Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 58, No. 3, pp.

377380, September 2004

Asian security: a critical review

GEOFF BARKER

The above three articles on the Asian security outlook are essentially venger exercises. They are nicely played and they are easy listening, but they offer little that is profound or original. Although written from somewhat different theoretical perspectives the articles reach similarly optimistic conclusions: despite emerging uncertainties in the region, mostly caused by Chinas growing military and economic power, the likelihood of major conict in the foreseeable future is remote and broad stability will continue. Written by eminent American scholars, the articles inevitably reect American views of the world. The United States is rightly seen as the crucial power in the region and the primary focus is on North Asia. Southeast Asia and the Pacic region, the areas of primary strategic interest to Australia, and South Asia, receive less attention and emphasis. Australias place and role barely rate a mention, reecting its limited relevance to elite American global strategic scholarship. Only Scalapino, in a brief coda, suggests that Australias strategic ties with the US provide a foundation for the important role that it is playing in the broader balance of power in the Asia-Pacic. Somewhat patronisingly he suggests Australia should not hesitate to provide counsel and advice to the US with respect to those issues with respect to which it is most familiar. In fact I suspect the US in fact gets more counsel and advice than it wants from ofcial and unofcial Australian sources, even if at times the US seems to needs it. But the substantial issue is whether the broad scholarly optimism reected by Scalapino, Kang and Ikenberry is rational from an Australian middle-power perspective that looks out at the world to the north-west, north and south-east onto what has become known as the arc of instability. Judging by its desire for close security links to the US, and its 10-year $50 billion program of new military equipment purchases, the Australian Government does not share this optimism. The prospect of armed invasion of Australia might be remote, but Australians cannot assume with Kang that what he calls the pessimistic hypothesis of regional conict is unwarranted. Kangs argument proceeds from his view that a hierarchical system of states,
ISSN 1035-7718 print/ISSN 1465-332X online/04/030377-04 2004 Australian Institute of International Affairs DOI: 10.1080/1035771042000260147

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rather than a system of power-balancing states, is emerging in Asia, and that this implies greater stability and order. China, the emerging dominant power in the hierarchical system, will preserve stability through combined benets and sanctions imposed on lesser states. Focused primarily on this theoretical hierarchy model, which he offers as a variation on conventional realism, Kang does not explore in detail the policies and ambitions of Asian powers or the US attitude towards them. Nor does he speculate on how these policies might evolve and where they might lead. Kangs model is abstracted from the world. But what is its analytical role? Is he offering an idealised model of empirical reality? Or is he is offering a formula which he believes will enable inferences to be drawn, and perhaps predictions to be made, about the future in Asia? Scholars and policy-makers (and journalists) unquestionably need theoretical frameworks through which to make sense of the ongoing narrative of international relations, but few would believe that they can aspire to the predictability or the objectivity of the physical sciences. Yet this view seems almost implied in Kangs claim that his theoretical propositions are universal in nature and in his conclusion that hierarchy is a defensible alternative theoretical approach to the balance of power. Unhappily, as Kang recognises, the distinction is limited between what he calls hierarchy and the concepts of hegemony and unipolarity. He denies that he is claiming hierarchy always predominates over balance, and he stresses the realist roots of his model by declaring that power, interests, and the actions that states take to signal intentions and preferences are all key features of a hierarchic system. So what is distinctive about Kangs model? A hierarchy, he says, is organised around a central dominant power and involves shared expectations of rights and responsibilities for both the dominant and secondary powers. The dominant power has different rights and obligations from secondary states. It is essentially a sort of international feudalism. But how might rival and similarly endowed feudal hierarchies in the world go about ordering their relations? By establishing higher-order hierarchies of hierarchies? Or by balancing? These are intriguing questions raised by Kangs analysis, but they are hardly issues which policy-makers and practitioners have the luxury to contemplate. Scalapino, by contrast, is rmly xed on the practitioners view. He is a balance-of-power realist whose interest is power and power relations, especially in north Asia. Unhappily he seems to have little new or distinctive to say about the current outlook. The US is dominant; China is rising; Japan is rich and growing militarily stronger; Russia is seeking to rebuild. The US-Japan alliance remains a key to strategic equilibrium. All true and all familiarbut what can be said about the future? Scalapino notes the US is moving away from unilateralism, and that nationalism is rising in China and Japan, but he seems generally sanguine about future Asia-Pacic stability,

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declaring that power in the region today is relatively balanced, weighing all its dimensions. Scalapino dismisses Southeast and South Asia in a couple of desultory paragraphs. Southeast Asia, he says, is contributing to a broad equilibrium or power balance in the Asia Pacic; the dispute between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan is dismissed as skirmishes. Indonesia does not rate a mention; nor does Malaysia. Yet both nations are passing through still uncertain historic transitions of potentially vital strategic interest to Australia. Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand are recognised only for their strategic ties to the US. This analysis is more myopic than anything likely to be written by a seriously engaged Australian foreign policy scholar, practitioner or journalist. Scalapino has revealed how different the US perspective of the region is from the Australian perspective. Perhaps the US can afford to take the Gods eye view; Australians have to attend to the details of complex and kaleidoscopic changes taking place around them. Somewhat curiously, Scalapino says there are ve relatively new security threats in Asia, but he lists only four much-discussed problems: terrorism, environmental degradation, failing states and the revolution in military affairs. One is left wondering about Scalapinos fth threat. Ikenberry, like Scalapino, is sanguine about the regional future declaring that the old American hegemonic order will remain a critical component of East Asian order for decades to comeAlternative regional orders might involve movement toward a balance of power system, a bipolar Sino-American stand-off or a more institutionalised multilateral political community. But none of these orders seem likely in the next decade or so. Again this is the Gods eye view. The possibility of miscalculation over Taiwan or the Korean peninsula is ignored. So is the potential impact of regional terrorism in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. The possible emergence of an Islamist general as leader of Indonesia is not considered. The destabilising consequences of another east Asian nancial crisis are nowhere canvassed. Nor are the consequences for Australia of state failure in Papua New Guinea or elsewhere in the south Pacic. From an Australian perspective these sorts of issue have to be paid as much attention as Ikenberry and Scalapino pay to the big-picture relations between the US, China and Japan. Alliance responsibilities, economic dependency and geographic proximity force Australian security policy to attend assiduously to North, South and Southeast Asia as well as to the Pacic. Ikenberrys key insight is what he calls the growing duality and disjunction between where the region sees its economic and security future. Most countries expect their future economic relations to be tied to China, but to rely for security on alliances with the US. He asks two questions that cannot be ignored by Australian planners: rst, can the region remain stable when economic and security logics diverge?; second, what if the US hegemon, no

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longer balanced by a great power rival, devalues old alliances in favour of coalitions of the willing as it focuses on its war on terrorism? It seems certain that Australias large and growing trading relationship with China will have consequences for strategic relations between the two countries as China grows in regional economic and military inuence. Australia could nd itself, in Kangs terms, trying to sit simultaneously as a secondary state in a global US-led security hierarchy and in a regional economic hierarchy headed by China. What then if the US and China made conicting demands on Canberra or if they had incompatible expectations of Canberra? Such dilemmas could arise before too many decades pass to confront an Australian government over issues like Taiwan, Korea or even trade questions. The choice might not be easy. Ikenberry argues that the tensions and contradictions entailed in this sort of situation will surely work to reshape the region over the long run. Yet he insists that East Asia has been a remarkably durable political order for many decades. Korea and Vietnam aside, this might be true from a US perspective, but the implied inductive argument for ongoing stability will hardly console Australian foreign policy-makers trying to look into the future.