Pacific Century Research Articles

The United States as a ‘Pacific Nation’: Imaginary, Performance, and Spatialisation

ABSTRACT In 2012, then United States (US) Secretary of State Hilary Clinton attended the leaders’ meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, the region’s pre-eminent politics and security-focused multilateral institution. At the meeting, Clinton remarked that: ‘I have said that the 21st century will be America’s Pacific century, with an emphasis on Pacific’, as the US is ‘a Pacific nation’. In this article, we analyse how, in the decade since, US government discourse has continued to narrate a social imaginary of the US as a ‘Pacific nation’ and to attempt to bring that imaginary into being through diplomatic performances and government policy. This has been driven by strategic concerns about the increasing activism of China in the Pacific Islands region and has sought to justify the US’s role, build its relationships, and exercise its power in the region. We argue that when the US is front stage and conscious of being observed, it narrates an imaginary of itself as a Pacific nation and performs that imaginary through its diplomatic performances and policy announcements. But the US’s back stage behaviour, including the non-implementation of policies and the spatialisation of the Pacific Islands region through efforts to discipline Pacific Island countries, build boundaries that exclude China, and emplace the US military presence, reveals its true intentions.

Hawaiʻi Triennial 2022: Pacific Century—E Hoʻomau no Moananuiākea. Curated by Michelle Chiu, Miwako Tezuka, and Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick

Hawaiʻi Triennial 2022: Pacific Century—E Hoʻomau no Moananuiākea. Curated by Michelle Chiu, Miwako Tezuka, and Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick

The Indo-Pacific Geostrategy and the Quad: The Pacific Century and China-USA Disputes

In 2011, during the Obama administration (2009-2017), changes in the course of the United States' geostrategy for Asia were named America's Pacific Century; which marks the shift in the US foreign policy towards a focus on the Pacific in the 21st century, and on the great powers present in the region, mainly China. Such actions are mainly based on the geopolitics of Offensive Realism as a strategic premise. In order to oppose the Chinese rise in the interstate system and maintain the primacy of its interests in Asia, the US proposes the Indo-Pacific strategy, in order to balance the Chinese role in the continent; in addition to the formation of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), together with Japan, Australia, and India, to establish a security partnership with those considered the greatest adversaries, in the US view, to Chinese interests in the Pacific. This strategy for Asia seeks to counteract the gradual Chinese preponderance in the Asia-Pacific region. Therefore, this article proposes to analyse the origins and main motivations for the establishment of a structure to contain China in the Pacific by the United States, as well as the Chinese positions and considerations for the region.

Bone and Coral: Ossuopower and the Control of (Future) Remains in Occupied Okinawa

Biopolitical and necropolitical frameworks posit death as sovereignty's limit. However, colonial abuses of indigenous remains suggest otherwise. Taking Achille Mbembe's necropolitics as a point of departure, I draw attention to the extraction of soil containing human remains in the US military base construction of occupied Okinawa. I argue that ossuopower—the right to control remains, both human and nonhuman—is fundamental to colonial territorial expansion. Tracing the stories of bones, I first contextualize the exercise of ossuopower in the history of US settler colonialism and garrison militarism in the Pacific, where bones symbolize sovereign power and claims to land. I then offer a case study of the exercise of the right over remains in Okinawa, from the post–World War II era of US occupation through Reversion-era mainland Japanese development to the current Futenma Airbase relocation. Bones bear the material traces of the changing forces of US militarization and Japanese maldevelopment. In closing, I analyze Tsuyoshi Shima's short story "Bones" to illumine an indigenous Okinawan relation to land and suggest the need for epistemes of care for remains and land. In theorizing ossuopower, I offer a lens to analyze the entanglement of militarization, globalization, and securitization in the Pacific Century.

Bound by War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America's First Pacific Century

Bound by War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America's First Pacific Century

The United States at the Center of the Action

The United States at the Center of the Action

Circulating Soldiers: Asian Military Labor across the American Pacific - Bound by War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America's First Pacific Century. By Christopher Capozzola. New York: Basic Books, 2020. 471 pp. ISBN: 9781541618275 (cloth). - Soldering through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific. By Simeon Man. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. xvi,

Circulating Soldiers: Asian Military Labor across the American Pacific - Bound by War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America's First Pacific Century. By Christopher Capozzola. New York: Basic Books, 2020. 471 pp. ISBN: 9781541618275 (cloth). - Soldering through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific. By Simeon Man. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. xvi, 262 pp. ISBN: 9780520283343 (cloth). - Freedom Incorporated: Anticommunism and Philippine Independence in the Age of Decolonization. By Colleen Woods. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2020. ix, 267 pp. ISBN: 9781501749131 (cloth). - Volume 80 Issue 4

Christopher Capozzola, Bound by War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America’s First Pacific Century

Christopher Capozzola, Bound by War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America’s First Pacific Century

Silent Springs and Biological Annihilations: Re-seeing America's Pacific Century through Environmental Catastrophe

Silent Springs and Biological Annihilations: Re-seeing America's Pacific Century through Environmental Catastrophe

Asia’s Regional Architecture: Alliances and Institutions in the Pacific Century

Asia’s Regional Architecture: Alliances and Institutions in the Pacific Century

Asia's Regional Architecture: Alliances and Institutions in the Pacific Century by Andrew Yeo, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2019, xvi + 242 pp.

Asia's Regional Architecture: Alliances and Institutions in the Pacific Century by Andrew Yeo, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2019, xvi + 242 pp.

Making Sense of Asia's Crowded Space

Making Sense of Asia's Crowded Space Alice D. Ba (bio) Asia has become a crowded space. A region once distinguished by the near absence of cooperative security mechanisms is now distinguished by the opposite. Indeed, once upon a time, this was a region where the only cooperative frameworks purposed for regional security were (1) the bilateral alliances between the United States and a select few regional states and (2) the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which until the 1990s did not even encompass all the subregion's states. In contrast, the region today consists of a mix of overlapping, crosscutting security frameworks of varying shapes and sizes. Andrew Yeo poses two questions in Asia's Regional Architecture: Alliances and Institutions in the Pacific Century, his recent contribution to the debates about East Asian security. The first is how we explain "the robustness of U.S. bilateral alliances with the rapid proliferation of multilateral institutions in the region" (p. 4). The second is, broadly speaking, what Asia's different security arrangements constitute in toto. There is much to recommend about his discussion. I would emphasize two points, in particular. The first is the "historical institutionalist" perspective the book brings to a policy and analytical space that tends to reduce most outcomes to "strategy," especially the geopolitical and functional challenges faced by states. As Yeo argues, the historical institutionalist approach provides ways to highlight continuity, not just change, as well as the means to capture the complex mix of threat perceptions, ideas, institutions, and domestic politics that go into the construction of elite consensus and, in turn, what he and some others call Asia's regional architecture. The second is his effort to offer a framework that accounts for both the U.S. alliance and multistate institutional dimensions of Asian security. In both instances, the book offers ways to bridge existing accounts that tend to be bifurcated between, on the one hand, those who focus on more conventional (i.e., realist) security drivers associated with traditional security frameworks like U.S. alliances and, on the other hand, those who focus on Asia's regional multilateral endeavors, especially their liberal and sociological drivers. This is important because to consider one without the other is not just to offer an incomplete picture of Asian security but [End Page 131] also, arguably, to miss something even more fundamental going on in the region's international politics. A more accurate picture of Asia consequently demands attention to U.S. bilateral alliances alongside the dramatic growth of nonalliance, multistate arrangements. Andrew Yeo's book thus offers a more complete account than most. Yet, I do have questions. In the spirit of discussion, let me raise two. The first concerns the historical institutionalist approach. In a critical respect, this is the main value the book adds, given that previous studies have detailed similar empirics, processes, and logics of layering associated with Asia's institutions and alliances. One of historical institutionalism's more important insights is the way that past commitments (e.g., cognitive, material, institutional, and policy) bear on conceptualizations of interests (individual and collective), the realm of possible options, and, in turn, the choices made. What is, at times, less clear in the discussion under review, however, is what is doing the work. For example, historical institutionalist approaches highlight the effects of "lock-in" and "feedback" effects associated with particular institutional-ecological contexts, but the processes and mechanisms through which that happens in the cases presented by Yeo are often left underspecified beyond the need to be "cognizant" of the security arrangements created earlier. Part of the challenge is one of scope. Yeo's book is inclusive of nearly all of Asia's actors and a wide range of diverse arrangements—from U.S. alliances to six-party talks to China-Japan-Korea trilateralism to ASEAN configurations. I appreciate the author's attempt. It is very difficult to highlight how past commitments constrain calculations and conclusions in each case over time and across actors without closer examination of either the international or domestic negotiation processes or of their accumulating lock-in processes that, in historical institutionalist accounts, bias one outcome over another. This is, again...

Asia's Evolving Security Architecture

Asia's Evolving Security Architecture Ralf Emmers (bio) In Asia's Regional Architecture: Alliances and Institutions in the Pacific Century, Andrew Yeo makes both a conceptual and empirical contribution to the existing literature on the evolving architecture in Asia since the end of World War II. The scholarship on the subject is vast and comprehensive, but it tends to be divided into two sets of approaches that have characterized the international relations of the region: on the one hand, bilateral alliances and other defense ties linking various Asian states to the United States, and on the other, multilateral arrangements mostly driven by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Moreover, the existing literature on the regional architecture has been further divided along economic and security lines, as only a few publications have so far explored the security-economic nexus in Asia. Finally, the literature on the regional architecture is dominated theoretically by constructivism (with its emphasis on norms and community-building) and realism (with its focus on hard and soft balancing). Asia's Regional Architecture is insightful and ambitious. It seeks to bridge the different examples of bilateralism and multilateralism that together form the regional architecture as well as to cover both the economic and security sides of the overall cooperative framework in the region. The empirical evidence is well-known, as bilateralism and multilateralism in Asia have been extensively researched since the end of the Cold War. Other sources have looked at Asia's multilateral architecture in a topical and timely fashion, especially with the architecture's ongoing buildup and rapid evolution. It is true, therefore, that the empirical evidence presented in Asia's Regional Architecture is not particularly new. Yeo contributes to the literature by bringing all of this material together and analyzing it through the application of a less well-known conceptual framework—historical institutionalism. To my knowledge, this has never before been attempted, making the book both original and innovative. The end result is that Asia's Regional Architecture takes a long-term view that enriches the existing analysis and provides a sense of perspective. [End Page 128] The book makes two significant contributions to the existing literature. First, scholarship has for too long studied the hub-and-spoke system and the ASEAN model of cooperative security separately and independently from each other. The author fills this lacuna by exploring the synergies between bilateralism and multilateralism in a historic and systematic way. Second, Yeo goes beyond the standard realism-constructivism debate that has dominated academic discussions of Asian architecture since the 1990s. Historical institutionalism, with its notions of endogenous change, institutional layering, and institutional drift, offers a convincing framework to explain stability and change in the regional architecture. Though some of this has been attempted before on a smaller scale, this book is comprehensive in its attempt to fulfill these objectives. Indeed, Yeo provides a rich, systematic, and detailed account of how the security and economic architecture has evolved since 1945. The importance given to providing a coherent conceptual framework that ties all this empirical evidence together is therefore critical. Furthermore, Asia's Regional Architecture is well-researched. Yeo thoroughly reviews the existing conceptual and empirical literature. He comfortably switches from an in-depth discussion on historical institutionalism to illustrations of economic and security regionalism. Chapter 1 sets the stage by introducing methods and research design and articulating a series of propositions. The structure of the book flows logically and its organization is clear and well-conceived, with the chronological approach adopted in the chapters preventing too much repetition of empirical evidence. The overall writing style is coherent and engaging. Some issues should be mentioned, however. First, as most of us do, Yeo struggles to make sense of the Trump administration and its position on the regional architecture, among other areas of its foreign policy. The book mostly ends with the Obama administration, although the concluding chapter touches on the "America first" principle and Trump's decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trump has so far shown little interest in Asia's architecture, especially in comparison to the Obama administration and its policy of a pivot toward Asia. The wider issue of a possible...

Three Scenarios for Asia's Changing Regional Order

Three Scenarios for Asia's Changing Regional Order Renato Cruz De Castro (bio) Prior to Donald Trump's presidential inauguration on January 20, 2017, several East Asian leaders were concerned about the fate of the Obama administration's rebalancing strategy toward the Asia-Pacific in particular and U.S. foreign policy in the region more generally. They suspected already that President Trump would ignore the region, given that one of his first official decisions was to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Neither was their apprehension assuaged by a subgroup of White House national security officials who tried to soften or rectify the president's statements on a range of issues from the South China Sea to the notorious activities of extremist groups in Southeast Asia.1 The public airing of discord within the administration also generated confusion and doubt about the credibility of U.S. foreign policy commitments in Asia. Trump's decision to withdraw from the TPP, his quirky temperament, his lack of strategy for the Indo-Pacific region, and his personal concern regarding Islamic militancy in the Middle East made analysts and Asian statesmen doubt whether he would heed former president Barack Obama's advice that "engaging in the Asia-Pacific is critical to America's future prosperity and security."2 Along with China's growing economic and strategic clout and increasing tensions in several regional flashpoints, all these factors made many pessimistic about the future of U.S. foreign policy in East Asia and the durability of the regional security order. Andrew Yeo's recent work Asia's Regional Architecture: Alliances and Institutions in the Pacific Century offers a fresh and reassuring outlook on the future of Asia's security order and U.S. foreign policy in the region. In the book, Yeo argues that Asia's regional institutions are more powerful and resilient than the whims of the United States' current, eccentric president. He observes that political leaders' choices and actions [End Page 139] are framed within a larger temporal and historical context, making it difficult for new and inexperienced decision-makers to reverse existing ideas and institutions that were created to articulate states' core interests and values. He maintains that Asia's security architecture reflects greater stability and continuity; thus, it can withstand and even outlive the Trump administration's inconsistent signals regarding long-term U.S. intentions and policy toward the region. Using historical institutionalism as a theoretical framework, the book examines the evolution of Asia's regional security order. Yeo explores the beginnings and development of U.S. bilateral security alliances as well as the modes of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) toward fostering multilateralism in Asia. He observes that while this system of bilateral alliances remains an important means of ensuring national security and regional stability, regional institutional structures are also being used by several states to organize and address emerging security and economic challenges. He assumes that bilateralism and multilateralism are complementary rather than contradictory. This raises two questions: how do bilateral and multilateral institutions interact, and how are old and new institutions layered and integrated? Yeo traces how the emergence of the postwar bilateral alliance system in the 1950s and the formation of ASEAN in the late 1960s led to the creation of the complex patchwork of overlapping bilateral, trilateral, and multilateral institutions that currently constitute Asia's security architecture. However, despite the region's new multilateralism and the proliferation of several patchworks of regional institutions, Cold War relics such as the U.S. system of bilateral alliances and ASEAN remain at the core of this architecture. The book then examines how the Trump administration's actions and China's foreign policy goals can affect the regional order. Yeo notes that despite Trump's erratic statements on U.S. policy toward Asia, the actions of the United States appear to encourage some degree of stability and continuity in the regional architecture. Interestingly, he maintains that China does not actually want to overhaul this regional security architecture. Instead, it wants greater influence in the region and simply seeks to fill the void that the United States and its allies have left. Yeo is skeptical...

Twentieth-Century China as an Object of Thought: An Introduction, Part 1 The Birth of the Century: The Chinese Revolution and the Logic of Politics

This two-part article explores the question of how to constitute China in the twentieth century as an object of thought. This means, first of all, releasing the twentieth century from the position of being a mere object, such that one no longer regards this era as an annotation or appendage to contemporary value systems and ideologies, but instead approaches it as a process in which, passing through the liberation of the object, we may reconstruct a relation of dialogue between ourselves and twentieth-century China. Part 1 proceeds from a temporal analysis of the twentieth century, and Part 2 analyzes this era from a spatial perspective. Part 1 encompasses three sections: first, the long twentieth century, the European fin de siècle, and the century as a trend of the times; second, the conditions of the short century, imperialism, and the rise of the Pacific century; third, the Chinese Revolution and the rise of the short century: unevenness and “the weakest link.” Having pursued an analysis of the global conditions of the imperialist epoch, I assert that any discussion of the birth of the “short twentieth century” must begin with an analysis of “the weakest link.” In seeking the roots of the revolutionary moment, one must look not at the geopolitical contestations in Eurasia, but instead the revolutionary conditions produced by the new situation in Asia (especially the rise of Japan and Japan’s victory over Russia). That is, it was not imperialist wars pure and simple, but instead the “awakening of Asia” called into being by these wars that constituted the multifaceted point of departure for the “short twentieth century.” Thus, from the perspective of temporality, the “short twentieth century” did not, as is often believed, begin in 1914, but rather in the period 1905–1911; from the perspective of spatiality, it did not begin at a single point of beginning, but from a whole series of points of beginning; from the perspective of the moment, it did not begin through destructive wars, but instead was born in a series of attempts to break free of the imperialist system and the archaic regime.

The US policy of “Rebalance” and China’s counter-tactics

In 2011, National Bureau of Asian Research at the US Department of State was “absolutely panicked” that Beijing would understand that American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were drawing down so sought to describe this more positively, and initially they put forward the term “the turn to Asia”. In the article “America’s Pacific Century”, which appeared in the November 2011 issue of Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton used the concept of “Pivot” instead of “Turn”, its content included the statements and deployments towards Asia - Pacific, becoming one of the highlights of the Barack Obama government’s security and foreign policy. This policy achieved initial successful deployments, especially when President Obama announced an agreement for 2,500 US Marines based in Darwin (Australia), and he became the first America President attending the East Asia Summit (in Bali), the “Pivot” became seemingly unknown after those successes. If the US can turn to Asia, it can turn away in the future. Washington needs something long-term and “Pivot” has become “Rebalance” within six months.

СВЯЗЫВАЯ ИНДИЙСКИЙ С ТИХИМ, ИЛИ МОДЕРНИЗАЦИЯ ИНСТРУМЕНТОВ ВЛИЯНИЯ

The article presents the results of research on the officially declared construction of the Indo-Pacific region (Indo-Pacific). Centered around the purpose of the study (identification of the transregional structure), characteristics of historical strategies applied at different times in the basins of three oceans (Atlantic, Pacific and Indian) are drawn, a possible design is schematized, the “connectedness” construct is tested. In the course of a comparative analysis of oceanic complexes, the relief of interference space is described on the basis of the Monsoon Asia countries; its post-Soviet (the political model of Central Asia) and Russian segments (Monsoon regions of the Arctic zone) are revealed. The geographic and political discourse highlights the motives that define the functions of the projected international region. It is proved that as part of the simulation of Indo-Pacific (the global version of the Middle East territorial complex) an iterative approach reflecting the modern ideas of its designers, concerning the development environment of a “world superpower”, is used. The key moments of the conceptual impact of H. Mackinder’s, A. Mahan’s, N. Spykman’s and F. Turner’s theories of the West as a space of North American leadership are noted — in particular, the Turner’s “Pacific Century” of the United States, the Mahan’s provision on the emerging threat in the “Asian Mediterranean”, etc. Relevant similarities between modern methods of risk prevention and recommendations found in the works of the British and North American scientists are made. The applied aspect of the connection strategy, motives and functions of the projected international region are highlighted. Given the need to understand the essence of the process, the definition of a geostrategic region is proposed for the first time, assumptions of its functional role under conditions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (with its paradox of technologies outstripping human ideas) are made.

The North Atlantic anchor: Canada and the Pacific Century

This paper surveys Canada’s ambivalence towards the Asia Pacific, and seeks to put that ambivalence into the broader context of the dominant strategic perspective in Canada that has privileged, and continues to privilege, a North Atlantic focus for Canadian foreign and defence policy. It argues that Canada’s laggardly approach to Asia Pacific diplomacy can be best explained by the widespread perception among Canadians—and their government—that the North Atlantic alliance should remain the key driver of Canadian foreign and defence policy. Indeed, this geostrategic outlook has actually intensified with the election of Donald J. Trump and his unorthodox approach to the transatlantic alliance and the liberal international order. I argue that this North Atlantic outlook, so dominant for so much of Canada’s history, will continue to anchor Canadian foreign and defence policy, making Canada’s engagement in the Asia Pacific more problematic.

Re-examining English and/in the Geography of (World) Literature

Re-examining English and/in the Geography of (World) Literature

Ultimatum Game, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias in Action: The Case of Privatization of PCCW

<p><em>In 2008, Pacific Century Regional Development and China Netcom Corporation, two major shareholders of Pacific Century Cyber Works (PCCW, 00008.hk), proposed privatization of the firm listed in Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Minority shareholders opposed fiercely. The proposal, although endorsed in special shareholders meeting in February 2009, was challenged in Court and overturned, due to allegations of vote-rigging in the shareholders meeting. One interesting aspect of this episode is that, while the offer by major shareholders was very attractive compare to the current share price, it is hard to understand why relatively large percentage of shareholders voted against the offer. The percentage deviates from what often found in ultimatum game experiments, as the offer proposed by the major shareholders was comparable to the median offers in a lot of ultimatum game experiments. This could be understood through loss aversion, which predict a bias towards status quo.</em></p>