INTRODUCTION

The chapters of this book have shown that the Asian security discourse is in flux. The negative impact of the energy crisis and the positive encouragement of détentein the 1970s, have shifted security thinking from a focus on military power of states to a more comprehensive conception of security. As explained in Chapter 1, comprehensive security is a much broader security concept that seeks to cope also with non-military threats caused by energy shortages, trade and financial crises, and international institutional instability. After the end of the Cold War there was another conceptual shift, albeit within narrow limits, towards human security policies to take account of new challenges of arms proliferation, environmental degradation, intra-state and inter-ethnic violence and terrorism, irregular migration flows, and human rights violations. More recently organized crime, cyber crime, and epidemics such as AIDS, SARS and bird flu have entered the security agenda. Yet, Asian policymakers and analysts are still far from abandoning state-centric outlooks to see security in terms of community-building as envisioned by Dominique Schirmer (Chapter 13), or a global public good as called for by Hermann Schwengel (Chapter 14). Security cooperation has never transcended “soft institutionalism” and is mostly confined to institutional balancing. It ends where states fear the loss of national sovereignty. If the options of policymakers are defined by a continuum where power politics and military strength constitute one pole and supranational cooperation marks the opposite pole, Asian security is still found to be closer to the realist pole. Jürgen Haacke's discussion of regional security institutions (Chapter 6) and the other contributions to Part II of this book indirectly confirm this characterization.

This concluding chapter seeks to identify reasons why this is the case. What are the major ideational and material impediments to comprehensive and human security in Pacific Asia? The chapter begins with an analysis of the ideas and experiences that influence the security culture prevalent among Asian decision-makers and the broader public. I then take a closer look at the domestic preconditions for cooperative and human security, the institutional prerequisites and the actors involved in the security discourse. The next section discusses the costs related to institution-building in the security sector. The chapter ends with a discussion of the impact of systemic influences on security thinking in the region.

INTRODUCTION

Asia is beset by security dilemmas. These dilemmas have their origins in the collective memories of Asian societies, and were sharpened by colonial experience and intensified by interaction patterns of the Cold War period. These pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial experiences still influence the perceptions of contemporary actors. Present day security dilemmas appear to be embedded in the driving forces of technological change, globalization and cultural diffusion. Policymakers need conceptual tools to resolve these dilemmas, or at least manage them by bridging the different ways of thinking about them. This chapter is an attempt to construct a conceptual bridge by proposing the idea of global public goods.

To conceptualize security dilemmas in terms of globalization, structural change, or the polarities of realist versus liberal political theory is a start. But more concrete results are needed, for example, good governance, sustainable growth and cultural resilience. Reaching consensus on the best route from diagnosis to reform is, however, more difficult than ever. In the years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, those advocating Kantian agendas for peace have suffered disenchantment, but so too have those proposing new Hobbesian world orders. The expectation of an era of fresh opportunity for international peace and security which characterized the early years of the post-bipolar world definitely has gone. Those in the moderate centre advocate pragmatic means of conflict management, including early attention to potential conflicts, confidence-building measures, negotiated peacemaking, pre-emptive containment of disputes, and the threat or use of military force as a last resort. Others support a benevolent hegemonial strategy to allow free markets, sustainable development, and democracy to flourish. Policies abound but a vision is needed to direct them.

TOWARDS A FRESH DISCOURSE

The time is ripe for a fresh discourse on security frameworks. If new concepts of global growth can be manifested to stabilize and strengthen Asian economies, then new comprehensive concepts may be able to meliorate security dilemmas, too. This search for comprehensive concepts should be motivated not by optimism but rather cool political calculation. I propose the concept of global public goods to interpret the dynamics of international relations, security dilemmas and the opportunities of regions such as Asia.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter builds on the observation that the past leaves a legacy, and that that legacy will influence contemporary security perceptions and security policies. This theme is always implicit, and often explicit, in the chapters that follow, for which this chapter serves as a historical introduction. However, the course of history is neither a progressive one as Westerners tend to believe, nor a cyclic one, as Asians under the influence of Buddhism tend to believe. It is rather a winding road, and those travelling it have difficulty detecting the turning points or most important milestones. Sometimes the past seems totally forgotten, no longer affecting politics. But with sudden changes in international affairs the national past can reemerge into view, be freshly interpreted, and even be deliberately molded to support a particular response to a security crisis. History, as constructivists warn us, is not a monolith but rather a quarry where the stones are chosen and shaped by policymakers for a political purpose.

An example will illustrate the point and also lead the discussion to the body of this chapter. In the eyes of United States policymakers, the Pacific countries have been an American sphere of influence, a U.S. security and economic “mare nostrum”, for almost 150 years. This outlook was challenged by the great European powers in the age of imperialism and was contested again by Asian leaders in the post-colonial era. Because of their Asian colonial heritage, British, French and Dutch historians often tend to glorify the colonial past, which in turn legitimated their governments’ later searches for privileges in the region. Contrariwise, Asian leaders find little virtue in the colonial past but reached back to pre-colonial kingdoms and cultures to underpin their authoritarian and nationalistic policies.

THREE SCHOOLS OF SECURITY THINKING

Considering these varying national perceptions, contemporary historians and political scientists have developed three schools of thinking about security that are applicable to East Asia. These have been foreshadowed also by the discussion in Chapter 1 of this book. The school of realism focuses on power-politics, a derivative of Bismarck's “realpolitik”, to achieve security. European statesmen and historians, quite familiar with the continental record of permanent wars, have developed the idea of challenge and response or, in military terms, of attack and counter-attack, and also of threat and deterrence.

INTRODUCTION

The United States was a Pacific power long before it became an Atlantic one. In the early 1840s the United States intensified its commercial engagement in East Asia. Under the terms of the Treaty of Wanghia (1844), America gained the right to trade in Chinese ports. More decisively, in 1853 Commodore Matthew Perry terminated Japan's self-imposed isolation and forced the country to enter into trade with the United States. Both events paved the way for America's later colonial involvement in the region, which took shape with the takeover of the former Spanish colonies in the Philippines and Guam in 1898. In only a dozen decades the United States had experienced a metamorphosis from a colony to a colonial power. Since the late nineteenth century the United States has maintained a preeminent position in the Asia-Pacific, only briefly interrupted by imperial Japan's attempts to establish a “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere”, which precipitated the Pacific War.

The defeat of Japan in August 1945 was followed by the emergence of an Asia-Pacific Pax Americana in the post-World War II era. Although the Cold War in the Asia-Pacific was characterized by a tripolar structure with the United States, China and Russia as its poles and shifting power relativities within this triangular order, its dominant element was nevertheless American primacy or, as some argue, hegemony. Unlike Western Europe where the United States’ leading security role was embedded in a multilateral structure centred on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a collection of bilateral alliances with Japan, South Korea, Republic of China on Taiwan and the Philippines served as the ad hoc structure of security relations in the Asia-Pacific. Among those, the U.S.-Japan axis emerged as the most important. In 1951 the United States and Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the Mutual Security Treaty. While the first formally ended the American occupation of Japan, the second enshrined Japan's position as Washington's principal Asian ally or, according to some, military satellite. In 1960 a bilateral defence pact between the two nations raised Japan's status because it eliminated earlier provisions allowing the United States to intervene in Japanese politics, provided a nuclear umbrella and obliged the United States to defend Japan if attacked. The pact also required Washington to consult Tokyo regarding use of U.S. military bases in Japan.

INTRODUCTION

The need for natural resources has given rise to conflicts in many parts of the world. As the World Commission on Environment and Development points out, “nations have often fought to assert or resist control over war materials, energy supplies, land, river basins, sea passages and other key environmental resources”. Malaquias observes that it is “not accidental that some of the nastiest wars in Africa are being fought in countries richly endowed with natural resources”. While there are no parallel cases in East and Southeast Asia to match the intensity and magnitude of the conflicts in some African countries, many conflicts have arisen either directly or indirectly over the control and use of natural resources. The concentration of rich natural resources in outlying parts of countries, especially in large countries with weak provincial administrative structures, can be a major contributor to calls for autonomy or breakaway in some countries.

Frequently, political and social disagreements about the sharing of economic benefits of natural resources assume major significance and often exacerbate existing religious, cultural and social tensions. Security of nations may be undermined by internal or external armed conflict or by terrorism, as well as by the weakening of economic systems, thereby making nations more vulnerable to attack. Geographic cultural diversity (for example, of ethnic minorities) and geographical inequality in natural resources available within countries and in different regions add to tensions. Furthermore, more economically developed regions and nations, to sustain economic growth, tend to exploit the natural resources and environments of less developed regions and nations. Perhaps as a precaution against attack from neighbours, small but resource rich countries such as Brunei spend a larger percentage of their GDP on defense than some of the larger countries such as China, Indonesia and Malaysia.

This chapter discusses the security issues and conflicts (both external and internal) over natural resources and the environment in East and Southeast Asia. The first section briefly discusses the resources of the region. A map locates some of the natural resources discussed. The second section deals with the conflicts related to the use and control of natural resources in the region. The nature and the magnitude of the conflicts between and within countries are dealt with. The third section discusses the responses and possible remedial action for these conflicts and the fourth section concludes the chapter.

INTRODUCTION

In the past decade we have witnessed a number of financial crises in Asia and elsewhere. None was predicted but all imposed great economic and social costs on the countries involved directly or indirectly in the crises. The stability of states and the security of their inhabitants were jeopardized. Greater openness of economies, a facet of globalization, thus entails greater instability, vulnerability, and costs not only in the economic sector but in society, politics, and international relations as well. Financial integration has spread, outdistancing methods or mechanisms for assessing the state of countries’ financial sectors and economies in general so that crises could be predicted and costs either prevented or minimized. However, more is learnt from bad experiences than from good ones. This chapter is thus a stock-taking exercise about where we stand today with respect to financial crises, that is, what we know about their causes and how to respond to them. Answers to such questions are essential for providing stability and predictability to the markets, which in turn are necessary (although not always sufficient) conditions for Asian security.

The chapter begins with giving a brief overview of the process of globalization and its different aspects. The rest of the chapter is organized as follows. An overview of potential benefits and costs of open financial markets is given prior to discussing the nature and types of financial crises as one of the more serious globalization-driven threats to security. This is followed by a detailed account of the Asian crisis of 1997–98. While the Asian crisis was indeed triggered by an overvalued Thai baht in July 1997, there is a host of contributing factors leading to this triggering moment and inducing the crisis to spread. There is a broad consensus on what caused the Asian crisis. It was different from other crises because its origin was found in imbalances of the private sector across the region. Nevertheless, the crucial question remains why the policymakers in the East and Southeast Asian countries, which managed their economies so well before, and not at all so badly since, did not see the crisis coming. There is a set of policy prerequisites that may allow governments better to manage the risks while still letting their countries enjoy the benefits of open financial markets.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter discusses East Asia's cooperative security arrangements and regional organizations insofar as they seek to make a contribution to regional security. The chapter will focus on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO). In doing so, it will outline the respective security agendas of these four institutions and provide an overview of their responses in the face of the security challenges of the post-Cold War period. Particular attention will be given to developments since the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98 and the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Although the above regional security institutions will be discussed individually for the most part, it is also one of the aims of this chapter to provide a brief comparison between them in the concluding section.

Two points must be stressed from the outset. First, East Asia's security institutions neither have the same membership, nor do they all aspire to enhance regional and international security in the same way. Given the inter-governmental nature of cooperation, they moreover tend to be hostage to the national foreign policies of their respective members. This implies that their purpose and the decisions and actions taken by them reflect the consensus of their members. This consensus takes concrete form in the normative framework underpinning security cooperation, the agenda, and the resources and capabilities with which their members have invested them.

Second, when analysing cooperative security arrangements and regional organizations it is also necessary to bear in mind that relations between members and the major powers shape their development and achievements. For example, although states seeking security may be party to a security regime, they may also want to rely in some way on a major power for their defence, irrespective of whether the major power concerned is itself party to the security arrangement in question. This sort of reliance is particularly likely when the major power in question is in effect a hegemonic power that is capable of offering extensive security cooperation to another state or is otherwise enhancing its defence capacity and the security of the incumbent regime. In such a case, the significance of cooperative security arrangements may be severely reduced.

Thousands of books have been written on how to achieve security. But the victims of insecurity since World War II have numbered in the tens of millions, nearly half of them in Asia, caught in armed conflicts and attendant famine or disease, and the damage has cost trillions of dollars. Another book on security is hardly superfluous but instead an additional asset in the search for a less lethal and destructive way of conducting inter-and intra-state relations, not least in the Asian region. It is our belief that fresh thinking about security concepts can lead to more perceptive studies by security scholars and more discriminating policies by Asian leaders and those of governments dealing with Asia such as the United States. We have endeavoured to produce a book that spans not only a variety of security threats and policies in a number of Asian countries but also a generous interval of time, thus achieving a measure of historical perspective as well as geo-political scope. We have been less concerned to quantify concepts, test hypotheses, or survey Asian countries systematically than to inform the reader of pressing issues, illuminate important themes, and put forward promising conceptual innovations in the fields of security studies and security policies. Building on the works of our academic predecessors, we hope this volume will be of value to our contemporaries and successors in the ongoing intellectual project of sharpening analysis and motivating research. We hope also to reach out to the security-policy community to contribute to improving Asian security not only at the regional and state levels but also in the economic, ethno-cultural and community spheres, ultimately enhancing human security.

INTRODUCTION

Few topics can be more important to more people than security, not least in Asia. Unfortunately for those who live there, Asia has been one of the world's most belligerent regions since the end of World War II. Of the approximately two hundred armed conflicts registered between 1945 and the present, nearly one-third took place in Asia. Two of the deadliest among them were fought in Asia. More than three million people died in the Korean War (1950–53) and over two million in the Vietnam War (1965–73). The Indochina death toll would reach three million if we add the victims of the first Indochina War (1946–54) and the Cambodian conflict (1979–91). Great power rivalry, arms races, communist insurgencies, ethnic rebellions, genocide, massive refugee flows, widespread human rights violations, terrorism, banditry and piracy have added to the apprehensions over Asia's security.

The end of the Cold War has not defused many of these conflicts in Asia as it has those in other parts of the world such as Europe. Even worse, new threats have emerged to frustrate the efforts of Asian governments and international organizations to create a peaceful security environment in the region. The nature of these threats has been aptly summarized by the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Reviewof the United States Department of Defense. The report describes Asia as a region containing:

In a globalized world the consequences of these conflicts may easily spill over into other world regions. Asia's security problems have thus become a prime focus for study by policymakers, scholars of international relations and the media, both inside and outside the region. This volume contributes to this policy-relevant study. It seeks to assess the changes in the Asian security environment since the end of the Cold War and the shifts in the perceptions and strategies of managing the threats in the region.

INTRODUCTION

Politicized ethnicity “has become the most keen and potent edge of intrastate and inter-state conflict displacing class and ideological conflict, and it asserts itself today, dialectically, as the leading legitimator or delegitimating challenger of political authority”. This statement is as valid today as when Joseph Rothschild made it in 1981. Southeast Asia's “plural societies” — most notably Indonesia and Myanmar, but also Malaysia, the Southern Philippines and Southern Thailand — are particularly exposed to communal strife. In the Philippines and Indonesia, Islam has been a major ingredient in these conflicts, nurturing fears that they may spur Islamist militancy in Southeast Asia, a region known for a diverse but heretofore tolerant Islam.

This chapter seeks to explore the security risks posed by ethnic violence in Southeast Asia. From among a plethora of ethnic conflicts in the region, the conflicts in Aceh and the Southern Philippines have been selected for in-depth study. Both conflicts are driven by Muslim secessionist movements — albeit in one case, the Philippines, against a Christian majority, in the other case, Indonesia, against Javanese dominance, which is equated with a hegemonic Indonesian state. Although the role of Islam as the unifying factor has declined in recent years, Acehnese still perceive Indonesia as a primarily secular state and hence as a threat to their cultural identity which is strongly flavoured by Islam. Both conflicts have centuries-old roots, both have been exacerbated by modernization and globalization and both rage in peripheral regions. After sketching a framework of analysis, the chapter first discusses the underlying causes of these conflicts, and then offers options for conflict resolution. The final section links them to the wider Asian and international security arenas and the post-September 11 developments.

CONCEPTUAL PREMISES

Few concepts are more contested than “ethnicity” and few topics have generated more theoretical approaches than ethnic conflict. Among the multitude of explanations for ethnic conflict we may distinguish the (1) primordialist, (2) political economy and (3) cognitive approaches.

Primordialists use “objective” criteria for defining ethnic identities such as blood relations, race, physical features, language, religion and custom. These commonalities constitute fundamental group identities that have developed over centuries.

INTRODUCTION

Any reassessment of the changing Asian security environment must allow considerable space for the large, unresolved issues of earlier years. Despite the rush of new issues onto the Asian security agenda, at the core of many regional security problems still lies a continuing worry about an old issue: Weapons proliferation. Indeed, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now appears more worrying than before, precisely because of the change in the nature of war-making units that the events of September 11 have advertised, and the new determination in Washington to act forcefully, and if necessary pre-emptively, to prevent terrorists from acquiring such weapons. Further, WMD remain a major concern of analysts studying the traditional state-centric balance of power in the region.

Such concerns are replicated, albeit at a lower level, in relation to the steady accumulation and qualitative improvement of conventional forces in the region. In short, the Asia-Pacific remains an area where regional institutionalization is under-developed, cross-border tensions are comparatively high, weapons capabilities are increasing, and the complex issues of WMD proliferation have not been solved. In this chapter, I will examine the issues surrounding both nuclear and conventional proliferation, by focusing on the North Korean nuclear issue and China's conventional force modernization.

THE TWO CHESSBOARDS

Since the dramatic events of 11 September 2001, it has become clear that international security is now most appropriately depicted not as one “grand chessboard” but as two interlinked chessboards. Up on the top board exist those state-centric actors who have traditionally monopolized the field of international security, and all their related concerns. On the top chessboard, the principal concern is to check great power conflict, for the simple reason that great-power wars can be incredibly destructive. On that top chessboard, we have developed, essentially since the age of Napoleon, a set of mechanisms for managing that concern, such as power-balancing, diplomacy, arms control and deterrence. Further, unipolarity suggests the basic problems of the top chessboard are currently held in check by U.S. “hyperpower”. Still, even a hyperpower has its limits, and the phenomenon of hyperpowerdom is itself so unusual in international relations that it might be wise to suspend judgment on whether it is stabilizing or not until further evidence is available.

UNREGULATED MIGRATION AS A SECURITY THREAT

Migration has long been a security-policy concern to Asian governments. But during the Cold War it was discounted by realist theorists as a social or economic problem, and thus relegated to “low politics”, in contrast to the “high politics” of defence and diplomacy. The rise to prominence of concepts of comprehensive security and human security has brought migration into clearer view as a security threat in the post-Cold War period. This is most obvious in the cases of disorderly migrations forced by government oppression or expulsion, or precipitated by war, ethnic violence, or famine. Furthermore, illegal movement by economic migrants facilitated by document forgers, people-smuggling and people-trafficking gangs, and illicit employer networks, and other law-breaking activity such as labour exploitation, extortion, and forced prostitution, have made migration a central topic for security studies. Because realists and liberals differ on the cause and nature of migration problems and the proper policies to address them, political controversy is endemic.

Migration is an Asian security concern from the perspective of not only the migrants but also the source and host states. Migrants, particularly illegal migrants, are at physical risk during their perilous transit and at legal risk and vulnerable to economic exploitation until their status is regularized in their new abode and their rights protected by governments. Migrants’ unauthorized or sudden appearance in the host country can inflame social tensions, raise costs of public services, and unsettle traditional institutions of administration and law enforcement. However, under certain circumstances migration can increase individuals’ security, as in the case of escape from famine in North Korea or joblessness in Indonesia or ethnic war in Myanmar. High-skilled or wealthy migrants can be long-term economic assets to their new home countries. Moreover, migration can help a poor and overcrowded source country by relieving pressure and generating remittances. Conversely, it can threaten the source country by depleting its human capital or providing resources for insurrection. Herein lies the six-fold paradox of migration: It can enhance the security of both the migrant and the source and destination countries, or jeopardize the security of all three, or produce good outcomes for one and simultaneously negative ones for the others. This chapter is concerned with the negative outcomes, for they are associated with security risks and threats.