security architecture-building and regional integration in asia-pacific

8/7/2019 Security Architecture-Building and Regional Integration in Asia-Pacific

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Security Architecture-Building and Regional Integration in Asia-Pacific

Simona Soare

Abstract

The European model has confirmed the fact that institution-building and regionalintegration can help alleviate a series of problems of a particular region. But the Europeanmodel was built on a very different theoretical approach, an approach that emphasizedcomplementary or even common interests, integration and cooperation as the foundations ofinternational relations. This does not seem to be the model that is currently developing inAsia-Pacific, where institution-building is seen particularly as an instrument of hedging(particularly by minor powers) or soft balancing among the major actors of the region. Letus take the case of the East-Asia Summit and that of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperationfor instance. They are often quoted as examples of Chinas efforts to put together an all-Asianforum that would be based on Asian values. This attempt is regarded as highly dangerousby other non-Asian actors such as the US or the EU which argue this attempt runs counter to

the WTOs principles and norms. Moreover, these institutions have strongly developedsecurity dimensions. The EU and the US argue this Chinese attempt at monopolizing security-provision in Asia-Pacific is dangerous because it signals Chinas attempt at regionalhegemony. However interesting, though, this picture is not entirely accurate. Asia-Pacificssecurity architecture is that of a profound transition-period. China is not yet seeking regionalhegemony. Nor does it seem to be inclined to refuse to play by the already established rulesenshrined in the international regimes and institutions in force in the region. Rather, the forcesthat shape the security environment in the Asia-Pacific (unlike the economic one) rest less onits current situation and more on the expectations of all actors involved upon their evolutionas well as that of their opponents and partners throughout the next 20-25 years.

Asia-Pacific is one of the most important regions nowadays as far as economicdevelopment, international relations and regional integration processes are concerned.International security, more and more inseparable and indivisible from regional andnational security in this age of globalization, is increasingly seen through the lens ofregionalism. The effect some scholars say is created by the fact that the end of theCold War was also at the end of polarity and so the regional level, rather than thesystemic one have become the main focus of international relations.

1The reason why this

particular region is so important to international security is the convergence of differenttypes of conventional and non-conventional, asymmetrical threats in this region.Moreover, the respective threats and security risks in the region appear to be mutuallyreinforcing rather than criss-crossing. Asia-Pacific is the fastest developing region in theworld nowadays encouraging speculations that the center of the world is shiftingfrom the North Atlantic to the Pacific region. However, the economic crisis of 1997-1998has hit the Asian tigers heavily and left its mark, proving that interdependency andglobalization are not without risks and that these prove more illusive and harder to tacklethan traditional ones. Last, but not least, Asia is important because of its strong non-conventional security threats such as the proliferation of weapons of mass-destruction,

1 See, for instance, Barry Buzan and Ole Wver, Regions and Powers. The Structure of InternationalSecurity, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. For a different approach, see Christopher Layne,The Peace of Illusions. American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present, Ithaca and Londra: CornellUniversity Press, 2006. I am in debt to Christopher Layne for having helped me clear up some aspects ofsystemic transition and the regional and systemic power politics in Asia-Pacific.


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international terrorism, transnational organized crime, piracy, secessionism, xenophobia,etc. Recently, the turmoil in Pakistan caused by the assassination of former PrimeMinister Benazir Bhutto, the relinquishing of its military title by president Pervez

Musharaff and his recent, unexpected resignation in late August 2008 have made itquite clear that while non-conventional threats are seen as the wave-of-the-futurethreats, the old, conventional ones are not yet a matter of the past.

Regional integration in Asia-Pacific has become a topic of interest for local andWestern scholars only in the last decade or so. Most research on security architecturebuilding in Asia-Pacific in the decade have predominantly focused on the bilateral level.Some have emphasized the transformation and development of the regional multilateralinstitutional level as well2, but over-relied on path dependency3 in explaining thatsecurity organizations created at the beginning of and during the Cold War continued toleave a mark on the regional institutional security architecture in Asia-Pacific. Few arethe studies that stop and focus on the current regional security architecture or its

building process for that matter. And even those that do consider it, seem more concernedor interested in its future transformation rather than its current shape and characteristics.No one simply seems to take the time to look at the region, trace out the regional securityarchitecture and analyze it in greater depth.

Asia-Pacific. The definition of the region

Regions are not just mere geographical constructs. In taking a more constructivistapproach, they are geo-political constructs, they require a certain identity built in timeand transformed over time share certain cultural characteristics and a cooperation andsecurity environment defined by a set of common opportunities, risks and threats. Indefining Asia-Pacific however, it seems that there is an ongoing debate. Traditionally, the

region is referred to as Asia and is a geographically inspired one and it does notusually include the United States. Another one is East Asia which is a tighter definedone, usually not including the United States, and sometimes not even India or Australia.The third is Asia-Pacific, the one I myself use, which is the most encompassing fromboth a geographical and a political perspective.

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2 See, for instance, John G. Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno (ed), The Theory of International Relationsand the Asia-Pacific, Columbia University Press, 2003; Ian Sorey, The United States and ASEAN-ChinaRelations: All Quiet on the Southeast Asian Front?, Strategic Studies Institute, Carslile Barracks, October2007, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=812. Also see Robert Ross,

The Geopraphy of the Peace. East Asia in the 21st Century n International Security, 23:4, 1999, pp. 81-118; Bruce Vaughn and Wayne M. Morrison, China-Southeast Asia Relations: Trends, Issues, andImplications for the United States, CRS Report for Congress, order code RL32688, April 4, 2006,http://www.italy.usembassy.gov/pdf/other/RL32688.pdf; Thomas Lum, Wayne M. Morrison and BruceVaughn, Chinas Soft Power in Southeast Asia, CRS Report for Congress, order code RL34310, January2008, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34310.pdf.3 See Christopher Hemmer and Peter J. Katzenstein, Why is There No NATO in Asia? Collective Identity,Regionalism, and the Origins of Multilateralism in International Organization, 56:3, 2002, pp. 575-607;John S. Duffield, Asia-Pacific Security Institutions in Comparative Perspective in John G. Ikenberry andMichael Mastanduno (ed), The Theory of International Relations and the Asia-Pacific, ColumbiaUniversity Press, 2003, pp. 243-263.4 Asia-Pacific is especially used in Western diplomacy, though it is slowly beginning to be used by stateslike China too, which favored another name for the region East Asia.


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Asia-Pacific is a region of intense rivalry, mutual suspicion and insecurity5, anenvironment in which conventional security risks and threats converge and reinforce eachother with non-conventional, non-military ones. The relative peace and stability in the

region over the last two decades has been due mostly to the focus of all the great regionalactors on economic6 rather than security aspects of regional and international politics which has been possible altogether due to considerable American military presence in theregion.

7And although Asia-Pacific has come a long way, the region is still plagued by a

high concentration of communist, totalitarian or authoritarian regimes (the highest in theworld), the dependency of these regimes on repressive politics as a means of maintainingpolitical and social stability, the lack of respect for human dignity and the fundamentalrights and liberties of man, the underdeveloped regional institutional architecture, thestrong influence of nationalism, extremism, xenophobia, international terrorism,transnational organized crime, and so on with a high degree of likelihood regarding thecomeback of an intense security dilemma and arms race.

For instance, Chinas defense budget grew by 47% between 2000-2008; in fact, itgrew from $29.8 billion in 2005 to $35 billion in 2006 and to $46.7 billion in 20078, withan estimated increase of ober 25% in 2008 and nearly 28% in 2009. Moreover, mainlyAmerican and some British data suggest that the Chinese military-related expenses arenearly 50% higher than official figures. India too increased its defense budget from anestimated $22.9 billion in 2006, to $28.5 billion in 2007; the increase focused mainly onthe budget for new military equipment and systems acquisitions such as the nearly $2billion contract sighned with BrahMos for the delievery of a fifth generation fighter, the$1.2 billion contract signed with Russia for the purchase of over 1000 T-90 main battletanks, the acquisition of nearly 120 new multirol figthers for Indian Air Forces and so on.Japans defense budget has been rising steadily, at a slower rate from $41.1 billion in

2006 to $43.6 billion in 2007; moreover, Japan has been recently pushing for amendingarticle 9 of its Constitution regarding its military apparatus, that forbade Tokyo to field aforce larger than 100000 troops and deploy them overseas, in 2006-2007 transformed itsNational Security Agency into a full-fledged National Defense Ministry and increased thesize of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces while diversifying their equipment, training aswell as the range of missions they can forgo within a much wider geographical arena

9.

And although the military balance in the region is still dominated by the United States whose defense budget rose from $521 billion in 2006 to $571 billion in 2007 and reacheda staggering $695 billion in 2008 (although this amount includes the budget of over $200

5 Aaron L. Friedberg, Will Europes Past be Asias Future? Survival, 42:3, 2000, pp. 147-160.6 Zalmay Khalil, David T. Orletsky, Jonathan D. Pollack, Kevin Pollpeter, Angel M. Rabasa, David A.Shlapak, Abram N. Shulsky, Ashley J. Tellis, The United States and Asia. Towards a New US Strategy andForce Posture, RAND Publisher, 2001, pp. 4-5, www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1315. Also,for a relevant survey of military and defense-related expenses of states in the Asia-Pacific see MilitaryBalance 2008, especially chapters East Asia and Australia and Central and South Asia.7 Christopher Layne argues that American massive military forward presence in the Pacific is going tostrengthen as the US has been and continues to be seeking the role of a systemic hegemon, raisingprospects of the formation in the near future of a powerful balancing coalition of which China is likely tobe part. See Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions, pp. 11-14.8Military Balance 2008, especially chapters East Asia and Australia and Central and South Asia.9Ibidem.


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billion for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq)10, the fact that defense budgets in this regionare rising so fast is not a good indication that states feel secure.

The region is also still marked by a host of conventional and nuclear military

confrontations such as the conflict between India and Pakistan and the one between Northand South Korea. And territorial revisionism spreads even further to the Spratly Islands disputed by Malasia, Brunei, Indonesia, the Phillipines and China the Kurile Islands disputed by Japan and the Russian Federation the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands, disputedby China and Japan, as well as the to the precise delimitation of the exclusive economiczones around much of South-East Asia, and the settling of border disputes betweenmainland states.

Last, but not least, Asia-Pacific has the highest economic growth rate in theworld. Trade in Asia-Pacific alone stands at 14.1% of world trade, while trade betweenAsian and North American nations reached a staggering $1022 billion in 2007, andbetween the European Union and Asian nations reached some $970 billion (see Map 1).

Map 1. Regional and Intre-regional trade as % of World trade in 2007

Moreover, between 2005-2007 we have seen a rise of 13% in commodities trade in Asia-Pacific, 11% in South-East Asia and about 10% in Japan alone, whereas imports rose by8-9% during the same period. Trade in the Asia-Pacific represented roughly 27,8% of

10Military Balance 2008, Capitolul North America, especially pp. 18 and 29.

Source: International Trade Stratistics 2007, WTO


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world trade in 2007, of which about 11% was trade with North America, 11% with theEuropean Union, 27% with Africa and 57.7% was intra-regional trade.11

Regional Security Architecture in Asia-Pacific

Most of the literature regarding regional integration in the Asia-Pacific is tributaryto the path dependency theory, considerind the current fragile institutional architecture tobe a remnant of the Cold War, when the region was deeply divided. Washingtonsstrategy of favoring bilateral alliances instead of a multilateral one such as NATO was inEurope

12 lead to the creation and the preservation of a strategic environment in which

conventional security threats have failed to be solved, whereas historical tensions havebeen frozen and are as present as ever in the absence of a cooperative process of dilogueand negotiation to address them. The dependency of all Asia allies on their hegemon either the United States or the former Soviet Union determined them to seek

priviledged relations with these alone and freeze out the attempts to develop closer andwarmer relations with each others.

This strategy has outlived the Cold War to this very day. However, as regionaleconomies started to grow at a fast pace and acknowledge the benefits of free trade andintegration, the necessity of developing closer bilateral ties with neighbors seemedinescapable. Particularly the period since 1996 has been most relevant in this respect, aswell as from the point of view of regional integration processes taking off in Asia-Pacific,driven especially by the European integration model considered to be beneficial botheconomically and security-wise.

But a quick look at the current regional institutional architecture in Asia-Pacificreveals a series of fundamental differences between the European and the Asian

models of integration. As opposed to Europe that centers around the European Union as amodel of economic and, more recently, security integration, Asia-Pacific has several suchcores, the most important of which are the East-Asia Summit (EAS), the Association ofSouth-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), ASEAN+3 (China, Japan and South Korea),ASEANs Regional Forum (ARF), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), andthe Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); to these channels of formal,institutionalized networking one must also add the informal, uninstitutionalized Six PartyTalks focused on solving the North-South Korean conflict and the issue of North Koreasmilitary nuclear arsenal and nuclear weapons producing capabilities. Lately, however,there has been increasing talk of formalizing the Six Party Talks by establishing thepermanent and institutionalized Regional North-East Asia Security Forum, a proposal

highly supported by Washington and partially by Beijing and Tokyo. The regionalsecurity architecture in Asia-Pacific is clearly laid down in Fig.1 below.

11 International Trade Statistics 2007, World Trade Organization,http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/its2007_e/its07_toc_e.htm.12 Avery Goldstein, An Emerging Chinas Emerging Grand Strategy. A Neo-Bismarckian Turn? n JohnG. Ikkenberry and Michael Mastanduno, The Theory of International Relations and the Asia-Pacific,Columbia University Press, 2003, pp. 77-9.


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Fig. 1. The regional security and economic architecture in the Asia-Pacific

The East Asia Summit (EAS)The East Asia Summit is one of the most recent multilateral forums in Asia-

Pacific and gathers all ASEAN member states which some claim have a main part insteering the course of the new forum China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia andNew Zeeland. The Russian Federation has a permanent observer status. The first reunionof the EAS took place on December 14, 2005 in Malasia and focused on several centralaspects of regional economic development as well as a series of security issues caused byasymmetrical risks and threats particularly climate change, industrialization and energy

security. Esentially, the EAS was built and is intended to work as an umbrella-organization based on an economic pillar marked by the proposal to sign a Free TradeAgreement between all the participating states in the EAS and unification of theirmarkets into an EAS common market, such as the European model and a security pillar.

The EASs second reunion, due to take place in December 2006 was cancelled,but in January 2007 the representatives of the member states met ub the Phillipines andadopted the Cebu Declaration on East Asian Energy Security a series of principlesmeant to ensure the security of energy resources for member states. The third reunion of

Source: Dick Nanto, East Asian Regional Architecture: New Economic and SecurityArrangements and US Policy, p. 20.


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the EAS took place in December 2007 in Singapore, where the member states adoptedthe Declaration on Climate Change, Energy and the Environment.13

The Assosciation of South-East Asian Nationals (ASEAN)ASEAN was founded in 1967 as a regional integration process based on two main

pilars: an economic pillar, whose main purpose was to continue and accelerate economicgrowth and development and a security pillar whose purpose was to preserve andpromote regional peace and stability by emphasizing the importance of the rule of lawand independence in bilateral relations between regional states, as well as the principle ofnon-interference in another states internal affairs. The principals underlying thefoundation of ASEAN, as laid down in the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation inSouth-East Asia, are: Mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty, eguality, territorial integrity

and national identity of all nations;

The right of every state to be free of interference, subversion or coercion; Non-interference in another states internal affairs; The peaceful resolution of international disputes and differends; The renounciation to the use of or the threat with the use of force; Effective cooperation between states;14

Nowadays, ASEAN has 10 member states: Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, thePhillipines, Indonesia, Laos, Malasia, Singapore Thailand and Vietnam. In 2002, ASEANlaunched the ASEAN Vision 2020 which underlines the common vision of a concert ofnations seeking to boost their economic growth rates as well as their cooperation in thesphere of security. In 2003 the ASEAN Community was launched, its foundations restingon three pillars: an ASEAN Security Community, an ASEAN Economic Community and

a Socio-Cultural ASEAN Community.

ASEAN+3ASEAN+3 was established at the informal ASEAN Summit of 1997, to which

China, Japan and South Korea were also invited and attended the event. Later on, in1999, the integration process was formalized and turned into an institution, and a mainone for that matter particularly in East Asia. Security-wise, cooperation in ASEAN+3focused mainly on countering the terrorist threat and resulted in the adoption in Bangkok,in January 2004, of a plan of coordinately countering terorism, drugs and humantrafficking, piracy, arms smuggling, money-laundrying, transnational economic crimeand internet crime. Economic cooperation resulted in a rather spectacular rise of trade

between the member states by aproximately 14-15% each year.15 Although initiallyASEAN+3 was not looked upon favorably, at least by Beijing, particularly because of theJapanese participation considered a threat to the Chinese regional interests, China cameto hold considerable influence within this regional forum, now one of its regionalpriorities in terms of multilateral diplomacy and cooperation.

13 For further details please see the Declarations available at http://www.aseansec.org/21116.htm.14 See http://www.aseansec.org/64.htm.15 See http://www.aseansec.org/16580.htm.


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ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)ARF is the broadest security forum in Asia-Pacific and at the same time it is also

the most inclusive one of all, bringing together all ASEAN member states, China, Japan,

India, South Korea, the United States, the European Union, Russia, and so forth. Becauseof its broad membership, which tends to moderate and tone down Chinese influence, theARF is largely considered to be the most appropriate regional security initiative at leastby some of its members, such as Japan, the US, India or South Korea. Moreover, theforum brings forward and confronts a series of very different security outlooks of theregion as a whole, bridging the differences between the five sub-systems of internationalrelations in Asia-Pacific and lying the foundations for a truly regional mechanism in thesecurity field. The plurality and complexity of the security vision developed within theARF also gives substance to security cooperation on the Asian continent and the outsidepartners and stirs their development in a coordinated fashion. In addition, unlike otherregional initiatives, the ARFs main goal is to focus exclusively on regional security

matters; economic integration, although an in-built pillar of the ARF, has becomeincreasingly less central to its functioning over the last decade. The ARF, which wasestablished in 1993, on the occasion of the 26th Ministerial Reunion and Post-MinisterialConference of ASEAN, focused on two main objectives: The promotion of constructive dialogue and consultations regarding political and

security issues of common interest; The creation of significant contributions and efforts to consolidate trust and

preventive diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region.16Over time, the ARF also came to develop significant cooperation projects in the fields ofnon-proliferation, counter-terrorism and countering transnational organized crime,maritime security, peacekeeping and so on. On the occasion of the latest Ministerial

Reunion, the Secretary General of the ARF emphasized the need to form a rapid reactiongroup that will be in charge of crisis management and response to emergency situations,tackling the negative effectos of crises and disasters and aproviding relief and aid for theaffected population. However, the move was fiercely criticized, particularly by Westernanalysts as a mere substance-less process within the framework of the ARF which is nomore than a talk-shop, with no real power or will for that matter to take action.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)

The SCO focuses mainly on countering and preventing terrorism, seccessionismand extremism, drugs and human trafficking, transnational organized crime and illegalimmigration as the primary threats to the security of its member states.17 The SCO is an

inter-governmental organization of shared and mutual security18, but without being analliance per se or a genuine regional integration mechanism. The SCO was established in2001 by the leadership of China and the Russian Federation, alongside the Central Asianstates Kazakstan, Kirghizstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Cooperation within the SCO

16 See http://www.aseanregionalforum.org/AboutUs/ARFObjectives/tabid/129/Default.aspx.17 See the Shanghai Cooperation Organizations Chart, adopted in June 2002, available athttp://www.sectsco.org/news_detail.asp?id=96&LanguageID=2.18 Ingmar Oldberg, The Shaghai Cooperation Organization: Powerhouse or Paper Tiger?, DefenseAnalysis, Swedish Defense Research Agency, June 2007, http://www2.foi.se/rapp/foir2301.pdf, pp. 13-21.


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has developed steadily since the organizations creation and it indeed helped lay thefoundations for a close and friendly relationship between Moscow and Beijing.

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)Unlike the ARF, which is mainly a common security regional organization, the

APEC is dominated by the economic dimension though security talks are common atthe APEC Summits and is the closest to the European model in terms of economicintegration. The APEC is thus an intergovernmental forum that seeks to facilitateeconomic growth and development, trade and foreign direct investment in the region byacting on the basis of non-binding commitments, through dialogue and mutual respect forall the participants visions and interests.19 All in all, the APEC is mostly a consensualorganization and its power resides within the states building trust and prosperity as theycome to recognize its importance, and not as a process imposed upon them by ahardcore of willing and powerful states a driving engine that is.

The Six Party Talks

The Six Party Talks represent an informal, uninstitutionalized forum of regionalsecurity, focused only on the issue of the nuclear disarmament of North Korea. Theforum was established in 2003, after Pyongyang decided to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and continue the development of its military nuclear program, in anattempt to build nuclear weapons apparently meant to ensure the survival and the securityof the North Korean regime. So far, the Six Party Talks have developed in six rounds ofdialogue and negociations, though these are to continue until the full achievement andimplementation of all the goals agreed upon in the February 13, 200720 agreement signedby the participating states the United States, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and

North Korea. In 2005, the United States launched the proposal of possibly establishing apermanent replacement for the Six Party Talks, a much broader-focused regional securityorganization, a North-East Asia Regional Security Forum that would include the samemembership, but have more readily-agreed, binding mechanisms of crisis managementand conflict prevention, monitoring and negociation.

21

Having shortly mentined the main pieces of the Asian regional integrationachitecture, both in economic and security terms, it biffits our task here to lay out a seriesof overall conclusions. First, and perhaps the most relevant, is the fact that it becomesquite clear from the principles underlying the foundations of the different regionalintegration initiatives in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as their effective functioning

over time, that the European integration model has provided only the idea ofregionalism, but nothing more substantial really. While European integration started offas an attempt not only to produce prosperity by taking down barriers to free tradebetween the member states, but also to impose mechanisms that would make compliancemonitoring easier between the states and thus help decrease uncertainty and mutual

19 More details are readily available at http://www.apec.org/content/apec/about_apec.html.20 See http://www.state.gov/p/eap/regional/c15455.htm.21 See Nanto, Dick K. East Asian Regional Architecture: New Economic and Security Arrangements andUS Policy, CRS Reports for Congress, order code RL33653, September 18, 2006,http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/75280.pdf, pp. 51-3.


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suspicion, the Asian model of regional integration focused on a set of principles thatraised even more obstacles to setting up effective monitoring mechanisms. Emphasizingindependence and non-interpherence, the member states of Asias regional integration

initiatives were highly suspicious of institutional monitoring mechanisms and reluctant tofully participate in them. Moreover, they were and still are reluctant and suspicious ofattempts at establishing binding commitments at the multilateral level. Most states in theregion do not have the power to upstand American influence or growing Chinese, Indian,Japanese influence over these regional organizations. Agreeing to a multilateral bindingcommitment is seen as potentially dangerous because it puts the state in a vulnerableposition towards unfriendly or rival neighbors or perhaps because it puts increasingpressure on their domestic political and economic apparatus.

For this, and other historical reasons, trust came to be consolidated at a very slowpace, which in fact acted as an obstacle to the overall pace of integration. Rather, regionalstates have proven much more open to a model of integration that was based on country-

to-country integration in the economic field, by the establishment of bilateral FTAs.Duplication was not a matter of concern for states for whom avoiding vulnerability isindeed a priority. This has set in motion a two-speed integration process in Asia-Pacific,one that moved along consolidated bilateral networking channels, which have becamemutually-reinforcing, and not across them as was the case in Europe. The different paceat which integration developed and is still developing in the five sub-systems of Asia-Pacific has prevented the establishment of a comprehensive regional architecture and laidthe foundations for the current fragmented regional system.

The vulnerability of the regional integration process in Asia-Pacific, even in theASEAN region, is revealed by the current food crisis that brought about decisions bystates such as Indonesia to impose exports quotas to rice and other food products for fear

that uprisings will follow as a result of the lack of food available to the people ataffordable prices (such as was the case in Haiti for instance).

22China, which used to be

one of the worlds top rise and grain producers has recently become one of the topimporters of such foods of the international market. Much of the Indonesian riceproduction for instance goes to China, whose fast economic development meant that alarger proportion of the population has access to better and larger amounts of food. Andwhile some states in the region fear they have no sufficient reserves to feed theirpopulations, others have excess reserves that are used to feed animals for lack of a betteruse. Japan is one such example. Japan, despite having one of the best developed riceproduction in the world, imports annualy an enormous amount of rice. Some of thereserves stocked from the previous years have been recently used as humanitarian aid

sent to North Korea, Indonesia, China, Myanmar and other states affected by natural orman-made disasters. Other, similarly large quantities, have simply rotteed away instorage houses or were used to feed animals. The occurance of such extreme phenomenawhile trying to apparently boost regional integration is a measure of the partial failure ofthese regional integration mechanisms. Reverting to protectionist measures, so easily,even for short periods of time, proves that the economic integration process in the Asia-Pacific region not only is quite fragile, but also that its very premises are shaky anindication that perhaps the time has come for them to change.

22 WTO data, May 2008. See http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/statis_e.htm.


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Moreover, whereas the European model was focused on a rather limited area at itsbeginnings, all Asian regional initiatives started off from a broader base and sought toachieve integration in several areas simultaneously, seeking to burn stages and achieve

maximum results in a shorter period of time. From this respect, the Asian model adoptedthe fundamental principle of issue-linkage underlying the European integration model,but failed to recognize the importance of a variable rarely, if ever mentioned in surveys ofthe issue at hand: time. Issue-linkage works best over time, because it tends to befacilitated by the acknowledgement of the trust built between the states that havepreviously participated in more limited enterprises.

Neorealist and Neoclassical realist authors claim that such economics-inspiredtheses do not apply to the realm of security which continues to be governed by the samerealist considerations. Consequently, building integration in the field of security is themost difficult.

23The European model made a first attempt in the mid-1950s to build a

European army, but failed to achieve its end when France vetoed the initiative. Only in

the 1990s, and more specifically after Saint Malo in 1998 did the Common Foreign andSecurity Policy (CFSP) pillar take shape and started to develop at a faster pace. However,the Asian model has bipassed integration in the security field from the very beginning infavor of enlarged security cooperation; integration per se in the security filed, as it isnowadays thought of in the European Union a common expeditionary force, a commonarms market, coordinated procurement programs or even a single integrated one for allmember states, and so on is not and, we believe, will not be a specific Asian goal for along time to come.

The Asian model of regional integration may not be as broad or as intense as theEuropean one, but it still builds on the idea that integration is the best means to promoteprosperity and produce security. Regional integration does not bear the profound

meanings of the European model sometimes labeled post-modern but rather itsmeaning resembles that ofa bridge between the nations in the region , though not alwaysacross the deeply dividing issues that still plague their bilateral relationships. Anddespite much Western criticism of regional integration in Asia-Pacific, the process ismoving along at a rather satisfactory speed for most regional actors. China, as well asIndia and indeed other states in the region perhaps with the exception of theWesternized Japan, South Korea, Singapore and the Phillipines are quite satisfied withthis pace of regional integration because while it may produce moderate results most ofthe time, it does not force them into making decisions they do not feel ready or secureenough to make or feel pressured to make by other actors outside the region. Moreover,none of these states is willing to take on the role of building a vision of future regional

integration for Asia-Pacific, because the current strategic environment in the region is notconducive to that. As we shall see in the second part of the study, China is very muchpartial to letting things evolve in the direction already embarked upon and is resilient tosay the least to assume a greater role in stirring the course of regional integration. Itsmission is in many ways made difficult by the balancing act it is forced to playregionally: on the one hand, Chinese researchers emphasize that Beijing has not yetdecided upon claiming the position of leadership in regional integration in Asia-Pacificfor two very worrisome reasons. The first is that China has invested heavily in reassuring

23 See Christopher Layne, Peace of Illusions, Randall Schweller, Unanswered Threats, Christopher Layneand Alfred Thayer, American Empire. A Debate, to mention but a few.


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its neighbors of its peaceful and mutually beneficial intentions and it makes itsequidistance in strategic matters a priority in foreign policy.24 Beijing feels like there ismore to loose from assuming a more central role in promoting regional integration at this

time and to a certain degree it is right to fear such an outcome. Both security-wise andeconomically, China is a major actor and no doubt is looked upon with suspicion bysmaller economies in the region. Singapore is just one such developed economy in South-East Asia that fears being completly engulfed and consumed by the Chinese giant, fast-expanding economy. Thus, Chinas regional policy emphasizes a principle at allsurprising considering we are dealing with a Communist regime after all: that alldecisions concerning regional integration be adopted on a unanimous basis, with thespecific agreement and by the free will of all participating states.25 Not only does Chinahesitate on taking on the responsability of leadership in regional economic integrationand security building, but it is resielient to accept US leadership as well or theleadership of any other state for that matter. The way Beijing would have regionalism

develop is as a leaderless process and in terms of security, as a necessarily non-militaryone.

The second reson why China is reluctant to assume a leadership position inregional integration is that it is trying to avoid putting extra pressure on its own domesticpolitical apparatus both for more liberalization of Chinas economy already consideredto have gone too far by a large part of the Chinese Communist Partys conservativebranch26 - and more concessions made to neighbors and partners as implied by a moreintense integration process. China, though, is not the only regional major actor playing asafe game. Though it is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, India plays asimilar game in terms of regional integration. On the other hand, while China seemsready to make concessions to promote regionalism, it is not quite decided whether to

assume broader responsability for this at the multilateral and perhaps risk alienating theUnited States or Japan even further.

Regional integration is proceeding much faster and with far better results on abilateral level basis in the Asia-Pacific region. This is another particularity of the Asianintegration model, as opposed to the European one, and it is what accentuates itsfragmented character and two-speed development with deeper and more intenseintegration in South-East Asia and fragile and superficial integration in North-East andCentral Asia. Most Free Trade Agreements in Asia-Pacific, particularly in the ASEANregion were established on a country-to-country or an ASEAN-to-country (such was thecase of ASEAN-China 2002 FTA, the ASEAN-Japan 2003 Comprehensive Economic

24 Take, for instance, Chinas reaction to the August 2008 war in Georgia. Though Beijing is a fiercedefender of the non-interference and independence principles, its reaction to the Russian invasion ofGeorgia was mild to say the least. Not only is this openly assumed to be due to an attempt not to alienateMoscow, with whom Beijing has been fostering friendly and close relations over the last decade, but alsobecause China is in the very difficult position of sending a message to its neighbors: this kinds ofresponsibility in the international system, China is at present willing to forego.25 See Zhu Majie, China and Asia-Pacific security building in the new century, in David W. Lovell, AsiaPacific Security. Policy Challenges, Singapore: ISEAS, 2003, pp.139-141.26 The 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, held in mid-November 2007, brought on a fewnotable changes in Chinas economic policy adopting a series of decisions to push economicliberalization further and at a much faster pace than before. On this occasion a series of high-profileconservative leaders of the CCP have expressed their concern that the direction in which the CCP wasstirring China was dangerous and irreversible.


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Partnership, etc) the basis and nowadays there are notable efforts to turn them intomultilateral ones see for instance the efforts to promote an Easy-Asian FTA within theEAS. ASEANs Area of Free Trade (AFTA) established in 1992 is perhaps the single

most successful so far and its achievements in the economic field seem to be comparableto its set goals achievement of the elimination of intra-regional trade tarriffs for theCEPT Inclusion Listproducts (except the newest members Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos andCambodia, which are expected to eliminate intra-regional trade barriers by 2006, 2008and 2010 respectively). By 2007, the intra-regional trade tarriffs were lowered to anaverage of 3.8% for most of the traded products included on the CEPT Inclusion List.

Thus, regional integration building mechanisms in Asia-Pacific function ratherdifferently from the way those in Europe did and though all regional states have comeacknowledge its importance, few are ready to take on more binding commitments withinthe regional organizations seeking integration either in economic or security terms. Also,the fragile and rather loose and fluid membership of the regional integration

organizations has so far prevented them from developing a true vision, much less acomprehensive strategy of enlargement or deepening of integration. Although we areseeing such signs particularly in the ASEAN region, they are mostly absent on the rest ofthe continent.

The bilateral level of Asia-Pacifics security architecture

The bilateral level, traditionally the most developed in the region, continues todominate the current security architecture in the Asia-Pacific region . Though the processis evenly pursued by all regional actors, great powers such as the United States andregional powers such as China, India, Japan and Russia are possibly the most relevant.However, we will focus on China and the United States as the two most important actors

in the region as a whole.

Peoples Republic of China

Chinas grand strategy emphasizes a status quo policy based on strategic self-restraint

27 which seeks to reassure neighboring countries that Chinas rise to the status

of great power will not be accompanied by a subsequent attempt at regional hegemony;China is not seeking to become regional hegemon or to change the current world order as many other great powers in past have done.28 This policy is based on what the Chinesecall Chinese exceptionalism or the policy ofpeaceful development marked by thesearch to sustain peace and an essentially defensive strategic posture.29 Perhaps the mostinteresting aspect of the Chinese strategy of particularly the manner in which China

perceives itself in relation with the two windows of opportunity and vulnerabilityrespectively that it is experiencing at present. It is thus only fair to say that Chinas grandstrategy is still one of a rising great power, experiencing a deep period of transition bothin its domestic, as well as its international environment. Such interpretation of Chinasforeign policy seems to suggest China is seeking to make short-term, relative gains,

27 For further details see John G. Ikkenbery, After Victory. Instituitions, Strategic Restraint and theRebuilding of Order after Major Wars, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, especially Chapter 1.28 White Paper on National Defense of the Peoples Republic of China, published in December 2006http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/book/194421.htm.29Idem, especially Chapter I, II and X.


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rather than long-term ones, which associated with the lack of transparency and theChinese military build-up program determins an almost general suspicion that Beijingmay be hiding or disguising its true strategis interests and intentions in order to win time

and avoid early or perhaps timely balancing/containment by other regional actors .China has shought to establish strategic partnerships with all the great powers

within its system of international relations from the United States and Japan to Indiaand Russia. This type of policy has been refered to as a neo-bismarkian

30policy through

which China seeks to enhance its attractiveness as a responsible strategic partner, thusmaximizing its own regional clout. For China, the strategic partnerships it establishedwith the aforementioned great powers or rising great powers represent a means to builtinterdependence in terms of complementary interests, thus reducing the probability andlikelihood of confrontation, containment or balancing behavior.31 Moreover, the veryexistance of these strategic partnerships is all the more important for the Chinese as theyallow Beijing to avoid a confrontation in terms of hard power with the United States.

On the one hand, Chinas relationship with Japan continues to be extremely tenseand alienated, marked by deep-running mistrust, historical rivalry and a feeling ofrevanschism. China believes that the US security umbrella is the only one that is holdingback Japan from conventional and nuclear military build-up and a reversal to itstraditional agressive power politics. Beijing estimates that Japan could become a greatmilitary power within 25 years at the most in the absence of the US security guaranteesthat seem to condition Tokyos self-restraint and the reduced effectives of its armedforces. Hence, China is partial to US continued military presence in Japan, but sees asdangerous any additional renegociation of the alliance, either by reducing the number ofUS troops in Japan (as strongly rumoured during the late 1990s) or by encouragingTokyo to assume a more prominent and active role within the alliance and rennounce its

pacifist Constitution (either to participate in international military operations andpeacekeeping missions or to develop jointly with Washington the missile defense systemin Asia-Pacific).32 China fiercely criticized the renegotiation of the US-Japan militaryalliance during 2000-2008, which envisions a broader role for Japanese armed forces,both within and beyond the region. The fact that the new alliance permits a broader reachof Japanese troops, very close to the mainland and Chinese borders is a topic that stronglyupsets and worries Beijing. Furthermore, the fact that the reach of the new American-Japanese allaince is defined in situational, not geographical terms is another cause ofconcern. For instance, Beijing argues that according to the new treaty of the US-Japanallaince, not only are Japanese troops required to participate in international operationsbeyond Asia-Pacific, but also there is a very good possibility (by the vaguness of the

alliance treaty) that Japan could lend support to the US or Taiwan in a confrontation withChina.

On the other hand, Chinas relationship with India is just as tense, especially afterthe signing in 2007 of the US-India strategic partnership and cooperation agreement in

30Avery Goldstein, An Emerging Chinas Emerging Grand Strategy, pp. 57-106.31Idem, p. 74.32 Thomas J. Christensen, China. The US-Japan Alliance, and the Security Dilemma in East Asia, in JohnG. Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno (ed), The Theory of International Relations and the Asia-Pacific,Columbia University Press, 2003, pp. 26-35. Also see Emma Chanlett-Avery, The Changing US-JapanAlliance: Implications for US Interests, CRS Report, order code RL33740, January 10, 2008, p. 3,http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33740.pdf.


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the field of civian nuclear energy. Beijing argues that New Delhi is playing a powerfulgame, seeking to help the US in surrounding China and encouraging the build-up of USforward military presence in the vecinity of the Chinese borders merely as a

counterweight to Chinese regional clout.33At the multilateral level, international institutions hold a particular significance in

Chinas foreign policy as they are considered to be cetral to the preservation of thecurrent international order that offers all international actors and states regardless oftheir relative power legal equal rights and an undeniable right to sovereignty.34Particularly, China has been trying, quite successfully to become an active and prominentpresence in all international institutions, be they systemic or regional, economic orsecurity-related.35 This effort is considered as a fundamental part of Chinas effort tointegrate the international society and build itself the reputation and the image of aresponsible and reliable member, equal partner and stakeholder. Thus, Chinas currentforeign policy strategy emphasizes the relevance of international multilateral forums as

well as regionalism particularly under the principle regional cultural ownership.36 Justas in the case of the bilateral level, China is particularly concerned with its immediateperiphery focusing on developing strong friendly relations with the states on its borders,particularly smaller, less powerful client states or failing states such as Vietnam,Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, etc. The same pirority leaves its mark in institution buildingas well, though at the institutional level China is definitely seeking to expand itsgeostrategic reach. The huge relevance this institutional or multilateral level has forChina is partially deduced from Beijings strong representation in all top-level reunionsand forum reunions, as well as in what is generally known as track-two diplomacy.

37In

addition, Chinas emphasis on regional cultural ownership within the institutionalnetworking environment in Asia-Pacific offers Beijing a perfect cover for soft-

balancing the US in the region, without risking direct or hard balancing. Chinasregional institutional comiitment is not equal in all of the five Asian sub-systems of

33 Susan Craig, Chinese Perceptions of Traditional and Nontraditional Security Threats, Strategic StudiesInstitute, Carslile Barracks, March 2007,http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/Pubs/Display.Cfm?pubID=765, pp. 87-92 and Dipanjan RoyChaudhury, Boosting Maritime Capabilities in the Indian Ocean, August 23, 2003,http://www.worldpress.org/Asia/2908.cfm.34Idem, p. 31.35Annual Report to Congress of the Military Power of the Peoples Republic of China 2007, p. 2.36 Regional integration and security institutions building in Asia-Pacific is proceeding accordingly to whatwe call regional cultural ownership namely the emphasis on common interests not merely as a result of a

objective confrontation of the same common threats and challenges, but as a result of a much deeper, andindeed unbreakable cultural similarity and closeness between the regional states, a set of shared commonAsian values, etc. This is generally referred to as the ASEAN model in which China is seeking acentral part by imposing a host of Asia values.37 For instance, notice the level of Chinese representation in forums such as USPACOM, Shangri-LaDialogue organized by the IISS, the Counco; for Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (http://www.cscap.org),North-East Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD) organized by Berkley, etc. For more details seeDesmond Ball, Anthony Milner and Brendan Taylor, Track 2 Security Dialogue in the Asia-Pacific:Reflections and Future Directions, Asian Security, 2:3, 2006, pp. 174-188. Also, notice that recently theShanghai Institute for International Studies (SIIS) has begun inviting numerous NATO high-rankingofficials to its reunions alongside numerous Chinese officials in the hope of creating a basis for Chinese-NATO cooperation and dialogue which at present is completely absent. We are thankful to Professor YuXiantian, director of the SIIS, for having pointed this out.


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international relations, but this seems mostly due to the difference in the latters degree ofregional integration and the degree of regional security regime building. Thus, while inSouth-East and Central Asia Beijing is deeply involved, in North-East Asia China is

contempt to pursue mere informal networking through the Six Party Talks.Chinas foreign policy emphasizes those regional multilateral forums of which the

US is not a part despite the official claim that China is promoting all regionalmultilateral forums and institutions. According to Ikenberry and Mastanduno, the EAS isChinas favorite regional cooperation forum simply because its clout is not at allinfluenced by US presence. However, by the amounts invested by China in regionalism,we would rather say that ASEAN+3, APEC and the SCO are the three most importantregional institutions for China. In APEC, China hold one of the central roles, particularlywithin the last two years. For instance, on the occasion of the APEC Summit inSeptember 2007, China signed a record number of trade agreements; moreover, Chinaalready has or is in the process of negotiating/implementing FTAs with a majority of

Asian states.38 The APECs strategic goals to develop regional prosperity, consolidateregional trade and enhance interdependence, as well as promote sustainable economicgrowth perfectly match Chinas vital interests and are synchronized with Beijingsperceptions concerning its window of opportunity which is compulsory to be exploited tothe maximum. Surely, one must also include the ARF here, which is considered by theASEAN member states to be the principal security cooperation actor in the whole ofAsia-Pacific; But Chinese involvement and investments in developing the ARFs reachhave been secondary in comparison to the first three institutions mentioned above. As inthe case of ASEAN+3, mainly a regional economic integration mechanism, and a securitycooperation forum, China sees its involvement in multilateral security forums in Asia-Pacific in a non-military manner and more so than anything else under the strict condition

of developing security cooperation in relation with two main requirements:a. that security cooperation focus on new concepts of security common

security (requires common interests built on pragmatic premises confrontingcommon threats and cultural ones a community of common Asian values),comprehensive security (which requires that all aspects of security beconsidered, including environmental security, with an equal respect for theinterests of participating countries) and multilateral security (that is, theparticipation of regional states on the basis of equal rights and obligations andequal respect to abiding by international norms); this focus on the newconcepts of security also helps stirr security cooperation in Asia-Pacific awayfrom the field of military-to-military enhanced cooperation where Beijing

knows it will be faced with increasing pressure to acount for its military buildup program as well as to adopt more transparent policies in the field ofmilitary procurement.

b. That security cooperation develop on the basis of economic cooperationand/or integration. Thus economic cooperation is a precondition of securitycooperation and is expected to develop simultanously. Hence, it isunderstandable why for instance in the SCO China has been pushing andlobbying for closer economic ties with Central Asian states seen as crucial for

38 See Dirk Nanto, East Asian Regional Architecture: New Economic and Security Arrangements and USPolicy, CRS Reports for Congress, pp. 10-7.


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Chinas diversification of its energy resources and energy transport routes(thus bipassing maritime routes largely controlled by the US).39 Moreover,China has greatly insisted upon establishing FTAs with the Central Asian

states a goal described in the Joint Communique of the Reunion of theHeads of State and Government of the SCO member states held in November2007, as well as the similar previous Communique of February 2007.40

There is much speculation going around whether the SCO will eventually in amore or less distant future be transformed into a fully-fledged military alliance.However, this strategy is simply not feasible for either of the organizations main actors,the Russian Federation and China which both have vast territories, long borders, bothon the ground and maritime, are confronted with multiple and complex threats to theirsecurity, which are only partly overlapping, and continue to see each other with relativesuspicion. Neither China, nor the Russian Federation is currently willing to undertakesuch huge responsability (and financial burden) towards each other. Moreover, both

states have their own nuclear arsenal which acts as a credible deterrent and is ultimatelytheir ultimate security and survival guarantee. Hence, an alliance between the two statesjust simply does not seem cost-efficient.The direct result of the convergence of Chinas perceptions concerning its window ofopportunity and its window of vulnerability both developing simultaneously is thatChina is pursuing soft balancing of the US, using the institutional regionalmechanisms as a disguise for this indirect confruntation hence, regionalism isesentially used as a self-help mechanism41 meant to buy Beijng time, access to resourcesand markets and delay containement or balancing.

42Chinas moderate revisionism is in

many ways a conservative-driven enterprise and a culturally-motivated one, but itnonetheless involves a series of strategic challenges for the current world order. Asia-

Pacific is in the middle of a power transition phase. Chinas cautious strategy is thusbased on: Countering other actors perceptions of the China threat The creation of a broad perception of mutual benefits and gains drawn from

regional economic integration and security cooperation; The cultivation of a progressive opening towards and integration into the

globalized world economy, broader access to markets and energy resources, FDIand a diversity of economic partners (upon which China is only moderatelydependent);

39

Alyson J.K. Bailes, Pal Dunay, Pan Guang and Mikhail Troitskiy, The Shanghai CooperationOrganization, SIPRI Policy Paper nr. 17, May 2007,http://www.sipri.org/contents/publications/Policypaper17.pdf.40 See the full text of the two documents available online at http://www.sectsco.org/html/01881.html.

41 For more on cooperation as self-help see Charles L. Glaser, Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help, International Security, 19:3, 1994-1995, pp. 50-90.42 For a rather different perspective see Evelyn Goh, Great Powers and Hierarchical Order in SoutheastAsia: Analyzing Regional Security Strategies, International Security, 32:3, 2007-2008, pp. 113-157 andGreat Powers and Southeast Asian Regional Security Strategies: Omni-Enmeshment, Balancing andHierarchical Order, Working Paper nr. 84, Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, Singapore, July2005,http://www.isn.ethz.ch/pubs/ph/details.cfm?v21=107183&click53=107183&lng=en&v33=106752&id=27123.


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The commitment to enhanced cooperation as a means of buying time, disguisinginterests and decreasing the intensity of the regional security dilemma;At the same time, though, Chinas perception of a short-term window of

opportunity (as opposed to the long-term window of vulnerability it is experiencing)determines Beijing to take on a soft balancing strategy against the US in order tomaximize economic gains as a premises of boosting its national comprehensive power.

Traditionally, the bilateral level of security architecture building has beendominant in Chinas foreign policy which emphasized country-to-country contacts as themost effective, efficient, time- and resource-saving means to pursue its strategic goals.Moreover, China continues to this day to focus mainly on the bilateral level of securityarchitecture building, but Chinese officials claim this is the case because within certainAsian subsystems of international relations, there is simply no other mechanism ofcooperation but bilateral diplomacy or, at most, an informal networking mechanism such as the Six Party Talks in North-East Asia. The appeal of this particular strategy for

the Chinese government has deep-running historical reasons namely, Chinas emphasison independence and the principle of non-interference. And although these two principlesremain essential to China to this day, recently Chinese foreign policy has began to changefrom this traditional focus on bilateral level to multilateral level diplomacy as the bestmeans of tackling security threats (particularly of the asymmetrical, non-conventionalkind) and promoting its national interests. Nowadays China emphasizes multilateralcooperation, in a formal networking environment, in ASEAN+3 and the SCO.43Moreover, Chinese foreign policy researchers are expecting China to increasingly rely onthis multilateral level in its foreign policy as the best method to tackle threats in aglobalized world. This move away from its traditional foreign policy is brought about byChinas gradual integration in the international society and its changing attitude and

image of it. This translates into the fact that China wants to become a responsible actor(great power, that is) and stakeholder in this international society, but there is an intensedebate going on in China about the exact meaning of this responsibility and particularlywhat responsibilities China should take on as a rising great power and which it should tryto forego or avoid.

Still, this seems to apply to the larger international system as opposed to Chinasimmediate periphery which represents one of Beijings highest priorities. And in sodoing, China is seeking to diversify its networking channels and emphasize regionalism.And regional integration is in fact a major interest of China, so much so that Beijing hasrepeatedly proven willing to make concessions to promote regionalism. The Europeanregional integration model is highly regarded by Beijing and it is in fact credited as a

model for regional integration in Asia-Pacific. However, several points must be kept inmind when considering integration in Asia-Pacific. First is that China has and willcontinue to emphasize regional ownership and regional cultural specificity which keepregionalism in Asia-Pacific from developing similarly to the manner in which itdeveloped in Europe. Moreover, the Chinese officials underline the fact that there is no

43 We are in debt to dr. Zhang Pei, Director of the Department of European Studies, dr. Zhou Zhougfei,Director of Department of World Economy Studies and professor Yu Xiantian, Director of the SIIS formaking clear the hierarchy of regional multilateral mechanisms China is most interested in and mostwilling to promote.


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hardcore44 in Asia (such as France and Germany have been for Europe) that could

provide the driving engine for regional integration. On the contrary, in South-East Asiaregional integration has been driven by a host of minor powers acting together and

pulling together on their strength to maximize results this is the case of ASEAN. Butthe similarities exist far beyond what some are willing to recognize. Beijing is definitelyquick to admit the tense relations it has with Japan as well as the host of traditionalsecurity issues plaguing their cooperation. However, it does not seem to accept thatFrance and Germany have been much fiercer enemies before they decided to worktogether to lay the foundations of the European Community. This possibility is simply notone that Beijing or even the Chinese researchers are willing to consider.

Thirdly, Asia-Pacific is not a homogenous region. In fact it contains five differentsub-systems of international relations, all of them moving in quite different directionssecurity-wise. Hence, there is no comprehensive security architecture in the Asia-Pacificregion. Instead, the regional integration process is fragmentedby the fact that there is an

entire host of regional mechanisms and institutions in the five sub-regions of Asia-Pacific. This is mainly where Asia in general is departing from the European modelwhich is comprehensive and aims to be all-encompassing namely, it aims to bringtogether under the aegis of the European Union the willing states on the continentparticipating in a single, ever-evolving and ever-expanding integration process that usedto work on a minimal basis, but now increasingly is shifting towards a maximalintegration approach. This is not the case in Asia where the minimal approach isbypassed altogether and the maximal approach applies from the very start through theemphasis on burning stages of integration. This however creates increasing pressure onthe participating states and risks rising serious obstacles in the unraveling of the processaltogether. One must keep in mind that regional integration works in a very different

manner from mere regional cooperation which involves only the coordination ofdomestic politics to commonly assumed, partially overlapping goals. Regional integrationrequires building common goals and common, compulsory mechanisms to be employedin pursuing them. The fragmentation of regional integration in Asia has a secondaryeffect in the sense that institutions, assumed to be working in the interlocking andpartially overlapping manner they do in the West, particularly in the North-Atlanticregion, are becoming increasingly more specialized. China itself, which is seekingmembership in allof these regional institutions, is emphasizing that all these mechanismsperform a particularfunction at the regional level. Surely, Beijing is looking forward toconnecting all these institutions to one another in the future, but in the meantime itchooses to simply promote them all simultaneously which leads to a competition between

all of these institutions for funds and attention, producing more fragmentation andimpeding the process of developing in an interlocking, overlapping manner such as in theEuropean model.

Regional states emphasize that this effect is created by regional culturalspecificity which is no doubt an issue. But before anything else, this effect is createdand amplified by political regional specificity. The rivalry between the regional greatpowers leads to this effect. Regional integration is expected to develop at a relatively

44 Though China acknowledges the importance of ASEAN in driving forward the regional security dialoguewithin the ARF, Beijing does not seem to consider ASEAN as a whole a powerful enough hardcore topromote security cooperation beyond these limits.


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high pace and the results of this process tend to stretch for the maximum by comparisonto the level reached by the EU even though the EU has had a head-start of at least adecade or two on any regional integration process in Asia. Moreover, US differential

involvement in Europe and Asia during the Cold War is credited to have created andhelped widen this gap by emphasizing the importance of Europe rather than Asia andinvesting heavily in NATO as opposed to CENTO. The benefits of US hegemony inEurope creating the security premises for the beginning of the integration process inEurope are considered to have been largely absent in Asia during the Cold War and arestill thought to be missing nowadays. Hence, regional integration in Asia not only buildson different cultural background, but also on a very different, more fluid political one aswell. Chinese researchers have repeatedly emphasized that China is seeking to developregional integration mechanisms as a bridge between the different nations in Asia and asa means of producing prosperity readily and fairly accessible to all participants. BecauseChina has been importing heavily components of finished products from its ASEAN

neighbors in particular, and because it seeks to expands its market-share in the region the fastest growing in the world from and economical point of view Beijing isincreasingly interested in bringing down the trade barriers that are keeping this flow ofgoods, labor force and capital that are feeding its economic growth from surging. Theeconomic and security benefits are largely complementary.

The United States of America

Asia-Pacific is an increasingly important region for the US, particularly sinceWashingtons grand strategy emphasizes status quo preservation and the strategic must ofmaintaining the posture of world military leader and unrivaled military power. Accordingto the 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States of America, the US is world

military hegemon although in the economic field Washington acknowledges a tendencytowards multipolarity and the maintainance of this dominant status is esential to thesecurity of the US as well as international peace and security. The American grandstrategy empasizes two main pillars both at the systemic and regional levels: Promting democracy, human rights, liberties and human dignity; and Promoting peace and stability by the continuos expansion of the community of

democratic states;45

Washingtons strategic interests in the Asia-Pacific region are as follows: To prevent the domination of the Asian mainland by one single (hostile) great

power or the rise of a regional hegemon contesting the current internationalorder; from this point of view, the American forward military presence in Asia-

Pacific is the main deterernt to such an undesirable scenario. To maintain regional stability as the fundamental premisis of uninterrupted

sustainable regional economic growth; To control, monitor and guide the regions transformation and power transition.

This goal is mainly achieved by the following three strategic steps: shaping thestrategic environment, regional crisis management and conflict prevension andpromotion of democracy and human rights.

45 National Security Strategy of the United States of America, Washington, 2006,http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/nss2006.pdf.


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The American grand strategy for Asia-Pacific rests on the concept oftransformational diplomacy meant to shape the strategic environment in the region. Themultilateral, institutional level is represented by Washingtons support of the

comprehensive and interlocking regional institutional architecture on the basis ofdemocracy and the respect for human dignity and human rights whose role is to preventthe escalation of the regional security dilemma, arms races and historic mistrust andtensions between regional nations. Moreover, these are considered to be the foundationsof a regional mechanism of crisis management and conflict prevention preventivediplomacy. However, the tradition focus in the American regional grand strategy onbilateral relations in the military realm as the foundations of the regional securityarchitecture remains unshaken. The US is actively represented within the main regionalsecurity forums in Asia-Pacific, the most relevant of which is the ARF, and the Six PartyTalks, while continuing to redefine and develop its military alliances with pivot states inthe region: Japana, South Korea, Malasia, the Phillipines. The USs participation in the

ARF temporarily decreased between 2004-2006, with high-ranking American officialsfailing to be present to the forums annual top-level reunions46, leading to speculationsthat the US was less interested in it and that the ARF was no longer an economic priorityin the Asia-Pacific for the Americans. So far, the US has supported both the ARF as aforum of regional security cooperation, even though Washington has repeatedly walkaway from negotiations frustrated by the regional actors emphasis of non-intervention asa fundamental principle of the institutional architecture which lead to a series of USpreventive and pro-active measure being rejected by regional partners.

At the economic level though, the multilateral level seems to be favored to agreater extent than country-to-country FTAs. In this respect, the APEC remainsWashingtons predilect forum for developing regional free trade and regional economic

integration though it is not the USs interest to become binded to an institution in theregion, but rather to avoid being excluded from such a regional cooperation institution.Despite Washingtons repeated declarations that it is supporting the APEC, in 2007, onthe ocaasion of the APEC Summit in Vietnam, US President Bush arrived a day late andleft a day earlier than planned

47 leaving room for speculations that he was not serious in

his declaration of support. Still, it is not just regional politicians and researchers that takeaccount of this US behavior. US analysts, such as Fareed Zakaria, are quick to worn thatwhile the USs soft power in Asia-Pacific is decreasing relatively fast, China is gainingground. Thus the US risks being faced with a Chinese-centered security and economicarchitecture in Asia and possibly be the subject of a Chinese sponsored denial strategy.Despite Chinas accusations that Washington is seeking regional leadership, the USs

initiatives in Asia in general have been mostly absent during the last at least seven yearssince September 11 with perhaps the exception of the Six Party Talks and theProliferation Security Initiative in North-East Asia. The USs different representationwithin sub-regional forums and international institutions continues to create suspicions to

46 Dana R. Dillon, Rice Misses the ASEAN Regional Forum: Now What?, Heritage Foundation, August 12005, http://www.heritage.org/Research/AsiaandthePacific/wm813.cfm.47 President Bushs early departure from the APEC Summit was in fact caused by a series of problems thathad come up in Iraq and required his immediate attention. For further information, see Fareed Zakaria, IsChina Winning the diplomatic tussle in Asia?, Washinton Post September 10, 2007,http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/2007/09/is_china_winning_the_diplomati.html


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all regional states regarding the strength and reliability of the American commitment tothe region and its regional partners.

Conclusions

One of the main conclusions of this study is that China, as well as the RussianFederation, prefer rivalry within the institutional, multilateral environment as a safer,more restrained and more binding meaning of solving differends because of the relativelyhigh regulations of this environment and clear de-escalating mechanisms which aremuch more difficult to impose in a direct confruntation. On the contrary, states like theUS, Japan and India prefer traditional military alliances as a means of balancing theirrivals and prefer preventive rather than reactive or reparatory politics. This makes theAsia-pacific regional security architecture not only multi-ordered, but also relativelyfragmented, built at different paces in different sub-systems and on at least two different

levels: a bilateral level dominant and influential way beyond any other and amultilateral or institutional level. Unlike the European model in which path dependencyemphasizes interlocking institutions with largely overlapping functions and goals thatfacilitate cooperation and integration, in Asia-Pacific seem to reinforce regional fault-lines instead of prove criss-crossing and conciliatory; in Asia-Pacific the two levels of theregional security architecture work as means of mutual balancing employed by regionalactors. Actors use bilateral relations to counter the increasing influence of regionalinstitutions sponsored by rival powers and the regional institutions as means andenvironments to balance the regional clout of their rivals without risking directconfrontation a strategy we call institutional proxy soft balancing, strongly influencedby a series of elements of the strategic environment in which it is actually employed:

Polarity and the regional distribution of power: balanced political and economicmultipolarity (United States, China, Japan and India) and unbalanced militarymultipolarity;

Tense relationships between the regions great powers and rising great powersmarked by recurring nationalism in China and Japan and a series of complexhistorical unsolved issues;

A multitude of political regimes starting from the Communist China, to themilitary dictatorship in Myanmar, and the democratic ones in the US, Japan,South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, etc;

Frozen or hot territorial conflicts in the region;. Nationalist, seccessionist and xenophobe tendencies; Great differences between the economic development stage and rate of regional

actors;

The presence of large nuclear arsenals and proliferation outside the NPT; The existance/absence of a subregional institutional economic or security

framework and the differentiated access to such a framework ASEAN, ARF,APEC, ASEAN + 3 due to the different stages of regional security institutionsbuilding within the five Asian subsystems of international relations;

Great political instability Pakistan is just one of the most recent examples andindeed the most telling ones;


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Great economic growth potential. Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing region inthe world in terms of GDP and economic output;

Heterogeneous ethnic and religious population structure; Terrorism, transnational organized crime, piracy; Locus of several of the worlds strategic sea routes;

Chinas effort and willingness to concessions to promote regionalism and animage of itself as a reliable and responsible partner and member of the internationalsociety reveals that its inclination towards multilateralism may just as well besynonimous with non-intervention in domestic affairs by other states or eveninternational institutions. China is the UN Security Councils most active memberparticipating with over 7000 troops in over 15 peacekeeping missions throughout theworld, under UNSC mandate.48 But despite Chinas apparent commitment toinstitutionalized multilateralism, Beijing finds it disturbing and dangerous that the veryinternacional order it is commited to preserve raises such threats as blockades, economic

sanctions, even the unilateral use of force against other states by some of the institucionalactors of the present internacional system. Hence, Chinas relatively reticent in putting itsfull weight behind the institutional integration and cooperation process as becamepainfully clear in the cases of Iran, Myanmar and more recently Georgia. China is thus infavor of a regional and international institutional environment that is neutral and in

which the existence and acceptance of pluralism in terms of security perspectives trulymeans a shallow implementation of international norms and rules.

In the absence of a genuine, reliable and functioning comprehensive regionalsecurity architecture, the bilateral level remains dominant in the expectation that what isnow considered mere remnants of the Cold War will in the future be overcome. In Asia-Pacific we are indeed dealing with a different integration model which borrows from the

European model mainly the superficial structure, but none of its substance. Although thecreation of ever more numerous regional integration mechanisms and broader securitycooperation forums seems like integration is deepening and security is building in a morecooperative fashion, these are mere shallow appearances. In fact, by constantly creatingnew integration and cooperations mechanisms and forums the member states duplicatedtheir efforts without really getting beeper integration and commit precious resources toprocesses that instead of complementing each other, either duplicate one another orsimple just create the conditions of subverting one anothers results. The functioning ofinterlocking and partially interlocking institutions in Asia-Pacific is understood asworking on the basis of the principle of duplication nor deepening of integration andcomplementarity:

First of all, we cannot truely speak of a comprehensive regional securityarchitecture or a comprehensive regional economic integration structure; at best itis barely being built. The different dynamics and pace of development of the fivesubsystems of the Asia-Pacific region fosters this model of fragmented, two-speedregional integration process;

48 China only participates in peacekeeping missions (and not in peace-making or peace-enforcing missions)and only does so if the mission is the subject of a UNSC Resolution. See Marcin Zaborowski (ed), FacingChinas Rise: Guidelines for an EU Policy, Chaillot Paper nr. 94, December 2006,http://www.iss.europa.eu/uploads/media/chai94.pdf.


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In spite of claims that the Asia-Pacific regional security architecture is built on themodel of the European integration, regional institutions in this part of the worldseem to work more as tradition realist instruments for the assertion of national

power and regional domination, while their dynamics is all but integrative, leavingroom for these institutions to rival each other rather than function in aninterconnected complementary manner;

Expect for the institutions and forums coordinated by ASEAN, most regionalinstitutions in Asia-Pacific do not have established permanent dialogue with eachother which acts to prevent complementarity and fosters duplication andinstitutional rivalry; instead of seeking integration and enlargement, the institutionsbuilt on the basis of bilateral compatibility and affiliations seem to emphasize theprinciple of excluding some potential members more than welcoming new ones;

Because regional institutions work as classical power instruments in the hands ofregional actors, they fail to provide an integrated, comprehensive security vision for

the region, whereas Chinas emphasis on plurality in terms of security seems tocreate the premises for building rival nor integrated visions regarding thecontinents security;

In terms of security alone, most institutions that make up Asia-Pacifics currentregional security architecture are hybrid institutions somewhere between securityorganizations, alliances and economic enhanced partnerships all rolled into onepackage; most times, the Ministries of Defense of member states are not eveninvited to attend these meetings where states are representated by their Ministers ofForeign Affairs

49, thus strengthening the perception that these forums are but mere

diplomatic instruments with few if any effective power to act efficiently; moreover,their development is ussually conditioned by economic cooperation, which leads to

a two-speed developement of the institutional architecture, in a rather non-synchronized manner;

Most of the regional security institutions in Asia-Pacific avoid the military realmand develop mainly in relation to non-conventional, non-military threats and risks.This is an indication that in a region where military conflicts are as present as ever,military-to-military relations still represent a taboo subject which are to be leftseparate and marked mistrust;

Minor powers use regional forums and institutions as means to promote a hedgingpolicy between two or more regional powers;

49Idem, pp. 11-4.


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Constitution of the Communist Party

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