David Kang Getting Asia Wrong

Getting As ia Wrong
Getting Asia Wrong
David C. Kang
The Need for New Analytical

Frameworks
ost international relations theory is inductively derived from the European experience of the past
four centuries, during which Europe was the locus and generator of war, innovation, and wealth. According to Kenneth Waltz, The theory of international
politics is written in terms of the great powers of an era. It would be . . . ridiculous to construct a theory of international politics based on Malaysia and Costa
Rica. . . . A general theory of international politics is necessarily based on the
great powers.1 If international relations theorists paid attention to other regions of the globe, it was to study subjects considered peripheral such as third
world security or the behavior of small states.2 Accordingly, international relations scholarship has focused on explaining the European experience, including, for example, the causes of World Wars I and II, as well as the Cold War
and U.S.-Soviet relations.3 Although this is still true, other parts of the world
have become increasingly signicant. Accordingly, knowledge of European
David C. Kang is Associate Professor of Government and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Tuck School of
Business at Dartmouth College.
For comments on earlier drafts of this article, the author thanks Muthiah Alagappa, Stephen
Brooks, Victor Cha, Victoria Hui, Peter Katzenstein, Seo-hyun Park, Andrew Stigler, and two anonymous referees. He extends particular thanks to William Wohlforth.
1. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), p. 73.
Another classic work uses Europes past as a guide to Asias future. See Aaron L. Friedberg, Ripe
for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia, International Security, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Winter
1993), pp. 533.
2. See, for example, Stephen D. Krasner, Structural Conict: The Third World against Global Liberalism
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Edward Azar and Chung-in Moon, National Security in the Third World: The Management of Internal and External Threats (Aldershot, U.K.: Edward
Elgar, 1988); Caroline Thomas, In Search of Security: The Third World in International Relations (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1987); and Mohammed Ayoob, ed., Regional Security in the Third World:
Case Studies from Southeast Asia and the Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1986).
3. Classic works in international relations include E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 19191939:
An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1951); and Hans J.
Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th ed. (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1973). For discussion about the eld, see Jack Snyder, Richness, Rigor, and Relevance in
the Study of Soviet Foreign Policy, International Security, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Winter 1984/85), pp. 89
108; Samuel S. Kim, Introduction, in Kim, ed., China and the World: Chinese Foreign Policy Faces the
New Millennium (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1994), pp. 118; and James N. Rosenau, Toward Single-Country Theories of Foreign Policy: The Case of the USSR, in Charles F. Hermann, Charles W.
Kegley Jr., and Rosenau, eds., New Directions in the Study of Foreign Policy (Boston: Allen and
Unwin, 1987), pp. 5373.
International Security, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Spring 2003), pp. 5785
2003 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
57
International Security 27:4 58
relations is no longer sufcient for a well-trained international relations

generalist.
During this time Asia itselfsometimes dened as including China, India,
Japan, and Russia and comprising perhaps half the worlds populationhad
an occasional impact on the great powers, but it was never a primary focus. In
the past two decades, however, Asia has emerged as a region whose economic,
military, and diplomatic power has begun to rival and perhaps even exceed
that of Europe. Its growing inuence gives scholars a wonderful opportunity
in the elds of international relations generally and Asian security specically
to produce increasingly rigorous and theoretically sophisticated work. Because
Europe was so important for so long a period, in seeking to understand international relations, scholars have often simply deployed concepts, theories, and
experiences derived from the European experience to project onto and explain
Asia. This approach is problematic at best. Eurocentric ideas have yielded several mistaken conclusions and predictions about conict and alignment behavior in Asia. For example, since the early 1990s many Western analysts have
predicted dire scenarios for Asia, whereas many Asian experts have expressed
growing optimism about the regions future.4 It is an open question whether
Asia, with its very different political economy, history, culture, and demographics, will ever function like the European state system. This is not to criticize European-derived theories purely because they are based on the Western
experience: The origins of a theory are not necessarily relevant to its applicability. Rather these theories do a poor job as they are applied to Asia; what I seek
to show in this article is that more careful attention to their application can
strengthen the theories themselves.
In this article I make two claims about the levels of conict and types of
alignment behavior in Asia. First, I argue that the pessimistic predictions of
Western scholars after the end of the Cold War that Asia would experience a
period of increased arms racing and power politics has largely failed to materialize, a reality that scholars must confront if they are to develop a better understanding of Asian relations. Second, contrary to the expectations of standard
formulations of realism, and although U.S. power confounds the issue, Asian
states do not appear to be balancing against rising powers such as China.
Rather they seem to be bandwagoning.
4. For optimistic views of Asia in the early 1990s, see Frank B. Gibney, The Pacic Century: America
and Asia in a Changing World (New York: Scribner, 1992); World Bank, The East Asian Miracle (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1993); and Paul Dibb, David Hale, and Peter Prince, The Strategic
Implications of Asias Economic Crisis, Survival, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 526.
Getting Asia Wrong 59
I make these claims with great care. Asia is empirically rich and, in many
ways, different from the West. Thus efforts to explain Asian issues using international relations theories largely derived inductively from the European
experience can be problematic. Focusing exclusively on Asias differences,
however, runs the risk of essentializing the region, resulting in the sort of orientalist analysis that most scholars have correctly avoided.5 I am not making a
plea for research that includes a touch of realism, a dash of constructivism, and
a pinch of liberalism.6 The same social-scientic standardsfalsiability, generalizability, and clear causal logicshould apply in the study of Asian international relations as has been applied to the study of Europe. To achieve this,
scholars must not dismiss evidence that does not t their theories. Instead they
must consider such evidence and sharpen their propositions so that they may
be falsied.
Many of the criticisms that I make in this article could apply to other international relations theories such as liberalism or constructivism. I have chosen to
focus on realist approaches because of their wide use in Western scholarship
on Asia. In addition, determining which predictions emerge from which variant of realist theory is often the subject of heated debate; in particular, efforts to
single out predictions that apply to Asia can be extremely frustrating.7
I have three caveats: First, I am not claiming a priori that difference will triumph over similarity. Whether Asian and Western international relations are
different is an open question, and in many cases scholars may conclude that
there are no signicant differences. Instead of ignoring or dismissing potential
differences as unimportant, however, scholars should ask: Is this situation
different? And if so, why? Such questions are likely to yield useful answers
not only for scholars of international relations but also for those specializing in
either security or Asian studies.
Second, scholarship on Asian international relations from all perspectives
is increasingly theoretically rich and empirically sophisticated. Research
from the realist and liberal schools has explored issues such as U.S.-China and
U.S.-Japan relations, as well as the changing dynamics of the Japan-South
5. See Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978); and A.L. Mace, ed., Orientalism: A
Reader (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
6. An excellent discussion of new research is found in Peter J. Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara,
Japan, Asian-Pacic Security, and the Case for Analytic Eclecticism, International Security, Vol. 26,
No. 3 (Winter 2002), pp. 153185.
7. See Stephen G. Brooks, Dueling Realisms, International Organization, Vol. 51 No, 3 (Summer
1997), pp. 445477.
Korea-U.S. alliance.8 Literature with a cultural or constructivist perspective has

addressed topics including the formation of identity, prostitution and its relationship to U.S. overseas troop deployments, and antimilitarist sentiment in
Japan.9 More historically oriented work has emerged that challenges all of the
prevailing paradigms.10 Despite these encouraging trends, such work remains
the exception rather than the norm.
Finally, the concept of Asia lends itself to highly problematic and often
sweeping generalizations. The term Asia often refers to a geographic area
that takes in Russia and Japan, encompasses the entire Pacic Ocean including
Australia, and ranges as far west as India and Pakistan. These countries have
different cultures, histories, political institutions, economies, geographic features, and climates. Accordingly, wherever possible I refer either to individual
countries, to Northeast Asia (comprising Japan, China, the Korean Peninsula,
and occasionally Russia), or to Southeast Asia (whose principal countries include Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam).
This article does not cover South Asia (principally the countries of Bangladesh,
India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka). When I do refer to Asia as a whole, it is mainly
to differentiate it from the West.11
8. See Thomas J. Christensen, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and SinoAmerican Conict, 194758 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996); Victor D. Cha, Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States-Korea-Japan Security Triangle (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1999); Leonard J. Schoppa, Bargaining with Japan: What American Pressure Can and
Cannot Do (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); and Richard Samuels, Rich Nation,
Strong Army: National Security and Technological Transformation in Japan (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994).
9. See Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994); Katharine H.S. Moon, Sex among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); Peter J.
Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1996); Thomas U. Berger, Cultures of Anti-Militarism: National Security in
Germany and Japan (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Chalmers A. Johnson,
The State and Japanese Grand Strategy, in Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein, eds., The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993); and Benedict Anderson,
Imagined Communities: Reections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).
10. See Victoria Tin-bor Hui, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe
(New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming); Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992); Rosemary Foot, The Practice of Power: U.S. Relations with China since 1949 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995); and Gordon H. Chang, Friends and Enemies:
The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 194872 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
1990).
11. See Alexander Woodside, The Asia-Pacic Idea as a Mobilization Myth, in Arif Dirlik, ed.,
Whats in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the Pacic Region Idea (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littleeld, 1998), pp. 1328; Gil Rozman, Flawed Regionalism: Reconceptualizing Northeast Asia in
the 1990s, Pacic Review, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1998), pp. 127; and Michael Ng-Quinn, The Internation-
This article is composed of three major sections. In the rst section, I explain
why the pessimistic predictions of the 1990s about a return of power politics to
Asia have not materialized and why scholarship needs to acknowledge this
fact. In the second section, I argue that the Chinese experience of the past two
decades poses a challenge to realist theories. The third section argues that
Asian countries balance differently from countries in the West. I conclude by
discussing the tension between area studies and political science theorizing in
the eld of comparative politics. I argue that this tension is healthy because it
forces both sides of the debate to sharpen their scholarship. The eld of international relations can benet from such a discussion, as well. Elevating the
Asian experience to a central place in the study of international relations will
provide an excellent opportunity to inject vitality into the stale paradigm wars
that currently characterize the eld.
PostCold War Pessimism over Asia

Following the end of the Cold War in 1991, some scholars in the West began to
predict that Asia was ripe for rivalry.12 They based this prediction on the following factors: wide disparities in the levels of economic and military power
among nations in the region; their different political systems, ranging from
democratic to totalitarian; historical animosities; and the lack of international
institutions. Many scholars thus envisaged a return of power politics after decades when conict in Asia was dominated by the Cold War tension between
the United States and the Soviet Union. In addition, scholars envisaged a return of arms racing and the possibility of major conict among Asian coun-
alization of the Region: The Case of Northeast Asian International Relations, Review of International Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (January 1986), pp. 107125.
12. For generally pessimistic perspectives, see Friedberg, Ripe for Rivalry; Richard K. Betts,
Wealth, Power, and Instability: East Asia and the United States after the Cold War, International
Security, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Winter 1993/94), p. 60; Robert A. Manning and James Przystup, Asias
Transition Diplomacy: Hedging against Futureshock, Survival, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Autumn 1999),
pp. 4367; Avery Goldstein, Great Expectations: Interpreting Chinas Arrival, International Security, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Winter 1997/98), pp. 3673; Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal, Rethinking East
Asian Security, Survival, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 321; Christopher Layne, The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise, International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993),
pp. 551; Thomas J. Christensen, Posing Problems without Catching Up: Chinas Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy, International Security, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Spring 2001), pp. 540; Kenneth N. Waltz, The Emerging Structure of International Politics, International Security, Vol. 18,
No. 2 (Fall 1993), pp. 56, 65; and Charles A. Kupchan, After Pax Americana: Benign Power, Regional Integration, and the Sources of Stable Multipolarity, International Security, Vol. 23, No. 2
(Fall 1998), pp. 4079.
tries, almost all of which had rapidly changing internal and external
environments. More specic predictions included the growing possibility of
Japanese rearmament;13 increased Chinese adventurism spurred by Chinas
rising power and ostensibly revisionist intentions;14 conict or war over the
status of Taiwan;15 terrorist or missile attacks from a rogue North Korea
against South Korea, Japan, or even the United States;16 and arms racing or
even conict in Southeast Asia, prompted in part by unresolved territorial
disputes.17
13. On Japan, see Gerald Segal, The Coming Confrontation between China and Japan, World
Policy Journal, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Summer 1993), pp. 2732; Allen S. Whiting, China Eyes Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Clyde Prestowitz Jr., Trading Places: How We Allowed Japan
to Take the Lead (New York: Basic Books, 1989); Ezra F. Vogel, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979); Eamonn Fingleton, Blindside: Why Japan Is
Still on Track to Overtake the U.S. by the Year 2000 (Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1994); Chalmers A.
Johnson, Japan in Search of a Normal Role, Daedalus, Vol. 121 (Fall 1992), pp. 133; Reinhard
Drifte, Japans Foreign Policy for the Twenty-rst Century: From Economic Superpower to What Power?
(New York: St. Martins, 1998); and George Friedman and Meredith Lebard, The Coming War with
Japan (New York: St. Martins, 1991). For an example of the worry that Japans economy induced in
policymaking circles, see Central Intelligence Agency, Japan, 2000 (Rochester, N.Y.: Rochester Institute of Technology, 1991); and Paradigm Paranoia, Far Eastern Economic Review, June 27, 1991,
p. 15.
14. On the China threat, see Gerald Segal, East Asia and the Constraintment of China, International Security, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Spring 1996), pp. 107135; Denny Roy, Hegemon on the Horizon?
Chinas Threat to East Asian Security, International Security, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1994), pp. 149
168, at p. 164; Nicholas D. Kristof, The Rise of China, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 5 (November/
December 1993), pp. 5974; and Edward Friedman and Barrett L. McCormick, eds., What If China
Doesnt Democratize? Implications for War and Peace (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2000).
15. See Christopher W. Hughes, Taiwan and Chinese Nationalism: National Identity and Status in International Society (New York: Routledge, 1997); Shelley Rigger, Competing Conceptions of Taiwans
Identity, in Suisheng Zhao, ed., Across the Taiwan Strait: Mainland China, Taiwan, and the 19951996
Crisis (New York: Routledge, 1997); Patrick Tyler, A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China (New York:
PublicAffairs, 1999); and John Franklin Copper, Taiwan: Nation-State or Province? (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview, 1990).
16. See Betts, Wealth, Power, and Instability, p. 66; Aaron Friedberg, Loose Cannon, New York
Times Review of Books, December 12, 1999, p. 23; Nicholas Eberstadt, The Most Dangerous Country, National Interest, Vol. 57 (Fall 1999), pp. 4554; Fred C. Ikl, U.S. Folly May Start Another
Korean War, Wall Street Journal, October 12, 1998, p. A18; Amos A. Jordan, Coping with North
Korea, Washington Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Winter 1998), pp. 3346; Sound the Alarm: Defector
Says North Korea Is Preparing for War, Economist, April 26, 1997, p. 34; and Gen. Patrick Hughes,
director, U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, statement before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Global Threats and Challenges to the United States and Its Interests Abroad, February 5,
1997, 102d Cong., 1st sess., http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1997_hr/s970205d.htm. For
counterarguments, see David C. Kang, North Korea: Deterrence through Danger, in Muthiah
Alagappa, ed., Asian Security Practice: Material and Ideational Inuences (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1998), pp. 234263; David C. Kang, Preventive War and North Korea, Security
Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Winter 1995), pp. 330363; Denny Roy, North Korea and the Madman Theory, Security Dialogue, Vol. 25, No. 3 (September 1994), pp. 307316; and Leon V. Sigal, Disarming
Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998).
17. Kupchan, After Pax Americana, pp. 4445.
More than a dozen years have passed since the end of the Cold War, yet
none of these pessimistic predictions have come to pass. Indeed there has not
been a major war in Asia since the 197879 Vietnam-Cambodia-China conict;
and with only a few exceptions (North Korea and Taiwan), Asian countries do
not fear for their survival. Japan, though powerful, has not rearmed to the extent it could. China seems no more revisionist or adventurous now than it was
before the end of the Cold War. And no Asian country appears to be balancing
against China. In contrast to the period 195080, the past two decades have
witnessed enduring regional stability and minimal conict. Scholars should
directly confront these anomalies, rather than dismissing them.
Social scientists can learn as much from events that do not occur as from
those that do. The case of Asian security provides an opportunity to examine
the usefulness of accepted international relations paradigms and to determine
how the assumptions underlying these theories can become misspecied.
Some scholars have smuggled ancillary and ad hoc hypotheses about preferences into realist, institutionalist, and constructivist theories to make them t
various aspects of the Asian cases, including: assumptions about an irrational
North Korean leadership, predictions of an expansionist and revisionist China,
and depictions of Japanese foreign policy as abnormal.18 Social science
moves forward from the clear statement of a theory, its causal logic, and its
predictions. Just as important, however, is the rigorous assessment of the theory, especially if predictions owing from it fail to materialize. Exploring why
scholars have misunderstood Asia is both a fruitful and a necessary theoretical
exercise.
Two major problems exist with many of the pessimistic predictions about
Asia. First, when confronted with the nonbalancing of Asian states against
China, the lack of Japanese rearmament, and ve decades of noninvasion by
North Korea, scholars typically respond: Just wait. This reply, however, is intellectually ambiguous. Although it would be unfair to expect instantaneous national responses to changing international conditions, a dozen years would
seem to be long enough to detect at least some change. Indeed Asian nations
have historically shown an ability to respond quickly to changing circumstances. The Meiji restoration in Japan in 1868 was a remarkable example of
governmental response to European and American encroachment, and by 1874
18. For a detailed discussion of these criticisms that uses North Korea as an example, see David C.
Kang, International Relations Theory and the Second Korean War, International Studies Quarterly,
Vol. 47, No. 3 (September 2003).
Japan had emerged from centuries of isolation to occupy Taiwan.19 More recently, with the introduction of market reforms in late 1978, when Deng
Xiaoping famously declared, To get rich is glorious, the Chinese have transformed themselves from diehard socialists to exuberant capitalists beginning
less than three years after Maos death in 1976.20 In the absence of a specic
time frame, the just wait response is unfalsiable. Providing a causal logic
that explains how and when scholars can expect changes is an important aspect of this response, and reasonable scholars will accept that change may not
be immediate but may occur over time. Without such a time frame, however,
the just wait response is mere rhetorical wordplay designed to avoid troubling evidence.
A more rigorous response in the Chinese case would be to argue that conditions of balancing, not timing per se, are the critical factor. In this view, Chinas
relatively slow military modernization and limited power projection capabilities suggest that its potential threat to other Asian countries is growing only
slowly; thus the conditions necessary to produce costly all-out balancing
efforts do not yet exist. Moreover, even though many of the conditions that
theorists argue can lead to conict do already exist in East Asia, the region has
so far avoided both major and minor interstate conict. Most signicant, in less
than two decades China has evolved from being a moribund and closed middle power to the most dynamic country in the region, with an economy that
not only will soon surpass Japans (if it has not already) but also shows many
signs of continuing growth. This dramatic power transition has evoked hardly
any response from Chinas neighbors.21 By realist standards, China should be
provoking balancing behavior, merely because its overall size and projected
rate of growth are so high.
19. On the Meiji restoration, see E. Herbert Norman, Japans Emergence as a Modern State: Political
and Economic Problems of the Meiji Period (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1973); and Ramon H. Myers
and Mark R. Peattie, eds., The Japanese Colonial Empire, 18951945 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984).
20. See Andrew G. Walder, ed., Chinas Transitional Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996); and Jean Oi, State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
21. Douglas Lemke and Suzanne Werner, Power Parity, Commitment to Change, and War, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 2 (June 1996), pp. 235260; Jack S. Levy, Declining Power
and the Preventive Motivation for War, World Politics, Vol. 40, No. 1 (October 1987), pp. 82107;
Randall L. Schweller, Domestic Structure and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacic?
World Politics, Vol. 44, No. 2 (January 1992), pp. 235269; Woosang Kim and James D. Morrow,
When Do Power Shifts Lead to War? American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 36, No. 4 (November 1992), pp. 896922; and Henk W. Houweling and Jan G. Siccama, Power Transitions as a
Cause of War, Journal of Conict Resolution, Vol. 32, No. 1 (March 1988), pp. 87102.
Second, pessimistic predictions about Asias future often suffer from incompletely specied evidentiary standards. Scholars will frequently select evidence that supports their arguments and dismiss contradictory evidence as
epiphenomenal. For example, in his most recent book, John Mearsheimer argues that although Japan (and Germany) have the potential in terms of population and wealth to become great powers . . . they depend on the United States
for their security, and are effectively semi-sovereign states, not great powers.22
This begs a number of questions: For instance, why dene Japan, which has
the second largest economy in the world, as semi-sovereign? Indeed why
would such an economically advanced state ever allow itself to remain semisovereign? Mearsheimers book is focused on building a theory of offensive
realism, but the logic of offensive realism would lead to the conclusion that Japan should have rearmed long ago. The onus is on those predicting an increase
in power politics in Asia to state clearly what evidence would falsify their arguments or challenge their assumptions, not to explain away objections or ignore contradictory evidence. A clearer explication of their hypotheses and the
refutable propositions would be a genuine contribution to the eld.
More than a dozen years after the end of the Cold War, much of Asia bears
little resemblance to the picture painted by the pessimists. Although the years
195080 saw numerous armed conicts, since then there has been no major interstate war in either Northeast or Southeast Asia. Countries do not fear for
their survival in either area. In Northeast Asia, rivalry and power politics remain muted. Japan has not rearmed, China shows little sign of having revisionist tendencies, and North Korea has neither imploded nor exploded.
Southeast Asia, as well, remains free of the kinds of arms races and power politics that some have expected. As Muthiah Alagappa writes, Viewed through
the ahistorical realist lens, the contemporary security challenges could indeed
suggest that Asia is a dangerous place. But a comprehensive historical view
would suggest otherwise. Although Asia still faces serious internal and international challenges, there are fewer challenges than before and most of the regions disputes and conicts have stabilized.23 The eld of international
relations would be better served if the pessimists not only admitted this reality
but also asked why this might be the case. Because China has such an impor-
22. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), p. 382
(emphasis added).
23. Muthiah Alagappa, Introduction: Predictability and Stability Despite Challenges, in
Algappa, Asian Security Order, p. 11.
tant inuence on Northeast, Southeast, and even South Asia, I offer the tentative outline of such an explanation in the following section.
China, Hierarchy, and Balancing

The most hotly debated of the pessimistic predictions about Asia concerns the
rise of a revisionist China. After two decades of rapid economic growth, China
appears poised to become a great power once again. Thus for Richard Betts,
the question becomes: Should we want China to get rich or not? For realists,
the answer should be no, since a rich China would overturn any balance of
power.24 Concern over a revisionist and destabilizing China has only increased in the past decade, as its economy continues to grow and its military
and technological capabilities further expand.25
Yet concern over a strong China may be misplaced. Historically, it has been
Chinese weakness that has led to chaos in Asia. When China has been strong
and stable, order has been preserved. East Asian regional relations have historically been hierarchic, more peaceful, and more stable than those in the West.26
Until the intrusion of the Western powers in the nineteenth century, East Asian
interstate relations were remarkably stable, punctuated only occasionally by
24. Betts, Wealth, Power, and Instability, p. 55. For similar arguments, see Roy, Hegemon on the
Horizon?; Andrew Nathan and Robert S. Ross, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: Chinas
Search for Security (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997); Goldstein, Great Expectations; and the citations in note 16.
25. For excellent attempts to measure Chinese economic growth, see Harry X. Wu, How Rich
Is China and How Fast Has the Economy Grown? Statistical Controversies, China Economy Papers
(Canberra: Asia Pacic School of Economics and Management, Australian National University,
1998); and Lawrence Lau, The Chinese Economy: Past, Present, and Future, Stanford University,
2000.
26. For detailed discussion on hierarchy in Asian international relations, see David C. Kang, Hierarchy in Asian International Relations: 14002000, Dartmouth College, 2002; and Muthiah
Alagappa, International Politics in Asia: The Historical Context, in Algappa, Asian Security Practice, pp. 65114. The classic statement is John King Fairbank, ed., The Chinese World Order: Traditional Chinas Foreign Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968). See also Michel
Oksenberg, The Issue of Sovereignty in the Asian Historical Context, in Stephen D. Krasner, ed.,
Problematic Sovereignty: Contest Rules and Political Possibilities (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2001); Akira Iriye, Across the Pacic: An Inner History of AmericanEast Asian Relations (New
York: Harcourt, Brace, 1967); and Johnston, Cultural Realism. For complementary work, see Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1999); Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1996); and Victor D. Chas discussion in Dening Security in East Asia: History, Hotspots, and Horizon-gazing, in Eun Mee Kim, ed., The Four Asian Tigers: Economic Development and the Global Political Economy (San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press, 1998), pp. 3360.
conict between countries. The system was based on Chinese military and economic power but was reinforced through centuries of cultural exchange, and
the units in the system were sovereign states that had political control over recognized geographic areas. East Asian international relations emphasized formal hierarchy among nations while allowing considerable informal equality.
With China as the dominant state and surrounding countries as peripheral or
secondary states, as long as hierarchy was observed there was little need for interstate war. This contrasts sharply with the Western tradition of international
relations, which has consisted of formal equality between nation-states, informal hierarchy, and near-constant interstate conict.27
In the nineteenth century, the traditional East Asian order was demolished
as both Western and Asian powers (in particular, Japan) scrambled to establish
inuence in the region. After a century of tumult in Asia, the late 1990s saw the
reemergence of a strong and condent China, the growing stabilization of Vietnam, and increasingly consolidated political rule around the region. Although
realists and liberals have tended to view modern East Asia as potentially unstable, if the system is experiencing a return to a pattern of hierarchy, the result
may be increased stability.
China in 2003 appears to be reemerging as the gravitational center of East
Asia. From a historical perspective, a rich and strong China could again cement regional stability. However, a century of chaos and change, and the
growing inuence of the rest of the world (in particular the United States),
would lead one to conclude that a Chinese-led regional system would not look
like its historical predecessor. Indeed Chung-in Moon argues that the
Westphalian notion of sovereignty holds sway in Asia, although he also admits
that this is frequently compromised and often contested.28
Even if a hierarchic system does not reemerge in East Asia, and even if countries in the region do not adopt Westphalian norms in their entirety, the ques27. For more on the concept of hierarchy in its various forms, see William C. Wohlforth, The Stability of a Unipolar World, International Security, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Summer 1999), p. 13; David Lake,
Anarchy, Hierarchy, and the Variety of International Relations, International Organization, Vol. 50,
No. 1 (Winter 1996), pp. 133; Alexander Wendt and Daniel Friedheim, Hierarchy under Anarchy:
Informal Empire and the East German State, International Organization, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Autumn
1995), pp. 689721; and Douglas Lemke, Regions of War and Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
28. Chung-in Moon, Sovereignty: Dominance of the Westphalian Concept and Implications for
Regional Security, in Alagappa, Asian Security Order, pp. 424457. Jean-Marc Blanchard calls
Asian states adolescent. Blanchard, Maritime Issues in Asia: The Problem of Adolescence, in
ibid., pp. 424457.
tion of whether a more powerful China will be a revisionist or a status quo

state remains.29 Although the evidence is mixed, much in Chinas behavior
points to Beijings desire to stabilize the region. According to political scientist
Xinbo Wu, Both the political leadership and the Chinese public believe
that . . . China must regain major-power status.30 Wu also notes that China
perceives the international environment in the past decade as less hostile, and
even benign. At the same time, Beijing views its relationship with Washington
as potentially the most troubling, believing that the United States is the primary constraint on Chinese maneuvering and inuence in the region.31 It is not
clear, however, if China intends to challenge the United States for regional supremacy. For three decades, China has made a conscious decision to conne itself to a relatively modest second-strike nuclear force, although this could
change depending on U.S. actions regarding missile defense.32
Does China have territorial or ideological ambitions? The evidence so far
suggests that although China has outstanding territorial disputes with a number of countries, it has neither revisionist nor imperial aims. First, China has
shown a genuine desire to join the world community, perhaps best reected in
its considerable efforts to become a member of the World Trade Organization.
Wu notes that the PRC understands that the best way to defend its interest is
to make its own voice heard in the rule-making process,33 by joining inuential regional and international institutions. This explains Chinese active
participation in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the
ASEAN Regional Forum, and a number of other international institutions.34
29. See Alastair Iain Johnston, Beijings Security Behavior in the Asia-Pacic: Is China a
Dissatised Power? paper prepared for Asian Security Workshop, Cornell University, March 29
30, 2002.
30. Xinbo Wu, China: Security Practice of a Modernizing and Ascending Power, in Alagappa,
Asian Security Practice, p. 115. For extended discussion, see Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert S.
Ross, eds., Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power (London: Routledge, 1999).
31. Wu, China, p. 148.
32. On the controversy over theater and national missile defenses, see Kori Urayama, Chinese
Perspectives on Theater Missile Defense: Policy Implications for Japan, Asian Survey, Vol. 40,
No. 4 (July/August 2000), pp. 599621; and Thomas J. Christensen, Theater Missile Defense and
Taiwans Security, Orbis, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Winter 2000), pp. 1832; and Bates Gill and Michael
OHanlon, Chinas Hollow Military, National Interest, Vol. 56 (Summer 1999), pp. 5562.
33. Wu, China, p. 151.
34. On multilateral institutions in Asia, see Amitav Acharya, Regional Institutions and Asian
Security Order, in Alagappa, Asian Security Order, pp. 210240; and Margaret M. Pearson, The
Major Multilateral Economic Institutions Engage China, in Johnston and Ross, Engaging China,
pp. 207234.
Second, in the past two decades China has resolved territorial disputes with
Afghanistan, Burma, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, and
Russia. More recently, it has resolved its disputes with Cambodia and Vietnam,
renouncing support from the Khmer Rouge and embracing the Paris Peace
Accords of 1991 that brought elections to Cambodia, and normalizing relations
and delineating its border with Vietnam.35 Jianwei Wang writes that the fact
that no war for territory has been fought in East Asia since the 1980s indicates
a tendency to seek peaceful settlement of the remaining disputes.36 On maritime disputes, Jean-Marc Blanchard notes that all Asian countries except Cambodia, North Korea, and Thailand have signed the United Nations Convention
on the Law of the Sea, which has provided an institutional forum for parties to
address disputes over shing rights, trade routes, and other matters.37
China does have unresolved territorial disputes over Taiwan, with ASEAN
over the Spratly Islands, and with Japan over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands.38
Many other Asian nations also have unresolved territorial issues, resulting
from a century of regional change, not from Chinese revisionism. For example,
Japan and Russia have yet to resolve their dispute over the Northern territories, nor have Japan and Korea resolved their dispute over Tokto Island. Thus
these territorial disputes by themselves are not an indicator of Chinese
ambitions.
Countries in East Asia are also deciding how to deal with Chinas growing
economy. Japanese investment in China continues to expand, and Japanese
companies are increasingly seeing their fortunes tied to the Chinese market. Japan runs a $27 billion trade decit with China.39 Forty thousand Taiwanese
companies have investments in the mainland, employing 10 million people.
The Taiwanese central bank estimates that total mainland investment is be-
35. On the Paris Peace Accords, see S.J. Hood, Beijings Cambodia Gamble and the Prospects for
Peace in Indochina: The Khmer Rouge or Sihanouk? Asian Survey, Vol. 30, No. 10 (October 1990),
pp. 977991.
36. Jianwei Wang, Territorial Disputes and Asian Conict: Sources, Management, and Prospects, in Alagappa, Asian Security Order, pp. 380423, at p. 383.
37. Blanchard, Maritime Issues in Asia, pp. 424457.
38. On the Spratlys, see Michael Gallagher, Chinas Illusory Threat to the South China Sea, International Security, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1994), pp. 169194; Ian Storey, Creeping Assertiveness:
China, the Philippines, and the South China Sea Dispute, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 21,
No. 1 (April 1999), pp. 95118; and Mark Valencia, China and the South China Sea Disputes, Adelphi
Papers No. 298 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, October 1995).
39. See David Kruger and Ichiko Fuyuno, Innovate or Die: Reinventing Japan, Far Eastern Economic Review, April 25, 2002, pp. 2834.
tween $40 and $50 billion.40 Sixty percent of Taiwanese foreign direct investment went to China in 2001, despite rising political tensions. The capitalization
of Chinas stock market is the largest in Asia except for Japans, despite being
just a decade oldlarger than the capitalization of stock markets in Brazil,
Hong Kong, India, Mexico, South Korea, or Taiwan.41
The growing importance of Chinas economy in some ways parallels Chinas
historical role. Historical precedents may not be tremendously helpful, however, in assessing whether hierarchy will reemerge in Asia, because other
Asian nations willingness to accept subordinate positions in a Sino-centric
hierarchy will depend on beliefs about how a dominant China would behave
in the future. Additionally, it is not clear if China is willing to make more
adjustments to calm fears or further integrate into the globalized world. This
possibility deserves serious investigation, however, and it could be a fruitful
line of research. Because the evidence of Chinese revisionism over the past
decade of rapid growth is limited at best, scholars should explore the possibility that China will be a stabilizing force in Northeast and Southeast Asia. One
way in which East Asian relations may manifest themselves differently than
realists expect concerns the issue of whether other nations in the region fear
Chinas growing power and will seek to balance against it, or whether those
nations will instead choose to bandwagon with it.
Balancing versus Bandwagoning and the Role of the United States

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Northeast and Southeast Asian nations
are not obviously balancing against China. Relying on variations of mercantile realism, soft balancing, and reluctant realism,42 however, scholars
contend that this is likely to change in the future. Yet any argument that balancing may occur in Asia or that balancing has a different meaning in Asia is
an admission that such countries are not acting as balance of power realists ex40. There is also considerable nonapproved Taiwanese investment, meaning that the actual gures
are higher. See David Murphy and Maureen Pao, A Place to Call Home, Far Eastern Economic Review, July 5, 2001, p. 56.
41. Tom Holland, Between Hype and a Hard Place, Far Eastern Economic Review, June 28, 2001,
p. 40.
42. See Eric Heginbotham and Richard J. Samuels, Mercantile Realism and Japanese Foreign Policy, International Security, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Spring 1998), pp. 171203; Yuen Foong Khong, Southeast
Asias PostCold War Security Strategy: Institutions and Soft Balancing in the Wake of Strategic
Uncertainty, paper prepared for Asian Security Workshop, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York,
March 2930, 2002; and Michael J. Green, Japans Reluctant Realism: Foreign Policy Challenges in an
Era of Uncertain Power (New York: Palgrave, 2001).
pect. Although the issue of balancing is complicated by the presence of U.S.

diplomatic, economic, cultural, and military power in Asia, it is still possible to
make tentative assessments about the region. Instead of assuming that Asia
will balance rising Chinese power, posing this as a question would be a more
productive exercise.43
Hierarchy can be global as well as regional, and the United States is clearly
the dominant state both in the international order and in Asia. This has important implications for scholarly understanding of the region. As China continues on the path of economic growth and military modernization, the key
question is whether the United States can or will allow China to resume its
place atop the Asian regional hierarchy. As this section shows, the answer to
this question is not obvious. It is difcult to predict the reaction of other Asian
nations to the possibility of increased U.S.-Chinese confrontation as a result of
continued Chinese economic and military growth. If, as realists expect, Asian
nations do not balance against China, a U.S. attempt to form a balancing coalition with East Asian states to contain China could be highly problematic. In
addition, if the United States withdraws signicantly from the region, Asia
may not become the dangerous or unstable region that balance of power adherents would suggest, because other nations may acquiesce to Chinas central
position in Asia.44
Discerning balancing behavior in Asia is especially difcult given the overwhelming dominance of U.S. power in the region. As argued by Michael
Mastanduno and others, the conventional view is that by balancing China,
the United States acts as a stabilizing force in the region. According to
Mastanduno, American power and presence have helped to keep traditional
power rivals in the region from engaging in signicant conict and have reassured smaller states who have traditionally been vulnerable to major regional
wars.45 The U.S. alliance system in Northeast and Southeast Asia, as well as
43. On bandwagoning, see Randall L. Schweller, Bandwagoning for Prot: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In, International Security, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1994), pp. 72107.
44. For an argument that U.S. power projection is misguided, see Chalmers A. Johnson, Blowback:
The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000). There is currently no indication that the United States will withdraw military assets from Korea or Japan. Such
steps have been discussed, however, since the Jimmy Carter administration in the 1970s. For current U.S. planning, see Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Vision, 2020 (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Ofce, June 2000).
45. Michael Mastanduno, Incomplete Hegemony: The United States and Security Order in Asia,
in Alagappa, Asian Security Order, pp. 141170, at p. 143. See also Robert S. Ross, The Geography
of the Peace: East Asia in the Twenty-rst Century, International Security, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Spring
1999), pp. 81118.
the provision of naval facilities to the United States by Singapore and the Philippines, are manifestations of this balancing behavior. The implication is that
there would be considerably more conict in the region were the United States
to pull back or otherwise reduce its military presence.46
The ability of the United States to maintain regional peace and stability,
however, especially in Northeast Asia, is an open question. As Alagappa notes,
The claim that stability in Northeast Asia is predicated on the U.S. role rests
on several controversial assertions . . . that the United States checks Chinas
growing power and inuence, which is feared by other Asian states; [and] that
nearly all countries trust and prefer the United States. . . . [However,] containment of China does not appeal to many Asian states.47 Although the United
States still retains overwhelming power in the region, its scope is considerably
smaller than it was at its height a quarter century ago. In addition, both East
Asian and Southeast Asian countries have grown signicantly stronger, richer,
and generally more stable. This transition at least requires an explanation. That
the United States plays an important security role in Asia is relatively uncontroversial. Whether some type of U.S. withdrawal would be deleterious for the
region is far more questionable.
Mastanduno writes that U.S. hegemony in Asia is incomplete in many respects and functions more as a holding operation.48 And although Avery
Goldstein argues that balancing does occur in Asia, he too suggests that its
contribution to regional security is less clear.49 The distribution of power
and potential for conict do not lead to obvious bipolarity or multipolarity.50
Part of what makes understanding Asia so difcult is this complexity. Indeed
some scholars have argued that underlying the core U.S. strategy is the belief
that Chinas future behavior can be changed in a positive direction, through
either democratization or integration into the global economy (or some combination of both), and that engagement is a policy tool toward that end.51
46. Christensen, Theater Missile Defense and Taiwans Security; and Kupchan, After Pax
Americana, pp. 4055.
47. Alagappa, Managing Asian Security, in Alagappa, Asian Security Order, pp. 571606, at
p. 601.
48. Mastanduno, Incomplete Hegemony. On U.S. supremacy, see Wohlforth, The Stability of a
Unipolar World, p. 13.
49. Avery Goldstein, Balance of Power Politics: Consequences for Asian Security Order, in
Alagappa, Asian Security Order, pp. 171209.
50. Ibid.
51. Mastanduno, Incomplete Hegemony.
realisms japan problem

Japans foreign policy provides perhaps the strongest evidence to date that balancing is not occurring in Asia as realist theories would predict. For the past
twenty years, realists have consistently predicted that Japan would rearm, or
at least become increasingly assertive in parallel with its growing economic
power, but it has not. Although Japan is very powerful, it has not yet adopted
the trappings of a great power. In contrast to realists who argue that power
considerations will ultimately inuence Japanese foreign policy, and in contrast to constructivists who argue that Japans culture or domestic politics explain its foreign policy,52 I offer another explanation.
Scholars have spent decades speculating about whether and when Japan
might become a normal power.53 This is the wrong question. Arguments
about whether Japan is normal or militant essentialize the country and
miss the point. Japan invaded other Asian states a century ago because the system in Asia was highly unstable and Japan sought to protect itself. In the current era, Japan has little to gain from challenging either a strong China or the
United States, but much to lose by starting great power competition. Geography, population, and economics mean not only that Japan benets from a
strong international order, but also that it is relatively safe from military
threats.
There are two major realist explanations for Japans foreign policy behavior,
both of which are often conated in the literature. The rst is the great power
explanation, which holds that Japan is so rich and technologically advanced
that it will soon want to become a great power once again (this is the power
maximization hypothesis). Second is the umbrella (or power satisfaction)
explanation: According to this hypothesis, when U.S. forces withdraw from Japan, it will rearm and become a normal power.54
52. See, for example, Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security; Thomas U. Berger, From
Sword to Chrysanthemum: Japans Culture of Anti-militarism, International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4
(Spring 1993), pp. 119150; and Heginbotham and Samuels, Mercantile Realism and Japanese Foreign Policy.
53. Johnson, Japan in Search of a Normal Role; and Drifte, Japans Foreign Policy for the Twentyrst Century.
54. For arguments that Japan will soon become a great power, see Waltz, The Emerging Structure
of International Politics, pp. 56, 65; Betts, Wealth, Power, and Instability, p. 55; and Michael C.
Desch, Correspondence: Isms and SchismsCulturalism versus Realism in Security Studies, International Security, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Summer 1999), p. 176. On the U.S. security umbrella restraining
Japanese rearmament, see Betts, Wealth, Power, and Instability, p. 56; and Friedberg, Ripe for
Rivalry, p. 25. For counterarguments, see the extended discussion in Katzenstein, Cultural Norms
These explanations are mutually incompatible: Japan cannot be a normal

great power and yet be protected by the U.S. security umbrella. Of the two, the
power maximization hypothesis is most easily falsied. Realists have no explanation for why Japan, the worlds second-largest economy, has not sought to
balance or challenge the United States (the worlds largest power) or why
Japan has not attempted to provide for its own security. As Waltz has written,
Countries with great power economics have become great military powers,
whether or not reluctantly.55 In addition to having the worlds second largest
economy, Japan is arguably the worlds nest manufacturing nation and one of
it most technologically sophisticated. Yet not only does Japan lack aircraft carriers, intercontinental missiles, and nuclear weapons, but it does not send
troops abroad. In sum, Japan is hard to invade, but it also evinces almost no
signicant military or diplomatic strength. So although Japan is relatively
strong, it has not rearmed to the extent it could, nor has it rearmed to the extent
that a great power would (see Table 1).
In support of the great power explanation, Michael Desch offers evidence of
Japanese supposed intentions: marginally increased defense spending, pursuit
of a virtual nuclear deterrent, and growing nationalistic rhetoric from selected
politicians.56 Yet this evidence is speculative at best. The key is not the offhand
remark of a right-wing politician, but rather that Japan could easily triple its
defense budget and still spend only what other powers such as France and
Germany do (Figure 1). In addition, Japan could modify its constitution, develop a nuclear arsenal, deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles, and build
aircraft carriers. It could also forge a foreign policy independent from that of
the United States and attempt to exert far more inuence in diplomatic arenas.
This would be convincing evidence that Japan is, or aspires to be, a great
power. Discussion of Japan as a virtual, potential, or nascent power is simply
an admission that Japan does not function as a typical realist nation-state.
and National Security; Yoshihide Soeya, Japan: Normative Constraints versus Structural Imperatives, in Alagappa, Asian Security Practice, p. 203; Chalmers A. Johnson, History Restarted: Japanese-American Relations at the End of the Century, in Richard Higgott, Richard Leaver, and John
Ravenhill, eds., Pacic Economic Relations in the 1990s: Cooperation or Conict? (Sydney: Allen and
Unwin, 1993); Jennifer M. Lind, Correspondence: Spirals, Security, and Stability in East Asia, International Security, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Spring 2000), pp. 190195; and Berger, From Sword to
Chrysanthemum.
55. Waltz, The Emerging Structure of International Relations, p. 66.
56. Desch, Correspondence: Isms and SchismsCulturalism versus Realism in Security Studies,
p. 177.
Table 1. Japan and Evidence of Great Power Status.

Indicators of Great Power Aspirations or Potential
Modifications of the constitution to allow the use of force
Nuclear weapons
Aircraft carriers
Power projection capabilities
Intercontinental missiles
Defense spending on par with great powers
Military procurement strategies
Attempts to influence the great game (e.g., a seat on the
UN Security Council)
Active regional leadership
Gross domestic product on par with great powers
Population on par with great powers
Per capita gross domestic product on par with great powers
Technological capability on par with great powers
Japans Status
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
The U.S. umbrella explanation is also unconvincing, for at least two reasons.
First, it does not explain why the second largest economic power in the international system would trust the worlds only superpower to provide for its security. Threats arise through the mere existence of capabilitiesintentions can
always change for the worse.57 As Robert Jervis writes, Minds can be
changed, new leaders can come to power, values can shift, new opportunities
and dangers can arise.58 A weak, peaceful country may alter its goals as it becomes stronger. Second, the umbrella explanation fails to account for why
Japan did not doubt the U.S. commitment to its security in the past. Arguments about the U.S. umbrella implicitly assume that Japan is realist and
would rearm if the United States departed the region. If this is true, and if there
is no other factor that keeps Japanese foreign policy from becoming more assertive, then Japan should have rearmed at least a decade ago, when the Japanese economy was at its height and when Tokyo had many reasons to doubt
the U.S. commitment to its defense.
A Japanese policymaker in 1985 might have concluded that, given the previous fteen years or so of negative signals from Washington, the U.S. commitment to Japan was unlikely to endure. In 1969 President Richard Nixon had
57. Layne, The Unipolar Illusion.
58. Robert Jervis, Cooperation under the Security Dilemma, World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2 (January 1978), p. 105.
Figure 1. Great Powers Defense Spending as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product,

1985 and 1999.
International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 2000 2001
(London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2002).
SOURCE:
called for Asia for Asians and began a major drawdown of U.S. troops and
commitments to the region.59 By 1985 Japan had seen the United States abandon South Vietnam, withdraw recognition of Taiwan, and pull half of its troops
out of South Korea. In the mid-1980s U.S. concern over Japanese trading and
economic policies was at its peak. This concern manifested itself in intense U.S.
pressure on Japan to alter some of its economic agreements, among them the
1985 Plaza Accords that attempted to devalue the yen relative to the dollar,
and the 1988 Structural Impediments Initiative that sought to force changes in
Japans domestic economic practices.60 In addition, the United States had begun to pressure Japan over burden sharing and attempted to make the Japanese pay more for the U.S. troops already deployed. All these indicators
59. On the Nixon shocks, see C. Vanhollen, The Tilt Policy Revisited: Nixon-Kissinger Geopolitics and South Asia, Asian Survey, Vol. 20, No. 4 (April 1980), pp. 339361.
60. See Leonard J. Schoppa, Two-Level Games and Bargaining Outcomes: Why Gaiatsu Succeeds
in Japan in Some Cases but Not Others, International Organization, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Summer 1993),
pp. 353386.
suggested that the United States would cease to be a reliable ally of Japan. In
addition, Japanese economic growth was at its highest, national sentiment
about Japans future was increasingly optimistic, and Japan was by some measures a better technological and manufacturing country than the United States.
From a realist perspective, only the most nave and myopic of leaders would
focus solely on the present. Thus Japan has had ample reason to doubt the U.S.
commitment to its defense. Yet in 1976 Tokyo pledged to keep defense spending at 1 percent of Japans gross domestic product, which has essentially remained unchanged. In addition, Japanese leaders had little reaction to either
the Vietnam or Taiwan pullouts by the United States. Further, in the mid-1980s
there was no concomitant change in the policies of Japans Self-Defense
Forces.61 Japan did not rearm despite real tensions with the United States in the
1980s, nor did it make any major changes in its foreign policy.62
There is a third alternative concerning Japans foreign policy, which I refer to
as the hierarchic explanation. According to this explanation, Japan is a status
quo secondary power that has not rearmed to the level it could because it has
no need to, and because it has no intention of challenging either China or the
United States for dominance in Asia. Japan does not fear for its survival, and it
accepts the centrality of China in regional politics. The historical animosities
and lingering mistrust over Japan for its colonial aggression in the late nineteenth century and the rst half of the twentieth century are reasons sometimes cited for a fear of Japanese rearmament. In the late nineteenth century,
Japan faced decaying and despotic Chinese and Korean monarchies, a
signicant regional power vacuum, and pressures from Western nations. Today the militaries of South Korea and China are well equipped, their economies are robust, and there is no threat of Western colonization. Thus it is
unlikely that Japan needs or will seek to expand its diplomatic and military
inuence on the Asian landmass.
In addition to explaining the historical pattern of Japanese foreign policy, the
hierarchic explanation generates a different set of questions about Japans
future. For example, could Japan tilt toward China? Could Japan see the
United States as the real threat to its survival? If Washington were to pressure
Tokyo to take sides in an increasingly acrimonious U.S.-China relationship, it is
61. For a detailed study of Japanese military expenditures, see Michael J. Green, Arming Japan: Production, Alliance Politics, and the Postwar Search for Autonomy (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994).
62. Glenn D. Hook, Julie Gilson, Christopher W. Hughes, and Hugo Dobson, Japans International
Relations: Politics, Economics, and Security (London: Routledge, 2001).
not clear that Japan would antagonize a geographically proximate power for
the sake of a tenuous alliance with a distant power.63 In fact, there is evidence
that Japan does not view its relationship with the United States as purely positive. There is also increasing evidence that the Japanese do not fear a strong
China as much as they do a strong United States. A May 1995 Yomiuri Shimbun
poll found that 26.6 percent of Japanese identied the United States as a security threat to their country, whereas only 21.3 percent identied China as a
threat.64 In countering the assumption that Japan has no choice but to rely on
the United States, former Prime Minister Yashuiro Nakasone has said that a
worm can turn.65 A more recent opinion poll by Asahi Shimbun in May 2001
found that 74 percent of the Japanese public opposed revision of article 9 of the
constitution (which prohibits Japan from using force as means of settling international disputes).66 And in a magazine article, politician Ozawa Ichiro,
who makes no mention of China, does mention the need for multilateralism to
protect Japan from Anglo-Saxon principles.67
As to whether Japan could tilt toward China, Ted Galen Carpenter writes,
[U.S.] ofcials who assume that a more active Japan will be an obedient junior
partner of the United States are in for an unpleasant surprise. Tokyo shows
signs of not only being more active on the security front, but also of being more
independent of the United States. Nowhere is that trend more evident than
with respect to policy toward China.68 For example, Japan has made clear that
it does not wish to be drawn into any conict over the status of Taiwan. In fact,
the United States cannot count on Japan to support or provide bases in the
event of a China-Taiwan conict.69 Japanese cooperation with China is increas-
63. James Przystup, China, Japan, and the United States, in Michael J. Green and Patrick M.
Cronin, eds., The U.S.-Japan Alliace: Past, Present, and Future (New York: Council on Foreign Relations), pp. 2142.
64. Poll quoted by Paul Midford, July 27, 2001, on the Social Science Japan Forum discussion site:
[email protected]. This site has featured an ongoing discussion about whether Japan
might nd the United States or China a greater threat.
65. Quoted in Yoichi Funabashi, Alliance Adrift (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1999),
p. 435.
66. Howard W. French, Top Bush Aide Urges Japan to Form In-Depth Ties with the U.S., New
York Times, May 8, 2001, p. A10. See also The Best Response to the U.S. on Missile Defense Is a Flat
No, Asahi Shimbun, May 11, 2001, http://www.asahi.co.jp. The poll was conducted on May 2,
2001.
67. Ozawa Ichiro, Nihon-koku Kenpo Kaisei Shian [Draft proposal to change the Japanese constitution], Bungei-shunjuu, September 1999, p. 100.
68. Ted Galen Carpenter, Is Japan Tilting toward China? Japan Times, June 9, 2001, p. 6, http://
www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion.htm.
69. Martin Sieff, Asias Allies Wont Back Bush, United Press International, April 26, 2001.
ing in other ways as well. Bilateral trade volume between Japan and China in
1997 amounted to $570 billion, fty-two times greater than in 1972. China is
now Japans second-largest trading partner, and Japan ranks as Chinas largest
trading partner. Moreover, China is the largest recipient of Japanese investment in Asia.70
Japan is neither normal nor abnormal, militaristic nor pacist. Its survival
and economic health are best provided by a stable order. Neither China nor the
United States threatens Japan militarily. Thus Japan has not seen t to rearm
extensively, despite its capacity to build aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons.71 Furthermore, Japan has shown no signs of balancing against China.
south korea, vietnam, and their nonbalancing behavior
Given the lack of evidence of Japanese balancing, might other countries in
Northeast Asia and Southeast Asiaparticularly South Korea and Vietnam
seek to balance China? First, if forced to choose between the United States and
China, it is unclear which state either country would support. Second, the importance of the United States in curtailing an Asian arms race may be overstated. If the United States pulls out of the region, China could take a greater
role in organizing the system, and the countries of Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia would adjustwith order preserved.
Realist theories would predict that both South Korea and Vietnam should
welcome the United States and fear China. Yet this understates the historically
complex relationship between these two countries and China. Both South
Korea and Vietnam, while wary of China, are not obviously balancing against
it. Historically, both have been forced to adjust to China even while attempting
to retain autonomy, and this will most likely be true in the future as well. Both
South Korea and Vietnam are known for their stubborn nationalism, gritty
determination, and proud history as countries independent from China.72
From this perspective, it would probably be more surprising if they tried to
balance against China by siding with the United States than it would be if they
found a means of accommodating Beijing.
North Korea has consistently had better diplomatic relations with China
than with any of its other communist patrons. In addition, China has managed
70. Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Recent Developments in China and Japan-China Relations, brieng, January 16, 1999.
71. See Kent E. Calder, Japanese Foreign Economic Policy Formation: Explaining the Reactive
State, World Politics, Vol. 40, No. 4 (July 1988), pp. 517541.
72. See Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Penguin, 1997).
to retain close relations with North Korea despite Beijings recognition of South
Korea and the rapid development of cultural and economic ties between South
Korea and China. South Korea has shown considerable deference to China, especially in its reluctance to give full support to U.S. plans for theater missile
defense (TMD).73 Moreover, South Korean military planningeven the distant
planning for postunication defensehas focused on maritime threats, not on
a possible Chinese land invasion.74 The anti-American demonstrations in late
2002 over the U.S. bases in South Korea reveal the complexity of Seouls relationship with Washington. In addition, many in South Koreas business community see their future in China and have increasingly oriented their strategies
in this direction, rather than toward the United States.
Regarding Vietnam, political scientist Ang Cheng Guan notes that [in 1960]
Ho Chi Minh appealed to Khrushchev to accede to the Chinese because, according to Ho, China was a big country. . . . Khrushchev retorted that the Soviet Union was by no means a small country. Ho replied, For us it is doubly
difcult. Dont forget, China is our neighbor.75 Political scientist Kim Ninh
writes that although China remains the biggest external security threat to
Vietnam . . . Vietnam is doing its best to cultivate friendly bilateral relations
and is engaging in talks over a number of contentious issues between the two
countries. 76 Like North and South Korea, Vietnam shows no obvious signs
of preparing to balance against a rising China. Also like the Koreas, Vietnam
has historically stood in the shadow of China, and its relationship with China
is both nuanced and complex. Ninh writes, This love-hate, dependentindependent relationship with China is a fundamental factor in the Vietnamese
conception of security.77
Today Vietnam is neither arming nor actively defending its border against
China.78 The past three decades have seen conict between the two nations:
Vietnam fought a short but bloody war with China in 1979, and in 1988 the two
73. This may also reect South Koreas belief that TMD will not help it in a conventional war with
the North. See Victor D. Cha, TMD and Nuclear Weapons in Asia, in Alagappa, Asian Security
Order, pp. 458496.
74. For discussion of the normalization of ties, see Daniel C. Sanford, South Korea and the Socialist
Countries: The Politics of Trade (New York: St. Martins, 1990). On military planning, see Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, Waygyo Baekso [Foreign policy white paper] (Seoul: Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
1999).
75. Ang Cheng Guan, Vietnam-China Relations since the End of the Cold War, Asian Survey,
Vol. 38, No. 12 (December 1998), p. 1141.
76. Kim Ninh, Vietnam: Struggle and Cooperation, in Alagappa, Asian Security Practice, p. 462.
77. Ibid., p. 447.
78. For a review, see Cecil B. Currey, Vietnam: Foreign and Domestic Policies, Journal of Third
World Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall 1999), p. 197198; and Guan, Vietnam-China Relations since the
End of the Cold War, pp. 11221141.
countries engaged in a brief naval clash over the Spratly Islands. Both clashes,
however, occurred under vastly different domestic and international conditions, and unlike the peoples war for independence fought against the
French and the United States, neither was all encompassing. By the 1990s, border incidents between Vietnam and China had mostly disappeared, and
unofcial border trade began to develop. 79
The major security concern between Vietnam and China is the unresolved issue of control over the Spratly Islands, a potentially oil-rich group of islands in
the South China Sea. Yet Vietnamese and Chinese leaders have met annually
since the normalization of relations between their countries in 1991, despite
differences over the Spratlys, and relations have improved steadily over time.
Ang Cheng Guan notes that it is unlikely that the two countries [Vietnam and
China] will engage in another military clash over their South China Sea dispute.80 In other areas, Vietnam has sought to take Chinas perspective into its
decisionmaking calculus, as well. For example, when Vietnam joined ASEAN
in 1995, Vietnams deputy foreign minister explicitly told reporters that his
countrys entry should not worry China.81
The case of Vietnam shows that relations between dominant and secondary
states do not necessarily have to be warmaccommodation can be grudging,
as well. Since 1991, trade and other forms of economic cooperation have developed steadily between China and Vietnam. By 1997, this trade totaled $1.44 billion, and China had invested an estimated $102 million in Vietnam.82 In 1999
the two countries signed a tourism cooperation plan, allowing Chinese nationals to enter Vietnam without visas.83 China also signed an economic agreement
with Vietnam in 2000, providing $55.25 million to upgrade the Thai Nguyen
Steel Company and other industrial plants in Vietnam.84 Thus indications are
that Vietnam and China are developing a stable relationship.
southeast asia and china
Nor do other Southeast Asian states seem to be balancing China. Although Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore all provide naval facilities to the United
79. Carlyle A. Thayer, Vietnam: Coping with China, Southeast Asian Affairs, 1994 (Singapore:
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1995), p. 353.
80. Guan, Vietnam-China Relations since the End of the Cold War, p. 1140.
81. Ibid., p. 1129.
82. Gu Xiaosong and Brantly Womack, Border Cooperation between China and Vietnam in the
1990s, Asian Survey, Vol. 40, No. 6 (November/December 2000), p. 1045.
83. Tuyet Minh, The Chinese Are Coming, Vietnam Economic News, No. 33 (December 2000),
p. 24.
84. China to Aid Vietnamese Instustry, Business Vietnam, Vol. 12, No. 6 (June 2000), p. 4.
States, these countries also have deep economic and cultural ties with China,
and none has shown an inclination to balance against it. Goldstein writes that
Vietnam and the Philippines have joined ASEAN and repaired relations with
the United States to counter possible Chinese inuence, although he admits
that this is a far cry from what actual alliances would offer. He writes that [the
Philippines], like other ASEAN states, neither has embraced a simple-minded
strategy that treats China as an implacable foe to be balanced at all costs.
Instead, both simultaneously engage China while hedging their bets.85
A dozen years is perhaps too short a time to predict that no country in Asia
will seek to balance against China. Although U.S. power in the region may be a
complicating factor, there is ample evidence that, contrary to the expectations
of some realists, other Asian nations do not fear China. Scholars must begin to
address this seeming anomaly. As James Przystup writes, It is highly unlikely
that Japan or Americas other allies in the region are prepared to join in a concerted containment strategy aimed at China. . . . They have voiced their apprehension that actions taken in Washington could cause them to be confronted
with difcult choices.86 The existence of a U.S. alliance system that helps to
reassure Asian allies of their security is insufcient to explain the dynamics of
the entire region, and scholarship that explores Sino-Asian relations promises
to be a fruitful line of inquiry into perceptions, strategies, and alliances in the
region.87
Conclusion
There is likely to be far more stability in Asiaand more bandwagoning with
Chinathan balance of power theorists expect. The rapid economic and political changes in both Northeast and Southeast Asia over the past thirty years
have not led to major instability, in part because of the vast U.S. political, economic, and military presence in the region. Also, there is evidence, as shown in
this article, that China is likely to act within bounds acceptable to the other
Asian nations. If this is the case, U.S. attempts to form a balancing coalition
against China may be counterproductive. As countries in Northeast and
Southeast Asia increasingly orient their economic and political focus toward
85. Goldstein, Balance of Power Politics, p. 193.
86. Przystup, China, Japan, and the United States, p. 37.
87. This lack of balancing should not be surprising. International relations scholars are engaged in
a lively discussion about whether U.S. predominance is a unipolar illusion and whether such a
system is in fact stable.
China, Asian nations, if forced to choose between the United States and China,
may not make the choice that many Westerners assume they will. Historically,
it has been Chinese weakness that has led to chaos in Asia. When China has
been strong and stable, order has been preserved.
The paradigm wars have grown stale: Pitting realism, constructivism, and
liberalism against one another and then attempting to prove one right while
dismissing the others has created a body of soul-crushingly boring research.
More useful approaches would include moving within the paradigms and examining the interaction between the unit level and the system. In this vein, recognition that Northeast, Southeast, and South Asia may offer new insights to
international relations theorists should be welcome. Examining the possibility
that these regions may pose new empirical and theoretical challenges could
lead to a fruitful research agenda. Moving the eld of international relations in
this direction, however, will not be easy.
The debate over area studies versus political science theorizing has been
healthy for the eld of comparative politics, focusing as it has on important issues of research methodology and evidentiary standards.88 Indeed scholars in
the eld of comparative politics take for granted questions that international
relations specialists have only begun to address. These include whether politics in other regions operate differently from the standard European model
based on the Westphalian state system, and if so, how and why. In comparative
politics, it is accepted that in different countries formal institutions such as
democracy may not operate in the same way, that authoritarianism has
many disparate causes and consequences, and that economic policymaking
may differ.89 While much of comparative politics involves applying models
and theories originally developed to explain political institutions in the United
States to other countries, there is also a consistent stream of research that ows
88. See Robert Bates, Area Studies and the Discipline: A Useful Controversy? PS: Political Science
and Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2 (June 1997), pp. 166169; Peter J. Katzenstein, Area and Regional
Studies in the United States, PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 34, No. 4 (December 2001),
pp. 789791; and Kenneth Prewitt, Presidential Items, Items, Vol. 50, Nos. 23 (June/September
1996), pp. 3140.
89. See David Collier, ed., The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1979); and Guillermo A. ODonnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). On states and
markets, see Chalmers A. Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy,
192575 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1982); Alice H. Amsden, Asias Next Giant:
South Korea and Late Industrialization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); and Robert Wade,
Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990).
from area specialists that informs and furthers scholars theories.90 There is no
one answer: At times general models explain problems better than do case
studies; at other times evidence from the cases forces adjustments in the
models.
Comparative politics is more than a passive recipient of political economy
theories developed in the United States and Europe. It involves spirited dialogue between theory and evidence. The international relations discipline
could follow this example, but it will require openness to this possibility. In
that way, despite the internecine battles in the study of comparative politics,
that eld has done more than the international relations eld to embrace a
healthy tension and dialogue between theory and area studies, as well as between U.S. and European models and how they are applied in the rest of the
world. One can note difference without it becoming caricature, and that is the
goal to which the eld of international relations should aspire.
There are two general ways in which Asian international relations might
prove different. The rst concerns the nature of the state. Although countries
in Asia are supercially Westphalian, they do not share the same process of
development as countries in the West, nor are they designed to address the
same pressures and issues that drove the development of the European nationstate system.91 Asia has different historical traditions, different geographic and
political realities, and different cultural traditions. Thus it should not be surprising if nation-states in Asia do not necessarily function like states in the
West or if they are preoccupied with issues that European nations for the most
part resolved long ago, such as internal conict or questions of legitimacy. On
the one hand, many countries in Northeast Asia (e.g., China, Japan, and Korea)
have centuries of experience as formal political units, and their histories as
sovereign political entities often predate those in the West. Not only does this
mean that their national identities may have deeper roots; it also means that
Asian perspectives on nationalism and identity may be different, and that
issues of legitimacy or nationalism may not be the most important issues for
governments in Northeast Asia. On the other hand, many countries in Southeast and South Asia (e.g., Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines) were not as
90. Examples include Robert H. Bates, Beyond the Miracle of the Market: The Political Economy of
Agrarian Development in Kenya (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Stephan Haggard
and Robert R. Kaufman, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1995); and Kathleen Collins, Clans, Pacts, and Politics: Understanding Regime
Change in Central Asia, University of Notre Dame, 2001.
91. On Westphalian states, see Krasner, Sovereignty.
formally organizedeven by the mid-twentieth century. For these countries,

the creation of modern nation-states has been a different process than it was in
Europe, as they have had to establish their political and economic institutions
while interacting with states that already have those institutions. These nationstates have been concerned with crafting legitimacy, incorporating ethnic factions, and forging a sense of national identity.
A second major difference is the historical path that Asian nations have
taken as they became incorporated into the larger international system. The
legacy of Western colonialism in Southeast Asia, and Japanese colonialism in
East Asia, remains vivid and continues to inuence relations between states in
Asia and with the West. The Philippines has been indelibly altered because of
its relations with the United States, from its political institutions to its passion
for basketball. China, Japan, and Korea also have complex pasts that involve
war and occupation, while Southeast Asia is one of the great crossroads of the
world, where Indian, Muslim, and Chinese civilizations intersect. These countries also have complex relations with their former colonial rulers and with
each other. And although Asian countries were incorporated more recently as
nation-states, they deal with situations not de novo but rather within a set of
existing global alliances, conicts, and institutions. This may mean that their
foreign relations operate differently than those in the West. Given the very different historical paths these states have taken, and the different set of issues
and circumstances that they have faced, it would be surprising if their foreign
relations did not include some differences as well.
For the eld of international relations in general, and the study of Asian security in particular, the coming years provide an opportunity to make exciting
advances. A vigorous dialogue between theory and evidence holds the promise of enriching all the major international relations paradigms, as well as the
deepening scholarly understanding of Asia. By avoiding an implicitly Eurocentric approach to Asia, and more accurately theorizing and problematizing
international relations in Asia, scholars in the elds of international relations
and Asian security appear poised to make major strides.
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Getting As ia Wrong

Getting Asia Wrong

The Need for New Analytical

International Security 27:4 58

relations is no longer sufcient for a well-trained international relations

Getting Asia Wrong 59

International Security 27:4 60

Korea-U.S. alliance.8 Literature with a cultural or constructivist perspective has

Getting Asia Wrong 61

PostCold War Pessimism over Asia

International Security 27:4 62

Getting Asia Wrong 63

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Getting Asia Wrong 65

International Security 27:4 66

China, Hierarchy, and Balancing

Getting Asia Wrong 67

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tion of whether a more powerful China will be a revisionist or a status quo

Getting Asia Wrong 69

International Security 27:4 70

Balancing versus Bandwagoning and the Role of the United States

Getting Asia Wrong 71

pect. Although the issue of balancing is complicated by the presence of U.S.

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Getting Asia Wrong 73

realisms japan problem

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These explanations are mutually incompatible: Japan cannot be a normal

Getting Asia Wrong 75

Table 1. Japan and Evidence of Great Power Status.

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Figure 1. Great Powers Defense Spending as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product,

Getting Asia Wrong 77

International Security 27:4 78

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International Security 27:4 80

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Getting Asia Wrong 85

formally organizedeven by the mid-twentieth century. For these countries,

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