Forging a regional security community a study of the driving forces behind ASEAN and east asian regionalism 1

Already many plans have been set forth for integrating Asia....Ultimately, the issue is a cultural one in that no such community of nations will be viable without some shared language,

1

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

Whether or not the Asian-Pacific region will be able to develop a framework

for common action, like the European Community, is the key question Already many plans have been set forth for integrating Asia Ultimately, the

issue is a cultural one in that no such community of nations will be viable

without some shared language, some ideas and perspectives the participants

have in common.1

Purpose and Scope of Dissertation

Over the past half century, the steady rise of East Asia has been a notable feature in bringing about a perceptible shifting of the global balance of power.2

1 Akira Iriye, Across the Pacific: An Inner History of American-East Asian Relations

Chicago: Imprint Publications Inc., 2nd edition, 1992, pp 391-92 The study of

“regions” is contested, in terms of definitions and approaches For example, is a

“region” geographically defined or is it a mental construct? Controversial issues include the role of identity, culture, and institutionalisation See Rick Fawn ed

Globalising the Regional, Regionalizing the Global, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press, 2009, pp 5-34

Since the Cold War era in the early 1990s, East Asian regionalism has accelerated The central aim of a regional security community is to eliminate war among its member-states A major issue is whether East Asia is becoming more integrated and peaceful, or whether the threat of inter-state armed conflict remains real As Shambaugh has pointed out, “The dynamics of international relations in Asia are undergoing broad and fundamental changes that are reverberating around the world Primary among the

post-2 David L Shambaugh, Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2005 James F Hoge, “A Global Power Shift in the

Making: Is the United States Ready?” Foreign Affairs, Vol 2, July/August 2004 Hoge argues that global power shifts ‘are rarely peaceful’ Kishore Mahbubani, The

New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East US:

Public Affairs, 2008 John Malcolm Dowling, Future Perspectives on the Economic

Development of Asia Singapore: World Scientific, 2009 N.S Sisodia and V

Krishnappa, Global Power Shifts and Strategic Transition in Asia, New Delhi:

Academic Foundation in association with the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, 2009 The temporal scope of this study is end-February 2010

2

catalysts of change in the region is the rise of China as the engine of regional economic growth, as a major military power, as a significant voice in regional

diplomacy, and as a proactive power in multilateral institutions.”3

‘Regionalism’ refers generally to the top-down state-driven political process

of promoting greater economic cooperation and political integration, either in a geographical area or a mental construct among states sharing common values,

interests, identity, and goals Regional political integration would include, as in the

West European case, the establishment of a common identity, a common

foreign-security policy, plus growing elements of supranationalism The contemporary benchmark of regionalism will be the EU In contrast, ‘regionalization’ refers to the

role played by non-state actors in promoting greater economic linkages and

region-wide production networks in specific regions around the world Akira Iriye posits that

a genuine regional political community must have both material and ideational bases:

shared norms and identities about their visions and common strategic policies for their

common destiny The issue is: to what extent do the East Asian states share such

‘commonalities’ as identity and foreign-security policy? The EU is generally

The rise of East Asia started with Japan’s miracle growth in the 1950s and 1960s, followed by the

‘Asian Tigers’ of Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore in the 1970s Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia followed in the 1980s The late-1990s saw the rise

of China and India By the early-twenty first century, East Asia had emerged as the

third pillar of the world economy, besides that of the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) This dissertation focuses on the main driving forces that are

shaping the evolution of security regionalism in East Asia

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10447.php

3

regarded to have achieved the most advanced form of a security community A Deutschian security community4 is forged when its member-states become so integrated that war among them becomes unthinkable War and peace in International Relations should be conceptualized along a spectrum or continuum If we think of war as being placed at the extreme left hand of the continuum, and peace at the right hand side, then the in-between categories would include militarized border clashes and skirmishes, “gunboat diplomacy”, the setting up of regional and international organizations, regional security complexes,5

security regimes, ‘zone of peace’ and military alliances A ‘zone of peace’ is a geographical region in which armed conflicts and even war are thinkable but unlikely to occur (See Figure 1) A security community can be conceptualized as both a process and an end product The post-Cold War era has seen a revival of regional integration around the world This is the result of increased globalization, an expanding world economy, the rise of economic blocs in the EU and NAFTA in the late 1980s, the rise of China and India in the 1990s, and the spread of democracy and democratization worldwide

4 Karl Deutsch et al Political Community in the North Atlantic Area: International

Organization in the Light of Historical Experience Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1957 According to Deutsch, there are two types of security communities, ‘amalgamated’ and ‘pluralistic’ The United States of America is an example of an amalgamated security community where its constituting entities lose their sovereignty The EU is a pluralistic security community in that its member states retain their sovereignty In this dissertation, we are referring to pluralistic

security communities See also Louise Fawcett and Andrew Hurrell eds Regionalism

in World Politics: Regional Organization and International Order, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1995

5 Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International

Security, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 The idea of a ‘regional

security complex’ is about how geographically proximate states intentionally or unintentionally affect each other’s security – see Johan Eriksson and Mark Rhinard,

“The Internal-External Security Nexus”, Cooperation and Conflict 44 (3) 2009:

243-267 See also Barry Buzan, “Security Architecture in Asia: the interplay of regional

and global levels”, The Pacific Review 16 (2) June 2003: 143-173

4

Figure 1.1 Conceptualization of War and Peace along a continuum

Source

War

: Adapted from Barry Buzan and Ole Weaver, Regions and Powers: The Structure of

International Security Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 David Lake,

“Anarchy, Hierarchy, and the Variety of International Relations”, International Organisation,

50 (1996): 1-36; cited in Emanuel Adler and Patricia Greve, “When security community

meets balance of power: overlapping regional mechanisms of security governance”, in Rick

Fawn ed Globalising the Regional, Regionalising the Global Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

“Gunboat diplomacy”

or overt military displays of power against rivals

Regional organizations

Regional Security Complexes (armed conflicts are thinkable and likely)

Security Regimes (armed conflicts are thinkable and possible)

‘Zone of Peace’

(Armed conflicts are thinkable but unlikely)

Military Alliances

Peace (Security Community, either at the regional or global levels)

5

I will re-examine a claim made by some constructivist scholars that ASEAN is either a nascent security community or is already one (Acharya 2001).6 This assessment is carried out by testing it against the two core features of the classic Deutschian regional security community concept: Existence of a ‘we-feeling’ community; and the rise of a ‘non-war’ community These two features can be sub-divided into the following six components of a regional security community: a Mutual compatibility of values (like democracy), b Strong economic ties and expectations of more (based on a strong sense of mutual fair-play and benefit), c Multifaceted social, political and cultural transactions (strong positive feelings about one another), d Growing degree of institutionalized relationships, e Mutual responsiveness (sensitivity to one another’s legitimate interests), and f Mutual predictability of behaviour, especially about the practice of peaceful settlement of disputes.7

It is important to re-examine this contentious claim because the parties in this scholarly debate (the ‘ASEANists’ and their critics) have for at least the past ten years seemed to talk past one another Both sides have basically stuck to their positions, seemingly choosing to ignore the other party This unhealthy situation needs to be remedied Not surprisingly, the scholarly literature continues to accumulate the work

of both parties, but without any clear resolution as to which claim is a better explanation of the driving forces behind the evolution of regionalism in East Asia The scholarly debate has important implications which extend far beyond a mere

6 Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: The problem

of Regional Order London: Routledge, 2001 The second edition of this book was

published in 2009

7 Ken Booth and Nicholas Wheeler, The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation and

Trust in World Politics, New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2008, pp 191-196

6

intellectual discourse It has implications for the development of regional integration

in different regions, and international relations theory more generally William Tow has suggested that a reason for studying the evolving Asian security order is its

‘regional-global nexus’: “such knowledge is increasingly compelling as international security problems are more and more shaping the dynamics of Asian security politics”.8 Premature and misleading claims need to be highlighted and better still, resolved so that the international relations discipline can be put on the right path In October 2003 the governments of the ASEAN states formally adopted the goal of establishing a three-pillared ASEAN Community, based on the formation of an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community, an ASEAN Economic Community, and an ASEAN Security Community (since re-named as ASEAN Political-Security Community) by the year 2020.9

Second, this dissertation examines a claim by some constructivist scholars that the ‘ASEAN Way’ (characterized by features like consensual decision-making; informality; minimal institutionalization; sovereignty-orientation; non-intervention; and the non-use of force in settling interstate conflicts), also known as the ‘Asia-Pacific Way’ or the ‘East Asian Way’, has played the major role in shaping post-cold war regional integration in Northeast Asia: “…Southeast Asian leaders and intellectuals speak of an ‘ASEAN Way’ of regional cooperation, which is being promoted by them as the organizing framework of multilateralism at the wider Asia-

Precisely because the ASEAN governments have decided on creating an ASEAN Security Community, it is vital that we are clear what

is precisely meant by the notion of a security community

8 William Tow, “Setting the context” in Tow ed Security Politics in the Asia-Pacific:

A Regional-Global Nexus? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p 4

www.asean.org/18741.htm (Accessed on 31 January 2010)

7

Pacific regional level.”10 In other words, the ASEAN elites are seeking to extend the ASEAN Way of cooperative security to Northeast Asian regionalism Peace, security, and regionalism in the geographically-proximate sub-regions of Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia are inextricably linked There are a number of reasons why ASEAN became concerned with regional security trends in post-Cold War Northeast Asia: the closure of US bases in the Philippines in 1992; the unresolved territorial issues in the South China Sea; instability on the Korean Peninsula arising from Pyongyang’s ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons; and Sino-US tensions over Taiwan due to the rise of pro-independence forces there.11

I examine this claim by considering other determinants which may offer better explanations of the growing momentum of Northeast Asian regionalism These include the impact of globalization on state behaviour; the implications of the rise of China; Japan’s quest for ‘normal’ country status and its support for regional multilateralism; the leadership role of a middle power like South Korea, and the shifting US policy in support of an inclusive form of East Asian regionalism, especially since the late-1990s Realists, like Aaron Friedberg, argue that Northeast Asia is ‘ripe for rivalry’, while constructivists like Amitav Acharya tend to be more optimistic At an IISS-Asia Seminar in July 2010, Acharya characterized the evolving

10 Amitav Acharya 2001 op cit Acharya, “Ideas, Identity, and Institution-building:

from the ‘ASEAN Way’ to the ‘Asia-Pacific Way’? Pacific Review 10(3) 1997:

319-46 Timo Kivimaki, “The Long Peace of ASEAN,” Journal of Peace Research 38 (1)

2001: 5-25 Christopher Hughes, “New Security Dynamics in the Asia-Pacific:

Extending regionalism from Southeast Asia to Northeast Asia”, The International

Spectator, 42 (3) 2007: 319-335

11 Jurgen Haacke and Noel M Morada, “The ASEAN Regional Forum: origins and

evolution”, in Jurgen Haacke and Noel Morada eds Cooperative Security in the

Asia-Pacific: The ASEAN Regional Forum, London and New York: Routledge, 2010,

pp 14-15

12 Aaron Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia”,

International Security 18(3) Winter 1993-94: 5-33 Richard Betts, “Wealth, Power

and Instability: East Asia and the United States after the Cold War”, International

Security, 18 (3) Winter 1993-94: 34-77 Thomas Christensen, “China, the US-Japan

Alliance, and the Security Dilemma in East Asia”, International Security, 23 (4)

Spring 1999: 49-80 See also Evelyn Goh, “Great Powers and Hierarchical Order in

Southeast Asia: Analysing regional security strategies,” International Security 32 (3)

2007/8: 113-57 Hans H Indorf, “ASEAN in extra-regional perspective,”

Contemporary Southeast Asia 9 (2) 1987: 86-105 Thomas Berger, “Set for Stability?

Prospects for Conflict and Cooperation in East Asia’, Review of International Studies

Vol 26 (2006): 405-28 G John Ikenberry and Jitsuo Tsuchiyama, “Between

Balance of Power and Community: The Future of Multilateral Security Cooperation

in the Asia-Pacific’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 2 (1) 2002: 69-94

Amitav Acharya, “Between Confucius and Kant: China’s Ascent and the Future of Asia’s Security Order”, IISS-Asia Seminar Series, Singapore, 21 July 2010 http://www.iiss.org/about-us/offices/iiss-asia-singapore/events-activities/iiss-asia-

seminar-series-professor-amitav-acharya)

13 Louise Fawcett and Andrew Hurrell eds Regionalism in World Politics: Regional

Organization and International Order Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995

“ASEAN” scholars also acknowledge this point Peter J Katzenstein, A World of

Regions: Asia and Europe in the American Imperium, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University

Press, 2005 Khong Yuen Foong, “ASEAN and the Southeast Asian Security

Complex”, in David Lake and Patrick Morgan eds Regional Order: Building Security

in a New York, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997

Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston eds Crafting Cooperation: Regional

International Institutions in Comparative Perspective New York: Cambridge

University Press, 2007

9

Rationale for this Study

There are a number of reasons for choosing this topic for investigation First, East Asia is a vital part of the global political economy Trends in East Asian economics, politics, and security are shaping the international security order The growing importance of Asia in the regional and global balance of power is cogently captured

by William Tow in the following manner:

Asia has arguably become the most critical region in an evolving

international order Geopolitically, the region includes three of the world’s

great powers — China, Japan and India — and two others, the United States

and Russia, lie just beyond its peripheries and interact with it extensively

Demographically, over half of the world’s total population is Asian and that

total is forecast to reach 60 per cent by 2050 Economically, it is projected

that China and India alone will account for more than 50 per cent of global

growth between 2005 and 2030 Militarily, four key players in the broader

Asia-Pacific – the US, Russia, China and North Korea — are nuclear

weapons states Asian defence budgets constitute the world’s largest arms

market (US$150 billion in purchases between 1990 and 2002) and the

region’s “defence transformation” programmes are growing.14

Second, the driving forces behind the evolution of East Asian regionalism are deeply linked to the basic issue of war and peace in the international system, and the emergence of a new East Asian security order In this regard, Evelyn Goh posits that there are two key determinants linked to the nature of US-China relations: “Can the

US be persuaded that China can act as a reliable ‘regional stakeholder’ that will help

to buttress regional stability and US global security aims? Can China be convinced that the US has neither territorial ambitions in Asia nor the desire to encircle China, but will help to promote Chinese development and stability as part of its global security strategy?15

14 William Tow ed Security Politics in the Asia-Pacific: A Regional-Global Nexus?

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p 1

Unlike realism, liberal and constructivist approaches argue that war is not necessarily inevitable in an anarchical international system In particular,

15 Evelyn Goh, “Hegemony, hierarchy and order”, in William T Tow ed Security

Politics in the Asia-Pacific: A Regional-Global Nexus? Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2009, p 119

10

constructivist scholars argue that a socially-constructed security community offers a promising way out of the security dilemma Andrew Farrell has pointed out that in the nuclear age, the study of regionalism can make a meaningful contribution to understanding the building up of interstate tensions.16 A study of non-Western regionalism has profound implications for regional order and for the growth of IR theory If ASEAN is able to maintain its unity and makes progress in becoming integrated into a security community, it could facilitate, as pointed out by Acharya and Stubbs, the rise of a distinctive non-Western theory of international relations.17

A study of the driving forces of regionalism is likely to be very useful in

generating knowledge about the nature and unique features of the evolving

East Asian regional security order A study of the driving forces in ASEAN

and Northeast Asian regionalism can facilitate the quest to develop a

non-Western theory of international relations Two books edited by Muthiah

Alagappa (1998, 2003) considered how “international relations theory can

help explain the interrelationships of material power, ideational perceptions

and order-building dynamics within Asia” Another influential and constructive study of Asian security was edited by G John Ikenberry and

Michael Mastanduno and appeared in 2003 as International Relations Theory

and the Asia-Pacific: it focused “on regional power relations as a component

of the global security environment” The Ikenberry/Mastanduno book

highlighted “the ongoing weakness of existing Asian security institutions

relative to their European counterparts It posits that the United States’ early

post-war decision to manage power in Asia not by institutionalisation (along

the lines of NATO) but by hierarchy (through its bilateral system of alliances

there), established path dependency” that has since inhibited the establishment of more robust Asian security institutions (Duffield 2003: 256-

8) Tow pointed out that if this interpretation is correct, American power has

imposed constraints on Asian order-building that impede an Asian capability

to shape and manage regional order autonomously, refuting the arguments of

Kang and others who insist that more region-centric models can be applied to

this process On the other hand, American power endows the Asian region

with “breathing space” for developing more self-reliant institutions and

processes for achieving security.

William Tow has made a similar argument:

18

16 Farrell op cit 2005: 9 See also Bruce Russett, Harvey Starr, David Kinsella, World

Politics: Menu for Choice, Florence, KY, USA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2009

17 Amitav Acharya and Richard Stubbs eds., Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations,

London: Routledge, 2009

18 Tow ed 2009 op cit., pp 5-7

11

Third, this study is important because the evolution of East Asian regionalism is closely related to the changing dynamics of US-China strategic relations, arguably one of the most critical factors affecting international peace and security Jae Ho Chung has put the long term significance of the evolving US-China strategic relationship in the following manner:

…if America were to commit fully to mobilizing its East Asian allies and

friends, a scenario that is not highly likely under President Obama, it

would most likely spark China’s “siege mentality,” which has been

largely dormant under the tenet of “peaceful rise.” That is to say, China

would view such moves by America as provocative and even threatening,

and the nature of US-China strategic interactions might accordingly be

transformed into a zero-sum game, thereby generating fierce competition

in the region and making the option of balancing and bandwagoning

other-excluding behaviour Beijing’s subsequent counter-efforts to curtail

Washington’s alliance management may in turn be construed as a grave

challenge to America’s primacy in East Asia This is certainly not an

ideal situation for the region or any of its member states.19

Fourth, there are important benefits to be derived from a qualitative study of the driving forces behind the European regionalist project and that of East Asia The study of the driving forces and characteristics of East Asian regionalism is important because the region has emerged as the third pillar of the expanding world economy Indeed, some observers, like the veteran Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani (2008), have argued that the global balance of power is increasingly shifting to the East.20

This means that the direction of the evolution of ASEAN and East Asian

19 Jae Ho Chung, “East Asia’s Responses to China’s Rise”, Pacific Affairs, 82 (4)

Winter 2009-2010: 657-675

20 Kishore Mahbubani, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Power to

the East New York: Public Affairs, 2008 For a sceptical view, see Myongsob Kim

and Horace Jeffery Hodges, “Is the 21st Century an ‘Asian Century’? Raising More

Reservations than Hopes”, Pacific Focus 25 (2) August 2010: 161-180

12

regionalism is likely to have a decisive impact on the prospects for war and peace at the global level The rise of China (and India) is steadily shifting the balance of global power and influence Over the past decade, the ASEAN Plus Three states are making strong, determined efforts to enhance their economic interdependence by establishing bilateral and regional-wide Free Trade Areas (FTAs) The rise of China will be a critical factor in the evolution of multilateral East Asian regionalism As pointed out by Ellen Frost: “The East Asian integration movement keeps security cooperation moving forward, particularly with regard to China At present, there appears to be a growing divergence between Asian economic interests, which are closely linked to China, and Asia’s security needs, which are largely met by the US Whether or not these trends blend into a constructive division of labour based on complementary interests depends enormously on how China evolves in the next decade.”21

Not surprisingly, it is important to closely monitor trends in ASEAN’s relations with its more powerful neighbours in Northeast Asia, whether there are perceptions of real mutual gains from increasing cultural, economic, and political-strategic interactions How are regionalisms in Southeast and Northeast Asia related?

Is it reasonable to expect a regional security community to emerge in Southeast and Northeast Asia? Sceptics, especially realists, will argue that this is very unlikely given the great cultural, socio-economic, political-ideological, and military-strategic diversity of East Asia, and the historical legacy of armed conflicts and mistrust arising from the ‘history problem’ among the Northeast Asian states These pessimists are

21 Ellen L Frost, Asia’s New Regionalism Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers 2008

13

likely to consider the possibility of a rise of a regional security community, especially

in Northeast Asia, as very remote

I would instead argue that it is entirely appropriate to analyse the driving forces behind East Asian regionalism, bearing in mind the Western European experience, for a number of reasons There are subtle similarities in the historical evolution of regional cooperation between the two regions Before World War Two, Western Europe also had a history of devastating interstate wars, especially between France and Germany, the two giants of continental Europe Both countries fought three devastating wars within 70 years: in 1870-71; 1914-1918; and 1939-1945 At the end of World War Two, the possibility of a Franco-German political reconciliation seemed distant But the fact is that Franco-German reconciliation of the early-1950s was an important milestone in the acceleration of European economic and political integration, from the formation of the supranational European Coal and Steel Community (1952), the European Economic Community (1957), the European Common Market (1970s), the rise of the EU (1992), and the Euro area (1999) Like Western Europe, Southeast Asian elites since the mid-1970s and their counterparts in Northeast Asia since the second-half of the 1990s, have also shown great interest and determination in accelerating the momentum to forge ever closer economic and political cooperation, as seen in the formation of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF 1994), the ASEAN Plus Three (APT 1997) and the East Asian Summit (EAS 2005), and the ratification of the European Union-style ASEAN Charter at end-2008 Despite their historical enmity arising from Japanese colonialism of Korea and militarism in China, and their current political rivalry for East Asian leadership, Beijing and Tokyo have since the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) of 1997-98 forged closer economic and financial cooperation, as evidenced by the formation in year

14

2000 of the Chiang Mai Initiative (the building up of East Asian financial reserves through bilateral currency swaps in order to prevent a repeat of the AFC meltdown) and the fact that they are each other’s major trading partners Indeed, as Michael Schuman has recently pointed out, the Asian economic miracle is the epic story of Asia’s relentless quest to create wealth, of searching for political stability and prosperity for their peoples.22 Virtually all of East Asia, except for North Korea, has adopted the free-market capitalist economic system to release the energies of their peoples to generate wealth Post-Cold War East Asian elites are pragmatic Intensifying economic interdependence in East Asia and the nuclear age have made the cost of wars very prohibitive for most states in the international system It is in this sense that the threat of war in East Asia and virtually the rest of the world (perhaps except Africa) has become a sunset industry The spread of free-market capitalism and literacy, higher levels of economic development and wealth, and greater experience with state-building and nation-building have contributed to the rise

of more stable states throughout most of East Asia over the past three decades In turn, this is resulting in what Benjamin Miller calls the reduced “war-propensity” in East Asia.23

22 Michael Schuman, The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia’s Quest for Wealth New

York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2009

Miller posits that ‘failing’ or ‘failed’ states are more likely to increase

‘war-propensity’ in a specific region This would appear to make intuitive sense given that political instability and civil war within a specific state is more likely to spill-over into neighbouring states One example was Indonesian President Sukarno’s

belligerent policy of Confrontation against the formation of the Federation of

23 Benjamin Miller, “Between the revisionist state and the frontier state: regional

variations in state war-propensity”, in Rick Fawn ed Globalizing the Regional,

Regionalizing the Global Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp

85-119

of Defence Robert Gates stated in his speech to the Singapore-based Shangri-la Dialogue in 2008: “The United States notes the stirrings of a new regionalism, a pan-Asian desire for new frameworks to encompass and thereby moderate inter-state competition We welcome the resulting search for a ‘new security architecture’…This search will continue…after all, one can hardly suggest that it is appropriate for Europe, the Middle East and Africa to develop regional security institutions, but not for Asia to do so.”25 The greater assertiveness of East Asian elites in seeking to become active managers of the emerging regional order is also a clear reflection of their new-found confidence arising from the region’s rapid economic transformation over the past three decades

24 John Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno: British, American, Australian and New

Zealand Diplomacy in the Malaysian-Indonesian Confrontation, 1961-65, New York:

St Martin’s, 2000 Dewi Fortuna Anwar, Indonesia in ASEAN: Foreign Policy and

Regionalism Singapore: ISEAS, 1994 J.A.C Mackie, Konfrontasi: the Malaysia Dispute, 1963-1966, New York: published for the Australian Institute of

Indonesia-International Affairs by Oxford University Press, 1974

25 Robert Gates, “Challenges to Stability in the Asia-Pacific,” in Tim Huxley and

Alexander Nicholl eds., Perspectives on International Security London: International

Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), 2008 Speech by the US Secretary of Defense at the Shangri-La Dialogue held in Singapore on 31 May 2008

16

Theoretical approaches to the study of ‘Security Communities’

The Deutschian ‘security community’ concept, as applied to the East Asian region, is

as pointed out by Sorpong Peou26, based on the assumption that individual states can relate to one another more positively as their values and interests converge This makes intuitive sense as the forging of ‘we-feeling’ between states is an integral process of establishing truly mutually beneficial relations There are two main theoretical approaches to the study of security communities, the Deutschian and constructivist approaches First, the Deutschian integration theory which focuses on material transactions (termed as “transactionalism’) between states like the quantifiable economic flows of trade, investment, and measures of interpersonal communication such as the volume of mail, telephone calls, or tourism, which are taken as measurable indicators of ‘integration’.27 But the Deutschian concepts of

“integration” and “dependable expectations of peaceful change” can be quite subjective and difficult to measure at the empirical level Throughout the Cold War period, the Deutschian theoretical approach made little headway in the non-Western world because its concepts proved “relatively imprecise, and the concept of security communities has proved difficult to apply in empirical research”, as argued by Gleditsch.28

26 Sorpong Peou, “Security community-building in the Asia-Pacific”, in William T

Tow ed., Security Politics in the Asia-Pacific: A Regional-Global Nexus?,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p 144

27 Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede, All International Politics is Local: the Diffusion of

Conflict, Integration, and Democratization, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan

Press, 2002, p 34

28 Gleditsch, p 35 See also Joseph S Nye ed International Regionalism, Boston,

USA: Little, Brown, 1968 James Rosenau ed., International Politics and Foreign

Policy, New York: Free Press, 1961 Joseph S Nye, “Comparative regional

integration: concept and measurement”, in Fred H Lawson ed., Comparative

Regionalism, England: Ashgate, 2009

17

Second, the constructivist approach, pioneered by Adler and Barnett (1998) focuses on the role of ideas, peaceful norms of interstate behaviour, and ‘collective meanings’ in facilitating the rise of security communities.29 That is, how inter-subjective “meaning” or “identity” can promote the rise of security communities among states In the view of Adler (2008), security communities are “communities of practices” and have developed “dispositions of self-restraint” towards other states.30 The security community concept and the ‘balance of power’ are not mutually exclusive Both concepts assume that the state is the key player in international relations In their study in 2009, Adler and Greve argued that security community and balance of power should be conceptualized as “overlapping regional mechanisms of security governance”.31

The intellectual discourse on ‘security community’ is closely linked to the concept of regional integration theory Deutsch and his associates pioneered the concept; it has to do with the fundamental issue of war and peace in the international system Deutsch’s focus was on the North Atlantic region His focus was not surprising in that European Powers initiated the two most devastating wars in human

This point makes sense because the balance of power and security community concepts arise from an attempt to forge regional peace and security

29 Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett eds., Security Communities, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1998 Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is what States make

of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics”, International Organization, 41:

335-70

30 Emanuel Adler, “The Spread of Security Communities: Communities of Practice,

Self-Restraint, and NATO’s post-Cold War Transformation”, European Journal of

International Relations 14 (2) 2008: 195-230

31 Emanuel Adler and Patricia Greve, “When security community meets balance of

power: overlapping regional mechanism of security governance”, in Rick Fawn ed

Globalising the Regional, Regionalizing the Global, 2009, op cit., pp 59-84

18

history, between 1914 and 1945 The end result of World Wars One and Two was the destruction of Europe as the centre of world power A major assumption behind Deutsch’s study is that inter-state war in the nuclear age will be very costly and even nationally suicidal for all the combatants, and hence great efforts must be made to avoid future inter-state wars, specifically in the Atlantic region

In this dissertation, I take the view that any conception of a ‘security community’, whether Deutschian or constructivist-ideational, must contain the central idea that war among its member-states becomes unthinkable Sixty five years after the end of World War Two, only a few regions in the Western world have established durable pluralistic ‘security communities’: Western Europe, North America (US-Canada), and Australia-New Zealand In 2001, Amitav Acharya32 claimed in a

formal study, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the

Problem of Regional Order, that ASEAN can be regarded as a nascent security

community Acharya’s claim has since been supported by a number of other analysts, including Sorpong Peou in a 2009 study.33

The key difference between a Deutschian security community and a constructivist-security community has to do with the role of ideational forces in shaping inter-subjective, collective meanings about norms, state ‘identity’ and

‘interests” Adler and Barnett made an interesting innovation with their idea of three stages (phases) in the emergence of a durable security community: ‘nascent’;

‘ascendant’; and ‘mature’ Adler and Barnett’s three stages will be reviewed in greater

32 Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia, London:

Routledge, 2001

33 Sorpong Peou, “Security community-building in the Asia-Pacific”, in William Tow

ed Security Politics in the Asia-Pacific: A Regional-Global Nexus? Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2009, p 144

19

depth in Chapter Two.34 But I argue that the first two stages (nascent and ascendant) cannot be regarded as true regional security communities It is meaningless and misleading to speak of a ‘nascent’ security community.35

Another variation in the conceptualization of a ‘security community’ is that advanced by the Indonesian scholar, Rizal Sukma, in his 2003 concept paper outlining the elements of a potential ASEAN Security Community (ASC) At the 2003 ASEAN Summit in Bali, the member governments endorsed an Indonesian proposal

to establish a three-pillared ASEAN Community by the year 2020 (the target date was changed to 2015 at the ASEAN Summit in Cebu in January 2007) The three pillars are an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community, an ASEAN Economic Community, and

an ASEAN Security Community The Indonesian proposal came from a concept paper by Rizal Sukma, a scholar at the Jakarta-based Centre for Strategic and

This is analogous to

‘sovereignty’: there is no such thing as a ‘semi’ sovereign state Thus, only a

‘mature’ security community (in the sense used by Adler and Barnett) can really be regarded as a Deutschian security community A security community must have two core components, that is, a ‘we-feeling’ and a ‘non-war’ community This will be my position when I evaluate a claim made by constructivist scholars that ASEAN is a

‘nascent’ security community in Chapter Three

34 Christopher Roberts has suggested that a ‘security community’ is more

comprehensively defined as a ‘transnational community of two or more states whose sovereignty is increasingly amalgamated and whose people maintain dependable

expectations of peaceful change.” See his ASEAN’s Myanmar Crisis: Challenges to

the Pursuit of a Security Community, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

(ISEAS), 2010, p 4

35 This point was made by Alan Collins in an email correspondence with the author on 9

October 2009: “The stage of being a nascent security community actually does not indicate a security community will form, just that it might So attaching security community to a stage that might, or might not, lead to its creation is misleading.”