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Volume 41/No. 3/Autumn 1999
Glittering visions of a forthcoming ‘Asian century’ have given way to Asian insecurity. Since mid-1997, security planners have been confounded by three events: the Asian economic crisis; the end of President Suharto’s regime in Indonesia; and the development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles by India, Pakistan and North Korea. There is clear potential for more strategic turbulence: Indonesia’s disintegration, a nuclear miscalculation in South Asia, China’s adoption of a more aggressive stance, or conflict on the Korean Peninsula. Given these risks and uncertainties, too many governments continue to rely on straight-line extrapolations of Asia’s strategic future. Such analysis demonstrably failed to predict the economic crisis; strategic planners should spend more time preparing for ‘alternative strategic futures’.
Paul Dibb is Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, Canberra.
David D. Hale is Chief Global Economist of the Zurich Group, Chicago, IL.
Peter Prince is the former head of the ASEAN section in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Canberra.
After 20 years of rapid economic growth, China’s leaders are at a crossroads. They can no longer push the process of modernisation without far more fundamental reform of their political economy. Confronted with the spectre of challenges to their legitimacy and the regime’s stability, however, their response has been to undertake far-reaching economic, but limited political, reform. Yet both the political and economic reforms have set in motion change well beyond the leaders’ desired goals. With or without the sanction of its leadership, China’s political economy is being transformed. For the rest of the world, the outcome of this process is vitally important. It will shape not only China’s foreign policy on issues like trade and human rights, but also the country’s capacity to fulfil the full range of its international obligations.
Elizabeth C. Economy is Senior Fellow, China Studies, and Deputy Director, Asia Studies, at the Council on Foreign Relations, New York.
The pace and direction of diplomacy in Asia reflects increasingly sophisticated hedging strategies being pursued by all the major actors as they anticipate a new structure of relations. The region is reaching a stage, however, where probable events and policy choices may soon begin to foreclose options. There are three such fateful decision points just over the horizon: decisions made in the process of Korean reunification; over the future of Taiwan; and in regard to deployment of missile defence-systems by the US and its allies. The goal of statecraft should be to recognise and operate within the parameters of necessary ambiguity, while seeking to reduce the risk that events will force premature choices and establish antagonistic geopolitical alignments throughout the region.
Robert A. Manning, former US State Department Advisor for Policy (1989–93), is Senior Fellow and Director of Asian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington DC. James Przystup is Senior Fellow, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Washington DC.
However it comes about, a stable peace on the Korean Peninsula would drastically alter the strategic environment, forcing all countries with interests in the region to reassess their military postures and alignments. Tokyo and Seoul, in particular, would face the urgent task of reassessing and possibly reconfiguring their alliance relationships with the US. In a world without a North Korean threat, the two alliances should be reorganised to reduce asymmetries between them. Serious discussions now about the future of the two alliances would help to create a sense of direction and predictability for all countries in the region, including China. It would be wise, therefore, for Washington, Tokyo and Seoul to start the rethinking process sooner rather than later.
Narushige Michishita is research associate at the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS) in Tokyo.
One of the twenty-first century’s great challenges will be to fill Asia’s security vacuum. The US maintains a heavy military presence and an important set of bilateral security arrangements, and the region’s great powers cooperate on an ad hoc basis. But there is no developed security system embraced by Asia-Pacific’s leading powers. Meanwhile, the ‘Asian way’ of consensus-based diplomacy has suffered greatly—in coherence and prestige—from the financial crisis which started in 1997. What the region needs is a limited and informal concert, based on the classical principles of European concert diplomacy. Such a framework would satisfy China’s quest for enhanced international status, help US efforts to ‘engage’ China, and address the fear of Japan and Russia being marginalised if the Sino-US relationship develops into a true ‘strategic partnership’.
Amitav Acharya is Associate Professor at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
NATO’s Operation Allied Force against Yugoslavia in March–June 1999 marked a significant stage in the developing practice of using force in defence of international norms. It was also influenced by concerns about the Alliance’s credibility. The first major bombing campaign aimed at reversing a state’s oppression of part of its own population led to speculation about whether a new norm of humanitarian intervention was emerging. However, the Kosovo war illustrated the difficulty of securing international agreement on the legitimacy of such intervention. It raised questions about the quality of NATO decision-making, the degree of reliance on air power, the impact of the war on civilians, and the role played by the threat of land operations in reaching an eventual settlement.
Adam Roberts is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford University and a Fellow of Balliol College.
Iran appears to be pursuing a nuclear option, and it may well be the next nuclear power in the Middle East. Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons would transform the regional balance of power. It could alter the decision calculus of Iran’s leadership, reorder political alignments in the greater Middle East, and strike a fatal blow to the international nuclear non-proliferation regime. Due to the volatility of Iranian politics, the clerical regime’s involvement in terrorism, continuing tensions with several of its neighbours and the US, and its continued denial of Israel’s right to exist, the emergence of a nuclear Iran would, at the very least, have a destabilising impact on the region. For these reasons, averting the emergence of a nuclear Iran will be a key Western interest in coming years. Managing the consequences of a nuclear Iran may be the West’s next unwelcome challenge.
Michael Eisenstadt is Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, specialising in Arab–Israeli and Persian Gulf security affairs.
Given their new nuclear status, the bitter confrontation between India and Pakistan—and especially their 50-year dispute over Kashmir—constitutes one of the gravest perils for global peace and security. Resolving the Kashmir issue will require restraint from, and dialogue between, New Delhi and Islamabad, as well as a long-term framework for softening the as yet unreconcilable conflicts of loyalty and identity among the Kashmir population on both sides of the dividing line. In searching for such a framework, it is worth looking at other peace-process models, such as that in Northern Ireland, which derive from similar historical partitions and are characterised by similar intersections of internal and external conflict.
Sumantra Bose is Ralf Dahrendorf Fellow in Government, London School of Economics and Political Science.