The balance of power in East Asia

Our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin recently gave a talk at the Malaysian Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) on the Balance of Power in East Asia. A modified version of the talk follows in this and a following article on Monday.

KUALA LUMPUR (JP): An analysis of the balance of power in East Asia produces contrary conclusions. In the present circumstances, no balance is possible, but a balance is still needed. The fact that there is no real balance of power right now can be seen as a plus -- a balance of weakness emerges instead.

Two realities must first be clarified. First, it is no longer appropriate to look at the balance in military terms only. The overall balance includes economic and political power too. There is an ever increasing need to also include technological power. As China, Korea and Taiwan, in their various ways, seek to hire out-of-work or badly underpaid Russian scientists for either economic or military research projects, they underline their technological weakness -- and illustrate that Russian economic power can no longer support its level of technological accomplishment.

Second, a distinction is made between East and Southeast Asia. The balance in one obviously affects the other, but it is East Asia wherein the interests of the four major powers can directly collide. Southeast Asia consists of the ten present and future members of ASEAN. East Asia comprises China, Taiwan, Japan and the two Koreas.

Then there is Northeast Asia which consists entirely of the Russian Far East. The capital of the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido, Sapporo, is roughly on the same latitude as Rome or Istanbul in southern Europe. To talk about Japan as "northeast Asia" ignores the territorial vastness of the Russian Far East.

The United States is usually seen as a trans-Pacific power, and so it is. But the U.S. is also territorially part of East Asia as a result of its firm foothold in that huge archipelago which starts just off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula and swingsin a great arc all the way round to India's Andaman islands in the Bay of Bengal.

Given the perennial East and Southeast Asian fears that the Americans are leaving or abandoning the region, it is worth remembering that they cannot do that as long as the Stars and Stripes flies over the Commonwealth of the North Marianas and over the territory of Guam. Contrary to popular imagination, Guam and the Marianas do not lie far out in the Pacific, somewhere off Hawaii. Instead they lie due south of Tokyo Bay and Japan's Ogasawara islands.

Guam is closer to Tokyo than Hong Kong, a fact worth noting in case, before very long, the U.S. feels obliged to remove some of its military bases from Japan. While Asian governments understandably worry about the almost permanent uncertainties of American politics in relation to U.S. Asia policy, the fact remains that the U.S. is geographically anchored in East Asia.

The balance of power in East Asia critically rests upon four major powers, two of whom are believers in the balance of power concept and two of whom are not.

Japan and China are the true believers. Analysis based on the balance of power is part of their respective political bloodstreams, so to speak. It is no accident that twice in this century Japan has chosen to ally itself with the predominant power in global politics. Japan only came to grief when it tried to become the predominant power in East Asia all by itself.

A nation like China, with the struggles between the Three Kingdoms as part of its cultural heritage, understands the nuances of a power balance instinctively.

Additionally, factional strife within either the Liberal Democratic Party (at least until recently) or the Communist Party of China is frequently based upon power politics, pure and simple. Those reared in power politics at home naturally tend to look for power politics overseas.

The balance of power is not part of the bloodstreams of Russia or the United States. The Americans disdain the concept and in a different way so do the Russians. They both prefer an imbalance of power -- in their favor, of course. The Russians have displayed a historical preference for conquest while the Americans have preferred crusades, on those occasions when they have fully involved themselves in international politics.

The Cold War arose because, after 1945, the Russians still preferred conquest and the Americans responded belatedly with another crusade. But the Cold War was also, in a way, a healthy corrective. It forced the U.S. and the Soviet Union to try and maintain a balance of power for most of the post-World War II period. Ultimately the Soviet Union's economic power and political viability could not sustain its military and technological power.

Everyone, nearly everyone, assumes that the end of the Cold War was a good thing but this is questionable. As in 1945, so in 1991-92 the Americans have wound up their crusade, and too many Americans have assumed that, as a consequence, they can now forget about the world for a while.

In 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt, his successor President Harry Truman and even General Douglas MacArthur, all attacked the balance of power as an immoral concept, unlikely to bring about peace. Believing that America's massive economic power and pre- eminence were enough to guarantee security, U.S. military power was wound down and diminished at an astonishing rate.

The Soviet leader Stalin and North Korea's leader Kim IL Sung drew what, for them, was the obvious conclusion of U.S. weakness. The onset of the Cold War, and the outbreak of the Korean War, together had the effect of forcing the Americans to revive their military power and to take part in striving for the selfsame balance of power which had earlier been denounced.

I think you will have guessed why I am recalling history. Focus on the balance of power problem and inevitably the thought arises: the more things change, the more they stay the same. In some ways 1991-1996 has been a re-run of 1945-1950. Once again the U.S. has tended to see international relations in terms of a completed crusade, rather than as a continuum which never ends.

The dissolution of the Berlin Wall and then of the Soviet Union itself was hailed as a "victory" which ended a problem and therefore justified a wholesale rundown of U.S. military forces. The Gulf War provided a brief reminder of the enduring realities of power politics, but that was seen as a brief crusade too. President Clinton has presided over one of the most drastic rundowns of the U.S. Navy in terms of ships decommissioned.

Speaking at the decommissioning of the world's last in-service battleship, the USS Missouri, Republican Senator Ike Skelton warned against this cyclical pattern of "victory" leading to careless U.S. military rundowns, leading to foreign policy crises, followed by expensive rearmament. His timely warning was not reported, let alone heeded. The United States too easily forgets that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, North Korea attacked South Korea, President Saddam Hussein grabbed Kuwait, and China has recently practiced missile diplomacy against Taiwan -- all precisely because the U.S. was perceived as weak and unlikely to respond. Likewise, first Kim IL Sung and now his son Kim Jong IL have sought, based on the same perception, to demolish the instrument that has kept the Korean peace since 1953, the Korean armistice treaty.

Straightaway, one is confronted with the perennial problem of analyzing the balance of power -- power lies, or does not lie, in the eyes of the beholder. The power balance in East Asia rests upon a paradox: the U.S. may be supreme but, wittingly or unwittingly, it may act in ways which cause other nations or leaders to forget this fact.

It can be argued that there is no balance of power possible in East Asia today because one power, the United States, is so heavily, not to say overwhelmingly, predominant.

A meaningful counter-balance can hardly be imagined, especially just so long as the U.S.-Japan alliance endures.

One theoretical possibility would be an alliance between Japan and Russia. But since World War II is not yet over for these two powers -- and indeed it is questionable whether the Russo- Japanese War 1904-05 is truly concluded -- the theoretical possibility is impossible. It is most unlikely that any Russian government will give up the southernmost islands in the Kurile chain. It is most unlikely that any Japanese government will cease to demand the return of the Northern Territories just off Hokkaido.

This dispute has an important effect on the power balance. While it continues, Japan will never do as much to strengthen Russian economic power as it currently does to strengthen China's.