T.J. Pempel, Chung-Min Lee - Security Cooperation in Northeast Asia (2012)

Security Cooperation
in Northeast Asia
Architecture and beyond
Edited by T.J. Pempel and Chung-Min Lee
POLITICS IN ASIA
Downloaded by [Hacettepe University] at 19:39 17 January 2017
Security Cooperation in
Northeast Asia
Defining and conceptualizing Northeast Asia’s security complex poses unique

quandaries. The security architecture in Northeast Asia to date has been predomi-
nately U.S.-dominated bilateral alliances, weak institutional structures and the cur-
rent Six Party Talks dealing with the North Korean nuclear issue. There has been a
distinct lack of desire among regional countries as well as the U.S. to follow in the
footsteps of Europe with its robust set of multilateral institutions. However, since
the late 1990s, there has been burgeoning interest among regional states towards
forming new multilateral institutions as well as reforming and revitalizing existing
mechanisms. Much of this effort has been in the economic and political arenas,
with the creation of bodies such as the East Asian Summit, but there have also
been important initiatives in the security sphere.
This book offers detailed examinations about how this potentially tense region
of the world is redefining certain longstanding national interests, and shows how
this shift is the result of changing power relations, the desire to protect hard-won
economic gains, as well as growing trust in new processes designed to foster
regional cooperation over regional conflict.
Presenting new and timely research on topics that are vital to the security future
of one of the world’s most important geographical regions, this book will be of
great value to students and scholars of Asian politics, regionalism, international
politics and security studies.
T.J. Pempel is Professor and Jack M. Forcey Chair of Political Science for Study
of East Asian Politics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Chung-Min Lee is Dean and Professor of International Relations at the Graduate
School of International Studies, Yonsei University, South Korea.
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Security Cooperation in Northeast Asia

Edited by T.J. Pempel and Chung-Min Lee
Security Cooperation in
Northeast Asia
Edited by
T.J. Pempel and Chung-Min Lee
First published 2012
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
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© 2012 T.J. Pempel and Chung-Min Lee for selection and editorial matter;
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Security cooperation in northeast Asia: architecture and beyond /
edited by T. J. Pempel and Chung-Min Lee.
p.cm—(Politics in Asia series)
1. Security, International—East Asia
I. Pempel, T. J. II. Lee, Chung-Min.
JZ6009.E18S43 2012
355'.031095—dc23
2011047698
ISBN: 978–0–415–50695–3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978–0–203–11844–3 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman

by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon
Contents
List of figures and tables xiii

Notes on contributors xv
Acknowledgements xvi
PART I
The Northeast Asian security complex 1
1 The Northeast Asian security complex: history, power,

and strategic choices 3
CHUNG-MIN LEE AND T.J. PEMPEL
2 The requirements for security cooperation in Northeast Asia:

theory and reality 22
AJIN CHOI
PART II
Security challenges, drivers, and issues 41
3 Nuclear weapons, state bellicosity, and prospects for an

East Asian security architecture 43
JOSEPH M. GRIECO
4 Between multilateralism and bilateralism 65

GEUNWOOK LEE
PART III
State interests and strategies 87
5 European experience and lessons 89

HAE-WON JUN
xii Contents
6 China’s strategic option: multilateralism and the pursuit of
influence 106
SUKHEE HAN AND LUO JIANBO
7 What is a “liberal” East Asia policy? Japan and the DPJ

government 124
YOKO IWAMA
8 The Republic of Korea: toward peace and cooperation 146

HYUNG MIN KIM
9 Leadership and commitment: the United States, its allies,

and emerging security institutions in Northeast Asia 167

CAROL ATKINSON AND GIACOMO CHIOZZA
PART IV
Actualizing security cooperation and its future 191
10 The Northeast Asia cooperation dialogue: an experiment in

Track II multilateral diplomacy 193
SUSAN L. SHIRK
11 Security architecture in Northeast Asia: projections

from the rearview mirror 212
T.J. PEMPEL
Index 233
Contents xiii
Figures and tables

Figures
2.1 Percentage of exports from Korea and Japan to the
United States and China 29
5.1 Organization of main ESDP bodies 98
5.2 Simplified overview of the ESDP decision-making process 99
8.1 Comparing Korea’s regional power share to
Great Britain’s regional power share 153
8.2 Korea’s network power share in the region 154
8.3 Increased economic interdependence in the region 155
8.4 Korea’s economic interdependence in the region 156
9.1 Isolationism in the US public, 1964–2009 171
9.2 US popular attitudes towards other countries and people, 2008 172
Tables
2.1 IR theories on security cooperation, seven derived variables
and their predictions 27
2.2 Trade volume and direction of Northeast Asia states, 2001–2008 33
3.1 Nuclear-weapon status and crisis initiations 51
3.2 Consequences of violent triggers and crisis-escalation dominance,
1946–2007 54
3.3 Nuclear weapons and the violent challenger triggers to military crises,
1946–2007 55
3.4 Nuclear weapons and violent challenges against non-nuclear
defenders, 1946–2007 56
3.5 Sources of challenger crisis-escalation dominance, 1946–2007 57
3.6 Sources of challenger crisis-escalation dominance,
non-nuclear defenders, 1946–2007 58
3.7 Estimated effects of nuclear-weapon possession on
crisis-escalation dominance, 1946–2007 59
5.1 Membership of current security institutions in Europe 92
5.2 NATO military expenditures 95
xiv Figures and tables
5.3 EU military operations 97
5.4 Athena mechanism 100
5.5 Member states’ contribution to the EU battlegroups 101
8.1 Analysis of dyadic dispute onset: on the conditions for
peace in the region 151
11.1 Major security arrangements affecting Northeast Asia 215
Contributors
Carol Atkinson is a retired U.S. military officer. She is Assistant Professor of

Political Science at Vanderbilt University.
Giacomo Chiozza is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt
University.
Ajin Choi is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of International Studies at
Yonsei University. She was a Belfer Research Fellow in Harvard’s International
Security Program during 2010–2011.
Joseph M. Grieco is Professor of Political Science at Duke University, Durham,
North Carolina.
Sukhee Han is Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies and Associate
Professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei Univesity.
Yoko Iwama is Professor of International Relations at GRIPS (National Graduate
Institute for Policy Studies) in Tokyo, Japan.
Hae-Won Jun is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National
Security, Seoul.
Hyung Min Kim is a visiting scholar at Seoul National University of Science and
Technology, Korea.
Chung-Min Lee is Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies and
Director of Yonsei’s Institute for Modern Korean Studies at Yonsei University.
Geunwook Lee is an Associate Professor of the Department of Political Science,
Sogang University (Seoul, Korea).
Luo Jianbao is a researcher at the Central Party School of the Communist Party of
China in Beijing.
T.J. Pempel is Jack M. Forcey Professor of Political Science at the University of
California, Berkeley.
Susan L. Shirk is the Ho Miu Lam Endowed Chair in China and Pacific Relations
in the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UC San Diego
and director of the University of California system-wide Institute on Global
Conflict and Cooperation.
Acknowledgements
This volume is the outcome of a more extensive project involving security in

Northeast Asia conducted by the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation
(IGCC) at the University of California and the Graduate School of International
Studies (GSIS) at Yonsei University. Of our many debts of gratitude, the greatest
is to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Asia Security Initia-
tive for the funding that made the entire project possible. Matthew Stumpf and
Amy Gordon of the foundation were particularly instrumental in helping us move
this project forward. Etel Solingen attended our two conferences and provided
invaluable feedback and suggestions.
There was valuable staff support from both IGCC and GSIS. At IGCC we would
especially like to thank Susan Shirk, Tai Ming Cheung, and Heidi Serochi. Lynne
Bush provided extremely valuable editorial assistance on the final manuscript.
T.J. Pempel would like to give special thinks to Chris Reinhardt, who provided
extremely valuable research and editorial help throughout the project.
At the GSIS, Chung Min Lee would like to express appreciations to Ajin Choi
and Sukhee Han for their scholarly contribution to the book as well as their kind
and selfless efforts for the project. Sincere thanks must also go to the staff and
student assistants at the GSIS who made the completion of the book as well as the
project possible.
Leanne Hinves and Ed Needle at Routledge have been extremely helpful in
shepherding this volume through its many iterations.
Part I
security complex
The Northeast Asian
1 The Northeast Asian security
complex
History, power, and strategic
choices
Chung Min Lee and T.J. Pempel
Northeast Asia and the international system: strategic

legacies and future trajectories
The significance of Northeast Asia’s rise

Defining and conceptualizing Northeast Asia’s security complex poses unique
quandaries. Certainly, one of the most vexing and consequential security chal-
lenges confronting Greater Asia and the world in the early twenty-first century lies
in co-shaping and forecasting the evolution of its most dynamic, powerful, and his-
torically discordant sub-region—Northeast Asia: home to the world’s most popu-
lous nation, the second and third most powerful economies in the global system,
and three of the world’s five largest armies (including two nuclear weapon states—
China and Russia—as well as a nuclear weapons-capable North Korea). Even more
problematic are projections about the future and how best to shape it in ways that
might reduce the chances that security dilemmas will become exacerbated.
Northeast Asia’s strategic future—including its potential security architec-
tures—is likely to hinge on the convergence of four interrelated developments.
First, the adroit management of China’s rise not only by China’s own leadership,
but by all of its strategically consequential neighbors and other key stakeholders
such as the United States and the European Union. China’s unparalleled economic
growth since the introduction of economic reforms in the late 1970s has already
ushered in a deeply significant development at the end of 2010: China has sur-
passed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy after the United States.
Unlike the case of the former Soviet Union, which was never an economic super-
power, the evolution of the “China Question” throughout the first half of this century
will be dominated by the pros and cons of China’s economic might concomitant
with its growing ability to project power beyond its shores. One of Beijing’s greatest
diplomatic feats since the late 1970s has been in the field of “normalizing” its rela-
tions with almost all of its fourteen border-sharing states. While China’s accelerated
economic growth has provided Beijing with new opportunities, it also creates enor-
mous obstacles domestically as the economy already begins to show signs of matu-
rity (and attendant slower growth rates). In essence, the economics of geopolitics is
already emerging as one key determinant of Northeast Asia’s security futures.
4 Chung Min Lee and T.J. Pempel
Second, the web of alliances created and fostered by the United States in the era
following the Korean War is now entering its sixth decade. Following the elec-
tion of a new government headed by the Democratic Party of Japan there was a
bout of strategic discord between Japan and the United States concerning military
bases on Okinawa. Similarly, the Roh Moo-hyun government in South Korea had
enormous difficulties with the Bush administration in revamping the Republic of
Korea (ROK)–US alliance. Difficulties such as these in bilateral security rela-
tions stand in stark contrast to the rather harmonious bilateralism of the Cold War
era. These tensions make clear that reformulating America’s Asian alliances for
the twenty-first century is bound to be affected increasingly by shifting domestic
political forces and a fundamentally different economic template. Japan and South
Korea, not to mention Australia and the Association of South-East Asian Nations
(ASEAN) economies, now trade more with China than with the United States.
How these traditional US allies co-shape their respective security linkages with
the United States is bound to influence Northeast Asia’s security milieu well into
the mid-century.
Despite commentaries suggesting the inevitability of a US–China “G-2” system,
the United States continues to enjoy strategic advantages in the region that stem
from its decades-long security presence, its overwhelming military superiority,
the sharing of key political values and norms with its principal allies in the region,
and continued perceptions of it as an honest broker. These critical assets, however,
are being increasingly contested by a rising China and the associated complexities
confronting America’s traditional alliance partners with the difficulty of pursuing
two seemingly bifurcated goals: strengthening and maintaining security ties with
the United States at a time of deepening economic linkages with China.
Third, the economies of China, Japan, and South Korea together account for 70
percent of East Asia’s GDP and Northeast Asia has fully emerged as the world’s
third economic pillar, meaning that the region’s future is indelibly tied to that of
the world’s and vice versa. Yet a much more globalized Northeast Asia also poses
significant new challenges to policymakers and their respective political constitu-
ents. Every major global issue such as climate change, stemming the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), fighting transnational terrorism and net-
worked crime syndicates, and key socio-demographic trends, to mention only a
few, cannot be resolved in part or in whole without the active participation of the
principal Northeast Asian states. Rhetorical commitments to addressing endemic
global challenges must be matched by financial, technological, and political com-
mitments by all Northeast Asian governments.
Fourth, despite the rising importance of asymmetrical terrorist threats and the
growing importance of dealing with failed states, Northeast Asia is still uniquely
challenging as the main repository of the world’s outstanding traditional secu-
rity quandaries. Not only does the region house some of the world’s largest and
increasingly sophisticated armies, it also includes key geopolitical hotspots such
as the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait. Toxic historical legacies have yet
to be fully overcome, and abidingly nationalistic worldviews persist. Overcoming
a confluence of hard and traditional security challenges in addition to building
more enduring political trust continues to elude the region’s leaders. It is true that
certain valuable steps have been taken, such as the institutionalization of annual
Northeast Asian summits, and new architectures designed to mitigate tensions are
being put in place. And the chapters in this book make clear how valuable this
changing architecture can be. At the same time, important as any new architecture
may be, the unique set of circumstances that makes up the Northeast Asian secu-
rity complex suggests that adhering to post-conflict norms and, to the extent pos-
sible, less politicized bilateral relationships is likely to pay heavier dividends, at
least until some of the more vexing security quagmires are resolved. Architecture
alone will not resolve the region’s emerging security problems.
Northeast Asia’s forced entry into the modern world system began in earnest
with Japan’s Meiji Restoration of 1868, which in turn triggered the demise of the
Sino-centric world order, leading ultimately to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty
in China and the Yi Dynasty in Korea. Subsequently, Northeast Asia was engulfed
in half a century of virtually incessant conflicts including civil wars, struggles for
independence, and major wars including World War II and the Korean War. If
the first half of Northeast Asia’s twentieth-century journey was emblematic of
the recurrence of potent clashes such as marked the world at large, the second
half could not be more different. Indeed, Northeast Asia’s economic rise in the
post-Korean War era, but particularly since China’s post-reform era from the late
1970s, has been equally prophetic for large parts of the world which have enjoyed
unprecedented socio-economic development and rejection of inter-state wars.
This is not to suggest that political disputes, internal perturbations, and even out-
of-area conflicts have been dormant. China’s Great Leap Forward (1958–1961)
and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) resulted in unparal-
leled discord and mayhem in China, and the 1989 protests posed a major challenge
to the regime. While not directly impinging on strategic stability in Northeast
Asia, the Vietnam War that ended with North Vietnam’s victory in 1975 ushered
in a period of strategic uncertainty throughout much of East Asia. The Khmer
Rouge’s genocide in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, the short but intense border
war between China and Vietnam in January 1979, and the subsequent invasion of
Cambodia by Vietnam also in 1979 all attest to the prevalence of rippling conflicts
in Southeast Asia. Tensions across the Taiwan Strait have periodically exploded
into missile launches and threats of military conflict. North Korean shelling of
Yeongpyeong at the end of 2010 served as a reminder that the Korean Peninsula
is still technically at war. Since the early 1980s, however, and notwithstanding
the continuing relevance of key geopolitical hotspots (notably the Korean Penin-
sula and the Taiwan Strait), Northeast Asia’s overall trajectory has indelibly been
shifting from conflict to cooperation.
In and of itself, such a paradigm shift is not remarkable, since Western Europe
also embarked on a similar path following World War II. Yet, whereas Europe’s
postwar rebirth (symbolized in its final stages by the dissolution of the former
Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, and the consolidation of the Euro-
pean Union) coincided with the historical ebbing of Western Europe’s geopo-
litical and geo-economic influences that had spanned nearly five centuries, East
Asia’s postwar rebirth is occurring precisely at another turning-point in world
history: the emergence of East Asia, and in particular China, as a principal driver
of the international system. That said, it would be far too optimistic to suggest
that, going into the second decade of the twenty-first century, Asia’s rise will be
marked by essentially linear trajectories marked by sustained economic growth,
political stability, and a significant cooling of key geopolitical hotspots. Equally
important, Asia’s rise does not necessarily mean that the region’s strategically
consequential states will assume a larger share of an increasingly common secu-
rity and economic burden across a spectrum of issues. Three other key points need
to be emphasized in assessing East Asia’s emerging role in the world system.
Pre-conditions for Asia’s “peaceful rise”

First, the much talked about demise of the West, and the alleged decline in US
influence in particular, is far from certain, given its ability for regeneration, reju-
venation, and reassessment.1 US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated in a
November 2010 speech on Asian security that the “US is a Pacific nation and is,
and will remain, a power in the Pacific.” As he stated: “I do so for a reason: with
sovereign territory and longstanding economic and cultural ties to this region,
America’s security interests and economic well-being are integrally tied to Asia’s”
(Gates 5 June 2010). He also went on to say:
My government’s overriding obligation to allies, partners, and the region is

to reaffirm America’s security commitments in this region . . . It has become
clear to us that an effective, affordable, and sustainable US defense posture
requires a broad portfolio of military capabilities with maximum versatility
across the widest possible spectrum of conflict. Fielding these capabilities, and
demonstrating the resolve to use them if necessary, assures friends and poten-
tial adversaries alike of the credibility of US security commitments through
our ability to defend against the full range of potential threats . . . There is no
question that, in the future, even more than in the past, the safety, security, and
economic well-being of the US will be increasingly linked to Asia. The US
defense strategy in this region reflects continuing recognition of both old and
new challenges to peace and security, from North Korea to extremist terror-
ism, while acknowledging the many changes that have taken place in recent
years, especially the rise of Asia and its place in the global order.
(Ibid.)
Second, the growing importance and adoption of intrinsically universal values,

norms, and institutions along with accelerating globalization have continued to
dilute more traditional (i.e., nationalistic and geographic) conceptions of identity
and the subsequent enlargement of more “regional” identities and groupings. This
is certainly happening in Northeast Asia.
Third, East Asia’s pronounced and unprecedented societal, intra-regional, and
supra-national challenges are likely to curtail significantly East Asia’s much-vaunted
emerging role as the epicenter of world politics and economics in the twenty-first
century and beyond. Or as one analyst has written, “theories of functional integra-
tion are sorely tested by the fact that the deepest disputes are between the economies
of Northeast Asia that have a very high degree of interdependence, namely, Taiwan,
Japan, China and the divided Korean Peninsula” (Hughes 2007: 320).
There is an ongoing debate between views that “Asia has arrived” and those
that stress “Asia has arrived but is replete with indigenous problems.” This debate
really centers on the long-standing realist versus liberal theories of international
relations or “the relative importance and efficacy of material capabilities versus
institutions in world politics” (Hemmer and Katzenstein 2002: 576). Yet North-
east Asia stands out as a unique laboratory for world politics precisely because it
simultaneously embodies, embraces, but also seemingly falsifies these two con-
tending schools of thought. Competing bodies of empirical evidence that can eas-
ily lend credibility to realist or liberal traditions miss the more important point that
neither school fully meets the most basic theoretical requirement: more univer-
sal explanatory and predictive capacity. Thus, while the term has been over-used
and misused, conceptualizing Northeast Asia’s security complex should begin by
exploring the very nexus of neo-realism and neo-liberalism or a “third way,” given
the preponderance of centrifugal and centripetal forces that have come to define
Northeast Asia in the post-World War II era.
History has amply shown that peace and conflict, discord and cooperation,
hierarchies and non-hierarchies, and justice and injustice have always co-existed.
Mitigating these and other tensions between opposites by strengthening norms
about non-use of force, institutionalization of CBMs (confidence building meas-
ures) through multilateral mechanisms and regimes, and arms control could sub-
stantially mitigate existing security dilemmas in Northeast Asia. In these ways
institutionalists have evidence supporting their arguments. Viewed through a real-
ist lens, however, Northeast Asia’s prospects for multilateral security cooperation
are significantly curtailed by the preponderance of “hard security” threats such
as great power military competition, increasingly sophisticated power projec-
tion capabilities, a prevailing strategic culture characterized by lasting historical
animosities, and the proliferation of WMD. The continuing relevance of Cold
War-era alliances (US–Japan, ROK–US, China–Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea (DPRK), and US–Australia) suggests that even with increasingly waning
prospects for major wars between the great powers, America’s Asian alliances
remain the primary guarantor of regional stability, while those ties as well as the
links between China and the DPRK reduce the capacity to speak meaningfully of a
post-Cold War era of regional cooperation. Robust military capabilities, extended
deterrence guarantees, and crisis stability dynamics continue to remain valid in
maintaining stability and security in Northeast Asia.
This last point was brought to the fore on March 26, 2010 when a North Korean
torpedo sank the South Korean naval vessel the Cheonan, resulting in the deaths
of 46 sailors. A multi-national investigation panel released its findings on May 24
and the South Korean government subsequently implemented a range of responses
including diplomatic pressure through the United Nations that virtually cut off
inter-Korean trade, while the ROK also upgraded its previously conservative rules
of engagement.2 Equally supportive of realist views was the rapidity with which
traditional military alliances were reaffirmed following North Korea’s shelling of
Yeongpyeong eighteen months later.
Equally convincingly, however, one could argue from a liberalist perspec-
tive that precisely because of growing economic interdependence, the extremely
high opportunity costs associated with any major breakdown in the status quo,
and growing aversion to the use of force, Northeast Asia’s security complex is
becoming increasingly defined by more universal and non-military norms of state
behavior. As a case in point, the fact that China signed on to UN Security Council
Resolution 1874 in June 2009 soon after North Korea’s second nuclear test of
May 25, 2009 attests to Beijing’s growing political dilemma; namely, whether it
should continue to support its only treaty ally (North Korea) even when DPRK
actions pose significant threats to regional and global security. Beijing’s much
more nuanced and reserved responses to the Cheonan incident also illustrate Chi-
na’s growing frustrations with North Korea. An editorial published by the Global
Times (a sister publication of the People’s Daily) on June 12 stated, in part, that:
A cold reality confronting Pyongyang now is that South Korea has presented
evidence so overwhelming that it has gained full support from the US and
Japan and dominated worldwide public opinion on this issue. In contrast,
North Korea has merely thrown in strong verbiage along with the threat of
an “all-out war.” Its reaction will by no means help Pyongyang get out of the
current predicament. Instead, it can only come at the heavy price of further
isolation from the rest of the world. As a country suffering from deteriorating
international credibility, a careful presentation of solid evidence against the
accusation is the only option it has to persuade the world of its truthfulness.
To be sure, China’s alliance with North Korea is unlikely to be disestablished

anytime in the near future and despite Pyongyang’s provocations, Beijing contin-
ues to supply more than 70 percent of North Korea’s food and fuel. Nonetheless,
the facts that China’s largest trading partners in Asia are Japan and South Korea
and that these three economies comprise 70 percent of East Asia’s GDP, suggest
that deepening economic integration cannot but influence longer-term Sino-North
Korean relations. During a trilateral summit in Jeju on May 25, 2010, President
Lee Myung-bak, Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio, and Chinese Premier
Wen Jiabao agreed to set up a virtual secretariat to enhance trilateral cooperation
on key regional and global issues and, following a review, to set up a permanent
Korea–Japan–China or a “Northeast Asian” secretariat in 2011. The three lead-
ers also agreed to pursue a free trade agreement as well as a common investment
treaty (Asia Economy 29 May 2010).
At the same time, however, in order for deepening economic integration in North-
east Asia to translate into more positive political and security drivers, entrenched
political obstacles such as the inter-Korean relationship and cross-strait relations
must be removed or mitigated significantly. Thus, the key challenge that would
impede a neo-liberal paradigm’s being more readily applied in Northeast Asia
lies in the fact that it cannot fully account for the region’s deeply rooted security
challenges, including the potential outbreak of a security dilemma such as is now
being illustrated by the region’s increasingly robust defense budget outlays. Nor
has it yet been shown that rising economic interdependence and growing receptiv-
ity towards multilateral cooperation can be equated with post-realist behavioral
norms in Northeast Asia (Kim 2005: 38).
Thus, scholars and analysts alike who are trying to conceptualize and define
Northeast Asia’s contrasting forces face significant hurdles. While East Asia’s
security template is not managed by a collective security alliance such as NATO
or even a multinational CBM organization like the Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the web of US-led bilateral alliances, nascent

multilateral security forums such as the ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum), and the
trilateral summit meetings among China, Japan, and South Korea, attests to the
growing importance of Northeast Asia’s emerging security architecture, which
now involves a number of “mini-laterals” and bilaterals having multilateral under-
pinnings. What is perhaps more relevant in forecasting Northeast Asian trajecto-
ries is working backwards from more normative (or even ideal) regional security
futures and then asking ourselves about the ideal roles and structures of multilat-
eral mechanisms and architectures that might support such positive futures.
The rediscovery of geopolitics in Northeast Asia: mass,

history, and strategy
Historically, Northeast Asia’s experience with multilateralism has been decidedly
mixed, given the preference for, and prevalence of, bilateral security ties for much
of the postwar era. Throughout its postwar economic resurrection, Japan’s foreign
and security policies have been intimately tied to its de facto alliance with the
United States, a point equally central to South Korean–US ties. But as Japan’s
(and to a lesser extent, South Korea’s) security template has expanded in the post-
Cold War era, both countries have upgraded and modernized their alliances with
the United States while also harnessing new security ties with third parties such as
Australia and India. In March 2007, Japan announced a comprehensive security
declaration with Australia and in March 2009, South Korea followed suit (Mulgan
2008: 54). In the Joint Statement on “Enhanced Global and Security Coopera-
tion” that was signed between Korea and Australia, the two governments agreed to
cooperate on a range of security issues including the holding of an annual foreign
ministers’ meeting, consultations on combating transnational crime, addressing
border security issues, WMD proliferation, peacekeeping and defense operations,
maritime security and humanitarian operations (Department of Foreign Affairs
and Trade 5 March 2009). This was the first time since the conclusion of the
US–Korea mutual defense treaty that South Korea had concluded a comprehen-
sive security partnership with another country.
Since 9/11, South Korea and Japan have been forced to grapple with out-of-
area security commitments (such as the dispatching of non-combatants to Iraq and
Afghanistan) and modernizing their respective alliances with the United States in
order to respond to a broadened security menu. For the time being, both Tokyo and
Seoul have chosen not to explicitly emphasize their worries about China’s grow-
ing strategic footprints throughout East Asia because of their increasingly robust
trade ties with China, and in South Korea’s case, the extremely sensitive nature
of Sino-North Korean relations. That said, the emergence of more robust security
cooperation among the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Australia signals
the creation of a “de facto multilateral” security mechanism built on a web of bilat-
eral linkages but in ways that reinforce rather than reduce existing lines of tension.
As a case in point, in May 2009, US, Japanese, and South Korean defense minis-
ters held their first official trilateral meeting at the Shangri-La Dialogue sponsored
by the International Institute for Strategic Studies; a second round of consultations

took place at the 2010 Shangri-La Dialogue.
Although US–Japan relations were reset first by the new Democratic Party
of Japan (DPJ) government and then again with the departure of Prime Minis-
ter Hatoyama Yukio and his last-minute decision to proceed with the Futenma
base relocation accord, ongoing tensions within Japan (particularly surrounding
Okinawa) persist vis-à-vis US–Japan security relations. At a deeper level, both
the United States and Japan, or for that matter, even South Korea, face a com-
mon conundrum: namely, fostering closer economic ties with China while hedg-
ing against Beijing’s growing military capabilities. Or as one observer has noted,
“with China stating that it plans to build several aircraft carriers, alliance military
planners are questioning why Beijing is developing power-projection capabili-
ties that could be used to deny access to US naval ships and to control strategic
waterways.”3
While it is difficult to envision any sudden shift to multilateral security coopera-
tion by either Japan or South Korea, both parties have been heavily involved in the
Six Party Talks that were designed to cope with the ongoing North Korean nuclear
issue. Whether the Six Party Talks could evolve ultimately into a “Northeast Asian
Security Organization” akin to the OSCE remains unclear but the format is likely
to outlive the North Korean nuclear issue to the extent that the eventual unification
of the Korean Peninsula is likely to require in-depth consultations and coordina-
tion by the two Koreas and the four major powers. One of the core challenges
confronting Northeast Asia vis-à-vis the greater institutionalization of multilateral
security mechanisms is that while they may serve to alleviate and even lessen
tensions in key areas, they are likely to generate “marginal” improvements rather
than fundamental changes in the national security strategies and corresponding
capabilities of the three main countries concerned. The continued dominance of
“hard security” agendas in Northeast Asia also suggests that for the time being,
inculcating a culture of multilateral security dialogue is the best first step prior to
drawing up plans for more permanent institutions.
But thinking about multilateral security futures is critical, given that Northeast
Asia’s expanding geostrategic significance and corresponding influences is argu-
ably the single most important development in world politics and economics over
the past half century. Clearly, the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, the rise
of fundamentalism in the Muslim world, transnational security threats, and global
dislocations (such as climate change, pandemics, or energy and food security)
have transformed and continue to transform the international system. Nonethe-
less, how Northeast Asia evolves, interacts, and responds vis-à-vis the world is
likely to be one of the key determinants of twenty-first century geopolitics for
three main reasons: 1) the preponderance of the China Factor; 2) managing and
shaping core hotspots; and 3) the economics of geopolitics.
The preponderance of the China factor

China’s cumulative rise, corresponding shifts in the global balance of power, and
its longer-term evolution cannot but have global strategic ramifications. No single
major issue confronting Northeast Asia (or for that matter, the rest of Asia) can
be resolved or mitigated without taking into consideration China’s enlarging foot-
print. If the gradual collapse of the Qing Dynasty in the late nineteenth century
resulted in decades of domestic turmoil and regional conflicts (the Sino-Japanese
War of 1895, the Russo-Japanese of 1905, the annexation of Korea in 1910, and
the second Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, to name only the most prominent),
the rise of China since the 1990s has usually been equated with intensifying intra-
regional economic integration, more accommodative and pragmatic foreign pol-
icies, and significantly reduced prospects for major conflict between the great
powers. Yet precisely due to China’s meteoric rise, its potential for much more
robust power-projection capabilities, and uncertainties surrounding its political
transitions, China’s, and by extension, Northeast Asia’s, trajectories are likely to
shape the regional and global distribution of power more than any other single
geopolitical factor.
The rediscovery of geopolitics in Northeast Asia has gained prominence owing
primarily to China’s rise and attendant consequences such as India’s closer strate-
gic relationship with the United States and its major security partners in East Asia
such as Japan and South Korea. It should be noted, however, that China’s pursuit
of a more robust security policy is not without drawbacks and new opportunity
costs. For example, as Beijing’s military outlays continue to increase, almost
all of its strategically consequential neighbors—India, Japan, South Korea, and
Vietnam—are pursuing variations of hedging strategies vis-à-vis China’s grow-
ing military capabilities. India has been alarmed at China’s naval modernization,
particularly as the Chinese naval footprint increases in the Indian Ocean and even
into the Bay of Bengal—long considered India’s “maritime backyard” (Zhu 2009:
20).
One Chinese security analyst argues that there are three major factors that could
trigger a potential arms race in East Asia: the preponderance of flash-points in the
region, hedging strategies on the part of the regional powers, and China’s military
modernization. He argues that China’s military modernization is driven by com-
plex motivations including its pursuit of great-power status, complex political and
foreign policy insecurities, and core national interests, including securing critical
energy supplies. He goes on to note that “domestically, military modernization
is a reliable and visible way to deter ethnic and separatist rebel movements and
enhance national cohesion; internationally, it reflects a preoccupation of the lead-
ership to counter ideological antagonism” (Zhu 2009: 24).
For the moment, China realizes that its military modernization strategy can-
not compete head-to-head with the United States, given the latter’s unsurpassed
advantage in fielding the world’s most sophisticated military technologies. At the
same time, despite the fact that the United States has now been engaged in its
“longest war,” i.e., counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan following 9/11,
and has faced significant hurdles in Iraq prior to the withdrawal of US forces there,
it is also undeniable that the US military has gained key battleground experiences
which continue to elude the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The ultimate suc-
cess or failure of US operations in Afghanistan hinges on a combination of factors

and forces, but the integration of asymmetrical strategies and tactics such as the
use of drones and Special Forces is likely to provide key insights into how next-
generation warfare will evolve.
Chinese leaders may decide to delay any concerted effort to directly contest US
naval supremacy in the Asia-Pacific theater, given current undeniable disparities; it
may choose instead to emphasize building up its own selective RMA (Revolution
in Military Affairs) capabilities. Or, as one Chinese military observer has written,
China is likely to become a major exporter of RMA related technologies and

systems. This will have serious international political ramifications. If China
continues to grow, and the development of its RMA related technological-
industrial base keeps pace, China is very likely to provide information prod-
ucts including whole packages of military aid to developing countries at a
reasonable price, leading to a possible re-alignment of the global balance of
power.
(Ding 2008: 94)
As in the cases of all great powers on the brink of exercising their cumulative
influences, China’s political leadership faces unparalleled challenges and dilem-
mas. Should China choose to tame its assertive “hyper-nationalism,” implement
more adroit global strategies, significantly enhance its military transparency, and
attach greater importance to selective “disengagement” from relationships that
are increasingly becoming liabilities rather than assets (such as its ties with North
Korea and Myanmar), its ability to foster a favorable regional road map will be
significantly enhanced. To be sure, even if Beijing chooses a “softer” approach
commensurate with ambitions befitting a great power, concerns will remain
throughout the region.
Additionally, the pace and extent of domestic political evolutions in China sug-
gests that the Chinese Communist Party in its current form is likely to confront
myriad pressures likely to trigger extensive internal reforms. But if it chooses to
embark on an “über-realist” security and military posture, not only will the United
States accelerate its contestation of China’s growing power projection capabilities,
so too will many of China’s strategically consequential neighbors. For China, key
strategic dividends stemming from the post-Cold War era included the cessation
of decades of enmity with Russia (and the former Soviet Union); the “normaliza-
tion” of its relations with Vietnam, Indonesia, and India; and most importantly,
expanding its economic influences in key economic power houses that were tradi-
tionally tied more closely with the US economy, such as Japan, South Korea, and
the ASEAN economies. Should Beijing opt for a more aggressive security pos-
ture, however, these dividends are likely to be transformed into a ring of liabilities
which would not only negate China’s military modernization measures, but also
help to trigger an end to any so-called Beijing consensus.
Managing and shaping core hotspots

While Northeast Asia has been devoid of major inter-state conflict since the
Korean War (1950–1953), some of the world’s most pronounced security dilem-
mas persist in the region, as noted above. Provocative actions by North Korea
include the second Taepodong-2 ICBM test of 5 April 2009, its second nuclear
test of 25 May 2009, the 26 March 2010 sinking of the Cheonan; the 26 November
2010 shelling of Yeonpyeong; and subsequent threats to “turn Seoul into a sea of
fire.” Such actions illustrate the tenuous military balance on the Korean Peninsula
and prospects for serious military crises. Despite rising concern that some type of
a military clash may be inevitable between the two Koreas, however, chances of a
major conflict on the peninsula remain low.
The Obama administration has stated unequivocally that any additional North
Korean military actions will be matched by commensurate responses by the ROK
as well as US forces stationed in South Korea. While China continues to stress the
critical importance of diffusing tensions through diplomatic measures, Beijing’s
“neutral” stance over the Cheonan incident can be construed as China’s continu-
ing displeasure with North Korean actions. Particularly following the death of Kim
Jong-il, it is impossible to verify the extent to which Chinese leaders are debating
their next steps vis-à-vis North Korea. As one long-time American observer of
China commented,
North Korea’s second nuclear test and other actions have triggered an intense
debate over China’s long-term interests on the Korean peninsula and how to
best protect those interests. In a likely reflection of sharp differences among
policy makers, the China media has permitted, and perhaps even encouraged,
discussion of the correctness of China’s policy toward North Korea and the
pros and cons of applying pressure on its neighbour.
(Glaser 2009: 2)
Beyond the Korean Peninsula, the continuing delicate balance across the Taiwan
Strait, Japan’s robust military modernization, China’s deeper maritime forays in
the East China Seas and South China Seas and beyond, and prospects for pro-
longed Sino-US competition are some of the region’s more pronounced security
issues. Although the Sino-US relationship is qualitatively different compared to
the US–Soviet relationship during the Cold War, East Asia’s security complex is
likely to be significantly affected by the Beijing–Washington dyad. Great-power
competition in the Western Pacific, South China Seas, and even the Indian Ocean
is likely to persist, which in turn could heighten naval competition well into the
2020–2030 timeframe. At the same time, the region also confronts a range of non-
traditional security threats such as pandemics (SARS and avian flu), transnational
migration and the plight of refugees (notably North Korean refugees in China and
Southeast Asia), illegal fisheries, drug trafficking, and so on.
Although other regions exhibit powerful political contests and outstanding
historical legacies (for example, the Middle East and the Balkans), Northeast
Asia’s warrant closer attention, given their linkages to great-power competition,
hyper-nationalism, and brittle political psychologies that have often erupted into
mass social protest movements and extremely volatile bilateral relations (such as
Sino-Japanese and Korean–Japanese relations). Nationalism has always assumed
a central role in defining the Northeast Asian political map. The surge in Chinese
nationalism following the demise of the Qing Dynasty and Japanese aggression;
the struggle for Korean identity, independence, and democratization; Japan’s con-
tinued tendency to justify military rule at home and colonialism abroad; and North
Korea’s Juche ideology based on dynastic jingoism are some of the more pro-
nounced examples of historically rooted nationalism in Northeast Asia.
Democratization and the emergence of civil societies in Japan and South Korea,
unprecedented market economic reforms in China, and globalization across virtu-
ally all sectors have had the salutary impact of smoothing the worst vestiges of
hyper-nationalism. Nonetheless, outstanding territorial disputes and contending
maritime boundaries (Tokdo/Takeshima, Senkaku/Diaoyu, South China Seas) are
always just beneath the surface. Additionally, as communist ideology has waned
in China, the central government has often exploited Chinese nationalism as the
vanguard of the “New China.”
The economics of geopolitics

Finally, notwithstanding the very economic success and vitality of Northeast Asia
(with the notable exception of North Korea), the region’s accelerated economic
rise has contributed directly to new economic dislocations, systemic inequalities,
and unparalleled socio-economic challenges. Rapid and intensified urbanization,
gross environmental mismanagement, widening income gaps, declining birth
rates, accelerated aging, and divergent political developmental paths are some of
the myriad challenges Northeast Asia confronts—within their respective societies
and more collectively. China’s unquenchable thirst for oil and energy, overfishing
by all three principal Northeast Asian states, and side-effects stemming from accel-
erating climate change are some of the more pronounced non-traditional security
threats flowing from decades of unbridled economic growth. This central dichot-
omy—massive socio-economic dislocations triggered, magnified, and prolonged
by Northeast Asia’s very economic rise—is arguably the most significant societal
and transnational challenge the region faces over the next two to three decades.
While it is difficult to forecast with any degree of accuracy China’s economic
trajectory over the next two to three decades, a growing number of studies indicate
that by mid-century, China is poised to be the world’s largest economy. In turn,
China’s growing economic capabilities, and its avoidance of the kinds of costly
wars that have devastated the US budget, mean that for the foreseeable future, Bei-
jing will have the means to pursue a much more focused and strategically driven
military modernization program. According to Goldman Sachs (2007), China’s
nominal GDP in 2050 is projected to rise to $70 trillion, as compared to $38 tril-
lion for the United States, $6.7 trillion for Japan, and $37 trillion for India.
In a 2007 report focusing on the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and
the N-11 (Next-11, or a grouping of the most dynamic emerging economies),
Goldman Sachs projected that China will overtake the United States in 2027 and
India will overtake the United States by 2050. Interestingly, Korea is projected
to become the only N-11 country to join the “rich club” by 2040 with per capita
incomes of $65,000 or more, and by 2050 is forecast to be the second-richest
country in per capita income, behind only the United States. If these trends con-
tinue, China will be positioned to pursue much more robust foreign and security
policies with matching military capabilities. As one analyst has noted, China’s
influence in Eurasia and Africa is growing and an expected shift in the balance
of power in the Eastern Hemisphere “must mightily concern the United States”
(Kaplan 2010: 23). And furthermore:
Because what drives China abroad has to do with a core national interest—
economic survival—China can be defined as a über-realist power . . . Having
no choice in the matter, Beijing cares little about the type of regime with
which it is engaged; it requires stability, not virtue as the West conceives of it
. . . On land and at sea, abetted by China’s favorable location on the map, Bei-
jing’s influence is emanating and expanding from Central Asia to the South
China Sea, from the Russian Far East to the Indian Ocean. China is a rising
continental power, and, as Napoleon famously said, the policies of such states
are inherent in their geography.
(Ibid.)
If China’s and Northeast Asia’s economic trajectories approximate recent esti-

mates over the ensuing two to three decades and if some of the more urgent side-
effects of the region’s rapid economic growth can be ameliorated or mitigated,
the flow of global capital is going to be increasingly determined and affected
by Northeast Asian economies. By extension, therefore, the critical security lit-
mus test is likely to be whether expanding, deepening, and probably irreversible
economic linkages between the three principal Northeast Asian economies and
their respective ties with the global economy will perpetuate and institutional-
ize political and military CBMs. At the very same time, precisely because these
countries are going to have greater access to capital, a growing R&D base, and
matching new technologies, their ability to field forces well beyond their tradi-
tional zones of military operations is also likely to increase. Overcoming this
central dilemma will lie at the heart of the Northeast Asian security discourse
well into mid-century.
All of the problems noted in these three primary clusters are by no means
unique to Northeast Asia but they are significantly more pronounced, owing to
their sheer magnitude (strategic, political, economic, and societal) and the inabil-
ity of any single Northeast Asian country to overcome them without significantly
heightened multilateral cooperation. Moreover, Northeast Asia’s future trajecto-
ries cannot but resonate deeply well beyond its shores throughout Greater Asia
and the Western Pacific. Any wide-ranging or prolonged systemic dislocations in
Northeast Asia will have systemic repercussions, owing to the direct convergence
of the core interests of the four great powers (the United States, China, Japan,
and Russia) and ripple effects into South and Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and
Australasia.
Emerging issues and potential architectures

Forecasting Asian security to a great extent is always a work in progress but the
record since the end of the Cold War suggests that East Asia’s entry into the
twenty-first century has been markedly more stable, with relatively weaker con-
flict triggers, as compared to its experiences in the early twentieth century. Gov-
ernments across Southeast and Northeast Asia have focused on ensuring sustained
economic growth while cushioning, to the extent possible, their expanding and
deepening linkages with the global economy.
In sharp contrast to the Northeast Asia of the early 1900s, when economic and
political fragility were at their peaks, the vast majority of the regional economies
today are critically dependent upon open markets, access to energy and natural
resources, and more unfettered transfer of peoples, cultures, and technologies.
The last vestiges of Western colonialism expired formally with the return of Hong
Kong and Macao to Chinese sovereignty. With the exception of the region’s two
demonstrably pariah states (North Korea and Myanmar) and those states that have
yet to fully embrace free-market reforms (such as Laos), almost all of the regional
economies have forged increasingly robust, and crucially important, irreversible
ties with the global economy. This is one of the most important features of the
Asian landscape and Northeast Asia’s key legacy to the rest of the world in the
twenty-first century—the notion that socio-economic development is possible
even under geopolitically adverse conditions. Northeast Asia took the lead in Asian
industrialization, beginning with Japan’s postwar recovery and the Four Tigers’
emulation of Japan’s export-led growth. Parallel policies were also pursued by
key Southeast Asian states (notably Singapore and Thailand since the 1970s) to
the extent that ASEAN’s enlargement over the past decade and a half would not
have been feasible without market-friendly national economic policies.
But it remains to be seen whether Northeast Asia’s generally market-friendly
economic and trade policies can be transformed into equally positive behavio-
ral changes in the political and military arenas. As mentioned in previous sec-
tions, there is little doubt that Northeast Asia has made huge strides in overcoming
endemic political struggles, and even in the most fragile conflict-prone zones such
as the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait, the use of force has been deterred
effectively for the past five decades. As Northeast Asia successfully extricated
itself from its “Hundred Years of Conflict” (roughly from the mid-nineteenth
to mid-twentieth centuries), the key litmus test rests on co-managing five major
issues: 1) more accurate estimates on the rise of China and follow-on ramifica-
tions, given the growing importance of the China factor in shaping Asia’s over-
all strategic terrain; 2) mitigating, to the greatest extent possible, major power
competition, particularly that between the United States and China and between
Japan and China based on the United States’ central role in preventing the rise
of an anti-status quo hegemon in the region and also constraining major power
clashes; 3) coming to grips with key tipping-points such as the specter of a unified
Korea, most likely following prolonged uncertainty and pockets of volatility in
North Korea; 4) facilitating Southeast Asia’s diverse transitions and ensuring that
this sub-region does not become a new zone of major power competition (such
as potentially intensified Sino-American maritime competition); and 5) ensuring
greater transparency in the conduct of national security policies by the strategi-
cally consequential powers of Southeast and Northeast Asia.
If the postwar era has demonstrated East Asia’s ability to emerge as the third
pillar of the global economy, the major challenge in the future lies in inculcating
a new strategic culture with matching institutions that curtails significantly the
chances of conflict and any wide-ranging major power clashes. Northeast Asia
can be said to have arguably overcome or at least been co-managing key security
flash-points but this track record could be reversed, perhaps even sharply, if the
regional powers continue to pay less attention to the potent mix of challenges that
are surfacing today, many of them the direct consequences of East Asia’s eco-
nomic success. The region may no longer have to worry about inter-state wars as
existential threats, but a series of cascading and overlapping crises may test North-
east Asia’s co-management abilities more severely than at any other time in the
postwar era, and hence, the region faces a greater need for multilateral cushions.
Outline of the book

The chapters that follow all address these problems and seek to provide a record
of how Northeast Asia has evolved on key aspects of these points while more
explicitly addressing how the governments in the region have used existing and
new architectural arrangements in doing so. The book is divided into four parts.
The first part examines the Northeast Asian Security Complex. The editor’s
Introduction offers an overview of the problems rippling across the region. Then
in Chapter 2, Ajin Choi draws out seven key implications from the competing
international relations literature for how Northeast Asia is likely to behave. She
uses these historical facts to highlight the key variables that international relations
theorists suggest need to be examined as one analyzes Northeast Asia. Examin-
ing each of these in detail, she concludes, among other things, that clearly no one
of the single theoretical paradigms by itself can capture the complex realities of
Northeast Asia’s recent and evolving security relationships.
This is followed by two chapters in Part II addressing broad issues of conflict
behaviour once a state has acquired nuclear weapons as well as the relationship
between bilateralism and multilateralism. Joe Grieco examines how various coun-
tries have or have not become somewhat more aggressive in their foreign policy
behaviors once they have acquired a nuclear capability. This comparative material
makes it even more striking why the nuclearization of North Korea is likely to pose
a severe and upending military challenge to the current status quo in the region.
Geunwook Lee follows with a theoretically based examination of the competing
reasons why different countries, including great powers and hegemonic states, are
more likely to pursue either bilateral alliances or multilateral and regional solu-
tions to their security needs. He shows the ways in which US self-interest rather
than any inherent lack of interest on the part of regional powers impelled East
Asia’s early moves toward bilateral alliances. But he also shows how and why,
given the changing balance of regional forces, it would be advantageous for both
China and the US to pursue their interests through multilateral security forums.
Hae-won Jun begins Part III with a detailed examination of regional security
bodies in Western Europe, often held up as the paragon of “good” multilateral
security cooperation. He focuses largely on how three different European secu-
rity institutions adjusted to the end of the Cold War. Interestingly, he finds that
even though all institutions are sticky, the European Union went through a rather
convincing transformation, taking on new multilateral security tasks that included
both non-traditional and traditional security problems. In contrast, NATO contin-
ued to focus on its core mission of hard military security, though increasingly it
was used out of area. The OSCE continues to have a broad mandate that includes
both hard and soft security matters and is frequently mobilized in a range of cir-
cumstances. Importantly for Northeast Asia, Jun’s analysis shows that Europe
enjoyed no single multilateral body but, rather, an overlapping and often reinforc-
ing matrix of institutions, and that the most successful of these institutions showed
important capacity to adjust to new conditions.
Jun’s chapter is followed by four chapters devoted respectively to the state
interests and strategies of China, Japan, the ROK, and the United States. Sukhee
Han and Luo Jianbo begin with an examination of China in Chapter 6, giving
primary attention to its recent spectacular rise and what that means for regional
power transformation. Of particular concern have been China’s efforts to defuse
fears among other regional states by its seemingly unselfish commitment to vari-
ous multilateral processes and institutions. Of course, as they note, many of these
efforts have the hidden potential to offset the currently dominant US presence in
the region, presumably undercutting the apparent need for states in the region to
rely for their security on a close military embrace of the United States. This effort
to make China’s rise appear innocuous, however, has come into question, particu-
larly in much of 2010, when China’s diplomacy appeared to have lost its prior
deftness, leading many countries to return to hedging strategies against the rise of
a China which suddenly appeared to have become more aggressive.
In Chapter 7 Yoko Iwama examines the changing security position of Japan, a
country which for the bulk of the postwar period relied almost exclusively on the
US–Japan alliance for military security while pursuing an economic growth strat-
egy that until 1990 or so brought the country spectacular success. In the period
since the end of the Cold War however, Japan has been searching for ways to
adjust its security policies to allow it to move away from its prior “splendid isola-
tion” and to become a more “normal” country. For some, this has meant military
modernization, including out-of-area dispatches of Japanese forces. For others,
the effort has generated a new nationalism that has become more skeptical of US
military bases in the country and more anxious to develop closer ties with the rest
of Asia. This came to the fore with the election of a government headed by the
Democratic Party of Japan, representing the first sustained non-Liberal Demo-
cratic Party government since 1955. But tensions with the United States over bases
in Okinawa became white hot under the new government, threatening the alliance
and leading to a new, and presumably less autonomy-seeking, government.
Chapter 8 provides Hyung-min Kim’s examination of the actions of South
Korea. He provides a detailed and sophisticated factor analysis to test a number
of security-related hypotheses. Following this, he moves on to demonstrate how
the strongest of these hypotheses can help us to understand security behavior by
the ROK. Of central concern to him are the trade-offs among democratic peace
theory, commercial peace theory, and power preponderance theory and how these
factor into decisions to join and utilize multilateral institutional forums.
Finally, the United States is examined by Carol Atkinson and Giacomo Ciozza.
Their chapter analyzes the efforts by the United States to remain engaged with
Asia, particularly as that region’s economic success has become so globally per-
vasive. At the same time, policymakers in the United States are handicapped by
the growing public concern about overseas American involvement, presumably
made more acute by the country’s rising economic problems, heavily, though not
exclusively, the result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They assess how these
attitudes are influencing the nature and future of military cooperation in Northeast
Asia as part of overall US national security objectives and planning. So much of
what the United States has accomplished in Northeast Asia is dependent upon US
military power, meaning that this foundation is often taken for granted. As they
put it, with its military presence, the United States has reassured, deterred, con-
tained, and patrolled the high seas over which the Asian economic miracle sailed.
Yet, as East Asia changes, it is incumbent upon the United States to examine what
new strategies and architectures are likely to be conducive to securing future US
interests and ensuring peace in the region.
Part IV concentrates on specific regional security bodies in Northeast Asia.
Susan Shirk, the founder and long-time motivator of the Northeast Asian Cooper-
ation Dialogue (NEACD), a Track II diplomatic venture begun in 1993, begins her
analysis by providing an examination of NEACD and Track II diplomatic efforts
in Northeast Asia. Among other things, she demonstrates how NEACD shows the
capacity of Track II activities to foster confidence among erstwhile foes, as well
as showing how such bodies can, through regularized meetings, begin to socialize
their members as deeper personal relations are developed and as new CBMs are
tested and prove effective.
T.J. Pempel follows this with an extensive analysis of both the bilateral and mul-
tilateral architectures that have enveloped and been developed by Northeast Asian
governments. He notes that previous bilateral alliances continue to be critical ver-
tebrae in the spine of Northeast Asian security mechanisms. But he also illustrates
how many of these previously bilateral alliances and their Cold War logics are
being multilateralized, as has happened with the trilateralization of several bilateral
US alliances, as well as with the formation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organiza-
tion. Superimposed on these are a number of new and cross-cutting institutions that
bring together putative foes—the Six Party Talks, the trilateral summits among
Japan, China, and Korea, and the East Asia Summit. He concludes by suggesting
that such a multilayered architecture may well be the most practical and promising
set of arrangements for long-term security cooperation across the region.

Together these chapters offer detailed examinations about how this potentially
tense region of the world is redefining certain long-standing national interests,
in part as the consequence of changing power relations, in part as the result of a
desire to protect hard-won economic gains, and in part out of growing trust in new
processes designed to foster regional cooperation over regional conflict. This will
by no means be a smooth nor linear journey. As we have made clear from the start
of this chapter, security tensions and potential hotspots and problems are numer-
ous. But it is well to return to a central fact: despite all of these possibilities for
conflict to break out, Northeast Asia has seen no shooting wars since the end of
the Korean conflict in 1953. To continue that record, leaders throughout the region
must continue to muster determined efforts. And they must do so in a climate that
will be constantly shifting both regionally and globally. This will not be easy, but
some of the shifting architecture within the region will provide a valuable infra-
structural asset upon which they can increasingly rely.
Notes
1 Long-time Asia analyst James Przystup (2009: 1–2) notes that the United States
continues to have critical interests in Asia including forward-deployed forces in
the Asia-Pacific region, access to regional markets, ensuring freedom of the seas,
maintaining a regional balance of power that prevents the rise of a hegemon that would
constrain US political and economic access, promoting democracy and human rights,
and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
2 On the day of the South Korean government’s announcement of the joint investigation
into the sinking of the Cheonan, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that “The
United States fully supports President Lee’s responsible handling of the Cheonan
incident, and the objective investigation that followed, which we and other international
observers joined. The measures that President Lee announced in his speech are both
prudent and entirely appropriate.” She also noted that
First, we endorse President Lee’s call on North Korea to come forward with the facts
regarding this act of aggression and, above all, stop its belligerence and threatening
behavior. Second, our support for South Korea’s defense is unequivocal, and President
Obama has directed his military commanders to coordinate closely with their Korean
counterparts to ensure readiness and to deter future aggression. As part of our ongoing
dialogue, we will explore further enhancements to our joint posture on the Peninsula.
Third, we support President Lee’s call to bring this issue to the United Nations Security
Council. I will be working with Ambassador Rice and our Korean counterparts, as well
as Japan, China, and other UN Security Council member states to reach agreement on
a way forward in the Council. Fourth, President Obama has directed US Government
agencies to review their existing authorities and policies related to North Korea, to
ensure that we have adequate measures in place, and to identify areas where adjustments
would be appropriate. (Clinton 24 May 2010)
3 Auslin 2010: 5. For a succinct overview of the history of the US–Japan security
relationship, see Packard 2010: 92–103.
References
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<http://www.asiae.co.kr/news/view.htm?sec=sisa1&idxno=2010052905475641084>.
Auslin, M. (2010) “The US–Japan Alliance: Relic of a Bygone Era?” Asian Outlook, 1
(Jan.): 1–7.
Clinton, H.R. (2010) “Briefing on the Republic of Korea,” US Department of State, May
24. Online. Available at <http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/05/142135.htm>.
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Security Cooperation between Australia and the Republic of Korea,” March 5. Online.
Available at <http://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/rok/fta/090305_joint_statement.html>.
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and the Neorealist Paradigm,” The Korean Journal of International Relations, 45 (5):
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ism to Modest Multilateralism,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, 30 (1): 52–72.
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(March/April): 92–103.
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Impact,” Asian Perspective, 33 (4): 17–45.
2 The requirements for security
cooperation in Northeast Asia
Theory and reality
Ajin Choi
Introduction
Following the end of the Cold War, the peaceful transformation of Europe was
largely attributed to its multilateral security regime and this made both scholars
and practitioners of international relations contemplate the utility of multilateral
security regime in other regions. Northeast Asia has been one such focus, and it
is often described as having a lack of multilateral security cooperation despite the
fact that this region confronts many serious security threats and challenges. During
the Cold War, Northeast Asia was a serious battlefield; as a result, many legacies
of the divided politics still drive regional relations. Furthermore, the region has
been faced with new security challenges such as a drastic shift in power arrange-
ments and the possibility of nuclear proliferation, thus increasing the levels of
ambiguity and uncertainty even further. In this context, some claim that the lack
of multilateral efforts or the absence of such arrangements among the major states
is a critical hindrance to promoting security and to stabilizing this region.
This chapter will examine the conditions under which Northeast Asia might
be able to achieve multilateral security cooperation. In order to identify the condi-
tions and assess the feasibility of multilateral security cooperation in this region,
this chapter first reviews three major international relations theories, those of
realism, liberalism, and constructivism. From these it draws seven variables as
important forces in explaining security cooperation. Following this, the predic-
tions of these seven variables about different types of multilateral cooperation are
presented. The chapter then explores how each variable actually operates in the
Northeast Asian context and whether it can eventually facilitate security coop-
eration in this region, as the three international relations (IR) theories anticipate.
Finally, the conclusion presents a summary of the assessment of the relationship
between the theoretically derived variables and the actual Northeast Asian empir-
ics in order to discuss briefly the conceptual lessons for security cooperation in
Northeast Asia.
This chapter aims neither to test competing hypotheses nor to capture complex
interactions among the variables. It does, however, aim to offer an opportunity
to rethink where to go from conditions on the ground today by engaging in
theoretical discussions and assessing the empirics of Northeast Asia for security
The requirements for security cooperation 23
cooperation. This approach appears to be driving with a rearview perspective,
as T.J. Pempel (Chapter 11) points out, but without it we cannot drive forward
“safely”; thus, such a path may be particularly useful in the first part of this book.
Security cooperation in international relations theories
Realist explanations of security cooperation

Realism is cautious about the possible success of cooperation among states and is
relatively pessimistic as to the effectiveness of any such international cooperation.
Kenneth Waltz (1979) argued that, in order for any state to increase its security in
the competitive international system, it should focus on building up its own military
force and should cooperate internationally through alliances. The latter, however,
has limited value for most states because alliances are likely to change as interna-
tional environments change. Although realism does not have great expectations
for security cooperation among states in general, it does offer useful explanations
for the causes of security cooperation by identifying the conditions for the forma-
tion of alliances. These explanations can be divided into two theoretical domains.
First, according to the power transition theory or hegemony stability theory, mul-
tilateral security cooperation, as well as international peace, can be achieved when
power in the international system is asymmetrically distributed. That is, if a hege-
monic state with the capabilities and willingness to lead the system exists, the
dangerous effects of anarchy can be mitigated and the hierarchical order can serve
to promote international peace and stability. This is because the hegemonic state
enjoys most of the benefits and privileges in the existing international system and
therefore tries to preserve the status quo. In this process, the dominant state tends
to form alliances and provides security to member states by trading these for the
support of allies for its leadership. Under this international system, alliances can
be an important means by which the hegemonic state can preserve and manage the
existing international order (Organski and Kugler 1980).
In contrast, the balance of power theory argues that when power is more or less
equally distributed among major powers, the international system is more stable.
According to this theory, a newly rising power can be a direct and serious threat to
security under an anarchical structure of the international system, therefore states
have a strong incentive to prevent any other states from dominating the whole
system. In order to balance against newly rising powers, states tend to form new
alliances or change existing alliances, all the while building up their own mili-
tary force. Although their own military capabilities are regarded as more reliable
and alliances among great powers are hardly important in any bipolar interna-
tional system, states often choose alliances as an effective alternative to a major
arms buildup because most states cannot augment their own capabilities in a short
period of time. Furthermore, alliances are regarded as a flexible option for states,
which can form and maintain them if they think necessary, but can also break them
if the situation in the international system changes (Waltz 1979). Stephen Walt
(1986) expands the explanation of the formation of alliances based on the balance
24 Ajin Choi
of power theory, arguing that states are likely to form alliances to balance against
any threats, whether these threats come from offensive power, geographical prox-
imity, or aggressive intentions over and above simple aggregate power.
From these two realist theories, alliances emerge as the most important form
of security cooperation among states, and alliances are likely to be formed or to
decline depending on the changing configuration of power or common threats.
Although these two realist theories do not clearly distinguish between bilateral
and multilateral alliances, some realist scholars argue that multilateral cooperation
may be more likely to emerge than bilateral cooperation, but multilateral coopera-
tion is also seen as ineffective or, at best, serving only the interests of powerful
states (Grieco 1993; Mearsheimer 1994/1995). Therefore, besides the distribution
of power and the existence of a common threat, realism does not offer any other
detailed conditions for the formation and effectiveness of security cooperation.
Liberal explanations for security cooperation

While realism considers security cooperation by outlining alliance formation as
the second-best option for states, the liberal school endorses security coopera-
tion as a way that states can reach a Pareto-optimal outcome, thus offering more
diverse and specific conditions by which to achieve security cooperation. This
perspective also argues that such cooperation can have an independent, or at least
a significant, role in shaping international outcomes in ways that do not simply
conform to the existing structure of power in the international system. The liberal
perspective shares the view of the importance of international cooperation, but
this varies, depending on the specific determining factor that each of three sub-sets
of the liberal school emphasizes for their explanation of security cooperation. This
section addresses the three following schools of thought: neo-liberal institutional-
ism, the economic cooperation and interdependence school, and the democratic
peace and cooperation school.
Neo-liberal institutionalism explains the success or failure of cooperation among
states based on the level of institutionalization that exists to resolve distribution,
enforcement, and uncertainty problems. In response to John Mearsheimer’s pes-
simistic critique (1994/1995) on the effectiveness of international security institu-
tions, Lisa Martin and Robert Keohane (1995) claim that states have increasingly
created international institutions and invested considerable amounts of time and
resources in institutional design and rule making; therefore, it is worthwhile stud-
ying how they influence international relations. In particular, defining multilater-
alism as “the practice of coordinating national policies in groups of three or more
states,” Keohane (1990: 731) clearly distinguishes between bilateral and multilat-
eral cooperation and emphasizes the importance of international institutions in the
case of the latter. As shown in Olson’s collective action problem, the larger the
number of actors, the less likely it is that those actors will choose to work together
for mutual gains, due to increased difficulties in monitoring and punishing poten-
tial defectors. This school further contends that international institutions can have
diverse shapes based on scope, membership, centralization, control, and flexibility.
Among these factors, membership has both exogenous and endogenous elements
in the development of international institutions. For example, if the number of
interested actors increases, the scope of an international institution becomes
consequently broader and its capacity to control becomes weaker. On the other
hand, if enforcement problems are serious or the level of uncertainty is very high,
international institutions are likely to have restrictive memberships (Koremenos,
Lipson and Snidal 2001). That is, a larger number of interested actors demand
a different institutional design, and problems or difficulties in the cooperation
affect the size of membership of the institution. Overall, according to neo-liberal
institutionalism, a large number of actors complicates international cooperation in
general. In order to cope with this the institution’s cooperative practices need to
be institutionalized (Oye 1986).

The economic cooperation and interdependence school is first based on the idea
that cooperation can be achieved through an evolutionary approach that begins
with limited and pragmatic cooperation on nonpolitical issues and uses such expe-
riences as a foundation from which to achieve cooperation in politically sensitive
issues. In other words, by cooperating on specific and pragmatic areas such as
trade and other economic issues, states can increase communication and develop
trust. This in turn will have a spill over effect resulting in cooperation in more
sensitive issues like security. In addition to increasing communication and trust,
states will want to maintain the benefits reaped from economic interdependence
by avoiding military conflict. If military conflict were to occur, the economic
interdependence would result in increased costs; therefore economically interde-
pendent states have a strong incentive to cooperate with each other on security
issues (Rosecrance 1986).
Finally, the liberal school argues that international cooperation has domes-
tic political sources. Among these, it particularly emphasizes the importance of
democracy as a contributor to international conflict and cooperation. According
to the democratic peace and cooperation school, on the one hand, democratic
institutions can constrain the concentration of power and promote openness and
transparency, leading democratic states to reduce levels of uncertainty and to
send clear signals to partners as well as adversaries. On the other hand, by shar-
ing democratic norms such as respect for the rule of law and peaceful resolution
of conflicts, democratic states can build trust and respect. Therefore, democratic
states not only resolve conflicts with other democratic states more easily without
using military force, but they are also more likely to cooperate with each other.
Furthermore, such cooperation is likely to be more effective and to last longer
(Maoz and Russett 1993; Gaubatz 1996; Choi 2003).
Constructivist perspectives on security cooperation

While realism focuses on the structure of power arrangements and liberalism con-
cerns itself with preferences and uncertainties in achieving cooperation among
states, the constructivist perspective pays a great deal of attention to “certain” prin-
ciples or “deeper” causes of international cooperation and institution building.
26 Ajin Choi
The school first emphasizes a qualitative dimension to multilateralism. John
Ruggie explains that international cooperation cannot be considered immediately
as multilateralism without appropriate norms and principles. Therefore, the issue
is “not the number of parties so much . . . as the kind of relations that are insti-
tuted among them . . . on the basis of certain [appropriate generalized] principles
of state conduct or ordering relations among those states” (1993: 6–7; emphasis
added). Among them, the norm of universal membership or democratic opera-
tion of international institutions is an increasingly important issue affecting the
success or failure of interstate cooperation. In particular, in international security
cooperation, the collective security system is regarded as an important principle.
This principle is based on the premise that peace is indivisible among member states
and this indivisibility requires an unconditional collective response. Therefore, the

collective security system is a “highly demanding institutional form” (ibid.: 12).
Another constructivist perspective approaches the multilateral security regime
with the principle of a “security community,” challenging the atomistic model of
international relations based on the anarchical structure of the international system
(Adler and Barnett 1998). The concept of a security community originates in the
work of Karl Deutsch and proposes two types of security communities: amalga-
mated and pluralistic security. The former refers to the “formal merger of two or
more previously independent units into a single larger unit, with some type of a
common government after amalgamation.” The latter retains the legal independence
of separate governments but its community members “possess compatible core val-
ues . . . mutual identity, and loyalty, a sense of ‘we-ness,’ and are integrated to the
point that they entertain ‘dependable expectations of peaceful changes.’” (Deutsch
et al. 1957: 5–6). By emphasizing appropriate norms and principles in international
cooperation rather than focusing on what has been done among a number of states,
normative discourse about what values should be pursued becomes an important
element of international relations in the constructivist perspective.
The constructivist approach also emphasizes the importance of broader contexts
having international outcomes as well as non-material incentives that influence
state choices. In other words, this perspective argues that, in order to understand
state choices and international outcomes, the exclusive focus on the calculation
of benefits and costs of states based on material incentives is a myopic approach,
whereas the social or historical contexts in which states have interacted, as well
as cognitive or non-material factors such as identity, values and ideas, and legiti-
macy and persuasion, need to be considered as well. According to this approach,
through their own historical experiences states will develop identities that are
different from one another and through the clash or convergence of state identi-
ties, states can influence their choices about whether or not to cooperate. Alter-
natively, once certain values or ideas gain legitimacy among a certain group in
society or within an epistemic community, they can spread internationally through
socialization and persuasion, thus exerting an influence over international coop-
eration. Furthermore, the external environment can change over time. Whereas
the anarchical structure of the international system as a fixed condition is a severe
barrier against international cooperation in both neo-realism and neo-liberalism,
constructivism does not assume that the anarchy is a given condition; rather it is
“what states make of it.” Therefore, from this perspective the international system
varies with state interactions as well as with power structures (Wendt 1992). In
a narrower context, depending on both historical and social factors of states as
well as cognitive factors affecting leaders and elites, the decision-making environ-
ment affecting the security policy of individual states can also change and affect
that state’s choices for security cooperation (Katzenstein 1993). In sum, from the
constructivist perspective, state preferences and environments are socially and
historically constructed, therefore, international interactions and outcomes cannot
be determined simply by exogenously given material incentives or fixed struc-
tural constraints. For that reason, this perspective provides far less parsimonious
explanations as compared to both realism and liberalism, but it is significantly

advantaged in offering prescriptive guidelines and a forward-looking approach to
international cooperation (Wendt 2001).
Theoretical conditions for security cooperation and the security

architecture of Northeast Asia
This section will introduce seven major variables derived from the three theo-
retical perspectives on security cooperation and their expectations for the type of
security regime that might be created. Then it will present empirical analyses on
how these variables are operating and exert an influence over security cooperation
among the Northeast Asian countries, respectively (Solingen 2008).1
As shown in Table 2.1, the seven variables drawn from the three major IR
theories are the distribution of power and perception of common threat variables
from realism; the institutionalization, economic cooperation and interdependence,
and democratic peace and cooperation variables from liberalism; and the shared
principles and ideas and historical experience and memory variables from con-
structivism. These variables offer different expectations or predictions for the type
Table 2.1 IR theories on security cooperation, seven derived variables and their predictions
IR theory on Relevant variables Expectations from the theories
security
cooperation
Realism 1) Change in the distribution – Strengthening existing alliances
of power
2) Common threats
Liberalism 3) Institutionalization – Forming a formal multilateral
security regime
4) Economic cooperation – Transforming an economic regime
interdependence into a security regime
5) Democratic peace and – Forming a security regime among
cooperation democracies
Constructivism 6) Shared principles and ideas – Forming a collective security regime
7) Historical experience and
memory
28 Ajin Choi
of security regime. Both of the realist variables expect states to strengthen current
alliances. The three liberalist variables expect states to form a formal multilateral
security regime, to transform an economic regime to a security regime, and to
form a security regime among democracies, respectively. The two constructivist
variables expect states to form a collective security regime.
The distribution of power

From the realist perspective, the most important variable in determining security
cooperation is the distribution of power in the international system. By winning
World War II, the United States was able to shape a new power structure and
security order that was based on a multilateral alliance with Western Europe and
bilateral alliances with Korea and Japan in Northeast Asia, all aimed at balancing
against the Soviet Union. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States
eventually emerged as the world’s sole superpower and thus enjoyed an unchal-
lenged preeminence in the international system. Contrary to the balance of power
theory, other states neither formed counter-hegemonic coalitions nor undertook
serious military buildups in order to balance US preponderance for the last twenty
years of the post-Cold War period. Rather, as power transition or hegemonic sta-
bility theory anticipates, as the United States reached hegemonic status, its over-
whelming military and economic power dissuaded other states from competing
and balancing against it, and at the same time other states strove to enjoy the
benefits of cooperation with the United States (Ikenberry 1998/1999; Pape 2005;
Brooks and Wohlforth 2005; Lieber and Alexander 2005). In Northeast Asia, the
United States has been a dominant power by providing security based on bilateral
alliances with Korea and Japan and offering significant economic assistance as
well as its own large market to Asian partners. This US-centered security and eco-
nomic structure has contributed to the peace and stability of the region.
Recently, this power structure has begun to change, due to the rapid rise of
China, giving rise to a series of linked questions: whether the “unipolar moment”
of the United States would be sustained; how the rapid rise of China might alter the
distribution of power in the international system in general and in Northeast Asia
in particular; and whether China will challenge the regional stability and security
order that the United States has put in place (Layne 2009). Indeed, although pro-
jected military expenditures and GDP per capita over the next 30 years suggest
that the superiority of US power will continue, China’s rise may generate a rela-
tive decline in US power in the region. In terms of the security dimension, since
the 1990s China has spent increasingly substantial amounts on armaments and the
modernization of its air, naval, and land forces. Importantly, if the military capa-
bilities of the two countries are compared at the regional level, the difference is not
as large as it is globally. In fact, according to The Military Balance, the number
of troops in the US Pacific Command is approximately 26 percent of the entire
number of US troops (IISS 2004: 31–2). China also announced that it will soon
embark on a more ambitious maritime policy, constructing a power-projection
navy with an aircraft carrier, which would enable China to challenge US interests
in Asian sea routes (Ross 2009: 46–81). Furthermore, in the assessment of US
Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates,
Beijing’s investments in cyber warfare, anti-satellite warfare, antiaircraft

and anti-ship weaponry, submarines, and ballistic missiles could threaten the
United States’ primary means to project its power and help its allies in the
Pacific: bases, air and sea assets, and the networks that support them.
(2009: 31)
If we consider the economic dimension, China has already overtaken the United
States as the world’s leading manufacturer and is expected to overtake the US
GDP in the next ten to fifteen years. While the dollar’s vulnerability began to
impose serious restraints upon American prominence, China possesses de facto
veto power over certain US interest and exchange rate decisions by virtue of its
having displaced Japan as the largest foreign holder of US debt in 2008 (Drezner
2009: 8). Moreover, China now provides the largest market to major Northeast
Asian countries, displacing the United States in that role as well. For example, as
shown in Figure 2.1, the dependence of Japan and South Korea on the Chinese
market has already or almost superseded their dependence on the US market.
Korea exports
30
20
Percent
10
0
2008
2003
2007
2002
2006
2000
2001
2004
2005
1996
1994
1995
1992
1991
1998
1997
1993
1999
Japan exports
40
30
Percent
20
10
0
2005
2000
2004
1994
2008
1995
2003
1993
1991
1998
2007
1997
1992
1999
2002
1996
2006
2001
Exports to the United States Exports to China
Figure 2.1 Percentage of exports from Korea and Japan to the United States and China
30 Ajin Choi
As shown by military and economic indicators, the relative power of the United
States has declined, whereas China has speedily risen to great power status in
Northeast Asia. In addition, according to a survey response to the question of
which state would be the strongest power in Asia in ten years’ time, 65.5 per-
cent of respondents answered China, while only 31 percent answered the United
States (Gill et al. 2009: 4). However, at present, such changes in the distribution of
power have not significantly challenged the US-centered status quo. The United
States and China have avoided much instability and great power rivalry and have
maintained cooperation in Northeast Asia. Based on this US–China relationship,
other states have not tried to strengthen cooperation with the United States to bal-
ance against a rising China. Rather, the US relationship with its bilateral allies
Korea and Japan has at times become strained, leading positive opinion about the
United States to drop in these two countries (Pew Research Center 2009: 1). It
may be argued that this is because China’s rise has not produced military capabili-
ties that have in fact affected the regional security order and vital US interests.
However, if China were to expand beyond a certain acceptable size in its military
capabilities, it might start a serious arms race with the United States that would
result in an unstable security environment in Northeast Asia and drastic changes
in alliance structures (Mearsheimer 2001). Although change in the distribution
of power does not decisively lead to changes in state behavior and choices for
security cooperation, as realism expected, it does increase the level of uncertainty
in the regional security environment and makes states reconsider their security
policy, thus increasing at least the probability of change in state security policy in
Northeast Asia.
The existence of common threats

Another critical variable considered from the realist perspective is whether states
hold a perception of common threats in the region that are sufficient to spur them
to form a new counter-coalition or to expand their existing alliances. According to
this perspective, aggressive or offensive intentions by rising powers are important
when other states consider balancing against them. For example, it is argued that
by adopting the path of “strategic restraint,” the United States was able to rise to
its status as a hegemon and to maintain its dominance without serious counter-
coalitions or resistance (Ikenberry 1998/1999). Therefore, in order to understand
states’ responses to China’s rise in Northeast Asia, it is first important to assess
whether China has aggressive intentions or is dissatisfied with the US-centered
regional order. Aware of the fear and concern of other states about any rapidly
rising power, China itself has consistently emphasized that it would rise peace-
fully and prudently. In his empirical study analyzing China’s international inten-
tions and behavior, Alastair Iain Johnston (2003) suggests that although China has
increasingly participated in international institutions and organizations, the degree
of its agreeability or compliance with current international norms and regimes is
mixed. More importantly, except for its uncompromising commitment to Taiwan,
China’s intentions and preferences on other security issues are also somewhat
ambiguous and complex. Recognizing the US alliance system in Northeast Asia as
having contributed to regional stability for the past several decades, China is try-
ing hard not to undermine that system, but at the same time it expresses concerns
about the permanence of US bases on the Korean peninsula and the possible future
reinforcement of the US–Japan alliance.
On the other hand, it is also important to consider how other states actually
perceive a rising China. There have been serious debates in both US policy and
academic circles concerning whether or not a rising China poses a severe threat to
US national security and interests. Some argue that China will challenge Ameri-
ca’s hegemonic position because it will rise as a dissatisfied power with a strong
nationalism and a search for prestige. Others claim that China will grow as a mem-
ber of the international community accommodating US-driven international norms

and rules (Friedberg 2005). Both sides, however, agree that a rising China can
increase uncertainty in US–China relations, particularly within the regional secu-
rity order in Northeast Asia. Furthermore, according to a recent survey, despite
Chinese efforts to appear less threatening to other states, most Northeast Asian
respondents answered that China is the biggest threat and North Korea the second-
greatest threat in this region. However, Northeast Asian states have not tried hard
to initiate a new counter-coalition or to strengthen the current US-centered alli-
ance system. Furthermore, in response to the question of whether states are likely
to form and expand alliances to deter these threats, US elites answered that their
own military power is more important than expanded alliances, while Japanese
and South Korean elites responded that they want to strengthen their bilateral alli-
ances with the United States (Gill et al. 2009: 7, 13–14). This response shows that
although states may perceive themselves as having common threats, in contrast to
realist expectations, their responses and coping strategies are not homogeneous
and can vary across states for other reasons.
The level of institutionalization

According to neo-liberal institutionalism, the level of institutionalization can
play a key role in promoting security cooperation, especially when more than
two players are involved. It is, however, generally believed that while bilateral
alliances have been durable and effective, multilateral security regimes have
generally been improvised, ad hoc, and ineffective in Northeast Asia. One of
the stark differences found in the two systems is that the former have formally
institutionalized binding mechanisms whereas the latter have only vaguely insti-
tutionalized procedures. Experts on Asian security and regionalism also agree
that, despite many emerging regional security issues, Asian countries have not
tried to deal with those problems and challenges by creating multilateral rules
and institutions that involve more than two countries. Instead, most security
matters have been managed on a bilateral or an ad hoc approach. For example,
in the face of the North Korean nuclear crisis, states concerned launched the
Six Party Talks in 2003, but at the same time they retained and utilized existing
bilateral contacts and negotiations.
32 Ajin Choi
Even if states tried to form a multilateral security regime in Northeast Asia,
there is little evidence of concerted efforts to design and create effective rules
and institutions. Going along with the international trend of regionalization in the
1990s, Asian countries have agreed on developing several security groups, among
them the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN Plus Three, and the East Asia
Summit (EAS). In the process, despite the fact that the expansion of membership
can impose burdens on any efforts to coordinate or bind state behavior, they have
invariably allowed a large number of countries to join without engaging in any
serious discussion on the appropriate size of membership or what membership cri-
teria might be best for effective security cooperation. Across these regional mul-
tilateral arrangements, therefore, the capacity of institutions to influence member
states’ behavior remains weak. Their rules and obligations are also not precisely
defined. For example, ARF was established as a multilateral security regime in the
Asia-Pacific in 1994; since then its membership has expanded to 27 states. With
respect to the membership, ARF only loosely stipulates that “a new participant
should be admitted only if it can be demonstrated that it has an impact on the
peace and security of the ‘geographical footprint’ of key ARF activities.”2 It also
rejected the highly institutionalized and legalized European model without includ-
ing any binding commitment of member states; indeed, the first ARF chairman’s
statement outlined its objectives as fostering “constructive dialogue and consulta-
tion on political and security issues of common interest and concern” and making
“significant contributions to efforts towards confidence-building and preventive
diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region.”3
For these reasons, Miles Kahler assesses that “the Asia-Pacific region offers an
important example of low legalization and possibly an explicit aversion to legali-
zation” (2000: 549). Etel Solingen (2004) also describes Asian regionalism as
being characterized by informality, openness, and consensus-based decision mak-
ing. Inferring from past experience and scholarly analysis, it would be difficult
to expect to create any multilateral security institution exclusively for Northeast
Asian countries. Even if it were to be formed in the future, states would be likely
to prefer a very loosely institutionalized form relying on bilateral arrangements for
critical challenges rather than creating a firmly institutionalized form as the main
alternative for regional security architecture in Northeast Asia.
Economic cooperation and interdependence

The liberal school also argues that cooperative experience and interdependence in
the economic arena can help states to achieve security cooperation. This is because
states can accumulate trust through economic interactions and are willing to pay
higher costs if any military tension escalates when they are economically interde-
pendent. In the case of Northeast Asia, the direction of influence was often reversed
and the institutionalized multilateral experience is relatively shallow. First, most
states have achieved national economic growth and expanded economic relations
under the political and military protection of US power. In particular, during the
Cold War period, South Korea and Japan were able to concentrate on economic
development and reduce expenses for national defense, due to their respective
bilateral alliances with the United States. Second, it is difficult to expect that any
institutionalization in economic interaction will spill over into the security arena
because the level of institutionalization in regional economic interactions is rela-
tively weak compared to that of other regions. For example, Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation is one of the most successful examples of multilateral economic coop-
eration in the Asia-Pacific, but it does not impose any regulations or constraints on
members’ international economic activities (Grieco 1997; Kahler 2000; Acharya
and Johnston 2007). Rather, states have started to undertake trade liberalization
through bilateral approaches. Therefore, even in this politically less sensitive area
of trade, states in this region have neither accumulated significant trust through
multilateral cooperation nor learned about international coordination and practice

within the boundaries of formal and binding rules and regulations.
On the other hand, increasing economic interdependence among Northeast
Asian countries provides a positive expectation in terms of security cooperation.
As shown in Table 2.2, both the volume and direction of trade of Northeast Asian
countries have dramatically changed. The increase and concentration of intra-
regional trade was triggered by the national economic growth of Japan and the
Newly Industrializing Economies in the 1970s and 1980s and has been accelerated
by the rise of China since the 1990s. In the 2000s, the volume of world and North-
east Asian trade increased by approximately 2.5 times and the volume of China’s
trade continued to increase the most, jumping about five-fold from 2001 to 2008.
More specifically, looking at the intra-regional trade pattern, 25 percent of the
world trade volume belongs to the four countries in Northeast Asia and 28 percent
of their trade volume is directed at those four regional states. The trade volume
of the United States directed to this region is relatively small, 13 percent in 2008,
as compared to China’s 31 percent, Japan’s 41 percent, and Korea’s 39 percent.
As shown by these indicators, the level of economic interdependence among
Northeast Asian states is currently high and it is expected to become deeper;
Table 2.2 Trade volume and direction of Northeast Asian states, 2001–2008 (US$bn)
Export Year World Northeast Asia China Japan Korea USA
World 2008 16032 4114.8 995.6 682.2 403.5 2033.5
2001 6141.7 1765.9 221 316.1 130.1 1098.7
Northeast Asia 2008 3939.2 1104.8 287.7 94.7 168.1 438.2
2001 1552.4 455.4 68.2 119.1 59.8 208.3
China 2008 1429.3 442.7 x 116.1 73.9 252.7
2001 266.7 111.8 x 45 12.5 54.3
Japan 2008 783.1 323.4 125 x 59.4 139
2001 403.6 178.8 30.9 x 25.2 122.7
Korea 2008 426.7 166 91.3 28.2 x 46.5
2001 151 65.9 18.1 16.5 x 31.3
USA 2008 1300.1 172.7 71.4 66.5 34.8 x
2001 731.1 98.9 19.2 57.6 22.1 x
Source: International Monetary Fund (IMF), http://www2.imfstatistics.org/DOT/.

34 Ajin Choi
nevertheless, we have yet to see any strong link between economic interdepend-
ence and security cooperation.
Democratic peace and cooperation

Liberalism not only focuses on the attributes of international institutions and
economic interactions, but it also emphasizes the impact of domestic politics in
achieving cooperation among states. There are a variety of explanations linking
domestic political factors with a state’s international activities that focus on state
capacity, political regime type, economic development, and other factors. With
respect to the weak institutionalization of Asian regional regimes as compared
to the European experience, one explanation is that insecure states tend to avoid
strong international institutions “for the fear of compromising sovereignty and
regime survival” (Acharya and Johnston 2007). In other words, if there had been
more democracies—i.e. states with legitimacy—in this region, then a stronger
regional regime would have been possible in Asia.
In fact, the domestic political regimes of states in Northeast Asia are not homo-
geneously democratic. While Japan, South Korea, and the United States are demo-
cratic, China and North Korea are not. Furthermore, there is substantial heterogene-
ity among these democracies. For example, democracy came to Japan via external
force and was compromised by the fact that one party dominated control of govern-
ment for the best part of fifty years, while South Korea and Taiwan have had rela-
tively short histories of democratic practices that should be further consolidated.4
Moreover, although the three democratic states have not used military force against
each other to resolve security tension and conflict since their democratization, they
have not accumulated substantive experiences in trilateral democratic cooperation.
Instead they continue to rely on already established bilateral relations between South
Korea and the United States and between Japan and the United States, respectively.
Other sources of potential instability in Northeast Asia can be found in the pos-
sibility of political change in China or the highly unpredictable nature of the North
Korean regime. Once China accomplishes further economic development, its peo-
ple may demand political reform. In the face of widespread political demands, the
Chinese government may choose an aggressive foreign policy option to divert the
public’s attention from domestic political issues. North Korea has undergone long
and severe economic difficulties as well as being faced with serious international
pressure, due to the development of its nuclear program. Overall, the non-demo-
cratic part of Northeast Asia manifests sources of potential instability, while the
democratic part of this region lacks cooperative experiences in the security area.
For these reasons, it is difficult to expect democratic peace and cooperation to be
a driving force for security cooperation in Northeast Asia.
Shared principles and ideas

When realism raises the issue of players or actors, it claims that only great
powers can play a crucial role in achieving or breaking international cooperation.
Neo-liberal institutionalism focuses on the number of players and suggests that
increasing the number of players can hinder international cooperation. Construc-
tivism generally emphasizes the inclusiveness of players and particularly presents
a collective security system as an important “principle” for security cooperation.
In proposing a collective security system for a post-Cold War security architec-
ture in Europe, Charles and Cliff Kupchan (1991) highlight, among other things,
the role of shared views and ideas. That is, in order for this system to function,
member states should have a consensus on the requirements for regional stability
and order. In particular, the common beliefs and efforts among experts and elites
who lead the flow of ideas and discussions about international affairs are crucial.
According to survey results from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS), about 81 percent of respondents answered that they

support the concept of an “East Asia Community,” and the priority of its goal
should be “promoting confidence and mutual understanding” and “preventing
interstate conflict” (Gill et al. 2009: 8–9). But, at the same time, they answered
that they will rely far more on military self-sufficiency or alliances than on multi-
lateral regimes for preventing attacks in the future (ibid.: 13).
In addition, in order to examine the degree of “we-ness” among members, there
needs to be an examination of how people in each country think about or trust oth-
ers as well as how they differ and converge on international issues. According to
a recent survey from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (2007), when asked
about globalization, the majority of people answered that it is good for them—but
the level of support varies across countries: South Korea (86 percent) and China
(87 percent) are higher than the United States (60 percent). Regarding the role of
the United Nations and the United States, the majority of people supported the
idea that the role of the United Nations should be strengthened and the United
States should work together with other countries to solve international problems.
Regarding the role of the US military, Chinese people strongly expressed that
overseas US military bases, including those in East Asia, should be reduced, while
South Koreans answered that the United States should at least maintain the size
of its troops.
Regarding the effect of the rising Chinese economy, the majority of people in
the world answered that it would be equally positive and negative, with respond-
ents who felt that overall results would be positive outnumbering those who
thought the results would be negative. In the case of US respondents, although
the majority answered that it would be equally positive and negative, more than
three times as many thought that the results would be negative, compared to those
who thought the results would be positive. Finally, regarding US and Chinese
leadership and influence, the majority of people in the world did not trust that
leadership would be responsibly exercised by either the United States or China.
Publics in Asia ranked the United States’ global influence as higher than China’s,
but in Asia China ranked closely behind the United States (Chicago Council on
Global Affairs 2007: 8–9, 21–27, 28–35, 36–40).
To sum up, according to this survey, public opinion in Asia is converging on
many of these international issues, but they still do not trust each other, nor do they
36 Ajin Choi
trust the leadership of either China or the United States. Instead, people in both
China and the United States perceive that these two countries will be potential
rivals in the future.
Historical experience and memory

Historical experiences and memories may not by themselves be the direct causes
of conflict or sources of cooperation, but by helping both the masses and elites to
interpret the present in a certain way they can be a crucial element in explaining
one state’s behavior toward other states and their choices for international coop-
eration. Their influence over state security cooperation in Northeast Asia can be
seen in various contexts. First, historical experiences and memories can aggra-
vate the security dilemma, thus disturbing security cooperation among Northeast
Asian states. For example, China’s distress about Japanese prime ministers’ visits
to the Yasukuni Shrine, refusal on the part of Japan to revise textbooks so as to
acknowledge the 1937 Nanjing massacre, and China’s ambiguous attitude toward
the future of the Japan–US alliance reflect its distrust and deep fear of Japanese
intentions, namely that Japan could eventually transform itself into an aggressive
military power as it did previously (Berger 2003). Due to this fragile and precari-
ous relationship, it will hardly be easy to achieve security cooperation between
these two countries, making it possible for any small dispute to escalate quickly
into a full-fledged conflict.
Second, colonial experiences and memories in the early twenty-first century not
only cement the nationalism of individual states but also create a common history
of shared victimization in Asia, thus helping such countries to continually empha-
size the norm of strong state sovereignty in the institutionalization of regional
security regimes (Acharya and Johnston 2007: 21). In fact, most Asian countries
are very sensitive to this issue and the ARF clearly stipulates and continues to
confirm non-interference as one of its key norms. Furthermore, in certain contexts
the colonial history facilitates anti-Western sentiments. Memories of past suffer-
ing and humiliation inflicted by the West fuel China’s nationalism, which in turn
could have important implications for the US–China competition for power and
prestige in the future (Gries 2004).
Third, historical experiences and memories can also affect an individual state’s
choice for security policy in Northeast Asia. In the case of Korea, on the one
hand, Japan’s colonization is remembered as harsh and the resentment towards
it remains palpable in Korea. Therefore, despite the existence of common threats
in the Cold War period, these two countries did not consider forming an alliance
with each other. On the other hand, a belief has recently developed in South Korea
that South Korea and North Korea share a common history as an ethnic national
community and that surrounding outside powers have advanced the division of
the Korean peninsula. The spread of such nationalism, in addition to the spread
of anti-Americanism among the South Korean public, facilitated an engage-
ment policy toward North Korea while it strained the Republic of Korea–US
alliance, causing unnecessary tensions and misunderstandings between the two
long-standing allies (Steinberg 2005). Overall, historical memories that Northeast
Asian states have about themselves and others are very complex and at times even
bitter. They may help to explain why Northeast Asia has not been able to form a
strong security regime.
Conclusion
In order to understand conditions for multilateral security cooperation in North-
east Asia, first, three theoretical perspectives from international relations were
reviewed. Second, seven specific variables were derived from the three perspec-
tives and discussed in light of the empirics of Northeast Asia. The findings from
the analysis, which are summarized below, show that Northeast Asia embraces
both positive and negative conditions for multilateral security cooperation and
institution building, but that these positive forces are not likely to lead to multilat-
eral security cooperation just yet.
Realism
1. The distribution of power is changing in Northeast Asia: China is rapidly ris-
ing and the United States is declining in relative terms.
2. The majority of states agree that once China has risen, it may be a source of
regional instability.
These two realist variables provide states with an incentive to form new coalitions
or realignments, but no significant attempts in that direction have been seen.
Neoliberal institutionalism
3. The level of institutionalization is weak in Northeast Asia.
4. Regional economic cooperation and interdependence has become deeper.
5. Political systems are heterogeneous across states in Northeast Asia.
Among the three liberal variables, the economic cooperation and interdependence
variables are most promising for institutionalized cooperation, but a spillover effect
from economic interaction to security cooperation has not yet materialized.
Constructivism
6. States have not been able to reach agreement on many important regional and
international security values and issues.
7. Historical experience and memory are likely to remain a source of instability
rather than a means to promote security cooperation in Northeast Asia.
According to these findings, the prospect of multilateral security cooperation in

Northeast Asia seems dim or embedded in such complex contexts that it is at the
38 Ajin Choi
very least invisible today. They do not, however, suggest that it is impossible.
There is still considerable potential to accomplish this goal through innovative
policy and initiatives. The following chapters will explore a number of different
paths through which enhanced security cooperation have been attempted as well
as new directions promising potentially greater cooperation.
Notes
1 This work provides a detailed analysis of the origins, designs, and effectiveness of East
Asian regional institutions, comparing the explanatory power of four different theoreti-
cal approaches.
2 <http://www.aseanregionalforum.org/AboutUs/tabid/57/Default.aspx>
3 Ibid.
4 According to the Polity IV dataset, the democracy score of China is persistently 0, that of
Japan has been 10 since 1952, and that of Korea was 7 from 1988 to 1998 and has been
8 since 1999. Data available at <http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/inscr.htm>.
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Part II
drivers, and issues

Security challenges,
3 Nuclear weapons, state
bellicosity, and prospects
for an East Asian security
architecture
Joseph M. Grieco1
Introduction
North Korea’s increasingly advanced nuclear weapons and ballistic missile pro-
grams raise a fundamental question: As it becomes a nuclear state, will North
Korea become more bellicose toward South Korea, Japan, and the United States?
This question is clearly important when we think about the prospects for a North-
east and broader Asian security architecture, and I therefore seek to address it in
this paper. I do so by examining whether states that have attained nuclear status
have become more bellicose, that is, whether they have become more likely to use
acute pressure, and especially military force, to settle disputes with other states,
and I then draw generalizations about that behavior to the manner in which we
might expect North Korea to behave as it develops its nuclear arsenal.
The next section of the paper explores the very different ideas that scholars
have posited to date about the impact of nuclear weapons acquisition on state
bellicosity. In the subsequent section a research methodology is presented, and
relevant data are described, that may allow us to investigate linkages between state
bellicosity and the possession of nuclear weapons. The paper’s third main section
introduces a range of models that tap into the ways in which the former might in
fact be a function of the latter. The last section summarizes the paper’s key results,
and highlights the main policy implications that emerge from the analysis.
The issue of nuclear weapons and state bellicosity

Scholars have sought to determine if nuclear weapons cause states to be more
bellicose.2 The results of that work have been mixed. For example, in a recent
special issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution (Gartzke and Kroenig 2009),
one analysis found that, controlling for the possibility that conflict-prone states
are more likely to acquire nuclear weapons, the possession of nuclear weapons
has no effect on the propensity of states to start militarized disputes (Gartzke and
Jo 2009); another found that nuclear weapon possession may dampen the risk of
major war among nuclear states, but increase the risk of lesser forms of military
conflicts (Rauchhaus 2009); and a third found that the possession of nuclear weap-
ons may influence whether a state responds to a military challenge as a function
44 Joseph M. Grieco
of the time that the state possesses such weapons (Horowitz 2009). In contrast
to the work by Gartzke and Jo (2009), a study by Gibler, Rider, and Hutchinson
(2005) found that possession of nuclear weapons is positively associated with a
heightened likelihood of the initiation of militarized disputes, but Sample (1998,
2002) found that possession of nuclear weapons depressed the risk that states in
low-level disputes will escalate to more deadly encounters.
There are also divergent views in policy discussions on whether Iran would
become more bellicose if it were to acquire nuclear weapons. Kenneth Waltz, for
example, has argued that we have little to fear from a nuclear Iran: he has suggested
that “whoever gets nuclear weapons behaves with caution and moderation” (Sagan,
Waltz, and Betts 2007: 137, emphasis added; also see Posen 2006a, 2006b). In con-
trast, Scott Sagan has suggested that we should be worried that Iran might behave
as Pakistan did after it conducted nuclear weapon tests in May 1998. After those
tests, Sagan has suggested, elements of the Pakistani military pushed then Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif to launch an operation against India at Kargil. So too, then,
if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, “The government may become emboldened, and
organizations that purport to manage nuclear weapons in Iran will be weak, and the
weapons will be in danger of being stolen or sold to others. In short, we will face
a very different kind of nuclear dynamic and danger than we ever faced during the
Cold War” (Sagan, Waltz, and Betts 2007: 142, emphasis added).
Research strategy, data, and methods

To address the basic question, do nuclear weapons make countries more bellicose,
it might be productive to examine the international conflict behavior between 1946
and 2007 of the countries that have acquired nuclear weapons during some reason-
able period of time both before and after they obtained nuclear weapons (which,
with the exception of Israel and South Africa, are defined in the analysis below
as having nuclear status from the year that the country tested a nuclear weapon)
and to see whether their conflict behavior changed across the two periods. The
countries that have acquired nuclear arsenals, and have a substantial track record
of subsequent conflict behavior, include the United States, the Soviet Union/Rus-
sia, Britain, France, China, Israel, South Africa (between 1980 and 1991), India,
and Pakistan. Therefore, the conflict behavior before and after these countries
acquired nuclear weapons will be the focus of attention in the analysis below.3
It would also be helpful to compare the conflict behavior of the nuclear weapon
states not just to the behavior they exhibited before they acquired nuclear weapons
(and, in the case of South Africa, after it did so), but to the behavior of states that
have not acquired such weapons.
For the discussion below, we will focus on three observable expectations that
seem reasonably to flow from the perspective that countries that acquire nuclear
weapons will in consequence become more belligerent, namely, the expectations
that states that obtain nuclear weapons will: 1) become more likely to start milita-
rized crises; 2) employ greater levels of violence once they start such crises; and 3)
attain a higher level of crisis-escalation dominance during the crises they initiate.
Nuclear weapons, state bellicosity, and prospects 45
These three observable implications are explored through analysis of 361
directed-dyad pairs of states that engaged in military disputes between 1946 and
2007 drawn from, with amendments, crisis events that are reported in the Interna-
tional Crisis Behavior Project (ICB July 2010).4 In the following discussion, if a
variable is employed in the statistical analysis, it is highlighted in bold.
Dependent variables: crisis initiation, crisis trigger, and crisis-escalation

dominance
Incidence of crisis initiation

Both the ICB data set and the modified ICB dataset used below identify what are
termed in this analysis as the challenger (the state the ICB team identifies as the
“triggering entity,” or ICB Variable 3) and the defender (the state the ICB team
calls the “actor,” ICB Variable 5) in a given international crisis. By providing such
information about the challengers and defenders in crises during this period, it is
possible to address the question of whether states change their incidence of the
initiation of militarized crises after they have acquired a nuclear capability.
Violence of initiator’s crisis trigger

The ICB dataset has an important variable, called “TRIGGR” (ICB Variable 1),
which reports the level of violence that the challenger (or, in some cases, not
included in the analysis below, other crisis actors, such as an alliance) elected to
use to inaugurate a given crisis with a defender state. Such triggering events by
the challenger against the defender can take nine values: 1 = verbal act, such as
a threat; 2 = political act, such as the formation of an alliance; 3 = economic act,
such an embargo; 4 = external change, such as the construction of a military base
close to the target state; 5 = other non-violent act, such a request by a third party
for military aid; 6 = internal verbal or physical challenge to the target’s regime or
elite, such as an act of sabotage or terrorism; 7 = non-violent military act, such as
military maneuvers or mobilization directed against the target; 8 = indirect violent
act such as a military attack against an “ally, friendly state, or client state”; and 9 =
violent act, such as “border clash” or “large-scale military attack,” or “war.”
These nine possible values for TRIGGR do not constitute a single scale with
equal intervals. Moreover, since in the present discussion we are interested in
whether states use markedly higher levels of violence when initiating militarized
crises, in the analysis below, a new variable based on TRIGGR is employed,
ChTrigdi2010:
ChTrigdi2010 = 1 if TRIGGR > 7, 0 otherwise
This new categorical variable allows us to address the question as to whether the
possession of nuclear weapons is associated with a higher propensity of challeng-
ers to employ violent triggers to the military crises they elect to inaugurate.
46 Joseph M. Grieco
Crisis-escalation dominance
We want to know if states that acquire nuclear weapons are more readily able to
attain crisis-escalation dominance, that is, whether they are better positioned than
non-nuclear challengers to employ strategies that threaten or actually use more
coercive measures, and especially violence, than can their respective defenders
during the course of a crisis. To pursue this question, the variable ChEsDm2010
is constructed in the following manner.
The ICB dataset includes a helpful variable, CRISMG, Crisis Management
II: Principal Technique (ICB Variable 13). ICB presents with this variable as an
8-point scale, based on its understanding of the defender state’s “primary crisis
management technique.” The options are: 1 = negotiation; 2 = adjudication or

arbitration; 3 = mediation; 4 = multiple not including violence; 5 = non-military
pressure; 6 = non-violent military measures; 7 = multiple including violence; and
8 = violence only.
In the discussion below, the focus is on the relative emphasis by the challenger
and defender on the use of coercion in general, and violence in particular, in their
respective crisis strategies. Therefore, in the amended ICB data set used in the
analysis the crisis management strategy of each side in each directed dyad was
first coded using the 8-point scale listed above: for the challenger, this variable
in the amended ICB data set is termed chcms2010, and for defender it is termed
dfcms2010. Because the 8-point CRISMG and, along the same lines, chcms2010
and dfcms2010 do not represent a single scale with equal intervals, and given the
focus of attention on the violence intensity of the challenger and defender’s crisis
strategy, in the discussion below, the 8-point crisis management scale has been
collapsed into a 4-point scale for both parties:
For the challenger, the variable chcms4_2010, has been created, which can take
four values:
1 if chcms2010 < 4;
2 if chcms2010 is between 4 and 6;
3 if chcms2010 = 7
4 if chcms2010 = 8
The same has been done for the defending state: the variable dfcms4_2010 has
been created, using exactly the same coding scheme:
1 if dfcms2010 < 4;
2 if dfcms2010 is between 4 and 6;
3 if dfcms2010 = 7
4 if dfcms2010 = 8
Finally, using chcms4_2010 and dfcms4_2010, a variable for relative escalation

by the challenger and defender during the crisis is generated:
ChEsDm2010 = chcms4_2010 – dfcms4_2010

ChEsDm2010 takes values from –3 (defender attained maximum possible crisis-
escalation dominance to +3 (challenger attained maximum possible crisis-
escalation dominance). A value of 0 on this variable indicates that the challenger
and defender used an equal level of pressure or violence as the central element of
their respective strategies during their crisis with one another.
Independent variables relating to nuclear status

In the discussion below, the key focus is on whether a country that was involved
in the start of a military crisis, either as a challenger or a defender, was or was not
a nuclear weapon state. With the exceptions of Israel and South Africa, a state is
defined as being a nuclear weapon state in the analysis from the year following the
year when it first tested a nuclear device. In the cases of Israel and South Africa,
the analysis makes use of the consensus view in the scholarly literature of the year
in which they were likely to have operational devices at their disposal: for Israel,
from 1969 onward, and for South Africa, from 1980 onward.5 Using these proce-
dures, three variables were constructed:
ChNuc2010 = 1 if initiator is nuclear weapon state during crisis year,

0 otherwise
DfNuc2010 = 1 if defender is nuclear-weapon state during crisis year,
0 otherwise
ChDfNuc2010 = ChNuc2010 × DfNuc2010
The first two variables focus on whether the challenger or defender, respectively,
possessed nuclear weapons during a year of interest; the third variable represents
an interaction term: it takes on a value of 1 only if both the challenger and defender
possessed nuclear weapons in a given year, 0 otherwise.
Control variables
In the analysis below, an effort is made to estimate the impact of the posses-
sion of nuclear weapons by conflicting countries on violent triggers and crisis-
escalation dominance while controlling for a number of other factors that may
influence crisis dynamics. These control factors include possession or not by the
defender of allies with nuclear weapons, the absolute and relative capabilities of
the challenger and defender, the relative stakes at issue for the challenger and
defender, and the domestic political regimes of the challenger and defender.
Nuclear ally
Weede (1983) suggested that the United States and the Soviet Union succeeded in
protecting their allies during the Cold War in part because they provided them with
extended deterrence buttressed by their possession of nuclear weapons. In the same
vein, in his engagement of work by Huth (1988) and Huth and Russett (1988), who
48 Joseph M. Grieco
suggested that nuclear weapons did not add to the extended deterrence effective-
ness of great powers, Fearon (1994: 254–7) pointed out that, in instances in which
a major power sought to undertake extended deterrence during the Cold War—for
example, efforts by the United States to prevent the Soviet Union from coercing
West Germany in 1948, or efforts by the Soviet Union to prevent Turkey from
coercing Syria in 1957—the possession by the major power of nuclear weapons
greatly increased the odds that it would succeed in defending its protégé.
To control for this possible dampening effect of nuclear allies on a challenger’s
use of violent triggers and ability to gain crisis-escalation dominance, the analysis
below makes use of data on alliance membership drawn from the Alliance Treaty
Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) project (Leeds 2005a). Among other features,
the ATOP project systematically reports alliance-dyads (Leeds 2005b: 49–51), and
whether these alliances contain commitments of alliance partners to actual mutual
military assistance (these are offensive, defensive, and mixed offensive–defensive
alliances), or commit parties solely to neutrality, mutual non-aggression, or mutual
consultations in the event that one or the other—or both—experiences an external
threat. For the analysis below, we concentrate on the first three types of alliances,
that is, those that contain commitments for actual mutual assistance. Knowing
which countries possessed nuclear weapons, we then ask in particular whether, in
the year that a military crisis is launched against it, the defender had an offensive,
defensive, or combined offensive–defensive alliance with a country in possession
of nuclear weapons. That is, we include the following dichotomous variable:
DfNucAlly2010 = 1 if defender has an offensive, defensive, or mixed offen-

sive–defensive alliance with a state with nuclear weapons, 0 otherwise.
Relative capabilities and power status

It could be that the more power a state has, then the greater its worldwide interests
and responsibilities, and the more likely it will wish to prevail in any given crisis
it initiates or in which it is the defender. Moreover, the greater a state’s abso-
lute capabilities, the greater the pain it can inflict on the other state, regardless of
imbalances in capabilities. Hence, there may be a positive relationship between
power status, as represented by possession of the world’s share of overall capabili-
ties, and the violence intensity of initiating triggers or the ability and willingness
by a state to attain crisis-escalation dominance once a crisis begins.
Relative capabilities may also affect triggering behavior and crisis-escalation domi-
nance. A relatively more powerful challenger might elect to start a military crisis with
relatively low levels of force, since both it and the defender state would know that
the challenger could resort to higher levels of violence later in the crisis. Of course, it
is also possible that the relatively more powerful challenger might just go ahead and
use a more violence-intensive trigger, confident that the defender is not in a position
to do much in reply. Once a crisis begins, and assuming that the outcome will reflect
relative resolve and relative ability to employ violence, crisis-escalation dominance
is likely to be positively associated with absolute and relative capabilities.
To address these possibilities, the analysis below employs three variables:
ChCap2010 = Challenger’s share of Correlates of War global material capa-

bilities (COW 2010), measured by its annual Composite Index of National
Capabilities (CINC).
DfCap2010 = Defender’s share of Correlates of War global material capa-
bilities (COW 2010), measured by its annual Composite Index of National
Capabilities (CINC).
ChDfRelC2010 = Challenger’s capabilities relative to the defender, defined
as ChCap2010/(ChCap2010 + DfCap2010).
Relative stakes in the crisis

The relative interests or stakes of the challenger and defender state may influ-
ence the former’s triggering behavior or subsequent crisis escalation. For exam-
ple, in respect of crisis triggering, a challenger that has more at stake relative to
the defender may elect to launch the crisis at a relatively higher level of violence.
So too, the country with more at stake once a military crisis begins may be more
willing to escalate the crisis in terms of the relative violence intensity of crisis
management strategies.
To examine these possible linkages, the analysis makes use of the coding of
relative stakes of ICB crises that was undertaken by Gelpi and Griesdorf (2001)
in their analysis of ICB crises that occurred between 1918 and 1994. They began
with the ICB variable GRAVTY, which reports the character of the issue at stake
from the viewpoint of the challenger and defender states. Gelpi and Griesdorf
adjusted and collapsed the original ICB scale, and recharacterized the stakes in
each crisis as they were perceived by the challenger and defender states using the
following rule: “crises that involve a low level of threat or international influence
are given a value of 1; those that involve territory or the status of the regime are
coded 2; and those that threaten grave damage or the existence of the state are
coded 3” (Gelpi and Griesdorf, 2001: 638). For the analysis below, a comparable
coding procedure was undertaken to generate the coding of stakes from the view-
point of challenger and defender states in crises that are reported by the ICB dur-
ing the period from 1995 to 2007. Employed then is a measure of relative stakes,
which is undertaken by generating a composite variable, ChDfRStake2010. This
variable is generated as follows:
chSTAKE2010 = Coding of challenger’s stakes using Griesdorf and Gelpi’s

3-point scale:
1 if challenger’s stake was low level threat or international influence;
2 if territory or status of regime;
3 if grave damage or existence
dfSTAKE2010 = Coding of defender’s stakes using Griesdorf and Gelpi’s
3-point scale:
50 Joseph M. Grieco
1 if defender’s stake was low level threat or international influence;
2 if territory or status of regime;
3 if grave damage or existence
Putting together the stakes of the challenger and defender, we have:
ChDfRStake2010 = chSTAKE2010 – dfSTAKE2010
By subtracting the defender’s perceived stake in the crisis from that of the chal-
lenger’s, ChDfRStake2010 gives us a sense of the relative importance of the mat-
ters in dispute in the crisis. The variable can take on values from +2 (the challenger
state believes the stakes in the crisis involve grave damage or its very existence
while the defender state believes the stakes involve influence or a low threat to
itself) to 0 (both the challenger and defender believe the same issues are at stake)
to –2 (the challenger state believes the stakes in the crisis involve influence or a
low threat to itself while the defender state believes the stakes involve grave dam-
age or its very existence).
Domestic political regime

It is possible that the regime type of the challenger or the defender, and in particu-
lar whether they are democracies or authoritarian regimes, as well as the interac-
tion between the regime types of the two adversaries, may influence their behavior
in military crises. To test for this possibility, the analysis below employs the Polity
IV data set (Marshall 2009) to construct a dichotomous variable, characterizing the
country as either democratic or authoritarian. For each party in each directed dyad,
the country’s autocracy score, advaut2010 for the challenger and actaut2010 for
the defender (each with a range 0–10) is subtracted from its respective democracy
score, advdem2010 for the challenger and actdem2010 for the defender (again,
each with a range 0–10); 10 is added to each resulting score, producing a com-
posite regime score for each participant in the directed dyad that can run from 0
(wholly autocratic) to 20 (wholly democratic). Since we are interested in knowing
whether democracies behave differently from authoritarian states prior to and dur-
ing military crises, these continuous scores are turned into dichotomous values:
For the challenger: ChDemdi2010 = 1 if (advdem2010 – advaut2010) + 10

> 16, 0 otherwise
For the defender: DfDemdi2010 = 1 if (actdem2010 – actaut2010) + 10 > 16,
0 otherwise
ChDfDemdi2010 = Interaction term consisting of ChDemdi2010 ×
DfDemdi2010
Key results
As noted above, attention will first be directed to the question of whether states
that attain nuclear weapons exhibit a greater propensity to inaugurate military
crises; this will be followed by an analysis of whether such states, having decided
to launch such crises, do so with a relatively higher level of violence than do
non-nuclear states; and finally, analysis will be undertaken of whether nuclear
weapon states that launch military crises have a higher propensity to attain crisis-
escalation dominance during such crises.
Possession of nuclear weapons and incidence of military crisis initiations

To address the question of whether states that have acquired nuclear weapons
became more likely to inaugurate militarized crises, Table 3.1 presents the annual
number of ICB crises that the nuclear weapon states, with the exception of South
Africa, India, and Pakistan, initiated during the twenty years prior to their testing
of nuclear weapons, and during the twenty years after they did so. South Africa
Table 3.1 Nuclear-weapon status and crisis initiations

Part A Crisis initiations, before and after attaining nuclear weapons
Country Year nuclear Crises Average Crises Average
weapons initiated 20 annual rate initiated 20 annual rate
years before prior to years after after
nuclear nuclear nuclear nuclear
weapons weapons weapons weapons
United States 1945 2 0.1 6 0.3
Soviet Union 1949 20 1.0 12 0.6
United Kingdom 1952 2 0.1 0 0
France 1960 1 0.05 1 0.05
China 1964 7 0.35 4 0.2
Israel 1968 5 0.25 9 0.45
South Africa 1979 0 0 1 0.08
Pakistan 1998 1 0.05 4 0.44
India 1998 1 0.05 0 0
Notes: South Africa’s observed nuclear period is 1980–1991, or 12 years. Nuclear periods for Pakistan
and India are from 1999 to 2007, or 9 years.
Part B Test of difference in crisis initiations, before and after nuclear weapons (two-sample
t test with equal variances)
Observations Mean Standard Standard 95% confidence
error deviation interval
Group 0 9 .2166667 .1047484 .3142451 –.0248835 .4582169
Group 1 9 .2359259 .0740303 .2220909 .0652117 .4066401
Combined 18 .2262963 .062263 .2641595 .0949329 .3576597
Diff –.0192593 .1282681 –.2911755 .252657
Group 0 = Nuclear weapon states prior to obtaining nuclear weapons

Group 1 = Nuclear weapon states after obtaining nuclear weapons
diff = mean(0) – mean(1)t =–0.1501
Ho: diff = 0degrees of freedom =16
Ha: diff < 0 Ha: diff != 0 Ha: diff > 0
Pr(T < t) = 0.4413 Pr(|T| > |t|) = 0.8825 Pr(T > t) = 0.5587
52 Joseph M. Grieco
dismantled its nuclear weapons stockpile in 1991, so South Africa is coded as
having nuclear weapons only between 1980 and 1991, a period of twelve years.
In addition, because the ICB data set ends in 2007, and since Pakistan and India
tested nuclear weapons in 1998, there are at present only nine years of post-nuclear
ICB-type data available for these two countries.
As can be observed in Part A of the table, while such countries as the United
States, Israel, and Pakistan increased their respective annual ICB-type crisis ini-
tiations in the wake of attaining nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union, China, the
United Kingdom, and India reduced their conflict initiations. As can be observed
in Part B of the table, this mixed pattern translates into the lack of a systematic,
discernible difference in the rates of conflict initiations if we pool the pre- and
post-nuclear experiences of these countries, and confirms the multivariate analy-

ses of militarized interstate disputes that are reported by Gartzke and Jo (2009).
Nuclear weapons, violent triggers, and crisis-escalation dominance
Rationale for focusing on violent triggers and crisis-escalation dominance

It is readily understandable why students of international conflict are interested in the
question of whether states increase their incidence of launching military crises after
they obtain nuclear weapons—a core interest, if not the central interest, of interna-
tional conflict studies, and of international relations as a field, is to identify the causes
of the start of military disputes that threaten or actually lead to war. What about the
violence of the triggering actions of challengers in military crises, and the ability of
challengers to attain crisis-escalation dominance? Why are they important?
Violent triggers appear to be a strong precursor to the level of subsequent vio-
lence that takes place in the crisis, at least for the defender. This can be observed in
an analysis, undertaken below, of a variable, Dfsevvio2010, which is based on an
ICB variable, Intensity of Violence (SEVVIO, ICB Variable 15). Dfsevvio2010
focuses on the defender, as coded in the amended ICB data set, and, following the
original ICB coding rules, can take one of four values, relating to different levels
of violence experienced by the defender: 1 = no violence; 2 = minor clashes; 3 =
serious clashes; and 4 = full-scale war.
Crisis-escalation dominance is also important because it may be related to who
wins and who loses ICB-type crises. The ICB dataset presents a variable, Content
of Crisis Outcome (OUTCOM, ICB Variable 36), which takes on four possible
values: 1 if the defender achieved victory, 2 if it achieved a compromise, 3 if
the outcome was a stalemate, and 4 if it achieved a defeat. This variable was
employed to create a new variable, nwout2010. Two adjustments to the original
ICB OUTCOM variable have been made in creating nwout2010. First, nwout2010
is constructed from the viewpoint of the challenger, that is, it records whether the
challenger achieved victory over the defender, ended the crisis with a compro-
mise between itself and the defender, whether the crisis instead ended in stale-
mate between the two disputants with no change in the status quo, or whether the
challenger was defeated by the defender. Second, since, as indicated by ICB, a
compromise entails the achievement by both the challenger and the defender of
some of its goals, nwout2010 reverses the values of compromise and stalemate,
with compromise yielding the challenger a higher value than stalemate.
With these two changes, the variable ChOutcom2010 is coded and analyzed
below. ChOutcom2010 can take one of the following four values:
1 if the challenger was defeated by the defender;

2 if the crisis ended in stalemate, that is, no change in the status quo;
3 if the challenger achieved a compromise outcome;
4 if the challenger achieved a victory over the defender.
An analysis of the effects of violent triggers on subsequent violence experienced

by the defender, and of the impact of challenger crisis-escalation on outcomes
attained by the challenger, is presented in Table 3.2. As can be observed in Part A
of Table 3.2, there is a positive and statistically discernible relationship between
violent triggers by challengers and subsequent defender severity of violence. In
addition, as can be observed in Part B of the table, there is a positive and statis-
tically discernible relationship between the level of achieved challenger crisis-
escalation dominance and challenger attainment of progressively more desirable
outcomes. Hence, if we want to understand how much violence a defender experi-
ences in a crisis, the violence of the challenger’s opening move is a good place to
begin our analysis; and if we want to understand whether a challenger will attain
progressively superior outcomes in a crisis, we do well to look at the degree to
which the challenger attains crisis-escalation dominance during that crisis.
Do nuclear weapons affect the choice by challengers of violent triggers? A
model that speaks to this question is presented in Table 3.3.
Given that, in connection to the impact of nuclear weapon possession by the
challenger, defender, or both on the choice of violent triggers, we have two con-
stituent variables, ChNuc2010 and DfNuc2010, and one interaction term, ChD-
fNuc2010, the effects for the constituent variables on violent triggers are condi-
tional. By itself, ChNuc2010 represents the change in the likelihood of the use of
violent triggers by nuclear as opposed to non-nuclear states when the targets are
non-nuclear defender states. DfNuc2010 captures the change in likelihood that
non-nuclear challengers will use violent triggers against nuclear as opposed to
non-nuclear defenders. When challengers do have nuclear weapons, the effect on
trigger violence of the possession or not of nuclear weapons by defenders is cap-
tured by the combined coefficients for DfNuc2010 and ChDfNuc2010.
We begin with defenders. As noted above, DfNuc2010 captures the change in
likelihood that non-nuclear challengers will decide to use violent triggers against
nuclear as opposed to non-nuclear defenders. As can be observed in Part A of
Table 3, the coefficient for DfNuc2010 is positive but only marginally discern-
ible from zero (p-value <. 08). Hence, there is some, but only weak, evidence that
non-nuclear challengers have been more likely to employ violent triggers when
they accosted nuclear as opposed to non-nuclear defenders. So too, if defend-
ers are nuclear weapon states, nuclear challengers have not been more likely to
54 Joseph M. Grieco
Table 3.2 Consequences of violent triggers and crisis-escalation dominance, 1946–2007
Part A Violent challenger triggers and subsequent defender severity of violence (two-sam-
ple t test with equal variances)
Observations Mean Standard Standard 95% confidence
error deviation interval
Group 0 149 1.845638 .0917042 1.119392 1.664419 2.026856
Group 1 212 2.584906 .0734724 1.069774 2.440072 2.72974
Combined 361 2.279778 .06044 1.148359 2.160919 2.398638
Diff –.7392681 .1165787 –.9685311 –.5100051
Group 0 = Nuclear weapon states prior to obtaining nuclear weapons
Group 1 = Nuclear weapon states after obtaining nuclear weapons
diff = mean(0) – mean(1)t =–6.3414

Ho: diff = 0degrees of freedom =359
Ha: diff < 0 Ha: diff != 0 Ha: diff > 0
Pr(T < t) = 0.0000 Pr(|T| > |t|) = 0.0000 Pr(T > t) = 1.0000
Part B Challenger crisis-escalation dominance and challenger crisis performance

ChEsDm2010 ChOutcom2010 Total
1 2 3 4
Frequency = –3 0 6 0 0 6
row percentage 0 100 0 0 100
column percentage 0 6.59 0.00 0.00 1.66
Frequency = –2 2 1 2 1 6
row percentage 33.33 16.67 33.33 16.67 100
column percentage 1.36 1.10 3.08 1.72 1.66
Frequency = –1 19 5 2 2 28
row percentage 67.86 17.86 7.14 7.14 100
Frequency = 0 97 61 51 40 249
row percentage 38.96 24.50 20.48 16.06 100
Frequency = 1 20 14 7 5 46
row percentage 43.48 30.43 15.22 10.87 100
Frequency = 2 4 3 3 6 16
row percentage 25.00 18.75 18.75 37.50 100
Frequency = 3 5 1 0 4 10
row percentage 50.00 10.00 0.00 40.00 100
Total 147 91 65 58 361
row percentage 40.72 25.21 18.01 16.07 100
column percentage 100 100 100 100 100
Pearson chi2(18) =42.6820

Pr = 0.001
employ violent triggers against them than have non-nuclear challengers: as can
be observed in Part B of Table 3.3, the sum of coefficients for ChNuc2010 and
ChDfNuc2010, while negative, is not discernible from zero.
Table 3.3 Nuclear weapons and the violent challenger triggers to military crises, 1946–2007
Part A Probitanalysis of violent triggers
Probit regression Number of obs = 357
Wald chi2(11) = 47.77
Prob> chi2 = 0.0000
Log pseudolikelihood = –221.21426
Pseudo R2 = 0.0880
(Std. Err. adjusted for 171 clusters in chaldef)
ChTrigdi2010 Coef. Robust Std. Z P>|Z| 95% Conf. Interval

Err.
ChNuc2010 .7690998 .3822526 2.01 0.044 .0198985 1.518301
DfNuc2010 .4274666 .2408911 1.77 0.076 –.0446712 .8996045

ChDfNuc2010 –1.147662 .5308051 –2.16 0.031 –2.188021 –.1073028
DfNucAl~2010 –.3469448 .1752509 –1.98 0.048 –.6904303 –.0034593
ChCap2010 –4.717868 2.246328 –2.10 0.036 –9.12059 –.3151457
DfCap2010 1.886024 2.128597 0.89 0.376 –2.285949 6.057997
ChDfRelC2010 –.8913325 .2784938 –3.20 0.001 –1.43717 –.3454947
ChDfRSt~2010 –.1023101 .1063582 –0.96 0.336 –.3107683 .1061481
ChDemdi2010 –.3176175 .2546724 –1.25 0.212 –.8167663 .1815314
DfDemdi2010 –.2433817 .1904042 –1.28 0.201 –.6165671 .1298037
ChDfDem~2010 .0259662 .3805681 0.07 0.946 –.7199336 .7718659
_cons .8446367 .1855762 4.55 0.000 .480914 1.208359
Part B Estimates of linear combination of coefficients relating to nuclear variables

Hypothesis: ChNuc2010 + ChDfNuc2010 = 0
ChTrigdi2010 Coef. Std. Err. z P>|z| 95% Conf. Interval
(1) –.378562 .5358986 –0.71 0.480 –1.428904 .6717799
Hypothesis: DfNuc2010 + ChDfNuc2010 = 0
(1) –.7201952 .5403337 –1.33 0.183 –1.77923 .3388393
Now let us focus on the nuclear status of challengers. By itself, ChNuc2010

represents the change in the likelihood of the use of violent triggers by nuclear as
opposed to non-nuclear states when the targets are non-nuclear defender states. In
Part A of Table 3.3, we see that the coefficient for ChNuc2010 is positive and is
statistically discernible from zero. This finding suggests that in the period under
review, when non-nuclear countries have been targets of military crises, the chal-
lengers with nuclear weapons have been more likely to choose violent triggers
than have challengers without nuclear weapons.
We can probe more deeply into whether the possession by challengers of nuclear
weapons influences the likelihood of violent challenger triggers that they employ
against non-nuclear defenders by undertaking matching analyses (Ho et al. 2007).
We first isolate the observations involving non-nuclear defenders, and then under-
take both probit and matching analyses with a focus on the effect of ChNuc2010
on the probability of violent triggers, ChTrigdi2010. The results of this effort are
reported in Table 3.4.
56 Joseph M. Grieco
Table 3.4 Nuclear weapons and violent challenges against non-nuclear defenders,
1946–2007
Part A Probitanalysis of violent triggers
Probit regression Number of obs = 283
Wald chi2 (9) = 23.17
Prob> chi2 = 0.0058
Log pseudolikelihood = –182.68261Pseudo R2=0.0595
ChTrigdi2010 Coef. Robust Z P>|Z| 95% Conf. Interval

Std. Err.
ChNuc2010 .5433736 .3788285 1.43 0.151 –.1991167 1.285864
DfNuc2010 –.3270462 .2023197 –1.62 0.106 –.7235855 .0694932

ChCap2010 –3.142479 2.347473 –1.34 0.181 –7.743442 1.458484
DfCap2010 –1.051737 5.526951 –0.19 0.849 –11.88436 9.780888
ChDfRelC2010 –.9127153 .3117388 –2.93 0.003 –1.523712 –.3017184
ChDfRSt~2010 –.1260522 .1135689 –1.11 0.267 –.3486433 .0965388
ChDemdi2010 –.2984658 .2666198 –1.12 0.263 –.821031 .2240993
DfDemdi2010 –.1218014 .2075155 –0.59 0.557 –.5285243 .2849215
ChDfDem~2010 –.0935158 .4336877 –0.22 0.829 –.9435281 .7564965
_cons .8315702 .2102365 3.96 0.000 .4195142 1.243626
Part B Matching analysis

Matching estimator:Average Treatment Effect for the Treated
Weighting matrix: inverse variance
Number of obs = 283
Number of matches(m) =1
ChTrigdi2010 Coef. Std. Err. Z P>|z| 95% Conf. Interval

SATT .25 .1310279 1.91 0.056 –.0068099 .5068099
Matching variables:DfNucAlly2010 ChCap2010 DfCap2010 ChDfRelC2010
ChDfRStake2010 ChDemdi2010 DfDemdi2010 ChDfDemdi2010
Number of obs = 283
Number of matches(m) = 2

SATT .1634615 .1247707 1.31 0.190 –.0810845 .4080076
Matching variables:see above
Number of obs = 283

SATT .0961538 .1083984 0.89 0.375 –.1163031 .3086108
Matching variables:see above

Compared with the coefficient for ChNuc2010 reported in Part A of Table
3.3, the coefficient for ChNuc2010 in Part A of Table 3.4 is smaller, and misses
statistical significance even at the 0.1 level of significance. Moreover, notice that,
in Part B of Table 3.4, we find that ChNuc2010 has a positive coefficient in dif-
ferent matching exercises, but reaches statistical significance only in one of three
possible matching scenarios. It would seem, then, that there is mixed and therefore
insufficient evidence that non-nuclear defenders have been at a greater risk of
experiencing violent triggers when challengers have had, as opposed to lacked,
nuclear weapons.
What about crisis-escalation dominance? We turn to that matter in Table 3.5.
We observe that the coefficient for DfNuc2010 in Part A of Table 3.5 is nega-
tive, and somewhat discernible from zero (p-value <. 09), and the linear combina-
tion of DfNuc2010 and ChDfNuc2010 is negative and discernible from zero at the
0.01 level. Hence, there is some, but only weak, evidence that nuclear challengers
have been less able to attain crisis-escalation dominance when they have accosted
nuclear as opposed to non-nuclear defenders. In contrast, there is more evidence
Table 3.5 Sources of challenger crisis-escalation dominance, 1946–2007

Part A Regression analysis of challenger crisis-escalation dominance
Linear regression Number of obs = 357
F(11,170) = 3.04
Prob> F = 0.0010
R-squared = 0.1322
Root MSE = .86537
ChEsDm2010 Coef. Robust Std. Err. t P>|t| 95% Conf. Interval

ChNuc2010 .3731291 .1780121 2.10 0.038 .0217303 .724528
DfNuc2010 | –.3423681 .2014532 –1.70 0.091 –.74004 .0553039
ChDfNuc2010 | –.188801 .1717193 –1.10 0.273 –.5277778 .1501757
DfNucAl~2010 .3498755 .140409 2.49 0.014 .0727058 .6270452
ChCap2010 –2.756059 1.308108 –2.11 0.037 –5.338286 –.1738324
DfCap2010 1.709369 1.230932 1.39 0.167 –.7205114 4.13925
ChDfRelC2010 .9590383 .2294566 4.18 0.000 .5060871 1.411989
ChDfRSt~2010 .018868 .0765322 0.25 0.806 –.1322078 .1699437
ChDemdi2010 –.0694241 .1417673 –0.49 0.625 –.3492752 .2104269
DfDemdi2010 .1404144 .1199747 1.17 0.243 –.0964177 .3772466
ChDfDem~2010 –.0574149 .2570211 –0.22 0.824 –.5647789 .4499491
_cons –.440614 .1518051 –2.90 0.004 –.7402799 –.1409481
Part B Estimates of linear combination of coefficients relating to nuclear variables

Hypothesis: ChNuc2010 + ChDfNuc2010 = 0
ChEsDm2010 Coef. Std. Err. z P>|z| 95% Conf. Interval
(1) .1843281 .1890835 0.97 0.331 –.1889258 .557582
Hypothesis: DfNuc2010 + ChDfNuc2010 = 0
(1) –.5311691 .214786 –2.47 0.014 –.9551602 –.107178
58 Joseph M. Grieco
that non-nuclear defenders may have a problem. As can be observed in Part A of
Table 3.5, the coefficient for ChNuc2010 is positive and statistically discernible
from zero (p-value < 0.04). This finding suggests that, when engaged in military
crises with non-nuclear defenders, nuclear challengers have typically attained a
higher level of crisis-escalation dominance (by about one-third of a point along
the 7-point escalation-dominance scale) than have non-nuclear challengers.
To investigate this further, a model of crisis-escalation dominance for non-
nuclear defenders is estimated, and then matching analysis is undertaken of the
effect of ChNuc2010 on crisis-escalation dominance. The results are reported in
Table 3.6.
The coefficient for ChNuc2010 reported in Part A of Table 3.6 is positive and
statistically discernible from zero (p-value < 0.051). Moreover, if we undertake
Table 3.6 Sources of challenger crisis-escalation dominance, non-nuclear defenders,

1946–2007
Part A Effects of challenger nuclear status, non-nuclear defenders

Linear regression
Number of obs = 283
F(9,153) = 2.43
Prob> F = 0.0131
R-squared = 0.0958
Root MSE = .86872
ChEsDm2010 Coef. Robust Std. Err. t P>|t| 95% Conf. Interval

ChNuc2010 .3905738 .1982532 1.97 0.051 –.0010932 .7822408
DfNucAl~2010 .2423038 .1651694 1.47 0.144 –.0840033 .5686109
ChCap2010 –2.283342 1.33213 –1.71 0.089 –4.915085 .3484006
DfCap2010 .203917 2.460384 0.08 0.934 –4.656794 5.064628
ChDfRelC2010 .8682147 .2413157 3.60 0.000 .3914738 1.344956
ChDfRSt~2010 .0781676 .0884269 0.88 0.378 –.0965277 .252863
ChDemdi2010 –.0927936 .1484232 –0.63 0.533 –.3860171 .2004299
DfDemdi2010 .0614417 .1234311 0.50 0.619 –.1824076 .3052911
ChDfDem~2010 –.0438303 .2779057 –0.16 0.875 –.5928581 .5051976
_cons –.3197951 .1601472 –2.00 0.048 –.6361802 –.0034099
Part B Matching analysis

Number of obs = 283
ChEsDm2010 Coef. Std. Err. Z P>|z| 95% Conf. Interval

SATT .4230769 .2539816 1.67 0.096 –.0747179 .9208718
Matching variables:DfNucAlly2010 ChCap2010 DfCap2010 ChDfRelC2010

ChDfRStake2010 ChDemdi2010 DfDemdi2010 ChDfDemdi2010
Weighting matrix: inverse varianceNumber of obs=283

SATT .4230769 .2293245 1.84 0.065 –.0263909 .8725448
Matching variables: see above

Weighting matrix: inverse variance Number of obs = 283

SATT .4294872 .1967571 2.18 0.029 .0438503 .8151241
Matching variables: see above

matching analysis, using our control variables and different matching levels, we
observe in Part B of Table 3.6 that ChNuc2010 is positive and discernible from
zero, at least at the 0.1 level of significance, in each of three matching scenarios.
Non-nuclear defenders appear to face a problem regarding crisis-escalation domi-
nance with nuclear challengers that they do not face with non-nuclear challengers:
they are more likely to be victims of such dominance when they face nuclear as
opposed to non-nuclear challengers.
Finally, if we employ the model of crisis-escalation dominance that is presented
in Table 3.5 to undertake an estimated-effects exercise utilizing Tomz, Witten-
berg, and King’s CLARIFY procedures within STATA (2003), with mean or
modal values assigned control variables as appropriate, we obtain the predicted
effects of nuclear weapons possession on challenger crisis-escalation dominance
that are reported in Table 3.7.
As can be observed in the upper-left cell in Table 3.7, if neither the defender nor
the challenger possesses nuclear weapons, then they are estimated to differ to no
observable degree in their crisis management strategies; that is, crisis-escalation
dominance by the challenger is estimated to reach a level effectively of zero. We
also can observe, in the lower-left cell of the table, that compared to the baseline
of mutual non-possession of nuclear weapons, in cases where the defender has
nuclear weapons and the challenger does not there is a reduction in crisis-escala-
tion by the challenger, although there is some chance that this depressive effect is
actually zero. We observe further, in the lower-right cell of the table, that posses-
sion of nuclear weapons both by the challenger and the defender produces a con-
Table 3.7 Estimated effects of nuclear-weapon possession on crisis-escalation dominance,

1946–2007
Challenger
Does not have Does have
nuclear weapons nuclear weapons
Defender Does not have nuclear weapons .003 .37
(–.16 to .17) (.03 to .70)
Does have nuclear weapons –.34 –.16
(–.75 to .05) (–.54 to .19)
60 Joseph M. Grieco
straining effect on challenger escalation dominance relative to a situation in which
only the challenger has them, but there is also a chance that there is no effect.
Indeed, there is only one clear-cut instance in which there is an estimated impact
of nuclear weapons on crisis-escalation dominance, and that instance is reflected
in the upper-right cell of Table 3.7. That is, the model predicts that if a defender
without nuclear weapons is accosted by a challenger with such weapons rather
than by a challenger without them, the nuclear challenger attains an advantage in
crisis-escalation dominance by about one-third of a point on the 7-point scale.
This finding, it should be noted, is consistent with and indeed it may help explain
the finding by Beardsley and Asal (2009: 289–90) that the possession of nuclear
weapons helps the possessor to attain a desirable outcome in circumstances in
which its adversary is a non-nuclear state, but not when both it and its adversary
are nuclear weapon nations. This finding, it must also be acknowledged, does not
mean that nuclear weapon challengers necessarily will prevail in the crises they
inaugurate; the possession of nuclear weapons, as Organski and Kugler (1980)
and, separately, Kugler (1984), have suggested, does not automatically translate
into victory in serious crises. However, at the margin, between nuclear challengers
and non-nuclear defenders, possession by the former of such weapons may pro-
vide an edge in crisis-escalation dominance and, thereby, a relatively better chance
of attaining its objectives.
Summary, implications, and looking ahead

Three main summary inferences can be drawn from the analysis above. First, con-
firming the work of others that has included the use of multivariate analyses, the
simple bivariate analysis presented in this paper suggests that the possession of
nuclear weapons does not translate into a higher willingness or propensity to start
military crises. On this dimension of belligerency, nuclear weapons appear neither
to promote greater caution in states, as Waltz might lead us to hope for, nor to
impart additional risk taking, as Sagan might lead us to fear.
Second, and regarding the use of violent triggers, the weight of the evidence sug-
gests that, in most circumstances, compared to non-nuclear challengers, nuclear
weapon states are not more likely to employ more violent triggers to military cri-
ses. On this matter, the weight of the evidence again falls somewhere between the
optimism of Waltz and the pessimism of Sagan.
Third, nuclear weapons may have some effect on crisis-escalation dominance.
Using a conservative assessment strategy, there is evidence that states with nuclear
weapons have attained a higher level of crisis-escalation dominance than have
non-nuclear challengers when targeting non-nuclear defenders. This finding pro-
vides support for Sagan’s view that states with nuclear weapons may, in the con-
text of a crisis, be more belligerent as a result of having such weapons.
If these initial results are correct and are validated through many more studies,
then for a nuclear weapon country like Israel, Iran’s obtaining nuclear weapons
would not necessarily translate into an enhanced willingness on its part to use a
violent trigger when launching a military crisis against Israel. However, for non-
nuclear countries like Turkey or Saudi Arabia, if Iran were to get nuclear weapons,
acquisition by them of nuclear weapons in response might reduce the capacity of
Iran to attain crisis-escalation dominance in some future military crisis launched
by that country. Put another way, not having nuclear weapons leaves them rela-
tively less favorably positioned to restrain crisis escalation by a nuclear Iran, if a
crisis with that country begins.
Similarly, while North Korea’s recent development of nuclear weapons may
not translate into any change in that country’s interest or ability to start military
crises, or to coerce countries like the United States that already possess nuclear
weapons, neighbors that at present do not have such weapons, such as South Korea
and Japan, might wonder if attaining such weapons would enhance their ability
to restrict the capacity of North Korea to bully them during the course of a future
military crisis. The implications of this line of thinking would probably be dire for
the formation of a cooperative security arrangement in Asia, given the likely reac-
tion by China to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by South Korea or, especially,
by Japan.
Thus, the development by North Korea of nuclear weapons may, on balance,
add a new source of danger to the politics of East Asia, for at the margin it could
be viewed by South Korea and Japan as providing rational grounds for a reas-
sessment of their own nuclear options. One might believe that the provision by
the United States of security guarantees in the form of long-standing formal and
actually quite robust military alliances would serve as a functional substitute for
nuclear weapons for Japan and South Korea. However, it will be recalled that the
results that point to a possible problem for non-nuclear defenders were generated
by a model that included the operation of a nuclear weapon ally. At this point, it
might be wise to press for a diplomatic solution to the problems in East Asia, for
if North Korea remains a viable state, and does so as a nuclear power, there may
be trouble ahead and roadblocks to the formation of a viable security architecture
for that part of the world.
Notes
1 Earlier drafts of this paper were delivered at conferences made possible by support
from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and co-sponsored by Yonsei
University, Tokyo University, and the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation
on the theme of “Cooperation in Northeast Asia: Architecture and Beyond,” Seoul,
Korea, and 30 June–2 July 2009, and 14–15 June 2010, Seoul, Korea. An earlier draft
was also presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association,
Washington, DC, 2–5 September 2010. For their comments and suggestions on the paper
I thank Ajin Choi, Christopher Gelpi, Daniel Geller, Chung Min Lee, T.J. Pempel, and
Susan Shirk. I also thank Charles Miller, Lauren Moxley, and IonutPopescu for their
excellent help as research assistants on this project.
2 In addition to the recent works cited in the text, important analyses of conflict that include
a substantial focus on the effects of nuclear-weapons possession include those by Weede
(1983), Kugler (1984), Huth (1984), Huth and Russett (1984), Geller (1990), and Fearon
(1994).
3 The early reporting about North Korea’s May 2009 nuclear weapon test is that the device
that was detonated possessed a yield in excess of one kiloton. That, in my view, makes
62 Joseph M. Grieco
North Korea a nuclear weapons state, and it will be important to track its future conflict
behavior to learn if attaining that status affected that behavior.
4 The coding procedures for this analysis are described in Rousseau, Gelpi, Reiter, and Huth
(1996), Grieco (2001), and Gelpi and Grieco (2001). The analysis 1) excludes ICB cases
in which states were not sovereign or if they matched states against rebel movements in
colonies; 2) excludes ICB cases if the challenger issued no clear threat backed by force
or did not undertake military activities as a part of its challenge; 3) brings together ICB
“intra-war” crises into the single main conflict of which these events were a part; 4)
brings together several conflicts coded by ICB as discrete events if the prior event ended
without a negotiated solution and less than one year elapsed before hostilities resumed;
and 5) differs in some instances from ICB identifications of crises, crisis participants, or
the roles undertaken by participants. As an example of operation 5, ICB characterizes the
Cyprus crisis beginning in July 1974 as involving Greece–Turkey and Turkey–Cyprus;
the present analysis adds Greece–Cyprus, for the crisis began with a violent coup d’état
in Cyprus directed against it by Greece. Further, in cases in which countries such as Israel
attacked countries such as Egypt in retaliation for operations launched on the former
from the latter by non-state actors, while ICB coded Israel and similarly placed countries
as the initiators, it is assumed that the non-state actors could not have operated without
acceptance by their host countries, and therefore it is the host countries that are coded as
the challengers.
5 Israel has never announced the testing of a nuclear weapon, although it appears that it
undertook a nuclear test in 1979, with cooperation from South Africa. There is a high
probability that Israel actually had operational nuclear weapons no later than 1968, and
in the analysis below I assign that year for Israel as becoming a nuclear state. On the
strong likelihood that Israel had nuclear weapons no later than 1968, see Hersh (1991:
179). There are reports that Israel might have had at least one device by late 1966, and
by then had certainly brought together the key elements of a usable nuclear weapon:
see Karpin(2006: 268), and Cohen (1998: 231–2). South Africa appears to have had
one or two devices by 1979, with aircraft-deliverable nuclear weapons by 1982, and a
total arsenal of six weapons by 1989: see Albright (1994: 37–47), Reiss (1995: 11), and
Liberman (2001: 54).
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4 Between multilateralism
and bilateralism
Geunwook Lee
For the last three decades or so, the world has seen three powerhouses in inter-
national politics. The first is North America, where the United States (US) has
successfully maintained its hegemonic position for more than a century. North
America has been, still is, and probably will be a peaceful region due to America’s
predominance in both soft power and hard power. The region is separated by two
oceans, protecting countries from extra-regional threats. The United States resides
at the heart of the continent, behaves as a leader reigning over its neighbors, and
enjoys its supremacy. It is a classic example of unipolar stability with one nuclear
power: the United States.
The second powerhouse is Western Europe, a collection of advanced coun-
tries flexibly united and cooperating with each other over various issues. Their
relationship is highly institutionalized in implementation, multilateral in member-
ship, and universal in scope. From Portugal and Spain to Bulgaria and Romania,
twenty-seven countries are combined as members of the European Union (EU),
allegedly the most elaborate regional multilateral institution. The region has no
hegemon; instead the region’s major members are somewhat equal in their rela-
tive capabilities even though it also contains two nuclear powers: France and the
United Kingdom.1 The region is multipolar but stable, serving as a rare example
of multipolar stability.
The third powerhouse region is East Asia, or Northeast Asia. The region is
known for the heterogeneity of its political system and the relatively disparate
capabilities of the countries involved. There are democracies such as Japan, South
Korea, and Taiwan. China has become a pseudo-capitalist state under a socialist
political banner while North Korea is struggling as one of the last Stalinist regimes
and with a hereditary leadership. The distribution of power also diverges in many
respects. China is a rising power that might challenge US supremacy in a decade
or two, while Japan has been struggling with an aging population and deteriorating
production bases. South Korea is surpassing its northern rival in overall capabili-
ties, while North Korea has built a limited number of nuclear weapons but has a
dysfunctional economy as well as bankrupt armed forces.2 What is interesting is
that East Asia has no overarching institutions in security affairs nor a predominant
power. China would be a most likely candidate for any East Asian hegemon, but the
United States, with its strong presence throughout the region, maintains military
66 Geunwook Lee
positions in Japan and South Korea partly in anticipation of a possible “China con-
tingency.” This US military presence further complicates security affairs in East
Asia and raises various issues that are both theoretical and policy relevant.
What, then, are the current institutional settings in East Asia and what are their
theoretical implications? This is the critical question explored by this chapter.
Under the current settings, East Asia is characterized by bilateral security institu-
tions such as the US–Japan and Republic of Korea–US alliances, as well as the
de jure People’s Republic of China (PRC)–Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea (DPRK) alliance.3 These bilateral arrangements are distinct from Europe’s
multilateralism in security as well as political or economic affairs. The countries
in Western Europe, along with the United States and Canada, built the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a way to handle the Soviet threat;

however, several East Asian countries signed bilateral alliance treaties with
the United States even though they faced a similar threat from the Soviet Union
and Communist China. In other words, there is no multilateral security alliance
such as NATO in East Asia (Hemmer and Katzenstein 2002). In addition, East
Asia has no overarching regional political institutions, while Europe has the Euro-
pean Union.
Scholars investigating this contrast have typically concluded that East Asia’s
institutions are somewhat inferior to Europe’s multilateralism. This chapter,
however, does not begin from such a perspective. Instead, it acknowledges that
while there is, in fact, a difference in the institutional settings between East Asia
and Europe, such differences are largely the result of choices made by the states
involved. Accordingly, the chapter tries to maintain a value-neutral position over
the different institutional settings and to analyze the theoretical differences and
implications for further research. In other words, the institutional settings are dif-
ferent, but one is not presumed to be superior to the other.
At the same time, this chapter accepts the premise that institutional design or
architecture is an issue of crucial importance. Since institutions, once built and
established, are not easy to change, it is critical to focus on institutional design.
States build institutions in order to pursue their own interests. Thus, international
institutions, including alliances and security institutions, must be understood as
tools that states choose for their own security purposes. When states build bilat-
eral alliances, the members have reasons to do so; likewise, if states decide on a
multilateral alliance, there must be interests that are seen to be optimally pursued
through multilateral institutions rather than bilateral ones (Lake and Powell 1999;
Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal 2003). The logical question, then, is under what
conditions do states prefer building multilateral rather than bilateral institutions?
What are the “interests” that determine the form of international institutions?
Theoretically, the difference between bilateral and multilateral institutions
is most notably that of membership, meaning whether institutions contain two
or more than two members. Membership per se indicates simply the number of
participants in certain institutions, not the scale or jurisdiction of those institu-
tions. Scale and jurisdiction relate to the scope that characterizes international
institutions. Some institutions enjoy general or universal jurisdictions—the United
Between multilateralism and bilateralism 67
Nations (UN), for example, is a multilateral institution with universal jurisdiction,
while the World Trade Organization (WTO) has a multilateral membership but its
jurisdiction is limited to trade-specific issues.
The following section reviews the institutional settings of East Asia, focus-
ing on the “peculiarities” of East Asia’s international institutions. What kinds of
institutions do countries in East Asia build? What are the differences between the
institutions of East Asia and those of other regions? Then, the chapter analyzes
issues of theoretical importance—differences between multilateralism and bilat-
eralism and their respective determinants. A third section illustrates the rational
analysis behind the existing institutional settings of East Asia. It offers as its main
argument the contention that sets of bilateral alliances, rather than a multilateral
security institution, were driven by the United States and represent an intentional
outcome rather than a coincidence. The fourth section explores potential secu-
rity multilateralism in East Asia. Two critical issues are investigated there. One
involves the conditions under which states are likely to build multilateral institu-
tions to address their security problems. The second is whether regional security
multilateralism would compete with or complement the existing security bilateral-
ism—the US-centric “hub and spoke” alliances. The final section provides a sum-
mary of the discussion and policy suggestions for decision makers.
East Asia: varieties of institutions

States in East Asia have built different forms of regional institutions. Some are
fluid in their memberships and have wide discretion over scope, while others are
highly exclusive and are reluctant to accept new countries. The choices concerning
institutional form are divergent on matters of scope, membership, and agenda.
Regional differences
East Asia is a geographical concept, but its institutional implications are political
and the choices complicated. East Asia is known as a “region of institutional bilat-
eralism,” leaving very few multilateral institutions. The best regional multilateral
example is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its recent
extension toward Northeast Asian states.4 In 1997, ten members of ASEAN held
a meeting with three states from Northeast Asia (China, Japan, and South Korea);
two years later, the grouping developed a more institutionalized cooperation and
became a major forum that was helpful in overcoming the financial crisis of 1997.
Ever since, this “ASEAN Plus Three” (APT) coalition has made significant con-
tributions to regional cooperation in East Asia, including moves to create a mul-
tilateralized currency swap agreement that builds on the Chiang Mai Initiative
(CMI). As of March 2010, the newly multilateralized CMI was funded at the level
of US$120 billion.5
In contrast, states in Latin America and Africa have failed to build similar insti-
tutions to engineer regional financial cooperation. In the Western Hemisphere,
for instance, states have established trade blocs such as MERCOSUR (Mercado
68 Geunwook Lee
Común del Sur; Southern Common Market) and CAN (Comunidad Andina;
Andean Community). However, unlike East Asia, there is no integrated effort
to build a financial institution.6 In Africa, states have built several institutions
for economic and political development, but none has proved to be successful.
For example, the African Economic Community (AEC) was founded in 2002
by fifty-three countries, but no meaningful contribution has been made since its
establishment.
At the other extreme, states in Europe, and Western Europe in particular, have
been highly successful in building multilateral institutions with broad and general
jurisdictions. The European Union (EU) is the best example, with its twenty-seven
members and layers of administrative bureaucracy in addition to an independent
central bank and regional courts. The EU Council has a qualified majority rule
to make decisions; the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has empow-
ered individuals to appeal to international courts; and the European Central Bank
(ECB) is regarded as the most politically independent and powerful monetary
institution in the world.
East Asia stands between these two. Its regional institutions are more fully
developed and effective than those of Latin America and Africa, but less devel-
oped than those of Europe. The East Asian performance is also interesting because
states in Latin America and Africa have not been as successful in creating a com-
mon response to financial crises. In other words, East Asia is characterized not
only by bilateralism, particularly in security affairs, but also by its limited multi-
lateralism on other agendas, most notably on finance. There are layers of institu-
tions in East Asia, and regional states can rely differently on them in pursuit of
their diverse vested interests.7
Topical differences
A second characteristic in East Asia’s institutional setting is the diversity of
issues that are addressed. On the one hand, East Asia has multilateral institutions
such as ASEAN and APT. Countries in Asia have been trying to build multilat-
eral institutions to deal with economic and trade affairs. The financial crisis of
1997–1998 made an ironic contribution to Asian economic cooperation. In 2000,
ASEAN, China, Japan, and South Korea began the CMI—a multilateral com-
mitment involving a series of bilateral currency swaps among its members. The
basic motive was to prevent any more disastrous liquidity crises in Asia. Countries
in East Asia now participate in several regional institutions such as Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC), whose membership reaches beyond East Asia;
indeed it accounts for 40 percent of the world’s population, more than half of
world production, and slightly less than half of world trade.8
East Asian economic institutions tend to be multilateral rather than bilateral,
with the goal of trade creation, but East Asia is also overlaid with several bilat-
eral free trade agreements (FTAs). South Korea, for instance, has signed seven
FTAs altogether and has been negotiating on an additional seven.9 Though late to
bilateral trade arrangements, Japan has reached nine such agreements with mostly
Asian countries and is bargaining for more, while China in its turn has sealed
fourteen bilateral agreements with Asia-Pacific economies.10
While multilateralism has been advanced in the economic sphere, security insti-
tutions in East Asia have long consisted primarily of bilateral alliances such as
those between the United States and Japan and South Korea, rather than multi-
lateral security organizations like NATO in Europe (Cha 2009/10). In the years
of the Cold War, America’s allies in East Asia were faced with the same threat
from the communist bloc that spurred NATO in Western Europe, but East Asia
did not respond by constructing a multilateral alliance that enabled it to pool mili-
tary resources for its collective survival. Taiwan—the “Republic of China” on the
island—was an ally of the United States until 1979, when Washington changed its
recognition of China from the Republic of China to the PRC.11 Meanwhile, anti-
Japanese sentiment in South Korea prevented a tripartite alliance among Seoul,
Tokyo, and Washington. (The absence of any alliance between Seoul and Taipei
is all the more interesting, since there has been no similar historical obstacle.)
Equally important, there are several forms of institutions built by Asian mem-
bers themselves. For example, at the turn of the century, China and Russia initiated
a multilateral security organization with countries in Central Asia, the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO). This has evolved from an informal group, the
Shanghai Five, into a formal organization with six members—China, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan—as of 2010. Though suspected of
being an anti-American coalition and an effort to engage in soft balancing against
American dominance, the organization claims that it was created simply for secu-
rity, economic, and cultural cooperation among member states. Four other coun-
tries—India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan—participate in meetings as observers,
while two—Sri Lanka and Belarus—are dialogue partners who “share the goals
and principles of the SCO and wish to establish relations of ‘equal and mutually
beneficial partnership’ with the organization.”12
ASEAN started as a multilateral security institution in the 1960s. A tripartite
alliance among the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand, called the Association of
Southeast Asia, was a precedent to ASEAN. The alliance developed into ASEAN
in 1967 with two additional members, Indonesia and Singapore, but remained
mostly dormant for the rest of the Cold War. In the mid-1990s, Vietnam, Laos,
Cambodia, and Myanmar joined ASEAN and the organization simultaneously
intensified its efforts to promote regional integration in economic affairs by invit-
ing three East Asian countries to build APT, which began in 1999. Also, ASEAN
declared the region free of nuclear weapons with the signing of the treaty of South-
east Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in 1995.
A third institution is the East Asian Summit (EAS). This body grew out of a
suggestion by Malaysia in 1991, but it was not until 2002, when APT decided
to hold ASEAN-embedded summits, excluding non-APT countries such as Aus-
tralia, New Zealand, and India. The first EAS meeting was held in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, in December 2005, but by then its membership included the thirteen
APT countries, India, New Zealand and Australia. The second summit was hosted
by the Philippines in January 2007, the third by Singapore in November 2007, the
70 Geunwook Lee
fourth by Thailand in October 2009, and the fifth was at Hanoi, Vietnam in 2010.
At the Hanoi meeting the United States and Russia attended as observers and
both are hopeful of becoming full members. The participants continue to discuss a
possible East Asian Community, despite lingering disagreements about important
specifics. In principle, EAS has no limits on the issues it can address, but most of
the discussions concern economy-related issues such as economic impacts of cli-
mate changes; energy security; trade; and the Comprehensive Economic Partner-
ship in East Asia (CEPEA). Political and military issues have rarely been on the
table, although in 2006 the Malaysian representatives called for EAS to consider
promoting peace, stability, and economic prosperity in East Asia.
It should be clear from these examples that East Asia has built layers of institu-
tions not only in economics and finance but also in sensitive political and security
affairs. Thus, it is not entirely accurate to argue that security regimes in East Asia
are exclusively bilateral in nature. It is undeniable that sets of bilateral alliances
with Washington have been at the centers of security policies among East Asian
capitals, but the “hub and spoke” represents only part of the regional security
picture.
A theoretical exploration: multilateralism and bilateralism

Institutions in East Asia vary in terms of membership. Alliances such as those
between the United States and its respective allies are obviously bilateral, while
others such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) or SCO are multilateral secu-
rity institutions. As was noted earlier, states build institutions in pursuit of national
interests, designing forms of international institutions in accord with their specific
purposes. Consequently, we can expect that states in East Asia built their institu-
tions—bilateral as well as multilateral—with careful consideration of present and
future purposes.
International institutions
Two definitions of international institutions are widely accepted in the field of
international relations (IR). The one is a “set of implicit or explicit principles,
norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which states’ expectations
converge in a given area of international relations.” The other is a “set of rules
that stipulate the ways in which states should cooperate and compete” with each
other (Krasner 1983; Mearsheimer 1994/95). Since the 1980s, when the concept
of international regimes was proposed, IR theorists have explored various aspects
of international institutions, from their nature and causes to effects and inertia.
Most theorists agree that international institutions are not a world government.
The international system is anarchic to the extent that there is no centralized author-
ity over independent sovereign states. This in turn means that states can compete
or cooperate whenever they want. Even when they cooperate, it is impossible to
refer to international institutions as a way to enforce cooperation contracts. The
best that states can expect is “decentralized cooperation of individual sovereign
states without any effective mechanism of command” (Lipson 1994). Theorists
are also in consensus that international institutions are built and managed by states
and that sovereign states are the volitional providers of basic resources—finances
and personnel—to sustain these international institutions. There is no world tax
to provide the budget for international institutions. Independent states choose to
obey the rules that member states create and that international institutions propose;
however, states are ultimately free to obey or not (Martin and Simmons 1998).
International institutions at the same time can be efficient instruments for states
in various ways. They are convenient tools to save costs and enhance benefits; they
can also facilitate a convergence of states’ expectations, making future behavior
more predictable and reducing the chronic uncertainty in international relations.
Without such institutions, states—even great powers—have to restart every little

procedure from the beginning, raising the costs of international relations. States can
certainly pursue their interests in the absence of institutions, but they can usually
operate better and more efficiently with them. It is for such reasons that states build
international institutions as tools through which to advance their own interests.
States build international institutions in part to reduce costs and to gain effi-
ciencies, but the instruments are not particularly flexible. Institutions are costly
to build from scratch; they are not easy to tailor to various conditions; and once
created, they are highly sticky in their rules and procedures. When pre-existing
institutions are available, states are likely to rely on them rather than build brand-
new ones for at least two reasons. First, future uncertainties restrain investments in
new institutions. Each new condition would require a new institution, and future
changes might ultimately bring the states back to the starting-point, at which point
states will have to replace the old institutions with the new ones, thus expending
additional resources.13 Second, creating new institutions almost always is more
difficult, costly and complicated than amending existing ones. When changes in
international conditions are small, any benefit from building new institutions will
be marginal. Adding a few new touches to old institutions is far less problematic
than trying to create whole new institutions from scratch (Keohane 1986).
Furthermore, some institutions survive even massive changes under disadvan-
tageous circumstances. For example, NATO has been transformed from an anti-
Soviet alliance during the Cold War years into a security institution that deals with
a variety of new security issues in Europe. It outlived one of the greatest changes
in the structure of the international system in the late 1980s and early 1990s
as Cold War bipolarity gave way to US-dominated unipolarity. In contrast, the
Warsaw Pact, the rival of the Atlantic alliance, failed to sustain itself; its members
decided in 1991 that continuation would simply sustain a relic from the Soviet
days (Haftendorn et al. 1999).
Another, probably the best, example of institutional inertia would be the Char-
ter of the UN, which was written in 1944 when, among other things, Germany
and Japan were both major enemies of the Allies and when India was not an inde-
pendent state. The structure of the UN reflects a sixty-six-year survival, with no
prominent changes in institutional structure, of arrangements made on the basis of
the 1944 balance of power. Little institutional evolution has occurred within the
72 Geunwook Lee
rigid structure of the Charter on two distinct matters. First, the permanent mem-
bers of the Security Council remain the United States, Russia, China, the United
Kingdom, and France, in disregard of the actual power balance of the twenty-
first century. There is no place for India, Brazil, or Australia, not to mention two
“enemy states,” Germany and Japan. Second, Article 53 of Chapter VIII (Regional
Arrangements) prescribes that the “enemy states”—states that “during the Second
World War ha[ve] been an enemy of any signatory of the present Charter”—can
be attacked without any new permissive resolution from the Security Council.14
Rational design of international institutions

States build multilateral institutions when they need multilateral solutions to their
problems, and bilateral institutions if they anticipate bilateral solutions. Ameri-
ca’s set of bilateral alliances with its East Asian allies represents an intentional
choice by the United States in the 1950s rather than an unintended consequence.
Victor Cha, for example, proposes a theory of power play to explain the eccentric
form of the alliances in East Asia (Cha 2009/10). Unlike NATO or other regional
security organizations that the United States sponsored during the Cold War, the
US-centered system of alliances in East Asia was the outcome of a fear of rogue
allies such as South Korea and Taiwan, which might take dangerous risks for their
own domestic political agendas. The United States tried to maximize its control
over these smaller partners and chose to build a set of bilateral alliances rather than
a multilateral institution. This argument is quite insightful, even though it lacks
theoretical micro-foundations in the IR literature.
IR theorists suggest that states design forms—membership in particular—of
international institutions depending upon their own situations. Restrictive rather
than open membership is chosen when states are faced with serious enforcement
issues or uncertainty in preferences. In contrast, distribution problems typically
lead states to go for an open membership. Enforcement problems arise when states
are able to free ride; that is, to enjoy institutional benefits even though they make
no contribution to the solution. The classic example involves the supply of public
goods such as security or clean air (Olson 1965; Olson and Zeckhauser 1966).
Given that it is difficult, though not impossible, to exclude non-contributors from
enjoying the benefits of broad cooperation, free-riding actors have every incen-
tive to evade military service or dump pollutants into the air. The only solution
is a centralized authority that is capable of imposing a universal duty—manda-
tory military service, a defense tax, environmental regulations. Thus, states would
ordinarily choose bilateral rather than multilateral arrangements when they are
faced with collective action problems (Martin 1992).
Furthermore, distribution problems are less severe when there is a single pre-
dominant power within acertain region. A true hegemon would worry little about
its junior partners or future security matters. The concern for relative gains would
remain, but it would not be perceived as a severe constraint on helping the junior
partners, given the vast differences in existing relative power. In contrast, multi-
lateral arrangements are most useful when states are seeking to achieve economies
of scale; it is a useful hedge against future security threats. When numerous states
participate, it is possible—or at least less difficult—to lessen the risk from future
power imbalances. Cooperation with multiple partners enables states to “diver-
sify” their cooperation portfolio and enjoy an “optimal mix” under which they
achieve more gains with fewer risks. When a large number of states cooperate
over smaller issues, asymmetry in distribution would favor some at the expense of
others, but neither those benefiting nor those being disadvantaged would expect
such disproportionate favors to disrupt the broader balance of power in the short
or medium future, offering weaker incentives to build multilateral institutions.
Instead, the most powerful state would choose tailor-made, bilateral solutions to
its problems.
Analysis into reality: security multilateralism in East Asia

The previous analysis spotlights different aspects of what John Foster Dulles
called the “hub and spoke” system. It was a solution to problems that the United
States was faced with in the early 1950s and the American institution designers
deliberately built the “hub and spoke” system rather than a duplicate of NATO
in East Asia. At the beginning of the 1950s, the United States faced three major
structural features in East Asia: war in the Korean peninsula; lack of reliable allies
with military potential; and American material supremacy. These problems led to
a greater possibility of free riding by Asian allies, but a relative lack of distribu-
tion concerns.
First, there was the issue of free riding on American efforts. The Korean War
and its horrifying destruction in the peninsula proved to be a boon to the Japa-
nese and the Taiwanese economies. Japan rebuilt its industrial capability by
supplying the American troops in Korea, while Taiwan was able to exploit the
economic spin-offs from the war. Neither made substantial military contributions
to the fighting. Japanese minesweepers were mobilized to clear the Wonsan area
in October 1950; however, Japan’s role in the Korean War was limited and highly
classified at the time. The ROC government in Taiwan was willing to participate
in the war, but its true motive was to acquire US military aid as well as to garner
political support for its planned roll-back invasion of the Chinese mainland. Chi-
na’s fighting in the peninsula was draining military resources that the new com-
munist regime in Beijing might have otherwise used against Taiwan, which made
the ROC feel safer. Thus two potential partners exploited American and South
Korean efforts, enjoyed the benefit of being safer and getting richer, but made no
significant contributions. A multilateral alliance system in East Asia would have
aggravated the problem.
In contrast, a series of bilateral alliances enabled the Americans to control each
ally individually. The United States took command authority over South Korea’s
armed forces and intervened in military policies until the 1970s (Kim 2001).
American military advisors were embedded into the ROK combat units on vari-
ous levels during the war, while Korean officers were sent to the United States for
advanced training. Alliances with Taiwan or Japan did not require similar levels
74 Geunwook Lee
of US intervention or advisors. Taipei and Tokyo were allowed to free ride during
the American and South Korean struggle in the peninsula, while the effects of the
free riding were successfully contained by the separate bilateral alliances. A mul-
tilateral alliance, in contrast, would have heightened the serious inequality in the
military efforts of Seoul, on the one hand, and of Taipei and Tokyo, on the other.
A bilateral system prevented the issue from plaguing the political relationships
among America’s regional allies.
Second, America’s material superiority over its Asian allies was sufficiently large
so as to overwhelm potential concern about relative gains and distribution issues.
The US economy totaled almost half of the world economy at the end of World
War II, while its Asian allies were devastated by World War II, the Chinese civil
war, and the Korean War. In 1952, for example, US GDP was $1.6 trillion, whereas
Japan’s was only $200 billion, South Korea’s was $16 billion, and Taiwan’s only
$9 billion. Americans’ per capita income was slightly over $10,000, as compared
to Japan’s $2,300, Korea’s $753, and Taiwan’s $1,000 (Maddison 2006).15 In addi-
tion, US military supremacy was complete. Washington monopolized nuclear
weapons, which is the case even today with its Asian allies (Posen 2003). There
would be, therefore, no compelling reason for the United States to be concerned
about distribution issues. Small changes in relative capabilities would not disrupt
the overall power balance between Washington and its allies. Indeed, growth in
the power of America’s allies was encouraged in light of the global confrontation
with the communist bloc. The United States provided massive assistance—military
as well as economic—to its partners in East Asia. Among America and its allies,
power distribution would not be a serious concern and generosity toward those
allies was intentionally encouraged by US decision makers (Gowa 1994).
The United States thus saw no reason to build a multilateral alliance out of con-
cerns about distribution or relative gainsin the early 1950s. Its material suprem-
acy, both economic and military, enabled Washington to ignore potential dangers
from slight disruptions in the future power balance and to provide universal rather
than bilateral favors to its junior partners. Given that any multilateral alliance
would encourage its members to free ride on US efforts, it was thus logical for the
United States to build a set of bilateral alliances rather than a multilateral alliance
like NATO.
Furthermore, the sequence and the peculiar history of each alliance contributed
to the predisposition toward bilateral relations in East Asia. The US–Japan alliance
began in 1951 when the peace treaty ending World War II (San Francisco Treaty)
was signed. The two states bargained and revised the 1951 Security Pact into an
alliance in January 1960 with the formal title of “Treaty of Mutual Cooperation
and Security.” Meanwhile, the US–Korea alliance was signed in October 1953,
two months after the armistice of the Korean War, though the functional precedent
was created in July 1950 when the president of South Korea handed over com-
mand authority over the ROK armed forces to the UN Commander. The alliance
treaty of October 1953 was a simple ratification of what had existed on the bat-
tlefield during the war. Finally, the alliance with Taiwan—which has the official
title of the “Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty”—was signed in December
1954 and annulled in January 1980, meaning that there is now no formal relation-
ship, alliance or diplomatic, between the United States and the Republic of China
on the island of Taiwan.
In this sequence, the first alliance of substance was built with the South Kore-
ans at the beginning of the war, followed by the alliance with Japan. The severe
antagonism held by most Koreans towards the Japanese made it extremely diffi-
cult to establish any trilateral security relationship among Washington, Seoul, and
Tokyo (Cha 1999). Establishing NATO had been possible because of the com-
mon enemy of the Soviet Union. However, the West Germans were not allowed
to participate in NATO for the first six years.16 Also, German troops were not
deployed on foreign soils; instead, soldiers from the United States, the United
Kingdom, and France were deployed in West Germany. Given the bloody com-
bat on the peninsula, soldiers from Japan should possibly have been mobilized
and deployed alongside South Korean troops, but for historical reasons this was
completely unacceptable. The French would not have allowed German soldiers in
Paris in 1950; so too, the South Koreans would not have tolerated Japanese troops
on the peninsula during the war. Ever since the alliances were first signed and for-
malized, it has become more and more difficult to revise them into a multilateral
institution. The effects of path dependence and institutional stickiness solidified
the “hub and spoke” system, which has remained intact until today.
Exploring potentials: security multilateralism in East Asia

For the last two decades, many scholars and policy makers have discussed secu-
rity multilateralism in East Asia. The “lack of multilateral institutions in security
affairs,” according to one scholar, contributes to pessimistic predictions about the
future of East Asia (Friedberg 1993/94). Though such predictions—most of them
made in the early 1990s—have proven to be wrong, many scholars still worry
more about East Asian security than about the future security of Western Europe.
Their arguments are complicated, but there is a single consensus on one key point:
the rise of China and its implications for East Asian security (Kang 2007). On the
other hand, Washington has not been active in promoting security multilateralism
in East Asia for a decade or so. In particular, the Bush administration was at best
lukewarm about various proposals for any multilateral East Asian security archi-
tecture (Shirk 2010).
States build multilateral institutions when multilateralism serves their inter-
ests; for example, the Bush administration was comfortable leading a “coalition
of the willing” for the invasion of Iraq. In East Asia, the United States failed to
strengthen its alliance relationship with South Korea under the late president Roh
Moo-Hyun, while the political relationship with Tokyo became quite cordial. The
Obama administration has sought to restore the relationship with Seoul, but its
attitude toward Japan became sour enough to weaken the Japanese government in
2010. These experiences make it clear that viable policy suggestions require that
scholars understand states’ incentives concerning institutional choices;17 other-
wise, policy makers would greet such proposals with deaf ears.
76 Geunwook Lee
The question of under what conditions states would be most likely to build
multilateral security institutions in East Asia does not imply that multilateralism
is superior to bilateralism. It is not a normative, but a positive question.18 A second
question concerns institutional interaction in East Asia. If multilateralism were to
arise in East Asia as a way to manage security affairs, what would be the relation-
ship between existing bilateral arrangements and any emerging multilateralism?
Would multilateralism replace the decades-old bilateralism? Or, would bilater-
alism and multilateralism go “hand in hand” to solve various regional security
issues?
Will East Asians build multilateral security institutions?

For more than half a century, scholars and policymakers have asked: Why doesn’t
East Asia have a NATO even after the Cold War? NATO was a very successful
alliance during the Cold War and it has evolved from an anti-Soviet alliance into
a multilateral security institution that now handles regional issues and manages
risks and uncertainties among its members. In contrast, East Asia had no NATO
from the beginning and has failed to build effective multilateral security institu-
tions ever since. APEC came close to being such a multilateral architecture, but
it is largely a political and economic, rather than a security, framework. The Six
Party Talks might become such an institutional framework, but to date they have
concentrated on managing North Korea’s nuclear program and even in that limited
task have not been particularly effective.19
The “hub and spoke” system was built by the Americans in the early 1950s.
However, East Asia at the beginning of the twenty-first century has few, if any,
similarities with the East Asia of the 1950s. China is a rising power rather than the
“sick man of Asia,” surpassing Japan as the second-largest economy of the world.
Japan saw an economic boom followed by a bust, but it is still a major industrial
force. Korea’s growth has been explosive and it now has joined the ranks of the
OECD countries as a rather wealthy nation. There are discussions—pessimistic as
well as optimistic—over the future of East Asia (Brown, Lynn-Jones, and Miller
1996). Given that East Asia has long been characterized by bilateralism in security
affairs, the question is whether states will pursue multilateralism, given the rather
changed situation in the region. Returning to the central question of the condi-
tions under which states are likely to build multilateral institutions it is worth
remembering that states will opt for multilateral paths only when the path appears
to serve their best interests; that is, when the free-riding problem and the relative-
gains problems are not serious impediments.
With regard to the first issue, states have stronger incentives to free ride when
institutions have a larger number of participants. It is easier to pass the buck on
their responsibilities and it is more difficult to identify and punish non-contribu-
tors in larger institutions. States prefer bilateralism to multilateralism when they
are supposed to provide public goods, and they expect partners to free ride on
their sacrifices. In such conditions, states would prefer to invest their resources
in bilateral arrangements. Given that security is a classic example of such public
goods, states are likely to free ride; in this context, the East Asian states would be
unlikely to build multilateral institutions for their own security affairs. As long as
security is a public good and states are concerned about their own survival, it will
not be easy for East Asians to build multilateral institutions.
The nature of security problems, however, has changed considerably in the last
half century. Over that time there has been a move from a clear and present threat to
more generalized risk and uncertainty about the future. In the early 1950s, states in
East Asia—non-communist countries in particular—were faced with a clear threat
from the Soviet bloc. China became a communist country, pushing the Nationalist
government headed by Chiang Kai-Shek into Taiwan. North Korea tried to unify the
Korean peninsula under the communist flag, but failed; the peninsula was divided
once again into two highly armed Koreas. The Japanese did not suffer directly from
war with the communists, but even though Japan was the most advanced country in
the region, Tokyo had good reason to fear direct or indirect communist challenges.
In other words, the nature of the security problem in the 1950s was the clear exter-
nal threat posed to America’s allies by the communist bloc (Walt 1987).
At the beginning of the new century, the situation is different. There is no imme-
diate threat, internal or external, in East Asia. Instead, the urgent issue is the rise of
China and its potential impacts upon regional security, but there is little likelihood
of an actual military threat posed by China. It is clear that Beijing’s economic
power has been increasing for the last thirty years or so and that China’s armed
forces are being strengthened, but there is no consensus that China is threatening
or will threaten its neighbors. East Asians show no clear signs of balancing against
the Chinese power—neither hard balancing nor soft balancing (Pape 2005). States
in East Asia are concerned about the rise of China, but they are not certain about
the regional ramification of that rise. Uncertainty and risk are the main characteris-
tics of the security challenges in East Asia at the beginning of the twenty-first cen-
tury, rather than any clear and present danger from China’s rise (Lampton 2008).
Under such a situation of uncertainty and risk, the optimal security institution is a
multilateral framework aimed at facilitating information flow and enhancing trans-
parency. As a rising power, China would clearly prefer multilateralism in order to
persuade its neighbors about Beijing’s “peaceful intentions,” while Japan and South
Korea, as declining powers, would benefit from multilateralism as a way to acquire
more information about Chinese power and intentions. This situation involves no
clear provision of public goods; non-contributors could be easily excluded from any
multilateral benefits and it would be relatively easy to identify or punish a defector.
There would be little incentive to free ride; states would more willingly partici-
pate in a multilateral framework to ensure further dialogue with the Chinese, while
Beijing would welcome as many members as possible. This is all the more the case
because East Asia is in general rife with nationalism and because the nationalist
sentiment in China has been strong and is likely to increase (Gries 2004).
In addition to the new security problems of the 2010s, concerns about relative
gains would encourage states to choose multilateral rather than bilateral institu-
tions. Contrary to the 1950s, there is now a new trilateral structure of regional
politics in East Asia involving two junior partners: China and Japan as regional
78 Geunwook Lee
economic poles, with the United States as the geographical outsider but a politico-
economic insider. South Korea and Taiwan, although smaller still, cannot be eas-
ily disregarded. America remains as the paramount military power. China and
Japan, along with South Korea and Taiwan, are heavily armed, not to mention
North Korea’s new nuclear capacity.
Under these conditions, states in East Asia would be more worried about the
security consequences of engaging in cooperation, and they are likely to find ways
to avoid jeopardizing their future survival. Concerns about relative gains, therefore,
must be seriously addressed. Given the current power balance, most countries would
not participate in arms control, for example, if they expected the relative power to
shift in favor of their multilateral partners at their expense. If states are engaged in
long-term cooperation enough benefits from small-sized cooperation could be accu-

mulated so as to prevent any major disruption in the future power balance.
Multilateralism could be one of the logical solutions for the relative gains prob-
lem. A series of small-scale cooperative ventures with multiple partners would
allow states to spread the risks of unfavorable gains while enjoying the benefits
provided by cooperation. In particular, states could engage in a series of bilateral
cooperation arrangements within the regional multilateral framework. For exam-
ple, under the multilateral trade regime of the WTO, South Korea has engaged in
bilateral agreements with multiple partners such as ASEAN, Chile, the European
Union, and the United States. Each round of cooperation brings some benefits, but
such cooperation does not jeopardize South Korea’s security, because the partners
are different under each agreement. A similar logic could work in arms control.
States could create a multilateral arms control regime in which each state might
engage in bilateral cooperation with others in the pursuit of further reductions.
Therefore, East Asia might opt for multilateral institutions in the new century.
The existing system of bilateral alliances is no longer optimal in the new regional
security environment. The nature of East Asia’s security problems has changed
from external threat to internal risk and uncertainty, a condition less suited to
resolution through bilateral alliances. In addition, economic tripolarity encourages
East Asian states to take concerns about relative gains more seriously. Instead of
bilateral institutions under which states cannot spread the risk of relative gains,
states in East Asia are likely to build multilateral rather than bilateral frameworks.
Will a new framework replace the old institutions?
Will security multilateralism compete with or complement bilateral

alliances in East Asia?
American policymakers are concerned about the weaker control over their allies
that would come from multilateralism, while the East Asians are worried about
mistrust and arms races during a period of power transition. And, as noted earlier,
the security environment at the beginning of the new century differs from that in
the 1950s when the United States built its “hub and spoke” alliances to deal with
a clear and present threat from the communist bloc. Today, problems of mistrust
and nationalism are the main issues haunting East Asia, which is likely to lead to
forging multilateral rather than bilateral institutions in security affairs. A question
of significant policy relevance then arises. Will the East Asians replace the old
bilateral alliances with new multilateral security institutions? Will multilateralism
be competitive with or complementary to the old US “hub and spoke” alliances?
It is almost impossible to make accurate predictions about the future, but theo-
retical understandings suggest that the East Asians will be unlikely to replace the
half-century-old institutional arrangements with new multilateral bodies. At the
end of the Cold War, the countries in Eastern Europe decided not to keep the War-
saw Pact alive, but to pull the plug. In February 1991, the members of the Warsaw
Pact chose to end the military provisions, and in March all of the Warsaw Pact
structures were abolished (Mastny and Byrne 2005).
Instead, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan would be more likely to layer multilat-
eral institutions on the top of their existing bilateral arrangements with the United
States. The alliance system with the United States at the center is likely to survive
the changes in international structure in East Asia, as NATO did at the end of the
Cold War. The states in East Asia—America’s allies in particular—are not likely
to give up their security ties with Washington simply on the promise of future
benefits from untested multilateral institutions. It would be too dangerous to put
all of their eggs into a single basket.
First, institutions are difficult to demolish; effective for more than half a cen-
tury, the “hub and spoke” system has fostered an enormous security infrastruc-
ture in East Asia with strong supporters. For example, the United States has built
intensive networks of military bases in South Korea as well as in Japan; the SOFA
(Status of Forces Agreement) is a set of highly elaborated legal structures that has
developed over the last sixty years. To replace existing alliances with multilateral
security institutions would require that all of the security infrastructure that the
United State and its allies in the region have constructed would be replaced as
well. The simple economic costs of demolishing existing structures and building
brand-new institutions would be prohibitive.
Second, out-and-out replacement would be likely to be politically costly in the
United States as well as in East Asia. Such a complete institutional change would
be perceived as an end of the American commitment to East Asia. For example,
the public opinion of South Korea fluctuated when the Bush administration simply
announced the relocation of the US forces in Korea from the frontline to further
south on the peninsula. A complete replacement of the existing alliance structure
with the United States would cause massive domestic fallout across East Asia.
Conservative political factions in both Japan and South Korea believe that the
American military presence is the linchpin in their country’s respective national
security and worry that the United States might withdraw its military commitment
to the region. Given such domestic circumstances, even minor changes in US alli-
ances could escalate into huge domestic political struggles and jeopardize political
stability across the region.
East Asia without the US alliances might initiate balancing against China’s
rising power, which might be good for the United States in the short run. How-
ever, such balancing would lead to regional arms races between China on the
80 Geunwook Lee
one hand and Japan and South Korea on the other. Given that democratic coun-
tries in East Asia do not have nuclear weapons, while non-democratic members
in the region—China and North Korea—have nuclear arms, strong incentives to
build nuclear weapons would emerge if the alliances with the United States were
replaced with multilateral security institutions. Years ago, prominent scholars dis-
cussed just such a possibility of a “nuclear cascade in East Asia” in twenty years
or so (Allison 2005; Bracken 1999).
Control over allies is also an exceptionally important issue for the East Asian
countries as well as for the Americans. Washington has every reason to try to
maintain its grip over Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo. Such US control over its regional
allies is welcomed by the East Asians, too. With no American supervision, Japan
would claim the position of leader against Chinese expansion, but South Korea
and Taiwan would not be happy to see the former colonial master’s military
return. Seoul and Taipei would clearly prefer Washington’s supremacy. Mean-
while, Beijing has come to accept US soldiers on the Korean peninsula rather than
Japanese troops in Seoul. A similar logic worked in Western Europe. “NATO
has three purposes,” Hastings Ismay—the first secretary general of the Atlan-
tic Alliance—said, “keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans
down” (Nye 2002: 33). This famous quote suggests that NATO was not all about
external threat from the Soviet Union. The US presence on the continent helped
the Western Europeans to harness German power—military as well as economic.
Most of all, the security environment is still murky and is likely to remain so for
some decades to come. The rise of Chinese power, even if Beijing does not pose a
clear and present danger to its neighbors, is likely to raise fears of a Chinese threat
in the long run because sheer material capability is one of the critical components
for assessing external threat. Sparta, for example, perceived an Athenian threat
even when Pericles restrained Athenian policy toward Sparta, because Athens had
grown so much faster than Sparta and because the shifting power balance favored
the Athenians. For the last two decades, Japan has been in decline for deep struc-
tural reasons, including a shrinking and aging population. The economic engine
has slowed substantially and many people are seriously concerned about contin-
ued zero growth in the country. In contrast, China has transformed its economic
power into military muscle and presents Beijing as not simply a regional power
but a potential global power.
Under these circumstances, states in East Asia are unlikely to surrender their
alliances with the United States. They are not strong enough to face China with no
military or political support from the Americans. Faced with the size of China’s
economy and its nuclear capacity, non-nuclear democracies would remain vul-
nerable if they had to rely simply on multilateral security institutions. A stronger
US security commitment is necessary and an American military presence with
bilateral alliances is required to assure Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo. Otherwise,
America’s democratic allies in East Asia might consider the nuclear option rather
than pooling their military resources in order to balance against Chinese power.20
In the 1970s, when the United States seemed to be disengaging from East Asia,
South Korea publicly threatened to build nuclear weapons and Taiwan pursued a
classified nuclear program. A replacement of the “hub and spoke” system would
be likely to lead to a similar panic among East Asian capitals, triggering escalating
arms races, nuclear as well as conventional, throughout the region.
China is not a serious issue for South Korea. Its northern neighbor, with its
economy in shambles, nuclear weapons in its arsenals, and hundreds of long-range
missiles targeting Seoul is the real and immediate threat to South Korean security.
North Korea is a failed state, but its armed forces—conventional and nuclear—are
powerful enough to inflict significant damage on South Korea.21 In any war on the
Korean peninsula, South Korea would ultimately prevail, but the victory would be
pyrrhic. Containment and deterrence against North Korea is the best option; and the
US military is essential to convince the North Korean leadership not to unleash its
military power against the South. Obviously, replacing the alliance with the United
States would not be a prudent option for the South Koreans even if security multi-
lateralism were in place within East Asia. Seoul desperately needs the US military
commitment and the alliance in order to deter Pyongyang rather than Beijing.
Conclusion
The system of bilateral alliances that the United States has forged in East Asia is
an exception rather than a rule. East Asia has several multilateral institutions in
economic and political affairs. There are also several examples of economic bilat-
eralism: FTAs between South Korea and its partners such as the United States,
ASEAN, and Singapore, for example, as well as similar FTAs by China and Japan
with other neighbors. However, trade multilateralism in accord with the World
Trade Organization is the rule. Furthermore, there are existing political multilat-
eral institutions to deal with security issues, for example, ASEAN and the SCO.
The US-centered “hub and spoke” is thus an exception in East Asia.
This exception was created by the Americans in the early 1950s. The United
States built its East Asian alliance system—a set of bilateral alliances rather than
a single multilateral alliance—in pursuit of its own interests. The rationale behind
such an institutional design was multifold. The first justification was to prevent
free riding by America’s Asian allies, a benefit reinforced by the second factor, the
lack of concern about power redistribution. American supremacy allowed Wash-
ington to disregard most concerns about relative gains. Under that situation, the
time sequence—a third factor—contributed to consolidating and implanting the
“hub and spoke” alliances.
Multilateralism is no panacea. Under certain circumstances, states can coop-
erate well through bilateral rather than multilateral arrangements. The historical
record of East Asia and the alliances illustrate the virtues of bilateralism. Under
the new security conditions in the region, states in East Asia might well build
multilateral institutions in addition to the existing bilateral security framework.
Instead of facing some external threat, however, the East Asians are exposed to
mistrust and uncertainty in their regional security affairs, requiring multilateral
institutions to ensure transparency. This does not imply that states in East Asia
are likely to replace the existing bilateral security institutions with a completely
82 Geunwook Lee
new multilateral architecture. Institutional replacement is expensive, and the full
implications of China’s ascent are not clear yet. Far more likely is a layering of
new multilateral arrangements on top of the existing bilateral security alliances.
Notes
1 Simple GDP data easily illustrate the prominence of the United States. The GDP of
the United States is $14.44 trillion in 2008, which is 20 percent of the world economy.
Canada’s economy is $1.3 trillion, which is roughly 9 percent of the US economy,
while the size of the Mexican economy is $1.08 trillion, or 7.5 percent. A parallel
comparison shows the economic multipolarity in Europe. The entire EU economy is
$14.9 trillion, which consists of Germany ($2.9 trillion or 19.5 percent), Great Britain
($2.23 trillion or 15 percent), France ($2.13 trillion or 14 percent), Italy ($1.99 trillion
or 13 percent), and Spain ($ 1.4 trillion or 9.3percent). Data is from <https://www.cia.
gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html>.
2 As of 2008, South Korea enjoys an economy whose total output is 33 times larger than
North Korea’s. However, North Korea has twice tested its nuclear weapons, in October
2006 and May 2009.
3 The PRC–DPRK alliance was signed in July 1961, three years after the Chinese with-
drawal from North Korea. In the same month, North Korea signed an alliance treaty
with the Soviet Union, but both of the treaties went dormant for “Pyongyang’s neutral-
ity” over the Sino-Soviet conflict in the 1960s. At the end of the Cold War, the Soviet
treaty was terminated and the Russian Federation did not pay much attention to the
alliance with North Korea until the 2000s. Meanwhile, the Chinese have remained the
sole ally of the North Koreans until today. Each pledged to immediately render military
and other assistance by all means to its ally against any outside attack. The treaty is in
effect as of January 2011 and will remain in force until the contracting parties agree on
its amendment or termination.
4 ASEAN was founded in 1967 with five members: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore, and Thailand. Its organization was sponsored by the United States in order
to contain a communist expansion in Southeast Asia. In the 1980s and 1990s, ASEAN
accepted five additional members: Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. As
of 2010, it has ten members and two candidate states (Papua New Guinea and Timor-
Leste).
5 For details about “ASEAN Plus Three,” see <http://www.aseansec.org/16580.htm>.
There is an earlier initiative for the AMF in the 1990s, which was not fruitful. The
Japanese proposed to build an AMF, but the Americans and the Chinese did not endorse
Tokyo’s ambition. In contrast, the proposal of 2010 was co-sponsored by China, Japan,
and South Korea with active support from the United States. The ASEAN countries are
also founding members with 19.2 percent quota ($23.72 million out of the total fund
amount of US$120 billion).
6 MERCOSUR was built in 1991 by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay as the
largest free trade agreement in Latin America. It has expanded to include Bolivia,
Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru as associate members. CAN is a trade bloc built by
Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru in 1969.
7 My thanks to T.J. Pempel for this point.
8 See APEC website at <http://www.apec.org/apec/about_apec.html>.
9 South Korea’s FTA partners are Chile, Singapore, the EFTA (European Free Trade
Association), ASEAN, India, the United States, and the European Union.
10 Japan’s partners are such as Singapore, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Indonesia,
Chile, Thailand, ASEAN as a whole, and Vietnam. Major partners of Chinese FTAs
are ASEAN, Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, Niger, Chile, Pakistan, New Zealand, Peru,
and Singapore. See <http://www.bilaterals.org/>.
11 The Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and Taiwan was terminated by
the Americans in January 1980. Instead, the Carter administration provided a functional
replacement to the Republic of China—the Taiwan Relations Act—and began de facto
diplomatic relations with the “governing authorities on Taiwan.” The US embassy was
closed on the island, but the American Institute in Taiwan, a private nonprofit corpora-
tion, was empowered to be a quasi-embassy in 1979.
12 See the Shanghai Cooperation Organization website at <http://www.sectsco.org/>.
13 Usually, this type of cost is called a “menu cost,” which is the cost to print menus every
day depending upon every small change in prices. When the benefit from a price change
is small, it is rational for restaurant owners not to reprint all of their menus, but to use
the old menus with no changes in prices and to wait for permanent or long-term changes
coming to the food market.
14 The UN Charter is available online at <http://www.un.org/>.
15 In 1990 dollars.
16 It was 1954, almost a decade after World War II, when West Germany—the Federal
Republic of Germany—was admitted into NATO and the Germans were given weap-
ons. The East Germans were allowed to build military power in 1955 as a part of the
Warsaw Pact. The German Democratic Republic was a founding member of the War-
saw Pact, which started in May 1955.
17 In both cases, conflicts arose over positions of the US military bases. In the mid-
2000s, the liberal administration under the late President Roh had troubles with the
Bush administration over the United States Forces Korea positioning at Pyongtaek. In
June 2010, Prime Minister Hatoyama of Japan resigned over US–Japanese differences
regarding the USFJ base at Futenma, Okinawa.
18 Recent research in political economy, for example, explores the potential effect of
FTAs upon harmonizing the economic relations with special focus upon ASEAN–Japan
Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (Corning 2009). It concludes that
labor mobility was not fully addressed through negotiations and suggests that negotia-
tors make more efforts to increase labor mobility.
19 Beginning in August 2003, representatives from six states—the United States, Russia,
China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea—met and discussed the North Korean
nuclear issues under the chairmanship of China. They have met six times. The rounds
were held in August 2003, February 2004, June 2004, July/September 2005, November
2005, and March/September 2007. However, it has been “temporarily suspended” for
Pyongyang’s unsuccessful launch of what it claimed was a satellite but which skeptics
presumed was a long-range missile and the consequent sanctions by the United States
and South Korea under the UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR 9364).
20 Japan’s colonial past is the most significant obstacle to any regional alliance against
China. In this sense, policy suggestions for America’s “offshore balancer” are mislead-
ing (Mearsheimer 2001). It is likely to encourage local allies to pursue an independent
nuclear program rather than regional alliances.
21 North Korea was ranked nineteenth in the list of “failed states” published by the Fund
for Peace. Ever since the list has been disclosed, North Korea’s ranking has fluctuated,
from thirteenth place in 2005 to nineteenth in 2010.
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Part III
strategies
State interests and
5 European experience and
lessons
Hae-Won Jun
European security architecture since the end of the cold war

Literature on comparative regionalism has tried to draw lessons from the Euro-
pean experience for other regions, including Northeast Asia (Mattli 1999; Fort
and Weber 2006; Jetschke 2009). Although most of these efforts have focused
on the economic aspects of integration, a few works have dealt with security
integration.1 Yet virtually all such comparisons question whether the European
experience in security cooperation, including not only the European Union but
also the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organization for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), is even slightly relevant to the
current security environment in Northeast Asia (Friedberg 1993/94; Hemmer
and Katzenstein 2002; Kang 2003; Krause 2003; Beeson 2005; Maull 2005;
Weber 2007; Rees 2010).
The security environment of Europe has undergone serious transformation since
the end of the Cold War. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which the West
regarded as its principal potential enemy, the security architecture in Europe faced
a need to adapt to the new environment. The Western European countries sud-
denly had to deal with the aspiration of Central and Eastern European countries
to join NATO and the European Union. Many of these states were unstable and
often ethnically and religiously divided, spurring fears that they would face con-
flicts that might spread instability to their neighbors. Some of the former Soviet
Union states remained unfriendly to the West and their governments maintained
close relationships with Russia; occasionally they were active in suppressing pro-
Western groups at home. Moreover, the events of September 11, 2001, crystalized
a new security threat, requiring a new approach to international security coopera-
tion. Moreover, the war in Iraq illustrated how the West had become fragmented
in dealing with these new security challenges, not only across the Atlantic but also
within Europe itself (Peterson 2004).
Such changes in the security environment implied that Europe had to strengthen
its security cooperation and reform its existing security organizations, most nota-
bly the European Union (EU), NATO, and the OSCE. As political institutions are
sticky, these three institutions not only survived the new security environment but
also gained enhanced presence in the post-Cold War world.
90 Hae-Won Jun
The EU’s role in European security is relatively new, as its primary Cold War
focus was on economic integration. Despite its short history as compared to NATO
and the OSCE, however, the EU has expanded its arena for security cooperation in
Europe by starting the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). In this chap-
ter, I investigate how the EU became a new security actor alongside the other two
organizations. I argue that the EU filled a gap in security cooperation caused by
the new security environment that emerged after the end of the Cold War. NATO
and the OSCE were unable to fill that gap, leaving a window of opportunity for the
EU. The success of the EU lies in the fact that it did not try to replace NATO or
the OSCE but, rather, sought to complement them. The chapter then investigates
which European security institutions are most relevant for Asia.
Three security institutions in the global era: functional and

geographical expansions
With the end of Cold War, Europe faced three security challenges, even as mas-
sive-scale violence became unthinkable in Europe. First, the United States, which
had provided a defense umbrella over Europe against the Soviet Union, no longer
accorded European security its utmost strategic priority. It became more reluc-
tant to intervene in European security, making it clear that the European coun-
tries should take on more of their own security burden. Second, the collapse of
the Soviet Union reduced stability in the border regions of Eastern Europe. The
former Soviet Union’s satellites in Central and Eastern Europe went through dra-
matic economic and political changes, accompanied by political instability, border
disputes, population migration, and internal and external ethnic conflicts. Facing
substantial demands to accept massive numbers of refugees, and possible security
threats from unstable neighbors, Western European countries found themselves
exposed to continuous risks arising from regional insecurity. Third, and finally,
with its rising economic power as a result of economic integration, both exter-
nal and internal expectations have grown that Europe would play a larger role in
global issues. Demands have risen for more autonomous action by Europe.
Europe’s three international security institutions changed in response to this
altered security environment. Yet their respective transformations differed signifi-
cantly from one another’s, as a result of their original characters (Rivera 2005).
Before examining the important differences in their responses, it is well to high-
light certain similarities in the way these institutions adapted to the post-Cold War
era. To begin with, all three expanded their membership. The OSCE expanded
to include fifty-six states, becoming the largest existing regional security organi-
zation; it now includes continental Europe, Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia,
the United States, and Canada. The new post-1989 members were mainly drawn
from the former Yugoslavia and the Caucasus. NATO and the EU also expanded
towards Central and Eastern Europe. Accepting new members was designed to
increase stability and security for the former non-members in the region. Unlike
the case of the OSCE, however, the enlargement of the EU and, even more so,
of NATO generated new tensions between members and non-members. Russia,
European experience and lessons 91
in particular, considered NATO’s eastward expansion as a threat to its sphere of
influence (Daalder and Goldgeier 2006).
Another similarity in the three institutions’ transformation lies in the fact that
they all adopted a more comprehensive concept of security, extending their roles
into new areas of security cooperation. Before becoming the OSCE in 1992, the
Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe had the broadest approach
to security cooperation, ranging from the maintenance of peace and stability to
promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms (Biscop 2006). At the 1990
Bonn Conference on Economic Co-operation in Europe, the underdeveloped eco-
nomic and environmental cooperation area received added momentum. NATO
also took a more comprehensive role in European security, as well as a more sub-
stantial role in its out-of-area missions, departing from its prior focus on hard-core
security and military alliance. The European Communities became the European
Union and introduced the Common and Foreign Security Policy. As a result of
these moves, the memberships of those three institutions have come to overlap,
over time, and they have taken on similar security goals, as shown in Table 5.1.
Despite such similarities, however, the three institutions also changed in
significantly different ways. Their key post-Cold War features can be summa-
rized as follows: NATO became a global security actor; the OSCE declined as
a European security forum, and the EU emerged as a European security actor.
The next section follows the steps taken by the EU in its security cooperation.
It also shows why the EU became a new security actor in Europe, on a parallel
with NATO and the OSCE. In short, the EU tried to narrow the capability-and-
expectation gap in three ways. It redefined its security role in three ways: Euro-
pean security (outside the EU); global security (outside Europe); and European
defense (within the EU).
The development of the EU as a European security actor

With twenty-seven member states, the EU is now a key player in international
issues, not only in economic matters but also in security. Along with other devel-
opments, one of the EU’s most notable changes in the last two decades has been
its transformation from a mere trade actor into a substantial wielder of soft power,
one that acts to resolve conflicts and to shape global affairs using tools like trade,
aid, and peacekeeping.
The growing economic power of the European Community (EC) raised expec-
tations for its contribution to global governance both in economy and security. The
EC member states sought to have more visibility and influence in global affairs,
while those outside the EC demanded that Europe take on enhanced responsibility
economically, diplomatically, and militarily.
Meeting these challenges was the main motivation driving the EU to develop
security and defense capabilities and to become a soft-power entity. Expanding
its policy objectives and scope, increasing capacities, and improving decision-
making structures are three key areas that the EU needed to address in order to
make coherent, effective, and visible foreign and security policies.
92 Hae-Won Jun
Table 5.1 Membership of current security institutions in Europe (O: Member, X; Non-member;
C: Candidate)
Country EU NATO CSTO OSCE
Albania X O X O
Andorra X X X O
Armenia X X O O
Austria O X X O
Azerbaijan X X X O
Belarus X X O O
Belgium O O X O
Bosnia and Herzegovina X X X O
Bulgaria O O X O
Canada X O X O
Croatia C O X O
Cyprus O X X O
Czech Republic O O X O
Denmark O O X O
Estonia O O X O
Finland O O X O
France O O X O
Georgia X X X O
Germany O O X O
Greece O O X O
Hungary O O X O
Iceland X O X O
Ireland O X X O
Italy O O X O
Kazakhstan X X O O
Kyrgyzstan X X O O
Latvia O O X O
Liechtenstein X X X O
Lithuania O O X O
Luxembourg O O X O
Malta O O X O
Moldova X X X O
Monaco X X X O
Montenegro X X X O
Netherlands O O X O
Norway X O X O
Poland O O X O
Portugal O O X O
Romania O O X O
Russian Federation X X O O
San Marino X X X O
Serbia X X X O
Slovakia O O X O
Slovenia O O X O
Spain O O X O
Sweden O X X O
Switzerland X X X O
Tajikistan X X O O
former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia C C X O
Turkey C O X O
Turkmenistan X X X O
Ukraine X X X O
United Kingdom O O X O
United States of America X O X O
Uzbekistan X X O O
Vatican X X X O
It was against such a backdrop that the member states of the EC decided to
include foreign and security policy in the scope of European integration. In the
1992 Treaty of Maastricht, they initiated the EU with a three-pillar structure—the
EC, the CFSP, and the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA). To meet the new security
challenges, the CFSP sought to forge a unified international voice for Europe in
diplomacy, foreign aid, and economic sanctions. It laid out the types of diplomatic
and political activities that the EU could undertake in conflict prevention and reso-
lution. However, the focus on the EU as a civilian power, as envisaged under the
Maastricht Treaty, proved to be a critical limitation when dealing with the wars in
the Western Balkans. Lacking consensus among the member states, and short of
appropriate military instruments, the EU proved unable to solve the crisis. In the
late 1990s, seeing that the United States was reluctant to intervene in the security
matters in Europe during the crisis in Yugoslavia, and acknowledging the widen-
ing gap between US and European security interests, the EU member states found
it to be of growing importance to improve the CFSP and to equip the EU with its
own effective military tools.
The 1997 Amsterdam Treaty addressed such matters in two ways. First, to give
its diplomacy more clout and visibility, the EU created the post of High Repre-
sentative for Foreign and Security Policy. The holder of this position coordinates
among EU countries to shape and carry out foreign policy with a broadly “Euro-
pean” direction. In addition, the treaty added the Petersberg Tasks to the CFSP.
These cover humanitarian and rescue missions, peacekeeping, and the utilization
of combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking tasks. The Peters-
berg Tasks also underscore the EU’s focus on becoming a wielder of soft power:
for all that the EU sought to expand its military capacity, a central aim remains
increasing its ability to engage in activities such as crisis management and peace-
keeping, rather than to provide a robust offensive capability.
Accomplishing the Petersberg Tasks required that the EU have military instru-
ments. In the St. Malo Declaration of 1998, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and
French President Jacques Chirac argued for the establishment of the European
Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) as a part of the CFSP. Under the ESDP,
European military or police forces can be sent to conflict areas to carry out cri-
sis management, humanitarian and rescue missions, peacekeeping activities, and
even peacemaking operations. In 1999 the two countries also agreed that by 2003
the EU should be ready to dispatch 50,000 to 60,000 rapid reaction forces within
sixty days for periods of up to one year. In 2001 the decision-making structures of
the ESDP were institutionalized by the Treaty of Nice. Realizing that the rapid-
reaction forces would be difficult to mobilize, the EU introduced the concept of
the EU Battlegroup in 2004. EU member states and willing third countries would
contribute forces, with each battlegroup comprising 1,500 troops capable of being
deployed within ten days for a period of 30–120 days.
The European Security Strategy (ESS) of 2003, inspired by the new security
environment after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, incorporated new threats that the
CFSP would address, most notably international terrorism, proliferation of weap-
ons of mass destruction, threats to regional security, and problems of failed states
94 Hae-Won Jun
and organized crime. It should be noted that, despite their serious divisions over
the war in Iraq, the EU member states remained willing to increase the EU’s secu-
rity capacity (Hill 2004).
Pursuing more coherence, better coordination, and wider policy areas, the Treaty
of Lisbon, signed in December 2007 and in effect in December 2009, renamed the
ESDP as the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). The treaty also intro-
duced “a mutual defense clause” and a “solidarity clause” in the EU’s security and
defense policy, meaning that the EU would now complement NATO in the ter-
ritorial defense of EU member states and assist member states in overcoming any
terrorist attack or any natural or man made disaster on its territory (Duke 2008).
The treaty brought more coherence to the decision-making structure affecting
the EU’s external relations (Grevi et al. 2009). The President of the European
Council is now elected by the member states for a thirty-month term, replacing the
prior six-month rotating presidency among member states. More importantly, the
consistency of the EU’s external actions is to be improved by a new High Repre-
sentative, a post created by merging the External Relations Commissioner in the
European Commission with the High Representative of the Council of Ministers.
This allows the economic tools available to the Commission and the diplomatic
and military tools of the Council to be wielded by a single person.
In short, through a series of moves over the twenty years from Maastricht to
Lisbon, the EU has recreated itself as a major European security actor. Of the three
security institutions in Europe, the EU, NATO, and the OSCE, the EU has the
most coherent membership in terms of geography and shared values. It has more
resources than the OSCE, both in civilian and military instruments. By utiliz-
ing primarily soft power that relies heavily on civilian and bureaucratic resources
which far outstrip those of NATO, the EU presents a much less confrontational
character than NATO, while also projecting a more consistently European per-
spective (Yost 2007). The OSCE has limited decision-making mechanisms and
resources that restrict its assertiveness in any security conflicts in Europe and
Eurasia. The role of the OSCE is thus limited to promoting democracy, stability,
and human rights by monitoring basic freedoms, warning about potential political
crises, and enhancing cooperation aimed at strengthening stability.
NATO, on the other hand, expanded its remit from territorial defense to peace-
keeping and stability operations outside of Europe as well promoting military
interoperability among its member states (Wallander 2000). Yet, despite its effec-
tive military resources (as shown in Table 5.2), NATO is not a purely European
security actor, and its adaptation to newly emerging unconventional security con-
cerns such as counterterrorism is hampered by its limited civilian instruments
(Duke 2002; Rees 2006).
NATO’s original focus, European security, has become more sensitive, in fact,
because the United States and the major Western European countries do not want
to provoke Russia. For instance, in 2008, NATO decided to postpone extending
the NATO Membership Action Plan to Georgia and Ukraine, after having antag-
onized Russia by previously expanding its memberships to certain Central and
Eastern European countries (Kydd 2001). Perhaps more dramatically, in 2009, the
Table 5.2 NATO military expenditures (US $m)
Country Personnel Equipment
2006 2007 2006 2007
Belgium 3160 3258 248 290
Bulgaria 326 344 104 129
Czech Republic 1043 1038 323 313
Denmark 1847 1898 584 509
Estonia 58.2 74.2 32.4 49.8
France 30053 29946 12340 12000
Germany 21200 20935 5571 5659
Greece 5189 5469 1047 1205
Hungary 745 660 129 166

Italy 26568 26332 2336 3606
Latvia 115 118 36 44.7
Lithuania 185 204 57.4 71.5
Luxembourg 188 191 21.3 83.5
Netherlands 4787 4720 1638 1852
Norway 936 1185 936 1185
Poland 3128 3442 1058 1585
Portugal 2319 2137 271 342
Romania 1218 1483 489 456
Slovakia 410 452 106 161
Slovenia 366 367 74.3 43.5
Spain 7395 7858 3000 3305
Turkey 5384 5434 3828 3785
UK 23034 22111 12087 12988
NATO Europe
(23 countries) 140911 140558 46360 49830
Canada 6433 6545 1629 2668
USA 171754 157770 128304 136630
NATO total 319098 304872 176293 189128
(25 countries)
Source: SIPRI Yearbook 2008: Armaments, Disarmaments and International Security, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
United States halted its plans to install missile defense systems in Poland and the
Czech Republic, in response to strong Russian opposition that included threaten-
ing to deploy Iskander cruise missiles in Kaliningrad to “neutralize” the US mis-
sile defense system. Although NATO and US officials have made it clear that they
do not recognize Russia’s “sphere of influence” nor any special relationship with
its so-called near abroad, the United States and some Western European coun-
tries, such as Germany and France, conspicuously avoid increasing confrontation
levels with Russia, due to that country’s strategic importance in economics (e.g.
energy and financial investment) and security (e.g. Afghanistan). Dealing with
Russia on geopolitical security issues in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, NATO often
sets a more confrontational tone than the EU would prefer. The EU, emphasizing
soft power and not simply military alliances, offers a forum through which Euro-
pean countries can attempt to solve regional security problems with Russia in a
96 Hae-Won Jun
friendlier manner. In August 2008, for example, the EU brokered a ceasefire to
end fighting between Georgia and Russia, deploying EU observers to monitor the
situation while providing humanitarian aid for Georgia.
The European security and defense policy: resources,

decision-making structure, and activities
The biggest challenge to the extension of the EU’s security capability is how to
reconcile and coordinate the diverse interests and security culture of its increasing
number of member states. The traditional division affecting the EU’s security role
was the difference between Europeanists and Atlanticists. Whereas the European-
ists, headed by France, emphasized the need for the EU to have an autonomous secu-
rity role and capability, the Atlanticists, headed by the United Kingdom, argued for
security cooperation with the United States. The two sides found it particularly dif-
ficult to find common ground with regard to the EU’s role in the defense of Europe,
but also problematic was the scope of cooperation with the United States outside
Europe (Howorth 2003/04). While the Europeanists wanted the EU to gradually
develop a role in defending the member states independently from the United States,
the Atlanticists considered NATO to remain the primary actor in any such a role.
Another division exists on the method by which to achieve the EU’s expanded
security role. The EU has neutral members, that is, Ireland, Austria, Sweden, and
Finland, which refrain from an activists’ reliance on using military instruments in
overseas missions. Finally, due to geopolitics and history, the Central and Eastern
member states of the EU consider Russia to pose a much more serious security
threat than do the older EU members (Meyer 2004).
The ESDP has addressed these three different divisions within the EU. The
ESDP has sought to provide the EU with the operational capacity to undertake
peacekeeping and crisis-management missions outside the territory of the EU by
drawing on the civilian and military capabilities of the member states. With no
standing army, the EU relies on ad hoc forces contributed by member countries for
conflict prevention, maintenance of peace and restoration of stability (see Table
5.3). The ESDP is most active in the area of the lowest common denominator
among the EU member states: civilian missions assisted by military instruments
(the maximum military activity accepted by neutrals), which is welcomed or at
least not opposed by both the United States and Russia.
The ESDP now has the following facilities and procedures. First, the ESDP
incorporates political and military organs. Second, as shown in Figures 5.1 and
5.2, the ESDP has developed a clear-cut decision-making structure. Third, accord-
ing to Council Decision 2004/197/CFSP, the Council established a mechanism,
named Athena, to offer a more permanent basis for the financing of EU operations
having military or defense implications while reducing the time necessary to start
financing them (Table 5.4). With a view to the administrative management of
financing such operations, Athena, acting on behalf of participating or contribut-
ing member states, has the necessary legal capacity to hold a bank account; to
acquire, hold or dispose of property; to enter into contracts and administrative
Table 5.3 EU military operations

Operation Concordia Artemis EUFOR-Althea EUFOR-RD Congo EUFOR-Chad/CAR EU NAVCO
Coordination
Action/
Atalanta
Country F.Y.R of Democratic Bosnia-Herzegovina Democratic Chad Somalia
Macedonia Republic of Congo Republic of Congo
Period 2003.3–2003.12 2003.6.5–2003.9.1 2004.12.2– 2006.6–2006.12 2008.1.28–2009.3.15 2008.9–
No. of personnel 400 2,000 7,000 2,000 3,700 1,500
No. of participating 26 17 22 18 23 7
countries
UN resolution UNSCR 1371 UNSCR 1484 UNSCR 1575 UNSCR 1671 UNSCR 1778 UNSCR
1816, 1814
Commanding structure Berlin Plus EU Berlin Plus EU EU EU
Source: European Commission.
98 Hae-Won Jun
arrangements; and to be a party to legal proceedings. The decision provides for
the Athena administrator, with the support of the EU military staff and, if he/she
is in post, the operation commander, to evaluate the amount judged necessary to
cover the common costs of the operation for the planned period. The administrator
will then propose such an amount through the presidency to the Council bodies
responsible for examining the draft joint action or decision.2
Finally, the ESDP now has the EU battlegroups outlined in Table 5.5. The idea
of developing the battlegroups was initially suggested at a bilateral Franco-British
summit in Le Touquet on 4 February 2003. On 24 November 2003, the two coun-
tries insisted on the need, building upon the precedent of the French-led autonomous
EU Operation Artemis, for “credible Battlegroup sized forces” of about 1,500 sol-
diers, each with appropriate transport and sustainability. The first autonomous EU-
led military operation, Artemis, was launched in June 2003 at the request of the UN
Security Council, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
European Council Commission
Commissioner for
external relations
Council (normally GAERC) DG RELEX
SG/HR DGICFSP
Directorate A
Council COREPERII A:l European
Secretariat correspondents
PU A:2 CM and CP
PSC/COPS A:3 CFSP and

DGE RRM
Relex
SitCen A:4 Security
policy
PMG
EUMS
EUMC CIVCOM
Satellite Europe
Center EU-ISS EDA ECHO Aid
Agencies
Figure 5.1 Organization of main ESDP bodies

Source: Björkdahland Strömvik 2008.
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negotiate the proposal
PSC discusses and negotiates the

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If no agreement in PSC: Proposal (or ,IDJUHHPHQWLQ36&3URSRVDOSODFHGRQ

certain details) either sent back for further &RXQFLODJHQGD
negotiation or taken off agenda
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Figure 5.2 Simplified overview of the ESDP decision-making process

Source: Björkdahl and Strömvik 2008.
The battlegroup concept was regarded as necessary to strengthen the EU’s rapid-
reaction capability in support of UN operations. The Franco-British proposal for
these battlegroups was subsequently endorsed by Germany, and was then submit-
ted to the Political and Security Committee and to the Military Committee in Feb-
ruary 2004. It subsequently gained further support at the Brussels informal defense
ministers and chiefs of defense staff meeting on 5–6 April 2004. Endorsement
100 Hae-Won Jun
Table 5.4 Athena mechanism (GNI scale (in %) used for contributions where 26
member states are contributing)
Country 2006 2007
Austria 2.28 2.29
Belgium 2.88 2.83
Bulgaria 0.22
Cyprus 0.12 0.13
Czech Republic 0.91 0.96
Estonia 0.09 0.11
Finland 1.48 1.47
France 16.19 16.08
Germany 20.97 20.18
Greece 1.74 1.77

Hungary 0.83 0.77
Ireland 1.3 1.36
Italy 13.29 12.8
Latvia 0.12 0.14
Lithuania 0.19 0.21
Luxemburg 0.24 0.23
Malta 0.04 0.04
Netherlands 4.47 4.66
Poland 2.21 2.3
Portugal 1.31 1.35
Romania 0.9
Slovakia 0.36 0.39
Slovenia 0.27 0.27
Spain 8.28 8.78
Sweden 2.83 2.72
United Kingdom 17.57 17.01
Source: EU Council Secretariat. Factsheet. Financing of ESDP operations. June 2007.
of the concept then took place at the 17–18 May Joint Foreign Affairs and Defense
Ministers’ Council, which in turn led to its broader integration into the June 2004
European Council’s adoption of its new Headline Goal 2010.
As noted earlier, the battlegroup concept consists of highly trained, battalion-
size formations (1,500 soldiers each)—including all combat and service support
as well as assets to ensure deployability and sustainability. These should be avail-
able within 15 days and should be sustainable for at least 30 days (and extend-
able to 120 days by rotation). The forces should be flexible enough to promptly
undertake operations in distant crisis areas (such as failing states) under, but not
exclusively, a UN mandate, and to conduct combat missions in extremely hostile
environments (mountains, desert, jungle). The groups are also designed to prepare
the ground for larger, more traditional peacekeeping forces, ideally provided by
the UN or the member states. Not surprisingly, the development of the battlegroup
concept implies the availability of strategic lift and combat support capabilities.
How has the EU used such resources? A point to note in the growth of the
CFSP over the last two decades is the fact that the willingness and capability to
use non-civilian measures significantly expanded the scope of activities of the
Table 5.5 Member states’ contribution to the EU battle groups
Initial First half 2005 Second half 2005 First half 2006 Second half
operational 2006
capability
UK FR IT Nil DE + FR ES + IT, FR + DE Nil
EL, and and BE
PT
Full First half 2007 Second half 2007 First half 2008 Second half
operational 2008
capability
DE + FR + BE IT + EL + RO, SE + FI, ES + DE, DE and UK
NL and and LU HU BG, and EE, and FR, and FR + BE,

FI and SI CY NO PT LU, and
ES
Full operational capability First half 2009 Second half 2009 First half 2010
Second half 2010
IT + ES, Nil CZ + FR + BE PL + UK + NL IT + RO Nil
PT, and SK (TBC) DE, SK, and TR
EL LV, and
LT
Source: European Commission.

Notes: BE = Belgium, BG = Bulgaria, CY = Cyprus, CZ = Czech Republic, DE = Germany, EE = Estonia,
EL = Greece, ES = Spain, FI = Finland, FR = France, HU = Hungary, IT = Italy, LT = Lithuania, LU = Lux-
embourg, LV = Latvia, NL = Netherlands, NO = Norway, PL = Poland, PT = Portugal, RO = Romania, SE =
Sweden, SI = Slovenia, SL = Slovakia, TR = Turkey, UK = United Kingdom.
Nil = No BG has been committed.
TBC = To be confirmed.
EU and improved its visibility in global politics. That ESDP missions have strong
civilian and humanitarian characteristics is reflected in the fact that two-thirds of
them have been civilian missions. The civilian aspects of these missions include
policing; strengthening the rule of law; strengthening civilian administration; and
civil protection. The combination of civilian and military operations is a particular
strength of the EU because crisis management usually calls for both peacekeeping
conducted through military operations and subsequent state rebuilding through
civilian operations. To date, ESDP operations have been conducted in the West-
ern Balkans (e.g. Kosovo), the Middle East (e.g. Iraq), Africa (e.g. Congo), and
Afghanistan. The primary focus of these missions has been to provide humanitar-
ian and reconstruction assistance (Morelli and Belkin 2009). In December 2008,
the EU launched its first maritime operation, designed to protect ships from pirates
along the Somali coast, in particular ships delivering food aid to Somalia.
Although still small in scale, the EU’s role in crisis management and recon-
struction, supported by strengthened military instruments and growing experience
in peacekeeping, has certainly increased its visibility in global security affairs.
It has become an instrument through which member states can conduct overseas
missions and it has allowed Europe to become involved in global security opera-
tions independently of the United States.
102 Hae-Won Jun
In which direction will the CFSP proceed? The Lisbon Treaty anticipates that
the EU will be more active in crisis management in situations where a more rapid
response is required than current UN peacekeeping operations are able to provide.
It is also expected to be reluctant to conduct such tasks where the United States
wants to participate on a large scale, say, a NATO operation. Clearly, EU member
states belonging to NATO prefer to act militarily as a part of that organization. In
the case of neutral members, EU operations will be limited to non-combat mis-
sions and combat missions will be conducted by NATO or a coalition of willing
states.
Three obstacles may inhibit a more active EU participation in global security.
First, the requirement of unanimity by the member states for any major deci-
sions in CFSP and for all decisions with military implications in CSDP will be an
obstacle to efficient and effective decision making (Smith 2004). Member states’
diversity in capabilities as well as in strategic interests has increased as a result of
subsequent enlargements, while convergence of policy preferences has not been
seen yet, as was clear from the different positions taken by the EU member states
on Kosovo’s 2008 declarations of independence. Second, due to severe budgetary
constraints, one cannot expect dramatic expansions of CSDP missions. There is
no EU budget earmarked for ESDP military missions, leaving member states to
support both their individual expenses and joint expenses. Third, simultaneous
participation by the EU and NATO may overstretch the capacities of the members
of both organizations. The EU and NATO seem to have reached a harmonious
complementarity, with France’s formal return to the NATO military structure in
April 2009 and the Obama administration’s encouraging the European countries
to strengthen their own military cooperation so as to share the burden of global
security with the United States (Belkin et al. 2009). Still, European countries’
restricted capability to deploy troops abroad may present them with difficult
choices if they ever have to choose between the EU and NATO.
What are the implications for these developments in international security? To
begin with, cooperation with the EU in international organizations will become
more important for its counterparts. Now that the EU has a legal personality, it is
more likely that EU member states will take a unitary position within international
organizations and on matters of multilateral cooperation. A more coherent and
unified European partner may make it easier for counterparts to negotiate with
the EU. On the other hand, EU unity may spawn more European assertiveness
and rigidity if its positions have already gone through difficult internal compro-
mises among member states and the EU institutions. In international organizations
where the EU or the European Commission and the member states have parallel
membership, one can anticipate that the EU member states and the EU will form
a common position.
Overall, the EU’s increased participation in global affairs is certain. Having
military instruments at its disposal, the EU has become a more active player in
global security, with particular interests in crisis management and peacekeeping
missions. Mixing civilian and military operations and avoiding combat missions
has been the general direction of the EU. Through participation in operations
supported by the UN Security Council, the EU has accumulated experiences in
peacekeeping missions in Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Economic
interests in support of reconstruction within post-conflict areas have also been
recognizable.
It is fair to say that the European Union’s role in global foreign and security
affairs is most likely to increase in the future. The CFSP and ESDP are both
works in progress and still have significant limitations, most notably the domi-
nance of individual member states within their decision making. The two bod-
ies have, however, already demonstrated their ability to support a more coherent
and unified European stance on important security and international issues and to
serve as an important arena within which a collective European perspective can be
constructed. They also put in place several capabilities and institutions that have
already proven their worth in stability and reconstruction operations and that cre-
ate great potential for further growth.
Implications for North East Asian security

The key differences among the three security institutions in Europe are two-fold:
membership and scope of activities. In a similar fashion, security cooperation in
Asia can be addressed according to the participants and the areas of cooperation.
To begin with, just as the relationship between Russia and the United States was
instrumental in some of the key differences among NATO, the OSCE and the EU,
so one can expect that any Asian security institution would be heavily affected by
the nature of the relationship between China and the United States. Currently, one
cannot imagine that either the United States or China would welcome the forma-
tion of any Asian institution aimed at security cooperation that included only one
of them. For the United States, a formal ally of the Republic of Korea, Japan, New
Zealand, and Australia, it would be unacceptable for any of these allies to engage
in significant security cooperation in Asia that did not include American involve-
ment. Likewise, China would oppose any movement toward Asian security coop-
eration that excluded it; that would be interpreted as a violation of what China
sees as its sphere of influence. Yet any meaningful body that included both the
United States and China would be equally problematic because it seems unlikely
that these two countries could agree on hard security issues. It is rather more likely
that a body that included both countries would be one in which other members
would be forced to side with China or the United States, a highly risky action for
the smaller states. On the other hand, organizational membership would heavily
influence the scope of cooperation. One cannot imagine meaningful hard security
cooperation in Asia without the United States and China, considering their power
and stakes in the hard security issues in the region.
Therefore, there is room for Asia to learn from the EU’s role in soft security
issues. The EU experience shows that there has been a way for the European
countries to pursue a new soft security agenda without the United States and Rus-
sia. It also shows that such an approach has later proved to be a stepping stone for
incremental security cooperation with both of these powers. This suggests that
104 Hae-Won Jun
some Asian countries may be able to pursue cooperation on activities similar to
the Petersberg Tasks of the EU, focusing on humanitarian and rescue missions,
peacekeeping operations, and the dispatch of combat forces for crisis manage-
ment, including peacemaking. Focusing on such activities would allow them
to enhance their own security cooperation in ways that would keep them from
becoming mired in the US–China competition.
Notes
1 See Acharya and Johnston (2007) and Philomena (2010) for the literature review.
2 Council Decision 2008/975/CFSP of 18 December 2008 establishing a mechanism
to administer the financing of the common costs of EU operations having military or

defense implications (Athena).
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6 China’s strategic option
Multilateralism and the
pursuit of influence
Sukhee Han and Luo Jianbo
Introduction
For almost two decades, the rise of China has been one of the mostly hotly debated
themes in international politics and the global economy. China’s rapid economic
growth and its attendant influence over global affairs have put China at the very
center of these debates.1 Not surprisingly, China has consistently pursued its great
power aspirations and has subsequently been identified as a member of the world’s
great power community. As we witnessed in the G-20 summit in London in April
2009, China’s ascent to a possible superpower status may already have begun, and
one of the central topics of international relations discussions has been the issue of
whether and when China will take over the lone superpower status of the United
States.2 Subsequent disquieting issues, including Taiwan, Tibet, trade, climate
change, Internet freedom, and human rights have reflected the bumpy bilateral
relations between the world’s biggest giants. Reviewing a series of bilateral con-
frontations, a number of international pundits, scholars, and journalists have been
concerned that China may have already started its challenge against the United
States as the leading superpower, raising questions about China’s veiled intention
to mount such a challenge (Pomfret 2010; Sheridan 2010; Nye 2010).
Since the beginning of the new millennium, when China’s rise has most visibly
materialized, China has initiated its challenges against US supremacy in various
non-military arenas. Many scholars in international politics have tended to ana-
lyze the rise of China through power transition theory, a theoretical prediction
about the consequences of a power shift from an existing power to a rising power.
The critical point now is that, in contrast to many expectations, China still lacks
comprehensive and substantial national capabilities to surpass the United States
for the foreseeable future. In other words, although China has recorded tremen-
dous gains in both its hard and soft power resources, it remains a long way from
catching up to the physical capabilities, diplomatic maneuverability, and cultural
universality of the United States.3
One of the major challenges during the contemporary power transition is how to
complete it without military confrontation. So far, China’s post-Global Financial
Crisis (GFC) pursuit of influence over the international financial system by chal-
lenging the US dollar-based international financial system has been reflective of
China’s strategic option 107
such a peaceful power transition. Although it was unable to replace the US dollar
as an international key currency with China’s renminbi, China has shown itself
to have a strong appetite for global leadership (Murphy and Yuan 2009; Over-
holt 2010; Drezner 2009). China’s pursuit of information and communications
technologies (ICT) standards is another example reflecting China’s great-power
aspiration. With the belief that one of the major functions of any great power is to
participate in the rule-making process, China has done its best to convert domestic
ITC standards into global ones (Han 2009). And finally, one of the dimensions
that China carefully approaches is competition with the United States for a leader-
ship role in multilateral institutions as well as within less fully institutionalized
multilateral arrangements, particularly those situated in East Asia.
Historically, rising powers have tended to secure their spheres of influence over
regionally adjacent neighbors, which could then serve as strategic outposts for
subsequent expansion of power to the global arena. In the same vein, China is
attempting to consolidate its own political, diplomatic, and economic influence
over the East Asian region as a power base from which to project itself toward
greater global power.4 However, East Asia has been a traditional backyard of US
power, with the United States serving as a military, economic, and cultural patron
for East Asian security and prosperity for more than five decades. Indeed, the
United States still maintains strategic alliances with a number of states in East
Asia. Hence, China has chosen to resort largely to a multilateral approach to
defend and expand its regional power interests vis-à-vis the United States. This
paper addresses the issue of how China pursues superpower status vis-à-vis the
United States within the context of East Asian multilateral institutions. Further-
more, it will attempt to analyze the strategic options available to China in light of
current concerns about the China threat and the possible transfer of power either
in East Asia or, further down the road, in global terms.
Non-violent power transition

Many have suggested that we are now living in a unipolar world. US unipolarity
and its concomitant hegemony in the post-Cold War era have allegedly served as
a defining element of the current international order. However, in the wake of the
GFC in 2008, the world has seen the United States plummet into recession while
China has continued to grow, giving impetus to questions about the future inter-
national power structure and whether it will remain unipolar, become multipolar,
or be transformed into a new unipolarity with China at the top. Evaluating the
current international order broadly, it is safe to say that the rise of China has been
increasingly acknowledged as rapid, but China is still subordinate globally to the
United States. Yet, at the very least, China has been encroaching upon American
influence in East Asia; many continue to believe that China may well overtake the
United States in global terms as well. Whether this encroachment is on a regional
scale or a global scale is a question that merits further study. However, it seems
certain that China’s challenge to US predominance adds uncertainty to the already
very fluid situation in the region, thereby contributing to a tendency for short-term
108 Sukhee Han and Luo Jianbo
power balancing.5 Chinese perception of US interests, and vice versa, in the region
are powerful drivers of any discussion concerning the future of multilateralism
in Northeast Asia. Furthermore, any possible power transition and the ensuing
systemic changes it would bring, regional and/or global, present impending issues
which are engulfing and puzzling policymakers and academics alike.
Many scholars writing about the rise of China and its international repercus-
sions have attempted to ground their theoretical approaches in this power and/or
hegemonic transition theory. Power transition theory was originally formulated by
A.F.K. Organski and Jacek Kugler to address the outbreak of wars among the most
powerful states in the international system. They challenged the existing balance
of power assumptions systemized by Hans Morgenthau and others who argued
that equilibrium is the natural condition of the international system; that a par-
ity of power promotes peace while a preponderance of power promotes war; and
that concentrations of power generate counterbalancing coalitions and occasional
counterhegemonic wars to restore equilibrium. In contrast, Organski claims that
the danger of systemic war is most likely when a dissatisfied challenger increases
its capabilities and begins to overtake the dominant power, and the probability of
war is also high when the challenger achieves parity in capabilities with the domi-
nant power (Morgenthau 1948).6
Organski and his colleagues, objecting to the assumptions of the balance of
power theory, also claim that hierarchy is endemic in the international system.
In their view, the international system is composed of a single dominant power
at the apex of the system; a handful of great powers; and a fairly large number of
middle and small powers. In particular, they emphasize the concept of dominant
power in comparison to the concept of hegemon. While the dominant power, like
a hegemon, controls the largest proportion of resources in the system, they argue,
few countries are ever truly hegemonic because they lack the coercive power to
control the behavior of all other actors. Dominant states, in their view, can at best
use their power to create a set of global political and economic structures and to
promote norms of behavior that enhance the stability of the system while at the
same time advancing their own security and other interests.7
Given the potential for violence as a key component of power transition theory,
bilateral parity in capabilities and challengers’ dissatisfaction are two factors to
be examined to verify the possibilities of any challenger’s attempt to bring about
a power transition. According to Tammen, a dissatisfied challenger may, either
advertently or inadvertently, cause a war against the dominant power when the two
powers’ capabilities are in parity (Tammen et al. 2000: 28; Tammen and Kugler
2006). In general, the challenger’s dissatisfaction with the existing international
order has been the key variable to evaluate whether that challenger poses a threat
to the system as a whole. Given the assumption of hierarchy in power transition
theory, the dominant power is by definition a satisfied power, because as the mas-
termind and architect of the existing system it has played the pivotal role in setting
up and maintaining the system. A majority of the great powers, along with some
middle and small states who enjoy disproportionate benefits from the existing
system, are also satisfied states. These all tend to support the dominant state, ally
with it, and help to reinvigorate the existing international order. But one or two
great powers and many weaker states may not share the sense of satisfaction with
the system. Generally such states believe that the existing system, including the
institutions and rules within it, provide an unfair distribution of benefits in which
they suffer; therefore they are willing to risk war in order to replace the existing
system and its leadership (Tammen et al. 2000; Organski 1958; Gilpin 1981).
Parity implies a situation in which the capabilities of the challenger reach equilib-
rium with those of the dominant power. Since the power transition theorists empha-
size such power parity as the major source of violence, considerable theoretical atten-
tion has been given to assessing the various factors that constitute a state’s resources.
Organski and his colleagues, five decades ago, had suggested population, economic
productivity, and state’s political capacity as the major criteria, while contemporary
students of power transition theory put more emphasis on factors that reflect the
updated environment of the international system, including military expenditures,
soft power indicators, per capita usage of information and technology, physical
quality of life and average income, and GDP per capita (adjusting for purchasing
power parity).8 If a great power increases in strength to the point that it acquires at
least 80 percent of the power of the dominant state, according to the power transi-
tion theorists, it is defined as a “challenger” to the dominant state and to that state’s
ability to control the international system (Levy 2008: 13).
Given the contemporary regional and global system, power transition theory
can deliver the most plausible insights into the dynamics and consequences of
the rise of China and the recession of the United States. Since the early twenty-
first century, as the rise of China has become more conspicuous internationally,
a number of scholars have applied power transition theory to the evolving Sino-
American relationship, calling attention to the possibility that we are witnessing
a major power transition from the United States to China. With a rising China
most tangibly in mind, these scholars have discussed the issues relating to China’s
national capabilities and its intentions, as well as challenges to power transition
theories. However, a number of them argue that hegemonic war or military con-
frontation between the United States and China seems unlikely.9 In terms of power
parity, China still has little chance to improve its military capabilities to US levels.
Despite its consistent military build-up, China’s capabilities in terms of military
budget, weapons modernization, and military technology remain far behind those
of the United States.10 Nor when it comes to nuclear capability can China currently
compete with the United States in terms of nuclear arsenal size or maneuverability
and technological advancement.11
Furthermore, China’s satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the US-led international
order plays into another criterion by which to evaluate China’s potential use of
violence. Since it possesses characteristics of both a satisfied and a dissatisfied
power, it is not easy to judge China as falling easily into either category. But upon
reviewing the two recent decades of Chinese behavior in the international com-
munity, one certainty is that any Chinese dissatisfaction is by no means as severe
as to cause a war against the United States, even if China is seen as a dissatisfied
or a revisionist state.12
For the previous twenty years, China has instead attempted to support the cur-
rent international order and to cooperate with the US-led system. As reflected in
the term “charm offensive,” China has approached its neighboring states, in par-
ticular the ASEAN states, through economic interdependence, cultural exchange,
and diplomatic partnerships.13 Its long history of economic exchange and aid to the
countries of Africa is also noteworthy in suggesting that China is making efforts to
become a legitimate power within the current system rather than challenging the
system as a whole. China has also presented a constructive stance on many inter-
national issues that require multilateral cooperation, including anti-terrorism, cli-
mate change, and nuclear nonproliferation.14 In addition, China has actively pro-
moted multilateral institutions, at both the global and regional levels. However,
China’s constructive and cooperative behavior towards the international commu-

nity has not always been sufficient to convince the international community in
general and the United States in particular that China has no intention of eventu-
ally pursuing a power transition. To many, it seems that China may have changed
its methods from what we traditionally expect of challengers to the system, while
leaving intact its long-term strategic goal of power transition. Rather than relying
on violence or military confrontation to achieve its aims, as theorized in the power
transition theory, China has adopted a non-violent and peaceful way to elicit the
desired power transition. One area that seems to reflect this more subtle Chinese
approach has been China’s behavior towards multilateral institutions and coopera-
tion. The following section addresses China’s non-violent and peaceful challenge
to current US supremacy within a multilateral setting and/or institutions.
Multilateralism: China’s peaceful challenge to US supremacy

Traditionally, China had been cautious about participating in multilateral institu-
tions. Obsessed with its historically rooted “victim mentality,” China has been
suspicious of multilateral institutions as conduits for prior imperialist encroach-
ment on Chinese national interests or as providing a justification for the devel-
oped state’s restraint of Chinese economic development. But as China continues
to grow, the Chinese have replaced this prior identity with a new “great power
mentality.”15 Having harnessed its unimpeded economic growth, and armed with
renewed confidence, China has approached multilateral institutions as a way to
solidify its great power image while simultaneously working to undermine per-
ceptions of the so-called China threat. China’s enthusiasm and activism toward
multilateral institutions has been further intensified by American moves toward
“unilateralism” in early 2001 (Wang 1999). The United States, well aware of its
unmatched power resources, but inattentive to the consequences of its use, par-
ticularly during the Bush administration, resorted to trying to resolve a variety
of international issues in a unilateral manner. In response to this behavior, the
Chinese have concentrated considerable effort on multilateral endeavors and/or
institutions in tackling global and regional issues. Recently, these Chinese efforts
at multilateralism became substantiated with Hu Jintao’s idea of a “harmonious
society.”16
China’s objective of participation in multilateral institutions and actively
encouraging multilateral initiatives has been driven very much by the desire to
offset the China threat theory. Identifying the rising power as a source of secu-
rity instability, China threat supporters have emphasized the dangers of China’s
growth to the current US-led international order. Despite China’s consistent
efforts to offset the spread of such notions in the global community by introducing
a series of propaganda projects, including the “New Security Concept,” “China’s
Peaceful Rise (development),” and “Responsible Great Power,” the Chinese gov-
ernment has failed to convince the international community that China’s rise will
automatically be peaceful.17 Given the tarnishing of its great power image from
the China threat theory, the Chinese government has recognized the necessity to
go beyond rhetoric and has therefore taken up an initiative to show its capacity for
cooperative behavior in multilateral institutions. Since the early 1990s, the United
States and the leading powers have encouraged China to participate in a vari-
ety of international institutions. Adopting the arguments of institutionalism and
constructivism, these powers have expected multilateral institutions to enmesh
and socialize China into existing global norms.18 From this perspective, China’s
participation in multilateral institutions and its enthusiastic activities within them
verify the country’s commitment to supporting the existing US-led system in a
peaceful and constructive way.
China’s multilateral behavior has, however, not always been in accord with
what the international community had expected. China has taken advantage of its
multilateral involvement to expand its diplomatic and economic influence over
the East Asian region rather than simply enmeshing or socializing itself to exist-
ing international practices. Recognizing the great benefits to its national interests
from joining international institutions, China has gradually expanded its partici-
pation in regional economic and security multilateral organizations. In particular,
in the wake of the East Asian financial crisis in 1997, China enhanced its image
as a responsible great power by declining to devalue its currency; advocated the
“Chiang Mai Initiative” with other East Asian countries; and supported the finan-
cial bailouts and new cooperation mechanisms in East Asia.19 China has enthusi-
astically approached East Asian multilateral institution building as well. As one
example, China has considered “10+1,” the cooperation of the ten Southeast Asian
countries (ASEAN) with China, as a basis of its regionalism strategy. China was
early in joining the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia as a way
to promote multilateral cooperation in the fields of traditional and non-traditional
securities with the ASEAN countries. China also pushed to set up a China–ASEAN
Free Trade Area (10+1), as a stepping-stone for further multilateral cooperation.20
China has consistently maintained and supported ASEAN as the body that should
play a unique and leading role in driving regional multilateral cooperation.
In East Asia, there have been a variety of historical confrontations and territo-
rial disputes which look unlikely to be resolved in the near future. Lacking mutual
trust, and short of confidence-building measures, it has been difficult for China,
Japan, and South Korea to cooperate so as to construct regional multilateral insti-
tutions. Although loosely organized, ASEAN has proven to be a unique model for
the successful construction of multilateralism in East Asia. Thus, China has been
willing to allow ASEAN to seek to expand its collective experience to the broader
East Asian region by integrating a variety of independent states into a common
regional cooperative framework.
China’s major intention in multilateral activities is best reflected in the “10+3”
structure (ASEAN Plus Three or APT), which includes the ten ASEAN mem-
ber states, plus China, Japan, and Korea. As Premier Wen Jiabao commented
in 2009, China intends to rely on “10+3” as the major channel to construct any
future East Asian Community (Xinhua News Agency 24 Oct 2009). In contrast
to China’s efforts to advance the APT, Japan has clearly emphasized the 10+6
(East Asian Summit or EAS) structure. EAS includes the thirteen APT states plus
Australia, New Zealand, and India. The key difference between 10+3 and 10+6
is that China has sought to construct a comprehensive multilateral structure that
would minimize US influence. As a rising great power, China wants to ensure that
the 10+3 formula becomes the central and substantial multilateral structure in the
East Asia region. China firmly consolidated its economic clout over the ASEAN
states through the China–ASEAN Free Trade Area and has benefited from the
growing economic dependence of both Korea and Japan on China. China believes
that 10+3 may be developed in ways that will ultimately make it the most China-
friendly, China-led, and non-US dominated multilateral institution in East Asia.
In contrast, Japan wants to invite more powers to the multilateral institution as
a way to dilute the power of China within it and to ensure tacit or direct US inclu-
sion.21 Most Chinese scholars advocate that China should pursue open regionalism
by welcoming all regional stakeholders, including the United States and Russia,
to increase their interests in issues regarding East Asia regional cooperation (Yun-
ling 2008; Honghua 2009). The Chinese government, however, still prefers in its
diplomacy practices to work toward defining any future East Asia Community as
delimited by APT.
The most nettlesome areas for East Asian cooperation lie in Northeast Asia,
especially among China, South Korea, and Japan. The extent to which these three
countries cooperate (or fail to do so) will be the key to whether any future East
Asia Community will be formulated or not. On 13 December 2008, the govern-
mental heads of China, South Korea, and Japan held an important conference that
grew out of the framework of APT but saw the three Northeast Asian countries
meeting separately from APT for the first time. This officially initiated an annual
special meeting mechanism among these three countries’ leaders that has contin-
ued to the present.
The Sino-Korea relation has comprehensive historical connections and a good
civilian base; however, problems exist concerning mutual political trust. The
Sino-Japan relation has many structural contradictions, ever affecting the normal
development of relations between these two countries and the broader issue of
East Asia integration. However, it would be incorrect and dangerous to deem the
Sino-Japan relationship as a zero-sum game, and it is shortsighted to ignore the
actual economic interdependence and political adjustments that have taken place
between the two. In fact, both China and Japan are on the way to becoming big
powers, and as their capabilities and interests change quickly, both have to adjust
their psychologies and strategies. Theoretically, a mature regional multilateral
cooperation framework should be a good way to relieve existing bilateral tensions
among China, Korea, and Japan. As the saying goes in Asia, “bilateral contradic-
tion, multilateral solution.” China has pushed for more trilateral cooperation, in
part as a way to decrease American influence in East Asian affairs and to improve
China’s agenda-setting ability and its strategic position in East Asia.
China’s leadership consolidation in East Asian multilateralism

A careful look at China’s behavior in multilateral institutions since the beginning
of the twenty-first century shows that China has consistently considered itself the
champion of multilateralism. It has not only increased the number of multilateral
institutions that it has joined, but it has also created regional multilateral institu-
tions under its own leadership, most notably the Shanghai Cooperation Organi-
zation (SCO) and the Six-Party Talks. The SCO was officially founded in 2001
with six member states, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and
Uzbekistan.22 Initiated by China, the SCO was formed to promote trust building
in military affairs among the member states, but it has greatly expanded its range
of cooperation into politics, economics, trade, science and technology, culture,
education, and energy. The preeminent Chinese role in the SCO cannot be denied,
in terms both of the organization’s creation and its successes. Another multilat-
eral arrangement, created and maintained by China, has been the Six-Party Talks.
In the wake of the North Korean nuclear brinkmanship, six states—the United
States, China, Russia, Japan, and the two Koreas—began meeting in 2003 as a
result of China’s leading role as the organizer. In pursuit of North Korea’s denu-
clearization, China has hosted more than five rounds of Six-Party Talks in Beijing.
Although the talks have been temporarily stalled by Pyongyang’s arbitrary refusal
to participate further, the value of the Six-Party Talks and China’s leadership has
been noted by many keen observers.23
Some scholars, journalists, and pundits have argued that China, taking advan-
tage of its leadership role, has managed the SCO like the Warsaw Pact during the
Cold War. In order to balance US influence in the East Asian and Central Asian
regions, China has expanded its leadership role and promoted economic coopera-
tion and security partnerships within the organization.24 The Six-Party Talks also
serve to convince others of the importance of Chinese leadership in dealing with
regional security issues. As a unique ally of North Korea, China has been the only
power in a position to persuade North Korea to show up at the negotiation table.
Taking advantage of this intimate relationship between China and North Korea,
China has maintained its leadership position within the Six-Party Talks structure.
But, despite two statements of agreement on various principles for resolution of
the current problems, the six years of the talks have failed to produce any substan-
tial progress toward the actual denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, its most
frequently stated goal. In fact, North Korea has twice tested nuclear devices and
is expected to do so once again, showing that the Chinese leadership cannot
guarantee the success of the Six-Party Talks on this most fundamental issue. But
China still stresses the importance of the Six-Party Talks, refusing to replace it
with any alternative approaches. Presumably, a major reason for China’s contin-
ued emphasis on the roles and functions of the Six-Party Talks is that it allows
China to retain its leadership within the structure, in the process demonstrating
the seeming superiority of its security leadership as compared to that of the United
States (Glaser 2009; Swaine 2009; Lai 2009).
Since the end of Cold War, East Asia’s global strategic importance has been
rising, and we have also seen a transition toward enhanced East Asian regional
order. Countries within and outside East Asia all strive for a regional order ben-
eficial to themselves. Although it has blended into the existing regional system
as a noteworthy beneficiary, China still hopes to advance the development of an

East Asian order that will be beneficial to itself, but to do so in peaceful ways.
China’s East Asia strategy has two targets: 1) enhancing the conditions for peace
and development of both China and other East Asian countries; and 2) bolstering
China’s ability to play the role of a big power. China’s multilateralism strategy in
East Asia is integral to its East Asian strategy as a whole.
In our opinion, the core target of China’s regional multilateralism strategy is
to build a new regional order, but the biggest problem for China is how to handle
relations with an East Asian order that is currently dominated by the United States.
One of the basic aims of China’s regional strategy is to use regional cooperation as
a vehicle to shift relations among big powers in ways that will allow it to compete
peacefully with the United States.
In the past ten years, China has become closer to certain East Asian countries
and has promoted its national image through its strategy of multilateralism. A
number of East Asian countries continue to echo the “China Threat Theory,” wor-
ried as they are about a stronger China that might eventually challenge the current
East Asian order and its dominance by the US, and concerned particularly about
the possibility that Asia will be the place where they eventually fight. Neverthe-
less, China has sought to relieve these worries through its regional integration
strategy. By participating in a series of multilateral institutions in ways that were
largely based on cooperation and consensus, China has shown itself to be one of
the builders of East Asian regional institutions and a responsible stakeholder in
East Asia.
Most Southeast Asian countries that several years ago worried about the China
threat, in conjunction with some Western countries, are now searching for ways to
cooperate with China and to latch onto the express train that is China’s booming
economy. In October 2005, Lee Hsien Loong, Premier of Singapore, was invited
to give a speech at the Party School of the Communist Party of China Central
Committee. There he declared that “the rise of China is the biggest event in the
world” and that “the gravity of global economy will come to Asia along with
China’s development, and then huge changes of the whole world order will be
followed” (Chinese Embassy in Singapore 2005). During the second East Asia
Summit in 2007, Philippine President Arroyo said, “We are happy to have China
as our big brother in the region” (Pastrana 2008). Sino-ASEAN cooperation has
become one of the most energetic and efficient relations in East Asian coopera-
tion, and Sino-ASEAN relations are at a historic high.
China’s improved relations with other East Asian countries enlarge and shift the
space of its diplomatic fights with the United States. For example, hand in hand
with China’s rising influence in Southeast Asia, ASEAN’s prior security depend-
ence on the United States and Japan’s economic dependence are modified. US
bilateral military alliances in East Asia bring China actual security pressure; this
external security pressure for China will be obviously relieved by pushing East
Asian multilateral security cooperation and improved relations with other East
Asian countries. Therefore, China’s national security now rests heavily on push-
ing regional multilateral cooperation.
China’s regional multilateralism strategy directly pushes forward the new

tide of East Asia integration while simultaneously making the United States pay
greater attention to the progress of East Asia’s multilateral cooperation in ways
that it has never done before. For a long time, the United States saw its bilateral
military alliances in East Asia as the pillar for its regional security policy and the
most critical instrument through which to advance its strategic interests and to
structure regional security affairs. Even though the United States has not formally
objected to East Asian multilateral cooperation, it has not seriously considered
a multilateral cooperation framework for East Asia and, until very recently, it
has not provided the embryonic East Asian multilateral cooperation with much
support.
This US attitude has been contradictory. On the one hand, the United States
does not want to be excluded from any East Asian integration, hoping to ensure,
for example, that East Asian markets remain open to it in investment and trade. On
the other hand, however, it does not want any type of multilateral cooperation that
would replace its present bilateral alliance framework in security. Nevertheless,
China’s shift toward greater regional cooperation and its rapidly growing regional
influence not only put much pressure on Japan and South Korea, but also directly
push countries like the United States and Russia to devote greater attention to the
East Asian cooperation process. In our opinion, because China’s efforts to join
and enhance East Asian integration will definitely increase, America’s attitude
towards East Asian multilateral cooperation will become more and more positive,
and its attitudes, targets, and demands will be more and more realistic. Without
exaggeration, the accidental acceleration of the entire East Asia regional coopera-
tion process traces to China’s fundamental shift in attitude.
China’s regional multilateralism strategy has advanced the strategic contacts
between China and the United States in ways that promote China’s enhanced posi-
tion in East Asia. For example, since the first North Korean nuclear crisis in early
1990s, more and more frequent interactions between China and the United States
have been made to address this problem. China knows that the United States
expects China to play a constructive role in the North Korean nuclear crisis and it
has shown its willingness to initiate Sino-US exchange mechanisms in the fields
of regional crisis management and security cooperation as means of controlling
the North Korean nuclear crisis. The United States knows that it cannot peacefully
settle the North Korean nuclear crisis on its own, and China’s participation largely
compensates for that, making it possible to think of an actual peace mechanism
on the Korean peninsula. The United States has taken the initiative to discuss the
Korean peninsula problem with China many times, and bilateral summits between
the two countries frequently have put the issue at the center of their exchange.
Meanwhile, China acts as a positive “participant” with a focus on preserving the
long-term interests of Northeast Asia’s peace and stability, which in turn satisfies
US interests to some extent. For China, the management and control of the North
Korean nuclear crisis is helpful in weakening any American policy of Chinese
containment, while increasingly constraining any US efforts to “solve” the North
Korean crisis by military means.
Within the United States, Sino-US contacts in East Asian multilateral mecha-
nisms advance the concepts of “engaging China” and “bringing China into the
international system.” Although China’s increasing capacities give rise to worries
among many Americans that China will eventually confront the United States,
China’s behavior and ideas concerning East Asian multilateral cooperation sug-
gest that it is not taking measures to weaken or exclude US influence in East Asia,
and China’s multilateral diplomacy shows its ability to handle relations with its
neighboring countries in a more open and mutually beneficial way. China does
not reject US military cooperation in East Asia, and even welcomes a constructive
and positive role by the United States in regional security and the maintenance of
regional peace and stability. China continues to emphasize the values of “open
regionalism.” This policy, to some extent, seeks to alleviate US doubts about car-
rying out military cooperation within the region and contributes to a softening of
America’s understanding about China’s international actions. As a consequence,
China is more and more considered to be a good neighbor, a constructive partner,
and a patient listener (Shambaugh 2004).
As global and regional situations change, Sino-US interests in many issues
within the region are becoming more similar. Though there are many contradic-
tions and disputes in the bilateral relationship, both parties seem better able to
search for realistic compromises and cooperation. China gradually has come to
accept America’s security existence in East Asia. It basically affirms America’s
role in East Asian stabilization. And meanwhile it invites the United States to
co-govern any Taiwan crisis and together to contain any impetus toward Tai-
wanese independence. China’s policy of joining East Asian multilateral diplo-
matic ventures shows that it has learned that cooperation with the United States
can serve China’s interests and bring China increasing fortune and power. The
United States has adopted a policy of engaging China; it gradually accepts Chi-
na’s rise; and it invites China to participate in the governance of global affairs. A
consensus is emerging in American strategic studies that the United States should
cooperate with, not confront, China. Robert Zoellick, the former US Deputy
Secretary of State, called for future Sino-US relations to be characterized by China
as a “responsible stakeholder,” which to some extent shows broad approval for
enhanced Chinese influence. Sino-US cooperation in multilateral institutions has
been helpful in promoting mutual trust and understanding, and decreasing the
chances for erroneous strategic judgments and mutual hostility. Multilateral coop-
eration provides a necessary tool for China and the United States to co-manage
East Asia’s common interests.
We should also recognize that China cannot completely challenge America’s
position in East Asia in the near future. The United States is not in East Asia
geographically, but it dominates East Asian affairs, especially in the security field
as a consequence of its overwhelming and comprehensive national power. Most
East Asian countries rely economically upon US markets and capital, while draw-
ing heavily on the United States politically. The United States is involved in all
the security issues within the region, and it is difficult to envision settling many
security problems without it. The United States directly affects regional security
cooperation through its Asian allies, Japan and South Korea, as well as its security
ties with several Southeast Asian countries. In the event of any local war among
East Asia’s big powers, all the positive contributions of existing East Asian secu-
rity cooperation will be quickly destroyed. What is more, any future East Asia
Community can be built only with recognition of the need for cooperation with the
United States and an acknowledgment of its comprehensive and deep economic,
political, and military influence in the region. Therefore, in East Asian multilat-
eral cooperation, China not only advances its own political, economic, and secu-
rity interests but also prompts the development of improved Sino-US relations
through multilateral cooperation.
America’s strategy of seeking to maintain hegemony simultaneously restrains
any increase in China’s regional power. As a country with deeply vested interests
and as the biggest beneficiary of the present hegemonic system, working to main-
tain the current system of hegemony has remained the “primary national interest
and international strategy target” pursued by all US administrations since the end
of the Cold War (Qin 1999). To realize a “Pax Americana,” the United States
must restrain other countries’ challenges and any competing push for counter-
hegemony. What the United States focuses on in regard to the ascendant and pro-
gressive East Asia integration process is effects that this process will have on its
interests in East Asia. Specifically, it focuses on three big questions: First, will
a regional big power relying upon the East Asian integration process rise and
strongly challenge America’s leadership in East Asia? Second, will East Asian
integration change and destroy the present regional security pattern dominated
by the United States? Third, will the United States be excluded from or be mar-
ginalized by any East Asia integration process, thereby damaging US economic
interests in East Asia? The key is that the United States does not want to see any
regional power dominating the East Asian integration process and thus weakening
or even subverting US hegemony in East Asia.
Therefore, how to prevent any country (especially China) from rising quickly
through East Asian integration and how to maintain US leadership and vested
interests in East Asia have become the starting-points from which the United States
is creating and implementing its political, security, and economic policies towards
East Asia. For this reason, the United States, by expanding security cooperation
with some East Asian countries, continues to maintain and strengthen its origi-
nal bilateral military alliances in the security field, and to further consolidate the
“hub-and-spoke security structure” that is centered on the United States. In the
economic field, the United States has sought to strengthen its bilateral trading
negotiations, actively striving for free trade associations with East Asian countries
as one way to avoid becoming marginalized as East Asian economic integration
advances. In the field of ideology, the United States strongly advocates its so-called
democratic value-based diplomacy, trying to construct “value-based alliances” in
accordance with US political norms and values. In these ways, the “trinity” of
hegemonic maintenance is maintained within East Asia’s strategic framework.
Some East Asian countries are afraid of China’s rise and have sought to tie
themselves closely to the United States as a way to benefit from any shift in the
power balance, and to restrain any increase in China’s regional power. Thus, Japan
advocated creating an East Asia Community based upon the East Asia Summit,
and one of its purposes was to bring in India, Australia, and New Zealand as
values-based allies to balance China’s increasing regional influence. ASEAN has
always adopted a strategy of “power balancing,” seeking to make use of power
competition among the big countries so as to maintain the regional balance of
power and prevent the emergence of any regional hegemony. ASEAN pays close
attention to developing its relations with China and approves of China’s playing a
constructive role in regional issues, but worries about China’s increasing military
capacity and political influence. It has been particularly alert to China’s moves
to claim sovereignty in the South China Sea. ASEAN always lays emphasis on
developing its military security relation with the United States as a way to offset
China’s increasing regional influence, as well as any right-wing tendencies in Jap-
anese politics. In recent years, ASEAN has developed better relations with India
and Russia so as to have more options in pinning down the regional diplomatic
endeavors of China, the United States, and Japan.
There are two levels to ASEAN’s big power-balancing strategy: globally,
the United States is the core element; regionally, Japan and China take on the
key roles. In the mutual game of big power relations, ASEAN wants to hold the
“balancing hand,” in order to ensure mutual restraint, to retain a certain balance
among the powers of the Asia-Pacific area, and to prevent any big power or big
power group from dominating regional affairs. All of this allows ASEAN to pro-
mote its own position in Asia-Pacific affairs.
Conclusion
China’s rise is ongoing; its struggle for great power status is in progress. In con-
trast to the assumptions of power transition theory, China has largely pursued a
non-violent and constructive approach in doing so. Multilateralism has provided
China with a comprehensive mechanism through which to improve its great power
image, expanding friendly relationships with multiple states while challenging
America’s unique superpower status. Given its long-term strategy to gain super-
power status, China should continue to develop its “multilateral approach with
Chinese characteristics.” Recognizing the duty of a superpower to provide public
goods to the international community, China would certainly like to develop mul-
tilateral institutions that reflect Chinese norms and values. Without adding Chi-
nese characteristics to existing international norms, values, and regulations, China
faces difficulties in convincing others of its capacity to play a leadership role and
to become a true superpower within the international community.
Notes
1 For recent publications on the various issues arising from the rise of China, see Jacques
2009; Schmitt 2009; Li 2008; Bergsten et al. 2009; and Bardhan 2010.
2 Since the London G-20 summit, the term “G2,” which treats the United States and
China as two leading great powers, has circulated widely in the international relations
community. For a succinct explanation of G2, see “Taking the Summit by Strategy,”
The Economist, 8 April 2009. But there have been criticisms of the concept of the G2;
see Economy and Segal 2009. In China, a majority of scholars are also negative on the
concept of the G2; see Wang et al. 2008, Wang 2008.
3 For representative literature on the power transition theory, see Organski 1958; Organski
and Kugler 1980; Kugler and Lemke 1996; Tammen et al. 2000. For analysis of Sino-
American relations with the adaptation of the power transition theory, see Lemke 2003;
Lemke and Tammen 2003; Efird, Kugler, and Genna 2003; and Rapkin and Thomp-
son 2003 in the special issue of International Interactions addressing issues related to
power transition theory and the rise of China. Also, see Chan 2005 and 2004.
4 In the past 30 years, China’s diplomacy has gradually constituted a strategic layout:
“Major powers are the key, peripheries are the primary, developing countries are the
basis, and multilateralism is an important arena.”
5 For discussions of the potential decline of the US and China’s rise, see Brooks and
Wohlforth 2008; Khanna 2008; Mahbubani 2008; National Intelligence Council 2008;
and Zakaria 2008.
6 For power transition theory, see Organski 1958; Gilpin 1981; Organski and Kugler
1980; Kugler and Lemke 1996; and Tammen et al. 2000.
7 For a substantial analysis of the roles of leading states in building international institutions
and developing norms for maintaining the international system, see Ikenberry 2001.
8 Organski and his colleagues measure power based on economic productivity in terms
of GDP/capita and political capacity. See Organski and Kugler 1980: 34. For their
definition of political capacity in particular, see Kugler and Arbetman 1989. For the
contemporary factors to evaluate the concept of power, see Chan 2005 and 2004.
9 For a study that argues that China’s peaceful rise would be possible, see Buzan 2010.
10 For a comparison of the military capabilities of the United States and China, see Fravel
2008 and Holslag 2009.
11 For the most recent review of the nuclear capabilities of the United States and China,
see US Department of Defense 2010.
12 For a detailed analysis of the importance of challengers’ satisfaction, see Schweller
1999.
13 For China’s charm offensive, see Kurlantzick 2007.
14 For China’s increasing influence over Africa, see Gill, Huang, and Morrison 2007;
Waldron 2008; and Alden 2007.
15 For the change in China’s self-perception from victim to great power, see Wang 1999.
16 For the relationship between Hu Jintao’s “Harmonious World” and multilateralism, see
Dellios 2009.
17 For a detailed analysis of China threat arguments, see Roy 1994, 1996, and 2003. For
discussion of China’s Responsible Great Power debates, see Chen 2009 and Zhang and
Austin 2001. For China’s new security concept, see Gill 2004.
18 For approaches reflecting the institutionalism and constructivism of the rising China,
see Johnston and Ross 1999; Axelrod and Keohane 1985; and Yong 2006.
19 For the relationship between the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 and China’s currency
policy, see Chang nd.
20 For detailed analysis of China-ASEAN economic cooperation (ASEAN+1), see Chia
2004.
21 For a detailed analysis of ASEAN+3 and ASEAN+6, see Dean and Wignaraja
2007.
22 For general views on China’s approach to the SCO, see Huang 2006; and Guang
2007.
23 For general background information on the Six-Party Talks, see Wit, Wolfsthal, and Oh
2005.
24 For an argument identifying the SCO with the Warsaw Pact, see Hansen 2008.
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February.
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124 Yoko Iwama
7 What is a “liberal” East Asia

policy?
Japan and the DPJ government
Yoko Iwama
Introduction
Japan’s success in the second half of the twentieth century had a unique structure.
Japan’s primary and widest opening to the world was through the United States.
America was synonymous with “Western civilization.” The majority of Japan’s
trade went to the US market. The majority of Japan’s knowledge and science came
from the United States. Militarily, Japan cut itself off from the rest of the world,
save for its Security Treaty with the United States. In exchange for military bases
which gradually came to be concentrated in Okinawa and Yokosuka, the coun-
try’s security was also guaranteed by the Americans. The credo of the Japanese
Foreign Office became “always stick to the Americans with heads down.” Japan
enjoyed its “splendid isolation” minus the might of the British Navy. The waves
were ruled by the US Seventh Fleet and Japan did not need to devote much of
its foreign policy energies to pursuit of an independent military security policy.
Instead, Japan opted to trade rather than conquer, reversing its prewar trajectory
and becoming a “Peace Nation.” Limited as Japan’s military might appear to have
been, however, Richard Samuels credits the country’s splendid isolation with in
fact being “Japan’s Grand Strategy” (Samuels 2007).
One can argue whether this isolation was a free choice or instead was a decision
forced on Japan by the victorious powers. Regardless, it proved to be a comfort-
able solution for both Japan and America for the first two decades after World War
II. The only demand on Japan was to remain in the camp of the free world and
to contain socialist-oriented forces at home. It is often argued that the US–Japan
Alliance traded bases for security (Sakamoto 2000). This was not exactly true.
The alliance provided Japan with security in exchange for broader political alle-
giance. Bases were simply the concrete incarnation of that allegiance.1
How does this very successful doctrine fit with international relations theory?
A liberal point of view would argue that it represented an institutionalization of
cooperation in the form of the US–Japan Alliance. Alternatively, one could regard
it as typical realist politics where a weaker power joins (or bandwagons) with the
stronger power for survival. But domestic politics were at the core of the bargain’s
continuation. Importantly, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
remained the dominant governmental power within Japan, essentially from its
What is a ‘liberal’ East Asia policy? 125
formation in 1955 until it was toppled in 2009, allowing it to ensure the bargain’s
successful continuation. No change of government was feasible during the Cold
War period, precisely because no other party could guarantee the continuation of
Japanese–US security arrangements.
When the Cold War ended, this very comfortable deal was deprived of its origi-
nal rationale. The system had solidified to such an extent, however, that it took
much longer than one might have expected to achieve a meaningful change of
government within Japan, one that might revisit the ongoing bargain between
Japan and the United States. There was a short period from August 1993 to June
1994 that saw two non-LDP government coalitions, but both were short lived,
after which the LDP managed to return to power by executing an unexpected
coalition with the Socialist Party. The party then stayed in power until the election
of 30 August 2009, when it suffered a massive defeat at the hands of the Demo-
cratic Party of Japan (DPJ). There was a lot of excitement about the man who had
accomplished this break from single-party dominance (seeming to parallel the
freshness of Barack Obama, who had just come to office in the United States) and
the initial approval rating of incoming Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio was very
high (more than 70 percent in most opinion polls).
But when one looks back, there was little policy debate in the election campaign
itself. The emphasis was on voting the LDP out of power for its failures to govern
effectively under three successive second- and third-generation politicians (Abe
Shinzô, Fukuda Yasuo, and Aso Taro). To put it simply, Japanese voters seemed
to want “anything but the LDP.” So although the DPJ victory was greeted enthusi-
astically, most voters had little idea what to expect from the new government. The
only principle on which the internally diverse party could agree was that of taking
political power away from the country’s career bureaucrats, who had enjoyed a
high degree of policymaking power during the long LDP reign. When it came to
foreign and security policy, the DPJ was divided internally. Some of the important
changes to Japanese foreign policy under this nominally “liberal” government
reflected this internal diversity.
In this article, I trace what happened in three fields related to East Asia where
one might have expected changes from the incoming liberal government. The first
involved how to deal with legacies from the past. The LDP had long been a haven
for defenders of Japan’s wartime behavior, and the Koizumi years (2001–2006)
in particular were plagued by his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. It was expected
that the new government would take a different stance concerning Japan’s past
activities so as to improve its relations with Japan’s Asian neighbors. The second
area concerned how to break out of the institutionalized confinement of foreign
policy by domestic and often legal constraints. Regionalism was the third area
where changes were expected. Many expected a DPJ government to give greater
emphasis to Asian regionalism and multilateralism, and to reduce Japan’s singu-
lar dependency on its alliance with the United States. To what extent were these
expectations achieved? How can they be best explained by international relations
theories and the changing dynamics of Japanese and regional politics?
126 Yoko Iwama
Overcoming the legacy of history
The early months of the Hatoyama administration were marked by activism con-
cerning Japan and its past. Three reports were released in rapid sequence, each
dealing with Japanese history in one way or the other. These were the Japan–China
Joint History Study, the Japan–Korea Joint History Study, and the commission on
the so-called secret nuclear agreement between the United States and Japan.
It was more of a coincidence than a plan that these three reports were completed
in late 2009 and early 2010. But it was also symbolic of Japan’s efforts since the
1950s to break away from its contentious past. Japan had been criticized repeat-
edly for not having realized reconciliation with its Asian neighbors, and for not
having “apologized” adequately for its colonial and wartime activities.2 Relations
with China were especially sour, and tensions were exacerbated by the visits of
Prime Minister Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine even though his three LDP suc-
cessors, Abe, Fukuda, and Aso, had refrained from visiting the shrine. At the same
time, however, diplomatic efforts were being advanced to achieve a reconcilia-
tion comparable to that achieved by West Germany with its immediate neighbors.
Many of the efforts were inspired by what had gone on between Germany and
France or Germany and Poland.
Japan–China Joint History Study

The first report dealing with the historical past was the Japan–China Joint History
Study. The final report and articles in each language were released on 31 January
2010. Translation into the other’s language was due to follow, although not to the
extent originally intended. The Japanese side still plans to translate its papers into
English, hoping that the Chinese will reciprocate, but the Chinese side has up till
now expressed no interest in such a translation.3
Establishment of this research commission was proposed and agreed to in
2005, with the initial proposal coming from then Foreign Minister, Machimura
Nobutaka. Prime Minister Abe made a commitment to establishing the commis-
sion when he made his blitz-visit to Beijing immediately after coming to office.
The scheme was finalized when Foreign Minister Aso Taro agreed with his coun-
terpart, Li Zhaoxing, to set up a commission composed of 10 specialists from
each side.
The group met twice under the Abe administration (26–27 December 2006 in
Beijing; 19–20 March 2007 in Tokyo). When it met for the third time, on 5–6
January 2008, Fukuda Yasuo had become prime minister. The fourth and final
meeting was held in December 2009, after the historic election of 30 August 2009,
when the long-ruling LDP lost power and the opposition DPJ took power.
As it turned out, it was the Chinese who dragged their feet about making the
discussions and results of the study public. In all, 32 papers were completed (14
for the early and Middle Ages, 18 for the modern and contemporary period). In
August 2008, the Chinese side expressed its wish that none of the papers be pub-
lished. This was contrary to the views of the Japanese side. After a long drawn-out
negotiation, it was agreed to suspend publication of the six papers which dealt
with the period after World War II but to publish the remainder. Even after this,
the Chinese side repeatedly changed its position after what appears to have been
considerable pressure from the Chinese foreign ministry about disclosing the con-
tent of the study to Chinese citizens (Kitaoka 2009, 2010).
Professor Shinichi Kitaoka, who headed the Japanese side of the commission,
notes that although the two sides disagreed about many points, the undertaking was
nevertheless meaningful. By admitting that World War II was an act of aggres-
sion on the Japanese side, and that atrocities actually took place in Nanjing in late
1937, Japan was able to officially separate itself from much of the past internal
debate about these issues. Certain right-wing historians in Japan had insisted that
World War II was not an act of aggression, and that the Massacre of Nanjing never
took place, or else that some unfortunate incidents had occurred but that Chinese
numbers were ridiculously inflated as part of Communist propaganda.4 Kitaoka
contends that he and the others on the Japanese side were able to show that such
views were not representative of serious historians in Japan and that, by demon-
strating serious academic standards, he could pave the way to more disciplined
and academic debate about actual historical facts.
The Japan–Korea Joint History Study

The second report was issued by the Japan–Korea Joint History Study at the end
of its second period of investigation.5 This group had begun in 2002, following
an agreement between the two governments in Seoul in October 2001. The first
period lasted from May 2002 to March 2005. The second period was from June
2007 to November 2009. Altogether, 17 articles were written and made public in
both languages following the first period; 42 articles were written and made public
in both languages in the second period. The second period also brought into being
a working group to deal with history textbooks.
If one compares this result with the outcome of the Japan–China Joint History
Study Commission, the difference is obvious. Although the Japanese and Korean
sides each had great difficulties in understanding the other’s point of view, they
were still able to present common conclusions to the broader public. Both gov-
ernments knew what it meant to respect freedom of thought, and neither tried to
manipulate the process or the outcome politically. This provided a stark contrast to
the attitude of the Chinese authorities on the earlier study. The Japanese press gen-
erally reported the release of the report in a negative tone, because there was no
common viewpoint on many issues. But the fact that Japan and Korea were able
to go through such processes was an achievement that laid the basis for further
scholarly and scientific debate, which in turn forms a foundation for better mutual
understanding by the next generation.
In fact, there are already signs of a more collaborative attitude among younger
scholars. The Japan–Korea New Era Joint Study Project, which started on the
initiative of President Lee Myung-bak and Prime Minister Aso Taro in January
2009, submitted its report in October 2010.6 Unlike the former two cases, this was
128 Yoko Iwama
not a history study but a future-oriented study by scholars of international politics
and the international economy. The report renewed its commitment to deepening
the understanding of history, but also made numerous future-oriented political and
economic suggestions for the Japan–Korea leadership of what it called the “Asian
Cohabitation Complex Network.”7
Of course, the opinions of a handful of professional scholars cannot be identi-
fied as equal to broader public opinion, nor even to the mainstream political con-
sensus. The memory of the division of the Japanese political class in the House of
Representatives on the occasion of the resolution on the fiftieth anniversary of the
end of World War II is still fresh.8 Although the parliamentarians are now much
younger and represent different generations, it still remains to be seen whether the
political class as a whole can present a united stance concerning such historical
questions. Such a consensus is a necessary condition for the development of stable
relationships between Japan and its neighbors.
The panel on the “secret nuclear agreement” between the United States
and Japan
The third report was that of the commission on the so-called secret nuclear agree-
ment between Japan and the United States. This commission was put together
under Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya after the DPJ government took office. The
existence of certain “mitsuyaku” (secret agreements) on sensitive foreign policy
matters was long known, and academics had long demanded official recognition
of that fact by the Japanese government and the Foreign Ministry. For almost half
a century, the government and the Foreign Ministry denied its existence, although
indications that such an agreement did take place had come from US archives.
Successive LDP governments had been accomplices in keeping this secret, mak-
ing it progressively more difficult to go public about its existence. Details and
texts had been lost over the years and it became increasingly difficult to trace the
actual facts. Only a total change in the governing political party made it possible
to tackle such a sensitive issue from the past.
Here again, Professor Kitaoka Shinichi was asked to head a panel of specialists
on US–Japan diplomatic history. The panel of six experts came together on 16
September 2009. (At the same time, 15 members within the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs were entrusted to clear this problem by internal investigation.) Its goal was
to assemble a report by mid-January 2010. But the investigation took longer than
expected and the panel did not hand in its final report until 9 March 2010.
Its task had been to investigate the existence of secret agreements in the follow-
ing four cases:
Two cases linked to the 1960 signing of the revised Security Treaty allowing:
• US military ships and airplanes carrying nuclear arms to visit or pass through
Japan without prior consultation
• US use of bases in Japan (without prior consultation) in the event of an emer-
gency on the Korean peninsula.
Two cases on the occasion of the 1972 reversion of Okinawa to Japan:
• a Sato–Nixon accord on the reintroduction of nuclear weapons into Okinawa

in case of emergency
• an agreement that Japan would pay compensation to local landowners that
was officially supposed to be paid by the United States.
The panel reported the following:
• For the first case, there was indeed a tacit agreement from both sides not to
push too hard for clarity as a starting point and, after the Ohira–Reichauer dis-
cussion on 3 April 1963, the Japanese side was made aware of the gap in the
interpretation of the 1960 exchange of letters, but the government did nothing
to make this difference clear to the public.
• For the second case, the panel agreed that the existing minute about the emer-
gency on the Korean peninsula did constitute a secret agreement. However,
this had been superseded by negotiations on the return of Okinawa and the
US–Japan Guidelines in the 1990s, so the original agreement was no longer
relevant.
• For the third case, the panel recognized the existence of a signed paper
between Sato and Nixon, but denied that it had a binding effect for subsequent
cabinets. In fact, Sato kept the signed text in his house and never explained it,
nor offered instructions about its contents even to the Foreign Ministry.
• For the fourth case, although there were no signed documents by which Japan
agreed to pay the Americans the compensation money, this could be seen as a
secret agreement in a broader sense.9
The biggest political issues had surrounded the first and third cases. In the third
case, the Yomiuri Shinbun found the signed paper at the house of the late Prime
Minister Sato.10 Sato had kept the paper in the official prime ministerial residence
during his tenure and, when he retired, he took it with him to his private residence.
Its existence had been revealed in the memoirs of the late Kei Wakaizumi, who
had acted as a personal agent for Sato at the time of the negotiation of the return of
Okinawa. Ties between Wakaizumi and Henry Kissinger had served as a kind of a
shadow route of negotiation between Sato and Nixon (Wakaizumi 1994, 2002).
The first case had been a source of embarrassment for successive LDP govern-
ments, which had insisted that, according to the exchange of letters of the 1960 US–
Japan Security Treaty, US naval vessels going through Japanese territorial waters
or coming into Japanese ports had no nuclear weapons on board, and that if there
were such nuclear weapons the matter would be a case requiring “prior consulta-
tion.” This insistence became necessary because of Japan’s “Three Non-nuclear
Principles” (the policy of not possessing, not producing, and not permitting the
introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan). These principles had been developed
by successive LDP governments during the 1950s and 1960s. Sato himself had con-
firmed these principles in conjunction with America’s reversion of the Ogasawara
130 Yoko Iwama
Islands, and he reconfirmed them in relation to the reversion of Okinawa on 30
January 1968. The Three Non-nuclear Principles were formalized in a Diet resolu-
tion in November 1971. So if naval vessels coming into and visiting Japan indeed
had nuclear weapons on board, the act would infringe on one of these established
three principles. Mention of the mere possibility that certain ships were carrying
nuclear weapons caused repeated incidents in Japanese domestic politics.11
After the end of the Cold War, President George H.W. Bush, on 27 September
1991, announced the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNI), designed to reduce the
number of Soviet and US nuclear weapons. The PNI contained a series of unilat-
eral initiatives to reduce drastically the role of “non-strategic or theater” nuclear
weapons. Alongside the total elimination of land-based theater nuclear weapons
(“bring home and destroy all of our nuclear artillery shells and short-range bal-
listic missile warheads”; that is, not including air-delivered nuclear deterrents),
he pledged to cease the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons on surface ships,
attack submarines, and land-based naval aircraft during “normal circumstances.”
This meant removing all nuclear Tomahawk cruise missiles from US ships and
submarines, as well as nuclear bombs aboard aircraft carriers (Bush 1991).
After this move, there was no more need to worry about US naval vessels in
Japanese waters carrying nuclear weapons, but the Japanese government and the
Foreign Ministry kept to their previously scripted lines. So it took a complete
turnover of the government for them to come clean about past deceptions. It was
discovered during the investigation that several important documents had prob-
ably been destroyed within the Foreign Ministry. The investigation into this mat-
ter has not yet been resolved.
Foreign Minister Okada went even further than just admitting the past decep-
tions. Answering a question in the foreign policy committee of the lower house,
Okada said that it was up to future governments to decide whether or not to allow
nuclear-armed vessels into Japanese waters if Japanese security could not other-
wise be guaranteed. It would be the task of that government to make the difficult
choice and explain it to the Japanese people.
The historical review on the secret nuclear agreements touched the core of
post-war Japanese security. It revealed the discrepancies between the “tatemae”
(publicly declared principles) and “honne” (the real intentions) of past Japanese
politicians and bureaucrats. But it is difficult to say that the revelations were com-
pletely endorsed across the diplomatic and political class. One report alone is not
sufficient to change the way business had been done for more than half a century.
More time and discussion is needed to achieve some sort of consensus concerning
the attitude of the Japanese people towards extended nuclear deterrence.
The DPJ and the legacy of the past

The relationship between Japan, on the one hand, and China and Korea, on the
other, has never been an easy one. Opinions on both sides remain laden with emo-
tions. The history textbook issue repeatedly came up on the agenda of the relation-
ships with these two countries.12
The DPJ’s Manifesto 2009 hardly mentioned foreign and security policy. The
only five points it raised on these topics were pushed into the chapter on employ-
ment and the economy. But it was generally expected that the DPJ government
would try to take a more independent and equal stance on the Japan–US alliance,
and that it would put more emphasis on better relationships with Asian countries,
“based on repentance for the last war.”13
There was already mention of a “multilateral security system of Asia Pacific” in
the Basic Policies of 1998, and the Manifesto 2009 articulated the goal of “estab-
lishing an East Asia Community.” Prime Minister Hatoyama (2009a) had com-
mented in a magazine article in late 2009 that he had inherited a dream from his
grandfather for the integration of the East Asian Community.
It was also expected, from the past debates in the Diet and from other sources,
that a DPJ government would be opposed to the special status given to the Yasu-
kuni Shrine and the official visits of the prime minister and cabinet members to the
site.14 In fact, for at least two years following the change of government there was
no top-level mention of Yasukuni. In so far as it has become clear that there are
political forces in Japan opposed to official visits to Yasukuni, it is a step forward
from the perception of many foreigners that the right-wing LDP stance on this
issue was representative of broader Japanese public opinion. This has never been
true, although right-wing voices do seem to have become louder recently.
In general, Japan’s relationship with the Republic of Korea (ROK) improved
considerably during the governments of Hatoyama and Kan Naoto. One memo-
rable occasion involved the 100th anniversary of Japan’s colonization of Korea
in 1910. On 10 August 2010, Prime Minister Kan issued a statement in which he
straightforwardly expressed his feelings:
I would like to face history with sincerity. I would like to have courage to
squarely confront the facts of history and humility to accept them, as well as
to be honest to reflect upon the errors of our own. Those who render pain tend
to forget it while those who suffered cannot forget it easily. To the tremendous
damage and sufferings that this colonial rule caused, I express here once again
my feelings of deep remorse and my heartfelt apology.15
He expressed his wish to build “a future-oriented Japan–Republic of Korea rela-

tionship.” His sentiment was echoed by President Lee Myung-bak on 15 August,
the day of liberation for the Koreans and the day of defeat for the Japanese. At the
newly restored Gwangguamun, Lee made a commemorative speech.
As we reflect on [the] Japanese forced annexation of Korea 100 years ago,

there is a definite need for the two countries to chart a new course for the years
to come. Every so often, I have reiterated that the two have to transcend the
painful history and forge ahead together. For the first time a few days ago, the
Japanese Prime Minister, on behalf of his government, issued a special formal
statement to Korea reflecting on and apologizing for the colonial rule that had
been imposed over Korea against the will of the Korean people. I have taken
132 Yoko Iwama
note of [this] Japanese effort, which represents one step forward. However,
there still remain issues that have to be resolved. The two countries are called
upon to take concrete measures to forge a new relationship for another 100
years. The two nations should never forget history, while at the same time
working together to develop a new kind of future. This is the way and direc-
tion Seoul and Tokyo have to take.16
The relationship between Japan and Korea has been steadily improving, and the
younger generations feel quite differently towards each other than do those who
experienced the occupation and early post-war years. Although generational change
has played a part, the improvement in the relationship also advanced as a result of
the democratization and modernization of the Republic of Korea. As Korean peo-

ple grew confident about their society and economy, it became increasingly pos-
sible to look back more calmly on the past. Although any reunification of the two
Koreas will present a huge challenge for the East Asian region as a whole, a bud-
ding Japan–ROK partnership will be an indispensable help in such unification.
Although there were probably equal efforts to create better relationships with
China, Japan–China relationships did not improve in the same way. This will be
dealt with in more detail below.
Constitutional constraints
Almost everyone vaguely familiar with Japanese politics knows about the famous
Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution.
Article 9:
Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the
Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and
the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and
air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right
of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.
Whether to change this unusual article or not has long been a central debate within
Japanese security policy. In the aftermath of World War II, even the constitu-
tionality of the Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF) was questioned. Gradually, the
existence of the JSDF was accepted, but the JSDF has continued to have less than
a free hand in its activities
For a certain period, Article 9 gave Japan many comparative advantages. It pro-
vided the Japanese people with a certain core national value and identity, which
the last war appeared to have shattered. The idea of “Heiwa Kokka” (peace nation)
was an essential value for many post-war Japanese, just as “Europe” had become
for many West Europeans.
Article 9 also enabled the Japanese political class to concentrate on relatively
fewer agendas and contributed to the economically efficient system that came to
be dubbed “Japan Inc.” Instead of restarting its military industry, Japan devel-
oped its economy by concentrating state resources and instruments on creating an
increasingly advanced industrial society dependent on exports to the American
market and redistribution of the wealth it gained to the local economy through the
political and bureaucratic machinery built to serve the LDP.
What was at the beginning only a temporary solution mainly forced on Japan
by the American Occupation Army sowed the seeds for what became a success
that very few could have dreamed of in the early post-war days. The three decades
from 1960, when the revised Security Treaty with the United States came into
effect, until the end of the Cold War in 1989 were the Golden Age for Japan Inc.
Japan enjoyed a “splendid isolation,” protected by the military prowess of the
US and the free trade system constructed and maintained with the United States.
“Alliance with the liberal Anglo-Saxon powers plus maintenance of the free trade
system” was the “grand strategy” of Japanese post-war generations, reinforced
through an interpretation of prewar history that stressed that the seeds of Japanese
failure lay in excessive militarism, alliance with the wrong country (Germany),
and economic protectionism.17
Even good things come to an end, and as early as the 1960s the magnitude
of Japanese economic success began to create tensions with the United States.
Although the Japanese self-image of the country as a lightly armed “merchant
nation” remained unchanged, Japanese power in fact went through a silent trans-
formation during these years. Since 1960, the Japanese defense budget has con-
tinued two-digit growth in absolute terms, hovering around 20 percent growth in
the mid-1970s. Although one must take into account the growing Japanese GDP
as well as inflation, such growth still remains impressive. Despite this, defense
spending remained under 1 percent of the GNP, slightly exceeded 1 percent in
late 1980s, but soon returned to the normal spending range.18 At the same time,
the JSDF, especially the Maritime Self-Defense Force, silently linked itself into
closer interoperability with the capabilities of the American Seventh Fleet.
The real shock and transition to Japan’s security policies came soon after the
end of the Cold War. The 1990 Gulf Crisis caught the Japanese political class
totally unprepared for the demands for military help by the United States; instead
Japan eventually contributed $13 billion to the US effort, but was still scorned by
American policymakers for its failure to put “boots on the ground.” The crisis left
a black mark, especially on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Avoiding the repeti-
tion of the 1990–91 experience became the objective of Japanese foreign policy
for the next decade. Between the humiliation of the first Gulf crisis and the Second
Gulf War of 2003, Japan came a long way. It piled up legislation and precedents
so that, by 2003, Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro was able to rush through leg-
islations that sent the JSDF to both Iraq and the Indian Ocean. Japanese officials
were content that they had “shown the flag” this time, and that they could get
through the crisis with considerably less cost than they did the first Gulf crisis. By
early 2011 the JSDF has had missions in the Golan Heights (UNDOF) and Haiti
(MINUSTAH), and smaller numbers in Sudan (UNMIS), Nepal (UNMIN), and
East Timor (UNMIT).19 But all of these forces remain under severe restrictions
134 Yoko Iwama
concerning rules of engagement, due to the peculiar interpretation of the Japanese
constitution.
The problems with the constitutional interpretation regarding the JSDF are well
summarized in the Report of the Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal
Basis for Security of 2008 (of which this author was a member).20 There are two
main issues concerning the “out of area” activities of the JSDF.
The first involves the interpretation of the right of collective self-defense.
Although the UN Charter recognizes both the individual and collective right of
self-defense, Japanese governments have held to the interpretation that Japan is
not allowed to exercise the right of collective self-defense. The government’s
position states: “It is obvious that Japan as a sovereign state inherently possesses
the right of collective self-defense under the international law, but the exercise of
the right of self-defense as allowed under Article 9 of the Constitution is limited
to what is minimum and necessary to defend the country, and exercise of the
right of collective self-defense exceeds that range and therefore is not permitted
under the Constitution.”21 This interpretation would mean that, for example, in
the case of a Korean peninsula emergency, if Japan were not directly attacked, its
actions would be considerably restricted. This was acutely shown at the time of
the 1994 crisis concerning North Korean nuclear weapons development. After this
incident, the new “Guidelines of Japan–U.S. Defense Cooperation” of 1997 were
agreed, which clarified what kind of assistance was possible from Japan in case of
“Shuhen Jitai” (Situations in Areas Surrounding Japan). The corresponding law
was promulgated in May 1999.22 But even after this legislation, Japan cannot take
part in military operations; it can mainly provide logistical support.
The second issue concerns the activities allowed under Japan’s International
Peace-Keeping Operations Act. This Act, passed in 1992 and amended in 1998,
1999, and 2001 allows participation by the JSDF in international peace operations.23
Such action is possible only in so far as the activities do not entail the use of force
or threat of the use of force. Japanese participation in peacekeeping operations is
only allowed when the situation fulfills all of the following “five principles”:
1. Agreement on a ceasefire shall have been reached among the parties to armed
conflicts.
2. Consent for the undertaking of UN peacekeeping operations as well as Japan’s
participation in such operations shall have been obtained from the host coun-
tries as well as the parties to armed conflicts.
3. The operations shall strictly maintain impartiality, not favoring any of the
parties to armed conflicts.
4. Should any of the requirements in the above-mentioned guideline cease to be
satisfied, the International Peace Cooperation Corps may suspend Interna-
tional Peace Cooperation Assignments. Unless the requirements be satisfied
again in a short term, the government of Japan may terminate the dispatch of
the personnel engaged in International Peace Cooperation Assignments.
5. The use of weapons shall be limited to the minimum necessary to protect the
lives of personnel, etc.
Working under these restrictions, the use of weapons is extremely limited, only in
order to protect one’s own life or the lives of others in the same corps. Weapons
cannot be used to protect civilians or even personnel from other peacekeeping
forces. Not only can they not use weapons, but Japanese personnel cannot conduct
any actions that can be seen as being a part of “ittaika,” the use of force by other
parties. Consequently, Japanese personnel can be sent only to environments which
can be deemed quite stable.
Japan’s security policies also contain several other restrictions, such as the three
non-nuclear principles and the three principles concerning the export of weapons,
which virtually ban all export and exchange of weapons-related technology.
The new Japanese government has shown very little inclination to change these
practices. Hatoyama in the past proposed the abolition of Article 9 and its replace-
ment with a full chapter on peace and international cooperation. In the preamble to
a draft constitution that he offered in 2005, he speaks of the importance of “evolu-
tionary maintenance” of the “spirit of international cooperation and peace estab-
lished in the 1946 Constitution.” He proposes a “permanent and universal system
of economic and social cooperation as well as one that would involve collective
defense in the Asia-Pacific region.” In chapter 4, on peace and international coop-
eration, he proposes to renounce aggressive war (article 46) but expresses the
intention to actively participate in operations for the maintenance and building
of peace realized through the United Nations and other international organiza-
tions (article 47). Japan, he proposes, could also transfer parts of its sovereignty to
international organizations and participate in collective security measures (article
48). Furthermore, in chapter 5, on security, he admits that Japan will possess a
Self Defense Military Force (Jieigun) in order to secure its own independence and
security (article 50). This military would require the recognition of the parliament
when the Prime Minister, as the supreme commander of the military, orders its
use (article 51-2). Japan would further renounce development, production, or pos-
session of nuclear, biological, and other weapons of mass destruction (article 53)
and denies the introduction of general conscription (article 54) (Hatoyama 2005:
68–83). But despite such elaborate proposals to alter the status quo, Hatoyama
showed no inclination to change the past institutional arrangements concerning
Japanese security while he was prime minister.
The year 2009 was supposed to see the promulgation of the National Defense
Program Guidelines for the next five years. A council of specialists had already
prepared a report, but Hatoyama refused to accept it because it had been put
together by a council chosen under the LDP government. Instead, he announced a
delay of one year with a total rethinking of all concepts. Accordingly, a new panel,
of which this author was a member, was put together and started work on 18 Feb-
ruary 2010.24 The membership of this council was perhaps a little more towards
the center than the last one, but it did not include any of the so-called security
advisors of Prime Minister Hatoyama. Nor did he try to intervene in the panel’s
discussion so as to give it his own sense of purpose or direction.25
Hatoyama did not receive the report of the panel he had created, due to his res-
ignation in June 2010. Prime Minister Kan Naoto received the report on 28 August
136 Yoko Iwama
2010. From the start of his administration, however, Kan was widely reported to be
not very much interested in security policy. Nevertheless, the DPJ almost agreed
to review the principles regarding the export of weapons, so as to allow Japan
to participate in common research and development and technology exchanges
with friendly countries. Discussions about such new guidelines were well under
way. But in the end, Kan opted to placate the left-leaning Social Democratic Party
(SDP) in his coalition in order to secure passage of the 2011 budget plan. As was
expected, he promised SDP leader Fukushima Mizuho that, in exchange for the
budget bill’s safe passage, he would not put the revision of the ban on weapons
exports into the National Defense Program Guidelines.
Attempts to establish a new balance between Asia and the United

States under the Hatoyama government
When the Hatoyama Yukio government came to office on 16 September 2009,
there were mixed emotions. The general public was enthralled with the fact that
the long-reigning, corrupt, and incapable LDP regime had ended. An opinion poll
showed 72 percent support for Hatoyama at the start of his new government.26 But
many doubts were also expressed about the ability of the DPJ to manage foreign
and security policy, especially because it had aligned itself with the SDP, known
for its pacifist foreign policy, as well as the People’s National Party (PNP). The
coalition agreement was effectively only three pages long and mostly concerned
with issues of social welfare and unemployment. Foreign policy came in point 9,
which offered only a mixture of all three parties’ agendas and covered topics as
diverse as the United Nations, the environment, securing an independent foreign
policy, creating an East Asia Community, disarmament, non-proliferation, North
Korean denuclearization, and anti-terrorist measures. The agreement explicitly
mentioned revision of the status of force agreement between Japan and the United
States as well as the construction of a “close and equal” Japan–US relationship.27
People started looking for what this agglomeration of topics could mean.
Hatoyama himself, despite his upbringing in a political family and having studied
in the United States, was very inexperienced in foreign policy. But it was well
known that one of Hatoyama’s close policy advisors was Terashima Jitsuro. They
seem to have ended their close working relationship at some point, but Terashi-
ma’s opinion gives us certain clues about the background of Hatoyama’s subse-
quent actions (e.g. Terashima, 1994a, 1994b, 2006, 2009).
Terashima, a baby boomer born in August 1947, has argued that post-war Japan
should be proud of its pacifist values, of not being quick to use military force,
and of never using force as a solution to international problems. The post-war
Japanese political opposition had the core values of anti-Americanism, pacifism
(against the revision of the post-war constitution), and socialism.
Post-war Japanese foreign policy had been dominated by the Cold War sys-
tem, in which Japan had few options other than to be under US hegemony. Even
though the Cold War was long over, the Japanese political class found itself unable
to escape from this deeply entrenched Cold War paradigm. Its only “foreign
policy” remained one of not antagonizing the Americans. Terashima called on the
Japanese to come out of their America-centered worldview and look at the world
in a more comprehensive and up-to-date way. He stressed that Japan needs to
rediscover Asia and learn to live as an Asian nation. While he does not advocate
deserting the American camp, he wants more distance and independence from the
United States. “Remaining friendly with the United States but becoming part of
Asia” (Shin-bei Nyuu-A) is his solution for Japan in the twenty-first century. In
this way he wishes to relativize modern Japan somewhat along the lines of Fuku-
zawa Yukichi, who told the Japanese in the late nineteenth century to “leave Asia
and enter Europe” (Datsu A NyuuOu) (Terashima 1994a).
This logic translates practically into having US forces leave Japan during
peacetime and return only in case of emergencies. Having foreign troops half-per-
manently on one’s soil is quite “unusual and unhealthy,” especially for Okinawa,
which by housing 70 percent of all US forces in Japan is left with an intolerable
state of affairs. In Terashima’s view, the US forces in Japan could be pulled back
to Guam and Hawaii and operate from an “over-the-horizon” position. They could
still react rapidly in emergencies.
For Terashima, the world has shifted to a US–China G2, leaving Japan with the
mission of becoming a “bridge” between the two. Equidistance between the United
States and China will nudge Japan towards a strategy that rests on a “Japan–US–
China equilateral-triangle.” To bring this about, Japan needs to gain true trust
from its Asian neighbors. Japan should try to support China as a “responsible
stakeholder.” Just as Great Britain acted as a “bridge” between Continental Europe
and the United States, so Japan should aspire to be the “bridge” which secures the
constructive engagement of the United States in Asia (Terashima 2010).
Hatoyama Yukio was never a realist and he always had an idealist streak in
his thinking. His grandfather, former Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichiro, was fasci-
nated by the Austrian aristocrat Count Coudenhove-Kalergi and his idea of “Yuai”
(Brüderlichkeit: fraternity) and of European integration. The elder Hatoyama intro-
duced these ideas into Japan by translating Coudenhove-Kalergi’s books and by
founding the Yuai Seinen Doshi Kai (Association of Youth Fraternity), and tried to
generate a movement among the younger generations from this fraternity.28
Yukio inherited his grandfather’s fascination with integration and Yuai. “Yuai
Kakumei” (Yuai Revolution) has been a central concept in his design for a new
Japan and he continuously placed the concept of Yuai at the core of his political
activities, from the time he broke from the LDP in 1993 (Hatoyama 1996a). His
fascination with Asian integration and the success of European integration led
him to put forward his notion of an “East Asia Community” as an Asian version of
regional integration. He set out the plans for his future government, including the
East Asia Community, in the magazine Voice, and they were reproduced in part in
the New York Times on 26 August 2009. The ideas caused consternation in many
quarters. The following are the concluding lines from this article:
The problems of increased militarization and territorial disputes cannot be

resolved by bilateral negotiations between, for example, Japan and South
138 Yoko Iwama
Korea, or Japan and China. The more these problems are discussed bilat-
erally, the greater the risk that emotions become inflamed and nationalism
intensified.
Therefore, I would suggest, somewhat paradoxically, that the issues that
stand in the way of regional integration can only be truly resolved by moving
toward greater integration. The experience of the EU shows us how regional
integration can defuse territorial disputes.
I believe that regional integration and collective security is the path we
should follow toward realizing the principles of pacifism and multilateral
cooperation advocated by the Japanese Constitution. It is also the appropriate
path for protecting Japan’s political and economic independence and pursu-
ing our interests in our position between the United States and China.
Let me conclude by quoting the words of Count Coudenhove-Kalergi,
founder of the first popular movement for a united Europe, written 85 years
ago in “Pan-Europa” (my grandfather, Ichiro Hatoyama, translated his book,
“The Totalitarian State Against Man,” into Japanese): “All great historical
ideas started as a utopian dream and ended with reality. Whether a particular
idea remains as a utopian dream or becomes a reality depends on the number
of people who believe in the ideal and their ability to act upon it.”
(Hatoyama 2009a, 2009b)
The combination of “regional integration” and “collective security” had worked

for the Europeans because they were already very strongly integrated militarily
into NATO. The European solution had always been “regional integration + col-
lective defense + multilateral security.” Hatoyama’s proposal for an East Asian
Community focused on Japan, Korea, and China was a totally different thing. To
many in the US policy community, Hatoyama’s idea could well have meant the
start of a drift away from the Japan–US Alliance.
Hatoyama’s first policy speech at the Diet on 26 October 2009 had echoes of
Terashima’s ideas about Japan as the “bridge” between Asia and the West.29 But
in fact, Hatoyama never got around to seriously working on his more complicated
idea of Asian integration, whether in currency or security, because his short term
(approximately eight months) was plagued by problems surrounding the US Mari-
nesbase in Futenma, Okinawa.30
The DPJ had repeatedly expressed its wishes for the immediate removal of the
Marinesbase out of Okinawa Prefecture and preferably out of Japan.31 During the
election campaign, although it was not expressly stated in the DPJ manifesto,
Hatoyama repeatedly suggested that Futenma should be moved.32 The SDP in
its manifesto had demanded an immediate closure of Futenma and opposed the
construction of a new base at Henoko, as had been agreed to by the prior LDP
government.33 The people of Okinawa had actually always been divided on such
issues and, under successive LDP governments, Tokyo had piled up local subsi-
dies to win the consent of the local Henoko community for the transfer of the base
from Futenma. But because Prime Minister Hatoyama repeatedly stressed that
he wanted a solution outside Okinawa, the local community was thrown into
confusion. The Hatoyama government itself was strongly divided, with Foreign
Minister Okada and Defense Minister Kitazawa both openly challenging the prime
minister and expressing the opinion that a base transfer to a site outside Okinawa
was impossible.
In the end, Hatoyama could not find any place that would accept the Marines
and that was also acceptable to the Marines. After a long drawn-out and confused
handling of the affair, Hatoyama visited Okinawa on 4 May 2010 and stated that in
order to maintain “deterrence” it was not at present possible to find a place outside
Okinawa to which the Marines could move. He confessed that he had not known
that the Marines in Okinawa served the purpose of deterrence and had first learned
about it after becoming prime minister.34 He made a public broadcast on 28 May
2010 and apologized to the Japanese and, especially, to the Okinawan people.35
On the same day, the so-called 2 + 2 committee (the Security Consultative Com-
mittee [SCC] composed of the foreign and defense ministers from both Japan and
the United States) announced in a joint statement that “both sides confirmed the
intention to locate the replacement facility at the Camp Schwab Henoko-saki area
and adjacent waters, with the runway portion(s) of the facility to be 1,800 meters
long, inclusive of overruns, exclusive of seawalls.”36
As was to be expected, the Social Democrats protested strongly and Hatoyama
had to dismiss Mizuho Fukushima, Minister of State for Consumer Affairs and
Food Safety, Social Affairs, and Gender Equality, and also leader of the SDP,
because of her refusal to agree to the SCC statement. Two days later, the Social
Democrats decided to leave the governing coalition. Although this did not deprive
the government of its majority in the Diet, Hatoyama announced his own intention
to resign, and his government fell on 8 June 2010.
His attempt to push forward an East Asia Community left little impression
because Futenma had taken up so much media attention, but Hatoyama did make
some progress with the Japan–China–ROK Trilateral Summit. The summit had
been held for the first time in 2008 under Prime Minister Aso, and then again on
10 October 2009 in Beijing, with a third summit in Jeju, Korea (30 May 2010) dur-
ing the Hatoyama government. A Japan–China–ROK Trilateral Foreign Ministers
Meeting was also held twice during the same period. During the third summit,
the three countries agreed to establish “the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat in
the Republic of Korea in 2011, with a view to making trilateral cooperation more
effective and systematic.” The three countries also agreed to meet again in Japan
in 2011.37 Although it did not attract much media attention at the time, a perma-
nent secretariat is to be created for the summit. This will represent something quite
new in the region if it materializes, and will contribute to the institutionalization
of trilateral cooperation.38
Naoto Kan and the return of pragmatic realism

When leaders from Japan, China, and the ROK met on Jeju Island on 30 May
2010, among other things they exchanged views about the sinking of the Cheonan
on 26 March. At the time the three agreed that “[w]e will keep in contact and
140 Yoko Iwama
properly address the matter so as to maintain peace and stability in the region.”
Such vague terminology did not give much assurance about their ability to coop-
erate in cases of military crisis but there was also no sense of urgency about the
security situation. This was to change drastically in the second half of 2010.
In his inaugural speech, Naoto Kan quoted his university professor, Nagai
Yonosuke, the author of Heiwa no Daisho (The Price of Peace), by telling the
Japanese people that he would pursue a policy based on “balanced pragmatism.”
In the same speech Kan also alluded to the “duality” of Japan, a “maritime nation
bordering the Pacific Ocean and at the same time an Asian nation.” He highlighted
the US–Japan alliance as an “internationally shared asset” and promised to deepen
that alliance further. But at the same time he said he would seek to bring about
an East Asian community. “With China, we shall deepen our mutually benefi-
cial relationship based on common strategic interests, while with the Republic
of Korea we shall forge a future-oriented partnership.”39 These were his initial
promises, but events took a more dramatic turn in September.
Quarrels regarding who can fish where and how much they can take have always
been problems in East Asian waters. The issue has had its ups and downs but it
has never gone away. On 7 September 2010 the Japan Coast Guard arrested the
captain and crew of a Chinese fishing boat near contested waters surrounding the
Senkaku Islands. Both Prime Minister Kan and Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara
were in New York at the time, attending a meeting of the United Nations General
Assembly. The arrest quickly turned into a diplomatic crisis when the Japanese
ambassador in Beijing was called up at midnight to listen to official protests from
the Chinese government. As the detention of the captain continued, Chinese pub-
lic opinion flared up, denouncing the Japanese government for claiming territory
that it saw as inherently Chinese. Several acts by the Chinese government, includ-
ing stopping the export of rare earth materials and detaining four Japanese busi-
nessmen from the Japanese company Fujita operating in China, were interpreted
in Japan as a series of interrelated retaliations. In a climate of protests from both
sides, the Chinese captain was released on 24 September. But the Sino-Japanese
relationship had been soured and many official events and visits were cancelled
as a consequence.
There have been many interpretations of the Chinese actions. There was deep
concern that the military and the nationalists were gaining the upper hand against
China’s moderate internationalists. Whatever the reason, Chinese behavior has
left a strong impression throughout Asia. The United States was just waking up to
the dangers of being denied its prior unlimited control of the sea and had begun to
address what it saw as a potential “anti-access” strategy in its 2010 Quadrennial
Defense Review, and had started developing the concept of “air-sea battle.”40
Chinese behavior has also accelerated the shift of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces
from northeast to southwest Japan and triggered concern about the kind of specific
capabilities that the JSDF will need in order to replace its prior general basic deter-
rence.41 China’s recent behavior has also frightened the ASEAN nations and has
alarmed the South Koreans. But China has continued to push ahead with its pro-
gram to acquire aircraft carriers and anti-aircraft carrier missiles. The developing
picture is that of a typical security dilemma in which all parties start building
up arms as “defensive” measures but thereby unleash increased tensions and
counter-build-ups.
In such a situation, the Kan government had little choice but to stick to the old
recipe of clinging tightly to the Japan–US Alliance. For the time being, China
seemed unsusceptible to liberal interdependence and socialization. China was act-
ing out of realist considerations and the surrounding countries had little choice but
to return in kind. Therefore, the foreign and security policy of the Kan administra-
tion has remained similar to the “pragmatic realism”’ of the LDP era. Despite the
efforts of many security specialists to break loose from some of the policy straight-
jackets of that earlier era, the DPJ government has yet to show such new thinking.
Japan and Asia in the twenty-first century

I continue to believe that the DPJ government has the potential to generate a “lib-
eral East Asia policy.” It is not in the interests of the Japanese people to continue
with the pragmatic realist LDP tradition. It is desirable to have a more creative,
proactive East Asia policy. The DPJ has shown the potential to adopt such a policy
and the two DPJ governments have made some moves towards this direction. The
stumbling block has always been China.
Regarding past history, Japan and the ROK have slowly moved away from
their previously fraught political relations. Although the problems concerning
textbooks and island territories remain, the two nations should be able to deal
with these problems diplomatically. Perceptions in both countries towards each
other have steadily improved. From a theoretical point of view, this can be seen
as a result of continuous efforts toward mutual socialization. Of course, major
changes in thinking take a long time to achieve, so there is still much more work
to be done. The start has been made, however, and the mood on both sides seems
accommodative.
The same cannot be said about the relationship between Japan and China.
Although the Japanese side has approached China in ways that were very similar to
its efforts with the ROK, concrete results have been minimal. Perhaps socialization
and cognitive approaches work only in cases where both sides are democracies, as
was the case with Germany’s historic accommodation with Poland (Iwama 2010).
The domestic institutional constraints on foreign policy have undergone few
changes under the DPJ government. In part, this is due to the fact that traditional
Japanese security policy continued many liberal elements conducive to DPJ orien-
tations. The choice of the SDP as the DPJ’s coalition partner also inhibited radical
breaks with the past, even though in its early days in government the DPJ could
have formed majorities in both houses without the SDP. Hatoyama’s choice of the
SDP as a coalition partner indicates that he had little understanding of how that
might limit his choices on Japanese security policy.
East Asian regionalism is one area where the DPJ could eventually show its
creative side. There has been some progress in the Japan–China–ROK Trilateral
Summit. But such momentum has been lost since the Senkaku Islands incident in
142 Yoko Iwama
mid-2010. In response to an increasingly realist Chinese diplomacy, Japan and
other countries could only respond in kind.
It remains to be seen how Chinese foreign policy will or will not change. What-
ever the outcome, uncertainty about the direction of Chinese policy is likely to
remain. So even for a liberal Japanese government, the response can only be one
that mixes “engagement” with “hedging.” But when Japan engages with China, a
more liberal foreign policy might benefit from seeking out multiple partners for
dialogue. Bilateral negotiations are likely to be less productive for Japan than will
be multilateral forums. Moreover, Japanese policy should focus not only on the
Chinese government but also on civil society and the general public. As Chinese
society becomes increasingly pluralistic, the Communist Party will find it increas-
ingly difficult to conciliate different directions in its society and insure top-down
control. Such moves may seem meaningless or ineffective in the short term. But
since Japan can afford to have a two-tiered foreign policy, it will not lose much by
trying out new things while keeping open older alternatives.
Notes
1 We now know that the CIA was actively engaged in keeping the US-oriented party in
power, just as it was in Western European democracies (Haruna 2000).
2 Typically, see Burma 1994. He (2009) also provides an important contribution to the
analysis of the Chinese side of historical “myth-making.”
3 The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs site on the study is at <http://www.mofa.
go.jp/mofaj/area/china/rekishi_kk.html> (accessed 30 April 2010).
4 The most recent and prominent example of such historical views was that of the then
Chief of Staff of the Air Self Defense Force, Tamogami Toshio, who has since pub-
lished numerous books and articles, none of them a work of serious history, but never-
theless considerably popular.
5 The project was carried out on the Japanese side under the Japan–Korea Cultural
Exchange Foundation. Available at <http://www.jkcf.or.jp/history/> (accessed 30 April
2010). Report of period I: <http://www.jkcf.or.jp/history/first/index.html>; report of
period II: <http://www.jkcf.or.jp/history/>.
6 See <http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/area/korea/visit/0804_2_pr.html> and <http://
www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/area/korea/newera/index.html>. The report itself is available
at <http://www.jkcf.or.jp/kaigi/newera/index.html>.
7 <http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/release/22/10/PDF/102201.pdf>.
8 Prime Minister Murayama attempted to pass a resolution regretting the deplorable past
between Japan and Asia on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the
Pacific War. Conservatives wanted to mention that Japan had only followed the example
of the Europeans and it was not the only country to have a record of misconduct against
a colonized population. In order to placate the conservatives, the resolution was watered
down to the point of meaninglessness. Still, only half of the total number of Diet mem-
bers attended the resolution. Out of 502 Diet members, 249 were absent, including 70
members of the governing coalition. The resolution was passed by 230 to 14 votes.
9 The report and all documents are listed on <http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/mit-
suyaku/kekka.html> (accessed 5 May 2010).
10 Yomiuri Shinbun, 22 December 2009.
11 The most famous of these was when former Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer
said in an interview to Mainichi Shinbun that nuclear weapons had been on board the
naval vessels visiting Japanese ports. Mainichi Shinbun, 18 May 1981.
12 Hatano 2004.
13 KihonSeisaku (Basic policies), 27 April 1998, at <http://www.dpj.or.jp/policy/rinen_
seisaku/seisaku.html> (accessed 2 May 2010).
14 Past debates on Yasukuni involving the DPJ can be searched on the House of Repre-
sentatives website at <http://www.shugiin.go.jp/index.nsf/html/index.htm> (accessed
2 May 2010).
15 <http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/kan/statement/201008/10danwa_e.html> (accessed
31 December 2010).
16 President Lee Myung-bak on the 65th Anniversary of Liberation, <http://www.korea-
times.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/08/113_71472.html> (accessed 31 December
2010).
17 This ideology comes out very strongly in the work of mainstream post-war diplomatic
historians like Iokibe Makoto. Their starting point is the benevolent occupation policy
of the United States and its generosity in keeping its markets open and protecting open
trade routes in which Japan could flourish.
18 See the defense White Books at <http://www.clearing.mod.go.jp/hakusho_web/>.
19 Secretariat of the International Peace Cooperation Headquarters, Cabinet Office,
<http://www.pko.go.jp/PKO_E/operations/pko.html (accessed 30th December 2010).
20 Report of the Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of Legal Basis for Security, 24 June
2008. Japanese version available at <http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/anzenhosyou/>
(accessed 6 May 2010).
21 See also Sase 2001: 124ff.
22 A good source of documents related to Japanese security is the database “World and
Japan” of Akihiko Tanaka Kenkyuushitsu. Main documents are translated into English
and/or Chinese. Available at <http://www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~worldjpn/> (accessed 8
May 2010).
23 <http://www.pko.go.jp/PKO_E/cooperation/cooperation.html> (accessed 8 May
2010).
24 <http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/shin-ampobouei2010/> (accessed 2 January 2011).
25 This author can testify that during the long dinner that the council members had with
Prime MinisterHatoyama and Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirano at the prime minister’s
residence, there was virtually no real discussion about security affairs. Prime Minister-
Hatoyama did ask for a “good discussion without any taboos” in his opening remarks,
but apart from that, conversation did not go into the substance of the policies.
26 Kyodo News Agency, 17 September 2010.
27 Coalition Agreement of the Three Parties, 9 September 2009, available at <http://www.
dpj.or.jp/news/files/20090909goui.pdf> (accessed 30 December 2010).
28 Nihon SeinenYuuaiKyoukai (Japan Association of Youth Fraternity) <http://yuaiy-
outh.or.jp/history.html>.
29 <http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/hatoyama/statement/200910/26syosin.html>.
30 The process is well sketched out in Mainichi ShinbunSeijibu (2010).
31 Since the 2005 manifesto, this has been the policy of DPJ. See <http://www.dpj-kochi.
jp/2005seisaku.pdf>.
32 His first statement was even before the Diet was resolved, on 19 July 2009 in Oki-
nawa. RyukuShinpo, 20 July 2009, available at <http://ryukyushimpo.jp/news/sto-
ryid-147365-storytopic-3.html> (accessed 30 December 2010). A background report
of Mainichi Shinbunon 2 November confirms this report and Maehara and (Akihisa)
Nagashima’s being against this.
33 <http://www5.sdp.or.jp/policy/policy/election/manifesto03_10.htm> (accessed 30
December 2010).
34 Sankei News, 4 May 2010, <http://sankei.jp.msn.com/politics/policy/100504/
plc1005041845021-n1.htm> (accessed 31 December 2010).
35 <http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/hatoyama/statement/201005/28kaiken.html> (accessed 31
December 2010).
144 Yoko Iwama
36 Joint Statement of the US–Japan Security Consultative Committee, 28 May 2010, by
Secretary of State Clinton, Secretary of Defense Gates, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Okada, Minister of Defense Kitazawa. Available at <http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/n-
america/us/security/scc/joint1005.html>.
37 See <http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/jck/summit.html> and <http://www.mofa.
go.jp/region/asia-paci/jck/summit1005/memorandum.html> (accessed 31 December
2010).
38 <http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/jck/summit1005/joint_pr.html> (accessed 31
December 2010).
39 <http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/kan/statement/201006/11syosin_e.html> (accessed
2 January 2011). Although the official English translation is “balanced pragmatism,”
Kan used the word “genjitsushugi”, which means “realism.”
40 <http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/PubLibrary/R.20100518.Air_Sea_Battle__
A_/R.20100518.Air_Sea_Battle__A_.pdf> (accessed 2 January 2010).

41 <http://www.mod.go.jp/j/approach/agenda/guideline/2011/index.html> (accessed 2
January 2011).
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8 The Republic of Korea
Toward peace and cooperation
Hyung Min Kim
Introduction
Multilateralism is defined as “the practice of coordinating national policies in
groups of three or more states” (Keohane 1990) “on the basis of generalized prin-
ciples of conduct” (Ruggie 1993), with characteristics such as “generalized non-
discriminatory codes of conduct,” “indivisibility of values,” and “diffuse reciproc-
ity” (Caporaso 1993). It contrasts with unilateralism and bilateralism. In Northeast
Asia, unlike the economic area, in which regional issues are regulated primarily
according to multilateral frameworks, regional security has been maintained pri-
marily through bilateral arrangements, with the United States playing a central
role. This lack of multilateral security arrangements in Northeast Asia also dif-
fers from other regions where regional security frameworks have been developed
in the form of the Organization of African States, the Organization for Security
and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Organization of American States, the
ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and Track II arrangements such as the Council
for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (CSCAP). Scholars and policy mak-
ers argue that an official regional security framework has not been established,
due, among other causes, to the diverse histories, cultural roots, and peculiar local
rivalries in the region. Local rivalries would include great power interactions and
rivalry, North Korean intransigence, and deeper historical legacies derived from
the scars of Japanese imperialism (Kim 2004; Rozman 2004; Shin and Sneider
2007; Acharya and Goh 2007; Roehrig, Seo, and Heo 2007).
This chapter attempts to address the issue of the multilateral security arrange-
ments in Northeast Asia and Korea’s interests and strategies with regard to such
arrangements. It argues that one of the most important preconditions for establish-
ing any viable regional framework is peaceful relationships among the relevant
actors in the region. If the cases involving Europe teach any important lesson, it is
that peaceful relationships among neighbors not only develop more deeply from
regional security arrangements, but they are also, more importantly, the most signif-
icant precondition for establishing such diplomatic arrangements in the first place.
Based on this argument, this chapter first examines the causes of peace and
cooperation in Northeast Asia by performing multivariate analyses of the deter-
minants of militarized conflicts in the region. The multivariate analyses examine
The Republic of Korea 147
the applicability of several central international relations (IR) theories, includ-
ing democratic peace theory, commercial peace theory, balance of power the-
ory, and power preponderance theory. Then, based on the results from the first
section of empirical analyses, the second section of this chapter provides some
insights concerning Korea’s interests and strategies with regard to the precondi-
tions for regional peace and the establishment of regional multilateral security
arrangements.
The preconditions for peace in the region

Scholars argue that one of the main purposes of any permanent multilateral secu-
rity architecture in Northeast Asia is the establishment of peaceful relationships

among states in the region (Calder and Fukuyama 2008). Based on the experience
of Europe, where the countries in the region have maintained relatively peaceful
relationships since the establishment of regional security architecture (OSCE),
countries in Northeast Asia have also suggested several diverse ideas for multilat-
eral security regimes, with the hope of establishing a permanently peaceful envi-
ronment in the region. What factors contribute to the peaceful relationships among
states in Northeast Asia? This section attempts to examine the preconditions for
peace in the region, using the argument that the peaceful relationships among the
countries provide the touchstone for establishing any successful multilateral secu-
rity framework in the region.
Scholars in the field of international relations have long studied the causes of
conflict and peace among countries. This section examines the causes of conflict
and peace in Northeast Asia by performing a multivariate analysis on the determi-
nants of militarized conflicts in the region. In the light of these analyses, this sec-
tion focuses on the several major IR theories and their applicability in the region.
General approach
Oneal, Russett, and their colleagues have been leading proponents of the empiri-
cal study of international conflicts (for example, Maoz and Russett 1993; Rus-
sett and Oneal 2001). Their model setup for interstate conflict has been adopted
extensively and includes the views of: 1) realists—that power (power balance and
major-power status) and alliance are crucial determinants of conflict; 2) liberals—
that state interests such as regime type (democracy) and trade ties (economic inter-
dependence) influence a state’s conflict behavior; and 3) political geographers—
that a county’s region and proximity to other states (contiguity and distance) affect
conflict.1 To facilitate comparisons with previous research, this chapter’s analysis
is based on their dyadic conflict model. However, to check the robustness of the
results, I performed a set of sensitivity analyses (varying the models by adding or
dropping some of the control variables and using sub-samples such as politically
relevant or politically active dyads); the overall pattern with this sensitivity test
confirms my findings. Equation 1 will be tested for the dyadic analysis of interna-
tional conflicts in Northeast Asia:
148 Hyung Min Kim
Onset of Dyadic Dispute,t–1 = ß0 + ß1*Level of Democracy Lower,t +
ß2*Level of Democracy Higher,t + ß3*Level of Economic Interdependence,t
+ ß4*Balance of Power,t + ß5*Shared Alliance Ties,t + ß6*Contiguity,t +
ß7*Distance,t + ß8*Major Power,t + ß9*Peace Year,t + ß10*Spline1,t +
ß11*Spline2,t + ß12*Spline3,t + b13*Conflict Interaction Level,t + e (Equa-
tion 1)
Hypotheses
Hypothesis 1. Increased levels of democracy decrease the probability of disputes.
This hypothesis probes the democratic peace pillar of the broader liberal peace
theory. The democratic peace theory argues that democratic states, which are con-
strained by their democratic institutions and norms, are less likely to resort to the
use of military force, regardless of the political regime type of their adversaries
(the “monadic” explanation, Rousseau 2005). Further, it contends that democratic
states tend not to use military force when facing other democracies (the “dyadic”
explanation, Russett and Oneal 2001).2
Hypothesis 2. Increased levels of economic interdependence (of a less constrained

state3) decrease the probability of disputes.
The hypothesis of commercial peace theory reflects the unconditional lib-
eral belief that economic ties increase the costs of becoming involved in dis-
putes and therefore these ties decrease the probability of being involved in a
dispute.4 While a null finding for this hypothesis could support either the con-
ditional school or the irrelevant school, a positive finding (that interdependence
increases conflict) would clearly support realist arguments by Waltz (1979) and
Gaddis (1986).
Hypothesis 3. Parity of power decreases the probability of disputes.

Hypothesis 3.1. The preponderance of power decreases the probability of the
onset of dispute.
Balance-of-power theorists argue that, if a state enjoys a power advantage over
its adversary, it is more likely to be involved in a dispute because it is more likely
to succeed, and the cost of dispute involvement is likely to be low (Wright 1965;
Kissinger 1964; Ferris 1973; Claude 1962; Morgenthau 1948; Waltz 1979). On the
other hand, power preponderance theorists argue that power preponderance will
preserve peace between states, because a clear preponderance of power reduces
the uncertainties about probable winners and losers in any dispute (Blainey 1988;
Organski 1958; Organski and Kugler 1980).
Hypothesis 4. A shared military alliance decreases the probability of disputes.

Realists also claim that shared security interests influence a state’s decision to
be involved in a dispute, because a state fears losing the security benefit that it
gains from alliance ties with the other actor in a dispute (Bennett and Stam 2004;
Huth and Allee 2002).
Hypothesis 5. A shared common border increases the probability of disputes.
Hypothesis 6. Geographic distance decreases the probability of disputes.
Hypothesis 7. When one of the two states in a dyad is a major power, the prob-
ability of disputes is increased.
Hypothesis 8. If the two states in a dyad have a conflictual historical relationship,
the probability of disputes is increased.
These hypotheses provide another set of realist constraints. The first two hypoth-
eses on geographical proximity are included to test the realist argument that the
potential for international violence exists when the actor can reach its adversary
with military force (Bennett and Stam 2004; Russett and Oneal 2001). The next
hypothesis is based on the argument that major powers have been engaged in more
international disputes, as compared to other states, based on their wider-ranging
interests (Russett and Oneal 2001; Schultz 2001). The final hypothesis is based
on the argument that prior conflict predisposes states to further interstate conflict
(Crescenzi and Enterline 2001).
Measurement
Onset of Dispute. This dichotomous dependent variable is coded as 1 if any kind of
militarized dispute is ongoing between two states in a particular year; if there was
no dispute, it is coded as 0.5 Some use only the initial year of a dispute, arguing
that events over time are not statistically independent. However, I include ongoing
disputes, following Russett and Oneal’s argument that “rational leaders frequently
reevaluate their positions, whether to escalate, deescalate, halt, or maintain the exist-
ing strategy” (Russett and Oneal 2001: 95, fn 2).6 The decision to include the ongo-
ing conflict instead of using only the initial year of conflict has been also rational-
ized in Maoz and Russett (1993: 631). They posit that states’ political systems and
other variables may well change frequently during ongoing conflicts, and that we
must take those changes into account when explaining states’ conflict behaviors.7
Level of Democracy. This independent variable is constructed by subtracting
the Polity IV autocracy index from the democracy index to produce a variable
that ranges from –10 to 10. The value of –10 in the final product indicates a fully
autocratic state while that of 10 indicates a fully democratic state. Following the
weak-link assumption (Dixon 1994), this variable is measured by using the score
from the less-democratic state in a dyad.
Level of Economic Interdependence. This has been operationalized in a vari-
ety of ways in the literature (for the debate, see Barbieri and Peters 2003; Oneal
2003). Although all operationalizations of interdependence have both strengths
and weaknesses, I believe that imports plus exports divided by GDP effectively
captures interdependence.8 Following the weak-link assumption (Dixon 1994),
this variable is measured by using the score from the less interdependent state in a
dyad. The data for the variable are taken from the Expanded Trade and GDP Data,
Version 4.1 (Gleditsch 2002, 2004).
150 Hyung Min Kim
Balance of Power. This variable measures each state’s military capability
relative to its opponent. Each state’s military capability is the average of three
components—the number of troops, military expenditures, and military expen-
ditures per soldier—from the National Material Capabilities Data (ICPSR
9903, Singer and Small 1993). The final product ranges from 0 to 1. A value of
more than 0.50 indicates that the state’s military capability is superior to that of
its opponent, while a value of less than 0.50 indicates military inferiority.
Shared Alliance Ties. This dummy variable takes the value of 1 when the two
states in the dyad share a defense pact, neutrality pact, or an entente; otherwise
the value is 0. This variable is taken from the Correlates of War (COW) 2 Formal
Alliances Version 3.03 (Gibler and Sarkees 2004).
Contiguity, Distance, and Major Power. If the two states in a dyad share a
boundary on land or are separated by less than 150 miles of water, either directly
or through their colonies or other dependencies, the variable contiguity is coded 1;
otherwise, it is coded 0. The variable distance is the natural logarithm of the great
circle distance between the two states in a dyad. Finally, the variable major power
is coded as 1 if at least one of the states in a dyad is a major power identified by the
COW project. The United States, France, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union,
and China qualify as major powers for the entire time period of my analysis, while
Germany and Japan gained major power status in 1992. The data for all three vari-
ables are taken from EUGene Version 2.30 (Bennett and Stam 2000a).
Peace Year, Spline1, Spline2, and Spline3. To control for temporal dependencies
in dyads, I constructed the variables for the length and three natural cubic splines
associated with non-eventual binary spells (Beck, Katz, and Tucker 1998).
Conflict Interaction Level. I apply the dyad’s conflict interaction level meas-
ured by Crescenzi and Enterline (2001); their measure ranges from –1 to +1 and
designates values close to –1 as strong enemies, the value of 0 as neutralities, and
values close to +1 as strong friendships.
Results and discussion

The results from Table 8.1 generally support all the hypotheses on the onset of
dyadic disputes in Northeast Asia. The democratic peace pillar of liberal peace
is strongly supported by the data. The level of democracy variable is negative,
as expected, and statistically significant at better than the 0.01 level in all mod-
els, meaning that democratic states are less likely to be involved in any dispute.
Hypothesis 2 predicts that the coefficient on the level of economic interdepend-
ence variable will be negative. This hypothesis implies that, if a state is economi-
cally interdependent with its opponent, it is less likely to be involved in a dis-
pute, presumably because it fears losing the benefits of trade. The results support
this assertion; the estimated coefficient for level of economic interdependence is
negative and statistically significant in all the models. Hypotheses 3 and 3.1 test
the arguments advanced by balance-of-power theorists (that the power parity of
states in a dyad leads to a decreased probability of a dispute) and by power-pre-
ponderance theorists (that power preponderance leads to a decreased probability
of dispute onset). The results from the logistic regressions (Table 8.1) strongly
support the arguments of power-preponderance theorists at the dyadic level. The
coefficient for the balance of power is negative and statistically significant, sug-
gesting that the more skewed the distribution of structural power in a dyad, the
less likely a militarized interstate dispute will be. It is clear from the analyses
that, when two states in a dyad share disproportionate power (one state’s power
is disproportionate to the other state’s power), they are less likely to be involved
in conflicts with each other, supporting the power-preponderance-leads-to-peace
argument. As power-preponderance theorists argue, the weaker state will not try
to fight with the stronger state because it will certainly lose, and therefore the
stronger state no longer needs to become involved in a fight to get what it wants.
Table 8.1 Analysis of dyadic dispute onset: on the conditions for peace in the region
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
NE Asia NE Asia Asia Asia
1816–2004 1950–2004 1816–2004 1950–2004
Variables
Level of democracy lower –0.0579** –0.0908*** –0.0647*** –0.0704***
(0.0192) (0.0265) (0.0125) (0.0138)
Level of democracy higher 0.0229+ 0.0393* 0.0454*** 0.0519***
(0.0152) (0.0189) (0.0088) (0.0092)
Level of economic –23.9413+ –58.2146* –30.4756** –26.3862*
interdependence (17.0646) (32.3623) (11.8070) (13.8084)
Balance of power –0.3369*** –0.4339*** –0.2996*** –0.2787***
(0.0762) (0.0970) (0.0370) (0.0396)
Shared alliance ties –0.2567 –0.0659 –0.2985+ –0.3128+
(0.3223) (0.4030) (0.2117) (0.2320)
Contiguity 0.7256 0.7086** 1.5144*** 1.5785***
(0.1882) (0.2428) (0.1257) (0.1401)
Distance –0.0216 0.0212 –0.5039*** –0.5404***
(0.1090) (0.1402) (0.0712) (0.0785)
Major power 0.0261 –0.0506 1.7218*** 1.7010***
(0.3102) (0.3691) (0.1325) (0.1424)
Peace year –0.6435*** –0.6593*** –0.5137*** –0.5144***
(0.0753) (0.0932) (0.0365) (0.0393)
Spline 1 –0.0096*** –0.0096*** –0.0048*** –0.0046***
(0.0021) (0.0027) (0.0006) (0.0007)
Spline 2 0.0027 0.0028** 0.0021*** 0.0020***
(0.0009) (0.0011) (0.0003) (0.0004)
Spline 3 0.0000*** –0.0001*** –0.0002*** –0.0002**
(0.0002) (0.0002) (0.0001) (0.0001)
Conflict interaction level 0.7763+ 0.5389 –0.5335* –0.8399**
(0.5564) (0.6909) (0.3224) (0.3297)
Constant –0.2588 –0.5104 0.9425* 1.0728*
(0.8167) (1.0060) (0.5429) (0.5961)
LR chi 552.73*** 520.11*** 2054.02*** 1939.69***
N 2,352 1,714 20,809 19,706
Note:Robust standard errors appear in parentheses below the coefficient estimates.*p<=0.10, *p<=0.05,
**p<=0.01, ***p<=0.001.
152 Hyung Min Kim
Hypothesis 4 predicts that the coefficient on shared alliance ties will be nega-
tive. The results support this hypothesis; the coefficient on the variable is nega-
tive, as expected, and statistically significant, supporting the realist argument that
allies are less likely to be involved in a dispute when they fear losing the security
benefit of the alliance. The regression analysis also supports hypotheses 5, 6, and
7, thus sustaining the realists’ arguments that: 1) the potential for international
violence exists when the actor can reach its adversary with military force; and 2)
major powers have been engaged in more international disputes, as compared to
other states, based on their wider-ranging interests. Hypothesis 5 predicts that a
shared common border decreases the probability of a dispute. As expected, the
coefficient on contiguity is positive and statistically significant at a better than
0.01 level. Hypothesis 6 argues that the geographic distance decreases the prob-
ability of the onset of a dispute. Again, as expected, the coefficient of distance is
negative and statistically significant. Hypothesis 7 predicts that, when one of the
two states in a dyad is a major power, the probability of a dispute is increased. As
expected, the major power estimated coefficient is positive and statistically sig-
nificant. Finally, the results confirm Hypothesis 8, asserting that the past interstate
conflict level affects the current interstate conflict level; thus the coefficient on
conflict interaction level is negative and statistically significant.
The results from the dyadic analyses on the causes of conflicts and peace in
Northeast Asia are quite clear. The results support the three main theories of conflict
in the field of international relations: first, the argument based on the democratic
peace theory that increased levels of democracy in the region decrease the prob-
ability of the onset of dispute; second, the argument from the commercial peace
theory that increased levels of economic interdependence decrease the probability
of the onset of dispute; and finally, the argument from the power preponderance
theory that preponderance of power decreases the probability of disputes.
This set of results should suggest some policy implications for peaceful rela-
tionships among countries in the region concerning the promotion of democracy
and the expansion of economic interdependence. When the countries in North-
east Asia become fully democratic and/or freely trade with each other, peace-
ful relationships in the region will be guaranteed. When we argue that one of
the most important preconditions for establishing permanent multilateral security
arrangements in the region should be the peaceful relationship among the regional
countries, policies toward promoting democracy and expanding economic inter-
dependence should be prescribed and encouraged, with efforts toward establish-
ing such arrangements in the region.
Korea’s interests and strategies: network power, economic

interdependence, and the Six-Party Talks
Peace and cooperation in the region

As mentioned previously, the multivariate analyses of peace and conflicts in the
region have suggested the applicability of democratic peace theory, commercial
peace theory, and power preponderance theory. In other words, when the major-
ity of countries become democratic, countries become economically interdepend-
ent, and a preponderance of power among regional countries is achieved, regional
peace would be maintained and could serve as a precondition toward multilateral
security arrangements. Based on this set of results, what should Korea’s strategies
be regarding peaceful relationships among regional countries in particular, and
what should it do to establish and maintain multilateral regional security archi-
tectures in general? In this section, I focus primarily on two elements of the IR
theories that were examined and supported in the multivariate analyses: accu-
mulating power (especially network power) and promoting regional economic
interdependence.
First, during his administration, Korean President Roh Moo-hyun established

the Presidential Commission on Northeast Asian Cooperation and promoted its
Northeast Asia cooperation initiative based on the idea that South Korea can play
the role of balancer in mediating the Sino-Japanese rivalry and other security
issues in Northeast Asia. This argument is based on balance of power theory.
However, the idea that South Korea can play a balancing role in mediating secu-
rity issues in Northeast Asia, as Great Britain did in Europe during the nineteenth
century, has been heavily criticized in both policy and academic arenas. One of
the most credible criticisms has been that, unlike nineteenth-century Great Britain
in Europe, South Korea does not possess the level of power required to mediate
regional security issues and to act as a true regional balancer. Figure 8.1 provides
the evidence supporting this criticism. In Figure 8.1, I compare Great Britain’s
.4
United Kingdom
South Korea
United Kingdom/South Korea
.3
.2
.1
0
1800 1850 1900 1950 2000
Year
Figure 8.1 Comparing Korea’s regional power share to Great Britain’s regional power
share
154 Hyung Min Kim
regional power share in Europe (during the nineteenth century) to South Korea’s
regional power share in Asia (during the twentieth century). As this figure shows,
Great Britain held 20–35 percent of the power in Europe throughout the nine-
teenth century, whereas South Korea’s power share in Asia during the second half
of the twentieth century has hovered around 5 percent. As critics have argued,
such evidence suggests that South Korea does not have enough power to mediate
security issues in Northeast Asia.
In light of this, what would be Korea’s alternative strategies? Scholars argue
that, in this period of globalization, network power, including non-material power,
may become more important than material power (see the Appendix for a brief
discussion on the conceptualization and measurement of national power from the
network perspective).9 Figure 8.2 shows South Korea’s power share in the region
in terms of two aspects of network power (material and non-material network
power). As this figure shows, from this perspective the power share of South
Korea, especially during the beginning of the 1990s, expanded to 10–15 percent.
South Korea’s non-material network power (using such data as foreign student
exchanges, diplomatic exchanges, and telecommunication exchanges) expands its
total share of regional power well beyond its purely material share. Based on this
observation, South Korea might be better advised to promote policies that would
enable it to acquire greater non-material power in the region. In other words,
South Korea has a greater chance to play the role of balancer in mediating security
issues in Northeast Asia and establishing permanent regional multilateral secu-
rity arrangements if it becomes more realistic and seeks to be a power balancer
through non-material network power.
.15
s_power/h_power
.1
.05
s_power
h_power
0
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Year
Figure 8.2 Korea’s network power share in the region
Second, as the results from the multivariate analyses show, economic interde-
pendence among countries promotes regional peace. As Oneal and Russett (1997:
267) point out, this commercial peace theory has its origins in classical litera-
ture. Immanuel Kant argued in Perpetual Peace (1991 [1795]) that “peace can
be built on a tripod of complementary influences: republican constitutions (i.e.,
representative democracy), international law and organization, and ‘cosmopolitan
law’ (economic interdependence)” (Oneal and Russett, 1997: 268). According to
Kant, the close transnational ties created by economic interdependence encourage
accommodation rather than conflict among states.
[T]he spirit of commerce sooner or later takes hold of every people, and it
cannot exist side by side with war. . . . Thus states find themselves compelled
to promote the noble cause of peace, though not exactly from motives of
morality. And wherever in the world there is a threat of war breaking out, they
will try to prevent it by mediation, just as if they had entered into a permanent
league for this purpose.
(Kant 1795: 144)
As Figure 8.3 shows, the economic interdependence among countries in the

region has increased continuously since 1950. Korea’s economic interdepend-
ence with other countries in the region has also increased significantly during this
period (Figure 8.4). Based on this evidence, the preconditions toward peaceful
relationships in the region are being realized and, as a result, there is promise
4.0
3.5
depend
3.0
2.5
2.0
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Year
Figure 8.3 Increased economic interdependence in the region
156 Hyung Min Kim
3.0
2.5
depend
2.0
1.5
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Year
Figure 8.4 Korea’s economic interdependence in the region
for the future establishment of security arrangements in the region, due in part to
the increasing economic interdependence among the relevant actors in the region.
Korea’s interests and strategies in this regard should be also quite clear (that they
lie in promoting and expanding economic interdependence with other regional
countries). As the unconditional “Interdependence Promotes Peace” proposition
argues, economic interdependence lowers the likelihood of war by increasing the
value of trade over the alternative of aggression—interdependent states would
rather trade than invade (Copeland 1996). The economically interdependent state
would not try to initiate conflict with its trade partners, for fear of losing its gains
from trade (Polachek 1980).
The Six-Party Talks
Efforts to establish security arrangements in the region

The idea of establishing security arrangements in the region is not new. For exam-
ple, in 1985, 1986, and 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev, then-General Secretary of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, proposed expanded regional cooperation
on the model of the Council for Security Cooperation in Europe. In 1990, Gareth
Evans, Foreign Minister of Australia, and in 1991, Joe Clark, Minister of External
Affairs in Canada, proposed regional security frameworks, such as the Conference
on Security and Cooperation in Asia and the North Pacific Cooperative Security
Dialogue. In 1991, then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker advocated the estab-
lishment of a two-plus-four mechanism for dealing with Korean tensions. In 1993,
Susan Shirk established the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue with financial
support from the U.S. government, which would support discussions aimed at
fostering an enhanced regional security community.
Korean governments have also introduced multilateral security proposals to
coordinate security interests in the region. In a speech to the United Nations in
1988, President Roh Tae-woo proposed a six-party Consultative Conference for
Peace in Northeast Asia. President Kim Young-sam supported taking steps toward
multilateral cooperation to deal with North Korea and as a result proposed the
Northeast Asia Security Dialogue. President Kim Dae-jung promoted the East
Asia Vision Group and became an active advocate of multilateral cooperation to
address regional security issues. President Roh Moo-hyun, based on his idea that
South Korea could play the role of balancer discussed above, established the Pres-
idential Commission on Northeast Asian Cooperation and promoted its Northeast
Asia cooperation initiative.
Toward a multilateral security regime in the region

Eventually, the issues on this topic and the process of the Six-Party Talks in dealing
with the nuclear issues of North Korea would become inseparable. In other words,
the future of multilateral security arrangements in the region is closely linked to the
process of the Six-Party Talks for management of North Korean nuclear issues.
When North Korea threatened to pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) in 1993, the United States initiated a bilateral dialogue with the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), which resulted in the estab-
lishment of a multilateral consortium (the Korean Peninsula Energy Develop-
ment Organization [KEDO]) to implement the terms of the deal. In the late
1990s, four-party talks (consisting of the United States, North and South Korea,
and China) were established to promote confidence-building measures as well
as to work towards creating a peace regime on the peninsula. Under the weight
of the second North Korean nuclear crisis and as a result of North Korea’s with-
drawal from the NPT, the Six-Party Talks were established in 2003 to address
the security challenges posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons pursuits, with
China taking the lead role as host and mediator of the process. Six rounds of
talks took place between 2003 and 2007. It has been argued that the Six-Party
Talks laid the foundations for the further development of a permanent multilat-
eral security mechanism in Northeast Asia. Below is a summary of the major
outcomes of the various meetings:
1st round (27–29 August 2003). No specific objectives were achieved, but partici-
pants agreed upon a future round of talks.
2nd round (25–28 February 2004). A chairman’s statement announced seven arti-
cles, including denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and peaceful coexist-
ence of participating states, stressing the use of mutually coordinated measures to
resolve crises.
158 Hyung Min Kim
3rd round (23–26 June 2004). A chairman’s statement announced eight arti-
cles, including reconfirmation of the commitment to denuclearizing the Korean
peninsula.
4th round (1st phase, 26 July–7 August 2005; 2nd phase, 13–19 September 2005).
A joint statement was issued agreeing to six main articles.
5th round (1st phase, 9–11 November 2005; 2nd phase, 18–22 December 2006;
3rd phase, 8–13 February 2007). A joint statement was issued with six points
analogous to those in the 2005 statement.
6th round (1st phase, 19–22 March 2007, 18–20 July 2007; 2nd phase, 27–30 Sep-
tember 2007). The parties restated their commitment to the joint statements from
19 September 2005 and 13 February 2007 and undertook to fulfill their respective
obligations under those agreements.
These six rounds of talks regarding the North Korean nuclear issues and the
future multilateral security arrangements in Northeast Asia resulted in agreements
regarding the two joint statements on 19 September 2005 and 13 February 2007.
In the joint statement of 19 September 2005, the parties agreed to:
1. Unanimously reaffirm that the goal of the Six-Party Talks is the verifiable
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner.
2. Abide by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and
recognized norms of international relations.
3. Promote economic cooperation in the fields of energy, trade, and investment
bilaterally and/or multilaterally.
4. Commit to joint efforts for lasting peace and stability in Northeast Asia. The
directly related parties will negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean
Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum. The six parties agreed to explore
ways and means to promote security cooperation in Northeast Asia.
5. Take coordinated steps to implement the aforementioned consensus in a
phased manner in line with the principle of “commitment for commitment,
action for action.”
6. Hold the fifth round of the Six-Party Talks in Beijing in early November 2005
at a date to be determined through consultations.
On 13 February 2007, the parties agreed to another six articles that are essentially
the same as those made in the 2005 statement. Among other things, the parties
agreed to establish the following working groups (WG) in order to begin to carry
out the full implementation of the joint statement: 1) Denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula, 2) Normalization of DPRK–US relations, 3) Normalization of DPRK–
Japan relations, 4) Economy and Energy Cooperation, and 5) Northeast Asia Peace
and Security Mechanism. The WGs would discuss and formulate specific plans
for the implementation of the joint statement in their respective areas. In principle,
progress in one WG would not affect the progress of other WGs. Plans made by the
five WGs would be implemented as a whole in a coordinated manner.
The uncertain future of the Six-Party Talks
On 13 April 2009, the UN Security Council unanimously agreed to condemn North
Korea over its failed satellite launch on 5 April. In response, on 14 April, North
Korea announced that it “will never again take part in such [six-party] talks and
will not be bound by any agreement reached at the talks.” On 25 May 2009, North
Korea detonated a nuclear device underground, and the test was condemned by
the UN, the other five members of the Six-Party Talks, and many other countries
worldwide. Amidst the stalemate of the Six-Party Talks, the future of dealing with
North Korean nuclear issues and, more generally, of multilateral security arrange-
ments in Northeast Asia (including the development of the Northeast Asia Peace
and Security Mechanism agreed to on 13 February 2007) came into question.

In the Korea–US summit on 16 June 2009 in Washington, DC, Korean Presi-
dent Lee Myung-bak and US President Barack Obama referred to North Korea’s
long-range rocket launch and nuclear test as an exhibition of provocative acts that
harmed the peace and stability of Northeast Asia. They agreed on the need for a
tough and unified response by the international community. In an effort to force
North Korea back to the negotiating table, the two leaders sought to strengthen
cooperation among the five nations of the Six-Party Talks, including China, Japan,
and Russia. Indeed, President Lee proposed five-party talks. In an interview with
the Wall Street Journal prior to his summit, he said, “The North Koreans have
gained, or bought, a lot of time through the six-party-talks framework to pursue
their own agenda. I think it’s important now, at this critical point in time, for us
not to repeat any past mistakes.” Lee continued that it was “very important for the
remaining five countries—excluding North Korea—to come to an agreement on
the way forward.” The official positions of the United States and Japan seemed
unclear in response to the proposal of five-party talks; however, Japan seemed in
favor of the idea of considering its previous position (on 12 May 2005, Japan was
considering five-party nuclear talks without North Korea if the communist nation
continued its boycott of negotiations, according to then foreign minister Nobutaka
Machimura).
However, China and Russia have remained opposed to convening five-party
talks that would appear to exclude the North and thereby rejecting the hardline
moves by Lee and the Republic of Korea (ROK). In Moscow on 17 June 2009,
Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev urged an
early resumption of the Six-Party Talks, expressing hope that parties to the talks
could fulfill their respective obligations stipulated in the 2005 joint statement.
They added that the parties concerned should be committed to addressing disputes
by peaceful means through dialogue and consultation and to establishing multilat-
eral mechanisms in order to maintain and consolidate regional peace and security.
Unfortunately, in spite of the Korea–US summit on 18 November 2009 in Seoul
and the US envoy’s visit to North Korea on 8–10 December 2009, the resump-
tion of the Six-Party Talks and Korea’s strategies with relation to the issue seem
indeterminate. Since then, and especially after North Korea’s attack on the South
Korean navy ship Cheonan on 26 March 2010 and the subsequent North Korean
160 Hyung Min Kim
shelling of Yeongpyeong Island in November 2010, the stalemate of the Six-Party
Talks has continued, despite the potential that the talks might hold for creating
peaceful security arrangements in the region. Even after the North Korean attack,
there have been some discussions by the relevant actors regarding the resumption
of the talks; but their future is still uncertain and, more importantly, even if they
are resumed, the likelihood that they will form the basis for longstanding regional
security arrangements looks relatively dim.
Conclusion
In response to the situation on the Korean Peninsula (the stalemate of the Six-
Party Talks and, more generally, the silence regarding any permanent multilat-
eral security arrangement in the region), this chapter tackled the emerging issues
on the multilateral security arrangements in the region. One of the preconditions
for establishing such a regional framework is peaceful relationships among the
regional countries that are not simply the result of regional security arrangements,
but are in fact the most important precondition for such arrangements in the first
place. Based on this argument, this chapter has examined the causes of conflicts
and peace in Northeast Asia through multivariate analyses of the determinants of
militarized conflicts in the region. These multivariate analyses have demonstrated
the applicability of three main IR theories: democratic peace theory, commercial
peace theory, and power preponderance theory. When the majority of countries
become democratic, when countries become economically interdependent, and
when the power preponderance among regional countries is achieved, regional
peace is advanced and serves as the precondition that makes enhanced multilateral
security arrangements more likely.
The combination of the empirical analyses of the conditions for the regional
peace and the ambiguous future of Six-Party Talks as the frameworks for the
regional multilateral security arrangements raises the question of what strategy
Korea should pursue on the issues. I have argued that plausible answers to Korea’s
national strategies include the expansion of non-material network power and the
promotion of economic interdependence. Such measures were pursued during the
administration of Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, when he established the Presi-
dential Commission on Northeast Asian Cooperation and promoted its Northeast
Asia cooperation initiative based on the idea that South Korea could play the role
of balancer in mediating Sino-Japanese rivalry and other security issues in North-
east Asia. South Korea might be better suited, I argue, to promote policies toward
acquiring non-material network power in the region. In other words, the idea of
South Korea playing the role of balancer in mediating security issues in Northeast
Asia and in establishing any permanent regional multilateral security arrange-
ments becomes more realistic when the ROK relies more heavily on non-material
network power to become a power balancer. Second, one of the important IR theo-
ries argues that the close transnational ties created by economic interdependence
encourage accommodation rather than conflict among states, and the evidence
in this chapter shows that the economic interdependence among the regional
countries and Korea’s economic interdependence with other regional countries
have increased significantly since 1950. Korea’s interests and strategies for pro-
moting and expanding economic interdependence with other regional countries
might advance peaceful relationships in the region and help to establish security
arrangements in the region. There has been a change by the current Korean Lee
government from its two predecessors, the Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Dae-jung
governments, as a result of President Lee’s presumed belief that economics and
security have to be linked in a more quid pro quo method that was done before.
Nevertheless, I argue that we have to remember the core of the classical “lib-
eralist” argument that close transnational ties created by economic interdepend-
ence encourage accommodation rather than conflict among states. Continuing and
promoting economic interdependence with countries, including China and North

Korea, without many preconditions will provide the basis for peaceful relation-
ships among regional countries, as was demonstrated by the empirical analyses
in the first section of this chapter. Ultimately this can lead to permanent security
arrangements in Northeast Asia.
Appendix: Conceptualizing and measuring power from the

network perspective
A state does not have power in isolation from others (without considering its linked
interactions to others) or from the broader structure of the global system (without
considering its structural positions in the system). Rather, a state has power as
a consequence of its interactive relations with other states in the system and its
structural positions in the network of relations (Hanneman and Riddle 2001). This
power concept from the social network perspective asserts that an individual state
obtains power from its location within established networks of international rela-
tions. A network power concept asserts that an individual state’s power arises
from its positions in different interaction networks of international relations. If
it is well positioned or occupies a relatively advantageous position in networks,
then it will be influential. This way of conceptualizing a state’s power accords
with treatments of social networks theorists who believe that the characteristics of
social units arise from structural or relational processes played out among all the
units within the network (Hanneman and Riddle 2001; Degenne and Forsé 1999;
Wasserman and Faust 1994; Scott 2000; Knoke and Laumann 1982; Freeman
1978/79; Borgatti and Everett 1999; Freeman, Borgatti, and White 1991; Borgatti,
Everett, and Freeman 2002; Wellman 1988).
Adopting the social network concept, this chapter focuses on two broad dimen-
sions of the international system to depict national power (in channels of com-
munication exchanges and of resource transfers): 1) how a state is connected or
interacts with other states through diplomatic channels (how diplomatic missions
are exchanged/transferred between states), academic channels (how foreign stu-
dents are exchanged/transferred between states), and telecommunication channels
(how international telephone messages are exchanged/transferred between states);
and 2) how a state is connected or interacts with other states in arms channels
162 Hyung Min Kim
(how arms are transferred or exchanged between states), trade channels (how for-
eign goods and services are transferred or exchanged between states), and mon-
etary channels (how international monetary assistance is transferred or exchanged
between states).
First, two widely used data sets of diplomatic exchanges among states are used
in this chapter to identify international communication flows (the diplomatic
channels of international communication exchanges): Singer and Small’s (1991)
“Diplomatic Missions Received by Each International System Member (ICPSR
5025)” and “Diplomatic Exchange Data (ICPSR 5026).” The two data sets record
the presence or absence of a diplomatic mission and, if present, the number and
rank of missions sent or received (at five-year intervals) among states in the
international system. This chapter also considers data from the United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s Statistical Yearbook (from
various years) to identify another aspect of international communication flows.
This source recodes the yearly number of foreign students exchanged by their
countries of origin. Finally, this chapter uses two widely used data sets of telecom-
munication exchanges to identify the other aspect of international communica-
tion flows: international telecommunications data from the ITU’s Yearbook of
Statistics (various years) and Direction of Traffic (various years). These sources
recode the yearly incoming/outgoing international telephone traffic in minutes by
country of origin.
This chapter considers data from the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute (SIPRI) to identify international resource flows. The SIPRI Arms
Transfers Database contains information on all transfers of seven categories
of major conventional weapons. This source covers both the sales of weapons
(including manufacturing licenses) and other forms of weapon supplies such
as gifts and aid. I also use data from Gleditsch (2002, 2004) to identify another
aspect of international resource flows. The Expanded Trade and GDP Data
version 4.1 by Gleditsch (2004) discusses total exports and imports among
states in the system in millions of current US dollars. Finally, the international
assistance data from the OECD’s International Development Statistics: Geo-
graphical Distribution of Financial Flows to Aid Recipients provides the vol-
ume, origin, and types of aid and other resource flows for more than 180 coun-
tries in the system.
Notes
1 For more detailed discussion on dyadic conflict model setups, see Vasquez 1993,
Bremer 1992 and 1993, and Gartzke et al. 2006.
2 The dyadic democratic peace argument has received empirical support in Maoz and
Russett 1993 and Rousseau et al. 1996. Authors finding support for the monadic
democratic peace argument include Rousseau 2005 and Russett and Oneal 2001.
3 The convention of empirical dyadic conflict study is that the likelihood of conflict
depends on how strong the constraints are on the less constrained state in a dyad (the
“weak link in the chain of peaceful dyadic relations” in Dixon 1994), primarily because
this state is the principal threat to peace.
4 For an extensive review of this theory and literature, see Barbieri and Schneider 1999,
Gartzke, Li, and Boehmer 2001, Mansfield and Pollins 2001 and 2003, McMillan 1997,
Reuveny 2000, and Schneider, Barbieri, and Gleditsch 2003.
5 See Pevehouse 2004 for a general discussion on the measurement of the dependent
variable, international conflict. He argues that widely used conflict data sets such as
MID code all hostilities, but only report the highest level of hostility in the dispute
and ignore the cooperative behavior among states. See Kadera (2001: 36–40) for a
discussion on the cooperation–conflict continuum (treating cooperation and conflict as
separate dimensions versus as opposite sides of one dimension).
6 Oneal and Russett also argued that more than half of all disputes involve change of the
level of force over the course of the dispute or a new dispute that arises before the first
has concluded (2001: 95, n 2).
7 Please also see Bennett and Stam (2000b, 2004) for general discussion on including
versus excluding ongoing disputes.

8 Four strengths of this operationalization stand out. First, the fact that the operationalization
has been used extensively in the literature facilitates comparisons with previous research.
Second, using the ratio of trade to the size of the economy allows the measure to capture
the importance of trade to the economy. Third, the operationalization captures the broad
connectedness that the two states in a dyad have with the world market. Fourth, the
operationalization provides a useful measure of sensitivity interdependence: it captures
how the economies of trade partners are intertwined.
9 Please see Nye 2005 for the related discussions of soft and hard power.
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9 Leadership and commitment
The United States, its allies, and
emerging security institutions in
Northeast Asia
Carol Atkinson and Giacomo Chiozza
Introduction
On 20 April 2009, the German car manufacturer Porsche unveiled to the public
the Panamera, the latest model in its fleet of luxury sports cars. For car aficionados
the world over, this was a much anticipated event. The new car, a four-door sedan,
joined a glorious series of iconic models by Porsche that for decades have symbol-
ized excellence in style, technology, and glamour. But even for scholars of world
politics, the event might count as a harbinger of things to come. To launch the car,
Porsche did not choose Berlin, the German capital city, or Frankfurt, home of the
world’s largest motor show, or Bel Air, California, where large numbers of Pana-
meras will be garaged, let alone Detroit, the ailing car capital in the United States
that was bailed out by the US government that same year.1 It chose the 13th Auto
Show in Shanghai, a backwater exhibition only twenty years ago but now one
of the world’s most influential automobile shows. Even more telling is the style
of the Panamera car itself. Porsche engineers and stylists designed an elongated
shape that particularly appeals to the taste of Asian drivers. If we were looking for
an example of the growing importance of Asian markets, this is certainly it. Not
only is China becoming the world’s top car market, but also the traditional trend
of making what appeals to Americans into a global consumer preference seems
to be reversed in the Panamera case. “Marketers did such a fine job of selling the
American way of life in recent decades that cigarettes are still associated with
cowboys,” writes John Gapper (2009) of the Financial Times, “Now they must
persuade us all that long Asian cars, not large American SUVs, are the best things
to drive.”
This is an anecdote about one firm in a specific industry, but its symbolic impact
should not be underestimated. Only ten years ago a global brand such as Porsche
would not have contemplated staging the debut of a new product in the People’s
Republic of China. The change of perspective that Porsche’s choice underscores is
an indication of what Kishore Mahbubani (2008), formerly Singapore’s ambassa-
dor to the United Nations, calls the “irresistible shift of global power to the East.”
This transformation—the rise of Asia—took place within an institutional archi-
tecture that was created by the United States after World War II (Katzenstein
2005). That system, usually referred to as the hub-and-spoke system, placed the
168 Carol Atkinson and Giacomo Chiozza
United States at the center of a series of security and economic arrangements
that indirectly connected the non-communist countries in the region (Fukuyama
2008). That structure served the United States and the region well. It established
the United States as the leading power in the region; it created the conditions for
the development, modernization, and democratization of East Asia; and it pro-
vided mutual reassurances against the security concerns that Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan, and the United States have with each other (Ikenberry 2008). Even the
People’s Republic of China, formally an outsider in the US hub-and-spoke sys-
tem, viewed it as a security guarantee against Japan and a positive contribution to
regional stability.
Despite all the contributions to peace, stability, and prosperity that it can claim
for itself, the order that the United States created in East Asia is, surprisingly,
denounced as inadequate in many quarters. Allegedly, it is inadequate for a Japan
that aspires to be a “normal” country with control over its foreign policy and use
of defense forces; it is inadequate for a Korea that is still suffering from the sepa-
ration imposed at the 38th parallel; it is inadequate for Taiwan, a country caught
in limbo, thriving and independent but formally deprived of the privileges of sov-
ereignty and uncertain of how to reconnect with mainland China; it is inadequate
for the People’s Republic of China, a continent-sized country, an ancient civiliza-
tion, a large market, and the touted new hegemon of the twenty-first century and
beyond. The shifts in the global balance of power that have taken place in Asia in
the last thirty years put into question the enduring relevance of the security archi-
tecture the United States had established in the region.
The features of a new emerging order, however, are as uncertain as they are
contested. They are, as Lee and Pempel aptly write in the introduction to this
volume, a “work in progress.” Scholars, experts, and policymakers elaborate sce-
narios and make predictions about the future of Asia, and of world politics, where
the analysis of historical regularities and theories of world politics are put to use
to imagine what the future might entail. But to underscore the difficulty of the task
and the magnitude of the political change underway in Northeast Asia, more than
history or theory, what shapes predictions and scenarios is the personal orienta-
tion of the analysts as pessimists or optimists (Friedberg 2005). The former, who
see a danger in every opportunity, are drawn to imagine a pattern of conflict and
instability where the welfare and security gains of the previous order are bound to
vanish in a tragic re-run of the 1930s or of 1914; the latter, who see an opportu-
nity in every danger, envision a peaceful evolution of current arrangements under
the steady guide of enlightened leaders that would usher in a long era of human
prosperity.
Much is clearly at stake both politically and intellectually. In this chapter, we
contribute to this discussion by assessing the basis for security cooperation in
Northeast Asia from the perspective of the United States. We evaluate how the
United States—its public and its elites—envisions its role in Northeast Asia, the
strategies it elaborates to enhance US strategic interests, and how those strategies
would resonate with the publics in the United States and in the region. We base
our evaluation on an analysis of the security documents that define US global
Leadership and commitment 169
approaches to its national security as well as the speeches of key US decision
makers and the proposals for reform debated in the defense policy community.
We examine national strategy statements by the governments in the region to add
insight. It is exactly in times like the current ones, when a power transition might
be taking place, that grand strategy documents and declarations become important.
“When operating in unfamiliar terrain,” Daniel Drezner (2011) writes, “officials
in charge of making and executing national policy can infer what to do from their
government’s strategy documents. Actors abroad can also develop expectations
about the future from them. In these circumstances, foreign governments will care
about how much a country’s proposed response to uncertainty seeks to revise or
reinforce the status quo.”
On the one hand, the US–centric system in Northeast Asia might indeed be
inadequate because the United States, suffering from the involvement in three
wars (Afghanistan, Iraq and al-Qaeda), an over-extended global presence, and a
faltering economy, may no longer have the stamina and resources to lead. Mul-
tilateral approaches where the United States asks others to take on some of the
burden in the region have begun to emerge. On the other hand, when compared
to plausible alternatives, the US-centric security architecture may still remain the
most viable option, given the enduring US commitment to Asia, the historical
legacy of the countries in the region, and their reactions to the growing power of
China. This is the central issue that our chapter will wrestle with.
We structure our assessment around two major themes. First, we provide an
overview of attitudes towards international cooperation among the US public.
What are the attitudes of US society and polity towards Northeast Asia, and
world politics in general? Second, we assess how these attitudes influence the
nature and future of military cooperation in Northeast Asia as part of overall US
national security objectives and planning. We argue that the security foundations
that have enabled the rise of Asia owe so large a debt to US military power that
this foundation is often taken for granted. With its military presence, the United
States has reassured, deterred, contained, and patrolled the high seas over which
the Asian economic miracle sailed. As Carla Norrlof (2010: 190) has illustrated,
this is exactly the kind of stabilizing function, from which everyone benefits, that
makes US power acceptable and welcome. We conclude that, despite an apparent
detachment from assertive international political agendas among the US publics,
the United States continues to envision a prominent role of leadership in Northeast
Asia through its own bilateral and military security commitments in the region,
and it is likely to remain the cornerstone of Northeast Asia’s security architecture
for the foreseeable future.
US public attitudes towards foreign policy and Northeast Asia

When the flag of the Soviet Union was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time
on 25 December 1991, an international system and a fierce rivalry came to an end.
The United States had emerged victorious in the geopolitical and ideological con-
test of the Cold War. For the second time in a century, the words that Harold Laski
(1947) had used to describe the United States in 1947 rang true: “America best
rides the world like a colossus; neither Rome at the height of its power nor Great
Britain in the period of its economic supremacy enjoyed an influence so direct, so
profound, or so pervasive.” Francis Fukuyama (1989: 4) celebrated those extraor-
dinary events by proclaiming that we had reached the “the end point of man-
kind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of western liberal democracy
as the final form of human government.” It was a “unipolar moment,” of which
the United States should take advantage, “unashamedly laying down the rules of
world order and being prepared to enforce them” (Krauthammer 1990/91: 33).
Combining extraordinary military and economic power with a belief that it was
sailing with the wind of history at its back, the United States took on the challenge
of shaping the character of world order after victory for the long haul, as theory
and history tell us it should (Ikenberry 2001). The expansion of democracy abroad
remained a central tenet of US national security strategy for all the post-Cold War
presidents, from George H.W. Bush to Barack H. Obama. Under the belief that
“without our leadership and engagement, threats would multiply and our opportu-
nities would narrow,” (Clinton 1998: 2) the United States exercised its leadership
and power, acting as—Madeleine Albright would declare—the “indispensable
nation.” US military interventions in Haiti in 1994, in Bosnia in 1995, in Kosovo
in 1999, as well as the financial intervention in the Asian financial crisis of 1997
bear witness to this role. Ominously, the absence of US leadership led to failure in
Somalia in 1993 and to a humanitarian catastrophe of unimaginable proportions
in Rwanda in 1995.
It was an expansive international agenda that gave the United States much clout
and pre-eminence, but that also led to involvement in major wars, military inter-
ventions, enormous defense budgets, and extended attempts at nation building. To
add to the challenge, since 2009 the United States has been in the process of recov-
ering from a financial and economic crisis of such proportions that the Financial
Times ran a series on the future of capitalism, as if that future was in question.2
Scholars sense that we might be at a critical juncture in history and proffer advice
to reshape and revitalize US commitments in the world and in Northeast Asia in
particular. The model of Europe in the late 1940s is oftentimes invoked both as an
aspiration and as an indication of the stakes involved (Ikenberry 2008: 217).
US elites are still strongly committed to a leadership role in the world. The
major candidates in the 2008 US presidential electoral campaign shared that posi-
tion, while disagreeing on nearly everything else. Voices arguing for retrench-
ment, still rare in mainstream political discourse in the United States, are becom-
ing more visible in policy circles (Posen 2007) as well as in electoral politics
(Mead 2011).
The US public appears less optimistic about the benefits that might accrue from
playing a leadership role. Rather, the US public asks for less international engage-
ment and greater attention to domestic problems. In 2008, the Chicago Coun-
cil on Global Affairs (2009) found that 36 percent of Americans believed that
the United States should stay out of world affairs. No larger percentage had ever
been recorded since 1947. This was not an isolated event. Surveys from the Pew
Research Center provide further confirmation of an undercurrent of isolationist
sentiments in the US public.
In 2009, for example, 49 percent of the US public stated that the United States
should “mind its own business internationally and let others get along the best
way they can on their own.” At the same time, 44 percent of the US public also
believed that “Since the US is the most powerful nation in the world, we should go
our own way in international matters, not worrying too much about whether other
countries agree with us or not” (Pew Research Center 2009: 12). As we illustrate
in Figure 9.1, in both cases, no higher percentages of approval for these two indi-
cators of isolationist positions had been recorded since the mid-1960s.
Attitudes towards international trade are also revealing. In 2002, about three-
quarters of the US public approved of “the growing trade and business ties between
the United States and other countries.” Six years later, in 2008, that percentage had
dropped to 53 percent, the lowest among the publics of twenty-three countries
surveyed by the Pew Global Attitudes Survey (Pew Research Center 2008). In
2010, the approval of international trade was moving upwards, with 66 percent of
the US public in favor, but still one of the smallest percentages worldwide (Pew
Research Center 2010).
50
45
40
Percent
35
30
25
20
2000
1980
1960
1970
1990
2010
Year
We should go our own way

United States should mind its own business
Figure 9.1 Isolationism in the US public, 1964–2009

As we illustrate in Atkinson and Chiozza (2011), the “unenthusiastic” orienta-
tion towards international trade was evenly distributed across party affiliations: in
2008, about 41.4 percent of Republicans, 41.7 percent of Democrats, and 39.6 per-
cent of Independents had a negative view of international trade. Asian Americans
were more in favor than whites and blacks. Similarly, Americans with college edu-
cation and annual incomes above fifty thousand dollars had more positive views.
Despite the benefits that global trade has generated for the US economy and for
the lives of ordinary Americans, many of these ordinary Americans increasingly
see global economic engagement as harming their economic prospects rather than
providing increased economic opportunities.
While ordinary Americans are skeptical about international trade, popular atti-
tudes towards major trading partners in Northeast Asia are in general positive,
with the exception of the attitudes towards the People’s Republic of China. Figure
9.2 shows that in 2008 about 39 percent of the US public held a favorable opinion
of China, a percentage that is similar to the figure for Pakistan, a difficult ally in
100
80
60
40
20
0
China Chinese Japan India Pakistan ROK
people
Favorable
Unfavorable
NA
Figure 9.2 US popular attitudes towards other countries and people, 2008
the US campaign against terrorism as well as the war in Afghanistan. However, it
should be noted that while ordinary Americans expressed dislike for the country
and its ruling regime, about two-thirds of them held positive attitudes toward the
Chinese people themselves. Japan and India elicited high rates of approval, 70
percent and 64 percent respectively, while the rate of favorability towards the
Republic of Korea (ROK) was about 50 percent.
Despite an inward-looking mood towards the US international role, the US
public mostly relates in a positive manner towards Northeast Asia. The types of
attitudes that shaped the US public and informed US policies towards Asia in the
1950s are, thankfully, long gone (Hemmer and Katzenstein 2002). While keeping
a skeptical eye towards the new potential competitor in the twenty-first century,
China, the US public feels connected with the countries with which the United
States has bilateral alliances, Japan and the Republic of Korea, and with India, a
fellow democracy and a potential balancer against China.
In sum, the overall orientation of the US public is likely to create a challenge
for the US policymakers attempting to elaborate assertive strategies based on mul-
tilateral institutions and shared responsibilities. There does not seem to be a core
constituency for such an agenda. Yet, despite the lack of enthusiasm among ordi-
nary people in the United States for continued or expanded international engage-
ment, US policymakers have consistently seen engagement in Northeast Asia as
a cornerstone of US national security. Their bilateral commitment to US allies
Japan and the Republic of Korea runs deep and across both Republican and Demo-
cratic administrations. In the next section, we examine how recent US administra-
tions have viewed the role of the United States in Northeast Asia and their visions
for US leadership in the region. To do this we to turn to the policy documents that
define current US strategies and statements by US leaders to assess the status and
trajectory of security cooperation in Northeast Asia.
US engagement in Northeast Asia

Historically, the United States has seen itself as global leader and supported its
vision of a peaceful and democratic world order with whatever resources were
needed, from financial aid to the use of military force. US commitment to global
leadership continues to this day in spite of a general lack of enthusiasm among a
good portion of US citizens for worldwide engagement. The war in Afghanistan
has now become the longest war in US history and, understandably, the US pub-
lic has grown more skeptical of overseas involvements. Despite such feelings,
America’s allies in Northeast Asia – the Republic of Korea and Japan – continue
to be seen in a positive light and US public support for alliances with both coun-
tries remains.
Political support within the United States, both elite and popular, for its alli-
ances with Japan and the Republic of Korea has endured across generations.
Barack Obama follows in a long line of US presidents, both Republican and Dem-
ocrat, who have worked closely with both Japan and the Republic of Korea. In
1987 President Ronald Reagan set the standard for successive US presidents in
his National Security Strategy by clearly stating the US vision for its key role in
East Asia: “The United States is a Pacific power and a proud member of the area
of the globe that has led the world’s economies in growth.” Reagan emphasized
that “cooperation with Japan is basic to US relationships in the region” and “our
alliance with the Republic of Korea remains of exceptional importance” (Rea-
gan 1987: 15). Over a decade later, President Bill Clinton, in A National Security
Strategy for A New Century, reaffirmed the United States’ bilateral security com-
mitments to Japan, noting “the alliance continues to be the cornerstone for achiev-
ing common security objectives and maintaining a stable and prosperous environ-
ment for the Asia Pacific region as we enter the twenty-first century” (Clinton
1998: 42). Bilateral alliances such as those with Japan and South Korea “serve as
the foundation for America’s continuing security role (ibid.: 41).

Another decade has passed and US commitment to the region and its key allies
remains firm. Despite tremendous expenditures, both human and financial, in other
regions of the world, the Obama administration remains committed to a US leader-
ship role in the Pacific and to its regional allies, Japan and the Republic of Korea.
The first overseas trip of President Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton,
was to Japan. In her Senate confirmation hearing, Secretary Clinton had noted the
importance of the US–Japan alliance: “Our alliance with Japan is a cornerstone of
American policy in Asia, essential to maintaining peace and prosperity in the Asia
Pacific region” (Clinton 2009b). Symbolic of this importance, during her visit
to Japan, Secretary Clinton extended the invitation to then Prime Minister Taro
Aso to be the first foreign leader to visit the White House under the new Obama
administration. This was a privilege that had been keenly sought by a number of
leaders around the world, including US allies in Europe. Likewise, several months
later, in his first meeting after taking office with President Lee Myung-Bak of the
Republic of Korea, President Obama reaffirmed that “the Republic of Korea is one
of America’s closest allies.” In a joint statement, President Obama and President
Lee emphasized the endurance of the alliance between the two countries, Obama
saying that “Our friendship has often, understandably, focused on security issues,
particularly in Northeast Asia. But we’re also committed to a sustained strategic
partnership with the Republic of Korea on the full range of global challenges that
we’re facing” (US White House 2009).
For more than fifty years, the United States has maintained strong bilateral
security alliances with Japan and the Republic of Korea. These bilateral structures
have been keys to maintaining relative peace and stability in Northeast Asia since
the end of the Korean War. With the end of the Cold War and the waning of Soviet
power, it might reasonably have been expected that the importance attached to US
alliances would diminish; after all, the raison d’être for key US alliances had been
to limit the expansion of Soviet influence. Yet in Northeast Asia this did not hap-
pen; in fact, we see continued emphasis on US bilateral ties with its “key” allies.
In Northeast Asia, a demilitarized Japan and stable Korean peninsula are piv-
otal concerns for all countries in the region. In the aftermath of World War II and
then the Korean War, the security guarantees that it extended to both Japan and
the Republic of Korea resulted in near-complete reliance on the United States
for defense. Everyday management of these alliances and their attendant secu-
rity interests for the United States and its allies was largely left to US Pacific
Command and its subordinate commands, United States Forces Japan and United
States Forces Korea. Both Japan and the Republic of Korea flourished under the
US nuclear umbrella and the security guarantees provided through these US bilat-
eral security agreements. Throughout the years, Japan and the Republic of Korea
have hosted an extensive network of US military forces. In 2010, the United States
military had more than 70,000 soldiers and sailors forward deployed to the Pacific
region, with 35,688 stationed ashore in Japan and 28,500 in the Republic of Korea
(US Department of Defense 2010b; Sharp 2010a).
The US military presence in Northeast Asia has maintained regional peace and
stability through traditional missions such as fighting wars, deterring aggression,

and coercing foes. However, the role of the US military in the region has always
been much broader: to change the preferences of its security partners. The US
military in Northeast Asia served as a way for the United States to engage allies
and shape not only their military organizations and doctrine, but also civilian poli-
cies. To say that these policies have been successful is an understatement. Today
Japan and the Republic of Korea are prosperous, democratic nations. Since near
defeat in the early 1950s, the ROK’s military has been transformed into a modern,
technologically sophisticated, and effective defense organization. The Japanese
military has remained a self-defense force. Although those in Washington peri-
odically worry that either of the Koreas might launch a unilateral major attack on
the other, to date this has not occurred. After the recent attacks by North Korea on
the Republic of Korea (the sinking of the Cheonan, a corvette of the Republic of
Korea’s Navy, and the artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong Island), rather than retali-
ate unilaterally, the Republic of Korea chose to work in partnership with the US
military to deter further attacks. Rather than playing into North Korea’s provoca-
tion, South Korea’s refusal to engage in tit-for-tat responses resulted in the failure
of North Korea’s provocation and, perhaps, had a deterrent effect on future actions
(Ramstad 2011).
Beyond its key regional alliances, the United States pursues a variety of security
strategies with the other major powers in Northeast Asia. These strategies are as
varied as the major powers with whom it interacts. China, now known in its con-
temporary essence as the People’s Republic of China, has been and continues to
be a major regional power in terms of culture, economics, and military capabili-
ties. The engagement of China, initiated by President Richard Nixon when he sent
National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger on a secret mission to Beijing in July
of 1971, has given rise to a pattern of both strategic cooperation and latent rivalry
between China and the United States.
The relations between China and the United States have reached at times the
status of a “de facto alliance,” when the presence of a common enemy, the Soviet
Union, led to a congruence of strategic imperatives (Kissinger 2011). Nowadays,
the interactions between the two countries underpin the foundations of an emerg-
ing international order for the twenty-first century whose features will reflect both
power realities and cultural vision. As Henry Kissinger (2011: 23) argues in his
treatise On China, “Where the Western tradition prized the decisive clash of forces
emphasizing feats of heroism, the Chinese ideal stressed subtlety, indirection, and
the patient accumulation of relative advantage.” China’s strategic approach flows
from Confucian philosophical traditions, such as Sun Tzu’s admonitions to gather
information, work behind the scene to set the stage to one’s own advantage, and
focus on the long term. Sun Tzu advised: “All warfare is based on deception.
Therefore, when capable, feign incapacity; when active, inactivity. When near,
make it appear that you are far away; when far away, that you are near. [. . .] Now
the shape of an army resembles water. Take advantage of the enemy’s unpre-
paredness; attack him when he does not expect it; avoid his strengths and strike
his emptiness, and like water, none can oppose you” (Sun Tzu 1971: 66, 89). The
parallel between Sun Tzu’s aphorisms and Deng Xiaoping’s 24 Character Strat-
egy is striking. In advice given to Chinese national security and foreign policy
officials Deng recommended “Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with
affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low
profile; and never claim leadership” (quoted in US Department of Defense, Office
of the Secretary of Defense 2006: 9).
All US presidents since Nixon would subscribe to the Reagan administration’s
apt characterization of China’s regional role: “China’s importance speaks for
itself” (Reagan 1987: 15). The Clinton administration was also quite clear on the
influence it believed that China wielded both for international security and for
US national security: “Our relationship with China will in large measure help to
determine whether the 21st century is one of security, peace, and prosperity for
the American people” (Clinton 1998: 42). Today the People’s Republic of China
has the world’s second-largest economy, the world’s largest standing army, and
a nuclear arsenal with long-range ballistic missiles capable of striking the United
States. It has over 1.3 billion people, making it the world’s most populous coun-
try, but it has also successfully managed its population growth in the last decade
(People’s Republic of China 2011).
While keeping an eye on China’s impressive capabilities, the United States has
sought cooperation and collaboration rather than confrontation. Regional issues
such as US military support of Taiwan and China’s human rights practices have
remained sensitive and contentious topics, yet the United States and China recog-
nize that there is much to be gained through security cooperation over issues rang-
ing from counter-piracy operations to illicit activities of North Korea to armed
conflicts in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. At the end of his presidency
George W. Bush remained popular with Chinese people. According to Barbara
Demick (2009), current bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times in Beijing, Bush is
credited with supporting free-trade policies that helped Chinese economic devel-
opment and contributing to Chinese prestige by attending the Beijing Olympics,
despite pressure to boycott.
Economic development is a key area offering opportunities for cooperation
between the United States and China. It is also, as Kissinger (2011: 500), among
many experts, has pointed out, a key pillar of legitimacy for the ruling Communist
Party leaders in the eyes of ordinary Chinese people. Under the imperative of
political survival and domestic stability, therefore, foreign and domestic policies
have become inexorably intertwined. Maintaining adequate energy supplies to
support their growing economy is critical to continued economic development and
the prosperity of the Chinese people. China has sought to diversify its crude oil
suppliers and secure its imports through the construction of pipelines. Neverthe-
less, the majority of Chinese oil imports now transit through the Straits of Malacca
and the Straits of Hormuz (US Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of
Defense 2010: 20). Thus, it should come as no surprise that China would continue
to support international counter-piracy operations as well as enhance its own naval
abilities to secure these routes.
In recent years, US government officials have periodically met with their Chi-
nese counterparts with the goal of increasing understanding and cooperation. In the
last decade, the two countries have exchanged visits of their highest military com-
manders as well as senior civilian leaders. In 2008, the commander of US Pacific
Command as well as the US Commandant of the Marine Corps visited China,
and the United States hosted the Commander of the Guangzhou Military Area as
well as the President of China’s National Defense University (People’s Republic
of China 2009). Under the Obama presidency, the United States has sought to
increase bilateral ties. Symbolic of this effort, in his first year in office President
Obama visited China and, in early 2011, hosted Chinese President Hu Jintao at
the White House. In a press conference during his US visit, President Hu reaf-
firmed the importance of continuing dialogue with the United States: “The [US]
President and I agree that China and the United States need to establish a pattern
of high-level exchanges featuring in-depth communication and candid dialogue.
President Obama and I will stay in close contact through meetings, telephone calls,
and letters. The two sides believe that the expansion of exchanges and cooperation
between our militaries contribute to deepening mutual trust between our two coun-
tries and to the growth of our overall relationship” (US White House 2011).
While both sides have emphasized the importance of bilateral exchanges, estab-
lishment of these exchanges has moved forward slowly. In January 2011, Secre-
tary of Defense Robert Gates traveled to Beijing as part of the US government’s
efforts to rebuild the military-to-military dialogue that had been suspended by
China in 2010 after a $6.2 billion arms sale to Taiwan by the United States. While
the results of Gates’s meetings were less than had been hoped for by the US side,
they nevertheless set the groundwork for Gates and his Chinese counterpart, Gen-
eral Liang Guanglie, to work toward developing a framework that might facilitate
future military-to-military exchanges and joint military activities (Dombey and
Hille 2011). Unfortunately for US military engagement efforts, China routinely
suspends bilateral military relations with the United States in response to US arms
sales to Taiwan. As both parties recognize that the United States will periodically
sell arms to Taiwan and that Beijing is likely to suspend military-to-military con-
tacts in response, this pattern of responses has acquired the status of what is to be
expected on this issue (Economist 2010).3 Although the United States seeks greater
military-to-military ties, the Chinese appear less enthusiastic and in the end retain
the upper hand in determining both the depth and extent of interactions.
Nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula and managing the consequences
of the decline of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) remain
central security issues in Northeast Asia for both China and the United States. The
North Korean regime has been, as noted by a Congressional Research Service
analyst, “among the most vexing and persistent problems in US foreign policy in
the post-Cold War period” and the problems associated with it “have become a
particularly complicating factor for Sino-US ties” (Chanlett-Avery 2011: 4). US
political and military leaders believe that Chinese security cooperation is essential
in confronting the belligerent policies of North Korea, countering illicit activities
by the regime, and promoting regional stability. As President Obama stated at his
joint press conference with President Hu: “I told President Hu that we appreci-
ated China’s role in reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, and we agreed
that North Korea must avoid further provocations. I also said that North Korea’s
nuclear and ballistic missile program is increasingly a direct threat to the security
of the United States and our allies. We agreed that the paramount goal must be
complete denuclearization of the peninsula” (US White House 2011).
The Chinese government seems more or less content in letting the United States
take the public leadership role, while it has engaged in extensive private negotia-
tions and provided support for a multi-party forum, the Six-Party Talks, where the
United States and North Korea can directly interact. In addressing nuclear prolif-
eration by North Korea, the Six-Party Talks have yet to produce tangible public
results. The talks were organized when North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003. At the time the main goal was to prevent nuclear
proliferation on the Korean peninsula; a goal that clearly was not achieved when,
three years later, North Korea conducted its first underground nuclear test. Since
then, extensive diplomatic efforts by China and the other five members of the Six-
Party initiative to “denuclearize” the Korean peninsula have failed, with North
Korea conducting a second nuclear test in 2009, torpedoing a South Korean vessel
and killing 46 sailors in 2010, and making artillery strikes on South Korean terri-
tory, also in 2010.
In the end, US leaders seem frustrated with their Chinese counterparts, who
prefer regional stability at the high cost of continuing to prop up the ailing North
Korean regime with economic and diplomatic support and acquiescing to its
nuclear ambitions. The different assessment that the Chinese and the Americans
have of negotiating efforts in the Korean peninsula might depend on different
strategic goals, but also on different diplomatic mindsets. As Henry Kissinger
(2011: 222) has noted, “American diplomacy generally prefers the specific over
the general, the practical over the abstract,” whereas the Chinese “patiently take
the long view against impatient interlocutors, making time their ally.”
US commentators as well as scholars frequently tout the Six-Party Talks as a
model upon which to build future multilateral cooperation in Northeast Asia. In
reality, the talks have had little impact. China still provides both the economic and
diplomatic support that sustains the North Korean regime and is essential for its
continued survival. In sum, while bilateral and multilateral cooperative arrange-
ments between China and the United States occur, they are extremely weak in
comparison to the bilateral institutions that the United States maintains with Japan
and the Republic of Korea.
Russian influence in Northeast Asia has always existed in the shadow of Chinese
influence that has spanned millennia and, in recent times, in the shadow of the US
military, economic, and diplomatic presence. Nevertheless, Russia’s geographic
location, its access to the Pacific Ocean, its borders with China and North Korea, its
energy resources, and its nuclear arsenal still make it a player in the region. From
the US perspective, confrontations with Russia have not gone away with the end
of the Cold War—as evidenced by former US Secretary of the Treasury Henry
Paulson’s experience during the US financial crisis in late 2008. According to Paul-
son (2010: 161), Russia secretly encouraged the Chinese to precipitate the United
States government to bail out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae by dumping US gov-
ernment-supported equities, a move that Paulson calls “deeply troubling” because
of the shock to capital markets and the loss of confidence it would have engendered
for two key US financial institutions. The Russian plan came to nothing, as the Chi-
nese government refused to participate, indicating that hurting the US economy and
the international financial system ran contrary to the Chinese national interest.
Although Russian political influence has diminished, Russia retains an impres-
sive nuclear arsenal and the capability to strike almost anywhere in the world.
Russia is a resource-wealthy country. It is the world’s second-largest exporter
of oil and possesses one-third of the world’s deposits of natural gas. In 2010,
China became Russia’s primary trading partner and in June 2011 the two countries
wrangled over a $1 trillion dollar natural gas deal whereby Russia would supply
China with natural gas over the next thirty years. As this chapter goes to press,
the two sides had not reached an agreement over the conditions of the sale. In
tough bargaining, China, the world’s largest energy consumer, appears to retain
the upper hand over Russia, the world’s largest energy producer, who worries
about maintaining gas prices in its European markets (Gorst 2011).
Russian national security interests include maintaining control of events in its
border regions. In the natural gas deal mentioned above, Russia worries about
Chinese access to gas fields in neighboring Turkmenistan (ibid.). In 2007 China
began construction of its first international natural gas pipeline that follows a route
from Turkmenistan through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. As part of its deal with
Russia, China is trying to convince Moscow to build a natural gas pipeline from
Sakhalin Island to northeast China (US Department of Defense, Office of the Sec-
retary of Defense 2010: 21) rather than through its Central Asian neighbors.
In Northeast Asia, Russia worries about events on the Korean peninsula that
could destabilize the region. In Russia’s National Security Strategy of the Rus-
sian Federation to 2020, released in May 2009, Russian security concerns include
the expansion of NATO, recurrence of the use of unilateral force in international
relations, disagreements between major powers, proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction, and the growth of radicalism. In a document that does not name too
many names, the Korean peninsula is mentioned by name as a situation that will
continue to exert a negative impact on the international situation (Security Council
of the Russian Federation 2009, author’s translation).
Russian influence in Northeast Asia has gone through several evolutions since
the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Russian relations with
Japan have been quietly contentious, characterized by a century-long dispute over
control of the South Kuril Islands and long memories of defeat by the Japanese
in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. As an illustration, in his most recent
policy speech before the Japanese Diet, Prime Minister Naoto Kan spoke exten-
sively of deepening the Japan–US alliance and strengthening relations with the
countries of Asia and the Pacific. He also spoke of expanding cooperation with
Russia as related to the development of resources and modernization, but never-
theless pledged to “tenaciously engage in negotiations” to resolve the dispute over
the Kuril Islands (Kan 2011).
Russia participates in a number of multinational fora in the region, including

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Shanghai Cooperation Organiza-
tion (SCO), and as a member of the Six-Party Talks. In the past, the Soviet Union
had been an important influence in inter-Korean dynamics, where it had been
able to exert some influence as patron and supplier of arms, military advisors,
and economic aid to North Korea. Today that influence is all but gone, as Russia
retains few exploitable ties with its former ally and is unwilling to use coercive
force. In a move of realpolitik after the Cold War, Russia instead sought coopera-
tive agreements with South Korea. Seung-Ho Joo (1996), an expert on Russian
foreign policy in Northeast Asia, describes how, after the fall of the Soviet Union,
Moscow had a lot to gain by developing economic ties with Seoul, whereas con-
tinued relations with the North Koreans were simply a drain on the already dimin-
ished resources of the new Russian government. According to Joo (1996: 39–40),
the primary concerns of the Russian government centered on regional stability.
The Russians worried that, with the end of the Cold War, a diminished presence
of US troops in the Pacific region, coupled with Russian troop withdrawals from
the Far East, would create a regional power vacuum that might be filled by a more
militant Japan or an increasingly modernized Chinese military. Ironically, even
for the Russians, the presence of the US military forces in Japan and the Republic
of Korea was seen as a stabilizing force in the region.
To better manage events on the Korean peninsula, after his election in 2000 Rus-
sian President Vladimir Putin sought to “normalize” relations with Kim Jong-il’s
regime. His initiatives eventually led to the founding of the Six-Party Talks and
Russia’s inclusion in negotiations over North Korean nuclear proliferation (see
Joo 2009 for an excellent analysis of the Russian–North Korean rapprochement).
Yet, despite the revived relationship between Russia and North Korea, there has
been little tangible reward for either side. Joo (2009: 128) summed up the disil-
lusionment of the Russians: “North Korea’s persisting nuclear crisis chilled Mos-
cow–Pyongyang relations. It soon became obvious to Russian leaders that Kim
Jong-il continued to be intent on dealing with the USA directly for security guar-
antee and economic aid, and to treat Russia as a secondary player in his survival
game.” Joo argued that, no matter what happened in the impending leadership
change in North Korea: “Russia will have a long way to go before it is recognized
as a major political–economic player in Korea and Northeast Asia” (ibid.: 129).
US security cooperation in Northeast Asia: issues and trends
When Barack Obama won the US presidential election in 2008, US popular stand-
ing abroad had been undergoing nearly a decade-long slump (American Political
Science Association 2009). In many quarters of the world, the image of the United
States had reached an all-time low, sapping the appeal of US soft power. A variety
of factors fed into the decline in US standing in the early years of the twenty-first
century; some were structural, as unsurpassed power engenders fear and suspi-
cion if it is not carefully handled; some were a consequence of specific policies
and circumstances, from the war in Iraq to the personal style of President George
W. Bush (Chiozza 2009). As a newly elected president, Barack Obama sought to
reinstate US standing, banking on his personal appeal but also promoting a new
strategic approach that would engage partners and allies more deeply (Obama
2010).4 US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (2009a) labeled the new approach a
“multi-partner world,” whereby the United States would “work through existing
institutions and reform them. [. . .] [and] use our power to convene, our ability to
connect countries around the world, and sound foreign policy strategies to create
partnerships aimed at solving problems.” “[This approach],” Secretary Clinton
continued, “will make it more difficult for others to abdicate their responsibilities
or abuse their power, but will offer a place at the table to any nation, group, or
citizen willing to shoulder a fair share of the burden.”
Given the extension of US commitments worldwide, and the human and eco-
nomic resources devoted to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the global fight
against the criminal network of al-Qaeda, the call for burden sharing and multilat-
eral engagements should not come as a surprise. In the case of the Northeast Asian
security architecture, a report prepared by Richard Armitage and Joseph Nye (2007)
illustrates this new perspective, as it attempts to provide a different political and
intellectual framework for the US–Japan alliance. While the United States, in the
report’s view, should continue to buttress Japanese security, “Japan must make the
alliance more equal by adequately providing for more of the areas required for its
own defense.” After the limitations on its international autonomy imposed on Japan
as punishment at the end of World War II, Japan is called upon to play a more active
and autonomous role. The underlying model for a revamped US–Japan alliance is no
less than the “special relationship” that the United States enjoys with Great Britain.
US policy documents confirm the centrality of the US–Japan alliance for North-
east Asian security. In the words of the Joint Statement of the Security Consulta-
tive Committee, signed by Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense
Gates for the United States and by Minister for Foreign Affairs Matsumoto and
Minister of Defense Kitazawa for Japan, “The Government of the United States
reaffirmed its commitment to the defense of Japan and the peace and security
of the region, including through the full range of US military capabilities, both
nuclear and conventional. The Government of Japan reaffirmed its commitment
to provide for the stable use of facilities and areas by US forces and to support the
smooth operation of those forces through the provision of Host Nation Support”
(Joint Statement of the Security Consultative Committee 2011: 2).
This is a position that is strongly endorsed by the Japanese Ministry of Defense:
“The presence of the US military remains extremely important in order to achieve
regional stability. Japan and other countries have established bilateral alliances
and friendly relations with the US and, accordingly, they allow the stationing or
presence of US forces in their territories” (Japan Ministry of Defense 2009: 4).
This affirmation of strategic and military cooperation occasionally clashes with
the dynamics of Japanese domestic politics. The agreement to relocate the US
Marine Corps’ Futenma air base is a case in point, in a longer series of popular con-
troversies on US military presence in Okinawa. The agreement, originally signed
in 1996 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan 1996), called for a relocation of the
Futenma air base to a new sea-based facility to be built in a less populated area of
Okinawa, near Henoko Bay. The goal of the agreement was to ease the burden of
US presence on the people of Okinawa, in response to the outrage caused by the
rape of a Japanese girl by three US service members in 1995, while preserving the
military capabilities of the current air base. The plan became a major political issue
when Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of the Democratic Party of Japan
made the electoral promise “to replace a deal to move Futenma from its city center
site to Okinawa’s less populated Henoko Bay” (Dickie and Pilling 2010). Prime
Minister Hatoyama tried to perform a tight balancing act between different politi-
cal imperatives. But when push came to shove, confronted with the inability to
find a viable alternative to the relocation plan, Prime Minister Hatoyama decided
to resign in order to preserve the alliance with the United States, rather than keep
his electoral pledge. As Prime Minister Hatoyama himself told Okinawan gover-
nor Hirokazu Nakaima, “When you consider the US–Japan alliance and relations
with neighboring countries, from a deterrence point of view moving everything
outside Okinawa is rather difficult in practice” (quoted in Soble and Dickie 2010).
The contribution of US military forces to regional stability and security for Japan
trumped political survival.
A similar dynamic of normalization and strengthening in bilateral relations is
also taking place with the Republic of Korea: two countries linked in a “sustained
strategic partnership,” as President Obama and Korean President Lee Myung-
Bak re-affirmed during President Lee’s visited to the White House in June 2009
(US White House 2009). Two significant steps are indicative of this new emphasis
on stronger bilateral ties: first, the reorganization of the wartime command of US
and ROK Armed Forces; second, the normalization of US troop rotations in South
Korea.
The United States is planning to de-activate the Combined Forces Command,
which had been instituted in 1978, and to create two separate and complementary
national commands, one for US Forces stationed in South Korea, and one for the
Korean armed forces themselves. Under the new arrangements, which are sched-
uled to become operative in 2015, ROK commanders will have wartime control
of ROK troops, while the United States will assume a supporting role (US Forces
Korea 2009). This is a major change that re-establishes Korea’s full sovereignty
over its armed forces. It is also an affirmation that the mistrust of ROK capabilities
and adventurism that had led to the current institutional arrangement (Cha 2005) is
a matter of the past. To underscore the magnitude of the change, it is worth empha-
sizing that the transfer of operational command was originally scheduled for 2012
and was delayed, at the request of the South Korean government, on 26 June 2010.
The delay in the transfer of operational command is a result of the current inability
of ROK forces to execute sufficient command and control of forces (Sharp 2010b),
perhaps highlighted by the sinking of the Cheonan on 26 March 2010.5
The second step towards the strengthening of the US–ROK alliance is the pro-
cess of normalization of troop rotations to the Republic of Korea. South Korea
is no longer viewed as a “remote” assignment where soldiers are not allowed
to bring their families and often serve for only one year. Now, tours of duty in
South Korea resemble those of longstanding NATO allies such as Britain and
Germany. Specifically, US soldiers who are accompanied by their families

will stay for three years; single soldiers will stay for two years. The goal is to
have 5,000 accompanied soldiers in Korea by 2011 (US Department of Defense
2010a: 52; Sharp 2010b).6 As General Walter Sharp, the Commander of US
Forces Korea, emphasized, “Tour Normalization greatly benefits the Alliance by
demonstrating our enduring commitment to the Republic of Korea and Northeast
Asia through our intended long-term presence by changing the conditions for US
forces from being forward deployed to being forward stationed with families”
(Sharp 2010b).
Even with respect to China, the Obama administration is seeking a posture that
portrays China more as a partner and less as an adversary. In its Quadrennial
Defense Review (QDR), the Obama administration presented a vision of China
as a responsible stakeholder in the Northeast Asian order, stating: “China’s mili-
tary has begun to develop new roles, missions, and capabilities in support of its
growing regional and global interests, which could enable it to play a more sub-
stantial and constructive role in international affairs. The United States welcomes
a strong, prosperous, and successful China that plays a greater global role. The
United States welcomes the positive benefits that can accrue from greater cooper-
ation” (US Department of Defense 2010a: 60). The Obama administration’s QDR
expressed a more conciliatory tone, as compared to the words the Bush adminis-
tration had employed four years earlier in 2006, when, along with calls for greater
cooperation, China was urged to “make its intentions clear and clarify its military
plans” (US Department of Defense 2006: 29) and, should cooperation fail, the
United States pledged to “deny a hostile power its strategic and operational objec-
tives” (US Department of Defense 2006: 30).
The Obama administration seems to be mindful of the paradox that a weak
and insecure China can be a source of security instability in the region as much
as can be an assertive and overbearing China. As Susan Shirk (2007: 255) per-
ceptively argued in 2007, “It is China’s internal fragility, not its growing strength
that presents the greatest danger.” The reason underlying Shirk’s argument is a
re-elaboration of the “wag the dog” thesis, known as the diversionary war argu-
ment in the international relations literature: when political leaders face domestic
political challenges to their rule, the argument maintains, they resort to confronta-
tional positions abroad, even at the risk of increasing the chances of war, in order
to shore up domestic support (Levy 1989). In this light, the engagement of China
in multilateral arrangements, from the issue of nuclear proliferation in the Korean
peninsula through the Six-Party Talks to combating Somali piracy, is an attempt
to foster a multi-layered approach that recognizes China’s stature in the region and
at the same time gives re-assurance to more accommodating and internationally
oriented elites in Beijing.
Promoting and developing such multi-layered approaches among countries in
Northeast Asia is important to security in the region, but not sufficient without the
strong bilateral agreements. The United States, through its own active involve-
ment in close security relationships, has changed the fundamental security inter-
ests of Japan and the Republic of Korea in a manner consistent with its own.7
US government officials, while appreciating the contribution to security of mul-

tilateral arrangements, nevertheless argue that lack of common values and shared
interests, as well as historical animosities and distrust, will make it very unlikely
that multilateral arrangements would supplant US bilateral relationships.
The reactions to China’s diplomatic positions after North Korea’s missile and
nuclear tests of 2009 and the attacks on Yeonpyeong Island (Page 2010), the con-
troversy over the jailing of a Chinese fishing boat’s captain by Japan (Blumen-
stein, Fairclough, and Hayashi 2010), and the affirmation of territorial claims in
the South China Sea (Page 2011), offer a clear illustration of the continuing rele-
vance of the US-centric security architecture. In times of crisis, the bedrock of US
bilateral arrangements re-emerged in the form of closer military cooperation, joint
military exercises in the Yellow Sea between the United States and the Republic
of Korea, as well as a trilateral meeting in Washington, DC, between Japanese,
Korean, and US security officials (Christensen 2011).
In both actions and statements, therefore, the United States continues to reiter-
ate its enduring commitment to its own strategic partners in the region. Even in the
face of mounting domestic political costs for an expansive international agenda,
for the foreseeable future US security cooperation in Northeast Asia will continue
to be based on its bilateral relationships. These have proven to be effective and
efficient in the past and continue to be seen in this light. Multilateral arrangements
will contribute to thicken the web of interactions in the region, but the bilateral
arrangements are still the “best game in town.”
Conclusion
In the past decade, the military and economic resources of the United States have
faced increasing demands. Under the administration of George W. Bush, the United
States sent its military to accomplish monumental tasks, including fundamentally
restructuring the government of Iraq, engaging in a (now) decades-long war with
extremist radical forces in Afghanistan and neighboring countries, and pursuing
a worldwide campaign against international criminal networks such as al-Qaeda.
In the midst of these missions the United States suffered its worst financial crisis
since the Great Depression, from which it has yet to recover, and has incurred
public debt of over $14 trillion, with attendant domestic political paralysis over
how to handle it. Under Barack Obama, forces for democratic reform in North
Africa and the Middle East have emerged and asked the United States for support.
Amid these crises, Chinese military and economic power has grown and is seen in
some quarters of the United States as the single most important national security
challenge of the next century. Nuclear-armed North Korea remains perched, sui-
cidally, on the edge of an abyss.
Assessing it within this context, one might imagine that the US-centric security
architecture in Northeast Asia would fall into decline. One would be mistaken. The
US-centric security architecture remains the cornerstone of international security
in Northeast Asia. Although multilateral approaches have emerged, they remain
weak and unable to provide the mutual security guarantees that the United States
has provided for more than sixty years. Our analysis shows that the US hub-and-
spoke system is seen as a stabilizing force by the primary regional powers, China
and Russia, and by US allies Japan and the Republic of Korea. Tellingly, the mul-
tinational forum most touted as the new multilateralism, the Six-Party Talks, has
morphed into stagnation, given that even the North Koreans want to talk bilater-
ally with the United States rather than resort to a forum that had been established
precisely to deal with their recalcitrance.
In a provocative book about the rise of other powers that will supplant the
United States, a sophisticated analyst such as Fareed Zakaria (2009: xxix) still
writes that the key for stability, peace, and prosperity resides in the United
States. “The United States,” Zakaria writes, “must provide rules, institutions, and
services that help solve the world’s major problems, while giving other coun-
tries—crucially the emerging powers—a stake in the system.” This is a profound
claim, which nonetheless begs the question of why the United States must provide
rules, institutions, and services in a post-American order. It also begs the ques-
tion of why the new leaders of the post-American world would accept American
rules, institutions, and services. Predictions of the demise of the American world
order have been formulated innumerable times.8 But again and again, crisis after
crisis, the United States has bounced back and led (Chiozza 2009). In Northeast
Asia, the security foundations that have enabled the rise of Asia remain anchored
to US military power. With no clear alternatives, it remains the security archi-
tecture of choice in the region, not just for the United States, but for all regional
players.
Notes
1 On the Detroit bailout, see Dombey and Simon 2008 and McKinnon and Stoll 2008 for
two articles, among many.
2 The series, which included articles by Samuel Brittan, Edmund Phelps, and Martin
Wolf, among others, can be retrieved at <http://www.ft.com/indepth/capitalism-future>
(accessed on 4 February 2010).
3 See in particular page 25 of the print edition: “China commonly responds to American
arms sales to Taiwan by suspending military dialogue. [. . .] But the importance of pre-
serving its relationship with America has always been paramount.” (Economist 2010,
emphasis added).
4 Two years later, the US image had undoubtedly improved, and in Asia in particular: 79
percent of Koreans, 66 percent of Indians and Japanese, 58 percent of Chinese reported
a favorable opinion of the United States (Pew Research Center 2010).
5 In a speech delivered as he stepped down as Commander of US Forces in South Korea,
General Sharp reiterated US commitment to the 2015 schedule. “He said another delay
is unlikely. ‘I’m very confident in the capabilities of the ROK [Republic of Korea] mili-
tary,’ he said.” (Quoted in Ramstad 2011).
6 As Evan Ramstad (2011) reports, “At present, about 6,000 of the 28,000 US personnel in
South Korea have families with them. In time, that is expected to grow by another 6,000
families.”
7 For those scholars who have been making the case for how institutions and military
bureaucracies change preferences (Atkinson 2006; Johnston 2001), these choices would
count as confirming evidence for their theories.
8 For a recent installment in a long and venerable series of jeremiads about the demise of
US international leadership, see Fallows 2010.
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Part IV
future
cooperation and its
Actualizing security
10 The Northeast Asia
cooperation dialogue
An experiment in Track II
multilateral diplomacy
Susan L. Shirk
The early 1990s were a period of great flux in East Asian international relations.
True, the end of the Cold War did not transform international relations in East Asia
as radically as it did in Europe. The blocs in Asia were less distinct. The Sino-Soviet
split divided the communist bloc; and Asia had no NATO or Warsaw Pact. Still,
the disappearance of the Soviet threat was a shock to the regional system. In reac-
tion, Americans started talking about drawing down the country’s forward-deployed
forces from East Asia in order to concentrate resources on domestic priorities (a
mandated 12 percent reduction in Pacific-based forces was announced in 1990).
Such talk raised doubts about the credibility of the United States’ commitments to its
allies and friends. East Asians worried that a US withdrawal would leave a vacuum
of power that China and Japan would compete to fill. Japan was considered the main
rising power in the region, but after 1990 China’s growth rates far surpassed Japan’s.
US–China relations had been devastated by the trauma of the Tiananmen crackdown
on democracy demonstrators in June 1989. North Korea was threatening to pull out
of the Nonproliferation Treaty. East Asian nations devoted more money to buying
military hardware than did any region of the world except the Middle East.
Responding to the risks and the opportunities of this tense and uncertain
regional environment, in 1993 the University of California Institute on Global
Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) founded the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dia-
logue (NEACD), a Track II experiment bringing together the United States, Japan,
China, and Russia, the Republic of Korea (ROK), and the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK) to discuss regional security issues. The objective of
these talks was to explore the potential for a multilateral process at the official
level to stabilize relations in Northeast Asia and East Asia as a whole. Over the
past seventeen years, to protect the confidentiality and the candor of the NEACD
discussions, we have done little public writing about NEACD. In this chapter,
I take the opportunity to relate the NEACD experience and share what I have
learned about the value and the limitations of Track II diplomacy.
Track II: definitions and expectations

The concept of “Track II diplomacy” is a relatively recent one, having been coined
by the American Foreign Service officer Joseph Montville in 1980, although
194 Susan L. Shirk
informal interactions to resolve conflicts between countries have occurred through-
out history. Montville broadly defined Track II in a co-authored 1981 article in
Foreign Policy as “unofficial, unstructured interaction” and included everything
from cultural exchanges to “psychologically focused political problem-solving
meetings” (Davidson and Montville 1981/82). Interested in the psychological
dimensions of international conflict, Montville believed in the benefit of comple-
menting the often-sterile formal diplomatic meetings of adversaries or contentious
friends with informal discussions to reduce the misperceptions that are psycho-
logical barriers to resolving differences. In his words, “Track II diplomacy is a
process that aims to help resolve or manage conflicts by exploring possible solu-
tions out of the public view and without the requirements of formal negotiation or
bargaining for advantage” (Zuckerman 2005).

In the early 1990s, regional experts at Asia-Pacific think-tanks and universities
started exploring the potential of informal Track II discussions to redefine and sta-
bilize the fluid post-Cold War regional security environment. Southeast Asians,
Canadians, and Australians led the way with pioneering efforts like the Associa-
tion of Southeast Asian Nations Institutes for Strategic and International Studies
(ASEAN ISIS) and the North Pacific Cooperative Security Dialogue. Canadian
political scientist Brian Job notes the paradox that nongovernmental unofficial
initiatives played a central role in building the post-Cold War security architecture
of Asia, a region that is characterized by strongly state-centric international rela-
tions (Job 2003: 241).
Most of the scholar-activists who initiated Track II dialogues in Asia, however,
are constructivists who share an optimistic assumption that identity and interests
can be transformed by interaction and communication (ibid.: 242) and seek to
transcend the limitations of international structure. Canadian scholars like David
Dewitt, Paul Evans, and Brian Job; Australian scholars like Desmond Ball, Andres
Mack, and Pauline Kerr; and Southeast Asian scholars like Carolina Hernandez,
Noordin Sopie, and Jusuf Wanandi were the intellectual and organizational inno-
vators who promoted Track II diplomacy as a strategy for mutual reassurance and
confidence building in the region. Brian Job calls these pioneers “norm entrepre-
neurs” (2003: 251). Their initiatives were supported by particular Canadian, Aus-
tralian, and Southeast Asian foreign ministers. Track II diplomacy became a hall-
mark of the gradual, consensus-based, and informal process of building regional
institutions in the Asia-Pacific.1
Many experts would limit the definition of Track II diplomacy to “unofficial
policy dialogues focused on problem-solving where the participants have access
to the official policymaking process” (Kaye 2001: 52; Agha et al. 2003). In this
definition, the connections between Track II participants and government officials
and the spillover from informally generated ideas and insights to official policy
are crucially important.2
Processes like the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue that include officials
as well as private citizens are even more closely integrated into official diplomacy
and are sometimes labeled as “Track 1.5 diplomacy.” The officials participate in
a private capacity and do not formally represent government positions, a “polite
The Northeast Asia cooperation dialogue 195
fiction” that allows them to speak more freely (Kraft 2000: 344). The participa-
tion of officials motivates governments to incorporate Track II dialogues into their
foreign policy strategies and to try to shape the agendas and participants of the
dialogues. As a result, the line between official and unofficial becomes blurred.
What kind of results should we expect from Track II processes? International
relations scholars and practitioners believe that we should set a low bar when eval-
uating the results of Track II diplomacy. We should not expect Track II discus-
sions to lead to major policy shifts or negotiating breakthroughs at the official level
(Kaye 2001: 50). The historic agreement produced by the Israeli-Palestinian Track
II process in Oslo was the exception that proves the rule that Track II efforts have
more modest and longer-term impacts (Agha et al. 2003). As Brian Job observes,
Track II is process driven rather than results oriented; the dialogues are seen “as
having intrinsic value as a confidence-building and socializing measure” (Job 2003:
257). A minimalist expectation would be simply to communicate with countries,
like North Korea or Iran, with whom no regular channels of communication exist.
One potential benefit of Track II is the opportunity to test out ideas with other
parties to seek their response and thereby acquire useful information for official
negotiations. It is much less politically risky for officials to try out proposals in
the context of Track II than in Track I, and it enables them to bypass their own
bureaucratic constraints to explore what kind of agreement might actually be pos-
sible (Agha et al. 2003). For example, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher
Hill, in charge of the nuclear negotiations with North Korea during the second
George W. Bush administration, sought to use NEACD to evade the strictures of
the interagency process to communicate and explore possible solutions to restart-
ing the Six Party Talks directly with the North Koreans. (In this case, the long
arm of the bureaucracy held him back even in the Track II setting: At the Tokyo
NEACD meeting in 2007, he was forbidden to sit next to his North Korean coun-
terpart, much less to engage him in any sideline discussions.)
Some experts look to Track II discussions to provide new ideas for on-the-
ground cooperation and confidence-building measures; by that somewhat more
demanding standard, the success of Track II depends on whether it develops
action-oriented proposals that are adopted by governments.
Track II discussions also enable participating governments to acquire valu-
able open-source intelligence about the variety of views associated with differ-
ent bureaucracies and social groups in other countries. The differences between
foreign ministry and defense ministry and military views emerge from the discus-
sions. Participants, particularly the academics, provide information about public
opinion, media roles, and other nuances of the domestic context surrounding for-
eign policies.
In examining Track II multilateral diplomacy in a region like East Asia that pre-
viously lacked a multilateral infrastructure, one criterion for evaluating its success
is whether it nurtures “habits of cooperation” that lead to the creation of official
multilateral institutions; for example, ASEAN-ISIS, a consortium of Southeast
Asian institutes on international security, laid the groundwork for the establish-
ment of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1993. Once official multilateral
196 Susan L. Shirk
institutions are established, the Track II network may continue to meet and to
serve as the de facto staff of these institutions, providing recommendations for the
governments to act upon. This is the role that the Committee for Security Coopera-
tion in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) now plays vis-à-vis ARF and that the Network of
East Asian Think Tanks plays with the ASEAN Plus Three (China, Japan, ROK)
process. From the beginning, exploring the possibilities for an official multilateral
security organization in Northeast Asia was a major objective of NEACD.
The primary rationale for Track II diplomacy, however, is its intangible and
long-term effect on the mutual perceptions of participants and their governments.
Track II works on the social-psychological context, the “deep barriers” to interna-
tional conflict resolution (Chataway 1998: 278). Mutual suspicion and other sub-
jective factors can render conflicts more difficult to resolve (Zuckerman 2005).
The expectation is that candid discussions away from the glare of the media and
the pressure to achieve deliverables will help to improve mutual understanding
and trust and reduce the sense of historical grievance and mutual suspicion that
impede governments from resolving conflicts. For countries such as China or
North Korea that have been isolated from the global community, participation in
Track II processes may socialize their representatives into less hostile and more
cooperative views. Evaluating the effects of the experience in Track II dialogues
on the attitudes of participants as compared to nonparticipants, although theoreti-
cally possible, has not yet been done.3 One factor that frustrates efforts to pin down
the specific impact of Track II on the attitudes of participants is the fact that many
government officials participate in both Track I and II regional forums. Even if we
were to identify Track II’s impact on participants, however, the spillover effects
on government policies are virtually impossible to document.
NEACD’s beginnings
In March 1993, the IGCC and the New York-based Council on Foreign Rela-
tions held a workshop on “Reconceptualizing United States Policy toward East
Asia” at University of California (UC) San Diego, with the goal of generating
new policy ideas for the incoming Clinton administration. This gathering brought
together representatives of the East Coast foreign policy establishment in a group
led by Richard Holbrooke with West Coast academic experts on the economic
and political dynamics of the Asia-Pacific. The West Coast contingent advocated
that Washington pay greater attention to multilateral institution building in the
East Asian region. The George H.W. Bush administration had rejected proposals
for East Asian security cooperation as a solution to a nonexistent problem and
clung to the US-centered hub-and-spokes architecture. The notion of multilateral
security arrangements in East Asia had been tainted because the Soviet Union
had originated it; Gorbachev made the first proposal at a speech in Vladivostok in
1986. But the US Pacific Commander Charles R. Larson and a few Bush adminis-
tration officials, like Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia William
Pendley (who attended the La Jolla workshop), believed that multilateral engage-
ment was needed to supplement the alliance structure. At the workshop, Peter
Thomsen, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary designate of the Bureau of
East Asia and Pacific Affairs, indicated that the Clinton administration intended to
take a more positive view than had its predecessor toward multilateral approaches
to preserving peace in East Asia. As often is the case in politics, the new adminis-
tration sought to differentiate its foreign policy approach from that of the previous
administration.
Following the workshop, IGCC moved quickly to propose the creation of a Track
II experiment with multilateral security dialogue in Northeast Asia, where the risk
of military conflict was most acute and no forum for communication existed. With
the support of Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord, IGCC obtained funding
for the dialogue from the regional nonproliferation office of the Department of
Energy, which continued to fund the dialogue until 2007. The State Department
arranged meetings for me with foreign ministry officials in Tokyo, Seoul, and Bei-
jing to ascertain their views, and I travelled to Pyongyang for the same purpose.
All six governments sent representatives to a small planning meeting held in
La Jolla in July 1993. China was the most reluctant to participate, more reluc-
tant even than North Korea to join in such a collective regional undertaking, and
decided only a day before the session to send a junior diplomat from its embassy
in Washington, DC. Although China was keen on the United Nations and enjoyed
its role as a permanent member of the Security Council, it was leery of regional
multilateralism, which it feared could turn into a finger-pointing exercise against
China (Johnston 1990: 173–203). North Korea sent its de facto ambassador to the
United States and another official from its mission to the United Nations in New
York. By the time of the first actual session held in La Jolla in October 1993,
however, the Chinese government sent a relatively senior official, Wang Yingfan,
then director general of the Asia department of the Foreign Ministry, to join the
discussion. But North Korea, in the midst of tense negotiations with the United
States and the IAEA regarding its nuclear facilities, declined to attend and, despite
the best efforts of all the NEACD members to bring it back, did not resume its
participation until 2002.
Why six countries?

The choice to limit participation in NEACD to China, Japan, Russia, the United
States, North Korea, and South Korea was organizationally difficult but concep-
tually clear. The Canadian government and academics had pioneered Track II
diplomacy in the region by establishing an eight-nation North Pacific Coopera-
tive Security Dialogue which ran from 1990 to 1992; naturally, it expected to be
included.4 The Australians also sought to join, making the only-half-joking claim
that their country was the “deep south of Northeast Asia.” Mongolia, eager to
enhance its regional role, has persistently petitioned to become a member. All of
these governments are international good citizens with much to contribute to coop-
erative enterprises, and it was painful to say no to them. But in consultation with
the East Asia Bureau at the State Department, IGCC decided to limit NEACD to
the six countries that are the major players and stake-holders in Northeast Asia.
198 Susan L. Shirk
Our concept of a multilateral mechanism to manage major power relations
defined the composition of the dialogue. From the beginning, IGCC hoped that
NEACD would lay the foundation for an official process of security coopera-
tion in Northeast Asia. Regular governmental consultations among China, Japan,
Russia, and the United States would constitute a de facto concert of powers to
help stabilize East Asia as a whole (Shirk 1997: 245–70). It also would provide
a practical way for the United States to sustain its active role in the region while
learning to share responsibility with the rising regional powers.
A concert of powers is a collective security arrangement modeled on the Con-
cert of Europe that was established by Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, Austria, and
France in the first half of the nineteenth century. Based on this one example, a
concert of powers has come to be thought of as a system in which a small group

of major powers agree to preserve the status quo in their relations, to resist aggres-
sion, to meet on a regular basis to monitor events and, if necessary, to orchestrate
collective initiatives. A concert is an informal process with no binding or codified
commitments. States still compete and balance against one another to a certain
extent, but without leading to overt conflict.
There were good reasons to believe that a concert was worth trying. Power
balancing and bilateral diplomacy through the US-centered alliances might not
be sufficient to prevent military conflict among the four powers. They are heav-
ily armed states with very different political systems and unresolved histori-
cal and territorial issues. There is no natural hierarchy in East Asia. At various
points in history, China, Japan, and the United States each have been dominant in
the region.
Many uncertainties exist about the relative capabilities of the United States,
Japan, China, and Russia projected into the future. All of these countries are look-
ing over their shoulders at one another as they modernize their militaries, creating
the risk of arms races. America’s overwhelmingly superior conventional capa-
bilities, combined with its missile defenses, motivate China and Russia to build
up their nuclear as well as conventional capabilities. Doubts about the long-term
viability of American extended deterrence could eventually tempt the Japanese to
turn their virtual nuclear deterrent into an actual one.
Uncertainties about intentions are even more acute. Relations among the four
powers are characterized by security dilemma dynamics. Perceptions of mutual
threat are heightened by domestic politicians who play to nationalist public opin-
ion in all four countries. The greatest danger is that popular hostility between
China and Japan might drive them into an unintended war; even if the United
States remains fully engaged, “off-shore balancing” is more likely to aggravate
Sino-Japanese mistrust than to dampen it.
The greatest source of instability in a multi-polar East Asia is the uncertain com-
mitment of the United States to the region because, as the distant power, it faces
no direct threat from regional conflict. Its military role in the region is optional,
despite its economic and political interests in the region. The United States didn’t
defend China from Japanese aggression until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The
forward deployment of American forces did not deter Chinese support for North
Vietnamese aggression in South Vietnam. Since the end of the Cold War, the
United States has reduced its forward-deployed forces in East Asia from roughly
100,000 (1976–90) to 67,000 as of 2005. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the high
priority in defending the homeland from terrorism, and economic problems at
home all limit American ability to deliver on its security commitments to Asian
allies. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s 2003 announcement that US
forces in South Korea would be moved south from the demilitarized zone and cut
by 17,000 triggered fears of abandonment in Japan as well as in South Korea. East
Asians wonder, if the United States brings home its forces or is preoccupied with
other security threats, will regional rivalries and arms races destroy the peaceful
regional environment? A concert-like consultative process would provide a practi-
cal way for the United States to maintain a credible commitment to the security of
the region while learning to share responsibility with the rising regional powers.
In 1993 I presented a paper on “A Concert of Powers for the Asia-Pacific” in
Beijing at China’s first international conference on regional security issues. The
skeptical reactions of the participants indicated clearly that the notion of a con-
cert of powers was considered politically incorrect in this age of egalitarianism
in international relations; it had to go undercover. By convening regular security
discussions in Northeast Asia, where the interests of China, Japan, Russia, and
the United States converge, we hoped that we might enable a concert-like proc-
ess to emerge. NEACD has always been as much about the security dilemma
dynamics of major power relations as about Korean peninsula issues. For eight
years of NEACD’s eighteen-year history, the DPRK wasn’t even present. Much
of the discussion centers on the China–Japan relationship that is at the core of the
regional dynamics.
NEACD participation and agendas

Since 1993, NEACD has met twenty-one times and has become the most institu-
tionalized security dialogue process in Northeast Asia.
NEACD’s participation formula consists of one foreign ministry official, one
defense ministry official, one military officer, and two academics from each coun-
try. NEACD has been able to attract and sustain the participation of policy-level
officials (usually at the deputy assistant secretary/director general level). The gov-
ernments take NEACD as part of their foreign policy portfolios. In the American,
Chinese, and Russian foreign ministries the regional bureaus are responsible for
NEACD; in Japan and the ROK the policy bureaus are responsible; and in the
DPRK the US section of the foreign ministry is responsible. In China, Japan, and
the ROK the governments insist on having a say in selecting their country’s aca-
demic participants; the US and Russian governments leave the choice of academ-
ics to the IGCC organizers; the DPRK participants are foreign ministry officials,
some of whom wear the hats of the ministry think-tank, the Institute for Disarma-
ment and Peace. This close coordination with the governments and the fact that
the majority of people in the room work for these governments are the reasons
why NEACD is usually described as a Track 1.5 dialogue. The governmental
200 Susan L. Shirk
connections provide direct channels for understandings developed at NEACD to
be injected into the policy process.
NEACD is, however, an unofficial process. The government officials participate
as private individuals, not as representatives of their governments, which creates
an atmosphere for candid exchanges of views. Participants are interspersed around
the table instead of being seated as national delegations. There are no talking points
and discussion flows spontaneously. The academics raise questions that officials
wouldn’t dare ask and scholars like the late Robert Scalapino and Seizaburo Sato
frame current issues in a historical perspective seldom heard in official meetings.
Candor is protected by the confidentiality rule against publicly revealing any
information about who said what. After the first few sessions, when the group ago-
nized over a press statement, it abandoned the practice because the negotiations
over the statement dominated the discussion. At some recent meetings, such as the
Tokyo meeting in 2007 and the La Jolla meeting in 2009, the media interest was so
intense that it was decided that I, as chair, would have to brief the press about the
meeting without providing any information about the contents of the discussions.
Following the meetings, the substance of the discussions is communicated directly
to policymakers through internal reporting by the government participants. The
American participants also give a general summary of the session at a public brief-
ing in Washington, DC, and visit government offices to provide a more detailed
read-out.
The venue for the meetings rotates in round-robin fashion among the countries,
which gives them a sense of ownership of the process. The North Koreans have not
yet been willing to invite the group to meet in their country, and they have refused
to attend meetings in South Korea. (Cheju Island was proposed in the hopes that
it would be easier to accept than Seoul, but it didn’t resolve the problem.) North
Korean diplomats explained that it was a bureaucratic matter: NEACD belongs to
the Foreign Ministry and the Foreign Ministry doesn’t deal with the ROK because
it does not consider it a foreign country. They rejected the various bureaucratic
fixes we suggested. When we first confronted this dilemma in 2004, the ROK gov-
ernment felt it was more important to have North Korean participation than to host
the meeting and therefore it suggested meeting in the United States, whose turn
was next. But in 2005, they insisted on holding the meeting in Seoul even though
it meant that the North Koreans sat it out that year.
IGCC serves as the secretariat for NEACD, but decisions about agenda, study
projects, and other issues are made by consensus. The basic formula for the agenda
emerged early in the NEACD process as the group improvised in this new and
unknown organizational terrain. On the first day of every NEACD meeting, the
foreign ministry official from each country gives a brief ten-minute presentation,
followed by fifty minutes of sharp questioning. This give and take brings into the
open the anxieties and misperceptions that others have about a government’s poli-
cies and allows that government to clarify its intentions and explain the domestic
context for decisions. The answers are supplied by the academics as well as the
officials. The entire day is devoted to these national perspectives, with each of the
six countries receiving an hour of attention.
At the first NEACD meeting I opened the discussion with a warning against
being over-polite. I was worried that participants might tip-toe around differences
instead of addressing them head on, and thereby vitiate the value of Track II dia-
logue as compared to official talks. My advice was unnecessary. At every meet-
ing, the academics can be counted on to confront other participants and speak
bluntly; the diplomats also talk more honestly than they are used to do outside
their office corridors. But the tone of discussion is cordial; no matter how heated
the exchange, people do not raise their voices or pound the table.
In 2002, when the North Koreans returned to NEACD after almost a decade’s
absence, the first country up to speak was Japan. Premier Koizumi had just returned
from visiting Pyongyang, where Chairman Kim Jong-il had told him about the
Japanese citizens who had been kidnapped to North Korea. The Japanese par-
ticipants described the media firestorm and intense public reaction that the news
about these abductees had generated. I was worried about how the North Koreans
were taking it. At the break, I asked the senior-most official what he thought of
the discussion. He was unfazed. “It’s very frank but friendly,” he said, much to
my relief.
On the second day, the group discusses a particular security-related topic,
beginning with several presentations by experts. We consciously rejected the
ASEAN approach of addressing soft, non-controversial issues first and plunged
immediately into hard security issues, including military build-ups and confidence
building. The forum addressed the issues that government decision makers really
care about and that have direct relevance for war and peace, including military
modernization, weapons of mass destruction, missile defenses, and historical and
territorial disputes. These are the issues which are particularly compelling in the
Northeast Asian context and make it worthwhile for busy policy-level officials to
spend their time traveling to NEACD meetings.
For the past decade, the foreign ministry officials have lunched separately on
the second day, to discuss the prospects for an official multilateral forum in North-
east Asia and how NEACD might facilitate it. All the foreign ministry officials,
North Koreans included, agree that it is only a matter of time before a permanent
regional forum is created. When I suggest that NEACD should declare victory
and disband when the official forum is established, the diplomats disagree. Even
if there is an official process, they say, they would value this opportunity for infor-
mal, unscripted give and take which is difficult to replicate in any official meeting.
NEACD could continue to function as a kind of retreat for the officials engaged in
Northeast Asian diplomacy, together with their academic counterparts. NEACD
also could supplement the work of official multilateralism by conducting research
projects and making proposals for the officials to act upon. The ROK organizers
of the Energy and Economics Working Group and the Russian organizers of the
Peace and Security Mechanism Working Group of the Six Party Talks were inter-
ested in using NEACD to provide this kind of input to the work of their groups.
From time to time, NEACD also organizes a one-day meeting on a special
topic immediately following the NEACD meeting. A number of these sessions
have been devoted to avenues for economic cooperation in the region, such as
202 Susan L. Shirk
energy (1996), energy and transportation infrastructure (2002), and the DPRK’s
economic development (2006). The Chinese have promoted these economic ses-
sions in the hopes that they might re-engage North Korea and stimulate its market
reform and opening to the world. Based on their own experience, the Chinese
believe that the best way to reduce North Korea’s hostility is to transform its eco-
nomic system.5 One of the earliest discussions envisioning regional cooperation
for civilian nuclear power occurred at the 1996 NEACD energy workshop. Issues
related to maritime trade and proposals for cooperative patrolling of the Sea Lanes
of Communication have also been discussed since the 1990s.
Finally, NEACD also has organized subgroup study projects to develop pro-
posals for the group as a whole to consider. In 1995, a committee consisting of
academics from all the countries except North Korea proposed a set of what they
called “mutual reassurance measures,” including but not limited to military-related
confidence-building measures that the governments should undertake: safety at
sea conventions; defense information sharing and a regional arms register dia-
logue; a dialogue on arms control, export controls, and non-proliferation; a com-
munications network; a maritime safety and security dialogue; a natural disasters
emergency response dialogue; economic issues conferences; and exchanges and
conferences for students, journalists, and chambers of commerce.
The defense information-sharing idea materialized into a subgroup of mili-
tary and defense officials that, beginning in 1998, started to meet regularly back
to back with the NEACD session. Although the military officers are reticent in
NEACD discussions with the foreign ministry officials in the room, when they
get off on their own, they are voluble and find a great deal of common ground as
professional soldiers. For example, all of them have struggled with new roles and
missions related to counter-terrorism after 2001; they commiserate about the dif-
ficulties of diverting resources to homeland defense and having to coordinate with
the internal security forces of civilian agencies. All the militaries have downsized
their forces and concentrated their resources on modernizing their technologies.
Most recently, the group is discussing a regional military white paper as well as
a defense transparency index. Over hard-drinking dinners and field trips to mili-
tary installations in Qingdao, Okinawa, San Diego, and the Demilitarized Zone,
the military-to-military group has developed a genuine esprit de corps. When the
North Koreans returned to NEACD in 2002, they started the practice of sending
two diplomats to observe the defense information-sharing subgroup meetings so
that they could pass the information to their own military, which someday may
agree to participate in NEACD. In 2009 several of us from IGCC visited the DPRK
and met with a Korean People’s Army general to encourage army officers to join
the NEACD process. The encounter was not encouraging: the general berated us
for America’s hostile policies and expressed no interest at all in sending officers
to NEACD.
Another study project, chaired by Chinese academic Chu Shulong, developed
a set of principles to undergird the NEACD process in 1996–97. Although many
of the principles are familiar, they include several concepts that have special reso-
nance in the Northeast Asia context: promotion of human rights, transparency on
security issues, freedom of navigation based on international law, and cooperation
on humanitarian assistance.
In 2001 a NEACD study project developed recommendations for how govern-
ments could move toward a Track I official regional security dialogue and what
form such a dialogue might take. The group urged that regular consultations by
the assistant secretaries and directors general responsible for managing East Asia
policy in the six countries be at the heart of the process. High-profile meetings by
foreign ministers or leaders can ease domestic-threat perceptions by publicizing
cooperation, but they are no substitute for the substantive policy coordination by
hands-on policy managers. NEACD continued envisioning a future Track I proc-
ess in a special workshop preceding the 2007 NEACD session in Moscow, organ-
ized in conjunction with the Russian officials in charge of the Six Party Talks
working group on the future Northeast Asia Peace and Security Mechanism.
National perspectives on NEACD
Republic of Korea
The South Koreans, from the time of NEACD’s founding until the present, have
been the keenest supporters of the dialogue and of all types of multilateral secu-
rity cooperation in Northeast Asia. Seoul policymakers view multilateralism as a
mechanism for enhancing their country’s role vis-à-vis its larger and more power-
ful neighbors, and as a way to reinforce their efforts to tame North Korea. Liberal
and conservative administrations alike have enthusiastically supported NEACD
(including providing financing for meetings held in the ROK) and promoted the
goal of an official Northeast Asia Security Dialogue (NEASD). Roh Tae-woo
first floated the idea of an official six-country body in 1988. The Kim Young-
sam administration made a similar proposal at the senior officials’ meeting of
the newly created ARF in 1994. Progressive presidents Kim Dae-Jung and Roh
Moo-hyun were no less positive about the notion. In a multilateral arena, the South
Koreans envision themselves as better able to act as a leader in promoting regional
stability (Snyder 2009). Before the creation of the ad hoc Six Party Talks in 2003,
the ROK Foreign Ministry had been urging NEACD to gradually transform itself
into an official forum by devoting the second day of the meeting to talks without
the academics in the room. It was also seeking to organize a meeting of the six
foreign ministers on the margin of the ASEAN Regional Forum.
Both the Republic of Korea and Japan, led by domestic coalitions favoring eco-
nomic openness, believed their interests were enhanced by strengthening regional
cooperation (Solingen 2008). In particular, they welcomed the opportunity to
build bridges to China while maintaining their alliances with the United States. In
candid moments during NEACD discussions, South Korean and Japanese partici-
pants have expressed the frustration they sometimes feel because they are treated
more as subordinates than as partners in their alliances with the United States.
Regional multilateral settings give them the freedom to operate more independ-
ently and on a more equal basis.
204 Susan L. Shirk
Japan
Japan also has been a strong supporter of NEACD since its founding. Tokyo views
regional multilateralism as a good way to enhance its regional role by building
trust with regional neighbors who still are resentful of Japan’s wartime occupa-
tions. In the early 1990s, South Koreans and Japanese had little interaction with
one another and emotions between them were still raw; in academic meetings, it
was not unusual for a South Korean scholar to bristle angrily in reaction to a com-
ment by a Japanese scholar. Japanese interactions with China were also strained.
Japanese diplomats and scholars often contrasted the tension that persists in
China–Japan relations with the post-war reconciliation between France and Ger-
many, which they attributed to the dense web of multilateral ties in Europe. Dur-
ing the second George W. Bush administration (2004–8), the Japanese public and
politicians cooled on the official Six Party Talks for a variety of reasons, but they
continued to be strong supporters of Track II multilateralism in Northeast Asia.
Russia
The Russians have been the least engaged of all the NEACD participants. Gor-
bachev originated the idea of a Northeast Asia security mechanism, presumably
as a tactic for subverting American alliances with Japan and the ROK. But once
the Soviet Union fell, the Russians became preoccupied with their own domestic
drama and with their new relationship with the West. East Asia became a lower
and lower priority, despite the economic opportunities offered by the region. This
trend was reflected in the character of Russian participation in NEACD. At the
very beginning, young, reform-minded officials and scholars embraced the dia-
logue and helped to host a wonderful meeting at a luxurious guest-house sur-
rounded by birch trees outside Moscow that had previously been the exclusive
preserve of the Communist Party Central Committee. But, over time, it became
increasingly difficult to attract interest from the Russians; the military and defense
officials, in particular, were hard to get and, when they did come, their inadequate
English-language skills impeded their ability to contribute. At the 2002 session in
Moscow, the other participants put the Russian foreign ministry officials on the
defensive by complaining vehemently that Russia focused all its attention on the
West and neglected East Asia. In 2007, when it again was Russia’s turn to host,
Vladimir Rakhmanin, the foreign ministry official in charge of Asian multilateral
affairs, bore the responsibility alone because he couldn’t get help from other parts
of the government or from non-governmental organizations.
China
Perhaps the most significant accomplishment of the NEACD process has been its
socialization of Chinese attitudes toward multilateralism in its own region. China,
while embracing multilateralism at the global level, from its status as a perma-
nent member of the United Nations Security Council, had originally worried that
any regional grouping would blame China for everything. The young diplomats
from the Asia Department, like Fu Ying, who attended NEACD in the mid-1990s,
however, learned that a multilateral arena offered China an excellent opportu-
nity to gain influence in the region by reassuring others about its benign inten-
tions. Their experience in NEACD and other region-wide organizations like the
ASEAN Regional Forum transformed the thinking of the Chinese about benefits
of regional cooperation from the standpoint of their own national interests. They
became more confident and comfortable with their regional leadership role and
emerged as strong advocates of regional multilateralism.
At first, Chinese officials were conspicuously ill at ease in the NEACD setting.
Their statements were stilted and encrusted in ideological rhetoric, and they strenu-
ously resisted any organizational initiatives such as study projects or group state-
ments that went beyond mere talk. The military representatives had a particularly
suspicious attitude toward proposals for confidence building, indicating just how
much they were needed. Senior Colonel Zhu Chenghu, who participated for a number
of years in the 1990s, was particularly caustic and outspoken. Over time, however,
led by the young, open-minded foreign ministry officials from the Asia Department
who attended, China began to take a more enthusiastic and proactive approach to
regional multilateral cooperation on both the official and unofficial levels.
The turnaround began in 1995 when Fu Ying, then a forty-year-old junior offi-
cial in the Asia Department, started to attend the dialogue. She had studied in
England and served a valuable apprenticeship in international cooperation in the
United Nations peacekeeping mission in Cambodia. Fu Ying quickly realized that
regional dialogues like NEACD created opportunities for China to demonstrate
to its neighbors that its intentions were friendly. The two of us, the only women
in the group, would consult every night about how to craft the next day’s agenda
to promote the progress of the dialogue. Fu Ying became an advocate within the
bureaucracy for regional multilateral cooperation, and she brought her mentor,
Wang Yi, then the director general of the Asia Department, on board. She arranged
for me to talk with him after the 1996 NEACD meeting in Beijing, and in later
years the three of us often discussed the PRC’s efforts to reassure its neighbors and
the United States about its cooperative approach to East Asia. As Fu Ying’s career
advanced, she was posted abroad and no longer participated in NEACD. In 2005,
however, she returned to NEACD at the meeting in Qingdao immediately follow-
ing the first meeting of the Six Party Talks. Briefing the group about the talks, she
said that NEACD had provided the model for them. She described NEACD as the
“shadow Six Party Talks.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry guides the NEACD delegation with a light hand.
The academics express independent views and explain the domestic pressures
operating on foreign policy, although they do not openly criticize their govern-
ment policies the way the American, Japanese, and South Korean academics do.
Although the Chinese government directs its representatives not to discuss
the relationship with Taiwan in international settings because, strictly speaking,
it should be considered a domestic issue, in the NEACD setting, most Chinese
participants are willing to address the issue and only a few young and insecure
officials refuse on principle.
206 Susan L. Shirk
Sino-Japanese relations are crucially important for maintaining a peaceful East
Asia, and they receive a great deal of attention during NEACD discussions. In
the 1990s, the Chinese went on the offensive, attacking Japan’s cooperation with
the United States on theater missile defense and its failure to adequately address
issues related to World War II history. Every comment had a sharp edge. In recent
years, however, Chinese participants have been much less vocal in their criticisms
of Japan.
When China created the Six Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issue, the
Foreign Ministry consulted with IGCC about the relationship between the talks
and NEACD. Although it preferred not to institutionalize the linkage at that point,
it anticipated the possibility of such linkage if and when the talks became a per-
manent multilateral organization. And in the meantime, the Chinese encouraged

NEACD to support the activities of the Six Party Talks working groups.
The DPRK
One important goal of NEACD is to follow the successful precedent with China
by transforming North Korea’s threat perceptions and its willingness to cooperate
with its neighbors and the United States.
At the first NEACD meeting, held at UC San Diego in 1993, the DPRK was an
eager participant. Because of this history, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-gwan,
attending the NEACD meeting in Tokyo in April 2006, proudly announced to the
press on several occasions that the DPRK was a “founding member” of the North-
east Asia Cooperation Dialogue.
Following the 1993–94 nuclear crisis, however, the DPRK stopped attend-
ing NEACD meetings despite the efforts of the other countries to bring it back.
Pyongyang returned to NEACD in 2002, sending four people to the meeting in
Moscow following Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi’s visit and at the same time
as US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly’s visit to Pyongyang. At that meet-
ing, the DPRK participants also sat in on the foreign ministry officials’ lunch and
the Defense Information Sharing Study Group session.
The 2006 meeting in Tokyo was the first time that North Koreans had traveled
to Japan for an international meeting. The session was attended by nine North
Koreans and most of the Six Party Talk negotiators, including Vice Foreign Min-
ister Kim Gye-gwan and Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who tried
to restart the stalled Six Party process. The meeting attracted a massive amount
of media attention and police protection. Although the attempt to restart the talks
failed, behind the headlines the North Koreans participated in a one-day seminar
on economic development with economists and representatives of the World Bank
and IMF, along with the regular NEACD events.
With each NEACD meeting, the comfort level of the DPRK participants has
increased. Instead of the leader being the sole speaker, other delegation members
talk too. Instead of only replying to questions, they raise questions of others. Jong
Tai-yang, the official from the DPRK Foreign Ministry who has led the delega-
tion at most of the sessions, expresses himself with an articulate naturalness and
avoids ideological jargon. The North Koreans are increasingly at ease in their
informal socializing with foreigners; two of the younger officials dropped in on
a graduate student party with their American hosts at UC San Diego. This evolu-
tion in behavior follows the pattern that the Chinese had followed before them. In
contrast to the Chinese, however, the North Koreans make little effort to reassure
others about their benign intentions. Instead they seek to show resolve by reas-
serting their demands; for example, for the light-water reactors promised them in
the 1994 Framework Agreement. And they downplay any indications of market
reforms in their country. They do, however, seek to explain the reasons why they
believe that their country faces a genuine threat from the United States.
In NEACD discussions participants from other countries seek to draw out the
North Koreans about what would convince them that the United States had aban-
doned what Pyongyang calls its “hostile policy.” At each meeting the North Kore-
ans answer that question by making somewhat different demands. The participants
from other countries in turn try to explain why these demands may not be in North
Korea’s own interests. They say, for example, that non-aggression pacts histori-
cally have often been broken; that light-water reactors are not as good a solution
to energy problems as non-nuclear solutions; and that North Korea possesses an
effective conventional deterrent and will not be more secure with nuclear weapons.
After the Six Party Talks started, American officials found NEACD helpful for
explicating “what we actually meant to say” at the official meetings, as Principal
Deputy Assistant Secretary Don Keyser put it at a NEACD briefing in Washington,
DC. The Americans also provide useful nuance about the domestic context for their
policies. For example, during the Bush administration, former Clinton administra-
tion official Robert Einhorn laid out the reasons why a future Democratic admin-
istration was likely to be politically constrained from offering Pyongyang a better
deal (a prediction that has been confirmed by Obama administration policies).
Even if the NEACD experience may have had a positive influence on the per-
ceptions of the North Korean participants, however, we do not know whether their
views are communicated to or have any effect on the actual decision makers in
Pyongyang. Until his death, Kim Jong-il seemed to make all important foreign
policy decisions by himself within a highly centralized system. Whether or not
this system will continue under his son is, of course, uncertain. Nor is it clear how
anything learned at NEACD will be communicated within the system. At a 2009
meeting in Pyongyang to discuss NEACD with a Korean People’s Army general,
the Foreign Ministry officials appeared intimidated by the military men; and when
I asked them if they had reported on the NEACD Defense Information Sharing
meetings to the military, they indicated that they had not. The nature of the DPRK
political system may make it more resistant to the positive influences of Track II
multilateral diplomacy than China was.
The United States

Although the Clinton administration backed IGCC’s initiative to establish NEACD,
the United States has, by and large, been skeptical about regional multilateralism
208 Susan L. Shirk
in East Asia. The multilateral leg of US policy toward the region remains thin-
ner and less developed than the bilateral leg. Washington’s ambivalence toward
the creation of a multilateral security regime in East Asia has stemmed from its
anxiety that multilateralism competes with and could subvert its bilateral alliances
with Japan and South Korea. As the most powerful player in the region, the United
States also worries about the loss of leadership and autonomy implied by a multi-
lateral arrangement.
After the initial burst of multilateral activism by the first Clinton administration,
spearheaded by Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord, the second Clinton
administration paid much less attention to multilateral engagement at the Track I
or II levels. As I saw for myself when I served in government, the State Depart-
ment treated participation in multilateral meetings as a lower priority than bilat-

eral meetings. The Secretary of State was sometimes absent from the ARF annual
meeting, which is an important ritual of regional multilateralism. High-level inter-
agency meetings by principals or deputies almost never discuss regional multi-
lateral forums, and government funding of multilateral activities is minimal. East
Asians have been very actively engaged in developing the multilateral architecture
of the region, but the United States largely marginalized itself from the process.
This pattern of neglect continued through the Bush administration until it began
talking about the need for a multilateral approach to the threat of the DPRK, an idea
that began as a kind of “faux multilateralism” to avoid offering the DPRK bilateral
talks. The establishment of the Six Party Talks on the DPRK nuclear issue, how-
ever, plunged the United States into its first real experience with a regional multi-
lateral approach to solving a serious regional problem. Although the coordination
of effort among the major players in the region represented a significant accom-
plishment, having to coordinate with others on bargaining with the DPRK was a
difficult adjustment for Washington. The process constrained the United States as
much as it did North Korea. China pressed Washington to be more flexible, while
Japan and the ROK insisted on greater firmness. The establishment of a working
group on a future Northeast Asia security mechanism within the Six Party Talks,
however, did motivate the US government to start thinking seriously about what
kind of multilateral arrangement would best serve its interests.
Organizational challenges
IGCC has learned from the NEACD experience that Track II diplomacy involves
a number of organizational challenges.
Maintaining group cohesion

It is difficult to create a strong feeling of community within the dialogue when its
membership is not consistent from year to year. Although the academics remain
more or less the same, the officials change job responsibilities and move on to
other departments after a year or two. As a result, the academics have established
stronger interpersonal ties than the officials have.
Maintaining communication throughout the year also is a challenge when the
group meets only once a year. During 2001–3, IGCC created an experiment in
virtual diplomacy called “Wired for Peace.” The online community consisted of
the members and alumni of NEACD. We funded research assistants in Tokyo and
Seoul to assist in stimulating the online conversation by posting news items and
commentary. The experiment was unsuccessful. The NEACD participants were
too busy to use the website and the officials were wary about sharing information
and expressing personal views online.
Creeping officialization
NEACD has always been more than an academic exercise—IGCC has worked
very closely with the participating governments in charting NEACD’s course. The
Chinese Foreign Ministry meets beforehand with the Chinese participants in order
to orchestrate what themes they want to highlight in their remarks. Sometimes
the US, Japanese, and ROK foreign ministry officials hold a trilateral meeting
before the NEACD session begins. Some of the foreign ministries insist that the
think-tank associated with the ministry be involved in the meetings and assert their
right to pick the NEACD participants. The active involvement of governments in
NEACD and the fact that the majority of participants are policy-level government
officials can be a curse as well as a blessing—NEACD confronts a particularly
acute form of what has been called the “autonomy dilemma” of Track II diplomacy
(Kraft 2000). If the meetings turn into a somewhat more candid replay of current
diplomatic discussions, but without the authority to actually decide anything, their
value is diminished. To counteract this tendency to be dominated by immediate
government concerns, IGCC has tried to create an agenda that forces discussion of
long-term regional dynamics, with the academics providing much of the analysis.
Funding
Maintaining financial support for the dialogue is another challenge. During the
second Bush administration, NEACD funding became a casualty of interagency
differences over North Korea strategy. The neoconservatives killed the Department
of Energy funding for NEACD because, as Bob Joseph, former Undersecretary of
State for Arms Control and Nonproliferation told me directly, he was “skeptical of
any process that gives legitimacy to the North Korean regime.” President Bush’s
support for the multilateral approach prevented the skeptics within the adminis-
tration from killing the official talks, but they did their best to kill the unofficial
version. NEACD survived, thanks to the contributions of the Japanese and ROK
governments, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Stanley Foundation.
Evaluating the NEACD record

Assessing the results of Track II multilateral diplomacy is more religion than sci-
ence. People like to believe that more talking leads to less fighting; that dialogue
210 Susan L. Shirk
dispels mistrust and improves mutual understanding, which will in turn enhance
cooperation and prevent military conflict. Documenting the actual impact of dia-
logue on mutual perceptions and international relations, however, is impossible.
For example, it would be a stretch to claim that any easing of relations between
China and Japan is due to the many hours of discussion of this relationship at
NEACD meetings.
What can be said about NEACD is that it is a remarkably long-lasting institution
for an informal dialogue. The measure of its success is that policy-level officials
from foreign and defense ministries come away from NEACD meetings positive
about the value of the experience and want to return. As a result, after seventeen
years and twenty-one meetings, the dialogue continues to earn the support of all
six governments, including financial support from the South Korean and Japanese
foreign ministries.
The participation in NEACD by young Chinese diplomats has also contributed
to the transformation of China’s policies toward multilateral security coopera-
tion in East Asia. The Chinese have come to promote regional multilateralism as
a useful way to enhance their regional influence in a non-threatening way. But
although the North Koreans are following the Chinese trajectory in the sense that
they are increasingly at ease in the NEACD setting, there is no evidence that the
experience has had an impact on their policies or behavior toward their neighbors
and the United States.
Finally, at least in the view of the Chinese, NEACD laid a foundation for the
official Six Party Talks, which in turn might eventually lead to a permanent official
consultative process for Northeast Asia. NEACD established a habit of cooperation
among the six countries that is likely to have a long-lasting institutional impact.
As the time of writing, however, the trends in the region could not be less aus-
picious for the emergence of cooperative security. The Six Party Talks have not
met for more than two years, and relations between countries in Northeast Asia
are as tense as they have ever been. Two North Korean attacks and a hardening of
ROK policy against North Korea are threatening to lead to more hostilities on the
Korean peninsula. Chinese–South Korean relations are severely frayed because
Beijing, in effect, took the DPRK’s side. The US, the ROK, and Japan are inten-
sifying joint military exercises to deter the DPRK, as well as to warn China that
unless it can constrain its ally, Northeast Asia will be split into two antagonistic
blocs. No one expects these negative trends in the security of the region to be
reversed by multilateral discussions at the Track I or Track II levels. The current
situation is a painful reminder that, despite the progress that has been made in
building trust and confidence through NEACD and other multilateral dialogues,
Track II diplomacy has had only a marginal impact on the international relations
of Northeast Asia.
Notes
1 Amitav Acharya (2009) emphasizes that these distinctive features emerged indigenously
from within Asia.
2 On the various definitions of second track processes in the Asia-Pacific see Job 2003:
246–7; and Capie and Evans 2002: 209–19.
3 Alastair Iain Johnston (2009) seeks to demonstrate how participation in Track II and
Track I multilateral forums socialized China into new norms of international coopera-
tion.
4 See Dewitt and Evans 1993.
5 This also was the conclusion of a task force that IGCC and the Asia Society organized in
2009. See “North Korea Inside-Out: The Case for Economic Engagement,” available at
<http://igcc.ucsd.edu/publications/igcc-publications/publications_20110524.htm>.
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11 Security architecture in
Northeast Asia
Projections from the rearview
mirror
T.J. Pempel
As the chapters in this book have shown, Northeast Asia is pockmarked by a

bevy of potential security hotspots that make it, in the famous phrase of Aaron
Friedberg (1993), a region “ripe for rivalry.” Residual cleavages from the Cold
War have kept the Korean peninsula split into two radically contrasting regimes
which are still technically in a state of war and, as recently as 2010, exchanged
artillery blasts. Though cross-strait relations between the People’s Republic of
China (PRC) and Taiwan enjoyed a period of calm following the 2008 election
of Ma Ying-jeou as president of Taiwan, as Han and Luo have shown in Chap-
ter 6, Taiwan still struggles to sustain its longstanding flexibility and de facto
political autonomy, while China continues to treat Taiwan as its last unreturned
province, lost during an imperial “century of humiliation,” and in 2005 passed
a law threatening military action to prevent Taiwanese independence. Multiple
unresolved boundary disputes, particularly at sea, spawn accusations of boundary
violations, periodic naval clashes, and nationalistic vituperation. While the region
is hardly engulfed in an overt arms race, several countries have been expanding
their military capabilities in a tit-for-tat fashion, marked by substantial invest-
ments in more sophisticated strategies, missile build-ups, cyber-warfare, satellite
reconnaissance, space technologies, naval expansions, and advanced military sys-
tems. Differences in political and economic systems inject further frictions, while
historical memories cast a contemporary pall over numerous bilateral relation-
ships. Most countries in the region (including the United States, which continues
to exert a major strategic influence) grapple with the question of how to deal with
a “rising China,” a country whose economic and security capabilities are growing
geometrically but whose long-term intentions remain opaque. China’s leaders, in
turn, have complained regularly about what they view as the efforts of others to
stifle China’s legitimate quest for great power status even as they attempt simulta-
neously to convince their neighbors that long-term Chinese intentions are peaceful
and non-threatening to the status quo.
Nonetheless, Northeast Asia presents a paradox examined by Chung-min Lee
and T.J. Pempel in the opening chapter. Though rife with various security dilem-
mas, bilateral animosities, tensions, mistrust, and national competitions, and with
the military defenses of virtually all countries in the region continuing to target
one another, the region has had no shooting wars since the armistice ending the
Security architecture in Northeast Asia 213
Korean War in 1953. During the subsequent fifty-plus years, few shots have been
fired and few lives have been lost. And, more tellingly, few national leaders have
put their countries on a war footing. Instead, numerous boundary disputes have
been peacefully settled. Compared to most other regions of the world, in North-
east Asia military budgets remain relatively low as a percentage of both GDP and
total government expenditures and for most countries in the region these percent-
ages are stable or declining. Potential security threats and military confrontations
remain low on the political priority list for most governments in Northeast Asia,
which instead devote their primary attention to domestic economic growth (Frost
2008; Mahbubani 2008; Overholt 2008; inter alia). As Lee and Pempel suggest in
Chapter 1, the Northeast Asian security complex is increasingly being defined by
non-military norms of state behavior.

The North Korean case remains an undeniably glaring exception to the broader
tranquility and concentration on economic development. The Democratic Repub-
lic of Korea’s (DPRK) actions, aimed at what its leaders continually claim is the
simple search for regime protection, have threatened to unleash both conventional
arms build-ups and nuclear proliferation at the regional and global levels. Two
nuclear tests, a bevy of missile launches, the probable sinking of the South Korean
corvette Cheonan in summer 2010 and the explicit violation of the armistice by its
shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November of that year are but the most recent
challenges to regional tranquility. Has the acquisition of nuclear weapons capa-
bility enhanced the already provocative inclinations of the DPRK? As Greico’s
comparative analysis suggests, other states that acquired nuclear weapons may
have gained what he calls greater “crisis escalation” dominance than their non-
nuclear neighbors. Certainly, North Korea appears willing to climb the ladder of
escalation more aggressively than any of its neighbors. At the same time, Greico’s
analysis also shows that the possession of nuclear weapons does not translate into
a higher propensity to start military crises, nor, as compared to non-nuclear chal-
lengers, are nuclear-weapon states more likely to employ more violent triggers in
military crises. This suggests that the probability of full-scale military confronta-
tions catalyzed by North Korea will continue to remain low.
Indeed, despite the DPRK’s ongoing military braggadocio, most leaders in the
region recognize its flamboyant outbursts as ritualized attention-getting devices,
linked more to blackmail and negotiating techniques, rather than as the signaling
prelude to all-out war. The North has a huge number of uniformed and reserve
military personnel; its artillery is capable of inflicting horrific damage on Seoul
and, possibly, Tokyo. But, as John Feffer (2009) has accurately put it, “North
Korea spends about half a billion dollars a year on its military. South Korea alone
spends 40 times that amount. And the United States spends 1,000 times more.
Neither China nor Russia would be likely to support any sustained North Korean
military action.” More telling still is the average number of training flight hours
per year for military pilots: in the United States this number varies between 180
and 220; in Japan it is about 180; in China the number is in the 80–115 range; in
the DPRK it is only 10. Fuel shortages alone prevent serious aerial training by the
North. The regime has virtually no capability to acquire sea or air compatibility,
214 T.J. Pempel
let alone superiority—even in the short run. As Feffer appropriately concludes,
“Militarily speaking, North Korea is a kamikaze country. It can inflict damage, but
only in a suicide attack and only close to home” (Feffer 2009).
Nevertheless, even if the probabilities of outright state-to-state warfare remain
remote, the countries in the region have by no means forged a “security commu-
nity,” a region in which wars and open conflict are essentially unimaginable (as, is
often suggested, is reflective of most of Europe or North America). Though they
maintain normal diplomatic relations and are not seriously contemplating overt
conflict, most states of the region remain viscerally skeptical of one another’s
intentions and shifting capabilities. In “hard security” affairs, historically rooted
rivalries and ongoing jockeying to enhance national influence continue to shape
developments across the region. And since virtually all ruling elites in the region
have prioritized economic well-being as a central pivot for their overall secu-
rity, mercantilist aspirations, trade disputes, energy competition, and contests for
markets also emerge periodically as additional triggers for political and diplo-
matic contestation.
Where does Northeast Asia’s security architecture fit into this picture? This
chapter examines the evolving security relationships in Northeast Asia with a par-
ticular emphasis on the shifting formal institutional arrangements that undergird
those relationships. It argues that the current security architecture is the conse-
quence of two competing trends. On the one hand, Northeast Asia contains numer-
ous architectural ribs that reflect and even expand old Cold War rivalries. At their
core, these architectural buttresses have long been justified as vital to overt mil-
itary deterrence and as offering ongoing hedges against possible alterations in
regional power. For the most part, they reflect an underlying regional competition
between the still hegemonic United States and a rapidly emerging China.
In contrast, however, such residual Cold War alliances have more recently
been cross-cut by a number of multilateral bodies that engage former and poten-
tial competitors—including the United States and China—in regionally specific
efforts designed to promote engagement, temper existing rivalries, enhance mutual
trust, and potentially expand the commitment to unearthing overlapping interests.
The cumulative institutional security picture in Northeast Asia is thus structurally
ambiguous—a mixture of balancing or hedging institutions, on the one hand, off-
set by bodies fostering engagement and comity, on the other.
The underlying question for the region’s future is the extent to which this mix of
institutions is likely to generate a sufficiently consistent sense of underlying order
and predictability as to reduce the chances of major military confrontations. Even
better, can this mixture forge an overarching sense of common purpose and exter-
nal security across the region so as to ensure a relatively harmonious adjustment to
the rapidly changing power relationships over the horizon? Can Northeast Asia’s
complex amalgamation of security arrangements become sufficiently dependable
that both large and small nation states in the region will be reassured in the face of
today’s prevailing security dilemmas?
Schematizing the current security architecture in Northeast Asia
Institutions can serve many simultaneous purposes. As Guenwook Lee explores
in depth in Chapter 4, institutions can reduce transaction costs that are difficult for
members to bear on their own. Simultaneously, they can operate as venues within
which members can engage in dialogue and bargaining. In many instances they are
also mechanisms that, over time, craft common agendas and even become expres-
sions of a newly discovered common identity (Ikenberry and Inoguchi 2007: 2–4).
Each of the institutions that make up the security architecture in Northeast Asia
does most of these things and often more, though with admittedly widely varying
degrees of effectiveness. Our concern here is less with the specific workings of the
individual institutions themselves than with the composite picture they reveal of
the security situation in Northeast Asia.
Northeast Asia’s security architecture is composed of at least three different
types of bodies, many of which have been examined in detail in the chapters
above. These exist side by side or in hierarchical layers, one on top of the other.
First, a series of institutions—mostly bilateral in character—reinforce traditional
power relationships; aim at deterring potential rivals; and/or balance or hedge
against them. Second, and usually far newer, other institutions—most of them
multilateral in nature—explicitly challenge or bridge such rivalries. And finally,
several institutions display combinations of hedging and engagement strategies
simultaneously (the composite is presented in Table 11.1). This section sketches
out some of the major examples of these different institutions.
Table 11.1 Major security arrangements affecting Northeast Asia
Narrow membership Expansive membership
Reinforce • US bilateral alliances • Abe proposal for “Arc of
traditional • 2 × 2 dialogue Freedom and Prosperity”
security rivalries • China–DPRK alliance • PSI
• Trilateral Coordination • Shanghai Cooperation
and Oversight Group* Organization
and US–Japan–Australia
Arrangements
Potential to go • ASEAN Plus 3 (risks China
either way dominance; no US presence)
• East Asia Summit (risks China
alienation by including “non-Asian”
allies of United States)
• Shangri-La Dialogue
Bridge traditional • Plus 3 from APT • APEC
security rivalries (Japan, ROK, China) • ARF
• Proposed China, Japan, • CMI
US meeting • ADBI
• Six Party Talks • Rudd’s proposed Asia-Pacific
Community
• Hatoyama’s proposed East
Asia Community
Note: * A group linking the US, Japan, and Korea.
216 T.J. Pempel
Reinforcing traditional power competitions
Bilateral alliances remain the most powerful vertebrae in the spine of Northeast
Asia’s security architecture. It is America’s bilateral alliances that are the most
prominent, providing the oft-described “hub and spoke” infrastructure central to
many of the region’s security relationships. As they have for decades, they project
US military power deep into the region, keeping America continually vested in
regional security affairs. And many analysts, particularly from the US side, would
contend that these alliances, but most especially the US–Japan Security Alliance,
have been critical to the maintenance of peace in the region and to reducing the
temptations toward an otherwise probable arms race and competition between
Japan and China (Ikenberry and Inoguchi 2007; Mastanduno 2003; Overholt
2008; inter alia). In the deft words of Atkinson and Chiozza in Chapter 9, “With
its military presence, the United States has reassured, deterred, contained, and
patrolled the high seas over which the Asian economic miracle sailed.” As such,
it is not surprising that, as they further note by drawing on statements in the 2010
U.S. Quadrennial Defense Report, the United States continues to see these bilat-
eral alliances as the core components of its Northeast Asian foreign and security
policies.
At the same time, China maintains a longstanding if frustrating military alli-
ance with North Korea, giving the DPRK backup muscle and security guarantees
against any possible regime-threatening military actions, while DPRK, Russian,
and Chinese security ties continue in less formal, but nonetheless real, ways that
have not fully escaped Cold War linkages.
However, in the wake of changing security relations after the Cold War and
altered economic relations following the Asian financial and Lehman crises, Asia
has witnessed the proliferation of new security arrangements that complement
these longstanding alliance ties. Some are clearly rooted in efforts to expand tra-
ditional security linkages and were driven by ongoing concerns about deterrence,
balance, and counterweight strategies. The United States and Japan, for example,
have supplemented their security alliance through the Nye Initiative; the so-called
2 x 2 process which involves annual meetings of the principals in both countries’
defense and foreign ministries; and by a host of upgrades to weapons systems,
interoperability; and basing arrangements (Hughes 2009; Pempel 2006, 2008b;
Samuels 2007; inter alia). The United States has also sought to multilateralize
some of its previously bilateral linkages through new trilateral arrangements such
as those linking the United States, Japan, and the ROK, as well as those among the
United States, Australia, and Japan, the details of which are spelled out more fully
by Lee in Chapter 5, Iwama in Chapter 7, and Atkinson and Chiozza in Chapter
9. The United States has also led a number of multilateral military cooperation
exercises among overt allies, such as Cobra Gold and joint US–ROK exercises
designed to respond to perceived military provocations by the DPRK in 2010. In
addition, the United States spurred new instrumentalities, such as the Proliferation
Security Initiative (PSI), that now include a number of Asian partners, many of
whom have no overt alliances with the United States. PSI offers something of an
ad hoc “coalition of the willing” aimed at interdicting shipments of nuclear and
other weapon of mass destruction materials from the DPRK.
Less often acknowledged as part of Northeast Asia’s residual bilateral alliance
structures, China and the DPRK have maintained, however frostily, their formal
security alliance, with China serving continually as a protector of the DPRK in
the face of a host of United Nations sanctions and challenges from neighbors, as
well as continuing to serve as its overwhelmingly most critical source of foreign
direct investment and trade. Also reflecting Cold War relations, China and Rus-
sia have multilateralized and expanded their prior bilateral ties with the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO). As Lee describes in Chapter 4 and Han and
Luo deal with in Chapter 6, the SCO began in 1996 (as the Shanghai Five) and
was officially launched with its current six members—China, Russia, Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan—on 15 June 2001. Even though the SCO
spills geographically beyond “Northeast Asia,” Russia and China are two of its
most important six members, and so the SCO should be understood as a powerful
component in the region’s changing security architecture whose basic member-
ship is redolent of Cold War divisions.
The SCO has, as its primary focus, internal military security and economic
cooperation, particularly within the energy field. It has established a permanent
secretariat in Beijing, a regional counterterrorism center in Tashkent, and it has
undertaken activities in a broad range of areas from military and law enforcement
to health care and cultural exchange (Cole and Jensen 2009: 264–5). Since its for-
mation, the SCO has also welcomed a number of countries as observers, including
Iran, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Mongolia, and Turkmenistan, as Lee explores in
his chapter. The SCO’s joint military activities are the only such actions by an
Asian regional body. All of this evidence can be mustered to argue that the SCO
is emerging as an “anti-NATO,” even though its charter states explicitly that it
“is not an alliance directed against other states and regions and it adheres to the
principle of openness.” The SCO certainly provides a potential challenge to US
advances in the deployment of its missile defense systems. It has also made it
more difficult for the United States or NATO countries, now engaged militarily
in neighboring Afghanistan, to think quite so easily about expanding their actions
in Central Asia.
This range of activities is emblematic of, and underscores, the ongoing relation-
ships and tensions left from the Cold War. They manifest the continuing efforts,
particularly those led by the United States and China, to deter one another mili-
tarily, or at least to hedge against actions by either party that might be deemed an
infringement on the other’s current or future power and influence. The underlying
premise of all such bodies is wariness, if not overt hostility, toward another set of
countries perceived as probable threats.
Architectures bridging traditional rivalries

Quite the opposite in nature are several multilateral bodies that, without seeking to
counter the purported deterrence value of military alliances and their build-outs,
218 T.J. Pempel
bring erstwhile military rivals together in institutions of engagement and the
search for common solutions to jointly recognized problems. One of the longest-
standing such bodies is the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.
Launched in 1989, largely at the initiative of Australia and Japan, APEC was the
first multilateral institution in the Asia-Pacific to focus primarily on economics.
Though nominally an “economic” body, it has become increasingly relevant to the
region’s security architecture for at least two reasons.
First, most of Northeast Asia’s governments treat economic development and
well-being as a vital component of their overall security. APEC, with its twenty-
one member economies (a formulation that allows for the inclusion of both Hong
Kong and Taiwan) drawn from both sides of the Pacific Ocean, includes all major
Northeast Asian powers (except for the DPRK). Trade liberalization, economic
development, and economic cooperation are its three principal goals, at least the
last two of which overlap heavily with the comprehensive security goals of most
Northeast Asian governments.
Second, APEC, particularly during the Bush administration, was prodded to
address more traditional military issues going beyond its previously narrower
economic agenda as part of what Richard Higgott (2004) has called US efforts
to “securitize” economic globalization. These endeavors compromised APEC’s
original economic focus in favor of taking a collective stand in support of the so-
called global war on terror. Central to the discussion of security architecture in
Northeast Asia is the fact that APEC now stands as a broadly inclusive multilateral
institution whose members include erstwhile political, security, and diplomatic
competitors. Importantly, its broad membership sweeps across the Asia-Pacific,
explicitly including the United States rather than being confined simply to North-
east Asia.
Rather similar in membership and inclusivity is the ASEAN Regional Forum
(ARF). The ASEAN countries, spurred in part by Japan and Australia, launched
the ARF in 1993. The ARF now involves a total of twenty-seven countries that
meet annually for security dialogue and confidence-building measures (CBMs)
related to traditional hard-security problems across the “geographical footprint”
of Northeast and Southeast Asia as well as Oceania. To date, the ARF has been
longer on CBM rhetoric than on genuine crisis prevention.
Far shorter in longevity and less fully institutionalized is the Shangri-La Dia-
logue, driven primarily by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) in
Singapore. Since 2002, this dialogue has brought together the defense ministers of
numerous and varying Asia-Pacific countries in what its sponsors rather immod-
estly refer to as the region’s “premier and most inclusive security institution”
(IISS 2009). Key to any successes either the ARF or Shangri-La have been able
to achieve is the presence of top-level officials and the two bodies’ facilitation of
informal caucusing by attendees anxious to address issues of immediate salience
to various combinations of participants, again with the ability to transcend tradi-
tional security cleavages and ongoing alliances.
The ASEAN Plus 3 (APT) process provides still another relatively new mul-
tilateral approach to linking potential competitors, in this case primarily around
issues of regional finance. APT is important for many reasons, but among the fore-
most is the fact that it created a process which included “only Asians” as members,
quite notably excluding the United States. APT gained enhanced momentum fol-
lowing the Asian financial crisis and has advanced several region-wide projects,
most importantly the currency swap arrangements under the Chiang Mai Initiative
(CMI) (and the more recent multilateralization of CMI) as well as two different
regional bond initiatives (for details, see Amyx 2004, 2008; Grimes 2006, 2009;
Pempel 2006, 2008a). APT has itself taken only a minimal interest in hard security
issues but, to the extent that APT and its various initiatives lead to cooperation
among potential security competitors, it holds the promise of possible functional
spill-overs that might eventually generate a broader climate of trust and coopera-
tion within areas of hard security. Worth noting with the CMI is that Japan, Korea,
and the PRC were able to conclude a successful arrangement over their relative
contributions. Both Japan and China wanted to be the “largest” contributor; each
won notional bragging rights by a compromise that allowed Japan to contribute 32
percent—the largest single percentage—which was equaled by the PRC + Hong
Kong contribution of 32 percent. Japan can claim that it gives “more” than China,
which in turn can retort that “the Chinese” contribution equals that of Japan. The
ROK, in turn, succeeded in securing the right to contribute one-half of the 32 per-
cent maximum contribution with its 16 percent.
APT also spawned a separate body, the East Asia Summit (EAS), which has met
annually since its first plenary in 2005. With a membership of the thirteen APT
member countries plus Australia, New Zealand, and India, the EAS has embraced
a far more comprehensive set of tasks, including economic, security, environmen-
tal, cultural, and non-traditional security issues such as pandemics and migration.
At its 2010 meeting it allowed both Russia and the United States to participate as
observers, from which both have advanced to regular membership as of 2011.
Most of these multilateral institutions are noteworthy for the fact that they are
institutions or forums that are layered on top of traditional (primarily bilateral)
security arrangements and that they link members who have traditionally viewed
one another as rivals, if not overt threats. National rivalries by no means van-
ish within these multilateral arrangements; protection of national sovereignty and
interests remains a dominant motif for all countries in Northeast Asia, but members
in these new bodies find themselves in forums within which to explicitly engage in
political bargaining and work toward compromises aimed at reducing current and
future national security tensions. None has yet achieved banner headline successes,
but the APT, CMI, and even ARF have all been instrumental in facilitating varying
degrees of cooperation among longstanding rivals and laying the groundwork for
future collective problem solving (Grimes 2009; Pempel 2007, inter alia).
Worth noting, however, is that many of these organizations, particularly those
driven primarily by ASEAN (and embodying the “ASEAN way,” with its exalta-
tion of national sovereignty and consensus-making processes over tangible and
institutionalized results), have frustrated their larger and more powerful members
as a consequence of their limited ability to address successfully the region’s most
pressing security issues. Furthermore, because many of these forums exclude the
220 T.J. Pempel
United States and are bodies for “Asians only,” skeptics are wary of the alleged
benefits they might provide in dealing with hard-core military and defense chal-
lenges. The United States, particularly during the Bush administration, was perhaps
the most doubtful, but Australia under Kevin Rudd, and at times other countries,
such as Japan (as shown by Iwama in Chapter 7) and the ROK (as laid out by Kim
in Chapter 8), have voiced similar skepticism. China, in contrast, as Han and Kuo
make clear, has generally been a strong advocate of such regional security bodies,
if only as a tactic to thwart the influence of the United States and its bilateral ties.
In response to worries about broad inclusivity creating institutional inefficiencies,
skeptical countries have variously pressed for smaller, more focused and more “big
or middle power” dominated instruments that would expand existing alliances or
forge “coalitions of the willing”; an Asia-Pacific community; or various trilateral

meetings that either bridge or reinforce traditional security relationships.
Also worth noting, potential competition between several of these bodies can
become a surrogate for ongoing national rivalries. Thus, as Iwama demonstrates,
APT has increasingly been feared by Japanese leaders as unduly benefiting Chi-
na’s growing regional influence, leaving Japan, Indonesia, and Singapore to press
for the expanded membership contained in the East Asia Summit. China, in turn,
has downplayed EAS activities in favor of working within APT. To date, although
these bodies function in parallel, they have been emerging as alternatives, rather
than complements, to one another.
Finally, as one more indication of bodies that bridge traditional security arrange-
ments, several smaller trilateral arrangements bring together bigger Northeast
Asian powers at a summit level. The most notable of these is the “plus 3” that has
spun off from the ASEAN Plus Three. Heads of state or government from Japan,
China, and the ROK originally met in mini-summits in conjunction with the APT
meetings, starting in 1999, to discuss any and all issues of mutual concern. Sub-
sequently, starting in December 2008, the three have met annually completely
outside the auspices of APT. All of these meetings led to promises to cooperate on
outstanding security issues and to meet annually for similar discussions (Calder
and Ye 2010; Lee and Pempel this volume, Chapter 1). Following the 2010 meet-
ing, the three agreed to create a secretariat in Korea and to move forward toward
a common investment treaty as well as a trilateral free trade agreement. As of this
writing, these moves are being pushed forward and the secretariat has begun.
In a comparable vein, China, Japan, and the United States have at various times
discussed how those three could also meet on a regular basis. It remains to be seen
if this last trilateral will come to pass as a regularized arrangement, particularly
given the deterioration in relations among the three in 2010. Still, the point is that
a series of partly overlapping triangles have been put in place, all of which have a
strong security focus and all of which are smaller in size and include some of the
region’s major powers.
Within Northeast Asia’s security architecture one particular multilateral proc-
ess has three rather distinctive traits that distinguish it from the bodies and proc-
esses mentioned so far. The Six Party Talks (6PT) first of all, like many of the
newer institutions noted above, brings together potential allies and rivals; second,
the talks have involved all major powers in the region, including the United States;
and third, the process has a specific, tangible, and potentially critical hard-security
focus, namely issues surrounding the North Korean nuclear build-up. To most
leaders in the region, a nuclear North Korea directly challenges Northeast Asian
security by enhancing the dangers of nuclear proliferation to other states and non-
state actors as well as boosting the threat that a nuclear DPRK would trigger a
regional arms race that might include widespread nuclearization efforts by other
powers in the region (Cha and Kang 2003; Chinoy 2008; Funabashi 2007). The
talks, if successful, could, in contrast, form the basis for a “concert of powers”
working to resolve a key regional security problem and thereby laying the ground-
work for a softening of traditional rivalries and future security cooperation on
other security issues, most probably within the non-traditional security areas such
as disaster relief, migration controls, pandemics, and the like.
The 6PT grew out of months of mutual recriminations between the United
States and the DPRK following the breakdown in their relations in fall 2002, ush-
ering in a new multilateral process involving the two Koreas, the United States,
Japan, China, and Russia. From the start, China has chaired the talks. Addressing
this vital security problem through the 6PT was a signal victory for regional mul-
tilateralism over prior bilateralism as well as for negotiation over confrontation,
and for an approach that brought together important powers in a forum that tran-
scended their existing bilateral alliances. Particularly significant was the fact that
China, the United States, Russia, Japan, and the ROK all agreed (as in principle
did the DPRK) on the goal of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. In effect
the North Korean issue brought together erstwhile security enemies for hard bar-
gaining on a tough security issue (Pempel 2008b).
It looked as if the talks had achieved a great success with an agreement on 13
February 2007. (This was largely a reformulation of an earlier September 2005
agreement; both statements had the core elements of any final deal). Four pillars
were central to the agreement: 1) the verifiable and peaceful denuclearization of the
Korean peninsula; 2) a return by the DPRK to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the
International Atomic Energy Agency inspection regime; 3) guarantees by the United
States not to attack the DPRK, a respect for its sovereignty, and the commitment
to negotiate a permanent peace regime on the peninsula; and 4) promotion by all
six parties of economic cooperation on a bilateral and multilateral basis (full state-
ments and details at <http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/february/80479.htm>
and http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/february/80479.htm>). Also a part of the
settlement was the presumption that some version of the 6PT would continue even if
and when the immediate problems on the peninsula were resolved, thus allowing for
a more permanent concert of powers to deal with other security issues in the region.
The agreements broke down in fall 2008, however, with manifold evidence to argue
for guilt all around (see Funabashi 2007; Pempel 2008b; Sigal 2009, inter alia).
As of this writing (March 2012), the process remains stalled. Having been suc-
cessful in its second nuclear test, the DPRK today holds far stronger cards in
resisting denuclearization than when the talks first began in 2003. And a series
of military provocations by the DPRK in the second half of 2010 found the six
222 T.J. Pempel
countries divided on whether a resumption of the talks would be a move toward
de-escalation (the position advanced primarily by the PRC) or a “reward for bad
behavior” (the stance maintained by the United States, Japan, and the ROK). Yet,
in the long run, aside from the DPRK perhaps, the remaining five members appear
committed to an eventual resumption of the process as the most feasible mecha-
nism by which either to resolve the problem or else to ritualize the conflict and
prevent its escalation.
Given the above laundry list of institutions, Northeast Asia now has no shortage
of venues, official and unofficial, within which to address the many security issues
that confront the states of that region. Each of the key countries in Northeast Asia
is now engulfed in a multiplicity of security “architectures” that offer quite differ-
ent and highly porous connections among different combinations of states. This
allows for considerable “forum shopping” as individual states consider which of
the many institutional possibilities before them is the most likely to lead to their
desired outcomes.
One of the most persistent problems with the architecture per se is that to date
the major powers in Northeast Asia have maintained quite different perceptions
of their key security challenges (and these are further complicated by the often-
conflicting or competing goals of the ASEAN countries). These are made espe-
cially clear by the analyses in Chapters 6 to 9 that detail the widely differing goals
of Japan, China, and South Korea. Particularly divisive are two questions: 1) the
different perceptions of how dangerous the nuclearization of North Korea really
is for the region; and 2) differences concerning respect for national sovereignty
and the desire by several countries to ensure non-interference, in contrast to others
that are quicker to stress the need to forge regional institutions that can check
what they view as behavior detrimental to the region as a whole. Lacking any
commonly recognized enemy (Yahuda 2004: 229) and absent any easy agreement
on central goals, any comprehensive security architecture in Northeast Asia will
remain fragile. All will be forced to focus on common security rather than collec-
tive security. Yet, the emerging multi-layered security architecture still provides
the promise of ensuring mutual deterrence across the region while constructing
new mechanisms that bridge past rivalries.
Architectural lessons for the future

What lessons, if any, should the countries of Northeast Asia keep in mind as they
look to the future? The combined experiences of regional security bodies in East
Asia and elsewhere offer a number of potentially useful points of departure. But
let me make clear three of my fundamental starting points. First, there is no single
right way to achieve security cooperation for all geographical regions. In par-
ticular, idealization of the European Union (EU) as the “one right way” to go is
mistaken on many fronts (Katzenstein 2005). As Hae-won Jun notes in Chapter
5, the development and evolution of multilateral European institutions occurred
in highly particularistic and geographically contingent conditions. Second, seem-
ingly different institutional formulations, sensitive to particularistic conditions,
can achieve comparable results in diverse regions; the same destination may be
reached by many different roads. Third, given the diverse national interests across
Northeast Asia, as well as the multiplicity of regional instrumentalities addressing
hard and soft security issues, simultaneous hedging and engagement strategies
may remain the ideal mix for avoiding conflict. National agreement on complex
issues would be ideal, but is unlikely in a region that is undergoing serious chal-
lenges and substantial shifts in power. Institutions that facilitate a move from
mistrust and hedging to greater trust and engagement may be the best one can
anticipate. But in itself that is not a bad goal to pursue. With those caveats in mind,
let me offer six general points.
1. Architecture is important; it is not destiny. Architectural structure and institu-

tional arrangements can play a vital role in efforts to foster a climate of security
cooperation. As Winston Churchill put it in emphasizing the ability of structures
to shape behavior, “We shape the buildings; thereafter they shape us.” But equally
true, as Lao Tsu said centuries before, “The reality of the building does not consist
in the roof and walls, but the space within to be lived in.”
These two quotes epitomize classic polarities on the relative predominance of
structure versus agency. Each plays a role. Specific structures can be conducive
to shaping or impeding eventual solutions to problems. At the same time, the
significance of any security architecture will depend not only on its specific form,
rules and functions, but also on the interplay of preferences and flexibility that par-
ticipants demonstrate within those institutions. Any forum that serves as a simple
venue for posturing is likely to become progressively irrelevant to leaders actually
interested in problem solving. Increased ritualization and diminished real-world
significance are the likely consequence.
In other instances, as Hae-won Jun notes in Chapter 5, certain institutions such
as NATO, the European Union, and the Organization for Security and Co-opera-
tion in Europe (OSCE) all adjusted, over time, and for better or worse, to new roles
and orientations following the major changes in the international system caused
by the end of the Cold War; the Warsaw Pact simply went out of business. And as
Geunwook Lee notes in Chapter 4, the initially informal Shanghai Five consoli-
dated quickly to become the far more institutionalized and expansive Shanghai
Cooperation Organization.
Further, as ASEAN’s long, if bumpy, history has shown, it is possible for an
institution to become more successful and expansive over time even when “proc-
ess” takes a higher priority than policy. In a celebration of ASEAN’s 40th anniver-
sary, one critic declared that “only 30 percent of the items on which ASEAN has
agreed have been implemented.” At that point a host of voices in the audience of
ASEAN members quickly asserted that the speaker was vastly overstating the true
success rate. Nonetheless, as one cynical wag once told me, there are some 200
or more meetings of ASEAN bodies on an annual basis. Most, he said, might not
have highly visible achievements to tout, but with all those meetings to prepare
for every year, the ASEAN governments have little time to plan for actual security
conflicts with one another.
224 T.J. Pempel
As scholars such as Pierson (2000, 2004), Thelen (2004), and Atkinson (2006)
have shown, institutions are capable both of structuring choices and of evolving
over time. Thus, it took the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe
(later OSCE) decades to make the progress it eventually achieved. Dividing issues
into separate “baskets” helped to resolve a series of outstanding issues, but ulti-
mately it was the gradually discovered common will of the key players that proved
critical to success.The CMI and the 6PT are equally good examples of institutional
evolution in Northeast Asia.
2. Common identity among key players need not be a precondition to institu-

tional cooperation. Hyungmin Kim, in his discussion of Korea’s interrelationship
with regional security bodies (Chapter 5), notes the interactive nature of intentions
and institutions. On the one hand, peaceful intentions can serve as a powerful pre-
condition to the establishment of meaningful regional bodies. At the same time,
however, such institutions can play a positive role in enhancing the peaceful inten-
tions among otherwise suspicious neighbors. As was noted above, the key play-
ers in Northeast Asia frequently begin with competing security goals, and these
are likely to become even more disparate as the power resources of key players
in the region shift over time. There is also no natural hierarchy of states within
the region that might allow any single state to drive the regional agenda (as was
true for the United States in the establishment of numerous global institutions at
the end of World War II (Ikenberry 2001). If anything, Northeast Asia demon-
strates a multitude of competing hierarchies that reflect the different strengths
of different states in different areas. The United States still dominates the region
militarily and economically, but Japan remains an economically and techno-
logically powerful second-place player, and China, with its rapidly flourishing
economy and overwhelming foreign-reserve war chest, has achieved a substantial
measure of economic leverage over the United States, particularly as America’s
own debt spirals upward, and over Japan as its domestic economic engine sput-
ters. Meanwhile, Korea’s technology and rapid growth give it a claim to taking
an important middle-power role. At present it is clear that these key actors in
Northeast Asia, even if they do not have explicitly hostile intentions toward one
another, are at a minimum highly suspicious of each other’s intentions. Add in
North Korea and perhaps Taiwan and it is undeniable that the region shares little
common ground concerning the willingness or reluctance to use military force
under certain conditions.
Diverse and occasionally competing national interests therefore cannot be
ignored. Yet, such diverse interests also lay behind the actions of numerous states
as the groundwork was being laid for what eventually became the European
Union, as Jun’s analysis in Chapter 5 makes clear. Indeed, the most critical short-
term institutional needs for security in Northeast Asia are moves to defuse current
tensions within the region. Multilateralists would stress the importance of utilizing
institutions now in place which, instead of concentrating on and reinforcing com-
peting national interests, seek to identify overlapping and mutually reinforcing
national interests and to work toward mutually acceptable solutions. Bilateralists
would emphasize the valuable role played by the US alliance structure in provid-
ing tangible and occasionally militarized actions that deter or set outer limits on
the worst extremes of military escalation. Meanwhile, the leaders of China, Japan,
and Korea have periodically reinforced their common awareness of the need to
find ways to cooperate despite historical, territorial, and nationalist pulls to the
contrary.
3. Process and socialization. There is considerable debate among students of

regional institutions as to whether cooperation is a process or an endpoint. Ernest
Haas (1964),one of the early pioneers and advocates of regional institutions as a
powerful potential for cooperation, saw it clearly as “a process whereby political
actors in several distinct national settings are persuaded to shift their loyalties,
expectation, and political activities toward a new center, whose institutions pos-
sess or demand jurisdiction over the pre-existing national states.” In contrast, Karl
Deutsch (1957), an equally influential student of regionalism, saw it as an end-
point, namely “the attainment, within a territory, of a ‘sense of community’ and
of institutions and practices strong enough and widespread enough to assure, for a
‘long time,’ dependable expectations of ‘peaceful change’ among its population”
(Acharya and Johnston 2007: 5). Under current conditions, Northeast Asia has
at best a thin “sense of community” and most Northeast Asian regional institu-
tions consequently focus heavily on process, with the eventual goal of creating the
“habits of cooperation” that might, over time, lead to Deutsch’s eventual endpoint,
namely a broadly accepted “sense of community” with dependable expectations
of peaceful change.
Given the current absence of agreement regarding common threat perceptions
or the best means to achieve security cooperation, process itself becomes even
more imperative. Meeting regularly, continually negotiating in search of areas
of agreement, and developing habits of cooperation and trust over time are all
benefits from a process-focused, rather than an outcome-focused, architecture. As
current problems are addressed, the opportunities for enhanced mutual trust go
up in both traditional and non-traditional security questions. The early ASEAN
and OSCE experiences reinforce this point. Moreover, scholars such as Acharya
(2001), Buzan (2003), and Johnston (2003) all provide compelling evidence of the
socialization effects of various regional bodies in East Asia.
Shirk’s study of NEACD as a Track II process in Chapter 10 is particularly rel-
evant to the regional situation in showing a similar socializing experience through
institutional membership and ongoing participation in collective activities. Iwama
(Chapter 7) shows how common activity by professional historians in addressing
the region’s collective past can reshape deeply rooted views and forge a more
empathetic commonality. Further, Johnston (2003) notes how China offers an
example of the ways in which socialization fosters an enhanced regional iden-
tity. He shows that persuasion was adopted within the ARF to develop “habits
of cooperation” generally and, more specifically, as a key strategy to socialize
China into accepting ARF principles (Johnston 2003: 108). Continual interaction
in ARF and Track II activities has slowly but steadily (if only for tactical reasons)
226 T.J. Pempel
caused China to accept core elements of an increased commitment to the goal
of “common security” (Johnston 2003: 127). In the process, China has backed
up ARF structures to which it previously objected (ibid.: 134). Such examples
show how existing institutions are helping to create common identities, build trust
among actors, and redirect state actions from nationalistic pursuits to regional
cooperation.
The politically trickier question lies in the extent to which such institutional
socialization can alter deeply held national preferences and suspicions. American
policymakers, particularly during the Bush administration, expressed a keen desire
to see China become a “responsible stakeholder” in the current global system. Yet,
all the while, American analysts simultaneously warned the world that the admo-
nition of Deng Xiao-ping contained the seeds of possible future expansion: Hide
your capabilities, be patient, assess all situations, and never claim leadership.
China, meanwhile, has demonstrated its own skepticism about the intentions
of the United States; nationalist outbursts against alleged challenges to China’s
rise are ongoing, as Han and Luo show at length (Chapter 6). Socialization may
be an important possibility for institutions, but too easily expectations centre on
socialization of “the other” at the expense of socialization of oneself. In the exam-
ple above, American (as well, perhaps, as Korean and Japanese) expectations are
for Chinese adjustment and accommodation; China should learn to “fit into” or to
accommodate existing global and regional structures. Genuine socialization must
also affect the expectations of these other countries toward China, generating
shifts in their policy preferences regarding Northeast Asia as well.
Finally, it is important to remember that accepting realities at one stage does
not necessarily mean accepting their permanence. Brandt’s treaties with East Ger-
many and the USSR appeared highly generous at the time when they were signed,
but they defused tensions sufficiently to allow economic development to become
a key component in an expanded West German diplomacy. As such, they were
critical to the eventual success of the OSCE. Power resources are shifting rap-
idly in Northeast Asia, and domestic politics will often show a shift in a nation’s
preferences, from one administration to another. North Korea appeared to shift
to a much harder line following the stroke of Kim Jung-il in August 2008. The
South Korean security approach shifted radically with the conservative adminis-
tration of Lee Myung-bok after ten years of relatively progressive governments.
Japan’s Democratic Party of Japan government sought a more pro-Asia and pro-
China direction than did prior Liberal Democratic Party governments. The Obama
administration sought to re-engage with Asian multilateral processes, following
the more multilaterally skeptical Bush years (Pempel 2008b), by assigning an
ambassador to ASEAN, refocusing its APEC agenda on economics, and signing
the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (a requirement for membership in the East
Asian Summit), among other things.
4. Within Northeast Asia, “security” means more than simply military security.
Comprehensive security has long been a critical notion for most of the countries
of the region. China, Japan, and the ROK are all deeply focused not just on their
“hard” security defenses against military invasion, but also on their economic,
energy, environmental, and health security as well as the best inoculation against
a host of non-traditional security challenges, including illegal drugs and immigra-
tion, pandemics, and natural disasters. To most current regimes, economic devel-
opment remains a preponderant component in such a comprehensive national
security. Limiting “security cooperation” to traditional military threats does lit-
tle more than privilege the concerns of national defense agencies and military
planners at the expense of these countries’ far broader security concerns. Indeed,
by conceptualizing security more broadly, various regional institutions become
freer to engage in complex trade-offs among states and across issue areas, thus
providing a broader array of options and potential solutions than when just tra-
ditional security is on the table. At the same time, it is of course necessary not
to “securitize” every issue faced by every state, and thereby to spread the security
net so widely that anything and everything is somehow included. But the broader
conception of security is vital to allowing multiple institutions with overlapping
missions to contribute positively to regional security cooperation in Northeast
Asia.
In this regard, the 6PT was quick to link economic assistance for the DPRK
to the issue of denuclearization. APEC was jaw-boned by the Bush administra-
tion to move beyond economics to address security issues. The East Asia Summit
has taken on a broad mandate that includes economics, development, education,
environment, diplomacy, and security, among other things (ASEAN Secretariat;
Cody 2005). The trilateral leaders meetings among Japan, China, and Korea have
ruled no issues off the table. Nonetheless, excluding nothing too easily can mean
resolving nothing. Institutions such as these that have sought to link issues are
counterbalanced by the more singular focus of, for example, the CMI, with its
emphasis on finance, or regional bodies such as the Tourism Ministers’ meeting
or the Energy Ministers’ meeting.
5. Regional security institutions need not be comprehensive in their member-

ships, nor need Asia move toward any single regional “multipurpose” institution.
Multiple overlapping security institutions now envelop different combinations of
the countries of Northeast Asia within discrete bodies that at some times are
restricted to Northeast Asian members but at others expand to the Asia-Pacific,
East Asia, and South and Central Asia. This seeming ragbag of porous and some-
times overlapping regional institutions with thin levels of institutionalization
and high degrees of informality frequently leaves European-focused regional-
ists aghast. As Breslin et al. (2002: 13) observed in their study of comparative
regionalism: “There is a widespread assumption . . . that in order to be ‘proper’
regionalism, a degree of EU-style institutionalism should be in place.” But, as has
been widely argued, Europe’s past need not be Asia’s future (Katzenstein 2005).
EU fascination drives many of the existing studies of comparative regionalism,
but in fact East Asia’s and Northeast Asia’s multiplicity of institutions with often
diverse memberships reflects the complexities of East Asia quite effectively
(Pempel 2005, 2010).
228 T.J. Pempel
David Victor (2007: 150) similarly argues that the Kyoto Protocol’s emphasis
on an integrated, universal approach, in conjunction with its lack of an effective
compensation mechanism, actually crippled it. He has suggested instead that a
truly global solution to climate change will necessarily involve not a single global
treaty that all countries are made party to, but rather a patchwork of smaller-scale
deals in which all states are somehow incorporated, even if not under a single
roof. Victor’s work has tended to focus on carbon markets, but he rightly contends
that “the architecture must allow for a variety of efforts that are tailored to each
key member’s capabilities and interests—rather than a single integrated system
within which all members must adopt similar instruments.” A similarly engulfing
comprehensiveness is beginning to take shape with the multiplicity of seemingly
competitive bilateral and mini-lateral free trade agreements that are weaving vari-
ous Asian economies together.
There is a huge benefit in the current complexity of security institutions and,
given the absence of a single security vision among the major countries of North-
east Asia, there is no compelling reason to seek some single idealized security
architecture. Far better, it would seem, is an acceptance of a multilayered series
of institutions from which a “marketplace of institutions” can serve as a testing
ground to determine which work best. Let several exist simultaneously and see
which one(s) prove the most effective. In effect, allow an “institutional Darwin-
ism” to work its way (Pempel 2010). As simply one example, consider the APT
and the ways in which the “plus 3” spun off to deal with a commonly perceived
need among the bigger powers of Northeast Asia for unencumbered talks among
themselves.
6. The Six Party Talks may still be the “least bad” hope for robust security archi-
tecture in Northeast Asia. As of this writing, the 6PT has not met for over two
years. To say it is on hold may be optimistic, given that military tensions sur-
rounding the DPRK have escalated since the last meetings, with the sinking of
the Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island by the North being the most
tangible manifestations of escalating tensions. Nevertheless, unless the countries
of Northeast Asia are prepared to accept a nuclear North Korea, as most indi-
cate they are not, the 6PT still provides the most promising venue for resolving
that specific issue while reducing the current nationalistically rooted fissures that
divide the key actors in Northeast Asia and laying the groundwork for future big
power cooperation.
If these talks eventually resume, they have the wherewithal to move the par-
ties toward some commonly accepted solution to the current problems. As noted
above, this may begin with mere crisis ritualization, in which each crisis is fol-
lowed by meetings, agreements, and a tempering of tensions, and then to mutual
claims of agreements violated, bribery to the North to return to the process, and
a resumption of the cycle. Even that much would be sufficient to ensure mutual
deterrence and the avoidance of military conflict.
If the 6PT proves successful in denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, how-
ever, the process and the mechanism that achieved such a feat would be widely
applauded and pressures would be high for its continuation, albeit with a new
agenda concentrated on several well-recognized problems that lend themselves to
positive-sum solutions. Most particularly, these would involve problems whose
solution would reach across the territorial-maritime divide. Among these would
be: energy exploration and pipeline development; limiting nuclear proliferation;
regulation of illegal migration; reduction in drug trafficking; naval cooperation to
keep open the major Sea Lanes of Communication; and police and security coop-
eration against regional and global terrorist groups. Surely other problems could
be considered. But central to the overall success would be a mutual commitment
to dealing with the region’s easier, rather than its more difficult, problems—those
where positive payoffs could most likely be enjoyed by all six countries and others
in the region.
There is, however, one important point to keep in mind: once bargains are
reached in any forum like the 6PT, the institution has vitality only to the extent that
those agreements are kept. Considerable criticism is now being cast on the DPRK
for allegedly backtracking on its earlier agreements regarding Yongbyon, for mis-
sile and nuclear testing in early 2008, and for refusing to participate in the 6PT.
The North may well have decided for purely tactical reasons to backtrack on its
2005 and 2007 agreements. But it should be remembered that Condi Rice changed
the terms for nuclear “verification” by unilaterally moving up actions that were
to be considered much later than as an immediate consequence of the 2007 agree-
ment (Sigal 2009); equally problematic, Japan refused to meet its written com-
mitments to deliver heavy fuel oil; and the ROK under Lee Myong-bak refused to
adhere to earlier bilateral agreements reached between prior ROK administrations
and the DPRK. North Korea is hardly blameless in the breakdown of the current
talks, but the current stagnation can hardly be attributed solely to the North. If the
talks can be resumed, the chances for collective agreement are far less likely than
they were in 2007, but if commitments can be kept, the chances for agreement
should not be discounted.
Conclusion
Northeast Asia’s security architecture has become a complicated mixture of alli-
ances and their extensions, with an unmistakable focus on deterrence and hedg-
ing combined with multilateral forums seeking to bridge traditional divisions by
engaging both allies and adversaries. Many of these bodies aim explicitly at secu-
rity engagement, confidence building, and the search for win-win solutions to
erstwhile security dilemmas.
As we look toward the future, Northeast Asia will surely have to confront the
three security quandaries noted in Chapter 1—the potential challenges to the sta-
tus quo presented by a rising China; the continuation of core hotspots; and the
economics of geopolitics. Nevertheless, the fact that Northeast Asia has avoided
shooting wars since 1953 suggests that complexity, layering, and multiplicity of
regional security bodies may be institutionally awkward but functionally effective
in softening the region’s security rough spots. The potentially competing goals of
230 T.J. Pempel
deterrence, balancing, hedging, bandwaggoning, and engagement seem to be met
by the current multiplicity of arrangements.
The institutional experiences of various bodies, some from within Asia and
others from elsewhere, also suggest that institutions need not start with common
agendas among members, that as they evolve they may expand their missions,
and/or engender greater confidence among their members. Through bargaining
and diplomacy, institutions may help to move their members to solve problems
that might earlier have proved intractable.
A number of bodies are now working to enhance security confidence in North-
east Asia, despite the ongoing vituperations simultaneously flying across the
region. Collectively, they appear to be building, if not explicit confidence among
the states of the region, at least the collective awareness that there may be more to
be gained by multilateral negotiations than by military build-ups and confronta-
tion. Leaders are increasingly reluctant to resort to military means to resolve their
disputes and the norms of non-military resolution are gaining potency.
At present the stalled 6PT may still offer the greatest promise for a positive
outcome in dealing with Northeast Asian security problems. The denuclearization
of the Korean peninsula remains a formidable hurdle to eventual cooperation. But
if the process can in fact make substantial strides in that direction, the potential
is high for a peace-oriented “concert of powers” in the region that will transcend
the more confrontational “balance of powers” that has long dominated the region.
In the interim, a number of other bodies and forums are operating in ways that
advance opportunities for a mix of intra-regional cooperation and hedging on a
host of security-related issues that may continue to keep the peace, despite multi-
ple incentives for conflict.
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——. (2004) Politics in Time, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Samuels, R.J. (2007) Securing Japan, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Sigal, L. (2009) “Punishing North Korea Won’t Work,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
29 May.
Thelen, K. (2004) How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany,
Britain, the United States, and Japan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Victor, D. (2007) “Fragmented Carbon Markets and Reluctant Nations: Implications for the
Design of Effective Architectures,” in J.E. Aldy and R.N. Stavins (eds) Architectures for
Agreement: Addressing Global Climate Change in the Post- Kyoto World, Cambridge:
Yahuda, M.B. (2004) The International Politics of the Asia-Pacific, 1945–1995, 2nd edn,
London and New York: Routledge Curzon.
Index
academics 199–200; scholar-activists 194 battlegroups, EU 93, 98–101

adherence to agreements 229 Beardsley, K. 60
Afghanistan 12 bellicosity, state 18, 43–64
African Economic Community (AEC) 68 bilateral alliances 66; China and North
agency and structure 223 Korea 8, 66, 217; US 4, 72, 73–5,
alliance formation 23–4 79–81, 173–5, 181–3, 184, 216
alliance ties 148, 150, 151, 152 bilateralism 31; institutional settings 18,
Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions 65–85; multilateralism as competition
(ATOP) project 48 or complement 78–81; security
amalgamated security community 26 architecture 19–20, 216–17
Amsterdam Treaty 93 bridging traditional security rivalries 215,
architecture see security architecture 217–22
Armitage, R. 181 Bush, G.H.W. 130
Article 9 of the Japanese Bush, G.W. 176
Constitution 132–3
Asal, V. 60 CAN 68
ASEAN Institutes for Strategic and Canada 197
International Studies (ASEAN- capabilities, parity in 108–9
ISIS) 194, 195 Central and Eastern European
ASEAN Plus Three (APT) 32, 67, 69, 196, countries 89, 90
218–19, 220, 228; China and 112, 220 challenger dissatisfaction 108–9
ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) 32, 36, charm offensive, China’s 110
195, 196, 218, 225–6 Cheonan sinking 7–8, 139, 228
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) 67, 68, 219
(APEC) 33, 68, 76, 218, 227 China 18, 65–6, 76, 103, 106–23, 137,
Aso, Taro 174 168, 217; alliance with North Korea 8,
Association of Southeast Asian Nations 66, 217; economic growth 3, 15;
(ASEAN) 67, 69, 223; China and geopolitics and the preponderance
111, 114–15; China–ASEAN Free of 11–13; impact of rise on regional
Trade Area 111, 112; power balancing security 30–1, 77, 80–1; joint
strategy 118 history study with Japan 126–7;
Athena mechanism 96–8, 100 leadership consolidation in North East
Atlanticists 96 Asian multilateralism 113–18; and
Australia 9, 197 multilateralism 110–18; NEACD 197,
204–6, 210; non-violent power
Baker, J. 156–7 transition 107–10; peaceful challenge
balance of power 108; dyadic conflict to US supremacy 110–13; public
theory 148, 150, 150–1; South Korea’s opinion in Asia 35–6; relationship with
strategy 153–4; theory 23–4, 148 Japan 140–1, 141, 142; relationship
234 Index
with Taiwan 177, 212; relationship with Deng Xiaoping 176
the US 115–17, 175–9, 183–4; rise of design of international institutions 72–3
and the distribution of power 28–30; Deutsch, K.W. 26, 225
SCO 113, 217; socialization 225–6; Ding, A.S. 12
trilateral cooperation with Japan and distance 149, 150, 151, 152
South Korea 8, 112–13, 139–40, 220, distribution of power 27, 28–30, 37
227; US public attitudes to 172–3 distribution problems 72–3, 77–8
China–ASEAN Free Trade Area 111, 112 diversionary war argument 183–4
China threat theory 110, 111, 114 dominant power 108
civilian missions 101 Drezner, D. 169
Clark, J. 156 dyadic conflict model 147–52
Clinton, B. 174, 176
Clinton, H. 174, 181 East Asia Summit (EAS) 32, 69–70, 112,
coalition agreement (Japan) 136 219, 220, 227

collective security 26, 138 East Asian Community (EAC) 118, 137–8
collective self-defense 134 East Asian financial crisis (1997) 111–12
commercial peace theory 148, 152 economic cooperation and
Committee for Security Cooperation in the interdependence 25, 27, 32–4, 37
Asia Pacific (CSCAP) 196 economic cooperation sessions 201–2
Common Foreign and Security Policy economic development: cooperation
(CFSP) (EU) 91, 93–4, 102, 103 between the US and China 176–7;
Common Security and Defence Policy Japan 132–3
(CSDP) 94 economic institutions 68–9
common threats 27, 30–1, 37 economic interdependence: dyadic conflict
complexity of institutions 227–8 model 148, 149, 150, 151; economic
Comprehensive Economic Partnership in cooperation and 25, 27, 32–4, 37; South
East Asia (CEPEA) 70 Korea’s strategies 155–6, 160–1
comprehensive security 226–7 economic security threats 14–16
concert of powers 198–9, 221 economic trajectories 15–16
Conference for Security and Co- Europe 65, 66, 137, 138; experience of
operation in Europe 91, 224; see also security cooperation 18, 89–105
Organization for Security and Co- European Central Bank (ECB) 68
operation in Europe (OSCE) European Court of Human Rights
conflict 5; behavior before and after (ECHR) 68
acquisition of nuclear weapons 44–60; European Security and Defense Policy
determinants of militarized conflicts (ESDP) 93, 94; operations 101;
147–52; prior history of 149, 151, 152 resources, decision-making structure and
constitutional constraints 132–6 activities 96–103
constructivism 25–7, 27, 37–8 European Security Strategy (ESS) 93–4
contiguity 149, 150, 151, 152 European Union (EU) 18, 66, 68, 89–90,
crisis-escalation dominance 46–7, 52–60, 90–1, 222, 223, 227; battlegroups 93,
60 98–101; CFSP 91, 93–4, 102, 103;
crisis initiation 45, 51–2, 60 CSDP 94; development as a European
crisis management, EU and 101–2 security actor 91–6; ESDP see
European Security and Defense Policy;
democracy 170; level of in dyadic conflict membership 92; military operations 96,
model 148, 149, 150, 151 97
Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) 124–45; Europeanists 96
and the legacy of the past 130–2 Evans, G. 156
democratic peace and cooperation 25, 27,
34, 37 fishing dispute 140
democratic peace theory 148, 152 foreign ministry officials 199, 200, 201
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea forum shopping 222
(DPRK) see North Korea free riding 72, 73, 76–7
Index 235
free trade agreements (FTAs) 68–9, 111, rational design of 72–3; see also under
112 individual institutions
Fu Ying 205 international relations (IR) theories 17,
Fukushima, Mizuho 139 23–7, 70–1, 72
funding of NEACD 197, 209 Iran 44, 60–1
Futenma US Marines air base 138–9, 182 Ismay, H. 80
isolationism: Japan 124; US public
Gates, R.M. 6, 29, 177 opinion 170–1
geopolitics 9–16; economics of 14–16 Israeli–Palestinian Track II process 195
global economic ties 16
global financial crisis 106, 107, 170 Japan 9–10, 18–19, 65–6, 76, 124–45,
globalization 4 168; Article 9 of the Constitution
Gorbachev, M. 156, 196, 204 132–3; and Asia in the 21st
government officials 199–200 century 141–2; bilateral alliance

group cohesion, maintaining 208–9 with the US 9, 66, 74, 124, 133,
Gulf Wars 133 173–5, 181–2, 216; constitutional
constraints 132–6; exports 29;
Haas, E. 225 Hatoyama government and the US-
Hatoyama, Ichiro 137 Asia balance 136–9; International
Hatoyama, Yukio 125, 131, 135, 137–8, Peace-keeping Operations Act 134–5;
139, 182; Hatoyama government and JSDF see Japan Self Defense Force;
the balance between Asia and the NEACD 201, 203, 204; overcoming
US 136–9 the legacy of history 126–32; panel
hegemonic transition 106–7, 107–10 on the secret nuclear agreement with
hierarchy 108 the US 128–30; relationship with
High Representative for Foreign and China 112–13; relationship with
Security Policy 93 Russia 180; relationship with South
Hill, C. 195, 206 Korea 131–2, 141; return of pragmatic
historical experience and memory 27, realism 139–41; trilateral cooperation
36–7, 37 with China and South Korea 8, 112–13,
historical legacy, overcoming 126–32 139–40, 220, 227; US public attitudes
Holbrooke, R. 196 to 172, 173
hotspots 4–5; managing and shaping core Japan–China Joint History Study 126–7
hotspots 13–14 Japan–Korea Joint History Study 127–8
Hu Jintao 177 Japan–Korea New Era Joint Study
hub-and-spoke system 73–5, 79–81, 117– Project 127–8
18, 167–8, 185 Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF) 132,
humanitarian assistance 101 133–4, 140; issues over the ‘out of area’
activities of 134–5
India 172, 173 Job, B. 194, 195
Institute on Global Conflict and Johnston, A.I. 30, 225–6
Cooperation (IGCC) (University of Jong Tai-yang 206–7
California) 193, 196–7, 198, 200, 208, Joo, S.-H. 180
209
institutionalization, level of 27, 31–2, 37 Kan, Naoto 131, 135–6, 139–41, 180
institutions: European 90–1; institutional Kant, I. 155
settings 18, 65–85; international 70–3, Keohane, R. 24
102; security architecture in Northeast Kim Dae-jung 157, 203
Asia 19–20, 212–32; varieties of Kim Gye-gwan 206
institutions in Northeast Asia 67–70; Kim Jong-il 180, 207
see also under individual institutions Kim Young-sam 157
intentions, and institutional Kissinger, H. 175–6, 178
cooperation 224–5 Kitaoka, S. 127, 128
international institutions 70–3, 102; Koizumi, Junichiro 125, 126, 133
236 Index
Korea see North Korea, South Korea North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Korean Peninsula Energy Development (NATO) 18, 66, 75, 80, 89–90, 94–5,
Organization (KEDO) 157 96, 223; EU member states and 102;
Korean War 73, 75 expansion 90–1; membership 92;
Kugler, J. 108 military expenditures 95;
Kyoto Protocol 228 transformation 71, 76
North Korea 65, 213–14; alliance with
Larson, C.R. 196 China 8, 66, 217; NEACD 197,
Lee Hsien Loong 114 200, 201, 202, 206–7, 210; nuclear
Lee Myung-bak 131–2, 159, 161, 174 weapons 43, 61, 80, 115–16, 157–8,
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) 159, 178, 213; provocative actions 7,
(Japan) 124–5 13, 159, 175, 210, 213, 228; Russia
liberalism 7–8, 24–5, 27, 37, 147 and 180; Six-Party Talks 113–14, 157,
Lisbon Treaty 94, 102 159–60, 221–2, 228, 229; threat to

South Korea 81; US–China
Maastricht Treaty 93 relations 178
major power, dyadic conflict model North Pacific Cooperative Security
and 149, 151, 152 Dialogue 194, 197
Martin, L. 24 Northeast Asia 3–17; emerging
memory, historical experience and 27, issues 16–17; and the international
36–7, 37 system 3–9; preconditions for peaceful
MERCOSUR 67–8 rise 6–9; rediscovery of geopolitics
military expenditures 213; NATO 95 in 9–16; significance of rise of 3–6
military interventions/missions: EU 96, Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue
97, 101; Japan 133–4; US 170 (NEACD) 19, 157, 193–211, 225;
military-to-military group 202 beginnings 196–7; evaluation of the
military modernization 11–12 NEACD record 209–10; national
Mongolia 197 perspectives on 203–8; organizational
Montville, J. 193–4 challenges 208–9; participation and
Morgenthau, H. 108 agendas 199–203; rationale for six
multilateralism 8, 10, 24, 31–2, 146; countries 197–9
China and 110–18; China’s leadership Northeast Asia cooperation initiative 153,
consolidation in Northeast Asia 113– 157, 160
18; China’s peaceful challenge to US nuclear allies 47–8
supremacy 110–13; competition or Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
complement to bilateralism 78–81; (NPT) 157
institutional settings 18, 65–85; security nuclear weapons 80–1; and state
architecture 19–20, 217–22; South bellicosity 18, 43–64; North Korea 43,
Korea’s strategies 157–8 61, 80, 115–16, 157–8, 159, 178, 213;
multi-partner world approach 181 panel on the secret agreement between
multiplicity of institutions 227–8 the US and Japan 128–30
multivariate analysis 147–52 Nye, J. 181
mutual reassurance measures 202 Nye Initiative 216
Nanjing atrocities 127 Obama, B. 159, 174, 177, 178, 181

National Defense Program Guidelines official multilateral forum, likelihood
(Japan) 135–6 of 201
national interests 224–5 officialization of NEACD, creeping 209
nationalism 14 Okinawa 138–9, 182
natural gas 179 Oneal, J.R. 147, 155
neo-liberal institutionalism 24–5, 37 Organization for Security and
Network of East Asian Think Tanks 196 Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) 18,
network power 153–4, 160, 161–2 89–90, 90–1, 94, 223; membership 92
normalization of troop rotations 183 Organiski, A.F.K. 108
Index 237
Pakistan 172, 173 government and 136–9, 141–2; security
panel on the secret nuclear agreement arrangements 146
between the US and Japan 128–30 reinforcement of traditional power
Paulson, H. 179 competitions 215, 216–17
peace: democratic peace and relative capabilities 48–9
cooperation 25, 27, 34, 37; democratic relative gains problems 72–3, 77–8
peace theory 148, 152; preconditions relative stakes in crises 49–50
for regional peace 147–52; South Republic of Korea (ROK) see South Korea
Korea’s interests and strategies 152–6 requirements for security cooperation 17,
peaceful intentions 224 22–40; international relations
peaceful rise of Northeast Asia, theories 23–7; theoretical conditions
preconditions for 6–9 and security architecture of Northeast
peacekeeping operations 134–5 Asia 27–37
Petersberg Tasks 93 risk 77

pluralistic security community 26 RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs)
Porsche Panamera car 167 capabilities 12
power: balance of see balance of power; Roh Moo-hyun 153, 157, 160, 203
distribution of 27, 28–30, 37; dyadic Roh Tae-woo 157, 203
conflict model 148, 150, 150–1; Ruggie, J. 26
network power 153–4, 160, 161–2 Russett, B.M. 147, 155
power preponderance theory 148, 152 Russia: influence in Northeast Asia
power status 48–9 179–80; NATO, EU and 94–6;
power transition 106; China’s non- NEACD 204
violent 106–7, 107–10; theory 23
pragmatic realism 124–5, 139–41 Sagan, S. 44
preconditions for regional peace 147–52 satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the
preferences, shifts in 226 international order 108–9
President of the European Council 94 Sato, Eisaku 129–30
Presidential Commission on Northeast scholar-activists 194
Asian Cooperation 153, 157, 160 secret nuclear agreement between the US
Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNI) 130 and Japan 128–30
principles and ideas, shared 27, 34–6, 37 security architecture 16–19, 19–20,
prior conflict 149, 151, 152 212–32; Europe 89–90; importance
process 225–6 of architecture 223–4; lessons for the
Proliferation Security Initiative future 222–9; schematization of the
(PSI) 216–17 current architecture 215–22; theoretical
public opinion 35; in the US toward conditions for security cooperation
foreign policy and Northeast and 27–37
Asia 169–73 security community 26
Putin, V. 180 security dilemmas (hotspots) 4–5, 13–14
Senkaku Islands incident 140
Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) 183 Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO) 69, 113, 217, 223
Rakhmanin, V. 204 Shangri-La Dialogue 10, 218
Reagan, R. 173–4, 176 shared alliance ties 148, 150, 151, 152
realism 7–8, 23–4, 27, 37, 147; pragmatic shared principles and ideas 27, 34–6, 37
in Japan 124–5, 139–41 Shirk, S. 157, 183
‘Reconceptualizing United States Policy Six-Party Talks 10, 31, 76, 156–60,
toward East Asia’ workshop 196–7 178, 195; China’s leadership
reconstruction 101 role 113–14; NEACD and 206, 207,
regime type 50 208, 210; rounds 157–8; and security
regionalism 32; China’s regional architecture 220–2, 227, 228–9, 230;
integration strategy 114–15; uncertain future of 159–60; Working
institutions 67–8; Japan’s DPJ Groups 158
238 Index
Social Democratic Party (SDP) 133, 173–5, 181–2, 216; alliance with
(Japan) 136, 139, 141 South Korea 9, 66, 73–4, 74, 75,
socialization, institutional 225–6 173–5, 182–3; bilateral alliances 4,
SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) 79 72, 73–5, 79–81, 173–5, 181–3, 184,
soft security issues/cooperation 101–2, 216; changing power structure in
103–4 Northeast Asia 28–30; China’s peaceful
South Korea 9–10, 19, 65–6, 76, power transition and 106–7, 107–10;
146–66, 168, 180; bilateral alliance engagement in Northeast Asia 173–80;
with the US 9, 66, 73–4, 74, 75, and European security 90, 94–5,
173–5, 182–3; cooperation with 103; hub-and-spoke system 73–5,
Australia 9; exports 29; interests 79–81, 117–18, 167–8, 185; issues
and strategies 152–60; joint studies and trends in security cooperation in
with Japan 127–8; NEACD 203; Northeast Asia 181–4; Japan’s attempts
relationship with Japan 131–2, 141; to establish a new balance between

trilateral cooperation with China and Asia and the US 136–9; Marines
Japan 8, 112–13, 139–40, 220, 227; air base in Futenma 138–9, 182;
threat from North Korea 81; US public multilateralism and China’s peaceful
attitudes towards 172, 173 challenge to US hegemony 110–13;
Soviet Union 180; collapse of 89, 90, NEACD 207–8, 209; and Northeast
169–70 Asian multilateralism 115; panel on
state bellicosity, nuclear weapons and 18, the secret nuclear agreement with
43–64 Japan 128–30; PSI 216–17; public
structure and agency 223 attitudes towards foreign policy and
Sun Tzu 176 Northeast Asia 169–73; public opinion
in Northeast Asia 35–6; relationship
Taiwan 168; alliance with the US 74–5; with China 115–17, 175–9, 183–4;
relationship with China 177, 212 Six-Party Talks 159, 178, 207; trilateral
Tammen, R.L. 108–9 arrangements 10, 216, 220; uncertain
Terashima, Jitsuro 136–7 commitment to Northeast Asia 198–9;
Thomsen, P. 196–7 unilateralism 110
Three Non-nuclear Principles 129–30
Track I regional dialogue 203 Victor, D. 228
Track II diplomacy 193–6; see also violence of crisis trigger 45, 52–60, 60
Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue
(NEACD) Wakaizumi, Kei 129
trade 33–4; FTAs 68–9, 111, 112; US Waltz, K. 44
public opinion 171–2 Wang Yi 205
trilateral cooperation: China––Japan–South Warsaw Pact 71, 79
Korea 8, 112–13, 139–40, 220, 227; West Germany 226
involving the US 10, 216, 220 ‘Wired for Peace’ online community 209
World Trade Organization (WTO) 67, 78
uncertainty 77 World War II 127
unilateralism 110
United Kingdom 153–4 Yasukuni Shrine 125, 126, 131
United Nations 66–7; Charter 71–2; Yeonpyeong Island shelling 228
Security Council 72 Yuai concept 137
United States (US) 6, 10, 19, 65–6, 140,
167–90, 216–17; Afghanistan 12; Zakaria, F. 185
alliance with Japan 9, 66, 74, 124, Zoellick, R. 116
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Security Cooperation

Defining and conceptualizing Northeast Asia’s security complex poses unique

ASEAN and the Security of South-East Asia

China’s Policy towards Territorial Disputes

India and Southeast Asia

Gorbachev and Southeast Asia

Indonesian Politics under Suharto

The State and Ethnic Politics in Southeast Asia

The Politics of Nation Building and Citizenship in Singapore

Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore

The Challenge of Democracy in Nepal

The International Politics of the Asia-Pacific, 1945–1995

Political Change in Southeast Asia

Korea versus Korea

Taiwan and Chinese Nationalism

Managing Political Change in Singapore

Islam in Malaysian Foreign Policy

Political Change in Thailand

The Politics of NGOs in Southeast Asia

Malaysian Politics Under Mahathir

Indonesia and China

Singapore’s Foreign Policy

Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century

Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia

Monarchy in South East Asia

Korea After the Crash

The Future of North Korea

The International Relations of Japan and South East Asia

Power and Change in Central Asia

The Politics of Human Rights in Southeast Asia

Political Business in East Asia

Media and Politics in Pacific Asia

China and the Internet

Politics of the digital leap forward

Challenging Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia

Islam in Indonesian Foreign Policy

Media, War and Terrorism

China, Arms Control and Nonproliferation

Communitarian Politics in Asia

East Timor, Australia and Regional Order

Domestic Politics, International Bargaining and China’s Territorial

Democratic Development in East Asia

Civil Life, Globalization, and Political Change in Asia

Realism and Interdependence in Singapore’s Foreign Policy

Party Politics in Taiwan

State Terrorism and Political Identity in Indonesia

China’s Rise, Taiwan’s Dilemma’s and International Peace

Japan and China in the World Political Economy

Order and Security in Southeast Asia

State Making in Asia

US–China Relations in the 21st Century

Empire and Neoliberalism in Asia

South Korean Engagement Policies and North Korea

Indonesia’s War over Aceh

Advancing East Asian Regionalism

Political Cultures in Asia and Europe

Citizens, states and societal values

Rethinking Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia

Foreign Policy Making in Taiwan

The Balance of Power in Asia-Pacific Security

Taiwan in the 21st Century

Elections as Popular Culture in Asia

Security and Migration in Asia

Political Transitions in Dominant Party Systems