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The partial Good Samaritan states: China and Japan in the international relations of autocracy and democracy

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The partial Good Samaritan states: China and Japan in the international relations of autocracy and democracy

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Content The Partial Good Samaritan States: China and Japan in the International Relations of Autocracy and Democracy by Xiangfeng Yang _____________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the USC Graduate School University of Southern California In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS) May 2014 Copyright 2014 Xiangfeng Yang 2 Acknowledgements This dissertation cannot possibly have come to fruition without the kindness and wisdom of the people I am so proud to call my mentors. Over the years Professors Patrick James and Saori N. Katada have been my role models as much as sources of support, always encouraging, always responsive with all kinds of requests, and considerate in every possible way. Prof. James has read dozens of my drafts, giving prompt and poignant feedback along the way. His advice has served me well intellectually and professionally. Prof. Katada introduced me to Japan, and has cleared countless administrative hurdles since my first year at USC. I got to know Professor Nicholas Onuf on a chance occasion, and was pleasantly surprised that he agreed to join my dissertation committee. A true sage, every sentence he utters deserves deep reflection. Professor Brett Sheehan responded to my abrupt email request for assistance without hesitation, and has been patient and encouraging ever since. To all of you, I am perpetually grateful. I also want to express my deep gratitude to the faculty and staff associated with the Political Science and International Relations (POIR) program and other units of USC —the late George Totten, Stanley Rosen, Robert English, John Odell, Daniel Lynch, Doug Becker, Jeffrey Sellers, Steve Lamy, John Wills, Eric Heikkila, Apichai Shipper, Linda Cole, Cathy Ballard, Jody Battles, Karen Tang, Veri Chavarin. The East Asian Studies Center, the US-China Institute and the Center for Transpacific Studies—all at USC—have generously supported my research. For that, I want to thank Grace Ryu (EASC), Clay Dube (USCI) and Viet Nyuyen (CTS). I also want to thank Professor Tanaka Takahiko for making my stay at Waseda University a memorable experience. My time at the University of British Columbia and the Carter Center was fairly short, but I want to thank Paul Evans, Brian Job, Yves Tiberghien and Liu Yawei for making it possible. The Japan Foundation’s Kansai Center and Japanese Studies Program, Waseda University, and the International Council for Canadian Studies provided financial assistance at various stage of my research. Professor Kathleen Hartford was my first mentor. I could not have come this far without her caring warmth and guidance. I would also like to thank the many friends whose friendship and camaraderie has made this journey less lonely—Peter Marolt, Elizabeth Martin del Campo, Li Ying, Kate Svyatets, Indira Persad, Jeffrey Fields, Christina Wagner Faegri, Jarrod Hayes, Maria Armoudian, Jenifer Whitten-Woodring, Jason Enia, Willy Jou, Eric Blanchard, Wang Shengzhe, Micha Ramakers, Xiao Disheng, Yi Yonggang, Aya Shiota, Miwa Kawamura, Ryoko Sei, Eiko Fujii, David D. Yang, Li Liwei, and Ngoc Thu Luong Thi. I dedicate this work to my teachers and my family back in China. 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................ ………..2 Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………….4 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..5 Chapter 1. International Norms and the Socialization of the Leviathan: Why We Must Hear from the State…………………...……………………………………..…….14 Chapter 2. Visions of World Order in Competition: Nationalism in between Liberalism and Realism …………………………………………………………………61 Chapter 3. China and the Fallacy of Status Quo and Revisionism: Why Nationalism is the “Third Way”….……………………………………………………………………..143 Chapter 4. The China Model away from Home: Testing the Myth of Beijing’s Export of Authoritarianism ……………………………….……………………..……190 Chapter 5. A Facade of Liberal Internationalism: The Democracy Deficit in Japanese Approach to Global Governance ………………………………………………...……244 Chapter 6. Democracy as the Missing Link: The Logic of Japan’s Participation in Global Governance…………………………………………………………………..….279 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….……323 References………………………………………………………………………….…....332 4 Abstract In this research I aim to compare, contrast and explain the varied manner with which two Asian powers—China and Japan—are involved in international affairs. I take note of their new-found interests in two main good-Samaritan initiatives in global governance since the late 1980s—peacekeeping in war-torn regions and economic assistance to poorer countries—but turn my attention to their action or non-action toward regime promotion. Specifically, how does Japan relate to the enterprise of democracy assistance in view of its overall international activism and peer pressure from Western allies? And, is China indeed promoting, or will it promote, its trademark capitalist authoritarianism abroad, as many in the West fear? This project takes a holistic and comprehensive view of states’ participation in international society. Instead of asking why states act in a certain way, I ask why they have shown such a discrepancy in light of their proactivity in some areas and passivity in others. In the case of Japan, I contrast its lukewarm attitude toward democracy promotion—a linchpin foreign policy program in line with the liberal internationalist doctrine—with its enthusiasm in human security and international peacekeeping missions. I argue that Japan’s post-Cold War diplomatic activism, manifested in its embrace of peace and development initiatives as well as some norm-conforming behavior, was spurred by Japanese nationalism instead of liberal values. For China, I make the case that a deliberate attempt to thwart democratic advances overseas is most likely to transpire in Burma/Myanmar, where its entrenched geopolitical and economic interests have been thrown in peril by the top-down democratization that has been ongoing since 2011. As a matter of fact, Beijing’s unwillingness to intervene in Burma for its own good is thus a negation of the much-hyped Chinese autocracy promotion thesis. The juxtaposition of China’s dutiful observance of an increasing number of international norms against and uncompromising stance toward territorial disputes in East and South China Seas, I argue, is again the work of nationalism that injects a great deal of inconsistency and contradictions into China’s international behavior. 5 Introduction The world is standing at the crossroads of the past and the future. In no greater measure our past still looms large at present: inter-state wars and conflicts owing to disputes and tensions over territory, religion and ethnic animosities break out with fairly great frequency; the fluctuating distribution of wealth and capabilities, exemplified by the recent global financial and economic crises and the rise of non-Western powers including China and India, gives rise to continued balancing and realignment among great and regional powers; just as transnational issues ranging from environmental degradation, global warming, pandemic diseases remain intractable threats of terrorist attacks and the spread of thermonuclear weapons, grab bigger headlines whereas, a skyrocketing number of cyber-attacks and emerging cyber-warfare poise to wreak no smaller havoc without even firing a shot. The world seems as precarious as ever. Looking back, however, we could have been in bigger danger. For one thing, realist scholars predicted with confidence twenty-some years ago that, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the bipolar world order, European powers were revert back to their time-honored realpolitik tradition that would render the continent exceedingly war-prone (Mearsheimer 1990), while sustained peace in Asian could be equally illusive for the same reason (Friedberg 1993). Luckily, such a bleak picture in most part failed to materialize, as European integration accelerated on multiple fronts and East Asians learned to live together in spite of their mutual suspicion and distrust. More comforting, though, is the accelerated proliferation of myriads of conscience-driven individuals, 6 intergovernmental organizations, and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that avidly propagate angelic ideals and practical knowledge of democracy, human rights, justice and environmental protection— internationally as well as within national boundaries (Clark 2001; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Pevehouse 2005). Transmitting and transplanting international norms, commonly defined as standards of behavior implicitly assumed as positive or progressive, those do-good people and organizations are invariably referred to as norm entrepreneurs or agents. A multiplicity of studies in the last two decades detailing how dynamic interactions among actors resulted in a certain degree of convergence in identity or interest have lent tremendous empirical and theoretical credence to a burgeoning constructivist literature and an unusually rosy outlook of contemporary world politics. Together, they have demonstrated not only that ideas matter and interest and identity can be redefined, but also that progressive change is possible, because norms can causally impact a recipient actor and direct it toward a more desirable course of action. Idiosyncratically, at the receiving end of those norm cycles are usually nation-states or national governments, which are typically portrayed as reactive and defensive, but can nonetheless become responsive when confronted by international norms and their domestic or international representatives. Much as I appreciate the nuanced, cautiously optimistic outlook the vast norm-based literature has laid bare, this dissertation is focused on nation-states instead as agents of change. While it is certainly true, that, more often than not, they have to be pushed and pressured into instituting a more humane and responsible policy contra a specific issue domain, as in the case of Western powers taking a tougher stand against the 7 apartheid regime in South Africa after intense lobbying by transnational activists (Klotz 1995b), states can also go beyond behaving themselves on their own volition and take the initiative to be part of the class of norm entrepreneurs in international society. In so doing, they project some morally admirable and progressive values into international space, in conjunction with concrete policy programs in their conscientious efforts to engineer a better world in accordance with their self-interest. They are actively involved in peacemaking and peacekeeping activities, doling out development assistance and humanitarian aid at times of disasters, and facilitating the democratization process of other polities. Of those do-good states Canada is a shining example. Insofar as the idea that “the world needs more Canada” was originated as a sales pitch for attracting more tourists, the image struck the right chord with much of the rest of the world and was concurred by such dignitaries as then U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anna and Bono, some of whom would even use the phrases verbatim. 1 Besides Canada, Sweden, Norway and a few other Nordic countries are other exemplars of good Samaritan states whose foreign policy is for the most part underpinned by a shared ideational framework known as liberal internationalism (Ingebritsen 2002). Less innocuous than these middle or lesser powers, because of their global ambition and power projections, the United States, Britain and France too, have taken liberal internationalism to a new level—certainly the goals and objectives, if not in 1 “How much Canada does the world need? Follow in our footsteps, just hands off our wallets”, accessed 07/16/2012, http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/06/28/the-world-needs-more-canada-but-how-much-is-enough/; Jane Taber, The Globe and Mail (Canada) November 15, 2003 Saturday “Bono says he'll be a 'pain' about Africa; Funny, articulate rock star praises Canada's international presence”; Kofi Annan, “A Pillar of Support: Kofi Annan's Address to the Canadian Parliament” March 9, 2004, accessed 07/16/2012, http://www.ploughshares.ca/content/pillar-support-kofi-annans-address-canadian-parliament; 8 terms of the means and tactics they employ, a subject matter I will delve into in later chapters. These countries, as we know it, all share a common cultural lineage broadly defined, being geographically Western, traditionally Christian, politically aligned and all. At the same time, states working to advance those—or some of those—liberal international causes do not always fit this category of Western democracies. Notably, both China and Japan in recent decades have emerged as avid participants in international peacekeeping missions and generous suppliers of economic aid and credit to less developed countries. Insofar as they choose to specialize in selected good-will missions, they can be considered partial good Samaritan states nonetheless. That aside, there are two main issues that stand out in the two Asian powers’ relations with international society at large. First, in terms of do-good, or for that matter, do-bad, Japan is expected to follow the American lead by actively engaging in democracy assistance, whereas China, with its power rising so fast, is suspected of working to subvert democratic governance abroad. Second, their efforts to engineer world peace and prosperity notwithstanding, both countries have seen a resurgence of nationalism—an anathema of liberal internationalism—that has transpired into headline-grabbing incidents to the detriment of their national image. This project, therefore, focuses on China and Japan. At the risk of appearing biased against non-Western states, I intend to use the paragon of liberal internationalism to serve as a foil against which they reconsider their interests and responsibilities in regional and international affairs. I take note of their new-found enthusiasm in two main good-Samaritan initiatives in global governance since the late 1980s—peacekeeping in 9 war-torn regions and economic assistance to poorer countries—but turn my attention to their action or non-action toward regime promotion. I ask, specifically, how does Japan relate to the enterprise of democracy assistance in view of its overall international activism and peer pressure from Western allies? And, is China indeed promoting or will it promote its trademark capitalist authoritarianism abroad, as many in the West fear? This work bridges two divergent research genres vis-à-vis China and Japan’s international behavior that contribute to somewhat contradictory perceptions. That is, on the one hand many emphasize the upsurge of nationalism in both countries that is at times assertive, aggressive and even virulent; on the other hand, scholars of norms and international institutions have shed positive light on their convergence with international rules and conventions in a wide range of policy areas. Epistemologically, however, both sides have a tendency to select on the dependent variable—that is, choosing cases favorable to their prospective theoretical framework—without engaging each other. In particular, norm-based researchers often times take a rather binary view of state’s relations with international norms—in terms of acceptance and/or rejection—with little consideration of states themselves being users and agents of norms, whereas scholars of nationalism center almost solely on its negative and pernicious implications on states’ intentions and behavior. This project, instead, takes a holistic and nuanced view of states’ involvement in international society. In setting them up as change agents, I am agnostic in terms of the nature and occurrence of change. Change can be positive (democracy) and negative (autocracy), while the role of change agents may be sought by them or forced on them by 10 external pressure. Instead of asking why states act on a certain way, I ask why they have shown such a discrepancy in light of their proactivity in some areas and indifference in others. In the case of Japan, I contrast its lukewarm attitude toward democracy promotion—a linchpin policy of the liberal internationalist doctrine—with its enthusiasm in human security and international peacekeeping missions. For China, I make the case that a deliberate attempt to thwart democratic advances overseas is most likely to transpire in Burma, where its entrenched geopolitical and economic interests are at risk due to the top-down democratization that has been ongoing since 2011. As a matter of fact, Beijing’s unwillingness to intervene in Burma for its own good is thus a negation of the much-hyped Chinese autocracy promotion thesis, whereupon this sovereignty-above-interest approach is juxtaposed against its observance of an increasing number of norms and uncompromising stance toward territorial disputes in East and South China Seas. In trying to understand these behavioral variations that both China and Japan have amply exhibited, I look at how the dynamic interactions between the international normative context and domestic worldviews shape actual foreign policy choices. In Chapter 1 will first examine the socialization literature that has been widely adopted to analyze norm adoption. It is, I argue, flawed on several accounts: researchers seeing from this outside-in angle often conceptualize socialization as a one-way street; they tend to denigrate and minimize the role of the state in the process and as such, it is invariably states that are socialized by international norms; they commit the mistake of taking the part as the whole by extrapolating states’ socialization from that of state agents’ by international norms in a much more isolated and institutionalized context, an ontological 11 and epistemological problem exemplified by the perspective that purports to use “international institutions as social environment” (Johnston 2001b). As a result, the power and impact of norms and institutions on states is often exaggerated, because they neglect to investigate a priori the broad contours of states’ motivation and behavioral logic. In other words, by limiting its purview to adoption or rejection of norms by state actors, the socialization perspective neglects to consider the possibility that states too can utilize, manipulate and transform the normative context they are in—no longer as norm-takers only, but also as norm-entrepreneurs themselves. It is therefore imperative that we examine in the context of states’ domestic foreign policy debate how their major worldviews come into contact with external expectations and international norms and produce policy outcomes. In this respect, there are three such overarching “grand thoughts” held by political and policy elites that “suffuse” other factors such as elite politics, domestic political ideology, and international power distribution (Nau and Ollapally 2012 4): liberalism, realism and nationalism. How these grand thoughts conceptualize national interests and international strategies will be examined in Chapter 2. Liberalism and realism have long been understood as two fundamental theories of international relations that are diametrically opposed to each other. Upon a closer look, there is actually a vast grey area between them occupied by nationalism, which stretches between liberal universalism, and realist parochialism. Marxism and religion are two other ideological frameworks that have universal pretensions and monumental impact on international relations. They each have had fierce battles with liberalism, realism and nationalism. Nevertheless, the former has diminished drastically since the end of the Cold 12 War, whereas the latter deserves to be examined in a region where it is potent. In settling on liberalism, realism and nationalism, the worldviews that intellectually underpin a country’s international conduct, this project presumes an environment where secularism reigns supreme. Chapters 3-6 are devoted to studying Chinese and Japanese international relations. In Chapter 3, I question the propriety of using the status quo/revisionism binary on China, highlighting the uncertainties and disruptions that nationalism brings into foreign policy. Chapter 4 takes the charge of China exporting authoritarianism seriously, using China’s reactions to a democratizing Burma as a case study. Chapter 5 looks at Japan’s role in international democracy assistance against the broad context of its push for human security and other international programs. Chapter 6 then seeks to understand the logic of Japan’s international activism that leaves democracy behind. I find state nationalism playing critical role in both Chinese and Japanese foreign policy. My study of Japan’s reluctant entanglement with US-led democracy promotion demonstrates that its international activism in the last two decades is not underpinned intellectually by liberal internationalism. Rather, much like that of China, Japanese diplomatic expansion has been in fact propelled and informed fundamentally by realism and nationalism. That Beijing is at times flexible, at times hardline in its dealings with its maritime neighbor while ruling out intervention in Burma—as mandated by realism—in a take-it-for-granted manner can only be explained by nationalism. Indeed, in both situations Chinese nationalism is intricately tied to its conception of state sovereignty—it does not tolerate others’ violation of Chinese sovereignty, nor does it want to violate others’—such 13 that it acts like a defender and agent of the principle of sovereignty in international relations when its sanctity is increasingly under attack from all sides. Not only does nationalism—because of its particularism—explains why Chinese authoritarianism is self-contained rather than expansive, it also why Beijing has warmed up to certain norms and rules in trade and security areas. Nationalism is highly contingent, but can nonetheless be very potent. Obviously, the interlacing of nationalist thinking and realist calculations is behind Japan and China’s military buildup. For Japan, especially, its heightened avidness in joining international peacekeeping efforts is part of a concerted attempt by conservative elites to use international norms to justify, domestically as well as internationally, a more prominent role for its military that had been stunted by its pacifist constitution. That said, realism, understood as states’ pragmatically weighing cost and benefit in political and military terms, cannot explain why they venture into non-material spheres of international politics such as reputation, altruism, legitimacy and soft power. Japan’s effort to advance its version of human security is such a case that realism has little interest in and cannot explain. By extension, realist policy prescriptions are often derailed and supplanted by nationalism, which is as multifarious as it is amorphous. Nationalism thus contributes too much of the “unevenness” and asymmetry in their level of interests and participation in various security and policy programs. 14 Chapter 1 International Norms and the Socialization of the Leviathan Why We Must Hear from the State Students of international relations these days can hardly avoid talking about norms. By definition the norm-talk denotes a value-laden and politically charged atmosphere where states interact with one another. Understood as “collective expectations for the proper behavior of actors with a given identity” (Katzenstein 1996b 5), norms are obviously important, more so as the world we live in continues to move towards a rule-based system. Norms also implies some sort of action and process about how the abnormal can be “normalized” into conforming to existing norms. For enthusiasts of norms in the study and practice of international politics, this normative context is often likened—implicitly or explicitly—to the society where infants are taught to about societal mores and cultural values so that as they grow they will diligently observe expectations commensurate with their age group they are in. Indeed, there has been a plethora of scholarship—and expanding fast—documenting how states can be socialized into the “normal” category. Whereas families, schools and other institutions are where infants are socialized, a certain “world culture” or international institutions are the main venue where nation-states are cultivated. The broader message of this line of research is that states, the Leviathan, can be tamed. In the grand scheme of things, several major developments contributed to the proliferation of norms and scholarly study of them. The first is the rise of international organizations and institutions that, in spite of realists’ denigration of their utility, have actually made some difference, even at the high time of the Cold War. The norms, rules 15 and decision-making procedures in an institutionalized environment subsequently became subjects of fascination for liberal institutionalists. In the wake of the end of the Cold War, realpolitik appears to have ceded to a plethora of international law, norms, rules and procedures—not that power politics has disappeared from the horizon—wherein more states turn their attention to the pursuit of legitimacy, respect and prominence as well as soft power in international society. Tapping into the great many historical and contemporary instances of norms shaping and impacting on the contours of states’ behavior, constructivists argue that, contra neorealists and neoliberals, state interests are not fixed. They made great theoretical strides by dwelling on what was missing in previous generations of scholarships, which, according to Jeffrey Checkel, is “the content and sources of state interests and the social fabric of world politics” (Checkel 1998). Norms, reside in both domestic and international settings. Some domestic norms, most notably antimilitarism prevalent in post-World War II Japan and Germany, shaped national identities and exerted powerful normative and political constraints on the state in a way that made the pacifist course of action naturally unchallenged and unchallengeable, an abnormality that realists have a hard time explaining (Berger 1998). It is norms coming from the exterior of state polity, however, that are at the center of much of the related IR research. As the rich empirical studies stand, the state, which was believed to a self-interested entity, is at the center of the storm. International norms have made the Leviathan gentler and more benevolent. They are known to have compelled and convinced states to take the welfare of foreign nationals into their respective policy domain (Klotz 1995a; Finnemore 1996a), refrained from behaving in a certain way even at times of war 16 fighting (Sandholtz 2008; Legro 1996), erected prohibitive barriers to their exercise of the nuclear and chemical options in their pursuit of interests in international politics (Price 1997; Tannenwald 1999), and even taught them how to calibrate their bureaucratic makeup (Finnemore 1993, 1996b). The process in which states come into contact and interact with others and the environmental surroundings is often referred to as socialization, which, according to conventional definition, performs the function of “inducting actors into the norms and rules of a given community” (Checkel 2005 804). In effect such definition is a constructivist description of how states become what they are. Not that those scholars of theoretical streams have nothing to say about socialization. They do, except that they conceptualize it in a rather mechanistic way. In Iain Johnston’s telling, neorealists equate socialization with “selection and competition” through which states unaccustomed to balancing and bandwagoning are “weeded out” of the anarchical system. Liberal institutionalists, much as they put a premium on the institutional setting that impacts the way states deal with each other, are nonetheless unconcerned with—unlike constructivists—whether the environment has a bearing on their preference and identity (Johnston 2001a). That said, where norms are the locus of the research, most expect some behavioral modification from the state as a result. At the same time, as the substantive scope of the norm-related research continues to expand, many of the concerned researchers’ conceptual assumptions and ideological dispositions remain implicit and unexplored. This chapter therefore aims to fill the gap by zeroing in on some of these problems. I begin by putting some of the theoretical precepts such as “world culture” under the microscope. Much of 17 the norm literature is liberal, I contend, and can be very political, with little heed paid to power politics that underpins the liberal moral structure. I then move on to more recent research intended to more rigorously demonstrate how norms become effective in transforming states’ identity and behavior. Not only am I critical of the way scholars treat the state in reactive mode, I will also point out why the linear, one-dimensional depiction and conception of socialization misses much of the dynamism and scope of activities states normally have in international relations. Without throwing international norms out with the bathwater, I argue that the effects of norms are often overstated for not a priori examining the “mind” of the state. By that I refer to the grand thoughts and intellectual movements within the state that give a broad sense of direction for foreign policy and international strategy. I conclude the chapter by presenting liberalism, realism, and nationalism as the three frameworks for further investigation in later chapters. REIFICATION OF THE “WORLD CULTURE” The norm literature in the American International Relations arose in the early 1990s in the most part as a result of scholars’ dissatisfaction with the dominant structural realism. According to the latter, the logic of state behavior is fundamentally rooted in the nature of power distribution among states, which in turn is shape by geography, technology and military capabilities. The materialist foundation of this theory means that ideational elements are not significant. In opposition to that, a nascent stream of research has artfully demonstrated that not only does organizational culture at domestic level have an 18 independent causal autonomy in the formation of state preference with respect to the use of force (Legro 1996) (Kier 1996), some states also overtly defy the realist dictum as their totality can be immersed in a politico-military culture of nonrealist disposition (Berger 1998). Furthermore, to the extent that states do take to heart the imperatives of power competition and maximization in interstate affairs, it is because these commandments themselves are historically conditioned and culturally based (Johnston 1995c). When restricted to a domestic setting norms are conveniently comprehensible because they invariably derive from an institutional basis and cultural traditions that are tangibly present and empirically verifiable. As Thomas Berger points out, “Institutions and culture exist in an interdependent relationship, each relying upon the other in an ongoing way” (Berger 1998 11-12). Together they provide substance to identity and shape the contour of behavior. Be it political culture or strategic culture, domestic norms are subsets of culture in relation to some specific issues and strategic choices, and lend consistency to states’ behavior across a certain amount of time and space in spite of the fluidities of the external circumstances they find themselves in (Duffield 1999; Johnston 1995b). As Johnston reminds us, even though “the notion of strategic culture leaves open the possibilities that strategic preferences and strategic interests are somewhat more amenable to purposive changes than structural realists might assume,” cultural realism might still prove itself “a hardy norm in international relations” (Johnston 1995b 63). In other words, 19 domestic norms engender a great deal of stability and predictability thanks to the staying power of culture and institutions. By extending the norm approach to the international sphere, however, giant steps are made with little fanfare. Durable behavioral patterns are not longer the focal point of research. Change is in the air, so to speak, and states will have to respond to those external norms and adapt their policies and behavior one way or another. Conceptually, when we impute states’ behavioral changes as effects of socialization of states or their agents, it implies that a normative context into which states identify has an independent existence, even though it does not have the backing of a firm institutional structure. A further assumption is that the norms are potent enough to pressure states into at least partial conformity. The human rights norms that caused an international outcry over the Apartheid and helped end it are a good example. To be sure, international forums such as the United Nations and other international organizational venues serve as institutional moorings for certain norms thanks to their high intensity of institutionalization and level of legitimacy. Topping the list of norms that are pronounced and commonly accepted is state sovereignty. 2 Not all norms, however, are as institutionally embedded and enjoy such undisputed recognition and acceptance worldwide. 2 For Mearsheimer, sovereignty “inheres in states because there is no higher ruling body in the international system” and international institutions are essentially hand tools of great powers (Mearsheimer 2001). Yet besides epitomizing the autonomy of states free from legal domination of a supranational structure, sovereignty also entails “acceptance of coexistence as a norm” in the state system—a sort of protective shield for the less powerful such that outright violation of their sovereignty by great powers will most certainly incur international condemnation—a position realists of less hardline position readily accept (Tang 2010). 20 It is said that “there are at least three layers to the international cultural environments” when it comes to national security policies (Jepperson et al. 1996). The first layer consists of formal institutions and security regimes, such as NATO and international treaties like the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), whereas the third layer encompasses ideational and perceptional elements with respect to “international patterns of amity and enmity” that are of cultural implications. What is most curious is the second layer, which ranges from “elements like rules of sovereignty and international law, norms for the proper enactments of sovereign statehood, standardize social and political technologies” to “a transnational political discourse” carried by a motley of social movements and international non-governmental organizations. Combined, they are what amounts to be “a world culture” (Jepperson et al. 1996 34), which is somewhat analogous to the idea of international society spelled out by students of the English School. 3 Somewhat ironically, however, likening the world culture teeming with INGOs to a domestically confined culture blurs the difference between within an institution and without. States may be infused with, and steeped in, their own culture and institutions, yet their relationship with the “world culture” and international institutions can hardly be the same. But in the conception of the world culture theory—namely sociological institutionalism, also called world polity theory or world society theory depending on the theoretical discourse—culture is understood to be Western culture with Weberian rationality and purposive action at its core. Focusing on “the social and cognitive features of institutions rather than structural and constraining features”, scholars in this vein see 3 For scholars of norms, most of who are constructivists, the English School is too interpretive and uninterested in explicit hypothesis-testing exercise that is mainstay in the American mode of social sciences (Finnemore 1996c 333-334; 2001). 21 social structure as global and all-encompassing that “permeates all aspects of political and social life in all states” (Finnemore 1996c). Contra the English School, “social structure is constituted, not by an international society of states, but by an expanding and deepening world culture” (Finnemore 1996b 19). International NGOs are also important propagators of world cultural principles on the basis of “rational voluntarism” which entails “responsible individuals acting collectively through rational procedures” without the presence and supervision of an external authority (Boli and Thomas 1999). As a result, various organizations and bureaucracies have seen their copycats popping up worldwide—not necessarily because they are particularly efficient but because their forms have been externally legitimated “as a social good” (Finnemore 1996c 329). Taking a macro-level view of social structure, the world culture approach does not necessarily see global cultural homogenization in a deterministic manner as other strands of globalization theories contend. They foresee the phenomenon of “decoupling” when global standards and international norms are not adhered to and local conventions continue to hold sway, resulting in broad variation in the level of compliance and disjointed “glocalized” cultures (Risse 2007). Not only does world culture theory have a hard time explicating those discrepancies and variations, it is also remarkably devoid of political contestations and elements of power. Conceptually, scholars of world culture are more interested in its effects than in analyzing the changes of the social structure and the causal mechanisms of its impact as well as the “specification of the content of world culture” that is riddled with inner tension (Finnemore 1996c 339-341). Indeed, to the extent that the “world culture” is greatly reified, the “cultural” influence of international norms on state 22 behavior is often exaggerated. Empirically, the theory lacks the support of rich case studies, and is found to be inadequate even in one of its home-turf issue areas, the adoption of technological and industrial standards (Mattli and Büthe 2003). Owing to these problems, second generation study of norms has gone beyond demonstrating norms matter and moved on to ask which specific norms matter, in what context, how and why they matter. It is more specific about where norms are from—usually by tying them to international institutions, regimes, non-state actors and social movements—and has paid more attention to the variation of their impact on state preferences and behavior. Epistemologically and stylistically, researchers either peg norms’ potency to norms’ actual institutionalization, or move to assess the robustness of norms independent of institutions—in terms such as their specificity, durability, and concordance (Legro 1997 34). Stylistically and in terms of research focus, one grouping of scholars are interested in locating domestic structure and political process as a medium for international norms and state preferences and identities (Risse-Kappen 1994b) (Checkel 1999; Cortell and Davis 2000, 2005), whereas others have chosen to deem international institutions as social environments—or rather, incubators—through which states can be socialized by corresponding international norms (Johnston 2001b; Checkel 2005), a subject of further discussion I will return to later. THE LIBERAL BIAS OF INTERNATIONAL NORMS 23 As I argued earlier, there initially exist no international norms per se. Finnemore and Sikkink have duly noted this when they acknowledge that “Many international norms began as domestic norms and become international through the efforts of entrepreneurs of various kind” (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998 893). The externalization of these domestic cultural conventions, moral standards and practical solutions can well be results of voluntary learning and migration as much as of forcible transplantation. Henceforth the mainstay of international relations—power politics—and historical contextualization should be brought to the fore of our discussion. First, in a world even the equality among states as denoted by sovereignty is nominal at best, the nature and objectives of those norm entrepreneurs should be put under the microscope. But scholars of international norms, constructivists especially, prefer to tell their stories from the perspectives of non-states as norm agents. This penchant may well have to do with their efforts in arguing—against the realists—that states can be vulnerable to the normative pressure, but as a matter of fact too often the expansion of norms often goes parallel with a relationship of domination. No doubt it is the case when their “carriers” are major powers and when one region dominates much of the world. Even the notion of sovereignty and modern nation-state were spawned in the successive revolutions on the European continent about the nature of justice and political authority (Philpott 2001), and then brandished as the rule of the game in international relations by European powers to the vast non-European world where empires, feudal states an tribes were the more common forms of political entity and suzerainty the natural relationship between the strong and weak. The liberal norms of free trade, too, could not have become 24 “norms” if it were not for the successive Anglo-American hegemony the last several centuries. Certainly the British and Americans did not flinch from applying gunboat diplomacy in their push for unfettered access to raw materials and markets in the vast non-Western world. Evidently, the same political logic remains valid today. Relatedly, a second point resolves around power. Earlier studies by neoliberals and regime scholars accord norms a limited role in light of their insistence that norms are dependent on the underlying power distribution and are “separate from, rather than constitutive of interests” (Klotz 1995a 14-15). In their effort to establish norms as a critical analytical category, constructivists subsequently put a premium on their intersubjective qualities as well as the mutual constitution of norms and interests. Yet aside from those aspects, their notion of norms is very static and the presence of relevant norms pre-given. In reality, propagating and upholding norms internationally is more than just salesmanship, which naturally incurs some cost of operation. Besides a deep pocket, norms rely on the political will and physical prowess of a patron to back them up and enforce them since they are sure to encounter some form of resistance. Proponents of hegemonic stability have argued forcefully how the inability of the British and the unwillingness of the Americans to provide the necessary public goods precipitated the collapse of the inter-war global economic system and the associated norms, rules and institutions. Other moral projects like the anti-slave trade in the 19 th century and the anti-apartheid movement, although less grandiose in scale, too required some international leadership and substantial amount of economic cost on the part of those great powers that spearheaded them (Kaufmann and Pape 1999). 25 Yet too often we equate power with material payoffs and pay scant attention to its softer sides, such as the power of persuasion and discourse. Besides physical conquest hegemonic powers have an innate impulse to project “a set of normative principles in order to facilitate the construction of an order conductive to its interests,” say Ikenberry and Kupchan, and “Elites in secondary states buy into and internalize norms that are articulated by the hegemon and therefore pursue policies consistent with the hegemon’s notion of international order” (Ikenberry and Kupchan 1990). By the sheer weight of its discursive power, referencing a norm as what is expected of behaving oneself—no different from the tactic of framing by nongovernmental organizations to shame norm-violating governments (Keck and Sikkink 1998)—is a weapon for the strong and powerful that can be used to ostracize the weak and the up-and-coming from the community of respectable states. When the international spotlight was on Beijing’s suspected massive espionage and cyberattacks reported around the world, one cannot avoid being struck by reiterated American calls for Beijing to respect “acceptable norms of behavior in cyberspace.” 4 That occasion was of course before the Edward Snowden affair that unwittingly exposed Washington’s unmitigated thirst for all things digital and its vast network of global snooping on ordinary foreign citizens and leaders alike. 5 Third, rarely are international norms developed, selected and nurtured in a fair and transparent manner by states as participants on an equal footing. In the political circus that 4 Mark Lander and David E. Sanger, “U.S. Demands China Block Cyberattacks and Agree to Rules,” The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/world/asia/us-demands-that-china-end-hacking-and-set-cyber-rules.htm l 5 There is more nuance to the brouhaha: the United States never disavows its spy machine and intelligence prowess—all countries spy on each other—but insists that it does not engage in industrial espionage for economic and commercial advantage, the kind of intelligence gathering Americans accuse the Chinese of engaging unfairly. 26 is contemporary world politics, the United Nations, much as it bestows a great deal of legitimacy and authority in sanctioning major initiatives like international peacekeeping missions, is limited in its norm-making capacities. Instead, “norm entrepreneurs and the organizations they inhabit usually need to secure the support of state actors to endorse their norms and make norm socialization a part of their agenda;” and there exists a tipping point where the number of norm-espousing states and how much gravitas they carry is crucial for norm’s emergence (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998 900-901). As far as this is concerned, few reasonable observers would deny that the pedigree of most norms cannot avoid being tied to the values and interests of the Western powers as one liberal bloc. In return the parochial traits and politicizing quality of most norms can hardly be ignored. Consequently, norms as standards of proper behavior embody a heavy dose of “oughtness” and moral evaluation that reflects the positions of their progenitor states or institutions. In a great many situations, the very claim that there is a presiding norm in the respective issue area is a culturally and ideologically contingent affair across time and space. Slave trade, for instance, was not looked askance at for a long time until in the 19 th century, when Britain took upon itself the heavy moral weight of banning slave trade and enforcing it. That, according to Kaufman and Pape, was “an instance of cultural imperialism” reflecting the abolitionists’—neither the establishment’s nor the general public’s—“parochial identities as Protestant Dissenters, members of the middle class, and their national identity as Englishmen” (Kaufmann and Pape 1999 644). Consequentially, in the absence of genuine democratic representation in designating what is norm and what is not, some behavioral practices and conventions are called norms mostly because their 27 sponsors—usually powerful, well-heeled, outspoken and boisterous—have said so. Direct democracy promotion is one of the political and diplomatic act first initiated by the United States. A pillar of post-9/11 American foreign policy, it was widely seen as tainted by the association with what was seen as imperialistic and unilateral Bush Doctrine. In order to salvage the good name of their much cherished democracy enterprise, proponents then began to call for it be disentangled from American foreign policy (McFaul 2004). That numerous norms steeped in Western cultural and political tradition concerning governance, human rights, the environment and others have been widely accepted and internalized elsewhere does not retroactively negate their provincial—as opposed to universal—roots. For one thing, even the most globally active Western NGOs that purportedly project a cosmopolitan identity remain deeply tied to the national environments they are from, exhibiting great diversity in their resources, organizational structure and institutional norms (Stroup 2012). For another, we cannot easily disengage the diffusion of norms from the cultural crusade—either in the form of colonization in the past or the Americanization of the present—the West has engaged, willingly or not, on the East. Even the positive outcomes cannot be used to impute some kind of inherent benevolence in the intentional underpinning of the West-to-East historical expansion of norms and values. Some historicization is earnestly warranted. By downplaying colonization Western-centric IR theories, norm-based approaches included, fail to acknowledge the Janus-faced character of the European international system that socialized the rest of the world into its normative framework of international relations (Suzuki 2005, 2009). The colonial era may have ended, but the broader racial and cultural 28 tenor lingers: while intellectuals continue to debate over standards of civilization, religious and other ideologically oriented individuals and institutions, much like the good old times, still embrace a “civilizing” mission in the land of non-believers (Hirono 2008; Bob 2012). As it happens, even in the narrower range of international affairs the debate over universalism and cultural relativism rages on. One particular example I want to raise is what I would call the concoction of an international norm against death penalty. While the United Nations and some regional human rights organizations have adopted treaties urging a curb of its use, there exists no explicit international consensus on its ultimate abolition. Instead, the movement to eradicate capital punishment is mostly by European countries and a number of human rights organizations and activists who like to emphasize its overall cruelty as well as ineffectiveness as deterrence against crimes. Given that in the scores of countries in favor of death penalty—such as the United States and Japan, where rule of law is at place—its use is limited to criminals who have committed multiple murders and other egregious crimes, these norm agents campaigning for the end of death penalty stand to commit a double fallacy: not only do they give short shrift to justice of the victims, their successes in selected countries, such as Ukraine and South Korea (Bae 2008), also come at the expense of domestic majorities often decidedly in favor of continuing the practice. In academic circles the tendency to judge on the basis of one’s own cultural and ideological precepts is no less potent than in the realm of policy making. In this respect the world culture theorists are the exception for making explicit but honest claims that almost all norms are traceable to Western society. Others, however, have not been so forthcoming. One might reasonably assume that because of their attentiveness toward many of the 29 non-high security issues—human rights, human security, use of weapons of mass destruction, et cetera—they naturally fall into the self-designated category of political progressive. As such, the fine line between advocacy and scholarship can be easily blurred, deliberately or not. One such example is McFaul’s backing of democracy promotion cited earlier as an international norm that renders incumbent on all democracies to project liberal values abroad. It is political advocacy in action for sure. Yet considering that most of us perceive that as a noble cause, who would blame him? That said, in spite of their progressive and lofty associations, norms are constantly invoked to moralize. Understandably norm agents do not like to dwell on those hidden traits lest they undercut the argument and mission aimed at “normalizing” the “abnormal.” As Finnemore and Sikkink readily admit, “One logical corollary to the prescriptive quality of norms is that, by definition, there are no bad norms from the vantage point of those who promote the norm” (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998 892). This very tendency is in spite of the acknowledgement that the constructivist ontology itself, within which much of the norm research is housed, is not substantive and ideologically agnostic. 6 Consequently the liberal idiosyncrasies with which the functionalities and role of norms are associated are nothing short of reflecting scholars’ personal and ideological leanings in the realm of international relations. Perhaps suitably, constructivists using norms as the analytical medium are at times called conventional constructivists (Hopf 1998), liberal constructivists 6 In Finnemore’s words, “Constructivism is a social theory, not a theory of politics.” It should be understood in ontological and epistemological terms instead of in evaluative and political terms.(Finnemore 1996b 27). 30 (Barkin 2003) or problem-solving constructivists (Adler 1997), as opposed to critical constructivists. 7 As with other liberals, the idea of progress attracts focal attention both analytically and politically. Progress in this context, as Adler succinctly summarizes, “(1) is not based only on what theorists say but also, and primarily, on what political actors do; (2) occurs through the redefinition of identities and interests of the actors themselves; and (3) is inescapably about universal normative ideas, even if their meaning varies from time to time and place to place” (Adler 1997 334). Correspondingly, a flurry of norm research has shown the good intentions of norm agents—mostly non-state actors and transnational networks working in tandem with each other in such diverse range of subject matters as human rights, governance, weapons of mass destruction—but also the perfectibility of the states when confronted with a choice to improve themselves through adoption of, or adaptation to, respective norms. By most accounts international norms automatically invoke positive change that is to be engineered when they enter the domestic realm and political process, overwhelm, defeat and replace antagonistic indigenous norms. Little ink is spilled on norms that are conservative, overtly extreme, and propagate intolerance and incivility. 8 And to the extent that liberal norms do not necessarily co-exist in harmony, and even compete with and contradict one other—the kind of inner tension within the big tent 7 Unlike critical constructivism that is opposed to positivism, conventional constructivism “takes the world as it finds it…as the given framework for action” (Cox 1986 208-209) and shares the same epistemology and methodology with mainstream IR. In arguing that constructivism is also compatible with the realist worldview, Barkin claims that “Self-proclaimed constructivists often have (or at least are seen to have) world views that fall within liberalism, broadly defined, and often accept that categorization.” 8 A recent welcome exception is (Bob 2012). 31 of liberalism, or rather, liberalisms (Sorensen 2011)—it has yet to become an issue of concern for norm aficionado. 9 Through the study of norm constructivists take it upon themselves to challenge the triple foundation of structuralism, materialism and rationalism embedded in Waltzian realism. But as Nicholas Onuf suggests, albeit somewhat sarcastically, “Lumped with globalists and tarred as idealists, liberal institutionalists found their deliverance in constructivism…Scholars from across the left turned to constructivism, finding it in renewed hope for social understanding, a framework for programs of social and political reconstruction, or a critical instrument for political emancipation” (Onuf 2001 252-253). The inveterate liberal telos is constructed in a undoubtedly straightforward fashion: powerful and progressive states or networks as liberal bastions give rise to liberal norms and values; as liberal guardians they also endeavor to transplant those values and practices to foreign land, by force, by communication and persuasion, or by sheer example; illiberal entities and forces have no alternative but to submit to this vision and be “normalized.” MECHANISMS OF SOCIALIZATION Norms, as I have argued, exist to normalize. Constructivists in their debate with structural realists put norms on the pedestal and demonstrate convincingly the transformative effects of norms on state behavior and identity. Beyond that, norm researchers are further tasked with not only identifying and specifying the causal mechanisms by which norms are transferred to states and have the constitutive effects as 9 Also see (Bailey 2008; Cortell and Davis 2005). 32 claimed, but also explaining the uneven rather than uniform level of acceptance and receptions accorded to them by kindred states (Checkel 1999 85). Yet first generation constructivist research, more interested in illustrating norms matter and influenced by sociological institutionalism, hovers primarily at the international system level. But as the life cycle of international norms suggests, after their emergence on the horizon norms become “contagious” in a cascade effect as “socializers” until they are internalized by the recipients (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). Analytically, for students of norms, at issue is the microprocesses of norm diffusion, that is, “how norms ‘out there’ in the international system get ‘down here’ to the national arena and have constitutive effects” (Checkel 1999 85). 10 In lieu of normalization, socialization is the frequently used phrase that reveals the magic of norms. Defined “as a process of inducting actors into the norms and rules of a given community,” its outcome is sustained compliance based on the internalization of those norms” (Checkel 2005 804). In taking this process-oriented approach to norm’s externalization, researchers have clearly broadened their view beyond the one-step shop of social construction of identity and interest. Rather, the goal now is to present a more nuanced and panoramic picture of changes in states’ identity and interest from point n to point n+1. That is to say, socializing is a dynamic continuum and commences at the early stage when states make rational cost and benefit calculations in the face of a foreign normative context. A complete picture of socialization therefore entails at least two end spectrums and most likely three stages. As Checkel goes on to say, “In adopting 10 Kai Alderson, however, cautions that “diffusion’ belongs to a different social science tradition “concerned with the geographical spread of social practices and technological innovations”, even though the two concepts “may be used interchangeably in a descriptive sense” (Alderson 2001). 33 community rule, socialization implies that an agent switches from following a logic of consequences to a logic of appropriateness; this adoption is sustained over time and is quite independent from a particular structure of material incentives or sanctions” (Checkel 2005 804). For analysts with a positivist epistemology, sympathizers of social constructivism included, socialization is no longer the sole terrain of constructivism, but instead bridges rationalism (in the form of regulative norms) and constructivism (in the form of constitutive norms). 11 How does socialization work? There are two major approaches, one emphasizing the impeding effects of domestic structure contra external norms and the other the nurturing power of international institutions. I call the former the political approach, the latter the institutional approach. Both are unsatisfied with the system-level analysis led by the so-called “transnational constructivists” who “at the state level treat states as ‘black boxed’ so as to yield a theoretically parsimonious and sharper framework through which to investigate the material world” (Nagtzaam 2009 62-63). On the contrary, they do not take for granted the smooth sailing of international norms, and regard as unrealistic the assumption that “agents at the systemic level have relatively unobstructed access to states and substate actors from which to diffuse new normative understandings” (Johnston 2001b). Both evaluate socialization by the degree of institutionalization of the international norms in domestic laws and procedures, which come at the expense of incompatible or adversarial native norms and should manifest in national discourse as well as behavioral and policy shifts in related issue areas consistent with what those initially alien norms 11 This approach may well be encouraged and enlightened by Fearon and Wendt’s argument that rationalism and constructivism are more complimentary than diametrically opposed to each other, and the debate between the two ontologies is better framed in empirical terms (Fearon and Wendt 2002). 34 prescribe (Cortell and Davis 2000 70-71). Where they differ most is the locale where socialization actually takes place. In the text to follow, I will discuss the political approach first before dwelling on the institutional approach. The Political Approach The approach privileging domestic political process is a conscientious effort to bring politics back into the scene of norms. After all, the domestic sphere is not a vacuum by itself but also imbued with a motley of understandings, beliefs, practical knowledge and cultural practices. Cautioning against putting all the norms in the international basket, Legro suggests that norms ensconced in other social entities—regional, national and subnational institutions and bureaucracies—too deserve scrutiny. Organizational culture, that of the military in Legro’s case, can mediate between international norms and state preference and is why European powers chose to adhere to norms against the use of chemical weapons but violated norms prohibiting submarine warfare and strategic bombing of nonmilitary targets (Legro 1997). Smooth socialization as researches in this vein understand it is a game of relay whereby protagonists of foreign ideas and international norms have no choice but to build coalitions so as to accelerate the change they want, which is “determined by the domestic structure of the target state, that is, the nature of its political institutions, state-society relations, and the value of norms embedded in its political culture” (Risse-Kappen 1994a 187). The unique character of each country’s domestic circumstances dictates that there exists broad cross-national variation in states’ conformity with the same norm and in their interpretation of it. 35 Therefore, the degree of norm compliance is predicated upon two main factors: “the domestic salience or legitimacy of the norm, and the structural context within which the domestic policy debate transpire” (Cortell and Davis 2000 66). Operationally, the political and moral standing of international norms should be measured up against the domestic cultural context. Cultural match, “a situation where the prescriptions embodied in an international norm are convergent with domestic norm, as reflected in discourse, the legal system (constitutions, judicial codes, laws), and bureaucratic agencies (organizational ethos and administrative procedures),” captures the level of salience of international norms vis-à-vis domestic beliefs and norms (Checkel 1999 87), which in turn conditions the contour and trajectory of interactions between the two sets of norms. When cultural match is positive, domestic forces are then poised to perceive international norms as benign and legitimate, and modify their behavior accordingly so as to be consistent with international standards. Conversely, when international norms are not congruent or even in conflict with domestic norms, compliance is by no means automatic and natural. In their proposition, Cortell and Davis list several ways by which an international norm make headways in a national polity and “feel at home”: rhetoric of political and societal leaders, consideration of material interests at stake by state or social groups, domestic institutions that can channel and anchor an alien norm as well as socializing forces at both the structural and agent level (Cortell and Davis 2000). Here their conception of socialization actually include the structural and realist perspectives as well as the constructivist and transnational perspectives, which take a profound interest in how non-state actors utilize so-called “‘soft’ power resources, such as moral leverage and 36 technical knowledge” to—metaphorically speaking—“convert” states (Cortell and Davis 2000 83) As noted earlier, the latter school has flourished since the 1990s, shedding important light on the critical role of transnational networks and advocacy groups as norm entrepreneurs. Keck and Sikkink succinctly summarize their tactics and strategies as follows: “Network actors try to frame issues in ways that make them fit into particular institutional venues and that make them resonate with broader publics, use information and symbols to reinforce their claims, identify appropriate targets, seek leverage over more powerful actors to influence their targets.”(Keck and Sikkink 1998 201) In terms of subject areas, human rights are at the forefront of transnational advocacy and favorite examples of transitionally guided socialization (Risse et al. 1999). Keck and Sikkink too credit transnational do-gooders with ending the female food-binding tradition in China and curbing female circumcision in Africa. Likewise, others too attribute events such as the anti-personal land mine ban to the effective mobilization of international opinions by issue-based advocacy organizations (Price 1998). But these activists do not have to be international or transnational. In some occasions, in a two-level game kind of dynamic interaction international norms provide the local agitators a moral compass and cover to argue for their domestic acceptance. In image-conscious Japan, for example, activists working on issues such as immigration, refugees and gender equality have learned to invoke international norms anchored in the United Nations and international treaties to effectively advance their causes (Gurowitz 1999; Flowers 2009). The Institutional Approach 37 While the domestic politics approach relies on social pressure to engineer norm compliance, the institutional approach instead understand socialization as a top-down process wherein social learning by state leaders is the key (Checkel 1999 88). Without rejecting the former the latter is very concerned with methodological rigor and theoretical specification. This is because socialization, as indicated earlier, is varied in degree and can be shallow and calculative but also substantive and transformative. Yet scholars focusing on the activism of transnational networks in domestic politics—in addition to limiting the scope of pathways through which socialization materializes (Checkel 2005 807)—are hard-pressed in explaining how states’ acceptance of international norms is predicated on a change of interest and identity rather than a recalibration of interests in adaptation to a new strategic environment. For scholars of the institutional approach to socialization, mapping out the shift of states from rational actors to social actor—the “when” question—is as important as spelling out the micro-level causal mechanisms, hence the “how” question (Checkel 2005 805). After all, it is the switch of states’ behavioral rationale from the logic of consequences to the logic of appropriateness that is the subject of intense debates among theories of different stripes. As Johnston characterizes it, genuine internalization of international norms is constructivists’ “trump card in disputes with neorealists and contractualists over whether social interaction can change actor preferences and interests in pro-social ways, and it is the purest type of socialization” (Johnston 2001b 494). As for the micro processes and mechanisms—“immediate processes along which international institutions may lead actors toward accepting the norms, rules, and modes of behavior of a 38 given community” (Zürn and Checkel 2005 1049)—Checkel identifies three: strategic calculation, role playing (agents “behave appropriately by learning a role—acquiring the knowledge that enables them to act in accordance with expectations—irrespective of whether they like the role or agree with it”), and normative persuasion (“agents accept community or organizational norms as ‘the right thing to do’”) (Checkel 2005 804). Johnston too finds three that are fairly similar to Checkel’s—mimicking, social influence, and persuasion—except that only the third fallows the logic of appropriateness (Johnston 2008). Why Institutions? This is because, as illuminated by Johnston above, they are intricately tied to socialization and as a result remain at the center of the IR debate in ontological and epistemological terms. Constructivists are determined to puncture the shared assumption of neorealism and neoliberalism that institutions can only constrain the behavior of states with fixed interests. Rather, they are convinced that institutions can serve as “fertile social soil within which actors’ preferences might be transformed” (Jupille and Caporaso 1999 440). Not only are institutions “promoters of socialization” they are also “sites of socialization” (Checkel 2005). Simultaneously, international institutions being “an ideal laboratory” (Checkel 2005 806) means that they, “as social environment” (Johnston 2001b), can be controlled, tweaked, and put under the microscope for intense observation. Consequently, what really sets the institutional approach of socialization apart is that national governments—instead of being inundated, pressured, and possibly swept off their feet by intensified transnational linkage politics and issue-specific campaigns—are 39 encaged by and act within or around international institutions. More precisely, in fact, these “lab rats” are not states per se but their agents including “diplomats, decision makers, analysts, policy specialists, non-governmental agents of state principals, and so on” (Johnston 2008 27). Apropos of an example, no institutions fit these requirements and expectations better than the organizational and institutional apparatus of the European Union. Founded on the basis of a dense cobweb of multilateral treaties and formal bureaucracies, the EU consists of not just one institution but a constellation of institutions charged with executive, legislative and judicial powers governing a long range of policy areas from monetary policy, trade, immigration, labor and human rights to common security. Thanks to the scope and intensity of these institutions, the effects of one EU institution cannot easily be separated from and studied independently of those of the overall governance structure, because members are by and large absorbed and integrated into the EU structure whereas non-member European states are attracted to and moved by the monstrous weight of its gravity. There has been an abundance of literature on the socializing effects of EU-related institutions. Jeffrey Lewis’ research of the EU Committee of Permanent Representatives shows that members of this grouping, thought of as defender of national interests of the country they are from, are well socialized into the Brussels-based collective culture as a result of their participation in the day-to-day management of EU affairs, wherein all three mechanisms identified by Checkel (above) are borne out (Lewis 2005). In her examination of NATO’s inclusion of former Eastern bloc countries as new members, Alexandra Gheciu presents evidence showing that this collective security organization not 40 only managed to shape the security strategies of Central/Eastern European states but also the definition of their national identity and interest by projecting its “persuasive appeals launched in the name of lineal-democratic norms” (Gheciu 2005).12 Johnston’s own research on China’s participation in international security institutions takes the socialization beyond Europe. A country steeped in a historically and culturally informed realpolitik tradition, China in recent decades nonetheless has been socialized, Johnston asserts, into behaving in a much more cooperative and multilateral manner—all through an array of instrumental and identity-transforming processes in its involvement in the institutions of arms control and nuclear disarmament as well as regional forums in the Asia-Pacific region (Johnston 2008). THE STRAITJACKET OF SOCIALIZATION Scholars of either the political approach or the institutional approach are predominantly constructivists interested in norms and international institutions. For them, mechanisms of socialization are the “holy grail” that establishes socialization as an important concept in social science. The so-called constructivist turn in IR brought it to focus because constructivism needs to specify in greater detail the causal mechanisms of norm diffusion in order to move beyond correlational analyses connecting norms to behavior (Checkel 1998). Much of the work cited above is a testament to the progress made by scholars over the years toward that goal, as concerned researchers bend over 12 In this case the socializees are not yet formal NATO members, but their behavior vis-à-vis NATO is nonetheless inexorably shaped and channeled by an intense desire to join it. 41 backwards to more precisely define their dependent and independent variables and generate testable hypotheses on the basis of empirical evidence and theorized pathways and scope conditions of potentially successful socialization. The institutional approach, in particular, has aimed to build “middle-range theories of socialization” with the assumption that “how actors change their interests and their behavior inside institutions will come from understanding the interaction of strategic behavior within social-psychological socialization mechanisms”, which in itself is a rejection of the traditional view that rational choice is incompatible with socialization (Johnston 2005 1014). Like any area of research there are lingering problems with this line of research. Most scholars thus far have concentrated their critical assessment of the extant socialization literature on the many methodological and operational pitfalls. It is with the infancy stage of this area of research in mind that Kai Alderson sets out to crystallize the concept of state socialization by defining what it is and is not (Alderson 2001). Reacting to Alderson, Cameron Thies points to the confusion in his definition of socialization as outcome and/or process as well as in the separation of instrumental approach from socialization (Thies 2003). Indeed, much of recent research on socialization has made the point of bridge building and cuts across the rationalism/constructivism divide (Zürn and Checkel 2005). Yet the outcome-process ambiguity continues to hamper efforts to distinguish dependent and independent variables from each other, whereas the temporal quality of socialization is yet to be fully appreciated by the research designs in use (Beyers 2010). 42 Empirically, the recent wave of socialization research presents a much more lucid view on how socializers and socializees interact by bringing the domestic scene back in. The empirical context is as rich as it is comprehensive. While scholars have applied the transnational perspectives of socialization to a wide range of polities, institutional contexts and issue areas, the institutional perspective is thus far rather limited—with a few exceptions—to the domain of European Union. Rather than a broad review of what has been achieved theoretically and empirically, my critique will revolve mostly around some epistemological and methodological presumptions as well as normative judgment imbedded in the socialization literature, the institutional perspective in particular. In the text to follow, not only will I call attention to how the state is treated—mostly in reactive and partial mode—in the face of mounting normative pressure, I will also evaluate the extent to which related scholarship is instructive or biased for better understanding China and Japan’s international relations in recent decades as a prelude for the chapters to come. I will end the chapter with an argument that in lieu of the outside-in angle of socialization, examining the core ideological frameworks and grand thoughts of a state yields a much more comprehensive view of what motivates states to act the way they do in international relations. Whose socialization? It is been long asserted that conventional constructivism, for all its focus on collectively shared, intersubjective meaning (norm), lacks a theory of agency, an imprint and legacy of its partial roots in sociological institutionalism (Checkel 1998). 43 Constructivists starting with Alexander Wendt are often accused of bracketing structure, and then agency, to underscore their mutual constitution. This is a bit ironic because constructivists are conscious of the fact that the inception of most new norms is dependent on both “norm entrepreneurs and the organizational platforms from which entrepreneurs act” (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998 896). At times the dual function of some non-state actors to perform duties of both agents (actors, networks, bureaucracies, institutions, moral entrepreneurs, etc) and ideational and intersubjective content (epistemic community, social movement, global civil society, etc) obfuscates the distinction between agent and structure (Klotz and Lynch 2007 46-47). Similarly, research on socialization that leans on transnational networks or implicit linkage politics too benefits to some lesser extent from having advocacy groups or movements doubling up as both agent and structure. Japan is a country of fascination for this line of research. An industrialized democracy, it is nonetheless different from most Western states in many aspects ranging from political structure, cultural traditions to socio-economic relations. Yet its standing as an economic powerhouse and numerous international linkages have also made the Japanese state a target of peer pressure and transnational/domestic activism. 13 Once again, human rights are a popular policy domain widely studied by students of norms and socialization. In her examination of policy changes in issues of sexuality related to women and children, Jennifer Chan-Tiberghien attributes the progress made to efforts by Japanese activists working in sync with broader transnational human rights movements, especially by several high-profile international human rights conferences in the 1990s. Their 13 Apichai Shipper even argues that, from a domestic angle, NGOs fighting for immigrant rights have contribute to the country’s democratic citizenship and democratic development (Shipper 2008) 44 immersion and learning in the international political community not only taught them to reframe their issues of concern under the normatively compelling umbrella term of human rights but also passed them political and organizational skills in leverage politics and coalition building at home, which ended up serving them well (Chan 2004a). Another recent study by Petrice Flowers was about Japan’s adoption of the Refugee Convention, Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as well as the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personal land mines (Flowers 2009). Flowers accepts the two usual factors—“the degree of conflict between international and domestic norms” (cultural match) and “the strength of nonstate actors”—as critical to understanding why Japan has signed international treaties “clearly contrary to its domestic norms,” but she also proposes to include its reflexive consideration of international legitimacy as the third factor (Flowers 2009 3). Seen from the perspective of institutional approach, the shortcoming in applying the transnational approach to empirical studies of state socialization is not just in the fuzziness of the causal mechanisms and scope conditions but also the absence of sufficient evidence certifying that states have indeed internalized the said international norms (persuasion). The two books on Japan cited above can be faulted on both accounts. For Flowers especially, although she juxtaposes her constructivist framework against neoliberalism and the realist idea of “gaiatsu”—an idiosyncratic concept used to describe the habitual way the Japanese state responds to foreign pressure, especially in economic sphere and from the United States (Calder 1988)—her true target is actually the materialist foundation of the latter two paradigms rather than rationalism. In fact, her claim that 45 Japan’s burning “desire for international legitimacy trumped internal conflict” between international norm and domestic attitudes concerning refugees exudes a defiantly rationalist tone. Instead of having its identity recast through socialization by international norms, Japan is consciously working to revamp its identity, as she puts it (Flowers 2009 12). This clearly runs counter to the attempt by social constructivists to defend the home turf of socialization against neorealists and neoliberals who either reject out of hand or downplay the possibility that new identities and preferences can emerge out of the socialization process. It is against this backdrop of paradigmatic debates that constructivists are keen to put their research subjects in a more institutionalized environment, where they think they can, in a manner of speaking, kill two birds with one stone, namely achieving methodological rigor all the while lending credence to the idea that actors do redefine their identities and interests in response to environmental stimuli. In China Johnston finds its entanglement with international institutions a bonanza for the purpose of theory development and testing. By moving away from the Eurocentric tendencies of the literature he also hopes to improve its regional substantiation of socialization. This is because while Europe is the most likely case of norm internalization as a result of the thickness of its institutionalization, China is the least likely case precisely for the opposite reason. At times, however, his twin tasks of using China’s policy toward international security institutions to test for socialization show unmistakable signs of strains. Much of the tension stems from the decision to treat international institutions as social environments where actors are pressured, encouraged, or induced into conforming to the group norms. These actors are 46 not in fact states as unitary actors but agents of the state. These individuals, through their deep involvement and dynamic interactions on regular basis with their counterparts of the international organizations and other states, are their first to be “socialized.” By nature of their work, they are also much more susceptible to alien ideas and practices than the top leadership. Considering the critical importance of security, strategy and policies, which are usually the prerogatives of top leaders as principals, the cited results in policy change can only materialize in a chain reaction. That is, international institutions first socialize a number of agents, who then have to negotiate and bargain in the bureaucratic process with competing agents not exposed to socialization, but most importantly, persuade the principals to take their side. While the consent of the principals is both the necessary and sufficient condition for any major policy shift, agents’ socialization, facilitating as it is, is neither. Johnston, however, only gives scant attention to the role of the principals, conceptually and empirically, even as he claims to be investigating why “Chinese foreign policy decision makers” would agree to render cooperation in security institutions (Johnston 2008 xiii). Truthfully, this portion of the causal transmission is the most difficult to explicate due to the researcher’s understandable lack of access to confidential information and witnesses at the highest level, but underestimating the role they have played effectively leaves some exogenous causal forces unaccounted for, and consequently impact of socialization over-exaggerated. In particular, since China’s entry into those was initiated by the leaders in the first place, why are in the most part still in the driver’s seat owing to the top-down decision-making style of the political system. 47 When discussing social influence, for instance, Johnston makes the point that top leaders including President Jiang Zemin and Premier Li Peng became very sensitive to China’s international image and their personal interests in the CTBT was essentially why China signed off on it. In this instance, he blurs the distinction between the principal and the agent, and the institution-as-social-environments framework became a conceptual straitjacket because it is designed for studying “Chinese agents in international institutions” rather than “China in international institutions.” To be fair, some scholars in the community are acutely aware of this epistemological challenge. Michael Zürn and Jeffrey Checkel, in their concluding chapter of the special issue of International Organization on European socialization, depict the problem in terms of “whether a changed allegiance and the supranational role conception of a participating individual do indeed necessarily translate into pro-norm behavioral changes in states.” They further suggest that while the approach is conducive to solving the problem of agency, the work to “connect such micro-dynamics to the macro level of state politics and policy” is “largely made by establishing correlation” (Zürn and Checkel 2005 1054-1055) The Reactive State It would not be unfair to say that constructivism made its mark in IR theory by minimizing or even denigrating the role of the state. To be sure, some early constructivist work does take the state as the object of study and “the key site of agency” (Price 1998 614). But that is in the most part to prove the point that interests and identities are socially constructed— even for the state that is the most autonomous from society and 48 conventionally thought to be obsessed with material power only. 14 As things stand now, the thrust of the constructivist imprint on the knowledge of socialization is that the causal arrow unfailingly goes from international society with transnational actors and international norms as the missionary agents to the state as the potential socializee irrespective of how much the latter is responsive and amenable. As an intellectual target the state thus has become the peak to be conquered, the hard nut to crack, or in the methodological parlance, the least likely place where ideas can not only make an impact but also construct the very definition and content of national security. Not that those scholars have denied that the cultural tradition and political system of the specific nation-state also makes a difference. Regional specialists have a particular penchant to investigate how non-Western states are “normalized” or “mainstreamed” by international norms, a reflection of both the political realities and the normative idiosyncrasies of this research enterprise. In the two books on China he authored—one on its cultural realism and the other its potential for socialization—Johnston makes the point of noting that the country offers him the methodological vantage point of having the most or least likely case for theory testing: for the former, the Sino-Confucian historical and cultural continuities mandate that “hypotheses about the existence and effect of strategic culture are true,” 15 whereas for the latter, Chinese realpolitik and high sensitivity about national independence should make it balk at participating in international institutions and giving away morsels of its sovereignty (Johnston 2008). In a similar fashion Japan 14 See, for instance, (Katzenstein 1996b). 15 See, (Johnston 1995c 29). Admittedly this book is about socialization of leaders “through education and training as decision making elites” in a domestic setting (Johnston 1995c 37), a subject I will touch upon later. 49 specialists emphasize how its peculiar cultural traits such as attitudes toward foreigners and women—and to some lesser extent—its political structure make the cultural mismatch vis-à-vis respective international norms pronounced and the country an inhospitable place for international norms to take root in and flourish (Gurowitz 1999; Flowers 2009). Whereas students of international norms and socialization do not necessarily take light of the state and see it as a pushover—judging from the publications that have been surveyed—they nonetheless perceive and portray it as an impediment to the global proliferation of norms. Why do they take such a stand against the state in such an uncompromising manner? Aside from the fact that much of the world is far from being up to the par of the liberal ethos—hence the non-liberal world is supposed to be taken over by international norms—in Richard Price’s telling, “focusing solely on the state as an actor diverts attention from other sources of agency and socialization, sources that have been particularly important in generating norms in a variety of issues on the global agenda” (Price 1998 615). But ridding the state of its primary focus results in depictions of it as lifeless, and deprived of its own volition. For the most important and powerful political entity this is too drastic a move that comes with penurious consequences. For example, Price’s oft-cited work on the international treaty banning the use of anti-personal land mines sheds important light on how transnational civil society groups pulled the feat by unleashing waves of moral persuasion and social pressure on the state. Yet even while he cautions against interpreting this particular success story “as a victory for civil society at the expense of the key pillar of sovereignty of the sate is too simplistic” (Price 1998 641), he is oddly stingy with praise a number of countries rightly deserve for 50 their instructive and instrumental role in the process. One of those liberal international states was Canada, which, in addition to incorporating members of the Canadian civil society into its official delegation, hosted the convention (hence the Ottawa Treaty), conscientiously erected itself as an exemplary example in support of the ban, lobbied intensely for its passage at the international gathering, and arduously shepherded and facilitated the negotiations. 16 That the socialization scholarship minimizes the role of the state is intricately tied, in the words of Charlotte Epstein, to “the logic of a concept which…inherently impedes the possibility of fully restoring the perspective of the socializee, insofar as the latter can only ever be apprehended on the receiving end of the socialization process” (Epstein 2012 140). Proving her case by tapping into the diplomatic exchanges concerning the international controversy of whaling, she accuses the socialization discourse as well as the socializer—in her case, Australia—of “infantilizing the socializee” such as Japan (Epstein 2012 141). The point she raises is no doubt a valid one. With its genesis in sociology and psychology, the concept of socialization routinely begins with a presumption about an agent with a brain that is yet to be filled with a mind. In one of the many definitions, for example, Stryker and Statham characterize it as “the generic term used to refer to the processes by which the newcomer—the infant, rookie, trainee for example—becomes incorporated into organized patterns of interaction” (Stryker and Statham 1985). 17 Following this tradition and in line with the China-joins-the-world line of thinking contra 16 For an detailed analysis of Canada’s role in Ottawa, see, for example, (Axworthy and Taylor 1998). 17 Also cited in (Johnston 2008 21). 51 its post-reform foreign policy, 18 Johnston too likens China to “a tabula rasa state that then becomes rapidly involved in international institutional life” (Johnston 2008 xx). Admittedly, the anthropomorphic practice, albeit belittling to the state, is an attempt to foreground the study of socialization in the extant social science scholarship. That is not totally without justification. What is puzzling and bizarre is the monolithic and simplistic view of the state that is so typecast. In other words, there exists an utter lack of interests among constructivists in distinguishing the state as socializer and the state as socializee, either in terms of different categories of states commensurate with their social power and standing in international society, or in light of how one single state relates to different sets of international norms and exhibits varied modification of behavior. Relatedly, in the case of Australia versus Japan on whaling, one might be prompted to pose questions such as: What makes Australia feel like it has the authority and legitimacy to speak on behalf of the anti-whaling movement? Is Japan’s role as socializee fixed or can it swap that with Australia when confronting another issue of international concern? By all measures, the image-conscious Japanese have been discontent with their norm-taker status and have strived assiduously to become a norm-maker in international affairs. One such signature achievement for Japan similar to the Ottawa Convention for Canada is the Kyoto Protocol, which the Japanese government at the time worked hard to make happen in spite of the fact that latter governments’ climate policies were not as consistently positive either. These policy initiatives and the spirit of good international citizenship smack every bit of liberal internationalism. Why are conventional constructivists reluctant to take this up even though they have painted such a magnanimous picture about transnational 18 See, for example, (Economy and Oksenberg 1999). 52 networks and advocacy groups that are often allied with or even dependent upon those very liberal states? Again I suppose it is because norm scholars, being closet liberals and innately hesitant to engage overtly in issues of political nature, are much less inclined than mainstream liberal scholars to dwell on such questions as “the nature and sources of liberal international order” (Deudney and Ikenberry 1999). In addition, I venture two other reasons. First, like liberal institutionalists, conventional constructivists are fixated on theoretically explaining—and inducing in light of policy prescription—cooperation, which they in actuality equate with conformity and convergence with pre-existing international norms and practices. This brings about an ironic double-bind situation: that is, their potent liberal ethos emphasizing human progress notwithstanding, students of norms and socialization—mostly conventional constructivists—are reluctant to go beyond the purview of pre-given norms and relate norms to credit liberal states for their norm-propagating work because of their habitual anti-state tendencies as political liberals—even though it is liberal states as norm entrepreneurs that we are speaking of. 19 They are therefore almost indistinguishable from liberal institutionalists, not the least because that they too hang onto institutions as the locomotive for social change. More fundamentally, in the metatheoretical sense constructivists also share, according to Sterling-Folker, “a reliance on the same logic of functional institutional efficiency which serves as a mechanism to promote cooperative change in neo-functionalism and neoliberal institutionalism as well” (Sterling ‐Folker 2000). 19 This is also indicative of the trend in the study of globalization and governance that has decidedly moved away from the state, see, for example, (Risse 2011). 53 Relatedly, a second reason for constructivists’ antithesis to the state has a lot to do with the sociology of discipline. As is known, the fight for constructivism to eke out its intellectual niche was waged fundamentally in ontological and epistemological terms. Value projection in the form of assertive foreign policy overtures and initiatives —whether it is liberal states working to advance the liberal project or non-liberal states flexing their soft power muscle—can yields little in terms of what constructivists look for: identity reconstruction independent of material incentives following the logic of appropriateness. The corollary is that constructivists are instinctually prone to see the state in reactive and reactionary light, which is also indicative of their normative hostility to the state. Empirically, constructivists are not avid about engaging in discussions—even with liberal theories of IR and foreign policy—about actual policy that invariably establishes the state as agents with a great amount of free will and the most powerful actor of international affairs. Consequently, they are understandably less than enthralled with a dynamic conception of socialization that allows states to proactively influencing the normative social structure by exercising leadership and utilizing their power, hard or otherwise. REVERSING “THE SECOND IMAGE REVERSED” There should be no doubt that the scholarly enterprise of socialization has greatly advanced our knowledge about a wide range of processes and mechanisms in international affairs. Chief among the findings is the malleable character of state identities and the causal impact of norms on both identity and behavior. Broadly conceived, socialization is 54 part of the second-image-reversed trend that shifts the analytical gravitas from how domestic structure impact the international system to the effects of international systemic on regime types and coalition patterns where domestic structure plays the a mediating role (Gourevitch 1978). The problem, as I have detailed earlier, is that the pendulum has swung too far. As a result, the unidimensional conceptualization of socialization privileges the socializers coming from outside the domestic realm, shuts off dissenting voices, pretends or purports to tame states as socializes even when the Leviathan is, in terms of both temporality and circumstances, not all that docile. While the policy discourse of socialization is a weapon of the strong, the analytical framework of socialization obscures many facets of the state in international relations. In all seriousness the weak states are certainly not meek or submissive, however. Nor are they blank sheets to be dribbled on. Rather, they are social entities with complicated historical legacies and cultural conventions that not only have tremendous staying power and but also exerts influence in states’ understandings and conceptions—conflicting as they may be—of the nature of the international system and their destinies within it. At the individual level, actors, educated about their national experience and steeped in their social and cultural environments, are first and foremost agents of their respective nation-states. This is precisely why in the socialization literature to socialize representatives of the states is tantamount to de-nationalizing them, a herculean task in and of itself. With their attention focused on the internationally denoted socialization, scholars of socialization cannot be accused of being completely oblivious to the prior condition that 55 they refer to as “national socialization.” In Johnston’s take, national bureaucracies and institutions have at least three advantages over transnational ones in shaping up and sustaining the allegiance of state agents: they are the first and foremost institutions within which actors are socialized (primary and primacy effects); they incur the most enduring impact “because of the time spent in them and by the often zero-sum presentation of national allegiances” (intensity effects); and they conjure up identities and loyalties that are incredibly difficult to transcend by virtue of ingroup/outgroup social dynamics as well as the legal and political cost associated with this transcendence, or rather, the transgression (boundary policing) (Johnston 2005 13-14). The permeability and potency of national socialization is demonstrably manifest even within the European Union contexts, the most hospitable place for international socialization to arise. Several essays in the aforementioned International Organization special issue on European socialization touch upon the subject that had been fairly understudied. In one of the studies Liesbet Hooghe examines how top officials of the European Commission—arguably one of the most autonomous and powerful among the layers of European supranational institutions—relate to core norms of the executive arm of the European Union. To the extent that support for EU norms is high, she finds, it is either because their national experience “predisposes” them to favor supranationalism or because their native countries benefit from supranationalism. “Several roads lead to Commission norms, but few run through international socialization,” she summarily claims (Hooghe 2005). Findings such as Hooghe’s prompt Michael Zürn and Jeffrey Chekel, co-editors of the IO volume, to issue calls for “bringing the domestic back in” even as they argue for a 56 more composite approach integrating both national and international/transnational level factors into analysis (Zürn and Checkel 2005). One has to wonder if their appeal is simply rehashing the old narrative of external norms entering into and interacting with domestic politics. I argue, rather, that the more appropriate approach should be about how states act and react vis-à-vis international norms, putting the analytical limelight on the domestic scene infused with competing political and ideological streams. These ideological forces and lines of thinking about a state’s proper role, mission, status and national interests in international society as well as the overall international order are by all accounts far more comprehensive, pervasive and vigorous than international norms. Even at the individual level, citizens and officials alike are both recipients and teachers of these domestic cultural and ideational elements. And while Johnston’s aforementioned description of national socialization does not seem to extend to agents working for international institutions, it should be emphasized, however, that these professionals and practitioners themselves are holders of passports issued by their respective national governments. Only upon their entry into adulthood, professional lives into this seemingly non-partisan—in terms of inter-state relations—milieu were they inculcated by international norms, which are more like niche values corresponding to specific, individual issues than a system of contextualized ideas about how nation-states should conduct themselves on the international stage. As one of the few attempts to inject agency of local actors into the study of socialization and norm adoption, Amitav Acharya thrusts the preexistent, indigenous normative structure into the analytical spotlight concerning the peculiar contours of Asian 57 regionalism. Reacting to Western dominance, according to Acharya, nationalist leaders of newly independent Southeast Asian states asserted the non-intervention norms, rendering in turn a condition of “cognitive prior” with which transnational norms need to be compatible to trickle down. Local actors were by no means passive and idle. In lieu of norm diffusion that paints a picture of international norms displace local practice, Acharya envisions instead a dynamic of localization whereby “the initiative to seek change belongs to the local agent” without “the cognitive prior or identity of the norm-takers” mostly preserved, if not maintained intact (Acharya 2009 19). Laudable as it is, I still think the argument does not go far enough to capture the full, variegated scope of states’ actions and reactions with regard to international norms. For the states, existing international norms are to be engaged and counteracted, but they also have the inherent urge and impulse to externalize their own indigenous norms and practices as behavioral models for all nations. That a state is a norm taker does not contradict that it can also be a norm maker. As a matter of empirical and policy concern, socialization ought to be conceptualized as a two-way street. This is most acute and pertinent with respect to the integration of rising powers into the liberal international order and the transformed distribution of power distribution (Pu 2012). Describing this as a process of “reciprocal socialization,” Maximillian Terhalle asserts that “rising powers are socialized into the existing international order, while reshaping the order when they enter” (Terhalle 2011). To paraphrase it using China as an example, soon after the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping made the opening-up strategy a national policy, the country started to exhibit a self-driven socialization in the form of voluntary and assertive adoption of international norms in 58 economic and technical areas; yet at the same time taking up Western political values in domestic governance nonetheless has consistently encountered insurmountable opposition from the elite class (Wang 2007). Internationally, Beijing remains a steadfast champion of the primacy of state sovereignty as a bedrock principle of contemporary international relations and strenuously resists humanitarian intervention as an acceptable and viable solution to regional conflicts and human suffering. This combination of ambivalent acceptance and rejection toward international norms is not unusual for the marginalized seeking to partake in the international order, and both China and Japan are members of the club. As Rosemary Foot and Andrew Walter succinctly put it, “Norm takers are more likely to see existing global norms as biased and as entrenching the position of hegemonic values and interests, perhaps often because they have emerged into a global normative order established during a period in which their preferences were either ignored or suppressed” (Foot and Walter 2010 11). The research duo’s comparative study of China and the United States shows that Beijing has been no less observant, if not more, of global norms in five selected issue areas than Washington, and that domestic policy priorities and domestic resonance of international norms are critical in determining China’s willingness to abide by alien norms. There are two main takeaways stemming from their research. On the one hand, placing the United States on the par with its nearest competitor while comparing their behavioral consistency with international norms is an immensely novel approach that sheds away, as they note, some biased baggage assumptions such as American exceptionalism and excessive application of the revisionist label on China (Foot and Walter 2010 15-21). 59 On the other hand, sticking to norm observance as the dependent variable implies an unattainable goal of 100% convergence even as norms are also evolving; it also constrains our purview and skewers overwhelmingly toward cooperative behavior—a point that cannot be reiterated enough—at the expense of non-cooperative actions as well as lofty but unconventional deeds, such as advocacy of human security by Japan and of humanitarian intervention by Western states. We should train out eyes to capture the full range of international behavior of states with or without regard to current, standing international norms. By turning the table around we are now better positioned to ask and examine from the perspectives of states themselves a series of questions such as: What motivates states to behave in a certain way? Why do states pursue and flout soft power and seek greater international status? Why do states promote their domestic norms but also adapt to international norms? Why are they benign and cooperative in some areas while acting aggressively and maliciously in others? In the next chapter I will zero in on three major foreign policy worldviews—realism, liberalism and nationalism—and examine how they each conceptualize national interests as well as positive contributions that do not necessarily have direct linkage with conventionally defined material interests in a globalized world. Although they do not dictate every foreign policy decision, these ideological precepts and belief systems do, by virtue of their being discursive yet present and overarching, provide not only some evaluative markers and parameters but also a plausible range of acceptable possibilities for decision-makers choose from in response to the external stimuli, environmental circumstances or even out of self-awareness of costs and opportunities. 60 Epistemologically, the understanding that ideational elements produce behavioral results has received wider acknowledgement in recent years (Yee 1996) (Goldstein and Keohane 1993). Yet when attempting to explain the failure of transnational ideas to bring about positive domestic changes scholars almost always put the blame on the domestic structure and neglect to explicate competing ideational pillars that underpin such institutional resistance. Thus this project is also an effort to fill that void. 61 Chapter 2 Visions of World Order in Competition Nationalism in between Liberalism and Realism Following my review of the literature on international norms and socialization, I will turn “inward,” so to speak, and examine the three worldviews that give a sense of direction to a country’s leaders in their making of foreign policy. They are liberalism, realism and nationalism, all grand thoughts of international relations deeply embedded in a country’s history, culture and political institutions. With respect to liberalism and realism, I will first provide a brief overview on how realists and liberals expect the world order to be managed and organized and what they expect of the nation-states—especially the great powers—as players on the international stage. Considering that liberalism is an avowedly interventionist ideological framework that gave rise of a flurry of what I call good Samaritan initiatives intended to boost international peace, economic development, democracy and human rights, I will begin with liberalism, followed by realist arguments and critique of liberalism. The third segment dwells on nationalism, which is in fact less about what nationalism means than about liberals and realists’ relations with nationalism. This strategy stems from the fact that state nationalism—a key subject of interest for this project—is incredibly difficult to pin down and there is a paucity of literature about it. Instead, I shed light on the deep ambivalence between nationalism on the one hand and liberalism and realism on the other hand, particularly on the easy slide between liberal internationalism and neoconservatism. Based on these analyses I argue that nationalism occupies a large policy spectrum between ideal-type liberalism and political realism, and therefore should 62 be treated—methodologically speaking—as a residual factor. This chapter ends with an explanation of plans for my theoretical and empirical investigation of China and Japan’s international behavior. Finally, a caveat. This project is more about the two Asian powers than about the United States. To the extent that there are many references to American foreign policy, it is because much of the international relations scholarship is developed in the United States and influenced by America’s international relations. Furthermore, what is written about peculiar traits of American foreign policy, such as liberal internationalism and neoconservatism, can be seen as prototypes of international doctrines shaped by one or more of the grand thoughts. This chapter thus paints broad sketches of great powers’ role in reforming or restructuring the international order. In the chapters to follow I will provide further review of international relations scholarship tailored to the specificity of Chinese and Japanese foreign policy. THE LIBERAL VISION OF WORLD ORDER The Liberal Triumph of the West Enduring poverty, war, political and religious oppression are ultimate culminations of human agency. More pointedly, too often than not these protracted problems co-exist and inspire scores of beliefs, ideas and theories that expose their deeper causes and promise practical solutions. These perspectives are akin to what Michael Barnett calls the “alchemical branch” of humanitarianism—as supposed to the “emergency branch” that is more keen on alleviating the “symptoms”—that aims to obliterate “the root causes of 63 suffering” (Barnett 2011 10). Pertinent to these encompassing objectives, questions abound concerning not just the desirability and effectiveness of external linkages but also the optimal institutional arrangements of a recipient polity and the sequence of priorities (democracy first or development first, democracy later), balance between the state and the society, the proper role and size of the government, et cetera. Meant to be concrete policy resolutions are such policy projects as development assistance, humanitarian intervention, promotion of democracy and human rights, as well as peace-keeping and peace-building. In essence, they are various types of international social engineering, each corresponding to one perennially recurring theme of good life and all uniformly perceived as indispensable parameters for modernity and human progress: material sufficiency and economic prosperity, freedom and liberty, inter-state peace and internal tranquility. It is liberalism at work. In spite of myriad antithetical dyads of political labels—Socialists vs. Conservatives (especially in France and Germany), liberals vs. conservatives, or Democrats vs. Republicans (particular to the United States), liberal tenets centering on individual freedom nonetheless reigns supreme in the West. As the political theorist Ruth Abbey puts it aptly, “Much of the current exchange among English-language political theorists takes place under the auspices of liberalism: the conversation between liberals and their critics have been superseded largely, albeit not wholly, by arguments among those who place themselves under the liberal umbrella” (Abbey 2005 462). In other words, much of what is bitterly contested by contemporary political left and right wing is genuinely more about the proper role of the state in socio-political life in the effort to 64 ensure and maximize liberty than about the liberation of the individual as a shared objective of pursuit. Insofar as “Liberalism is best understood as a theory of the good life for individuals that is linked to a theory of the social, economic, and political arrangement within which they may lead the life” (Ryan 2012 35), it is also a broad tent under which a galaxy of towering liberal figures—John Locke, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, David Hume, Isaiah Berlin, Friedrich Hayek, John Rawls, and the list goes on and on—disagree over the boundaries of freedom and toleration, the virtue or vice of the welfare state, and the perfection and imperfection of democracy, all fundamental questions in contemporary society. Nor is there consensus on what liberty means for individual action and domestic and foreign policy of a liberal state. After all, freedom itself invariably entails a kind of ‘negative liberty” that implies compromise and restraint as well as “positive liberty” that denotes more choice and activism. 20 Classical liberals, including Locke, Smith, and Alexis de Tocqueville, emphasize the rule of law, limited government, the paramountcy of private property and individual responsibility. They have a mixed reception nowadays. On the one hand, they are challenged by modern liberals who, with a much more expansive view and emboldened overtones, aims “to emancipate individuals from the fear of hunger, unemployment, ill health, and a miserable old age, and, positively, to attempt to help members of modern industrial societies flourish;” on the other hand, they have ancestry traced to them—with tenuous veracity—by contemporary libertarians who perceives government “not as a necessary evil but a largely (and for so-called anarchocapitalists, a wholly) unnecessary 20 See, “Two Concepts of Liberty” in (Berlin 2002). 65 evil” and ardently rejects its legitimacy in any form of property deprivation and wealth distribution (Ryan 2012). Its individualist leitmotif notwithstanding, liberals are inevitably confronted with the question of institutional and organizational form of the broad community the individual cannot get away from. While there is not doubt that early liberals of the 18 th and 19 th century were opposed to the system of feudal lordship predominant at the time in Europe, their initial reaction to democracy as a new governmental type was uneasy at best. Distinct from each other, liberalism and democracy are concerned with liberty and equality respectively; “liberalism’s individual is essentially atomistic, whereas democracy’s individual is more directly societal” (Hobson 2009 640). Afraid that “the voices of the enlightened few …[be] drowned out by the uneducated, and thus unenlightened, masses”—democracy’s proneness to the “tyranny of the majority” a la Tocqueville, for example—liberals’ response to the spread of universal suffrage was to apply a strategy “to entrench liberal rights” in constitutional democracy with the understanding that “the best way to manage democracy’s seemingly unavoidable rise was to limit and control it as best as they could” (Hobson 2009 643). The relative smooth induction of expanded suffrage in Britain and the United States put Anglo-Saxon liberals there back at ease and turned them into avid proponents of liberal democracy, which has exhibited unparalleled level of stability. Continental Europe, however, had to embarked on a tormented path characterized by ideological conflicts and abominable intermittence of violence before achieving “a new balance of democracy and liberal principles, and constitutionalism in particular, but with 66 both liberalism and democracy redefined in light of the totalitarian experience of mid-twentieth-century Europe” (Muller 2011). To safeguard and nurture liberty liberals are adamant about the right to private property as much as in favor of rule of law and limited government. Considering liberalism’s universalist pretensions, it is often said that “international dimension of liberalism was little more than the projection of domestic liberalism on a world scale” as far as its aversion to political oppression and violence is concerned (Hoffmann 1995b 160). But while the liberal vision of politics transcends physical boundaries, a liberal policy has to come to terms with the fact that national borders matter gravely and that in international politics there exists an extra layer of governance and player. Historically, principles of national sovereignty and self-determination emerged out of “the most important contextual change in international politics in this millennium: the shift from the medieval to the modern international system” (Ruggie 1986 141). More specifically, it was two major waves of “revolutions in ideas about justice and political authority”—the Thirty Years’ War that spawned the idea of sovereignty in light of religious freedom and the anti-colonial movement and wars in the 19th and 20th century inspired by nationalism and racial equality—that propagated acceptance of sovereignty world-wide (Philpott 2001 4). Notably, however, liberals’ relations with national sovereignty have been very complicated, to say the least. The dual function of non-violation of national sovereignty as both a shield against foreign invasion on the one hand and a cover for depriving individual rights by domestic illiberal forces on the other hand is lost to few. As Philpott artfully puts it, “there is a paradox to the liberation. If the sovereign state provides a people with one 67 sort of liberty, it also provides a carapace under which regimes may, and have, suppressed liberal and democratic rights, other forms of liberty”(Philpott 2001 10). In historicizing the liberal balance between internal liberty and international justice, scholars have also noted that “It was to free trade that the 19 th -century liberals looked for the foundation of a new kind of international order” (Richardson 1997 15). Insofar as the liberal view toward those monumental events of the era—defined by the American Civil War, unification of Germany and Italy as well as colonial competition among the great powers—is concerned, liberals then took comfort in what they saw as greater political solidarity and “for a time…equated progress with unification in the nation-state” (Steigerwald 1994 4). Rarely were liberalism’s intimacies with the British international primacy and imperialism/colonialism cast in serous doubt. Nor did liberals have problems with the idea of non-intervention: they were not particularly concerned about those struggling for national liberation (the Concert of Europe and the crackdown on major revolutions in 1848, for instance, were reminders of that goal) but wary of consequences such as potential cost and uncertain implications arising from an interventionist foreign policy (Richardson 1997 15-16). As such, Western European bourgeoisies with a liberal conscience—politically positioned between the newly awakened working mass and the recalcitrant aristocrats, both of whom grew more agitated and nationalistic—were left languishing as the prospect of great power war loomed large toward the end of the 19 th century. It took the devastation of World War I and America’s historical foray into Europe-dominated world politics for liberalism to take a stridently proactive and 68 interventionist turn. In 1918 Woodrow Wilson announced his Fourteen Points before the US Congress and then worked tirelessly at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 to promote his plan to an international audience. His passionate calls for free trade, democracy, self-determination and a new institutional structure to ensure world peace were an amalgam of liberal values in action, and permanently placed him in the pantheon of liberal leaders and prominent activists endeavoring to engineer international progress. Wilson, undoubtedly influenced by a peculiar missionary ideology conditioned by the unique trajectory of American political development (Smith 1994; Hunt 2009), also took his philosophical cue from Edmund Burke and perceiving social progress in evolutionary—“through organic growth”—rather than revolutionary terms: He conveniently married his democratic expansionism with the new tradition of international intervention begun only two decade ago with President McKinley in Cuba and the Philippines (Nordholt 1994). In the words of Constance Anthony, “Wilson stood at the intersection of the republicanism of the founders and the humanitarian paternalism of the new interventionists and adopted the focus on the democracy of the former and the hopes for military intervention of the latter” (Anthony 2008 242). Wilsonian idealism, otherwise also known as “liberal democratic internationalism,” is said to have been “the most important and distinctive contribution of the United States to the international history of the twentieth century”, whereas since Wilson “the most consistent tradition in American foreign policy with respect to this global change has been the belief that the nation’s security is best protected by the expansion of democracy worldwide” (Smith 2012). This does not mean it succeeded outright in usurping the 69 day-to-day management of national security from realpolitik considerations. As said by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “Nineteen hundred looked forward to the irresistible expansion of freedom, democracy and abundance”, reflecting a liberal mood at that time of a more optimistic and progressive world, whereas in retrospect “1950 will look back totalitarianism, to concentration camps, to mass starvation, to atomic war” (Schlesinger Jr 1997 2). While the United States itself deviated from liberal internationalism by either succumbing to nationalist isolationism during the inter-war period, it nonetheless applied an intensively liberal/democratic agenda to the reordering of the post-World War II international system. Even during the Cold War, itself a protracted game of realpolitik between two superpowers and two contesting sets of ideology, Wilsonianism, playing second fiddle to power politics, never actually faded away. By the time Ronald Reagan initiated his “democratic revolutionism” in the 1980s, thus becoming the first Republican president to wrap himself in what was long considered Democrats’ agenda, Wilsonian internationalism has come to a full swing and emerged as the consensual principle for the American national security establishment. Already a vast network of democracy activists, government think tanks and scholars, all with a liberal leaning outlook, collaborated to produce a cornucopia of scholarship ranging from modernization theory, democratic transition, political economy and theory of democratic peace, all pointing to democracy as the key for progressive international relations and democracy promotion as a way of facilitating the process (Doyle 1983a; Guilhot 2005). 21 Subsequently the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War was spoken 21 From the practical point of view, many prominent scholars and public intellectuals support low-intensity or moderate-intensity democracy promotion, that is, short of externally imposed regime change. See, for example, (Russett 2005). 70 of as an unconditional victory for the West and liberalism. And to a great many triumphalists, this not only indicates “the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism”—hence “the end of history”—and also heralds a liberal world order “far more preoccupied with economics than with politics or strategy” (Fukuyama 1989). So robust is the American commitment to revamping the post-cold war order that Americans are not only used to define its external relations through the lens of democracy but also apt to intervene—politically and economically—for the sake of it, as was the case with post-Cold War Russia and post-Tian’anmen China during the Clinton years (Carothers 2009a). Justifying the invasion of Iraq, ex post, on the grounds of democratic peace and then stripping the Middle East the status of “reserved territory” free of liberal lashing in spite of the conspicuous lack of democracy and freedom, President George W. Bush elected the profile of democracy promotion to a high in both rhetoric and practical terms and then damaged it in the global public eye with its unabashed unilateralism and penchant for regime change. That notwithstanding, global democracy remained steadfastly a bipartisan policy objective and concern in the post-Bush era, as reflected in the call for a “League of Democracies” or “Concerned of Democracies” to further jumpstart the value agenda by political heavyweights and scholars on both the Republic and Democratic sides of the aisle (Carothers 2008; Kagan 2008). Liberal Remedies of International Ills As I have said earlier, institutions and multilateralism are more liberal means than liberal ends. To the extent that international regimes and institutions do work, it is because 71 members share a certain amount of interests to begin with such that they are willing to enter into negotiation and bargaining under these rubrics. They are not the cure-all, nor are they the only means at the disposal for liberal internationalists. Across the globe the world has been torn with political calamities and human tragedies: the ethnic conflicts in Kosovo, Rwanda and Sudan, the ruthless tyranny of Saddam Hussein and the Kim dynasty in North Korea, the dual deficit of democracy and security in the Middle East, underdevelopment and stagnation in large swathe of the third world. Liberals of conscience are intellectually challenged to proffer end-all remedies and solutions that portend to engineer social, economic and political progress. Financial aid is extended to governments intent on improving these conditions whereas economic sanctions and political pressure are often applied on the ones deemed nefarious and dangerous. At times of the Bosnia bloodshed in the late 1990s and Hussein’s suspected nuclear ambition, liberals, as much as they endeavor to resort to cumbersome multilateral talks that often yield no desired result, are confronted with the tough and urgent choices of intervention and use of force to achieve what they earnestly yearn for. Below I will proceed to survey those boldface liberal programs and initiatives. Nation-building: Aimed at stimulating, accelerating and even manufacturing political progress and outcomes, these what I call good-Samaritan initiatives are interventionist by design and political by nature. In the parlance of American foreign policy making, they are part and parcel of the nation-building business. Encapsulates the grandiose enterprise of orchestrating political change and institutional development in foreign lands, it is often 72 used interchangeably with state-building with an emphasis on economic development (Fukuyama 2006 3). Mirroring America’s national experience and self-portrait as the “shining city on the hill”, the phantom of its messianic impulses can be found in each and every one of its major international foray from the Philippines in the late 19 th century, the crushing defeat of the Vietnam war to the tumultuous twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of September 11. For the most part, American nation building is better known and remembered for its depth of involvement and concentration of resources and man power in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is also the dramatic flair and the extraordinary reach to precipitate domestic transformation that some choose to define nation building “as the use of armed forces in the aftermath of a conflict to promote an enduring peace and transition to democracy” (Dobbins et al. 2008 2). And insofar as America’s turnaround of Germany and Japan from war-time nemeses to post-war allies is institutionalized in memory as a success, it provides a certain degree of empirical justification for the adventure in Iraq. President George W. Bush, having rejected nation-building as a reckless use of American military power, abruptly embraced it with gravitas after 9.11. Speaking in the run-up to the launch of the Iraq invasion in early 2003, he proclaimed that “There was a time when many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values. Well, they were wrong. Some say the same of Iraq today. They are mistaken. The nation of Iraq, with its proud heritage, abundant resources and skilled and educated people is fully capable of 73 moving toward democracy and living in freedom.” 22 Perceiving democracy as the core of nation building, he could not have foreseen the splinter of the Iraqi nation along sectarian lines in the post-Hussein era. Cost aside, some say, it is incumbent on the United States to do what it does simply because nation building is “the inescapable responsibility of the world’s only superpower” (Dobbins et al. 2003 xv). The United States is not the only nation engaged in the business of nation building. During the Cold War the Soviet Union was no less preoccupied with setting up and propping up regimes across the world that, if not genuine believers of communism, at least paid lip service to it. Even then, America took nation-building to a whole new level, poring financial and intellectual capital in gargantuan quantities into fragile allies and newly independent nations—South Korea, Japan, India, et cetera—to ensure they had the “right kind of revolution” and modernization frameworks (Latham 2011; Ekbladh 2011). Entering the post-Cold War era, American nation-building manifests itself in a cascade of policy positions from tacit encouragement for a liberalizing orientation to accompany economic modernization in countries such as China, a well-defined agenda focusing on economic aid and technical assistance in post-conflict regions such as Bosnia and East Timor, to a complete takeover and overhaul of failed states such as Iraq and Afghanistan that entails ensuring the end of violence and smooth running of their state apparatus (Suri 2011 44). What is striking about American nation-building are two pronounced traits. The first is the scope and depth of its commitment to profound social change that is 22 “President Bush’s speech at the American Enterprise Institute,” February 27, 2003, [accessed 08/16/2012], http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/world/threats-responses-president-s-words-free-people-will-keep-peace -world.html 74 quintessentially American, so much so that it amounts to be a “national pastime,” 23 even as the bitter taste lingers from the many disappointments over the years. 24 A second feature is, as indicated by the earlier quote by President Bush, the priority on democratic governance. That is, to the extent that one of the fundamental aspirations for American nation-building ventures is indeed to engender peace and stability, the theoretical underpinning behind it dictates that peace is best preserved only when a democratically formed governance structure guarantees individual rights and spurs economic growth in accordance with free-market principles. In other words, there is a strict sequence involved here: a peace operation cannot stand alone because only democratically derived peace can perpetuate domestic stability and international harmony and prevent them from faltering: for the actual act of nation-building, ensuring security is only the opening act for a two-phrase wholesale package consisted of reconstruction and development (Fukuyama 2006). Nation building by definition is basically to nurture a well-functioning democratic polity by all means possible. As Americans learned from their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is a complete package that consists of political, social, and economic aspects covering all urgent and long-term needs. In Afghanistan, for instance, Americans were tasked—aside from fighting off Al Qaeda and the Taliban—with providing aid and support ranging from helping build critical state institutions to providing basic health and 23 Robert Kagan, “Nation-Building, Our National Pastime,” [accessed 07/12/2012], http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/books/review/libertys-surest-guardian-by-jeremi-suri-book-review.html 24 Incidentally, at times of difficulty this is when champions refrain from using the word nation-building and opt instead for “capacity building.” Alan Greenblatt, “U.S. Easing out of Nation-Building Business,” [accessed 08/18/2012], http://www.npr.org/2011/11/23/142699506/u-s-easing-out-of-nation-building-business 75 educational service to the locals. On the other hand, however, the boldest, most complex and multi-dimensional experiment of social engineering does not always come in full piece at one time. Such liberal international programs, as democracy promotion, peacekeeping and peace building and foreign aid, have been in full swing for decades as inter-locking yet separate missions, all or some of which have been taken up by liberal and illiberal states as well as the United Nations. Foreign Aid: Development aid is the most common, non-reciprocal form of economic support from richer countries to less developed ones. Defined as “flows of official financing administered with the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries as the main objective, and which are concessional in character with a grant element of at least 25 percent (using a fixed 10 percent rate of discount)”, Official Development Aid (ODA) as a type of money transfer is comparable in scale to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and “[comprises] contributions of donor government agencies, at all levels, to developing countries (“bilateral ODA”) and to multilateral institutions” 25 Known as a club of rich countries who are also traditional ODA donor countries, the OECD reports that annual aid commitments of its members to developing countries saw a decline of 3%, three years after the break of the worst global economic and financial crisis since the 1930s and the first drop—“disregarding years of exceptional debt relief”—since 1997. 26 25 Definition by OECD, accessed [07/27/2012], http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=6043 26 Accessed 07/27/2012, http://www.oecd.org/document/3/0,3746,en_2649_37413_50058883_1_1_1_37413,00.html 76 In spite of its current popularity in international economic relations, foreign aid as an established practice only began after World War II, when the United States extended the Marshall Program and other related facilities projects to its European allies and other nations desperately in need of help. The overriding concern in Washington at the time was that economic calamities would provide a fortuitous opening for communism and the Soviet Union. As such it fitted seamlessly with the nation building agenda to which successive US administrations subscribed. Not only were some US-dominated international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, charged with providing economic aid and technical assistance, new aid bureaucracies staffed predominantly by economists and technical specialists were also created in developed democracies to manage generous aid budgets. Although development assistance commenced in a geopolitical climate, it was intricately tied to a liberal conception of political development that, according to Robert Packenham, sees “change and development are easy; all good things go together, radicalism and revolution are bad; distributing power is more important than accumulating power” (Packenham 1973a 20). Today foreign aid is not longer strictly under the spell of parochial American liberalism but also draws support from humanitarianism and other liberal ideas, including internationalism and egalitarianism (Lumsdaine 1993 46-47). One major indication of its broader liberal appeal cited by Lumsdaine and others is that social democracies, Nordic countries especially, tend to distribute a bigger proportion of their public expenditure to foreign aid, echoing a domestic concern to poverty in general (Lumsdaine 1993 42). On the other hand, although other self-serving motives as reflected in the patterns of aid 77 allocation does not mean they are the reasons foreign aid came into being (Lumsdaine 1993 51), it does get entangled in many different domestic and international considerations. At the international level at the least, big money breeds big influence. Even rising powers such as China, India and Brazil that are not in the cohort of developed countries have vastly increased their economic aid to other developing countries. Although its aid is tied with trade and diplomatic priorities, making it difficult to account on Western definition of ODA, China in 2009 and 2010 lent more money to other developing countries than the World Bank, long the primary channel of development money, making China an “aid hegemon” already on the horizon. 27 Promotion of Democracy and Human Rights: America’s passion for “democratic peace” is an unwavering conviction that democracy ought to be the default system of government and that relations among democratic nations are destined to be peaceful. It also means that it tends to look askance at “authoritarian peace,” a circumstance of peaceful co-existence among countries ruled by a military dictator, a powerful strongman or a political party that represents only limited segments of the society. This does not mean that various administrations have always practiced what they preach through the course of their country’s entanglement in world affairs. On the contrary, there exist plenty of examples in which Washington made Faustian bargains with non-democratic rulers, most prominently during the Cold War, as a way to protect its regional and geopolitical interests stemming from the fear of unnecessarily upsetting an applecart full of anti-democratic but 27 Geoff Dyer, Jamil Anderlini, Henny Sender, The Financial Times, “China’s lending hits new heights” January 17, 2011. 78 stridently pro-US allies and partners (Robinson 1996). As glaring and jarring as these blots are, however, it is the perennial endeavor of promoting change where material interests are minimal or uncertain—in profound defiance of realism—that is much worthier of critical examination here. Democracy promotion is thus a political project infused with idealism that seeks to spread democratic values and make democracy the “only game in town” as a political system. Nowhere is the missionary zeal for fostering democracy abroad stronger than the United States, where “to promote democracy abroad as a way of enhancing the national security” is “surely the greatest ambition” of American foreign policy for much of its history (Smith 1994 4) and a means of “fulfilling America’s destiny” (Muravchik 1992). Besides incorporating it as a part and parcel of state-to-state political relations, some of the most avid democracy-promoting governments came to appreciate an alternative way that relies upon entities institutionally separated from the government but nonetheless financially supported by the state considering that keeping them at arm’s lengths from the government brings more reputational credibility and practical flexibility in dealing with the details on the ground. For many decades the German government continues to allocate a fairly large share (worth hundreds of millions of dollars) of its development budget to the German political foundations that were credited with democratic transition in countries ranging from Europe to Latin America; effective and instrumental in professionalizing an army of democracy promotion personnel, the German model was later copied by other governments, a move that gave birth during the Reagan administration to the prominent American organization designated for promoting democracy overseas, notably National 79 Democratic Institute (NDI) and National Endowment for Democracy (NED) (Pinto-Duschinsky 1991). Utilizing conventional diplomatic means and the aforementioned quasi-state organizations, Western liberal democracies have expanded both the scope of their target regions and the range of tactics. Rules and mechanisms have been instituted in their implementation of development aid that gear toward good governance, rule of law, democratic institutional building and transparency. Along with like-minded NGOs, government-affiliated organizations and their professionals provide crucial funding, training and technical assistance to support civil society groups, media outlets and even political parties in target countries, and are regular participants in monitoring elections in transitional countries. Their work has proved pivotal in the many democratic awakenings in Ukraine and Central Asia in the last decade, while government-sponsored democracy-promoting organizations too have increased in number. Also noteworthy is the push for democratic change by the Bush administration in the Middle East, where the collaboration of a coterie of authoritarian regimes were indispensable for securing America’s geopolitical interest in the region. Indirectly, the political preferences and conditions for joining international organizations comprised primarily by democratic countries too have also accelerated the democratization process in countries aspiring membership in those multilateral institutions (Pevehouse 2005). Human rights is intricately tied to a country’s political system, and as a political issue it has taken a much more prominent profile in the foreign policy of more countries over the years. This coincides with a time when non-governmental rights organizations 80 such as Amnesty International began to utilize worldwide publicity campaigns well-integrated with fact-finding activities and shaming tactics that often succeeded—as in the worldwide condemnation and sanction of the Apartheid regime—in either directly pressuring governments with less-than-desirable records into improving their human rights practices or urging Western governments to apply political and diplomatic resources to compel counterparts of the former kind to comply (Clark 2001; Klotz 1995a; Keck and Sikkink 1998). But many states are more than followers of advocacy networks or by-standers in raising consciousness of human rights plights in the world. Domestic political considerations motivated governments of a few newly democratized countries to push for establishing the earliest human rights regimes (Moravcsik 2000). And toward the waning years of the cold war the Carter administration put a premium on human rights in its relations with other powers, and by making the subject a point of contention that resulted in the Soviet Union’s signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, Western powers entrapped its communist adversaries in a moral discussion that both emboldened and mobilized the opposition forces, thus leading the wave for peaceful and democratic changes of 1989 (Thomas 2001). Today more governments than ever before have a designated human rights unit within their foreign policy bureaucracies that regularly interacts with the media, international organizations, and NGOs on a long slew of issues ranging from immigrants’ rights, women’s rights to labor rights. Governments have learned to criticize, and be criticized by, each other on issues of human rights. More importantly, not only has South Africa turned from a global pariah as a result of its entrenched racial discrimination in the 81 Apartheid era into an energized advocate for better rights practices elsewhere, such tiny country as Costa Rica too sees its championing of human rights in its regional neighborhood and multilateral settings as commensurate with its moral standards and “long terms security” (Brysk 2009). A much more forceful form of human rights promotion in recent years is humanitarian intervention that involves “deploying military force across borders for the purpose of protecting foreign nationals from man-made violence” (Finnemore 2003 53). To the extent that states are more reluctant to declare war unilaterally, they now appeal to universal humanitarian values and multilateral institutions for the sake of defending civilians against indiscriminate killing, a stance shared too by some non-democratic countries and applied to international interventions in Haiti, the Balkans, Libya and elsewhere. Brushing against the counter-argument that it is “morally unjustifiable and political indefensible” to put American soldiers (and of other countries as well) in harm’s way in situations bearing no relevance to one’s national interest, the United States and other governments have learned through successes and failures to grapple with thorny issues of logistical preparation, coalition building and final exit (Western and Goldstein 2011). Politically and legally, the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention was bolstered with the establishment in 2002 of a permanent tribunal (the International Criminal Court) devoted to prosecuting war criminals and the inculcation of the concept of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), both of which came under the aegis of the United Nations only after indefatigable efforts by like-minded countries such as Canada. 82 Peacekeeping and PeaceBuilding: Beginning as an innovative measure for conflict management in the early years of the Cold War, international peacekeeping has been mandated by the United Nations Charter following a cease-fire agreement between the warring parties. These missions were generally impartial and launched on the conditions of host consent and nonuse of force except in the cases of self-defense. Since the 1990s, however, this peace mechanism has departed from traditional guidelines and applied to cases where a political settlement is not at place and use of force is authorized. Peacebuilding too is added to the objectives and missions are no longer restricted to United Nations platform. Charged with responsibilities such as monitoring the withdrawal of combatants from the conflict area and provision of reconstruction aid, these peace missions are intended “to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict” (Boutros-Ghali 1992). That civil conflicts, often tragically characterized by ethnically defined conflicts, became more prevalent also forced peacekeepers and peacebuilders to take over a set of regiments such as election morning, police training and even some administrative functions of a state apparatus that can be more interventionist and in the confines of state building. Insofar as the United Nations and regional institutions such as Organization for American States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are instrumental in organizing and coordinating peace-related activities, members states of these organizations are just as important since inevitably they are the ones responsible for footing the bill and contributing soldiers and other critical personnel, not to mention that the consent of major powers is necessary for jumpstarting the process in the first place. As of June 2012, there 83 were 17 peace operations led by the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) that employed 12,0350 uniformed and civilian personnel as well as volunteers, with the uniformed personnel coming from 120 countries—a new record. 28 Among the countries that only became proactive in the collaborative peace-enhancing scheme in recent decades, Japan had to endure vehement domestic wrangling over the constitutionality of dispatching its armed forces overseas, whereas China of late quietly stepped up its involvement by filling the void left by some Western powers whose interest has been waning. Both China and Japan perceive international peacekeeping through the prism of the United Nations that lends legitimacy and authority to the project. While Japan extends its endeavors to peace building as well, China, in spite of its new-found enthusiasm, largely limits its participation to peacekeeping. Yet peacebuilding is more of the norm in recent decades. Undergirded by the liberal internationalist paradigm, proponents of peace building subscribe to the belief that “the surest foundation for peace, both within and between states, is market democracy, that is, a liberal democratic polity and a market-oriented economy” (Paris 1997 56). Liberalization, however, naturally unleashed a torrent of destabilizing side-effects contributing sometimes to continuation or escalation of conflicts, which international agencies were initially ill prepared for and unable to remedy (Paris 1997 56-57). Latter evolution of the peacebuilding operations, however, also falls into a dilemma and faces criticisms from all sides: as their scope and duration are expanded to perform more state-building functions to ensure durable effects in those 28 “Peacekeeping Fact Sheet, accessed 10/08/2012, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/resources/statistics/factsheet.shtml 84 war-torn regions, they also tend to be overly intrusive into the target country’s domestic political process, thus robbing the locals of the ownership of the endeavor undercutting its legitimacy (Cooper et al. 2011) (Cooper et al. 2011). THE REALIST VISION OF WORLD ORDER The Perpetual Import of being “Realistic” In the wake of 9.11, President George W. Bush, transformed himself from being the standard-bearer of American conservatism in the new millennium to “the most Wilsonian statement any President has made since Wilson himself:” In justifying maintaining America’s military supremacy he talked about “making the destabilizing arms race of other eras pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace” (Zakaria 2002). What ensued in the wake of the war he waged in Iraq were a nominally democratic but ethnically divided Iraq, the surge of global anti-Americanism as well as an enervated economy in crisis. Then in their heated 2008 presidential campaign, both Obama—the liberal and Democrat—and McCain—the conservative and Republican—competed to claim the mantle of Henry Kissinger (Del Pero 2010 1-5). Kissinger, of course, is the quintessential practitioner of realpolitik many liberals love to hate, whose handling of American foreign policy during the Nixon and Ford administrations exposed himself to countless accusations of immorality and appeasement of the Soviets by both sides of the American political spectrum. In another subtle twist, McCain spoke forcefully about the need for the United States to forge a new “League of 85 Democracies” with like-minded allies in order to confront authoritarian powers, China and Russia in particular. Obama, while also paying much verbal respect to the American democracy assistance tradition, was instead more famously remembered for his “nation-building at home” proclamation. 29 The irony of these episodes lies in the two candidates’ reinstatement of Kissingerian realism as much as their joint embrace of international democracy enterprise. Long considered diametrically opposed to each other, realism and idealism/liberalism seem to have learned to eke out an oxymoronic co-existence in the American body politic. Such is case that America’s first female chief diplomat, Madeleine Albright, curtly declared that she “hoped never again to hear foreign policy described as a debate between Wilsonian idealism and geopolitical realists. In our era, no President or Secretary of State could manage events without combining the two” (Albright 2003 505). On the one hand, she does have a point since inevitably there are situations where realists and liberals can agree on actual strategies and policy. On the other hand, we cannot just brush off those differences and conflate substantive nuances with rhetorical appeals. Earlier review of liberalism has demonstrated how the ideology, in either multilateral or unilateral incarnation, has dominated American foreign policy thinking and international strategies. Paradoxically, at least in terms of public discourse, realism still wins by appearing realistic or pragmatic since nobody wants to be branded as idealistic for being idealistic or naive. As Del Petro puts it, the two presidential contenders’ adulation of Kissinger “was not so much over the merit of the issue or the strength of Kissinger’s argument, but its symbolic 29 “The Candidates on Democracy Promotion in the Arab World,” accessed 10/11/2012, http://www.cfr.org/africa/candidates-democracy-promotion-arab-world/p14754 86 value…by invoking Kissinger’s authority and claiming his support, whether willing or unwilling, the presidential candidates looked to justify their positions and emphasize who was the greater realist” (Del Pero 2010 2). Indeed, that the liberalism/conservatism dichotomy in domestic political setting is out of alignment with the liberalism/realism divide in its diplomatic repertoire tells as much about the general contours of America’s international involvement and outlook as about the two basic tenets of foreign policy. Critics of idealism have long accused its proponents of “clothing [their] own interest in the guise of a universal interest for the purpose of imposing it on the rest of the world ” (Carr 1939 75). To be fair, such derision stems from the fact that leaders, to the extant that they appeal to a utopian world of peace and prosperity and use that visage to call for action and global change, invariably mix their high-minded rhetoric with hard-nosed power politics. Reagan, known “in some respects …more Wilsonian than any of his Democratic predecessors” (Smith 2012 xv), ratcheted up arms race in the 1980s with the Soviet Union without a flinch. The downside of the triumph of American realpolitik, agreed by many, is that it was a Pyrrhic victory resulting in “paradigm lost” for the realist school of thought and “the triumph of Wilsonianism” by default in the competition of ideas for the remaking of the world thereafter (Haass 1995; Tucker 1993). Deprived of the sworn enemy as much as the realist raison d'etat, champions of realpolitik and containment became “adrift” as reinvigorated Wilsonianism surged to dominance in American policy circles (Kristol and Kagan 1996). Unmatched by any other belief systems, the realist weltanschauung is indisputably the most intuitive and time-tested perspectives of international relations. Coming off from 87 thousands of years of human interactions and communications when peace was considered as anomalous as oasis in the desert, generations of realists take to heart what Thucydides referred to the law of jungle as “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” International relations came to fruition as a discipline in post-World War II America, and only in America because of the dramatic increase in the demand for international knowledge thanks to its newfound status as the indispensable world power as well as its evidence-based intellectual propensity that a coterie of emigre intellectuals from Europe ensconced in (Hoffmann 1995a). And the discipline’s inception was intricately tied to realism, with Morgenthau as its “founding father” (Hoffmann 1995a 216). But Morgenthau and his peers were also criticized for being “more interested in practice than abstract theory” and were generally content with “the triumph of realism as a way of thinking about foreign policy” (Keohane 1986 9). In academic circles, especially, political realism was caught up in the aftermath of the behavioral revolution in social science, a notably systemic approach steeped in positivist ontology and epistemology that began with Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (1979). A highly prescriptive theory, structural realism took for granted the relative stability engendered by the irrepressible fear of nuclear mutual destruction—the sword of Damocles indeed—that two system powers themselves unequivocally felt. The denouement of the Cold War, a result without the finale in some way, was unexpected to realists as much as to everyone else. The paradigm shifted toward structural realism henceforth, lost a great deal of luster, and stimulated the inception and growth of adapted variations as well as competing paradigmatic approaches (Wohlforth 1994). 88 Instead of tracing the fundamental cause of state behavior to human nature or the character of leaders, Waltzian neorealism ascribes its explanatory prowess exclusively to the international structure defined by anarchy as its ordering principle, and by the distribution of capabilities measured by the number of great powers. Variants of neorealists nonetheless nonetheless spar over the scope and veracity of states’ ultimate objective and “how much power states want:” defensive realists claim that states strive to ensure their survival; offensive realists counter that this aim is too conservative, and given the extraordinary degree of uncertainty, states are simply hard-wired to seek hegemony in the system (Mearsheimer 2001). Rejecting the linear causal effect of anarchy on foreign policy depicted by structural realists, a new crop of realists, enlightened by their classical realist predecessors while acknowledging the critical significance of a state’s position in the international system and material power in relative terms—for which they are called neoclassical realists—argue that domestic factors such as state structure and leaders’ idiosyncrasies do matter because they are the conduits through which system pressure is filtered to impact policy (Rose 1998). At present still the dominant paradigm in international relations scholarship, realism is faced with two dilemmas of completely different nature. First, in order to obtain more explanatory prowess and prescriptive precision, realist scholars increasingly reach out to such factors as domestic politics, ideas, institutions that are terrains of its rival paradigms, ending with the weakening of its theoretical elegance and distinctiveness (Legro and Moravcsik 1999). One scholar, for instance, in his attempt to adapt realist frameworks to explain post-Cold War American strategies, applies balance of threat to the 89 security sector and balance of power to the economic sphere (Mastanduno 1997). Secondly, the more conceptually and theoretically sophisticated realism and its competitors get, the more they become esoteric to policy makers and are perceived as irrelevant to helping solve real world problems (Walt 2005a; Nye Jr 2009). There is, however, no denying that realism remains a very potent intellectual force and policy doctrine in the United States and elsewhere. In the United States, for example, there exist a horde of journalists, government officials public intellectuals, notably the journalist and writer Robert D. Kaplan, who continue to preach a realist ethos through their articles, opinion-editorials and books that are prominently placed and reviewed. Joining them are also erstwhile pragmatic practitioners who came of age during the Cold War (e.g., Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George Bush, Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell), hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats and senior government officials whose academic training in international relations was steeped in realism, an elite cadre of academics who have both the interest and opportunity to practice what the preach during their occasional government stints (Thomas Christensen, Aaron Friedberg), and even the improbably giant on the left, Norm Chomsky (Osborn 2009). 30 While realist thinking in America remains uncomfortably in the shadows of Wilsonian internationalism in the pantheon of foreign policy paradigms, it has either been prevalent or is on the rise in a number of other countries. Using China as a hard case to show that—contrary to classical realist and neorealist claims that realpolitik stems from 30 Some scholars who had stints in government are liberals, including Anthony Lake and Ane-Marie Slaughter. 90 either human nature of the anarchic international structure—realpolitik can be culturally embedded and sustained, Johnston contests that a parabellum strategic culture in China exerted enormous influence on politico-military behavior in ancient times, but it also remained vibrant in the Maoist era (Johnston 1995c; Johnston 1996). Extending his timeframe to the present, he asserts that in spite of the about-face in socio-economic policies Deng Xiaoping undertook after Mao died, Chinese cultural realism remains “valid” as Maoist “strategic and military legacy was accepted and internalized by Chinese decision makers” (Johnston 1996 note 19). Thomas Christensen echoes that point, claiming that “China may well be the high church of realpolitik in the post-Cold War world” (Christensen 1996). In contrast to China, post-WWII Japan for many decades was a hard case to crack for realists given the obvious disparity between its economic prowess and secondary standing in world affairs. One may argue that it simply chose to pass the buck to others and shy away from hard balancing (Lind 2004). 31 But the anomaly was still too contrarian for realism(s) to be convincing and was seized upon by the nascent school of constructivism to boost its empirical credence (Berger 1998) (Katzenstein 1996a). Nonetheless, some realists decided to cut the procrustean bed and relax structural realism’s definition of power, making the case that Japan’s pursuit of technoeconomic security is adequate signs for “mercantile realism” (Heginbotham and Samuels 1998). Another realist reformation put a premium on regional security dilemma and economic resources as determinants of its effete security approach (Kawasaki 2001). As time moves on, it turns out Japanese obliviousness to structural realist imperatives is temporally and situationally fixed: the 31 Note that Lind’s claim came rather late to the debate. 91 realities of a transformed regional environment in which resurgent China has awakened the Japanese public and elites from decades of pacifism and mercantilism, triggering a realist and nationalist impulse that is manifested in stealthy remilitarization and diplomatic assertiveness (Green 2001). Interests, Responsibilities and the Possibility of Engineering Progress Realists and liberals have opposing views on where their theoretical precepts come from and the purpose of the state. Whereas liberal theses ferment political activism that transcends territorial borders in the name of the humanity, the realist political creed is unequivocally self-centered and culture-blind. Prominent realists from key thinkers such as Edward Carr, Hans Morgenthau, and Reinhold Niebuhr to master practitioners like George Kennan and Kissinger tend to agree on a number of important assumptions and beliefs: 1) states and comparable political units are dominant actors in world politics; 2) states strive to maximize their power and treat it as an end itself as much as a means that serves other ends; 3) they are rational and act rationally, able to critically interpret the words and deeds of interacting counterparts and respond accordingly and appropriately, either by threat or other strategic and tactical moves (Keohane 1986 7-9). Put it more simply, realist of all stripes in the broad church are strict followers of three commandments: statism, survival and self-help (Dunne and Schmidt 2001). To the extent that national interest is at the center of any realist policy program, political realists are by default nationally and territorially defined insofar as they accept their nation-state as given. This is construed as the “Reason of State” that harkens back to 92 Machiavelli, “the belief that, where international relations are concerned, the interests of the state predominate over all other interests and values” (Haslam 2002 17). The state, defined as having “the monopoly of legitimate use of physical force” (Weber 1965), entrust foreign and security policy to the government as its representative agent. Thus the moral imperatives of the government, argues George Kennan forcefully, are distinctively apart from those of individuals in that “its primary obligation is to the interests of the national society it represents, not to the moral impulses that individual elements of that society may experience” (Kennan 1985). 32 It is worth noting that by pitting the state to its peer competitors for power and survival, the state is sublimated into an independent, objective existence irrespective of the nature and constitution of the sovereign. As state interests are derived from the inherent dynamics of world politics—gains and loss at the expense of one another—realism is distinguished from not only liberalism but also nationalism, whose many incarnations are often driven by people more concerned about the parochial interests of their groupings. It is no surprise that realists are overwhelmingly leery of the idea of progress. In their eyes, the two fundamental causes are simply not going to change: human nature, as Kenneth Thompson describes it, “has not changed since the days of classical antiquity” (Thompson 1985 17), whereas the anarchical nature of the international system is beyond change and repair so long as national borders separating states from each other persist. Pessimism is _realism’s second nature. As Buzan observes, “much of realism can be read as a sophisticated form of fatalism” and when challenged, realists would point to the endless list of tragic events in world history that affirm such a conviction (Buzan 1996 61). 32 Italics original. 93 Realists are quick to predict, for example, that with the hefty weight of the cold war removed and as the world embark on a course toward “multi-multipolarity”, Europe would revert back to its bad old days of inter-state violence and likewise, an arms race will be triggered in Asia involving China, Japan and the United States (Mearsheimer 1990; Friedberg 1993). Ahistorical as they are accused of being, realists cannot simply be oblivious to new fixtures in international relations, in particular, international institutions and regimes—notably the United Nations—as well as the rousing voice of democratic peace. Realists take internationalists to task to demonstrate the significant impact of institutions on state behavior. To structural realists, in particular, states as rational actors being sensitive to relative gains hinders inter-state cooperation (Grieco 1988); “little more than ciphers for state power” (Koremenos et al. 2001 762), institutions cannot be durable and are epiphenomenal to international life. International institutions, says John Mearsheimer, “have minimal influence on state behavior, and thus hold little promise for promoting stability in the post-Cold War world”, and institutionalist theories are appealing not because of values of their own but because of their antithetical relationship to realism, and the unpopularity of realism itself in the American political culture much more used to “thumbing its nose at realism” (Mearsheimer 1994). International institutions are just one additional leg that, together with economic interdependence and democracy, constitutes what proponents call “Kantian peace” (Russett et al. 1998; Russett and Oneal 2001). Democratic peace theory, the most controversial component, is predicated on the dual premises of institutional constraint on 94 unnecessary military expansionism and the shared democratic norms and identities conductive to solving disputes among democracies by peaceful means. Layne examined some “almost-wars” among democracies and claim that violence was averted not because of the sparring democracies’ unwillingness to fight but as a result of their fear for a third party. He thus faulted the thesis for having little conceptual robustness and empirical evidence to elevate what he sees as “a correlation between domestic structure and the absence of war between democracies” to a rigorous theory proffering a causal link between the two (Layne 1994). Liberals also acknowledge that democracies have to be mutually recognized as democratic to make peace between them actually materialize, a caveat applicable to such instances as US intervention in the Dominican Republic and Chile during the Cold War. In response Waltz characterizes democratic peace as another liberal attempt “to get the politics out of politics.” “[Once] one begins to go down that road, there is no place to stop,” he laments (Waltz 2000). This admonition from Waltz stems of course from his structural determinism that finds any artificial attempt at reforming the dog-eat-dog rules of the game preposterous and futile. Not unlike him, most realists would frown upon the flurry of social engineering activities hitting international headlines in recent decades—humanitarian intervention, democracy assistance, development aid, peace keeping and peace building, all of which are enlightened by liberalism—as they are tangential to state’s core business in a competitive international system. In practical terms, only states of considerable power and resources can afford those “hobbies” that are as costly as they are complicated. As such they are often expected of 95 great powers by the country in need and the liberal advocate of more proactive international engagement. Conventional realists would have no none of those tasks phrased in terms of responsibilities because “the idea that [great powers] have special responsibilities to international society as a whole makes little sense” (Brown 2004 11). As an aside, the very concept of international society is problematic to realists as states are supposed to look after their own interests—rather than others’—in a world where its survival can never be taken for granted. In large measure, that “international order is a public good” to which great powers contribute and from which they benefit—such that “Americans have a national interest beyond [their] borders” (Nye Jr 2002 142)—is a quaint liberal conception in the calculus of most realists. That said, scores of realists also argue that there is a difference between moral responsibility and functional responsibility. In the words of Jack Donnelly, the latter is peculiar to the institution of great powers “which allocates special rights and responsibilities to leading states” (Donnelly 2000 97). In this opening statement in Politics Among Nations, Hans Morgenthau highlights the seriousness with which the United States should wield its incredible power: “The United States holds a position of predominant power, and hence of foremost responsibility, the understanding of the forces which mold international politics and of the factors which determine its course has become for the United States an interesting occupation. It has become a vital necessity” (Morgenthau 1954 8). Certainly realists cannot emphasize enough the connection between responsibilities and the material capabilities that put great power a distinct category of states. Following their 96 logic, power begets influence as well as a bigger role in the management of international affairs commensurate with their relative power. It is important to note, however, that “mere possession of great capabilities does not, by itself, necessarily result in ‘responsible’ behavior”; for mainstream realists like Waltz, such responsibility is owed to the maintenance of the international system itself by great powers and primarily reflected in the security aspect of the international order (Bukovansky et al. 2012 34-50). Accordingly, realists may have found solace in efforts by Soviet Union and the United States to ameliorate the tension between Arab nations and Israel, which threatened to pull the two superpowers in. Deployment of peacekeeping forces thus should be deemed as necessary and commendable. In no different fashion, the chaotic mayhem and bloodshed in the Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan and elsewhere were not what prompted the United States into laborious nation-building in the Clinton and Bush eras. Rather, a realist rationale is that international security risks spawned by political disorder and economic collapse, including the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, international terrorism, drug and human smuggling, are too grave to be left ignored. These urgent circumstances instead necessitate “neotrusteeship,” a form of multilateral intervention spearheaded by one major power (Fearon and Laitin 2004). Simply put, only the lawlessness in failed states threatens to throw the entire system off balance is intervention by major powers merited on realism’s moral scale. That passive scenario aside, would the expansion of interest entice realists to act beneficently—not in terms of motivation but in terms of consequence— and more proactively? This may be in the form of aiding another country to democratize and turning 97 it into an ally, or advancing economic assistance for a country that can turn into a major market and trade partner. In this regard differences among realists emerge. Much as they see eye to eye on the conflictual nature of international relations, they are divided on how that structural conditions relate to a slew of priorities states are faced with. Neorealists are adamant that perpetual possibility of conflict dictates that states adopt a worst-scenario approach and put immediate military preparedness over longer-term objectives when harmony between the two is illusive, according to Stephen Brooks. In contrast, other realists (he refers to them as postclassical realists) claim that states are more apt to make security decisions based on time-sensitive assessments of threat: “state decision makers do not maximize power because of an insatiable desire to dominate others; rather states pursue power because doing so allows for maximum flexibility in achieving the nation’s instrumental interests” (Brooks 1997 462). In other words, states can be “more deliverable in their pursuit of power”, notably by using a host of economic statecrafts to enhance their economic capacity (Brooks 1997 462). Among this school of realists is Robert Gilpin, who sees the necessary prospect that “the prudent state prevent relative increases in the powers of competitor states” (Gilpin 1981 88). Along these lines relative power and interests work in lockstep. As Gideon Rose puts it, “over the long term the relative amount of material power resources countries possess will shape the magnitude and ambition…of their foreign policies: as their relative power rises states will seek more influence abroad, and as it falls their actions will be scaled back accordingly” (Rose 1998). With their interests straddling across national borders and becoming a function of their actual behavior, states can be potentially open to 98 a more expansive array of international strategies without imperiling their security through what Jack Snyder calls “imperial overreach” (Kennedy 1989; Snyder 2013). How far they want to go is an entirely different question. And the allure is bigger for the giant who have a stake in ensuring long-term dominance. “Empires and dominant states supply public goods (security, economic order, etc.) that give other states an interest in following their lead”, asserts Robert Gilpin, “every dominant state, and particularly an empire, promotes a religion or ideology that justifies its domination over other states in the system” (Gilpin 1981 30). International social programs as broad as nation-building and as limited in scale as development assistance may fit the bill so long as they entail a certain degree of foresight and balance, it seems. Fareed Zakaria echoes the sentiment by saying the following: “For great powers survival is usually assured. Freed of this basic constraints, they often concern themselves with goals beyond security, such as spreading their beliefs or religion abroad. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with spending ‘surplus power’ on non-security related goals. For example, America’s vigorous promotion of democracy abroad is a noble cause…What realists often suggest as a grand strategy for states is the foreign policy equivalent of a long-term strategy for a big business. It eschews dramatic short-term profits and risky investments in return for smaller but more lasting gains, long-term profits, and security. It is the grand strategy of Warren Buffet rather than Donald Trump.” (Zakaria 1992 24) Good Samaritan Deeds in Search of Realist Explanations Zakaria and others’ ambiguity notwithstanding, an overwhelming majority of realists are suspicious of both international progress and the wisdom of engineering it by human intervention. To the extent some realists are somewhat open to foreign adventures that purport to orchestrate positive social and political changes on behalf of a foreign state and people, the act is justified only insofar as it simultaneously serves their own national interest. In general, international benevolence is not a subject matter realists generally find interesting and worthy of attention, even if they may find it permissible under the terms of 99 caution and if complimentary to state security and stability of the international system. As a result, this opposition or tepidness reduces them to the permanent seat of critics at a time social engineering programs ranging from low-intensity ones, such as development assistance, to morally charged humanitarian intervention became all the rage in the liberal world order. The post-cold war era thus far has witnessed a flurry of regional inter-state conflicts and sectarian violence resulting in a series of humanitarian disasters as well as a string of failed or failing states. As the United Nations gets either too unwieldy or—even worse—becomes an impediment to consensus-driven action, the United States, being the liberal beacon and the only superpower, has invariably been called upon to demonstrate its leadership even at the expense of multilateralism. Washington did intervene in Somalia but the debacle left the Clinton administration shell-shocked, making it reluctant to get involved in the subsequent Rwanda and Bosnia genocides. Their conscience shaken, liberals and neoconservatives alike swore “never again”, a sentiment that was widely believed to have made George W. Bush’s war in Iraq more politically palatable. 33 Seeing what everyone else saw, realists nonetheless take all human suffering and calamities in stride. They regard humanitarian intervention as a trick to cloak interest expansion under a false pretense, a practice that can easily lead to selective use and abuse; the economic and personnel cost associated with the cause demands humanitarian concern can only be a byproduct of intervention in defense of a definitive and vital set of interests 33 Repelled by his unilateralism, many liberals were nonetheless convinced at the time that the war was justified given what the administration described as mortal and imminent danger. Reviewing Samantha Power’s influential book, A Problem from Hell, Stephen Holmes claims that “Having supported unilateralist intervention outside the U.N. framework during the 1990's, liberals and progressives are simply unable to make a credible case against Bush today,'' (Holmes 2002). 100 are stake (Wheeler 2000 27-33). Political realists in the United States hardened their position through the prism of the Vietnam war even though it was waged on pure political calculation rather than humanitarian ground; thus to engage in sui generis humanitarian intervention is “to engage in self-delusion, error, and hypocrisy” (Smith 1998). America’s intervention in the far-flung African county of Somalia was not without consideration of national interests (Gibbs 2000), but they were so minuscule that most realists were appalled at the administration’s foolhardiness. Samuel Huntington, for one, is on record declaring that “it is morally unjustifiable and political indefensible that members of the [US] armed forces should be killed to prevent Somalis from killing one another”(Huntington 1993). In contrast to their displeasure, constructivists take the phenomenon as an established convention, and try to explicate it by investigating how shared understanding about humanitarian protection came into prominence and paved the way for more proactive action (Finnemore 1996a). While realists are right to point to cases where security and other complex interests are at play, in cases these interests are not obvious they yield few useful insights. 34 As aforementioned, structural realists rejects the idea of democratic peace as a whole. They insist that the character of domestic regime has no bearing at all on states behavior, and as a corollary, democracy promotion is a waste of time and resources. A cadre of “neoclassical realists” including Zakaria, however, recognize how domestic variables and intentions can inform specific foreign policy behavior within the broad context as determined by the state’s place in the international system (Rose 1998). Accordingly, the propagation of democracy can only “ameliorate” system’s pressures 34 (Finnemore 1996a), p.158, note 4. 101 without being able to “entirely eliminate them” (Schweller 2000 43), not to mention what a herculean task it is for democracy to take roots in exotic lands. In no small measure they felt vindicated when the combined efforts of liberals and neoconservatives in democratizing Iraq went awry—to put it mildly—which turned “everyone in Washington… a realist now” (Kaplan 2004). But what accounts for the persistency with which the United States perform the duty of democracy’s missionary against their injunction? Schweller comes up with two points: First, “the US should still promote democracy abroad simply because it is an intrinsic value that people be able to decide who governs and how”; Second, Washington is more interested in sustaining its global hegemony than promoting democracy or using democracy to advance peace, because “peace and stability are not necessarily intrinsic values or in the US national interest” (Schweller 2000 60-61). While his latter point is conventional realist wisdom, the first can be interpreted as an implicit admission of realism’s irrelevance in this regard: because America’s obsession with democracy promotion is embedded in its national psyche, we ought to trace it to nationalism or its coupling with a liberal ethos. Development aid, compared to humanitarian intervention and democracy assistance, seems much less ideological than practical. Realists have long been considered it a foreign policy instrument by donor countries in pursuit of their national interests, especially in the developing world (Morgenthau 1962). Indeed, contrary to the benefactors’ professed altruism, numerous research by scholars invariably points to a confluence of strategic and economic factors as determinants of aid allocation. On the other hand, much like other parallel political projects, the genesis and evolution of aid is a lot more complex than the 102 realist rationale. In fact, there is ample evidence that ideological considerations—the advancement of democracy being a major one for the US— almost always figure prominently, sometimes even more than security-related goals (Schraeder et al. 1998; Meernik et al. 1998). In relation to that, many others forcefully assert the practice as a moral act steeped in the liberal tradition. 35 David Lumsdaine has mounted perhaps the most spirited defense of foreign aid as “a paradigm case of the influence of crucial moral principles because of its universal scope, as assistance from well-off nations to any in need, its focus on poverty, and its empowerment of the weakest groups and states in the international system” (Lumsdaine 1993 29). Engaging a variety of realists he argues that the international system is changeable and that states can still be civic-minded regardless of system’s constraints. Aid, therefore, reflects “the humanitarian and egalitarian principles of the donor countries, and...their belief that only on the basis of a just international order in which all states had a chance to do well was peace and prosperity possible” (Lumsdaine 1993 30). To sum up, variants of realism do not have a stellar record in explicating states’ contrarian good Samaritan behavior and social engineering programs that have been on ever more abundant display in recent years. They are either too general and unspecified, or too focused on the utilitarian side of motivation. That does not mean we ought to throw out realism in its entirety. “Realism can explain the broad contours of political expansion”, as Monten puts it aptly, “but it cannot capture within the terms of the factors it privileges variation in the specific content of interests or policy choice” (Monten 2005). In other 35 For example, see, (Packenham 1973b) (Hattori 2003). Michael Barnett might well be the first to distinguish instinctual knee-jerk humanitarianism from the holistic, “alchemical branch” of liberal humanitarianism, see (Barnett 2011). 103 words, while we cannot dismiss offhandedly realist credos such as balance of power and self-help, we also need to conceptualize the state, especially those with the power and wherewithal, as an agent that enjoy a moderately wide range of free will, and as a complicated creature with an ideational structure and peculiar personality (national identity). At the same time, much as policy makers like to tout their realist convictions, too often tucked underneath is nationalism, a subject I will dwell on in the next segment. 36 NATIONALISM AND THE POSITIONING OF THE STATE Nationalism is everywhere and precisely because of its ubiquity across culture, region, religion, language, tradition, race and ethnicity, national and international politics, attempts to define it are just as controversial as numerous. By no coincidence such illusiveness stems from the notion of nation, which, according to Charles Tilly, is “one of the most puzzling and tendentious items in the political lexicon” (Tilly 1975 6). Mindful of the quagmire, Eric Hobsbawm wisely cautions that “agnosticism is the best initial posture of a student in this field” (Hobsbawm 1992 8). Benedict Anderson proposes encapsulating the nation—“in an anthropological spirit”—as “an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (Anderson 2006). In comparison, Hobsbawm argues that as an analytical strategy “it is more profitable to begin with the concept of ‘the nation’ (i.e., with ‘nationalism’) than with the reality it represents”, the reason being “the ‘nation’ as conceived by nationalism, can be recognized prospectively; 36 Condoleezza Rice, for one, boasts of “a uniquely American realism” which in fact is closer to Wilsonianism than Kissingerian realism (Rice 2008). 104 the real ‘nation’ can only be recognized a posteriori” (Hobsbawm 1972 387; Hobsbawm 1992 9). Along this vein, nationalism is understood by a great many scholars, Anderson included, as a political and intellectual force intent on creating conditions for state formation on the way to modernity. For Ernst Gellner, nationalism is quintessentially “a theory of political legitimacy” as much as “primarily a political principle, which holds the political and the national unit should be congruent” (Gellner 1983 1). Emphasizing its potency and purposefulness, Anthony Smith conceptualizes nationalism as “an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity for a population which some of its members deem to constitute an actual or potential ‘nation’” (Smith 2010 9). Summarizing himself along with Gellner, Smith and Anderson, Ernst Haas refers to nationalism as “the convergence of territorial and political loyalty irresponsive of competing foci of affiliation, such as kinship, profession, religion, economic interest, race, or even language” (Haas 1986 709). In tandem with it is “ a principle of identity based on impersonal ties…mediated by a set of common symbols embedded in a certain pattern of communication”; if “successful”, “a minimum of social harmony” and “legitimate authority under conditions of mass politics” will eventually arise to shape up a national identity (Haas 1986 709). The sole holder of legitimate use of force within the parameter of its direct control (Weber 1965), the state is the institutional and organizational presentation of the nation under most circumstances. In an unequivocal way the nationalist project underscores the idea that “the world is (or should be) divided into nations and the nation is the only proper 105 basis for a sovereign state and the ultimate source of governmental authority” (Mayall 1990 2). Since 1648 the Westphalian system of sovereign states was first faced with the competition between the nation-state as a new-type of political units and its progenitors, including empires, princely states as well as city-states. Even though the inception of national sovereignty was rooted in religious freedom, revolutions in ideas about social justice and political authority would nonetheless give rise to nationalism and racial equality in the 20 th century, which through wars and political struggles ultimately culminated in the global popularization of nation-states (Philpott 2001). The triumph of nation-states over its competitors, however, did not stop the fragmentation of multiethnic states. A contributing factor to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ethno-nationalism not only fractured the former Yugoslavia, threw the Balkans into a decade of bloody chaos but have also shaken up regions in the Middle East (Iraq), Africa (Sudan, etc) and Asia (Sri Lanka, etc). Against this backdrop of ethnic rift and bloodletting it is no surprise that nationalism has long been perceived as a scourge to be spurned by most, if not all, contemporary realists and liberals. But nationalism does not manifest in an ethno-linguistic formation, nor does it have to carry a vicious overtone. After all, this project is focused on studying the politic logic of states’—China and Japan’s—participation in international affairs where their status of being organic units in international society is questioned. In this case to the extent that states exhibit nationalism in their external outreach and interactions with the international community, it is a reflection of their political and cultural identities as shown in the leaders’ behavioral and policy choices. In the text to 106 follow, I will review the study of nationalism in the literature of realism and liberalism—the two dominant and competing grand thoughts in international relations—before concluding with my thoughts on how nationalism should be studied. The reason for this layout is simply because there exists thus far no nationalist theory of international relations. Instead, connections to nationalism have been frequently made here and there but invariably on ad hoc basis and with little systematic clarification. In reviewing what has been written and said about nationalism in the IR literature, I will pay particular attention to how liberals and realists relate to nationalism as an element of monumental significance, how they tackle and manage nationalism as an empirical and political problem, and whether their efforts have been successful and whether they can genuinely disentangle themselves from nationalism. The Union of Liberalism and Nationalism: Liberal Nationalism At first glance, liberalism is more incompatible than realism with nationalism, especially given the tension between the atomistic individualism of the former and the collective ethos of the latter. The reality of course is more complicated than meets the eye. On the one hand, as my earlier survey of liberalism has revealed, liberals are staunch supporter of national self-determination, though how far they are willing to strive for homogenous nation-states is a question unsettled given the political and circumstantial uncertainties surrounding the split of multinational states. On the other hand, liberals are acutely aware of the furious eruptions of racism, xenophobia and ethnic violence that rabid nationalism can ignite. However much liberals try to transfer group loyalties from the 107 nation-state to supranational entities, much like Marxists and religious activists have done, nationalism simply cannot be wished away. At least before the world turns into one single genuine world community, nationalism remains the most enduring and “characteristic expression of shared political identity of the modern world” (Yack 1995 166) Liberal societies too are not immune from nationalism that is indispensable in solidifying a community of peoples divided by all sorts of fault lines. Nor is nationalism antithetical to liberalism and progress. Defending the historical significance of nationalism for providing coherence and content to a society in transformation on its path to modernity, Ernest Haas stakes the claim that liberal nationalism represents the most coherent and successful form of rationalization (Haas 1997). A political force that, according to Haas, presents the greatest potential for generating human progress, liberal nationalism purports to transcend the particularism of races, religions and cultures, but instead lend political legitimacy to the state via citizenry’s participation in national political life by democratic means. As a matter of conviction, liberal progressives of early 20 th century America, such as Herbert Croly and John Dewy, also sought to “impose an image of Americanness on new arrivals and to shut out those who they thought unfit for the treatment;” they also instructed that “good nationalism creates an American culture and is consistent with internationalism, whereas bad nationalism represses internal differences and is bellicose” (Ryan 2012 476, 502). Latter-day liberals likewise too place their bet on liberal nationalism as the cure for runaway nationalism in its ethnocentric and vicious manifestation. As ethnonationalism reached to its zenith in the wake of the collapse of such multiethnic federal states as the 108 Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, liberal nationalism was called to the rescue to support a redrawing of the map along linguistic-cultural boundaries as a Western strategy to forge peace and democracy (Lind 1994). As an empirical matter, however, the degree to which liberal nationalism can be adopted is a function of the states’ prior experience with communism (Chen 2010a). From the theoretical point of view, we are reminded of the peril with laying too much analytical purchase on either liberal nationalism or a dichotomous view of nationalism: “it is precisely the mix of political and ethnocultural community in political experience that makes nationalism so problematic for both modern political theory and practice” (Yack 1995 180). How do liberalism relate to nationalism in the context of international relations is an entirely different question. Liberals have high hopes that international relations can be reformed and transformed for the better, especially considering that much of the world remains in the throes of war, conflict and poverty and that there exist a plethora of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. They find two ways to fulfill that goal. One is by way of socialization. As I suggested in my review of the norm and socialization literature, proponents of liberal norms are convinced that illiberal states are apt by the international social structure—composed of international norms, rules and practices with individuals, progressive non-governmental and governmental actors as the moral entrepreneurs and instigators—to be socialized into converging with the liberal standards in their domestic and foreign policy. To the extent that these objectives fall short, it is nationalism that is at fault and to blame. A second tactic is to charge liberal states with the responsibilities of spreading the gospel of liberalism, that is, direct democracy promotion. 109 The notion of nation-states, especially liberal great powers, as agents of liberalism thus presents a major political and moral quandary for liberals. On the one hand, because they can make a difference, liberal giants are taken to task with enforcing community norms and liberal reforms where they are lacking. On the other hand, the liberal cause also provides these states with a noble-sounding veneer to camouflage their pursuit of parochial self-interests. After all, being liberal does not preclude them from being rational and selfish at the same time. To this day much of the world remains convinced that the reason the Bush administration initiated the war in Iraq was to secure and grab more oil rights. Conversely, not jumping in to halt some tragedies in the making, like the Obama administration’s hesitation to intervene in the protracted civil war in Syria, is seen by many as a dereliction of duty for this liberal giants with special responsibilities. But decisionmakers of liberal democracies who balk at foreign intervention are not without their reason. After all, every act on behalf of a foreign group and a high-minded humanitarian goal entails costs that need to be justified for the domestic constituency who ultimately pays for an adventure overseas. Whatever the reason, however, the worst scenario liberals can imagine is when the liberal power goes rogue, becomes imperial and a liability rather than an assets to the liberal cause. In other words, it is taken over by rabid nationalism. What an awkward moment for liberals! In a domestic sphere liberalism is used as an antidote for nationalism; in international relations when nationalism becomes the locomotive for the liberal enterprise not much can water down the fervor but international backlash. The ideal situation for a liberal foreign policy is when liberalism is in the driver’s seat, a doctrine 110 commonly referred to as liberal internationalism. But as I will suggest below, liberal internationalism is in a perpetually unattainable position for unleashing the national(ist) wild horse and wanting to curb it. The nationalist temptation is simply too great to resist. Liberalism and Nationalism: Liberal Internationalism to the Rescue United by a spate of political objectives, liberals are nonetheless riven by competing ways of fulfilling liberal promises. Of the liberal derivatives, though, no branch is more vaulted and pitched as right kind than liberal internationalism. Its universalist ethos means that liberalism is antithetical to isolationism but has a natural affinity with internationalism. But the idea of liberal internationalism is hardly self-explanatory. Definitions, too, abound (Richardson 2001). Broadly understood, it is underpinned by “the assumption that one can apply reason to extend the possibilities for individual and collective self-rule, or freedom” through “the projection of liberal thought and political principles to the international realm” (MacMillan 2007). The complexity emanating from the inner tensions between these objectives and ways to actualize them thus makes it easier, some argue, to simply define liberal internationalism by what it is not: “it is not isolationist, and it is not unilateral” (Chaudoin et al. 2010). The invocation of multilateralism, and by extension, the rejection of unilateralism as ill-suited for liberal objectives, designates liberal internationalism as the predominant liberal foreign policy outlook and sets it apart from those “fringe” approaches that align liberal ends with non-multilateral means. This way of defining liberal internationalism is rather odd, however, as there is nothing inherently liberal about multilateralism. The most 111 we can find that even remotely resembles it in the domestic scene may be constitutionalism and rule of law. That is to say, liberalism does not always resonate naturally with multilateralism given the absence of a world state as well as the schism between domestic and international politics. Put it another way, the institutional manifestations of multilateralism—international institutions and regimes—are not intrinsic liberal values themselves but intermediary organizational forms toward the liberal objectives of peace, freedom, justice and prosperity. Historically, liberal internationalism’s bond with multilateralism began with Wilson’s conception of a new international organization to advance international peace that was enlightened by a faith in democratic control of foreign policy. After World War II, multilateral institutions further manifested itself as a liberal pillar in the postwar economic and security institutions spearheaded by the United States. In the words of G. John Ikenberry (Ikenberry 2001), Washington “sought to restrain power, reassure weaker potential rivals, and establish commitments by creating various types of binding institutions” rather than restoring a classical balance of power or imposing hegemony; such an attempt to mollify and reassure potential rivals was no different from 1815 (after Napoleon’s fall) and 1919 (after WWI), but the degree to which the American victor in 1945 used institutions to advance such as strategy was unprecedented. This instead is “a strong constitutional order” in which “the rules, rights, and protections are widely agreed upon, highly institutionalized, and generalized observed” and in which “international institutions bind powerful and weaker states together, creating a difficult-to-change institutional framework within which their relations are carried out, and thereby 112 establishing some limits on the arbitrary and indiscriminate exercise of state power” (Ikenberry 2001 36). All told, it is again democratic peace in full swing. Ikenberry claims to have woven both realist and liberal insights to foreground his theoretical and empirical claims about the post-WWII global order and American foreign policy. But the liberalization of trade and money—a core liberal credo and a critical ingredient of the post-WWII economic system—owe its inception to British supremacy that stood until the late 19 th century. After World War II, the international economic order was build on an “embedded liberalism” compromise, which fostered the further liberalization of trade and investment so as to achieve a world market while allowing states to use the domestic welfare state to cushion the adverse blows of global liberalization. Typified by the Breton Woods system and the 1947 GATT trade regime, these economic regimes came to existence owing to the unchallenged power of the United States that created and sponsored them. One benefit of the system is that while the social purposes of the regimes persist and continue to buttress the postwar order even as the power of the hegemon erodes. As artfully summarized by John Ruggie, this arrangement is phenomenal in two ways: “unlike the economic nationalism of the thirties, it would be multilateral in character; unlike the liberalism of the gold standard and free trade, its multilateralism would be predicated upon domestic interventionism” (Ruggie 1982 393). There are of course at least two parties to the liberal/multilateral scheme in question. To the extent international regimes and multinational institutions governing economic and security content of world affairs are multilateral, they are also riven by debates over their broad policy prescriptions and consequences. Within the liberal economic order, for 113 instance, the United States has had to defend its vision of embedded liberalism against a program of “redistributive multilateralism” by developing countries who see the former as unjust because it “perpetuated or even reinforced the enormous differences in levels of economic development” between the rich and poor (Steffek 2006). Ultimately, it is the benevolence and self-restraint of the US as the hegemon that is at the heart of the liberal internationalist argument. Yet to realists it simply defies logic that a great power, not to mention the world’s only superpower, will voluntarily and consistently surrender much of its decision-making capacity and state autonomy to those institutions that it created in the first place and that still greatly depend on its cooperation and financial support in order to function. The initial calculation for the United States to create this cobweb of multilateral institutions that it got itself entangled in, contends Ikenberry, was that Washington wanted to lock in future benefits knowing that its relative power would unavoidably go downhill. Such oxymoronic ambivalence cannot be more poignantly captured than by Randall Schweller, a realist albeit with a neoclassical bent: “institutions both limit and project state power; they are mechanisms of hegemonic self-constraint and tools of hegemonic power” (Schweller 2001 163). To put it crudely, liberals love the hegemony because a liberal order depends on it to say the least. They just do not want it to go solo and “go mad,” so to speak, even on the behalf of the liberal purpose. That would be too nationalistic and imperial, as with the post-9/11 United States. Some liberal scholars put a gentler touch on what they call America’s “duo commitment to power projection and international cooperation that distinguished liberal internationalism from earlier US strategies”: “the United States would 114 project its military strength to preserve stability, but it would seek to exercise its leadership through multilateral partnership rather than unilateral initiative” (Kupchan and Trubowitz 2007). The idea that that the United States does not distinguish between self-interest and the common good is too fanciful to be true, says Richard Betts. Lambasting Ikenberry’s contention that in the old good times “American hegemonic power and liberal international order were fused,” Betts concludes that “in substance it comports ironically with the cruder American nationalism that Ikenberry rejects” (Betts 2011). The indisputable fact is, realists—seizing on the self-serving aspects of the bargain while dismissing the altruistic motives—would always characterize the multilateral/institutional novelty as “liberal idealist means to achieve Machiavellian realist ends” (Schweller 2001 163 184). For them, genuine multilateralism exists only when partners of comparable power and influence are united by the same goal, whereas what we have today is ‘pseudo-multilateralism” pure and simple: “a dominant great power acts essentially alone, but, embarrassed at the idea and still worshipping at the shrine of collective security, recruits a ship here, a brigade there, and blessing all around to give its unilateral actions a multilateral sheen” (Krauthammer 1990 25). It comes full circle when we consider liberals’ counter-punch on realists. Not only did conventional realists have difficulty explaining the emergence of international regimes and institutions, they were off the mark in quickly pronouncing the demise of these liberal inventions that they claimed were contingent upon the structural conditions of the Cold War (Mearsheimer 1994; Layne 1994). Nor were they able to explain many salient features of the postwar international order—such as initiation of the Western institutionalization as 115 well as Germany and Japan’s lack of interest in traditional realpolitik (Deudney and Ikenberry 1999)—without becoming less of a realist (Legro and Moravcsik 1999). Even in the fundamental debates about state behavior in international relations, realists’ universal claims about human nature or international structure is pitted against an array of cultural, ideational, and identity-based explanations that tends to be of particularistic qualities. To the extent that they acknowledge the structural conditions that shaped the contour of state’s behavior, most scholars in the anti-realist camp, if not all, are then forced to turn to the quintessentially liberal quality of America’s national identity (Legro 2000) (Ruggie 1996) (Dueck 2005). In a strange way, in spite of their dominance in academia, realist doctrine has not been absorbed and stuck to by successive American administrations as much as they wish. 37 Liberalism and Nationalism: Neoconservatism, The Nationalist Contamination of Liberalism It is no surprise that realists have every reason to repudiate post-9/11 American foreign policy that bore all hallmarks of liberalism, except that it is the kind of mainstream liberalism liberal realists too rush to reject. Indeed, the distinction itself is in dispute. In the first George W. Bush administration’s paramount passion for nation building, regime change and democracy promotion the diplomatic historian Tony Smith sees plenty of consistency and continuity with Wilsonian internationalism (Smith 2009, 2012), an agreement reflected in the anguished exclamation of “I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-a-Hawk-Club” 37 Christopher Layne suggests that Liberalism, as embodied in what some diplomatic historians refer to as the “Open Door,” explains U.S. grand strategy since World War II. Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006), chap. 7 116 by traditional liberals and Democrats (Keller 2003; Cooper 2014). Many mainstream liberal internationalists, however, are abhorred by and distressed with the unilateral and imperious manner with which the whole business is conducted, even as they have found solace in the Bush foreign policy and rhetorics intricately linked to the liberal project. Some contest neoconservatism’s single-minded emphasis on free market enterprise and democratic expansion, and assiduously insist instead on adding more sophistication in the substantive content of Wilsonianism. That liberal doctrine, on John G. Ikenberry’s scoreboard, is manifested in a barrage of political and socio-economic goals and mechanisms involving “open markets, international institutions, cooperative security, democratic community, progressive change, collective problem solving, shared sovereignty, and the rule of law” (Ikenberry 2009 71). In essence, what is jarringly missing in the neoconservative Bush Doctrine is a multilateral commitment to building a cooperative and rule-based international order; and to the extent that the exercise of American leadership is highly desired, it ought to be leadership without hegemony (Knock 2009) (Slaughter 2009). Understandably for a plurality of liberal internationalists, the Bush years is a dark era they wish to fast-forward. The key question is how it bodes for the future and whether the demise of liberal internationalism is a bygone conclusion. The crux of the debate, therefore, as Ikenberry puts it, “depends on whether today’s American unilateralism is a product of deep structural shifts in the country’s global position or if it reflects more contingent and passing circumstances” (Ikenberry 2003 533). Taking an eclectic view, Kupchan and Trubowitz jointly proclaim that liberal internationalism—“the coupling of 117 U.S. Power and international partnership”—have become a victim of its own success because America’s newfound geopolitical position as the unipolar has helped rip the erstwhile liberal domestic constituency asunder (Kupchan and Trubowitz 2007). Others are quick to demur. While admitting the partisan acrimony in US politics, Chaudoin and his collaborators fail to see it transpire with regard to foreign policy (Chaudoin et al. 2010), a conclusion also echoed by Busby and Monten (Busby and Monten 2008). Ikenberry himself, too, remains cautiously hopeful. The genesis of American unilateralism, he claims, is the sense of encumbrance associated with the current stage of multilateralism, to which the United States react in order to wrestle back “opportunities…to exercise political control over others and …ways to escape the binding obligations of the agreements” (Ikenberry 2003 533). “We are witnessing not an end to multilateralism but a struggle over its scope and character,” he says, before warning that chances for Washington to rebel against the multilayered, institutionalized management of global affairs it played an instrumental role in building are both present and continue to rise (Ikenberry 2003 533). Correspondingly, the liberal international order must find a way to accommodate shrinking American authority and sovereignty to be able to stay vibrant (Ikenberry 2009). Contra liberal internationalists, most realists do not care for multilateralism in the first place. What they find objectionable and deeply troubling about the Bush administration’s strategy and the neoconservative ideology that is ascendant during those years is both its substance and the style, although there is more consensus about the former than the latter. As my earlier review of realism has suggested, that the United States, or any country for that matter, expends its valuable resources on nation-building, democracy and 118 human rights at the behest of foreign nationals is, in general and as a principle, fundamentally wrong regardless of whether it does so through multilateral means or by going alone. Possibly because this is not a publicly appealing position, disgruntled realists choose to aim their criticisms instead on the democratic peace assumption that both the liberal internationalism and neoconservatism have in common (Layne 2006 26-27). On the policy front, prominent realists go into overdrive denouncing not only Bush’s initiation of the war on Iraq but the execution of it. Rejecting some emotionally charged depictions of Saddam Hussein as crazy, paranoid or mentally ill, Mearsheimer and Walt, for instance, forcefully argue that he is a rational human being and therefore deterrable, thus rendering the invasion itself unnecessary and foolhardy (Mearsheimer and Walt 2003). As faithful believers and champions of power politics, American realists are at times uncomfortably confused with neoconservatives who unabashedly support American primacy and unilateralism (Desch 2008 37). In response realists would most probably contend they are much more sophisticated than that by pointing to the basic logics of realist international relations paradigm: balance of power. Their premise is that as the distribution of power gravitates against the United States and in favor of emerging powers like China, the United States cannot sustain as a unipolar power, nor can it afford a strategy of preponderance. While realists espouse a heavy-handed stance toward terrorism, in great power relations Washington has been advised to retreat to an offshore balancing position (Gholz et al. 1997; Layne 1997; Posen 2007), or in Stephen Walt’s words, “taming American power” becomes a necessity (Walt 2005b). In this case the Iraq war is a painful lessen for the enormous economic and human cost incurred on the United States as 119 much as for the furious international reactions against it. Although traditional balancing behavior including arms buildup and countervailing alliances against the United States fail to emerge as predicted, some observers insist that the ways by which countries second-tier great powers such as Russia, France, and China seek to sabotage it does amount to some serious backlash in the form of soft balancing (Pape 2005; Paul 2005). Not all realists agree with this diagnosis, however. William Wohlforth and Stephen Brooks consistently argue that “the unprecedented concentration of power resources in the United States generally renders inoperative the constraining effects of the systemic properties” that would have been inimical to the United States, including soft balancing (Brooks and Wohlforth 2005a, 2008), and the cost stemming from US unilateralism is in fact not high (Brooks and Wohlforth 2005b). There is little doubt, however, that this duo’s opinion is a minority view among his realist comrades who since the day of Hans Morgenthau and George Kennan have been fierce critics of their country’s moralistic tendency to remake the world in his own mirror image. Understandably contemporary realists too are overwhelmingly opposed to the war and aggrieved at what they perceive as recklessness of the neoconservative ideologues (Mearsheimer 2005a). 38 Describing the results as “disastrous,” Mearsheimer vents his frustration at both the neoconservatives and liberal internationalists—who he contemptuously refers to as “liberal imperialists”—whom he accuses of being theoretically and empirically superficial and politically naive (Mearsheimer 2011a). In no different fashion, Michael Desch too points his fingers at America’s liberal tradition that have enlightened the “neoconservative activists both inside 38 Mearsheimer and Desch are among the 33 prominent realists in American academe who put up a paid advertisement against the Iraq war in the New York Times, September 26, 2002. 120 and outside” the Bush administration. What has unleashed the wave of neoconservatism, according to him, is the structural condition of faded physical constraints on the United States since the Cold War that leads to the radical liberals spreading liberal values “by employing illiberal tactics.” Only a heavy dose of realism can steer the United States back to the right course, Desch asserts (Desch 2008). But what is the neoconservative ideology? Where is it situated philosophically within the debate among rival schools of thought in international relations? Policy-wise, in addition to its devote belief in the utility of military force, preventive and unilateral action as well as democracy promotion, the neoconservative harbors deep antipathy towards traditional balance of power and deterrence (Schmidt and Williams 2008). Apropos of its intellectual genesis, realists generally lump neoconservatism with mainstream liberal internationalism under the canopy of liberalism without parsing the intellectual differences among the two branches. Liberal internationalists, in contrast, blame “the new fundamentalism,” a “vision of world order…based on unrivaled American military might and a cultivated belief in American exceptionalism” (Ikenberry 2004). It is now clear that for all their shared antipathy towards nationalism elsewhere in the world, American intellectual thinkers would opt for flashy words like “empire,” “imperial” and “fundamentalism” to characterize a quintessential brand of nationalism at home. 39 Nationalism is like a plague they must run away lest they too get tainted, a practice in and of itself is a reflection of American exceptionalism and inveterate bias. But in spite of their 39 Mearsheimer, for example, emphasizes that nationalism is “the most powerful political ideology on the face of the earth,” but in analyzing why realists oppose the Iraq war he stresses how US belligerence “stokes nationalism” in target countries and pointedly neglect to talk about how American nationalism has informed and shaped neoconservative policies (Mearsheimer 2005a). 121 evasiveness American nationalism is alive and kicking, and is invariably mixed with liberalism. In a prescient warning nearly two decades ago, Stanley Hoffmann cautions by saying the following, “Liberalism’s embrace of nationalism introduced into liberalism a philosophical incongruity…Nationalism, in other words, reopens the inherent tension between liberalism and democracy that had broken out in the French Revolution, and thus threatened both the liberal program at home and the cosmopolitan vision abroad—by creating new sources of intense conflict between states with different conceptions of the nation and overlapping nationalities, and by weakening the two transnational pillars of the liberal international order: a transnational economy and world public opinion” (Hoffmann 1995b 163-164). Hoffmann in the mid-1990s could not have accurately predicted the events of the 21 st century. But a cornucopia of timely research intended to scrutinize the intellectual framework and historical evolution of neoconservatism has revealed and affirmed that at its core it is indeed an amalgamation of liberalism and American nationalism. America’s profound interest in democracy assistance, a core mission of the Bush Doctrine, is a function of “both the expansion of material capabilities and the presence of a nationalist domestic ideology that favors vindicationism over exemplarism,” says Jonathan Monten; and neoconservatism is by no means a break with precedent, but is “consisted with a history of nationalist ideologies rooted in liberal exceptionalism” (Monten 2005). More broadly and critically, the neoconservative ideology is about American foreign policy as much as about the struggle for the American psyche. Its conception of national interests, as Brian Schmidt and Michael Williams put it, “is linked to issues as old and fundamental as the nature of political modernity, the travails of illiberalism, and the foundation of the American republic,” and “transcends any absolute divide between domestic foreign policy, incorporating issues as broad and contested as the prevailing social structures and moral 122 standards in contemporary American life” (Schmidt and Williams 2008 215). Psychologically and intellectually, they say, the neoconservatives inject into the American sense of exceptionalism and liberal universalism an almost disbarring “sense of foreboding—a constant fear that America’s liberal political order is at risk of destruction not only through the actions of foreign enemies or idealistic overextension, but through internal political decline” (Schmidt and Williams 2008 214). 40 The trajectory of neoconservatism’s rise is therefore a culture war within America and a nationalist crusade under liberal guise abroad. Discontented for decades with domestic and international status quo, neoconservatives since its formation mostly stayed on the right wing of the Republican Party waiting for the opening to assert themselves in American political and social life. According to the conservative columnist and political commentator Charles Krauthammer, “that the Bush Doctrine is, essentially, a synonym for neoconservative foreign policy makes neoconservatism’s own transition from a position of dissidence, which it occupied during the first Bush administration and the Clinton years, to governance” (Krauthammer 2005 22). The Iraq debacle may well have discredited neoconservatism, and the stridency in the overtone of American foreign policy too has softened a great deal along with the transition to the Obama administration. Critics, though, remain alert about the liberal interventionism that elites liberal left and nationalist right have come to converge on (Parmar 2009). Realism and Nationalism: A Frenemy Relationship 40 For in-depth analyses of neoconservatism, such as its intellectual history and its enmeshing with post-9/11 American policy debate, see, (Mann and Mann 2004; Halper and Clarke 2005; Vaïsse 2010). 123 Like liberals, realists are compelled to dance carefully around nationalism. Realists in the 1990s have shown a renewed interest in nationalism as nationalism-inspired conflicts cut across national borders and even splinter extant states into pieces. In general, nationalist/separatist movements by groups without their own states tends to be more violence-prone because accommodating them often means secession and entails rupturing current political and territorial arrangement (Van Evera 1994). The dissolutions of the USSR and Yugoslavia are vivid examples. With the collapse of the two states of heterogeneous peoples, ethnicity became the default marker for the population to self-select into self-protection groups in the face of a general security dilemma. As such preemptive attacks for the sake of self-defense gained more impetus even though other factors such as geography and residence patterns were also critical for groups’ strategic calculation (Posen 1993b). Even the only silver lining throughout these great transformations—democratization, albeit partial in some cases—might be less positive than what it usually symbolizes. In course of political opening and liberalization old establishments with “a particular interest in war and empire” were pitted against the new elites; and in their struggle for power and survival both would resort to extremist nationalist rhetorics and tactics in order to drum up domestic electoral support, heightening as a result the chance for war and conflict with a foreign antagonist (Mansfield and Snyder 1995b). 41 Nationalisms, besides binding people of non-kinship relations together for the purpose of building their common state, fueled the fire of inter-ethnic tension largely 41 The two authors focus primarily on great powers, but they also refer to the Serbia/Croatia and Armenia/Azerbaijan pairs as pertinent examples. 124 through “the ability…to mobilize the creative energies and the spirit of self-sacrifice of millions of soldiers” (Posen 1993a 81; Mansfield and Snyder 1995b). That aside, nationalism is not necessarily manifested along the ethnic line, nor are the more established nation-state in West Europe immune from the perils of state nationalism. Predicting the withdrawal of Soviet and American forces from the European continent as early as the1990s, Mearsheimer, for one, sensed given the security deficit in a new multipolar Europe individual states would have no choice but to rely on nationalism or hyper-nationalism at the societal level to support their mass armies. According to him, nationalist fervor was most likely to rise in Eastern Europe, whereas Germany too remained a prime suspect (Mearsheimer 1990). Disputing Mearsheimer’s grim prediction of Europe’s future, Van Evera claimed that the risk of war was overstated. While he agreed that inter-ethnic conflict was a major concern for Eastern Europe, he also argued that the myriad military factors and domestic conditions that gave rise to the great wars of the past had undergone changes that rendered aggression improbable. Chief among the changes in the domestic political landscape was the waning of militarism and hyper-nationalism, which was aid by the spread of democracy to invalidate the “‘social imperial’ motives for war” (Van Evera 1990). Setting his attention on Asia, Aaron Friedberg asserted that Asia was on course to repeat Europe’s past that Europe had grown out of. On the one hand, Asian nationalism, while ingrained in racial and ethnic differences, was also complicated by the region’s topographical and geographical diversity as well as the haunting memory of its past. On the other hand, compared to Europe, democracy in Asia was less established and widespread, regional 125 institutions remained jejune, economic interdependence was picking up but not vibrant enough to counter-balance the nefarious effects of nationalism magnified by a multipolar regional system. All things considered, Asia was careening toward more pronounced instability induced by nationalism and other structural deficiencies (Friedberg 1993). Almost by definition nationalism denotes unity within and differentiation without, even though the confines of inside/outside are subject to contention. While the disquiet, tension or furor instigated by nationalism is felt at home and abroad, scholarly research of nationalism, the cornucopia of knowledge aside, remains largely within a domestic realm and historical domain. In political science, nationalism is a subject of interest more in comparative politics than in international relations, which is more consumed with the realist/idealist debate (idealism is often a coded reference to liberal thought). Therefore, to the extent that nationalism is perceived as a powerful force to reckon in international relations, too often it is referenced on ad hoc basis with a hint of peculiarity to the actor(s) that is branded as nationalist. The several pieces of research on regional and international security cited above is no exception to this observation and exemplifies realists’ attempt to relegate nationalism to a lower-level causal variable subject to realism’s grand scheme of things, both in terms of its inception and significance in international affairs. While most realists take for granted the primacy of nation-states in international relations, it is nationalism that made it so. As Mearsheimer aptly admits, “The main reason that most people privilege the state over the individual and the while of humanity is nationalism, which remains the most powerful political ideology on the planet and shows few signs of disappearing any time soon” (Mearsheimer 2005b 148). In many ways realists 126 and nationalists are allies as natural as twins, or in Mearsheimer’s words, “kissing cousins” (Mearsheimer 2011b). Seeing states as primary agents in a competitive international environment, the two camps also share the view that preserving the national interest, its unity, survival included, is the ultimate raison d’état for the nation-state. In spite of that common ground, the two perspectives have vastly different understanding of preserving and expanding the national interest. Realists, insofar as they do not question the rationality and legitimacy of the given nation-state while striving to preserve and expand the national interests, are nationalists by default even though they tend to reject this label because of its negative connotations. From the perspectives of mainstream realists, that image associated with nationalism, which usually is none other than pragmatic nationalism, is logically irrational, emotionally inconsistent, and as a result often irresponsible and inimical to the nation-state and its people. Nationalism is thus both boon and bane for the nation-state. Nationalists, however, are not necessarily realists because the parameters for fitting into the category is much more expansive and nebulous. Nationalism sells. As long as their action can be justified to be in service of the nation-state, leaders, in theory, are presented with a wide selection of strategic choices that can still be perceived as nationalist. In light of a country’s participation in international affairs, nationalism can manifest itself not only in autarky, self-selected isolationism and military chauvinism—behavioral patterns characteristic North Korea has exhibited to perfection in recent decades—but also in more proactive engagement with the broader outside world. Internationalism and nationalism are not necessarily opposites of each other. European states, for instance, are long known to have used integration for the purposes of maintaining one’s identity, retaining control of 127 domestic affairs, or enhancing its international influence; this proves that “the process of internationalization of politics results to some extent from the pursuit of a program that is nationalist rather than internationalist” (Goldmann et al. 2000 4). Nationalism, for all its divisive tendencies and omnipresence, is particularistic and individualistic. It shapes, and is shaped by, the political contingencies and national character of the nation-state in question. In the absence of clear parameters and objective benchmarks for what accounts for national interests, nationalism does not commit leaders a priori to one designated set of policy goal. Extreme nationalism, in particular, breeds unreasonable arrogance and hubris that in turn inflates one’s own strength and valor while underestimating that of the opponent. The resultant “false optimism” and illusional perception of balance of power certainly do not bode well for in a situation where war remains a distinct possibility (Van Evera 1999 27). That aside, jingoistic fanatics are not necessarily so irrational as to wage a costly war that they end up losing. In fact, drumming up for war or expansion may not be the goal but a conduit for other goals of parochial nature. Yet when narrow interests gather by forming “logrolling coalitions”, particularly in a great power with “cartelized” political systems, expansionism supported by a mythmaking ideology is likely to hold sway over state strategy (Snyder 1991). In sharp contrast to the vicissitudes with which variants of nationalism inform states’ strategies, realism both as a theoretical paradigm and a foreign policy program is a lot more precise even though it itself is a broad tent. Classical realists have long battled nationalism, mostly, however, because they see nationalism as auxiliary and attendant to 128 liberalism, the more pronounced antagonist. 42 They contend that international politics is fundamentally driven by human nature, whose insidiousness is culturally and historically unbound. Consequently they find as distasteful as misleading the moral high ground and cultural pretentiousness that nationalism exudes. Nationalists stake out a claim of uniqueness and holier-than-thou-ness and often act on an innate urge to propagate their national values (virtues) and bend the international system to its liking, a tendency known as “universalistic nationalism” or “nationalistic universalism” (Little 2009 26). In comparison, realists tailor their counsel to the specific circumstances and condition of the state on the rationale that all states practice realpolitik but strategies and tactics differ. 43 In other words, realists, including neorealists, reject all claims of universality and moral judgment except for the ubiquity of human nature and power politics as a basic and everlasting law of international relations. However much classical realists detest the psychological imbalance and policy discordance that nationalism entails, the level-headedness that they themselves prescribe too is an attribute of leaders’ emotional state of being and thus hard to retain and sustain. In contrast, neorealists (or structural realists), by ascribing to the structural condition of the international system (anarchy), attempt to eliminate this oft-unreliable, undoubtedly unscientific and instinctual ways of guiding the state’s security strategies. Still, they see 42 In his classic The Twenty Years’ Crisis, E. H. Carr takes note of the liberalism/nationalism union in their shared belief in national self-determination as well as its “degeneration” into imperialism in the European powers in the 19 th century. In Nationalism and After he explores the evolution of nationalism in five stages and how it came to reside in and dominate states and the international order. 43 Hans Morgenthau observes that “Instead of the universality of an ethics to which all nations adhere, we have in the end the particularity of national ethics which claims the right to, and aspires toward, universal recognition. There are then as many ethical codes claiming universality as there are political active nations (Morgenthau 1948 96). 129 nationalism as critically important for conditioning the state to become what it is in and play the realist game of self-help and survival. Mearsheimer, for instance, recognizes that as an omnipresent and omnipotent force of togetherness nationalism “glorifies the state”, cement the bonding between leaders and their population, especially in wartime, and hinders the ability of the victor “to subdue and manipulate the people in defeated states” (Mearsheimer 2001). Mearsheimer’s depiction of the world, wherein states inherently seeks expansion to ensure survival, is less reflective of the contemporary world than a thing of the past, according to proponents of social evolution paradigm, because the logic of an offensive realist world was rendered increasingly inoperative as states grew bigger and consolidated. In the words of Shiping Tang (Tang 2010 42-43), the inception and popularization of sovereignty and nationalism, are the ideational underpinning for the transition from a self-destructive offensive realism world to a defensive realist system. Nationalism, for its part, played a pivotal role by mellowing—to some extent— the Hobbesian character of the system: not only did it hinder the physical conquest by the powerful, it also impeded the formation of offensive alliances by sowing the seeds of distrust with respect to the spoils. By most measures, nationalism in the vast body of neorealist literature is perceived as a by-product of the structural conditions of the international system. Mearsheimer, for instance, without repudiating nationalism as a universal phenomenon sees hyper-nationalism as the prevailing form of nationalism that can easily spin into aggressive and dangerous terrain, post-cold war Europe being a prime example. Even though hypernationalism is “the most important domestic cause of war,” he argues, it is “still a 130 second-order force in world politics” (Mearsheimer 1990 21). In comparison, a selected few neorealists like Van Evera, who sees war as rarely profitable and stems from domestic factors such as militarism and hypernationalism (Van Evera 1990), do give somewhat independent causal potency to nationalism alongside the overarching, all-encompassing weight of the anarchical structure that is multipolar, bipolar, or unipolar. Describing Huntington’s clashes-of-civilization thesis as superfluous and unrealistic, Stephen Walt pinpoints the dual utility of nationalism befitting the neorealist paradigm: not only is it the “main political expression” of cultural differentiation, it is also a mighty force that “marries individual cultural affinities to an agency—the state—that can actually do something” (Walt 1997). It is clear that, their emphasis on nationalism notwithstanding, most of realists conveniently apply nationalism on ad hoc basis to make up for missing political dynamics and disjointed causal mechanism that connects structural imperatives with the variance of behavior at the state or individual level. 44 The perfunctory way of incorporating nationalism into the ahistorical and timeless framework of neorealism thus causes a great deal of analytical mishaps. Jack Snyder levels a poignant critique of such treatment and lists at least three problems: 1), the narrow focus neglects “the socioeconomic processes that foster aggressive nationalism” and obfuscates the causal link—because anarchy “is sometimes not the root cause of nationalism, but rather a symptom of other social processes that spurred nationalist consciousness in the first place;” 2), as the extant scholarship of nationalism comes from other social science disciplines, mostly by sociologists, transplanting it to the study of international relations “[risks] reifying the sometimes arbitrary distinction between the international and domestic 44 See also, (Brooks 1997 455) 131 ‘level of analysis’”; 3) what neorealists refer to as “hypernationalism”—a vicious type of nationalism that turns states belligerent—is ill-defined and conceptually inseparable from the more benign form of nationalism (Snyder 1993). By all accounts shortchanging nationalism is full of perils. These gaps are precisely what neoclassical realists are intent on filling. Operating under the grand assumption that a state’s behavior “is driven first and foremost by its place in the international system and specifically by its relative material power capabilities”, indirect as it is, neoclassical realism is also keenly aware of the fact that systemic pressure needs to be transmitted through domestic and unit-level variables to manifest in foreign policy (Rose 1998). With its presence ubiquitous in the domestic sphere of politics as well as the personal or social psychology of elites and leaders, nationalism is put under the microscope by neoclassical realists who study a wide array of themes including state capacity and state behavioral orientation. Of components of state power—nationalism, ideology, and institutions—that inform and shape strategies for self-strengthening, states brimming with nationalist fervor, according to Jeffery Taliaferro (Taliaferro 2009), tend to respond favorably to pressure and incentives at system level and push for foreign learning and innovation. For Jennifer Sterling-Folker (Sterling-Folker 2009), nationalism can still stir up animosity and perception of security threats and impedes mutual understanding and acceptance, contrary to liberal predictions of more sanguine predictions, even in the face of heightened economic interdependence. Realism and Nationalism: Not Too Little, Not Too Much 132 In conducting international affairs do states act on a premise that is essentially realist, or do nationalist impulses trump realist rules? This question, if asked of policymakers, will most probably cause them to bemoan the unfairness and impropriety of its underlying assumptions. To act along the lines of realism for them is in perfect harmony with being a nationalist as far as national interest is concerned. 45 As it happens, however, in light of convention the nationalism choice is by comparison a latecomer in the lexicon of international relations. That is, the question of human nature—having been pondered and debated by philosophers and historians throughout the history—has laid the groundwork for a highly intuitive and dichotomous worldview depending on if one think humans are corrigible (idealism) or not (realism). Classical realism, a kind of political realism, while not entirely rejecting “the pursuit of …higher virtues”, holds the firm belief that “the final arbiter of things political is power”(Gilpin 1986 304). Furthermore, realism observes and analyzes human society in light of “conflict groups” that pit one collective of individuals against another; when nation-state became the predominant form of these groups, the word “nationalism” is what “loyalty” to it manifests itself (Gilpin 1986 305). Certainly groups (or nation-states) can splinter along ethno-national lines. But as it stands, the realist logic of inter-group conflict and competition is perennial and independently valid. Nationalism, to the extent it is significant in international relations, affects, according to realists, only the constitution of the state as an actor and adds into the mix some uncertainty and dynamism in terms of its behavior—all without overthrowing 45 Of course liberals too can make the claim that behaving “liberally” is akin to act “realistically”, which also ultimately serves the said—albeit liberal—nation-state. But because such rationale is hinged on a future scenario where the actual returns are paid, the cost-benefit connection is far more indirect than straightforward. 133 the realist logic. Nationalism is thus subsumed into realism as a second-order component. At the same time, precisely because they see nationalism as the most powerful social psychological—and territorially defined, like realism—bond that either fractures or solidifies groups, realistic thinkers and practitioners have shown some solid prescience in predicting the untenability of transcendental links, such as religion, class solidarity, in international life. 46 Contra classical realism, neorealism has the deterministic factor of state behavior transferred from the human condition to a more ontologically salient element, ie., the structural condition of the international system. This analytical move unwittingly repudiates the natural union of nationalism and classical realism, thus “effectively [denying] the theoretical import of the national category and of the international/interstate distinction” (Lapid and Kratochwil 1996). The result is often awkward. Taking the state as given—so as to have international politics walled off from domestic politic process and contestations—is one major, inherent problem, not the least because it can break apart thanks to ethnonationalism, the disintegration of the Soviet Union being a prime case in point. John Mearsheimer, for one, points to hypernationalism, a virulent form of nationalism, as “the most important domestic cause of war,” but nonetheless still relegates nationalism to “a second-order force in world politics” (Mearsheimer 1990 21). In no dissimilar fashion, because it is predicated on the assumption of stability—not necessarily stability of the system per se but the consistent predictability of states’ behavior emanating from structural determinism—as structural transformation is very rare to come by, 46 Nixon and Kissinger, for instance, were relatively quicker to realize that Beijing’s sparring and tension with Moscow rooted more in divergence of national interest than of ideology. Hence they began their diplomatic overtures and the international high-drama of Nixon going to China. 134 neorealists have to put to use the expediency of other variables, nationalism in particular, for point prediction as much as period prediction. As Alexander Wendt fittingly puts it, neorealism, “like all structural theories…[presupposes] some theory of what is being structured, human or organizational agents, and of their relationship to social structure” (Wendt 1987 336-337). Neorealism is a theory of international relations, argue Waltz’s defenders and comrades. Questions within the purview of neorealists are more about international outcomes—such as wars between great powers as well as “international cooperation, arms races, crisis bargaining, aggregate alignment patterns, and the war proneness of the international system”—than foreign policy of specific states (Taliaferro 2006). To amend these patches neoclassical realists take it to task to construct “a theory of mistakes” (Schweller 2006 10)—inappropriate responses to external threat that fall short of the right amount of balancing—by integrating neorealism’s structural backbone with ideas and domestic politics. With regard to the role and functionality of nationalism, though, neoclassical realism inherits an ambivalence from classical realism. On the one hand, nationalism is a necessary social glue that facilitates the formation of a national identity as well as the mobilization of both resources and personnel in reaction to the constraints exerted by the self-help system. On the other hand, nationalism frequently leads to, and is blamed for, state behavior incongruent with expectations harkening back to anarchy and self-help—overexpansion easily comes to mind—that departs from the neorealist premises of unitary actor and rationality. 135 That nationalism can go awry and derail the policy trajectory prescribed by realism lays bare the contradictions of neoclassical realism between its analytical thrust and empirical reality. This results from the way neoclassical realists’ use of ideas and identity, which are applied “instrumentally as part of self-help” (Rathbun 2008 303). In Brian Rathbun’s words, “The existence of nationalism is not evidence that the world is socially constructed but rather that anarchy compels the utilization of social construction techniques to come to terms with objectively real systemic constraints…The power of ideas is confined nationally and is put in the service of material power mobilization and the will to use it. There is no notion of ideas being used to co-opt potential adversaries in the form of ‘soft power’” (Rathbun 2008 303-304). Somewhat cryptic as it is, Rathbun’s statement crystalizes the constricted understanding and utilization of ideas and nationalism by neoclassical realists, and the implications are manifold. First, following the logic, as Legro (Legro 2005 44) puts it, “ideational continuity and change will vary with the international circumstances that state face, especially as they relate to security and wealth maximization”, whereas “changes in ideas [occur] when the balance of international power or threat indicates security and/or when wealth can be improved by doing so.” In that process nationalism is the necessary lubricant or stimulant as it can galvanizes the population into one act or another. Legro demonstrates, among several cases, how the dominant ideas in the 1930s in the United States, isolationism, prevented the world’s greatest power from balancing against the rising power and threat of Nazi Germany as neorealism would have anticipated. In comparison, a case of idea change preceding structural transformation is presented by the historian Jian Chen, who asserts 136 that China exited the Cold War a decade before it officially ended thanks to the emergence of a more nationally defined objective centered on domestic economic growth (Chen 2013). Nationalism figures prominently in both instances. The difference is that in the former the smothering effects of nationalism prevented the United States from taking its due position in the global balance of power, whereas in the latter behavioral modification enlightened by nationalism leapt ahead of structural transformation. It is safe to say that realism needs nationalism to work the magic, but not too much to be counter-productive. Secondly, international relations cannot do without nationalism. At root nationalism is fundamentally derived from group psychology of differentiation. According to Wendt, “the dependence of states on their societies may be such that they cultivate nationalist sentiments in order to solidify their corporate identities vis-a-vis each other,” all the while “the depth and exclusivity of national identities varies greatly” (Wendt 1994 387). And since realism presupposes a territorially decided world, realists are keenly aware that nationalism is here to stay and the important question is how to harness it. National identities, however, can also maintain a varying degree of autonomy from contemporaneous distribution of power because the norms and values shaping up identities can be also societally and historically situated. International strategies of the United States, for example, are known to have been dominated by liberal precepts of democracy and free market much to the chagrin of realists unmoved by those lofty and moral concerns. This trait is so pronounced that even liberal thoughts in the United States ranging from liberal institutionalism to the neoconservative doctrine is adulterated by nationalism. China, in comparison, hews much closer to the 137 realist playbook according to a plethora of scholarship. But “realism with Chinese characteristics” appears as culturally bound as it is dictated by its long-time second-tier great power status and recent trajectory of “national humiliation” in the hands of foreign powers (Johnston 1995c; Johnston 1996; Christensen 1996). A vastly different historical fate also chastened Japan. Apropos of realism, no great power has more obviously defied its security-obsessed logic than Japan, which until the last decade adopted the medicine of economic nationalism to perfection. Bewildered at first, realists scrambled to define the strategy post hoc as mercantile realism (Heginbotham and Samuels 1998). The above also resonates profoundly with my third point. That is, realism is too often easier said than done. In policy making it is an especially delicate balance to make: for realism to perform, nationalism has to be of the just right amount. Too little the state lacks solidarity and strength; too much it would overstretch itself with belligerence. As an ideational factor the fact that various variants of realism both love and hate nationalism only proves that nationalism can be even more prevalent than realism among policy and intellectual elites. Theoretically, realism is more about international relations than about foreign policy. Its exclusive preoccupation with security affairs also means that its relevance is limited on a wide range of contemporary issues—such as states’ heightened interests in and pursuit of status, prestige, legitimacy, soft power as well as cooperation—that cannot be explained by liberalism alone either. Nationalism, however, is not conceptually tied to one single object, attesting to the fact that means that it is omnipresent, multifarious, and even mercurial. Studying nationalism can easily fall into 138 the trap of tautology. It is nonetheless high time to put nationalism at the front and center of our studies of international relations and foreign policy. That said, when the nation-state’s internal organization is assured, realist stream of thought and nationalism overlap a great deal in terms of how to define the scope and ambition of a country’s foreign policy. Both see the pursuit of national interests as the ultimate raison d’état. What then separates realists from nationalists are qualities and factors that shape up the calculation of interests. While there is no logical reason to deny realists the (dis)honor and label of nationalists, nationalists, on the basis of conceptual differentiation and common usage, are known to be more emotional than rational. That is to say, realists tend to take a more objective, comprehensive view of costs and benefits associated with each policy behavior in an unsentimental way, taking to heart the timeless truth that nothing is eternal but interests in the material sense. As such it evinces a great deal of consistency and stability. Nationalists, in contrast, are more likely to be prisoners of historical memory and national experience, or instigators of those emotions for personal or factional gains (Snyder 1991). Instead of acting in correspondence to material power distribution only, as realists insist they do, nationalists differ—even among themselves—over the appropriate content of national interests. Emotionally driven nationalists can go off the track of level-headedness and behave at the spur of the moment, whereas pragmatic nationalists may have in mind the overall well-being of the nation and race that can be about national comprehensive power, reputation, and legitimacy, et cetera. They tend to be reflexive and see relations with foreign countries in dyadic terms infused with love and hate. By and large, nationalists are change agents. 139 NATIONALISM AS THE RESIDUAL FACTOR The unique qualities of nationalism present a researcher with enormous conceptual and methodological challenges. When the integrity of the state is no longer in doubt, how do we conceptualize nationalism in the form of state nationalism? How do we ascertain its presence amongst a kaleidoscope of vibrant intellectual and cultural elements? More importantly, how do we measure its causal impact in an analytically neutral manner? Unfortunately, unlike realism, which is defined mostly in material and structural terms, nationalism has no characteristic and measurable markers and can manifest itself in contradictory policy and behavioral orientations. For instance, nationalism can impede international cooperation and engagement (isolationism), but it also can encourage integration with the global economy and international society in pursuit of wealth and a bigger say in international affairs. Even though the latter scenario can be characterized loosely in terms of “liberalization,” the phrase may only denote some degree of loosening of control in the economy and politics rather than a full-blown flourishing of liberal values. That is, the process is not necessarily led by a complete change of heart in the ruling class’s ideology, but rather, by a change of tactics by a group of nationalists, as evidenced by the Chinese reform since the Deng Xiaoping era. This self-perpetuating logic renders nationalism highly subjective and almost impossible to pin down. To a striking extent, nationalism is no less like culture that has been predominantly treated as a residual factor within the dominant analytical frameworks for international relations. In other words, only when scholars have exhausted all what they regard as 140 veritable variables and still cannot come up with a reasonable explanation do they turn to culture for rescue, not to mention that culture is just as difficult to capture and measure and that nationalism and culture have much in common. Since this project aims to examine the source of China and Japan’s international engagement, including some cooperative behavior in areas of international peace and development assistance, I will not try to measure nationalism not only because it is simply an impossible task at present but also because it is not my objective. Rather, I will apply the same strategy many scholars have employed vis-a-vis culture and treat nationalism as a residual element after realism and liberalism. As has been explained earlier, in this dissertation I see nationalism along with realism and liberalism as parallel grand thoughts about the nature and efficacy of international relations, ideological configurations through which leaders understand the world and tackle foreign policy problems they are faced with rather than theoretical frameworks that scholars use to explicate a problématique they find interesting or puzzling. Luckily, liberalism has been widely understood as a political creed as such, even though it has also been used for sophisticated theoretical formulations. Realism, on the other hand, has many variations, structural realism being the most prominent one. In lieu of its structuralism, however, here I opt to use realism as a culturally imbued reference to a materialist conception of national interests and pragmatic and balanced approach to power politics. Nationalism, too, is centered on defining and defending the national interest, but it is generally what realism is and what realism is not. In this context, however, for the 141 purpose of distinguishing the two streams when necessary I will lean heavily on the latter part of the spectrum. Consequently, I will be keen on investigating states’ activities that are intended to boost their nonmaterial interests —such as reputation, legitimacy, international standing and influence, etc—that do not have a direct bearing on states’ security and survival but are nonetheless the growth sectors in which they are investing more and more resources. My decision to treat nationalism as leftover is by no means to denigrate its political significance and analytical gravity. On the contrary, I believe nationalism occupies the vast expanses of ideational and ideological spectrum between liberalism and realism, the grey area that is too complex and fuzzy to depict by words. The decision is purely for methodological and analytical purpose because realism and liberalism are the two extremes that can be evaluated in light of states’ actions. This also means that I will have to sacrifice the area where nationalism overlaps with realism and liberalism. Specifically, for instance, an ideal-type realist foreign policy is the result of both realism and pragmatic nationalism. At times for the sake of clarity I will only examine issue areas and places nationalism is not pragmatic but dogmatic or irrational in order ascertain that nationalism exists independent of realism. This is when I examine in the next chapter China’s current or hypothetical autocracy agenda. The empirical case will be Burma/Myanmar, where Beijing is highly likely to endeavor to sabotage the ongoing democratization process to ensure its realist gains. In the event that Beijing’s actual behavior runs counter to what realism prescribes, then we can be sure that nationalism is vividly at play on a grand scale, causing the discrepancy between realist predictions and 142 the reality on the ground. In turn I will extrapolate the presence of nationalism to explain China’s behavior in other spheres of security and governance. As for the Japan case, I will begin by asking whether Japan’s diplomatic activism, as seen from its enthusiastic involvement in development assistance, peacekeeping and human security, is indeed driven by a liberal logic. The absence of a vibrant democracy promotion program and interests among elites therein is evidence enough that liberal internationalism is not the driving force behind Tokyo’s charm offensives. Rather, it is a nationalist agenda as Japan has outgrown the particular post-World War II context that greatly limited its international role. While humanitarianism cannot be ignored completely, it is nationalist sentiments shared by the Japanese political elites that has motivated Tokyo to explore political and military options and expand its presence in issues of global governance, not liberal ideological, not liberal international norms. To the extent that expanding Japan’s and involvement in peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions has helped the Japanese military to circumvent its pacifist constitution, it is the result of the convergence of nationalism and realism. 143 Chapter 3 China and the Fallacy of Status Quo and Revisionism Why Nationalism is the “Third Way” In a world where the United States is the undisputed hegemon, it is expected that a great many great powers—save for the US itself and beneficiaries of its rule—are disgruntled with the current power arrangement. Logically, countries such as China, Russia, India, and Brazil that were shunted from the creation of the US-dominated post-Cold War order are natural candidates for spoiling the status quo in the future. And China is the chief suspect for two major reasons. First, the other three members of the so-called BRIC club, Brazil, Russia and India, are more up-and-coming than present challengers owing to their second-tier material power in spite of their first-tier potentials. Second, Brazil and India share with the West democratic values. India, which shares a long and contentious border with China, appears to be inching closer to the United States, with whom it signed a historical nuclear deal in clear breach of anti-proliferation international norm (Mohan 2006). In contrast, both Russia and China have a relationship with the United States that went on a roller-coaster ride in the past century, and are still operating out of the Western security community (Jervis 2002; Nau 2002) (Rosecrance 2001). Two above-mentioned factors combined, China has been increasingly perceived as the biggest potential challenger to the international order, and points of contention with range from security, trade and investment, human rights and democracy as well as its tacit support of certain “rogue nations,” North Korea in particular. That concern is further heightened in the context of Western powers mired in stagnation or recession and continued explosive growth of the Chinese economy spanning 144 more than three decades. Unlike Japan that, too, raised a great deal of unease as it was undergoing a much similar economic juggernaut, China practices no antimilitarism, but is instead historically ingrained in its own cultural realpolitik (Johnston 1995c). And it has been consistently ruled with a tight fist for more than half a century by an authoritarian Communist Party that is not ready to yield its monopoly of political power regardless of domestic pressure and international censure. In great measure, China would never cease to be a power to reckon with simply because it is endowed with the world’s largest population and third largest landmass as well as nuclear weapons, a reality geo-strategies cannot ignore even when the country was still poverty-stricken China. For the Chinese, direct descendants to one of the major sources of human civilization, they are simply on a path to claim their rightful place in the world, a renaissance (fuxing) that was bound by destiny. Much of the International Relations literature on China resolves around one issue: how does Beijing relate to the international system and how will it wield its newfound power in international relations? Particularly, will it strive to overthrow the current international order dominated by the United States, or be willing to accept it and adapt to it? Will it promote its trademark capitalist authoritarianism to advance its social power and influence? These are commonsensical questions that are nonetheless of monumental significance in both theory and practice. For scholars, the endeavor to answer these questions undoubtedly involves coming up with the appropriate analytical approach, reasonable assumptions, workable measurements as well as careful empirical examination. 145 To date, academic and policy debates are largely fought along the fault line of whether Beijing is a revisionist or status quo power. Realists—political realists, neorealist, theories of hegemonic power and power transition—see China as a challenger to the US, but they tend to dismiss or discount the connection between power and intentions to a varying degree. Liberal scholars of norms and institutions applying the concept of socialization, which on the other hand, focus on the degree to which China adapts to and internalizes rules and norms, and generally agree that China was gravitated toward the status quo. This binary view, however, I argue, is fraught with subjective presumptions and conceptual ambiguities and confusions, and therefore ill-equipped to encapsulate the totality of China’s international behavior. Realists’ problem, for the most part, stems from the misguided decision to use the US as a yardstick to measure China’s strategic behavior and calculations while, in fact, the former itself can be revisionist. Scholars of socialization, on the other hand, overstate the “normalizing” power of international regimes and multilateralism while giving short shrift to Beijing’s earnest efforts—informed and enlightened by nationalism—to be carve out its own path in regional security and global governance. With a particular focus on China’s international behavior, this chapter is nonetheless a continuation of previous discussions detailing the basic positions and inner tensions of constructivism/socialization, realism, liberalism and nationalism. One caveat, though. As the liberal ideology is non-existent with the authoritarian Chinese polity, liberal conceptions of international relations are exclusively reflected in the school of thought emphasizing the effects of international norms and the process of socialization. As liberals 146 emphasizing the potential of China being absorbed into the international system, most realists counter that by arguing that it is a revisionist power even if its teeth are not yet shown. For decades the status quo/revisionism dichotomy underpinned by liberalism and realism respectively lent support to oscillation in American strategies to China between engagement and containment, with the former being the default policy. My main contention is that the dichotomy not only is ill-equipped to capture the complexities of Chinese foreign policy—not only because there is an overemphasis on US-China relations, but also because the two theories/diagnoses are too clear-cut and straightforward (and therefore too simplistic) for their own good. I argue, rather, it is nationalism that has supplied much of the impetus for China’s international behavior and that nationalism’s mercurial quality is why there is a wide variance in both cooperative and antagonistic behavior. Furthermore, the entrenched and embedded nationalism inherently generates some imbalances, inconsistencies and discontinuities in China’s international behavior that neither the revisionist nor the status quo label is capable of capturing. CHINA: AS A SPOILER OF STATUS QUO? Is China a status quo power or revisionist power? This rendering puts China’s behavior in black-and-white contrast with the current international order. Suspicion aside, to rigorously evaluate the degree to which Beijing constitutes a threat simultaneously begs the question over to whom it poses a threat, what kind of threat it is, what is the status quo that it might seek to “revise” (hence the word “revisionist”), and what is the ideal world 147 order that it desires. Consumed by power politics, realists have put a great deal of efforts in defining the status quo and setting up parameters for it. “The policy of the status quo aims at the maintenance of the distribution of power as it exists at a particular moment in history,” says Hans Morgenthau (Morgenthau 1978 46). In general, a policy in favor of status quo rejects any “reversal of the power relations among two or more nations, reducing, for instance, A from a first rate to a second rate power and raising B to the eminent position A formerly held,” while minor adjustments “leave intact the relative power positions of the nations concerned are fully compatible with a policy of the status quo” (Morgenthau 1978 46). Morgenthau does not address such important questions as how minor adjustments are different from status quo-shattering behavior, and his conception of status quo is rather static and neglects how the differential growth rates may impact on the power relations between top contending great powers. Following his logic, “any rising states is by definition a revisionist one insofar as it wants to change the global distribution by increasing its own power”(Johnston 2003 9, note 14). The causal link between capability and behavior cannot be more straight-forward for offensive realists: revisionism “refers to the intentions of a state to change the balance of power in its favor, which may not reflect actual behavior if the state lacks such capability” (Wang 2004). In other words, intensions do not have to manifest in behavior, and because states can never accurately ascertain intentions of others a more appropriate indicator of behavior is therefore power and capabilities largely irrespective of intensions (Wang 2004). Some defensive realists, however, think that intentions do matter. Because there exists potentially “a mutual-gains benefit,” intentions to cooperate or not are a 148 function of a range of factors specific to the offense-defense balance, the relative gain distribution, the mechanisms to prevent cheating, and so on (Glaser 1994; Jervis 1978). Putting a premium on intentions, scholars of power transition take to heart—aside from the geographical size, a constant—difference between a rising power’s economic development and political ambition. In this aspect, the most crucial indicators are “economic productivity and the efficiency of the political system in extracting and aggregating human and material resources in to pools available for national purposes” (Organski and Kugler 1981 20). In a way, intentions are driven by expanding capabilities, and a mismatch between a rising power’s growing material power and its relatively stunted status in the hierarchical system incurs resentment, “a general dissatisfaction with its position in the system, and a desire to redraft the rules by which relations among nations work” (Organski and Kugler 1981 23). Henceforth, it is the unquenchable thirst for respect and for the ability to dictate that it feels entitled to, rather than “a desire to maximize power or a single-minded urge to guarantee security in the narrow sense,” that turns the “parvenue” power into a war-prone challenger (Organski and Kugler 1981 19-23). The power transition model, with an almost fatalistic conviction that security is best ensured by power non-parity and little consideration on how alliance may structure and transform those relations, is most applicable to analyzing competitive dyadic relationships between the world’s top two powers. Power is assumed to be perpetually zero-sum, not only because there is little chance the ambitious newcomer would be content with rising within the system, but also because the system is what it wants to destroy. 149 Moving beyond the singular focus on great power dyads, Schweller tries to separate “the goals and means to which those capabilities or influence are put to use” as a determinant for international stability from the distribution of capabilities alone. He nonetheless agrees with much of what power transition theorists have to say. According to him, for status quo powers, “the potential gains from non-security expansion are outweighed by the cost of war” because they are more interested in “self-preservation and the protection of values they already possess”, whereas “revisionist states value what they covet more than what they currently possess…and will employ military force to change the status quo and to extend their values” (Schweller 1994 104-105). Without specifying what status quo entails, his conception remains very nebulous. Robert Gilpin, however, outlines some clear parameters for separating status quo powers from revisionist powers: in addition to “the distribution of power and the hierarchy of prestige,” “a set of rights and rules that govern or at least influence the interactions among states” are a third component granting legitimacy to the hegemon and presumably have been internalized by most players in the system (Gilpin 1981 33-34). Acting in violation or even speaking ill of those rules and presage the intent of a revisionist power. Nothing can be more heinous and dramatic for a revisionist power than to try to knock the hegemon off its pedestal by force and usurp its place. However, for China to become a full-blown revisionist—a power usurper, rather—the underlying assumption is that it has at least inched close to power parity with the United States, which in turn emboldens it to resort to outright force to transform the international order in its favor. Such a scenario is yet to materialize, however, not the least because China, in spite of its 150 explosive growth that powered it through the ranks of great powers and rapid increase in military spending since the 1990s, remains lagging behind the United States in almost all parameters of power and capabilities. America still the indisputable hegemon and the system unequivocally unipolar (Ikenberry et al. 2009), it would only be reckless and foolhardy for China to initiate a power grab. In fact, entering a new millennium, mainstream IR theories increasingly play down the possibility of wars between or among major powers thanks to the cost of nuclear war, gains from peace, and the stabilizing effect of US hegemony (realists), their changing ideas and identities that moderate the sense of insecurity (constructivists), or the benefits of democratic peace and economic interdependence (liberals). Even as China remains on the fringe of the security community of Western powers plus Japan, a war breaking out between China and the US remains a distant possibility in an “era of leading power peace” (Jervis 2002). Such projection of a non-violent path of future great power relations is countered by scholars more in tune with philosophical fatalism and political pessimism. While they do not necessarily project violence, they see no reason to believe that China will not try to upset the status quo. Operating from a cultural angle tailored to individual civilizations, Samuel Huntington notes that China has even been more violent than Muslim states, and is more apt to use force four times than the United States. Disregarding ample evidence showing that today’s China is more imbued in the Westphalian concept of sovereignty much more than any Western powers, he put emphasis on its China’s traditional aversion of multipolarity, balance, and equality, and argues that it strenuously aims to return to the historic “Sinocentric” order in East Asia with itself at the top (Huntington 1997). 151 Mearsheimer agrees with this illustration of Chinese ambition but predicts that it will be countered by a containment posture the United States initiates with the assistance of Japan, Korea and Vietnam. For him, there is nothing idiosyncratic or particularistic about the Chinese because great power relations function with a simple logic: they all seek hegemony—regional hegemony, in fact, only because global hegemony is unattainable—and established hegemons will try all it can to prevent others from becoming its peers and challengers, making conflicts inevitable (Mearsheimer 2001). As every major great power harbors revisionist calculations, the status quo is simply a fleeting moment of tranquility destined to be broken. Structural realism such as Mearsheimer’s strand of offensive realism is exceedingly parsimonious as it jettisons everything domestic from bureaucratic politics to economic growth rate, and attributes the pivotal force shaping states’ behavior to international anarchy alone. That leaves little room for human agency, and insofar as China’s material power base as the exogenous variable continues to grow, the United States will be “reactivated” back into a containment mode much the same way it applied it against the Soviet Union (Mearsheimer 2001). Conceptualizing international relations through the lens of inter-state hierarchy, power transition theorists, in contrast, integrate the state actor’s emotional state of being (satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the status quo) as a behavioral inducement that dynamically corresponds to variations in relative power driven by varying degree of economic growth and capital mobility. Emotionally charged clashes of interest and status can be treated as the transitory variable between the social and structural circumstances and the behavioral outcome. Neoclassical realists too agree. For a rising 152 state whose international status still pales against the hegemon, unfulfilled expectations will give rise to destabilizing behavior because a state’s unsatisfied desire for higher status can have enduring, deleterious effects on the state’s pride (Wohlforth 2009). Perpetual dissatisfaction and clashes over the status quo notwithstanding, the highly stratified distribution of capabilities associated with a unipolar international order “precludes a competitive identity-maintenance strategy vis-à-vis the United States” (Wohlforth 2009). Such is the case that that some analysts see Beijing in terms of “posing problems without catching up” (Christensen 2001). For structural realists, new powers will eventually catch up (Layne 1993), and a more powerful and confident China is certain to challenge the extant order just as ferociously as America is to defend it. That destiny has little to do with the distinct features of the Chinese per se, as survival instinct as a result of international anarchy pushes states to pursue dominance, making China and America essentially no different from each other. Seen from the realist perspective, to expect a future China that is democratic and liberal to be collaborative with America is a wishful thinking that cannot be more off the mark.47 Neoclassical realists, on the hand, see the dual forces of both international structure and regime character at work: as economic strength emboldens Chinese behavior, the authoritarian nature of the communist regime makes it more likely to use force to achieve political objectives (Roy 1994). Considering its enthusiasm in promulgating its own values internationally, China’s ideological differences with the United States will only exacerbate 47 The United States is consequently advised to retreat from a strategy of primacy to that of offshore balancing in response (Layne 1997, 2007). 153 mutual antagonism and mistrust on the path to build regional hegemony without resorting to physical conquest (Friedberg 2011b). Given their belief that China is embarking on a path to wreak havoc with the status quo, the onus is on inherently pessimistic realists to argue the case using evidence. This is a tall order because since the 1980s Beijing has shown little interest in foreign adventurism, preferring to concentrate on shepherding a sustained economic growth, a crucial rationale shoring up the Communist Party’s political legitimacy in the post-revolutionary era. Some nettlesome frictions over the ownership of small islands with some neighbors and in the East and South China Seas as well as relations with Taiwan notwithstanding, Beijing has peacefully settled many other long-standing territorial disputes with its neighbors, sometimes to the detriment of its national interest in exchange for regime security (Fravel 2005). In the words of Peter Gries, “While many Chinese have convinced themselves that US power predominance cannot last, they do grudgingly acknowledge the world’s current unipolar nature” (Gries 2005 406). The lie-low strategy is in line with Deng Xiaoping pithy dictum of “tao guang yang hui” (maintain a low profile, hide brightness, refrain from seeking leadership, but also try to achieve something). After several run-ins with the Americans, notably the Taiwan Straits Crisis in 1996 and the Spy Plane Incident of 2001, Beijing lunched a much publicized “peaceful rise” campaign that was obviously aimed at allaying international fear of its power and intentions. Its “charm offensive” in the form of accommodating multilateral diplomacy and development aid in its “charm offensive” greatly calmed the nerves of its jittery neighbors (Kurlantzick 2007). It fits seamlessly with the Dengist doctrine as “a de facto grand 154 strategy” aimed at “[engineering] China’s rise to great power status within the constraints of a unipolar international system that the United States dominates,” which inevitably entails stabilizing the US-China relations chiefly on Washington’s terms (Goldstein 2005 12). Ironically, as it wears on, suspicion is roused of China free-riding on the United States and evading its responsibilities as a great power. At a time the Bush administration was mired in quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, American officials who had previously categorized China as a non-status quo power and America’s strategic competitor were prompted to call upon Beijing to perform certain international responsibilities commensurate with it being a “responsible stakeholder” (Zoellick 2005; Rice 2000). The relative smooth sailing of US-China relations under the Bush administration notwithstanding, some scholars charge that around the time of the Iraq invasion China was “engaging in the early stages of balancing behavior against the United States” along with other major powers including Germany, France, and Russia (Pape 2005 9). Short of traditional (hard) balancing measures that entail military buildups and anti-America alliance, efforts by foreign governments to “delay, frustrate, and undermine U.S. policies” through international institutions, economic statecraft, and diplomatic arrangements are perceived as a new form of balancing adapted to counter the hegemon’s overwhelming power advantage (Pape 2005). A form of “tacit balancing short of formal alliances” but “based on a limited arms buildup, ad hoc cooperative exercises, or collaboration in rational collaboration in regional or international institutions,” soft balancing is “to balance a potentially threatening state or a rising power”, and can evolve into overt hard-balancing “if and when security competition becomes intense and the powerful state becomes 155 threatening” (Paul 2004 3). China’s hard balancing against the United States fits nicely the scenario power transition theory conjectures, yet it never materializes. On the other hand, insofar as “soft balancing accepts the current balance of power but seeks to obtain better outcomes within it, by assembling countervailing coalitions designed to thwart or impede specific policies” (Walt 2009 104), symptoms of China soft balancing against the United States, if any, do not offer much illuminating insight on China’s strategic calculation vis-à-vis the international order either. It is also worth noting that the conceptual clarity and integrity of the concept of soft power is still in doubt and its manifestations are said to be indistinguishable from “routine diplomatic friction” and “policy bargaining” (Lieber and Alexander 2005) (Brooks and Wohlforth 2005a) (Howorth and Menon 2009). The inadequacies so far of the many variants of realism have prodded some scholars to call for new analytical assumptions and frameworks suited for better understanding of China’s international behavior in a more historically informed manner in the regional context of Asia (Kang 2003). But realists can always respond by saying “just wait and see” because international politics is perpetually evolving. The “I-told-you-so moment” seems to have arrived when the tone of Chinese foreign policy turned strident around 2009. Since then a series of incidents between China and its maritime neighbors—Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines especially—markedly ratcheted up regional tension and the limited amount of goodwill engendered by Beijing’s soft power push from previous years rapidly dissipated. And there was no letup as the Obama administration began its “Asia pivot” around the same time. Also, Deng’s wisdom of “tao guang yang hui” is increasingly challenged at home as its veracity is doubted abroad. 156 Understandably, the realist alarms are even louder. The risk of a military conflict involving the two nuclear armed powers is “a tangible, near-term concern,” says Goldstein, not because the two giants are coming to a full-out war as peer competitors and adversaries, but because the crisis involving the United States and its Asian supporters may spin out of control (Goldstein 2013b, 2013a). That being said, it is still too early to call the realists winners of the debate. Their theories being primarily of deductive nature, realist scholars discount states’ ability to learn from history yet regularly refer to historical turn of events for validation of current and future scenarios, a practice that historians have come to have plenty of doubts with (Schroeder 1994; Gaddis 1992). For instance, Mearsheimer in his assessment acknowledges that states learn from history—“China is likely to imitate the United States and attempt to become a regional hegemon”—all the while emphasizing that “countries usually do not pay much attention to a potential rival’s past behavior when trying to determine its future intentions” (Mearsheimer 2010). Although logically more sophisticated, power transition theory, too, is criticized for a multiplicity of conceptual under specification and empirical discrepancies with the geographical reality of China’s rise in a unipolar context. In addition to their undue downplaying of the effects of nuclear weapons that ought to impact on the strategic calculations of leaders, power transition theorists are also at fault for forcing the regional milieu of China’s ascendance onto the Procrustean bed of power transition on the global scale when it is clear that thanks to its geographical distance from other major centers of power—Europe and the Americas, in particular—China is at best only able to pose threat to American strategic interests in the 157 Asian vicinity (Levy 2008). Furthermore, not only does the United States remain far more powerful than China, thus making a power transition scenario a possibility still distant, it itself is also not immune from suspicion of upending current world order: empirically, the United States itself has a long record of going unilateral at various stage of history; theoretically, there is no ample logical support to assume a ascending power like China would want to initiate war and conflict given its momentum (Chan 2007). CAN CHINA BE “NORMALIZED”? It is astutely observed that debates about the future of U.S.-China relations are fundamentally between realist pessimists and liberal optimists: while realists cannot move away from the many vicious cycles of recurrent struggle for power and dominance, liberals perceive human history as a progressive force that leads to peace, democracy, and prosperity (Friedberg 2005). 48 International institutions are the locus of attention for most political literals—liberal institutionalism and constructivists in the IR theoretical sense—because a motley of institutions—inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations, regimes, norms, and rules—have penetrated contemporary world politics like never before. That character is attributable to the historical uniqueness of the postwar 48 In fact, the pessimism/optimism divide is evident in all three major IR paradigms: among realists the disagreements stem from their varying assessments of China’s power, strategic goals, and the intensity of the security dilemma. Among liberals, optimists have confidence in the positive effects of interdependence, international institutions, and democratization, whereas pessimists tend to draw attention to the destabilizing effects of the CCP’s authoritarianism and America’s tradition of using democracy in the fashion of an international crusade. Finally, optimist constructivists acknowledge the flexible and “softening” effects via institutional contact of identities, strategic cultures, and international norms, but pessimist constructivists argue that differentiated identities of self and other can be rigid, and hardened in response to shocks and crisis, thus heightening the prospect of conflict. See, (Friedberg 2005). 158 Western order, says Ikenberry: “Any international order dominated by a powerful state is based on a mix of coercion and consent, but the U.S.-led order is distinctive in that it has been more liberal than imperial—and so unusually accessible, legitimate, and durable. Its rules and institutions are rooted in, and thus reinforced by, the evolving global forces of democracy and capitalism. It is expansive, with a wide and widening array of participants and stakeholders. It is capable of generating tremendous economic growth and power while also signaling restraint -- all of which make it hard to overturn and easy to join” (Ikenberry 2008). Ikenberry’s conception of benevolent American Imperium is indebted to historical institutionalism (Fioretos 2011), yet the neoliberal institutionalist conception of international institutions that gained much currency since the 1980s is more concerned with the genesis of international regimes—defined as “implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations” (Krasner 1982)—as an innovative platform that renders international cooperation possible against all neorealist odds. Indeed, international institutions have proven useful in improving communication between states suspecting of each other, reducing uncertainty about intentions by lowering the chance of cheating, thus making credible commitments by members states possible. Contributing to cooperation not by implementing rules that states must follow but by changing the context within which states make decision based on self-interest, institutions take a life of their own because “they perform important functions and because they are difficult to create or reconstruct” (Keohane 2005 14). 159 Both domestic and international politics are about overlapping layers of contending rules and rule that are of hierarchical, heteronomous, or hegemonial nature (Onuf and Klink 1989). As seen from the myriad definitions of status quo cited above, in the era when the United States reigns supreme, these rules are unavoidably associated, and even conflated, with the power and authority of the master and creator of the Pax Americana. Different from the emergence as great power of Germany and Japan in the 19 th and 20 th century, China is rising in a milieu in which international institutions have been developed to an unprecedented degree in terms of depth and breadth. For Beijing, no international institutional podium is more important than the United Nations, and the Communist Party spent many years waging a tug of war with the Kuomintang in Taiwan over who was the legitimate holder of “China” seat. Its entry in 1971 came simultaneously with it assuming the role of a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. As the Cold War was winding down, Beijing since the 1980s gradually warmed up to the world body as indispensable for safeguarding world peace, such that it shed its earlier doubts and started to contribute handsomely to U.N-led peacekeeping missions. Cooperating with and through international institutions not only award China some tangible benefits, such as favorable terms for fostering trade and investment, but also portends to enhance its role and prestige within the international system as a status quo power. In terms of their mandate and levels of formalization, these institutions, in Lanteigne’s classification, are poised to provide such precious “goods” as state security, regime security, information acquisition, economic benefits, and improved position vis-à-vis other great powers, and prestige (Lanteigne 2005). Among them, the World Trade 160 Organization allows China to access the well-established dispute resolution process that shields it not only from numerous unilaterally imposed restrictions on Chinese exports by its major trade partners but also from the politicization of China’s Most Favored Nation status in the messy American political process; the nuclear nonproliferation regime that China entered into in 1996 brought along international credibility befitting a member of the UN P5; regional forums such as the APEC (the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), ARF (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional forum), ASEAN+3, the East Asia Summit have further facilitated bilateral and multilateral interactions, informal deliberations as well as Track II initiatives facilitating contacts among businesses, bureaucracies, and academics, all of which in turn contribute to information sharing and confidence building that undoubtedly help assuage the unease China’s neighbors have toward its intentions and policies. With their analyses and worldview shaped and dictated by the basic assumption of unabated structural anarchy, realists overwhelmingly dismiss international institutions as a reflection as much as an unintended by-product of the distribution of power in the world (Mearsheimer 1994). 49 Coupled with the conventional view of “the high church of realpolitik” that is China, claims are often made on how skeptical of multilateral institutions Chinese elites are without eschewing them entirely: “In most cases, China joins such organizations to avoid losing face and influence. But Beijing does not allow these organizations to prevent it from pursuing its own economic and security interests. Chinese analysts often view international organizations and their universal norms as fronts for other 49 Note that some traditional (classical or neoclassical) realists counter that this view is outdated and too “extreme” for “[putting] realists of all stripes on the defensive in discussions about institutions,” see, (Schweller and Priess 1997). 161 powers” (Christensen 1996).To be sure, Chinese officials did exhibit ample amount of ambivalence and ambiguity toward international economic and security regimes in a policy-making process deeply constrained by “dependencies, status relationships, and security realities,” which in the immediate aftermath of the post-Tiananmen international isolation was unwillingly compounded by the contingent need for a “break-out” strategy (Gill 2001). This realpolitik strategic culture of Chinese characteristics aside, 50 a more salient ideological impediment to China’s involvement in international institutions is in fact its deeply entrenched belief in the sacrosanctness of national sovereignty, a sensitivity that was beyond doubt developed through its painful dealings with Western colonial powers. When elucidating the Chinese thinking on nuclear weapons and strategy, for instance, Johnston states that “The preferred ends have predominantly remained the preservation of territorial integrity and foreign policy autonomy, the defense of political power by the communist leadership in Beijing, and the growth of China’s influence commensurate with its self-ascribed status as a major power” (Johnston 1995a). As its interactions with international regimes began to intensify, in spite of a foreign policy reorientation in the spirit of “international cooperation” and “global interdependence,” the PRC is said to have acted on “state-enhancing, not state-diminishing functionalism” in conjunction with the “maxi/mini principle” aimed at maximizing its rights and minimizing its responsibilities vis-à-vis international institutions, which manifested in “free rides” and unabashed pursuits of foreign aid, investment, and technological know-how in an effort to further its economic 50 Johnston asserts that the view was incorrectly claimed to be supported by his idea of “cultural realism”—expounded in his first book that was informed by Ming dynasty military strategies—without sufficient logical basis to be relevant to contemporary China (Johnston 2008 xviii-xix) 162 modernization (Kim 1992). Except when existing rules of a particular institution are compatible with its interests, China, according to Economy, generally resist regimes that “hinder China’s economic development, infringe on its sovereignty either through monitoring by external actors or determination of how China utilizes its resources), or permit the advanced industrialized countries to further the already unequal technological or economic advantages they enjoy” (Economy 2001 251). On the other hand, the upside is that its domestic bureaucratic structure and policies respond positively to tangible benefits such as financial incentives and technology (Economy 2001 251). These facets of China’s participation in international institutional environment fall between a neorealist conception of socialization, that is, an process whereby states become increasingly sensitive “to signals emanating from the material structure about who succeeds and who fails and why” by rational unitary actors, 51 and a liberal contractual institutionalist perspective of socialization that, too, assumes that “actors generally emerge from interaction inside institutions with the same attributes, traits, and characteristics with which they entered ” (Johnston 2008 5-6). 52 After all, true to their shared ontological commitment to individualism and materialism, both structural realists and liberal institutionalists are focused on how states pursue self-interest in a world saturated with their innate quest for ensuring their own survival. Their main difference is that the latter, enlightened by a game theoretical epistemology and macroeconomic roots, are very keen 51 In this case socialization does not assume a priori an institutional environment, but rather a broad space in which states are the primary actors interacting with each other. 52 In Johnston’s own words, “These characteristics have no effect on the attributes, traits, or characteristics of the institutions itself—an efficient institution in principle should reflect the nature of the cooperation problem, not the nature of the actors themselves—and these characteristics, in turn, have no impact on actor identities…Whether social interaction is short run or long term, it has no effect on underlying preferences. All it does is change the cost and benefits of pursuing these preferences.” (Johnston 2008 6-7) 163 on institutions as a solution for achieving more efficiency. Attesting to this judgment of a rationally motivated actor, Economy dissects Beijing’s preference to partner with institutions that allow its equal participation, sidestep consensual style of rules, and evolve at a pace domestic interests and bureaucracies can easily adjust to (Economy and Oksenberg 1999 22-23). To conclude that China, still imbued in its interest-maximizing culture, has skillfully adapted to a multilateral, institutionalized setting without fundamentally altering its realpolitik orientation is to imply that China is an anomaly for behaving so selfishly, opportunistically and defensively. As some scholars have noted, there is hardly anything unique about Beijing being this skittish toward international institutions, especially for a country just coming out of its own shell and unsure about how to conduct normal political and economic relations with much of the world, nor is it the only one among all nation-states in world politics so guarded about external interference into its domestic affairs (Lanteigne 2005 12). Simply put, insofar as Beijing wants to reserve maximal autonomy and flexibility in relation to international institutions as well as the encompassing international society, it is acting just as any rationalist theory expects it to perform. The status quo and revisionism dichotomy too is rendered indeterminate herein based on its willingness alone to participate or not. For all its strength in explaining the “creation and maintenance” of international institution, neoliberal institutionalist perspective is known to be “weaker in delineating its effect on state behavior, and other significant outcomes” (Martin and Simmons 1998 738). 164 The solution is still to turn the table around and see how institutions change the way actors behave themselves. Once in the game, however, one is expected to abide by the rules. No rules in international relations are clearly stipulated than those of formal organizations created and joined by autonomous sovereign states on their own volition. However, membership in these “institutional representation of interdependence” means that applicants must be ready to surrender part and parcel of their sovereignty in order to receive benefits engendered by these cooperative schemes, and that, for China, in spite of its reservation over issues such as humanitarian intervention, is a relatively expedient process as it readjusted its very definition of national interest and sovereignty, and poised to accept certain level of cost (Kent 2002 343). In a similar vein, asserting that the cobweb of institutions constitute in great measure the “rule of the game”, Johnston develops two sets of indicators by which we can assess rigorously the degree to which an actor is full engrossed in “a status quo ‘international community’” rather than resorting to subversion or sabotage (Johnston 2003). One set of indicators examine the level of proactivity with which the said actor challenges formal and informal rules of major international institutions that most other actors identify with, including the participation frequency in activities regulated by the institutions, the genuine acceptance of the norms of the community, and the presumably subversive intention to torpedo the purposive foundation of the institution and community. The other set of indicators shed light on “the attitudes and behavior of an actor toward distributions of material power that appear to be disadvantageous to it,” including an inherent preference for power redistribution as well as military means toward that goal (Johnston 2003). Careful empirical analyses lead Johnston 165 to conclude that although domestic social and political upheaval and a US-China security dilemma going out of control, especially regarding Taiwan, risk provoking Beijing into a revisionist mode, China’s involvement in international economic and security institutions so far serves a testament to its status quo-oriented intentions. For Kent, a state’s complying with international norms and rules does not mean full cooperation, which is about “cooperation, coordination, join action, and mutual support” (Kent 2007 17). To operationalize cooperation, she uses such indices as its readiness to ratify multilateral treaties without excessive reservation, the voluntary act of shouldering additional obligations and promoting the mission and purpose of an organization and its treaties pertaining to it, and encouragement to others to do the same. Her close scrutiny of China’s interactions with and involvement in a series of international institutions and regimes, including the Conference on Disarmament, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Trade Organization, and the International Labor Organization (ILO), all indicate that international laws and norms have successfully smoothed the many rough edges of a non-liberal China through the socialization of “recalcitrant members” (Kent 2007). In Social States, Johnston, too, takes a step further from his previous work on socialization and sets out to identify and specify the micro processes linking the particular normative structure at the international level and the constraining effects of these norms on the actor at the unit level, whereby China’s participation in international institutions across time not only enlightens us about the general orientation of its international behavior but also serves as the empirical basis for testing his propositions. Seeing the effect of socialization as “a 166 function of the characteristics of the environment interacting with the characteristics of the agent in an ongoing tight feedback relationship, mediated by a foreign policy process” (Johnston 2008 27), 53 the best way to test for socialization, Johnston says, is to treat international institutions as a social environment in which individuals and small groups involved in state policy processes—rather than the state as a whole—evolutionally adapts. Assuming a priori that China does indeed have a realpolitik ideology, Johnston makes the case that China is a least likely case for non-realpolitik socialization and most likely for structural realism (read revisionism). China’s entry into these counter-realpolitik international institutions predicated on the notion of common security provides a scenario of sharp contrast and makes it easiest to observe and measure the effects of positive socialization. Johnston identifies three such micro processes of socialization. Mimicking is when a novice consciously imitates others in the group by borrowing the commonly practiced language, habits and ways of acting in order to survive in an uncertain, anarchic environment. Mechanical as it is, this move can, nonetheless, lead to path-dependent lock-in effects that make it increasingly difficult for the actor to back out, ignore or deviate from the norms of the institution: to meet the technical demands of the international institutions, the new participant will have to create and develop some specialized organizations, which will—in the course of repeated interactions with international institutions--adopt the institution’s work routines and discursive practices and gradually 53 In this instance, Johnston’s definition is broader—only supplying the basic conditions for dynamic interactions to happen—than a tailor-made constructivist definition that sees it as “the process that is directed toward a state’s internalization of the constitutive beliefs and practices institutionalized in its international environment” (Schimmelfennig 2000 111-112). 167 gravitate more and more—institutionally and ideologically–toward the larger epistemic community. Mimicking was evident in China’s involvement in the U.N. Conference on Disarmament (CD). Since joining in the 1980s, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) expanded its CD arms, from a small division, to an Arms Control Department in 1997; while an interagency process involving MOFA, a host of scientists, and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) came into fruition to assist diplomats’ negotiation within the CD. The second microprocess is social influence, whereby the actor’s behavior was induced by its sensitivity to status markers bestowed by a social group, specifically in the form of back-patting or opprobrium signals. While back-patting is considered a reward for being an active pro-social member because it can reaffirm an actor’s self-esteem and self-perception as a high-status actor, opprobrium is a type of social cost and punishment for its negative consequences on the actor’s status and prestige in the group. Process-tracing every major turn of events in the negotiations leading up to its entrance into the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), Johnston demonstrates how top leadership’s concerns over the country’s international image and status in the face of strong criticism of moral hypocrisy from developing countries, middle powers and the NGO community helped MOFA win the internal policy debate in favor of the treaty. He goes on to argue that even confounding cases does not necessarily contradict the theoretical premises of social influence. For instance, even though they were unable to persuade the military to agree to the Ottawa Treaty banning landmines (1997), MOFA diplomats still managed to tactfully use public diplomacy to minimize the level of opprobrium directed toward China. 168 Finally, persuasion as a third microprocess indicates a high degree of “taken-for-grantedness” in the sense that the actor has cognitively internalized the new norms and values to form a new causal understanding of its environment—all “in the absence of overtly material or mental coercion” (Johnston 2008 155). Persuasion works best when the actor is highly cognitively motivated, relatively autonomous from the principal, has few prior or ingrained attitudes. It also helps when the “persuader” of the high-affect in-group the actor belongs or aspires to join is a highly authoritative member (Johnston 2008 159-160). China’s participation in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is a case in point. Exposure to ARF’s counter-realpolitik ideology such as “cooperative security” and decision rules increased China’s “comfort level” with the new mechanism, so much so that MOFA’s Asian Department argued that multilateralism is conducive to China’s national security, and the concepts of mutual and common security were later absorbed into Beijing’s own new security discourse. Overall, as I have suggested in Chapter 1, the socialization perspective tends to see the state and its agents in a reactive mode without giving sufficient attention to the other side of the story, that is, states can choose to go on the offensive and purposefully seek to change the immediate surroundings to its liking by creatively utilizing a repertoire of soft power and public diplomacy that include such tactical means and tools as multilateralism, foreign aid, trade concessions, etc. Opening the inquiry instead by asking how states are socialized or normalized brings a long a normative undertone and skews the analysis toward status quo-orientedness. After all, their choosing to enter them is already a testament explicit enough of certain degree of acceptance to the binding rules of those 169 institutions in the first place. Another bias of the framing of the question is to imply that “the norms of the international community are ones of cooperation” when in fact habitual realpolitik thinking remains endemic in international relations (Wang 2000a 487). In more concrete terms, the plight of the socialization literature comes from two inherent and inter-related epistemological problems. In Johnston’s case, Chinese agents may well be novices in international institutions initially as judged by their lack of sophisticated technical knowledge, but the Chinese state was by no means “a tabula rasa state” vis-à-vis international institutions (Johnston 2008 xx). In fact, Chinese leaders may well have been greatly constrained by their cultural frame of mind—in this case their inflexible approach to state sovereignty, for instance—from taking certain course of action because innate worldview, perceptions and values tend to have “path-dependent and embedded nature” (Wang 2000a 477). On the other hand, somewhat unpredictably, strong leaders may also decide to plunge their nation into the international environment that is alien to it as a way to enhance its legitimacy, status, or national interest. In the case of China, Deng Xiaoping’s vision of internationalization and experimentation, aphoristically captured by his injunction of crossing the river by feeling for the stone, was monumental. Sensible leaders are prone to take initiatives and risks, and can be reflexive. Their initial vulnerability does not prevent them from thinking about wrestling control over the process of internationalization and socialization. In recent years, more and more Chinese analysts have called upon it to “upgrade” from the position of rule-taker to that of rule-maker. 54 54 This line of reasoning was probably first started during the debate over the pros and cons of joining the World Trade Organization in the late 1990s by those in favor of it. You have to be in it to revise the rules for your own benefit, it was often said. 170 Conversely, a fair question should be asked, that is, can the state as a whole be socialized? In fact, much of the socialization literatures in IR tend to have the state as the unit of analysis. Johnston’s decision to treat international institutions as the social environment is made to catch up with his empirical intention to put state’s behavior under the microscope, which renders previous work by sociological institutionalists inadequate (Johnston 2008 27). Shifting the level of analysis from agents and bureaucrats to the state, however, requires a different set of assumptions about depths and confines of those rules and values as well as the scope conditions of the outcome activities of socialization. Scholars affiliated with the English School solve the problem by focusing on the entry and membership of non-European states into international society from the standpoint of civilization, qualification for membership, and normative “code of conduct.” Socialization therefore is defined more in terms of selecting and inducting new members into the group “led by the senior members of the community, whose goal is to ‘create persons who can sustain confidence that they meet the requisites of membership and to incorporate them into membership’” (Suzuki 2009 29). In more concrete terms, a “civilized state” was thus expected to protect the life, rights, and property of foreign nationals, have an efficient state bureaucracy to run the daily affairs of the state including self-defense, observe international law and follow diplomatic conventions, and adapt “to the accepted norms and practice of the ‘civilized’ international society” (Gong 1984 14-15). The downside of applying the English School is that because the notion of international society is a construct of macro-history, it seems to hold limited analytical and empirical purchase 171 vis-à-vis today’s globally integrated world when more nuanced, detailed, cross-time studies of behavioral change as depicted by Johnston is in short supply and quick demand. WHAT STATUS QUO? Recall that the main question is about China’s future role in world politics and how it will use its quickly expanding supply of material resources toward that end. As of now debates among IR scholars about China’s international role still revolve around the revisionism/status quo nexus, yet this dichotomous view is plagued by a series of hidden yet often unsubstantiated assumptions that inexorably obscures many of the complexities of Chinese foreign policy. In painting a black-or-white picture and trying to fit China into the mold, we also have our view clouded as to the genuine motivation and logic of behavior propelling China does what it does. Because realists’ predictions about China is predicated upon what it does in the future, which I believe is very much uncertain, I reserve my criticism—in line with my earlier review of the socialization literature—on the status quo side of the argument that is heavily influenced by liberal theories and outlook. To judge how the observed object is behaving, one not only needs to be conscious of his own position but also set up beforehand a point of reference. In their analyses of Chinese foreign policy in the post-Cold War era, scholars understandably juxtapose China against the existing world order in order to ascertain China’s behavior and intentions. The thrust of their research is to clarify what this international order entails and how it relates to the American preponderance. According to critical theorist Robert Cox, “‘world order’ 172 is neutral as regards the nature of the entities that constitute power; it designates a historically specific configuration of power of whatever kind” (Cox 1992 161). On this front, the interplay of personal beliefs and theoretical convictions are almost self-evident among scholars themselves. Those studying the interactions between China and myriad international institutions, regimes and multilateral forums unambiguously intend to use them as a foil to test for its intentions and measure the depths of that international enthusiasm. International community and institutions are the “world” that China was to “join” (Economy and Oksenberg 1999). This commitment to international institutions as an incubator for socializing an outcast into the family of “normal” nations is theoretically underwritten by both liberal institutionalism, which exalts institutions as an efficacious confidence building and cost-cutting mechanism, and conventional constructivism, which asserts that institutions are capable of constructing an intersubjective community wherein interests and identities can be renegotiated through social practice (Hopf 1998 188-191). This line of analytical thinking and research on the integration of China into international institutions is both outdated and inadequate: outdated because a much more powerful, confident and active China is much less apt to be domesticated, inadequate because the effect of socialization through international institutions is predicated on China’s willingness a priori to face up to the consequences of joining international institutions. Many scholars studying China’s involvement in international institutions, by virtue of their exclusive focus on Chinese behavior, seem to take it as a technocratic process divorced from the of structural conditions of world politics described by 173 neorealists. This is unfortunate: while Mearsheimer’s claim that “institutions have minimal influence on state behavior” (Mearsheimer 1994 7) drastically underestimate the role of international institutions, the structural condition where the United States retains enormous power and influence on international institutions cannot be neglected either. There are two take-aways in this regard. On the one hand, the power of United States is reflected in “shaping the agenda of institutions where its interests are at stake and, even more fundamentally, in shaping and reshaping the actual character of the institutions themselves”, whereas American attitudes toward international institutions are a function of their perceived effectiveness and compatibility with its interests (Foot et al. 2003). On the other hand, the liberal international order itself with the United States at the helm is evolving as a result of crises of authority and legitimacy, not just because of China and other emerging powers do but because the system needs to adapt to accommodate their presence (Ikenberry 2009; Koivisto and Dunne 2010). Seen this way, China’s convergence with existing norms and rules of both pertinent international institutions and the international order is not sufficient evidence for its status-quo orientation, nor should its possible rejection of certain arrangements be construed as attesting to its revisionist intent. In sharp contrast to the subtle way liberal internationalists—liberal institutionalists and some constructivists included—use as yardstick to measure the degree to which a latecomer is enmeshed in the rules and norms of international institutions, structural realists (notably, offensive realists) and power transition theorists unequivocally equate the world order with distribution of power and question whether China is a revisionist power or status quo power solely based on its head-on competition (or not) and power 174 comparison with the United States. By all accounts, as aforementioned, owing to the sweeping manner with which they judge China’s strategic inclination and their epistemological tendency to derive that conclusion from deductive theoretical inference, almost all of them suggest that China, whose power has grown exponentially, cannot possibly be inclined to accept the status quo and will only resort to revisionism to in order to wrestle power from the US. 55 That is to say, realists pretty much have only one answer to the revisionist-or-not question and it is yes no matter what. Some critics assert that these general depictions of China “as a threatening other” essentially emanate from longstanding images by American elites and mainstream China scholars about themselves as “representatives of the indispensable, security-conscious nation” (Pan 2004). Nor does it stack up against evidence proving that China is acting in accordance with predictions of revisionism as I have outlined above. It is therefore my contention that much of the literature conflates China’s attitudes toward American hegemony with its behavioral logic. The underlying assumption in the use of the United States as the sounding board to test for China’s behavioral intentions is that the former, with the international system it dominates decidedly in its favor, can only be a satisfied power committed to defending the status quo against prospective revisionist power like China. Some facts indicate otherwise. Comparing China with its peers in the U.N. Security Council, Chan finds that Beijing cast the least number of veto votes since taking over the “China” seat from Taipei, ratified more international conventions on human rights than the United States, and spends the smallest portion of gross national 55 Classical realists and neoclassical realists may be a bit agnostic on this account. 175 product (GNP) on its military. He thus concludes that China leans toward status quo no less than the United States (Chan 2004b). This US-as-the-standard rationale also runs counter to much of the public perception of the Bush administration’s unilateral policies and tactics in advancing American interests, ideals and agenda in the name of global war against terror. In a self-contradictory manner, some proponents of soft balancing—which, according to them, targets the United States and originates from “[concerns] about the increasing unilateralism of the United States and its post-September 11 tendency to intervene militarily in sovereign states and forcibly change regime that pursue anti-U.S. Policies (such as Iraq)”—argues that “Even when pursuing quasi-imperial policies, such as in the Middle East, the United States has generally been perceived as a defender of the international status quo and an opponent of forced territorial revisions” (Paul 2005). Notably, only when America is engaged in “empire building” that entails violation of “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a large number of states” do they call it a dangerous revisionist state (Paul 2005 71). Although definitions vary, the notion of American empire gained great currency over the course of the Bush years (Layne and Thayer 2007) (Nexon and Wright 2007) (Ferguson 2003). By reversing its earlier commitment to international law (as in the case of its rejection of the International Criminal Court, international regimes (as in the case of its refusal to sign on the Kyoto Protocol and its repudiation of the 30-year-old ABM Treaty), and multilateralism (as in its unilateral overthrow of the Saddam regime), Washington not alienated the rest of the world but also de-legitimated the international social basis of its 176 own power (Hurd 2007). In the course of America’s unilateralism damaging the US-China relations was the least of Washington’s concerns (Xiang 2001). All these factors suggest that American unilateralism has a great deal of staying power even in the post-Bush: 1) the United States can afford to go alone as the overall cost of so doing is lower than widely expected (Brooks and Wohlforth 2005b); 2) entering the unipolar era, the “institutional bargain” it struck with allies has been eroded, thereby weakening its commitment to multilateralism, while the lessoning of systemic constraints strengthened the hand of domestic veto players inimical to internationalism (Skidmore 2005); 3) ideological conviction in the pacifying effects of democracy and neoconservative beliefs of leaders inject into the political process a revolutionary zeal seeking to transform the world in line with American ideals in the post-911world (Jervis 2006). Speaking more broadly, the idea of American decline, popularly juxtaposed often with the “rise of the rest,” especially in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, has been subjected to serious scholarly inquiry. As a result, an argument is gaining traction that in spite of its decline in relative terms, not only is American power of robust and enduring qualities in the next coming decades, it can also be reinvigorated to refurbish the structure and content of the world order (Nye Jr 2010; Lieber 2009; Brooks and Wohlforth 2008). Some realists have called out upon Washington to take the lead in reforming the institutional infrastructure of the current world order so as to entice “China and India to advance their interests within U.S.-led global governance structure rather than outside of them” (Drezner 2007 46; Brooks and Wohlforth 2009). In other words, in the name of preserving the status quo, international institutions can be used as a pawn to ensnare these 177 rising powers into the complex web of institutional rules and commitments in order to neutralize their subversive ambitions. To the extent that Washington does apply this strategy, it is to preemptive maneuver to prevent China to challenge it. Who is revisionist and who is not is even harder to tell. To reiterate, the status quo/revisionism binary is exceedingly inappropriate for examining China’s international behavior. First, as the definitions of both status quo and revisionism remain nebulous and underspecified, putting the totality of China’s international relations in an analytical straitjacket of black-and-or-white nature is both limiting and misleading. In no great measure, China’s engagement with the US-led world order is a multilayered and multidimensional undertaking, whereby its management of relations with the United States is also a dynamic, interactive process that involves constantly sizing up the other party’s intentions and numerous rounds of acting and responding. To the extent that Beijing’s US strategy is a non-confrontational posture seeking to assure its cooperative intentions—all the while fiercely defending its self-perceived core interests on Taiwan and else against undue US intervention—as far as America’s geostrategic prerogatives are concerned, its overall global strategy goes far beyond the exclusive focus on the United States and includes engineering a conducive international environment that serves simultaneously the overriding priority of economic growth at home and buttressing its interests and profile abroad. To that end, China’s diplomacy is more conciliatory and includes numerous outreaches to the rest of the world 178 by way of building partnerships and easing tensions with some old, neighborly foes (Deng 2001; Fravel 2008). 56 A second, but related problem with the status quo/revisionism framework is that the easy conflation of the world order and US primacy not only leaves more balanced, comprehensive analysis of China’s international behavior much to be desired. Being exclusively attentive to American concern over China’s behavior precludes the researcher from digging deeper to reveal the crosscutting causal forces that shape China’s international behavior. As a result, there tends to be a misattribution of motives that drive China’s international behavior and global outreach. Indeed, there is no other alternative for the Chinese leadership other than navigating carefully the potentially treacherous terrain of international politics. It is their national survival, interest and grandeur that remain their first and foremost objectives, rather than challenging the United States, that is, unless it stands in the way. This is by no means to downplay the American factor in Beijing’s strategic calculations, but to stress the point that not all critical issues in Chinese foreign policy are evaluated and decided on the basis of their prospective repercussions on the US-China relations, be them propitious or pernicious. Take China’s relations with some of the most notorious “rogue nations” for example. In the initial years of the Bush administration, Beijing’s bolstering of ties with North Korea, Angola and Uzbekistan around 2004 was a reactive stance to the democratic “color revolutions” in Eastern Europe and Central Asia championed by the West as Communist Party officials grew fearful that Beijing itself would be the next target of 56 Even that positive result can be fleeting as the recent flare up of tensions between China and its maritime neighbors shows. 179 regime change for Washington. At the same time, booming Chinese investments in these trouble spots as Anglo and Sudan are first and foremost to quench its own thirst of oil, whereas a massive infrastructure (pipeline, ports, etc) in Burma is to circumvent the Strait of Malacca so as to minimize strategic risks should the United States act to curtail China’s oil imports when/if bilateral relations go awry. 57 On the other hand, nurturing those relations that many in the West consider unseemly does not contradict Beijing’s long-standing stance of nonintervention as a general principle (Kleine-Ahlbrandt and Small 2008). Therefore, to automatically suggest that the reason Beijing beefed up relations with other international players is to get back at the United States or achieve domination in the region—therefore, an attempt to challenge the status quo, as some analysts have suggested—is to mistake the effect for the cause (Blumenthal 2005). This kind of hyperbole, often seized upon by policy wonks and journalists to dramatize certain points or behavioral patterns, 58 underscores a puritanical zero-sum mentality without little regard to specificity of issues and content at hand. 59 Third, the dual options of status quo and revisionism, assume that there exists an integrated Chinese grand strategy that is coherent, consistent and stable vis-à-vis both the United States and the overall international society, at the same time without giving it much thought to the reflexive, trial and err aspects of foreign policy making. In reality, the immediate strategic contingency (China’s own ascent) coupled with the broader structural 57 Development of China’s southwest border provinces is another priority, as they remain the poorest area in China 58 See, for example, Randal C. Archibold, “China Buys Inroads in the Caribbean, Catching U.S. Notice”, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/world/americas/us-alert-as-chinas-cash-buys-inroads-in-caribbean.html, accessed April 8, 2012. 59 Bilateral trade between China and Australia, for instance, has been booming thanks to China’s insatiable demand for raw materials, but that does not mean Beijing is able to pull Canberra away from Washington. The fact is quite the contrary. See, (Manicom and O'Neil 2010, 2012; He 2012). 180 conditions of international politics in influx (changing distribution of power and American unilateralism) renders the ascribing of cause and effect increasingly unreliable. After all, circumstances invariably change. For while the doctrine of “tao guang yang hui” may have served China’s interests well when it was weak so that it could concentrate its attention and resources on economic development, China in the 21 st century now can no longer afford to be indifferent to what is happening on the high seas and many of the world’s conflict-prone areas as piracy off the cost of East Africa and oil production in Sudan are now both intricately linked with Chinese interests. BRACING FOR THE NATIONALIST COMPLICATIONS Since the mid-2000 talk of China as either a revisionist or status quo power has quieted down quite a bit. One interesting indication of this new trend is the waning of the idea of “engagement” in policy circles, where the strategies of containment and engagement are theoretically underpinned and correspond respectively to prescriptions of China as a revisionist and status quo power. Intellectually informed by liberal theories of institutionalism and socialization/constructivism, proponents of engagement with China harbored hope that by immersing the communist country in global norms and institutional networks of trade, investment as well as security and politics Beijing could be tethered to the system that it could no longer be separated from—not only because the cost was too high but because it would be “socialized” into thinking and behaving just like any other member of the liberal international system. Engagement thus became the default strategy 181 to China in Washington and other Western capitals, agreed to by most in government, academia and the private sector poised to benefit from China’s economic growth. To the extent realist hardliners occasionally objected to it, it would be modified to include some tough tactics and rhetoric, i.e., “congagement.” At times when Washington’s heavy-handed attempts to punish Beijing for its human rights violations or trade infringements failed in the face of Chinese resistance, as what happened to the first term of the Clinton administration, officials would invariably justify their policy reversals by invoking the rationale for engagement. Be it engagement or socialization, its initiation—as I have argued earlier in Chapter 1—is predicated upon Beijing’s willingness to participate. Indeed, the initial decision by Deng Xiaoping to open up the economy and lunge into to the global capitalist market is by no means liberal—he may be liberal in the sense of being more open-minded than others but he was a communist and nationalist at heart—but can only be of realist and nationalist calculation as the liberal orthodoxy has no cultural or institutional existence in the Chinese political system. Consequently only the socialization literature is left to do the intellectual heavy-lifting for liberalism. Yet the effects of socialization also depend on the substantive issue and institutional circumstances that one studies, which, in Johnston’s case, are thick institutions that replete with rules and routine interactions that Beijing at least made some half-hearted commitment to upon its entrance. In the area of development assistance, for instance, there is evidence that China is converging on established practices of the donor community and has begun to compliment its traditional focus on infrastructure to capacity building and social development (Chin and Frolic 2007). 182 As I have argued earlier, the socialization literature is at its best analyzing how state agents can be tamed within the institutional environment of norms and rules, but socialization should not be understood as a one-way street. China is more likely to accommodate international aid norms where Chinese aid deliverers have more opportunities to interact with regional institutions, through which China tries to assert its norm-making authority by presenting its own vision and preferences (Reilly 2012). In general, it goes without saying that states are reluctant to surrender their autonomy and sovereignty. Unsatisfied with their norm-taking status, they can revolt and be tempted to seek norm-making power and influence. For example, how do we make of China’s intransigent refusal to accept international monitoring of its compliance with the climate deal struck at the Copenhagen climate change conference in 2009, held under the aegis of the United Nations that China was widely accused of “highjacking”? Perspicacious as his institution-centered study is, even Johnston himself is compelled to acknowledge that “there are no institutions of persuasion or social influence that can counteract the powerful domestic forces preventing the leadership [in Beijing] from abandoning coercive diplomacy against a democratic Taiwan” (Johnston 2008 210). Apropos of Taiwan Johnston is obviously making implicit reference to Chinese nationalism. Unlike liberalism, nationalism is ubiquitous and powerful, ever more so in a post-Communist China. Yet the socialization/engagement/status quo side of the argument largely shies away from discussing nationalism. This is unfortunate, not different from not being able to see the forest for the trees. This does not mean realists got it right all the time either. In retrospect, even though the broad international trajectory of China in the last 183 hundred years resonate well with the many decrees of realism, a closer look at the historical context shows that it is in fact Chinese nationalism that shapes the contours of its external relations. By most measures, nationalism in the vast body of realist literature is understood as a by-product of the structural conditions of the international system. Be that as it may, in the course of recent Chinese history since the late 19 th century when the survival of the Chinese nation was at stake, it was nationalism—not realism—that was at the front and center of Chinese people’s entangled relationship with the rest of the world. Generations of political leaders and intellectuals fired up by a nationalist fervor had to confront successive Western and Japanese colonial invasions, domestic turmoil and then the specter of the Cold War. Facing the cruel reality of their country being the big pie to be divided by vulturous invading powers, these individuals had to be conscious of the self-help rule of international politics, not the least because they—such as Mao and Deng—were at the same time acculturated into a cultural realism (Johnston 1996). Playing realpolitik was a given when China was more of a geographical concept than a compact and functional entity in the international system. Nationalism in modern China has had many highs, but few lows. Never was realpolitik lost on the Chinese mind, but playing that game is possible only when a Chinese nation-state became a reality in the Communist-nationalist incarnation. The tumultuous path that China took over the past century is a testament to how vigorous and strident nationalism has been in China as much as to how nationalism produced China as it is today. Chinese nationalism first rose as a visceral reaction to Western and Japanese colonialism 184 and is irreversibly tied to its independence and status in the international system as well as its relationships with those great powers of the time. Ubiquitous and palpable, nationalist fervor became fused with Marxism-Leninism—another intellectual goods imported from the West—in the Chinese Communist Party whose mainstay ideology took a very dim and even adversarial view of nationalism. In fact, considering that the CCP and its rival, the Nationalist Party competed to win over the mass on a nationalist platform, “the communist rise to power in China should be understood as a species of nationalist movement” (Johnson 1962 ix). Internationally, “The fragmentation of the monolithic, Soviet-led Communist movement by forces of nationalism was pioneered by Mao,” who was a nationalist when accepting Marxism and never rejected it (Garver 1988 10). The momentous decision by Mao was, of course, to split with the Soviet Union, the CCP’s former patron, or in the Chinese vernacular, the “big brother.” It is often nationalism that lends nation-states that abrupt, disruptive force in international relations, not realism. To be sure, when the nation-state’s internal organization is assured, the realist stream of thought and nationalism, overlap a great deal in terms of how to define the scope and ambition of a country’s foreign policy. The fitful characteristic of Chinese nationalism was on full display in the zigzagging of its international alignment during the Cold War. For the Soviet-China fallout and Mao’s orchestration of the Nixon-going-to-China masterstroke, there is no good realist explanation. Sandwiched between a domineering Communist superpower and a capitalist one no less formidable, Maoist China was in a geostrategic bind. Trying to release itself from the tight fold of Moscow was an extraordinarily precarious gamble for a weak China 185 when it could face devastating nuclear punishment from Moscow on the one hand with no American assistance forthcoming. What drove the two Communist brethren apart was Chinese nationalism masked in ideological differences, Mao’s strong will (folly is a better description) as well as his sensitivity to national sovereignty (Haas 2005) (Zhang 2010) (Westad 1998). 60 While certainly the US-China rapprochement was masterstroke realpolitik on the part of Mao (and Richard Nixon), in hindsight this outcome was by no means preordained. By all accounts the United States, still standing steadfastly behind the CCP’s mortal enemy in the Chinese civil war—the Kuomintang regime in Taiwan, was a threat just as hostile at the time as the Soviet Union, if not more. 61 A further symptom of Mao’s China’s nationalist character lies with the way it perceived itself and the manner it conducted itself. With an ambition for the leadership position in both the socialist camp and the anti-colonial movement, Mao and his comrades spared no effort in expanding its own revolutionary model globally, creating a great of tension with many other countries along the way. Toward the end of his life Mao began to emphasize—“first and foremost to the Chinese people”—economic development, a line of thought more consistent with the CCP’s earlier pursuit of national salvation and continued and substantiated through economic reform under Deng Xiaoping. In so doing and in conjunction with the US-China thaw, the historian Jian Chen poignantly argues, not only did the Chinese transcend the ideological barrier between communism and capitalism, they 60 This view is disputed by scholars such as Lorenz Luthi, who attributes the rupture to ideological debates “entangled in internal politics” of China and ascribes Chinese nationalism “subsidiary” importance (Lüthi 2010). But he does not dwell on the possibility that nationalism can be deeply intertwined with ideology, as Jian Chen (Chen 2001), et al, do. 61 With memories of the Korean War and Quemory-Matsu Crisis still raw, the Kennedy administration seriously considered attacking China’s nuclear facilities, possibly a joint move with the Soviets, before China’s first successful nuclear test in 1964 (Chang 1988; Burr and Richelson 2000). 186 also extricated themselves from the Cold War—largely irrespective of structural constraints of the bipolar system—a decade before it officially ended (Chen 2013). As Goldstein argues, Mao’s successors have the incentive to associate themselves with “Mao the nationalist”—who not only unified the country but elevated to a geopolitical power—instead of with “Mao the Marxist ideologue” (Goldstein 1995 225). Much as Deng’s “Four Modernizations” through “reform and opening-up” unleashed a torrent of learning and adaptation of Western ideas and practices in economics and domestic governance, it “did not mean China was not nationalistic” (Fewsmith and Rosen 2001). On the contrary, the nationalist and realist essence of self-strengthening in order to rise above the jungle of competitive international politics remains firmly in place as of today. In a crude way, the age of Maoism and the post-Mao era are differentiated mostly by the strategic approaches toward fully achieving the nationalist objective—by autarchy and self-reliance (zi li geng sheng) in the case of the former, or engagement and integration in the case of the latter. Deng chose the latter. By giving up class struggles and focusing on economic development at home, the Party has deviated from the orthodox Marxist doctrine. Precisely in light of fading Marxist zeal in post-Mao China, the Chinese Communist Party has no choice, but to burnish its nationalist credentials in order to hang onto political legitimacy and power. A pathfinder, Deng Xiaoping was able to forge a national consensus partly because he was in a position to impose it on the nation, partly because the economy-first credo rang true to the poverty-stricken vox populi as well as the Party elites. It was the epitome of pragmatic nationalism—in perfect harmony with political realism—in the combination of 187 domestic strengthening and international passivity. But as China’s power rises, the erosion of this consensus is inevitable, as nationalists can no longer agree on what is the best means to safeguard and maximize the national interests in a world saturated with of normative expectations and realist modus operandi. On the one hand, they are enticed by the prospect of becoming a hegemon, which is equivalent to pushing back on the Americans on Taiwan and other issues related to regional security and global governance arrangement. If this faction rules the day it is Chinese revisionism for certain. On the other hand, however, the Chinese leadership also wants respect, international legitimacy and at least the facade of being a responsible superpower, all of which in turn reflexively exerts constraints on Beijing’s freedom of action and compel it to abide by certain international norms and rules. After all, status quo has the benefits of certainty and predictability, from which China has been a beneficiary. It would be nice to have the cake and eat it too, but striking a balance between the two competing visions gets harder and harder in the face of divided domestic opinion and prospective pay-offs associated with each option. At times even the Communist Party leadership is at a loss caught between sticking to Deng Xiaoping’s motto of lie-low and carving a new path commensurate with new realities of international politics bent by the weight of its power. Domestically, the proliferation of participants and voices, the intertwining of competing dimensions of national interests in the progressively complex process of international policymaking involving security, economics, finance, etc, all contribute to—in much the same way as in the United States—“a conflicted China” whose behavior exhibit more contradictory and multidimensional characteristics (Shambaugh 188 2011). A case in point: the idea of “peaceful rise” propagated by the Hu Jintao/Wen Jiabao administration since their assumption of formal power in 2002 was thus a rethinking of its geopolitical interests in the context of unprecedented global interdependence as much as a push-back to the “China threat” thesis rampant on international scene (Zheng 2005). The double irony is that while its pledge to peace risks defanging the offensive/defensive posture against Taiwan independence, the self-claimed “rise” may cause the unintended consequence of intensifying fears among its already jittery neighbors (Suettinger 2004; Glaser and Medeiros 2007). Bowing to the latter concern, Beijing eventually opted to adjust the slogan to “peaceful development.” Yet amid alarm that other claimants of the disputed islands in the East and South China Seas had taken advantage of China’s commitment to solving international disputes by peaceful means to encroach on Chinese territory, hardliners within the Chinese political apparatus felt obliged to issue a caveat that neither “peaceful rise” nor “peace and development” precludes Beijing from defending its interests using military violence. 62 By the year 2013 the nationalist tone and hawkish tactics had become the mainstream and the two flashy slogans fell off the map completely. To recap, to use the revisionism/status quo dichotomy, to describe or predict China’s international behavior, is an attempt too simplistic and superficial, nor is the realism/liberalism nexus fully capable of explicating the intellectual and political forces motivating and shaping the contours of China’s international strategies. Analysts instead ought to recognize, I argue, that the enduring prevalence of nationalism spawns an 62 “Analysts Contentiously Debate ‘tao guang yang hui’: Peaceful Rise Does not Preclude China from Defending Itself Using Violence,” accessed 01/20/2012, http://china.huanqiu.com/roll/2011-12/2273974_2.html 189 incredible amount of uncertainties and fluidities in terms of how China relate and interact with the rest of the world. Nationalism, mobilized by a complex mosaic of history, ideas and politics, gives life and space to a wide range of behavioral possibilities, simultaneously and across time. As such Chinese foreign policy has shown qualities that are pragmatic but also dogmatic, consistent, but also erratic, rational but also volatile, stable, but also fitful. As a matter of policy, liberals are not at fault for engaging China but they cannot expect a linear process of socialization, whereas realists are well advised to shed the structuralist baggage and heed the advice of old-time political realism (Kirshner 2012). As has been suggested, the study of China’s international relations—in terms of the analytical paradigms and frameworks—is dominated by realists in spite of a late surge of liberals who laud the utility of international norms. To demonstrate how nationalism engenders contradictions and inconsistencies between proactivity and passivity, in the next chapter I will examine the prospect of China using its power to project authoritarianism or disrupt democratization overseas, a scenario much hyped in some policy and intellectual quarters and a nightmare for both realists and liberals. The case I will shed the spotlight on is Burma’s ongoing democratization, where Chinese interference would have served for both geopolitical and ideological purposes. The fact that this remains a distant possibility draws our attention to the uneven and imbalanced nature of Chinese foreign policy making at a time the country is increasingly perceived as aggressive and belligerent in its international dealings. 190 Chapter 4 The China Model away from Home Testing the Myth of Beijing’s Export of Authoritarianism Is the People’s Republic of China promoting authoritarianism abroad? Against the background of China’s rise and decline of the West, a fear arises that the PRC is intent on using its newfound clout to project overseas authoritarian capitalism embedded in the so-called China Model or Beijing Consensus. The country, the most populous on the planet and growing more powerful by the day, is not turning democratic soon. China, together with Russia, has punctured the end-of-history euphoria of democratic triumphalism and invincibility that in the wake of the end of the Cold War gained a tremendous amount of intellectual currency. That surprise stems primarily from its success so far at refashioning the union between state capitalism and political authoritarianism, as demonstrated by the vibrancy of the regime (Gat 2007). Yet Beijing’s relationship with democracy is more complicated than victorious. On the one hand, it is often beset by a neurotic sense of insecurity—induced by a keen awareness of raging popular grievances and vigorous democracy push by Western powers—that invariably transpires in crackdown on internal dissent (Chen 2010b). On the other hand, the combination of its power and resilient authoritarianism means that “[there] may be far less of a challenge to China from democracy than there is a challenge to democracy from China” (Friedman 2009 12). By the same logic, some argue, “[even] in its infancy, a loosely defined alternative (to the democratic liberal order)…being crafted by China and its illiberal friends represents a very real challenge” (Barma and Ratner 2006 66). 191 This chapter engages this scenario seriously, even though it remains very much hypothetical. I begin by turning away from discussion of China’s democratic future and situating the debate about China as an autocracy promoter in the myriad speculations about its intentions and international behavior. Exploring the problematique of regime promotion in the realist and liberal literatures, I argue that the imperatives of realpolitik are most likely to force Beijing to take into consideration the regime character of country it deals with. I then proceed with several conjectures to assist an empirical investigation of Beijing’s suppression of democratization or buttressing of an authoritarian regime in a direct and forceful manner. The ongoing top-down democratization process in Burma makes it a best case to investigate Beijing’s possible shift to an autocracy promotion agenda thanks to the former’s critical import on China’s geostrategic map. China’s reaction, as it turned out, was much more subdued than what realists would like. Comparing this indifference with Beijing’s fierce competition for the islands in East and South China Seas, I relate the contrast of attitudes back to nationalism. AUTHORITARIAN POWER, AUTHORITARIAN FOREIGN POLICY? Operating under guidance of Deng Xiaoping’s idea of “tao guang yang hui,” China has since the early 1980s largely adhered to national sovereignty and non-intervention as the principal code of conduct in international affairs. As Chinese leaders are primarily preoccupied with the country’s economic development through closer integration with the 192 global economy, pragmatism is known to have characterized China’s international strategies. As such the Communist Party is mostly on the defense on the political and ideological front. On the one hand, Party elites invariably bristle at Western efforts to influence and liberalize Chinese politics, attempts they dub as “peaceful evolution” with a vicious objective of overthrowing the Communist Party. Hardline political control mixing with liberal economics is their answer to that. On the other hand, they also consider a parallel effort to promote their own ideology irrelevant and even inimical to China’s national interests. The current president and CCP secretary general Xi Jinping, for instance, is on record for pushing back against accusations of Chinese malfeasance in blunt and memorable language: “China does not, first, export revolution; second, export poverty and hunger; or third, cause unnecessary troubles for them. What else is there to say?” (Sim 2009). 63 Indeed, most China observers, regardless of their disagreement on other facets of the PRC’s foreign policy, would concur with Andrew Nathan that “China does not try to promote change in other countries’ ideologies” (Nathan and Scobell 2012 347). This is of course in line with long-standing Dengist strategy of “tao guang yang hui,” which roughly translates as “mind your own business.” Nevertheless, that behavioral pattern may well be undergoing significant changes and probably can no longer be taken for granted as the presence of Chinese power and influence is now felt from remote corners of Africa to capitals of Western powers. More urgent alarms have been sounded by activists and dissidents who witnessed or experienced 63 Xi made these remarks in 2009 as vice president on a visit to Mexico. 193 first-hand the cruelty with which the Chinese government crushed its critics. 64 Because of that they are more likely to emphasize the international spillover of those inhume tactics and practices intended to thwart democratic advancement and crack down on individual liberty. The dissident writer Yu Jie, who paid dearly in the form of physical and psychological torture at the heavy hands of the government before fleeing to the United States, warned sternly that Beijing was bent on “exporting authoritarianism to other countries and threatening [world] stability.” 65 That possibility looms large even to many emotionally detached analysts as they take note of how Beijing utilizes its diplomatic clout, trade deals and aid packages to advance its interests and political agenda. For instance, the Confucius Institute, which is charged with the mission of propagating the ideologically innocuous Chinese culture and has its branches set up in more than a hundred countries, has aroused much suspicion in Western countries of them being a “Chinese Trojan horse” remote-controlled by a politically motivated Beijing. More nuanced analyses, in no small fashion, take stock of the concerted and deliberate strategies—contortion of democracy’s meaning by way of disinformation, Internet censorship, foreign aid, illiberal education draped in nationalism, and obstructive diplomacy in multilateral institutions—Beijing and its authoritarian peers put to good use in order to threaten and undermine existing democracies in the underdeveloped world (Kurlantzick and Link 2009). To the politically attuned observers, China’s authoritarian offensives abroad go hand in hand with its global outreach beginning in last decade through trade, investment 64 DROI (Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization), Hearing on Human Rights in China, December 14, 2011, http://www.unpo.org/article/13614. 65 Yu Jie,”Escaped dissident warns of China role”, AFP News, Jan 19, 2012, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/escaped-dissident-warns-china-role-002423544.html. 194 and diplomacy. Clearly the new superpower’s economic and political clout is beyond doubt. At Beijing’s disposal is not only its vast appetite for resources but also a deep pocket that can be used to entice into its embrace governments of developing countries weaned off from traditional sources of credit and aid, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, that usually come with stiff conditions. By as early as 2010 China had lent more money to the developing world than the World Bank (Dyer et al. 2011). With its nondemocratic nature and nontransparent practices, critics say, China’s doling out of “rogue aid” is to serve its national interest and ideological agenda and therefore detrimental to interests of its recipient countries (Naím 2007). Increasingly, more heed has been paid to the body of knowledge and practice that has not only led to the Chinese economic juggernaut but also illustrated the political viability of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This intellectual fountain of governing philosophy and practical experiences has been essentialized and popularized by the eponymous concept of Beijing Consensus or China Model. 66 One the one hand, by virtue of having defied the Western prescriptions of market economy and liberal politics and charted a course of modernization with Chinese characteristics, Chinese leaders have seized upon their success as an immense national pride. On the other hand, by being an alternative with a proven record, China’s developmental achievement has encouraged and enlightened countless policymakers in the vast developing world on how to jumpstart their own economy, or tighten their grip on state power, or both. Even some Russian elites look 66 The Chinese prefer the latter as the former was coined by Joshua Cooper Ramo, who started the conversation but is obviously not Chinese. 195 up to China as a model. 67 Now safely ensconced in its unchallenged power position at home, it is often said, Chinese leaders, whose worldview tends to be steeped in the binary mode of China versus the West as well as Chinese authoritarianism versus Western democracy, have an impulse stronger than ever to “[reinject] ideology into geopolitics” (Halper 2010 71) (Kagan 2007; Friedberg 2011b). No wonder observations, innuendoes, accusations of an emboldened China advancing autocracy internationally have gained momentum and attention in the news media, blogsphere and academy. That said, much of what is written about China’s authoritarian expansionism is unsystematic, and even speculative, whereas evidence proffered to back up the charge tends to be sporadic and anecdotal. In particular, those accusing Beijing of lending support to authoritarian regimes and dictators often do so by focusing on the pernicious effects of China’s policies and actions only. Many analysts concerned about environmental degradation, corruption and welfare of the locals in places such as Africa trace these ills to Chinese resource extraction and corporate activities, but they often do not distinguish private entrepreneurs and state-own companies—both of which are profit-seeking—from the Chinese government per se. They err by imputing intention from outcome without unpacking the logic of Chinese foreign policy. As a result, their claim of China engaging in either democracy suppression or autocracy promotion is hobbled by conceptual and logical lapses. The problem begins with their binary assumption of states in international relations with respect to regime promotion. In their view, great powers either intentionally support or hamper democratic governance in another country. But China generally has a 67 See Clifford J. Levy, “Russia’s Leaders See China as Template for Ruling,” The New York Times (October 17, 2009), p. A8, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/world/europe/18russia.html. 196 regime-blind approach that allows it to conduct normal relations with authoritarian regimes and democratically elected governments alike. Critics who accuse Beijing of having an authoritarian agenda tend to overlook this factor and instead focus on how its no-strings-attached stance with authoritarian regimes result in human rights violations and other nefarious effects in some developing countries. By laying blame on China in this arbitrary fashion not only do they neglect the positive results associated with Chinese investment, trade and other actions, they also forget that the ultimate responsibility of political development rests with the people and government of the host countries—not with China (Amosu 2007) (Moyo 2009). Autocracy promotion in Peter Burnell’s conceptualization (Burnell 2010) has five different categories in light of the intensity and scope, ranging from “doing ‘business as usual’ with a regime in a way that gives it greater freedom to determine its political trajectory” (Category v) to “assisting other regimes’ efforts to counter the pressures and inducements to democratise” from abroad (Category iii), and to the more draconian and “deliberate attempts to influence a regime in an anti-democratic direction” (Category v). Accordingly, much of what has been described as China’s countermove against democracy thus far falls into the lower-intensity categories. There are some problems, however, in attributing China’s actions and their negative impact on foreign polities to autocracy promotion, as I alluded earlier. First, autocratic government such as the Hun Sen regime in Cambodia and democracies such as Indonesia, ceteris paribus, are just as likely to benefit 197 from closer economic relations with China. 68 Seemingly therefore, Beijing’s regime-blind, business-only approach toward its international dealings have simultaneously undermined and strengthened democratic governance elsewhere; thus its dual role as an indirect democracy promoter and autocracy booster can cause a great deal of conceptual and analytical confusion. Second, Beijing has been, generally speaking, willing to cultivate relations with a foreign country irrespective of its regime type and domestic power transition, provided that the latter respects Beijing’s bottom line on issues related to Chinese sovereignty such as Taiwan and Tibet. Therefore, that an authoritarian regime of a sovereign nation cozies up to Beijing tells more about intentions and choices of the former than Beijing’s anti-democratic intent. And for us to ascertain whether Beijing has indeed made a clearly ideological turn to project authoritarian values and ways of governing, it makes sense for us to define autocracy promotion in higher-intensity terms that highlight the connection between intention (cause) and effects, that is—much like the way Russia does to Ukraine and Belarus to prop up the nondemocratic and pro-Russia governments there—in terms of an external actor “actively supporting illiberal elites, groups, or regimes through direct assistance” (Vanderhill 2013 9). Thus, only when Beijing intentionally work to sabotage democratic progress or build up an authoritarian regime in a foreign country can we be certain of a purposeful Chinese autocracy promotion agenda that breaks with its diplomatic tradition of national sovereignty and non-interference. 68 Research (Melnykovska et al. 2012) shows that trade with China has contributed to better governance in the several Central Asian countries that are, in Fareed Zakaria’s conception, illiberal democracies (Zakaria 1997). 198 That moment, by some accounts, might well have come on the heels of the global financial crisis in 2008. Emboldened with a sense of schadenfreude by an enervated United States (and by association, the West in general) distressed by the economic meltdown and twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese leadership shifted away from the much publicized idea of “Peaceful Rise” and “charm offensive” that seemed to have had served China well in assuaging worldwide fear of its rising power (Kurlantzick 2007). Now that the tide shifted precipitously—at least in perception—in its favor, Beijing all of a sudden became more “aggressive,” “assertive,” “revisionist,” and much “less cooperative” (Scobell and Harold 2013; Swaine 2010; Johnston 2013; Christensen 2011). Chinese nationalism with respect to foreign policy, which hereto had been more mass-based than state-led (Weiss 2013), struck a more strident tone. The muscular manner it manages territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas may well be a sign that a strategic recalibration on how to best protect its expanding interest even beyond its geographical borders is under way. 69 Against this backdrop, that Beijing sees democratic advancement in countries it deals with as hostile and seeks to roll back the clock, either by outright intervention or secret obstruction, simply cannot be ruled out. Indeed, while some Chinese scholars call for the government to reconsider the long-standing policy of no “value export” and supply the world with “solutions” derived from China’s own success (Pang 2011), some international observers have already connected the dots and referred to China’s recent moves as fitting into a broader objective of promulgating the “Beijing Consensus”, i.e., developmental authoritarianism 69 Xi himself, having promoted the notion of “Chinese dream”, has been stuck the label of nationalist by scores of foreign media and observers. 199 ("Geopolitics: Facing up to China" 2010; Cha 2009). The idea of a defensive-minded Beijing taking no stand on the regime character of others and happily conduct business with whoever is willing is no longer self-evident and may not even be tenable. For those who warned forcefully about the Chinese peril, it sounds very much like déjà vu all over again. Furthermore, even if Beijing is not engaged in autocracy promotion there is not guarantee that it never will. The current world order as we know it is under tremendous amount of stress precisely because China’s dramatic rise has upset its structural underpinning defined in both material and ideological terms. There are already on-going debates within and outside China, albeit mostly in scholarly circles, on a future international or regional order of hierarchical feature with China at the top (Kang 2003) (Callahan 2008). At the policy level, China is learning to utilize its newfound power, reacting and adapting to the transformed geopolitical landscape studded with challenges and opportunities alike. The “Peaceful Rise” campaign and the soft power push launched in the last decade are prime examples in this regard (Callahan 2008). THE LOGIC OF REGIME PROMOTION What does a foreign country’s regime type have to do with another state’s interests, so much so that the latter would want to promote its own political system abroad and/or engineer a regime change in a target country? At the first glance, the enterprise of value projection generally lacks a clear and direct connection to one’s survival and other core interests, and invariably entails some degree of economic and political cost. Without a 200 doubt it is affordable only to countries with the financial, political and military wherewithal, especially great powers. Indeed, too often it is easy to forget that great powers are manifested by not only their astronomical GDP size and aircraft carriers but also a set of core ideals and values that inform their vision of the international order, some of which they are interested in propagating internationally. Among the many ways to orchestrate political change is “forcible regime promotion” intended to recast the basic political principles and institutions in a target country, which has occurred throughout the modern era and is likely to persist (Owen IV 2010). In terms of states that have a penchant for the value business, there is no better example than the United States, where since Woodrow Wilson “the most consistent tradition in American foreign policy with respect to this global change has been the belief that the nation’s security is best protected by the expansion of democracy worldwide” (Smith 2012 9). The Cold War, as it turned out, was a fierce competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, both claimants to universal truth, who “were driven to intervene in the Third World by the ideologies inherent in their politics” (Westad 2005 4). An authoritarian regime is first and foremost a menace to the people under its jurisdiction, to whom it is not electorally responsible. But by the sheer size of its population, landmass as well as its geopolitical import, China is no ordinary country. The nature of its political structure thus carries a great deal of international significance. As a corollary, questions naturally arise as to whether the regime will deal with its foreign counterparts and citizens the way it does to the vast populace under its rule. What then is the general logic for states’ to push for an international value agenda in the contemporary 201 world? One major approach, intuitive as it sounds, argues that foreign policy is guided by a political logic that is consistent with how internal politics is structured. “Foreign policy is the external manifestation of domestic institutions, ideologies, and other attributes of the polity,” asserts Ole R. Hosti (Holsti 1977). Therefore, “a democratic regime pursues one type of foreign policy, an autocratic government another, a communist government a third, and a democratic socialist administration still another.” 70 As it happens, this line of thinking is embraced by liberalism, which is a predominant theoretical framework for international relations as much as a foreign policy guideline for liberal states (Ikenberry 1999). As John M. Owen IV puts it, Liberalism gives rise to an ideology that distinguishes states primarily according to regime type: in assessing a state, liberalism first asks whether it is a liberal democracy or not.28 This is in contrast to neorealism, which distinguishes states according to capabilities. Liberalism, in looking to characteristics other than power, is similar to most other systems of international thought, including communism, fascism, and monarchism… Liberals believe that they understand the intentions of foreign liberal democracies, and that those intentions are always pacific toward fellow liberal democracies...Illiberal states, on the other hand, are viewed prima facie as unreasonable, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous. These are states either ruled by despots, or with unenlightened citizenries. (Owen 1994 95-96) Not only does liberalism give rise to a dichotomous worldview of good and evil, it also prescribes an activist, interventionist foreign policy for liberal great powers. At its core, a liberal foreign policy is embedded with “the assumption that one can apply reason to extend the possibilities for individual and collective self-rule, or freedom” through “the projection of liberal thought and political principles to the international realm” (MacMillan 2007). Intellectually underpinned by the practical knowledge in political development and political economy (Guilhot 2005) as well as the democratic peace theory, a liberal international strategy is featured predominantly by a democracy agenda and embraces a 70 (Thompson and Macridis 1972), pp.1ff, cited in (Carlsnaes 1986 5) 202 barrage of policy goals and mechanisms involving “open markets, international institutions, cooperative security, democratic community, progressive change, collective problem solving, shared sovereignty, and the rule of law”(Ikenberry 2009 71). This said, a democratic foreign policy in the form of liberal internationalism is not blind to power realities; it just prefers a multilateral and institutional channel to exercise leadership (Ikenberry and Kupchan 2004). Nonetheless, the teleological logic of liberalism means that liberals are leery of and antagonistic toward all non-liberal and illiberal regimes, as its global triumph unavoidably requires “the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism” (Fukuyama 1992). At the same time, the liberal analytical perspective privileges material power as much as processes. In the international system “[t]he exercise of power—and hence the mechanism through which compliance is achieved—involves the projection by the hegemon of a set of norms and their embrace by leaders in other nations” (Ikenberry and Kupchan 1990 283). Consequently it is incumbent upon liberal great powers to carry out and fulfill the liberal mission that is by all accounts historical and transcendental. On the other hand, perhaps inevitably, liberalism’s universalist impulses can go off the track of mainstream liberal internationalism and result in an oxymoronic pitfall of utilizing illiberal means to advance liberal goals, as the excess of the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq amply demonstrates (Sorensen 2011; Russett 2005). At the same time, liberals, inured in a transcendental mission of their own, are convinced through the mirror image that totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, not different from liberal regimes, are predisposed to tap into state power to spread authoritarian norms abroad. As Charles 203 Hermann says, “Regimes that tend to engage in [domestic] physical suppression..are more likely to engage in foreign policy activity that seeks to justify this behavior.” 71 Authoritarian regimes, with state power concentrated in the hands of a selected few, can be as capricious as it is predatory: not only do there exist no or few checks and balances, the character of the regime can also facilitate the mobilization of resources to externalize its ideology, if so desired. This is why liberals, aside from requisite consideration of power politics, are generally ill at ease with China’s domestic political development and its foreign relations. Much as liberals find solace in the economic liberalization Deng Xiaoping first initiated in the early 1980s, since the Tian’anmen tragedy of 1989 meaningful political reform has been largely stalled even though the economy has been greatly liberalized. Its communist brand a name only, the country of 1.3 billion people is firmly in the throes of a resilient and revitalized communist party, whose success in weathering the post-cold war storm serves as a perennial reminder of the illusiveness of liberalism’s eventual triumph. Liberal discomfort and apprehension is further aggravated by the soaring Chinese material power, with which Beijing is increasingly more likely to change the existing Western-dominated liberal order than to be changed by it. Informed by this avowedly ideological outlook, policy and opinion makers in the United States in recent decades have warmed up to India, the other Asian giant that is democratic, with the assumption that it “is more likely to pursue foreign policies commensurate with U.S. Interests than China” (Gilboy and Heginbotham 2012 253). Seeing China flexing its muscle globally without letting up on domestic civil rebellions 71 Cited in (Wang 2000b 52). 204 and minorities, prominent intellectuals in the West, including mainstream Democrats and Republicans in the United States, have called for “a league of democracies” with institutional structure to counterbalance China (and Russia) in “a new cold war” (Kagan 2008). For many of them, China’s (and Russia’s) politico-economic success so far is why the end-of-history triumphalism is dashed, as “The competition between liberalism and absolutism has reemerged, with the nations of the world increasingly lining up, as in the past, along ideological lines” (Kagan 2007; Nolt 1997 549). Not all liberals are as unnerved. As I have suggested in Chapter 1 and 3, norm-based liberals/constructivists feel encouraged that China has been receptive to a series of international norms. Even though their research focus is in one or more specific issue areas, they are generally of the belief that China is less likely to challenge the existing world order than to be changed by it. Similarly, many mainstream liberals are more sanguine about the vitality of US-led liberal order than about the sustainability and replicability of the Chinese model. Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry, for instance, argue that “the recent success of autocratic states has depended on their access to the international liberal order, and they remain dependent on its success (Deudney and Ikenberry 2009). Those who do fret about the ideological challenge from China, though, are yet to elucidate the nature of the Chinese threat. Since Beijing halted three decades ago the attempt to export communist revolution, evidence of it applying its weight for the purpose of thwarting democratic advance in other countries has been as scant as is elusive. Lacking sufficient empirical basis to support the claim of Chinese authoritarian expansionism, liberals nonetheless tend to obfuscate and 205 merge together two types of threat emanating from China. The first perceived danger stems from their own sense of ontological insecurity vis-à-vis the success of developmental authoritarianism, 72 But this new Chinese peril exists more in abstract theory—resulting from China being a viable alternative to liberal capitalism—than in established fact of Beijing’s proactively projecting its political value and governing model abroad. As it stands now, many worldly liberal are either unconvinced of its exportability of China’s developmental authoritarianism, or remain keenly aware of Beijing’s lack of interest “to expand its control or ideology beyond its borders except in areas where it has a historical claim” (Broomfield 2003 268). A second kind of threat liberals are sensitive to has to do with a formidable China playing the game of pure-and-simple realpolitik—rather than idealpolitik—that is, with little regard to the regime character of the opponents. 73 The latter of course goes beyond the purview of liberalism and falls squarely in the realm of realism. But conventional realists—by that I mean the neorealists whose bedrock assumption is that the anarchical structure of the international system forces states to be power hungry and obsessed with self-preservation—have little stomach for a state-sponsored value projection agenda. They are on record rejecting “democratic peace” as merely a statistical artifact and accuse it of “pander[ing] to impulses, which, however noble in the abstract, have led to disastrous military interventions abroad, strategic overextension, and the relative decline of American power” (Layne 1994 47). Thankfully 72 In the words of Michael Doyle, “the atmosphere of suspicion” between states of competing political systems emanates in part from “the perception by liberal states that nonliberal states are in a permanent state of aggression against their own people” (Doyle 1983b 325). 73 See, for example, (Kagan 2009). Kagan made his name as a neoconservative, a foreign policy ideology mixing liberalism with American nationalism. 206 for realists, Western states such as the United States have left some leeway for realpolitik and have been selective about when and where to promote democracy. One such glaring example is the entrenched practice of “democracy prevention” by the United States in the Middle East (Brownlee 2012). For the most part, the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, two presidents whose embrace of the democracy project were well-known, did not forget to mix their liberal ideals with realist ingredients when necessary. The pattern, according to Thomas Carothers, is that “Where democracy appears to fit in well with U.S. security and economic interests, the United States promotes democracy. Where democracy clashes with other significant interests, it is downplayed or even ignored.”(Carothers 2009a 3) 74 In spite of these expediencies, however, the general phenomenon of great powers seeking to extend internationally their particular value system with no clear material payback—once again America’s tradition of democracy promotion being a prime example—is a practice that neorealists like to denounce but have not yet rigorously explained, a point I have made in Chapter 2. This is where neoclassical realists come to rescue. While readily acknowledging that states’ behavior are constrained primarily by their place in the international system in light of their relative material power capabilities, this new strand of realists also credit unit level variables with translating “indirect and complex” systemic pressure into specific 74 Whether and how much the US incorporates democracy into its diplomacy also depends on who the counterpart is as that is intricately tied to the specific American interests. During the Bush years, for instance, “It includes some low-key, prodemocracy diplomacy and assistance but is primarily driven by economic and security interests that often clash with support for democracy, such as in China, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, and many other places” (Carothers 2007). Another major criticism of the democracy assistance is about the quality of democratic change being nurtured and touted, see, for example (Zakaria 2007). 207 foreign policy (Rose 1998). Along this vein, US democracy promotion “can be explained by both the expansion of material capabilities and the presence of a nationalist domestic ideology” that is “rooted in liberal exceptionalism”, the Bush era neoconservatism being “a particularly aggressive iteration” of it (Monten 2005). As for the project’s theoretical and substantive merit, neoclassical realists welcome it “[i]nsofar as the spread of liberal democracy creates shared values, common interests, and, most important, greater transparency of state motivation”, even though they remain doubtful of perpetual peace among democracies (Schweller 2000 43). Turning to China, most realist observers regard it as a formidable threat almost solely on the basis of its colossal material power and its impact on global and regional balance of power. The nature of the Chinese regime is not even a factor on their radar (Mearsheimer 2010). As an interesting and ironic parallel, Beijing’s single-minded attentiveness to economic growth at home and indifference to contentious international issues with little relevance to its material interest makes the Chinese admirable realists, putting them in “the high church of realpolitik in the post-Cold War world” (Christensen 1996 37). In the telling of Henry Kissinger, the quintessential realist mastermind whose dealings with China stretches all the way back to the high time of the cold war era, “Chinese leaders no longer made any claim to represent a unique revolutionary truth available for export. Instead, they espoused the essentially defensive aim of working toward a world not overtly hostile to their system of governance or territorial integrity and buying time to develop their economy and working out their domestic problems at their own pace. It was a foreign policy posture arguably closer to Bismarck’s than Mao’s: incremental, defensive, and based on building dams against unfavorable historical tides. But even as tides were shifting, Chinese leaders projected a fiery sense of independence. They masked their concern by missing no opportunity to proclaim that they would resist outside pressure to the utmost.” (Kissinger 2011 476) 208 Christensen further puts China and America’s diverging approaches toward managing international affairs in sharper context: “[Chinese analysts] are also much less likely than their Western counterparts to emphasize political, cultural, or ideological differences with foreign countries. The United States considers the ‘enlargement of areas of democracy’ a core element of its grand strategy, but China has made almost no effort, with the possible exception of its relations with North Korea, to export its ideas about ‘market socialism’” (Christensen 1996 37-38). That Beijing sees its interests more “objectively”, however, does not reject political ideology as an important internal factor that determines how China behaves toward the world beyond its borders. Rather, it only shows that long ago the Chinese made a judgment call to take a more practical and value-neutral stance in their dealings with foreign counterparts. For the historically minded, Maoist China was once very active in propagating its preferred revolutionary model in the vast developing world, Beijing’s decision to extricate itself from value export in the early Dengist era is therefore fundamentally a turn toward pragmatic nationalism (Chen 2013). Given the amorphous and sometimes mercurial nature of Chinese nationalism in a fluid global and regional context, what is in the store for China’s future behavior is “uncertain, and contingent”, argues Jonathan Kirshner, albeit from the perspective of a classical realist (Kirshner 2012). Although sharing classical realists’ concern of history, ideology and domestic politics, neoclassical realists are nonetheless much more pessimistic with respect to the possibility of international conflict stemming from China’s rise, which is a structuralist 209 outlook inherited from neorealism rather than classical realism (Kirshner 2012). 75 According to Friedberg, a neoclassical realist, the divergence of material interests aside, the clashes of deep ideological and political commitments too will make the Sino-US relations more competitive and challenging to manage (Friedberg 2011a). In this respect the contentiousness and hostility has as much do with the United States as with China. On the Chinese side such tension emanates primarily from the CCP’s relentless efforts to retain the monopoly of state power and rejuvenate its legitimacy, which—given the tight control over the political process—can only be achieved by engineering stellar economic growth at home and boosting the country’s national security and international standing. Consequently, where foreign policy is concerned, “it means that Beijing’s ultimate aim can be understood as ‘making the world safe for authoritarianism,’ or at least for continued one-party rule in China” (Friedberg 2011a 136). As per China’s ambition of hegemony, Friedberg is disinclined to see its rising power as the one and only cause. Rather, “[Chinese leaders’] desire for dominance and control is in large measure a by-product of the type of political system over which they preside,” he argues (Friedberg 2011a 138). Much as he sounds like a liberal in attributing Beijing’s aggressiveness and belligerence to Chinese authoritarianism, Friedberg is in fact alluding to the inseparable nature of the CCP’s role as an authoritarian party and its function as the chief custodian for Chinese national interests in the power-denominated international system. In contrast to the universal pretensions of liberalism and communism, the CCP’s ruling ideology is a far cry from its professed allegiance to Marxist ideals of human progress and equality, nor is it 75 As noted by Friedberg, “For realist pessimists, the single most important feature of the PRC today is its rising power” (Friedberg 2005 17). 210 a theory of social order and progress at any level. Rather it is the practice of power and domination with no grand theoretical precepts that nonetheless needs some measure of legitimacy in the broader Chinese society in order to last. As such it is profoundly parochial and constricted to the Chinese context in light of its exclusive control of political power domestically. However much the CCP is uncomfortable with or resentful toward Western countries’ touting of its own poor human rights and governance record, going on the offensive is mostly limited to the domestic setting in the form of crackdown upon political discontent and mass propaganda. In international relations where the Party executes Chinese state power, at times it also puts regime security ahead of national interests (Fravel 2008). This does not mean, however, the regime character of a foreign country has no bearing on Beijing’s calculation of national interest. Insofar as even universalist ideologies have to be borne out and advocated by a state apparatus on behalf of a socio-political movement, the non-universal character of Chinese authoritarianism, insufferable as it is for numerous in and outside China, reinforces the country’s realist tendencies and nationalist orientation. That is to say, it will be out of the question for it to even ponder a full-frontal, comprehensive campaign to shore up autocracies abroad for that sake because it has little in common—intellectually and substantively—with other authoritarian regimes elsewhere except they all behave undemocratically. At most ideological concerns are the “helper variable” working in tandem with other main causal variables to impact upon foreign policy behavior. 211 In other words, in the Chines setting where realist and nationalist thinking reigns supreme, geostrategic and economic interests are in effect the sui generis driving forces directing foreign policy behavior. Concerns over the palatability of another country’s regime type must first impact on some material (realist) interest calculation and resonate emotionally (nationalist) to be able to prompt a meaningful response from Beijing that is meant to either strengthen that target country’s autocratic rule or impede its ongoing democratization process. The subsequent task is to narrow down the scope conditions and pinpoint potential recipients of Beijing’s autocracy promotion for the purpose of in-depth case studies. A ROADMAP OF AUTOCRACY PROMOTION In the text above I have established that if Beijing does intervene in another country’s domestic politics to the detriment of democratic advancement, it must in reaction to some contingencies of geopolitical and economic interests on ad hoc basis. On the other hand, these interests at stake need to be of reasonably large scale to justify such a move by Beijing considering that the new practice constitutes a u-turn from its long-standing principle of non-inference and sovereignty. Juxtaposing this important insight against the many facets of Chinese foreign policy and international relations, I derive some useful conjectures that can be instrumental yardsticks in helping locate illuminating cases for more fine-tuned examination. 212 Conjecture 1: Beijing’s authoritarian offensive is more likely to be unilateral than multilateral. For advocates of democracy promotion, international organizations have been a preferred tool and venue, as memberships in them can be effective in inducing the desired political outcome in candidate countries by changing the cost-benefit structure of the elites (Pevehouse 2002; Dimitrova and Pridham 2004; Moravcsik 2000). Chinese leaders would hesitate to use multilateral organizations and institutions to push for an authoritarian platform, though. For one thing, Beijing has long had a penchant for conducting foreign relations bilaterally, which in effect makes it easier to throw its weight around vis-à-vis a weaker counterpart and obtain desired goals. Furthermore, the multiplicity of their memberships also means that China’s voice can be drowned out and diluted, not the least because most of the world’s primary international institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, are part and parcel of the post-1945 liberal international system created and sponsored by the United States and China itself is a latecomer. 76 Far from being able to dominating these organizations and institutions, China for the past several decades have been more apt to be “socialized” into their norms and ways of behaving and managing problems and issues of international concern (Johnston 2008). Lacking allies and clout commensurate with its power in multilateral venues makes Beijing balk at subjecting more of its economic and security policy to multilateralism out of concern for national sovereignty and policy flexibility as well as American interference (Wang 2000a). For the same reason, Beijing has resisted important multilateral forums like 76 Even at the United Nations, where Beijing has the veto right at the Security Council, it is hardly a mover and shaker in light of the cumbersome decisionmaking and consultation procedures there. 213 ASEAN and the International Court of Justice to mediate its heated row with its neighbors over the disputes isles in East and South China Seas. Of all international organizations it is a member of, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) may well be the only one within which it has achieved some outsized influence. Established in 2001, the SCO and its precursor—the Shanghai Five (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan)—are known to be “the first multilateral security organizations initiated and promoted by China” (Chung 2006 5). Over the years the SCO’s institutionalization has gone a long way, rendering it a security community in Eurasia and “a useful conduit for the development of Chinese and Russian Central Asia policy and engagement” (Lanteigne 2006 620; Chung 2006). On that account anti-terrorism and anti-separatism are the foremost objectives for China with an eye toward anchoring Xinjiang—the restive region in northwest China with a large population of ethnic Uighurs who have varying degrees of cultural and linguistic ties with fellow muslims in the vast Central Asia steppe—in a multilateral security arrangement aimed at isolating domestic and eradicating domestic terrorist and separatist forces (Yuan 2010). Interests in deepening economic integration further picked up in recent years as a way to boost Xinjiang’s material prosperity in order to pacify minorities’ discontent there and to use import much needed oil and gas from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan through Xinjiang. By no coincidence the SCO’s Central Asian members are a coterie of “illiberal democracies” featured by non-competitive elections and absence of civil liberties. One particular member of the cohort, Kyrgyzstan, actually went through a Tulip Revolution—one of the feature Color Revolutions—in 2005 that resulted in the overthrow 214 of President Akayev’s 15-year rule. Collectively, the SCO is said to “[represent] a formidable challenge to the ideas of universal democracy and human rights through its de facto legitimisation of authoritarianism and by establishing itself as a counterweight to external democratic norms;” individually, it is “the institutionalisation of the opposition of Moscow and Beijing to the American-dominated, unipolar international order in which the US promotes democracy and universal human rights”(Ambrosio 2008 1322, 1328). In spite of all this, however, there is a dearth of evidence unequivocally pinpointing Beijing as the chief protagonist of autocracy assistance, especially considering that Central Asia is traditionally Russia’s turf. To the extent that the SCO is referenced by some as China’s NATO—in the context of recent massive infusion of Chinese money in pursuit of oil supply, which may well have the same effect of stunting democratic progress 77 —it is because there exist in the first place those political strongmen, with whom Beijing has no choice but to deal with, not because Beijing chose to intentionally prop them up. Conjecture 2: Geostrategic concerns are the fundamental cause and objective for the anti-democratic shift. As indicated previously, the convergence of CCP authoritarianism and Chinese nationalism—both of which do now have a global vision and are peculiar to the Chinese context—does not intellectually sanction the concerted effort to promulgate autocracy beyond the Chinese borders. In the meantime, the regime-blind, business-only way of conducting relations with the rest of the world has served China fairly well so far. Old ways die hard, and for Beijing to seriously contemplate messing with another country’s 77 http://thediplomat.com/china-power/the-shanghai-cooperation-organization-chinas-nato/ 215 domestic politics there must be some vital interest at stake in a fast-changing environment. That interest has to be of grave scale and weight to be able to prompt such a notable modification in Beijing’s mentality and behavior. Specifically, it can only be of geostrategic in nature and tied to China’s acute sense of national security, either in military or economic terms. Of all major powers China has the misfortune of having the worst geographical location. Besides close proximity to two of the world’s major hot spots, North Korea and Afpak (the inseparable nature of Afghanistan’s troubles from Pakistan), China also shares land or maritime borders with three other great powers—India, Russia and Japan—with which it fought wars in the last century that still resonate today to a varying degree. That China is surrounded by all confirmed nuclear states (US, Russia, India, Pakistan, North Korea) but France and Britain is another testament to how precarious Chinese security is at the geostrategic level. Understandably this predicament, in conjunction with China’s relatively limited power projection capabilities, has predisposed Beijing to invest a rather large portion of its military and diplomatic resources in the regional vicinities and react sensitively to any transformative events near or around its borders. Its intensified outreach to Central Asia is one of these cases. Geostrategic hotspots are hardly replaceable because of their association with geography, but the scope can expand along with the necessity of safeguarding other core interests. In tandem with China’s economic juggernaut the task of securing its trading routes and supply of critical raw materials has been elevated to the geopolitical level, 216 forcing the Chinese to design alternative plans for unforeseeable, adversarial scenarios. One of those nightmare situations oft-cited in Chinese press in recent years is the bottleneck of Malacca Strait which most of China’s oil supply—much of which is in turn from the Persian Gulf—has to pass by. Not only are the oil-exporting Arab nations susceptible to flare-ups of regional and domestic instability, both the Middle East and the narrow Malacca waterway are considered firmly in the control of US navy, engendering for Beijing a risk of astronomical proportion should the two world’s largest powers come to a path of militarized conflict. To cut the Gordian knot China thus far has sought to diversify its energy supply—going after mega-projects in Russia and Central Asia, for instance—and build overland oil pipelines or railways through Myanmar (completed) and Pakistan (still in the planning phase) in its attempts to circumvent the Malacca logjam. 78 The dual significance in border security and transportation/navigation highlights the outsize weight some neighboring countries hold on China’s geostrategic map. Some supply countries of oil, such as Kazakhstan and Russia, are more attractive partners to Beijing because of the geographical proximity. This does not mean, however, all supply countries of oil and other critical raw materials are as important to Chinese national interests. This is because there is little exclusivity tied to the resources. However much importance Beijing attaches to one supplier of major material source, such as Sudan for the oil, at the end of day it can still find another seller, even at a higher price. Beijing would much less likely to bend over backwards to fend off challenges to its interest in a trade 78 The New York Times, for instance, notes that “China’s economic ties with Central Asia could liberate it from any concern that the United States could use its superior naval power to enforce a sea blockade, should relations ever deteriorate to the point of confrontation.” See, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/world/asia/china-gains-new-friends-in-its-quest-for-energy.html 217 partner—even at the risk of getting entangled in the country’s domestic politics, a practice it has long shunned—than when the country in question is of strategic import to China. Africa is where China has rushed to secure procurement of natural resources and market in the last decade or so, so much so that Western observers and politicians regularly refer to the Chinese onslaught as neocolonialism. But it is improbable that Beijing would experiment autocracy promotion in the continent. Much as Africa is important to China in economic—and to a lesser extent—political terms, its long distance to China and the fungible nature of raw materials Africa has to offer means that the continent as a whole is hardly comparable in terms of geostrategic value to Beijing as its neighbors. In fact in Africa it is Beijing’s stubborn hold onto principles of national sovereignty and non-interference that caused much of the friction with host governments and international norms—which at times came to detriment of Chinese interests—rather than its anti-democratic bent. To the extent that Beijing’s behavior damages democratic advancement in countries it holds much sway, the negativities are better understood as unintended consequences rather than purposive goals. Zambia is an example with some twist. The African nation is the rare case “where the role of China and of Chinese people in the country became an explicit and potential political issue.” 79 The controversy was not about China’s political interference but over the pernicious effects of heavy Chinese investment in its copper-mining industry, corruption, poor working conditions and observation of local labor law being the main 79 Howard W. French, “In Africa, an Election Reveals Skepticism of Chinese Involvement,” accessed 10/09/2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/in-africa-an-election-reveals-skepticism-of-chinese -involvement/245832/ 218 complaints. 80 In the national election held in 2011, the opposition leader, Michael Sata, referred to Chinese investors as “infesters” and threatened to recognize Taiwan if elected. In the embittered campaign supposedly between anti-China and pro-China campaign, the strongest evidence about China’s meddling turned out to be some “made-in-China lollipops” with slogans in support of the sitting president. 81 In the aftermath of Sata’s victory, however, pragmatism prevailed as he reassured Chinese investors on the condition they respect Zambian law and Beijing customarily committed itself to respecting the choice of the Zambian people. In contrast to Zambia, the crises on Sudan and Libya laid bare the perils and cost of Beijing’s strict observance of national sovereignty and non-intervention. In all likelihood Chinese leaders would prefer to steer clear of treacherous waters far away from home—like the conflicts in Bosnia and the Middle East—that forced them to choose sides warts and all. Yet the human tragedy on the ground there ricocheted to aggravate China’s overall international standing because its clout with the Sudan government and the United Nations was perceived to be able to make a difference. On both Sudan and Libya Beijing faced the delicate task of balancing economic interests, principles of sovereignty, and international pressure. With the partition of Sudan imminent Beijing worked its way to earn the trust of South Sudan, which has much of the oil fields and reserve but is landlocked, without turning against Khartoum, which owns most of utilities to export the South’s oil, including pipelines. The bitter divorce between the North and South turned 80 In fall 2010, two Chinese managers of a copper mine shot and killed 13 locals in a wage protest. 81 Erin Conway-Smith, “Zambian election results check Chinese influence in Africa,” http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/110924/zambian-election-results-check-chinese-infl uence-africa 219 domestic affairs into international relations. Although Beijing was able to secure the oil rights in South Sudan through diplomacy and aid, beneath the diplomatic facade the South Sudanese were said to harbor resentment toward Beijing to “[looking] the other way” when they were downbeat by the al-Bashir’s soldiers armed with Chinese weapons." 82 Conjecture 3: Beijing is more likely to export its trademark authoritarianism to smaller, weaker nations isolated by the international community than countries more politically and economically connected with the rest of the world. That target countries of Beijing’s autocratic offensive has to be minnows in international politics is almost axiomatic considering their dearth of economic and political power. And they most probably reside—as a corollary of the argument putting a premium on their strategic import—in the regional neighborhood, which is the surrounding areas of Asia. The experimental nature of this authoritarian push also means, however, that the ad hoc measure is more likely to be applied to countries within or near the Chinese orbit of influence and control than outside of it. As explained earlier, the limited scope and tentativeness of an ideological turn stems from the entrenched principled belief in state sovereignty. To inject its own views of political system—to the extent of angering domestic opposition by supporting an authoritarian ruler or forcing a regime change in a foreign country—is a foreign policy departure from decades-long precedent whose significance cannot be emphasized enough. 82 Alexander Dziadosz, “Special Report: South Sudan's Chinese oil puzzle,” accessed 10/07/2013, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/14/us-southsudan-chinese-oil-idUSBRE8AD0B520121114 220 Indeed, there exists little rationale for Beijing to embark on such a drastic path especially in view of the fact that the long-standing non-intervention principle has served it fairly well so far with respect to its relations with neighboring countries. In other words, by flexing its economic muscles alone—through trade, investment and bank lending in vast numbers—Beijing is in the most part able to neutralize the suspicion of many neighbors and achieve most of its geopolitical objectives. With respect to Indonesia, for instance, Beijing maintained a nonchalant stance when riots killed thousands of ethnic Chinese in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis and Suharto’s downfall. Today China is a major investor and trading partner of the Southeast Asian nation that, in the midst of wrangling over the South China Sea between China and its fellow ASEAN members, retains a largely neutral approach. Cambodia, not really known for its geostrategic value, too is lavished with Chinese money and attention, an association made all the more pronounced because the Hun Sen government has shown its authoritarian teeth. In contrast, countries that are already at odds with China because of territorial disputes, Vietnam and the Philippines in particular, have cleverly turned to the United States, Japan and multilateral fora to make their case in their efforts to balance a China that they perceive as a formidable bully. All things considered, Beijing has higher incentives to apply an autocracy promotion agenda to strategically important nations already under its spell. This is first of course because it can, but also because it must, that is, in reaction to some geopolitical imperatives that it cannot rationally ignore. Surveying the geostrategic map in the context of dynamic uncertainties, which arose not only from China’s own surge on the global theatre but also as a result of transformed domestic and international political landscape in 221 the respective countries, I identify two countries that are most likely to arouse Beijing’s interest in intervening into their government systems in order to protect and safeguard its geostrategic interests. The first is Pakistan, Beijing’s most important geostrategic ally that has been more reliable than North Korea. While Pyongyang today is more a drag and liability to Beijing than an asset, Islamabad remains a useful ally for China on multiple fronts. First of all, Beijing would like to see it continue to counter-balance India—which understandably has begun to see China as a much more daunting rival—without unnecessarily escalating the bilateral tension. Secondly, Beijing needs Pakistan as an anchor of peace and stability in Afghanistan, with which shares a short border, in no different manner than the way Washington needs Islamabad’s cooperation in solving the so-called Afpak problem. Thirdly, much as Chinese officials are irritated at the fact that most of the Uighur separatists received their training in those remote terrorist hideouts inside Pakistan, they have no choice but to turn to the Pakistani authorities for intelligence and logistic assistance. Furthermore, with the vast Islamic world suspicious of Beijing’s crackdown on their Muslim brethren looking on, Beijing needs Islamabad for the political cover and public relations work. Unlike its relations with other neighbors—India, Russia, North Korea, Japan, the two Koreas—that have been perilous roller-coaster rides, China’s relationship with Pakistan have maintained rather stable over the decades since it took the present geopolitical form. The goodwill is undoubtedly mutual, so much so that leaders of either party rarely fails to employ such platitudes as higher-than-mountain and 222 sweater-than-honey to praise the friendship. While Pakistan is critical to China, China is indispensable to Pakistan. At present Pakistan simply cannot afford to lose Beijing’s backing in a geopolitical climate increasingly hostile to it. Not only has the power parity on the subcontinent in the last decade been sliding in ever more lopsided fashion in favor of India, Pakistan’s mortal enemy since the day the two nations emerged independent from British rule, it is also suffering from the dire consequences of its involvement in Afghanistan as well as extremists’ incessant bloody attacks on Pakistani state institutions that has severely disrupted its economic and political life. All things combined, as one seasoned observer puts it, Pakistan is a country “on the brink”(Rashid 2012). Should Beijing step in and lend a helping hand to a critical ally? Absolutely. A failing or failed Pakistan would deprive Beijing a linchpin and the staunchest ally in the geopolitical theatre and expose its vast western flank to volatility and turmoil brought by both state rivals and religious extremism. Should autocracy then be the diagnosis Beijing presents the Pakistanis in order to cure the ills of their state? There are multiple dimensions to the question. First of all, however messy and dysfunctional Pakistan’s political system has been, in terms of international outlook friendship with China enjoys overwhelming support across all walks of political life in Pakistan. As a result, Beijing has less incentive to incur the ire of domestic power groups by getting itself involved in the political process, which invariably entails picking winners and losers. More importantly, however, the range of socioeconomic and security problems that the South Asian country is confronted with are simply too entrenched and herculean for any external actor to fathom and resolve. To transform Pakistan into a viable player befits the ambitious agenda of state building that 223 the United States purportedly has been doing in Afghanistan. This requires infusion of massive mount of capital and other resources, all aimed at stabilizing the country’s faltering economy, building the infrastructure, and safeguarding domestic order and border security. The overall task is definitely not something China, or any country for that matter, is willing to undertake even in the most extraordinary circumstances. 83 A second country in which China might want to experiment an autocracy-oriented policy is Burma. Otherwise known as Myanmar, it has been in the throes of the military junta since the crackdown on the democratic movement in 1988. The isolationist policy of its own choosing vis-à-vis Western states as well as the ensuing international sanctions pushed it to inexorable reliance on Beijing for economic, military and political support crucial for the survival of the regime, all the while using the “China card” to entice trade and investment from other ASEAN states, Japan and India (Seekins 1997). In two decades, both the scope and depth of Chinese interests with respect to Burma expanded remarkably as Chinese presence grew entrenched more than ever in the Southeast Asian nation. Much as Chinese officials worry about drug trafficking and illegal immigration that had the roots in Burma, the benefits of closer economic ties clearly outweighed these negatives. Cross-border trade blossomed, with Chinese businessmen importing timber, jade and other raw materials on the cheap and selling electronics and other manufactured goods. More importantly, however, Beijing’s almost exclusive hold on Burma strengthened its hands vis-à-vis its competitors in the region—Japan, India and the United States—and gave it 83 That said, since the leadership changes in both countries in 2013, Beijing has been extraordinarily generous with numerous requests of the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, committing $6.5 billion to construct twin nuclear power stations and as much as $20 billion for other infrastructure projects in Pakistan. The interesting question is, however, why did it wait so long to lend its hand to the Pakistanis? 224 much cherished access to the Indian Ocean. In the words of Wayne Bert, “Burma represents the fulfillment of the maximum Chinese objectives of obtaining reliable strategic allies and useful economic partners” (Bert 2004 263). That, of course, was before the military government with President Thein Sein at the helm unexpectedly initiated a democratic opening in a distinct top-down manner, which led to fast thawing and warming of relations with the United States and the international community at large. All of a sudden Beijing is no longer Naypyidaw’s only patron. But the blow could have been softened a bit had the Burmese government not doused cold water on the bilateral relationship in such dramatic and public fashion. In September 2011, responding to outcries of environmental degradation President Thein Sein ordered the suspension of the construction of the controversial Myitsone dam project financed and led by a state-own Chinese company which had sunk several billion dollars in it. And that was on top of billions of dollars invested in other mega-projects, including the Sino-Burma Oil and Gas Pipelines that were expected to link the landlocked Yunan Province to the port and gas field on Burmese coast. Beijing’s reversal of fortune in Burma is all the more stunning when the United States, riding on the Obama administration’s “Asia pivot,” stepped up the game as well. A path-finding mission by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in late 2011 was right after the public decision to put the dam project on hold, and was followed up by a tour of America in September 2012 by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who was given a hero’s welcome. Two month later, President Barack Obama, on his first visit overseas after winning reelection, became the 225 first sitting president of the United States to visit the once secluded country. A reciprocal visit by President Thein Sein to Washington ensued in May 2013. With the democratic mood in full swing, Burma is now at the forefront of a zero-sum geopolitical game between “an emboldened China projecting military and economic power as never before” and an America “reasserting itself in Asia” (Perlez 2012). For the Americans, “Having another country move from dictatorship toward democracy on President Obama’s watch would be a political achievement; having a friendly country on China’s border would be a strategic one” (Perlez 2012). For Beijing, Burma’s democratic turn is equivalent to freeing itself from its embrace—the Chinese stranglehold in the eyes of many Burmese and Westerners—and being pulled into the Western orbit. The underlying strategic shift is lost to nobody. A reporter for the BBC Chinese notes, for instance, that Japanese media portrayed the visit of a Japanese fleet to a Burmese port as an act of “betraying China.” 84 The trouble for China is not simply because Burma now has more friends to lean on. Some Chinese researchers note that the Burmese military, consisted of mostly the majority Bamar people, is culturally and politically pro-India and anti-China, making India the most important competitor for China in its effort to “manage Burma” (Liang 2011 65). To be sure, the Burmese, being the minnow next to a giant, are under no illusion that they cannot afford to break completely with China and become a stooge for competing superpowers like the Vietnamese did to Beijing in the 1970s. Yet in the eyes of Chinese their dual act of keeping the distance and getting closer to the Americans and the Indians is a betrayal nonetheless. The interesting question is how they 84 Qian Tong, “Japanese Media: Burma Betrays China and Welcomes Japanese Fleet,” accessed 10/01/2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/world/2013/10/131002_burma_japan.shtml 226 have reacted. The next section is therefore devoted to analyzing what China should have done in accordance with realist premises and what it ended up doing in actuality. BITING THE BULLET ON BURMA? As laid out earlier, Burma was an important node in China’s international strategies in terms of geopolitics, border security as well as supply of raw materials and fight against drug-trafficking. Because of its international isolation until 2011, it had no choice to but rely on Beijing for political and economic support. In many ways, Burma was a second North Korea for the Chinese leaders and put them in an awkward position. While China publicly went to great lengths to defend the military regime—going so far as using its veto power on a UNSC resolution condemning the junta, a rarity for China—it also wanted the regime to open up its economy and politics a bit—but not too much—so as to lessen the burden on China. Ironically, like the North Koreans, the Burmese were as meek in spite of their dependency status, rebuffing Beijing’s entreaties rather often. Even a matter as important as the relocation in late 2005 of the capital from Yangon to Naypyidaw was not told to Chinese officials before it was announced. Imagine the shock when Beijing learned of President Thein Sein’s sudden decision to put the dam project on hold and his diplomatic overtures to the Americans. So heavy is the stake at risk that whatever major move Beijing takes or does not take concerning Burma would impact significantly the political progress there. If the traditional policy of nonintervention holds sway, Beijing would probably take the loss in 227 strides and accommodate the newly awakened Burma much the same way it has dealt with government or regime changes elsewhere. If, however, Beijing decides to retaliate, any punitive action would most likely disrupt, detract or stall the ongoing democratization process, even if rolling back the clock is never the main objective in the first place. In this respect there are a whole range of options, which I put in three categories: 1) exerting direct pressure on the Burmese leadership who are mostly former military commanders, including President Thein Sein, 2) pulling out crucial investments and impose economic sanctions to cause pain on the Burmese economy, 3) thwarting Naypyidaw’s attempts to obtain the control of border regions populated by minorities by instigating ethnic conflicts. Given the stakes, there are certainly ample incentives for Beijing to reverse its geopolitical fortune at a time its overall foreign policy is known to have grown more assertive and even aggressive. All in all, Burma is the most likely case to measure the degree to which Beijing seeks to saw the seeds of authoritarianism and impede democratization internationally. There is, however, little sign that Beijing has taken any serious steps toward that direction and the Chinese has had more than two years to inflict pains on the Burmese for their betrayal. At least superficially, top-level exchanges seem normal and Beijing is yet to treat Mr. Thein Sein—like it has done to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe since the latter took office for a second time in December 2012—as persona non grata. The former paid a state visit to China barely two months after assuming the presidency. His went to China again in September 2012 on the heels of a visit to Burma by then Chairman of the National People’s Congress, Wu Bangguo, and a year after he ordered the suspension of the Myitsone project. He was again welcomed to Hainan by Mr. Xi Jinping, who was just 228 installed as president less than a month ago and whose visit to Burma as vice president in 2009 saw the signing of the Myitsone project. Apparently, Beijing wanted to put up a gracious face in spite of Thein Sein’s actions and policies that were widely depicted as unfriendly in the Chinese press. While Chinese officials may have pressed him to change course on a number of issues important to China—for instance, lifting the ban on the dam project—they are yet to get what they wish for. As it is understandable, visits by state leaders tend to be more symbolic than substantive as much of the groundwork has been ironed out before the visits per se, which are intended instead to present a show of friendship and cooperation. There did not seem to be much antagonism in the Chinese government toward President Thein Sein. This is very curious because it was under Thein Sein’s tenure as prime minister (before he became president) that several mega-projects were approved. In contrast, in the aftermath of escalation of tensions between China and the Philippines in 2013, a media ruckus erupted over President Benigno Aquino was disinvited or un-invited to a regional trade forum in Nanning, China. 85 The business-as-usual facade for political relations notwithstanding, bilateral economic relations between Burma and China took a big hit as a result of the change of political climate in Burma. From 2008 to 2011, total Chinese investment in Burma was close to $13 billion, but the figure dropped precipitously to $407 million in the fiscal year 2012/2013, which was most likely disbursement for investment projects that were previously agreed to (Sun 2013 1). Much of the investment came from state-owned 85 As a side note, he was indeed invited to Beijing in 2011 and visited his an ancestral village in Fujian Province. Simone Orendain, “Canceled Aquino Visit Ratchets Up Tensions Between Philippines, China,” accessed 03/10/2014, http://www.voanews.com/content/canceled-aquino-visit-ratchets-up-tensions-between-philippines-china/174 1485.html 229 Chinese companies, and three mega-projects alone account for a large portion of the pool (more than $8 billion in terms of committed investments). Besides the dam project, the other two are the Letpadaung Cooper Mine and the Sino-Myanmar Oil and Gas Pipelines. Because overwhelming proportions of final products—electricity, minerals, oil and gas—were supposed to be shipped to and benefit China whereas the locals were to shoulder the environmental and social costs. As it stands now, the dam project has no chance of revival in sight, and the mining project was derailed by mass protests in November 2012. Only the construction of the pipelines was relatively on track, probably due to its multinational nature (six stakeholders from China, Burma, India and South Korea) and the monumental importance the Chinese attached to it (hence low tolerance of its disruption) like what the Dam project had (Sun 2013 8). Given the drastically changed circumstances few Chinese investors, state-owned or private, are eager to accept the heightened risks and pour money into Burma. This is in view of the policy reversal I have discussed as much as the social and political disturbances the ongoing democratization process has unleashed. Therefore, Burma can ill afford the loss of foreign investors’ confidence at a time its economy desperately needs a big shot in the arm. Given the uncertainties, however, it is doubtful that investment from other countries—Japan and the United States, for example—can make up for the lost Chinese investment. A lesson is learned for the Chinese as well. To salvage their sunk investment, Chinese companies had to play nice and started to talk about corporate social responsibilities. 86 The pipelines, on the other hand, were suggested to be a colossal 86 Wanbao Mining Ltd., the Chinese stakeholder in the mining project that is a subsidiary of a state-owned conglomerate, committed itself to $1 million a year to villages around the mining site in social spending 230 blunder to begin with on the part of the China National Petroleum Cooperation (CNPC), which has a controlling stake in it. According to the prominent Caijing Magazine, not only can the pipelines not help China circumvent the treacherous Malacca Strait as was previously hyped because of its low volume of transport, there is not enough oil and gas in the upstream for the pipelines to run at full capacity. 87 Perhaps not surprisingly, there was little jubilation nor fanfare when the gas pipeline was completed in late 2013. Clearly the Chinese are frustrated by the transformed political landscape in Burma and afraid of further losses. No doubt it dawned on them that putting so many eggs in the Burmese basket was an egregious miscalculation at the strategic level, which, I venture to speculate, is why since 2013 they began to show ever heightened interests in shoring up Pakistan, a much more reliable partner and ally. From the realist perspective, though, it is puzzling to see how subdued the Chinese reaction has been. To the extent the Chinese companies felt both the shock and pain, they turned out to be rather compliant rather than defiant. Given the scale of investments and the involvement of several state-owned corporate giants, it was only natural that their political bosses in the central government ministries and the cabinet took notice. Instead, they too chose to be accommodating. There was no talk of pulling out investment, no trade sanctions and economic embargo, just more caution. Shibani Mahtani, “Chinese Companies Launches Charm Offensive in Myanmar,” The Wall Street Journal, October 09, 2013, accessed 10/10/2013, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304520704579125083505961324 87 Yi Li, Yu Wang, Rui Yang, “Re-examining the Sino-Myanmar Oil and Gas Pipelines,” accessed 07/10/2013, http://magazine.caijing.com.cn/2013-06-16/112912267.html; also see, “Commercial Outlook for China-Myanmar Pipeline Bleak,” accessed 07/10/2013, http://english.caijing.com.cn/2013-06-18/112920308.html 231 A last big chip Beijing has against Naypyidaw is Burma’s ethnic politics. A multi-ethnic country, Burma is highly vulnerable to the many disturbances stirred up along ethno-religious lines and other divisive socio-political fault lines, a commonality for countries on the transitional path from dictatorship to democracy (Mansfield and Snyder 1995a). Already violence initiated by the majority Buddhist population against the minority Muslims in western Burma has resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. What matters most of those ethnic conflicts is the clashes between the Burma central government and the ethnic groups in the Kachi and Shan states, which among others include the Kachi, the Wa and the Kokang. The transnational ramifications of these conflicts stems not only from the fact that these areas in northern Burma adjoin China’s Yunan Province but also the reality that they each have their ethnic brethren within China. The Kokang are in fact Han Chinese, the majority people in China. In 2009, their losing battle with the Burmese military received much coverage in the Chinese press and sent civilians and fighters alike fleeing from their tiny enclave across the border. Border security and stability has always been a primary concern for the central government in Beijing even as in peace time local officials tend to put cross-border trade as a higher priority. In recent years Chinese import of timber, jade and other materials has been the mainstay of border trade. The Burmese side, however, has seen booming in Burma sheltering a medley of Chinese fortune-seekers such as drug traffickers, smugglers, gamblers and prostitutes whose businesses are all outlawed in China. 88 All of the prosperity and tranquility was threatened when the Burmese military launched a military 88 See, for example, Andrew Jacobs, “A Border City on the Edge of the Law,” The New York Times, February 24, 2014. 232 offensive against the Kachin Independence Army in June 2011, soon after the former top general Thein Sein took over civilian power as president. After a period of indifference and hesitation, all the talk from Beijing is “restraint and negotiation,” it finally decided to step up its involvement in late 2012 as the escalated fighting inched toward the border and thousands of refugees flowed in to China. At Beijing’s prodding, the two sides met for negotiation in the Chinese city of Ruili, which, according to the analyst Yun Sun, is the first time in decades for China to openly play the role of mediator in an internal conflict between the central government and rebel group of a foreign sovereign country (Sun 2014). In Sun’s telling, the fundamental reason for China to become a visibly proactive intermediary and mediator was to prevent internationalization of a conflict adjacent to the Chinese border by keeping the United States out of the process (Sun 2014). That America became a new factor in the Chinese calculation was a testament to its increased presence in Burma’s domestic politics. And the bane of both the conflict and the American influence was with the sudden political opening initiated by Thein Sein. But the conflict presented Beijing with the opportunity to play the game of divide and conquer and hold the Burmese government for ransom. Both the Myitsone Dam and another dam of smaller scale built by China closer to the border, the Dapein Dam, are located in Kachin state. The former was suspended by President Thein Sein largely because of the Kachin’s opposition, the later was affected as a result of the attack by the KIA. Although choosing sides has complications, Beijing could have aided the Kachin in exchange for their assurance of protecting Chinese interests, as it had used in the past the Burmese Communist Party consisted of the Kachin, the Wa and some Chinese nationals against the 233 Burmese government. 89 Noting the intransigence of the KIA in the China-brokered peace negotiations, the Yunan-based analyst Liang Jinyun argues forcefully that “if China treats and use we’ll the ethnically based local militant groups, they can be the most faithful and reliable friends in the forefront of competition between the United States and China in Burma, standing sentry for China, even marching on the frontline” (Liang 2011 67). Using Beijing’s hands-off approach to the Kokang crisis of 2009 as example, Liang lashes out at what he characterizes as blind adherence to the non-intervention principle that caused great harm to China’s national interests. Liang’s ideas and arguments did not elude his colleagues in the Chinese capital. In the view of some, “since Myanmar is throwing itself into the arms of the West, China has nothing to lose and everything to gain” 90 Getting its hands dirty in the negotiations was certainly an notable adjustment of policy toward that direction, and there were reports that Beijing quietly sold some advanced weapons to the United Wa State Army, another ethic insurgent group near the Chinese border. 91 Overall, however, old habits die hard and the Chinese largely stuck to its time-honored script of non-intervention. The Foreign Ministry consistently opposed to overstep these boundaries by citing the long-standing principle and to the fear of further alienating the Burmese government; 92 the Chinese military, too, being used to deal with the Burmese military, was lukewarm to the idea of taking advantage of the situation. 89 The Burmese Communist Party splintered and vanished in the 1980s. 90 Yun Sun, “Has China Lost Myanmar?” January 15, 2013, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/15/has_china_lost_myanmar 91 Daniel Schearf, “With Burma in Mind, China Quietly Supports Wa Rebels,” accessed 08/30/2013, http://www.voanews.com/content/chinese-support-for-wa-rebels-designed-to-counter-burma/1590718.html 92 Yun Sun, “Has China Lost Myanmar?” January 15, 2013, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/15/has_china_lost_myanmar 234 To sum up, the dramatic political change in Burma jumpstarted by President Thein Sein’s government in Naypyidaw dealt irreparable damage to Chinese interests in both strategic and economic terms. Beijing could have heavy-handedly pushed back by hitting back at where it hurts for Burma—by direct pressure on the leadership, by economic sanctions, and by inciting ethnic struggles—but it failed to act boldly enough. Any of those measures could have been to the detriment of the burgeoning democratic process in Burma. Even though restoring the authoritarian rule in the country, as I have reiterated above, could not have been the foremost Chinese objective, but it is the best possible scenario where what China does could have direct, causal impact on the country’s political system. None of those hypothetical reactions would have been pain-free for China, of course, but the the inflictions on the Burmese could and should have forced it to pay more heed to Chinese interests, possibly without backtracking on political liberalization. In the end, Beijing settled on the limited goal of border security and opted to cling to the principles of non-intervention and noninterference into other countries’ domestic affairs. The Burmese basically got off scot-free. It is, therefore, safe for us to conclude that the idea of China voluntarily and actively promoting autocracy and stunting democracy remains very improbable. Chinese authoritarianism is far more self-contained than other illiberal regimes, such as Russia and Iran, that have shown a keen interest in expanding in its vicinities for either ideological or realpolitik purposes (Vanderhill 2013). Until 2011 China’s deep reach in strategic, political and economic terms was almost universally depicted as a manifestation of Chinese realpolitik (Lee et al. 2009). Not much has been written about afterwards in large part Beijing was written off as a loser, 235 though. Nor have many asked why Beijing did not rock the boat of the Burmese democracy even as massive interests have showered on its intensive and extensive activities in Africa and elsewhere. In a way, Beijing’s strategic restraint and indolence in response to Burma’s political transformation may not be surprising to many China scholars who are used to seeing it tiptoeing around national sovereignty in international affairs. Nevertheless, the magnanimity with which Beijing has reacted to Naypyidaw is a marked contrast to the tit-for-tat and even vicious way that Beijing has dealt with countries it has territorial and maritime disputes with. While there has been an abundance of journalistic reporting and policy analyses on these disputes in the East and South China Seas and on China’s involvement in Burma, little ink has spilled on the contrast in the manners Beijing has handled both matters. It is, however, an interesting phenomenon in and of itself that reveals a great deal about China’s international behavior. The final part of this chapter is to briefly address this question. PICKING THE NATIONALIST FIGHT In Chapter 2 I criticized the dichotomous view of China as either a revisionist or status quo power. These two opposing sides, informed by realism and liberal interpretation of socialization, are narrowly focused on how China relates to the US-dominated international system either bilaterally or multilaterally (through international institutions), and tends to see China’s international relations in straightforward and linear fashion. These characterizations of China’s international behavior have many limitations, I contend, 236 because the black-or-white kind of analytical framework, by virtue of establishing two archetypal models of states’ behavior to choose from, obfuscates more than it illuminates. The primary cause of the flaw is that liberals and realists alike do not pay sufficient attention to the variegated incarnations of nationalism that inject a great deal of uncertainty into the mix. Precisely because of the at times self-contradictory, oxymoronic and even inconsistent qualities of nationalism, which are manifest in Chinese nationalism for certain, China’s international behavior can be conflictual and cooperative, conformist and disruptive, altruistic and selfish, all at the same time but in different aspects. In this chapter I probed the possibility of China attempting to stem the global spread of democracy by advancing an autocracy promotion agenda. That scenario, contemplated by some liberals, is most likely, however, to occur in realist territory, that is, when China’s strategic and material interests are at stake. Beijing’s listless response to its loss incurred Burma’s top-down democratization is one more testament to it as a “non-ideological challenge to international norms” of human rights and democracy (Givens 2011). But Beijing is in fact no stranger to the business of exporting political values abroad. In the early years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Communist Party leaders introduced and enshrined the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence—which puts a great emphasis on national sovereignty and non-interference—as the cornerstone of its foreign policy. 93 In that spirit Beijing avidly supported the raging national independence and decolonization movement in the Third World (Van Ness 1973), all the while making 93 The five principles are: mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. They were first introduced by China and India in 1954 to govern their bilateral relations, and was adopted by the Asian-African Conference convened in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955. 237 no secret of its promotion of its trademark Maoist version of Marxist-Leninist ideology. It partnered with its communist brethren in some newly independent nations, causing much tension with neighboring countries such as Indonesia as a result (Cook 2010). Its split with the Soviet Union in the early 1960s and the rabid Cultural Revolution further radicalized and ideologicalized Chinese foreign relations, and at the time far-flung nations such as Angola and Albania emerged as the battleground, not to mention its indelible footprint in Vietnam. Such was its unwavering opposition to imperialism, colonialism and Soviet revisionism that at a time when hundreds of millions of Chinese people remained poorly fed and clothed, Beijing spared no money and human resources in building a 1,060-mile-long railway in the East Africa as a way to demonstrate its steadfast brotherly commitment to like-minded nations (Monson 2009). This frenzied drive only came to a grinding halt when Deng Xiaoping decided in the early 1980s to withdraw from ideological warfare and concentrate on domestic economic development, to which objectives of foreign relations were also subjected. Reasons for Maoist China to invest heavily in foreign political ventures were twofold: its communist ideology perceived class struggle as the fundamental socio-economic problem in human relations and had a universalist logic of expansion, whereas in the process nationalism embedded in the Party steered it to seek a leadership role. But the Chinese Communist Party was more nationalist than communist. Never fully converted by orthodox Marxism, it in its early years adopted a mixed batch of ideological precepts and political strategies suited to the national cause of liberation and contingencies 238 in the wars with the Kuomintang and Japanese. 94 Draped “in the language of revolutionary nationalism”, Chinese Communists, “no matter to what extent they were loyal to Communism…were nationalistic in their essence” (Chen 2013 86). After the founding of the PRC, Mao and his comrades fancied themselves as the leader in the upcoming world revolution and actively pushed—through diplomacy and alignment, foreign aid and even armed conflicts—the surging anti-colonial and nationalist movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America to follow the Chinese model. As Jian Chen lucidly argues, however, the Three Words Thesis that Mao introduced in his twilight years was less a revolutionary manifesto than a development-oriented perspective that laid the intellectual groundwork for not only Deng’s economic reform program but also a more committed approach to the Five Principles (Chen 2013). 95 In the wake of decades of political upheaval Deng’s socio-economic program, if there was one at all, is experimental and particularistic to China’s own destitute situation, as reflected in his famous black-cat-white-cat and cross-the-river-by-touching-the-stone dictums. Shorn of its messianic impulses, communism in post-Mao China was invoked “within a Chinese context as the value framework for socialist modernization”, whereas in foreign policy the formal, dualist ideology has ceded its place to an informal ideology 94 Leninist regimes such as the ones in Russia and China, argues Cheng Chen, bred and stirred up nationalism, albeit the illiberal aspects of it, in their efforts to bind the Marxist/Leninist ideology in their respective national identity (Chen 2010a). 95 This classification regards the two superpowers as the First Word, economically developed countries including Japan, Canada, Austria and Western Europe as the Second World, the vast swathe of underdeveloped nations in Asia, Latin America and Africa as the Third World. 239 manifested by “a generic Chinese nationalism rooted in a sense of Chinese national identity that developed historically over a very long period” (Levine 1995). Because the Communist Party now considered its foremost priority nation building at home, on which it banked its legitimacy and monopoly of state power, it had no interest in projecting values overseas, nor did have a potent ideological framework to work with (Wang 2000b). On the contrary, Beijing’s overriding posture on the ideology front was predominantly defensive and reactive, as now Party leaders’ preoccupation was to forestall a countermove by Western powers to turn China into a liberal democracy. Paradoxical this may sound, Beijing is never comfortable being branded as authoritarian however steadfastly it repudiates liberal democracy. More importantly, for all the homage paid to Marxist and communist ideals, the Party’s adaption of its sociopolitical program was intended for solving the real problems of Chinese modernization and it also learned to limit the recipe’s scope conditions and appeal to a quintessential Chinese context. As is known, the Dengist reform mixing liberal-leaning economics with conservative one-party politics headed unavoidably to a legitimacy crisis that culminated in 1989 (Ding 1994). Against the backdrop of an ideological vacuum the CCP, which has its origin in national salvation movement in the early 20 th century, cling ever more closer to nationalism to ground its political legitimacy. 96 As Christensen aptly puts it, “Since the Chinese Communist Party is no longer communist, it must be even more Chinese” (Christensen 1996). 96 Socialism with Chinese characteristics, in the words of Hu Jintao, general secretary of the CCP until 2012, 240 There exist several distinctive features in the ideology-policy nexus across Chinese domestic politics and foreign policy. First, in adapting communism to indigenous conditions in China without precedent, the reform-era CCP leadership explicitly professed their reformulation in experimental terms. No better expression captures this sense of tentativeness than the famous phrase uttered by Deng Xiaoping, “crossing the river by touching the stone.” To the extent the CCP never ceases brandishing economic growth to bolster its domestic legitimacy, it continues to hew to the time-honored script that a country should find a sociopolitical program suitable for its own indigenous circumstances. Even amidst the enthusiastic push to strengthen Chinese soft power abroad since the new millennium, Chinese leaders have actually never made any sales pitch for the Chinese political and developmental experience. Then Premier Wen Jiabao, when what other countries could learn from China’s experiences, explicitly rejected the notion of a “model.” Instead, “we think every country should a development mode that best suits it, and we respect the choice by the people of other countries”, says Wen. 97 Second, the Five Principles of Peaceful Existence, resuscitated in the 1980s after the Cultural Revolution, remain practiced and persistently invoked by Beijing to assure the world, developing nations in particular, of its noninterventionalist and nonideological intent (Richardson 2009). Among the Five Principles, sovereignty is of paramount import in the Chinese “the latest success of the Sinification (zhongguohua) of Marxism, the most precious riches of the Party’s politics and spirit, and the foundation of the common thought of the whole people’s struggle for unity” Hu Jintao, “Zai jinian dang de shiyi xu san zhong quanhui zhaokai 30 zhounian dahuishang de Jianghua” (Speech Remembering the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Third Plenum of the 11th Party Congress), reprinted in Liu ge weishenma (The Six Why’s) (Beijing: People’s Daily Publishing Company, 2009), pp. 9. 97 Xinhua News Agency, “Premier Wen Jiabao’s press conference at the 4 th plenary session of the 11 th National People’s Congress,” accessed 12/17/2011, http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2011lh/2011-03/14/c_121187130.htm 241 diplomatic discourse such that, by the sheer account of references made by Beijing in UN venues, it was said that people “could easily take sovereignty as a quintessentially Chinese idea” (Kim 1994 428). That is not to say that Beijing has been stubbornly inflexible. Taken as a bundle of rights, national sovereignty in the Chinese conceptions can actually be self-contradictory (Carlson 2005): over the years China has surrender portions of economic sovereignty with relative ease in order to integrate into the global economy, but has persistently appealed to territorial sovereignty to argue its case on Taiwan and Tibet and noninterference into domestic affairs on the other hand to defend itself on issues of democracy and human rights. When it comes down to the Communist Party, it is purely self-centered: insofar as its dominance of Chinese state power is secure, it is indifferent to regime types of other countries. Third, China’s approaches to international security, in Liselotte Odgaard’s words, are conditioned by “a dialogue between coexistence and nationalism” (Odgaard 2012 xii), the former emphasizing the political and juridical aspects of sovereignty and the latter inexorably tied to the narrative of national humiliation since the mid-19 th century (Callahan 2004). In the 1980s as Party leaders came to the realization that they had no choice but to confront “the existing unjustified international order” as it was, Chinese nationalism began to manifest itself primarily as a “strong state complex” (Zheng 1999). It is state-led, pragmatic, “assertive in form, but reactive in essences” (Shambaugh 1996 205; Zhao 2000). Even on territorial disputes with countries such as Japan, Beijing proved to be more restrained and conciliatory than outright antagonistic (Downs and Saunders 1998). That was then. After a brief dabble in public diplomacy and soft power—hence the ideas of 242 “peaceful rise” or “peaceful development”—China has been noticed to take on a stridently more aggressive tactic and tone in the intensifying rows on some tiny rocks and reefs in East and South China Seas. Understandably some analysts have seized this as latest cascade of evidence of China being a menace to international and regional security (Johnston 2013). Yet Beijing failed to follow the realist playbook on Burma. As I have argued, this is a case of norms of sovereignty and non-intervention at work. Many Chinese have been using sovereignty as a defensive mechanism to fend off Western criticisms of its human rights violations and minority rights, among other things, the entrenched idea of sovereignty also mentally blocked it from foreign adventures of little psychological and nationalist value. This is because, unlike in the disputes with Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam China’s stakes at risk in Burma were of totally different nature. To great extent this contrast of Chinese passivity and aggressiveness conforms to what Lei Guang refers to as “realpolitik nationalism,” which tends to “frame external threats in terms not of [the] country’s unique history, culture, ethnicity, or religion but of a breach of the prevailing norms in international society” (Guang 2005 499). And for the Chinese, no international norms are more sacrosanct than the notion of territorial sovereignty, which is at the heart of Chinese nationalism. 98 In this respect while the separation of norms of sovereignty from national history and culture cannot be as clean-cut as Guang claims, the aftermath of realpolitik nationalism is nonetheless the same. That is, nationalism “may prevent the logic of realpolitik—relentless pursuit of material power and interests unencumbered by 98 As Downs and Saunders asserts, “the development of Chinese nationalism…has given sovereignty and territorial integrity intense symbolic value” (Downs and Saunders 1998 118) 243 ideational factors—from always playing out completely” when circumstances “do not arouse nationalistic passions” (Guang 2005 499). The islands in China’s near seas are, after all, territories. Whatever Chinese interests lost in Burma, they were either intangible (strategic interests) or entailed further losses in a worse scenario (economic interests) if the hypothetical Chinese intervention goes awry. The imbalance of foreign policy behavior caused by nationalism cannot be laid more bare. For all the bad press associated with nationalism, there is a silver lining to every dark cloud. 99 As I have reiterated elsewhere, nationalist sentiments can also motivate states to act more benevolently and responsibly, even though the fundamental motives are not liberal in essence. In the next two chapters I will note Japan’s active role in a slate of global governance initiatives, but focus on its reluctant entanglement in the US-led franchise of democracy assistance. Much as nationalism injected into national debates the impetus for Japan’s diplomatic expansion, I argue, the contrast between its enthusiasm in development aid and peacekeeping missions on the one hand and ambivalence in democracy promotion on the other is again the work of nationalism—with some help from realism. 99 See, for example,(Christensen 2011) 244 Chapter 5 A Facade of Liberal Internationalism The Democracy Deficit in Japanese Approach to Global Governance Since its dramatic recovery from the devastation of World War II Japan has been imposed the epithet “economic giant, political midget” either as a badge of honor or a symbol of disdain. Either way, it bedeviled realists who just did not see it right. In just about 20 years since the end of the Cold War, however, Japan has shed much of its irrelevance in world politics, even though its military prowess is increasing but still not up to the par realists have expected. In all seriousness, Japan has transformed itself into a “global civilian power” and “a global power for justice”—ostensibly by attempting to fulfill its national goals through an increased acceptance of supranational authority and peaceful means (Maull 1990; Inoguchi 2004). Indeed, since the late 1980s, the idea of a well-intentioned Japan making its due kokusai koken (international contribution) has been a prevailing theme within domestic debates regarding its proper role in international affairs. In many aspects Japan has practiced what it preaches: besides maintaining one of the largest development assistance programs in spite of its own economic malaise, Japan has expanded its peace-keeping and peace-building efforts without overthrowing its pacifist constitution (Lam 2009), helped broker the landmark Kyoto Protocol (Hattori 1999), deepened relations with countries in Asia bilaterally and through multilateral forums (Chung 2011), and is a fervent champion of human security worldwide (Hsien-Li 2010). These actions and initiatives easily remind people of some middle-power nations such as Sweden and Canada, whose trademark international humanitarianism has earned them the befitting tittle of “good states” (Brysk 2009). 245 Is Japan indeed the new Canada or Sweden in Asia? Both Canada and Sweden have long been known to epitomize liberal internationalism, “a vision of an open, rule-based system” within which democracies are more prone to advance their interests through trade and multilateralism (Ikenberry 2009). A policy doctrine at times found wanting in the United States, liberal internationalism provides much of the theoretical underpinning for international peacekeeping and development assistance (Paris 1997) (Goldgeier and McFaul 1992), both of which are also deemed as pillars of post-cold war Japanese diplomatic expansion. In fact, as early as 1987, the Japanese government led by Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, who jumpstarted the push for Japan’s deeper involvement in international affairs, raised the banner of liberal internationalism as an objective to achieve (Mochizuki 1990). Subsequent Japanese decisions to support multilateral mechanisms such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), it was argued, was enlightened by an analogous liberal thinking that injected a collaborative spirit into enhancing regional stability (Kawasaki 1997). Even as Japan gradually cast off the many pacifist constraints on the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, hope is high still that it would adopt a liberal internationalist security approach that lends support to its participation in peace-enhancing measures, humanitarian relief and counterterrorism operations (O'Hanlon 2007). For many, Japan’s unbridled enthusiasm in promoting human security globally is an indelible testament to its metamorphosis from “one-country pacifism” to liberal internationalism writ large (Soeya 2005). In no different fashion, scholars applying the norm-based framework to studying Japan’s international behavior inadvertently feed into this impression (Gurowitz 1999; Cortell and Davis 2005). 246 In this chapter I challenge head-on the myth of a liberal internationalist Japan by arguing that while it is without a doubt more internationally involved than ever, liberalism in Japan remains scarce and desired in both its foreign policy motivation and manifestations. Thus far the most evident counter-example of this liberal mirage is the Japanese state’s inability to rectify in a clean and humane manner the injustices of wartime comfort women and forced laborers, which have not only caused frequent flare-ups of tension with its Asian neighbor but also made a mockery of its international benevolence. This chapter, however, documents and analyzes another jarringly missing but critical ingredient of liberal internationalism that separates Japan from other mature democracies, i.e, its stubborn reluctance to incorporate democracy assistance into its strategic outlook and international program, a fact long taken for granted by Japanese and international observers yet a valid puzzle on both theoretical and policy grounds. Being a liberal democracy, as Japan is, entails a constitutional power structure in which principles of liberalism are embedded. Freedom within the domestic realm aside, liberal conception of liberty intrinsically dictates an activist agenda shaped by a universalist and self-reinforcing logic that in turn renders the global spread of democracy an imperative for democracies (Franceschet 2001; Agné 2010). Even though variants of liberalism can be at odds with one another over the appropriate means toward liberal ends (Richardson 1997; Sorensen 2011), liberal internationalism is of the belief that liberal values should be projected externally, and that international politics can be transformed and improved much like political life internally (Smith 1992). In short, a liberal internationalist program vis-à-vis the liberal zone of peace and democracy is about “preserving” it as much as “expanding” it 247 (Doyle 1999). A liberal internationalist Japan would not have shied away from this dual task. Yet, with few exceptions, Japanese leaders and officials have been reluctant to talk about democracy and human rights in foreign countries, not to mention making the promotion of democracy abroad one of its primary foreign policy objectives, as it is the case with the United States and its Western allies. As Japan’s prime minister whose tenure (2001-2006) dovetailed with much of that of President George H.W. Bush, Junichiro Koizumi forged the kind of personal trust and friendship with President Bush rivaled only by Britain’s Tony Blair. Given the critical importance that the Bush administration attached to democracy in its global war on terror as well as its overall grand strategy, one would assume that even if the Japanese government was not yet equipped with the necessary institutional infrastructure and technical know-how by then, Koizumi’s usually long tenure would have been a good time to commence. His immediate successors did attempt to join the foray by initiating the so-called value-based diplomacy, but this was as superficial as it was short-lived. This irony is further heightened by the fondness with which Japanese elites talk about their ideological affinity with the U.S. Although their country shares vast economic interests with an authoritarian China, they say, Japan’s relationship with the United States is of a different nature because “it is built on a security alliance, and not just the alliance, but on the shard values of liberal democracy, and on its shared ideals” (Fackler 2010). At the same time, American officials never publicly disputed the idea of “shared values,” which instead has been reaffirmed at almost every major event of political and diplomatic 248 consequence attended by both Japanese and American officials, even though these reaffirmations were out of step when it comes to practicing what they have preached. In reality, behind this chorus of solidarity there exists a much under-studied “discord” between the Washington and Tokyo over democracy assistance (Takeda 1997). Policy-wise, it would be hard to imagine the Japanese not to have been urged, nudged and encouraged to follow suit by its American allies who have maintained incredible influence over Japanese foreign policy and security 100 This presumption evinces from the fervor with which Washington strives to foster democracy abroad. During the Bush administration Americans invariably evoked the American success in instituting democracy in post-war Japan to justify the efficacy of nation-building and took the step to recruit India—a country much less dependent on the United States than Japan—to help spread democracy (Mohan 2007b). Japan’s reticence is thus all the more surprising, especially considering the many carrots and sticks at its disposal. One likely scenario for Japan to learn the “trade” of promoting democracy is to leverage its large economic assistance package to induce positive political change in recipient countries of Japanese aid. Promoting democracy is “a world value,” claims one avid proponent (McFaul 2004), but somehow Japan, for all its enthusiasm in contributing to world peace and prosperity, remains very much lukewarm to the democracy cause. A project with a progressive aspiration, democracy assistance is the core ethos for liberal internationalism even though both brands incurred much damage when the Bush administration used democracy, ex post, to justify the war in Iraq (Russett 2005). This 100 The Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy, for one, worked hard to lobby Japan to create a sister institution as early as late 1990s but failed to gain much attraction, interview with Japanese scholars and officials, May 2008, Tokyo. 249 chapter thus analyzes Japan’s ambivalent entanglement in the democracy promotion movement spearheaded by its American and European allies in light of Japan’s endeavors to propagate its preferred policy programs and values abroad. Understandably, little ink has been spilled so far on this subject precisely because little has been done by Japan in democracy’s name. Its voluntary indifference to democracy promotion aside, how has Japan reacted to the U.S.-led campaign to promote democracy and assist the rising wave of democratization since the 1980s? This chapter pays particular attention to democracy as a foreign policy agenda in its own right for the past two decades, in parallel with peace-keeping and development assistance in Japanese foreign policy. In highlighting the evolution of Japanese idealpolitik in three stages—as a source of economic aid to buttress burgeoning “third wave” democracies, as human security’s most enthusiastic promoter since the late 1990s, and finally as a half-hearted newcomer to democracy-based diplomacy, it compares and contrasts these policy choices with concurrent external expectations in order to assess the extent to which democracy actually matters in Japan’s approaches to global governance. Not surprisingly, previous research on Japan’s diplomatic enlargement has been overwhelmingly concentrated on its peace activities and international aid programs, with much of the attention centered on their technical dimensions and policy evolution. Likewise, the small literature on Japan’s human rights diplomacy, too, is limited to discussing the progress or lack thereof on this front, whereas little light has been shed on how democracy promotion is perceived and acted upon at the state level—other than some scholarship on the incorporation of human rights and democracy into the implementation 250 of ODA at the bureaucratic or subnational level—simply because the Japanese government has paid scant attention to it. In the text to follow I will take stock in three stages of the evolution of Japan’s policy and normative discourse regarding democracy abroad: as a source of economic aid to buttress burgeoning “third wave” democracies, as human security’s most enthusiastic promoter since the late 1990s, and finally as a half-hearted newcomer to democracy-based diplomacy. In so doing my goal is less to provide an overview of Japan’s role in international society than to ascertain the basic ideational origin for its selective, lopsided internationalism that is decidedly in favor of peace and development at the expense of democracy. Counter to the depictions of a liberal internationalist Japan both scholars and the Japanese government have made, implicitly or explicitly, I argue instead that Japan’s selective internationalism is not driven by liberal principles, but is as nationalist as realist in essence. In relation to that, I conclude with critique of some norm and identity-centered research and caution that scholars need to be sensitive to positionality of their own. FINANCING NEW DEMOCRACIES (late 1980s—mid-1990s) At the height of the Cold War, questions of national security overshadowed all other foreign policy objectives, but human rights and democracy nonetheless seeped in in its waning years. The Helsinki Accords, reached between the Communist bloc and the West in 1975, while ensuring the inviolability of national borders and respect for territorial integrity, also codified respect of human rights and national self-determination, and henceforth unwittingly unleashed a transnational human rights movement that transformed 251 the agenda of East-West relations, shattered the viability of one-party Communist rule, and ultimately contributed to the demise of Communism (Thomas 2001). Since the Carter administration the United States raised its decibels on human rights as a way to shame the Soviet Union and its vassal states in Eastern Europe, and dissidents like Andrei Sakharov and Václav Havel subsequently became household names in the West. In response to President Ronald Reagan’s proposition to “foster the infrastructure of democracy” that includes “the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities”, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created through Congressional mandate as a non-governmental institution to channel funds to pro-democracy activities and organizations abroad. In Asia, the “Third Wave” of democratization began in the Philippines with the nonviolent People Power Revolution in 1986 that forced President Ferdinand Marcos to resign from his office and flee from the country. Having had dealt with successive military dictatorships in South Korea for decades with no regard to their human rights violations, Japan nonetheless decided—in order to keep up with Washington’s changing tunes in favor of the popular will— to extend a helping hand. The Southeast Asian nation was already a major recipient of Japanese ODA, but Tokyo increased its volume to help strengthen the newly elected government of President Corazon Aquino (Inada 1990). Japan subsequently participated in the International Conference of New or Restored Democracies under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 101 101 The first meeting took place in 1988 in Manila and 5 subsequent meetings were held in 1994, 1997, 2000, 2004 and 2006 with the attendance of countries from Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa, see,[accessed July 3, 2011], <http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/jinken/minshu/icnrd.html>. 252 The dramatic end of the Cold War and a little later, the sudden dissolution of the once formidable Soviet Union presented enormous challenges to leaders of the West, in particular France and West Germany, who saw a historical opportunity to shore up security and stability on Europe’s eastern frontier in guiding struggling nations through economic and political transformation. But these free-market and political reforms could not possibly be carried through without a vast capital infusion from the West, and Japan’s contribution was eagerly sought out in the name of safeguarding the hard-won fruits of the Cold War. Tokyo obliged by directing more aid to many East European countries, but rebuffed Gorbachev’s initial requests for aid owing to his non-compromising stance on the disputed islands the Soviet Union took from Japan at the end of the World War II. This principle is known as seikei fukabun (inseparability of politics and economics), i.e., no aid until the return of the disputed Northern Territory. 102 At the G7 summit of July1990 in Houston, basking in the euphoria of “the renaissance of democracy throughout much of the world.” 103 Western leaders released a political declaration entitled “Securing Democracy” that reaffirmed their commitment to supporting multiparty democracy, human rights, and economic reforms in what they hoped to be a “decade of democracy”. Claiming to represent the “Japan of Asia”, Japanese leaders also took the opportunity to push for their Asian agenda that included Mongolia’s membership in the Asian Development Bank and yen loans to China (Dobson 2004 85-87). In so doing, the summit nonetheless had Japan’s inconsistent positions vis-à-vis the 102 Ironically, one idea that figured prominently in Japan’s post-war foreign policy is seikei bunri (separating politics from economics), first outlined by Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida in the early 1950s, 103 Houston Economic Declaration, July 11, 1990”, [accessed July 3, 2011], <http://www.g8.utoronto.ca/summit/1990houston/declaration.html>. 253 democratization of China and Russia at an awkward full display: while Tokyo argued against further sanctions against Beijing for fear of jeopardizing China’s economic and political reforms and herein insisted on resuming its ODA loans worth of billions of US dollars that were suspended in the wake of the Tian’anmen tragedy, it was just as adamant in rejecting the idea of extending aid to the Soviet Union because of the lack of progress on the bilateral territorial dispute (Dobson 2004 87). Following up on the Houston Summit, the Japanese cabinet approved its first ODA Charter. This had considerations on democracy, human rights practices and market-based economy as its forth principle, along with the recipient country’s military expenditure, export and import of weaponry, and nuclear proliferation. The Japanese logic on democratization, referred to often as an “indirect approach” as opposed to the “direct approach” held by its American and European peers, purported to have the recipient country’s long-term progression toward democracy in mind, a conviction even a recurrence of a Tian’anmen-like incident would not alter (Inada 1995). The first batches of Japanese ODA to Vietnam in 1992 and Myanmar in 1994 were carried out in this spirit. But the extraordinary case of aiding the USSR/Russia took much arm-twisting from Japan’s Western allies, primarily the United States. The coup d'état attempt in August 1991 made Washington more appreciative of having a reformist Gorbachev in power, hence renewed urgency to support his reform programs and increased pressure on Japan to cooperate (Miyashita 2003 105-110). At first, to avoid isolation in the G7 group, Japan agreed to participate in the West’s assistance program, but only through multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. After the Soviet 254 Union’s dissolution, the West pinned their hope of a democratic Russia on Boris Yeltsin, and the new US president, Bill Clinton, made abundantly clear that Russia’s successful transition to liberal democracy was of vital interest to the West. On the other hand, Japan’s insistence on resolution of the territorial problem as a precondition for economic assistance made the Russians believe that it was taking advantage of their weakness; and Yeltsin, mired in mounting political and economic difficulties and in desperate need of Western support, was irked by Japan’s stiffness and no less resistant to Japan’s demands (Panov 2006). Only after being repeatedly warned by its allies of the dangerous scenario Russia’s failed transition would bring about, for which Japan would be to blame, did the the Japanese government quietly drop its linkage strategy at the Tokyo G7 Summit in 1993 and commit to a multi-billion dollar pledge to Russia. Beyond the former Soviet bloc, the United States began to push for democratization in Latin America, its backyard, as well. Political support to that region became a new focal point for the US-Japan Global Partnership as the Americans proposed a USD 1.5 billion Central and South America Support Fund within the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Japanese government followed up by hosting several multilateral forums attended by the Rio Group, the U.S, Canada, and the European Union. On his January 1992 visit to Tokyo when trade disputes occupied much of the media attention, President George Bush signed a Global Partnership Agreement with Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa in which the two governments pledged to cooperate to “promote democracy and freedom” in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. These ideas were re-affirmed a year later by President Clinton and Mr. Miyazawa and evolved into what was called “A Common 255 Agenda for Cooperation in Global Perspective” 104 .These initiatives involved mainly bilateral policy coordination on economic assistance to those newly democratized states. At the G7 Summit in Lyon in 1996, Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) announced its first democracy-centered foreign policy program—the Partnership for Democratic Development (PDD)—with the explicit goal of helping young democracies strengthen their institutional mechanisms for democratic governance. Not unlike Japanese ODA, the PDD was carried out on the basis of self-help, consultations, and mutual agreement, and was meant to propagate Japanese know-how and experiences through technical assistance such as training seminars for NGOS and police force, and electoral support, et cetera. 105 In the same vein, most of these activities were carried out by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)—indeed the same aid implementation agency whose involvement in foreign elections, for example, was limited to provision of material supplies through grant aid and dispatches of election observers owing to its lack of experience (Hashimoto 2006). In examining Japanese participation in global governance, one needs to keep in mind that throughout the 1990s Japanese debates on foreign policy were centered on the constitutionality of sending Self-defense Forces on international peacekeeping missions. The flurry of controversy and reflections over Japan’s role in international society was triggered off by the diplomatic snubbing and under-appreciation Tokyo received in spite of its substantial financial contribution to the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi 104 “1992 U.S.-Japan Global Partnership Agreement”, [accessed July 10, 2011], <http://www.mac.doc.gov/japan-korea/market-opening/ta920109.htm> 105 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Japan’s Support for Democratization”, [accessed July 10, 2011], <http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/oda/category/democratiz/1999/index.html>. 256 occupation. Even though the War itself was not a peacekeeping operation, many Japanese leaders saw UN peacekeeping as “a useful instrument with which to dispel some of this anxiety because it makes an uncertain world a little more certain” (Inoguchi 1994 327) as well as a means to legitimate Japan’s great power status in world politics (Suzuki 2008). Thus, in evaluating its potential international contribution in international society, Japan not only chose peace-keeping over democracy assistance but kept the latter on the policy margins. The 1992 International Peace Co-operation (PKO) Law in June 1992 made it legally possible for the Self-Defense Forces to participate in United Nations peacekeeping operations overseas, and Tokyo subsequently sent its first-ever peacekeeping forces to work with the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). Other than that, Japan contributed a great amount of other diplomatic, financial, and human resources. JICA, for its part, assisted efforts to strengthen Cambodia’s legal infrastructure by helping draft its legal codes and training some lawyers in addition to its traditional development work (Peou 2007). While the Cambodian peace process can be analyzed through the prism of democracy assistance, it was first and foremost a multilateral, multilayered enterprise to bring peace to this war-torn nation in Southeast Asia rather than a democracy-centered agenda. Similar to Cambodia, later dispatches of electoral experts by JICA to Indonesia (1999), East Timor (2001), Pakistan (2002), Afghanistan (2004) were all based on the PKO Law that has explicit reference to democratic governance. THE JAPANIZATION OF HUMAN SECURITY (SINCE THE LATE 1990s) 257 For all Japan’s contribution to the democracy cause as laid out above, the paucity of these efforts was dwarfed by the task at hand. Throughout the last decade of the 20th century the United States and Europe remained involved in helping consolidate the new democracies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and NATO’s war efforts in Kosovo sparked contentious international debates over the issue of “humanitarian intervention.” Neither, however, gained much traction in policymaking and academic circles in Japan, where human security rose to become the most prominent leitmotif of Japan’s external policy. This concept was widely attributed to the 1994 UNDP Human Development Report, which called for a reconceptualization of security from state-centric to individual-focused in order to cope with the new realities and international concerns following the end of the Cold War. On the occasion of the 50 th anniversary of the United Nations in 1995, the Socialist Party Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama endorsed the concept in his speech to the General Assembly by calling on “building a human-centered Society.” 106 Stating that his country as a leading donor country had long supported sustainable development and provided assistance for the promotion of democracy and economic reforms, Murayama proclaimed that Japan was interested in enhancing international peace in such areas as humanitarian assistance, preventive diplomacy, peace-keeping operations, arms control and disarmament, and restrictions on the use of conventional weapons including anti-personnel land-mines. Given the slew of important issues to be addressed, human security was deemed as a perfect umbrella term that unified them under one banner, to which Japan hoped to 106 ”Statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama at the Special Commemorative Meeting on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of U.N.”, [accessed July 14, 2011], <http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/announce/archive_3/sp.html>. 258 contribute by tapping into its vast financial resources. Although Murayama’s Socialist Party soon disintegrated, almost all his successors as prime minister use human security to charter its own course of idealpolitik. In 1998, as many Asian nations plunged into the throes of a financial crisis, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi took note of the economic hardship people in Asia were suffering in several major domestic and international speeches, and listed a multitude of problems—including the exodus of refugees, violations of human rights, infectious diseases like AIDS, terrorism, and anti-personnel land mines as integral components of human security. The Japanese government subsequently donated 500 million yen (USD 4.2 million) to the United Nations to establish the “Human Security Fund” (later renamed the “Trust Fund for Human Security”) to support pertinent projects around the world. With its inclusion in the Diplomatic Bluebook (Gaikō seisho) in 1999, Human Security was formally pushed to the front and center of Japanese diplomacy. Making use of the podium as the host of the G-8 summit in 2000, Japan started a coordinated campaign to promote the awareness of human security internationally and abroad. An additional 10 billion yen (about US$ 100 million) was donated to the Human Security Fund. The same year, in response to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s call for advancing both “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear,” the Japanese government announced the creation of the Commission on Human Security (CHS) co-chaired by former UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ms. Sadako Ogata and Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen, then of Cambridge University. 259 Before the CHS was completed, the September 11 attacks occurred and terrorism took the central stage of international relations and global governance. Japanese rhetoric on human security was slightly toned down (Edström 2008 131-141), but officials quickly moved to incorporate terrorism into human security. In December, in his opening speech at the symposium entitled Human Security and Terrorism – Diversifying Threats under Globalization, Prime Minister Koizumi, while noting terrorism as a threat to democracy and freedom, declared that “armed conflicts, poverty and other socio-economic factors” create ‘hotbeds’ for terrorism”. 107 In this context, it is worthwhile to compare and contrast the outlooks of Koizumi and George H. W. Bush on terrorism. As has been widely documented, September 11 fundamentally altered the worldview and policy contour of the Bush administration, as it fervently embraced idealistic notions such as nation building and democracy promotion that it was harshly critical of previously. Enlarging democracy around the world became central to America’s global war on terror, as the view—however unfounded it is (Russett 2005)—that democracy was the cure of terrorism firmly took hold. While “Bush the democracy-advocator” had to coexist with “Bush the realist” who cultivated good relations with “friendly tyrants”, in many other regions (Carothers 2003), Koizumi the faithful ally followed American strategic priorities but was more convinced that socio-economic elements were the source of terrorism and human security was the remedy. In spring 2003, co-chairs Ogata and Sen presented their findings to Koizumi and Mr. Annan in a report entitled Human Security Now. The report was much needed for the 107 “The International Symposium on Human Security Remark by Mr. Junichiro Koizumi, Prime Minister of Japan, Tokyo, December 15, 2001”, [accessed July 10, 2011], <http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/human_secu/sympo0112_pm.html> 260 United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security (UNTFHS) that Japan launched with the U.N. Secretariat in 1999, which had had no available conceptual framework to be based on until then.” 108 Also in 2003, the Japanese government and the United Nations jointly created a separate unit for human security in the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which Ms. Ogata led for 10 years until 2001. With Ogata, an international civil servant close to the Japanese diplomatic establishment, and Sen, a prominent economist and author of a well-received book entitled Development as Freedom, it should not come as a surprise that the Commission’s final report echoed the developmentalist views of the Japanese government to a great extent. For Japan, the way to attain greater human security is economic development and provision for basic human needs, a perspective summarized by “freedom from want” and close to the idea of human development. The corollary of this approach, therefore, is that the fundamental sources of myriad obstacles to human security are to be found more in the realm of economics and less in the political domain. The only point about which Japan may have doubts is the demand to the international community for more active intervention on humanitarian grounds as it contravenes its concern over state sovereignty (Shinoda 2009 1100). In January 2003, Koizumi declared in the Diet that “ODA will be implemented strategically in human security areas.” 109 A few months later, Japan’s ODA Charter was revised to incorporate the “protection” and “empowerment” components of the human security agenda. In substance, though, it hardly constituted a break with the past as poverty 108 United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security”, [accessed July 10, 2011], <http://ochaonline.un.org/TrustFund/tabid/2107/Default.aspx>. 109 “General Policy Speech by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the 156th Session of the Diet, January 31, 2003,” [accessed July 17, 2011], http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/pm/koizumi/speech030131.html 261 alleviation and sustainable growth remained the foremost priorities. In October, at the advanced age of 76, Ms. Ogata was appointed as the president of JICA which, in accordance with the ODA Charter, took human security as one of its basic missions and principles. A scholar-turned international servant of the highest esteem, who else would have the international stature and intellectual prowess than Ogata to take the helm of Japan’s premier institution of international good-will and practice Japan’s vision of human security on the ground? Within a short time, human security permeated into scholarly publications and conversations in Japan as well (Edström 2011, 46-47). Joining hands to form a new academic-policy complex, universities and think-tanks followed up by publishing reports on human security in the thousands and launching related academic programs, so much so that a Japanese scholar regards human security as “a Japanese social science” (Ikeda 2009). Criticized for its fuzziness, human security is nonetheless “a handy label for a broad category of research” that serves the purpose of conveying a sense of urgency toward the many issues in global governance, capturing public attention, and a genuine re-centering of focus in research and policymaking (Paris 2001). The Japanese approach to human security is known to be at odds in both scope and content with a rival perspective advocated by Canada and its European peers that puts a premium on “freedom from fear” and stresses aspects impeding the end to violent conflict and democratic transition. The latter view is based on the assumption that “human security can be guaranteed only be states that are liberal democracies, and in which the government and individuals can be held accountable” (Bosold and Werthes 2005 97), and it regards traditional development 262 assistance and the empowerment of the individual as secondary. Instead, it foregrounds the taming of uncontrolled use of force through the imposition of international legal standards for both individuals and states, micro-disarmament, and the use of sanctions for military force when necessary (Bosold and Werthes 2005 98). In addition to the achievement of an acceptable quality of life, this more restricted formulation also includes safety from military threats, a guarantee of fundamental human rights, the rule of law, good governance, social equality, protection of civilians in conflicts, and sustainable development (Axworthy 1996). 110 The two approaches were developed separately by the Japanese and Canadian camps with little interaction between them. Canada scored major diplomatic victories with the signing in 1997 of the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel land mines. Along with like-minded middle powers including Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Australia, the Canadian government launched the Human Security Network (HSN) to focus on issues in which they have common interests. The Japanese government was initially not involved in the HSN owing to the differences of opinion, especially its concern over the violation of national sovereignty that has been deemed sacred in Asia and its opposition to the notion of humanitarian intervention and “responsibility to protect” that often entails the use of force. Bilateral venues such as the biennial Canada-Japan Symposium on Peace and Security Cooperation provided a platform for exchanges of ideas, but even as the two 110 In contrast, indicative of the Japanese idiosyncrasies, neither the outline of CHS report nor the latest version (4 th version) of the UNTFHS guideline tends to minimize the political implications or complications of human security, as both the term “democracy” or “governance” was absent. Guidelines for the United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security,[accessed July 10, 2011], <http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/human_secu/guideline.pdf> 263 approaches on human security appear to be converging, significant differences on its operation remain (Fukushima 2009). THE RISE AND FALL OF THE “ARC OF FREEDOM AND PROSPERITY” (2006-2009) It also so happens that when the Bush administration’s unilateralism alienated many traditional US allies, Koizumi was spurned by Japan’s Asian neighbors—especially China and South Korea— resulting from his repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in spite of their vociferous objections. Under the international spotlight for their revisionist narratives of history that aggravated the Chinese greatly, some Japanese officials reacted by drawing attention to the authoritarian nature of the communist regime in Beijing. Alluding to the phenomenon of what people called “hot economics, cold politics” in Sino-Japanese relations, then-ambassador to the U.S., Ryozo Kato, for instance, claimed that Japan shared only economic interests with China, but it shared “values” with the United States. 111 In September 2006, Koizumi was succeeded by Shinzo Abe, another right wing politician whose first major diplomatic venture was to mend fences with Chinese and Korean leaders—largely on their terms. Improved relations with China did not prevent Japan from experimenting with democracy-based foreign policy spearheaded by Taro Aso, Foreign Minister under Koizumi and Abe from 2005 to 2007. An outspoken conservative 111 Speech at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, February 28, 2006, [accessed July 18, 2011], <http://www.sais-jhu.edu/pressroom/multimedia/letter_k.html>. 264 politician, Aso had argued for Japan to be the “Thought Leader of Asia” whereby Japan should pride itself for its democratic polity and economic success. He had also irked Beijing by publicly calling for a “democratic China” (Aso 2006), a highly unusual move by a serving Japanese foreign minister. In November 2006, Aso formally launched the “Arc of Freedom and Prosperity” concept that was the closest Japanese policy ever to the Bush administration’s “freedom agenda.” In a speech given at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, Aso proposed with great fanfare that beyond strengthening its alliance with the United States and relations with Asian neighbors, Japanese foreign policy should add as a new pillar “value added diplomacy.” A seemingly dramatic departure from Japanese diplomatic traditions, the initiative would use Japanese ODA and training programs to encourage the spread of "universal values" such as democracy, freedom, human rights, the rule of law, and the market economy, to build an “arc” of budding democracies at the outer rim of the Eurasian continent, where a series of “color revolutions” had recently topped a few authoritarian regimes and scared many others. 112 During his 22-month term at MOFA, Aso went on a diplomatic blitz through Asia, the Middle East and Latin America to sell the Arc concept. This was widely perceived by many as a poorly crafted way of attacking and containing China, not to mention that the Japanese government also strengthened—under the aegis of the Americans—its security relations with Australia (Samuels 2007b x). To promote the new brainchild of Abe and Aso, in February 2007, MOFA hosted a symposium entitled “New Developments in Japan’s Foreign Policy for the Promotion of Human Rights and Democracy” with 112 “Speech by Mr. Taro Aso, Minister for Foreign Affairs on the Occasion of the Japan Institute of International Affairs Seminar ‘Arc of Freedom and Prosperity: Japan's Expanding Diplomatic Horizons’,” [accessed July 19, 2011], <http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/fm/aso/speech0611.html>. 265 attendees from academia and the NGO community within Japan. A second symposium was held a year later with a keynote speech by the executive head of the U.N. Democracy Fund (UNDEF), an initiative created by Kofi Annan in 2005, to which the Abe government donated USD 10 million in 2007. A seminar on how to apply for UNDEF grants was held for Japanese NGOs. As Japan’s foreign policy apparatus had no democracy-enhancing institutions, both symposia were implemented by MOFA’s Human Rights Division. 113 The “Arc” idea was deemed “too extreme” for some MOFA bureaucrats, 114 nor was it applauded by the broader Japanese public. Washington, however, certainly welcomed usually value-shy Japan into the democracy promotion business. On his visit to Australia for the APEC summit in September 2007, President Bush proposed the creation of a new Asia-Pacific Democracy Partnership with Japan and Australia to “support democratic values, strengthen democratic institutions and assist those who are working to build and sustain free societies across the Asia-Pacific region”. 115 Then two weeks later Abe’s tenure was abruptly over when he checked into a hospital under stress and unexpected announced his resignation. In the ensuing campaign for the presidency of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, thus the post of prime minister, Aso’s critics accused him of using the “Arc” initiative to aggrandize himself and unnecessarily provoking Beijing. The eventual winner of the election, Yasuo Fukuda, a political moderate, had no interest in continuing “value diplomacy.” The “Arc” concept was therefore unceremoniously erased from the Diplomatic Bluebook (Gaikō seisho) in April 2008. 113 Interviews with MOFA officials, April 2008. 114 Interview with MOFA officials, April 2008. 115 Bush launches 'democracy partnership’,[accessed August 10, 2011], <http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2007/s2026609.htm>. 266 Aso finally became prime minister in September 2008. Understandably he worked to resuscitate the Arc policy, but his tenure instead was consumed with reviving the political fortune of the LDP, which ultimately lost to the Democratic Party (DPJ) in the lower house election in a landslide in September 2009. Calling for more equal partnership with the United States, the new DPJ government under Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama was far more keen on community building in Asia (hence the “East Asia Community”) than ideological affinity with the West, but his cabinet was rocked by a tumultuous relationship with Washington over the Okinawa base relocation issue. Japan did participate in the annual Bali Democracy Forum, an Indonesian initiative attended by all East Asian nations that began in 2008. Hatoyama even co-chaired the second forum in 2009, where—as in the case of US-initiated Asia-Pacific Development Partnership—his iteration of Japan’s efforts to assist democratization related back to projects carried out by JICA on human resource development, legal education, and election monitoring. 116 THE NONLIBERAL INTERNATIONALIST JAPAN Promoting human security does not necessarily preclude democracy assistance. Canada, for example, is active in both. Little research has been done on Japan’s involvement in the democracy promotion business precisely because it has done little. In spite of the fact that democracy has been instituted as an important factor for aid allocation in the ODA Charter since 1992, the Japanese government is yet to elevate in a consistent 116 Bali Democratic Forum”, [accessed September 10, 2011], <http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/indonesia/bdf/index.html>. 267 manner democracy promotion as a national strategy or as a priority for its international relations. Earlier portions of this article juxtaposed three phases of idealpolitik with the corresponding international context and the American policy agenda since the end of the Cold War. With the exception of the Abe and Aso era, the Japanese government maintained a rather passive or even nonchalant attitude toward democracy as an element of its foreign policy portfolio. This attitude has been evident in how Japan conducted relations with its two giant neighbors. So long as the territorial dispute still exists, a Russia speaking the same language of freedom, democracy and market economy was not enough to fundamentally change the Japanese perception of its northern neighbor. Seeing more strategic and economic interests in post-Tian’anmen China, Japan differed with its Western allies on the usefulness of sanctions on the ground that encouraging economic reform would incrementally and eventually lead to political liberalization and better human rights practices in China. In the end, Japan lifted its aid sanctions against China—but only with Washington’s acquiescence, and yielded to allies’ pressure on economic assistance to Russia. Likewise, putting democracy in its first ODA Charter was a response to peer pressure. That said, even though as Japan continues to shy away from the role of a proactive democracy promoter that many hoped it would play (Arase 1993, 1994), it nonetheless has become a passive democracy promoter in many ways. As much as Japanese ODA remains mercantilist (Chan 1992), for instance, its allocation and disbursement are now more sensitive to humanitarian needs and political conditions in the recipient countries (Tuman and Strand 2006; Furuoka 2005), and the aid implementation process too has become 268 much more democratic and pluralistic (Ichihara 2011; Hirata 2002). The enduring emphasis on “freedom from want” in the Japanese approach to human security and its reliance on economic growth for the realization of human security goals, however, means that the developmental democracy thesis will remain Japan’s guiding principle on global governance for the many years to come. The democracy deficit in its global governance policies notwithstanding, by concentrating its diplomatic resources in one single basket called “human security,” Japan has not only charted its own course of idealpolitik but also asserted itself to become a norm entrepreneur. Moreover, promoting the concept serves well two broader security and diplomatic concerns facing Japan: on the one hand, it underscores the country’s commitment to multilateral international cooperation in a US-dominated unipolar world without ever weakening the US-Japan alliance as the basis of Japan’s national security; on the other hand, branding and defining a still under-appreciated new concept with Japan’s well-known developmentalist worldview not only plays to Japan’s strengths as a leading donor of international economic aid to the developing world, it is also integrated seamlessly with the multi-faceted efforts to raise Japan’s international profile as Tokyo ratcheted up its campaign for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. In other words, championing human security provides the perfect rationale to both international and domestic audiences for Japan to transition from so-called “one-country pacifism” to a “proactive pacifism,” which is now utilized to rationalize a more proactive role overseas for the Japanese military in the name of advancing international peace (Soeya 2005). 269 Still, the contrast between Japanese tepidness toward democracy assistance on the one hand and its enthusiastic embrace of peace-keeping, development aid and human security on the other is stark. This unevenness is best described in terms of selective internationalism, and raises meaningful questions about the fundamental motivation behind its self-conscious drive to be a more impactful player in international society. First and foremost, given that Japan’s expanding role in global governance including human security is perennially pivoted around its outsized development assistance program, various democracy-supporting partnerships, from the PDD to the Arc and ADP, were overwhelmingly underpinned by a developmentalist logic and carried out by JICA. While in recent years Japanese ODA has shifted gradually from an almost exclusive focus on infrastructure to many other social aspects of development assistance including social protection, education, rights of women and refugees (Leheny and Warren 2009), the several programs on good governance touted by Japanese officials as supporting democratization, electoral assistance and judicial reform, are in actuality more aimed at strengthening extant state institutions than expanding the degree of political contestation and participation. Practices with the purpose of accelerating regime change in authoritarian countries--such as aiding civil society and pro-democracy parties--that are common ways of democracy promotion in the West are almost unheard of amongst all Japanese endeavors. Secondly, Japanese idealpolitik has increasingly gravitated more toward the United Nations than the United States even as the latter remains its indispensable ally in international affairs. A nation said not to be beholden to any stringent political philosophy 270 (Tamamoto 1994), Japan did not want to—with the rare exception of the Arc episode—to get bogged down in any ideological conflict with foreign governments that may jeopardize its ambitions in the Security Council. The non-controversial and non-partisan characteristics of the human security concept, in addition to its close association with the United Nations and compatibility with the Japanese way of thinking on global governance, were no doubt behind Tokyo’s decision to brand itself in its glory and generate much international publicity around the theme. On the other hand, at a time the Bush administration went all the way to recruit India—a country whose relations with the United States had been far more tempestuous in the past 50 years than the US-Japan relations—to join the campaign (Mohan 2007a), it would be inconceivable for Japanese officials not to be urged, nudged and encouraged to act in tandem with Washington’s value-laden strategies. The National Endowment for Democracy, for one, worked hard to lobby the Japanese government to create a sister institution as early as late 1990s, yet the issue received so little attention that it is yet to be the subject of any serious discussion. 117 In contrast, the Japanese government would rather donate a large sum of funds to the U.N. Democracy Fund even at the heyday of the Arc policy than complying with NED’s wishes. Similarly, conscious of the uproar the Bush administration’s extension of democracy promotion to the Middle East aroused in the region, the Japanese government chose to 117 Interview with Yukio Ozaki Memorial Foundation official, May 2008; National Endowment for Democracy Strategy Document January 2007, [accessed September 10, 2011], <http://www.ned.org/docs/strategy/strategy2007.pdf>. 271 channel funds through the United Nations in the name of human security rather than democracy to the Arab region. 118 Thirdly, it is paradoxical that those very Japanese elites who brandished the democracy banner were conservative right-wing politicians who held a revisionist view of Japanese colonial history. These people, including Abe and Aso, had made outrageous comments making light of Japan’s war responsibility and denying the truthfulness of Comfort Women, and brushed off objections from China and South Korea by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine at sensitive times. Such objectionable behavior certainly raised doubts about their own commitment to justice and deprived Japan of a great deal of international credibility. Also, it is hardly a coincidence that these same people tend to be pro-US defense hawks wary of the rising presence in the region of China and Russia. They often used the democracy card as a velvet bludgeon to hit and embarrass Beijing and Moscow for purposes other than democracy per se. As insiders have recently confided, for instance, the architects of the idea of Arc of Freedom and Prosperity initially intended to use it to strike a cord with Russian leaders in order to bring them around to the negotiating table on the territorial dispute (Taniguchi 2010). Nor did talking up democracy give them qualms in doing business with dictators elsewhere. Critics were therefore quick to point out that “[dressing] up in the value of humanitarianism, democracy and he rule of law” was just part of Japan’s “great game” to compete with China and Russia, and beneath the “facade of Japan’s talk of spreading democracy”, it was “pragmatic” business as usual ("Abe Blows Japan's Trumpet, Cautiously" 2007). 118 "Assistance by the United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security project ‘Promoting the Human Security Concept in the Arab Region’” [accessed September 15, 2011], <http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/announce/2007/6/1174269_828.html>. 272 These conservative politicians essentially practiced balance of power politics and used democratic enhancement as a camouflage. From Washington’s perspective, “building a regional consensus on neoliberal norms” is “an indispensable element in the strategy of encouraging China to itself become a responsible stakeholder” in an ever more important Asia (Green and Twining 2008 4). Equally anxious about China’s rise but draped in those liberal norms, Japan was ipso facto an American proxy for building a “democratic partnership in Asia” (Twining 2010) without being forced to develop a genuine America-style democracy promotion franchise. Like Richard Nixon, who vividly mused after the Tian’anmen Incident that anyone who “thinks Japan is going to export democracy to China must be smoking pot,” 119 most American officials have long been aware of Japanese reluctance to talk about democracy and human rights in their dealings with foreign counterparts. It thus seems that most American officials understand and reluctantly accept Japan’s own position on the subject and the two sides have achieved a mutual understanding (Wan 1998), to a point that even though Washington would exert a great deal of pressure on Tokyo when it comes to its other strategic priorities such as defense relations and trade disputes, they tend to persuade and encourage—rather than resorting to pressure—their Japanese counterparts to follow their lead on democracy assistance. For the United States, a menacing, authoritarian China with dazzling economic growth and expanding military presence in the region calls for a democratic alliance that Japan must be a part of, a position of liberal realism that both liberals and realists have no trouble 119 United Press International, “Nixon Warns House GOP on China: Must Maintain Contact,” March 08, 1990. 273 agreeing to. Against this backdrop, Japan inked a security pact with a third country other than the United States for the first time (Australia), and the Asia-Pacific Democracy Partnership was in some way an value-imbued anchor to cement the trilateral relations among them and to facilitate coordination with like-minded countries such as India and New Zealand. Likewise, when Prime Ministers Abe and Hatoyama visited India to encourage trade and investment and deepen political and defense connections, they again trumpeted the shared democratic ideals they shared with their host. Either way, the message was intended for Beijing the Japanese Defense Ministry white paper described as “assertive” and “overbearing.” It must be emphasized, however, in their strategic posturing vis-à-vis China, the United States and Japan converge on realism, not liberalism. A bulky ODA program alone with few strings attached to the political development and human rights conditions of recipient countries is a testament that in the Japanese foreign policy portfolio developmentalism is in abundance whereas liberalism is in short supply. But economic development and political freedom as objectives are not necessarily at cross purpose with each other. To be sure, economic development is critical for the betterment of individual freedoms and nurtures a democracy-friendly environment, it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for democratic change. For do-good states to expand the zone of democracy and economic prosperity, there naturally is a balance to strike in terms of priority and proper means to deliver the desired outcome. Yet the developmental approach that conceptualizes democratic governance as part and parcel of a broad objective of greater social justice and equality, as exemplified by the European powers, does not run 274 counter to the political approach the Americans are fond of, which put greater emphasis on the “right” political system that ensures basic political and civil rights; they can go hand in hand with each other (Carothers 2009b). As far as Japan’s own trajectory is concerned, the democratic constitutional structure created under American occupation ensured domestic stability as well as contentious but healthy competition between the left and right, thus paving the way for its economic juggernaut. But as I noted, the Japanese are poignantly keener to export peace and development than democracy. On the other hand, to say that Japan stood as an impediment to international democracy promotion is nothing short of a gross mischaracterization. Even those disagreeing with the Japanese approach would have to acknowledge that the modernization approach is not without its own theoretical plausibility and empirical support: who can dispute that an advanced economy and more material affluence of the people are inimical to democratization sooner or later? Even the most ardent democracy promoters, the U.S. and European powers included, regularly donate development aid packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the hopes that they can either induce positive behavior by governments—authoritarian or democratic—in recipient countries, or that stimulated economic growth and enhanced living standards would encourage popular demands for democracy and provide fertile soil for infant democracies to mature. After all, a proactive democracy assistance program does not have to be of the American style, highly politicized and aggressive that forces authoritarian regimes to spring to the offensive. Instead, it can be of European characteristics, focusing on stabilizing countries that are in the course of democratic transition or democratic consolidation rather than regime change 275 (Kopstein 2006). Not treating elections as political conjunctures as critical as the U.S.-dominated political approach does, nor does it exclude working in partnership with authoritarian regimes, this stance nonetheless put an emphasis on technocratic governance work (especially capacity building for state institutions), civil society programming, and protection of social and economic rights along with political and civil rights (Carothers 2009b). Even the American development agency, USAID, would allow their aid recipient Asian nongovernmental organizations to take a middle-of-the-road approach between democracy and development that addresses the most urgent needs of the relevant societies (Golub 2000). Since its inception as a euphemistic measure of war reparation to its former victim nations in the name of keizai kyoryoku (economic cooperation), Japanese foreign aid was known for being heavily parlayed for investment and trade opportunities instead of externalizing “the values of an electorate”, as domestic liberal voices were usually marginalized in the process (Arase 1993). 120 While democracy was included as a factor for aid allocation in the 1992 ODA Charter, primarily as a result of peer pressure from Western allies, the new approach taking in political and social concerns was resisted by the powerful economic bureaucracies and business lobbies (Hook and Zhang 1998). And to the extent that humanitarianism in Japanese ODA has been on the rise in recent decades (Chan 1992) (Katada 2002), not only does the “people-centered” recalibration have to compete with domestic consideration of economic returns at a time public support of foreign aid is waning, but the whole concept of human security is as amorphous as broad such that the 120 This does not mean other donors are not self-serving. But the specificity of interest does differ, as some have perspicuous political and ideological preferences (Schraeder et al. 1998). 276 development projects still congregate in conventional areas including infrastructure, disaster relief, public health, and poverty alleviation. There is no denying that Japanese foreign policy at the aggregate level has become more sensitive to the political winds in international relations. It often takes note of the plight of people living in nondemocratic regimes and was quick to extend economic assistance to countries undergoing political transformation, as in the aftermath of the Arab Spring and the recent top-down opening in Myanmar. The bottom line remains, however, that the Japanese government is yet to elevate in a consistent manner democracy promotion as a national strategy or international priority. A more internationally engaged Japan is more humanistic, but its brand of humanitarianism is not yet on a par with “Liberal Humanitarianism” characterized by “the liberal peace, globalization, and human rights” (Barnett 2011 9). Globally, faced with the insurgency of autocratic great powers whose fortune was revived by a combination of state capitalism and authoritarianism (Gat 2007), there were calls for a more institutionalized “league of democracies” that should brace themselves again for intensive ideological rivalry; Japan was again deemed a default member of this club (Kagan 2008) but proponents may be well advised to temper their expectation of an avid democracy promoter in Japan. Because it toyed with democracy’s internationalization before, at least rhetorically. The ephemerality of the Arc of Freedom and Prosperity and the media blitz shows that it was an aberration rather than an objective shared by Japanese political elites. More importantly, this “test-run” of Japan’s copycat value diplomacy caused so much awkward unease and discomfort domestically and internationally that some feared that Japan’s 277 membership in any democracy-only consortium—an idea that received much attention during the 2008 presidential election in the United States—would be a “drag on the system rather than a dynamic contributor” to the overall enterprise (Konishi 2008). The government’s inaction and people’s unfamiliarity with democracy promotion may have mutually contributed to the public’s lack of enthusiasm for value diplomacy. As public opinion polls from the last 20 years reveals, using freedom, democracy, and human rights as an option to enhance Japan’s international contribution consistently received the lowest level support from the Japanese public along with economic assistance to developing countries. 121 The Japanese public generally react to foreign policy initiatives rather than make policy, leaving the strategizing and implementation to the politicians, bureaucrats and other political elites. The curious paradox is that those very Japanese elites who proudly brandished the democracy banner tend to be right-wing conservatives whose display of illiberalism in the whitewashing of Japan’s own past cannot be more farcical and self-contradictory to their professed democratic values. Japanese political heavyweights, such as Abe and Aso, had repeatedly made outrageous comments making light of Japan’s war responsibility and denying the truthfulness of Comfort Women and the Nanjing Massacre, and brushed off objections from China and South Korea by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine at sensitive times. Controversies related to these historical legacies can easily galvanize domestic public opinion in Japan as much as in China and Korea in a 121 The unpopularity of ODA was mostly likely due to the economic stagnation at home since the bubble economy burst in the late 1980s and deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations given that China for many years was the largest ODA recipient, whereas the uptick of support for the democracy cause may be a reasonable reaction to the Arc policy. 278 mutually hostile manner, reflecting incompatible historical identities between the two sides (Shibuichi 2005). Thus instigators are not confined to a few Japanese politicians alone, as similar sentiment is shared across the broad spectrum of Japanese political elites whose electoral future may be on the line (Ryu 2007; Cheung 2010). Regardless of what the other parties do, apathetic amnesia and objectionable provocations by prominent Japanese elites in whatever capacity not only raises genuine doubts about Japan’s sincerity and commitment to practicing what it preaches internationally, but have also deprived Japan of a great deal of credibility as a responsible great power. This research takes a holistic and comprehensive view of states’ involvement in international society. Rather than focusing on one policy area Japan is or is not proactively engaged in, I seek to probe not only the selective manner with which Japan participate in global governance but also the deeper philosophical and intellectual foundation that gave rise to it. In the following chapter, I will critically analyze several arguments put forth by Japanese officials and scholars that seek to explicate Japan’s lack of interest in democracy assistance. One of these theories, the developmentalism thesis, rings more truth than others, but it only tells us why the democracy narrative has been stunted, not why it democracy was not a focal point of discussion in the post-Cold War Japanese diplomatic trajectory. This in turn leads me to contextualize the kokusai kokka and futsu no kuni discourses that lent nationalist justification into for Japanese diplomatic activism in the past two decades or so. 279 Chapter 6 The Logic of Japan’s Participation in Global Governance Democracy as the Missing Link In recent decades as successive Japanese governments have talked up the notion of “kokusai koken” (international contribution), the country has exhibited many signs of liberal internationalism, a foreign policy doctrine that has given rise to some good Samaritan behavior intended to improve the general welfare of international society. Of those initiatives enlightened by benign liberalism, development aid was the first one Japan was known for, although it began as war reparations after the World War II. Since the early 1990s, Japan has enthusiastically embraced peace-keeping as another policy pillar of international mission after some heated national debates over its national identity. At the same time, however, in spite of all the expectations and peer pressure from friendly Western allies, Japan has yet to, as I have demonstrated in previous chapter, take on the advancement of democracy and human rights as a project equally worthy of its support. Such is the Japanese enthusiasm in economic aid and international peace missions that its motto on global governance is said to be “peace without justice” (Brysk 2009). Or, even better, as I would call it, “peaceful development without democracy.” Peace and democracy are like twins. An aspiring good-Samaritan state is expected to decide which should come first—much the same way like deciding which of the twins to pluck out of danger at a time of disaster. Both are facets of a more humane society, but when only one objective can be prioritized it can still be peace without justice and democracy, or democracy that can well be unstable or tumultuous. For practitioners charged with solving these problems, “issues of timing and sequencing are both sources of 280 the dilemma between efforts to promote democracy and peace – and key to a possible way to a synchronized war-to-democracy transition” (Jarstad and Sisk 2008 9). For states wanting to make a difference in the world, the choice cannot be more affected by their value system embedded in their own national experience and political culture. That Japan has made it abundantly clear that it would rather be a peace-keeper and peace-builder than a democracy promoter behooves us to investigate the extent to which democracy matters as a zeitgeist in the Japanese political conscience and discourse. In the last chapter, I have argued against the liberal assumption of Japan’s diplomatic expansion based on its general lack of interest in international democracy promotion, a critical element of liberal internationalism. This chapter is a continuation of that discussion. My task is twofold. First, I will examine several theses—the history burden argument, the Asian identity perspective, the development-oriented thesis—that expound on Japan’s foreign policy on human rights and democracy. Reviewing their main assumptions based on pertaining empirical evidence, I fully intend to check on their logical consistency before arriving at one thesis as the most plausible one. Specifically, apropos of the history argument, I show that while war guilt was a significant factor for Japan’s weariness to wade into other countries’ domestic politics, it has worn off significantly in connection with the generational change and the rise of popular and state nationalism. The assertion of Asian identity, on the other hand, is too elusive to have a meaningful impact on foreign policy. Japan’s purported solidarity with Asia, I argue, was rather a quest for leadership in Asia, which fractured with the rise of China. The claim of developmentalism, in contrast, makes more sense not only because it is referenced numerous times by 281 Japanese officials but also because it has been embodied in large part by Japanese foreign aid practices. It is most plausible also because the problematique of democracy within the post-WWII Japanese political discourse has long been overshadowed by debates about the economy and peace. On this question, one might ask, is there at all a philosophical or intellectual underpinning of the Japanese perspectives on the world order and its proper role in it? To say “no” is to imply that a state performs its necessary functions in a thoughtless, rudderless and even reckless manner without actually knowing what it really wants. On the other hand, to say that all it does is to pursue interest without specifying what that concretely entails is tantamount to saying nothing meaningful because the statement itself is tautological. The notion of interest for a state in contemporary international relations is so nebulous that we have to stringently stipulate a priori empirical parameters for the term before empirically testing various propositions. For their convenience, IR realists and neoliberal scholars confine interest to a set of materially based goals and objectives, against which constructivists have been able to demonstrate the inadequacies of materialism. Rejecting the straightforward interest argument, I follow a constructivist ontology in assuming that interests are ideationally constructed. Building on existing research detailing aspects of Japan’s involvement in the international order and global governance, notably the evolution over the years of Japanese security policy, foreign aid and the peace-keeping missions, my second task is to contextualize the broader contours of the particular international activism that Japan has manifested since the late 1980s and early 1990s. Contra the burgeoning literature relying 282 the framework of international norms and socialization that usually depicts an increasingly progressive and liberal evolution of Japan in world affairs, I trace the genesis of this movement toward greater participation international affairs to the boisterous debates more than two decades ago revolving around notions of kokusai kokken (international contribution) and futsu no kuni (normal country). These debates, first initiated by conservative nationalist politicians, mobilized public opinion in support of a more muscular, activist approach toward enhancing international peace in lieu of Japan’s time-honored pacifism that was innately passive. Again, despite its liberal internationalist facade, it was of realist essence—so as to revitalize the Japanese military in the name of engendering peace—as much as of a distinct nationalist purpose. Furthermore, it is juxtaposed against this contextualized background that we can better come to grips with two divergent perspectives in the study of Japan’s international behavior that have resulted in contradictory perceptions. That is, on the one hand, analysts hopeful of a liberal internationalist Japan highlight its positive contributions—including peacekeeping and peace building in war-torn regions of the world as well as delivering aid and technical to stimulate economic growth of poor countries—precisely the way the Japanese government wants people to feel about Japan; on the other hand, observers mindful of Japanese revisionism and the regional context tend to emphasize the upsurge of Japanese nationalism that is illiberal, at times assertive, aggressive and even virulent. Owing to the nature of these questions, this analytical level of the inquiry is state-level and sees the Japanese state as one unitary actor with the full functional capacities to make strategic decisions on the stage of world politics in the face of myriad 283 domestic and international constraints after the Cold War. It is a clear attempt to ferret out the intellectual and psychological frame of reference Japanese leaders relied upon in designing a path for their country to advance its international prominence while simultaneously trying to mould the international environment, both objectives perceived as in the national interest of Japan that was evolving with the time and circumstances. THE PAST AS A DRAG ON THE PRESENT We humans live in and learn from history, and “history allows for the inheritance of acquired characteristics, even if biology does not” (Gaddis 1992). Given Japan’s past during the World War II as a perpetrator of the most heinous atrocities against humanities, it is not surprising to assume that Japanese politicians and policymakers, acutely aware of lingering enmity toward the country, would feel weak-kneed and ill-qualified to lecture other governments on the imperative of democracy and human rights. In the words of Yoichi Funabashi, a noted journalist and columnist for the more liberal leaning Asahi Shimbun who himself was born in Beijing before the end of the war, the guilt factor goes both ways in that those “profound political and psychological inhibitions” not only forces Japan to practice self-restraint but also serves as a convenient excuse for its Asian neighbors to push back against Japan for what they might consider as intrusive and unfriendly behavior (Funabashi 1991 63). Consequently, many scholars claim, the sense of guilt stemming from that national past makes it prohibitively difficult for Japanese officials to add some overtly political 284 content to its international agenda, nor would their Asian peers be receptive to the idea and the very policy (Orr Jr 1993 84). That sentiment renders Japan’s bountiful ODA package as carrots but not sticks in terms of the options and policy instruments Japan have toward a more human rights-centered policy. Likewise, in demonstrating their disapproval at avowedly ideological and divisive political purposiveness in the American democracy promotion program in the name of creating a perpetually peaceful world, many Japanese observers I talked to likened it to imperial Japan’s Grater East Asia Co-Periphery Sphere, a propaganda scheme aimed at justifying the Japanese colonial war in terms of Asians against Western colonialists of the white race. An additional derivative from this experience is, according to my Japanese interlocutors, that Japanese people tend to have some innate suspicion toward claims of universality of certain political values, and are therefore instinctively hesitant to impose theirs on other peoples. Historical experience matters, but the crux of this debate is to what extent it matters. The magnitude of the defeat and the collapse of the imperial ideology, and the pervasive sense of victimhood among the people helped cement—in the form of “negotiated reality” whereby policy compromise was negotiated and legitimated, according to Thomas Berger—a new political-military culture that gave rise to post-war Japanese antimilitarism. That, in turn, has been embedded in its myriad political institutions and manifested in an aversion shared by all walks of life to the use of force in international relations and to building a military force commensurate with Japan’s economic prowess (Berger 1998). The marquee idea behind this fortress of economic mercantilism and political inaction, the Yoshida doctrine, was entrenched in the formal rejection of war in the constitution, the 285 informal 1 percent GNP ceiling on defense spending, and a public ideology that internalized the perception that the Japanese military, the Self-defense Force, was not military in nature (Chai 1997). The we-can-only-mind-our-own-business sentiment being so pervasive, Japanese foreign policy “precludes value judgments,” says Kiichi Miyazawa—whose public service career includes stints as the country’s prime minister, foreign minister, and finance minister: “It is a foreign policy which excludes all value judgment. It is a pretense of a foreign policy…since there are no real value judgment possible we cannot say anything…All we can do when we are hit on the head is pull back” (Pyle 1987 11). Historical constraints aside, the Japanese made the best out of what was possible. Insomuch as it can be explained as reacting to the defeat and the constitutional straitjacket on the Japanese military, Japan’s international passivity, one argument goes, is “better understood as a strategy to allow Japan to pursue its national interests of economic growth with a minimum of domestic political turmoil” (Pyle 1992 199). While it is impossible to deny that historical memories have indelible impact on the thinking of certain Japanese elites, the idea that war-time Japanese experience to this day still constitutes a mental block for Japan to advance democracy and human rights overseas is a claim carried beyond its depth. In particular, one is on solid ground to question why the guilt derived from the exact experience could be so inexorable and effective as to make the Japanese government sheepish on human rights violations in other countries—but not powerful enough to effect change in its police so that the many unpleasant war legacies can be addressed in more 286 humane manner. The maladroit handling of these emotional and sensitive issues clearly indicate otherwise. Japanese equivocations over the war past have now been well documented by historians, journalists, and political scientists. Amidst lingering bitterness over the painful memories, insensitive or inopportune actions ranging from whitewashing and flat-out denials of certain historical events to evasive prevarication of responsibilities, are perpetual flash points in Japan’s relations with its Asian neighbors (China and the Koreas in particular) that can now and then roil emotions and provoke popular protests. Owing to the opaque nature of the bilateral negotiations that led to the normalization of Japan’s diplomatic relations with China and South Korea, some fundamental questions such as state-to-state apologies and compensation were glossed over in the process. 122 At the center of the many emotionally distraught controversies are the treatment of those Comfort Women, the Yasukuni Shrine, and the Nanjing Massacre. Take the Comfort Women for instance. Largely due to the social stigma attached to it, the question did not emerge to the frontline of open discussion and debate until the 1980s, and only after sufficient international exposure and public pressure from the South Korean government did the Japanese government agree to help establish the National/Asian Women’s Fund in 1995 charged with raising public funds and private donations and distributing “atonement money” to the victims in Korea, the Netherlands, Taiwan, and the Philippines. 123 In trying 122 Neither Seoul nor Tokyo, for example, raised the question of comfort women in the 14 years of negotiation leading up to the establishment of formal diplomatic relations in 1965 (Soh 2003 214). The same was with the Beijing-Tokyo negotiations 123 The practice did not extend to victims in mainland China because Beijing “did not want to help in establishing an authorisation system for women, like the South Korean government did”, Chris Hogg, “Japan's divisive 'comfort women' fund,” accessed 01/22/2012, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6530197.stm 287 to diffuse a contentious issue of moral and political implications under international spotlight, the Japanese government ended up “reducing it to a technical problem” (Tamamoto 2003 203). And Japan’s conundrum was on full display as Fund was not a fully mandated state/government entity but was nonetheless being directed by the Japanese government (Soh 2003). 124 To criticize officials’ handling of the sensitive memories is not to say that Japan suffers from total historical amnesia. To be fair, the evasive and even offensive narrative about the past stems primarily from “the nature of the international system in Asia” that was favorable to Japan as much as “the character of the dominant political elites in the immediate postwar era” (Berger 2012). Moreover, as the war guilt fades along with generational replacement, the convoluted discourse of the past by the elites continues to gain ground among the public. In turn, the Japanese state’s inability to solve those lingering controversies satisfactorily has been caught up in not only domestic politics but geopolitical considerations of all major players—China, the two Koreas, the United States—further complicating the matter in a vicious cycle (Berger 2012). Prominent leaders—Koizumi, Abe, Aso, et al—are of the generation of politicians whose professed (im)penitence pales against their expressed nationalist sentiments. These contradictions escaped few astute observers. When unveiling to a friendly domestic audience his vision of the “Arc of Freedom and Prosperity,” Taro Aso acknowledged the Western-likeness of his brainchild and the history baggage Japan had to barge into the territory of “virtuous 124 In much the same way lawsuits by enforced Chinese laborers abducted to Japan and their representatives launched in Japanese courts fared, legal challenges to the Japanese state by Korean Comfort Women were too thrown out by Japanese courts on the grounds that the bilateral government-to-government treaty on establishing formal diplomatic relations had settled all relevant disputes associated with the war and thus absolved the Japanese government of further liabilities and obligations. 288 conscience.” 125 While American officials applauded the long-awaited move by their junior partner to partake in the democracy-export franchise, the propaganda extravaganza also put under the limelight the contradictions between the moralistic speech act and the inadequacies of repentant action. 126 The doublespeak fooled few people in Asia as both Aso and Shinzo Abe, were both on the record denying that the involvement of the Japanese government in coercively recruiting Comfort Women during World War II. 127 THE ASIAN AVERSION TO DEMOCRACY? Prodded by the United States, Japan has the financial wherewithal to help accelerate the political liberalization and democratization process in Asia. All of that makes its reluctance and hesitation all the more striking. A perspective thereby claims that the self-awareness of Japan’s role in World War II made the Japanese government sensitive to Asian neighbor’s anxiety over their state sovereignty. Geographically located in Asia and striving to build cordial relations with its regional neighbors, Japan can identify itself simultaneously as an advanced industrialized democracy aligned with the West as much as an Asian country. Tokyo’s non-intrusive and accommodative approach toward human rights henceforth stems from this Asian identity, it is often argued, and its formulation of human security consequently adheres to the mutual respect for state 125 “Speech by Mr. Taro Aso, Minister of Foreign Affairs at the Occasion of the Japan Institute of International Affairs Seminar, ‘Arc of Freedom and Prosperity: Japan’s Expanding Diplomatic Horizons,” accessed 02/01/2012, http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/fm/aso/speech0611.html. 126 David Fouse, “Japan’s ‘value-oriented diplomacy’”, The New York Times, March 21, 2007. 127 A former senior official at the Ministry of Foreign Ministry in my interview with him also affirmed that all of them were commercially recruited in a typical private business manner. See, also,Washington Post editorial, “Shinzo Abe’s Double Talk: He’s passionate about Japanese victims of North Korea and blind to Japan’s own war crimes,” March 24, 2007. 289 sovereignty and non-interference in accordance with those norms held dear by people and government in this part of the world (Katsumata 2006). Although hard to measure cross-nationally, Asian states do tend to seize sovereignty as both “a cherished national asset” and a principle for international conduct because of the everlasting collective memories of the colonial past and major wars, nationalist sentiments as well as the absence of a shared sense of security community (Moon and Chun 2003). To the extent that the Asian identity thesis has its roots in colonialism, it can be seen as a variation of the burden of history logic. Echoing this perspective, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) invokes both the lessons of history and Japan’s Asian-ness to stake out its position on regional affairs as follows: “Respecting the independence and autonomy of various members of the Asia-Pacific region, Japan must cooperate with them, aiming together at both peace and development in the region. It is imperative that Japan be ever mindful of the unfortunate history that transpired between Japan and the other members of the Asia-Pacific region, and it is also essential that Japan remembers that developments, particularly economic developments, have a major impact on the entire region. As a stabilizing factor in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan should do its best to contribute to the further development and greater stability of the region. It is necessary to respect the wishes of other countries in promoting Asia-Pacific cooperation.” (Affairs 1990 11-12). No differently, when explaining or defending Japan’s nonchalance to violations of human rights and the poor state of democracy in the region, Japanese officials and intellectuals point to Japan’s sensitivity toward other Asian nations’ concern over their state sovereignty on these historical ground. This in fact is a misattribution of causes, I argue, because there is nothing particularly “Asian” about sovereignty and non-interference, which is more of a reflection of overall sentiments in the Third World than of Asian-ness per se. Overall, Japanese reluctance to wade in debates about human rights and democracy is more germane to Japan itself rather than its Asian identity. In a 290 fairly similar fashion, those arguing along these “Asian” lines often conflate Japan’s geographical and social belonging in Asia with the “Asian values” that do not necessarily apply to Japan. For one thing, much of the talk of Asian communitarianism came from authoritarian states such as Singapore, Malaysia, and China, where emphasis on their civilizational and cultural distance from the West is often used to deflect pressure from democratization and strengthen their national identity (Thompson 2001). For another, as Rozman points out, domestic debates about its national identity within Japan is between a Japan more ideologically aligned with the West, the United States in particular, and an ethnocentric view (nihonjinron) that puts a premium on the Japanese uniqueness (Rozman 2002)—instead of the Asian identity or value system that is more expansive. Moreover, already a well-established democracy, Japan itself attests to the fallacy that equates democracy with Western individualism in contradiction of Asian or Japanese values. In addition, many Japanese remained skeptical toward the reinvigorated Asianism as they pointed to the great variance in the political trajectories of Asian nations, especially the comparatively benign leadership the Japanese state provided in guiding a transformative economic juggernaut that was much less heavy-handed and authoritarian in contrast to the state in other Asian experiences. 128 Given that the Asian values were most enthusiastically endorsed by leaders in countries of conservative or authoritarian streak, an argument is also made that the ideological confrontation between East and West masked in cultural relativism is in fact intended to either protect their commercial or political interests, or to promote their internally driven “agendas of a conservative or neo-liberal nature that 128 Shin’ichi Kitaoka, “Japan’s Identity and What It Means,” accessed 02/04/2012, http://www.jfir.or.jp/e/special_study/seminar1/conver_3.htm. 291 [were] justified with reference to Asia” (Rodan 1996). Nevertheless, Asia’s collective rise gave impetus to a greater desire to define Asia and differentiate it from the West, a conscientious endeavor “animated by workaday pragmatism, the social awakening of a flourishing middle class and the moxie of technocrats, although still tinged perhaps by anticolonialist resentment, racism and indifference to civil liberties” (Funabashi 1993). A consternation of diversified opinions and assertions, the “Asian values” claim was a revolt against the excessive emphasis in the West on the individual and generally gravitated more toward greater emphasis on society and the state in our political and social life. 129 The MOFA statement cited above strikes the lofty notes of cooperation, peace, and development with no reference to democracy and human rights, not an unusual thing. That said, because Japan is always a major knot through which the Untied States coordinates its Asian policy and fits it into its global strategy, it just cannot steer clear of American democracy promotion. Fro Japanese leaders, it is said, their notion of democracy is inseparable from the alliance with the United State—“a set” (Tamamoto 1990). In the early 1990s, Washington needed Japan to help pay the bills for the Gulf War and the financial package necessary for the Soviet Union/Russia to democratize. Japan complied to the former request, albeit grudgingly. As for aid to Russia, Japan resisted vehemently, having determined that a democratized Russia would have little impact on the territorial dispute and Japan’s strategic environment. After much equivocation using the “seikei bunri” 129 To some, Asian values comprise of “a stress on the community rather than the individual, the privileging of order and harmony over personal freedom, refusal to compartmentalize religion away from other spheres of life, a particular emphasis on saving and thriftiness, an insistence on hard work, a respect for political leadership, a belief that government and business need to necessarily be natural adversaries, and emphasis on family loyalty.” See, Anthony Milner, “What's Happened to Asian Values?” accessed 10/09/2011, https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/41912/2/values.html 292 (separation of politics from economics) principle as a shield, the Japanese government finally came up with—not without much pushing and shoving by the peers in the G7 group—a new ODA charter in 1992 that for the first time adopted democratization and human rights as critical parameters for aid allocation and deliverance. In the March 1993 Bangkok meeting aimed at thrashing out an Asian consensus in preparation for the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in June, the Japanese representative engaged representatives of Indonesia, China, Singapore, and Malaysia by asserting the universality and indivisibility of human rights as well as the priority of human rights over development goals. The Bangkok Declaration hewed to the “Asian values” opinion that human rights were a matter of a state’s internal sovereignty, to which Japan was a signatory. Tokyo then tried to retreat from that position by voicing its reservation, putting at vivid display the balancing act between maintaining its solidarity with Asia and demonstrating its unity with the West on the subject (Neary 2000 85) (Yokota and Aoi 2000 125). Finally, Japan’s rejection of the “Asian values” came through loud and clear in the subsequent U.N. Conference, Nobuo Matsunaga, envoy of the Japanese government, echoed Japan’s rejection of human rights condition on the grounds of cultural relativism, stating unambiguously that “[Human] rights are universal values common to all mankind.. Japan firmly believes that the international community must remain committed to the principles set forth in the [Universal] Declaration [of Human Rights] and the [Twin] Covenants…It is the duty of all States, wherever the cultural tradition, whatever their political or economic system, to protect and promote these values.” (Tang 1995 217) The 1990s also saw Japan itself quickening its pace in conforming to international human rights norms through legal reforms and adopting a series of covenants protecting children, women and minorities. The impetus was lobbying by domestic non-governmental 293 organizations as much as the concerted efforts to establish itself as a credible candidate for a seat in the UN Security Council (Neary 2000 90-91) (Gurowitz 1999). Finally, the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 exposed some fundamental weakness of the Asian crony capitalism as much as the notion of “Asian values.” 130 At the regional level, the frosty reception of Japan in China and Korea remains an insurmountable hurdle for fostering a genuine sense of Asian community between Japan and continental Asia. 131 The Elephant in the Room Historically Japan always has had an ambiguous relationship with Asia. Yet vaulted as the notion that Japan should “abandon Asia and join the Western club” (datsu-a ryu-o) is, Japan cannot simply quit Asia—not only because Japan is in Asia but also because Asia matters to Japan. Until Asia’s economic surge, it is important to Japan as a market for Japanese industrial products and investment and a source origin for raw materials. At the level of international politics, Japan prides itself for being the bridge between East and West, and the leader of Asia. 132 Until recently Japanese officials made no efforts to hide the intention for speaking for Asia at venues when geographically and racially Japan was the only one non-Western nation present. China may be the permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, but until its economy was catapulted to the front row of global giants, Japan was the presumptive leader of Asia and the only Asian voice in 130 Some countries, especially Indonesia, had their political landscapes transformed as a result, whereas Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew had a change of heart about Asian values. 131 As Mastanduno astutely observes, “Despite proclamations of ‘Asian values,’ an ‘Asian way,’ or ‘Asian century,’ Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans, among others, do not typically think of themselves as ‘Asians’ sharing some type of common political project” (Mastanduno 2011 77). 132 Not that its Asian neighbors embraced it wholeheartedly. Some still remember with a taste of bitterness that in competing for the position of non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council in 1978, almost all Asian votes went to Bangladesh instead, see, (Funabashi 1993). 294 the dialogue with the United States, Canada and European powers at the G-7 (later G-8), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. What is more, Japan was intent on promoting—as an alternative to the neoliberal economic model—its trademark developmental state abroad (Lee 2008), whose success—until the crisis of 1998—in the region might well have emboldened Japan in return in spite of its own economic malaise in the decade. Henceforth there rose a sense of we-ness with Asia, for which it claimed the spokesmanship by positioning itself between its Asian “followers” and its Western partners. The dilemma of this leader-of-Asia complex was at its most acute display with respect to Japan’s relations with China. Until the mid-1990s the Sino-Japanese relations were flourishing. Disputes about territory and history were either neglected or shelved, leaders of both sides struck personal relations and were sensitive to each other’s balancing act in domestic politics. 133 The Chinese, dazzled by Japan’s technological sophistication and awestruck by its economic size, were eager to learn and deigned to regard themselves as students, a swap of historical roles in the two thousand years of cultural ties between the two countries. The Japanese, grateful that the Chinese were willing to let the bygones be bygones but also mindful of an enormous market right next door, encouraged bilateral exchanges, trade and investment. Beginning in 1980, Japan supplied yen loans on favorable terms, grant aid as well a technical cooperation worth more than 3 trillion yen over the course of nearly 30 years to China. Japanese aid was a significant lifeblood for the 133 For instance, upon learning Hu Yaobang, the general secretary of the Communist Party and Deng Xiaoping’s designated successor, came under attack as a result of his friendly relations with Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone after the latter’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, Nakasone voluntarily refrained from paying further official homage to the site and declared he would decide on future visits on a case-by-case basis. 295 Chinese government before inbound foreign direct investment caught up and the indigenous economy took off in the 1990s. As the previous chapter has detailed, Beijing was confronted with international isolation and severe shortage of investment in the wake of the Tian’anmen Incident. In both cases it was Japan that came to Beijing’s rescue. Not only was Japan the first major power to lessen international sanctions by economic overtures, it even attempted to shield the Chinese leadership from criticism. So special was the relationship that in the G-7 negotiations Tokyo tried to trade its endorsement for aid to Russia’s democratization in exchange for the group’s support for its resumption of ODA to China by essentially claiming that “China is Japan’s Russia” (Yasutomo 1995 166-167). Occasionally Japan’s aversion to human rights diplomacy got in the way between China and the West. “[It] is not proper to force a Western- or European-type democracy onto others,” Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa reportedly told his Chinese counterpart just when the Clinton administration was making good on its campaign promise of getting tough with Beijing on its human rights violations, thus creating quite a stir and further revealing a rift with the West. 134 Asia, along with the West, was the “other” by which Japanese national identity was constructed, and Japan’s Asian conundrum and identity crisis was really a question about “whether Japan in Asia [could] develop a sense of equality” (Tamamoto 2006). Vis-à-vis China, that sense of superiority was primarily defined in terms of economic disparity but colored by a disdainful taste of its political immaturity symbolized by the communist system. Yet China’s meteoric rise since the 1990s has accentuated the reversal of fortune 134 Reuters, “Western Idea of Human Rights Is Foreign, Japan Leader Tells China,” March 22, 1994. 296 by making the post-bubble deflation-plagued Japan look like the drag for Asia’s collective progress. More importantly, the structural condition of the international system changed: the USSR is no more, and the balance of power in Asia is tipping in China’s favor. Against this backdrop, one argument goes, Japan has been goaded into a newfound assertiveness by the United States, as the latter worked to reform the US-Japan Security Treaty to contain China (Wu 2005). The old-time bargain ran out its course: Japanese officials become more forceful in pushing back against Beijing on issues ranging from Taiwan to the use of history card. Domestically within Japan, with the demise of the pro-China Socialist Party and the fraying of the “friendship generation,” Japanese elites coalesced around to a new realization that China no longer deserved special treatment and should be dealt with as a normal country (Mochizuki 2007 241). Concerns over China’s rise and its action, some say, forced Japan to phase out an approach derived from its “geo-cultural identity” toward the direction of “‘Western’ identity in the field of human rights” (Takagi 1995). The rationale is that as Japan becomes more actively engaged with international affairs, a trend accelerated by the “reluctant realism” instigated by the Gulf War diplomatic humiliation (Green 2001), it will have to identify more with those Western values. 135 Yet to the extent this identity and ideological shift is true, it has not—as I have documented earlier—motivated Japan into adopting a more proactive strategic approach and policy vis-à-vis democracy and human rights. Incidentally, on the subject of Asian identity, contrary to the assumption of a prevalent Asian identity, the intensified rivalry between the two Asian giants has done a tremendous 135 As a result of rising mutual mistrust and security imperatives Sino-Japanese relations was ushered into an era of “competitive coexistence” (Wu 2000). 297 disservice to deepening regional integration, a confidence-enhancing process that may well be instrumental in solidifying a sense of common destiny among all Asians. THE ECONOMY-FIRST-THEN-DEMOCRACY SEQUENCE While Asian values are cultural and conceptual, the world problems states are confronted with are real and complicated. As the saying goes, bad things come in threes. In circumstances where external assistance or intervention is warranted there usually are numerous challenges that fall into three main categories of different nature: economic development, violence and conflict, and deprivation of basic human rights and civil liberties. This grim picture presents the outsiders with the conceptual questions about the roots of these problems as well as prioritizing. There is a delicate balance to strike, but my earlier review of liberal internationalism suggests that for most liberal good Samaritan states, the United States in particular, point to democratization as the uttermost important urgency (so that the government is endowed with political legitimacy before tackling other herculean tasks at hand). By virtue of not putting democracy promotion on the back burner, Japan has a different diagnosis of the dire situation and conceptual understanding of a causal relationship between the two knotty problems, ie., poverty and underdevelopment vs political disorder and restrictions on civil liberties. Many Japanese officials, when asked why Japan is not interested in advancing democracy and human rights overseas, would not make the connection to Japanese interests in trade and investment overseas even as they stress Japanese ODA as a critical policy instrument. Instead, they would confess to 298 subscribe to a development-focused thinking akin to the modernization theory that was wildly popular in both academic and policy circles in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Their reasoning is that certain level of economic development is the necessary material and social preconditions for democracy and democratization, and only when economic development has reached a certain level can a state achieve stable democracy that guarantees basic rights for its citizens, whereas imposed or premature democratization can be dangerously destabilizing and therefore detrimental to people’s wellbeing. “Economic development and stability form important foundations to the democratization and the introduction of a market economy,” says the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Affairs 1995 65). The contrast with the United States therefore is stark, as some Japanese intellectuals recognize: while the Americans believe in “development and international peace through promotion of democracy,” the Japanese sees democratization as a process that is dependent on a certain level of material achievement (Takeda 1997). As cogent as it may sound, the conception of democratization as described above ironically defies Japan’s own historical trajectory as the Japanese democracy itself and the marquee pacifist constitution were both forced upon it by the Americans following imperial Japan’s surrender in 1945. In other words, democracy came to Japan not in the form of a “trend” but a “big bang.” Yet cloaked in the modernization rationale, the official Japanese narrative can be deceptively convincing. After all, nobody will dispute the fact that democracy and development are mutually re-enforcing. And the Japanese narrative is remarkably similar to the modernization thesis, invented and promoted during the Cold War to fight the war of ideas with the Communist bloc and legitimatize the postwar liberal 299 order (Latham 2000; Gilman 2003). Back then, proponents of modernization theory avidly preached it in Japan—Ambassador Edwin Reischauer being the most earnest and effective spokesman owing to his illustrious academic expertise and high profile in Japan (Packard 2010)—in order to fend off the raging Marxist theory. Trying to retrofit Japanese history in line with Western experience, modernization scholars were said to be consumed with “an immediate, practical concern with ‘democratizing’ Japanese society” (Gordon 1993 413). The unintended consequences after Japan “made it,” some say, was the comeback of Japanese nationalism and the self-perception as an economic power (Gordon 1993 413). Reflecting on his influential developmental state theory featuring state planning and intervention in the management of Japanese economy, Johnson poses a revealing question: “Is Japan a democracy under the rule of law, or is it merely administered through law when convenient?” (Johnson 1999 50-54). To answer the question one must comprehend the Japanese national ethos that conceived of economic development as the overriding concern. Indeed, it is a visceral understanding also shared by many other Asian nations anxious to catch up with the West and the rest after decades of foreign colonization and humiliation, which is also why the nature of political authority in Asia took a shape different from the sense of mandate bestowed by a Western conception of civil society (Johnson 1999 50-54; Crane 1998). 136 As such, insofar as market forces were a socio-political mechanism optimal for achieving the desired economic goals, political authoritarianism could be of expedient use, as proven by the quasi-authoritarianism in Japan that was distinct from Western liberal democracy (Johnson 1999 50-54). Johnson’s 136 Facing accelerated global competition and integration, economic nationalism too was behind Japan’s reluctant economic liberalization since the 1990s (Hall 2004). 300 question in and of itself is an rebuke of the Japanese political system as much as a reflection of illiberal-ness in Japan, for which he pinpoints nationalism at the root of the developmental model Japan first popularized and copied by neighboring Asian nations. Echoing this observation, Bai Gao notes that rather than focusing on the firm or the market, as the orthodoxy of Western political economy is, “Japanese developmentalism addressed the issue of industrialization at the level of the nation-state and considered how to strengthen national production as the top priority of industrial policy” (Gao 2002 14). Whether Japan’s post-war economic and political trajectory confirms or rejects the modernization theory is a different question. 137 But the economy-first-democracy-second sequence does leave an indelible mark on the Japanese understanding of political economy. Some Japanese scholars and elites would use this version of Japan’s post-war economic and political development as rationale to justify the Japanese government’s indifference to democracy and human rights on foreign lands (Miyashita 2000 21-22). Such is the obsession with economic development that for many years Japanese ODA paid little heed to the human rights circumstances in its recipient countries, which in the end directly or indirectly contributed to development-oriented dictatorships’ violation of human rights (Sato 1994). Thus the democratization-through-development thesis—“regime changes in the Third World would be best effected through changes in economic and social structure and that democratization can be promoted indirectly through economic development” (Takeda 137 Referring to Japan in the pre-1990s era as a “mildly authoritarian country” with a democratic facade, Francis Fukuyama, thinks that what Japan went through after the bubble economy was a genuine democratization process. His reasoning is that earlier economic success were weighing down on an outdated political system, thus affirming the modernization theory (Fukuyama 1995). 301 1997 55) —as the intellectual compass for Japan’s participation in the global governance does make a lot of sense, at least insofar as the development-democracy nexus is concerned. Nevertheless, several conceptual and empirical questions linger. First, the argument that economic development should be prioritized over democracy is often politically expedient for governments to justify a foreign policy guided more by economic or strategic interests than moral principles. As an example, Japan’s reluctance to talk enough and impose sanctions on the junta regime in Burma/Myanmar is said to result from such economic and geopolitical calculations (Dalpino 2007). Second, to evaluate the claim that the developmetalism remains valid and rigorous in the contemporary Japanese political consciousness such that democracy promotion is blocked out as a policy option (Takeda 1997 55), we have to provide a contextualized roadmap on how it came to influence Japanese foreign policy making in the post-Cold War era. The text to follow addresses this question. THE INCEPTION OF JAPAN AS AN INTERNATIONAL STATE In the preceding sections I have examined three different explanations Japanese officials often invoke to explain and rationalize the evasiveness with which Japan has approached international democracy assistance. I find the theses of Asian identity and war guilt are deeply flawed, owing in larger part their internal incoherence. I do think, however, there is some plausibility to the developmentalist ethos. Much the same way the liberal missionary zeal has manifested itself in American foreign policy, developmenalism as an 302 conceptual framework with a straightforward causal sequence has not only prohibited Japan from taking up the banner of democracy in international affairs, it has also encouraged it to focus on what it think is good at, that is, helping strengthen the economic infrastructure of the recipients of its aid. That said, the economy-first generalization of political development explicates only Japan’s preference in terms of how they world order can be reformed and improved. After all, until well into the 1990s, ODA was pretty much the only major foreign policy tool at its disposal. Therefore, neither did its developmentalism nor the habitual way of using aid for diplomatic use shed enough light on what fundamentally motivates it to shed its indolence and isolationism and stand on its own merits on the international stage. The answer has to come from the intellectual movements of the post-Cold War era Japanese international relations that greatly politicized Japanese foreign policy. Since the last chapter examining Japan’s reluctance toward democracy assistance has excluded liberalism and international norms as the source of Japan’s international activism and put the limelight on nationalism and realism, in the text to follow I will contextualize the domestic foreign policy struggles over the role of Japan in a more globalized world. In so doing I will situate the democracy component in the broader context of Japanese foreign policy and juxtapose the democracy agenda against the two favorite themes of Japanese diplomacy: peace-keeping and development assistance. International Contribution within a Nationalist Frame 303 “Japanese are among the most nationalistic people in the world,” it is argued, because Japan’s ethnic homogeneity and collectivist culture provide a fertile soil for sociocultural nationalism “manifested not as a means of linking the citizen to the state but as a means of identifying with the nation” (Stronach 1995 164). The paramount emphasis since the end of the war on economic recovery and growth was by all means a mixture of economic nationalism and political realism, as national interests were defined strictly in economic terms and in lieu of more grandiose military and political ambition (Johnson 1982). State nationalism as more pertinent to international relations was suppressed by “Japan’s ‘fear of itself’” that no doubt stemmed from the devastation of the war and apprehension of a militaristic culture (Matthews 2003). But this psychological restraint gradually faded and gave away to a stronger sense of pride by the public’s self-awareness of Japan’s own economic success. From the 1980s on a growing cadre of Japanese political and intellectual elites no longer felt inhibited from criticizing their country’s subordination to the United States and deference to its neighbors. Shintaro Ishihara, famous for his The Japan That Can Say No and on the record for calling the Nanjing Massacre a fiction and Chinese propaganda, was instrumental in pushing nationalism to the mainstream. So strong is popular nationalism that, entering the new millennium, Japanese leaders’ handling of foreign criticism of Yasukuni shrine visits can even be used strategically to advance their domestic political gains (Cheung 2010). 138 138 Ishihara was instrumental in forcing the Sino-Japanese relations to its lowest point since the 1970s. Then major of Tokyo, Ishihara attempted to “buy” several isles of the disputed Senkakus/Diaoyu islands from a private owner, forcing the Japanese government to forestall him and nationalize those tiny rocks in the East China Sea. That move in turn infuriated Beijing. 304 Prominent nationalists could not tolerate a Japan whose international role is humiliatingly minuscule—vastly incommensurate with its economic clout—and constrained by its own constitution. At their prodding, an attempt to re-orient the very definition, content and substantive policy of Japan’s national interests through a global prism began to frame domestic debates in the name of Japan’s contribution to international society (kokusai kokken). In retrospect, this came as no surprise. For decades, anti-conservative pacifist views emphasizing Japanese cultural uniqueness and a neoconservative internationalist agenda countering anti-conservative pacifism had battled it out in the public sphere. Yet neither internationalism nor pacifism is the diametric opposite of nationalism, as they are both the means to service national grandeur as an end and therefore can be fused together to enrich the latter (Takekawa 2007). As such, when became Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone—a nationalist with conservative credential and ideals—took the task upon himself to refashion the role of the Japanese state in domestic political economy and international relations, the public mood had already moved on from the “catch-up modernization” ethos to an enlarged presence for Japan on the international stage (Muramatsu 1987). An earlier passionate critic of the Yoshida Doctrine, Nakasone’s grand vision for Japan was an image of Japan being “a leader of a new phase of human progress” that was to take the place of the passive Yoshida Doctrine as the new national consensus, or in his words, “replace Western industrial society as the image of Japan’s future with new goals that would be of Japan’s own making” (Pyle 1987 254-256). For that purpose he wasted no time trying to reform Japanese economic institutions while putting his imprint on 305 educational and social reforms in his attempt to fashion a new national character of his brand of liberal nationalism (Pyle 1987). In Nakasone’s own words, "In order to advance along the course of an international state (kokusai kokka no michi e zenshin suru), what is most important as one aspect (hanmen) of this transformation into an international state), is that (we Japanese) must know Japan itself. In other words, (this) is often called identity, (and this) is the identity argument (giron). Know not themselves, and comparisons and contrasts (taihi) (of Japan) with other countries cannot be made. Accordingly one aspect of this concept (hasso) of progressing toward an international state, to know ourselves means (hazu) that (Japan) must be studied with the same energy (that we expend on becoming an international state in the sense of contributing to world peace and prosperity)." 139 Jang observes that at the spiritual level, “The phenomenon of international contribution offers Japanese people a sort of ontological and epistemological basis through which they exist in international society…[The designation of kokusai kokka] is an act whereby Japan commits itself to international society or to the world into which its policies and actions are projected” (Jang). From all aspects this notion screams nationalism and realism. Tamamoto astutely observes back in 1990 that the idea of kokusaika (internationalization) was for Japan to respond to American concerns so as to maintain its alliance with the United States, thereby preserving Japan’s status as number two in the Pax Americana. 140 Nakasone would be the first Japanese prime minister after the war to worship at the Yasukuni Shrine, inviting acrimonious protests from China and the two Koreas. Under his tenure the one percent of GNP limit to defense budget was slashed—thus violating one major rule of the Yoshida Doctrine and one critical political 139 William Wetherall, The Japan Times, 26 November 1986, page 11, http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/yosha/yr/nationalism/Nakasone_remarks_on_intelligence_JT.html 140 He also states that, owing to the fact that Japanese democracy was imposed rather than homegrown, there was widespread fear that a more activist foreign policy that wielded Japanese state power across the national border would be too much for the Japanese democracy (Tamamoto 1990). 306 value of postwar Japan—in order to accommodate his pledge to the Americans as Washington’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in Asia against the Soviet Union. As for the specific content of “international contribution,” it consisted of such efforts as supporting the open trade system against protectionism, nuclear disarmament, and East-West dialogue as well as providing international development aid. As I have demonstrated earlier, the reliance on aid is by no means surprising. Such was the vibrancy and omnipresence of the developmental spirit that it took at least three different forms when stretching into world politics. In terms of geostrategic politics, economic nationalism as a state of mind was meant to remedy “status inconsistency” vis-à-vis the West (Woo-Cumings 1999 6); and even in a lopsided alliance with the United States, Japan was able to resort to economic balancing while bandwagoning with it militarily at the same time (Heginbotham and Samuels 1998). In foreign economic policy, developmentalism justified the distribution of ODA as a potent and effective means of serving domestic interests in a process “clothed in the authority and legitimacy of the state, as well as in the rhetoric of aid” (Arase 1995 7), all the while practicing some humanitarianism, supporting the capitalist system and accommodating Washington’s strategic needs (Tuman and Strand 2006; Chan 1992; Miyashita 2003). Even when Japan itself was mired in the post-bubble economy, its development model—being a practical manual of economic statecraft for developing countries and an alternative to the liberal Washington Consensus (Lee 2008)—was also a matter of national identity and pride. By all accounts, so long as Japan can still afford it, economic aid will remain a force de jour in Japan’s diplomatic repertoire of tools. The tone of international 307 contribution already set, the 1990s ushered in new opportunities for Japan to become actively engaged in two other critical global governance initiatives, peacekeeping and democracy promotion. As has been documented, Japan chose the former over the latter without a moment of hesitation. That, however, was a perfect case of Japan using a liberal rationale—international peace—to make a realist and nationalist move. To put it another way, for Japan to be a peacemaker and peacebuilder, it ought to unshackle itself first because Japan was not free. In the scheme of things, having “had its license to participate in international politics revoked as a result of the defeat in the Pacific War,” Japan and the nationalist politicians had to tackle the role of the military as a first step toward “restoring” the full functions and normalcy of a state that Japan aspired to be (Tamamoto 1990). The Invincible Peace Agenda A political firestorm inside Japan was ignited during the Gulf War (1990-91), when legal and normative constraints and public pressure as well as bureaucratic wrangling forced it to awkwardly stay put in spite of calls for a greater role from its allies. What is more, not only was its financial largess in the billions of dollars was under-appreciated, it was also caricatured as a free-rider, shocking the people and the political establishment in Japan. The protracted decision-making process resulted in the Self Defense Force sending minesweepers to the Gulf region months after the war, hence the international derision of “too little, too late”. In response the LDP created in June 1991 its “Special Study Group on Japan’s Role in the International community” chaired by its General Secretary Ichiro Ozawa. Making the case that the Japanese Constitution had a clear provision for the pursuit 308 of peaceful cooperation with all nations, the Ozawa Commission concluded that the dispatch of SDF to UN missions under the UN charter fulfilled the constitutional mandate and therefore legal. 141 In line with this reasoning, the International Peace Cooperation Bill, the so-called PKO bill, submitted to the Diet in September 1991, was finally passed in June 1992 after heated deliberations that divided the public opinion as well as the opposition parties. Three months later Japanese armed forces personnel was dispatched to Cambodia for the first time since the end of World War II. 142 What followed the stormy PKO-related process was the “normal nation” (futsu no kuni) controversy initiated by Ozawa in 1993. Ozawa, a long-time “shadow shogun” and intellectual mastermind in the ruling LDP, proposed that Japan take a leadership role in international peacekeeping and peace building by creating a special UN reserve unit within the Self-Defense Force, which required a revision of Article 9 of the constitution (Ozawa 1993). Hoping to sustain the alliance with the United States while maintaining amicable relations with Asian neighbors, Ozawa envisioned the future growth area for Japan’s 141 The Preamble says, “We, the Japanese people, acting through our duly elected representatives in the National Diet, determined that we shall secure for ourselves and our posterity the fruits of peaceful cooperation with all nations and the blessings of liberty through this land, and resolved that never again shall we be visited with horrors of war through the action of government, do proclaim that sovereign power resides with the people and do firmly establish this Constitution.” 142 Five principles were instituted at the time for Japanese participation in peacekeeping operations and were subsequently amended to be in sync with expanding scope of PKO missions and responsibilities, such as election monitoring and counter-terrorism operations. They now stand as follows: 1. Agreement on a cease-fire shall have been reached among the parties to armed conflicts. 2. Consent for the undertaking of UN peacekeeping operations as well as Japan's participation in such operations shall have been obtained from the host countries as well as the parties to armed conflicts. 3. The operations shall strictly maintain impartiality, not favoring any of the parties to armed conflicts. 4. Should any of the requirements in the above-mentioned guideline cease to be satisfied, the International Peace Cooperation Corps may suspend International Peace Cooperation Assignments. Unless the requirements be satisfied again in a short term, the Government of Japan may terminate the dispatch of the personnel engaged in International Peace Cooperation Assignments. 5. The use of weapons shall be limited to the minimum necessary to protect the lives of personnel, etc. Secretariat of International Peace Cooperation Headquarters, Cabinet Office, http://www.pko.go.jp/PKO_E/cooperation/cooperation.html, accessed 02/01/2012. 309 enlarged international presence and enhanced participation in U.N.-related agencies and activities. Ozawa’s influence waned after his split from the LDP, but his conceptual brainchild was then “appropriated by the new LDP mainstream” (Samuels 2007b 142) and transpired to great extent in subsequent diplomatic endeavors and ambitions by various LDP administrations. Thus an era ensued when Japan would strive to carve out an indelible niche in global governance featuring both PKO operations and ODA. As the relaxation of institutional constraints on the Japanese military an indispensable condition for Japan to perform PKO operations overseas, its Asian neighbors were naturally alarmed. The PRC and South Korea were the most vociferous in uttering their unease and discomfort. 143 As Qichen Qian, China’s foreign minister, said, “The people of China and some other Asian countries cannot but be concerned over the Japanese government’s plan to dispatch members of its SDF to [the] UN peace co-operation corps abroad as that unfortunate part of history remains fresh in our minds…It is our hope that the Japanese government will deal with this matter prudently.” 144 Beijing could have stymied Japan’s first foray in international peace-keeping activities in Cambodia, though not without some diplomatic cost (Takeda 1998). But still in the throes of international sanctions after 1989, that was a time Beijing needed Japan more than Japan needed China, it therefore acquiesced. All those boisterous opposition or quiet displeasure aside, Japanese officials were keen on tying their PKO endeavor to the United Nations. The rationale stemmed from the 143 Countries in Southeast Asia were the most understanding partially because they were not as devastated by the war and years of Japanese generous aid and cultural diplomacy helped cultivated some sort of “national historical amnesia,” see, Carlos H. Conde, “Letter from the Philippines: Long afterwards, war still wears on Filipinos,” The New York Times, August 13, 2005. 144 Japan Times, October 1, 1990. Cited in (Dobson 2003 80). 310 fact that the Japanese public had an idealistic empathy with the United Nations and its many causes. Moreover, with prominent international civil servants of Japanese nationality, including Sadako Ogata as High Commissioner of UNHCR and Yasushi Akashi as Special Representative to the Secretary-General and head of UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), Japan began to seek membership in prestigious international organizations, with a permanent seat in the Security Council being the crown jewel (Dobson 2003 41). Officials and non-state actors in favor of the PKO were also deft at framing it in light of UN internationalism in order to appeal to those who still embraced the norm of antimilitarism that seemed out of style in the context of an entirely new international order (Dobson 2003). One did not have to take a huge leap of faith to be convinced by the logic that peace did not come itself and had to be “made,” and it was incumbent upon the Japanese to make such a positive contribution, especially since it scored points in prestige and international standing and that Japanese military personnel were sent overseas with minimal bloodshed and within the legal framework and institutional oversight of the United Nations. As it is familiarly known, once the floodgate is flung open there is no return, and self-imposed restrictions would be adapted and revised in accordance with time and circumstances. Democracy as the Dependent Variable A state’s external behavior in the most part reflects dominant values in the domestic political system. Seen from outside, no other features of post-war Japan distinguished it from other states in the whole world than its developmentalism and 311 pacifism. In turn they laid much of the groundwork for their respective external manifestations in the spirit of a good Samaritan state—development aid and peace initiatives. The connection between domestic pacifism and a proactive peace program was contradictory, however. While the former was passive, the latter was aggressive with the constitutionality of the PKO was at issue. Nevertheless, having decided that Japan should be a kokusai kokka meant that it simply could no longer sit idle as a conscientious objector in world affairs to the act—by force or not—of engineering international peace. Hence the battle of words was waged on the grounds of normalcy. Nationalists turned the idea of Japan as a peaceful country on its head: a pacifist Japan was simply abnormal for not being able to fulfill its potential as a contributor to world peace on top of being incapable of defending herself. The narrative carried so much persuasion that conservative nationalists were able to win on both side of the argument, and public opinion eventually turned around in favor of the PKO law. As the talk of peace saturated the public discourse, the idea of Japan as a democracy promoter was, in comparison, overshadowed, relegated and suppressed. Not to mention that the salience of democracy in the Japanese political consciousness was low compared to developmentalism and pacifism. 145 In the West—the United States and large 145 In the immediate decade or so after the capitulation, demilitarization and democratization were principal political objectives for the Japanese. For John Dower, the watershed was the appointment as prime minister in 1957 of Nobusuke Kishi, a “Class A” war crime suspect designated by Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, and “Once ‘democratization’ was replaced by eco-nomic development as the overriding objective, most Japanese had little choice but to become socialized to corporate and national goals.” (Dower 1993). For Masao Maruyama, that reckoning came with the Phyrrhic victory of the popular movement against the revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1960 (Anpo) that brought down the Kishi cabinet. The tide of democratic fervor was since over, as “Together with the defeat of union-led strikes at the Miike mines, the Anpo struggles paved the way for an “economistic” settlement under Ikeda Hayato that in effect redefined Japanese democracy. The institutional framework laid out in 1947 and 1955 remained, along with the democratic rhetoric of that period. But its normative core would no longer be formed by social mobilization and broad 312 swathe of Western Europe—peace and development were guaranteed thanks to the sustained political stability and the tradition of liberal capitalism, whereas democracy was obtained through series of popular movements or political reform. Hence, democracy took precedence over development and peace, as in the now ubiquitous notion of democratic peace. In Japan, because of high salience of developmentalism and pacifism democracy was “involuntarily” downgraded to the position of dependent variable. Although it is hard to establish in scientific terms a strict causal relationship between democracy on one hand and development and peace on the other hand, democracy in Japan was nonetheless perceived as an outcome as a result of economic prosperity and political stability. Considering that a peaceful environment is perpetually desired and undergirds the pursuit of both economic and political objectives, peace/democracy connection can be more “agreeable” in the West, whereas the development-to-democracy sequence is a lot more provocatively contested. The developmental democracy thesis cannot be better captured by a statement in light of aid conditionality for democracy’s sake from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as follows: “Where democratization is concerned, each developing country faces economic conditions and social needs unique to it and widely different from other developing countries. Therefore, it is not proper to unilaterally and hastily impose the political system or institutions of Western countries on developing countries. One must view the efforts of democratization of developing countries as a trend. Therefore, it is impractical and improper, for instance, to cut aid immediately after the recipient country exceeds its military spending over a certain limitation or it veers away from a democratic model set arbitrarily by the donor country” 146 political criticism. Instead, it entailed consumer participation in an expanding gross national product driven by ‘large-scale mergers and the development of designated contracting systems.’” (Barshay 2007 223-224) 146 “Application of the ODA Principles,” Japan’s ODA 1993 (MOFA 1994), p.33, Cited in (Jones 1995). 313 The passage aforementioned epitomizes a crude version of the modernization theory that is no doubt still at work among the Japanese elites, 147 even though yielding to external pressure Japan incorporated democracy and human rights into its first ODA Chapter as of 1992. Although it refrained from vehemently contradicting Western democracy promotion, the statement made it clear that the Japanese perspective was that democracy elsewhere should be nurtured and fostered by a reasonable degree of material comfort (peace and stability was also implied), and could not simply be precipitated by way of social engineering as it would adversely affect social stability and economic growth. In fact, insofar as development remains the sacrosanct national goal, many Japanese officials and scholars regard premature democratization as a potential hindrance for developing countries eager to move up the ladder of politics and economics. The Japanese approach can be summarized in two installments: First, rejecting any ideological doctrinaire that claims that there is a one-size-fits-all program for problem solution, the Japanese relied more on caution, pragmatism, and ad hoc-ism when dealing with political and economic policy in a latecomer country; second, “authoritarian developmentalism” sometimes can be the necessary evil so long as it has been “ a temporary but very effective political regime to develop the market economy and realize rapid industrialization” (Ohno and Ohno 1998 39). From this perspective, then, the dissonance between Japan’s developmental democracy approach and Western democracy promotion is not as stark, even as it resembles the European approach more than the controversial American approach. The 147 Most internationally exposed, the MOFA is said to be more in favor of democracy and human rights than other bureaucracies. 314 overwhelming focus being economic development, at the core of its concern is the state’s ability to provide a secure environment—a sine qua non—as well as a set of powerful, efficient but also activist bureaucracies and institutions that—much like the METI that were behind Japan’s explosive growth after the war—are charged with strenuous market regulation and industrial planning. To put it in another way, despite a deterministic belief that economic prosperity will eventually lead to democratization, the Japanese hold an unshakable conviction that a strong state is key to sound economic management. Because most—if not all—authoritarian regimes are known to have a strong state, a character that democracies do not necessarily share because of the inherent power pluralization and decentralization, authoritarianism is acceptable as long as these nondemocratic regimes perform all the economic tasks satisfactorily, and the actual democratization is then left to time. The obsession with a strong state dovetails well with the newfound interest in good governance in ODA implementation by JICA, thus further tilting toward the European approach. An indirect method for democracy assistance, the governance package, including such efforts as support to rule of law, judicial reforms, and civil society groups in target countries, seems to align seamlessly with the modernization scheme: it does not threaten the stability of the current regime but tinkers with it; it does not hamper economic goals but intends to assist it by improving efficiency and capacities of the existing state institutions. Known to have a penchant for tied loans and infrastructure that benefited Japanese economic interests asymmetrically, Japanese ODA practices in recent years have undergone some profound changes and gravitated increasingly toward international norms 315 (Arase 2005). One of the specific area of convergence is in good governance, which did not appear until well into the 1990s but became more pronounced as JICA personnel realized, through the many interactions with their peers at Swedish, Canadian, British and American aid agencies, that closely working with aid recipients and transferring the technical know-how helped them better absorb and digest ODA. 148 These Japanese professionals were cognizant of a more direct approach to democracy assistance exists that puts a premium on political conditionality and a more intrusive manner toward democratic institutional building, and were once hopeful that the government, the MOFA in particular, would take up that approach (Institute for International Cooperation 2003; Hashimoto 2006). Yet as I have demonstrated above, a more forceful U.S.-like democracy promotion agenda remains illusive precisely because besides the political risks that could derail Japan’s relations with some countries, the idea runs counter to the very Japanese belief that puts economic accomplishments above political freedoms. NATIONALISM IN LIBERAL DISGUISE Thus far I have shown that liberalism is not the propelling force behind this wave of Japanese activism in global governance. That intellectual origin lies in the union between Japanese nationalism and realism. To be sure, Japanese nationalism for the most part has steered clear of the more repulsive and sometimes violent forms. Yet as shown in the dynamic contestations between two visions of Japan in international society—a conservative internationalist agenda vs. anti-conservative pacifist view emphasizing 148 Interviews with JICA officers, May 2008. 316 Japanese cultural uniqueness—neither internationalism nor pacifism is the diametric opposite of nationalism broadly defined, and they each can mesh well with it (Takekawa 2007). It is the former—state nationalism institutionally represented by the Liberal Democratic Party—that emerged the victor, whose dominance was further cemented by the dissolution of the opposition Socialist Party in the post-cold war era. In great measure thanks to persistent and successful agitations by rightwing firebrands such as Shintaro Ishihara, today nationalist sentiments in Japan have become powerful mainstream force across all walks of people, even as there exists varying degree of intensity (Sasada 2006; Matthews 2003) (Penney and Wakefield 2008). Other contributing factors include generational change coupled with the fraying of the war stigma as well as a transformed international and regional landscape featuring a rising China and belligerent, hostile North Korea. Nationalism by definition is a political force intricately linked to a country’s self-perceived status and stature in the hierarchical international society. With its military tied up by the pacifist constitution and its political clout in the international system dwarfed by its economic power, Japan’s ability to “contribute” was limited to writing checks to fund its ODA projects and American adventures worldwide, its thankless ten billion dollars to the Gulf War (1990-1991) being a prime example. Underscoring this dilemma was the subsequent ferocious debate centered on Japan’s future as a futsu no kuni (normal country) set off by the moderately conservative politician Ichiro Ozawa. The underlying message, of course, is that Japan was being “abnormal”. Normatively speaking, abnormalcy is bound to be remedied, and no other task was more critical than unfreezing 317 the Japanese military. Consequently, even as agreement remained illusive among conservatives over some major specifics in the blueprint, the consensus was that constitutional constraints on the military be loosened so that the Self-Defense Forces can participate in peacekeeping missions abroad (Park 2011). The revisionist movement was aided by an international normative content that made states’ participation in UN-orchestrated peacekeeping in the post-cold war world an honorable duty, providing a convenient political opening and a powerful rhetorical discourse for the conservatives to sway public opinion (Singh 2011). “Ideas do not flow freely,” says Risse-Kappen (Risse-Kappen 1994a), because they can percolate through the material structure and relate to state interests and preferences. Crucially, however, while much of Soviet new thinking on disarmament derived from interactions within the Western epistemic community that spawned such liberal internationalist notions as “common security,” Japanese conservatives did not have to be enlightened in a similar fashion because they had always known what they wanted. They only needed international norms and expectations to make an argument at home. Besides making due international contribution, other rationale includes burden-sharing and strengthening the rapport—depending the circumstances—with the United Nations (so as to make the case for a seat in the Security Council) or the United States (so as to show the flag as an ally). After much wrangling over the details the Japanese Diet approved the Peacekeeping Law (PKO Law) in June 1992 under the condition of five principles including a prior ceasefire and consent by the parties involved in the conflict as well as the minimal use of force by Japanese personnel. Cautious as it was as the first step, subsequent 318 peacekeeping missions overseas and Japanese responses to the post-9/11 anti-terror contingencies constituted “a larger process of redefining its security role in the Asia-Pacific region” (Ito 2007 75). From then on, the scope of Japanese PKO participation has been consistently stretched to the point that SDF personnel were dispatched to South Sudan in 2012, where use of weapons may be unavoidable even while domestic discussions were still ongoing to make it legally acceptable. In comparison, far more remarkable in the Japanese metamorphosis, which some characterized as “creeping realism” (Kliman 2006), is the elevation of its military strengths in light of its technical sophistication and ability to respond to regional contingencies. Fortifying the US-Japan alliance through collaborations such as ballistic missile defense while “extending the ‘reach’ of Japanese naval and air forces,” Japan was “modifying old taboos,” if not having cast them aside entirely, according to a former US ambassador to Tokyo (Armacost 2006). Being able to play realpolitik does not provide an alternative strategic blueprint as an ideological approach to foreign policy can be too divisive and extreme for the Japanese political class to attune to (Green 2001 5). At times, conservative politicians learned to practice balance of power politics and use democratic enhancement as a camouflage, especially regarding a more assertive China. From Washington’s perspective, “building a regional consensus on neoliberal norms” was “an indispensable element in the strategy of encouraging China to itself become a responsible stakeholder” in an ever more important Asia (Green and Twining 2008 4). Equally anxious about China’s rise, Japan was ipso factor an American proxy for building a “democratic partnership in Asia” (Twining 2010) without being forced to develop a genuine America-style democracy promotion franchise. 319 Hardly is it a coincidence that these same people tend to be pro-US defense hawks wary of the rising presence in the region of China and Russia. They often used the democracy card as a velvet bludgeon to hit and embarrass Beijing and Moscow for purposes other than democracy per se. As insiders have recently confided, for instance, the architects of the idea of Arc of Freedom and Prosperity initially intended to use it to strike a cord with Russian leaders in order to bring them around to the negotiating table on the territorial dispute (Taniguchi 2010). Nor did talking up democracy give them qualms in doing business with dictators elsewhere. To put it simply, Japan is no Canada, nor is it Germany, whose comparison with Japan in global governance has much ink spilled on (Katada et al. 2004). To conclude, to the extent “liberal internationalism has been an important security option for generations” in Japan (Samuels 2007a 126), it remains an option to be taken seriously and converted into actual policy. While it is hard to deny Japan the “internationalist” label considering its diplomatic activism in recent decades, the indispensable ingredient of liberal internationalism, “the projection of liberal thought and political principles to the international realm” underpinned by “the assumption that one can apply reason to extend the possibilities for individual and collective self-rule” (MacMillan 2007), is scantly represented and simply not the intellectual force propelling the Japanese global outreach. This is by no means to reject the positive contribution Japan made in support for various humanitarian causes, but these do-good activities cannot be explained by a liberal impulse. In fact, some argue, insofar as Japan is a democracy, it is understood to be “an attribute of the state” rather than “a social contract” based on individual liberties 320 (Tamamoto 1990 501). Nor were revisionists and conservatives enamored with post-war Japanese democracy in the first place, as they tried to cultivate—with a fair amount of success—“a State-centered nationalism” that takes an obvious stand “as its ideological enemy” (Kersten 1999). With a statist ontological ethos in common, nationalism and realism instead are the intellectual platform that supplied the impetus for Japan to reinvent itself. And it is within this broader historical context that Japan’s post-cold war international project be fully understood and explained. Integrating this social and historical milieu into study of Japan’s international behavior poses challenges to some theoretical and analytical approaches, especially constructivist research that has found Japan a favorite testing ground. First, analytically speaking, “accounting for both stasis and change in the same culture” can be problematic because norms can be always found, post hoc, to have an impact on a particular behavior (Kowert and Legro 1996 486-488). One recent study by Yukiko Miyagi, for example, examines how the post-9/11 Japanese government was compelled by domestic antimilitary norms manifested in public opinion to curtail a plan to deploy SDF forces overseas, a move strongly favored by both the Japanese policy elites and their American counterparts. Surprising as it was that a very politically expedient environment for revisionists “was not enough to transform Japan into a realist actor”, not only does the author risk overstating the significance of pacifist norms’ victory by taking on an extraordinary case with explicit constitutional implications, she also inadvertently opens up the possibility that antimilitarist norms, having been “thoroughly eroded by ‘realist factors’” at the elite level, could be endangered soon within the larger public (Miyagi 2009). 321 Second, insofar as norm-based constructivists continue to stay away from “the bad things in world politics that are socially constructed” (Checkel 1998), they are, as Nicholas Onuf likes to remind us, “bland liberals who fail to grasp that their ‘centrist’ tendencies constitute a political stance.” 149 In the event the socialization effects of norms on the Japanese state sometimes fall short, they place the blame squarely on certain invested domestic interests and fall back on a rationalist-materialist understanding of norms rather than speculating on the political logic behind the successes and failures of norms (Strand and Tuman 2011; Hirata 2004; Sato and Hirata 2008). Mayagi does not sound as politically evasive when categorizing the risk-averse public opinion as “holding onto nonrealist liberal internationalist and antimilitarist views” (Miyagi 2009 362). But liberalism, with its teleological imperatives, does not equate internationalism and antimilitarism as she implies. The neoconservative thought that reigned supreme during the Bush administration, which blends liberalism with a “forward-looking and outwardly oriented form of American nationalism” (Williams 2005), is as liberal and internationalist as any other rival ideologies can possibly be. A final point concerns Japan transforming itself from a norm taker to a norm entrepreneur. Shifting the focus of its ODA “from things to people” while talking it up in all sorts of international arenas, Japan has become the most avid salesman of human security. In spite of its liberal-sounding content, it is not supported by a liberal internationalist Japanese state. Rather, the human security campaign was in sync with a nationalist project to brand itself as “an ‘intellectual leader’ within the United Nations and other relevant institutions” (Kurusu and Kersten 2011). In this sense, nationalism, 149 Personal communication, 11/05/2012. 322 multifarious in its policy manifestations, is not necessarily a bad thing. Too often conflated with realism (Lapid 1996), nationalism remains very much understudied even though in foreign policy analyses we frequently reference it on ad hoc basis. Incorporating it remains a challenge for our study of Japanese foreign policy as much as for IR theory in general, and the way forward is to take an agent-centered approach that traces the connection between motivation and policy outcome. 323 Conclusion Why do states at times act benevolently, at times behave badly by flagrantly violating community norms and interests of others? What is the nature of international norms? Can the growing constellation of international norms, rules and procedures “domesticate” states into observing all of them? What might be the ideational and intellectual obstacles in this process that we call “socialization”? What is the prospect for good-Samaritan states? These are some of the theoretical and conceptual questions I seek to explore in this dissertation project. I choose to work on China and Japan not only because they are where my regional expertise lies but also because they fit well the profile of states whose relations with the current international system are complicated and evolving rapidly. Confident or not, they are, to great extent, unsure about their place and stature in the world that was “made” by America (Kagan 2012). Non-Western by culture, they still bear many scars from battles in the past with foreign powers, and their relations with the West and with each other are convoluted. Behaviorally, they have exhibited many positive signs of converging with established rules, norms and arrangement of the liberal system, but in many other aspects they also clearly want to chart a course of their own. For all the complexities of state’s international “life” in terms of motivations, policy manifestations as well as domestic and international implications, much of the existing research tends to focus on one part of the general phenomenon or one policy domain. Underlining this trend is the emphasis on theoretical purity and analytical 324 parsimony, not to mention thematic specialization. As a result, we can expect the kind of knee-jerk reaction from realists that international institutions are deeply flawed regardless of their contributions, that China’s future as a usurper of power is preordained, et cetera. While realists are perpetual pessimists, liberals can be just the opposite. Too often the debate evolves into glass-half-empty-or-half-full sort of situation, as each side relies on its preferred evidence and cases. Norm-based research, for example, has a penchant for studying situations where norms exist and work. As I have demonstrated earlier, norm scholars as closet liberals, by virtue of their determination to fight back against realists and demonstrate that both behavior and identities of state actors can be transformed, have unwittingly painted a picture of international relations rosier than it is. Compartmentalization is the rule of the day. But this did not happen without a reason. After all, we naturally want to study foreign policy behavior, policies and movements of great prominence and urgency. This explains why there has been so much research in recent years on Japan vis-à-vis international norms, peacekeeping, ODA and human security, and China vis-à-vis realism and nationalism, and peacekeeping and soft power concerning both China and Japan. No doubt these works have greatly enriched our understanding of the individual subject matter. The downside of this trend, however, is that their skewed analyses can block the researchers and readers from seeing the forest. More nuanced and balanced view is therefore warranted. At the risk of overstretching myself, I take a comprehensive and holistic approach to examining the two Asian powers’ international relations. I take note of both the positives—their participation in some good-Samaritan initiatives and the tendency to 325 conform to international norms—and the negatives, i.e., the rise of nationalism and their growing reliance on military power. In Chapter 1, I zero in on the former, examining the extent to which states—using China and Japan as examples when I can—can be socialized. But socialized by what and into what is a question itself. Current research on international norms and socialization is laden with ideological biases and conceptual lapses, I argue. On the one hand, liberal scholars and policymakers fond of international norms not only have a tendency to reify norms’ objective existence, they can also be evasive about the moralizing aspects of norms’ expansion and power politics behind it. On the other hand, both the analytical framework and narrative of socialization depict the process of socialization as uni-directional and characterize the state as reactive, which, I argue, is only half of the truth. In particular, the institutional approach, in trying to demonstrate the causal mechanisms that transpire in successful adoption of the norms and the shift of actor’s identity, commits the epistemological error of mistaking state agents as the state itself, thus resulting in overstating the effects of socialization and misattributing the cause of positive change to the power of norms. Without rejecting out of hand the causal impact of international norms on states’ behavior, I contend instead that we ought to examine how the states’ “state of mind” shapes the contour and content of their external behavior. This inside-out approach sheds ample light on the broad conceptual outlook and intellectual forces that provide the frames of reference and guideposts for states to conceptualize their goals and objectives in the world of nations and subsequently direct their policies. These are, in effect, the ideas and ideologies of the policy elites—realism, liberalism and nationalism—as I lay out in 326 Chapter 2. Liberalism and realism occupy the two end spectrums of this broad continuum. Nationalism, because of its contradictory nature and policy prescriptions, occupies the grey area in between. While liberalism has an individualist ethos and aims to transform the world for the better, realism is of a pessimistic and self-centered logic that seeks to attend first and foremost to interests of the given state. In policy terms, however, liberals have taken a proactive approach toward achieving those objectives of freedom, peace and material wellbeing through a slate of interventionist policy initiatives, including peacekeeping, democracy promotion, development assistance, humanitarian intervention. Realists, in contrast, are still playing catch-up with these new realities of international social engineering. Both realists and liberals are wary of nationalism. Yet they cannot get away from nationalism because the former are tethered to nation-states whereas the latter seek to use them, especially liberal great powers, to defend and propagate liberal causes. Realists need nationalism, just the right dose, whereas liberals are basically antagonistic towards nationalism. Both realism and liberalism, however, cannot avoid being “contaminated” by nationalism in practice. Liberals try to subdue nationalism by championing liberal nationalism at home and liberal internationalism abroad through international institutions. Liberal internationalism, however, is too often a mirage as the great powers that liberals count upon are themselves susceptible to unilateralist temptations. One cannot find a better example than the neoconservative movement that reached a zenith in the post-9.11 American foreign policy establishment. A product of the union between American 327 liberalism and nationalism, neoconservatism enthralled some liberals with its moralistic crusade yet riled up others for the unmistakable nationalist flair. The omnipresence and mercurial character of nationalism is thus laid bare. Although difficult to pin down theoretically and conceptually, it has both overlaps and disagreements with liberalism and nationalism. As a methodological tactic, I treat it as a residual factor but its presence contributes to the incoherence and inconsistency of foreign policy, a phenomenon that I have emphasized earlier. Chapter 3 further accentuates this point, as I offer a critique of the rival assessments of China as either a status quo or revisionist power. Informed respectively by liberalism/socialization and realism, this binary view is prone to single-minded optimism or pessimism about China’s international behavior that enlightened American strategy of engagement or containment with regard to China in recent decades. In contrast to that, I contend that China’s behavior, illuminated by state nationalism, is certain to present itself in both cooperation and competition with Western powers, thus rendering the status quo/revisionism categorization less meaningful. This is because while Chinese leaders desire international respect and legitimacy as well as material benefits of economic integration—which encourages them to adapt to international norms—they are also leery of the power-denominated international system dominated by the United States. The subject of regime promotion, which I explore in Chapter 4, is to demonstrate the coexistence of two competing dimensions of Chinese foreign policy. Taking seriously the charge of China promoting autocracy abroad, I deduce that this is most likely to occur when geopolitical and material interests of some scale are at stake. The transformed 328 political landscape in Burma fits this scenario, as the top-down democratization there has cost China dearly. An in-depth investigation, however, shows that Beijing, stunned by its reversal of fortune there, has nonetheless been reluctant to intervene for its own good. Contrasting its passivity with its recent tough-handedness in territorial and maritime disputes in East and South China Seas, I come to the conclusion that Chinese realpolitik is conditioned greatly by its concern for national sovereignty, an understanding that is intricately tied to Chinese nationalism. Chapters 5 and 6 shift gear to Japan, concentrating on Japan’s entanglement in US-led democracy promotion. Unlike many of the works that examine one policy area or one type of behavior, I take note of Japan’s enthusiastic embrace—in addition to ODA that began much earlier—of human security and peacekeeping as pillars of Japanese foreign policy in the 1990s. My main focus, however, is about Japan’s ambivalent and evasive attitudes about the democracy cause, which its American and European friends are so enamored with. This in turn leads me to re-examine the motivation and impetus that gave rise to Japan’s post-Cold War diplomatic activism. The liberal facade aside, I argue, it is nationalism mixing with realism that has undergirded the heightened international outreach. That democracy assistance is left behind is a reflection of Japanese developmentalism as much as the nationalism-inspired campaign led by the political elites for a great role for Japan in world affairs. In sum, this project makes two major analytical and empirical contributions. Empirically, regime promotion is a worthy research topic on its own because of its consequential impact on politics of the targeted country as well as regional politics, even 329 though imposing one’s political system is rarely the only objective. That China is advancing an authoritarian agenda in Africa or elsewhere needs to be taken seriously, and should either, verified or repudiated. Japan’s general reluctance to prioritize democracy in its international dealings reveals interesting dynamic of the US-Japan relations, whereas its occasional upsurge of interest further highlight the contradictions between the liberal pretensions and nationalistic outbursts of the conservative ruling elites. Analytically, by throwing light on the full kaleidoscopic variety of state behavior and policies, we are liberated from the straitjacket of determinism and can now better appreciate the many intricacies and contradictions inherent in a state’s trajectory. Insights yielded from this rethinking are especially pertinent for the study of norms and socialization. It is imperative that we see states as multifaceted agents with a great range of freedom and vigor. Depending on the circumstances and interests involved, they can be norm-objector, norm-taker, norm-user as well as norm-maker and norm-promoter. Much of the extant literature thus far is limited to states—states that are vulnerable to external pressure, to be more precise—as norm-taker. As a metatheoretical and methodological matter, for instance, for us to ascertain that norms are the primary reason for behavioral change, we ought to ascertain a priori the broad direction of the intellectual movement. In the case of Japan and China, the tone (kokusai kokken for Japan, tao guang yang hui for China) for integration and conformity with the international system had already been set by the plate tectonics of nationalism prior to many instances of them adapting to and adopting international norms. To credit international institutions and norms for the positive outcome 330 is therefore a misattribution of causes or exaggeration of the magic power of norms, to say the least. Potential for future research still abounds. Nationalism should be the first item on the agenda. While there has been outburst of interest in nationalism since the end of the Cold War, thus far much of the literature revolves around ethnonationalism or nationalism specific to a certain country. Owing to the nebulous nature of nationalism as much as the dearth of theoretical research on it in international relations, this project taps into nationalism by simply treating it as “the other” alongside, political realism and liberalism. Certainly more refined conceptualization, definition and specification of nationalism are highly desired. One way is to delve into the social psychological literature that has made great inroads into IR research, especially social constructivism, but is interested mostly in the convergence of identity and interests and yet to branch out to the identity differentiation. Other questions worthy of scholarly attention include the connection between state and popular nationalism, the social psychological basis for popular nationalism, an integrated approach examining the impact of nationalism on foreign policymaking, et cetera. For IR theorists, it is high time that we incorporate nationalism as an analytical component with independent standing rather than an add-on element to patch the loopholes of existing theoretical framework, as both liberals and realists like to do. There is no doubt that there is a great deal of work to do for a nationalist theory of international relations. At present, however, many theoretical themes and topics with relevance to nationalism are pursued without referencing nationalism at all. Perhaps, it might be also be a good idea to 331 link up nationalism with the burgeoning literatures on national identity, soft power, historical memory, authority, legitimacy and status. 332 References Abbey, Ruth. 2005. 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Creator Yang, Xiangfeng (author)

Core Title The partial Good Samaritan states: China and Japan in the international relations of autocracy and democracy

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Politics and International Relations

Publication Date 06/22/2016

Defense Date 05/06/2014

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag autocracy,China,democracy promotion,development assistance,Japan,liberalism,nationalism,OAI-PMH Harvest,peacekeeping,realism

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Language English

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Advisor James, Patrick (committee chair), Katada, Saori N. (committee member), Onuf, Nicholas (committee member), Sheehan, Brett G. (committee member)

Creator Email xiangfeng.yang@gmail.com,xiangfey@usc.edu

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