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1. The concept of hedging and its application to Southeast Asia: a critique and a proposal for a modified conceptual and methodological framework

Author:
Jürgen Haacke
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
In the context of the complex unipolar post-Cold War period that has witnessed China’s reemergence as an economic and military power, small and middle powers are increasingly considered to be hedging. This analysis is especially prevalent in relation to Southeast Asian countries, many of which face security challenges posed by China. However, as the literature on hedging has expanded, the concept’s analytical value is no longer obvious. Different understandings of hedging compete within the literature, and there are many criteria by which hedging is empirically ascertained, leading to confusion even over the basic question of which countries are hedging. In response, this article presents a modified conceptual and methodological framework that clearly delineates hedging from other security strategies and identifies key criteria to evaluate whether smaller powers are hedging when confronting a serious security challenge by one of the major powers. This framework is then applied to Malaysia and Singapore.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Post Cold War
Political Geography:
China, Malaysia, Asia, Singapore, and Southeast Asia

2. Japan’s new assertiveness: institutional change and Japan’s securitization of China

Author:
Kai Schulze
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
In recent years, Japan's foreign policy elite has started to increasingly securitize China in their security discourse. The harsher tone from Tokyo is widely evaluated as a direct reaction to China’s own assertive behavior since 2009/2010. Yet, the change in the Japanese government’s rhetoric had started changing before 2010. In order to close this gap, the present article sheds light on an alternative causal variable that has been overlooked in the literature: a change in Japan’s security institutions, more specifically, the upgrade of the Defense Agency to the Ministry of Defense, in 2007. While utilizing discursive institutionalism and securitization-approaches, the present article demonstrates that a strong correlation indeed exists between the institutional shift and the change in Japan’s defense whitepapers in the 2007–10 period. It thus opens up a research avenue for the further scrutiny of the hitherto understudied but significant causal linkage in the study of contemporary Japanese security policy toward China
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Foreign Policy, and Government
Political Geography:
Japan, China, and Asia-Pacific

3. Crouching tiger, lurking dragon: understanding Taiwan's sovereignty and trade linkages in the twenty-first century

Author:
Alexander C. Tan and Michael I. Magcamit
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This paper seeks to explore and explain the process through which Taiwan utilizes free trade – both at multilateral and bilateral levels – in enhancing its shrinking de facto sovereignty against the backdrop of ubiquitous 'China factor' in the twenty-first century. It argues that China's sinicization project creates a scenario wherein increasing cross-strait stability ironically leads to decreasing de facto sovereignty for Taiwan. Due to this existing cross-strait security dilemma, Taiwanese leaders are being forced to preserve the island's quasi-independent statehood due to fears of losing its remaining de facto autonomy over domestic and foreign affairs. In essence, Taiwan chooses to be de facto free by remaining de jure unfree. Taiwan's sovereign space, therefore, becomes a pivotal referent object of its national security policy and strategy. Balancing between the two paradoxical interests of enhancing sovereignty while maintaining the Chinese-dominated cross-strait status-quo underlines the relentless games, changes, and fears that Taiwan confronts today.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
China and Taiwan

4. The Economy-Security Nexus in Northeast Asia

Author:
Motoshi Suzuki
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
The Northeast Asian region has attracted at least two types of international relations analyses. A first type focuses primarily on military and hard security and investigates changes in states' power and the politics of coercion, balance of power, and alliances. A second type is interested in cross-border economic activities, regional interdependence, and institutionalization and then examines the states' policies of development, trade, money, and technology, as well as the politics of institutional building and reform. T.J. Pempel's edited volume synthesizes the two approaches by viewing the mutually shaping interactions between economics and security as a major feature of regional politics. The book is a fruit of collaborative efforts by American, Japanese, South Korean, and Chinese scholars who provide in-depth analyses of recent developments in the region.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Reform
Political Geography:
Japan, China, America, Asia, South Korea, and London

5. Institutions and the great power bargain in East Asia: ASEAN's limited 'brokerage' role

Author:
Evelyn Goh
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This article argues that in the post-Cold War strategic transition in East Asia, ASEAN has helped to create a minimalist normative bargain among the great powers in the region. The regional norms propagated through the 'ASEAN way', emphasizing sovereignty, non-intervention, consensus, inclusion, and informality were extremely important in the initial stages of bringing the great powers – especially China and the United States – to the table in the immediate post-Cold War period. During this time, ASEAN helped to institutionalize power relations legitimizing the role of the great powers as well as the 'voice' of smaller states in regional security management. But the process of institutionalizing great power relations contains further steps, and what ASEAN has achieved is well short of the kind of sustained cooperation on the part of the great powers that is so necessary to the creation of a new stable regional society of states. Moreover, ASEAN has provided the great powers with a minimalist normative position from which to resist the more difficult processes of negotiating common understanding on key strategic norms. At the same time, ASEAN's model of 'comfortable' regionalism allows the great powers to treat regional institutions as instruments of so-called 'soft' balancing, more than as sites for negotiating and institutionalizing regional 'rules of the game' that would contribute to a sustainable modus vivendi among the great powers. As such, ASEAN's role is limited in, and limiting of, the great power bargain that must underpin the negotiation of the new regional order. This is a task that the regional great powers (the United States, China, and Japan) must themselves undertake.
Topic:
Security and Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, and East Asia

6. East Asian relative peace and the ASEAN Way

Author:
Timo Kivimäki
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
East Asia has experienced a drastic decline in incidences of warfare and has had exceptionally low levels of battle deaths after 1979. However, East Asian peace had already begun in 1967 inside ASEAN. Is it possible that East Asian peace began in ASEAN and spread to the rest of East Asia? This is the question that this article aims to tackle by showing the association between a reasonable and plausible explanation, the ASEAN Way, and East Asian peace after 1979. The argument about the role of the ASEAN approach in the pacification of East Asia is based on an examination of the patterns of frequency of conflicts, numbers of battle deaths and conflict termination. In this kind of examination, it seems that the recipes for peace in East Asia after 1979 are similar to those of ASEAN after 1967, and that their relationship to conflicts was also very similar.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
China and East Asia

7. Power and Security in Northeast Asia: Shifting Strategies

Author:
Yumi Hiwatari
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This book highlights the shifting power structure of Northeast Asia. In the introduction, the editor considers a variety of issues in perspective, and power transition, economic interdependence, and democratization are viewed as key concepts in analyzing the radical transformation of the region. The impact of rising China on the power balance of the region is substantial, and the dynamic growth of the economy and the resulting growth of interdependence are the distinguishing characteristics of the region. The region is witnessing an ongoing process of democratization, possibly inviting an unpredictable future. While realistic predictions tell us that these dynamic changes will bring about armed conflicts among nations, the authors however conclude that power politics in Northeast Asia indicates 'an uneasy but resilient “equilibrium” of spatially and temporally asymmetric power relations' (p. 279). This equilibrium is termed uneasy because two elements of revisionism stand out, one being the Korean Peninsular and the other being Sino-Taiwan relations. The players involved all have unilateral revisionist incentives, but the likelihood of small crises escalating into major armed conflicts is remote, and their 'hedged engagement' strategy should control tensions and not allow them to spiral.
Topic:
Security and Democratization
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, and Northeast Asia

8. Hierarchy and the role of the United States in the East Asian security order

Author:
Evelyn Goh
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
To construct a coherent account of East Asia's evolving security order, this article treats the United States not as an extra-regional actor, but as the central force in constituting regional stability and order. It proposes that there is a layered regional hierarchy in East Asia, led by the United States, with China, Japan, and India constituting layers underneath its dominance. The major patterns of equilibrium and turbulence in the region since 1945 can be explained by the relative stability of the US position at the top of the regional hierarchy, with periods of greatest insecurity being correlated with greatest uncertainty over the American commitment to managing regional order. Furthermore, relationships of hierarchical assurance and hierarchical deference help to explain critical puzzles about the regional order in the post-Cold War era.
Topic:
Security and Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, India, and East Asia

9. Social States: China in International Institutions, 1980–2000

Author:
Rosemary Foot
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This is an impressive book that makes several major contributions – theoretically, empirically, and pedagogically. Written in a robust and engaging style it distils a wide range of literature in the social sciences, develops the concept of socialization, and links it firmly and productively with explanations of China's foreign policy views and behavior in international institutional settings. China's policy is presented predominantly as a case for understanding how socialization works, but that statement downplays the extent to which, in Johnston's detailed treatment of China, not only is the concept of socialization fundamentally enriched, but also our understanding of aspects of China's behavior and thinking. International Relations scholars will benefit as much from reading this book as those predominantly interested in charting the basis for change in China's security policies.
Topic:
Security and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
China