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Global Insecurity
 Anthony Burke • Rita Parker
Editors

Global Insecurity
Futures of Global Chaos and Governance
Editors
Anthony Burke Rita Parker
UNSW UNSW
Canberra, Australia Canberra, Australia

ISBN 978-1-349-95144-4 ISBN 978-1-349-95145-1 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95145-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017930676

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
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microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
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Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW,
United Kingdom
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book began its life in a two-day international workshop held in

Canberra in mid-2013 on the theme of the ‘Globalisation of Insecurity:
Challenges for Global Governance’. It gathered many of the contributors
in this book, Canberra-based diplomats, and Australian government offi-
cials for discussions about the developing landscape of global security and
our efforts to move beyond the national level. The workshop was finan-
cially and logistically supported by the School of Humanities and Social
Sciences at the University of New South Wales at Canberra, and we wish
to thank its Head, Professor David Lovell, School Manager Margaret
McGee, Shirley Ramsey, and Christopher Brown for their support and
work on the event.

v
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1
Anthony Burke

Part I Conceptualising Global Insecurity

2 Insecurity and Governance in an Age of Transition 23

Joseph Camilleri

3 Global Violence and Security from a Gendered Perspective 43

Jacqui True and Maria Tanyag

4 Post-human Security 65
Erika Cudworth and Stephen Hobden

5 Security Cosmopolitanism and Global Governance 83

Anthony Burke

Part II Global Agendas

6 Global Ecology, Social Nature, and Governance 103

Simon Dalby

vii
viii CONTENTS

7 Framing Global Climate Security 119

Mary E. Pettenger

8 The Women, Peace, and Security Agenda at the United

Nations 139
Laura J. Shepherd

9 Children, Conflict, and Global Governance 159

Katrina Lee-Koo

10 Global Weapons Proliferation, Disarmament,

and Arms Control 175
Marianne Hanson

11 Challenges Facing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty 195

Tanya Ogilvie-White

12 Restraint and Governance in Cyberspace 215

Greg Austin

13 Pandemics and Dual-Use Research 235

Rita Parker

14 Advocating Global Health Security 253

Sara E. Davies

15 The International Governance of Forced Migration 273

Savitri Taylor

16 Three Generations of International Human Rights

Governance 293
Morten B. Pedersen

17 The UN Security Council and the Problem of Mass

Atrocities 311
Alex J. Bellamy
 CONTENTS ix

Part III Reforming Global Institutions

18 The Future of National Security and the Role of States 327

Allan Behm

19 The United Nations and Global Security 347

Rita Parker and Anthony Burke

Index 369
 LIST OF TABLES

Table 10.1 Summary of adherents to the landmines and cluster

munitions conventions and the Arms Trade Treaty 180
Table 11.1 Summary of NPT Review Conference Outcomes,
1975–2015 199
Table 11.2 States with Demonstrated Enrichment and/or
Reprocessing Capability 203
Table 11.3 Nuclear status of countries where AP is not in force 204
Table 12.1 Significant milestones driving cyber norm development
2007–2014 218
Table 14.1 Word tree results from ‘Security’ and ‘Other Normative’
word searches in GAVI and TFI founding documents 264

xi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction
From Collective to Global Security

Anthony Burke

This is a book about the nature of global insecurity today and our collec-
tive international efforts to address it through what can be called ‘global
security governance’. Reflecting a broadening of the security agenda in
both International Security Studies (Buzan and Hansen 2009), and in
major institutions such as the United Nations (UN) and the US
Department of Defense, its chapters analyse contemporary patterns,
sources, and symptoms of security – from climate change to gender,
geopolitics, and genocide – and critically assess the institutional and policy
responses of states and other key actors at multiple levels, from national
capitals to global institutions. An important concern of the book is to
highlight how important forms of insecurity and threat now have wide-
spread range and sources beyond particular states and regions: to, in many
cases, the global and planetary levels. They also have a temporal scale that
is not often appreciated, having roots in past processes and effects that will
extend for hundreds and thousands of years, shaping the lives of many
future generations. The insecurities represented by phenomena such as

A. Burke (*)
International and Political Studies, University of New South Wales, New South
Wales, Australia
e-mail: a.burke@adfa.edu.au

© The Author(s) 2017 1

A. Burke, R. Parker (eds.), Global Insecurity,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95145-1_1
2 A. BURKE

transnational terrorism, gender violence, climate change and ecological

degradation, pollution, economic crisis, nuclear weapons, and transna-
tional crime have complex and systemic sources across large swathes of
time and space and can be reasonably understood as global forms of
insecurity. These often interpenetrating processes are what Joseph
Camilleri in this book calls ‘the globalisation of insecurity’. Furthermore,
it is important to understand ecological degradation, climate change, and
the potential global cooling (or ‘nuclear winter’) that would ensue from
nuclear war as threats to the very survival of the living complexity of planet
earth, and thus as planetary forms of insecurity.
We have assembled a group of leading scholars in global governance and
security studies, known for the innovation and excellence of their thinking, to
analyse how the global governance of security works in a range of major
global problems and processes: mass atrocities and the use of force; the global
climate and ecology; the world economy and the role of states; conflict,
gender, and peace-building; forced migration and asylum seekers; children
and health; weapons of mass destruction; cybersecurity; and human rights.
We asked them to explain how those issues are evolving in ways which
challenge existing structures and norms, to consider potential futures that
those structures and frameworks will need to address and to make recom-
mendations for reform, change and further evolution. And even as all of the
contributors are generally supportive of a broadening of the security agenda,
some ask hard questions about the impact of securitising particular issues
(such as health, climate, and refugees) because they are concerned that the
kinds of policy that results undermines human dignity, ecological protection
and social justice – that, in short, it creates more rather than less insecurity.
Hence the book’s subtitle concerned with futures and chaos. Even as
we can point to many positive global trends, what kind of futures should
we be concerned by? The fate of the planetary ecology is obviously the
most alarming. Climate and earth system scientists are making disturbing
predictions of dangerous climate change, the collapse of marine food
chains and fisheries and global collapse in biodiversity that will have
grave consequences both for human and ecological security in this century
(Steffen et al. 2015; Burke et al. 2016). The atmosphere has the highest
concentrations of carbon dioxide in 1 million years; the earth is already
experiencing its hottest average temperatures since records began; and
extreme weather and drought has killed and displaced large numbers of
people and been implicated in new conflicts such as the war in Darfur
(Mazo 2010; Christoff and Eckersley 2013).
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

Women remain vulnerable to conflict-related and sexual violence; to

deaths from childbirth and sexually transmitted disease; and dispropor-
tionally bear the costs of structural poverty, conflict, and forced migration.
While there are positive trends in women’s health and participation in
education, improvement in workforce participation and equality remains
stagnant (Department of Social and Economic Affairs 2015). Progress on
these issues is slow and fitful, despite a range of energetic global efforts,
and women confront growing sexism from conservative and fundamen-
talist political and religious movements in numerous countries. In turn,
the human rights and security of women are strongly dependent on how
we manage the global economy and address conflict in the coming dec-
ades. If inequality and violence is not reduced, the security of women will
not improve (True 2012).
Renewed talk of a return to geopolitics, with deepening strategic
hostility and distrust between the major powers, raises fears of a new
Cold War (Mead 2014). This threatens to undermine important norma-
tive progress on human rights, arms control, and crimes against humanity,
and is exacerbated by existing structures of global security governance
especially by the rules and composition of the Security Council and the
UN Charter. Such a development would also undermine the ability of the
nuclear non-proliferation regime both to address current challenges and to
evolve to deal with future ones. The NPT (Treaty on the Non-
Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) regime could muddle along in its
damaged and fractured state; it could break down entirely and open up
an alarming scenario of increased proliferation and potential nuclear use;
or it could face a different kind of challenge, in which momentum on
cooperative disarmament increases, raising the need to create new struc-
tures of regulation and control to secure a world of very few or zero
nuclear weapons. The development of drones, artificial intelligence,
cyber weapons, and space-based global strike capabilities raise further
possibilities for future insecurity.
An important feature of this book is the willingness of its authors to
look at global governance problems through new lenses. This willingness
is visible in all the chapters, and while it reflects the broadening and
deepening of the security agenda, there is also visible in this book a
willingness to rethink the very foundations and architecture of interna-
tional security. This is why the book begins with a section on conceptua-
lising global insecurity, with four framing theoretical contributions that
draw on important past and recent work: the globalisation of insecurity
4 A. BURKE

(Camilleri and Falk 2009), feminist political economy of violence (True

2012), post-human security (Cudworth and Hobden 2011; Mitchell
2014; Dalby 2014), and security cosmopolitanism (Burke et al. 2014;
Burke 2013, 2015, 2016). These are diverse theoretical contributions, but
they converge on some core understandings: the systemic and processual
nature of global insecurity; the need to address complex insecurities
through profound structural and normative change; and the need for
new kinds of analysis, ethics, and governance to address our common
global challenges.
In particular, two major conceptual and structural shifts that will shape
global governance – for good or ill – are highlighted in this book. First, in
the chapters by Camilleri, Dalby, Burke, and Cudworth and Hobden, the
‘Anthropocene’ is a powerful presence: a new geologic and industrial
epoch in which the collective activity of humanity has so dramatically
transformed the earth that society and nature are no longer distinct. As a
result, global governance can no longer retain its state- and anthropo-
centric focus and if it persists in doing so, the planet will pay a heavy price
in cascading forms of insecurity over coming decades and centuries.
Secondly, in many other chapters, including that on the role of the state
by Behm, the sustainability of an exclusively ‘Westphalian’ (state-centric)
international order is raised as a question. The globalisation of insecurity
puts the doctrine of national sovereignty into question in multiple and
complex ways, some of which we have probably not yet seen. One is
already obvious: the numbers of forced migrants in the world (nearly 60
million) are the highest ever; if poverty, climate change, and conflict are
not adequately addressed, hundreds of millions are likely to be on the
move.

THE GLOBALISATION OF INSECURITY

Understanding insecurity at the global and planetary scales can be double-
edged. On the one hand, it can focus the minds of analysts and policy-
makers on the global scale of cooperation and response – and, in the case
of the global ecology, on the need to broaden our range of global actors
and institutional participants to include the biosphere, ecosystems, and
nonhuman forms of life. In that latter vision, termed ‘Planet Politics’, the
UN Charter may need to be revised so that major ecosystems or species
groups could have representation in international organisations in the way
that states currently do (Cudworth and Hobden 2011; Mitchell 2014;
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

Burke et al. 2016). While this would no doubt be a complex and radical
reform, the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with its 17
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), recognises the indivisible and
globally interconnected nature of development, security, human rights,
and ecological protection. When it was adopted in September 2015 the
General Assembly declared that ‘we are resolved to free the human
race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure
our planet . . . to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path’
(UN A/RES/70/1). However, the governments of the world propose
to pursue this ‘supremely ambitious and transformational vision’ within
the current architecture of the UN and the international society of states
(United Nations 2015: 3, 28–35). Whether they can realise such a vision
within the current structure and dynamics of international order is a
matter of some doubt that demands significant, and critical, debate.
Hence, on the other hand, such a focus on the global and planetary
scale of insecurity raises profound questions of global will, capacity, nor-
mative and political conflict, and structural and institutional design. As we
write, in mid-2016, the United Nations Security Council was utterly
paralysed over a brutal and inhuman civil war in Syria that had taken
over 200,000 lives and created 10 million displaced persons. It was just
one of many long-running conflicts that international society was strug-
gling to resolve and ameliorate, while the militaries and intelligence agen-
cies of multiple states fanned the flames. Europe and the Middle East were
facing the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War, and largely
failing to deal with asylum seekers in ways that respected their human
rights or the deep insecurities that drove them to flee. Despite (or possibly
also in part because of) the prosecution of the global war on terror since
2001, casualties from terrorist attacks had seen a ninefold increase to a
high of over 32,000 deaths in 2014 (Global Terrorism Index 2015: 2).
Less than a decade after the Wall Street crash caused tens of trillions of
dollars in wealth to disappear, global economic recovery remained weak,
and poverty and economic inequality was increasing, creating a profound
barrier to economic and social recovery (Obstfeld 2016; Dabla-Norris
et al. 2015). At the same time, serious questions were being raised about
the viability and sustainability of a global growth model driven by con-
sumerism and financialisation using the energy provided by the burning of
fossil fuels, raw materials provided by environmentally and socially destruc-
tive mining activities, and food produced in ways that stress ecosystems
and enslave and immiserate animals (Klein 2015; Hamilton 2010).
6 A. BURKE

Global economic governance remains controlled and dominated by the

Bretton Woods institutions and by neoliberal ideologies of small govern-
ment, austerity, and free trade without reference to their devastating
social, ecological, and economic impact – even if a grand decline in the
credibility of neoliberalism is increasingly visible (Chakrabortty 2016).
In similar ways, global environmental governance is kept separate from
economic and security governance, and itself is fractured between multiple
treaties and institutions, so that, for example, climate change and biodi-
versity are not being addressed together. Despite the hope provided by the
Paris Agreement on climate change, global climate governance has pre-
sided over a leap in global greenhouse emissions that, if left unchecked,
will take us towards the nightmare of a ‘four degree world’ this century
(Biermann 2014; Stevenson 2012; Burke et al. 2016; Hamilton 2010;
Christoff 2013).
The grand bargain at the heart of the nuclear non-proliferation regime –
which exchanges disarmament for non-proliferation – is broken, evidenced
by the failure of the 9th Review Conference on the NPT in 2015, the push
by many states for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, and the refusal of
countries from the South to cooperate with strengthening controls on
nuclear proliferation. It is failing to address current trends of nuclear mod-
ernisation and hostility, let alone evolve to grapple with future change.
Recent conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Sri Lanka, and Palestine have seen terrible
war crimes committed by states and non-state belligerents, with impunity.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been attacked for only indicting
Africans and leaving great power human rights abusers untouched, and
numerous countries have thumbed their noses at its indictment of the
Sudanese president (Thakur 2015). To be sure, the picture is an ambiguous
one: serious failures coexist with remarkable successes, which would include
the strengthening norm of the Responsibility to Protect, the adoption of the
ICC Statute, the downward trend in the number of (and mortality from)
armed conflicts, the non-use of nuclear weapons in war since 1945, the Paris
Agreement on climate change, and normative progress in thinking about
international security.

GLOBAL SECURITY GOVERNANCE

In the light of the current crisis and stalemate, and our concern about
disastrous possible futures, a focus on the functioning and improvement of
global security governance is of crucial importance. Global governance
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

refers not just to ‘how states have established norms, laws, and institutions
to help them engage in collective action and create order’ but also to how
‘other actors, including [international organisations], transnational cor-
porations, non-governmental organisations, and new kinds of networks’
combine with states to create complex (and sometimes competing) sys-
tems of interaction and governance of particular international and global
problems (Barnett and Sikkink 2008: 63–64).
Three key issues arise in the global governance of security. The first
is about architecture and levels of governance. How integrated are
these levels and architectures, and if they lack integration, why? The
second is about normative pluralism in global governance: the question
of what global security governance is for. Can the world manage and
cope with deep normative conflict about what the fundamental ends
and purposes of global governance are – especially when they fracture
organisations that need to be organised around a common goals, such
as the UN? Or must they be harmonised if global security is to be
genuinely advanced? The third relates not only to these questions of
norms, but also to very real questions of whether we are missing and
failing to address serious and actual forms of insecurity, such as gender-
related insecurity, ecological degradation and climate change, the rights
and agency of children, refugees and asylum seekers, and the interests
of smaller and less powerful states. How do the key actors in global
security governance understand security? Do they see security as being
about coercion and power, as something that cannot be shared with
others but must be achieved against them, or do they see it in shared
and cooperative ways? What kinds of problems, threats, and challenges – and
to whom and what – are subsumed under those practical understandings
of security? All of these questions combine in the actual practice of global
security governance.
The global governance of security takes three major architectural forms:
firstly, bilateral or multilateral strategic alliances, which are usually focused
on military and intelligence cooperation and common defence; secondly,
regional security organisations and treaties that are being seen as increas-
ingly important and as conduits for normative pressures on their member
states (Aris and Wenger 2014); and, thirdly, the UN system, which
combines international law, numerous treaties, and cooperative enforce-
ment and management arrangements, and its key bodies such as the
General Assembly and the Security Council (Thakur 2006; Price and
Zacher 2004). These levels interact and coalesce with a range of less
8 A. BURKE

formal arrangements and institutions to produce, in aggregate, systems of

global security governance.
Whether and how these structures contribute to global security, and
normatively and operationally integrate, is a contested question. For
example, Cold War strategic alliances such as NATO and the Warsaw
Pact may have not only provided their members with some reassurance,
but also exposed them to great collective risks and fuelled nuclear prolif-
eration, creating ‘security dilemmas’ on a grand scale. There is real con-
cern that contemporary versions of such alliances – an expanded NATO
and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) are going to act in
ways that contribute to a new Cold War (Booth and Wheeler 2008;
Bleiker 2005). Recognising this, one regional organisation, Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), was formed around the principle of
precluding great power conflict and competition in Southeast Asia,
embedded norms for the peaceful resolution of disputes, and created a
nuclear weapons free zone. It was a prototype for what scholars later began
to call the ‘security community’ (Acharya 2001; Bellamy 2004). Yet it also
aggressively defended the principle of non-interference in internal affairs
which provided cover for member states to violently prosecute internal
conflicts and abuse human rights (Burke and McDonald 2007). Similarly,
its ability to prevent interstate conflict and strategic competition never
quite matched its declared norms, as exemplified by strategic tensions
between Singapore and Malaysia and ASEAN’s internal division over
Cambodia, a conflict that was ultimately resolved with the ideational and
diplomatic intervention of outsiders.
Over the last decade ASEAN has adopted a series of ambitious and
normatively progressive common objectives (an ASEAN ‘political-secur-
ity’, ‘economic’, and ‘social-cultural’ community), but commentators
remark that the ASEAN Regional Forum ‘has not tackled the most
important security issues in the region’ especially those in Northeast
Asia, and ‘climate change has not been adequately securitised . . . to make
it a substantiated area of regional cooperation’ despite the fact that the
region’s populations are distinctly vulnerable to climate change impacts
and already suffer the adverse health effects of transboundary pollution
(Burke 2010; Jetschke 2014: 94; Dent 2014: 113). In a similar way, the
African Union has transitioned from values of ‘non-interference’ to ‘non-
indifference’, while its practices have remained somewhat contradictory,
exhibiting tensions between ‘a conservative and deferential approach to
the continent’s incumbent regimes’ and the organisation’s declared liberal
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

objectives (Williams 2014: 38). An organisation such as the 115-member

Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) does not have a formal security mandate,
but was formed to create a community of states who wished to stand aside
from superpower conflict, and it plays a major role as a lobby in the nuclear
non-proliferation regime (Mukhatzhanova and Potter 2012).
One cannot underestimate the weight of strategic alliances and regional
security organisations in shaping the effective realities and landscape of
international security. However, the UN forms the final and most norma-
tively, legally and organisationally crucial layer. The UN Charter is over-
whelmingly concerned with peace and security, and acts like a global
constitution, establishing the Security Council and the International
Court of Justice and setting out rules for the pacific settlement of disputes
and the resort to force in international relations. Here its role is funda-
mentally ambiguous: it prohibits military aggression between sovereign
states and licenses the resort to force in self-defence, but creates few
constraints – certainly not legal ones – to the resort to force by a state
within its own borders (Burke et al. 2014: 84–90). This sets up compli-
cated challenges in relation to efforts to prevent and end civil wars, prevent
crimes against humanity, or prevent and prosecute war crimes, as the
chapters by Alex Bellamy and Anthony Burke and Rita Parker explain.
The UN also plays a significant role in the negotiation and adoption of key
international security treaties (such as the NPT, the chemical and biolo-
gical weapons conventions, the landmines convention, and more), hosts
major meetings of states and plays key roles in the evolution of those
treaties into cooperative security regimes. In this book, critical scrutiny of
the UN’s role in the promotion of the ‘women, peace, and security’
agenda and the governance of nuclear weapons and small arms are, respec-
tively, carried out by Laura Shepherd, Tanya Ogilvie White, and Marianne
Hanson.
Since the end of the Cold War, the UN’s role and responses have ranged
from being highly valuable to highly damaging. It was sidelined prior to the
Iraq invasion of 2003, then invited to mediate between ethnic groups only
to have its Baghdad headquarters bombed; it was rendered impotent in East
Timor in 1999 and in Bosnia-Herzogovina in 1997, stood scandalously by
while the Rwanda genocide took place in 1994, and imposed a near-total
trade embargo of Iraq during the 1990s which is alleged to have caused
the deaths of 100,000–500,000 people and provoked considerable soul-
searching about the value and impact of international sanctions (Cortwright
et al. 2007; Burke 2007: 208). More recently, it has been a well-meaning
10 A. BURKE

bystander to terrible conflicts in Sri Lanka, Syria, Libya, and Yemen,

reduced to providing humanitarian aid and refugee housing, and spon-
soring glacially slow processes of diplomatic mediation (Kampmark
2016; Perera 2015; Thasan 2016).
It is beyond the scope of a single chapter or book to convey the
complexity of the UN’s role and machinery in global security – which
includes roles in the nuclear non-proliferation regime; the limitation of
small arms; peacekeeping and peace-enforcement; international criminal
law; refugee protection; and normative innovations around the
Responsibility to Protect, human security, and gender – but there have
been a number of important studies (Price and Zacher 2004; Thakur
2006; Weiss and Daws 2008; Zifcak 2009; Newman 2007). This com-
plexity is exacerbated by internal division within the UN, both between
groups of member states and between major bodies such as the General
Assembly and the Security Council, and by serious problems of account-
ability and efficiency within the UN organisation itself, which are mani-
festing mostly visibly in ongoing problems around sexual abuses by
peacekeepers (Whalan 2016; Simm 2013; Duncanson 2009). A broader
source of division is evident in the deliberate lack of integration between
the global governance regimes relating to security, economics, develop-
ment, health, and the environment, which reflects both power politics and
profound normative disagreement between major actors in global security
(Biermann 2014). The UN’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges
and Change (United Nations 2004) may have argued that poverty, infec-
tious disease, and environmental degradation are threats to international
security as much as armed conflict, and as the 2005 World Summit (2005:
para 9) declared that ‘development, peace and security and human rights
are interlinked and mutually reinforcing’, but key global governance
frameworks and institutions dealing with the environment, the world
economy, human rights, and security are deliberately kept fragmented
and separate.

FROM COLLECTIVE TO GLOBAL SECURITY, AND BEYOND

Earlier we asked what global security governance is for. The UN began as a
system to create and assure ‘collective security’, which Barry Buzan has
defined as ‘a system for maintaining world peace and security by the
concerted action and agreement of all nations. The central idea of collec-
tive security is to institutionalize a permanent arrangement of the balance
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

of power in which the entire international community agrees to oppose

military aggression by any member’ (Buzan 2009). International lawyer
Alexander Orakhelashvili argues that ‘no collective security is feasible
unless it draws on fundamental security needs of states’ and – drawing
on the charters of the Organisation of American States, European Union,
and African union – that ‘protecting basic rights and interests of states is at
the heart of every viable collective security arrangement’. It is thus a
fundamentally state-centric and inter-national concept, which has flowed
into how the UN Charter was framed and the international security order
constructed (see also Weiss and Gordenker 1993). While international law
strongly prohibits military aggression by one state against another, Article
2(7) of the UN Charter states that ‘nothing contained in the present
Charter shall authorise the UN to intervene in matters which are essen-
tially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state’ – a principle that
protected human rights abusers during the Cold War and has been pried
open only with great difficulty and complexity.
Hence, collective security as a concept and institutional framework has
been framed around the interests of states and the need to suppress
interstate military conflict. This emphasis, however, is slowly transforming
and is an important background to this book. On the one hand, the
national and collective security agenda has been slowly broadening beyond
military conflict; on the other hand, global security governance is placing
normative, moral, and legal pressure on the permissible ways that states
can define their own security. This can be seen in the growing acceptance
of the norm of the Responsibility to Protect and its underlying principle of
‘sovereignty as responsibility’; debates over the last decade about the value
of human security over national security as a concept and set of practices;
and the growth of the ‘women, peace and security’ agenda. Orakhelashvili
(2011: 6) comments that ‘collective security thus understood imposes
universal concepts on national policies; it is, then, about an international
compromise on permissible limits to how states perceive security, and
means by which they can maximize their security’. He was drawing on
Nincic’s argument that ‘notion of security cannot, therefore, be left to the
individual and necessarily subjective appreciation of each individual
State . . . but should be objectively defined by the norms of the interna-
tional legal order. Security should, moreover, be equal for all’
(Orakhelashvili 2011: 5).
After the end of the Cold War, and especially since the attacks of 9/11
and the 2003 crisis around the invasion of Iraq, international efforts to
12 A. BURKE

rethink collective security have gathered pace. In 2003 the UN Secretary-

General commissioned an eminent ‘high level panel’ to develop ‘a new
security consensus’ around three basic pillars: ‘today’s threats recognise no
national boundaries, are connected, and must be addressed at the global
and regional as well as national levels. No State, no matter how powerful,
can by its own efforts alone make itself invulnerable to today’s threats. And
it cannot be assumed that every state will always be able or willing to meet
its responsibility to protect its own peoples and not to harm its neigh-
bours.’ It argued that ‘poverty, infectious disease, environmental degrada-
tion are more feed one another in a deadly cycle’, and argued that the new
collective security agenda should be based around six clusters of threats
(economic and social threats, including environmental degradation, inter-
state conflict, internal conflict, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism,
and transnational organised crime) (United Nations 2004: 9, 23).
The report was not without flaws (Fishel 2013), but it was working
intuitively with an underlying human security concept and attempting to
harmonise collective and national security in a new way. The 2005 United
Nations World Summit broadly adopted this new way of thinking, stating
that ‘we believe that today, more than ever before, we live in a global and
interdependent world [and] that collective security depends on effective
cooperation, in accordance with international law, against transnational
threats’. The Summit also resolved to ‘address the root causes of those
threats and challenges with resolve and determination’ (United Nations
2005: 2). The expansion and deepening of the security agenda has been
less obvious and more fitful in the national security approaches of member
states. However, the challenges of climate change receive prominent
mention in the United States’ 2010 Quadrennial Defence Review and its
2015 national security strategy, and the United Kingdom’s 2008 National
Security Strategy focuses around ‘a diverse but interconnected set of
threats and risks’ that are ‘driven by a diverse and interconnected set of
factors including climate change, competition for energy, poverty and
poor governance, demographic changes and globalisation’ (Department
of Defence 2010; White House 2015; United Kingdom 2008).
The 2005 World Summit was the most important gathering of UN
member states since 1945; even more important was the General
Assembly session in 2015 that adopted the Sustainable Development
Goals. That meeting acknowledged the urgency of the global economic
and climate crisis; the integrated nature of the earth system and human
impacts upon it; the systemic need to integrate social and gender justice,
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

ecological protection, human rights, and social inclusivity; and it set a goal
for the elimination of poverty and achievement of genuinely environmen-
tally sustainable economic growth. It recognised that ‘the survival of many
societies, and the biological support systems of the planet, is at risk’ and that
these are issues central to global security: ‘sustainable development cannot
be realised without peace and security; and peace and security will be at risk
without sustainable development’. Importantly, the General Assembly
affirmed, against the widespread warehousing and coercive exclusion of
refugees, that ‘we will cooperate internationally to ensure safe, orderly and
regular migration involving full respect for human rights and the humane
treatment of migrants regardless of migration status, of refugees and of
displaced persons’ (United Nations 2015: paras. 9, 13, 14, 35, 29).
The normative goals and analytical framework of the 2030 Agenda
reflect, at least in part, many of the most innovative and progressive
theories of security: Mary Kaldor’s ideal of global security based on
‘global social justice’ and the ‘international rule of law . . . based on
cosmopolitan principles’; Ken Booth’s vision of ‘global governance
becom[ing] a community of emancipatory communities . . . above and
below the state’; Jacqui True’s call for the structural transformation of
political economies to underpin the security of women and sustain non-
violent societies; Audra Mitchell’s call to secure the ‘worlds’ that
‘humans co-constitute with diverse nonhuman beings’; and Anthony
Burke’s call for ‘all actors and institutions’ to ‘advance the global
security of humanity and ecosystems without bias or discrimination’
and thus sustain ‘the entire mesh of planetary existence and life’
(Kaldor 2007: 98; Booth 2007: 141–142; True 2012: 184; Mitchell
2014: 5; Burke 2013: 24, 2016: 148–152).
Similarly innovative, future-directed, and progressive thinking to
address the weaknesses of global security governance is visible throughout
this book. Joseph Camilleri argues for new integrated modes of policy that
combine ‘whole of government’ and ‘whole of society’ approaches that are
far more democratic, responsive, and accountable. Jacqui True and Maria
Tanyag highlight the need to ‘challenge and overhaul underlying struc-
tures of political, social and economic inequality’. Simon Dalby asserts that
we must collectively ‘build a solar powered civilisation quickly so as to
secure the future relative stability of the biosphere’, which ‘may require
more drastic social changes than either traditional political or new govern-
ance agendas usually contemplate’. Taking a slightly different tack, Mary
Pettenger, Erica Cudworth and Stephen Hobden, and Sara Davies,
14 A. BURKE

respectively, question whether the ‘securitisation’ of climate change, the

global ecology, or global health will effectively advance efforts to promote
beneficial change.
Other contributors make concrete suggestions for improved regime
performance and institutional reform. Laura Shepherd insists that we
should go beyond a focus on conflict-related sexual violence to consider
how women are ‘agents of change in conflict and post-conflict situations’
and to ‘ensure women’s meaningful participation [at all levels] in peace
and security governance’ using a ‘whole of UN action’ approach. Katrina
Lee-Koo urges that existing programmes which take children’s ‘positive
agency’ in peace-building seriously need to be ‘aligned with existing
global architecture on children and armed conflict’. In regard to the
arms trade and weapons of mass destruction, Marianne Hanson argues
that the Arms Trade Treaty should be strengthened and that governments
should ‘legislate for greater civilian inclusion in defence policy-making and
for greater oversight of government arms acquisitions and transfers’;
Tanya Ogilvie-White advocates a range of measures to strengthen the
NPT regime, especially changes by the nuclear states in weapons posturing
and strategy, and a more sincere effort to progress disarmament in a
transparent way; and Rita Parker stresses the need for a comprehensive
and precautionary policy framework to govern dual-use biological
research. In his survey of global cybersecurity, Greg Austin concludes
that ‘the security interests of many actors are better served by understand-
ing how the technologies can be regulated and restrained through mutual
compromise’.
In the area of human rights, Savitri Taylor urges us to acknowledge that
the international refugee regime is broken. The way to overcome the
negative impacts of the coercive securitisation of forced migration, she
argues, is to think holistically and ‘advocate for the better implementation
of the existing human rights regime . . . as a regime that trumps all others’.
Morten Pedersen argues for traditional approaches to the enforcement of
international human rights, such as sanctions, to be supplemented by
practices of ‘principled engagement’ rather than the isolation of offending
regimes. Finally, when considering the role of major global security insti-
tutions, Allan Behm urges states to move beyond the failed nostrums of
neoliberal economics, and to develop ‘agility and adroitness’ and ‘prag-
matic interdependency’ based on the ‘fundamental recognition that every
human being enjoys the same basic rights by virtue of their very human-
ity’. Concerned to enhance the ability of the UN Security Council to fulfil
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

its role in promoting international peace and security, Alex Bellamy, Rita
Parker, and Anthony Burke, respectively, argue for voluntary restraint on
the use of the great power veto, the adoption of robust and transparent
accountability measures, reform of its membership that avoids entrenching
more destructive power politics, and a broadening of its understanding of
international peace and security to take in the holistic understanding of
global vulnerability that has been so prominent in General Assembly
meetings over the last decade.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development stands as the acme of
global institutional thinking about the complex integration of economic,
ecological, justice, and security systems, and it could well be one of the
most important documents that the international society of states has ever
produced. Yet there is also a vast gulf between aspiration and action. A
reading of the chapters in this book will demonstrate how far the world is
from being organised, normatively or institutionally, to achieve the goals
that the Agenda sets out as the conditions for our common survival.
However, this book provides timely analysis and creative thinking that
deserves to be part of the conversation about how, collectively, we can find
our way there.

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Anthony Burke is Professor of International and Political Studies, University of

New South Wales, Australia. He is coauthor (with Katrina Lee-Koo and Matt
McDonald) of Ethics and Global Security: A Cosmopolitan Approach (2014,
Routledge), and author of Fear of Security: Australia’s Invasion Anxiety
(Cambridge University Press, 2008), Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence: War
Against the Other (Routledge, 2007), and Uranium (Polity Press, 2017). He is
also co-editor (with Jonna Nyman) of Ethical Security Studies (2016, Routledge)
and (with Matt McDonald) Critical Security in the Asia-Pacific (2007, Manchester
University Press).
 PART I

Conceptualising Global Insecurity

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
I am sure that no unprejudiced observer of the body of men who
composed the Japanese House of Representatives in the Spring of
1892, could have failed to be greatly impressed with a certain air of
somewhat undisciplined vigour and as yet unskilled but promising
business-like quality. The first odd detail to be noticed was a
polished black tablet standing on the desk of each member and
inscribed with the Japanese character for his number. Thus they
undertook to avoid that dislike to having one’s own name ill used, in
which all men share but which is particularly offensive among
Oriental peoples. For instead of referring to one another as “the
gentleman from Arkansas,” etc., they made reference to one another
as “number so or so.” How could anything be more strictly
impersonal than sarcasm, or criticism, or even abuse, directed
against a number that happens only temporarily to be connected
with one’s Self!
It was my good fortune to light upon a time when the business of the
day was most interesting and suggestive of the temper and
intentions of these new experimenters in popular legislation; and, as
well, of the hold they already supposed themselves to possess on
the purse-strings of the General Government. What was my surprise
to find that this power was, to all appearances, far more effective and
frankly exercised by the Japanese Diet than has for a long time been
the case with our own House of Congress. For here there was little
chance for secret and illicit influences brought to bear upon
Committees on Appropriations; or for secure jobbery or log-rolling or
lobbying with particular legislators.
The business of the day was the passing upon requests for
supplementary grants from the different Departments of the General
Government. It was conducted in the following perfectly open and
intelligible way: The Vice-Minister of each Department was allowed
so many minutes in which he was expected to explain the exact
purpose for which the money was wanted; and to tell precisely in yen
how much would be required for that purpose and for that purpose
only. The request having been read, the Vice-Minister then retired,
and fifteen minutes, not more, were allowed for a speech from some
member of the opposition. The Speaker, or—to use the more
appropriate Japanese title—President of the House, was at that time
Mr. T. Hoshi, who had qualified as a barrister in London, and who in
personal appearance bore a somewhat striking resemblance to the
late President Harper of Chicago University. He seemed to preside
with commendable tact and dignity.
As I look backward upon that session of the Imperial Japanese Diet,
there is one item of business which it transacted that fills me with
astonishment. The request of the Department of Education for
money to rebuild the school-houses which had been destroyed by
the terrible earthquake of the preceding winter was immediately
granted. Similar requests from the Department of Justice, which
wished to rebuild the wrecked court-houses, and from the
Department of Communications, for funds to restore the post-offices,
also met with a favourable reception. But when the Government
asked an appropriation for the Department of the Navy, with which to
found iron-works, so that they might be prepared to repair their own
war-ships, the request was almost as promptly denied! To be sure,
the alleged ground of the denial was that the plans of the
Government were not yet sufficiently matured.
At this juncture Mr. Kojiro Matsukata, the third son of Japan’s great
financier, Marquis Matsukata, came into the gallery where we were
sitting and offered to take me into the House of Peers. But before I
follow him there let me recall another courtesy from this same
Japanese friend, which came fifteen years later; and which, by
suggesting contrasts with the action of the Diet in 1892, will
emphasise in a picturesque way the great and rapid changes which
have since then taken place in Japan. On the morning of February
19, 1907, Mr. Matsukata, who is now president of the ship-building
company at Kawasaki, near Kobe, showed me over the yards. This
plant is situated for the most part on made ground; and it required
four years and a half to find firm bottom at an expense of more than
yen 1,000,000. The capital of the company is now more than yen
10,000,000. All over the works the din of 9,000 workmen made
conversation nearly impossible. But when we had returned to his
office, a quiet chat with the host over the inevitable but always
grateful cups of tea, elicited these among other interesting incidents.
Above the master’s desk hung the photograph of a group which
included Admiral Togo; and still higher up, above the photograph, a
motto in the Admiral’s own hand-writing, executed on one of his
visits to the works—he having been summoned by the Emperor for
consultation during the Russo-Japanese war. On my asking for a
translation of the motto, I was told that it read simply: “Keep the
Peace.” Just two days before the battle of the Sea of Japan, Mr.
Matsukata had a telegraphic message from Togo, which came “out
of the blue,” so to say, and which read in this significant way: “After a
thousand different thoughts, now one fixed purpose.” In the centre of
another group-photograph of smaller size, sat the celebrated
Russian General, Kuropatkin. This picture was taken on the
occasion of his visit to the ship-yards some years before. Mr.
Matsukata became at that time well acquainted with Kuropatkin, and
described him to me as a kindly and simple-minded gentleman of the
type of an English squire. He was very fond of fishing; but like my
friend, the Russian General Y——, he appeared to have an almost
passionate abhorrence of war. He once said to my host: “Why do
you build war ships; why not build only merchant ships; that is much
better?” To this it was replied: “Why do you carry your sword? Throw
away the sword and I will stop building war ships.” And, indeed, in
most modern wars, it is not the men who must do the fighting or the
people who must pay the bills, that are chiefly responsible for their
initiation; it is the selfish promoters of schemes for the plunder of
other nations, the cowardly politicians, and perhaps above all, the
unscrupulous press, which are chiefly responsible for the horrors of
war. Through all modern history, since men ceased to be frankly
barbarian in their treatment of other peoples and races, it has been
commercial greed, and its subsidised agents among the makers of
laws and of public feeling, which have chiefly been guilty for the
waste of treasure and life among civilised peoples.
But let us leave the noise of the Kawasaki Dock Yards, where in
1907 Russian ships were repairing, Chinese gun-boats and torpedo
and other boats for Siam were building, and merchant and war ships
for the home country were in various stages of new construction or
repair; and let us return to the quiet of the House of Peers when I
visited it in May of 1892. After a short time spent in one of the retiring
rooms, which are assigned according to the rank of the members—
Marquis Matsukata being then Premier—we were admitted to the
gallery of the Foreign Ambassadors, from which there is a
particularly good view of the entire Upper House.
The Japanese House of Peers is composed of four classes of
members. These are (1) Princes of the Blood; (2) Peers, such as the
Princes and Marquises, who sit by virtue of their right, when they
reach the age of twenty-five, and Counts, Viscounts, and Barons,
who are elected to represent their own respective classes; (3) men
of erudition who are nominated by the Emperor for their
distinguished services to the state; and (4) representatives of the
highest tax-payers, who are elected from among themselves, and
only one from each prefecture. Each of the three inferior orders can
return not more than one-fifth of the total number of peers; and the
total of the non-titled members must not be greater than that of the
titled members. It is thus made obvious that the Japanese House of
Peers is essentially an aristocratic body; and yet that it represents all
the most important interests of the country in some good degree—
whatever may be thought of the proportion of representation
assigned to each interest. The care that science and scholarship
shall have at least some worthy representation in the national
counsels and legislation is well worthy of imitation by the United
States. And when to this provision we add the facts, that a Minister
of Education takes rank with the other Ministers, that the Professors
in the Imperial Universities have court rank by virtue of their services,
and that the permanent President of the Imperial Teacher’s
Association is a Baron and a member of the House of Peers, we
may well begin to doubt whether the recognition accorded to the
value of education in relation to the national life, and to the dignity
and worth of the teacher’s office, is in this country so superior to that
of other nations, after all.
 “THE PICTURESQUE MOAT AND ANCIENT WALL”
The appearance of the Chamber occupied by the Peers was
somewhat more luxurious than that of the Lower House; although it
was then, and still is, quite unimposing as compared with buildings
used for legislative purposes in this country and in Europe. Indeed,
everywhere in Tokyo, the ugly German architecture of the
Government buildings contrasts strikingly with the picturesque moat
and ancient walls of the Imperial grounds. More elaborate
decoration, and the platform above which an ascent by a few steps
led to the throne from which His Majesty opens Parliament, were the
only claims of the Upper Chamber to distinction. The personnel of
the members seemed to me on the whole less vigorous than that of
the Lower House. This was in part due to the sprinkling of youthful
marquises, who, as has already been explained, take their seats by
hereditary right at the age of twenty-five. In marked contrast with
them was the grim old General T——, a member of the Commission
which visited the United States in 1871, who asserted himself by
asking a question and then going on to make a speech, in spite of
the taunts of two or three of the younger members. The manner of
voting in the Upper House was particularly interesting; as the roll
was called, each member mounted the platform and deposited either
a white or a blue card in a black lacquer box which stood in front of
the President of the Chamber.
Here the business of the day was important on account of the
precedent which it was likely to establish. A Viscount member had
been promoted to a Count, and the question had arisen whether his
seat should be declared vacant. The report of the committee which
disqualified him from sitting as a Count was voted upon and
adopted. Then came up the case of two Counts who were claimants
for the same seat. The vote for these rival candidates had stood 30
to 31; but one voter among the majority had been declared
disqualified; because, having held a Viscount’s seat, on being
promoted to a Count, he had attempted to vote as a Count. All this,
while of importance as precedents determining the future constitution
of the House of Peers, had not at all the same wide-reaching
significance as the signs in the Lower House of the beginnings in
Japan of that struggle which is still going on all over the world
between the demands of the Central Government for money and the
legislative body which votes the appropriations to meet these
demands.
It was under very different circumstances that I witnessed a quite
dissimilar scene, when in December of 1906 my next visit was paid
to the Imperial Diet of Japan. This occasion was the opening of the
Diet by the Emperor in person. Now, while my court rank gave me
the right to request an official invitation to the ceremony, the nature
of the ceremony itself required that all who attended should come in
full dress and wearing their decorations, if they were the possessors
of decorations at all. It was also required that all visitors should be in
their respective waiting-rooms for a full hour before the ceremony
began. None might enter the House later than ten o’clock, although
His Majesty did not leave the palace until half-past this hour. This
waiting, however, gave a not undesirable opportunity to make some
new acquaintance, or to have a chat with two or three old friends.
But besides the members of the various diplomatic corps and a
French Count, who appeared to be a visitor at his nation’s Embassy,
there were no other foreigners in the waiting-room to which I was
directed on arrival.
During the hour spent in waiting, however, I had a most interesting
conversation with Baron R——, an attaché of the German Embassy,
who seemed a very clever and sensible young gentleman. The
excitement over the recent action of the San Francisco School Board
was then at its extreme height; and on discussing with him an “open
letter” which I had just published, explaining in behalf of my
Japanese friends the relation in which this action, with some of the
questions which it raised, stood to our national constitution, I found
him thoroughly acquainted with the historical and the political
bearings of the whole difficult subject. I could not avoid a regretful
sigh over the doubt whether one-half of our own representatives, or
even of our foreign service, were so well informed on the nature of
our constitution and its history as was this German diplomat.
However this may be, certain it is that a higher grade of culture is
eminently desirable in both the legislative and diplomatic classes of
our public service. In the same connection the Baron gave it as his
opinion that Japan had produced in this generation a nobler and
more knightly type of individual manhood than can be found in any
country in Europe. Such a verdict can, of course, never acquire any
higher trustworthiness than an individual’s opinion. But if we ask
ourselves, “Where in the world is another city of 45,000 inhabitants
to be found, which has produced in this generation six generals who
are the equals of Field Marshall Oyama, Admiral Togo, and Generals
Oku, Count Nodzu, and the two Saigos?” I imagine the answer
would be exceedingly hard to find. Perhaps the truth is, as one of my
best informed Japanese friends once quaintly said: “In America you
have a few big, bad men, and a good many small good men; but in
Japan we have a few big, good men and a good many small bad
men.” At any rate, the six “big men,” whose names have just been
mentioned, were about fifty years ago living and playing as boys
together in an area so small that the houses and yards of their
parents, and all the space intervening, might have been covered by
a ten-acre lot.
As soon as His Majesty had arrived, all those who had been waiting
were conducted to their proper chambers in the gallery of the Peer’s
House, where I found myself seated with Japanese only, and
between those of a higher rank on the right and of a lower rank on
the left. The members of both Houses of the Diet were standing on
the floor below;—those from the Lower House on the left and facing
the throne, and those from the House of Peers on the right. The
former were dressed, with some exceptions, in evening-dress, and
the latter in court uniform with gold epaulets on their shoulders. All
the spectators in the galleries were in court dress. On the right of the
platform, from which steps led up to the throne, stood a group of
some fifteen or twenty court officials. At about five minutes past
eleven an equal number of such personages came into the Chamber
by the opposite door of the platform and arranged themselves so as
to form a passage through the midst of them for the Emperor. Not
more than five minutes later His Majesty entered, and ascending to
the throne, sat down for a moment; but almost immediately rose and
received from the hand of Marquis Saionji, the Prime Minister, the
address from the throne inscribed on a parchment scroll. This he
then read, or rather intoned, in a remarkably clear but soft and
musical voice. The entire address occupied not more than three
minutes in the reading. After it was finished, Prince Tokugawa,
President of the Peers, went up from the floor of the House to the
platform, and then to a place before the throne; here he received the
scroll from the Emperor’s hand. After which he backed down to the
floor again, went directly in front of His Majesty and made a final
bow. The Emperor himself immediately descended from the throne
and made his exit from the platform by the door at which he had
entered, followed by all the courtiers.
All were enjoined to remain in their places until the Emperor had left
the House; the audience then dispersed without further regard to
order or to precedence. So simple and brief was this impressive
ceremony!
Nearly all over the civilised world, at the present time, there seems to
be a growing distrust of government by legislative bodies as at
present constituted and an increasing doubt as to the final fate of this
form of government. The distrust and doubt are chiefly due to the
fact that the legislators seem so largely under the control of the
struggle which is everywhere going on between the now privileged
classes, in their efforts to retain their inherited or acquired
advantages, and the socially lower or less prosperous classes, in
their efforts to wrest away these advantages and to secure what they
—whether rightly or wrongly—regard as equal rights and equal
opportunities with their more favoured and prosperous fellows. It is
not strange, in view of this so nearly universal fact, that any inquiry
as to the past and present success of legislation under constitutional
government in Japan, should receive such various and conflicting
answers both from intelligent natives and from observant foreigners.
There can be no doubt among those who know the inside of
Japanese politics that the success of this sort which has hitherto
been attained in Japan has been in large measure due to the wise
and firm but gracious conduct of the Emperor himself; and to that
small group of “elder statesmen” and other councillors whom he has
trusted and supported so faithfully. But no few men, however wise
and great, could have achieved by themselves what has actually
been accomplished in the last half-century of the Empire’s history.
Great credit must then be given to hundreds and thousands of lesser
heroes; and indeed the events of this history cannot be accounted
for without admitting that the genius of the race, accentuated by their
long period of seclusion, is the dominant factor. The one fault, which
most threatens the cause of parliamentary and constitutional
government of Japan, is a certain inability, hitherto inherent, to avoid
the evils of an extreme partisanship and to learn that art of practical
compromises which has made the Anglo-Saxon race so successful
hitherto in constitutional and popular government.
 CHAPTER II
DOWN THE KATSURA-GAWA

At four o’clock in the morning of the second day after my visit to the
Imperial Diet in the Spring of 1892, I arrived at the station of Kyoto,—
for more than a thousand years the capital of Japan. Here the
unbroken line of heavenly descended Mikados lived and held their
court; but most of the time in only nominal rule, while a succession of
Daimyos, military captains, and Shoguns, seized and held the real
power of government. Here also are the finest temples and factories
for the various kinds of native art-work; and here is where the relics
of the magnificence, combined with simplicity, of the court life during
Japan’s feudal ages may best be seen and studied by privileged
inquirers. It was fortunate, then, that my first introduction to interior
views of Japanese life and Japanese character was had in the
ancient rather than in the much more thoroughly modernised Capital
City of Tokyo.
At that time, the journey between the two capitals required some five
or six hours longer than is now necessary. The fact that there were
then no sleeping-cars, together with my interest in watching my
fellow travellers, had prevented my getting any sleep the night
before. When, therefore, I had been escorted to the home of my host
and forthwith informed that within two hours a delegation of students
would visit me, for the double purpose of extending a welcome and
of giving instructions as to the topics on which they wished to be
lectured to, I made bold to go to bed and leave word that I should be
glad to see them if they would return about noon. At the appointed
hour this first meeting with Japanese students face to face, in their
native land, came off. It was conducted with an appropriately polite
solemnity by both parties. An elaborate interchange of greetings and
compliments began the interview; and then the future speaker
listened attentively and patiently, while the delegation from a portion
of his future audience recited the subjects about which they deemed
it best for him to speak. The reply was to the effect that the subjects
for the course of lectures had already been selected and carefully
prepared: the program, therefore, could not be altered; but some of
the topics coincided closely with the program suggested by the
Committee; and a series of conversations would accompany the
lectures, at which the topics not provided for in the course of lectures
could be brought up for discussion in the form of question and
answer.
This experience and others somewhat similar, which followed with
sufficient rapidity, early taught me a valuable lesson for all
subsequent intercourse with the Japanese—young and old, and
irrespective of distinctions of classes. With full right, and on a basis
of history and racial characteristics, they do not gratefully tolerate
being looked down upon, or even condescended to, by foreigners.
But they respect, as we Anglo-Saxons do, the person who deals with
them in manly frankness, and on terms of manly equality. And they
admire and practice more than we do, the proper mixture of
quietness and politeness in manner with courage and firmness at the
heart (suaviter in modo, fortiter in re). In his admirable volumes on
the Russo-Japanese war, General Ian Hamilton tells the story of how
he asked some of the Japanese military authorities, What they
considered the most essential quality for a great field-marshal or
general in conducting a battle; and how the reply was these simple
words: “Du calme.” The private soldier—although not in accordance
with his best service of the cause—may indulge in the wild
excitement which Lieutenant Sakurai’s “Human Bullets” depicts in
such horribly graphic manner; but not so the officer in command of
the field. He must keep the cool head and the unperturbed heart,
with its steady pulse-beat, if he is going to fight successfully an up-
hill battle.
After only two days of lecturing at Doshisha, the institution founded
by Neesima, the unveiling of whose portrait has lately been
celebrated at Amherst College where he graduated some thirty years
ago, the weekly holiday arrived; and with it the time for an excursion
down the rapids of the Katsura-gawa, which was to give me the first
views of country scenes and country customs in Japan. The day was
as bright and beautiful as a day in early June can possibly be.
Nowhere else in the world, where I have been, are one’s pleasant
impressions and happiness in country excursions more completely
dependent upon the weather than in the Land of the “Rising Sun.”
Although this sun is of the kind which “smites you by day” in the
Summer months, you can easily guard against its smiting by use of
pith hat and umbrella; but you cannot so readily defend your spirits
against the depressing effect of day after day of cloud and down-
pour or drizzle of rain.
The starting at half-past seven o’clock made necessary an early
rising and an early breakfast; but this is custom and no hardship in
the Summer time of Japan. Indeed it has often seemed to me that
the Japanese in the cities at this time of the year do not go to bed at
all. The insufficiency of sleep is probably one chief reason for the
prevalence of nervous disorders among this class of the population.
It is somewhat compensated for, however, by the wonderful ability of
the coolies, which they possess in common with Orientals generally,
of falling asleep and waking up, like the opening and shutting of a
jack-knife.
It is not quite possible for the most gifted master of the descriptive
style to depict the charm of the first jinrikisha ride out into the country
surrounding Kyoto. At least, the charm experienced by me on the
occasion of this excursion will never be forgotten. The excellent
road; the durable and handsome stone bridges; the continuous
gardens and frequent villages; the perpetual stir along the highway,
with the multitude of jinrikishas and two-wheeled carts,—some
drawn by men and boys, and some by bulls, mostly black,—or of
foot-passengers, coming into the city on business or going into the
country bent on pleasure;—all these made the entire journey
exceedingly lively and interesting. Further out, in the more solitary
places, were the terraces covered with verdure and flowers, the hills
carpeted with what looked like large and luxurious ferns, but which
really was “mountain grass,” and the water-falls; but perhaps most
beautiful of all, the bamboo groves, whose slender trunks and
delicate foliage threw a matchless chiaroscuro upon the brilliantly
coloured ground below. Here was indeed a genuine chiaroscuro; for
the parts in shadow had “the clearness and warmth of those in light,
and those in light the depth and softness of those in shadow.”
What might have been a ridiculous or even a dangerous adventure
met us at the mouth of the long tunnel which the work of the
government has substituted for the ancient mountain pass. For, as
we reached the spot and were about to enter its mouth, strange
noises issuing from within made us pause to investigate their cause.
On peering into the darkness, we were able to make out that a full-
grown male of the domestic bovine species had broken the straw
rope by which two coolies were leading him, and was charging
toward our end of the tunnel with all the bellowing and antic fury
which is wont to characterise this animal under similar
circumstances. It did not seem that the issue of an encounter
between us in jinrikishas and the bull, in so narrow a passage with
high and roofed-over stone walls on either side, would be to our
advantage. We therefore laid aside our dignity, got down from our
jinrikishas, and squeezed both ourselves and them as closely as
possible against the side of the cut at the end of the tunnel.
Fortunately we had not long to wait in this position of rather uncertain
security. For either the sight of us, barring his passage, or some trick
of his own brain, induced the infuriated animal to turn about and
make his exit at the other end of the tunnel; and after waiting long
enough to place a sufficient distance between the two parties, we
continued our journey without further adventure.
On reaching Hozu, the village where the boat was to be taken for the
rapids, we found that President Kozaki and one of his teachers were
waiting for us. Some one-hundred and twenty boys of the
Preparatory School, who had risen in the night and walked out to
Hozu, had started down the rapids several hours before. The boat in
waiting for our party was of the style considered safest and most
manageable by the experienced boatmen, who during the previous
fifteen years had piloted thousands of persons down the Katsura-
gawa, at all stages of its waters, with a loss of only five lives. The
boat was very broad for its length, low, and light; with its bottom only
slightly curved, fore and aft, and toward both sides. So thin were the
boards between the passengers and the swift, boiling waters, that
one could feel them bend like paper as we shot over the waves. We
sat upon blankets laid on the bottom of the boat. There were four
boatmen;—one steersman with a long oar, in the stern, two oarsmen
on the same side, toward the bank of the river, in the middle of the
boat, and one man with a pole, in the bow. Once only during thirteen
miles of rapids between Hozu and Arashi-yama did the boat strike a
rock, from which it bounded off lightly;—the sole result being a
somewhat sharp interchange of opinion as to who was to blame,
between the steersman and the other boatmen.

“THE CHARM OF THE SCENERY ALONG THE BANKS”

The excitement of the ride did not in any respect interfere with a
constant and increasing admiration of the charm of the scenery
along the banks of the river. The canyon of the stream and the
surrounding hills were equally beautiful. The nearer banks were
adorned with bamboo groves, the attractiveness of whose delicately
contrasted or blended light and shadows has already been referred
to; and at this season, great clumps of azaleas—scarlet, pink, and
crimson—made spots of brilliant colouring upon the sober
background of moss and fern and soil and rock.
The average trip down the rapids of the Katsura-gawa occupies two
hours. But the favourable stage of the water, helped out by the skilful
management of the craft on this occasion, brought us to the landing
place at Arashi-yama in scarcely more than an hour and a half. Our
entire course may be described in the guide-book style as follows:
“Of the numerous small rapids and races, the following are a few of
the most exciting:—Koya no taki, or ‘Hut Rapids,’ a long race
terminating in a pretty rapid, the passage being narrow between
artificially constructed embankments of rock; Takase, or ‘High
Rapids’; Shishi no Kuchi, or ‘The Lion’s Mouth’; and Tonase-daki ‘the
last on the descent, where the river rushes between numerous rocks
and islets.’”
Arashi-yama, made picturesque by its hills everywhere covered with
pine trees, its plantations of cherry trees which are said to have been
brought from Yoshino in the thirteenth century by the Emperor
Kameyama, and its justly celebrated maple groves, was an
appropriately beautiful spot for the termination of our excursion. After
taking luncheon in one of its tea-houses,—my first meal, squatted on
the mats, in Japanese style,—my host and I left the rest of the party
and went back to his home in the city by jinrikishas. On the way we
stopped at one of those oldest, smallest, and most obscure of
ancient temples, which so often in Japan are overlooked by the
tourist, but which not infrequently are of all others best worth the
visiting. Here the mild-mannered, sincere old priest opened
everything freely to our inspection, lighted the tapers and
replenished the incense sticks; and even allowed us the very
unusual privilege of handling the sacred things about the idols.
Finally, putting a paper-covering over his mouth, and after much
prayer, he approached on his knees the “holy of holies,” drew aside
the gilt screens and showed us the inner shrine; and he then took
out the shoes belonging to the god and let us handle and admire
them.
From his point of view, the pious custodian of the sacred relics was
indulging in an altogether justifiable pride. For the temple of
Uzumasa is one of the oldest in Japan. It was founded in A. D. 604,
by Shōtoku Taishi, the Japanese Constantine, who consecrated it to
Buddhist gods whose images had been brought from Korea.
Although the original buildings were burned some centuries ago, the
relics and specimens of the most ancient art were fortunately saved.
Nowhere else in the whole country, except at Nara or Hōryūji—and
there only to those who are favoured with special privileges by the
Government—can such a multitude of these things be seen and
studied. The antiquarian interest in them is just now enhanced by the
fact that many of them, although called Japanese, were really made
either in Korea or else under the instruction of Korean teachers. It is
one of the shiftings of human history which has now placed upon the
Japanese the responsibility of instructing in every kind of modern art
their former teachers.
The accessories and incidents of my second excursion to the rapids
of the Katsura-gawa were of a totally different order. The day was in
early March of 1907, bright and beautiful, but somewhat cool for
such a venture. At the Nijo station—for one could now reach the
upper rapids by rail—my wife and I met President Harada and one of
the lady teachers of Doshisha, and two of the Professors of the
Imperial University. Passes and a present of envelopes containing a
number of pretty picture cards, from the Manager of the Kyoto
Railway Company, were waiting for the party. The ride to the village
of Kameoka was pleasant, although even the earliest of the plum
blossoms had not yet appeared to beautify the landscape.
I had been anticipating a day of complete freedom for recreation; but
the Christian pastor of the village, who had kindly arranged for our
boat, had with equal kindness of intention toward his parish,
betrayed our coming; and the inevitable under such circumstances
happened. The usual committee of Mayor, representatives of the
schools and others, were at the station to welcome us. “Could I not
visit the Primary School and say a few words—just show myself,
indeed—to the children who were all waiting eager with
expectation?” Of course, Yes: for how could so reasonable a
request, so politely proffered, be reasonably and politely denied?
Besides, the children were encouraged to plant and care for trees
about the school-buildings; and it was greatly desired that I should
plant one to commemorate our visit. Of course, again, Yes. Soon,
then, a long row of jinrikishas, holding both hosts and guests, was
being hurried over the mile or more separating the station from the
nearest school-building. On drawing near we found some 500 or 600
children—first the boys and then the girls—ranged along on either
side of the roadway; and between them, all bowing as they are
carefully trained to do in Japanese style and waving flags of both
countries, we passed, until we were discharged at the door of the
large school-house hall.

“TO TEND THESE TREES BECAME A PRIVILEGE”

After luncheon was finished, I assisted at the planting of two small
fir-trees just in front of the building, by dropping into the hole the first
two or three mattocks full of earth. We were then conducted to the
play-ground near by, where the whole school was drawn up in the
form of a hollow square. Here, from one end of the square, I spoke
to the children for not more than ten minutes, and President Harada
interpreted; after which the head-master made a characteristically
poetical response by way of thanks,—saying that the memory of the
visit and the impression of the words spoken would be evergreen,
like the tree which had been planted, and expressing the wish that
the future long lives of both their guests might be symbolised by the
life of the tree. To tend these trees became a privilege for which the
pupils of the school have since kept up a friendly rivalry.
The excursionists were quite naturally desirous of getting off
promptly upon the postponed pleasure trip; but this was not even yet
easily to be done. For now followed the request to visit two schools
of the higher grade and make a short talk to the pupils in them. I
compromised on the condition that the two should be gathered into
the same assembly; and this was cheerfully, and for the Japanese,
promptly done. The combined audience made about three-hundred
of each sex—older boys and girls—standing close together, one on
one side and the other on the other side of the room, in soldier-like
ranks, facing the speaker with curious and eager eyes, but with most
exemplary behaviour. Again I spoke for ten minutes; after which
followed the interpretation and the address of thanks and of promise
to remember and put into practice the speaker’s injunctions.
At the termination of this ceremony, I said—I fear a little abruptly
—“Arigato” (“Thank you”) and “Sayonara” (“Good-bye”) and started
to go. But I was brought to a halt by the suggestive, “Dozo, chotto”
(“In a moment, please”) and then asked to give the boys of the
school a chance to precede us to the river bank on foot, from which
they wished to see us off and to bid us a Japanese good-bye. And
who that knows what a Japanese “good-bye,” when genuine and
hearty, really is, would not give more than a single little moment, at
almost any juncture, to be the recipient of one? The boys, thereupon,
filed out in good military fashion; and after giving them a fair start, we
took our jinrikishas again and were carried to the river’s bank. It was
still some little time before the boat was ready; and then the party,
seated on the blankets and secured against the cold by a covering of
rugs, accompanied by the pastor and one of the teachers as an
escort, started down the river. Several hundred yards below our
starting point, the three-hundred school boys stood in single file
along the bank, and continued to “banzai” in their best style until a
turn in the river hid them from our sight.
I have dwelt at such length on this seemingly trivial incident, because
I should be glad to give an adequate impression of the influence of
the lower grades of the public schools of Japan in inculcating
lessons of order and politeness upon the children of the nation; and
in this way preparing them for fitting in well with the existing social
order and for obedience to the sovereign authority of the Emperor, of
their parents, and in general of their elders. The common impression
that Japanese babies are born so little nervous or so good-natured
that they never cry, is indeed far enough from the truth. They do cry,
as all healthy babies should, when hurt or when grieved; or, with
particular vehemence, when mad. They are almost without exception
injudiciously indulged by their parents, their nurses, and in truth by
everybody else. But from the time the boy or girl begins to attend
school, an astonishing change takes place. How far this change is
due to the influence of the teacher’s instruction and example, and
how far to the spirit and practice of the older pupils, it is perhaps not
easy to say. But, in school, both sexes are immediately placed under
a close-fitting system of physical and intellectual drill. Thus the pride
and ambition of all are called out by the effort to succeed and to
excel. The Imperial rescripts, the wise sayings and noble
achievements of ancient sages and heroes, the arousement of that
spirit which is called “Bushidō” or “Yamato-Damashii,” the appeal to
the pride and love of country, and instruction in ethics—as the
Japanese understand ethics—prolonged from the kindergarten to the
University;—all these means are employed in the public system of
education with the intention of producing citizens serviceable to the
State. They are all needed in the effort of the Government to control
the ferment of new ideas and the pressure of the new forces which
are shaping the future commercial, political, and social life of the
nation, perhaps too rapidly for its own good.
For the interested and sympathetic teacher of children there are no
more delightful experiences than may be had by visiting and
observing the primary grades of the public schools of Japan. I have
had the pleasure of speaking to several thousands of their pupils. At
the summons, the boys would come filing in on one side, and the
girls on the other side, of the large assembly room with which every
well-appointed school-house is now being provided; and as quietly
as drilled and veteran soldiers they would form themselves into a
compacted phalanx of the large style of ancient Macedonia. Six
hundred pairs of bright black eyes are then gazing steadily and
unflinchingly, but with a quiet and engaging respectfulness, into the
eyes of the speaker. And if his experience is like my own, he will
never see the slightest sign of inattention, impatience, or disorder, on
the part of a single one of his childish auditors. Further, as to the
effect of this upon the older boys when out of school: Although I
have been in a considerable number of places, both in the cities and
in the country places of Japan, I have never seen two Japanese
boys quarrelling or even behaving rudely toward each other so far as
their language was concerned. The second item of “advice” in the
“Imperial Rescript to the Army and Navy,” which precedes even the
exhortation—“It is incumbent on soldiers to be brave and
courageous”—reads as follows: “Soldiers must be polite in their
behaviour and ways. In the army and navy, there are hierarchical
ranks from the Marshal to the private or bluejacket which bind
together the whole for purposes of command, and there are the
gradations of seniority within the same rank. The junior must obey
the senior; the inferior must take orders from the superior, who
transmits them to Our direct command; and inferior and junior
officers and men must pay respect to their superiors and seniors,
even though they be not their direct superiors and seniors. Superiors
must never be haughty and proud toward those of lower rank, and
severity of discipline must be reserved for exceptional cases. In all
other cases superiors must treat those beneath them with kindness
and especial clemency, so that all men may unite as one man in the
service of the country. If you do not observe courtesy of behaviour, if
inferiors treat their superiors with disrespect, or superiors their
inferiors with harshness, if, in a word, the harmonious relations
between superiors and inferiors be lost, you will be not only playing
havoc with the army, but committing serious crimes against the
country.”