From Strategic Forecasting Inc:
The New, Old Face of Asia
By Rodger Baker
U.S. President George W. Bush travels to Vietnam this week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. The visit will include bilateral and multilateral meetings with several heads of state -- including those from China, Russia, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore. The eight-day trip is Bush's first venture overseas since the Democratic Party defeated his Republican Party in congressional elections -- which were closely watched in Asia to gauge what Washington's relations in the region may be like for the next two years.
Bush will arrive in an Asia where North Korea has (somewhat) successfully tested a nuclear device, where Japan is openly discussing the merits of discussing the merits of a nuclear weapons program, South Korea seems to be coming into closer alignment with North Korea than with the United States, and China reportedly is shadowing U.S. carrier battle groups and planning to buy advanced carrier-based aircraft from Russia.
With its resources and priorities squarely centered on Iraq, the United States has paid scant attention to East Asia -- despite its involvement in six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program and trade negotiations with Vietnam, South Korea and China. Asia, as a result, has been left to develop in its own natural direction, without U.S. "interference" and with emphasis more on regional concerns than global ones. The Cold War paradigm of global blocs has been swept away, and the post-Cold War sense of supreme and unchallengeable U.S. global hegemony has been shattered. In other words, the "old" shape of Asia is re-emerging.
And when Washington once again has the need and ability to focus its attention there, U.S. leaders may find themselves on unfamiliar ground.
A Strategic Alliance
Historically, East Asia has revolved around two poles. On one side is China -- a massive land power that once exerted direct influence over much of the region and, under Mongol leadership, up to the very gates of Europe. On the other side is Japan -- a maritime power that is protected by an oceanic buffer, but with limited resources and space.
Much as European history has been dominated and shaped by the power struggles between Continental powers and Britain, Asian history has been shaped by and expressed through the struggle between China and Japan. By the 1930s, Japan had become the dominant power in the region. Japanese forces occupied Manchuria and subjugated eastern China before embarking on an attempt to create a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."
But with the Japanese defeat in World War II, the United States began to emerge as the dominant power in the Asia-Pacific region. Japan was occupied and, thereafter, constrained by its demilitarization and its pacifist constitution. Over time, Tokyo learned to exploit this unnatural state of affairs for its own benefit. During the Cold War, Washington needed Japan to act as a cork on Soviet naval power in the Pacific, and as a forward staging ground for any potential East Asian contingency.
But it was the United States that had designed the Japanese Constitution, which forbade collective self-defense or the possession of an offensive military. Because of this, U.S. forces were based in Japan, and Japan's national security became a core of U.S. strategic interests. Washington provided for Japan's defense, and Japan used the money and energies normally associated with national defense and securing of national interests to build a massive economic machine instead.
As it was expanding to become the world's second-largest economy -- a title that is still far from being challenged -- Japan also built (with Washington's encouragement) a technologically advanced and well-armed "Self-Defense Force." However, it never was required to contribute anything but money to international or U.S.-led peacekeeping or military operations. The end of the Cold War terminated this comfortable arrangement, however.
In the late 1980s, China was not seen by the United States as a major military threat -- at least not on the scale of the former Soviet Union. Japan and other East Asian allies became less important to U.S. strategic thinking. Although the legacies of the Cold War structure were not readily abandoned -- and North Korea provided a convenient reason to avoid any significant change -- Washington's strategic need to ensure Japan's economic and national security diminished.
Japan's rise as an economic power in the late 1980s gave rise to a fear in the United States that the island nation once again would come to dominate the Asia-Pacific region, that American schoolchildren would need to learn Japanese, and Japan would overtake the United States economically. These fears, coupled with the collapse of the Soviet bloc (and of the Soviet Union itself) triggered a shift in U.S.-Japanese relations. The natural order of competition (fierce at times) between the world's largest and second-largest economies was restored.
Due to concerns about North Korea and, later, a rising China, the security relationship has remained largely intact, but economic security issues have grown more contentious -- most recently with the spat between Tokyo and Washington over Japan's energy relations with Iran. In this case, a fundamental interest of Japan (having a secure and diverse supply of energy) and a fundamental interest of the United States (constraining Iran in order to stem nuclear proliferation and to better manage the security situation in Iraq) came into conflict.
That said, shared concerns such as the rise of China in the mid- to late-1990s and North Korea's periodic outbursts have helped to reduce the potential for direct confrontations in U.S.-Japanese relations. As Washington's attention and resources turned to the Middle East and South Asia following the 9/11 attacks, its allies in the Asia-Pacific region -- particularly Japan and Australia -- took on greater responsibilities for ensuring regional security.
This process was already under way before 9/11 -- Canberra's intervention in East Timor being a case in point -- but accelerated after the attacks, and particularly as the United States became more deeply engaged in Iraq.
Japan's New Concerns
During the past decade, most notably under the administration of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Japan began to take a more serious look at its own fundamental interests and taking steps to ensure them. These steps ranged from developing and practicing combined operations to deploying forces to Iraq, as well as openly discussing and preparing for a change in the Japanese Constitution -- and its restrictions on the military. Today, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Japanese leadership is continuing efforts to abolish the half-century-old psychological taboo concerning military capabilities.
The Defense Agency is rising to a Cabinet-level position, and there is an open debate about the potential for Japan to eventually develop nuclear weapons. For Japan, the core national imperative is protection of supply routes. Japan is an island nation that lacks sufficient arable land and natural resources. This reality has been central to Japan's political development: Successive waves of imperialism emerged as Japan sought to gain and control access to resources and materials.
Because it is a maritime nation with minimal strategic depth, Japan's natural security concerns are less about securing its actual borders than about ensuring that no one can reach its borders -- or cut its vital supply lines. This is why, despite economic linkages with the United States and beyond, Tokyo considered it necessary to attack Pearl Harbor, a seat of U.S. naval power, in 1941. The United States was the only naval power capable of challenging Japan's control of the seas in the Pacific theater.
Currently, Japan sees its greatest risks in the area running along the Chinese coast through the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca, through the Indian Ocean to the Middle East. This is the route that energy supplies -- so fundamental to the Japanese economy and national strength -- travel. Tokyo cannot allow any other state to threaten its energy lifeline. Therefore, we expect to see Japan expanding security arrangements with Taiwan, Singapore and India -- all key states along the route -- and developing additional naval power, including light aircraft carriers (which Tokyo euphemistically refers to as "helicopter destroyers").
The Chinese Trajectory
As Japan reassesses its strategic concerns in a region with less direct U.S. involvement, China too has developed along its own path. As a land power, China's first concern is its neighbors. Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia are all key factors in China's desire to maintain strategic depth and build buffers against potential invaders. On the international front, China's concerns since the Communist victory in 1949 have matched those of Chinese empires for millennia: protection of the borders and the dominance of a central, unopposed leadership. The concerns over its borders and territorial security led to skirmishes with India, Russia and Vietnam, and to Chinese involvement in the Korean War.
More recently, however, China has taken a different approach -- engaging its neighbors to formalize borders and offering economic trade and interaction as a way to mitigate potential security threats. Now, with its land borders largely under control, China once again is looking eastward, to the sea. Unlike Japan with its limited resources and space, China has not traditionally been an expansionist power (aside from the aforementioned Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia). The Chinese have access to plenty of resources within their territory or from just across the border.
But with economic modernization has come a rapidly increasing need for additional energy supplies. This is driving China's more active foreign policy -- the search for access to, and security of, energy and certain raw materials. And that, in turn, is moving Chinese and Japanese interests toward confrontation. For instance, there have been very vocal disagreements over access to energy deposits in the waters between the two nations, as each seeks supplies close to home.
The Koreas: Caught in the Middle
Now, without the external dynamic imposed by the United States, the long-standing rivalry between mainland China and maritime Japan once again is becoming the driving force in Asia. For many countries, particularly those in Southeast Asia, this translates to a low-key struggle for influence through economic and political means. But on the Korean Peninsula -- which is the traditional invasion route between China and Japan -- the struggle is expressed differently.
Consider the North Korean nuclear issue. Neither China, which has relations with Pyongyang, nor Japan, with its Cold War alliance with South Korea, views that as a Korean issue. Rather, Beijing sees North Korea as a means of maintaining a buffer between China and potential challengers, and uses the issue as a way to counterbalance U.S. influence and Japanese interests. Japan sees the issue as one of national security, but also as part of the broader competition shaping up with China.
Meanwhile, the two Koreas have become more closely aligned -- often to the chagrin of their erstwhile sponsors, Beijing and Washington -- in the post-Cold War system. Though they are pursuing different paths, both Koreas see their futures as being shaped by the resurging competition between China and Japan. Korea long has been the "minnow between two whales," stuck between China and Japan, and historically has pursued two paths to preserve its independence -- attempted isolation or reliance on one big power to fend off another. Neither strategy has worked very well.
Both Koreas, independently but in parallel, are now pursuing more robust domestic defense capabilities and eyeing eventual reunification on mutual terms. To end their dependence on third parties for security, the only path that Pyongyang and Seoul see is to join together -- creating a nation of some 70 million or more that combines South Korea's technological strengths with North Korea's resources and labor. Such a unified state remains a distant goal, but the vision drives much of the strategic thinking in both Pyongyang and Seoul -- and causes confusion in the six-party talks, as Pyongyang bucks Chinese influence when possible and Seoul counters U.S. goals.
This is the dynamic that Bush will encounter during his travels to East Asia. The fundamental forces are local, the Cold War paradigm is finally being shed and the United States -- though still influential -- is no longer the driver. It is a return to the Asia of the past, shaped by natural geopolitical forces and competitions.
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