Major powers still key to Asia-Pacific security
Major powers still key to Asia-Pacific security
Much more than the current mechanisms are needed to maintain
regional stability. Amitav Acharya offers an old idea to fit the
new geostrategic setting.
The end of the Cold War has contributed to a great deal of
uncertainty in the Asia-Pacific as to the future relationship
among the region's major powers, the U.S., China,
Japan, Russia and India. Two perspectives have emerged. One
recognizes the growing interdependence among these powers and
advocates a policy of multilateralism and mutual engagement as
the appropriate framework for regional order. The other, alarmed
by China's rapid economic growth and military buildup, calls for
a strategy of containment against resurgent Chinese power.
Both perspectives have limitations and flaws. The multilateral
approach embodied in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), despite
having made a promising start, is a slow and cautious process
without any particular road map. It is constrained by the
exclusion of North Korea and Taiwan and the reluctance of most
regional actors to permit the requisite degree of military
transparency. Whether the ARF can successfully develop norms and
influence to regulate great power geopolitics is highly
uncertain. While a key aim of the ARF is to "engage" China within
a multilateral security structure, it is far from certain that
China wants to be engaged on terms laid down by ASEAN.
Advocates of containment ignore important realities. Close
economic linkages between China, its neighbors and the West
undermine the very rationale of a policy of seeking Beijing's
strategic isolation. Moreover, the necessary military structure
to underpin such a strategy is no longer present, given the
diminishing credibility of U.S. alliances and the U.S. security
umbrella in the region. A highly adversarial Sino-U.S.
relationship which the containment strategy will entail is likely
to be counterproductive. It is a sure prescription for
nationalist and belligerent Chinese response which will pose a
grave threat to regional stability.
There can be little doubt that prospects for regional
stability in the Asia-Pacific region depend critically on a
transparent, predictable and cooperative pattern of interaction
among the region's major powers. The ARF can contribute to this
process by developing norms and principles of interstate behavior
and measures of transparency, confidence building and
preventive diplomacy. But the ARF's somewhat passive and cautious
approach to multilateral engagement may not be adequate.
What is needed, over and above the ARF, is a framework in
which the great powers themselves develop a mechanism to regulate
their own interactions. Such a framework must steer a middle
course between a policy of passive engagement, which might prove
somewhat too idealistic, and a policy of aggressive containment,
with all the pitfalls associated with the realist logic of
deterrence.
In the 19th century, the European concert system was
successful in providing such a mechanism. The concert, involving
all the major powers of the day, assumed the primary
responsibility for managing Europe's security problems. Concert
diplomacy had four main features:
1. reliance on multilateral consultations among the great
powers (conference diplomacy) to manage crisis situations;
2. an agreement that there would be no territorial change
without great power approval;
3. a commitment to protect all "essential" members of the
state system, and;
4. a recognition that all the great powers must have equal
status and none should be humiliated.
Can these rules and principles of the classical concert model
be applied to relations among the major powers in the
contemporary Asia-Pacific milieu? In considering this question,
one should make a distinction between a formally-constituted
concert system and the norms of a concert relationship. A formal
system involving China, Japan, the U.S. and Russia is neither
feasible nor desirable. Such a system will be bitterly opposed by
the region's lesser powers, including ASEAN seeking a more equal
relationship among the regional countries. A concert system which
legitimizes great power domination at the expense of the
interests of lesser powers is not acceptable.
But without creating any formal mechanism, the major Asia-
Pacific powers could do well to learn from the concert experience
in conducting their mutual relations. The following lessons are
especially noteworthy.
The effectiveness of the concert was based on its ability to
highlight the common interests among the great powers, rather
than on stressing differences over ideological and strategic
issues. But unlike a collective security system, the concert was
not based on unrealistic expectations of harmony. Instead, the
great powers pragmatically accepted both competitive and
collaborative elements of their relationship while striving to
make the competitive element more restrained than would be the
case with a pure balance-of-power system. By providing a
mechanism for coordinating the maintenance of a balance of power
among the great powers, the concert made it possible for their
joint management of interstate conflicts.
A concert relationship in the Asia-Pacific region should
involve all the major powers committed to avoidance of ideology-
based foreign policy postures, to renunciation of war and
territorial expansion, and regular consultations on security
problems. Such a relationship should be consistent with the role
of the ARF and constitute a subset of the wider and more general
regional security relationship being developed by it.
In particular, the principles of concert diplomacy could prove
highly useful in developing the Sino-U.S. relationship. To be
sure, the U.S. and China have important ideological differences.
The American ideology of liberal democracy is not acceptable to
the Chinese. But a shared commitment to capitalist economic
development already exists. This could serve as the basis for
pursuing common security interests. A regional order could be
built around the understanding that China and others could remain
capitalist without necessarily being democratic, rather than
having to accept capitalism with democracy, as the U.S. demands.
While Chinese policymakers may reject the idea of a formal
concert, they also agree that the security of the Asia-Pacific
region depends largely on interactions among the major powers,
rather than on the kind of multilateralism initiated by weak
powers like ASEAN.
Chinese commentators have argued that it is the relationship
between the U.S., China and Japan (Russia is excluded for the
moment because of its domestic and international weaknesses), and
more specifically that between the U.S. and China, which is
critical to regional stability. Thus, the principle of concert
diplomacy is not inconsistent with China's quest for enhanced
international status and may encourage Beijing to accept greater
restraints in its quest for regional influence.
Dr. Amitav Acharya is an Associate Professor of Political Science
at York University, Canada.