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Volume 39/No. 4/Winter 1997–98
In considering whether to extend the presence of US troops in Bosnia beyond the current June 1998 deadline, the Clinton administration faces a quandary. Because the Dayton peace accords do not provide a short-term basis for a self-sustaining peace in Bosnia, an international-security presence will be required for many years to come. The US Congress, however, has indicated that it will not support a long-term US military presence in Bosnia, and the European allies—regrettably—have refused to stay without the US. The way out is for the administration to alter the Dayton framework to allow for a more stable Bosnia, and to condition future US military participation in Bosnia on an allied willingness to take full responsibility for the military presence there by an agreed date.
Security in the Asia-Pacific, as elsewhere, is in part a function of the economic environment. Asia’s current economic dynamism is also a product of the benign stability that has underpinned the region’s growth for 50 years, but that very dynamism poses a number of challenges for regional security. Differential rates of growth among countries, competition for markets and resources, internal economic imbalances and inequalities, and the social and environmental consequences of economic success are some of the challenges leaders must cope with if security is to be maintained. Four policies, in particular, will help: integrating China; a new US-Japan security agreement; preparing for Korean unification; and promoting regional and global economic openness.
Asia is currently at peace, but its future is highly uncertain. Territorial disputes, the two Koreas, Taiwan and a shifting regional balance of power all threaten the stability of the region. This uncertainty is made worse by the lack of multilateral security institutions. During the Cold War period, the balance of power in North-east Asia was based on Soviet expansionism and Japanese military self-restraint. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of China, Asian perceptions of US and Japanese intentions have become highly complex. The process of establishing a new equilibrium can be helped by a North-east Asian Security Organisation. But whether regional leaders will have the vision and political will to create a new security structure is difficult to predict.
China’s growing economic and military power is a central concern for Asia-Pacific nations as well as for US foreign policy. How China behaves as its power grows is an open question, and no one can be sure whether current US strategy will work. But a US presence in East Asia, reaffirmed through the US-Japan security treaty, provides regional stability. Prospects for avoiding conflict with China improve as the US maintains its strength—even in the face of difficult issues like Taiwan, trade or human rights. Some see China’s natural ambition to restore regional hegemony leading to international conflict, but they fail to take adequate account of the constraints of Beijing’s own objectives and Washington’s continuing information edge.
Over the next 10-15 years, Asia-Pacific leaders must nurture cooperative habits that will enable the region to replace the regional stability now enforced by US power with the unenforced stability of a Pacific community. The institutional tools for achieving this goal are still embryonic. But there is reason to be optimistic about East Asia’s prospects, because all its states are intent on economic development. The market system has made them increasingly interdependent and encouraged the emergence of civil society. Much will depend now on whether East Asia is able to ‘socialise’ China into its regional arrangements. Long-term stability will depend on how the region develops the idea of a pluralistic community having the sense of a common destiny.
There will be no widespread diffusion of dramatically advanced military capabilities—a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)—in Asia over the next 10-15 years. This is because fundamental weaknesses will continue to exist in most regional countries in such key areas as systems-integration, integrated logistics support and joint-force operational doctrines. As a result, there will be a hierarchy of RMA powers. The US will widen its technological lead and Washington’s closest allies—Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan—will make significant RMA advances. But China will not acquire an integrated, RMA-capable force, and in South-east Asia only Singapore will succeed with the RMA. In South Asia, neither India nor Pakistan will make much headway. Rather than a revolution, there will be an evolution in the RMA in Asia.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Europe’s involvement in Asia-Pacific security has been steadily growing in recent years. European powers now contribute to regional security in many direct ways: through arms transfers; via joint exercises, training and peacekeeping; and by participating in several multilateral initiatives to promote peace and stability. Regional security is also enhanced indirectly by helping to safeguard vital energy supplies, reduce the threat from a variety of common security threats and promote economic development. Europe has a strong strategic interest in playing a still more active role in the future. This should entail greater cooperation and coordination on Asia-Pacific security issues within Europe, strengthened ties to the region, and the development of a strategic dialogue with the US.
In the 1990s, a range of commentators and analysts—from Samuel P. Huntington to the East Asia Analytical Unit of the Australian government—have sought to identify an emerging ‘greater China’ or ‘Chinese commonwealth’ in the development of the People’s Republic of China and its interactions with the Ethnic Chinese of East and South-east Asia. While an extensive Ethnic Chinese presence could in theory have considerable potential to challenge regional security, the actual threat is more imagined than real. The various Chinese communities of South-east Asia are more divided by their differences than united by any extremely generalised notion of ‘Chineseness’.
Widespread assumptions that North Korea will either reform or collapse are not well founded: the country could survive indefinitely without undertaking major internal reforms or external policy changes. Faced with such prospects, the US, Japan, South Korea and other US allies should pay greater attention to their fundamental, long-term objectives. In particular, they should ensure that measures which help to perpetuate the regime are adopted only in exchange for concrete steps to open North Korea up and reduce the threat it poses to its neighbours. By focusing on a more prolonged pace towards unification, allied leaders will better ensure that their long-term goals are furthered, not thwarted, by short-term steps to prevent North Korea’s sudden collapse.