types of non-nation-states, the minority identity groups resist assimilation. A single identity
group establishing itself as the central national community to which others must assimilate
cannot occur because the distribution of power among identity groups prevents it (Cottam and
Cottam 2001, 195). Myanmar/Burma is an example of a postcolonial multiethnic state with a
core community, the Bamar, which dominates the state and its coercive apparatus. It
demonstrates violent assimilationist behavioral patterns toward its numerous ethnic minority
groups such as the Rohingya and others (Ives and Nang 2019).
Such states will be most susceptible to the competitive interference of stronger state actors
seeking to exert control over the foreign policies of these multiethnic states by intervening in
their internal affairs. This intervention will include economic inducements to profit-seeking
groups. From the point of view of the intervening power, the most favorable target would be
those governmental interests in control of the security services. They control the official
institutions of authority and incentivizing them to support Beijing or Washington is most
effective to achieve their tactical goal of containing the influence of their great power competitor.
Postcolonial Multiethnic Asian States
The focus here consists of those postcolonial, multiethnic Indo-Pacific/Southeast Asian states.
The authorities include political economic interests that have vested themselves in the market
encompassed by their respective territorial borders (Cottam and Cottam 2001, 212–14).
Protecting and advancing the interests of these economic and security bureaucracy interests tends
to be a primary driver behind their foreign policy behavior patterns. The main challenge they
have faced since independence includes the perceived China threat during the postwar
Communist revolutionary period. Their authoritarian regime authorities consequently allied with
the United States to participate in its containment strategy in the region. ASEAN emerged out of
this strategy to facilitate coordination of national resources to counter the perceived external
threat to internal stability while promoting development (Sutherland 2009, 317).
7
Cottam and Cottam (2001, 48) note that these states evidently do not have a predisposition to
strongly nationalistic behavior as their identity profile indicates, which one infers from an
application of their checklist of predisposing factors. Notably not in this group would be
Myanmar, which does have a core ethnic community, the Bamar, which constitute two-thirds of
the population. Cottam and Cottam note that a critical question is what trends have emerged
which have counteracted the expression of the obvious centrifugal potential in this cluster. Some
obvious preliminary answers include the following: 1) perhaps most important is the existence of
a large state bureaucracy including the military whose members have invested their interests
strongly in the existence of a multiethnic state; 2) similarly, the maintenance of a large market
supports strongly the economic interests of industrial and commercial elements. However, should
they succeed in organizing their own state, several ethnic group communities in the states
comprising this cluster have the capability to defend their respective communities and provide
them with their own economic viability. They have, in other words, effectively chosen not to
separate from the multiethnic state while having the option to do so (Cottam and Cottam 2001,
55).
Cottam and Cottam (2001, 55) continue that the proposition of having the option to leave,
but choosing not to do so, is worthy of serious consideration in states such as India. They argue
that a middle-level intensity identity attachment to the territorial Indian community has
developed. One may explain the failure of separatist movements to produce disintegration as due
in part to the appearance of such an identity within the large Indian community. This territorial

identity community basis at this level of intensity need not suggest a strong predisposition to
nationalist behavior on the territorial community basis. The challenge of global climate change,
with its potentially astronomical economic costs, provides an added incentive for minorities to
remain part of a multiethnic state. Adapting to this challenge will require policy coordination and
additional economic resources. Achieving development objectives while the economic costs of
global climate change mount will provide an added political incentive to maintain access to trade
and financial resources available in a much larger multiethnic state.
Cottam and Cottam (2001, 56) note that the growth in mass politics has been inexorable.
Yet, the episodes in which political dynamics have mobilized the newly active mass to support
nationalism with its basis in the postcolonial, territorially defined community are infrequent.
Usually, they are in response to major external challenges. In some ASEAN states, the southeast
Asian Chinese minorities are vehicles for economic development, yet they are vulnerable to
being perceived enviously as disloyal to the host community and to being scapegoated (Tseng
2002, 395).
Cottam and Cottam (2001, 56) note that the extent and intensity of collective perception of
community uniqueness is one factor that predisposes a community toward nationalistic behavior.
They continue that a belief appears to persist in the community underlays of these multiethnic
states that the territorial community is a culture conglomerate. It leads to the inference that these
communities resist efforts to steer toward the erosion of the cultural distinctiveness of the ethnic
communities which all together constitute the all-embracing territorial community. Unlike in the
immigrant communities of the Western hemisphere states, no strong indications exist of the
development of a common, distinctive culture in the territorial community. Therefore, they
conclude that the uniqueness factor of existence of a distinct culture as an indicator of a
predisposition toward nationalistic behavior would warrant a negative rating, for example, a
preference for English as a lingua franca is explicit in countries like Singapore and Philippines
and Nigeria, but implicit elsewhere, e.g. India, to avoid a perceived threat from ethnic favoritism.
Cottam and Cottam (2001, 56) note the importance of a belief in sharing a common history
which, more importantly, leads to the expectation of a common future as a positive indicator for
a communal predisposition toward nationalistic behavior. A better balance between positive and
negative factors regarding collective self-perception of postcolonial community uniqueness exists
among multiethnic, postcolonial Asian states. Older memories of conflict among different ethnic
8
communities balanced against them the act of gaining independence from a colonial power and
then meeting a series of often serious external challenges. These challenges include the perceived
postwar Chinese threat toward Southeast Asian states (Haitao 2017).
Cottam and Cottam (2001, 57) note that in the period of independence, perceptions of
favoritism toward other ethnic communities have been present. Yet, these unions have survived,
and their respective publics value their continuation, and a sense exists that they will continue in
the future. They focus on the question of competing ethnic versus territorial identities,
i.e. identity complementarity among the states of the Indo-Pacific region. The ranking on this
indicator of predisposition to nationalism warrants a negative rating rather than a strongly
negative rating because of this same process of growing expectations of persisting union. The
growing appeal of sectarian pan-communities, i.e. Islamist and Hindu, as foci of an identity
attachment counters this tendency toward complementarity as these sectarian pan-movements
seek control of the state. A tendency to turn to religio-political leaders has strengthened as the
process of growth in mass public predisposition to participate actively in the political process of
the state has gained strength (Cochrane 2018).
Cottam and Cottam (2001, 57) note that at the time of independence, only a veneer of the
population had a predisposition to participate actively in politics. The secular appeal of the older
generations’ political elite was more effective for mobilizing public support among this
mobilized stratum. Now, couching appeals in terms of an identity with a sectarian community of
believers is proving to be more effective for new leaders to mobilize a newly aware and activist

mass. Mass politics increasingly characterizes Asian societies. Identity communities are less
likely to manifest the kind of reconciliation process that could produce complementarity because
of the community polarization deriving from the very moral certainty of sectarian appeals.
For the relatively wealthy, business-oriented Chinese minority in southeastern Asia,
suspicions and animosities directed against them are a political constant since independence
(Lande 1999, 100–2). Their association with the Chinese homeland has been both a source of
opportunity and danger for them and for their host communities. “Since the 1990s, so important
have the Chinese become in Malaysia and elsewhere that their enterprises are widely considered
to have been a significant factor driving the process described as the East Asian economic
miracle (World Bank 1993)” (Cheong, Lee, and Lee 2015, 30–31). They have generally become
local targets of resentment and stereotyping because of their relative economic prosperity, and
they consequently tend to fear mass political mobilization and prefer oligarchical power (Mackie
2003, 40). They have experienced communal political marginalization and violent attacks (Wong
2010). They have been comparatively analyzed in relation to the Jewish diaspora and its role in
central Europe (Chirot and Reid 1997).
Post-Cold War Competitive Interference

Indirect competition characterizes intense great power conflict in the post-1945 nuclear setting.
Control over escalatory dynamics so as to avoid direct great power military conflict is a primary
strategic goal. Cold War containment of the perceived aggressive Great Power competitor was
displaced into competitive interference for control over the political processes within third
polities (Cottam 1967). It continues by allying with local contestants seeking external patronage
to prevail over their domestic adversaries (Hinnebusch 2017). Polities that are especially
vulnerable include those postcolonial multiethnic states with borders arbitrarily determined by
competing European imperial powers. A comparatively low level of intensity of community-
wide self-identification with the polity that typically includes perceived arbitrarily determined
borders and consequent populations characterizes these states. Allegiances are prone to be either
parochial (e.g. to ethnic groups within the polity) or transnational (e.g. to the ummah, i.e. the
worldwide community of Muslim believers) or to both, but to the detriment of allegiance to the
state (Rupprecht 2014, 28).
9
This political context characterizes US and Chinese competition for influence in a world in
which the economic development is an overriding imperative of state authorities, among other
reasons, to develop state power capabilities. Global climate change has magnified the intensity of
this motivation; now even greater, vast economic resources, albeit sustainably developed, are
essential to meet the challenges to societal prosperity today and in the future. The urgency to
address successful development challenges has intensified along with the rapidity of the changes
in the earth’s climate due to human-induced climate change. An implication of this analysis is
that these international and domestic systemic political factors will likely contribute to an
intensification in competition for alliances in a multipolar, great power competitive environment.
This competition will be most intense in postcolonial regions with many multiethnic states, i.e.
Asia and Africa. This study focuses on East Asia because the region was perceived as a combat
frontline in the Cold War so that the US twice fought land wars in the area against perceived
clients of the Communist bloc. During the Second World War, the US expended significant
resources to establish its control over further vast stretches of the Pacific Ocean. With vital
exceptions and caveats, e.g. Vietnam, these states are predominantly postcolonial entities that are
legacies of European imperialism, providing leverage for neocolonial competitive interference.
Japan as the third-largest economy has intensified its commitment of resources to the area to
respond to China’s growth and subsequent efforts to enforce its sovereignty claims to maritime
territory in the Pacific. The national security component of China’s foreign policy strategy
emphasizes China’s claim to sovereignty over the South China Sea as a so-called core interest

(Cheng 2018, 25–27).
Beijing’s focus on the South China Sea is a vehicle for its efforts to shift Southeast Asian
states into its sphere of influence, away from the US. Claims have been made that Beijing seeks
to control natural resources such as oil and gas reserves, as well as to safeguard marine trade
routes vital for its global commerce. Logically, these motivations would seem to be important.
Given the urgency of the need to shift away from global reliance on fossil fuels, the natural
resources urgency may not be so great. Fish stocks and fossil fuel deposits are large, but one
doubts that prospective business profit itself is the primary, driving government motivation in
making Chinese claims to the South China Sea a so-called core interest (Chun 2017). “The South
China Sea’s hydrocarbon resources are hotly contested though its reserves are unproven. While
their potential economic benefit may be considerable, their foremost significance is political, as
their division has implications for sovereignty and fundamental law of the sea principles”
(International Crisis Group 2016, i). A global crisis that would result in the cutting off of
international trade through the South China Sea would seem to involve apocalyptic scenarios for
many, if not all, beyond China. A claim here is that China’s claim to the South China Sea is a
political strategic indirect effort as a form of competitive interference to shift foreign policy
political orientations in Southeast Asia toward Beijing.
China’s military base–focused island construction aims to shape political trends within the
internal politics of the ASEAN core states and beyond into the rest of Asia. The consequent shift
in Philippines foreign policy toward de facto acknowledging China’s hegemony over the Spratly
Islands illustrates the effectiveness of this strategy. This island construction is inseparable from
China’s growing economic capability as part of a strategy to establish its hegemony in the region.
China’s focus on southeast Asia, however, is predominantly derivative from China’s perception
of its relationship with the United States, the other global military great power in Asia (Cottam
1977). The Cold War Communist block tended to view the founding states of ASEAN as clients
of the US (Tung 2002, 113). China’s strategy toward ASEAN states evolves along with the
evolving prevailing view in Beijing of the direction of its relationship with the United States.
ASEAN hedging strategies require that the analysis of the nature of these states themselves be a
feature of this behavior. Assuming them to be black boxes acting so-called rationally in response
to the rise of China is more plausible because most are not nation-states. Not all of them are so
willing to hedge; Vietnam is much more resistant to Chinese claims in the South China Sea.
10
Vietnam is a nation-state; consequently, it is more likely to perceive more intense challenges and
display nationalist motivations. “Vietnam has been more aggressive in contesting China’s
territorial claims in the South China Sea, a marked contrast to the Philippines, which has warmed
to Beijing under President Rodrigo Duterte. As tensions have escalated with China, there has
been wide public support in Vietnam for closer relations with the United States” (Mullany 2018,
para. 9). A central theme of the 2016 International Crisis Group report quoted above is a
comparison/contrast of Vietnam and multiethnic Philippines’ respective responses to Chinese
pressures to open up fossil fuel drilling in the maritime region.
The speed with which a polity can develop its economic and technological capacities
becomes a critical metric for legitimating influence (Berger and Beeson 1998). It derives from
this era’s equation by competing Great Powers of cultural level with economic and technological
capacity level as they competitively interfere in third country target polities (Citino 2008). It
reflects the soft power appeal of a development model. It should be noted that the Chinese
economic development capacities are exceptionally attractive, including its anti-pollution and
sustainable development commitments (Greenstone 2018).
Bargaining Leverage
Diplomatic negotiation bargaining leverage between interlocutory states involves perceived

relative strengths and weaknesses that their representatives use to attempt to persuade each other,

within a dyadic diplomatic case analysis (Cottam and Gallucci 1978). Passive bargaining levers
are so called because they are assumed to be stable within the timeframe of a particular set of
negotiations. Over the longer term, an emphasis of political strategy in international relations
consists of policies that influence important trends within the polity of the target to control the
relative scale of passive leverage (Cottam 1994). Targets of these trend influence efforts may
include the initiator government’s own polity in addition to the polities in the external
environment. Active bargaining leverage, in contrast, is readily variable within the parameters of
the specific bilateral case of diplomatic bargaining, e.g. offering more or less economic aid. A
state can boost its bargaining leverage by promoting worldwide awareness of global
interdependence in the course of delivering aid and leadership to the target policy in assisting it
to master the challenges of globalization to progress toward national sustainable development.
Table 1: Dyadic Diplomatic Bargaining Leverage in International Negotiations
Diplomatic Bargaining Lever
Passive
1. Perceived domestic public attitudes
2. Perceived possible great power involvement
3. Awareness of interdependence
4. Perceived long-term power alterations
5. Perceived economic/and/or political stability
6. Perceived irrationality of leaders
7. Perceived adverse effect on friendship
8. Perceived likelihood of accidental war
Active
1. Perceived ability to give or withhold aid
2. Perceived ability to influence 3rd countries
3. Perceived ability to use force
4. Perceived trade opportunities
5. Perceived ability to deal with domestic political dissatisfaction
6. Perceived transnational appeal of ideology
7. Perceived willingness to alter relationship type
Source: Cottam and Gallucci 1978, 48–49 (emphasis added)
11
The development of efficacious bargaining leverage capabilities which are available for
deployment, when necessary, is the goal of foreign and domestic policies that constitute an
operational political strategy. Passive levers are so-called only within the temporal context of the
bilateral case of international diplomatic negotiation. For the case analysis, the magnitude of
these levers is considered to be unchangeable, i.e. they constitute the political environment of the
negotiations, and diplomats attempt to use this environment to their advantage (i.e. as leverage).
For example, at a particular point in time, the intensity of Great Power competitive conflict will
help determine the likelihood and intensity of their interest in conflicts among lesser actors.
Conflicts involving third actors will draw more intense attention from Great Powers to the extent
that they are locked in competition for international influence with each other because of mutual
concern their rival will exploit it. Local competitors will likely seek to solicit Great Power aid to
prevail over their local rival(s). To the extent that these Great Powers are engaged in intensely
conflictual relations, then they are more likely to be apprehensive about these solicitations. Over
time, the intensity of conflict characterizing the relations among Great Powers varies. Regarding
the examination of particular case of diplomacy, taken as a given is the magnitude of hostility
characterizing relations among Russia, Japan, India, the US, and China. For example, in
convincing China to cease encroaching on Vietnam’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, a
propitious long-term Vietnamese strategic focus might be to heighten Washington’s concern
regarding Chinese aims regionally and globally. Thereby, the Vietnamese nation-state authorities
likely become more salient as concern for Washington. To attempt to do so, Hanoi may seek to

increase cooperative ties with the US national security establishment. Hanoi may then employ
this diplomatic bargaining leverage toward Washington.
Shaping the polity in the target state so as to increase the magnitude of passive bargaining
leverage is the aim of the constituent policies of an efficacious political strategy. As noted, an
initiator government’s own polity may also be a target, e.g. reforms to stabilize the government
and its regime. Desired trends within polity targets aim to promote corresponding domestic
constituencies with their respective worldviews and policy motivations. These trends may be
more readily achieved if the initiator polity undertakes domestic policies that increase its own
power capabilities. As indicated, a longer time horizon tends to characterize policy making that
cultivates passive bargaining leverage, i.e. shaping diplomacy’s political context. Multilateral
agreements promoting national and global sustainable development accentuate consciousness of
interdependence transnationally while affecting trends in economic and political constituencies
and governments within polities. To rephrase, fortifying capabilities labelled here as passive
bargaining leverage constitutes the deeper environment that generates the greater relative
capabilities available for utilization as active bargaining leverage. For example, nation-state
initiator polities which a target government perceives as enjoying pervasive public regime
backing (a passive lever) would also presumably display a higher level of military morale and
effectiveness (an active lever).
To the degree that the international community acknowledges global interdependence, then
this awareness of interdependence increases in intensity as a diplomatic bargaining lever
(DeDominicis 2017). Trends in international law reflect the growing awareness and intensity of
apprehension concerning greenhouse gas atmospheric accumulation leading to destructive
changes in climate for the global community. Following the Cold War’s end, the pace of
development in global environmental law accelerated. The formal initiation of this global
commitment was the 1992 Rio de Janeiro United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development, the so-called Earth Summit. The 2015 Paris Agreement was the most recent
landmark reached, building upon the Kyoto Protocol (1997) to the Climate Change Convention
on Climate Change adopted in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. The Paris Agreement formally succeeded
the Kyoto Protocol (Clark 2015). The Republic of Korea as a Cold War developmental state
emerged as a significant power seeking to acquire a higher profile role in providing leadership in
these most recent outcomes in efforts to engage in global public policy climate governance.
12
South Korea aims to exploit this increasing degree of transnational awareness of interdependence
for its strategic foreign policy goals. Development and employment of these diplomatic
bargaining levers may affect the magnitude and utility of others by wittingly or unwittingly
changing the context, e.g. an aid program helping to destabilize a regime. National public
orientations and elite ideological attitudes may be affected by increasing awareness of global
interdependence, with hard and soft power consequences for economic development ambitions.
Based on the assumption of global interdependency, global climate change mitigation
conferences are significant efforts at trend alteration in national perceptions and attitudes.
Awareness of global interdependency becomes an underpinning context for gradually cultivating
hard and soft power bargaining leverage of other types. In sum, it promotes openings for middle
powers such as the Republic of Korea to display conspicuous global transformational leadership
(Northouse 2012). Beijing seeks to employ interstate organizations to focus on international
development objectives concerning the so-called Third World. The Republic of Korea aims to
develop its relationship with the PRC as an actor intermediating between the industrializing
world and the Chinese polity (Mundy 2015).
Contemporary Grand Strategy in Asia

China’s late twentieth century rapid economic development increased Chinese power capabilities
concurrently with expanding Beijing’s perceived national interests. China’s public declaration of

sovereignty over the South China Sea as a core national interest occurred in 2010 decades after
its public commitment to maintenance of sovereignty over Tibet and Taiwan (Wong 2011). Its
economic interests in protecting trade routes with its growing dependence on international trade
are typically the explanation for this assertion. 1930s-type direct military intervention to satisfy
irredentist claims and assert regional domination is no longer a viable great power policy option
in the nuclear era. Indirect and covert military activity, so-called hybrid warfare, is a chosen
tactical approach to reduce the risk of uncontrolled escalation to direct great power confrontation
(Pajon 2017, 116). Use of political economic incentives to direct commerce trend patterns in
directions that increase economic leverage in diplomatic bargaining over issues in dispute is
another aspect of the indirect focus of great power competition. The Trans Pacific Partnership
was such a tactical initiative that the US administration may or may re-engage. China’s riposte is
the Regional Comprehensive Economic Program. Indirect competition includes a greater focus
on the polity of target states to increase influence over key constituencies that are critical for the
authorities at the apex of the control regime in the target states. The Chinese Communist Party is
committed to maintaining the authoritarian one-party system to forestall external soft power and
economic hard power efforts to influence Chinese domestic and foreign policy (Suryadinata
2017, 105).
More than twenty-five years since the USSR’s disintegration, China has now replaced
Moscow as the primary target of US strategic concern in South Asia (Trump 2017, 50). China’s
maintenance of a one-party totalitarian state while liberalizing the market to allow market-based
capital accumulation co-opted this authoritarian regime into supporting the world capitalist
market system. Its rapid economic and technological development repeated on an exponentially
larger scale what the original four Asian Tigers accomplished. The Beijing model may be
appealing to the large sections of humanity facing the challenge of poverty now complicated by
the large societal costs of global climate change. The urgency of the societal challenge of global
climate change can only be met by more rapid national economic development, generating a
dilemma. The economic costs of accommodating climate change may divert from economic
capital accumulation necessary for economic development within the global capitalist production
chain. The Chinese model may be promoted successfully if the developing state allies with
Beijing. Beijing will not negatively evaluate such an ally for its lack of liberal democratic regime
features at a time of national and global emergency. It may prefer such a regime as a client.
13
China’s declaration of its commitment to establishing its sovereignty over the South China
Sea targets other states of the international system. It reflects the impact of the nuclear setting
concurrently with the necessity of capitalist international trade for national development. China’s
declaration of its sovereignty directs Chinese power instrument resources to incentivize the
postcolonial states of Southeast Asia to orient their trade and development policies increasingly
to China. Nativist hostility to non-European immigration in the US indicates that labor exporters
such as the Philippines should point to China as the market for this labor. China’s authoritarian
system is more prone to control and suppress such hostilities at least at the public political level.
The weakening of US attempts to coordinate international responses to local and international
crises as the result of its own democratic political process has arguably weakened the
international appeal of the US model, i.e. US diplomatic bargaining leverage has declined.
Beijing’s perception of challenge from the US has intensified concurrently with the rise of
China’s capabilities and the growth in its domestic and international economic vested interests.
China’s view of ASEAN states has derivatively evolved as well. In these states, the enterprises of
Chinese ethnic minorities have played a central role in their economic development, as well as in
the development of mainland China itself (Cheong, Lee, and Lee 2015, 30–31). Unlike Vietnam,
China, Japan, and the US, most ASEAN states in maritime territorial disputes with Beijing over
the South China Sea are multiethnic states with territorial boundaries inherited from the former
European rulers. Their authorities face legitimacy challenges that differ at least in significant
degree from the challenges confronting the control of authorities in nation-states. In the latter,

state authority is more readily anchored in a demos in which the overwhelming majority of the
population shares the same primary intensity group self-identification. This self-perceived group
is a community whose borders at least roughly correspond with the territorial boundaries of the
state.
The territorial community of a multiethnic state, in contrast, by definition consists of
primary-intensity ethnic groups preordained to cohabit within a state with boundaries drawn by
others, generations earlier. They by definition typically lack the political, economic, and social
resources to strive consistently and intensely for so-called self-determination. Self-determination
requires secession and sovereignty acquisition in a typically hostile domestic, as well as a more
or less hostile regional and international political environment. These groups may have united in
the struggle against the former colonial master, but the memory of that struggle fades over
generations, while control over the state becomes an object of interethnic group competition.
Outside actors, e.g. the US, the USSR/Russia, China, displace their competition in the nuclear
setting into their competitive interference in the internal political dynamics of these multiethnic
states. Leaders of these competing ethnic groups seek external patrons for aid against their
adversary in their local struggle. The opposing contestant therefore solicits aid from the external
power in competition with the former’s external patron. A consequence can be the exacerbation
of already existing intergroup animosities, including the potential for genocidal violence. For the
Chinese minority, this tragic dynamic has been obvious in Indonesia. Callahan notes that in
response to the 1998 riots in Indonesia, Beijing officially protested to the Indonesian government
on behalf of ethnic Chinese attacked by street mobs. Beijing chose to respond to domestic public
opinion within China which had mobilized through the use of online media. Beijing’s actions
marked a significant departure from Chinese policy since the 1960s, emphasizing
nonintervention domestic affairs of others. Beijing’s actions also contravened various
“normalization treaties and nationality law” in that it asserted Beijing’s sovereignty regarding
overseas ethnic Chinese (Callahan 2005, 288).
This competitive interference predated the Cold War, but it intensified in the nuclear era in
which the imperative to avoid direct military conflict between nuclear powers increased. The
alignment of local clients with external patrons depended in part on the nature of polarization
within the target polity. In the early 1970s, for example, the US and its proxies intervened and
14
competed with Soviet proxies in class-polarized Chile (Shiraz, Gustafson, and Qureshi 2011,
609).
Conclusion
More than a generation since the collapse of the USSR, the perceived ideological component of
great power Cold War competition has faded. The Soviet economic and political development
model for postcolonial states expired, with the apparent global hegemony of integration into US-
led trade and finance capitalist political economic regimes. The disintegration of the Cold War
began decades before the demise of the Soviet Union. The Chinese Communist party leadership
had successfully adapted to this changing international political environment with the rise of
Deng Tsaio-Ping as supreme leader in the late 1970s. China’s economic modernization strategy
adapted on a larger scale the remarkably successful capitalist “East Asian developmental state
model” of Japan and later South Korea and the other “Asian Tigers” and “dragons” (Kim 2017,
1088). South Korea as a “middle power” has exploited its renowned development success and
cooperative foreign policy to magnify its international influence in the so-called developing
world (Kim 2017, 1093). Great Power competition did not end with the Cold War and continues
to intensify. Dozens of states possess the technological capacity to develop nuclear weapons, for
example Japan and Germany could manufacture them very quickly should their leadership see an
intense challenge necessitating possession of them. Indirect competition through overt and covert

competitive interference in the internal political dynamics of target polities remains the primary
vehicle for this competition. It has acquired a new name, hybrid warfare, and Beijing’s
declaration of its sovereignty over the South China Sea as a core interest is analyzable from this
perspective (Wither 2016, 78–79). The immediate target polities are Indo-Pacific and other East
Asian actors, e.g. Taiwan. The ultimate target polities are the other relevant Great Powers: the
US as well as India and Japan.
This article argues that an understanding of the essential differences among the polity types
of actors in the Indo-Pacific region, including those with Chinese diasporas in positions of
economic preeminence, is necessary. It helps in comprehension of nation-state Great Power
conflict in the nuclear era. The capitalist development imperative with a focus on integration into
international trade flows is another differentiation from the height of the nuclear-era Cold War. A
further differentiating factor is the rise of mass political participation, including its manifestation
as nationalism. This global trend precludes the empire building practiced until 1945. The
highlight of this imperial legacy includes postcolonial multiethnic states in Asia and elsewhere
that are more vulnerable to competitive interference by external actors to influence and control
their domestic and foreign policies. Public acknowledgment of formal sovereignty is therefore
necessary for these postcolonial states. External control efforts over the policies of a target
government are likely to focus on indirect methods of control in order to obscure from the public
the control relationship. Thereby, local resistance to this external control is misdirected and
lessened, and the costs to the neocolonial external actor of this control are reduced. These
indirect control efforts will also tend to focus on constituency groups within the broader polity
that are the political base of different government elite factions. This focus on indirect polity
influence to promote favorable trends supportive of Beijing’s regional hegemony in the nuclear
setting is the essential component for analyzing here Beijing’s claim to the South China Sea.
Post-Cold War economic development challenges are magnified by global climate change,
urgently intensifying the imperative of international political economic cooperation by
postcolonial states with great power patrons.
Finally, this study implies that intensifying multipolarity will increasingly characterize the
international political system’s response to the challenges of global sustainable development. The
persistence and intensification of communal nationalist values implies they will limit the political
initiative capacity of universal multilateral framework negotiations to mobilize political
resources to meet these global challenges. Great power nation-states by default are fated to
15
remain the primary foci of global efforts to organize the global community to achieve global
sustainable development because of their relative power mobilization capacity. As the world’s
two most powerful nation-states, the fate of the planet is disproportionally dependent upon
nationalist political volatility within the American and Chinese polities. This study implies that
the European Union and other international actors focus their political strategic trend alteration
efforts upon influencing the US and Chinese national communities. They should strive to
strengthen the latter two actors’ respective commitments to international cooperation by
fortifying the political influence of their domestic constituencies committed to global
interdependency. They must resolve the dilemma of endeavoring to do so while concurrently
minimizing nationalist backlashes within these two superpower polities. The reality that the
European Union is not itself a nation-state is a positive political asset in this last regard.
Acknowledgment
This article was written with the support of the Catholic University of Korea research fund. The
author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers as well as the journal editors for their
thoughtful and helpful critiques and comments. The author would also like to thank his students
at the Catholic University of Korea for providing the author with the opportunity to present and
develop his ideas. Any errors and omissions are solely the responsibility of the author.
16
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Benedict E. DeDominicis, PhD: Associate Professor of Political Science, International Studies
Department, Catholic University of Korea, Bucheon, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea
20
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