Security Stability in East Asia

Abstract

Asian Perspective 40 (2016), 147-160 COMMENTARY Security Stability in East Asia William A. Douglas During 2010 to 2012, considerable discussion took place in policy circles about avoiding a putative US-China competition through an East Asia multilateral balance of power in which nei­ ther power would dominate. The discussion was responding to what many observers saw as the prospect of a geopolitical power struggle (Economist 2014) in which the United States would seek to retain its present naval and air dominance in the western Pacific, and China would, at a minimum, seek to degrade US dominance (Gurtov 2013a) or, at a maximum, regain what many Chinese view as China’s historical place as the Middle Kingdom. These US and Chinese goals might well be incompatible in that, as the Chinese proverb puts it, “one mountain cannot be shared by two tigers.” Both governments have repeatedly expressed their desire to avoid such a “Thucydides trap” by prudent managing of the relationship between an established and a rising power. To President Xi Jinping that means establishing a “new type of relationship between the major powers” (Chen 2014b, 2; Wang 2014). The obvious way to prevent a US-China power struggle is to create a regional balance of power in which neither power would dominate the region. The United States would not try to preserve its post-World War II regional hegemony, and China would not seek to gain hegemony in East Asia. For a stable balance ofpower to emerge requires that no major power involved in the region believes itself strong enough to undertake an expansionist policy at reasonable risk and cost, and each nation feels secure from attack or attempts at domination by any of the others. The idea of a US-China balance of power was floated at a conference in the late 1990s, without much response, by the then US deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific 147 148 Security Stability in East Asia Affairs, Susan Shirk. She suggested that China, Russia, Japan, and the United States could “coordinate to keep the peace in Asia,” following the model of the Concert of Europe (Shirk 2007, 106). Early in 2012 Henry Kissinger called for a “Pacific Community” within which the United States and China could accommodate their respective interests. Zbigniew Brzezinski advocated “a U.S.Chinese -Japanese triangle” with the United States playing the role of “regional balancer,” replicating the role of Britain in Europe in the nineteenth century (Brzezinski 2012, 101-102; Kissinger 2012, 52). Similarly, Andrew Nathan and Andrew Scobell argued that both China and the United States could benefit from “a new equilibrium ofpower, but with a larger role for China” (2012, 46). Australian author Hugh White’s The China Choice (2012) also considers an East Asia balance of power. He argues that it is not feasible for the United States to maintain its military domi­ nance in the western Pacific given China’s burgeoning economic capacity, and therefore says the United States should aim at mov­ ing China to “accept limits to its power and work with America in a new regional order” (White 2012, 81). In 2013 a joint China-US public opinion poll found that Chinese elites favor a “balance of power between Washington and Beijing” (Carnegie Endowment 2013, 3). Perhaps this Chinese view, which implies that there would be no one dominant power in the region, could lead to Chi­ nese support for a broader concert among all the East Asian pow­ ers, adding some specificity to President Xi’s still somewhat neb­ ulous call for a “new type” of great power relationship. Unfortunately, interest in the concert concept seems to have crested. From late 2012 through 2015, books on the East Asian security situation by Timothy Beardson (2013), Steve Chan (2012), Noah Feldman (2013), Jonathan Fenby (2014), Edward Luttwak (2012), Robert Haddack (2014), Thomas Mahnken (2014), Geoff Dyer (2014), Lyle Goldstein (2015), and Daniel Lynch (2015) did not discuss the concert concept. Neither was it covered in articles during the same period by Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner (2014), Elizabeth Economy (2014), Thomas Fingar and Fan Jishe (2013), Avery Goldstein (2013), Mark Leonard (2013), Pei Minxin (2014), Ely...