International Relations of the Asia-Pacific

Koyama,, Hitomi;Buzan,, Barry

2019 International Relations of the Asia-Pacific

doi: 10.1093/irap/lcy013

Abstract Located geographically in the East, but often identified with the West, Japan’s role as a world power over the last century and a half remains curiously inconsistent in mainstream international relations (IR). By examining Japan’s often under-appreciated role in the international history of wealth and power, we argue that this tells us more about the distorting impact on IR theory of Eurocentrism and realism than it tells us about Japan’s role in world history. Symptomatic of these distortions are Japan's exclusion from or marginalization within, the first round of modernization before 1914, and the accompanying under-recognition of its role as a model and hub for Northeast Asia’s capitalist development. Also occluded is Japan’s key post-1945 role in both underpinning America’s superpower status, and promoting the capitalist world order in Asia. Mainstream IR theory provides poor foundations for both academic and policy analysis of Japan’s important world role. 1 Introduction In terms of wealth, power, and modernity, Japan has been one of the major powers in the world since the late 19th century. Yet, it occupies a strangely curious position within the historical and theoretical accounts of the international system offered not only by the approaches to International Relations (IR) dominant in the West, but also by non-Western, and postcolonial approaches. Even the term ‘non-Western’ presupposes a problematic binary that associates mainstream to Western, which leaves Japan sometimes in, and sometimes out. For postcolonial IR, Japan does not fit easily into the perpetrator/victim binaries of either colonialism or racism. For mainstream IR it does not fit comfortably into its generally Eurocentric accounts, whether these be defined by modernity; or by a core-periphery global structure of wealth, power, and/or ‘civilization’; or by a polarity structure; or by the social structure of a mainly Western formed international society. Rethinking Japan in IR thus contributes to rethinking the interrelated pairings of binaries and identity politics, such as white imperialist/nonwhite colonized that permeate not just postcolonialism but mainstream IR more broadly.1 Since the critical and mainstream stories do not mesh well, we focus in this article on Japan in mainstream IR, saving the critical and non-Western stories for later. The mainstream IR story of Japan starts from the puzzle of how to fit an early-rising Asian country into the generally Eurocentric accounts of modernity. Japan is usually placed as an outsider to the Western core of modernity, leaving it as an odd exception to a ‘backward’, ‘stagnant’ Asia, despite the fact that it uniquely prefigured the rise of the rest by a century. Japan’s groundbreaking defeat of Russia in 1904–1905, acknowledged as a major event at the time, now hardly registers in IR’s otherwise war-obsessed set of benchmark dates (Buzan and Lawson, 2014). Its brief bid for imperial hegemony over Asia during the 1930s and 40s registers as a flash, unpleasantly associated with the aggressive fascist bid for world power. And then Japan largely disappears from view in IR. Only those who specialize in IPE or East Asia note its economic resurgence during the Cold War. As a ‘civilian power’ it largely drops out of realist polarity theory, not only for its lack of military power, and its constitution’s Article 9 renouncing the use of force to resolve international disputes, but also for its security dependence on the United States. Japan is somehow always the unique exception that doesn’t fit neatly into the Eurocentric and mainly realist way that IR tells its stories about the last 150 years. This year marks the 150th anniversary of Japan’s Meiji Restoration/Revolution which many mark as the beginning of Japan’s turn to the West, and destabilizing of the West-non-West binary. The aim of this paper is to overthrow the mythologies of both uniqueness and misplacement of Japan.2 In doing so it exposes the distortions imposed on how Japan is understood not only by being viewed through the lens of Eurocentrism, but also by being viewed through the lenses of mainstream IR theories, particularly realism. Eurocentrism implies relationships among race, imperialism, and development that continue to contour the lines of debate in both IR and contemporary global politics. Realism imposes military-heavy understandings of power that sometimes fit Japan’s case and sometimes result in occlusion. We pursue this aim by retelling in chronological sequence four stories of modern Japan in international relations.3 The aim of these stories is to show the limits of mainstream IR story-telling by stripping away the distortions of Eurocentrism and realism, and showing how Japan’s impact on modern international relations has been wider and deeper than is generally acknowledged. First, Japan was part of the group of early modernizing countries, and this undoes the Eurocentric link between white/West and modernity. This initial misplacement of Japan underpins the subsequent distortions in how mainstream IR tells its story. Second, as the local core of modernity, Japan played a very significant role in Northeast Asia’s development up to 1945. Because development in East Asia is tightly associated with state legitimacy, Japan’s role in it is a difficult issue both for its former colonies and for the West. Third, from 1902 to 1945, Japan played a full global role as a great power, and made a large and lasting impact on world history and politics. Fourth, once it had recovered from the devastation of the Second World War, Japan quickly picked up its key role as the modernizing core for East Asia. It did this in complicity with, and subordination to, the United States, in the process providing a vital economic and ideological foundation for the successful US claim to global superpower status. The penultimate section discusses how our repositioning of Japan plays into the situation as we move into a post-Western and post-East Asian World Order where China and others are at last finding their own paths to modernity. The conclusions consider what explains Japan’s misplacement, and often marginalization, in IR. 2 Japan in the context of emerging modernity How does Japan fit into the process of modernity that took off during the 19th century? The way this story is told (or not told) is heavily influenced by Eurocentrism, and except as it relates to Japan’s military development is marginalized by realism. Japan is usually placed as the one non-white/Western country that somehow modernized a century before any other non-white/Western state, and became recognized as a great power by other leading states. It does not fit the broader story about an Asia of stagnant agrarian states either being colonized by Western powers (South and Southeast Asia) or having violent, sustained, and unequal encounters with them from a position of weakness (China). China and Japan started in similar positions, but quickly and sharply diverged (Gray, 2002, vii). Neither does it fit within the Western story, which likes to see the decisive emergence of a stable modernity as something that happened in (white) Western Europe and North America. A constant question is whether Japan is part of the East or part of the West, reflected in Japanese slogans such as wakon yosai (Japanese spirit western technology) or Yukichi Fukuzawa’s often misinterpreted essay on ‘leaving Asia’ to join the West. Japan’s relation to modernity, we argue, productively refuses a binary, West/non-West, mainstream account of both development and world history. Critics of Eurocentrism in IR also have a vexed relationship with Japan: while its defeat of Russia was a cause to celebrate the agency of a non-white/Western power, this narrative then often leaves out Japan because it joins the club of colonial great powers. Its early modernization is potentially a major threat to the whole West-centric story of modernity, and also thereby to Eurocentric and anti-Eurocentric accounts of how the modern international system unfolded. To discuss the history of Japan without succumbing to the historical development narrative that naturalizes Eurocentric modernity, we juxtapose Landes’ (1969) and Rosenberg’s (2010, 2013, 2016) theories of development. Landes’ (1969, 39, 124–126, chs 3 and 4) argument represents the mainstream view of modernity that Britain was the only case of sustained ‘self-generated’ industrial modernity, and that all other cases are necessarily versions of ‘emulative response’ (e.g., Pomeranz, 2000). From the late 19th century, Britain’s rising wealth and power was both an opportunity for, and a threat to, other powers. They faced intense pressure to copy the British model, but found it extremely difficult to adapt its complex social, economic, and political features to their own limitations and advantages. Rosenberg’s argument concerns uneven and combined development (UCD). It posits three drivers lying behind the universality of uneven development: first, the diversity of geographical and resource endowments; second, the physical separation of political units (IR theory’s familiar anarchic structure); and third, the differential impact of ‘combination’. ‘Combination’ means the ways in which social orders trade, coerce, emulate, borrow, and steal from each other, and, like unevenness, can vary greatly in degree. Before the 19th century, geography facilitated combination where there were available sea and river routes, but mountains, deserts, long distances, and harsh climates obstructed it. Since the 19th century, combination has been massively and permanently facilitated by industrial technologies that overcame geographical constraints: steamships, railways, highways, aircraft, spacecraft, the telegraph, and the internet (see also Baldwin, 2016). Combination therefore increases directly with the third element of UCD: ‘development’, which for our purposes is broadly synonymous with modernization. In Rosenberg’s formula, a new social configuration spreads outward from its point or points of origin, and has varied effects depending on both the timing of its arrival, and the local conditions of the cultures it impacts. Landes’ and Rosenberg’s analyses fit together nicely. The starting point for the new configuration was Britain, whose industrial modernization was, by the early 19th century, creating both extreme unevenness of development, and a rapidly accelerating level of combination. Britain’s industrial modernity opened up what today is seen as a spectrum of developed and underdeveloped economies defined in terms of an ever-advancing standard of modernity. The ideas, institutions, and products of modernity flowed out of Britain on a global scale, carried by both coercion and commerce. They forced other countries and peoples to adapt or resist as best they could. As Bairoch (1982, 272) makes clear, responding was not easy: the revolutionary changes towards industrial modernity that began in Britain ‘took over half a century to be initiated and copied elsewhere’, even amongst the small group of successful early responders. Some countries and cultures adapted to it with varying degrees of success. Some collapsed. Many were subordinated by the huge power gap that opened up between the handful of successful early modernizers and all the others, what Pomeranz (2000) called ‘the great divergence’. Where does Japan fit into this picture of the first round of a globally spreading modernity? That Japan was a member of the quite small core group of countries that achieved durable industrial modernity before the First World War is clear from the statistics, though the placement of Japan troubles some economic historians. Bairoch (1982, 288) excludes Japan from both the developed country group and the underdeveloped group. In his millennial perspective on global development, Maddison (2001) does eventually include it in his ‘Group A’ of developed states, along with Western Europe, the United States and the white commonwealth countries. His ‘Group B’ is the third world in Africa, Asia and Latin America, none of which achieved durable industrial modernity until a century later when the Asian tigers led the way, followed by China. Maddison’s, and Baldwin’s (2016) placement of Japan acknowledges that it was part of the handful of countries that responded successfully and early to the British challenge, achieving durable modernity before 1914. The data therefore show that Japan is located in ‘Group A’ rather than ‘Group B’. Geographically, Japan had the disadvantage of being almost as far from the British point of origin of industrial modernity as it was possible to get. Western and Northern Europe, the United States, and Russia, were either close to Britain, and/or strongly connected to it by commerce, immigration, and war. In contrast, Japan was on the end of a long and tenuous trading route, and under the Tokugawa Shogunate had, except for a small window in Nagasaki where Dutch–Japan relations informed the Japanese worldview, insulated itself for more than two centuries from trade and cultural contact with the West, though remaining open to trade and cultural contact with China and Korea (Jansen, 2000, ch. 3; Toby, 1984; Hamashita, 2003). When Commodore Perry’s gunboat diplomacy ‘opened’ Japan in 1853, it began an encounter with both the West and modernity that was later, and therefore more intense, than for the other members of the successful first responder group. But the disadvantage of distance was also an advantage. Japan was shielded from colonization both by its remoteness, and by the greater interest of the Western powers in the riches of China. After the 1857 uprising in India, Britain was disinclined to pay the cost of direct rule, and the United States was more interested in ‘open doors’ than in colonial rule. As with China (Gray, 2002, 101–103, 118–123; Darwin, 2007, 353), the Western powers preferred to use unequal treaties to extract profit from Japan (Duus, 1998). Furthermore, the Japanese elites were prompted to take modernization seriously by the British defeat of Qing China in the Opium War. Upon hearing of the British victory, samurai scholar Shozan Sakuma noted that the era of the kingly way was over, now is the era of might (Matsumoto, 2002, 7). The standard picture of the rise and spread of industrial modernity has Britain remaining dominant until at least 1860. The most successful early imitators were Switzerland, Belgium, France, and the United States, and by the 1870s, Germany and the United States were catching up (Bairoch, 1982, 272, 290–291). Although starting late, Japan was part of a third group of first round modernizers along with Russia, Italy, Spain, and Austria–Hungary (Bairoch, 1981, 10; Bairoch, 1982, 294–295). This core, along with the white commonwealth and some smaller European countries, together comprise the first general round of industrial modernization. For the century following 1870, the game of competitive modernity was largely played within this set. The second general round did not begin until the rise of the East Asian Tigers during the 1970s, reinforcing Bairoch’s point that emulation was not easy.4 Like the first responders to Britain, the second-round responders of the third world took half-a-century to catch up with the first round modernizers. Domestic factors also matter. Unlike most other non-Western countries, and some Western ones, most notably in Eastern Europe and Iberia, Japan had relatively favorable domestic conditions to facilitate its transformation. During the 18th century, before industrial modernity had made a big impact, Japan’s life expectancy, increase in per capita income growth, and GDP per capita were comparable to levels in Western Europe (Maddison, 2001, 27, 38, 46). It had a well-developed commercial economy, and its class structure, demography, and land ownership were all favorable for modernization (Curtin, 2000, 156–171; Pomeranz, 2000; Totman, 2005, locs 8028–8056; Allinson and Anievas, 2010, 479–485). Unlike China, where foreign pressure further weakened the dynasty, the Meiji reformers in Japan created a stabilizing, though flawed, fusion of tradition (the emperor and Shinto), and modernity (Gluck, 1985). They quickly put in place a modern nation-state that could cultivate nationalism, pursue industrialization, and resist foreign takeover (Jansen, 2000, chs 11–12; Totman, 2005, locs. 8198–8429). In 1871, Japan sent the Iwakura Mission to observe how things were done in Western countries, and hired experts from abroad to help with all aspects of modernization. Yukichi Fukuzawa in 1872 noted how science and technology is a recent development in the West also, therefore rendering the gap manageable (Fukuzawa, 2012; Jansen, 2000, locs. 5364–5438). Between 1870 and 1913, Japan broadly caught up with rates of growth in Western Europe for population, GDP and GDP/capita (Maddison, 2001, 126). Japan’s GDP tripled, comparable to Germany and Russia, and better than Britain, France, and Italy; and its GDP/capita doubled, slightly exceeding the rate in Western Europe (Maddison, 2001, 129, 206, 261, 264–265).5 Between 1820 and 1913, Japan’s share of the global GDP held fairly steady at around 3% as it kept pace with the industrializing leading edge. Life expectancy in Japan also rose during this period, as it did in the other core countries (Topik and Wells, 2012, 602–603; Osterhammel, 2014, 170–172). Japan was a comparative late-starter on the run to modernity. Although comparable in size to most Western economies in 1820, by 1870 Japan’s GDP was slightly more than half of Italy’s and a third of Germany’s, and about a quarter of that of Britain and the United States. By 1913, it was still about a third of Britain’s, Germany’s and Russia’s, but had nearly caught up with Italy (Maddison, 2007: 379). In terms of total manufacturing output, Japan ranked 8th by 1913, 20% of the British level and 17% of the German one (Bairoch, 1982, 284). The relative values of its merchandise exports 1870–1913 rose fast from 15-315, remaining much smaller than Germany and Britain, but comparable to Russia (216–783) (Maddison, 360–362). Japan’s share of world manufacturing output is comparable to Italy’s between 1870 and 1913. Japan overtook France in total industrial capacity during the 1930s (Bairoch, 1982, 301), but not until the 1960s did it catch up with the leading industrial powers in scale, surpassing the Soviet Union during the 1980s. As the data show, Japan, despite being geographically non-Western and as far away as possible from Britain, became clearly part of the 19th century core of early modernizers. Japan reacted to the external pressure of the new configuration of modernity, and created domestic conditions conducive to the pursuit of modernity. It matched the later modernizers within the first round, and left behind even those un- or de-colonized European countries that failed to respond effectively to the challenge of modernity. In line with UCD, Japan generated its own distinctive fusion of culture and modernity, which became the template for the Asian developmental state.6 3 Japan as the Regional Core for Asian Modernity Given its perceived cultural and geographical proximity, Meiji Japan quickly became both a model for other peripheral modernizers (Osterhammel, 2014, 560, 563), and was recognized as such by, Chinese and Korean reformers (Gray, 2002, 216–219; Schell and Delury, 2013 loc. 801). Between 1870 and 1930 Japan gave considerable inspiration and assistance to Chinese modernizers. As Schell and Delury (2013, 147) note: ‘This was the decade [before the 1914] when Chinese intellectual and political avant garde figures were all converging on their island neighbour to study the Meiji model’. Some came as students, others as political refugees, from both China and other parts of Asia. They included big names such as: Wang Jingwei (Mitter, 2013, loc. 679), Liang Qichao (Osterhammel, 2014, 786; Schell and Delury, 2013, 78, 99), Chen Duxiu (Schell and Delury, 2013, 142–147), Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen (Schell and Delury, 2013, 175), and Rash Behari Bose. Japan’s successful revision of unequal treaties imposed by Western powers meant that foreign powers could not pursue such people within Japan. In the three decades before 1937 some 30,000 Chinese studied in Japan (Mitter, 2013, locs. 462, 658). Japan provided for China much of the language and conceptual structure for Asian modernity (Duara, 2015, 84–87). Much of China’s military modernization, such as Yuan Shi-kai’s Beiyang Army, was modeled on Japan, and both Sun Yat-sen and the northern warlords vied for Japanese support (Peattie, 2007, 174–177, 182). The need for modernization advocated by these reformists became pitted against conservative factions within China and Korea who upheld traditional values and resisted modernization/Westernization. Unlike in Japan, this resistance was successful enough to render China and Korea ripe for external intervention. Both the Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War can be understood as the intersection of domestic desire for modernization in China and Korea, with Japan as the mediator, on the one hand, and the externally imposed modernization that was phrased in the language of the ‘civilizing mission’ with Japan as the colonizer, on the other. Fukuzawa’s essay, ‘Datsu-A Ron’ [Leave Asia] published in 1885, penned immediately after the failed Gapsin Coup in Choseon Korea, argued that Japan must decisively disconnect from Korea and China because continued association with them risked the West lumping Japan with Asia as the stagnant Other. Fukuzawa, a liberal thinker, was therefore supportive of the Sino-Japanese War, since for him forced Enlightenment was better than refusal of modernity. In the name of civilizing mission, Japan therefore became a direct agent of modernization in Northeast Asia (Dudden 2006). It is in this sense that the line between serving as a model and imposing a model is both difficult to draw and politically charged. Ironically, while Japan became a model and intellectual hub for many Asians, the Japanese views of its Asian Others were sharply split. While some in Japan supported the Chinese and Korean modernizers, others did not (Jansen, 2000, locs. 7709–7790; Peattie, 2007, 174–177). Right from the beginning, Japan has been divided about how to relate to both its region and the Western powers. The net result of this was that Japan contributed to the development of its neighbors, not only by offering inspiration, education, and sanctuary, but also by effectively imposing on its colonies, especially Korea, Taiwan, and Manchuria, a version of its own Meiji reforms. At the outset, Japan undertook a ‘civilizing mission’ towards its ‘underdeveloped’ neighbors (Dudden, 2006). But this mode of colonial rule changed after the First World War. There was a surge of anti-colonial independence movements (May 4th movement in China, March 1st movement in Korea) within Japan’s colonies and sphere of influence, inspired by Woodrow Wilson’s support for self-determination. And the Japanese military learned the lesson that the next war had to be fought as a total war based on a sustainable and self-sufficient regional bloc that was geared to enhancing Japan’s power. This continental strategy in turn created tension between the military and the Japanese state. It was in the spirit of collaborating with the United States and Britain that Japanese political leaders agreed to the naval reduction treaty. But perception in the military that the terms were unequal fed resentment, motivating its takeover of the civilian government (Paine, 2017, 77–108). Imperial development during the interwar period was about denying domestic anti-colonial movements in the name of pursuing Japanese and Asian regional autonomy on the one hand, and the geopolitical logic of creating a greater Japan, with a sufficient industrial and resource depth to defend itself and Asia from Western imperialism, on the other. This culminated in the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ (GEACPS). In the event, despite, and because of, the term ‘co’ in the prosperity sphere, the GEACPS ended up being largely defined in terms of the harsh and exploitative practices of the Japanese empire. But some of the prior thinking behind it in Japan took ‘co-prosperity’ seriously, though with Japan as the leader, but with a much more communitarian and developmental intent on the regional scale (Williams, 2004, 30; Goto-Jones, 2005; Sakai, 2008, 241–248). As noted earlier, Japan’s relation to its Asian neighbors oscillated between ‘rising together’ and ‘leaving Asia’—it is in the spirit of the former that the logic of both denial of autonomy of other Asians and the creation of regional block intertwine. And this communitarian/cooperative intent differentiates Japan’s imperial relations in terms of development. As Cumings (1984, 12–13) notes, before 1945 Japan was ‘among the very few imperial powers to have located modern heavy industries in its colonies: steel, chemicals, hydroelectric facilities in Korea and Manchuria, and automobile production for a time in the latter…. By 1945 Korea had an industrial infrastructure that, although sharply skewed towards metropolitan interests, was among the best developed in the third world’. Kohli (2004, 25–61) shows in detail how Japanese colonial rule was far more penetrative and modernizing than British and French, reshaping Korean agriculture, transforming the class and political structures, abolishing slavery, and creating an export-orientated modern economy with a substantial industrial sector. Although this was a coercive, repressive, colonial state, it also laid the foundations of modernity, in the process co-opting substantial sections of Korean society (Tudor, 2012, 19). As told by Duara (2003, see also Paine, 2017, 115–118) a somewhat similar story can be found in Manchuria except that in Manchukuo the Japanese tried to construct not so much a colony as an ‘independent’, if highly penetrated, nation-state (Duara, 2003, locs 116–123). Despite strenuous diplomatic efforts by Japan, this project failed to get international recognition, and despite some success in creating a national politics in Manchukuo, was eventually undermined by Japan’s extractive wartime demands and discriminatory racism. Nevertheless, during the period of Japanese rule, Manchuria was substantially industrialized and modernized. It too had a version of the Meiji modernization model thrust forcibly on it, becoming a highly authoritarian and repressive developmental state. It is revealing that the large inward migration from China into Manchuria that had been going on since the 1890s continued apace during the Japanese occupation. While some Chinese resisted Japan’s takeover, many others were drawn in by the expanding economic opportunities and the chance to escape the chaos of China’s failed state (Duara, 2003, 68). Koreans also played a significant role in Japan’s colonization and modernization of Manchuria. Taiwan likewise got significant infrastructure and industrial development. Japan treated Taiwan, like Korea, in many ways as part of itself, including extending to the population is own system of mass education (Gray, 2002, 456). Between 1910 and 1940, both Korea and Taiwan had higher average GDP growth than Japan’s 3.36%. Korea’s manufacturing capacity grew at 10% per annum (Cumings, 1984, 2). Albeit in self-interested fashion, Japan thus laid the social as well as the material foundations for the successful remodernizations of South Korea and Taiwan as Asian tigers after the Second World War. In doing so, however, it also left them with the dilemma of how to link their state legitimacy to that history. Japan’s Manchurian venture had a different fate, with much of its industry stripped out by the invading Russians (Duara, 2003; Paine, 2012: locs. 5003–5039). Japan laid in its colonies the foundations for wealth and power, while simultaneously compromising their culture and autonomy. Against these developmental contributions to its neighbors, stands the monstrous damage that Japan inflicted not only on its colonies in the name of development, but also on China and its Asia-Pacific neighbors as a imperial power. The developmental state model was ruthlessly applied on internal (Hokkaido) and external colonies. Such behavior leaves assessing the meaning of development in postcolonial societies in a difficult impasse: how does one judge ruthless development imposed by outsiders against ruthless development imposed by authoritarian regimes on their own people? Against China during its war of conquest between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese killed between 14 and 20 million Chinese (Mitter, 2013, locs. 283, 6734) and injured something like the same number. They wreaked huge destruction on the Chinese economy, leaving much of China’s own industrial and infrastructure modernization during the 1920s and 30s in ruins (Mitter, 2013, loc. 283; Paine, 2012, locs. 4624–4684). On top of this, Japan’s invasion, and China’s resistance to it, displaced as internal refugees perhaps 80–100 million people, 15–20% of China’s population (Mitter, 2013, loc. 2222). This was a massive blow to China’s development, and war damage was also widespread throughout Japan’s sphere of control in the Asia-Pacific. In addition, there were the massacres of civilians, the use of POW for medical experiments, and the recruitment of women into military prostitution, all of which have fueled deep and bitter history problems between Japan and both China and Korea (‘Impact of History’, 2007–2008; Tanaka, 2008; Togo, 2008a, 2008b). What all this underscores, is how treating the story of development strictly in terms of military and economic modernization desensitizes one to the politics of development. Japan’s omission from, and inclusion in, various narratives of IR must be partly understood as a consequence of this broader tension over the meaning of development in IR. 4 Japan as a great power from late 19th century to 1945 Japan made it into the ranks of the recognized great powers partly by meeting the Western ‘standard of civilization’ (Gong, 1984), partly by building up an industrial economy and a modern army and navy, partly by participating in great power diplomacy, and partly by winning wars and making alliances with other great powers. This part of Japan’s story fits well with realist criteria, and although its telling is tinged with Eurocentrism, is reasonably well represented in mainstream IR accounts of this period. But like its early contributions to Northeast Asian modernization, Japan’s record as a normal great power of the time, is overshadowed by its aggressions during the 1930s and 40s. Yet, for the first three decades of the 20th century, Japan was part of the great power club even though the ‘standard of civilization’ was certainly not color-blind. Despite its own embrace of imperialism, Japan made some significant contributions to anti-colonialism and anti-racism. From the beginning, the Meiji leadership aimed to escape being colonized. They emulated the style and form of the great powers of the day, which was to modernize internally, and build an empire externally. Appropriating the Eurocentric language of international law against the Sinocentric tributary practices, Japan invaded Taiwan in 1874 (annexing it formally in 1895), fought wars for overseas territory with both China (1894–1895) and Russia (1904–1905), and annexed Korea (1910). Such reforms went hand in hand with efforts to achieve equal diplomatic and political status. Japan campaigned vigorously against unequal treaties—extraterritoriality was revoked in the late 1890s and tariff controls were removed in 1911 (Gong, 1984, 164–196; Howland, 2016). Japan worked hard to meet the ‘standard of civilization’ which appeared color-blind both internally and externally. In both the 1894–1895 war against China, and the 1904–1905 one against Russia, the Japanese went out of their way to treat prisoners of war in a humane fashion, carefully following the international law of war to demonstrate its ‘civilized’ nature (Paine, 2003, 175, 209; Howland, 2016). Japanese victory against China put Japan on the road to recognition as a great power, but it met a setback with the Triple Intervention by Russia, Germany, and France afterwards, which took away some of its gains in China. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 gave Japan great power recognition, and its defeat of Russia three years later both reinforced this status, and signaled new possibilities for the meaning and implication of being ‘non-Western’. The global significance of Japan’s victory is little recognized now, but was fully apparent at the time. Alfred Zimmern, a leading academic in British interwar IR, announced to his Oxford class that: ‘I feel I must speak to you about the most important historical event that has happened, or is likely to happen, in our lifetime: the victory of a non-white people over a white people’ (Vitalis, 2005, 168). This remark illustrates the importance of race during the early 20th century. It underlines how Japan’s military victories broke the myth of invincible white power established during the 19th century, giving inspiration, except for those subjugated by Japan, to anti-colonial movements around the world (Westad, 2007, 88–89). The ‘awakening’ prompted by Japan’s defeat of Russia was realized in nationalist revolutions against ‘backwardness’ in Iran, China, and the Ottoman empire, as well as in the resurgence of a ‘pan-Asian’ strand of thought whose leading voices, such as the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, commanded large audiences (Collins, 2011). The Young Turks sought to make the Ottoman state the ‘Japan of the Near East’, praising its assertiveness and fashioning of a distinctly ‘Asian modernity’ (Aydin, 2007, 78). The early 20th century modernizers around the emperor in Ethiopia were called Japanizers (Westad, 2007, 253). Japan’s rise to great power status also resulted in rendering more explicit the underlying issue of racism in international politics. As Shimazu (1998) argues, racial discrimination against Japan threatened Japan’s standing as a great power by casting it as inferior to white powers and placing it alongside the non-white subjects of the colonies. This was rubbed in by anti-Japanese and anti-Asian immigration policies in the United States, Canada, and Australia, and by Woodrow Wilson’s joining of Britain in rejecting the bid for the inclusion of racial equality clause proposed by Japan (Clark, 2007, 83–106). Though motivated by its own concern over discrimination against Japanese immigration, Japan confronted the white great powers with the issue of racism at the Versailles negotiations during 1919. Although this was not about racial equality as a general principle since Japan wanted equality for itself while it continued to discriminate against its Asian neighbors, Western discrimination against Japanese immigrants fueled the anti-Western turn in Japanese policy that laid the basis for geopolitical contestation during the inter-war years, thereby implicitly racializing the meaning of war. The apparent contradiction of being both non-White and imperialist, must be understood in this light. The racial equality clause was vetoed by the United States and Britain, yet despite its failure to gain racial equality, Japan functioned as a normal member of the great power club. At the Washington Naval Conference in 1921–1922 it won designation as the third-ranked naval power ahead of France and Italy. It seized Manchuria in 1931, which was already a semi-autonomous warlord state, and as noted made a colonial state there. It invaded China in 1937, but despite many military victories was unable to defeat China. It was badly defeated in a short border war against the Soviet Union in 1939, joined the Axis Alliance with Germany and Italy in 1940, made a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union in 1941, and opened war against Britain and the United States in 1941 (Paine, 2012). It is notable how, once Japan declared war against the United States and Britain, the right wing Kyoto School philosophers latched onto the prevalence of pan-Asianist sentiments in the world beyond Japan’s immediate control by emphasizing as a central theme the breaking of ‘white power’ (Yonetani, 2006). In the run-up to the Second World War, Japan, like several other great powers, left the League of Nations. Ironically, its legitimation was anchored in the language of internationalism, in the name of bringing peace through an alternative regional bloc that rejected Anglo-American dominance (Abel, 2015). Because of IR’s own forgetting of its origins (Vitalis, 2005), internationalism is generally posed as an antithesis to imperialism, thereby also rendering Japan’s behavior an anomaly. By the standards of the day, Japan’s military strength was impressive despite its economy still being less developed than those of the leading Western great powers. By 1941, for example, Japan’s ‘Zero’ fighter, and its Type 93 ‘Long Lance’ torpedoes, were superior to anything in the US arsenal, and it had built the world’s biggest battleship (Yamato). Despite both its own colonialism, and eventually being defeated, Japan’s early victories over the United States, Britain, France, and the Dutch during 1941–1942 broke their colonial grip in Asia and significantly paved the way for the decolonization of the region (Paine, 2017, 175). Japan’s four-decade run as an imperial great power ended with the devastation of its cities and industry by the Allied Powers, and the near complete obliteration of its navy and merchant marine. The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki opened a narrative of Japan as a victim rather than victimizer, thereby occluding its past as a great power and continually postponing Japan from facing its history problem with its neighbors. Nevertheless, as Paine (2017, 149–156, 185; 2012, locs. 4624–4684, 5823) argues, Japan’s run as an independent great power had two other major and enduring consequences for world politics. First, the failure of Japan and Germany to coordinate against the Soviet Union at the crucial moments, significantly affected the outcome of the war in Europe and thus all that followed. Second, by breaking the power and legitimacy of the Nationalist government in China, Japan ensured the victory of the communists in the Chinese civil war, as Mao himself acknowledged (Jansen, 2000, loc. 10003; Gray, 2002, vii, 270). 5 1952–present: a pillar of the US-led capitalist world order After 1945, Japan disappeared from the ranks of the great powers and also from most of mainstream IR other than IPE, where its economic resurgence played significantly. In realist perspective, it was just a subordinate ally of the United States, with this view supporting the maintenance of a Eurocentric view of world politics. The only exception to this sidelining was a brief period during the early and middle 1990s, when Japan’s strong economic growth generated a fashion, especially in the United States, for seeing it as the likely challenger for superpower status (Huntington, 1991, 8; 1993; Layne, 1993, 42–43, 51; Spruyt, 1998). With Japan’s economic stagnation, this fashion faded quickly. Although it is true that Japan has been both subordinate to the United States, and militarily inert, it is untrue that it has been unimportant to the configuration and dynamics of wealth and power. The magnitude of Japan’s power has increased markedly, with its GDP surpassing that of the Soviet Union during the 1980s. Its former role as a self-seeking imperial great power has morphed into serving as the key pillar supporting US superpowerdom in Asia (Inoguchi, 1986). There has been a great deal of continuity in its role as a model and hub for much of the development process in East Asia. Japan has been crucial both to the victory of the West in the Cold War, and to the more general triumph of capitalism over command economy that both won the Cold War and shaped the post-Cold War world. In politico-military terms, by far the main significance of Japan in the configuration of world power since 1945 has been the essential role it plays in supporting the United States as the only superpower, both during the Cold War and after. This supportive role is only partly about Japan’s provision of bases, and its role in containment. The United States is certainly still the leading world power in material terms, but equally important is its social position, which is often marginalized in the materialist perspective of realism. The real key to US superpower status is that the next two biggest centers of capital and technology in the international system, Europe and Japan, subordinated themselves within US-dominated alliances (Nye, 2002). The United States thus both cemented a democratic/capitalist ideological consensus on the basic principles of the world economy, and prevented a serious great power coalition forming against it (Layne, 1993, 5–7). The United States is a superpower not only because of its material capability, but also because of its institutionalized and consensual partnerships with the EU and Japan. The endurance of such partnerships, despite the drift towards unilateralism in US policy that surfaced during the Bush administration (2001–2008), and has resurfaced in Trump’s ‘America first’ policy, is a testimony to its strength. Within that framing, Japan’s economic success, and its influential resumption of its earlier role as the development model and hub for East Asia, have been important. Japan not only pushed along the Asian Tigers, but also discredited the command economy approach to modernity, serving once again as a model for the Chinese turn to capitalism. The story of Japan’s economic miracle needs no repeating here. Its rapid economic resurgence provided the basis for Japan to resume its role as the economic and developmental core for East Asia. It still led by the example of its developmental state, but now added to this aid, investment, the transfer of technology, and the setting up of regional production chains. After independence, and under US hegemony, South Korea and Taiwan carried on with an authoritarian developmental state that clearly resembled the Japanese colonial system, and laid the foundations for their post-independence rise to wealth and power. Like the other Asian Tigers, South Korea has been very successful at generating wealth and power. Yet, the legitimacy of the leaders in the former colonies hinged on the extent to which they fought against the Japanese—which made it an imperative for those who were trained in the Japanese imperial army to insist on discontinuity rather than continuity. Likewise, for politicians and academics alike, speaking of the Japanese developmental legacy remains a risky topic in an age when the legitimacy of the state must be wedded to nationalist stories of development that celebrate the autonomy of the state. Close links between the South Korean and Taiwanese economies on the one hand, and the Japanese on the other, re-emerged from the wreckage of war. Cumings (1984), argues that as Japan moved away from earlier product cycles such as textiles and heavy industry it transferred these to Taiwan and South Korea, and others in East Asia in the ‘flying geese’ model of finance and technology transfer. From the 1970s, South Korea’s and Taiwan’s economic miracles added to the effect of Japan’s economic miracle in raising the status of Northeast Asia as the third core of the global capitalist economy. Like Japan, the ‘Asian Tigers’ (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) followed export-led industrialization, which proved to be as successful for them as it had been for Japan. Enabled both by state-led policies and by extensive aid and investment from foreign backers, the Asian Tigers tripled their GDP per capita in a little over two decades—by 1988, they accounted for 8.1% of world trade, almost double the share held by the whole of Latin America (Frieden, 2006, 317; Loth, 2014, 134). In South Korea, exports increased at an average rate of 8% per year between 1962 and 1989; per capita income rose by a factor of 52 during the same period (Zeiler, 2014, 312). A similar, though later, and lesser, story could be told about Japan and the development of Southeast Asian countries. Once Mao was dead, the success of the Asian Tiger’s development influenced Chinese leaders to open up through a combination of export-led industrialization and labor-intensive development (Sugihara, 2013; Wong, 1997). China also followed the Asian Tigers in using Japan’s early authoritarian developmental state model to maintain a system of low wages, while keeping both labor organizations and dissent in check. While the postcolonial core-periphery relationship between Japan, and South Korea and Taiwan, was re-established quickly, there was a much longer break between Japan’s early assistance to, and inspiration of, Chinese reformers. Between 1937 and 1945, Japan had mainly ruined China, and this was exacerbated by the brutal civil war amongst the Chinese themselves (Paine, 2012, locs. 2370, 4893). During Mao’s rule, China tried a different path to development, though even then, from the 1950s to the 1970s, some in the CCP looked upon Japan as a development model (King, 2014). Once reform and opening up began in China, Japan again began to play a major role in China’s development. Deng Xiaoping ‘pumped the trickle of Japanese visitors to Beijing for information on how their country’s leaders had managed to modernize science, technology, and industry’ (Schell and Delury, 2013, 272), and saw Japan as ‘a model for China’s own economic modernization’ (Yahuda, 2014, loc. 2179). Japan made significant contributions via both aid and investment to China’s modernization, providing the capital and the industrial technology that China needed for its economic takeoff, and helping Deng to overcome resistance to his market reform and opening up (Yahuda, 2014, locs. 627, 2258; Smith, 2015, 35–36; Kokubun et al., 2017, 95–121). Indeed, as Hagström (2015, 131) argues, by giving so much assistance to China’s rapid development from the 1980s onwards, Japan has been complicit in creating the material foundations for the security threat that it increasingly perceives from China. With the escalation since 2010 of the confrontation over the Sankaku/Diaoyu islands, the insulation between economic and political/security relations, has begun to break down. Japan therefore played a very substantial ideological and economic, and to a lesser extent military, role in the ending of the Cold War. Its alignment with the United States, and serving as another exemplary model of the capitalist developmental state, was and is one of the key pillars supporting America’s superpower status. Japan’s successful development not only put the Soviet Union and its model into the shade, but also facilitated the spread of capitalism throughout Asia. 6 Japan and the transition to a post-western world order? The next phase of the global structure of wealth and power seems likely to pose significant challenges for Japan. The rise of China puts Japan next door to the second, and potentially first, biggest power in the system, a problem compounded by the intensely anti-Japanese nationalism cultivated by the Chinese government in its patriotic education campaign. Japan’s population is shrinking in a world in which big populations are again becoming a key determinant of power. And Japan is at risk of becoming the front line in a United States–China rivalry at a time when the United States is becoming less reliable as an ally. So far, Japan’s government has sought to adjust by deepening its alliance with the United States, and trying to shake off the shackles of its pacifist constitution and become once again a ‘normal state’ in its relation to military power. It has also begun cultivating security relations with other Asian states that are likewise wary of rising Chinese power. While it has the theoretical options to bandwagon with China or pursue an independent great power status, neither looks attractive, and both require that Japan come to terms with its ‘history problem’—that is, over how to write a history of its imperial past that takes into consideration the memories held in the former victim states. China is bent on taking revenge for Japan’s role in China’s ‘century of humiliation’, making partnership difficult. The North Korean missile tests render the option of going it alone look dangerous. The coming decades will be shaped by what happens within and between China and the United States. Japan cannot hope for much amelioration of China’s hostility to it, even though Sino-Japanese relations are vital to China’s desire to have primacy in Asia. Japan now has to consider the security consequences of its economic relationship with China. Like its neighbours in India, Southeast Asia and Australia, it will probably try both to engage with China and hedge against it, playing to increase cooperation amongst themselves and trying to keep the United States on their side. But if China plays its hand cleverly by threatening Japan less, and/or the United States plays its hand badly by undermining the trust of its allies, then Japan might have to consider the options of bandwagoning with China or taking an independent stand. In either case, that action would pull the social props from the standing of the United States as a global superpower. Despite its relative decline, Japan remains significantly consequential to the global structure of wealth and power. 7 Conclusions The stories we have told above raise the question of why Japan’s position and role in the world history of the last 150 years has been so distorted and unbalanced in the study of IR. Why does Japan fade in and out of the IR stories? Once the filters of Eurocentrism and realism are stripped away, several explanations seem to bear: Both racism, initially explicit, but latterly implicit, and Eurocentrism, seem to account for the difficulty in acknowledging that Japan was part of the first round of modernity. As Edward Said put it, Orientalism = Eurocentrism (1993). In Orientalist discourse the Orient is presumed to be ‘stagnant’. This necessarily makes Japan, which geographically is in the Orient, an anomaly in the Orientalist/Eurocentric imagining of historical development. Being overshadowed by its catastrophic behavior during the 1930s and 40s, and IR’s forgetting of the link between internationalism and imperialism, seem to account for IR’s neglect of Japan’s role as a normal great power during the interwar period. This, plus the subordination of IPE to realism, explains the neglect of Japan’s importance as the development model and hub for Northeast Asia, and the importance of this to the outcome of the Cold War. The post-1945 consensus that development is a universal good to be aspired to ironically splits the assessment of Japanese colonialism, and its developmental contribution, between complete denial or affirmation. To paraphrase Escobar (1995), Japan’s history since the late 19th century as the Asian outpost of modernity, and the developmental hub for East Asia, has unsettled and politicized the meaning of development and its role in the making and unmaking of East Asia. Four explanations working in synergy seem to account for Japan’s marginalization in the story of the Cold War and after. One is the strength of neorealism, especially polarity theory, in IR thinking, which, because of its emphasis on military power and autonomous foreign policy, discounts Japan. A second is United States-centrism in IR, which is inclined to see Japan and Europe as being more dependent on US superpower than constitutive of it. A third is the general discounting of economic power in most mainstream IR thinking, and the particular failure to connect Japan’s position in the first rise of modernity, and its role as an early development model and hub for Northeast Asia, to its crucial role in the rise of a capitalist East Asia that is now becoming the central fact of world politics. A fourth is Japan’s divided view of itself and its history (Dudden, 2008), which means that Japan has hardly registered in the rest of the world in telling its own story. Emphasizing some parts of Japan’s story while suppressing, forgetting, or marginalizing others, produces an unbalanced and distorted picture of how this important country has both fitted into, and shaped, the global structure of wealth, power, and ideology since the Meiji restoration. In academic terms, this is both wrong in itself, and complicit in maintaining excessively Eurocentric and realist understandings of world politics. In practical terms, it provides a poor foundation for academics and policy-makers to understand the history and dynamics of both Asia, and the international system/society as a whole over the past century and a half. As we move out of the era of Western dominance, it is more than past time that Japan’s full story as the first non-Western modern great power be given the prominence and balance it deserves. On the 150th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration, rethinking Japan, points to a deeper need to rethink the Western biases of IR theory and the potential (or not) for non-Western approaches to give a clearer picture. Footnotes 1 Realism and liberalism (all versions), and (mainly Wendtian) constructivism, are conventionally viewed as the ‘big three’ of IR theory, certainly in the US, where neorealism and neoliberalism have largely merged in a ‘neo-neo’ synthesis. These big three are also significantly dominant in Europe, and wherever American approaches to IR have been influential. Some, including us, would include International Political Economy (IPE), with its significant Marxian content, and the English School, in the group of dominant approaches. We refer to these collectively as ‘mainstream’ approaches, mainly attempting to explain international relations. We differentiate them from more critical approaches to IR including poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and feminism. To the extent that Japan’s story is told in IR, it is mainly told in the framings of these five mainstream approaches. On this, and on the problematic West/non-West distinction, see the special issue of International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 7:3 (2007) on ‘Why is there no non-Western IR theory?’, the follow-on paper in 17:3 (2017) 341-70, and Acharya and Buzan, 2010, 229-33. 2 A significant caveat to our claim against uniqueness is that we deal only with Japan and make no attempt to propose a general framework applicable to other countries. Japan is often compared with Germany on the grounds of both being defeated great powers. This is valid, but superficial, and applies only post-1945. Japan’s story is affected by Eurocentrism in a way that Germany’s is not, involving race and non-Western culture. 3 These stories fall roughly into standard periodizations of IR: 19th century, interwar years, and post-1945. Each focuses on a particular neglected or distorted theme within that period. 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Li,, Xiaojun;Liu, Adam, Y

2019 International Relations of the Asia-Pacific

doi: 10.1093/irap/lcx020

Abstract What is the relationship between political tensions and economic relations? In this study, we explore this question by examining how Japan’s nationalization of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, a territory much disputed with China, has affected bilateral trade between the world’s second and third largest economies. Using monthly data, we find that the nationalization imbroglio has negatively affected the amount of goods Japan exports to China, with the effect being most pronounced for highly salient and visible products such as automobiles and cameras; these experienced immediate and dramatic drops lasting up to 12 months. In contrast, raw materials and intermediate goods were not affected at all; some even experienced increased exports. These findings suggest that consumer and corporate responses to political tensions may follow different logics. For consumers, certain political tensions, especially those involving enduring territorial disputes, could override entrenched economic interests and preferences, at least in the short term. In these instances, it will no longer be business as usual. 1 Introduction Do political tensions between states produce negative economic externalities? Scholars from the two major schools of international relations theory disagree on this crucial question. For realists, the answer is yes; according to them, political tensions lead states to reduce economic interdependence and discourage private actors from having further economic exchanges (Gowa and Mansfield, 1993; Kirshner, 1999). Liberals, however, believe that political tensions do not induce states to punish each other economically, and that economic interdependence and sunk costs make it difficult for private actors to quickly change trade and investment patterns (Oneal and Russett, 1997; Kastner, 2007; Maoz, 2009). In a widely cited study that aimed to adjudicate between these two competing theories, Davis and Meunier (2011) presented empirical evidence in support of the liberal view. Using quarterly economic and events data, they showed that varying levels of political tensions in US–France and China–Japan relations had no negative effects on these nations’ trade and investment flows, both in aggregate terms and in high-salience sectors such as wine and automobiles. In an era of globalization, they concluded, ‘actors lack incentive to link political and economic relations’ (Davis and Meunier, 2011: 628). However, more recent studies – using new cases, methods, and data – have cast doubt on the ‘business as usual’ thesis. Collectively, these have suggested that political tensions could still negatively affect economic relations in a globalized world (Fuchs and Klann, 2013; Pandya and Venkatesan, 2016; Wang, 2015). In this article, we join the debate on the trade-conflict nexus by empirically examining how recent political tensions stemming from Japan’s nationalization of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands have affected bilateral trade between China and Japan, the world’s second and third largest economies. Our analyses make two significant contributions. First, while recent studies have focused on the effect of smaller shifts in political relations, we highlight the impact of extreme cases on the political tension spectrum – i.e., territorial disputes with military threat but short of direct confrontation. Second, we rely on more fine-grained trade data at the level of month and industry, making it possible to detect immediate but nonetheless large economic disruptions following sudden political ruptures that could be otherwise masked in yearly or even quarterly data. The use of disaggregated data also allows us to uncover the potential heterogeneous impact of political tensions on different economic sectors. Our results provide evidence that the nationalization incident negatively affected the amount of goods Japan exported to China. The effect was most pronounced for highly salient and visible products such as automobiles and cameras, which experienced immediate, dramatic, and relatively long-term drops lasting up to 12 months. In contrast, Japanese raw materials and intermediate goods were not affected at all, and some even experienced increased exports, suggesting that some Chinese firms might be hedging against possible conflict escalation through increased imports from Japan. These findings provide important qualifications to the results of Davis and Meunier (2011), who argued that sunk costs in existing trade and investment make governments, firms, and consumers unlikely to change their behavior in response to political disputes. Moreover, the China–Japan case, when carefully examined, suggests that responses to political tensions from consumers and firms may follow different logics. For consumers, certain political tensions, especially those involving enduring territorial disputes, could override their entrenched economic interests and preferences. For firms, the story is more complicated; while some do not alter their trade behaviors amidst external political tensions, others do so to hedge against future import disruptions. The latter choice could well translate into high opportunity costs stemming from changing business patterns. In a nutshell, for both consumers and some firms, business will no longer be as usual amidst territorial disputes or other high-level political tensions. The rest of the article proceeds as follows. Section 2 reviews the existing literature. Section 3 provides a brief historical background to the nationalization incident. Section 4 and Section 5 present a set of qualitative and quantitative evidence for the negative impact of the nationalization incident. Section 6 provides additional evidence using the current THADD dispute between China and South Korea. Section 7 concludes with a discussion of the larger implications and areas for future research. 2 The trade-conflict nexus: political animals or Homo Economicus? From a realist perspective, states care first and foremost about their survival in the anarchic international system. Rational calculus should lead states to promote trade only with their political allies, so that they need not worry about gains from trade strengthening a potential adversary (Gowa and Mansfield, 1993). By the same logic, rational private actors should also ‘follow the flag’ when engaging in cross-national business activities – importers buy from friends, consumers punish foes (Pollins 1989a, 1989b). When ‘trade follows the flag,’ however, political tensions result in negative impacts on bilateral economic exchanges, even when governments from rival states do not explicitly sanction each other. Scholars in this line of research have shown that states sharing democratic institutions adopt similar policy positions and have more trust toward each other, and states that are political allies tend to have higher levels of international trade and investment (Dixon and Moon, 1993; Bliss and Russett, 1998; Morrow et al., 1998; Guiso et al., 2004). In contrast, liberals since Adam Smith have long emphasized the pacifying effect of international trade. A core assumption in the liberal perspective is that political conflict is deleterious to international trade and investment. Sustained and increased economic exchanges among states incubate vested domestic interest groups opposed to interstate conflict (Oneal and Russett, 1997; Polachek, 1980). These interest groups in turn lobby their governments not to engage in international conflicts (Mansfield, 1995; Copeland, 1996; Papayoanou, 1997; Kastner, 2007). In addition to nurturing interest groups, trade also helps sustain peace through an informational channel; states engaging in international trade and capital markets can more credibly signal to one another dissatisfaction and resolve (Gartzke et al., 2001). Even low-level political conflict should induce signaling – i.e., different economic behavior – from rival states. Statistical evidence indeed suggests that free trade encourages peace and reduces conflict (Maoz, 2009). Recent scholarship suggests that both the realist and the liberal perspectives are too simplistic to capture new realities in international political economy. In a widely-cited study, Davis and Meunier (2011) argued that, in an era of globalization, states no longer wield substantial control over economic actors, nor do economic actors exert dominance over states. While leaders still retain a certain degree of autonomy in their responses to market and interest-group pressures, their ability to manipulate economies for political purposes is increasingly constrained by low trade barriers, capital mobility, and multinational firms. Moreover, states might even be unwilling to play the economics card for fear of losing investor confidence (Davis and Meunier, 2011: 631). Finally, trade rules embodied by multilateral institutions such as the WTO also have significantly increased the cost of state intervention in international economic affairs. While states nowadays often need to think twice before linking politics with economics in international relations, private firms are even more resistant to suddenly changing their trade and investment patterns, given greater sunk costs in an increasingly globalized economy. Similarly, consumers also have sunk costs in purchasing decisions and are therefore unlikely to change their behavior because of national-level political tensions. In a nutshell, it is costly for everyone – states, firms, and consumers – to change the economic behavior for political reasons. What we should observe, therefore, is economic path-dependence in times of political tensions. In a globalized world, international economics should be independent of international politics. In support of this argument, Davis and Meunier (2011) have shown that aggregate economic flows and high-salience sectors, such as wine and automobiles, have been unaffected by the deterioration in political relations between the United States and France and between China and Japan. They concluded that it is business as usual, even when political tensions are high. But is business always as usual? Recent evidence from works exploring the trade-conflict nexus seem to indicate otherwise. Fuchs and Klann (2013), for example, found that countries that received the Dalai Lama at the highest level during the Hu Jintao era experienced reduced export to China in sectors such as machinery and transport equipment. Revisiting the US–France relationship during the 2003 Iraq War, a case carefully examined by Davis and Meunier (2011), Pandya and Venkatesan (2014) discovered that the market share of French-sounding US supermarket brands declined, and that the effect was larger in supermarkets where a higher proportion of customers were US citizens. Focusing on China’s enduring territorial tensions with the Philippines in the South China Sea, Wang (2015) showed that episodes of tension between the two countries had significantly reduced bilateral trade, and that the reduction had been proportional to the level of tension. We join this debate on the relationship between political tensions and economic relations. Rather than challenging the ‘business-as-usual’ thesis directly, however, we believe that the existing empirical indeterminacy can be reconciled with a more nuanced argument. In marketing research, an emerging body of work has examined the concept of ‘consumer animosity’ (Klein et al., 1998; Riefler and Diamantopoulos, 2007), defined as ‘remnants of antipathy related to previous or ongoing military, political or economic events (p. 90)’. Empirical studies in the United States, Europe and Asia have demonstrated that such animosity can lead to negative impacts on consumers’ willingness to buy products of companies from the offending nation (Shin, 2001; Klein et al., 2004; Nijssen and Douglas, 2004). Drawing on these insights, we argue that certain political tensions – especially those involving enduring territorial disputes – could override entrenched economic interests, resulting in abrupt changes in bilateral trade as consumers boycott foreign products and firms change export destinations. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that consumers and firms might be responding differently toward different goods produced by the other country. That is, not all products will be affected equally during political turmoil. The literature on boycott suggests that products purchased or used publicly, such as clothing and cars, present opportunities for social enforcement and selective incentives, such as reputational costs, belonging, and praise, which help overcome collective action problems, and thus are more likely to be targets of boycott (McCracken, 1990; Ram, 2007; Warde, 2015; Benstead and Reif, 2017). Profit maximizing firms, on the other hand, are less susceptible to such social pressure, especially if their trade with the other country are primarily in intermediate or raw materials – products that are not ‘visible’ to the public. To test these arguments, we leverage a recent shock to the Sino-Japanese relations – Japan’s nationalization of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in September 2012 – and examine its impact on trade between the two countries, using disaggregated trade data. If our arguments hold, we should expect to see disruptions in trade between the two countries following the nationalization incident. Furthermore, the degree of disruption should vary with respect to the nature of the products being traded, with salient and visible products and industries suffering more losses. 3 The Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute and the nationalization incident Recent political tensions between China and Japan center on eight small, uninhabited Islands located about 120 miles northeast of Taipei, Taiwan.1 The Japanese call them the Senkaku, the Chinese Diaoyu. Dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands has been long-standing. China claims that the Islands have been considered part of the Chinese empire since the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), as they appeared on maps and documents associated with coastal defenses of the Ming Empire. The subsequent Qing dynasty (1644–1911) strengthened its control over the Islands by placing it under the administration of Taiwan, which was then part of the Qing (State Council, China, 25 September 2012). However, contending claims suggest that although Chinese fishermen used the Islands as temporary shelter, China never established a permanent civilian or military personnel presence on it, nor did it have a strong naval presence in the surrounding waters (Cheng, 1974). Japan seized the Islands in 1885 after defeating the Qing navy in the first Sino-Japanese War, asserting the Islands were unoccupied and terra nullius (as empty land) and annexed it in 1895 (Fravel, 2010: 146). The Japanese had long claimed that their seizure was unrelated to winning the war, and that the Islands showed ‘no trace of having been under the control of China’ when they acquired them (Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, October 2010). In 1932, Japan sold the Islands to descendants of the original settlers. The Chinese contested Japan’s acquisition as a result of the Shimonoseki Treaty, calling it an ‘unequal treaty’ the Qing government had been forced to sign after losing the war, in which the Chinese agreed to cede Formosa (Taiwan) to Japan, ‘together with all the islets appertaining or belonging to the said Islands of Formosa’ (Manyin, 2013: 3). The treaty, however, did not mention Diaoyu/Senkaku, nor were the Islands discussed during the Sino-Japanese negotiations (Upton, 1972). Toward the end of World War II, the Allies’ declarations at Cairo and Potsdam demanded that Japan return to China all Chinese territories seized by force. In 1945, Japan relinquished sovereignty over Formosa (Taiwan) but without mentioning Diaoyu/Senkaku. After the signing of the 1951 Peace Treaty with Japan, Diaoyu/Senkaku was put under de facto American administration in 1953.2 When signing the 1971 Okinawa Reversion Treaty, several US officials asserted that in the Japan Peace Treaty, ‘Nansei Shoto south of 29 degrees north latitude’ was ‘understood by the United States and Japan to include the Senkaku Islands’ (Okinawa Reversion Hearings, 1971: 90–91, 93, 147).3 As a result, Japan currently administers the Islands, which geologists believe sit close to significant oil and gas deposits (Manyin, 2013). When China and Japan normalized their diplomatic relations in 1972, they agreed to shelve the dispute and let future leaders decide on how to deal with it. In April 2012, the year that marked the 40th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, Shintaro Ishihara, Governor of Tokyo, announced that the metropolitan government of Tokyo had been in negotiations of purchase with the two Saitama-based businessmen that currently own the four Islands in the Diaoyu/Senkaku chain (Yukio, 2012). The Ishihara proposal drew criticisms from within and outside of Japan, and soon the main opposition party and the ruling Democratic Party joined the fray, as both saw political gains in nationalizing the Islands (Drifte, 2014). Four months after the Ishihara proposal, on 14 August 2012, a group of Hong Kong activists reached the disputed Islands by sea for the first time since 1996. Seven disembarked onto the Islands – defying Japan’s prohibition – and asserted Chinese sovereignty. In response, a group of Japanese nationalists swam ashore and raised Japanese flags. These developments prompted the Japanese government to expedite the negotiation process with the private businessmen. On 10 September 2012, the government sealed the deal by offering JPY 2.05 billion to the owner. The move, according to the Japanese government, was to prevent the conservative, anti-China governor of Tokyo from buying the Islands and developing them (New York Times, 11 September 2012). The Chinese government responded immediately by condemning Japan’s nationalization of the Islands as a gross violation of China’s sovereignty. The Chinese Ministry of Defense issued a rare, harsh statement saying that the ‘Chinese government and armed forces stand firm … in their determination to safeguard the nation’s sovereignty and territory’ (Xinhua, 11 September 2012). The situation since then has been regarded as ‘the most serious in Sino-Japanese relations in the post-war period in terms of the risk of militarized conflict’ (BBC, 8 February 2013), with the USA worrying about being drawn into a Sino-Japanese violent confrontation (Manyin, 2016: 1). In the remaining days of the month of nationalization, China dispatched 13 ships to the waters surrounding the disputed area – more than the total number of vessels in the previous 45 months. The nationalization of the disputed Islands also led to an unprecedented wave of anti-Japanese protests in China. Adding fuel to the fire, the sale came a week before the 18th of September, the date of Japan’s invasion of China’s Manchurian region 81 years earlier. Over the weekend, thousands of Chinese protesters hurled bottles and eggs at the Japanese embassy in Beijing, chanting ‘down with Japanese imperialism’ and calling for war. Elsewhere in China, anti-Japanese rallies also broke out and sometimes turned violent, especially in localities with more migrants, college students, and the so-called patriotic education bases (Wallace and Weiss, 2015). Messages and photos posted on Chinese social media sites showed angry mobs in numerous cities ransacking Japanese stores and restaurants as well as smashing and burning cars of Japanese make (CNN, 12 September 2012). In addition to taking it to the street, enraged Chinese also took it to the internet to vent their anger. Many targeted not only the Japanese government, but also their own, which heavily censored internet comments of all sorts following the nationalization incident (Cairns and Carlson, 2016). 4 Economic responses to the nationalization incident Has the political crisis produced negative economic externalities for China and Japan? Have relevant economic actors changed their behavior as a result of heightened political tension? Business reports and newspaper editorials all suggest that this is the case, and the effects seemed to be particularly large for Japan. In January 2013, Bloomberg wrote that political tension was ‘taking a rising toll’ on the Japanese and Chinese economies (Bloomberg News, 8 January 2013). The tension ‘has become increasingly costly as Japan’s dependence on China as an export market has risen,’ and as ‘nationalism around the issue has resulted in lower demand for Japanese products in China’ said Tony Nash, a managing director at IHS Inc, an industry research and analytics firm for industries. JPMorgan Chase & Co. even estimated that the nationalization incident might have cut Japanese economic growth by 1% in the last quarter of 2012 (Bloomberg News, 8 January 2013). These macrolevel estimates are consistent with reports from different sectors and industries. For example, Japan’s largest airline had 46,000 seats cancelled on flights between China and Japan between September 2012 and November 2012. Sales of Japanese electronic products also dropped sharply after September 2012, as fewer Chinese customers showed open interest in buying such products, according to Chinese retailers in Beijing (Xinhua, 12 September 2012). A famous Japanese casual-wear retailer shut more than a third of its stores in China because of the diplomatic crisis. Anti-Japanese protests in China’s central Hunan Province forced a large Japanese supermarket to close for more than a month, incurring a loss of more than JPY 500 million (Xinhua, 12 September 2012). Consistent with our argument, highly visible goods were the most likely targets of consumer boycott. For example, it was reported that sales of the popular cosmetics and skin-care products made by the Japanese company Shiseido tumbled, partly because many customers refrained from sending them as holiday gifts (Katz, 2013), as gift exchanges are a rational ritual enhancing/undermining social relationships (Bourdieu, 1977). Automobiles, another example of visible good, were particularly hard hit. Toyota Motor Corporation revealed in November 2012 that output in China had experienced the biggest decline in the last decade, while Nissan Motor Corporation also reported the biggest output decline since the 2008 financial crisis (Katz, 2013). SocGen’s Kiyoko Katahira wrote that after the nationalization incident, Chinese consumers started avoiding Japanese products, and that the car industry was one of the most affected areas. In October, more than half of the decline in total exports to China can be explained by a large drop in motor vehicles exports (a drop of 54.1% from a year ago, or a contribution of –6.1 pp to total export growth), which were increasing in the months before the Islands dispute flared up (Business Insider, 21 November 2012). China’s economy could also be negatively affected in the long run, should political tension continue. One month after the spike in political tension, over a quarter of Japanese manufacturers suggested that they were thinking about shifting their production elsewhere, according to a Reuters Corporate Survey (Reuters, 23 October 2012). About 37% of the firms surveyed expressed ‘caution’ over the medium- and long-term prospects of using China as their production hub. In the same survey, 24% of the firms indicated that they would delay or reduce investment in China (Reuters, 23 October 2012). 5 Empirical evidence with disaggregated trade data We now turn to our empirical analysis to more formally assess whether the nationalization incident has harmed the bilateral trade. We use disaggregated, monthly trade data drawn from Chinese and Japanese Customs, respectively. The use of more fine-grained data allows us to detect economic disruptions following sudden political ruptures that could be otherwise masked in yearly or even quarterly data employed in most existing studies (e.g. Davis and Meunier, 2011). We begin by plotting the aggregate data for bilateral trade from September 2010 to January 2014 (Fig. 1). The first thing to notice is that that there are sharp drops around January and February due to Chinese New Year. Nevertheless, the volume of exports usually recovers in March.4 Looking at the top panel first, we can see that Chinese exports to Japan did not seem to be suffering from the nationalization incident. The volume of exports followed a steady upward trend for the entire period between September 2010 and January 2014. In other words, business appears to have been ‘as usual.’ Chinese exporters were not shipping their products to other markets, nor were the Japanese refraining from buying Chinese products. Figure 1 View largeDownload slide China–Japan bilateral trade, 2010–14. Note: These figures show the volume of Chinese/Japanese exports to Japan/China before and after the nationalization incident, which is represented by the vertical line. Horizontal lines are also given to represent the linear trend in exports. Source: China Customs. Figure 1 View largeDownload slide China–Japan bilateral trade, 2010–14. Note: These figures show the volume of Chinese/Japanese exports to Japan/China before and after the nationalization incident, which is represented by the vertical line. Horizontal lines are also given to represent the linear trend in exports. Source: China Customs. However, business certainly was not as usual when we consider Japan’s exports to China, in the bottom panel of Fig. 1. Here, we can see that the amount of exports prior to the nationalization incident followed a very slow downward trend. After the nationalization incident, however, Japan’s exports to China dropped sharply and did not recover until January of the following year. Overall, the linear trend lines of the two periods reveal a distinct overall downward shift in Japanese exports following the nationalization incident. Between September 2010 and August 2012, the average monthly exports from Japan to China amounted to USD 15.8 billion. This number was reduced to USD 13.7 billion during the next 18 months. The difference between the two period is statistically significant at the 0.01 level (t-statistic = 2.68; P = 0.0051). It could be that the drop in Japan’s exports to China was the result of a slump in Chinese demand for all foreign products. We investigate this possibility in Fig. 2, where we plot China’s imports from nine of its top 10 trading partners during the same period.5 The results are striking. The United States, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, and Australia all experienced increased exports to China in the post-nationalization period. While Brazil and Germany’s exports followed the same downward trend as Japan’s, the initial point of the decline preceded the nationalization incident, and they both returned to or even exceeded the pre-nationalization level shortly afterwards. The same can be said in the case of Russia – i.e. the overall downward trend began about six months prior to the nationalization incident and, by the end of 2013, the exports were starting to pick up. These cross-country comparisons suggest that the nationalization incident only had a negative impact on Japan’s exports. Furthermore, it seems that while China was not buying from Japan, it was compensating for the loss by increasing imports from its other major trading partners. That is, the nationalization incident has had a trade-diverting effect. Figure 2 View largeDownload slide China’s imports from its top 10 trading partners (excluding Japan), 2010–14. Note: The vertical line is the month of the nationalization incident. The horizontal lines are simple linear trends for the two periods. All series are normalized with the volume of exports in September 2012 set to 100. Source: China Customs. Figure 2 View largeDownload slide China’s imports from its top 10 trading partners (excluding Japan), 2010–14. Note: The vertical line is the month of the nationalization incident. The horizontal lines are simple linear trends for the two periods. All series are normalized with the volume of exports in September 2012 set to 100. Source: China Customs. Thus far, we have demonstrated the negative consequences of the nationalization incident on Japan’s aggregate export to China. We next use disaggregated data to examine whether some industries were more affected than others. We first break Japan’s exports to China into nine broad sectors. They are, in descending order as measured by the average volume of exports from August 2008 to August 2013, electromechanical, mechanical, manufacturing, chemical, other, transportation, raw materials, mineral fuel, and food. Figure 3 plots variation of Japan’s sector-level exports to China before and after the nationalization incident. Figure 3 View largeDownload slide Japan’s export to China by sector, 2008–13. Note: The vertical line is the month of the nationalization incident. The horizontal lines are simple linear trends for the two periods. All series are normalized with the volume of exports in September 2012 set to 100. Source: Japan Customs. Figure 3 View largeDownload slide Japan’s export to China by sector, 2008–13. Note: The vertical line is the month of the nationalization incident. The horizontal lines are simple linear trends for the two periods. All series are normalized with the volume of exports in September 2012 set to 100. Source: Japan Customs. Several patterns emerge from the sector-level data. First, the Chinese people continued to enjoy Japanese food products despite the nationalization incident; Japan’s food exports to China remained fairly stable and increased steadily over time. Second, sectors that primarily consist of intermediary goods, including raw materials, mineral fuels, chemicals, and others, saw moderate to sharp increases in the post-nationalization period. In contrast, the remaining four sectors all experienced, or continued to experience, reductions in their export volume after the nationalization incident. Notably, these sectors – mechanical, electromechanical, transportation, and manufacturing – are more likely to contain consumer goods. These contrasting patterns lend support to our expectation that responses to political tensions from consumers and firms may follow different logics. Immediately following the nationalization incident, Chinese consumers seemed to have overcome their entrenched economic interests and preferences and changed their purchasing behaviors, leading to substantial reductions in Japanese exports to China in sectors more concentrated in consumer goods. The effects lasted six months in the case of the transportation sector and 12 months in the case of the electromechanical sector. In the meantime, Chinese firms that relied on Japanese imports for intermediate and raw materials seemed to put business before politics. The fact that imports of raw materials and chemicals from Japan went up in some sectors suggests that some Chinese firms might have deliberately sped up their imports from Japan, lest the crisis escalated; escalation could have prompted Beijing to demand that firms reduce or cut their imports from Japan. In other words, the observed increase of imports in these sectors could reflect that Chinese firms were hedging against future state intervention and crisis escalation. Similar patterns exist not only at the sector level but also at the industry level once we further disaggregate the data. We do this for the four sectors that experienced drops after the nationalization incident, but for brevity here we only report the results for the electromechanical sector (Fig. 4).6 Here, we see that three industries saw immediate, dramatic drops in their export to China: image equipment, recorders, and heavy electrics; the effects are most obvious for image equipment and recorders. Similar to what we observe in the sector-level data, these negatively affected industries gradually bounced back after about six months, but they took longer to return to the pre-nationalization levels. The fact that image equipment (e.g. cameras) and recorders were particularly hard hit provides further evidence that it was individual consumers, rather than firms that use integrated circuit or battery storage imports from Japan, who were choosing to reduce their purchases of certain Japanese products that have high visibility (consumers mostly use cameras in public spaces rather than in private). Figure 4 View largeDownload slide Exports to China from Japan’s electromechanical sector. Note: The vertical line is the month of the nationalization incident. The horizontal lines are simple linear trends for the two periods. All series are normalized with the volume of exports in September 2012 set to 100. Source: Japan Customs. Figure 4 View largeDownload slide Exports to China from Japan’s electromechanical sector. Note: The vertical line is the month of the nationalization incident. The horizontal lines are simple linear trends for the two periods. All series are normalized with the volume of exports in September 2012 set to 100. Source: Japan Customs. One salient industry examined closely in Davis and Meunier (2011) – using quarterly data – is Japan’s automobile exports to China, which they find to be immune to political tensions between the two countries. Although covering a different time period, our monthly data present a vastly different picture. Figure 5 plots Japan’s auto exports to China between 2009 and 2014, using data from Japan’s Ministry of Finance. As a comparison, we also plot Japan’s auto exports to the European Union and the United States for the same period. Figure 5 View largeDownload slide Japan’s auto exports to China, the EU, and the United States. Source: Ministry of Finance, Japan. Figure 5 View largeDownload slide Japan’s auto exports to China, the EU, and the United States. Source: Ministry of Finance, Japan. The pattern is similar to what we found before, but the impact is much more dramatic. Car sales plummeted right after the nationalization incident, dropping from JPY 33,883 million in September 2012 to JPY 8,387 million one month later. And it took almost an entire year for the auto exports to recover from the fallout. Meanwhile, Japan’s auto exports to the EU and the United States remained unperturbed. This corroborates the anecdotal evidence reported by media and business groups – that is, Japan’s auto sector has been a conspicuous victim of rising political tensions between the two countries, stemming from the nationalization incident. To further buttress our finding, i.e. Japan’s auto exports to China was uniquely affected, we use monthly data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) to compare car exports to China from various countries. Due to data limitation, we restrict the time frame to three months before and after the nationalization incident. As can be seen in Table 1, only Japan’s export experienced an immediate and dramatic drop after September 2012, while exports from other countries all increased. Table 1 China’s auto imports from various countries (Unit: 10,000 cars) Country Month/Year 6/12 7/12 8/12 9/12 10/12 11/12 12/12 Belgium 0.2 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.5 0.4 0.4 Britain 0.9 0.7 1.1 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.9 Germany 2.8 2.4 3.7 2.0 2.0 1.9 2.0 Japan 2.5 2.7 2.3 2.1 1.0 0.6 1.3 Korea 0.8 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.7 0.9 United States 1.5 0.8 1.2 1.2 1.0 2.2 1.6 Country Month/Year 6/12 7/12 8/12 9/12 10/12 11/12 12/12 Belgium 0.2 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.5 0.4 0.4 Britain 0.9 0.7 1.1 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.9 Germany 2.8 2.4 3.7 2.0 2.0 1.9 2.0 Japan 2.5 2.7 2.3 2.1 1.0 0.6 1.3 Korea 0.8 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.7 0.9 United States 1.5 0.8 1.2 1.2 1.0 2.2 1.6 Source: China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). View Large Table 1 China’s auto imports from various countries (Unit: 10,000 cars) Country Month/Year 6/12 7/12 8/12 9/12 10/12 11/12 12/12 Belgium 0.2 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.5 0.4 0.4 Britain 0.9 0.7 1.1 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.9 Germany 2.8 2.4 3.7 2.0 2.0 1.9 2.0 Japan 2.5 2.7 2.3 2.1 1.0 0.6 1.3 Korea 0.8 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.7 0.9 United States 1.5 0.8 1.2 1.2 1.0 2.2 1.6 Country Month/Year 6/12 7/12 8/12 9/12 10/12 11/12 12/12 Belgium 0.2 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.5 0.4 0.4 Britain 0.9 0.7 1.1 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.9 Germany 2.8 2.4 3.7 2.0 2.0 1.9 2.0 Japan 2.5 2.7 2.3 2.1 1.0 0.6 1.3 Korea 0.8 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.7 0.9 United States 1.5 0.8 1.2 1.2 1.0 2.2 1.6 Source: China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). View Large 6 Additional evidence: the THAAD case The divergent responses to political tensions between consumers and firms are not unique to the nationalization incident. A similar case is the recent anti-Korean boycott across China after South Korea decided to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to counter threats from North Korea.7 Right after the board of an affiliate of South Korea’s Lotte Group approved a land swap with the South Korean government for deployment of THAAD, the Chinese government, along with Chinese consumers, retaliated. More than 88 of the 99 Lotte stores in China were forced by the government to shut down due to alleged violations of fire code (Shanghaiist, 21 March 2017). Reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution era, even primary school students were mobilized to boycott food items sold in Lotte stores (Shanghaiist, 13 March 2017). Putting patriotism above tourism, in a spectacular show of national solidarity, more than 3,000 Chinese tourists refused to disembark from their cruise ship at South Korea’s Jeju island, a popular destination that attracted more than two million Chinese in 2016 (Reuters, 14 March 2017). What sets the THAAD episode apart from the nationalization incident is the conspicuous involvement of the Chinese state. The People’s Daily, for example, published an editorial claiming that if Lotte could take actions harming China in the name of protecting national interests, then Chinese consumers could also say no to Lotte and its products for protecting China’s national interests (Xinhua, 27 March 2017). Such articles and commentaries went viral on all kinds of social media in China. The Communist Youth League even published a comprehensive list containing the location of every single Lotte store in China, calling for nation-wide boycott (Communist Youth League, 1 March 2017). Firms in China, on the other hand, behaved in a diametrically different way. In spite of the consumer fervor in response to state encouragement of the boycott and Lotte stores being shut down, recent statistics from the Korean government show that the country’s aggregate export to China has recorded a consecutive five-month growth amidst the THAAD crisis, and its exports of USD 11.6 billion in March 2017 were up by 12.1% compared to the same month the year before. However, as we would expect, driving this growth are not consumer products but Chinese firms’ imports of petrochemical materials, LCD screens, microchips, as well as other information technology related intermediary products – none of which are purchased directly by individual consumers (Free Asia TV, 4 April 2017). The THAAD episode only reinforces our finding from the China–Japan case: that despite differences in terms of state involvement in coordinating consumer responses, in a globalized world with ever deepening economic integration, politics continues to have a clear grip on the economic behaviors and fortunes of states, firms, and individuals. During times of heightened political tensions, business will no longer be as usual. 7 Discussion In understanding the relationship between economics and politics among states, the ‘business as usual’ thesis contends that sunk costs in existing trade and investment reduce the likelihood that governments, firms, and consumers would change their behavior in response to political tensions. In contrast, we argue that business may not always be ‘as usual.’ Certain political tensions, especially those involving enduring territorial disputes, could motivate domestic actors to change their preferences and behaviors, leading to disruptions in bilateral economic exchanges. In the case of China–Japan relations, our results provide evidence that Japan’s nationalization of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands negatively affected its exports to China. Using disaggregated data, we further show that the effect is most pronounced for highly salient and visible consumer products, such as automobiles and cameras, which experienced substantial drops lasting for up to 12 months. The lesson for policymakers is that they should not assume that there would be no economic ramifications when making political decisions, especially those involving sensitive territorial disputes. The evidence is clear that there will be. One interesting puzzle revealed by our analysis is that the disruptive effects of the nationalization incident only affected Japan’s exports – during the same period, China’s exports to Japan remained largely unchanged. There are a couple of potential explanations. First, what we observed may have been due to the fact that Japan was exporting more consumer goods to China rather than intermediate and raw materials; users of the latter are primarily firms. Second, it is possible that economic transactions other than trade were affected on the Chinese side. For instance, it was reported that Japanese investment in China declined by 4.3% in 2013 and further dropped by nearly half in the first six months of 2014, after posting a growth rate of 16.3% in 2012 (Bloomberg Businessweek, 16 July 2014). These potential explanations will be fruitful areas of inquiry for future research. Our industry-level analyses also suggest that responses to political tensions from consumers and firms may follow different logics. While consumers swiftly organized to boycott highly visible Japanese goods, firms seemed to put business before politics, sticking with their Japanese suppliers for intermediary goods and raw materials, and even potentially hedging against dispute escalation by stocking up on imports from Japan. Our discussion of the ongoing THAAD episode provides additional evidence for this pattern. Unpacking the mechanisms that drive the divergent behaviors between consumers and firms presents yet another promising topic for future research. Footnotes 1 The government of the Republic of China on Taiwan also claims sovereignty over the Islands. In this article, we will focus only on two claimants: China and Japan. 2 Treaty of Peace with Japan, signed on 8 September 1951, 3 U.S.T. 3169. 3 The State Department officials included: Robert Starr, Acting Assistant Legal Adviser for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; Harrison Symmes, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations; and Howard McElroy, Country Officer for Japan. 4 The Chinese Near Year falls in January in some years and February in others. During this time, factories stop production; migrant workers return home and financial markets are closed. The seasonal disruption of the Chinese New Year to the economy is visible in all of the import data series. 5 We used the 2013 data to determine the top 10 trading partners of China, which are, in descending order, United States, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Australia, Malaysia, Brazil, and Russia. 6 Results for the other sectors can be found in the Online Appendix. 7 China believed that the THAAD system, which has a powerful radar capable of penetrating the interior of China’s territory, could reduce China’s strategic leverage over other military powers in the region. 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Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan Association of International Relations; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)

Lee,, Ji-Young

2019 International Relations of the Asia-Pacific

doi: 10.1093/irap/lcx016

Abstract Why did American-led postwar institution building lead to different types of security orders in Asia and Europe? The article investigates the failure of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO)—the only postwar multilateral security organization in the Asia-Pacific region that resembled NATO—as contrasted with NATO’s survival. Despite the popular notion of ‘American liberal hegemony’, the US-led multilateral security institution in fact faced serious resistance in Southeast Asia during the early years of the Cold War, as regional players viewed SEATO as yet another form of Western imperialism threatening their independence. The article makes a theoretical argument for the role of delegitimation in hegemonic order formation and shows that the Asian historical experience of Western colonialism had structural consequences for American-led hegemonic order building in Asia. China-India joint delegitimation strategies against the United States invoked local actors’ collective beliefs against colonialism portraying SEATO as a vehicle of Western domination. Once established, the United States’ European allies within SEATO placed constraints on the exercise of American hegemonic power, by taking advantage of the multilateral rules of SEATO and refusing to act collectively in the local crises in Laos. Archival evidence suggests that such delegitimation and restraint strategies were fairly successful in terms of limiting SEATO membership and blocking interventions in Indochina, strengthening Asian neutrality rather than creating a pro-US bloc in the region. 1 Introduction The United States took the lead in the formation of various security institutions in Europe and Asia in the post-World War II period, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949 (NATO), the Australia-New Zealand-United States Treaty in 1951 (ANZUS), and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization in 1955 (SEATO). The postwar international order was linked to these institutions, which were based on American power and liberal principles of governance. According to John Ikenberry (2001, 2011), an ‘American-led hegemonic order’—or a ‘liberal hegemony’, a hegemonic order with distinctively liberal characteristics—emerged from this postwar institution building. However, American-led efforts at postwar institution building led to remarkably different outcomes in terms of the types of security orders in Europe and Asia. NATO, a highly institutionalized 12-member alliance, became the focus of a regional order characterized by consensus, institutionalization, and multilateralism in Europe, whereas the postwar order building in the Asia-Pacific region resulted in a different type of order, one based on what James Baker has called a ‘hub-and-spokes’ bilateral system. SEATO—the only postwar multilateral security organization in Asia that resembled NATO in terms of the number of participants—collapsed in 1977 in the midst of the Cold War. Why did the postwar American hegemonic order take on a different, much less multilateral, character in Asia? This article sheds light on this question, using SEATO as a case of a failed attempt at American-led multilateral security cooperation in postwar Asia. Understanding why SEATO could not develop into an ‘Asian NATO’ helps to elucidate an important aspect of the origins of postwar American hegemonic order in the region. American order building was in fact highly contested in Southeast Asia, leading some observers such as Amitav Acharya (2014, chapter 3) to declare the notion of American liberal hegemony a ‘myth’. In September 1954, the United States signed the Manila Pact that established SEATO as a buffer against communist expansion in Southeast Asia. But the responses of regional actors to this US-led multilateral security institution turned out to have the opposite effect of enhancing China’s status in the region, culminating in 1955 at the Bandung Conference and continuing throughout the latter part of the 1950s. By the early 1960s, SEATO was ‘testimony to the failure of Asian collective defense’ (Buszynski, 1983, p. 220) after the Laotian crises of 1959 and 1960–61 revealed the alliance’s inability to act as originally intended. In what Henry Kissinger called ‘a very curious phenomenon’, there were only two Southeast Asian countries (Thailand and the Philippines) in a collective defense organization for Southeast Asia (United States National Security Council, 1973). Of the 10 countries that the United States and Britain encouraged to join SEATO—the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon, India, Pakistan, Burma, Indonesia, and France (United States Department of State, 1952–1954, vol. 12, part 1, pp. 662–665), four Asian powers declined the invitation. At the request of Britain, Washington had invited the Asian states represented at the Colombo Conference earlier that year in April and May 1954—India, Indonesia, Ceylon, Pakistan, and Burma, known as the Colombo Powers (Buszynski, 1983, p. 19). However, only Pakistan joined SEATO. SEATO failed to receive even modest support from the missing Colombo powers, and instead was criticized as a vehicle for US ‘aggression’ toward China. When one approaches the postwar American hegemonic order through the United States’ power and preferences only, SEATO’s developments as described above are a puzzle. Consider that both SEATO and NATO were created by the United States under similar geostrategic environments for similar purposes. That is, at the end of World War II, the United States had to deal with the defeat of revisionist powers in both Europe and Asia—Germany and Japan—and had to find a way to rebuild international order against a backdrop of mistrust by regional players toward defeated powers (Duffield, 2003). Both of these institutions emerged as the United States assumed the role of hegemon, taking responsibility for thwarting the spread of communism both in Europe and Asia (Leffler, 1994). But the fate of SEATO was remarkably different from that of NATO. The case of SEATO shows that creating hegemonies and security institutions entails a process that is essentially social in nature. Much of the scholarship on hegemony explains the formation of hegemonic orders in terms of the dominant state’s projection of its power or ideology, while assuming that the specific type of order is a reflection of the leading power’s strategies or preferences only (see for example, Gilpin, 1981; Keohane, 1984; Ikenberry, 2001). The theory of US liberal hegemony, too, assumes that the American postwar order was an outcome of the United States’ decision to use institutions and to turn raw power into legitimate order (Ikenberry, 2001, 2011). Scholars who have studied the origins of the postwar order in Asia have similarly focused on the United States, paying little attention to the role played by less powerful actors (Hemmer and Katzenstein, 2002; He and Feng, 2012; Cha, 2016). This article takes issue with the literature that considers the less powerful powers as unimportant or that simply assumes that their interests were exogenously given. The prevailing view in the literature is that less powerful states lean toward multilateral security arrangements rather than bilateral arrangements to stave off the possibility of great power domination and to ensure that their voices are heard (Ikenberry, 2001: 50–79). However, this view fails to consider that building an international order requires social interactions that are grounded in specific cultural and historical contexts, within which not only the dominant state but also other less powerful actors draw on their own collective beliefs, identities, and norms. In this article, I show that the absence of postwar multilateral security cooperation in Asia was not only a reflection of US preferences and strategic choices, but also stemmed from those of other less powerful actors which were operating in the specific social context of decolonization across Asia. There is no denying that the United States did not intend to institutionalize SEATO to the degree that it did for NATO to begin with (United States Department of State, 1952–1954, vol. 12, part 1, p. 680). However, this US angle is only half the story and fails to explain why Asia’s non-communist states refused to join SEATO. The specific ways in which SEATO developed and collapsed can be better explained when viewed through the United States’ interactions at least with the other two groups—regional players in postwar Asia, especially those that declined the invitation to join SEATO and the US’ junior partners within SEATO. First, under the specific Southeast Asian context of ‘the proliferation of new sovereign states’ following the withdrawal of colonial powers that were in all cases Western (Cruickshank, 1967, p. 93), regional actors including the Colombo Powers interpreted the US-led multilateral security arrangement as yet another form of Western imperialism (Acharya, 2011). Key players such as India and Indonesia used strategies of active delegitimation of SEATO as a case of the United States imposing its interests on less powerful Asian actors and thus threatening their sense of sovereignty. China, too, pursued the strategy of linking of SEATO with Western colonialism to discourage uncommitted countries in Asia from joining the organization. Between 1954 and 1959, China’s and India’s joint delegitimation strategies invoked local actors’ collective beliefs against colonialism and great power politics, and the fear of their return in the guise of SEATO, dividing the non-communist regimes in Asia into those that joined SEATO and those that did not (Thomas, 1957, pp. 926–936). At a deeper level, this article presents an argument that SEATO’s failure was rooted in legitimacy issues enmeshed with actors’ concerns for security and tasks of nation building, which influenced their decision regarding SEATO membership. According to a cultural and sociological legitimation view of the historical institutionalist literature (Thelen, 2004), institutions embody collectively defined cultural and social understandings about the way the world works. Institutional development hinges on whether or not and to what extent actors view an institution as legitimate. In postwar Southeast Asia, actors’ pursuit of security and national interests was informed by their notions of legitimacy, which were tied to the specific context of decolonization, leading them to value independence, anti-colonialism, and peaceful coexistence over anticommunism. Second, on the part of the United States’ allies in SEATO, the primary motivations for SEATO membership rested on their desire to influence the policy of the United States through their participation. Former European colonial powers Britain and France joined the alliance not because they were concerned about communist expansion in Asia, but because they sought to maintain their privilege and great power status in the region (Buszynski, 1983). Furthermore, they were worried that Washington’s policy in Asia would likely divert US strength and commitment away from Europe. The focus of their SEATO participation was, therefore, placed on restraining and controlling US behavior. SEATO’s Asian ally Thailand, facing the threats of Viet Minh communist subversion at home and in the neighboring Laos and Cambodia, denounced the British and the French position of undercommitment and the tactics that restrained American power. After SEATO failed to intervene in Laos, the 1962 Rusk formula—the United States’ promise of bilateral as well as multilateral security commitment to Thailand to mitigate the latter’s abandonment fears—signified that SEATO had become ‘a forum of disagreement’ (Dimitrakis, 2012, p. 85). International relations literature often proposes that although hegemonic powers are averse to international regimes that they cannot dominate, ‘lesser powers like them precisely because they strengthen the many against the one’ (Joffe, 2002, p. 176). However, empirical evidence from SEATO shows quite convincingly that such a view requires further qualification. Some European powers of SEATO indeed preferred the multilateral rules of SEATO (such as the unanimous vote for interventions) because multilateralism helped them control what they considered to be reckless US adventures in Asia. However, other powers like the Philippines, Thailand, and Australia found their bilateral arrangements with the US to be more favorable and essential to their security, challenging the view that the less powerful always prefer multilateralism to bilateralism. In the next section, I take an eclectic approach and show how the existing realist, institutionalist, and constructivist accounts should consider the specific social context of decolonization and its impact on the workings of the US-led multilateral security institution in Southeast Asia. I then provide an argument that explains strategies of the less powerful—‘strategies of delegitimation and restraint’—in hegemonic order formation in postwar Asia. I examine the essay’s theoretical arguments against the two critical junctures—one in 1954–55 during SEATO’s formation and the other in 1959–61 during the Laotian crises—that proved consequential for the failure of SEATO. I conclude by summarizing the article’s findings in terms of our understanding of the American postwar order building in Asia. 2 Why no NATO in postwar Asia The existing realist, institutionalist, and constructivist accounts each shed light on important aspects of SEATO’s developments and collapse. The section takes an eclectic approach (see Sil and Katzenstein, 2010) and contrasts SEATO’s failures with NATO’s survival across their lifespans. According to Hemmer and Katzenstein (2002, p. 578), such comparisons are theoretically justifiable, as the two institutions constitute ‘something like a natural experiment’ to students of international relations. The case of SEATO shows that one should consider the role played by less powerful actors and how their threat perceptions, strategic interests, and collective beliefs collided with those of the United States, particularly in the specific historical context of post-colonial Asia. 2.1 Threats explanations To most neorealist scholars, the formation, management, and termination of alliances are a function of balance of power or threats. Security cooperation is rare in the world of anarchy, and security institutions collapse when the threats against which they were built disappear (Mearsheimer, 1994/95). In the case of SEATO, at first glance it might appear that the US’ pursuit of détente with China spurred the formal disintegration process of SEATO after a series of crises in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Subsequent to the Sino-Soviet split beginning in 1956, US policymakers had believed that China was not intent on waging an international conflict with the United States (United States Office of the Director of Central Intelligence, 1961). The 1972 Sino-US détente significantly assuaged the US’ perception of threat vis-à-vis China, signaling important changes in the Asian balance of power. Following in the footsteps of the United States, the Philippines and Thailand decided to seek rapprochement with China as well. However, it deserves attention here that SEATO was defunct prior to the Sino-US détente of 1972. According to Leszek Buszynski (1983, chapter 3), SEATO became more or less defunct as a collective defense organization after the Laotian crises of 1959 and 1960–61, but for reasons that had little to do with shifts in the balance of power or threats in Asia. SEATO’s failure had more to do with the organization’s inadequacy in cases of internal communist subversion. Consider that in Southeast Asia, it was not just communism but also colonialism, with which Southeast Asians associated threats. Despite massive American military power, without a host-government invitation, SEATO could not intervene without incurring the criticism that Western powers were interfering with weaker Asian states’ internal problems. A more convincing realist-constructivist synthesis argument can be made when we focus on how in 1954 potential allies of SEATO defined threats differently in the first place, which contributed to limited Asian membership. In the minds of US policymakers, the formation of SEATO rested on their ‘popular perception of a ubiquitous Soviet threat’ (Blum, 1982: 218) and the anti-communism that had become part of everyday American political life (Leffler, 1994, p. 69 and p. 121). However, in the words of Indonesian President Sukarno, ‘So many of us in Asia feel our blood tingle at the very mention of the words “imperialism” and “colonialism” for it carries with it memories whose scars are too recent to be lightly forgotten’ (cited in Idle, 1956, p. 241). Burma, India, and Indonesia all refused to join SEATO in 1954 and pursued the strategy of accommodation with China in the latter half of the 1950s. Of the two Southeast Asian countries that joined SEATO, it is worth noting that Thailand was the only country that avoided colonialization by a Western power, while the Philippines acquired independence peacefully from the United States, for which their elites felt grateful (cited in Idle, 1956, p. 129). 2.2 Institutionalization explanations If threat arguments suggest why regional actors in Southeast Asia chose not to join SEATO in the first place, institutionalists’ focus on common interests is useful in elucidating why SEATO suffered from self-defeating dynamics that adversely affected alliance cohesion. According to institutionalist theory, the key to answering the question of why certain alliances endure while others collapse depends on the differing degrees to which they are institutionalized (Wallander and Keohane, 1999, pp. 21–47). The institutionalist logic suggests that SEATO’s failure to become an ‘Asian NATO’ must consider why SEATO and NATO were institutionalized to differing degrees, in conjunction with alliance cohesion and collective action issues. After the initial phases of institution building, there were noticeable differences in the levels of institutionalization between SEATO and NATO. For example, Robert McCalla (1996) and Christian Tuschhoff (1999) attribute the persistence of NATO to its institutional density and depth. NATO developed elaborate political apparatuses for consultation, policy coordination, and joint decision making, as well as an integrated military planning and command structure. SEATO’s permanent organization involved less binding guarantees, few common policymaking structures, little joint military planning, and minimal military infrastructure. SEATO had no unified command structure or unified standing forces (Modelski, 1962, pp. 3–45). Perhaps one of the most important aspects of the differing levels of institutionalization is the degree to which the two institutions were willing to institutionalize the ‘indivisibility of security’ (see Ruggie, 1993). Compared with Article V of NATO’s treaty, in which an attack on any member state is considered an attack on all, Article IV(2) of the Manila Pact, which established SEATO, stated that members could only consult on whether an event constituted a threat to peace and security, thereby leaving latitude for members’ responses on a case-by-case basis. Any intervention under SEATO required the unanimous consent of all member states. There is no denying that without the inclusion of the non-communist states of major US interest—Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan—as members, the United States’ preference was to ensure its freedom of action, so that SEATO would not become an ‘Asian NATO’ (Buszynski, 1983, pp. 221–222). Less than two months before the signing of the Manila Pact, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles wrote to the British embassy: We do not envisage SEA security pact developing into NATO-type organization with large permanent machinery under which large local forces in being are to be created with substantial US financial support and to which US would be committed to contribute forces for local defense (United States Department of State, 1952–1954, vol. 12, part 1, p. 680). The goal of the Eisenhower administration was to ‘draw a line which, if crossed, would permit [the US] to retaliate at the source of aggression and to do so with the support of other nations’ (United States Department of State, 1952–1954, vol. 12, part 1, p. 666). By establishing SEATO, the United States hoped to demonstrate unity as a deterrent to the communist states China and the Soviet Union, but without providing the resources required for its credibility. Thus, the seeds of failure in the Laotian crises had been planted by Washington during the formative institution building process. However, in order to paint the full picture of SEATO’s failure to become an ‘Asian NATO’, it is not enough to examine only the role that the United States played. Britain, having agreed to join SEATO to preserve its great power status through its ‘special relationship’ with Washington while steering the latter’s commitment toward Commonwealth interests (Buszynski, 1983), never intended to institutionalize the military structure of SEATO (Dimitrakis, 2012). France, having worked to enlist American power in Vietnam to maintain its colonial power in Indochina in the 1940s (Lawrence, 1998), joined SEATO but consistently opposed any SEATO action to the extent that the Thai Foreign Minister hoped France would withdraw because France ‘only impeded its business’ (Dimitrakis, 2012, p. 116). 2.3 Collective beliefs explanations Constructivist scholars have long recognized that an international institution is not simply an aggregate of national interests of participating state actors, but an expression of collective identities, values, norms, and beliefs (Keohane, 1988; Acharya, 2009, 2011; Meunier and McNamara, 2007). The constructivist literature on the formation of NATO suggests why NATO enjoyed a high level of institutionalization by showing that the collective beliefs of US policymakers were consequential. According to Patrick Jackson (2003), NATO’s ‘indivisibility of security’ between the United States and Europe was justified in terms of the United States acting on behalf of the ‘Western civilization’. Steve Weber (1992) shows that Europe might have developed bilateral security arrangements similar to those in Asia if it were not for the Eisenhower administration’s belief in multilateralism with its European allies and acknowledgment of their great power status as an ‘appropriate’ way to organized international politics. Constructivist insights complement the preceding institutionalization explanations by yielding compelling arguments that consider why actors defined their interests the way they did in Southeast Asia. According to Hemmer and Katzenstein (2002), the lack of multilateral security arrangements in Asia cannot be explained without considering US policymakers’ collective identity and cognitive biases against Asia as being inferior to Europe. Acharya (2009, 2011) argues that the collective beliefs and norms of local Asian actors, especially those shaped by Western imperialism, help explain local agents’ rejection of great power-controlled institutional arrangements. The essay builds on this line of thinking to acknowledge the role of the collective beliefs of anti-colonialism and its implications for contested American hegemonic order building experiences. The history of Western colonialism in Southeast Asia shaped local actors’ collective image of the United States to be the new ‘imperialist bogey-man’ that could plunge Asia into a war against communism (Jennings 1954, p. 348). Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru insisted that all non-Asian military forces should withdraw from Asian countries, including US forces in Japan, and that colonial areas such as Indonesia should be liberated from Western powers. In the eyes of Indonesians, the prevailing view of SEATO was that joining the US-led military alliance would be ‘dishonorable’, an act equivalent to ‘selling the country’s independence’ (Weinstein, 1972, p. 361). Across Southeast Asia, the US acquired a reputation that it was not peace-loving; alliances sponsored by the US were believed to be conducive to war (Idle, 1956; Weinstein, 1972). 3 Strategies of the weaker and hegemonic power An understanding of SEATO’s failure as contrasted with NATO’s survival raises theoretical questions about legitimation and its structural consequences for order formation at least in two ways. First, whether or not and to what extent a future hegemon can successfully legitimate its power hinges not just on the content of its justifying ideologies, but also on the degree to which such ideologies resonate with other actors’ collective beliefs in their specific cultural and social contexts (Lee, 2016). As Patrick Jackson (2006, p. 17) puts it, the concept of legitimacy is ‘sociologically relative rather than transcendentally absolute’. Second, the dominant state’s legitimacy deficit can facilitate potential adversaries and other actors in mobilizing countervailing forces and delegitimation campaigns against the dominant state. Delegitimation of a dominant state is likely to be more successful when the delegitimating rhetoric resonates with the collective beliefs of the target audiences. The use of political labels such as Nazis, imperialists, colonialists, fascists, or capitalists, for example, constitutes an important delegitimation strategy. Delegitimation strategy involves ‘categorization of groups into negative social categories’, and such categories are ‘culture bound’ (Bar-Tal, 1989, p. 170 and p. 171). Therefore, labeling the Soviets as ‘communists’ during the Cold War would not make it a delegitimating act, but labeling Americans as ‘communists’ would (Bar-Tal, 1989, pp. 171–172). According to Schweller and Pu (2014: 44), delegitimation has two components: ‘a delegitimating rhetoric (the discourse of resistance) and cost-imposing strategies that fall short of full-fledged balancing behavior (the practice of resistance)’. Delegitimation is thus essentially a mechanism of power politics. SEATO and NATO—both initiated by the United States and justified on the same normative basis of countering Communist aggression and expansion—were received differently in Southeast Asia and in Europe. One must consider the differences in the historical and cultural contexts in order to determine if the normative content of the US’ justifying ideology (i.e. anti-communism) were legitimate in the eyes of local actors. After all, legitimation is essentially a social process, requiring the approval of and support from less powerful actors whose notions of legitimacy draw on their own social and cultural contexts. Consider, for example, that to newly independent Asian countries that embraced neutrality as a foreign policy goal, Ho Chi Minh was waging struggles against colonialism (Weinstein, 1972, p. 230-231). Therefore, successful legitimation hinges on how much political actors can publicly justify their position in ways that resonate with the collective beliefs of the audiences. Restraint strategy is another way through which less powerful actors might exercise control over the formation, management, and/or termination of an alliance by constraining the unilateral behavior of a more powerful ally. The idea that alliances are not just about balancing against external threats but play the role of constraining the behavior of alliance partners is not new. In the words of Paul Schroeder (1976, p. 230), ‘all alliances in some measure functioned as pacts of restraint (pacta de contrahendo), restraining or controlling the actions of the partners in the alliance themselves’. According to Cha (2016), the dominant state may construct an asymmetric alliance in order to maximize its ability to control its alliance partners, especially those that are deemed to be risk-taking and reckless. The restraint logic thus focuses on the desire to control an ally’s unilateral behavior and to reduce entrapment fears. Scholars have already shown that multilateral rules are effective when less powerful allies try to control a more powerful one. From the perspective of less powerful member states, the US’ construction of an asymmetric but multilateral alliance—as in the case of SEATO—gave them the leverage upon which they exerted control over what they considered the United States’ reckless plans to intervene in Indochina. France and Britain chained the US to undercommitment in the Laotian crises, and then sat out the conflict in the Vietnam crisis. The United States’ feeling that its security was tied to that of its European allies led it to create a multilateral arrangement in Southeast Asia. But because these European allies sought to prevent the US from overcommitting rather than sharing the goal of forging anti-communism in Asia, the US soon faced situations where its own strategic preferences were undermined due to its membership in SEATO. 4 SEATO as the return of Western imperialism In the late 1940s and 1950s, a majority of Southeast Asian countries India, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Ceylon, and Indonesia all experienced communist-led rebellions or infiltrations, leading them to basically oppose communism. Even those Asian powers that rejected SEATO membership did in fact fear China for Beijing’s support for communist insurgencies within their border, if not outright aggression. But why did these states refuse to join SEATO and instead sought to improve relations with China? From a realist point of view, it can be argued that their strategy was aimed at bandwagoning with China and/or balancing against the United States. However, the standard realist logic that focuses only on material power fails to explain the specific manner in which these states handled the United States and China. Rather than joining alliances as a way of increasing their security and relative power, they asserted neutrality and independence (Fig. 1). Figure 1 View largeDownload slide The pattern of informal alignments among noncommunist Asian powers. Author’s figure. Note that Pakistan, despite having joined SEATO, distanced itself from the United States and moved closer to China. Figure 1 View largeDownload slide The pattern of informal alignments among noncommunist Asian powers. Author’s figure. Note that Pakistan, despite having joined SEATO, distanced itself from the United States and moved closer to China. According to Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, a policy of neutrality means ‘a position of aloofness from power combinations, particularly power combinations that were at war or threatening war between themselves’ (cited in Chaudhry and Vanduzer-Snow, 2008, p. 326). Based on this stance, Nehru considered United States’ policies in Indochina wrong on moral grounds and ineffective. For example, he was critical of the US’ policy that tied the provision of aid to Laos’ exclusion of communists and communist sympathizers in its cabinet. During this period, India’s rocky relations with the United States had much to do with its power balance calculations vis-à-vis Pakistan. However, viewing India’s opposition to SEATO and US Asia policy only through the lens of Pakistan fails to consider that Nehru’s approach toward SEATO rested on his broader foreign policy aims that involved the creation of pan-Asian regional identities, as well as new regional norms (Singh, 2011). This type of diverging approaches to regional affairs of the US and India proved perhaps most consequential in terms of their attitudes toward China. According to Frankel (2004: 29), India was interested in cooperating with China as a means to building an Asian balance that can limit Western imperialist influences. Whereas the US considered regional actors’ neutralism as ‘impairing’ regional stability, Nehru believed that the US’ power politics and isolation of China would make Beijing more aggressive. In 1954, in what Norbu (1997, p. 1080) called ‘the biggest concession to China in modern Asian history’, Nehru decided to give up India’s extra territorial rights in Tibet and recognize it as a region of China. The decision originated not just from the difficulty of dislodging the Chinese People’s Liberation Army from Tibet but his desire to enhance Asian solidarity. Until the 1959 revolt in Tibet and the 1962 Sino-Indian border war turned their bilateral relations sour, it was Nehru’s actions that helped China to break out of international isolation, urging the US to recognize China. The formation of SEATO greatly upset India, Indonesia, and other regional actors, as well as China. There was the palpable fear that smaller Asian powers would assume an ‘inferior position’ and become ‘second class nation(s)’ if they join a military alliance with their former colonial powers including Britain, France, and possibly the Netherlands (Weinstein, 1972, p. 357). In India’s House of the People, SEATO was criticized as ‘an organization of certain imperial Powers and some others, who may have an interest in joining together to protect a territory which they say is in danger. We are part of that territory and we say that we do not want to be protected’ (as cited in Thomas, 1957, p. 933, n. 24). SEATO was denounced as a vehicle of Western domination. Such delegitimating rhetoric resonated with the collective beliefs among regional actors including China. A conversation between Chairman Mao Zedong and Prime Minister Nehru in October 1954, one month after the creation of SEATO, reveals that the two leaders constructed the United States and the Western powers as the ‘other’, and jointly denounced them: Mao: ‘Historically, all of us, people of the East, have been bulled by Western imperialist powers … . In spite of differences in our ideologies and social systems, we haven an overriding common point, that is, all of us have to cope with imperialism. Nehru: … You are absolutely right in saying that over the past two hundred years, our two countries and many other countries in Asia have suffered from the oppression and domination of foreign colonial powers.1 1 The paragraph draws on ‘Minutes of Chairman Mao Zedong’s First Meeting with Nehru’, 19 October 1954. Wilson Center Digital Archive. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/117825 (25 October 2017, date last accessed). The US formula for Southeast Asian peace through military alliance with former colonial powers was viewed by many Asian powers with suspicion as ‘forgetting or ignoring Asia, especially when these problems are Asian’ (Government of India Press Information Bureau, 1954). The success of China’s and India’s delegitimating campaigns against SEATO during the formation phase was thus in no small part attributable to the appeal of anti-Western imperialism rhetoric itself. 4.1 China’s and India’s loose coalition against SEATO From the Chinese point of view, SEATO targeted China as its main enemy. Against the backdrop of US’ participation in the Korean War, the basing of its forces on Taiwan, and the US aid to the French in Indochina, SEATO’s formation deeply worried the Chinese leadership that the United States was replacing France as the dominant Western power in Indochina, especially in Vietnam (Richardson, 2005, p. 48). How did Chinese policymakers respond to the creation of SEATO and the overall US strategies in the region? In addition to developing its conventional forces as well as a nuclear capability, Beijing pursued a strategy of delegitimating SEATO as an American device designed to exploit Asia’s weaker powers. China’s diplomatic efforts focused on drawing them into the neutralist orbit and thus addressing other Asian powers’ fears toward China and reassuring them of its peaceful intentions. According to Premier Zhou, China would have to make the peoples of the world believe that China sought to resolve disputes through peaceful means, whereas the United States insisted on using hostility. The decision was thus made that China would make a diplomatic breakthrough and make friends, especially with India (Pang, 2015). In 1954, Zhou accepted an invitation from Nehru—who, in the minds of the Chinese leadership, was ‘the most important leader of India’s independence movement’ and highly regarded among the newly sovereign states (Zhang, 2007, p. 519)—to visit New Delhi. According to an internal cable prior to the visit, Chinese intentions for the India visit were ‘to conduct preparation work for signing some form of Asian peace treaty and to strike a blow at the United States’ conspiracy to organize a Southeast Asian invasive bloc’.2 2 Cable from Zhou Enlai, ‘Premier’s Intentions and Plans to Visit India’, 22 June 1954. Wilson Center Digital Archive. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/112437 (25 October 2017, date last accessed). Zhou stated, ‘We will emphasize that Southeast Asian countries should unite against the invasion of the United States’.3 3 Cable from Zhou Enlai, ‘Premier’s Intentions and Plans to Visit India’, 22 June 1954. Wilson Center Digital Archive. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/112437 (25 October 2017, date last accessed). During that meeting in June 1954, Nehru’s proposal for ‘a peaceful zone’ in Asia—‘neutral, free of military bases, and no interference or aggression’—was welcomed by Zhou, who suggested applying the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence to India, Burma, Indonesia, Pakistan, Ceylon, Laos, and Cambodia (Zhang, 2007, p. 519). At both the Geneva and the Bandung conferences, Chinese diplomats endeavored to combat negative images of China, especially in the wake of the second Taiwan crisis, while using the rhetoric of nationalism, sovereignty, and anticolonialism, making it difficult for the United States to brand China as an aggressive power (Pang, 2015). Beijing considered the Bandung Conference to be of ‘historic importance’, and when the Colombo Powers were still debating over China’s attendance, Beijing contacted Indonesia to express its desire to be invited.4 4 Cable from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, ‘Receiving the Prime Ministers of India and Other Countries and Attending the Asian-African Conference’, 9 December 1954. Wilson Center Digital Archive. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114600 (25 October 2017, date last accessed). The report from Chinese Foreign Ministry states that Beijing ‘should concentrate [its] efforts to isolate the American force, actively win over the ‘peace and neutral’ countries (i.e. India, Burma, and Indonesia) and try to split the countries closely following the USA and hostile to China (i.e. Thailand and the Philippines)’.5 5 Report from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, ‘Draft of the Tentative Working Plan for Participating in the Asian-African Conference’, 16 January 1955. Wilson Center Digital Archive. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113189 (25 October 2017, date last accessed). At the conference, Zhou invited Prince Wong of Thailand to dispatch an inspection party to China to make sure that China did not have its troops along the Sino-Thai border in preparation for attacking Thailand. A similar offer was made to the Philippines to clear their suspicions of Chinese intentions. After the conference, the Ceylonese Prime Minister said that Zhou was not as bad as other people had said he was.6 6 ‘Chinese Foreign Ministry Reference Document No.1’, 28 April 1955. Wilson Center Digital Archive. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114684 (25 October 2017, date last accessed). By launching diplomacy aimed at reassuring Asian powers, China in the mid-1950s successfully helped drive uncommitted Asian powers away from the United States and into the neutralist orbit. Unlike the United States’ approach of urging Asian powers to choose to join the bloc against the Soviet Union and China, China’s strategy was to link itself to the smaller Asian powers’ desire for neutrality and independence. Beijing’s decisions not to try to draw them into the communist bloc and a Cold War great power competition thus proved consequential, because other Asian powers viewed such a stance as respecting their independence and sovereignty (Palmer, 1955). At the Bandung Conference, the common denominator that brought the 29 states together in what Nehru called an ‘odd assortment’ was the experience of having been ‘subjected to Western imperialism in one form or another within the past hundred years, (United States Central Intelligence Agency, 1955). The conference was a site where SEATO was delegitimized, while legitimating the alternative vision of China and India, which rested on the Five Principles. Prior to the conference, Burmese premier Nu said, ‘If we discuss colonialism we may have some disparaging remarks about colonial powers and those are mostly Western powers’ (United States Central Intelligence Agency, 1955). Sukarno’s opening speech declared that the Asian countries were ‘no longer the victims of colonialism’ (cited in Pang, 2009, p. 63). China’s premier Zhou warned other powers that ‘the rule of colonialism in this region has not yet come to an end and new colonialists are attempting to take the place of the old ones’.7 7 ‘Main Speech by Premier Zhou Enlai, Head of the Delegation of the People's Republic of China, Distributed at the Plenary Session of the Asian-African Conference’, 19 April 1955. Wilson Center Digital Archive. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121623 (25 October 2017, date last accessed). A key reason for China’s diplomatic success had to do with its partnership with India, especially in terms of discouraging the Colombo Powers from joining SEATO. As part of India’s own foreign policy goals, Nehru connected the Chinese Premier with other Asian leaders to help assuage their fear of China.8 8 ‘Chinese Foreign Ministry Intelligence Department Report on the Asian-African Conference,’ 4 September 1954. Wilson Center Digital Archive. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/112440 (25 October 2017, date last accessed). Over the course of China’s reassurance diplomacy, India’s influence in the region, especially among the Colombo Powers was indispensable; without it, SEATO would have been more appealing to other nations (Modelski, 1962, pp. 205–215). At the Colombo Conference in April and May 1954, all of the Colombo Powers agreed that China should be recognized and admitted to the UN (Wriggins, 1960, p. 440). Nehru was clearly aware that Asian powers were afraid of China and thus did not try to minimize the significance of their fear in dealing with China. In his conversation with Mao in October 1954, Nehru suggested to Mao that ‘if the Five Principles are carried out, it will help reduce fear’,9 9 ‘Minutes of Chairman Mao Zedong’s First Meeting with Nehru’, 19 October 1954. Wilson Center Digital Archive. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/117825 (25 October 2017, date last accessed). noting that the smaller powers feared both imperialism and the bigger powers such as China and India. 4.2 How delegitimation worked China and India could not have succeeded in delegitimating SEATO, without the other Colombo Powers’ own preferences for neutralism against great power politics. Of the other Colombo Powers that declined SEATO membership—Indonesia, Burma, and Ceylon— Indonesia’s foreign relations with China, the United States, India, and other Asian neighbors in the 1950s perhaps best illustrates how the history of Western colonialism influenced the ways in which regional players responded to SEATO in the midst of the Cold War rivalries. First of all, it is important to keep in mind that Indonesia’s refusal to join SEATO should be understood in the light that policy elites came to hold the view that ‘none of the big powers could be relied on to help Indonesia’ (Weinstein, 1972, p. 103). This line of thinking, which dates back to the country’s struggles for independence, formed the basis for Jakarta’s ‘independent and active foreign policy’ during its revolutionary period (1945–49), but went on well into the 1950s. According to the interview findings of all Indonesian foreign policy elites of the 1928, 1945, and 1966 generations, a majority of the policy elite (69%) said that a military pact with Western great powers would endanger their national security and identity as a newly independent state, as well as harm Indonesia’s international image and self-respect (Weinstein, 1972, pp. 356–364). During that time, most Indonesian elites felt that they needed to unite with newly independent, like-minded Asian powers to keep the Western powers out of the region. In particular, Indonesia formed friendly relations with India to pursue its own independent foreign policy; India and Indonesia voted alike at the UN in pursuit of anti-colonialism (Idle, 1956). Despite its suspicions of internal communist intent after a rebellion involving the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), Indonesia’s decision to recognize China in 1950 took shape because of the people’s strong demands for independence. While the Sukarno-Hatta administration was interested in foreign aid from the United States and the Netherlands for economic development projects, it had to drop the idea and instead pursue diplomatic relations with China to avoid criticisms levelled by the PKI and other political parties that the administration was ‘a semi-colonial state’ (Sukma, 1999, p. 22). In the 1950s, Indonesia’s foreign policy toward the US was still conditioned by what it perceived as Washington’s disappointing behavior during Indonesia’s struggle for independence (Weinstein, 1972). In 1952, Washington’s demands that Jakarta sign a mutual security agreement as a condition of receiving US military aid led to the Sukiman administration’s downfall (Simpson, 2008, p. 17). In July 1954, when US ambassador to Indonesia Cumming broached the topic of joining SEATO to Indonesia, President Sukarno told him that trying to change the Indonesian rejection of the invitation to SEATO ‘would doubtlessly be futile’. Doing so would invite criticism of the United States for pressuring a neutral state (United States Department of State, 1952–1954, vol. 12, part 1, p. 659). That Indonesia’s denunciation of SEATO came from its opposition to Western imperialism becomes clearer, when one examines a conversation in March 1954 between the Soviet ambassador to Indonesia, Zhukov and the Indonesian minister of foreign affairs, Sunario. Sunario expressed his fear that the Dutch might join SEATO and said that he viewed the upcoming Bandung Conference as a countermeasure to SEATO.10 10 ‘Journal Entry of Ambassador Zhukov: Record of Conversation with the Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sunario’, 12 April 1955. Wilson Center Digital Archive. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110262 (25 October 2017, date last accessed). Burma had a reputation for being the ‘prototype of a small, neutralist country’ (Johnstone, 1963, p. 2) due to its continued pursuit of neutrality and independence since 1948. Whereas India regarded two Asian powers of SEATO, Thailand and the Philippines, as ‘American stooges’, it considered Burma a friendly country (United States Department of State, 1952–1954, vol. 12, part 1, p. 568). Since its independence, Burmese foreign policy had followed strict neutrality; the country would ‘establish the friendliest relations with all nations whenever possible’ and that it would ‘accept from any country any assistance … provided such assistance is given freely and does not violate our sovereignty’ (Johnstone 1963, p. 70). In this way, its refusal to join SEATO was somewhat expected, as Rangoon sought to avoid being drawn into Cold War politics when it had to tackle more pressing tasks of economic development and other internal issues. The case of Burma’s rejection of SEATO shows an aspect of neutrality as a practical foreign policy choice on the part of a weak state, in the midst of Cold War power politics. With the help of Nehru, in June 1954 Chinese Premier Zhou paid his first visit to Burma and met with Burmese Prime Minister U Nu.11 11 ‘Record of the First Meeting between Premier Zhou and Prime Minister U Nu’, 28 June 1954. Wilson Center Digital Archive. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/112438 (25 October 2017, date last accessed). ‘Record of the Second Meeting between Premier Zhou and Prime Minister U Nu’, 29 June 1954. Wilson Center Digital Archive. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/120364 (25 October 2017, date last accessed). Burma had been troubled by the communist insurgencies within its borders, which it believed China supported. The Burmese were also worried that the Chinese Nationalist troops in northeastern Burma might provoke China into invading their country (United States Department of State, 1952–1954, vol. 12, part 2, p. 54). The 1954 Zhou-U meeting is a good example of China’s reassurance policy toward a neutral state in the 1950s. Zhou commended Burma’s independent foreign policy, particularly its opposition to the US desire to establish military bases in Burma. He reaffirmed that China was ‘willing to see Burma independent of the freedom to choose the system approved by the majority of the people’. Zhou also urged U Nu to study the China–India Five Principles of Peaceful Existence. The meeting apparently left a positive impression on the Burmese prime minister. Burma was the most vocal advocate in favor of sending an invitation to China to the Bandung Conference. By January 1955, the US’ intelligence report assessed that China’s prestige and influence in Burma were on the rise (United States Central Intelligence Agency, 1955). Until the Cultural Revolution interrupted bilateral ties in the 1960s, Rangoon and Beijing’s accommodation toward each other included the signing of the 1960 Border Agreement and the Treaty of Friendship and Non-Aggression, which stipulated ‘not to take part in any military alliance directed against the other party’ (Holmes, 1972, p. 241). In case of Ceylon, both the invitation extended to Ceylon to join SEATO and Ceylon’s decline cannot be separated from its relations with other Colombo Powers. Two considerations were at work. One is that the majority of the cabinet, the public, and the media were against it. The US Ambassador to Ceylon noted in his report that American support of Western colonial powers France and Britain led people of all classes to oppose ‘American imperialism’. He further stated, ‘Having been successively invaded and occupied for the past three hundred years by first the Portuguese then the Dutch and finally the British, the Ceylonese say that they have good reason to turn a quizzical eye on any maneuvers of the white races in this part of the world’. The other is more social in nature. When assessing Ceylon’s interest in joining SEATO, he noted that the Ceylonese government first had to consult with other Colombo powers (United States Department of State, 1952–1954, vol. 12, part, 2, p. 1616 and p. 1620-1621), which opposed the organization. Ceylon’s decision not to join SEATO was a result of peer pressure from the other Colombo powers, especially India (Modelski, 1962, pp. 206–208). The Ceylonese Prime Minister was anti-communist and in principle, supported SEATO (United States Department of State, 1952–1954, vol. 12, part, 2, p.1607 and p. 1621). 5 SEATO’s restraints on American power After SEATO’s failure to attract major regional players during the formative period, another critical juncture leading to SEATO’s formal demise in 1977 was the alliance’s handling of the Laotian crises of 1959 and 1960–61. Understanding the Laotian crises is important for this study, because as predicted by US, British, and Thai policymakers at that time (see for example, United States Department of State, 1961–63, p. 116), SEATO became largely irrelevant afterwards. The Geneva Agreements of 1954, signed after the Viet Minh’s defeat of France’s attempt to restore colonial rule in Indochina (Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia), established neutrality in these three countries. In Laos, the Agreements granted the Viet Minh-supported communists known as the Pathet Lao control over two provinces close to the Vietnamese border to the north. Both Moscow and Beijing advocated neutrality in Indochina, trying to rein in Ho Chi Minh to maintain the status quo under the Agreements (Gaiduk, 2003). Washington, concerned about a possible communist take-over of Laos, supported the Laotian Royal army with aid. The crisis in 1959 originated from Premier Phoui’s design to destroy the aforesaid communist Pathet Lao-controlled provinces, which led him to declare that the Geneva Agreements had been fulfilled and to call on Washington’s direct support. China changed its policy to support the Viet Minh’s resort to arms. The Soviet Union, alarmed by US involvement in the situation and yet reluctant to approve armed struggle, sought to restore the status quo through the International Control Commission (Gaiduk, 2003). In August 1960, Captain Kong Le (a neutralist supported by Moscow) overthrew the US-backed government led by General Phoumi Nosovan. Kong Le formed a neutralist government with Souvanna Phouma (a neutralist) and recognized the communist Pathet Lao. Soon, Phoumi, supported by the US aid, marched on the capital, which led Moscow to provide supplies to Kong Le. By December 1960, a new pro-US government led by Boun Oum was installed, which intensified the US-Soviet rivalry of offering aid. The question of how the Laotian crisis contributed to SEATO’s eventual demise is linked to the reasons why, despite its own anticolonial traditions, the United States failed to effectively counter local actors’ delegitimation campaigns discussed in the preceding section. Of course, compared to China, an Asian actor whose experiences of Western imperialism made it relatively easier for it to appeal to other Asian actors, an identity-based legitimation was not possible for the United States in the 1950s. However, the United States was clearly aware of the dissonance of legitimacy notions between itself and major actors in Southeast Asia. US secretary of state Dulles, the chief architect of SEATO, accurately assessed such dissonance. In the summer of 1954, the Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs’ regional planning advisor warned of ‘an inexorable propensity for approaching the colonial and former colonial parts of the world under the most unfavorable auspices’, thereby ‘handicapping’ the US position in Asia. (United States Department of State, 1952–1954, vol. 12, part 1, p. 663). How did the United States fail to support decolonization and legitimate its position as hegemon in Southeast Asia? United States policies toward Southeast Asia in the 1950s were caught in this dilemma between America’s anti-colonialism on the one hand, and its Europe-first policy and anti-communism on the other. The creation of SEATO can be viewed as an expression of the United States’ pursuit of the latter, giving priority to the goals of anti-communism and relationships with European allies. Despite the view that Vietnamese nationalism was an ‘irresistible force of history’ (Lawrence, 1998, p. 90), US officials were more concerned about ‘offending French sensibilities’ (Lawrence, 1998: 87) should the French interest in Indochina be ignored. In their contemplation of Southeast Asia strategy, US policymakers felt that if Washington was going to war with China, it had to work with France and Britain, ‘for without their support [they] might lose the whole NATO structure’ (United States Department of State, 1952–1954, vol. 12, part 1, p. 60). However, by January 1961, it had become apparent to President Eisenhower and US policymakers that the British were reluctant, and the French were unhelpful, and that ‘our own ally is working against us’. The United States saw ‘evidence of obstruction, at least on the part of certain French personnel, to the defense of Laos’. Further, ‘SEATO becomes a means whereby restraint is imposed on us by our allies against action which we might be willing and able to take unilaterally and which might be generally acceptable’ (United States Department of State, 1961–63, vol. 24, p. 30). As the Laotian crisis deepened, the US’ initial position was clearly in favor of taking military measures if the lack of military action meant a communist takeover in Laos. The Kennedy administration seriously considered a SEATO operation involving the movement of forces into Laos (United States Department of State, 1961–63, pp. 126–129). Eventually, however, President Kennedy abandoned the idea of SEATO intervention in Laos in the face of reluctant allies. Britain responded to President Kennedy’s call that there should be no differences among France, Britain, and the US over Laos. But internally, it was a great concern that a possible SEATO intervention would divert US strength from NATO to the SEATO region, especially at a time of the Berlin Crisis, and also that it might entrap Britain into a war in Asia. In order to continue to influence the US’ future policy in Asia and elsewhere, Britain’s strategy was to ‘boost morale but avoid fresh commitments’ (United Kingdom Embassy in Thailand, 1961). Its initial policy direction was to ‘do everything possible to avoid a situation in which America takes decisions openly to intervene in Laos’ (United Kingdom Embassy in Thailand, 1961). The secret memo to the Prime Minister reveals the British perception that London and Washington were ‘in danger of getting entangled in all sort of troubles around the world just as Berlin is coming to a head. These entanglements must please the Russians very much’ (United Kingdom Prime Minister, 1961). France agreed that Laos should not be completely overtaken by the Communists, but expressed unequivocal opposition to SEATO intervention (United Kingdom Embassy, United States, 1961). The attitude of de Gaulle was widely perceived as being a ‘complicating factor’ among US policymakers (United States Department of State, 1961–63, vol. 24, p. 26). A US official likened France’s attitude toward the US policy toward Southeast Asia to ‘sort of a dog in the manger complex with great jealousy of any US activity in Laos’ (United States Department of State, 1961–63, vol. 24, p. 2). During the May 1961 summit meeting between Presidents de Gaulle and Kennedy, de Gaulle said to Kennedy that in Southeast Asia, the West can have influence only through non-military means and that the United States should avoid providing aid to Southeast Asian countries to exercise influence in the region (United States Department of State, 1961–63, vol. 24, p. 216). Witnessing the SEATO developments toward Laos, Thailand grew increasingly nervous that ‘SEATO would be paralyzed by French and British unwillingness to take military action in defense of Thailand’ (United States Department of State, 1961–63, vol. 23, p. 23). Thailand proposed that SEATO should revise voting procedures so that interventions would not require unanimous consent. Washington seriously debated whether they should remove the rule of unanimity. By that point, not only Thailand, Pakistan, and the Philippines openly blamed French and British behavior, but Australia also expressed concerns about Britain’s reluctance to the United States (United States Department of State, 1961–63, p. 23). The US estimated that if Washington decided to accept the Thai proposal, Australia and New Zealand would probably follow, but not France or Britain. Not surprisingly, France, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand opposed this proposal (United States Department of State, 1961–1963, p. 35). The alternatives were either the dissolution of SEATO, or the withdrawal of France and Britain from it. Facing a real possibility of Thailand’s withdrawal from SEATO, the United States went for a separate bilateral arrangement with the Thais, while keeping the existing SEATO voting procedures. In March 1962, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk issued a joint communique with the Thai Foreign Minister, stating that the United States would come to its aid for Thailand’s defense against communism. Under this framework, the deployment of US forces in Thailand would not follow SEATO procedures. The 1962 Rusk formula is worth noting because the birth of this formula shows how, despite SEATO’s existence, an Asian SEATO ally (Thailand) formed bilateral arrangements with the United States. By the mid-1960s, the United States noted: ‘If SEATO cannot meet Vietnam crisis, questions arises as to what purpose organization serves’ (United States Department of State, 1964–68, vol. 27, p. 163). Amid the US’ air strikes against North Vietnam, in May 1965, the US considered a direct reliance on SEATO for intervention to meet aggression in South Vietnam. France declined to send even an observer to SEATO meetings; Britain refused to send any forces; Pakistan stopped participating SEATO military activities, while tightening relations with China; and Thailand grew increasingly dissatisfied with the purpose of the alliance. 6 Conclusions Postwar American hegemony in Asia took on a much less multilateral character compared to that in Europe not just because of the US’ preferences but also those of other less powerful actors. Taking an eclectic analytic framework, I have argued that the Asian experience of Western colonialism led actors to contest the American-led hegemonic order in postwar Southeast Asia. Although standard realist and institutionalist accounts offer important insights for SEATO’s failure against NATO’s survival, these accounts are insufficient without taking into account the strategic dimensions of the United States’ legitimacy deficit in the post-World War II period. The United States’ lack of legitimacy in the eyes of local Southeast Asian opened room for China and India to successfully undermine US strategy and delegitimize hegemony in the region. It is worth noting that China’s own shared experience of Western imperialism gave it a surprisingly high level of legitimacy even among Asian countries that were afraid of China and of communist infiltration within their borders. Another crucial factor behind SEATO’s failure is the role of the US’ European allies in SEATO. 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Kohama, Shoko

2019 International Relations of the Asia-Pacific

doi: 10.1093/irap/lcy001

Abstract This study investigates how territorial acquisition through war affects the durability of a successive ceasefire and determines what type of territorial acquisition is more detrimental to post-war peace. Despite the wealth of literature on recurrent war and on territory, the effect of territorial acquisition on war resumption has been understudied. This study shows that territorial acquisition creates expectations among adversaries for future power shifts, which results in a commitment problem that hinders peaceful revision of the existing ceasefire. Indeed, duration analysis of ceasefires following interstate wars since World War II shows that territorial change in war, especially acquisition of large and densely populated territories that have potential utility for greater power shifts, makes ceasefires more prone to failure. The analysis of Sino-Vietnamese ceasefires following militarized incidents over land and sea borders also illustrates the importance of territorial acquisition and the potential utility of the territory. 1 Introduction Ceasefires following interstate wars often break down after a short period and cause further devastation to people’s lives that have already been destroyed by war. Even ceasefires minimally defined by the absence of war have often failed: of the 56 pairs of countries engaged in full-scale war between 1946 and 2004, more than 40% reverted from a ceasefire to another full-scale war.1 This problem has cast a shadow over the Asia-Pacific region in which disputes that once caused wars between India and Pakistan and in the Korean Peninsula are yet to be resolved, and pairs of countries, such as China and Vietnam, have repeatedly engaged in military confrontations (Diehl and Goertz, 2000). Concerned over failed ceasefires and their consequences, scholars have made efforts to study why adversaries dishonor a ceasefire. Various factors have been identified ranging from the indecisive outcome of the preceding war, to compromises made in a negotiated ceasefire, to a post-war shift in adversaries’ power (e.g. Blainey, 1988; Werner, 1999; Quackenbush and Venteicher, 2008). Many studies investigated why the same set of states repeatedly engage in militarized disputes. However, another important question in this research field is, why do adversaries return to a full-scale war (Fortna, 2004; Werner and Yuen, 2005; Lo et al., 2008)? These are two different problems incurred because not all resumed disputes result in a war. Some of them are resolved short of war, while others escalate. Therefore, the problem of war resumption is worth exploring from normative and theoretical points of view. Although a handful of studies, such as Werner and Yuen (2005), have identified a mechanism specific to the resumption of war, the causes for recurrence of war remain understudied. This study examines the effect of territorial acquisition on the resumption of war. This factor has been largely ignored in the literature, even though territorial conflicts are consistently found to be violent and to recur (e.g. Goertz and Diehl, 1992; Vasquez, 1993, 1995; Quackenbush, 2010; Reed and Chiba, 2010). Specifically, this study highlights a commitment problem in the renegotiation of ceasefires as the cause for war resumption, and territorial acquisition through war identified as the source of the problem. This argument is tested against the data on (post-)interstate war ceasefires that occurred between 1946 and 1997, in which ceasefire is defined as ‘a period between two interstate wars, starting when the first war ends and failing when war resumes between the same adversaries’. The study also investigates what type of territorial acquisitions are more detrimental to ceasefires. Case studies of two Sino-Vietnamese conflicts at land and sea are presented as illustrative cases. The analysis reveals that territorial acquisition through war makes a subsequent ceasefire short-lived. The negative effect of territorial acquisition is not ascribed to the geographic contiguity of the adversaries, the contentiousness of territorial issues, or the observed post-war power shifts. Rather, it is argued that territorial change generates adversaries’ expectations for future power shifts, which causes a commitment problem when they engage in negotiation during ceasefire. Accordingly, it has been found that larger and more populated territories, that is, those with potential utility for greater power growth, are more likely to cause wars to resume when these are transferred in war. 2 Causes of recurrent war The literature on recurrent conflict can be divided into two camps according to the subject of research and the research question. Much of the literature focuses on settlement of disputes and solutions for underlying issues; the central question of this group of studies is, therefore, why do militarized interstate disputes occur between adversaries who have previously fought wars? Scholars have found that a military stalemate in the previous war (Blainey, 1988; Hensel, 1994; Grieco, 2001), compromises in reaching negotiated ceasefires (Senese and Quackenbush, 2003; Quackenbush and Venteicher, 2008), and third-party intervention and its withdrawal (Beardsley, 2008) cause disagreements and dissatisfaction with the ceasefire between adversaries. Some, however, as in the present study, ask a slightly different question: Why do adversaries return to a full-scale war, and not just a militarized dispute? In this framework focusing on wars causing a large number of casualties, a ceasefire is considered as maintained even if adversaries engage in small-scale military actions, such as a display of forces. Nevertheless, because dispute resumption is a part of the process in which war recurs, some studies also investigate mechanisms by which adversaries resume disputes and subsequent wars. Werner (1999) shows that large shifts in the post-war balance of power tend to cause war resumption because such shifts alter adversaries’ calculations and consequently encourage them to challenge the existing ceasefire. Lo et al. (2008) demonstrate that foreign-imposed regime change following war alters the preference and the institutions of the target country in favor of peace and reduces the risk of recurrent war. However, war resumption involves a mechanism distinct from that of dispute resumption, namely, failure of renegotiation. Even if adversaries challenge an existing ceasefire, it does not necessarily result in war, as it might be resolved through renegotiation of ceasefire terms. This issue is articulated in the bargaining theory of war, which posits that adversaries can usually settle their disputes without fighting, but they sometimes fail to do so and fight a war due to lack of credible information and commitment to a negotiated deal (e.g. Fearon, 1995). Applying this insight to the resumption of war, adversaries engage in another war because there are obstacles to peaceful renegotiation of the existing ceasefire. The literature on recurrent war explicitly or implicitly addresses this problem. Werner (1999) recognizes that post-war shifts in power, while encouraging adversaries to resume disputes, might not necessarily cause them to return to war. Adding to Werner’s study from an institutionalist perspective, Fortna (2004) shows that strong ceasefire agreements, for instance, those that are formally accepted and introduce demilitarized zones, contribute to post-war peace by increasing the cost of waging another war, by reducing uncertainty about each other’s actions and intentions, and by preventing accidental wars. Responding to Fortna, Werner and Yuen (2005) offer a new theory introducing an informational problem in reaching and maintaining ceasefires. Specifically, they argue that ‘unnatural settlements’ achieved after wars with inconsistent battle outcomes or under pressure from a third party prevent adversaries from acquiring accurate information and hence are more likely to become ‘obsolete’. Rephrased in the words of the bargaining theory of war, such ceasefires conclude despite significant uncertainty remaining unresolved, which makes peaceful renegotiation of ceasefires difficult. The present study adds to the literature on recurrent war, investigating the effect of territorial acquisition through war on the likelihood of war resumption. In contrast to the informational explanation offered by Werner and Yuen (2005), this study argues that territorial acquisition hinders peaceful revision of ceasefires by creating a situation in which adversaries are unable to credibly commit to a negotiated agreement. Moreover, by highlighting the consequence of territorial acquisition, the implication of this study also extends to the literature studying the association between territories and conflict, as is discussed in the next section. 3 War and territory It is well established that disputes over territory are violent and recurrent. This tendency toward escalation and recurrence is often attributed to two key characteristics of territorial disputes: contiguity and issue contentiousness. The geographic contiguity of adversaries provides them more opportunities to interact, a greater number of potential issues to fight over, and an environment more favorable to military deployment (e.g. Bremer, 1992; Quackenbush, 2006). Reed and Chiba (2010) also found that neighboring states not only differ in their ‘observable’ environment, such as the degree of economic interdependence, but also behave differently – namely, they respond more aggressively to a shift in the environment than do noncontiguous states. In a similar vein, Quackenbush (2010) reported that geographical contiguity increases the probability of dispute resumption after war, although the effect fades over time. Another key reason for the violent nature of territorial disputes is that territorial issues are salient because of the natural tendency of humans to occupy and defend territory. These territorial disagreements engender grievances among people, which help political leaders mobilize domestic support for militarized actions (e.g. Vasquez, 1993, 1995; Hensel, 1994, 2001; Walter, 2003; Senese and Vasquez, 2005). According to Senese and Vasquez (2003) and Senese (2005), territorial claims are important in explaining war onset, whereas contiguity makes militarized disputes more likely but not war. The same logic explains why militarized disputes over territory are more likely to recur (Hensel, 1996; Quackenbush, 2010). Acknowledging that ceasefires between contiguous parties and over territorial issues are precarious, this study argues that territorial transfers add yet another dimension to the problem. Early works investigating this issue was studied by Goertz and Diehl (1992), who argued that territorial changes spur losing parties’ grievances over lost territory and motivate them to engage in another militarized dispute. As Goertz and Diehl (1992) relied on factor analysis and did not treat censored data properly, Tir (2003) provided a more comprehensive and appropriate analysis. Comparing the effect of violent and peaceful territorial transfers on a prospective territorial dispute, Tir found that violent territorial transfers tend to be followed by shorter ceasefires. This association occurs because the party that obtained the territory seeks to acquire additional territory, especially when it is of strategic value, and the loser nurtures grievances over the lost territory, particularly if it has economic value. However, adversaries can establish a less hostile relationship even after violent territorial transfers if new borders are drawn in accordance with previous administrative frontiers (Carter and Goemans, 2011, 2014). Although violent territorial transfer appears to have a negative impact on peace, its effect on the resumption of war, especially its relation to failure of renegotiation, has not yet been properly investigated. To fill the gap, this study analyzes the durability of ceasefires following wars resulting in territorial acquisition as opposed to those without, an approach contrasting that of Tir (2003), who compares violent territorial transfer with a peaceful one and focuses on their impact on militarized disputes. Moreover, no studies have yet explicitly decomposed the impact of multiple mechanisms by which territorial acquisition could possibly affect ceasefire duration, for instance, the contiguity of adversaries, the salience of issues, and future power shifts. Without such an analysis, it is difficult to identify what type of territories pose threats to post-war peace. 4 Territorial acquisition and recurrent war War resumes because adversaries fail to revise their ceasefire peacefully. According to the literature on war, lack of commitment to a negotiated settlement is one of the reasons why adversaries resort to force rather than resolve their dispute through negotiation. The problem arises when adversaries are in a situation where they are unable to commit credibly to a negotiated agreement. One such situation is when the balance of power between adversaries shifts. The growing party is unable to make a credible commitment because it will be able to coerce the opposing party to accept a new deal that is more favorable to the growing party in the future, and the opponent knows it (e.g. Fearon, 1995; Powell, 2006). Consequently, the relatively declining party may choose to wage a preventive war rather than accept a negotiated deal that may be dishonored in the future. The same logic applies to the resumption of war; adversaries fail to revise their ceasefire peacefully if their power balance is expected to change with the passage of time. Territorial acquisition is one such factor generating shifts in the balance of power during a ceasefire. Territories seized in war are commonly believed to tip the post-war power balance in favor of the party that has gained them (hereafter, the victor). They encourage the victor’s power growth in various ways: by serving strategic purposes, empowering the victor through an endowment of natural resources, and offering the victor industries and markets. In each case, the acquired territory benefits the victor in terms of post-war power growth. The expectation of future power shifts caused by territorial acquisition then reduces the window of opportunity for a negotiated revision of the ceasefire and renders the ceasefire a failure. Anticipating the victor’s power growth, the loser is motivated to wage a war and recapture the lost territory before the victor fully exploits its value, which concomitantly stimulates the victor’s preventive actions. The key here is that territorial acquisition creates expectations among adversaries for future power shifts. Therefore, a commitment problem due to expectations of future power shifts is distinct from incentives to renegotiate, provoked by power shifts that have actually occurred, as was proved by Werner (1999). Not only causing a commitment problem, territorial acquisition also makes war a very attractive option because a successful restoration of territory will considerably change the tide of power shifts. Thus, the first hypothesis is as follows: Hypothesis 1 (Territorial Acquisition):Ceteris paribus, when a disputant has seized territory from the opponent during a preceding war, ceasefires tend to be more short-lived. Territories vary in their potential to empower the victor depending on their size and nature. Ceasefires are generally more vulnerable when territories provide the victor with greater potential for power growth. The victor that has seized territories with higher utility is expected to become more threatening as time passes; consequently, adversaries become less patient in revising an existing ceasefire. Thus, conflict is more likely to resume when the victor seizes a greater amount of resources and becomes more powerful over the course of a ceasefire. Moreover, territories differ in their exchangeability with regard to military power and potential benefits. Specifically, seized territory causes long-term power shifts if it contains industrial urban areas. Territory with value in industrial cities is not readily exchangeable with military power, but it does offer great potential benefits in the long term, as investments of capital, labor, and technology yield increasingly greater economic growth, which can be eventually converted into military power. Although the acquisition of strategically important territory also stimulates a shift in the military balance between adversaries, seizure of industrial cities is key to a long-term shift in power balance. Thus, more densely populated territories comprising industrial cities are expected to be more detrimental to ceasefires when acquired in the preceding war. Hypothesis 2a (Potential Utility of Acquired Territories I):Ceteris paribus, the greater the amount of territory acquired from the opponent during a preceding war, the more short-lived the ceasefires. Hypothesis 2b (Potential Utility of Acquired Territories II):Ceteris paribus, the more densely populated the acquired territory, the more short-lived the ceasefires. The following sections test these hypotheses against data on interstate ceasefires that have occurred since World War II and illustrate their underlying logic in relation to the Sino-Vietnamese conflicts. 5 Research design The hypotheses mentioned above are tested against data on ceasefires following interstate wars between 1946 and 1997, originally compiled by Fortna (2004).2 The analysis involves two parts. The first part tests the theoretical claim that territorial acquisition is one of the barriers to achieving durable ceasefires (Hypothesis 1). Next, it examines the link between ceasefire duration and characteristics of acquired territories (Hypotheses 2a and 2b). 5.1 Data Fortna’s dataset covers 48 ceasefires following 26 full-scale interstate wars between 1946 and 1997. In the dataset, a ceasefire is defined as ‘an end to or break in the fighting, whether or not it represents the final end of the war’ (Fortna, 2004, p. 45). Each case was based on the pair of countries involved in a conflict, dividing multilateral wars into several cases of principal belligerents. Each case rendered a series of observations representing each year or less after a ceasefire, so that time-varying covariates could be included in the analysis. In total, the 48 ceasefires generated 876 observations. Although new wars occurred and some ceasefires broke down after 1997, the analysis period was not extended beyond this point because some key variables were unavailable for the later wars. 5.2 Dependent variable The dependent variable of the analysis is the ceasefire duration, ‘measured from the date of the ceasefire to the start of another COW [Correlates of War] war between the same two belligerents, if there was one’ (Fortna, 2004, p. 48). Among the 48 ceasefires, war resumed in 22 cases, including the First Kashmir War and the First Turco-Cypriot War. In the other 26 cases, peace lasted beyond the time horizon of the analysis, and thus it was right-censored as of 1998. 5.3 Explanatory variables The first part of the analysis examines how territorial acquisition affects ceasefire duration. Each ceasefire was thus checked using the territorial change dataset of the COW Project to determine whether its preceding war resulted in any territorial acquisition (Tir et al., 1998). A binary variable, territorial change, was then created and coded as 1 when any violent territorial acquisition had been associated with a ceasefire, and as 0 if otherwise. In addition, two variables were constructed for capturing the varying degrees to which the seized territory is expected to empower the victor. The first factor considered is the size of the seized territory. The area of exchanged territory was included in the analysis based on the ‘Area of Unit Exchanged in Square Kilometers’ listed in Tir et al. (1998). Area was simply defined as the natural log of the land area obtained by the new owner through war. Observations from cases in which no territorial transfer occurred were assigned a value of 0. The second factor is the population density of the acquired territory. The density of exchanged territory was calculated by dividing the population residing therein by the area of the corresponding territory using the ‘Area of Unit Exchanged in Square Kilometers’ and the ‘Population of Unit Exchanged’ as listed in Tir et al. (1998). The natural log of the calculated density was used to create the variable density, thereby adjusting its diminishing marginal effect. Observations from cases in which no territorial change occurred were assigned a value of 0. 5.4 Other covariates The analyses also considered the following covariates. Related to territory, variables that represent the geographic proximity of adversaries and the issue at stake were included. The binary variable, contiguity, is coded 1 if adversaries are contiguous by land or separated by less than 150 miles of water. To measure whether the war was over contentious issues, a binary variable denoting whether adversaries’ existence was the major stake in the war was included. The variable was created by Fortna (2004) based on the ‘gravity of value threatened’ in the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) dataset (Brecher and Wilkenfeld, 2000). Because territory is one of the essential elements of a sovereign state, conflicts over existence necessarily involve territorial disagreements. The analysis also incorporated territorial integrity at stake, which is coded as 1 when one or both adversaries sought to seize a portion, but not the entirety, of the opponent’s territory. This variable was also derived by Fortna (2004) from the ICB dataset. In addition to these factors, the strength of ceasefire agreements was included, following Fortna (2004), who argued that a strong formal agreement contributes to durable peace. Fortna represented the strength of agreements using the agreement strength index, a composite measurement adding the following 10 factors: formal acceptance of a ceasefire proposal; withdrawal of military forces to status ante; formation of demilitarized zones; agreement on arms control procedure; involvement of peacekeeping forces; strength of enforcement measures by third-party involvement; strength of internal enforcement effort; number of paragraphs in the agreement text; agreement on confidence-building measures; and the level of dispute-resolution efforts. Following Werner and Yuen (2005), battle consistency and interrupted war were also incorporated into the analysis. The variable of battle consistency is measured by the duration over which one side is consistently winning battles toward the end of the war (the ‘last tide’ of the war) as a proportion of the total duration of the war. Interrupted war is a binary variable that takes 1 if ‘(1) there is clear evidence of significant third-party pressure to ceasefire, and (2) the ceasefire is invoked before the parties negotiate the final settlement’ (Werner and Yuen, 2005, p. 273), and 0 if otherwise. The indicator of actual shifts in power is represented by the post-war change in relative capabilities as created by Werner (1999) from the Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) score of the COW Project (Singer et al., 1972). This variable is measured by the absolute difference in adversaries’ growth rates. A country’s growth rate is obtained by the annual growth of its capability as a proportion of its capability the previous year. The variable is then obtained by taking the difference between the growth rates of the adversaries. Therefore, the larger the value of the change in relative capabilities, the more significant is the shift in the adversaries’ balance of power. Furthermore, a military tie was coded as 1 when a war ended in a tie and as 0 if otherwise. The cost of war was measured by the natural log of the total number of battle deaths. Last, adversaries’ history of conflict was measured by the number of militarized interstate disputes that occurred between the dyad’s members divided by the number of years that the dyad had existed in the interstate system when war started. These three variables were retrieved from the dataset provided by Fortna (2004). Descriptive statistics of all the variables are reported in Table 1. Table 1 Descriptive statistics Variables . Mean . Min . Max . Std. Dev. . Obs. . Territorial acquisition 0.15 0.00 1.00 0.36 891 Area 1.36 0.00 12.07 3.24 891 Density 0.68 0.00 7.36 1.69 891 Contiguous 0.66 0.00 1.00 0.48 876 Existence at stake 0.26 0.00 1.00 0.44 876 Territorial integrity at stake 0.17 0.00 1.00 0.38 876 Agreement strength 4.36 0.00 9.50 2.39 876 Battle consistency 0.42 0.00 1.00 0.43 876 Interrupted war 0.28 0.00 1.00 0.45 876 Change in relative capabilitiesa 0.12 0.00 5.43 0.28 770 Military tie 0.45 0.00 1.00 0.50 876 Cost of war 9.30 5.60 14.04 2.35 876 History of conflict 0.75 0.00 3.41 0.83 876 Variables . Mean . Min . Max . Std. Dev. . Obs. . Territorial acquisition 0.15 0.00 1.00 0.36 891 Area 1.36 0.00 12.07 3.24 891 Density 0.68 0.00 7.36 1.69 891 Contiguous 0.66 0.00 1.00 0.48 876 Existence at stake 0.26 0.00 1.00 0.44 876 Territorial integrity at stake 0.17 0.00 1.00 0.38 876 Agreement strength 4.36 0.00 9.50 2.39 876 Battle consistency 0.42 0.00 1.00 0.43 876 Interrupted war 0.28 0.00 1.00 0.45 876 Change in relative capabilitiesa 0.12 0.00 5.43 0.28 770 Military tie 0.45 0.00 1.00 0.50 876 Cost of war 9.30 5.60 14.04 2.35 876 History of conflict 0.75 0.00 3.41 0.83 876 aTime-varying covariate. Agreement strength might change over time if follow-up agreements are reached. Open in new tab Table 1 Descriptive statistics Variables . Mean . Min . Max . Std. Dev. . Obs. . Territorial acquisition 0.15 0.00 1.00 0.36 891 Area 1.36 0.00 12.07 3.24 891 Density 0.68 0.00 7.36 1.69 891 Contiguous 0.66 0.00 1.00 0.48 876 Existence at stake 0.26 0.00 1.00 0.44 876 Territorial integrity at stake 0.17 0.00 1.00 0.38 876 Agreement strength 4.36 0.00 9.50 2.39 876 Battle consistency 0.42 0.00 1.00 0.43 876 Interrupted war 0.28 0.00 1.00 0.45 876 Change in relative capabilitiesa 0.12 0.00 5.43 0.28 770 Military tie 0.45 0.00 1.00 0.50 876 Cost of war 9.30 5.60 14.04 2.35 876 History of conflict 0.75 0.00 3.41 0.83 876 Variables . Mean . Min . Max . Std. Dev. . Obs. . Territorial acquisition 0.15 0.00 1.00 0.36 891 Area 1.36 0.00 12.07 3.24 891 Density 0.68 0.00 7.36 1.69 891 Contiguous 0.66 0.00 1.00 0.48 876 Existence at stake 0.26 0.00 1.00 0.44 876 Territorial integrity at stake 0.17 0.00 1.00 0.38 876 Agreement strength 4.36 0.00 9.50 2.39 876 Battle consistency 0.42 0.00 1.00 0.43 876 Interrupted war 0.28 0.00 1.00 0.45 876 Change in relative capabilitiesa 0.12 0.00 5.43 0.28 770 Military tie 0.45 0.00 1.00 0.50 876 Cost of war 9.30 5.60 14.04 2.35 876 History of conflict 0.75 0.00 3.41 0.83 876 aTime-varying covariate. Agreement strength might change over time if follow-up agreements are reached. Open in new tab 5.5 Statistical model Ceasefire duration was examined through duration analysis to enable proper treatment of the right-censored processes. The current study employed the Weibull model, assuming that the baseline probability of war resumption monotonically changes over time. The same analyses using the Cox model were run here to reduce the risk of arriving at a conclusion sensitive to assumptions about the shape of the baseline hazard, although a residual analysis suggests that the Weibull model better fits the data. Corresponding results are reported in the Supplementary Material. 6 Results The results of the analysis are reported in the form of coefficients that show the marginal effects of variables on the hazard function, that is, the instantaneous probability of failure at a certain point in time conditional on survival up to that point. A factor with a negative coefficient decreases the instantaneous probability of ceasefire breakdown and thus extends its duration. For substantive interpretation, the hazard ratio is also reported: the instantaneous probability of ceasefire failure increases by the factor of the ratio, given survival up to that point. Predictors of the hazard ratio exceeding a value of 1 thus increase the likelihood of war resumption. 6.1 The effect of territorial acquisition The main results of the duration analysis on Hypothesis 1 are reported in Table 2. Model 1 examines the effect of territorial acquisition by controlling for factors such as the characteristics of war, the form of ceasefire agreements, and post-war shifts in the balance of power. Territorial acquisition is found to have a disturbing effect on ceasefire duration. When one or both adversaries acquire new territory through war, a succeeding ceasefire, when achieved, faces a higher risk of failure. The effect of territorial change is robust across different models and model specifications, as is discussed later and in the Supplementary Material. In all models, territorial acquisition decreases ceasefire duration. Table 2 Ceasefire duration and territorial acquisition (Weibull model) . (1) . (2) . (3) . (4) . . coef. . coef. . coef. . coef. . Territorial acquisition 2.16*** 2.57*** (0.23) (0.70) Area 0.29*** (0.05) Density 0.38* (0.15) Contiguous 1.29 1.10 1.60 (1.10) (0.98) (1.10) Existence at stake 2.50* 2.45* 2.60* (1.22) (1.11) (1.30) Territorial integrity at stake −3.53*** −3.84*** −2.96*** (0.66) (0.54) (0.86) Agreement strength −0.23 −0.35 −0.32 −0.37 (0.13) (0.23) (0.22) (0.29) Battle consistency −1.85 −7.31* −7.69** −6.78* (1.03) (2.85) (2.89) (3.09) Interrupted war 2.39*** 6.94*** 7.13*** 6.02*** (0.49) (0.95) (1.04) (1.30) Change in relative capabilities 0.88*** 1.29*** 1.24*** 1.33*** (0.15) (0.31) (0.29) (0.38) Military tie 2.25* 4.52 4.17 4.40 (0.92) (2.81) (2.36) (2.69) Cost of war −0.36* −0.87*** −0.87*** −0.94*** (0.16) (0.13) (0.14) (0.15) History of conflict 0.78*** 0.60 0.68 0.73 (0.17) (0.62) (0.54) (0.61) P 0.18 0.33** 0.32** 0.26* (0.13) (0.12) (0.13) (0.12) N 770 770 770 770 BIC 137.9 130.0 130.2 141.0 Log-likelihood −35.7 −31.8 −31.9 −34.0 . (1) . (2) . (3) . (4) . . coef. . coef. . coef. . coef. . Territorial acquisition 2.16*** 2.57*** (0.23) (0.70) Area 0.29*** (0.05) Density 0.38* (0.15) Contiguous 1.29 1.10 1.60 (1.10) (0.98) (1.10) Existence at stake 2.50* 2.45* 2.60* (1.22) (1.11) (1.30) Territorial integrity at stake −3.53*** −3.84*** −2.96*** (0.66) (0.54) (0.86) Agreement strength −0.23 −0.35 −0.32 −0.37 (0.13) (0.23) (0.22) (0.29) Battle consistency −1.85 −7.31* −7.69** −6.78* (1.03) (2.85) (2.89) (3.09) Interrupted war 2.39*** 6.94*** 7.13*** 6.02*** (0.49) (0.95) (1.04) (1.30) Change in relative capabilities 0.88*** 1.29*** 1.24*** 1.33*** (0.15) (0.31) (0.29) (0.38) Military tie 2.25* 4.52 4.17 4.40 (0.92) (2.81) (2.36) (2.69) Cost of war −0.36* −0.87*** −0.87*** −0.94*** (0.16) (0.13) (0.14) (0.15) History of conflict 0.78*** 0.60 0.68 0.73 (0.17) (0.62) (0.54) (0.61) P 0.18 0.33** 0.32** 0.26* (0.13) (0.12) (0.13) (0.12) N 770 770 770 770 BIC 137.9 130.0 130.2 141.0 Log-likelihood −35.7 −31.8 −31.9 −34.0 Note: Standard errors are clustered by conflict and reported in parentheses. * P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. Open in new tab Table 2 Ceasefire duration and territorial acquisition (Weibull model) . (1) . (2) . (3) . (4) . . coef. . coef. . coef. . coef. . Territorial acquisition 2.16*** 2.57*** (0.23) (0.70) Area 0.29*** (0.05) Density 0.38* (0.15) Contiguous 1.29 1.10 1.60 (1.10) (0.98) (1.10) Existence at stake 2.50* 2.45* 2.60* (1.22) (1.11) (1.30) Territorial integrity at stake −3.53*** −3.84*** −2.96*** (0.66) (0.54) (0.86) Agreement strength −0.23 −0.35 −0.32 −0.37 (0.13) (0.23) (0.22) (0.29) Battle consistency −1.85 −7.31* −7.69** −6.78* (1.03) (2.85) (2.89) (3.09) Interrupted war 2.39*** 6.94*** 7.13*** 6.02*** (0.49) (0.95) (1.04) (1.30) Change in relative capabilities 0.88*** 1.29*** 1.24*** 1.33*** (0.15) (0.31) (0.29) (0.38) Military tie 2.25* 4.52 4.17 4.40 (0.92) (2.81) (2.36) (2.69) Cost of war −0.36* −0.87*** −0.87*** −0.94*** (0.16) (0.13) (0.14) (0.15) History of conflict 0.78*** 0.60 0.68 0.73 (0.17) (0.62) (0.54) (0.61) P 0.18 0.33** 0.32** 0.26* (0.13) (0.12) (0.13) (0.12) N 770 770 770 770 BIC 137.9 130.0 130.2 141.0 Log-likelihood −35.7 −31.8 −31.9 −34.0 . (1) . (2) . (3) . (4) . . coef. . coef. . coef. . coef. . Territorial acquisition 2.16*** 2.57*** (0.23) (0.70) Area 0.29*** (0.05) Density 0.38* (0.15) Contiguous 1.29 1.10 1.60 (1.10) (0.98) (1.10) Existence at stake 2.50* 2.45* 2.60* (1.22) (1.11) (1.30) Territorial integrity at stake −3.53*** −3.84*** −2.96*** (0.66) (0.54) (0.86) Agreement strength −0.23 −0.35 −0.32 −0.37 (0.13) (0.23) (0.22) (0.29) Battle consistency −1.85 −7.31* −7.69** −6.78* (1.03) (2.85) (2.89) (3.09) Interrupted war 2.39*** 6.94*** 7.13*** 6.02*** (0.49) (0.95) (1.04) (1.30) Change in relative capabilities 0.88*** 1.29*** 1.24*** 1.33*** (0.15) (0.31) (0.29) (0.38) Military tie 2.25* 4.52 4.17 4.40 (0.92) (2.81) (2.36) (2.69) Cost of war −0.36* −0.87*** −0.87*** −0.94*** (0.16) (0.13) (0.14) (0.15) History of conflict 0.78*** 0.60 0.68 0.73 (0.17) (0.62) (0.54) (0.61) P 0.18 0.33** 0.32** 0.26* (0.13) (0.12) (0.13) (0.12) N 770 770 770 770 BIC 137.9 130.0 130.2 141.0 Log-likelihood −35.7 −31.8 −31.9 −34.0 Note: Standard errors are clustered by conflict and reported in parentheses. * P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. Open in new tab Model 2 in Table 2 incorporates the geographic proximity of adversaries and the issues at stake into Model 1. The effect of territorial acquisition remains consistent even when these factors are controlled for, that is, territorial change results in shorter ceasefires regardless of adversaries being contiguous or of existential and territorial issues at stake. Moreover, in Models 1 and 2, the effect of territorial acquisition is observed with controlling for post-war shifts in relative capabilities. According to the results of Model 2, among variables relating to territories, the geographical contiguity of adversaries does not affect ceasefire durability in a significant manner. In contrast, it was found that ceasefires are less likely to endure when an adversary’s existence as a sovereign state is threatened, although the magnitude of the variable’s substantive effect might be moderate, as is explained later. On the other hand, ceasefires are maintained for a longer period if their territorial integrity, but not existence, is challenged. The contrasting effects of these variables suggest that the more contentious the issue at stake is, the more likely the adversaries are to return to war. Additionally, interrupted wars are found to be associated with shorter ceasefires and wars with consistent battle outcomes tend to be followed by a more durable peace, as Werner and Yuen (2005) demonstrated. However, the analysis presented here is unable to determine whether third parties caused unstable ceasefires or whether particularly unstable ceasefires attracted third-party intervention. Moreover, consistent with Werner (1999), the post-war change in relative capabilities increases the risk of ceasefire breakdown. Furthermore, the greater the cost of the preceding war, the more durable the subsequent ceasefire, which is consistent across all model specifications. Figure 1 visually presents the hazard ratio of each variable estimated from Model 2. It shows that the occurrence of territorial acquisition considerably increases the probability of war resumption. The instantaneous probability of war resumption following territorial acquisition is estimated to be 13 times higher (95% confidence interval [CI] [3.29, 51.66]) than observed in cases involving no territorial change, ceteris paribus. Moreover, the resumption of war appears more likely when existence is at stake, showing the estimated hazard ratio of 12.2 (95% CI [1.12, 131.77]). However, from a substantive point of view, the existential issue might have only a moderate effect on ceasefire duration, taking into account its large standard error. The influence of a shift in relative capabilities appears moderate, considering that a one-unit increase of the variable signifies a very large shift in the balance of power such that the power of one side is doubled in a span of one year. Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide Effects on the likelihood of war resumption. The circles indicate the hazard ratio of each predictor and the line around them shows the 95% confidence interval. The scale of the horizontal axis is adjusted so that the behavior of all variables is substantively and intuitively understandable. Curtailed parts are denoted by vertical double lines. Created from Model 2 in Table 2. Looking at the left side of the figure, territory at stake and battle consistency greatly contribute to stable ceasefire outcomes. In other words, war is less likely to resume if it was fought over issues of territorial integration, annexation, and separatism, but not the existence of country. Adversaries are also less likely to return to war if they are able to infer their balance of power accurately from consistent battle outcomes of the preceding wars. The cost of war also has a non-negligible effect. To give an example of substantive interpretation, the figure shows the effect of the variable when the total number of battle deaths increases from 2,980 to 8,100. 6.2 The potential utility of exchanged territory Hypotheses 2a and 2b are then examined to analyze how the effects of territorial acquisition vary depending on the characteristics of territorial change. Model 3 in Table 2 provides the estimation results of the duration analysis incorporating the size of the acquired territories in occurrences of territorial acquisition. Consistent with the hypothesis, ceasefire breakdown is positively related to the size of the area exchanged between adversaries. The hazard ratio for area is 1.33, with 95% CI [1.20, 1.47]. To give an example, a one-unit increase in area is roughly equivalent to the difference between the Golan Heights (7.4) and West Bank (8.7) acquired by Israel from Syria and Jordan, respectively, through the Six-Day War. Considering that the observed value of area ranges from 5.6 to 12.1 with a mean value of 8.8 for cases involving territorial change, the result suggests that the effect of the variable is substantively important. Model 4 in Table 2 incorporates the density of exchanged territory while dropping area because of their high collinearity (the correlation is 0.91). The result shows that ceasefires are less durable when there is an exchange of more densely populated territory. In cases involving territorial change, the observed value of density varies from 2.1 to 7.4, with a mean value of 4.4. For instance, the density of the Golan Heights was 3.6 and that of the West Bank was 4.7. Hence, the hazard ratio of 1.47, with 95% CI [1.09, 1.98], indicates the variable’s non-negligible effect on ceasefire duration. Next, a graphical representation in Fig. 2 depicts how the population density of the acquired territory affects the likelihood of war resumption over time. The plots report the estimated hazard function (the left column) and the estimated survivor function (the right column) for three scenarios: ceasefires following (i) no territorial acquisition, (ii) acquisition of territories with average density, and (iii) acquisition of territories with the highest density recorded in the dataset. The 95% CIs are not reported for the sake of readability. According to the illustrations, supposing that 10 years (3,650 days) have passed since the war terminated without any territorial change, the likelihood of the ceasefire enduring until then is slightly higher than one following the acquisition of most densely populated territories. After 20 years (7,300 days), the possibility of a ceasefire preceded by the transfer of most densely populated territories remaining intact is much smaller than one involving no territorial change. Figure 2 Open in new tabDownload slide Estimated hazard function and survivor function for density. All other variables are held at their mean values. The 95% CIs are not shown in the plots for the sake of readability. Created from Model 4 in Table 2. 6.3 Discussion The first part of the analysis demonstrates that territorial acquisition increases the likelihood of war resumption and that this effect is not attributed to the contiguity of adversaries, the importance of territorial issues, and the actual shift in relative capabilities. Therefore, the findings suggest that territorial acquisition increases the likelihood of war resumption because it generates a commitment problem by shaping adversaries’ expectations for future power shifts. Potential concerns with the above analysis would be that the results depend on methodological assumptions and influential observations in the dataset. To address the first concern, the same analyses are run using the Cox model. A series of robustness checks are also conducted to control for the effect of possible outliers and influential observations, such as the Sinai War between Israel and Egypt and the First Turco-Cypriot War. The results remain unchanged, and are reported in the Supplementary Material. The second half of the analysis shows that the effect of territorial acquisition varies by territories’ potential utility to empower the victor. In other words, the seizure of large and densely populated territories through war causes less durable ceasefires. An alternative interpretation of the results may be that governing the local population inhabiting a newly acquired territory is more difficult than occupying an underpopulated land. The local population may organize rebellion(s) or work as operatives when the territory’s former ruler wages a counter-offense. More heavily populated territories are thus more difficult to secure control over and are more susceptible to war resumption. Although this study alone cannot reject this possibility, this alternative argument serves as a limited account of failed ceasefires, considering that they are not durable when democratic countries are victorious.3 When lack of effective governance over the occupied territory is the major barrier to a stable ceasefire, democratic countries should be able to promote post-war peace because they tend to have greater state capacity and to provide better governance. However, the supplemental analysis shows the opposite, implying that the main barrier is the victor’s potential for power growth rather than lack of governance. This statistical analysis illuminates the links between territorial acquisition, a commitment problem, and war recurrence. The next section applies this argument to cases in the Asia and Pacific region: the Sino-Vietnamese conflicts over the land border and in the South China Sea. The analysis also complements the statistical analysis, demonstrating that the patterns of their conflicts were affected by the utility of the seized territories in each region. 7 Illustration: Sino-Vietnamese conflicts The People’s Republic of China (hereafter, China) and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (hereafter, the SRV or Vietnam) are known for their long-time rivalry. Although both countries uphold a communist ideology, this commonality has not implied shared interests even during the Cold War. Their disputes are most intensely militarized along their land border, over which they fought two full-scale wars in 1979 and 1987. They have also engaged in less intensified and sporadic militarized disputes over the South China Sea, where armed clashes have happened in 1979 and 1988, and then frequently since 2010. Without doubt, the ceasefires between 1979 and the late 1980s at land and sea greatly differ in terms of the intensity of military actions (wars on land and militarized disputes at sea) and are not readily comparable. However, contrasting them will shed light on the above-mentioned dynamics while holding other factors, such as the presence of the Soviet Union and the ongoing civil war in Cambodia, constant. The First Sino-Vietnamese War broke out on 14 February 1979, when China invaded Vietnam beyond the disputed land border. After China’s extensive invasion and firm resistance by the Vietnamese troops, war was terminated when China announced its withdrawal from the occupied territory in March 1979. Historical accounts disagree on who won the war. Some suggest that ‘[i]t was a total defeat for China’ (Bercovitch and Jackson, 1997, p. 189), whereas others claim that Vietnam lost in terms of war damage (Hood, 1992, p. 59). The war imposed considerable costs on both sides; more than 50,000 soldiers lost their lives and 500,000 people were killed in the war, although contradictory figures are provided by various sources (Hood, 1992, p. xv; Bercovitch and Jackson, 1997, p. 189). Although Beijing and Hanoi initiated peace negotiations immediately after the war, fighting along the border resumed soon after. By early 1981, the number of violent incidents committed by the Chinese allegedly exceeded 4,000 cases, and China accused Vietnam of instigating more than 2,000 armed provocations and the killing of 240 Chinese (Chang, 1986, pp. 79–80). The fighting culminated in January 1987 through a conflict referred to as the Second Sino-Vietnamese War. Confrontations lasted until March 1987, resulting in as many as 3,000, mostly Chinese, fatalities (Bercovitch and Jackson, 1997, p. 216). The dispute over the South China Sea contrasts with the failed ceasefire over the land border. The first confrontation at sea occurred between China and South Vietnam in 1974 when China seized the entire Paracel Islands, and South Vietnam in turn occupied part of the Spratly Islands. After reunification in 1975, the SRV inherited territorial claims and control over the Spratlys from South Vietnam. Then, the first incident between China and the SRV occurred in April 1979 when ‘China seized a Vietnamese reconnaissance boat allegedly conducting sabotage activities in the Paracels’ (Chang, 1986, p. 79). Fighting was limited in intensity and no significant military confrontation was reported in the South China Sea until 1988. Stability broke down in 1988, when a Chinese naval vessel attacked a Vietnamese gunboat near the Spratly Islands, resulting in more than 70 casualties. Thus, the ceasefire terminating the First Sino-Vietnamese War failed quickly, whereas stability was preserved after the armed clash over the South China Sea. As noted above, the two incidents in 1979 significantly differ in intensity and there might be room for argument regarding whether a ‘ceasefire’ occurred in the South China Sea. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that the South China Sea incident did not escalate or recur as opposed to that over the land border. This contrast is even more intriguing considering that a costly and uninterrupted war is commonly considered less prone to recurrence. This study focuses on the utility of seized territories at land and sea. During confrontations along the land border, no large territorial change was reported4; however, China and Vietnam exchanged small but important territories: strategically situated hills along the border. These hills served as strategically important locations from which the occupier shelled the opponent in conflicts that ‘often took the form of artillery duels’. For instance, in mid-1981, ‘the two sides engaged several thousand troops and fought … over a few hills in the Fakashan area of China’s Guangxi region’ (Chang, 1986, pp. 79–80). Similarly, in 1984, ‘Chinese troops proceeded to seize a couple of hilltops that China claimed to be inside Chinese territory but which had been occupied by Vietnam since the war and repeatedly used to shell Chinese border villages for five straight years.’ The offense invoked unprecedented levels of counterattacks by Vietnam ‘in an attempt to recapture the strategic high grounds that Hanoi claimed were inside Vietnamese territory’ (Chang, 1986, pp. 80–81). The main stakes in the South China Sea were underwater oil and mineral reserves. Although the islands also had strategic value, the archipelagos ‘have attracted new attention since the late 1960s when these areas became known as rich in undersea oil deposits’ (Chang, 1986, pp. 14–16). This ambition for oil and minerals was fueled by the global trend of setting exclusive economic zones (EEZs) to include maritime resources. Indeed, when the SRV took over Spratly Islands, ‘Hanoi reportedly had also started to conduct talks with foreign oil companies on the resumption of oil exploration and exploitation in areas adjacent to this archipelago’ (Chang, 1986, p. 28). Therefore, China and Vietnam exchanged two vital territories: strategically located hills and islands containing maritime resources. Although they did not exchange industrial cities as posed in the theoretical argument, the two territories had different implications for future power shifts during the period between 1979 and 1988 as described in the theory: strategically located hills had greater utility in terms of stimulating power shifts than maritime resources, which both China and Vietnam lacked the capacity to exploit. The value of these hills was readily consumable by both countries that could improve their military position by simply consolidating their control over the hills (Carter, 2010). The vitality of these hills was compounded by the underdeveloped economic and military capabilities of the adversaries. Vietnam’s economic performance was unsatisfactory during this period due to the long Vietnam War, poor administrative capacities, and corruption among the political elite. Its economic and military capacities mostly depended on assistance from the Soviet Union (Hood, 1992, p. 66). Although the new leadership that took office in 1986 decided to turn away from a centrally planned economy and toward a market economy through a process of ‘Doi Moi (economic renovation)’, its economic growth was limited during the 1980s. In China, similarly, the economy and society, at large, were devastated by the Cultural Revolution. Although conditions began to change in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping took leadership and applied economic reforms, more than half the population still lived below the poverty line as reported in 1981 (Ravallion and Chen, 2007). China’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita remained at less than $2,000 (in 1990, in US dollars) until 1992.5 For adversaries with limited capacity, the hills were conceived of as an essential source of future power shifts. In contrast to the hills, both China and Vietnam lacked capacities to exploit offshore oil fields in the deep waters of the South China Sea. China was only able to exploit offshore oil from the shallow waters of the Gulf of Tonkin (Lo, 1989, pp. 60–61). To improve its capacity, under the new leadership of Deng Xiaoping, China established the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOON) in 1982, and signed a number of contracts with foreign companies throughout the 1980s (Chang, 1986, p. 72). However, by the early 1980s, their activities were still limited to shallow sea areas in the Tonkin Gulf and off the coast of Hainan Island (Lo, 1989, p. 61). By the end of 1982, China had extended its focus to the South China Sea and installed oil rigs there. Nevertheless, it was not able to initiate actual oil production, even in the Gulf, until 1986 (Hood, 1992, p. 132). Similarly, Vietnam suffered from lack of technological capabilities to extract maritime resources. Although Vietnam and the Soviet Union allegedly installed three or four oil rigs in the Gulf as early as in 1975 and 1976, ‘it was learned that probably only two were actually working’ in 1984. Even in the shallow waters of the Gulf, it was not until April 1986 that ‘the Vietnamese-Soviet drill crews discovered their first major producer … in the Bach Ho (White Tiger) field’. Disappointed by the result, Vietnam considered forging a contract with Western companies, but the USSR did not allow Hanoi to do so (Hood, 1992, pp. 131–133). Interestingly, in contrast to the stability of the South China Sea, a couple of incidents occurred in the Gulf of Tonkin during this period. Quarrels in the Gulf were clearly related to oil exploration in the area: Hanoi warned that ‘if China continued to search for oil in the disputed waters in the Gulf of Tonkin, companies … would have to bear the consequences’ (Hood, 1992, p. 132). In fact, 14 armed Vietnamese boats clashed with Chinese fishing trawlers in the Gulf in 1982. Similarly, in 1983, two Chinese fishing boats operating in the Gulf were attacked by Vietnamese forces (Chang, 1986, pp. 76–77). Also interesting is the fact that the armed clash of 1988 over the South China Sea was preceded by China’s discovery of oil in the Spratlys. Although ‘[u]ntil late 1987, the Spratly potential was largely unknown and unexplored’, the situation drastically changed in November 1987 when ‘China announced it had discovered rich oil and gas deposits under the Spratlys after a survey of 180,000 square kilometers.’ Thus, the successful discovery of the oil reserve appears to have disrupted stability in the area. Hence, the above illustrations suggest that territorial acquisition and the utility of seized territories explain the dynamics of the Sino-Vietnamese conflicts occurring between 1979 and the late 1980s. 8 Conclusions This study demonstrated that territorial acquisition increases the risk of war resumption because it shapes expectations for future shifts in the balance of adversaries’ power and consequently makes peaceful renegotiation more likely to fail because of a commitment problem. The duration analysis of ceasefires following wars occurring between 1946 and 1997 shows that territorial acquisition renders likely resumption of war. Moreover, some types of territorial acquisition pose a more serious commitment problem than others based on the characteristics of the transferred territory: the size and the population density. In short, territorial acquisition that would likely produce a larger future shift in power was demonstrated to be significantly more detrimental to lasting ceasefire. The findings presented here thus contribute to the literature on recurrent war in several respects. First, although disputes over territory have been especially conflictual, the effect of territorial acquisition on recurrent war has been insufficiently studied in the literature. This study filled the gap, demonstrating that territorial acquisition has detrimental effects on post-war peace. Moreover, this study also found that the negative effect of territorial acquisition is not completely attributed to the contiguity of adversaries or the vitality of territorial issues. Another explanation, therefore, was offered. Territorial acquisition generates a commitment problem, which obstructs peaceful renegotiation of ceasefires and causes recurrent war. The study also showed that the effect of territorial acquisition varies depending on the utility of the acquired territory. These findings are somewhat contradictory to intuition-based results. The common belief is that a decisive victory contributes to post-war peace. However, if the size of a victory is defined by the volume of the seized territories as opposed to military outcomes, a significant victory may not lead to post-war peace. The implications of this research extend to current incidents between China and Vietnam over the South China Sea. After several years of peace since 1988, controversy reemerged in 2010 when Chinese forces arrested nine fishermen accused of carrying explosives close to the Paracel Islands (The Associated Press, 2010). This event has been followed by several militarized incidents that were apparently motivated by a desire for maritime resources. Although these incidents are similar to those occurring during the 1970s and 1988s, they have become more frequent than before. Viewed in the framework of this study, this increase in the number of armed clashes over the South China Sea is possibly affected by the economic and technological development of both countries in exploiting maritime resources in deep water areas. It is not argued that the mechanism identified in the current study serves as the sole and complete explanation of the Sino-Vietnamese rivalry to date. Rather, it sheds light on the dynamics of their rivalry revolving around issues of territorial acquisition and their economic development, hoping to advance our understanding of their ongoing dispute and to find a way to prevent it from further escalating. Acknowledgements For helpful comments on this project, the author is grateful to Miao-ling Lin Hasenkamp, David Leblang, Jeffrey Legro, Kazuto Ohtsuki, Anna Pechenkina, Todd Sechser, Allan Stam, Changhe Su, Atsushi Tago, three anonymous reviewers, the editors of International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, and all participants of the 2013 Joint Conference of International Studies Association and Peace Science Society, the 2013 Kobe Sakura Meeting, the 2017 Annual Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, and the Workshop at Fudan University. The author also thanks Virginia Page Fortna for making her dataset available online. Special acknowledgement goes to Daichi Yamada for his research assistance. This research was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI 15K1699805. Footnotes 1 The list of cases provided by Fortna (2004) is supplemented by the author in reference to the Expanded War Data (v.2.1) listed in Gleditsch (2004). 2 The dataset can be downloaded from http://www.columbia.edu/~vpf4/peacetime.htm (24 February 2018, date last accessed). 3 Corresponding results are reported in the Supplementary Material. 4 No territorial exchange was identified in the dataset. However, this omission does not seriously undermine the validity of the statistical analysis, because at worst it would only cause an underestimation of the effect of territorial change. 5 The Maddison-Project, available at http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/oriindex.htm, 2013 version (24 February 2018, date last accessed). References Beardsley K. ( 2008 ) ‘ Agreement without peace? International mediation and time inconsistency problems’, American Journal of Political Science , 52 ( 4 ), 723 – 740 . 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This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact [email protected] © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan Association of International Relations.

Fatton, Lionel, P

2019 International Relations of the Asia-Pacific

doi: 10.1093/irap/lcy006

Abstract Japan is on the verge of what would be a dramatic shift in defense posture. The ‘spear and shield’ structure of the US–Japan alliance, at the center of its security policy for most of the postwar era, is being revamped by a move toward autonomous defense. Why would a country confined to a largely passive and Americanocentrist posture for more than half a century suddenly change course? I argue that autonomy is for Japan the only way out of an unprecedented ‘entrapment-abandonment dilemma’: any attempt to prevent defection by the United States in the face of an increasingly assertive China heightens to an unacceptable level the risk of Japan being dragged into a US-led conflict in the Korean Peninsula, and vice versa. Japan’s ability to wield the spear would likely have destabilizing consequences for the whole Asia-Pacific region. Since its defeat during the Second World War, Japan has relied on the overwhelming military power and offensive projection capabilities of the United States. The country has maintained an ‘exclusively defensive defense’ policy that precludes military potential in excess of the minimum necessary for self-defense. This alliance structure, labelled ‘spear and shield’, is changing. Japan recently reorganized its Self-Defense Forces (SDF), resulting in greater jointness between ground, air, and naval branches. Tokyo also approved the creation of an amphibious brigade and is planning for the acquisition of strike capabilities. Altogether, these developments indicate that Japan’s defense posture is on the verge of an unprecedented transformation toward greater autonomy from the United States. A new spear could be emerging in East Asia. The topic is important because Japan’s move toward autonomous defense may have destabilizing consequences for the whole Asia-Pacific region. A more autonomous Japan may jolt the alliance with the United States and generate tensions between the two allies due to the growing US fear of being entrapped in a Sino-Japanese conflict. Japan’s new defense posture may also damage relations with neighboring countries, China in particular. Beijing fears more than anything the revival of Japanese militarism and regards Japan’s growing autonomy as a warning sign. The question is: How could it be that a country confined to the same passive and Americanocentrist defense posture for more than half a century suddenly changes course? In this article, I argue that the explanation lies in a combination of specific regional threats and intra-alliance dynamics. Until recently, Japan used the classic strategy of alliance management to guarantee its security. When the country feared entrapment in US-led conflicts, it put forward the pacifism and antimilitarism of its population to resist embroilment. In periods of doubt about US security commitments, Japan played a more active role within the alliance framework to show the United States its value as an ally. For the first time today Japan faces the simultaneous prospects of entrapment and abandonment: the former in regard to growing tensions in the Korean Peninsula and the latter vis-à-vis an increasingly assertive China. In this context, the past alliance management strategy is counterproductive and even dangerous. Any attempt to prevent abandonment increases the risk of entrapment to an unacceptable level and vice versa. A more autonomous defense posture is the only way out of this ‘entrapment-abandonment dilemma’. By reducing Japan’s dependence on the alliance, greater autonomy reduces the fear and cost of potential abandonment by the United States. It also mitigates the risk of entrapment by strengthening Tokyo’s bargaining power and control on US decision-making process related to a possible Korean contingency. This article proceeds as follows. I first review the academic debate on the evolution of Japan’s security policy and lay down my argument based on the literature on alliances. The second section analyses the evolution of Japan’s defense posture during the Cold War and its most recent developments in light of the argument, and highlights the domestic constraints the country faces in reaching full-fledged autonomous defense. The article concludes by discussing the implications of Japan’s move toward autonomy for the alliance with the United States and regional dynamics. 1 Theoretical basis of Japan’s autonomous defense In this section, I provide an overview of the Japanese security policy since 1945 and discuss how scholars have explained its most recent evolution. I intend to show that the large majority of scholars emphasizes the constraining effect of domestic norms of antimilitarism and pacifism and takes Japan’s reliance on the alliance with the United States as a given. I then build my argument on Tokyo’s move toward autonomous defense, which challenges the insistence on both the alliance and norms, based on the academic literature on alliances. 1.1 Overview of Japan’s security policy since 1945 Having been disarmed by the occupying powers, Japan agreed in the 1951 Mutual Security Treaty to provide the United States with basing rights on its territory in exchange for security guarantees, which were officially granted by Washington at the time of the revision of the treaty in 1960 (Calder, 2009). The establishment of the SDF in 1954, promoted by Washington in view of the evolving geopolitical situation in East Asia, was accompanied by a parliament resolution that banned the dispatch of troops overseas. In 1956, the government decided not to recognize the right of collective self-defense, or coming to the aid of the United States in cases Japan itself was not attacked (Tsuchiyama, 2007). Finally, the 1957 Basic Policy for National Defense confined the SDF to an ‘exclusively defensive defense’ posture that precluded the possession of a military potential in excess of the minimum necessary for self-defense (Samuels, 2007, 65). Thereby was born the asymmetric ‘spear and shield’ alliance structure. The United States used bases in Japan to protect the country and project military power around the globe. Japan provided host nation support to US forces and defended its territory through a static military posture, while being unable to assist the United States abroad. This allowed Tokyo to focus on the pursuit of economic power and of a multi-dimensional and cooperative approach to security while relying largely on the United States for national defense (Singh, 2013). This security arrangement put Japan in a position of strong dependency on the United States and led to international immobilism. Japan became more active after the end of the Cold War by dispatching troops overseas in UN-mandated missions. During the summer of 1991, after the end of the First Gulf War, the country sent minesweepers in the Persian Gulf. The SDF were then dispatched to various locations as parts of UN peacekeeping operations, starting in 1992 with Cambodia (Tsuchiyama, 2007). In the late 1990s, a series of regional crises led Tokyo and Washington to revise the guidelines for the operationalization of their alliance. This allowed Japan to provide rear-area support to US forces, both on the Japanese territory and around Japan but out of combat zones, in the event of regional contingencies with important consequences on Japan’s security (Singh, 2013). The geographical and situational scope of the use of the SDF was expanding. Japan continued to enhance its international role during the 2000s. In response to the 9/11 terror attacks, Tokyo sent warships in the Indian Ocean to provide fuel to the US-led coalition in Afghanistan for the first SDF dispatch related to an active combat situation since the Second World War (Oros and Tatsumi, 2010). Two years later, ground troops were sent to Iraq following the lightning invasion of the country by the United States, the first time since 1945 that Japanese soldiers were deployed in a country at war (Yasutomo, 2014). Major security reforms were undertaken during the first half of the 2010s. The first ever national security strategy released in 2013 posited Japan as a ‘proactive contributor to peace’ destined for greater international involvement (Government of Japan, 2013). In July 2014, the government reinterpreted the constitution to allow for the exercise of the right of collective self-defense, previously understood as going beyond the minimum necessary for self-defense (Government of Japan, 2014). Finally, Japan and the United States revised their alliance’s guidelines in April 2015 and recognized its ‘global nature’ and the need to cooperate ‘from peacetime to contingencies’ (Ministry of Defense, 2015). As such, the guidelines provided the SDF with the ability to cooperate without geographical or time constraint with US forces. 1.2 Academic debate on Japan’s security policy Japan’s security policy since 1945 has puzzled scholars. Its evolution over the last two and a half decades is particularly remarkable when compared to the immobilism of the Cold War era. Recently, the academic debate has revolved primarily around the magnitude and direction of this evolution. There is a near consensus that Japan continues to rely on the alliance with the United States for its security and that the Japanese norms of antimilitarism and pacifism still impede security reforms. Scholars disagree, however, on both the resilience over time of these norms and the way they steer Japan’s policy. A first group of constructivist-oriented scholars argues that Japan’s security policy is deeply embedded in domestic norms of antimilitarism and pacifism (Katzenstein and Okawara, 1993; Katzenstein, 1996; Berger, 1998; Hook and McCormack, 2005; Friman et al., 2006; Oros, 2008). These norms act as powerful normative constraints that inhibit the use of the SDF in foreign policy and feed popular skepticism toward the military institution. In other words, domestic norms mitigate and even neutralize incentives for a more muscular security policy coming from regional threats. Consequently, Japan’s policy since the end of the Cold War remains relatively unchanged and characterized by its reliance on the US–Japan alliance, a minimalist use of the SDF, and an emphasis on economic instruments and international cooperation to guarantee national security (Hook, 2003; Ishizuka, 2008; Takao, 2008; Hagström and Williamson, 2009; Midford, 2011; Yasutomo, 2014). This does not mean that these scholars fail to account for recent developments. They argue that Japan is today more actively embarked on the path to cosmopolitanism and multilateralism. Thomas Berger defines Japan as a ‘liberal adaptive state’ that has adopted a ‘liberal philosophy of international relations’ in which economic and diplomatic contributions to international peace are central (Berger, 2007, 260–261). In the same vein, Daisuke Akimoto labels Japan a ‘global pacifist state’ while Bhubhindar Singh talks about the emergence in Japan of an ‘international-state security identity’ (Akimoto, 2013, 12; Singh, 2013, 3). Another group of realist-minded scholars interprets the evolution of Japan’s security policy as a sign of its reemergence as a ‘normal’ country able and willing to use military power in foreign policy.1 Post-Cold War developments, in particular the decline of US hegemony, the rise of China, and North Korea’s nuclearization, drive Japan to balance harder against potential opponents by transforming its colossal economic power into military might (Menon, 1997; Dupont, 2005; Kliman, 2006; Hughes and Krauss, 2007; Pyle, 2007; Samuels, 2007; Shinoda, 2007; Hornung, 2014). Changes in security policy are nonetheless mitigated by enduring US security guarantees, the superiority of the alliance’s defensive weapons, and the advantageous geostrategic situation of Japan as an island (Heginbotham and Samuels, 1998; Twomey, 2000; Green, 2001). A large majority of these scholars also recognizes the constraining effect of the domestic norms of antimilitarism and pacifism. Though these norms are not as inhibiting and resilient for realists as they are for their constructivist counterparts, they account for the incremental nature of Japanese security reforms. A representative example is Andrew Oros, who argues that Japan’s ‘security renaissance’ during the 2006–16 period was disciplined by the historical legacies of ‘contested memories of the Pacific War and imperial Japan, [and] postwar antimilitarist security practices’ (Oros, 2017, 2–3). Most realists also share with constructivists the view that the alliance with the United States remains central to Japan’s security policy (Funabashi, 1998; Okazaki, 2003; Gronning, 2014; Hughes, 2014; Oros, 2017). One exception is offensive realists. Because Japan is expected to be joining, again, the race for global hegemony, domestic norms are not significant constraining factors and Tokyo is doomed to seek autonomy from Washington (Mearsheimer, 2001). Another exception is Christopher Hughes in his latest work. He labels Japan’s security policy under Prime Minister Shinzō Abe as ‘resentful realism’ and argues that the combination of domestic revisionism, the fear of China’s rise, and a lack of trust in US security commitments ‘may generate impulses towards more independent national military action by Japan, facilitated by new autonomous capabilities’ (Hughes, 2016, 150).2 My conclusion regarding the future shape of Japan’s security policy is relatively similar to offensive realists and Hughes. I reach this conclusion by taking a different path, however. I argue that Japan seeks security, not hegemony, and that Shinzō Abe’s revisionist orientation is not a determining factor in the move toward autonomous defense. Rather, Japan’s new defense posture is explained by the fact that the country faces the simultaneous prospects of entrapment and abandonment by the United States in a context of growing tensions in the East China Sea and the Korean Peninsula. 1.3 Autonomous defense as a response to the ‘entrapment-abandonment dilemma’ Realist scholars view alliances as an instrument that helps countries maximize their security.3 Under anarchy, countries respond to threats or imbalances in power distribution by self-arming or coalescing in order to aggregate power, or both (Waltz, 1979; Altfeld, 1984; Walt, 1987; Conybeare, 1994b; Sorokin, 1994). Alliances are ad hoc responses to specific international developments and the result of a cost/benefit calculus made by rational actors, where benefits relate to increased security and the main cost to a decline in autonomy due to security commitments toward partners (Conybeare, 1994a; Snyder, 1997). Institutionalists have disputed this assertion that alliances fulfill only a capability aggregation function, however. They can also be used to handle intra-alliance conflicts, control allies, and share information on security-related matters (Morrow, 1991; McCalla, 1996; Wallander, 2000; Weitsman, 2004). Most often, the capability aggregation function of alliances cohabits with the governance function (Schroeder, 1976; Wallander and Keohane, 1999; Pressman, 2008). The respective importance for allies of these functions depends chiefly on the level of external threat. An acute threat from a third country reveals the significance of the capability aggregation function, while the absence of external threat leads allies to focus on intra-alliance governance. The primary function of the US–Japan alliance since its inception has mostly been capability aggregation, though the governance function has at times dominated like in the early 1990s when trade frictions preoccupied the two countries more than external threats (Singh, 2013). When the capability aggregation function prevails, the alliance management strategy revolves around the risks of abandonment and entrapment (Mandelbaum, 1981; Cha, 1999). A country fears abandonment when it doubts its ally’s security guarantees in the face of adversity. The absence of a central authority able to enforce the terms of alliances implies that the observance of the agreement depends chiefly on the ally’s interests.4 If its core interests are not at stake in the dispute, the credibility of its security guarantees appears weak. This is even more so when fighting is expected to be costly, the record of the ally’s past behavior contains failures to honor commitments, and the ally and the opponent share common interests. The abandoning ally may abrogate the alliance, fail to fulfill its commitments when the casus foederis occurs, or provide minimal military support or only diplomatic backing (Snyder, 1997; Beckley, 2015). The country that fears abandonment generally tries to show its value as a partner in order to reduce the ally’s incentive to defect (Snyder, 1997). It can concede a renegotiation of the alliance in the ally’s favor, strengthen its general support to the ally, back the latter in specific crises outside the scope of the alliance, or use any other means that help move closer to the ally. The fear of being entrapped comes from the possibility that one would have to fight in support of its ally for the defense of interests it does not share (Snyder, 1997). The country anxious about entrapment values the preservation of the alliance more than it worries about the prospect of conflict, reason why it could be dragged into war for the respect of its security commitments (Benson, 2012). Entrapment anxiety is thus rooted in the loss of autonomy that accompanies the conclusion of alliances. In most cases countries respond to this fear by distancing themselves from their allies in order to keep out of the conflict trap (Snyder, 1997). This can be done by reducing one’s security commitments, enacting domestic regulations on the use of force at variance with alliance obligations, or threatening the ally to withhold support in case of war. Measures taken to prevent abandonment increase the risk of entrapment, and vice versa (Snyder, 1997; Cha, 1999). A country that gets closer to its ally runs a greater risk of being dragged into war. Not only is the country more tightly aligned with the ally, the latter is also more confident of receiving support and may act recklessly. Inversely, a country that takes its distance to avoid entrapment is more likely to be abandoned because its value as an ally declines. To maximize security, allied countries must strike the right balance between anti-abandonment and anti-entrapment policies depending on which risk dominates at a given period.5 When a country faces the concurrent prospects of entrapment and abandonment, however, this classic strategy of alliance management is counterproductive and even dangerous. The notion of simultaneity of risks has escaped scholars’ attention because of their focus on a configuration made of two allies facing a single opponent or a homogenous alliance. In the presence of two or more opponents, anti-abandonment measures taken in the face of what a country perceives as the most hostile opponent endanger its security, because they increase to an unacceptable level the risk of being dragged by the ally into war against another opponent not considered as a priority. Inversely, if measures are taken to preclude entrapment in a conflict of secondary importance, the alliance’s deterrent power against the country’s primary security concern weakens and invites aggression. In other words, a balance between anti-abandonment and anti-entrapment policies cannot be reached. Because it reduces vulnerability to both abandonment and entrapment, greater autonomy in national defense is the only way out of this ‘entrapment-abandonment dilemma’. Greater autonomy is here understood as the replacement, through one’s own means, of certain defense functions previously fulfilled by the ally. If it is assumed that countries seek to maximize their security, a more autonomous defense posture implies some sort of military buildup and may at times require an institutional reorganization of armed forces. Abandonment anxiety is about losing power relative to one’s opponent. If a country is more self-sufficient in terms of defense, abandonment is less of a concern because the relative power decline caused by its ally’s potential defection would be smaller and have fewer consequences on national security.6 A more autonomous country can also better resist entrapment. The failure to honor commitments, or the threat to do so, is less consequential as the main fallout is the weakening or collapse of an alliance now less important for national security. Moreover, greater autonomy makes entrapment less likely by increasing one’s bargaining power toward the ally. Because the country’s dependence on the alliance declines, and the ally’s dependence increases, the former can more easily restrain the latter and keep events under control in times of crisis. Moving toward a more autonomous defense posture does not necessarily mean that the alliance is discarded. Actually, countries often operate on both fronts. As Stephen Walt notes, ‘a state whose security position is threatened will probably attempt to increase its relative power (e.g., by spending more on defense) while simultaneously seeking an alliance with another state’ (Walt, 1987, 9). Military buildup and the move toward autonomy can thus occur alongside the perpetuation of the alliance. This is particularly the case when domestic factors impede the swift transition toward full-fledged autonomy. 2 A new spear in Asia In this section I analyze the evolution of Japan’s security policy since the inception of the US–Japan alliance in light of the argument developed above. I first show that the country used the classic strategy of alliance management throughout the Cold War and that security initiatives in the 1990s and 2000s were not significant departures from this strategy. I then discuss the latest developments and Japan’s move toward autonomous defense. 2.1 Classic strategy of alliance management during the Cold War The risks of entrapment and abandonment were institutionalized in 1960 by the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. Article 5 enshrined US security commitments and Article 6 set forth the maintenance of peace in East Asia through the use of US military assets in Japan as a goal of the alliance (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1960). Over the next 50 years, Tokyo alternated between the fear of being entrapped in US-led conflicts under Article 6 and concerns that the United States could fail to fulfill its Article 5 obligations. It does not mean that one type of fear, entrapment or abandonment, was totally absent when the other was high, but rather that tackling the dominant fear did not increase the other to an unacceptable level. The classic strategy of alliance management worked well during this period to protect Japan against the Soviet and Chinese threats. The Cold War can be divided into two: the entrapment anxiety dominated until the early 1970s, when it was replaced by the fear of being abandoned (Midford, 2011). Early Cold War tensions increased the value of Japan as an ally. In addition to being the bulwark of democracy against the spread of communism in Asia, the United States needed the bases located on its territory to project military power into the region. The risk of abandonment was low for Japan (Shinoda, 2011). On the other hand, the prospect of being dragged into war grew during the 1960s due to deepening US involvement in Vietnam. The ports of Yokosuka and Sasebo developed into key US military logistics hubs and Tokyo became anxious about US demands for greater engagement. Japanese leaders put forward legislative brakes to resist entrapment in a conflict where no national interest was at stake. They based their plea chiefly on Article 9 of the US-imposed Japanese constitution of 1947 that precluded the use of armed forces to settle international disputes (Akimoto, 2013). Prime Minister Eisaku Satō also enacted a series of new brakes. He proclaimed in 1967 a ban on arms export to certain countries including, in an obvious reference to the United States, those involved in international conflicts. A few months later the three principles of non-possession, non-production, and non-introduction of nuclear weapons were unveiled to ensure that Japan would not become the Asian launch pad of US strategic forces (Oros, 2008). Lastly, the Diet adopted in 1969 a resolution to prevent Japan from being involved in US-led military activities in outer space. The fear of abandonment then replaced the fear of entrapment. The transition truly began in July 1971 when were revealed the completed secret visit to China of National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and the forthcoming visit of President Richard Nixon (Calder, 2009). This diplomatic breakthrough, made without prior consultation with Japan, ignited concern that the United States could neglect its traditional ally. The fear was particularly acute because the Sino-US rapprochement came only two years after Richard Nixon proclaimed the Guam Doctrine, by which he meant that US allies should provide for their own defense (Christensen, 2011). The subsequent 1973 Paris peace agreement that led to US withdrawal from Vietnam further alarmed Tokyo about the prospect of being abandoned amidst a rapidly evolving regional environment (Tsuchiyama, 2007). Japan tackled this abandonment anxiety by proactively supporting the United States in countering the growing Soviet naval power in Asia. The first ever guidelines for the operationalization of the US–Japan alliance, issued in 1978, opened the door to expanded Japanese responsibilities in East Asia (Ministry of Defense, 1978). In 1981, Prime Minister Zenkō Suzuki pledged to assign the SDF new missions complementary to US forces’. The SDF would be responsible for controlling Japanese chokepoint straits to prevent the Soviet Navy from entering the Western Pacific and for protecting sea lines of communication up to 1,000 nautical miles from Japanese coasts (Michishita et al., 2016). Yasuhiro Nakasone, premier between 1982 and 1987, aimed at transforming Japan into an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ for the United States by boosting SDF capabilities (Akimoto, 2013, 74). By the end of the decade, the SDF were endowed with cutting-edge anti-submarine warfare capabilities and a navy larger than Britain’s Royal Navy. 2.2 Classic strategy of alliance management in the post-Cold War era The fear of abandonment continued to dominate in Tokyo after the Cold War. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the primary rationale for US military commitments in Asia disappeared and Japanese leaders feared the country could turn isolationist (Mochizuki, 2007). Japan also proved an unreliable ally because of restrictive legislations on the use of the SDF. The country did not put boots on the ground during the First Gulf War, and Washington realized during the North Korean nuclear crisis of 1993–94 that Japan could not do more than to provide bases for US forces in case of regional contingency (Shinoda, 2011). Tokyo again reacted by moving closer to its ally. In 1996, Prime Minister Ryūtarō Hashimoto and President Bill Clinton issued a joint communiqué in which Japan pledged rear-area support to the United States and agreed to expand the geographical scope of the alliance to the ‘Asia-Pacific region’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1996). The alliance guidelines released one year later replaced the term ‘Asia-Pacific region’ by the ambiguous ‘situations in areas surrounding Japan’ because of China’s opposition amidst tensions in the Taiwan Strait (Ministry of Defense, 1997). It remains that the guidelines were the first policy document that mandated the SDF to play an active role in regional contingencies (Midford, 2011). International developments in the early 2000s pushed Japan’s abandonment anxiety to new heights. The global review of US military posture initiated by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in November 2001 highlighted the vulnerability of troops forward-deployed in East Asia in the face of growing North Korean and Chinese missile capabilities. Japanese leaders feared this could lead to a large reduction of US forces in Japan and a weakening of US commitments (Sato, 2013). In the meantime, the United States had responded to the 9/11 terror attacks with military interventions in Afghanistan, and then in Iraq where a ‘coalition of the willing’ was formed. Tokyo viewed with a jaundiced eye this model of informal and flexible coalition that could eventually replace formal frameworks like the US–Japan alliance (Samuels, 2007). Japan could not stay on the sideline of the War on Terror and had to show its value as an ally. From late 2001 to 2010, Japanese warships were sent to the Indian Ocean for a refueling mission in support of the US-led coalition fighting in Afghanistan (Singh, 2013). Tokyo also dispatched ground troops to Iraq from 2004 to 2006 (Yasutomo, 2014). More important, Japan and the United States embarked on a comprehensive review of the alliance structure that led to the release of the Roadmap for Realignment Implementation in May 2006. The document triggered the deepest integration process ever between the armed forces of the two countries, effectively transforming Japan into ‘a frontline American command post’ (Calder, 2009, 148). Japan stuck to the classic strategy of alliance management and its post-Cold War security policy remained fundamentally Americanocentrist. The country became more active internationally and made greater use of the SDF abroad in order to show its value as an ally and prevent abandonment by the United States. This proved to be effective in tackling the two biggest threats to national security after the collapse of the Soviet Union, namely China and North Korea. China was primarily a long-term geopolitical threat. The country gradually eclipsed Japan economically and became the world’s second largest economy in 2010. China also overtook Japan in terms of defense budget in 2004 and spends today at least three times more than its neighbor on security (Oros, 2017). This rapidly growing defense budget translated into an expanded power projection capability that threatened the Japanese mainland as well as vital sea lanes through the South China Sea (Bush, 2010). The worry was the eventual finlandization of Japan, China reaching a level of influence that would deprive Tokyo from its independence in foreign policy. Japan could not weigh against China alone. Tokyo worked to maintain a close relationship with the United States in order to offset Chinese regional influence and prevent a Sino-US rapprochement at its expense. The North Korean threat rose to prominence in 1993 with the test of the first ballistic missile capable of reaching Japan and continued to grow over the next two decades with countless missile and ultimately nuclear tests. Again, Tokyo could not face this threat alone. The United States helped Japan build its missile defense system, made of sea- and ground-based interceptors, through a joint development program started in 1998 (Samuels, 2007). Because of its ‘exclusively defensive defense’ posture and anti-nuclear stance, Japan also needed the backing of US strike and nuclear capabilities to strengthen deterrence with the ability to punish Pyongyang (Kaneda et al., 2007). Lastly, Japan had to cooperate with the United States, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, to pressure North Korea with international sanctions (Akutsu, 2015). 2.3 The move toward autonomous defense Japan is today on the verge of what would be a rupture as its defense posture is moving toward greater autonomy from the United States. Like other norms relevant to Japan’s security policy, antimilitarism and pacifism notably, autonomy takes its roots in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Prime ministers Hitoshi Ashida, Ichirō Hatoyama, and Nobusuke Kishi, among others, viewed Japan’s dependence on the United States as a disgrace and pleaded for rearmament and more autonomy (Singh, 2013). Until recently, however, the international context was not favorable to the materialization of that standpoint. The evolutions of the Chinese and North Korean threats have changed this state of affairs. The primarily geopolitical and long-term Chinese menace has become a concrete threat to territorial integrity. Though Japan and China have had competing claims over the Japanese-controlled Senkaku/Diaoyu islands since the 1970s, the conflict intensified only recently and raised bilateral tensions to their highest level in seven decades (Oros, 2017). The collision in September 2010 between a Chinese trawler and two Japanese coast guard vessels triggered a major diplomatic crisis during which the weak-kneed behavior of the Japanese government was criticized domestically (Smith, 2014). Tokyo hardened its stance and in September 2012 nationalized three islets of the disputed islands group. Beijing has since then stepped up anti-Japanese rhetoric, established an air defense identification zone over the Senkaku/Diaoyu in November 2013, and regularly sends vessels and aircraft around the islands (Fatton, 2013). The US–Japan alliance remains important to deter China from resorting to force. The alliance’s deterrent power is weakening, however, despite the US rebalance to Asia policy announced under the presidency of Barack Obama and apparently embraced by President Donald Trump. Deterrence is about the capability and resolve to make good on threatened reprisals in case the opponent crosses the red line. And from Tokyo’s perspective, both US capability and resolve are diminishing. It is unclear whether the United States has the financial ability to rebalance to Asia. This was illustrated by the 2013 government shutdown, which symbolically forced Barack Obama to cancel a visit to Southeast Asia (Kotani, 2015). US capacity to protect Japan is also being jeopardized. US military assets in East Asia are increasingly vulnerable to Chinese missiles and aircraft. This leads Washington to disperse its forces across Asia and reduce concentration in the northeast, as exemplified by the planned relocation of thousands of US Marines from Okinawa to Guam and Hawaii (Kotani, 2015). The evolution of military technology toward greater mobility and longer-range strike capabilities theoretically allows the United States to protect Japan from outside East Asia. The anti-access/area-denial strategy developed by Beijing endangers this ability, however (Hughes, 2014). To defend Japan against China is becoming prohibitively costly for the United States. Tokyo also doubts US resolve to meddle militarily in a conflict over the Senkaku/Diaoyu. The tiny and uninhabited islands hold no strategic or emotional significance to the United States (Resnick, 2014). Moreover, China is expected to resort to a ‘gray zone’ strategy using paramilitaries to invade the islands while remaining below the war threshold, and Japanese leaders did not fail to notice US passivity toward a similar invasion by Russia of southeastern Ukraine in 2014 (Oros, 2017). Lastly, Washington’s communication on the Senkaku/Diaoyu issue is ambiguous. Barack Obama became in April 2014 the first US president to state that the islands were covered by Article 5 of the alliance, but hastened to add that he was not drawing a red line and that he wanted a peaceful solution and the maintenance of good relations with Beijing (Hughes, 2015). After all, China is the United States’ biggest trading partner. Tokyo’s fear of being abandoned by the United States has reached an unprecedented level with the escalation of the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute. This has again led Japan to enact security reforms that enhance its value as an ally. Unlike in the past, however, these reforms have increased to an unacceptable level the risk that the country would be dragged into a war on the Korean Peninsula, where tensions between Washington and Pyongyang have skyrocketed since Donald Trump assumed presidency in January 2017. Japan’s hardline diplomatic stance toward North Korea does not contradict the fact that entrapment anxiety dominates in Tokyo. It rather reflects Japanese leaders’ distrust in a non-coercive approach to the North Korean headache and their belief that the situation could spiral out of control if Pyongyang is not constrained by sanctions and a strong deterrent posture. The ban on defending the United States if Japan is not itself attacked has helped Tokyo resist potential entrapment in a Korean conflict despite the presence on its territory of US troops and of the United Nations Command-Rear, which would be activated in case of contingency (Sakata, 2011). Japan’s capacity to resist entrapment is almost nil today. The July 2014 constitutional reinterpretation allows for the exercise of the right of collective self-defense under certain conditions, including the need for Tokyo to have a ‘close relationship’ with the country attacked and for Japan’s ‘survival’ to be endangered (Government of Japan, 2014). These conditions cannot be but fulfilled if war breaks out on the peninsula. Tokyo’s refusal to grant substantive military support to the United States would be purely political and significantly weaken if not ruin the alliance, an absurd perspective given the tense situation in the East China Sea. Japan’s security reforms go beyond enhanced wartime cooperation with the United States. The bills adopted by the Diet in September 2015 and enforced in March 2016 allow the SDF to back and protect US forces when the latter engage in peacetime activities beneficial to the defense of Japan. SDF vessels have refueled US ships involved in monitoring missions related to North Korean missile launches since May 2017, and that month a Japanese warship escorted a US supply boat for the first time (Doi, 2017). In September, the SDF practiced deploying anti-ballistic missile systems to protect US bases in Japan (Fujita, 2017). These new military roles heighten considerably the risk of entrapment amid mounting tensions in the Korean Peninsula. Under the new legislation, not only may Japan be required to intercept a missile aiming at US homeland or US bases in Japan or the Pacific, the decision to respond to an attack on US forces is also, under certain circumstances, at the discretion of SDF field commanders (Ueki, 2015). The classic strategy of alliance management has reached its limit and puts Japan in an increasingly unbearable ‘entrapment-abandonment dilemma’. Though, because of the domestic constraints discussed below, the country cannot be expected to quit the alliance with the United States in the foreseeable future, it is moving toward greater autonomy on both the Chinese and North Korean fronts to ease abandonment and entrapment anxieties. Tokyo reacted quickly on the Chinese front. The late 2010 National Defense Program Guidelines introduced the concept of ‘gray zone’ incident, shifted the SDF posture to southwest islands, and called for a flexible and mobile ‘dynamic defense force’ (Ministry of Defense, 2010). The revised guidelines released in December 2013 went further in advocating for jointness between the three services of the SDF through the establishment of a ‘dynamic joint defense force’ (Ministry of Defense, 2013). In regard to the Senkaku/Diaoyu, this increasing jointness translated into the development of amphibious warfare capabilities. The 2013 defense guidelines provided for the creation by early 2018 of an ‘amphibious rapid deployment brigade’ expected to be a first step toward larger forces (Kotani, 2015). Though the development of amphibious capabilities is still in its early stages, it reflects Japan’s growing autonomy as the country has so far depended on US Marines for the protection and recovery of remote islands. Tokyo reduces the fear and cost of possible abandonment by the United States in the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute by becoming more self-sufficient in terms of defense. The increasing jointness between the three branches of the SDF can be viewed as the extrapolation of this dynamics at the national level. On the North Korean front Japanese leaders are planning for the acquisition of strike capabilities, which are today provided by the United States under the ‘spear and shield’ alliance structure. Their likely procurement would signal a drastic change in Japan’s defense posture. Not only would Japan more decisively embark on the path to independence from the United States, the traditional ‘exclusively defensive defense’ policy would also be severely undermined (Kaneda et al., 2007). The debate on strike capabilities is not new and dates back to discussions in the 1950s on what kind of assets the newly established SDF should be endowed with (Oros, 2017). The question surfaced at regular intervals during the 1990s and 2000s in response to North Korean provocations, notably the 1998 launch of a long-range ballistic missile over Japan, the 2002–03 nuclear crisis, and the first and second nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. Until recently, however, serious discussions focused on whether Tokyo could legally ask the United States to preemptively strike North Korean missile bases in case of imminent threat. Deliberations about the acquisition and use of strike capabilities by Japan itself remained vague and mostly centered around a possible ‘right of preemptive self-defense’ and other legal issues (Samuels, 2007; Bush, 2010). The debate has become more concrete in recent months. In March 2017, the security panel of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party handed to Prime Minister Shinzō Abe a report that called for ‘immediately’ considering the purchase of capabilities to strike back if Japan is attacked (Aibara, 2017). The newly appointed Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, who had been the head of the panel that released the March report, said in August he had been instructed by Shinzō Abe to reexamine the 2013 defense guidelines, a necessary step toward the acquisition of strike capabilities because of the far-reaching consequences on Japan’s defense posture (Japan Times, 2017). Lastly, in December, the government secured 2.16 billion yen for the purchase of long-range cruise missiles to be mounted on F-35 stealth fighters (Tanaka, 2017). The possession of strike capabilities would mitigate the risk of entrapment in a Korean conflict by increasing Tokyo’s bargaining power and control over US military initiatives. The power imbalance between the two allies implies Japan’s heavy reliance on the United States and ultimately US operational command (Midford, 2011). With the ability to intervene on the peninsula, Japan could better restrain potentially destabilizing US military moves by having closer scrutiny of operational matters related to the Korean issue. A report issued in August 2010 by a government-mandated research council claimed that greater engagement in joint operations with the United States would lead to ‘expanding the scope of information-sharing between Japan and the US and deepening Japan’s involvement in the decision-making process on individual operations’ (Council on Security and Defense, 2010, 37). By acquiring strike capabilities, Japan would also address the possibility of abandonment by the United States. Because Pyongyang is getting closer to being able to threaten US homeland with nuclear weapons, as exemplified by successful nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests during the summer and fall 2017, the Gaullist concern that the United States may hesitate to put Los Angeles at risk to protect Tokyo is growing among Japanese leaders (Oros, 2017). Strike capabilities would allow Japan to better resist North Korean nuclear and missile blackmail by providing the capacity to punish Pyongyang, and thus more control on crisis escalation. Chiefly because of its more abstract nature, abandonment anxiety vis-à-vis North Korea is much weaker than the above-mentioned fear of entrapment. Nonetheless, though the ‘entrapment-abandonment dilemma’ faced by Japan is primarily rooted in a regional environment characterized by evolving Chinese and North Korean threats, it is to some extent also present at the sub-regional level in the Korean Peninsula. Finally, strike capabilities would reduce abandonment anxiety vis-à-vis China. Like amphibious assets, they would help Japan establish a more self-sufficient defense posture around the Senkaku/Diaoyu. Cruise missiles would allow Tokyo to formulate an autonomous anti-access/area-denial strategy aimed at deterring China from challenging Japan’s administration of the disputed islands by force. Though North Korea is the main rationale behind the purchase of cruise missiles, the Chinese factor also enters into the equation. 2.4 Domestic constraints on autonomous defense With increasing jointness between the three SDF services, the development of amphibious warfare capabilities, and the planned acquisition of strike capabilities, Japan’s defense posture is moving toward greater autonomy from the United States. Though the Japanese public is increasingly willing to recognize a powerful and independent SDF, demographic, economic, and political realities impede this development (Midford, 2011). Consequently, the transformation in the decades to come of Japan into a great power endowed with the full array of military assets, possibly including nuclear weapons, is unlikely. Japan’s falling population and low birthrate reduce manpower availability and will make increasingly challenging for the SDF to recruit despite a multiplication of marketing initiatives (Michishita et al., 2016). This demographic trend, combined with a super-aged society, also raises fiscal pressure on an already highly indebted country afflicted by anemic economic growth (Oros, 2017). In this context, the Japanese government will face difficulties justifying a surge in defense budget at the expense of social welfare spending and other public services. The informal ceiling that has capped defense budget at one percent of GDP since the mid-1970s will add to these difficulties as breaching it noticeably could feed domestic political opposition. This opposition is today almost inexistent. The rival Democratic Party weakened markedly after its poor performance in power in 2009–12, to finally implode in September 2017. In the meantime, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe brought back a political stability long-awaited by the Japanese population and strengthened his leadership (Osaki, 2017). This political dynamics is one factor behind the acceleration of security reforms in recent years. The unchallenged domination of the Liberal Democratic Party cannot be taken for granted, however. The opposition could grow again into a serious obstacle to a more autonomous defense posture, especially when it comes to sensitive issues like the acquisition of nuclear weapons. These domestic constraints will prevent Japan from reaching full-fledged autonomy for the foreseeable future, and the US–Japan alliance can thus be expected to remain an important pillar of Japan’s security policy. The gradual shift toward autonomous defense is nonetheless undeniable, and unprecedented. 3 Implications The tendency toward autonomy will endure, and this regardless of whom is in charge in Tokyo, because the nature of the Chinese and North Korean threats at the core of the ‘entrapment-abandonment dilemma’ is unlikely to change for years to come. The revisionism of Prime Minister Shinzō Abe is not a determining factor. The bulk of the security reforms he enacted originated during the 2010–12 period under the rule of the rival Democratic Party (Oros, 2017). Japan’s security policy is on the verge of what would be its first rupture since 1945. In the wake of the recovery through the right of collective self-defense of the ability to enter alliances with countries other than the United States, a more independent posture and the capacity to strike enemies’ territory is bringing Japan closer to ‘normality’ (Katahara, 2013). And this may have substantial consequences for the US–Japan alliance and regional dynamics. The alliance could be jolted by the United States’ growing entrapment anxiety. Washington has been relatively insulated from the ‘deter versus restrain dilemma’, or the fact that US security guarantees that strengthen the alliance’s deterrent power may embolden Japan to aggressive actions against neighbors by reassuring Tokyo about US backing (Snyder, 1997, 196). Heavy reliance on the United States for security and offensive operations has prevented Japan from taking such actions. The country’s move toward a more independent and offensive defense posture will exacerbate the ‘deter versus restrain dilemma’ for Washington. In line with the classic strategy of alliance management, the United States could be tempted to distance itself from Japan to mitigate the risk of entrapment. This in turn would heighten Tokyo’s fear of abandonment in regard to China and reinforce the ‘entrapment-abandonment dilemma’ vis-à-vis the Korean Peninsula, thus accelerating the Japanese shift to autonomy. A vicious circle would ensue, pulling the two allies apart and triggering an existential crisis for the alliance.7 The evolutions of Japan’s defense posture could have destabilizing consequences for the Asia-Pacific region as well. The high level of distrust, if not hostility, between China and Japan since the end of the Second World War has portended spiraling tensions caused by action–reaction dynamics between competitive defensive measures (Samuels, 2007). The US–Japan alliance has mitigated this security dilemma by guaranteeing Japan’s survival and acting as a ‘bottle cap’ on the resurgence of Japanese militarism (Christensen, 2011, 236). A militarily more autonomous and powerful Japan would alarm China. The ‘egg shell’ perception, which has gained momentum in Beijing since the mid-1990s and posits that the alliance is an incubator of Japanese rearmament, would strengthen (Christensen, 2011, 236). Not only would Sino-Japanese relations deteriorate due to the prospect of Japan’s revival as a great power, US–China relations would also be undermined by Beijing’s recognition of the alliance as a destabilizing factor. The United States and China, the world’s two largest economic and military powers, are widely regarded as holding the faith of the Asia-Pacific region. Japan is often dropped out of the equation despite its disruptive potential. A more autonomous Japan does not only raise the prospect of a military clash with China in the East China Sea, it also increases the likelihood of a Sino-American war. The US–Japan alliance could become the thread between an emotionally-charged territorial dispute and what would be a cataclysmic great power conflict (Miller, 2015). Deng Xiaoping said in the late 1970s that half of heaven would fall if Japan and China were to fight each other. Today, the whole heaven would collapse if the United States were embroiled. Footnotes 1 Such an evolution had been expected for decades by realists, leading some scholars to depict Japan during the Cold War as an abnormal country (Kahn, 1970; Waltz, 1981 and 1993; Layne, 1993; Betts, 1993–94). 2 In his book published in 2007, Richard Samuels similarly anticipated that once the debate on security policy going on at that time had concluded, Japan ‘will have ceased pretending to ignore the realist dictum of “self-help” and will have used the alliance to enhance its own autonomy’ (Samuels, 2007, 8). 3 I use the definition of Glenn Snyder, who describes alliances as a ‘formal association of states for the use (or nonuse) of military force, in specified circumstances, against states outside their own membership’ (Snyder, 1997, 4). 4 Reputational costs of noncompliance, though less consequential, may also influence the ally’s behavior (Snyder, 1997). 5 The expected reaction of the opponent to these intra-alliance dynamics is another factor of allies’ behavior (Snyder, 1984). 6 This explains why the weaker a country is compared to its ally, the more alarmed by the prospect of being abandoned (Gelpi, 1999). 7 The negative consequences of this vicious circle for the alliance would not be compensated by the addition of Japan’s new military assets, amphibious warfare and strike capabilities in particular, because they duplicates rather than complement US capabilities. 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Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan Association of International Relations; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)

Yu,, Yun;Kim, Ji, Young

2019 International Relations of the Asia-Pacific

doi: 10.1093/irap/lcy012

Abstract The Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute, a territorial dispute between Japan and China, has long been regarded as a ticking bomb, capable of blowing up the already volatile Sino-Japanese relations at any time. Would the differences over the islands lead China and Japan into major military confrontations, if not all-out war? This article argues that there is cause for optimism and that the Sino-Japanese relationship has displayed a remarkable level of resiliency through the years. In examining the three major diplomatic crises of 2004, 2010, and 2012 (and beyond) surrounding the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute, this article shows that Japan and China have successfully engaged in bilateral crisis management by operating political, diplomatic, and military exchanges to prevent further escalation. Our analysis calls for a more informed and balanced view within academic discourse, so as to encourage accurate threat perceptions between China and Japan, mitigate the security dilemma, thereby eventually fulfilling the optimistic theory. 1 Introduction A bleak picture of Sino-Japanese relations prevails in the current discourse based on the seemingly irreconcilable factors stemming from concerns over international power politics, historical memory, and ideological differences. These factors contribute to a relationship of ‘hot economics and cold politics’ between China and Japan, characterized by a lack of mutual trust. Against this backdrop, the territorial dispute over Senkaku/Diaoyu between China and Japan plays a critical role in defining the two countries’ relations.1 In particular, China’s rapid economic and military growth further encourages the alarming analysis of a possible armed conflict between the two regional powers. There are still several pacifying factors in Sino-Japanese relations, such as the alignment of economic interests, extended nuclear deterrence provided by the United States, and the maritime settings in East Asia that favor defensive capabilities (Goldstein, 2013: 69–75). Nevertheless, the territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu and the issues of exclusive economic zones (EEZs) in the East China Sea are two of the most important ongoing disputes between China and Japan that could easily strain the Sino-Japanese relations (Sakuwa, 2009: 519–520). Particularly since 2010, Japanese academics have sounded the alarm, skeptical of China’s self-proclaimed ‘peaceful rise’ and wary of the potentially devastating effect of the precarious Senkaku/Diaoyu territorial dispute (Kawashima, 2014; Matsuda, 2015; Aoyama, 2016). Would the conflict over Senkaku/Diaoyu islands eventually lead China and Japan to an armed clash, escalating into a major security crisis in East Asia? We argue that the possibility of an armed conflict is extremely low, considering the prior practices in the bilateral crisis management employed by the two countries. The term ‘bilateral crisis management’ is distinguishable from ‘internal crisis management mechanism’. The former refers to high-level political, diplomatic, and military dialog/exchanges, while the latter refers to domestic institutions relevant to crisis management, decision-making processes, executive leadership, and intelligence-sharing mechanism. Some scholars have accused Japan and China of lacking effective internal crisis management mechanism, which will make any clash over the islands difficult to contain (Hafeez, 2015: 73; Bush, 2010). Although this observation may be true, we believe that the two countries have nevertheless engaged with each other actively and successfully through state-to-state ‘bilateral crisis management’ measures, which have been effective in preventing further escalation once conflicts have broken out. And the operation of these measures could account for the resilience of the relationship between the two countries, even during periods of turbulence. Throughout the late 1990s to early 2000s, the ‘shelved’ dispute remained tranquil as both countries engaged in the active prevention of any escalation over the islands. Downs and Saunders’ insightful examination of the two disputes in 1990 and 1996 demonstrates that the Chinese government prioritized economic development over nationalist goals in managing the crises (Downs and Saunders, 1998). Up until the early 2000s, China and Japan had engaged in ‘active dispute management’ through the limited access of both countries’ nationals to the islands; the avoidance of social mobilization on this issue, especially in China; and, Japan’s constrained use of the islands (Fravel, 2010a). From the mid-2000s, however, as the regional context in East Asia gradually shifted with the rise of China, the relative tranquility had come to an end. This period coincided with the emergence of China’s ‘new assertiveness’ narrative both in academic discourse (Fravel, 2010a; Drifte, 2013; Christensen, 2015; Smith, 2015) and the mass media (Johnston, 2013). As one of the very few major economic powers that came through the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unharmed, China’s growing confidence of led to gradual shifts in its foreign policy toward a more assertive one, especially with regard to its territory and sovereignty issues (Feng, 2016). In response to this change, Japan has adjusted its security policy accordingly. In June 2008, the Japanese Diet passed legislation that prohibited foreign vessels to stay in Japanese territorial waters and enabled the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) to conduct on-the-spot inspections of suspicious ships and issue expulsion orders (Yomiuri Shimbun, 5 June 2008). In December, two Chinese Marine Surveillance Force ships were spotted in the disputed area by JCG for the first time (Yomiuri Shimbun, 9 December 2008). From then on, these islands have become a hot spot for conflicts. However, despite the growing tension surrounding the islands, no military confrontation has yet occurred in the East China Sea. In other words, China and Japan have been able to avoid escalation of this dispute to an armed conflict. Will this reserved interaction between the two countries, both of which have been diligent in strengthening their military capabilities, continue? What is the implication of employing two different perspectives (pessimistic vs. optimistic) in analyzing the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute? This article seeks to answer these questions. The article will proceed as follows. In the following section, the debate between the pessimistic and optimistic camps in the literature of Sino-Japanese relations over the disputed islands will be examined. While pessimists predict an exacerbation of the fragility of Sino-Japanese relations, optimists rebut such pessimism by pointing to signs that indicate its resilience. This will be followed by case studies of the three major crises over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in 2004, 2010, and 2012 and beyond. In this section, the aim is to investigate the bilateral crisis management that have been taken by China and Japan to avoid escalation and thus provide empirical support to the optimistic discourse. Finally, the implications of this article’s empirical findings to the future trajectory of the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute and Sino-Japanese relations in general will be discussed. 2 Intensifying conflict vs. resilience over the dispute? Pessimistic view that the stability of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands prior to the mid-2000s has faded away and there is a high possibility that a clash over the islands could escalate to a serious armed conflict. They base their prediction mainly on two assumptions: first, the possibility of conflict escalation due to the lack of an effective crisis management mechanism; and, second, the increasing military competition surrounding the dispute between China and Japan. First of all, some scholars point to the critical flaws in both countries’ crisis management, such as the lack of institutionalized channels of communication and a diminishing back-channel diplomacy, which have made a clash over the disputed islands not only more likely, but also difficult to contain (Bush, 2010; Hafeez, 2015: 73). Moreover, Japan’s volatile domestic political situation exacerbates the readiness for crisis management by crippling its ‘command and control power’ during the times of crises (Sakaki and Lukner, 2013: 171). Liff and Erickson examine Japan’s establishment of the National Security Council in 2013, based on which they argue that Japan’s internal crisis management mechanism has improved. However, they point out that the mechanism still lacks robust high-level diplomatic and emergency communication to de-escalate political-military crisis (Liff and Erickson, 2017). Secondly, as a rather indirect factor, increasing military competition trapped in a security dilemma predicts a grim picture of Sino-Japanese relations. Liff and Ikenberry posit that a direct conflict of interest over territorial pursuits, along with the security dilemma, has driven military competition between China and Japan (Liff and Ikenberry, 2014). China has been augmenting its military capabilities since the 1990s with military spending more than double of Japan’s, especially in its navy’s advancement and expansion (McDevitt and Velllucci, 2012; Aoyama, 2013; Liff and Ikenberry, 2014). The Japanese government responded to China’s military modernization with internal balancing by abandoning the Basic Defense Force concept in favor of a Dynamic Defense Force concept in 2010, indicating a shift from the previous passive and reactive doctrines to the more proactive and assertive defense policies. It increased its defense budget for the first time since 2002, with a focus on enhancing its navy’s ability to secure the safety of its sea-lanes (Kotani, 2014; Patalano, 2014a). As such, a vicious spiral of naval arms race between China and Japan has been discernible (Gronning, 2014; Hornung, 2014). The security dilemma between China and Japan is reinforced by another body of literature analyzing the mutual antagonism stemming from ideational factors. Such centrifugal factors include the historical legacy of the Sino-Japanese wars that has long been curbing the development of mutual trust between the two countries and the domestic instability caused by the economic slowdown that prompted both countries to turn to nationalism as an outlet for public discontent (Takeuchi, 2014; Takahara, 2015; Hafeez, 2015; Smith, 2015). Furthermore, for the pessimists, Japan’s security alliance with the United States expands the scope of this territorial dispute into a potential clash point for a violent structural reconfiguration of the international system between China, the rising power, and the United States, the current hegemon. Arguments compelling the United States to refresh and strengthen its ties with democratic allies in Asia to prepare for a rising China over the long run have emerged in both academic and policy discourses (Friedberg, 2011: 264–284; Mearsheimer, 2014). The trend, materialized in 2011 with the Obama Administration’s ‘Rebalance to Asia’ policy, resonates with the power transition theorists’ belief in the escalation of regional conflict to the global level when the global great power’s interests are at stake (Tammen et al., 2000: 77–79). The result put a spotlight on the Sino-Japanese bilateral tension over the disputed island, as a potential trigger of a violent structural revision of not only Asia, but also the world. The literature in the pessimistic camp has played an influential role in the academic discourse because its gloomy prediction is buttressed by many important theories of international relations, including the neorealist belief in the inevitability of China’s aspiration for regional hegemony, power transition’s prediction of China’s revisionist intentions, and the constructivist school’s emphasis on the profound mistrust embedded in the two societies. Nevertheless, these theoretical analyses are better at illustrating a potential trend rather than explaining the current state of affairs. Recently, there has been an intensification of dissenting voices. They have suggested that the stability-enforcing factors – economic interdependence, deterring effect of US–Japan security alliance, the limited economic and strategic significance of the islands, and the impossibility of permanently occupying – are strong enough to counter the centrifugal forces coming from domestic nationalist pressure and international power structure concerns (Fravel, 2010b; Patalano, 2014b; O’Shea, 2015). Furthermore, they highlight that explicit and implicit cooperation between China and Japan over their conflicting maritime interests has persisted throughout the changing power context in the region. Prominent examples of such cooperation include the fisheries agreement implemented in 2000 and the consensus reached on joint development in the East China Sea in 2008 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan [MOFAJ], 2008; Manicom, 2014). Albeit skeptical of Beijing’s commitment, the clashes over the disputed islands have turned Japanese planners not to an arms race, but rather to a series of confidence building measures, including head-of-state’s visits, a search-and-rescue agreement that would allow cooperation in responding to an accident at sea, and low-level government-to-government maritime talks (Smith, 2015). In addition, whenever there were flare-ups triggered by domestic actors, the two governments have successfully managed them through engaging in implicit cooperation by controlling the flare-ups to prevent these incidents from further escalation to militarized conflicts (O’Shea, 2015: 569). In short, the optimistic body of literature sheds light on the positive forces that make sense of the absence of military escalation around the disputed islands. The optimist viewpoint deserves closer attention for their explanatory power of the current situation. However, the optimists lack the empirical ground on exactly how the two counties have managed to restrain the escalation over the disputed islands and maintain resilience over the dispute. Based on the optimist assumption that bilateral crisis management or implicit cooperation occurs as the two countries’ interests are aligned in preventing serious escalation of conflict, this article seeks to illuminate how this cooperation has taken place so far. In other words, while pessimists criticize the ineffectiveness of internal and formal crisis management mechanism between/within the two countries, this article argues that an informal, albeit ad hoc, bilateral crisis management has been at work to prevent further escalation of any incident. 3 Case studies The following section will investigate three cases of the Senkaku/Diaoyu crises: first, the Japanese detention of Chinese activists and a Chinese vessel intrusion in 2004; second, the collision between a Chinese fishing trawler with JCG vessels and Japan’s subsequent detention of the Chinese captain in 2010; and, finally, Japan’s nationalization of the islands. The three cases vary in the context of the two countries’ regional power configurations and domestic political situations as well as other intervening factors, such as the historical controversy of the Yasukuni Shrine. At the same time, they share similar observations of the outcomes – the success in avoiding escalation to a military confrontation. Therefore, this section will discern the interactions between the two countries immediately after the three major crises and analyze the bilateral crisis management taken by both countries in detail to understand how the optimistic theories play out in reality. 3.1 Japanese detention of Chinese activists and the Chinese submarine intrusion in 2004 In the past two decades, the most destabilizing force in regards to the dispute was from private attempts made by activists from each side to land on the islands to assert their countries’ sovereignty rights. On 24 March 2004, seven Chinese activists landed on the islet of Uotsuri, part of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, and were subsequently arrested by Japanese authorities, becoming the first Chinese nationals to be detained for landing on the disputed islands. Although the activists were deported 48 hours later, this incident triggered a diplomatic struggle and an increase in military activities within the disputed area. The timing of the incident was poor as that year was already a rocky time for Sino-Japanese relations due to the then Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro’s continuous official visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine since 2001. Considering the inexpedient setting, this incident could have easily played to fuel the mounting Sino-Japanese tension and hostility. However, contrary to the bleak picture predicted by the pessimistic theories, this crisis was handled well and swiftly. Although there is no clear evidence of the Chinese authority’s attitude toward the group that landed on the islet of Uotsuri, the fact that the group’s application to lease the island was declined shows that Beijing did not actively support their landing (Hafeez, 2015). In the meantime, Japan also did not want this incident to exacerbate Sino-Japanese tensions. Prime Minister Koizumi called for a calm resolution to this incident and the Japanese government conveyed its hope to minimize the negative influence of the incident on the planned official visit to China by Prime Minister Koizumi later in that year (Yomiuri Shimbun, 25 March 2004). After the incident, both Chinese and Japanese authorities enhanced practices on stopping private activist groups from sailing to the islands. In July 2004, Fujian Provincial officials prevented attempts to conduct maritime excursions near the islands from the Fujianese ports and the central government raided the office of the Hong Kong-registered China Federation for Defending the Diaoyu Islands and confiscated some equipment in April 2005 (South China Morning Post, 27 April 2005). On top of that, the Chinese authorities effectively contained the mass media coverage of this dispute. For example, the major newspaper Renmin Ribao [People’s Daily] reported only very briefly on this incident without mentioning it on any of the front pages during the aftermath. Regardless of its potential usefulness in fueling anti-Japanese nationalism, the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute played only a minor role in the 2005 anti-Japanese demonstrations against Japan’s bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. At that time, rhetoric mainly composed of criticism toward the Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni and the issue of white-washing Japan’s wartime actions in some Japanese history textbooks. In addition to the domestic measures to contain the Senkaku/Diaoyu incident’s aftershocks, both the Chinese and Japanese authorities also actively engaged in high-level talks as the Japanese Foreign Minister Kawaguchi Yoriko made an official visit to China the week after the incident. There she met with her Chinese counterpart, during which they reached a consensus to develop a better communication mechanism for monitoring the situation in the East China Sea (MOFAJ, 2004a). Kawaguchi visited China again in June to attend the inaugural meeting of the Three-Party Committee of China, Japan, and South Korea, where the three countries confirmed the principle that meetings for the Committee are to be held once a year and the meeting venues are to be decided on a rotation basis (MOFAJ, 2004b). This confirmation of the frequency of the committee meetings demonstrated a forward-looking attitude favorable to cooperation among the three countries. This agreement is especially remarkable considering the Sino-Japanese friction around the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands that had occurred less than three months earlier. Not long after the crisis over the detention of Chinese activists cooled down, the intrusion of a Chinese submarine into Japanese waters in November triggered another wave of concern. The Japanese protested against this act of provocation, with some hard-liners asserting that this incident was a blatant Chinese challenge to the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) (Japan Times, 13 November 2014). Some scholars also mark this as the starting point for when China began to challenge Japan’s exclusive economic zone by stopping to provide advance notice of transits through those waters (Bush, 2010). China responded by expressing its regret about this incident and explained that this intrusion was an accident caused by technical errors rather than intentional provocation interpreted by many Japanese defense officials (Japan Times, 17 November 2014). The intruding submarine is a Han-class submarine, one of the earliest generations of nuclear-powered submarines that are large and noisy. If China was to intentionally challenge Japan’s MSDF, its choice of this obsolete submarine seems puzzling. It is not clear if China’s acknowledgment of the intrusion and promise to not repeat such an act was reassuring to Japanese officials, but China’s response to this crisis at least did not impose additional strains on the already tense Sino-Japanese relationship caused by Prime Minister Koizumi’s official visits to Yasukuni Shrine. A meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi was successfully organized a week later at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit. During the meeting, President Hu reinforced China’s attitude toward the submarine incident as regrettable and both sides refrained from bringing up the territorial dispute (MOFAJ, 2004c). It was obvious that there was an attempt to avoid reviving the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute as the Yasukuni controversy became the main source of discontent raised by China in official government-to-government meetings. When Prime Minister Abe Shinzo came into power in 2006, his first overseas trip was to China, where he made a pledge to not officially visit Yasukuni Shrine like his predecessor. With this announcement Sino-Japanese relations quickly recovered, resuming negotiations on cooperation in the East China Sea. There were more frequent top-level official visits made in 2007 and 2008, facilitating further communication and cooperation. China’s Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan’s visit to Japan in August 2007 rejuvenated the Sino-Japanese defense exchange by stepping up personnel exchange that included high-level military officials’ visits as well as reciprocal navy vessels’ visits to each other’s naval bases. Furthermore, China and Japan reached an agreement on the joint development of the Shirakaba/Chunxiao oil and gas field in the East China Sea in June 2008, dampening the tension in the disputed waters (MOFAJ, 2008). Despite the fall-through of the agreement when tension flared up following the crises in 2010 and 2012, the compromises made by both sides to reach such an agreement were remarkable: China acquiesced to the idea of a median line proposed by Japan, whereas Japan conceded the jurisdiction over the Shirakaba/Chunxiao field to China. In a nutshell, the crises in 2004 were swiftly contained, even against the backdrop of a cold Sino-Japanese relationship caused by Prime Minister Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. Although nationalism bred by a troubled Sino-Japanese relationship could easily induce violence over the territorial dispute, the stable political leadership in both China and Japan discouraged either side from manipulating the crisis as a diversion. Both sides’ concern of having poor political relations spill into the economic realm, highlight the important role that economic interdependence played in preventing further escalations. As such, high-level bilateral meetings were maintained and important regional cooperation was also under way. The Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute remained unpublicized in China and did not hinder the Sino-Japanese recovery initiated by the Japanese Prime Minister Abe’s visit to Beijing in 2006. 3.2 Collision between Chinese and Japanese vessels in 2010 The collision between a Chinese fishing trawler with JCG vessels on 7 September 2010 sparked one of the most serious diplomatic disputes between China and Japan in decades and this crisis is often quoted as one of the most prominent examples of China’s new assertiveness in the region. The Japanese government’s decision to detain and interrogate the captain of the trawler was strongly protested by the Chinese government. This diplomatic tension quickly spilled over to other aspects of the bilateral relation, including economic cooperation and cultural exchanges. Beijing started to cancel bilateral interactions and even arrested four Japanese citizens in late September for videotaping military installations. Beijing’s embargo on the export of rare earth elements to Japan as well as its demand for a formal apology and compensation from the Japanese government after the captain had been released, have been perceived as evidence of China’s ‘new assertiveness’ by many observers (Christensen, 2015). This also exacerbated the domestic perception of Tokyo’s decision to release the Chinese captain without charge as a source of bitterness. The crisis stimulated public criticism toward the new Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government’s weak handling of the situation and planted an incentive for radical right-wing politicians to intervene in the future. The two allegations of China’s assertiveness demonstrated in the 2010 crisis are convincingly challenged by Johnston who points out that, first, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs only mentioned the demand for compensation and apology once and then it quickly faded away in the following official statements. Secondly, there was little evidence for the execution of China’s embargo on rare earth elements (Johnston, 2013: 23–31). Hence, the target for these two actions was more likely to be China’s domestic audience and with a perfunctory, rather than escalatory, objective (Johnston, 2013). A comparison between the 2004 incident and the 2010 incident, which was the precedent for Japan’s detaining of Chinese citizens, can buttress Johnston’s argument in denouncing the popular belief in an assertive-turn in China’s foreign policy (Jerden, 2014). In 2010, the Chinese made a solemn demand to the Japanese foreign ministry for the immediate and unconditional release of the detained Chinese citizens to avoid a further escalation of the situation (Consulate-General of the PRC in Chicago, 2010). Whereas in 2004, China’s diplomatic protests ascribed the potential deterioration of the already damaged Sino-Japanese relations to Japan’s ‘full responsibility’ (Xian Ribao, 26 March 2004). Juxtaposing the wordings employed by the Chinese government in both incidences, China’s initial reaction to the 2010 incident was not more assertive than that in 2004. In fact, the 2010 response was weaker in the phrasing of its warnings and protests. The Chinese media also adopted a moderate approach to this incident in the first few days and tried to frame it as an unexpected accident to avoid an outbreak of anti-Japanese outcries (Mainichi Shimbun, 9 September 2010). Xinjingbao [Beijing News] (8 September 2010) even reported this issue by presenting both the Japanese and Chinese perspectives in print of the same size on its front page. In other words, if the Japanese authority did release the detained Chinese captain sooner, similar to what happened in 2004, it would be highly unlikely for China to further escalate things later with tougher measures. In fact, the public commentary in Japan concerning this crisis did not focus on a perceived Chinese assertiveness, but on the incompetence of the new DPJ government’s foreign policy decision-making and crisis management (Curtis, 2011). After the incident escalated to a diplomatic crisis with bilateral interactions and activities called off by Beijing to indicate its discontent, the two sides maintained frequent informal dialogs between the top leaders and ministers to remedy the rupture. A Chinese top-level official conveyed the Chinese government’s intention to de-escalate the crisis in a meeting with several news media, including Mainichi Shimbun, a major Japanese newspaper. When speaking of the Senkaku/Diaoyu crisis, he suddenly switched to English and delivered two words – ‘almost over’. The sudden switch to English from Chinese is a common tactic employed by Chinese officials when speaking about sensitive issues (Mainichi Shimbun, 9 September 2010). If their remarks are found problematic later, they can conveniently attribute the responsibility to translation mistakes. Soon after the Chinese official’s suggestive remarks, the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao met with the Japanese Prime Minister Kan Naoto at Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) for a 25-minute conversation on October 5. Although the conversation was conducted in an informal manner, the meeting was only achieved through strenuous efforts by diplomats since late September. The meeting was staged to be an unexpected encounter, as both leaders were accompanied only by their English interpreters to ensure that they look passive in the reconciliation effort and maintain a strong resolve on this issue to their domestic audience (Asahi Shimbun, 6 October 2010). This could be one factor accounting for the undervaluation of such positive interactions in academic discourse. However, this meeting was significant as it opened the official dialog channel between China and Japan and was followed by meetings between foreign ministers and defense ministers in October. These meetings helped facilitate a top-level meeting between Chinese President Hu and Japanese Prime Minister Kan at the APEC Summit in November 2010 (MOFAJ, 2010a,b; Japan Ministry of Defense, 2011). This top-level meeting was highly regarded by Prime Minister Kan, for which he remarked that the two countries could now move forward in the long-pursued strategic mutual beneficial relationship and the bilateral relation was able to recover to the point when he took office in June 2010, before the trawler crisis (Japan Kantei, 2010). The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson also acknowledged the achievement of this meeting. When asked about the trawler incident, instead of criticizing Japan as he had done in the past two months, the spokesperson quoted the agreement reached in the meeting between President Hu and Prime Minister Kan and indicated a hope for a ‘healthy and stable’ development of the Sino-Japanese relationship (Embassy of PRC in the Republic of Singapore, 2010). In December, important Chinese media directly under the Communist Party, including Huanqiu Shibao [Global Times] and Jiefangjunbao [PLA Daily], started to soften their stance by publishing articles and editorials calling for a peaceful resolution of the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute and reconciliation with Japan (Huanqiu Shibao, 1 December 2010; Jiefangjunbao, 2010). These newspapers have a reputation for their nationalist tone and hardline stance on foreign policy, rendering this shift toward moderation remarkable. On 16 December, China’s soon-to-be-president, Xi Jinping, reinforced the reconciliatory message in a meeting with the Japanese Komeito Party President, Yamaguchi Natsuo, in Beijing (Mainichi Shimbun, 16 December 2010). Xi spoke highly of such party-to-party interactions’ roles in helping recover the rocky bilateral relation. He also explicitly pointed out that China regarded Japan as its partner, not a rival (Renmin Ribao, 16 December 2010). Moreover, late 2010 witnessed the formal materialization of the establishment of The Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat among the Government of Japan, China and South Korea, with the Trilateral Summit Meetings being held annually in 2011 and 2012 without interruption (MOFAJ, 2015). Defense exchanges between China and Japan resumed with the forward-looking attitudes demonstrated by the two defense ministers in their meeting in June 2011. The visit paid by MSDF destroyer Kirisame to China’s naval base in Shandong on 19 December 2011, as the first Japanese naval vessel to visit China in three years, was symbolic of the attempts to thaw Sino-Japanese relations. Building on these positive interactions, Japanese Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko’s official visit to China finally materialized in late December 2011, marking an effective sign of reduced tension between China and Japan. During the summit meeting between Prime Minister Noda and Premier Wen, both sides tacitly avoided bringing up the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute and agreed to rekindle cooperation in the East China Sea (MOFAJ, 2011). This case is more nerve-wracking than the 2004 one as China surpassed Japan to become the world’s second largest economy, exerting a clear change in the regional power configuration. This gave China a better economic position and thus vitiated the economic costs for a military confrontation. On the other hand, the internal power struggle in China’s Communist Party and Japan’s frequent changes of political leadership exposed domestic weaknesses, making a military confrontation an attractive policy for diversion. Nevertheless, both sides worked rigorously to dampen escalation through dialog. Around ten high-level official meetings, including three summit meetings and three ministerial meetings, took place after the September incident in 2010, albeit some being informal to avoid alienating domestic audiences. This demonstrates that the political and diplomatic cost of being an aggressor plays a much more important role in both sides’ rational analyses. Apart from the international norm against conquest and the concern of sacrificing regional ties with other neighbors raised by Fravel (2010b), the U.S. involvement in this issue added more weight to the cost. In October 2010, the U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton stressed the U.S. position of covering the Senkaku islands in the U.S. obligation to defend Japan under its security treaty with Japan (U.S. Department of State, 2010). The U.S. position of double deterrence – recognizing Japan’s administrative control of the islands but not taking a stance on the sovereignty dispute – increases the political and diplomatic cost for the aggressor in a military escalation over the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute. 3.3 Japan’s nationalization of the islands in 2012 and beyond In April 2012, Tokyo governor Ishihara Shintaro, a preeminent hawk, rammed in the Sino-Japanese recovery with his plan of purchasing the disputed Senkaku islands on behalf of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. This triggered not only strong protest from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs but also a mounting nationalistic anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese public. The Japanese government then preempted Ishihara’s bid and nationalized the islands in September. To the Japanese government, the nationalization policy was an attempt to contain the situation by preventing a purchase made by Tokyo Metropolitan Government under the leadership of a right-wing politician who planned to actively exercise Japan’s sovereignty over the islands. It was unsurprising that China perceived the nationalization as Japan’s unilateral change of the status quo over the islands by deviating from the previous handling of circumscribing the sovereignty dispute. This yielded an assertive response from China. China started sending official vessels to the disputed waters regularly from September 2012 at a frequency of roughly 10 times per month throughout 2013 (MOFAJ, 2018). The situation became increasingly volatile and there were very dangerous moments like when a Chinese warships’ fire-control radar locked onto a Japanese destroyer and a helicopter (Japan Ministry of Defense, 2013). On top of its increasing military presence in the disputed waters, China also declared its air defense identification zone (ADIZ), which at certain points overlaps with Japan’s airspace, requiring all aircrafts traveling in the zone to notify Chinese authorities and claiming the right of Ministry of National Defense to take emergency defensive measures against aircraft not complying with the Chinese demands (Ministry of National Defense of PRC, 2013). Japan reacted to this declaration by renouncing it and ordering its civilian air carriers to refuse to abide by it (Japan Times, 27 November 2013). Fortunately, the rapid deterioration of Sino-Japanese relations did not escalate to a military confrontation and efforts made by both sides to reconcile their issues can be observed here as well as those in the two aforementioned cases. Both sides actually managed this crisis better than they did in 2010 as they successfully avoided a physical confrontation and maintained an open channel for dialog between top-level officials. Before Japan’s nationalization policy was implemented, the Japanese Prime Minister Noda wrote a letter regarding this issue and delivered it to President Hu in August (Mainichi Shimbun, 28 August 2012). Around two weeks after the nationalization, at the height of tension, both countries’ foreign ministers met in New York to exchange views on the crisis and this was followed by more detailed discussions between the deputy ministers. Although both countries’ news reports on this meeting focused more on the ministers’ resolve to alleviate domestic pressure, positive nuances can be spotted through phrases such as ‘candid and in-depth discussion’ (The Central People's Government of the PRC, 2012) and ‘agree to enhance mutual understanding’ (MOFAJ, 2012). Most importantly, both sides conveyed their intentions to continue ministry-level dialogs of this kind on this issue (Xinhua Net, 26 September 2012; MOFAJ, 2012). The willingness for dialog and the quick response to the crisis demonstrated in this meeting are factors contributing to the assurance of both sides’ strong desire to forestall military escalation. On September 27, a group of Japanese business representatives and politicians led by former Lower House President Kono Yohei visited China to make up for the canceled ceremony of the 40th anniversary for the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations. They met with China’s state councilor, Jia Qinlin, the number four power in the Chinese government, where they were assured of China’s desire for an open window of dialog through civilian exchanges in the face of a political rupture as well as China’s hope for an end to the current situation as soon as possible (Yomiuri Shimbun, 28 September 2012). In the following month, both the Chinese and Japanese diplomats waded through obstacles and secured several platforms for dialog between officials from section chiefs to vice ministers, although some were conducted in secret. When a secret meeting between the two sides’ vice foreign ministers in Shanghai was exposed by Japanese media, both governments responded positively: the Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary referred to the meeting as a part of Sino-Japanese multilevel communications for improving mutual understandings and the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson quoted it as an example of ongoing consultations and negotiations on the Senkaku/Diaoyu disputes (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, 2012; Yomiuri Shimbun, 24 October 2012). In January 2013, China’s now official state leader, Xi Jinping, met with his old friend, the Japanese Komeito Party President Yamaguchi, in Beijing, reminiscent of their 2010 meeting. There Xi responded positively to Yamaguchi’s proposal of a Sino-Japanese summit meeting (Renmin Ribao, 26 January 2013). Both countries’ major news agencies not only reported the achievement of the meeting welcomingly but they also covered the other side’s positive coverage to highlight the progress made toward recovery (Mainichi Shimbun, 27 January 2013; Renmin Ribao, 27 January 2013). Another group of representatives from the Japan-China Economic Association made their visit to China in March to rejuvenate the stagnated economic exchange and was received by China’s Vice President Li Yuanchao. Japanese media observed that Li’s tone regarding the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute was softened and less critical of Japan (Mainichi Shimbun, 23 March 2013). Following this trend, the Japanese Director General of Defense Policy Tokuchi Hideshi and Administrative Vice Foreign Minister Akitaka Saiki visited China respectively to communicate with their Chinese counterparts and lay out blueprints for mechanisms in resolving the crisis. Resonating with the positive interactions, the Chinese President Xi made a speech at the Politburo workshop on China’s sea power at the end of July. Xi highlighted the importance of finding a balance between regional stability and resolving sovereignty issues in the speech (Xinhua Net, 31 July 2013). He raised a guiding principle of ‘Zhuquanzaiwo, Gezhizhengyi, Gongtongkaifa [uphold sovereignty, shelf the dispute, jointly develop]’ for defending China’s maritime interests in order to ‘promote mutually beneficial cooperation, achieve and maximize mutual interests’ between China and its neighbors (Xinhua Net, 31 July 2013). Xi’s speech sent a clear signal that China desired to reduce its anxiety with Japan over the island dispute. This guiding principle was soon put into practice. In August, a Chinese navigator, Zhai Mo, told one of Japan’s major newspapers, Asahi Shimbun, that when his yacht was approaching the disputed islands in his attempt to land on the Diaoyu Island on August 3, he received a warning from the China Coast Guard (CCG) to not sail any closer to the disputed area (Asahi Shimbun, 10 August 2013). The CCG vessels later escorted Zhai’s yacht for over 74 kilometers to prevent him from turning back and attempting to land on the disputed island again. Although the Chinese authorities were still sending vessels to the disputed waters, CCG’s careful management of this incident shows its disinclination to have uncontrolled civilian vessels involved and can thus be read as Beijing’s attempt to avoid unexpected clashes with Japan in the area. Two months later, a substantial decline in the frequency of Chinese patrols sent into the disputed waters near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands was observed. As shown in Figure 1, China switched to the less provocative strategy of sending vessels to the border of the disputed area to maintain its resolve in 2013. Although much can be read from this change, one convincing interpretation is that China is using this reduction in patrols to signal its endeavors to mitigate the tension and seek cooperative responses from Japan (Fravel and Johnston, 2014). Also, soon after China’s provocative ADIZ announcement in November 2013, two American B-52 bombers flew through the zone to directly challenge China’s claim. Beijing responded to this challenge by claiming that the two bombers were detected and monitored throughout their flight in the zone but did not threaten to take action against aircraft not complying with its instructions, demonstrating Beijing’s lack of motivation to uphold its ADIZ at the expense of direct confrontations (Renmin Ribao, 28 November 2013). Figure 1 View largeDownload slide The numbers of Chinese government and other vessels that entered Japan’s contiguous zone or intruded into territorial sea surrounding the Senkaku Islands. Source: Data collected from Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (2018). Figure 1 View largeDownload slide The numbers of Chinese government and other vessels that entered Japan’s contiguous zone or intruded into territorial sea surrounding the Senkaku Islands. Source: Data collected from Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (2018). Japan’s Prime Minister Abe’s meeting with China’s President Xi at APEC in December 2014 was a more intelligible sign of both sides’ will for reconciliation. Although the resulting agreement that came with strategic ambiguity constructed to appeal to both domestic audiences might have blurred its meaningful achievement, it was significant in opening windows for future cooperation. Takahara Akio (2014) refers to this encounter as a détente between the two countries, in which Prime Minister Abe brought explicit cooperative initiatives to the table. This meeting emboldened cooperative movements such as the Fifth Meeting of the Japan-China Policy Dialogue on the Mekong Region and the Fourth Meeting of the New Japan-China Friendship Committee for the 21st Century, where the participating Japanese representatives were the first Japanese group received by Premier Li Keqiang since he assumed office in 2013 (MOFAJ, 2014; The State Council PRC, 2014). Many of the important security dialogs and negotiations, which had been stalled since 2012, were resumed in 2014. The Japan-China High level Consultation on Maritime Affairs was resumed and regularly held through 2015 and 2016. In the seventh meeting in 2017, the two sides agreed to strengthen cooperation between maritime legal enforcement agencies of the two countries and reconfirmed the importance of signing the Japan-China Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) agreement promptly (MOFAJ, 2017). The joint working group meeting on the ‘Japan-China Maritime Communications Mechanism’ (JCMCM), an important confidence-building arrangement, was also resumed in 2015 after the suspension of two years since 2012. Since 2015, JCMCM was expanded to include an aerial aspect as well and changed the name of the mechanism to a ‘Maritime and Air Communication Mechanism’, reflecting the need to cover air activities as well as maritime behaviors by the mechanism (Ross, 2015; Parameswaran, 2016). A breakthrough in the negotiations was achieved in December 2017, when both sides agreed to begin operating a hotline to avoid accidental conflicts in the East China Sea. It is undeniable that there continues to be disagreement between the two countries, and the Chinese vessels continue to enter the territorial waters around the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. August 2016 witnessed a striking spike in the number of Chinese vessels around the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands (Figure 1), among which there were also armed coast guard vessels. Despite the highly disconcerting nature of the behavior, the tensions were quickly relieved when Chinese President Xi and Japanese Prime Minister Abe met in September, when both leaders explicitly expressed intention to ‘properly handle the East China Sea issue’ and the number of Chinese vessels in the disputed water fell back to the average level (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, 2016). In fact, such ongoing tensions serve to accentuate the resilience in the Sino-Japanese relations, maintained through ministerial and working-level defense exchanges. 4 Future prospects of the disputed islands and Sino-Japanese relations As demonstrated above, despite mounting centrifugal pressures and prevalent gloomy predictions, the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute has been successfully managed to avoid military confrontation and the Sino-Japanese relations appear much more resilient. Considering the high domestic cost a government would have to pay when it appears weak in defending its sovereignty rights, the implicit cooperation between China and Japan displayed during the island crises was phenomenal, especially against the backdrop of volatile domestic situations and regional power structures. This article’s empirical studies of the three cases show that China and Japan managed to maintain dialog through diplomats or civilian exchanges even at difficult circumstances of mounting nationalism and chaotic coordination under weak political leadership. Contrary to the pessimistic prediction that both countries’ foreign policy would be hijacked by nationalism, Chinese and Japanese diplomats worked strenuously to secure platforms for communication, sometimes even under the table. The study of the Sino-Japanese recovery substantiates that the constraining factors of economic interdependence, U.S. deterrence, and the relative insignificant value of the disputed islands highlighted in the positive discourse have been able to rein in crises prompted by the disruptive forces such as the changing regional power configurations, week internal crisis management mechanism, and the mutual distrust rooted in both countries’ historical memories and nationalisms. Pessimistic theories only predict trends or outcomes in an infinite future that leaves room for great uncertainties between now and the supposed-to-come future. This room should not be taken unquestioned since it entails opportunities to alter the trends and shape the choices available for the parties involved. It is critical for both China and Japan to appreciate the degree of security they actually enjoy and construct an international climate supportive to the moderate voices in both countries. However, the prevalent narrative of an increasingly assertive China and an impending confrontation between China and Japan could skew both countries’ assessment of each other’s intentions and narrow the policy options available to foreign policy makers, thereby exacerbating the vicious cycle of a security dilemma. In other words, the entrenched pessimism in the discourses on Sino-Japanese relations is itself a negative influence on the situation that could eventually result in the China threat theory or the Sino-Japanese rupture prediction becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Therefore, the positive dynamics observed after the Senkaku/Diaoyu crises should be highlighted to overcome the predominant pessimistic analyses and gloomy predictions of the dispute’s future trajectory. Finally, how this thorny territorial dispute plays out will be contingent upon the choices of both countries’ leaders. Both China and Japan have explicitly expressed their desire to avoid escalations of conflicts over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands and they have worked hard to maintain the resilience of bilateral relations in spite of volatile situations. Looking at the existing practices, active engagement of the crisis management of the leaders in both countries are able to counter the compelling conflict-driven forces that dominated the pessimistic discourse. Therefore, we have grounds to believe that this trend will continue, possibly even moving in a better direction with more informed academic and policy discourses. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and member of International Relations of the Asia-Pacific editorial board for their valuable comments and suggestions. Footnotes 1 Taiwan is also an important participant in the dispute, which bases its claim on similar grounds with the PRC. However, the focus of this article is to examine the possibility of a security crisis in East Asia between Japan and China (PRC). As such, in this article, the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute will be treated as a bilateral issue between China and Japan. References Aoyama R. 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Tsung-yen Chen,, Ian

2019 International Relations of the Asia-Pacific

doi: 10.1093/irap/lcz001

Although the rise of China is by no means a new topic, how a rising China intends to engage in the polar regions—both the Arctic and the Antarctic—and how China can influence the power structure there remains under-investigated. In this book, Anne-Marie Brady tries to fill the gap by investigating China’s previous and current foreign policies and actual behavior in the polar regions, in order to decide whether China has yet become a great power in polar affairs. Brady considers that China has a strong interest in the opportunities offered by the North and South poles, in terms of traditional and nontraditional security, natural and economic resources, and science and technology. In the area of security, maintaining freedom of transportation in the Arctic region can provide China with an alternative to the more expensive, dangerous, and volatile sea-lanes through the Malacca Strait, the Panama Canal, or along the Somalian coast, as well as better access for its submarines. By using the maritime routes through the Arctic, Chinese naval vessels can circumvent any military blockade imposed by the United States and its Pacific allies. Although Antarctica is less important to China than the Arctic, it also has military-strategic significance in that it is on the air route linking Oceania, South America, and Africa. Now that the US Air Force has a base in Antarctica, Brady expects China to expand its role in the region by deploying more military personnel for logistics purposes. The polar regions have an abundance of natural and economic resources. If China can secure a stake in exploring and exploiting the Arctic’s oil and natural gas reserves, China’s problems with energy security will be alleviated. Interest in Antarctica is concentrated mainly on mineral resources, fisheries, and tourism, which require more investment and international coordination. China’s economic interests and engagement in Antarctica are also on the rise. Its polar science program focused on Antarctica and includes bioprospecting and biotechnological projects, space science programs, environmental programs, and technological projects related to its security and economic interests. Although China has a big stake in the polar regions, it is a latecomer compared to other neighboring countries that have already developed a stronger presence and influence there. In these circumstances, the question remains, how can China compete and/or coordinate with other countries that have stakes in the regions? Governance in the Arctic remains quite weak and fragmented and is dominated by stronger powers, such as the United States and Russia, and also the Nordic countries. These countries have a firmer claim to sovereignty over their immediate Arctic territories. Contestation is higher there than in Antarctica. That continent is close to weaker countries in South America and Oceania. The territorial claims of these countries and other powers are less contentious in terms of sovereignty issues. Brady finds that China’s tight party–military–state–market nexus is working to expand the country’s interests and influence in polar affairs. The Chinese Communist Party is promoting the importance of engaging in the polar regions, the People's Liberation Army is the driver behind China’s polar policy, and the government is encouraging and assisting Chinese companies to explore commercial opportunities in the Arctic and Antarctic. Brady further argues that political goals outweigh economic interests for Beijing at present, but the economic importance of the regions to China will increase in the future. With this tight nexus, China is currently challenging the existing governance system and other countries’ interests in the polar regions. Brady finds that although China supports the existing governance system and it does not have any major disagreements with other countries over the management of polar affairs, powerful countries, such as the United States and Russia, are concerned about Beijing’s huge investment in infrastructure and its active diplomacy toward minor powers, such as the Nordic countries. These countries, in turn, are more welcoming of China’s engagement in the development of the Arctic region and more supportive of allowing China a bigger say. In Antarctica, as the leading countries cut their budgets, China has an opportunity to increase its influence. At present, China continues to quietly pursue its interests in the polar regions as well as working toward great power status. Aside from the pursuit of power or interests, Brady also mentions that engagement in polar affairs is a result of China’s desire to achieve international “face” and positive recognition from other countries. As China becomes stronger, the polar regions are playing a more important role in satisfying its security and economic goals. Beijing may therefore increase its physical presence in the regions as well as speaking out more assertively on unresolved sovereignty disputes and plans to restrict access to both the Arctic and Antarctic. This book provides strong evidence that the power structure in the polar regions is changing. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan Association of International Relations; All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)

Leheny,, David

2019 International Relations of the Asia-Pacific

doi: 10.1093/irap/lcz002

This concise monograph is fascinating: a serious examination of a policy that frequently seems partial and even half-hearted. As Maiko Ichihara notes, while Japanese overseas development assistance officials have for decades emphasized their contributions to democracy, these programs typically avoid the deliberate pro-democracy interventions often seen in American and European aid packages. Ichihara, an international relations professor at Hitotsubashi University, examines this apparent mismatch—extensive policy declarations for usually subtle, even indistinguishable pro-democracy Japanese aid efforts—by examining international systemic and domestic institutional factors. Ichihara persuasively tracks how pro-democracy rhetoric, such as that in former Prime Minister Taro Aso’s ‘Arc of Freedom and Prosperity’ and the ‘values-oriented diplomacy’ in Shinzo Abe’s first stint as prime minister, has not only been durable in Japanese aid discourse but deepened even after it had started to sour in global politics because of the consequences of the disastrous Iraq war. She notes, however, that there seem to have been limited changes in Japan’s actual aid provision despite these pronouncements. So for Ichihara, this is a mystery: why talk about support for democracy in Japanese aid initiatives even after its importance has perhaps crested among other leading aid donors and despite Japan’s relatively consistent aid practices? Ichichara explains this with reference to both international structural factors (conventional ‘neoclassical realist’ power and normative features) as well as domestic institutional constraints. And this leads to a nuanced or mixed conclusion: a patchy tide of democracy in Asia, combined with contested interests in its promotion among Western donors (fitfully including Japan’s main alliance partner, the United States), combined with the complex challenges posed by a rising China, have together led to a partial commitment to democracy promotion in Japan’s aid system. Ichihara might dispute the ‘partial’ label here. She is at her best in showing both the instrumental goals of Japanese officials in using the language of democracy promotion as well as their apparent level of genuine belief. After all, if one buys into the tenets of modernization theories that tend to lie at the core of Japanese developmentalism, first one has to establish reliable economic growth, and then beneficial political change should logically come later. She moreover argues, sometimes a bit too subtly, that the cornerstone of official Japanese views of democracy lies less in the rough-and-tumble world of political contestation (this assistance virtually never extends to the support of nongovernment political parties) than in a kind of ‘good governance’ associated with the ‘rule of law’. If this is the case, Japan’s support for democracy in Asia means a commitment to the kinds of legal institutions that the country’s main rival, China, seems all too willing to flout in its engagement with the region’s other actors. And so technocratic solutions to lagging growth and legal institutions that govern economic interaction are understood as even more foundational to democratic emergence and sustainability than are institutions, such as NGOs and opposition parties, that ideally in a democracy push for alternatives to government demands. Ichihara coolly and dispassionately assesses her official informants’ views of democracy promotion. She therefore provides a breath of fresh air in the sometimes dismally predictable debates over Japanese foreign aid, neither lionizing the putative promotion of a superior model of development over those of its straw man Western competitors, nor heaping invective on the country for failing to live up to the demonstrated wisdom of global aid norms promoted by these same Western donors. Instead, she takes Japanese officials at their word in reporting their belief that democracy is best encouraged through growth and respect for institutions, not by providing immediate support to government critics and the organized opposition. She also recognizes how this belief maps neatly onto long-standing bureaucratic and political interests. This is just one feature making Ichihara’s book a welcome intervention in debates about Japan’s international relations. That said, she misses some key opportunities to deepen the study’s contributions. Ichihara tests four hypotheses to explain Japan’s democracy-related aid stance: international norm structure (primarily the spread of democracy in Asia), international power structure (mostly concerns about China), domestic institutional incrementalism, and a ‘speech act’ hypothesis. This final one stipulates that the government signals its commitments to democracy to Western donors while pursuing ‘comprehensive’ development strategies that envision democracy as a desirable, logical end point of economic growth. Ichihara finds partial support for all four hypotheses, which itself raises questions about the wisdom of organizing the book around overlapping causal claims that do not really compete with let alone obviate or challenge one another. More problematic is Ichihara’s limited exploration of the theoretical bases of her hypotheses beyond brief overviews of realist theory, studies of democracy promotion, and the standard explanations for Japanese foreign policy: reactivism, incrementalism, and so forth. Her hypotheses, which cut across these theories, seem jerry-rigged to the observed substance of policy, not derived logically from theoretical perspectives with rigorously defined boundaries, concepts, and claims. After all, realism sits only uneasily alongside attention to norms and domestic institutions, and Ichihara never delves into the Wittgensteinian roots of what speech acts are or do. Consider one reason this matters: the ‘soft power’ that she understands to be a resource that the Japanese government seeks to cultivate by speaking about democracy might actually be viewed completely differently, particularly if one begins to ask why these pro-democracy aid officials or politicians come to believe what they believe in the first place. After all, Japanese policymakers seem sincere in their pro-democratic views even though their policies promote them only fitfully, suggesting that these policymakers have themselves been shaped as actors in a transnational cultural environment over which the Japanese government has limited control. That is, if soft power really exists—and I am in no way advocating for this concept, which she herself raises—Ichihara’s book might tell us quite a lot about how Japan is as much its object as its subject. I make this point not because I think her analysis is wrong, but rather because her very interesting case studies might have even more to tell us about how power and ideas operate in a rapidly changing East Asia than Ichihara suggests in this original, compelling book. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan Association of International Relations; All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)

Whang,, Taehee;Lammbrau,, Michael;Joo,, Hyung-min

2019 International Relations of the Asia-Pacific

doi: 10.1093/irap/lcw020

International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, doi:10.1093/irap/lcw016. In the above article, Taehee Whang and Hyung-min Joo’s institutions were missing from their affiliations. This has been corrected above and in the article. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan Association of International Relations; all rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected] This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)

Hsieh, Pasha, L

2019 International Relations of the Asia-Pacific

doi: 10.1093/irap/lcy027

International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, doi: 10.1093/irap/lcx005. The online version of this article incorrectly listed the date of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 as 1991. This error has now been corrected. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan Association of International Relations; All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)