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.