japan, asian-pacific security,and the case for analytical ... · ... see john j. mearsheimer, ......

In recent years Interna-tional Security has published a large number of articles and exchanges articulat-ing the advantages and shortcomings of different analytical perspectives ininternational relations1 Controversies about the merits of neoliberalism con-structivism rationalism and realism have become an accepted part of bothscholarly debate and graduate teaching

153

International Security Vol 26 No 3 (Winter 200102) pp 153ndash185copy 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Peter J Katzenstein is the Walter S Carpenter Jr Professor of International Studies at Cornell UniversityNobuo Okawara is Professor of Political Studies at Kyushu University

Without saddling them for any of the remaining errors of omission or commission we would liketo thank for their criticisms comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article AmitavAcharya Thomas Berger Robert Bullock Thomas Christensen Susanne Feske Michael GreenWalter Hatch Brian Job Chalmers Johnson Alastair Iain Johnston Kozo Kato Robert KeohaneStephen Krasner Ellis Krauss David Leheny TJ Pempel Richard Samuels Keiichi Tsunekawaand Robert Uriu as well as members of seminars at the University of California San DiegoCornell University and Aoyama Gakuin University We are also very much indebted to two anon-ymous reviewers for their criticisms and suggestions and to a large number of Japanese andChinese government ofcials and policy advisers for generously sharing their time with us

1 On neoliberalism see John J Mearsheimer ldquoThe False Promise of International Institutionsrdquo In-ternational Security Vol 19 No 3 (Winter 199495) pp 5ndash49 Robert O Keohane and Lisa L Mar-tin ldquoThe Promise of Institutionalist Theoryrdquo International Security Vol 20 No 1 (Summer 1995)pp 39ndash51 Charles A Kupchan and Clifford A Kupchan ldquoThe Promise of Collective Securityrdquoibid pp 52ndash61 John Gerard Ruggie ldquoThe False Premise of Realismrdquo ibid pp 62ndash70 AlexanderWendt ldquoConstructing International Politicsrdquo ibid pp 71ndash81 and John J Mearsheimer ldquoA RealistReplyrdquo ibid pp 82ndash93 On constructivism see Michael C Desch ldquoCulture Clash Assessing theImportance of Ideas in Security Studiesrdquo International Security Vol 23 No 1 (Summer 1998)pp 141ndash170 Ted Hopf ldquoThe Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theoryrdquo ibidpp 171ndash200 and John S Dufeld Theo Farrell Richard Price and Michael C Desch ldquoCorrespon-dence Isms and Schisms Culturalism versus Realism in Security Studiesrdquo International SecurityVol 24 No 1 (Summer 1999) pp 156ndash180 On rationalism see Stephen M Walt ldquoRigor or RigorMortis Rational Choice and Security Studiesrdquo International Security Vol 23 No 4 (Spring 1999)pp 5ndash48 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and James D Morrow ldquoSorting through the Wealth of No-tionsrdquo International Security Vol 24 No 2 (Fall 1999) pp 56ndash73 Lisa L Martin ldquoThe Contribu-tions of Rational Choice A Defense of Pluralismrdquo ibid pp 74ndash83 Emerson MS Niou and PeterC Ordeshook ldquoReturn of the Ludditesrdquo ibid pp 84ndash96 Robert Powell ldquoThe Modeling Enterpriseand Security Studiesrdquo ibid pp 97ndash106 Frank C Zagare ldquoAll Mortis No Rigorrdquo ibid pp 107ndash114 and Stephen M Walt ldquoA Model Disagreementrdquo ibid pp 115ndash130 On realism see Jeffrey WLegro and Andrew Moravcsik ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo International Security Vol 24 No 2(Fall 1999) pp 5ndash55 Peter D Feaver Gunther Hellmann Randall L Schweller Jeffrey WTaliaferro William C Wohlforth and Jeffrey W Legro and Andrew Moravcsik ldquoCorrespondenceBrother Can You Spare a Paradigm (Or Was Anybody Ever a Realist)rdquo International Security Vol25 No 1 (Summer 2000) pp 165ndash193

Japan and Asian-Pacic Securi ty

Japan Asian-Paci cSecurity and the Case

for AnalyticalEclecticism

Peter J Katzensteinand Nobuo Okawara

Because the demand for academic spectacles continues to be strong journaleditors are not averse to committing their pages to polemics International Secu-rity is no exception The length of the rst footnote of this article shows that theeditors have made a truly exceptional effort to present all sides of various de-bates This editorial policy however has its costs Editors who publish grandparadigmatic debates have less space for other articles More important it isbecoming increasingly difcult for scholars to disabuse their students of thenotion that in international relations paradigmatic clashes are what scholar-ship should be about rather than the disciplined analysis of empirical puzzlesas is true of other elds of political science and the social sciences moregenerally

Given the substantial proportion of pages that International Security has de-voted to grand debates in the last decade it is our sense that the intellectual re-turns from these exchanges are diminishing sharply Extolling in the abstractthe virtues of a specic analytical perspective to the exclusion of others is intel-lectually less important than making sense of empirical anomalies and strip-ping notions of what is ldquonaturalrdquo of their intuitive plausibility With specicreference to Japanese and Asian-Pacic security affairs this article arguesagainst the privileging of parsimony that has become the hallmark of paradig-matic debates The complex links between power interest and norms defy an-alytical capture by any one paradigm They are made more intelligible bydrawing selectively on different paradigmsmdashthat is by analytical eclecticismnot parsimony

We illustrate this general point with specic reference to Asia-Pacic an areacentral to security affairs since the end of the Cold War In the rst section wequestion briey what is supposedly ldquonaturalrdquo or ldquonormalrdquo about Japan In thesecond section we analyze the formal and informal bilateral and embryonicmultilateral security arrangements that mark Japanese and Asian-Pacic secu-rity affairs Next we argue that styles of analysis that focus exclusively on ei-ther material capabilities institutional efciencies or norms and identitiesoverlook key aspects of the evidence We conclude with some general re-ections on the advantages and disadvantages of analytical eclecticism forunderstanding Japanese and Asian-Pacic security affairs

What Is a ldquoNaturalrdquo or ldquoNormalrdquo Japan

To many observers US-Japan security arrangements and Japanrsquos passivestance on issues of defense are unnatural to be superseded sooner or later by

International Security 263 154

an Asia2 freed from the shackles of US primacy and a Japan no longer re-strained by pacism We disagree on both empirical and analytical groundsBased on the evidence we argue that an eclectic theoretical approach nds thatthere is nothing ldquonaturalrdquo about a multipolar world with US primacy andnothing that is ldquonormalrdquo about a Japan without the institutional legacy of Hi-roshima and defeat in World War II

According to one group of Asia experts the ongoing presence of US forcesin South Korea and Japan prohibits the restoration of a regional balance ofpower as the ldquonaturalrdquo course of events in Asia-Pacic Chalmers Johnson forexample argues that US policy has a stranglehold over Japan and regionalthat carries an exorbitant cost to both the United States and its regionalpartners3 Far better Johnson argues to recall the US military and let Asiansbe in charge of Asia With the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of theSoviet Union the United States no longer needs its far-ung empire militaryor otherwise Chinarsquos high-growth economy the eventual reunication ofNorth and South Korea and a Japan that overcomes its self-willed form of po-litical paralysis are all natural developments that US policymakers need torecognize According to Johnson only by bending to the natural course of his-tory will the United States escape from the mounting cost of empire blowbackat home that he suggests threatens the very fabric of American society

Our main empirical nding points to a different conclusion The continuedUS presence in Asia appears to be beyond doubt for the short to mediumterm that is for the next three to ten years Formal and informal bilateralism isthriving in Asia-Pacic while an incipient multilateralism is beginning to takeshape4 Whether this incipient multilateralism will become sufciently strong

Japan and Asian-Pacic Security 155

2 The precise meaning and geographic scope of ldquoAsiardquo and ldquoAsia-Pacicrdquo are highly controver-sial Geography is a subject matter of both material reality and political construction For the pur-poses of this article we have chosen Asia-Pacic as the most general concept that encompassesUS relations with Asia and that also describes security affairs in East and Southeast Asia SeeChristopher Hemmer and Peter J Katzenstein ldquoCollective Identities and the Origins ofMultilateralism in Europe but Not in Asia in the Early Cold Warrdquo paper presented at the annualmeeting of the American Political Science Association Washington DC August 31ndashSeptember 32000 and Martin W Lewis and Kaumlren E Wigen The Myth of Continents A Critique of Metageography(Berkeley University of California Press 1997)3 Chalmers Johnson Blowback The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York HenryHolt 2000) and Chalmers Johnson ed ldquoDysfunctional Japan At Home and in the Worldrdquo specialissue of Asian Perspective Vol 24 (2000) p 44 The parallel to economic developments is striking After the debacle of the 1999 World TradeOrganization Ministerial Conference in Seattle the Japanese government seeking to forestall isola-tion wasted little time in beginning to negotiate bilateral free-trade arrangements with SingaporeSouth Korea and Mexico with the intent of eventually building a free-trade area in Asia-Pacic

and durable to offer a partial complement to traditional balance-of-power poli-tics as evidently has happened in Western Europe remains an open questionBut in the short to medium term most of the governments in Asia-Pacic willcontinue to welcome the US presence As has been true in Europe since 1989in Asia-Pacic the United States is seen as more distant and more benign thanother regional powers such as Japan and China The period of US security re-assurance to be sure may well be limited to a few decades But in Asia-Pacicthere is nothing natural about incipient multilateralism or the tendency to bal-ance power History is not a series of deviations from a ldquonaturalrdquo state of stableor unstable affairs Rather it is an open-ended process in which the accumula-tion of events and experience from one period alters the contours of the nextNothing about this process is ldquonaturalrdquo unless we permit our analytical per-spectives to make it so

Another group of Asia-Pacic analysts takes a different more threateningview of Japan that also cuts against this articlersquos analytical and empirical grainAccording to this view Japan is once again becoming a ldquonaturalrdquo major powerIt is spending more money on developing its military prowess and power pro-jection capabilities Japanrsquos military is beginning to equip itself with bothshield and spear By passing the International Peace Cooperation Law (whichauthorized the Japanese military to participate in United Nationsrsquo peacekeep-ing operations) purchasing modern ghter planes such as the F-2 and movingto acquire airborne refueling capabilities develop spy satellites and adopt atheater missile defense system the Japanese are signaling their intention toplay a more active role in regional security

Also according to this view Japanrsquos domestic politics is increasingly reveal-ing traits that mark the return to a ldquonormalrdquo right-wing nationalism The Japa-nese military is no longer viewed as a pariah and is evidently experiencing aprocess of normalization5 In both houses of the Diet panels were set up in2000 to debate a possible revision of the 1947 Constitution with the war-renouncing Article 9 likely to be at the center of the debate In 1999 the Diet en-acted legislation to implement new defense guidelines giving the Japanesemilitary broader missions Moreover the Diet passed an anti-organized crimelaw that allows wiretapping of citizensrsquo telephones and electronic mail and it


that would supplement the WTO Robert Scollay and John P Gilbert New Regional Trading Arrange-ments in the Asia Pacic (Washington DC Institute for International Economics 2001) pp 1ndash45 Sabine Fruehstueck ldquoNormalization and the Management of Violence in Japanrsquos ArmedForcesrdquo Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies University of California SantaBarbara 2000 and interview 10-00 Tokyo January 14 2000

curtailed the civil liberties of members of Aum Shinrikyo the religious cultthat organized the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway by passinga law that allows law enforcement to monitor the cultrsquos activities In additionin 1999 the Diet ofcially recognized the sun ag as Japanrsquos national ag and asong that celebrates the emperorrsquos reign as its national anthem In October1999 a newly appointed parliamentary vice minister of defense ShingoNishimura claimed that the Diet ought to consider arming the country withnuclear weapons This and his subsequent resignation created a furor that inthe words of Howard French ldquolaid bare deep fault lines in the new and politi-cally shaky coalition governmentrdquo6 And former Prime Minister Yoshiro Morihas made a number of public statements evoking the spirit of Japanese nation-alism in the 1930s Most recently in April 2001 controversial junior high-schoolhistory and social studies textbooks that downplay Japanese aggression inAsia and are tinged with nationalistic sentiments passed screening by theministry of education In sum this more threatening view seems to suggestthat there is ample reason to bemoan the stubborn ignorance with which USpolicymakers and media continue to deny obvious historical parallels betweencontemporary Japan and Japan of the 1930s7

The above news items are like dots that we can connect to create an image ofa Japan readying itself to strike militarily once again But these dots can be con-nected in many other ways How we go about drawing connections dependslargely on the implicit analytical lenses that we use to interpret Japanese poli-tics Because it regards as ldquonaturalrdquo the displacement of a 1960srsquo style liberalpacism by a 1930srsquo style militant nationalism a pessimistic interpretation ofthe evidence neglects many facets of Japanese politics and society that may beworth consideration But none of the political movements on the left or theright is ldquonaturalrdquo Instead they inuence one another in a process of historicalevolution that is likely to be combinatorial in creating unforeseen outcomesThe kind of nationalism that will shape Japanese politics remains largely un-known Falling back on past events to make sense of snippets of current news


6 Howard W French ldquoUS Copters No No No Not in Their BackyardrdquoNew York Times Janu-ary 20 2000 p A67 Ofcial reactions in Beijing to recent developments in Japan have been remarkably restrainedconsidering that some of Chinarsquos harshest critics of Japan hold powerful positions especially inthe Chinese military See David Shambaugh ldquoChinarsquos Military Views the World Ambivalent Secu-rityrdquo International Security Vol 24 No 3 (Winter 19992000) pp 52ndash79 Thomas J ChristensenldquoChina the US-Japan Alliance and the Security Dilemma in East Asiardquo International SecurityVol23 No 4 (Spring 1999) pp 49ndash80 and interviews 01-98 04-98 03-00 04-00 Beijing June 15 and 161998 and June 13 2000

is a mistake Instead our analysis should focus on the institutional norms andpractices that Japanrsquos political and other public leaders use to evolve novelforms of politics and policy8

No polity remains frozen in time and none returns to its ldquonaturalrdquo historicalorigin Obviously it would be wrong to rule out the emergence of a new kindof nationalist politics in Japan Here and elsewhere in Asia-Pacic historicalanimosities and suspicions run deep Thomas Berger may therefore be correctin looking to ethnic and racial hatreds as the most likely source of future mili-tary clashes in Asia-Pacic9 But the combined legacies of Japanese nationalismand pacism are likely to produce new political constellations and policies thatwill resist analytical capture by ahistorical conceptions of a ldquonormalrdquo JapanReal life is likely to be both more complicated and more interesting

Bilateralism and Multilateralism in Japanese and Asian-PacicSecurity

Analytical eclecticism is particularly well suited to capture the complexities ofthe uid security environment in Asia-Pacic Japanrsquos security policy andAsian-Pacic security affairs more generally rest on a rm foundation of for-mal and informal bilateral agreements supplemented by a variety of embry-onic multilateral arrangements10

bilateralismIn the early years of the Clinton administration growing bilateral trade con-icts Japanese uncertainty about US strategy in Asia-Pacic and an increas-ing emphasis on Asia-Pacic in Japanese foreign policy all pointed to thepossibility of a loosening of bilateral ties between Japan and the United StatesDespite these potential signals a series of reevaluations of strategic options inboth Tokyo and Washington culminated in the April 1996 signing of the Japan-US Joint Declaration on Security and the September 1997 Revised Guidelinesfor Japan-US Defense Cooperation The joint declaration calls for a review of


8 Peter J Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara Japanrsquos National Security Structures Norms and PolicyResponses in a ChangingWorld (Ithaca NY East Asia Program Cornell University 1993) and PeterJ Katzenstein Cultural Norms and National Security Police and Military in Postwar Japan (IthacaNY Cornell University Press 1996)9 Thomas Berger ldquoSet for Stability Prospects for Conict and Cooperation in East Asiardquo Reviewof International Studies Vol 26 (2000) pp 405ndash40610 This section draws on more extensive evidence reported in Nobuo Okawara and Peter JKatzenstein ldquoJapan and Asian-Pacic Security Regionalization Entrenched Bilateralism and In-cipient Multilateralismrdquo Pacic Review Vol 14 No 2 (2001) pp 165ndash194

the 1978 Guidelines for Japan-US Defense Cooperation and the revisedguidelines spell out the roles of the US military and Japanrsquos Self-DefenseForces (SDF) in the event of a crisis The latter refers specically to ldquosituationsin areas surrounding Japan that will have an important inuence on Japanrsquospeace and securityrdquo as the context in which the two governments could pro-vide each other with supplies and services11

In the context of modern warfare the expanded regional scope of the newJapanese-US defense cooperation arrangements has somewhat diluted Ja-panrsquos traditional postwar policy against the use of force in the absence of a di-rect attack SDF operations for example will no longer focus solely on thedefense of the Japanese home islands12 In a future crisis this may make itdifcult for the Maritime Self-Defense Force to delineate Japanrsquos defense per-imeter13 The 1995 revised National Defense Program Outline (which calls forthe SDFrsquos acquiring the capability to cope with situations in areas surroundingJapan that could adversely affect its peace and security) and the Defense Coop-eration Guidelines have effectively broadened the mission of the SDF The mis-sion of Japanrsquos military is no longer simply the defense of the home islandsagainst a direct attack thus securing Japanrsquos position in a global anticommu-nist alliance In the eyes of the proponents of the revised mission of the SDF Ja-panrsquos military is also committed to enhancing regional stability in Asia-Pacicand thus indirectly Japanrsquos own security

The importance of bilateralism is not restricted to Japanrsquos security relationswith the United States As an example senior Japan Defense Agency (JDA)ofcials met annually between 1993 and 1997 and again in 1999 with their Chi-nese counterparts to discuss a variety of issues of mutual concern (The 1998hiatus was most likely occasioned by the adoption of the revised US-Japanguidelines14) In addition Japan has initiated regular bilateral security talkswith Australia (since 1996) Singapore (since 1997) Indonesia (since 1997)Canada (since 1997) and Malaysia (since 1999)15 In brief the JDA is increas-ingly engaging Asia-Pacic in a broad range of bilateral security contacts16


11 Gaiko Forum [Foreign affairs forum] special issue November 1999 pp 134ndash135 141 and De-fense Agency Defense of Japan 1999 (Tokyo Japan Times 2000) p 23612 Interview 03-99 Tokyo January 12 199913 Interviews 12-99 and 13-99 Tokyo January 14 199914 Interview 13-00 Tokyo January 14 200015 Boeicho (Defense Agency) Boei Hakusho [Defense white paper] (Tokyo Okurasho Insatsu-kyoku 2000) p 18716 Interviews 10-00 and 13-00 Tokyo January 14 2000 With the tightening of US-Japan securityrelations after 1994 Japan has become more self-conscious in developing a broad set of bilateraldefense talks and exchanges that both complement its persistent dependence on the United Statesand cement the US presence in the region By 1999 Japan had committed to about ten regular bi-

Informal bilateralism has been Japanrsquos most important response to transna-tional crime Combating problems such as illegal immigration organizedcrime money laundering the distribution of illegal narcotics and terrorism re-main almost without exception under the exclusive prerogative of nationalgovernments Nevertheless Japanrsquos National Policy Agency (NPA) has begunsystematic cultivation of contacts with law enforcement agencies in otherAsian-Pacic countries in an effort to increase trust among police professionalsthroughout the region In so doing the NPA hopes to create a climate in whichJapanrsquos police will be able to cooperate more easily with foreign police forceson an ad hoc basis17

The NPA seeks this cooperation primarily by encouraging the systematic ex-change of information through the development of personal relationships withlaw enforcement ofcials from other countries This is especially true of Ja-panrsquos bilateral contacts with Burma Cambodia China Laos Taiwan Thailandand Vietnam In the view of the NPA bilateral police relations are good or ex-cellent with the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN) Hong Kong South Korea and the United States High-level policecontacts with law enforcement authorities in Taiwan are good but Taiwanrsquosambiguous diplomatic status severely constrains cooperation at lower levels

Japanrsquos relations with China are difcult because of the strong central con-trol that Chinarsquos vast Public Security Department bureaucracy exercises overits localities such as Fujian Province where drugs are produced and shippedto Japan The departmentrsquos insistence on strict observance of its rules and pro-cedures seriously undermines bilateral police cooperation18 The NPA remains


lateral talks too many for the two ofcials assigned by the JDA to this task India for example wasinterested in commencing bilateral defense consultations but Japan stalled not for reasons of pol-icy but simply because of resource constraints Interview 13-00 Tokyo January 14 200017 This intensication of bilateral contacts builds on a small foundation of transnational policelinks that Japanrsquos NPA had developed before the 1990s For example the NPA has organized short-term training courses for small numbers of police ofcials from other Asian-Pacic states dealingwith drug offenses (since 1962) criminal investigations (since 1975) organized crime (since 1988)police administration (since 1989) and community policing (since 1989) National Police AgencyInternational Cooperation Division International Affairs Department Police of Japan lsquo98 (TokyoNational Police Agency 1998) p 62 Japan also runs regular international seminars dealing withcriminal justice issues Finally Japanese experts travel to various countries in Asia-Pacic to trainlocal law-enforcement personnel These seminars and visits help to enhance the capacity of Asian-Pacic police forces by spreading information and establishing contacts that might be useful insubsequent ad hoc coordination of police work across national borders Keisatsucho (NationalPolicy Agency) Keisatsu Hakusho 1997 [White paper on police 1997] (Tokyo Okurasho Insatsu-kyoku 1997) pp 95ndash99 Jack Donnelly ldquoInternational Human Rights A Regime Analysisrdquo Interna-tional Organization Vol 40 No 3 (Summer 1986) p 628 and Katzenstein Cultural Norms and Na-tional Security pp 68ndash7118 Interview 06-99 Tokyo January 13 1999

nonetheless eager to strengthen its contacts with police ofcials from Fujian19

For example the NPA funds projects that send Japanese researchers to north-east China These researchers investigate the local conditions that permitChinarsquos crime syndicates to operate in Japan They also develop closer tieswith provincial police forces20 Even more signicant are recent joint opera-tions between the Japanese and Chinese police For instance in 1997 the NPAhelped Japanrsquos prefectural police departments in contacting the police in HongKong Canton and Shanghai International police cooperation resulted in sev-eral arrests in 1997ndash9821 In addition NPA ofcials met with their Shanghai andCantonese counterparts having already established ties with the Hong Kongpolice before 199722

multilateralismThe 1990s also witnessed the gradual emergence of a variety of Asian-Pacicmultilateral security arrangements involving track-one (government to govern-ment) track-two (semigovernmental think tanks) and track-three (private in-stitutions) dialogues23 Differences in the institutional afliation of national re-search organizations participating in track-two activities however confoundefforts to draw a sharp distinction among different tracks They vary from be-ing integral to the ministries of foreign affairs (the two Koreas China andLaos) to being totally (Vietnam) or partly (Japan) funded and largely (Viet-nam) or moderately (Japan) staffed by the ministry of foreign affairs to havingvery close proximity to the prime minister (Malaysia) to exhibiting high de-grees of independence (Thailand and Indonesia)24 For most Japanese ofcialswhatever the precise character of these dialogues they involve semi-ofcial orprivate contacts that are useful to the extent that they facilitate government-to-government talks however they have no value in and of themselves25


19 Interviews 09-99 and 10-99 Tokyo January 13 199920 Interviews 04-00 Tokyo January 12 200021 Interviews 08-99 and 10-99 Tokyo January 13 1999 and Kazuharu Hirano ldquoHito no MitsuyuKokusai Soshiki Hanzai no Genjo to Gaiji Keisatsu no Taiordquo [Alien smuggling Current state oftransnational organized crime and police countermeasures] Keisatsu-gaku Ronshu [Journal of po-lice science] Vol 51 No 9 (September 1998) pp 45ndash4622 Interview 10-99 Tokyo January 13 199923 Diane Stone ldquoNetworks Second Track Diplomacy and Regional Cooperation The Role ofSoutheast Asian Think Tanksrdquo paper presented at the Thirty-eighth Annual International StudiesAssociation Convention Toronto Canada March 22ndash26 1997 and Jun Wada ldquoApplying TrackTwo to China-Japan-US Relationsrdquo in Ryosei Kokubun ed Challenges for China-Japan-US Coop-eration (Tokyo Japan Center for International Exchange 1998) pp 154ndash18324 Interview 04-00 Tokyo January 12 200025 Interview 01-00 Tokyo January 11 2000 Track-two institutions thus tend to support ratherthan undermine the state There are instances when we should think of them not as nongovern-

The trend toward security multilateralism in Asia-Pacic is reected in sev-eral track-two dialogues Since 1993 for example Japan seeking to enhancemutual condence on security economic and environmental issues has par-ticipated with China Russia South Korea and the United States in the North-east Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD) In addition since 1994 a Japaneseresearch organization (the Japan Institute of International Affairs) has cospon-sored with its American and Russian counterparts (the Center for Strategic andInternational Studies and the Institute of World Economy and InternationalRelations respectively) the Trilateral Forum on North Pacic Security which isregularly attended by senior government ofcials from all three countries Fur-thermore since 1998 Japan has conducted semiofcial trilateral security talkswith China and the United States26

Important track-two talks arguably occur in the Council for Security Coop-eration in the Asia Pacic (CSCAP)27 whose predecessor was the ASEAN-afliated Institutes for Strategic and International Studies In the early 1990sthe institutes played a crucial role in encouraging ASEAN to commence sys-tematic security dialogues And with the establishment of the track-oneASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1994 the track-two activities of these insti-tutes have grown in signicance For example they prepare studies that maybe too sensitive for governments to conduct and they organize meetings ontopics that for political reasons governments may be unwilling or unable tohost

Track-two activities shape the climate of opinion in national settings inwhich security affairs are conducted They can also help decisionmakers in ar-


mental organizations (NGOs) but as governmentally organized NGOs In many states in Asia-Pacic the divide between public and private is easily bridged Prominent businesspeople andscholars nominally in the private sector are often linked informally to politicians and bureaucratswhose attendance at track-two meetings in their ldquoprivaterdquo capacity is polite ction Hence thechoice between the multilateralism of different tracks can be a matter of political convenience forgovernments Diane Stone Capturing the Political Imagination Think Tanks and the Policy Process(London Frank Cass 1996) pp 9ndash25 But both the nature of private-sector participants and thepattern of inuence between such participants and their governments vary widely26 ldquoNichi-Bei-Chu no Anpo Taiwa Shidordquo [Japan-US-China security dialogue starts] AsahiShimbun July 16 1998 14th ed Yosuke Naito ldquoPrivate-Sector Northeast Asia Security Forum Up-beatrdquo Japan Times September 28 1999 Akiko Fukushima ldquoJapanrsquos Emerging View of SecurityMultilateralism in Asiardquo University of California Institute on Global Conict and CooperationPolicy Paper 51 (June 1999) p 36 and Yoshitaka Sasaki ldquoAsian Trilateral Security Talks DebutrdquoAsahi Evening News November 7 199727 Interview 04-00 Sheldon W Simon ldquoSecurity Prospects in Southeast Asia Collaborative Ef-forts and the ASEAN Regional Forumrdquo Pacic Review Vol 11 No 2 (1998) pp 207ndash209 StoneldquoNetworks Second Track Diplomacy and Regional Cooperationrdquo pp 21ndash25 Wada ldquoApplyingTrack Two to China-Japan-US Relationsrdquo pp 162ndash165 and Brian L Job ldquoNon-Governmental Re-gional Institutions in the Evolving Asia Pacic Security Orderrdquo paper prepared for the SecondWorkshop on Security Order in the Asia Pacic Bali Indonesia May 30ndashJune 2 2000

ticulating new ideas Over time they may socialize elites either directly or in-directly to different norms and identities They may also build transnationalcoalitions of elites with considerable domestic inuence In brief they have be-come an important feature of Asian-Pacic security affairs

An embryonic multilateralism is also evident on issues of internal securitySince 1989 the NPA has hosted annual three-day meetings on how to combatorganized crime Funded by Japanrsquos foreign aid program these meetings aredesigned to strengthen cooperative police relationships28 Also confronting itsthird wave of stimulant abuse since 1945 Japan convened an Asian Drug LawEnforcement Conference in Tokyo in the winter of 199929 Ironically at thatmeeting the director of the United Nations Drug Control Program chastisedthe Japanese government for its limited commitment to multilateral efforts tocurtail regional trafcking in methamphetamines30 The NPA attended as anobserver a May 1999 meeting in which the ve Southeast Asian-Pacic coun-tries (Burma Cambodia Laos Thailand and Vietnam) and China formally ap-proved a policy strategy to deal with international drug trafcking31 And inJanuary 2000 the NPA organized a conference attended by ofcials fromthirty-seven countries to discuss how police cooperation could stem thespread of narcotics32

Because terrorism is a direct threat to the state it has been an item on the in-ternal security agenda of the multilateral Group of SevenEight meetings sincethe mid-1970s More recent summit meetings in Ottawa (December 1995)Sharm al-Sheikh (March 1996) Paris (July 1996) Denver (June 1997) and Co-logne (1999) reect the concerns that this threat continues to generate Since the


28 Since 1996 the NPA in an effort to build more cooperative international police relations to sup-press the smuggling of narcotics and after consultations with the US Drug Enforcement Agencyhas begun to host two annual meetings in Tokyo Each gathering involves forty to fty high-levelpolice ofcials one with representatives from China in attendance the other with representativesfrom Taiwan Each lasts four days but the ofcial part of the program consists of only a one-dayplenary session The rest of the time is spent on group tours of Japanese police facilities sight-seeing and socializing Interview 06-99 Tokyo January 13 199929 The meeting was attended by representatives from ve Southeast Asian-Pacic countries(Burma Cambodia Laos Thailand and Vietnam) and China as well as by ofcials from theUnited Nations and observers from eight countries and the European Union Jiro HaraguchildquoYakubutsu Taisaku no Genjo to Kadairdquo [Current state of and problems concerning drug control]Keisatsu-gaku Ronshu [Journal of political science] Vol 52 No 7 (July 1999) pp 30 36ndash37 ToshioJo ldquoTokyo Pledges to Finance UN Anti-Drug Planrdquo Asahi Evening News February 3 1999 andHisane Masaki ldquoSeven Nations to Gang Up against Illegal Stimulant Userdquo Japan Times December6 199830 H Richard Friman ldquoInternational Drug Control Policies Variations and Effectivenessrdquo De-partment of Political Science Marquette University 199931 Haraguchi ldquoYakubutsu Taisaku no Genjo to Kadairdquo pp 36ndash3732 ldquoAsia-Pacic States Vow to Combat Drugsrdquo Asahi Evening News January 28 2000

September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon these con-cerns have catapulted to the top of the security agenda of the United States andthe G-78 Over the last few years Japan has sought to create similar regionalcollaborations in Asia-Pacic33 Generally speaking however on the issue ofinternal security the absence of multilateral regional institutions in Asia-Pacicremains striking A recent inventory of transnational crimes lists several globalinstitutional fora in which these concerns are addressed but besides CSCAPrsquosworking group on transnational crime for Asia-Pacic there is only one otherregional forum the ASEAN ministry on drugs34

bilateralism and multilateralismAsia-Pacicrsquos entrenched bilateralism and incipient multilateralism need notconict35 Amitav Acharya speaks of an interlocking ldquospider webrdquo form ofbilateralism that compensates in part for the absence of multilateral securitycooperation in Asia-Pacic36 In the 1960s and 1970s for example a commit-


33 In June 1997 for example the NPA was instrumental in helping to create the Japan andASEAN Anti-Terrorism Network which seeks to strengthen ties among national police agenciesstreamline information gathering and coordinate investigations when acts of terrorism occur Fol-lowing up on an initiative taken by Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto during his travels throughSoutheast Asia in January 1997 the NPA and the ministry of foreign affairs jointly hosted in Octo-ber 1997 a Japan-ASEAN Conference on Counterterrorism for senior police and foreign affairsofcials from nine ASEAN countries National Police Agency Police of Japan lsquo98 p 53 Interview07-99 Tokyo January 13 1999 And in October 1998 the NPA and foreign ministry cohosted a jointAsian PacicndashLatin American conference on counterterrorism Based on ndings from the 1996ndash97Peruvian hostage crisismdashin which a Peruvian antigovernment group demanding that PresidentAlberto Fujimori order the release of all of its members from prison occupied the Japanese ambas-sadorrsquos ofcial residence in Lima for 127 daysmdashthe NPA sought to strengthen international coop-eration on antiterrorist measures Gaimusho (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) Gaiko Seisho 1999[Foreign affairs blue book 1999] (Tokyo Okurasho Insatsu-kyoku 1999) Vol 1 pp 103ndash104Hishinuma Takao ldquoJapan to Propose Antiterrorism Meeting at G-7 Summitrdquo Daily Yomiuri May9 1997 and Keisatsucho (National Policy Agency) Keisatsu Hakusho 1999 [Police white paper1999] (Tokyo Okurasho Insatsu-kyoku 1999) p 23134 James Shinn ldquoAmerican Stakes in Asian Problemsrdquo in Shinn ed Fires across the Water Trans-national Problems in Asia (New York Council on Foreign Relations 1998) pp 170ndash17135 David H Capie Paul M Evans and Akiko Fukushima ldquoSpeaking Asian Pacic Security ALexicon of English Terms with Chinese and Japanese Translations and a Note on the JapaneseTranslationrdquo Working Paper (Toronto Joint Centre for Asia Pacic Studies University of Toronto-York University 1998) pp 7ndash8 16ndash17 60ndash63 IV3ndash4 736 Amitav Acharya A Survey of Military Cooperation among the ASEAN States Bilateralism or Alli-ance Occasional Paper No 14 (Toronto Centre for International and Strategic Studies 1990) andAmitav Acharya ldquoRegional Institutions and Security Order in Asiardquo paper prepared for the Sec-ond Workshop on Security Order in the Asia-Pacic Bali Indonesia May 30ndashJune 2 2000 p 18 Inearly 2001 Dennis C Blair the commander in chief of the US Pacic Command at the time alsospoke of forming a ldquoweb of regional relationships and capabilitiesrdquo on the basis of bilateral secu-rity relationships in the Asia-Pacic See Dennis C Blair and John T Hanley Jr ldquoFrom Wheels toWebs Reconstructing Asia-Pacic Security Arrangementsrdquo Washington Quarterly Vol 24 No 1(Winter 2001) pp 7ndash17

ment to anticommunism provided the rationale for joint police operations andcross-border ldquohot pursuitsrdquo of communist guerrillas (eg between Malaysiaand Indonesia and between Malaysia and Thailand) And as MichaelStankiewicz observes efforts in the 1990s to deal with the North Korean nu-clear crisis illustrated ldquothe increasing complementarity between bilateral andmultilateral diplomatic efforts in Northeast Asiardquo37 Equally interesting im-provements in bilateral relations in Asia-Pacic occasioned by the conict onthe Korean Peninsula are fostering a gradual strengthening of multilateral se-curity arrangements such as the NEACD and the Korean Peninsula Energy De-velopment Organization Thus the potential for a ash point crisis betweenNorth Korea and its neighbors has been a source for strengthening nascentmultilateral security arrangements in Northeast Asia The April 1999 creationof the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group by Japan South Korea andthe United States to orchestrate policy toward North Korea is but the most re-cent example of this trend38

Japanese diplomacy thus is beginning to make new connections between bi-lateral and multilateral security dialogues39 This policy accords with the argu-ment of the Advisory Group on Defense Issues in its report to the primeminister that ldquothe Japan-US relationship of cooperation in the area of securitymust be considered not only from the bilateral viewpoint but at the same timealso from the broader perspective of security in the entire AsiaPacic re-gionrdquo40 According to one member of that advisory group Akio Watanabe ldquoIdonrsquot feel itrsquos a question of choosing one framework or the other From mystandpoint the issue is the necessity of redening the Japan-US security rela-tionship within the new international conditions of the postndashcold-war erardquo41

Takashi Inoguchi agrees when he writes that ldquothe Japan-US relationshipcould develop into an arrangement having multilateral aspectsrdquo42


37 Michael Stankiewicz ldquoPreface The Bilateral-Multilateral Context in Northeast Asian SecurityrdquoKorean Peninsula Security and the US-Japan Defense Guidelines IGCC (Institute on Global Conictand Cooperation) Policy Paper No 45 (San Diego Calif Northeast Asia Cooperation DialogueVII October 1998) p 238 The group decided to meet at least once every three months Takaaki Mizuno ldquoNichi-Bei-Kanga Chosei Grouprdquo [Japan US and South Korea Form Coordinating Group on North Korea] AsahiShimbun April 26 1999 evening 4th ed Masato Tainaka ldquoNations Renew N Korea EffortsrdquoAsahi EveningNews March 31 2000 and interviews 02-99 and 05-99 Tokyo January 11ndash12 199939 Interviews 02-99 and 05-99 Tokyo January 11ndash12 199940 Advisory Group on Defense Issues The Modality of the Security and Defense Capability of JapanThe Outlook for the 21st Century (Tokyo Advisory Group on Defense Issues 1994) p 1641 Takeshi Igarashi and Akio Watanabe ldquoBeyond the Defense Guidelinesrdquo Japan Echo December1997 p 3642 Takashi Inoguchi ldquoThe New Security Setup and Japanrsquos Optionsrdquo Japan Echo Autumn 1996p 37 A similar ldquotwin-trackrdquo stance also characterizes Japanrsquos trade policy since the WTO debacle

Japanrsquos government takes a pragmatic approach It views multilateralism asa complement rather than as a substitute for bilateralism The informal ex-change of information on a range of difcult issues around the edges of ofcialtalks enhances predictability and helps to build trust Although multilateral di-alogues do not solve problems they can make the underlying system of bilat-eral security arrangements in Asia-Pacic operate more smoothly43 Given thissense of pragmatism it is not surprising that as Paul Midford44 notes ForeignMinister Taro Nakayamarsquos July 1991 proposal for a new multilateral securitydialogue in Asia-Pacic did not resemble the European-style multilateralismthat John Ruggie45 has analyzed Nakayamarsquos proposal excluded socialiststates such as the Soviet Union it was implicitly discriminatory by accordingthe United States and Japan special status as major powers and it did not ad-vocate diffuse reciprocity but recognized instead the role of the United Statesas a security provider in Asia-Pacic and the circumstances of Japan as operat-ing under domestic legal restrictions

With Japanrsquos active support Asia-Pacic in the 1990s began to develop anembryonic set of multilateral security institutions and practices But comparedwith the scope and strength of both its formal and informal bilateral arrange-ments Asia-Pacicrsquos achievements in multilateralism remain limited at bestEven ASEANrsquos long-standing and relatively successful multilateralism hasencountered serious setbacks since Asiarsquos 1997 nancial crisis The multi-lateralism that Japan has traditionally supported has been modest In sum for-mal and informal bilateral approaches supplemented by nascent forms ofmultilateralism are dening both Japanese security policies and Asian-Pacicsecurity relations As we show in the next section analytical eclecticism is par-ticularly well suited to the task of analyzing the uid politics of Japanese andAsian-Pacic security


in Seattle See Gillian Tett ldquoTokyo Shifts Trade Policyrdquo Financial Times May 12 2000 p 1 andmore generally Muthia Alagappa ldquoAsia-Pacic Regional Security Order Introduction and Analyt-ical Frameworkrdquo paper prepared for the Second Workshop on Security Order in the Asia-PacicBali Indonesia May 30ndashJune 2 2000 pp 6ndash743 Interviews 01-00 02-00 03-00 and 04-00 Tokyo January 11ndash12 200044 Paul Midford ldquoFrom Reactive State to Cautious Leader The Nakayama Proposal theMiyazawa Doctrine and Japanrsquos Role in Promoting the Creation of the ASEAN Regional Forumrdquopaper prepared for the annual conference of the International Studies Association MinneapolisMinnesota March 17ndash21 199845 John Gerard Ruggie ldquoMultilateralism The Anatomy of an Institutionrdquo in Ruggie edMultilateralism Matters The Theory and Praxis of an Institutional Form (New York Columbia Univer-sity Press 1993) pp 3ndash47

Analytical Eclecticism in the Analysis of Japanese and Asian-PacicSecurity

A robust bilateralism and incipient multilateralism in Japanese and Asian-Pacic security affairs are typically not well explained by the exclusive relianceon any single analytical perspectivemdashbe it realist liberal or constructivist Ja-panrsquos and Asia-Pacicrsquos security policies are not shaped solely by power inter-est or identity but by their combination Adequate understanding requiresanalytical eclecticism not parsimony

disadvantages of parsimonious explanationsStrict formulations of realism liberalism and constructivism sacrice explana-tory power in the interest of analytical purity Yet in understanding politicalproblems we typically need to weigh the causal importance of different typesof factors for example material and ideal international and domestic Eclectictheorizing not the insistence on received paradigms helps us understand in-herently complex social and political processes

realism Realist theory has various guises Drawing on an increasingly richliterature Robert Jervis46 for example operates with a twofold distinction (be-tween offensive and defensive realism) Alastair Johnston47 favors a more com-plex fourfold categorization (balance of power power maximization balanceof threat and identity realism) Although they formulate their analyses some-what differently they and other realists share many insightsmdashthe most impor-tant being the effects of the security dilemma on state behavior Realists suchas Kenneth Waltz underline the brevity of the uni-polar moment that theUnited States has enjoyed since the end of the Cold War and the disintegrationof the Soviet Union48 For them however the magnitude of current US capa-bilities is less important than the policy folliesmdashsuch as interventions in areasof the world not directly tied to the national interests of the United Statesmdashthatsquander it Hence ldquothe all-but-inevitable movement from unipolarity tomultipolarity is taking place not in Europe but in Asia Theory enables one


46 Robert Jervis ldquoRealism Neoliberalism and Cooperation Understanding the Debaterdquo Interna-tional Security Vol 24 No 1 (Summer 1999) pp 42ndash4347 Alastair Iain Johnston ldquoRealism(s) and Chinese Security Policy in the PostndashCold War Periodrdquoin Ethan B Kapstein and Michael Mastanduno eds Unipolar Politics Realism and State Strategies af-ter the Cold War (New York Columbia University Press 1999) pp 261ndash31848 Kenneth N Waltz ldquoRealism after the Cold Warrdquo Institute of War and Peace Studies ColumbiaUniversity December 1998

to say that a new balance of power will form but not to say how long it willtakerdquo49 Though distinctively his own in style of argumentation Waltzrsquos analy-sis is in broad agreement with other types of realist analysis that consider fac-tors besides the international distribution of capabilities such as absolutesecurity needs and threats Japan and China are rising great powers in Asia-Pacic In view of a large number of potential military ash points the securitydilemma confronting Asian-Pacic states is serious Between 1950 and 1990one study reports 129 territorial disputes worldwide with Asia accounting forthe largest number Of the 54 borders disputed in 1990 the highest ratio of un-resolved disputes as a fraction of total contested borders was located in Eastand Southeast Asia50 In this view Asia-Pacic may well be ldquoripe for rivalryrdquo51

For realists balancing against the United States as the only superpower cur-rently by China and in the near future by Japan is the most important predic-tion that the theory generates52

Realist theory however is indeterminate It cannot say whether Japan willbalance with China against the United States as the preeminent threat orwhether it will balance with the United States against China as the rising re-gional power in East Asia53 Balance-of-power theory predicts that a with-drawal of US forces from East Asia would leave Japan no choice but to rearmAlternatively balancing theory can also support a very different line of reason-ing in which Japan though wary of China might recognize Chinarsquos central po-sition in Asia-Pacic and stop far short of adopting a policy of full-edgedremilitarization54 To infer anything about the direction of balancing requiresauxiliary assumptions that typically invoke interest threat or prestigemdashallvariables that require liberal or constructivist styles of analysis Moreover it isunclear whether a united Korea will balance against Japan (with its powerful


49 Ibid pp 30 1950 Paul K Huth Standing Your Ground Territorial Disputes and International Conict (Ann ArborUniversity of Michigan Press 1996) p 3251 Aaron L Friedberg ldquoRipe for Rivalry Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asiardquo InternationalSecurityVol 18 No 3 (Winter 199394) pp 5ndash33 and Richard K Betts ldquoWealth Power and Insta-bility East Asia and the United States after the Cold Warrdquo ibid pp 34ndash7752 Mike M Mochizuki ldquoAmerican and Japanese Strategic Debates The Need for a New Synthe-sisrdquo in Mochizuki ed Toward a True Alliance Restructuring US-Japan Security Relations (Washing-ton DC Brookings 1997) pp 43ndash8253 This limitation is not restricted to realist analysis of Asian-Pacic security affairs In strict anal-ogy realism was unable to specify whether at the end of the Cold War European states would bal-ance with Germany against the United States as the remaining superpower or with the UnitedStates against a united Germany as a potential regional hegemon54 The astonishing reticence on and lack of contact with Taiwan that characterizes the Japanesebureaucracy provides some evidence for this view See interview 04-00 Tokyo January 12 2000

navy that might ultimately control the sea-lanes on which Korean trade de-pends so heavily) or against China (with the strongest ground forces in Asiaand with whom Korea shares a common border)55 Thus realist theory pointsto omnipresent balancing behavior but tells us little about the direction of thatbalancing

Nor do military expenditures alone yield a clear picture of the geostrategicsituation in Asia-Pacic Asiarsquos 1997 nancial crisis slowed Asian-Pacic armsrivalries and lowered military spending56 Thus instead of worrying about es-calating arms rivalries some defense experts began to express greater concernover potential risks created by possible imbalances in military modernizationand nancial strength After 1997 countries less affected by the nancial cri-sismdashsuch as China Japan Korea Singapore and Taiwanmdashappeared to bemuch better positioned to harness sophisticated technologies to enhance theirmilitary strength57

liberalism On its own liberal theory also encounters serious difcultiesSome analysts have suggested that the US-Japan alliance can last only if it ar-ticulates common values Mike Mochizuki and Michael OrsquoHanlon for exam-ple have advocated that the alliance should become as ldquoclose balanced andprinciple-based as the US-UK special relationshiprdquo Not a common militarythreat but common interests derived from shared democratic values


55 Victor D Cha ldquoAbandonment Entrapment and Neoclassical Realism in Asia The UnitedStates Japan and Koreardquo International Studies Quarterly Vol 44 No 2 (June 2000) pp 261ndash29156 Taking account of weakening currency values defense spending (measured in US dollars1997 prices) was cut in 1998 by 39 percent in Thailand 35 percent in South Korea 32 percent in thePhilippines 26 percent in Vietnam and 10 percent in Japanmdashif measured in yen this representsthe rst reduction since 1955 Asagumo Shimbun-sha Boei Hando Bukku [Defense handbook] (To-kyo Asagumo Shimbun-sha 1998) pp 263ndash267 and Tim Huxley and Susan Willett Arming EastAsia Adelphi Paper 329 (Oxford International Institute for Strategic Studies [IISS] 1999) Manyanalysts expect that these reductions will continue for several years Michael Richardson ldquoAsianCrisis Stills Appetite for Armsrdquo International Herald Tribune April 23 1998 and National Institutefor Defense Studies East Asian Strategic Review 1998ndash1999 (Tokyo National Institute for DefenseStudies 1999) pp 33ndash35 Only China Taiwan and Indonesia have avoided cuts in military expen-ditures Huxley and Willett Arming East Asia p 16 See also Frank Umbach ldquoMilitary Balance inthe Asia Pacic Trends and Implicationsrdquo pp 12ndash17 and Desmond Ball ldquoMilitary Balance in theAsia Pacic Trends and Implicationsrdquo papers prepared for the Fourteenth Asia-PacicRoundtable Kuala Lumpur Malaysia June 3ndash7 2000 Since the end of the Cold War Japanese de-fense expenditures show rates of increase that are much smaller than those of China Between 1990and 1997 while Chinarsquos defense spending increased 45 percent from $251 billion to $365 billionJapanrsquos defense budget increased only 18 percent from $343 billion to $408 billion (1997 exchangerates) Asagumo Shimbun-sha Boei Hando Bukku p 267 and Koro Bessho Identities and Security inEast Asia Adelphi Paper 325 (Oxford IISS 1999) p 35 Differences in Chinarsquos and Japanrsquos inationrates overstate however the real increases in Chinese expenditures in the rst half of the 1990s57 Michael Richardson ldquoAsiarsquos Widening Arms Gap Uneven Spread of New Weapons SystemsMay Jeopardize Balance of Power in Eastrdquo International Herald Tribune January 7 2000

Mochizuki and OrsquoHanlon argue are the best guarantor for sustaining the US-Japan alliance58

What would happen however if the United States or Japan were no longer amember of the ldquofree worldrdquo Liberal analysis is hindered by the theoryrsquos un-derlying assumption that identities are unchanging Do liberal values reallyconstitute both the United States and Japan as actors This is implausible Thepromotion of democracy as a positive value for example is handled very dif-ferently by the US and Japanese governments The philosophical assumptioninforming US policy is that democracy and human rights should proceedhand in hand with economic development In contrast Japanese policy as-sumes that economic development is conducive to the building of democraticinstitutions This difference in philosophy leads to an equally noticeable differ-ence in method The United States operates with legal briefs economic sanc-tions and ldquosticksrdquo Japan prefers constructive engagement through dialogueeconomic assistance and ldquocarrotsrdquo59 Such systematic differences in approachundercut a liberal redenition of the US-Japan alliance To Japan they makethe United States appear high-handed and evangelical while to the UnitedStates Japan seems opportunistic and parochial These differences point to theimportance of collective identities not shared rather than of democratic institu-tions that are shared

An alternative neoliberal analysis of the US-Japan alliance focuses not onshared values but on efciency60 For example after the 1993ndash94 missile crisison the Korean Peninsula policymakers in Japan and the United States becameconvinced that their bilateral defense guidelines needed to be revised to en-hance the efciency of defense cooperation The 1960 Mutual Cooperation andSecurity Treaty and the 1978 Guidelines for Japan-US Defense Cooperationhad left unclear the role to be played by Japan in regional crises Specicallythey left undened both the extent to which Japan would provide logisticalsupport and whether the US military would have access to Japanrsquos SDF andcivilian facilities The 1997 revised defense guidelines reduce these ambiguitiesand thus help to prepare Japan for potential participation in both possible US


58 Mike M Mochizuki and Michael OrsquoHanlon ldquoA Liberal Vision for the US-Japan AlliancerdquoSurvival Vol 40 No 2 (Summer 1998) p 12759 Yasuhiro Takeda ldquoDemocracy Promotion Policies Overcoming Japan-US Discordrdquo in RalphA Cossa ed Restructuring the US-Japan Alliance Toward a More Equal Partnership (WashingtonDC CSIS [Center for Strategic and International Studies] Press 1997) pp 50ndash6260 Miles Kahler International Institutions and the Political Economy of Integration (Washington DCBrookings 1995) pp 80ndash81 107ndash116 and Takashi Inoguchi and Grant B Stillman eds North-EastAsian Regional Security The Role of International Institutions (Tokyo United Nations UniversityPress 1997)

and UN operations undertaken in the eyes of the proponents of the revisedguidelines in the interest of regional peace and security This is an instance ofgovernment policies seeking to lower transaction costs and enhanceefciencies through institutionalized cooperation61

The revision of the defense guidelines was however a central feature of Jap-anese security policy in the last decade that eludes neoliberal explanations Itextends the scope of the US-Japan security arrangement under the provisionsof the treaty for the maintenance of peace and security in ldquothe Far Eastrdquo to in-clude ldquosituations in areas surrounding Japanrdquo The operative understanding ofldquothe Far Eastrdquo in Article 6 of the security treaty was geographically dened bythe Japanese government in 1960 as ldquoprimarily the region north of the Philip-pines as well as Japan and its surrounding areardquo including South Korea andTaiwan The revised guidelines explicitly state that the phrase ldquosituations in ar-eas surrounding Japanrdquo (short for ldquosituations in areas surrounding Japan thatwill have an important inuence on Japanrsquos peace and securityrdquo) is conceptualand has no geographic connotations In situations when rear-area support maybe required these areas are not necessarily limited to East Asia62

This ambiguity has given rise to much debate in Japan and beyond Underthe revised guidelines US-Japanese cooperation in combat is obligatory onlyin situations involving the defense of Japanrsquos home islands In the view of revi-sion advocates problems may emerge in a crisis not involving an attack on Ja-panmdashincluding any that arise in the Asia-Pacic regionmdashbut that wouldrequire general defense cooperation with the United States in the interest of re-gional stability and security For some the revised defense guidelines free Ja-pan to provide logistical and other forms of support to the United Statesfalling short of military combat as long as the crisis is politically construed asconstituting a serious security threat to Japan63 Adopting a less exible ap-proach the ministry of foreign affairs director of the North American Affairs


61 Council on Foreign Relations Independent Study Group The Tests of War and the Strains ofPeace The US-Japan Security Relationship (New York Council on Foreign Relations 1998) pp 20ndash2662 The political leadership has denied however that ldquosituations in areas surrounding Japanrdquo in-volve no geographic element whatsoever Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi claimed before the lowerhouse budget committee that the ldquoMiddle East the Indian Ocean and the other side of the globerdquocannot be conceived of as being covered by the new guidelines According to this interpretationeven though an interruption of oil supplies from the Middle East would constitute a potentially se-rious threat to Japan that threat insofar as it is located in the Middle East or the Indian Oceanwould not be covered by the guidelines ldquoShuhen Jitai Chiriteki Yoso Fukumurdquo [Situation in areassurrounding Japan includes geographical factor] Asahi Shimbun January 27 1999 14th ed and in-terview 01-99 January 11 199963 Interview 03-99 Tokyo January 12 1999

Bureau stated in May 1998 before the Lower House Foreign Affairs Commit-tee that ldquosituations in areas surrounding Japanrdquo were restricted to those occur-ring in the Far East and its surrounding areas64

In the future the clash between more or less exible interpretations of thescope of US-Japan defense cooperation will be shaped by changing interna-tional and domestic political conditions The ambiguity that lurks behindconicting viewpoints and temporary victories of one side or the other is cen-tral to how Japanese ofcials adapt security policy to change According to thegovernmentrsquos ofcial interpretation it is the specic security threat at a specictime that in the judgment of the cabinet and the Diet will determine whetherthat threat will be covered by the ambiguous wording of the revised guide-lines Thus the scope of the areas surrounding Japan is variable and dependson a functional and conceptual rather than a geographic and objective con-struction of Japanrsquos changing security environment

Neoliberal explanations of the US-Japan alliance cannot explain the deliber-ate ambiguity in the denition of the term ldquosurrounding areardquo in the reviseddefense guidelines This ambiguity undercuts efciency because it leavesunspecied the contingencies under which the Japanese government mightchoose to participate in regional security cooperation measures Yet for theguidelinesrsquo advocates ambiguity by deecting criticism in Japan may well in-crease US-Japanese defense cooperation In seeking to create exibility in pol-icy through a politics of interpretation and reinterpretation of text ambiguityis a dening characteristic of Japanrsquos security policy65

constructivism Parsimonious constructivist analysis of Japanese andAsian-Pacic security also lacks plausibility Contrary to claims by neoliberalsmultilateral institutions do more than facilitate the exchange of informationASEAN processes of trust building for example appear to be well underway66 The ARF is more than an intraorganizational balancing of threats and


64 ldquoShuhen Jitai no Chiriteki Hanrsquoi Kyokuto to sono Shuhenrdquo [Geographical scope of situation inareas surrounding Japan is Far East and its surrounding areas] Asahi Shimbun May 23 1998 14thed Because the statement ran afoul of the governmentrsquos wariness of Chinese criticism of the re-vised guidelines the ofcial was removed from his post ldquoSeifu Hokubei Kyokucho wo Kotetsurdquo[Government removes director of North American Affairs Bureau from post] Asahi Shimbun July7 1998 evening 4th ed and ldquoShuhen Jitai ni Aimaisardquo [Situation in areas surrounding Japan isambiguous] Asahi Shimbun July 8 1998 14th ed65 Katzenstein Cultural Norms and National Security pp 59ndash13066 Simon ldquoSecurity Prospects in Southeast Asiardquo Amitav Acharya Constructing a Security Com-munity ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order (London Routledge 2000) Acharya ldquoRegionalInstitutions and Security Order in Asiardquo Amitav Acharya ldquoInstitutionalism and Balancing in theAsia Pacic Region ASEAN US Strategic Frameworks and the ASEAN Regional Forumrdquo (To-ronto Department of Political Science York University and Singapore Institute of Defense andStrategic Studies Nanyang Technological University 1999) Amitav Acharya ldquoCollective Identity

capabilities Yuen Foong Khong writes that it is the only ldquomechanism fordefusing the conictual by-products of power balancing practicesrdquo in Asia-Pacic67 It is thus understandable why governments are eager to adjustregional security institutions to new conditions rather than to abandon themaltogether Exclusive reliance on balancing strategies of the kind favored byrealists appears to Asian-Pacic governments to be fraught with risk68

In three carefully researched case studies dealing with relations betweenMalaysia and the Philippines between the 1960s and 1990s ASEANrsquos policiesafter Vietnamrsquos 1978 invasion of Cambodia and the period of strategic uncer-tainty after the end of the Cold War Nikolas Busse has shown that ASEANnorms have noticeably inuenced government policy69 In the 1990s spe-cically ASEAN members did not balance against the destabilizing possibili-ties of US disengagement Japanese reassertion and Chinese expansionInstead member states sought to export the ASEAN way of intensive consulta-tion to East Asia through the ARF and the Workshops on Managing PotentialConicts in the South China Sea that Indonesia has convened since 1990 Morerecently the ASEAN plus Three meetings have provided a forum for discus-sion of security issues involving ASEAN members Japan South Korea andChina70 And in 2000 the ARF ofcially accepted North Korea as a memberBussersquos research points to the importance of the legitimacy success and prom-inence of norms of informal consultations consensus building andnonintervention for Asian-Pacic security In brief ASEANrsquos strategy madeChina the United States and Japan part of ongoing security dialogues thatreplicate three important ASEAN norms informal diplomacy personal con-tacts and respect for the principle of nonintervention


and Conict Management in Southeast Asiardquo in Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett eds Secu-rity Communities (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1998) pp 198ndash227 Amitav AcharyaldquoA Regional Security Community in Southeast Asiardquo Journal of Strategic Studies Vol 18 No 3(September 1995) pp 181ndash182 Amitav Acharya ldquoThe Association of Southeast Asian Nations lsquoSe-curity Communityrsquo or lsquoDefense Communityrsquordquo Pacic Affairs Vol 64 No 2 (Summer 1991)pp 159ndash177 Yuen Foong Khong ldquoMaking Bricks without Straw in the Asia Pacicrdquo Pacic ReviewVol 10 No 2 (1997) pp 289ndash300 and Yuen Foong Khong ldquoASEANrsquos Collective Identity SourcesShifts and Security Consequencesrdquo paper prepared for the annual meeting of the American Politi-cal Science Association Boston Massachusetts September 3ndash6 199867 Khong ldquoMaking Bricks without Straw in the Asia Pacicrdquo p 29668 Acharya ldquoInstitutionalism and Balancing in the Asia Pacic Regionrdquo69 Nikolas Busse Die Entstehung von kollektiven Identitaumlten Das Beispiel der ASEAN-Staaten [Therise of collective identity The example of the ASEAN states] (Baden-Baden Nomos 2000) andNikolas Busse ldquoConstructivism and Southeast Asian Securityrdquo Pacic Review Vol 12 No 1 (1999)pp 39ndash6070 Interview 01-00 Singapore June 7 2000 South Korea used to be wary of ASEAN-led multilat-eral consultations which it saw as being focused primarily on South China Sea issues See Hideya

The redenition of collective identities however is a process measured indecades not years The accomplishments of various track-one and track-twosecurity dialogues in Asia-Pacic remain limited Bilateralism and multi-lateralism as Acharya has pointed out are less threat and more uncertaintyoriented71 Collective identity is therefore less directly at stake than are trustand reputation Skeptics have joked that the bark of the ARF is worse than itsbite The ARF has sidestepped the most pressing security issues in Asiaconicts on the Korean Peninsula across the Taiwan Strait and in the SouthChina Sea North Korearsquos nuclear and missile programs have become a majorsource of instability in Asia-Pacic72 Hoping to defuse this crisis the UnitedStates Japan China and South Korea are all engaged in complicated inter-linked diplomatic initiatives that exclude both ASEAN and the ARF The sameis true of the smoldering Taiwan Strait crisis With China declaring the statusof Taiwan a domestic matter the ASEAN norm of nonintervention has pre-vented the ARF from playing a mediating role in this crisis73 Finally inthe South China Sea the ARF has been slightly more engaged while still fall-ing well short of seeking the role of active mediator between clashing stateinterests74

The restricted scope of ARF activity is reected in its minuscule organiza-tional resources Since its rst meeting in 1994 the ARF has modeled itself afterASEAN It has ldquoparticipantsrdquo rather than ldquomembersrdquo thus signaling the pre-mium that it places on a lack of permanency and formality ARF has no head-quarters or secretariat and it is unlikely that either will be established75

Although there are a number of intersessional working groups the ARF itselfmeets annually for one day only76


Kurata ldquoMultilateralism and the Korean Problem with Respect to the Asia-Pacic Regionrdquo Journalof Pacic Asia Vol 3 (1996) pp 132ndash13871 Acharya ldquoRegional Institutions and Security Order in Asiardquo p 1872 Christopher W Hughes ldquoThe North Korean Nuclear Crisis and Japanese Securityrdquo SurvivalVol 38 No 2 (Summer 1996) pp 79ndash10373 This is not an exception All Asian states either voted against or abstained from voting on theSeptember 27 1999 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees resolution calling on the UNsecretary-general to establish an international commission of inquiry into violations of interna-tional law in East Timor Rosemary Foot ldquoGlobal Institutions and the Management of Regional Se-curity in the Asia Pacicrdquo paper prepared for the Second Workshop on Security Order in the Asia-Pacic Bali Indonesia May 30ndashJune 2 2000 p 2074 Interviews 08-98 01-00 and 07-00 Beijing June 21 1998 June 13 2000 and June 15 200075 Interview 07-00 Tokyo January 13 200076 In 1996 for example Japan cochaired the ARF working group on condence- and security-building measures Boeicho (Defense Agency) Boei Hakusho [Defense white paper] (TokyoOkurasho Insatsu-kyoku 1999) p 187 Gaimusho Gaiko Seisho 1998 p 31 and Hisane MasakildquoJapan to Co-chair Peacekeeping Grouprdquo Japan Times July 17 1998

The ARF has been weakened further by three developments in the late1990s First Asiarsquos nancial crisis has put new strains on relations among sev-eral ASEAN members (including Malaysia and Singapore) and has illustratedin the words of former Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew that ldquowecanrsquot help each otherrdquo77 Second the ARF was unable to act in a politicallymeaningful way in the 1999 crisis in East Timor The United Nations not theARF was the central international arena and actor to which Indonesia turnedThird there are some indications that according to Michael Leifer the acces-sion of Cambodia Laos and Vietnam to ASEAN is leading to ldquorevisionaryfragmentationrdquo with the three governments meeting separately at times fromthe older ASEAN members78 In addition the United States is putting increas-ing emphasis on bilateral diplomatic and military relationships Since 1996 forexample it has strengthened its links with Japan and Australia and has ex-panded its military access to ASEAN members such as Singapore MalaysiaIndonesia Thailand and the Philippines79

The Taiwan problem has imported the ARFrsquos track-one problems into track-two talks The ARF has not admitted Taiwan as a participant After Chinajoined CSCAP in 1996 Taiwanese participation in working group discussionsoccurred only by special invitation that had to be vetted informally by China80

Procedural and political controversies thus lurk just below the surface andtend to hamper progress in CSCAP Its working groups are typically staffed byrelatively young researchers given to a relatively free and informal style of ex-changing views The Chinese representative however is often unwilling toparticipate in these discussions except to stop them whenever they veer to-ward the politically sensitive issues of Taiwanrsquos status or sovereignty disputesin the South China Sea In the context of the working group discussions some


77 Quoted in ldquoASEANrsquos Failure The Limits of Politenessrdquo Economist February 28 1994 p 44Acharya ldquoInstitutionalism and Balancing in the Asia Pacic Regionrdquo pp 3 26 and Juumlrgen RuumllandldquoASEAN and the Asian Crisis Theoretical Implications and Practical Consequences for SoutheastAsian Regionalismrdquo Pacic Review Vol 13 No 3 (2000) p 43978 Michael Leifer ldquoRegionalism Compared The Perils and Benets of Expansionrdquo paper pre-pared for the Fourteenth Asia-Pacic Roundtable Kuala Lumpur Malaysia June 3ndash7 2000 p 479 Acharya ldquoInstitutionalism and Balancing in the Asia Pacic Regionrdquo p 280 Akiko Fukushima Japanese Foreign Policy The Emerging Logic of Multilateralism (BasingstokeUK Macmillan 1999) pp 149 155 197 Toshiya Hoshino ldquoNichi-bei Domei to Asia Taiheiyo noTakoku-kan Anzen Hosho Nihon no Shitenrdquo [Japan-US alliance and multilateral security in theAsia-Pacic A Japanese perspective] in Hideki Kan Glenn D Hook and Stephanie A Westoneds Asia Taiheiyo no Chiiki Chitsujo to Anzen Hosho [Regional order and security in the Asia-Pacic](Kyoto Minerva Shobo 1999) p 181 Takashi Terada ldquoThe Origins of Japanrsquos APEC Policy For-eign Minister Takeo Mikirsquos Asia-Pacic Policy and Current Implicationsrdquo Pacic Review Vol 11No 3 (1998) p 361 interviews 01-98 and 02-98 Beijing June 12 1998 and Brian Job personal com-munication July 1 2000

Japanese participants interpret Chinarsquos role as bordering on systematic ob-structionism of the track-two process81

The self-blocking tendencies of security multilateralism require much pa-tience and reinforce in the eyes of Japanese policymakers the advantages ofbilateral approaches to security issues82 The Japan Institute of InternationalAffairs (JIIA) is the undisputed center for Japanrsquos active involvement in abroad range of track-two activities83 Founded in the late 1950s and well con-nected in Japan Asia-Pacic and throughout the advanced industrial worldthe JIIA has acted as the coordinator and secretarial ofce in Japan not only forCSCAP (since 1994) but also for the Pacic Economic Cooperation Council(since 1980) and for the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (since 1998)84

Bilateralism marks the activities of JIIA Based on a decade-long tradition of bi-lateral meetings with think tanks universities and international affairs insti-tutes in North America and Western Europe regular bilateral exchanges withAsian-Pacic countries have increased sharply only since the mid-1980smdashforexample with the China Institute of International Studies (since 1985) theSouth Korean Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (since 1986)


81 Interviews 01-98 02-98 and 07-00 Beijing June 15 1998 and June 15 2000 and interview 04-00 Tokyo January 12 2000 The dynamics in CSCAPrsquos working groups differ however Interview09-00 Tokyo January 13 2000 With its twenty to thirty participants the working group on trans-national crime for example meets semiannually to deal with more specic issues It is staffed byequal numbers of police professionals policy experts and scholars (mostly criminologists) whoare more interested in exchanging information than in discussing solutions to policy problemsThe working group has recently added the issue of illegal trafcking in people migrants andwomen and children to its traditional topics of illegal trade in narcotics and small rearms The na-ture of the subject matter and the grouprsquos diversity yield a different style of discussion and groupdynamic Chinese representatives balk when infrequent policy discussions even suggest ways tocooperate that might be seen as infringing on state sovereignty Although they do not tend to par-ticipate actively the Chinese typically do not object to discussion of the problems that organizedcrime in China creates for other countries and the region as a whole In meetings of this workinggroup China thus looks less obstructionist to its Asian-Pacic neighbors than it does in discus-sions of traditional national security issues in other working groups but Chinese ofcials areclearly less forthcoming in a multilateral setting than in bilateral police discussions and jointoperations82 Interview 04-00 Tokyo January 12 200083 Ibid84 Although JIIA is important and has particularly close relations with the ministry of foreign af-fairs both in terms of nance and personnel other research organizationsmdashincluding the ResearchInstitute for Peace and Security and the Institute for International Policy Studiesmdashare routinely en-gaged in similar kinds of meetings and exchanges that are designed to strengthen Asian-Pacicnetworks The National Institute for Defense Studies for example has hosted since 1994 an annualsecurity seminar focusing on the development of condence-building measures The seminar is at-tended by professional military personnel in November 1998 participants from nineteen countriesattended Boeicho Boei Hakusho 1999pp 189ndash190 422 Fukushima ldquoJapanrsquos Emerging View of Se-curity Multilateralism in Asiardquo p 31 and interviews 02-99 and 04-99 Tokyo January 11ndash12 1999

the North Korean Institute for Disarmament and Peace (since 1990) the Viet-namese Institute for International Relations (since 1992) and the Indian Insti-tute for Defense Studies and Analysis (since 1995)85

advantages of eclectic explanationsCompelling analyses of empirical puzzles can be built through combining real-ist liberal and constructivist modes of explanation Realism and liberalism to-gether for example can generate powerful insights into the mixture ofbalance-of-power and multilateral politics A soft form of balance-of-powertheorizing for example informs the 1995 Nye report that provides a rationalefor continued US military engagement in East Asia86 At one level the reportis about increasing trust communication transparency and reliability in aUS-Japan relationship marked by complex interdependence thus seeking tostabilize the alliance and enhance predictability and stability in the region Butit is also about maintaining US primacy The 1997 Revised Guidelines for Ja-pan-US Defense Cooperation spell out the operations that Japan would be ex-pected to carry out in a regional crisis and thus ensure that in such a crisispotentially hostile states could not drive a wedge between the United Statesand Japan Japanrsquos support of US forces would be sufciently robust to pre-vent a backlash in the US Congress against either the alliance or the forwarddeployment of US forces in Asia-Pacic Japanrsquos defense posture would con-tinue to be guided by alliance planning and nally the United States would beable to win decisively in a possible military conict with North Korea withoutshouldering excessive costs87

In this realist-liberal perspective the United States remains militarily andeconomically fully engaged in Asia-Pacic thus reassuring Asian-Pacic statesagainst the threat posed by Japanrsquos present economic preponderance andpotential military rearmament Japan emerges as a potential economic andpolitical leader contained within well-dened political boundaries This dou-ble-barreled US approach is rounded out by hopes for a unied and peaceful


85 Such bilateral meetings and exchanges are also characteristic of other Japanese research orga-nizations The National Institute for Defense Studies for example runs a series of annual bilateralmeetings with representatives from China Russia and South Korea It hosted eight researchersfrom ASEAN in 1999 Interview 04-99 Tokyo January 12 199986 Doug Bandow ldquoOld Wine in New Bottles The Pentagonrsquos East Asia Security Strategy ReportrdquoPolicy Analysis No 344 CATO Institute May 18 1999 Council on Foreign Relations IndependentStudy Group The Tests of War and the Strains of Peace and Joseph S Nye ldquoThe lsquoNye Reportrsquo SixYears Laterrdquo International Relations of the Asia-Pacic Vol 1 No 1 (2001) pp 95ndash10487 We would like to thank Michael Green for clarifying this point for us

Korea and an economically prospering China increasingly engaged with theWest Japan and the rest of Asia-Pacic88

Japanrsquos China policy also reects a mixture of realist and liberal elements89

Just as Germany avoids at all cost having to choose between the United Statesand France Japan avoids having to choose between the United States andChina Without risking its primary security relationship with the United StatesJapan since the 1970s has consistently sought to engage China diplomaticallyThis entails an element of balancing as Japan seeks to constrain China a poten-tial opponent through a policy of engagement From Japanrsquos perspectivecountering China is possible only through alignment with the United StatesBecause Chinarsquos military does not currently pose a serious threat to the regionand because military modernization is a costly and prolonged process mea-sured in decades rather than years the military aspects of the Japan-China re-lationship are relatively unimportant Instead Japanrsquos diplomacy aims at aslow steady and prolonged process of encouraging China to contribute moreto regional stability and prosperity On several issuesmdashsuch as Chinarsquos grow-ing involvement in the ARF an ofcially unacknowledged but nonetheless evi-dent policy of seeking to enhance stability on the Korean Peninsula and thesomewhat greater exibility with which the leadership in Beijing has ad-dressed encroachments on Chinarsquos sovereignty on issues of political authorityand economic independence (as opposed to those involving territorial integ-rity and jurisdictional monopoly)mdashJapanese patience is being rewarded90 Thesettlement of virtually all of Chinarsquos border conicts its acceptance into theWorld Trade Organization (WTO) and its far-reaching domestic reforms allpoint to a general political climate conducive to Japanrsquos policy of engage-ment91

A combination of realist and constructivist styles of analysis also hasconsiderable heuristic power as David Spiro and Alastair Johnston have


88 James E Auer ldquoA Win-Win Alliance for Asardquo Japan Times August 8 199889 Interview 03-00 Tokyo January 11 199990 Interviews 01-98 04-98 05-98 07-98 and 09-98 Beijing June 15 16 19 20 and 22 1998 andAllen M Carlson ldquoThe Lock on Chinarsquos Door Chinese Foreign Policy and the Sovereignty NormrdquoPhD dissertation Yale University 2000 See also the cautious notes of optimism in ChristensenldquoChina the US-Japan Alliance and the Security Dilemma in East Asiardquo pp 69ndash8091 A mixture of realist and liberal categories is also better than either alone to capture the combi-nation of balancing and engagement characteristic of the diplomatic strategies of many Asian-Pacic states Interview 02-00 Tokyo January 11 1999 Even though some Southeast Asian states(such as Indonesia the Philippines and Vietnam) are wary of China because of past or current ter-ritorial disputes they nevertheless seek to engage it in multilateral institutions such as the ARFAnd even though Japan is the overwhelming power in Southeast Asia its relations with states inthe region have been good and are getting better in the wake of the Asian nancial crisis

argued92 The volatile issue of Taiwan potentially the most serious trouble spotin Asia-Pacic illustrates this analytical possibility93 The use of the term ldquosur-rounding areasrdquo rather than ldquoFar Eastrdquo in the revised guidelines creates ambi-guities but they have been acceptable to both US and Japanese defenseofcials for instrumental reasons The United States has an interest in enhanc-ing the deterrent effect of its alliance with Japan against China Japaneseofcials have an interest in leaving undened Japanrsquos response to a possiblecrisis over Taiwan The advantages of ambiguity on Taiwan are widely ac-knowledged inside the Japanese government94 as are the risks95 In the 1979Taiwan Relations Act the United States combined its diplomatic recognition ofthe Peoplersquos Republic of China with a commitment to Taiwanrsquos military de-fense Japan however has kept its stance on Taiwan as ambiguous as possibleJapanese insistence on the domestic nature of the conict between Beijing andTaipei however may not sufce in future crises More than any other issueTaiwanrsquos status potentially confronts Japan and the United States with seriousdifculties in defense cooperation should China seek to resolve this issuethrough military means96

A combination of constructivism and realism also offers historical insightsJohn Fairbank for example has offered a broad interpretation of East Asian in-ternational relations97 For many centuries Asian international relations wereinstitutionalized as a suzerain rather than as a sovereign system of states inwhich the central power did not seek to subordinate or intervene unduly in theaffairs of lesser powers within its ambit98 China was the center of a system oftributary trade in which polities emulated and aligned with the central powerFocusing on systems with a preponderant source of power Randall Schweller


92 David E Spiro The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony Petrodollar Recycling and InternationalMarkets (Ithaca NY Cornell University Press 1999) and Alastair Iain Johnston Cultural RealismStrategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press1995)93 Christensen ldquoChina the US-Japan Alliance and the Security Dilemma in East Asiardquo pp 62ndash6994 Interviews 02-99 05-99 11-99 and 13-99 Tokyo January 11ndash12 and 14 199995 Interview 03-99 Tokyo January 12 199996 Interviews 02-99 and 13-99 Tokyo January 11 and 14 199997 John King Fairbank ed The Chinese World Order Traditional Chinarsquos Foreign Relations (Cam-bridge Mass Harvard University Press 1968)98 David C Kang ldquoAsian Nations Bandwagonrdquo in G John Ikenberry and Michael Mastandunoeds The Emerging International Relations of the Asia Pacic Region (New York Columbia UniversityPress forthcoming) pp 14ndash16 (ms) and Susanne Feske ldquoJapan und die USA Zivilmaumlchte imasiatisch-pazischen Raumrdquo [Japan and the USA Civilian powers in Asia-Pacic] TrierArbeitspapiere zum DFG-Forschungsprojekt ldquoZivilmaumlchte in der internationalen Politikrdquo [Trierworking papers for the DFG research project ldquoCivilian powers in international politicsrdquo] Trier Ger-many July 1997 pp 18ndash19

speaks of ldquobandwagoning for protrdquo99 Less material objects than prots nar-rowly construed were involved however In Asia tribute was not only trade Itwas also an institutional transmission belt for collective norms and identitiesin Chinese culture Power trade and culture were central in dening the polit-ical relationships between the Middle Kingdom and its neighbors

The Sinocentric world order was anarchic and organized around the princi-ple of self-help Power and geographic location mattered just as realism leadsus to expect Yet Chinese diplomatic practices also facilitated cultural emula-tion thus yielding a system with a distinctive mixture of hierarchy and equal-ity In this Sinocentric world discrepancies between norms and practice werecommon as is true of the Westphalian system of sovereign states But asMichel Oksenberg has observed the nature of the mist was different so thatcertain ambiguous solutions of the past concerning territorial disputes overTaiwan Tibet and Hong Kong are today rendered more intractable100

Amending his own published work Robert Jervis usefully underlines a theo-retical point that many realists and neoliberals discount unduly the dynamicand unanticipated consequences that institutions can have for preferences overoutcomes especially by affecting through domestic politics ldquodeeper changes inwhat the actors want and how they conceive of their interestsrdquo101

Liberalism and constructivism can also be combined to good effect This de-cade for example has witnessed the growth of formal and informal multilat-eral security arrangements in Asia-Pacic ldquoCooperativerdquo approaches focus onmilitary and nonmilitary dimensions of security seek to prevent the emer-gence of manifest security threats and are inclusive in their membership Dia-


99 Randall L Schweller ldquoBandwagoning for Prot Bringing the Revisionist State Back Inrdquo Inter-national Security Vol 19 No 1 (Summer 1994) pp 72ndash107100 Michel Oksenberg ldquoThe Issue of Sovereignty in the Asian Historical Contextrdquo in Stephen DKrasner ed Problematic Sovereignty Contested Rules and Political Possibilities (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press 2001) pp 83ndash104 See also Stephen D Krasner ldquoOrganized Hypocrisy in 19thCentury East Asiardquo International Relations of the Asia-Pacic Vol 1 No 2 (2001) pp 173ndash197Fairbank has been criticized often for taking the self-interested descriptions of Chinese court lite-rati as unproblematic data describing how the system of tributary trade was actually working Forfollow-up research that investigates how this system of trade may have operated in practice seefor example Morris Rossabi ed China among Equals The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbors 10thndash14th Centuries (Berkeley University of California Press 1983) John E Wills Jr Embassies and Illu-sions Dutch and Portuguese Envoys to Krsquoang-hsi 1666ndash1687 (Cambridge Mass Harvard UniversityPress 1984) and James L Hevia Cherishing Men from Afar Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Em-bassy of 1793 (Durham NC Duke University Press 1995) Fairbankrsquos failing is not uncommon Itis shared by realists who rely on Thucydides as an unquestioned historical source for thePeloponnesian War101 Jervis ldquoRealism Neoliberalism and Cooperationrdquo pp 61ndash62

logues and various condence-building measures are crucial to the creation ofmutual trust102 These seek to lower the costs of making political contacts facil-itate the exchange of information enhance transparency and strengthen trustbetween governments103

Multilateral security institutions can enhance efciencies and over timealter underlying preferences and thus redene interests104 The analytical dif-ference between these two effects is mirrored in the attitudes of Japaneseofcials between a more skeptical and ldquorealisticrdquo stance on Asian security insti-tutions on the one hand and a more enthusiastic and ldquopacistrdquo one on theother105

Over longer periods multilateral security institutions can do more than cre-ate efciencies in the relations between governments They can redene identi-ties and acceptable standards of behavior and thus reduce or enhance fear andhostility or the collective pursuit of economic prosperity and political coopera-tion Scholars who have written on the ARF for example have made a strongcase for the importance of informal and formal dialogues as ways of creatingnot only more transparency but also arenas of persuasion and a partial changein preferences and interests106

Analytical eclecticism offers distinct advantages Whether they stress materi-alist or ideational factors rationalist analytical perspectives such as realismand liberalism are enriched when employed in tandem They are also enrichedby the incorporation of constructivist elements When realists and liberals in


102 Matake Kamiya ldquoThe US-Japan Alliance and Regional Security Cooperation Toward a Dou-ble-Layered Security Systemrdquo in Cossa Restructuring the US-Japan Alliance pp 21ndash22103 Interview 13-99 Tokyo January 14 1999104 Peter Alexis Gourevitch ldquoThe Governance Problem in International Relationsrdquo in David ALake and Robert Powell eds Strategic Choice and International Relations (Princeton NJ PrincetonUniversity Press 1999) p 137 and Jervis ldquoRealism Neoliberalism and Cooperationrdquo pp 58ndash63105 Interview 04-00 Tokyo January 12 2000106 Acharya ldquoInstitutionalism and Balancing in the Asia Pacic Regionrdquo Amitav Acharya ldquoRe-gionalism and the Emerging (Intrusive) World Order Sovereignty Autonomy Identityrdquo paperpresented at the CSGR (Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation) Third AnnualConference After the Global Crisis What Next for Regionalism Scarman House University ofWarwick September 16ndash18 1999 Acharya ldquoCollective Identityrdquo Acharya ldquoA Regional SecurityCommunityrdquo Busse Die Entstehung von kollektiven Identitaumlten Busse ldquoConstructivism and South-east Asian Securityrdquo Joseph YS Cheng ldquoChinarsquos ASEAN Policy in the 1990s Pushing forMultipolarity in the Regional Contextrdquo Contemporary China Centre City University of HongKong nd Alastair Iain Johnston ldquoThe Myth of the ASEAN Way Explaining the Evolution of theASEAN Regional Forumrdquo in Helga Haftendorn Robert O Keohane and Celeste A Wallandereds Imperfect Unions Security Institutions over Time and Space (Oxford Oxford University Press1999) pp 287ndash324 Khong ldquoASEANrsquos Collective Identityrdquo and Simon ldquoSecurity Prospects forSoutheast Asiardquo

their empirically informed theoretical and policy writings slight norms andidentities they undermine the contribution to knowledge and policy advicethey seek to make107

Conclusion

The paradigmatic clashes in international relations theory and the eld of secu-rity studies are part of a broader set of disagreements in political science andthe social sciences Theoretical debates between proponents of rationalistculturalist and historical-institutional approaches appear these days in vari-ous guises and combinations in virtually all elds of social inquiry These de-bates reveal differences in problem focus acceptable analytic methods andsubstantive hypotheses More important they point to deep divides aboutunveriable underlying assumptions concerning the possibilities characterand purpose of social knowledge the different routes we take to gain thatknowledge and the ontological status and epistemological signicance of the


107 To the extent that recent analyses of Japanese and Asian-Pacic security have chosen to sim-ply ignore or misinterpret sociology or constructivism they have unnecessarily weakened the con-tribution they make by misconstruing sociological analyses as inherently optimistic (Robert MUriu ldquoDomestic-International Interactions and Japanese Security Studiesrdquo Journal of Asian and Af-rican Studies Vol 33 No 1 [1998] pp 76ndash93) and ahistorical (Robert M Uriu ldquoDomestic-Interna-tional Interactions and Japanese Security Studiesrdquo in James Sperling Yogendra Malik and DavidLouscher eds Zones of Amity Zones of Enmity The Prospects for Economic and Military Security inAsia [Leiden Brill 1998] pp 85ndash86) failing to address explicitly the relevance of collective identi-ties while appealing obliquely to regional security communities that presuppose the existence ofsuch identities (Mochizuki and OrsquoHanlon ldquoA Liberal Visionrdquo) offering a misleadingly partialanalysis of mercantilism that both neglects the ideological component of that intriguing conceptand misinterprets a sociological explanation of Japanese foreign policy as dealing merely with anexceptional case in a realist world (Eric Heginbotham and Richard J Samuels ldquoMercantile Realismand Japanese Foreign Policyrdquo International Security Vol 22 No 4 [Spring 1998] pp 171ndash203) insharp contrast to the much richer and more compelling argument proposed by Richard J Samuelsin his book Rich Nation Strong Army National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan(Ithaca NY Cornell University Press 1994) wavering between a cultural and a materialist pre-sentation of realist theory (Michael J Green ldquoState of the Field Report Research on Japanese Secu-rity Policyrdquo Access Asia Review Vol 2 No 1 [September 1998] pp 13 15 37) neglecting that in thecase of Japanese security sociological analyses focus their attention not on specic variants of real-ism but on rationalist explanations more generally and that they explain not merely national secu-rity narrowly construed but also internal and economic security more broadly understood issuesthat elude realist theorizing (Tsuyoshi Kawasaki ldquoPostclassical Realism and Japanese Security Pol-icyrdquo paper prepared for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association AtlantaGeorgia September 2ndash5 1999) and by overlooking how norms that constitute Japanrsquos collectiveidentity as a ldquonon-threatening peace-loving staterdquo are nested in underlying and more fundamen-tal norms of Japan as a nonmajoritarian political community (Daniel Okimoto ldquoThe Japan-Amer-ica Security Alliance Prospects for the Twenty-First Centuryrdquo Stanford University Institute forInternational Studies AsiaPacic Research Center 1998 pp 28ndash29)

relations between agents and structures and of the material and ideal aspectsof social life108

Many scholars offer reasonable and seemingly convergent postulates onevery side of these debates that stress the need to build bridges between multi-ple analytical perspectives Yet paradigmatic debates rarely succeed in movingus closer to a better integrated or more unied perspective in the social sci-encesmdashand for good reason According to Rudra Sil standard rhetoric in theeld of comparative politics for example emphasizes ldquonot a unied syntheticapproach but rather the greater exibility of a particular research tradition vis-agrave-vis the others the objective is not to encourage theoretical integration but toward off the standard criticisms each approach typically faces from proponentsof competing approachesrdquo In this genre of academic writing smart rhetoricalposturing dictates pragmatic exibility not cultish monism in the effort tosubsume the particularistic and myopic concerns of competing perspectiveswithout relaxing any of the original foundational assumptions of onersquos ownpreferred perspective109

Instead of approach-driven analysis we advocate problem-driven researchThe insistence on parsimony clashes with the complexity of social processesoccurring within specic contexts of both time and space110 As this article hasillustrated and with no claim to originality international relations analysiscan build on the identication of empirical anomalies for any one analyticalperspective A problem-driven approach to research has one big advantageIt sidesteps often bitter repetitive and inherently inconclusive paradig-matic debates Such debates detract scholars and graduate students from theprimary task at hand recognizing interesting questions and testing alternativeexplanations

A glance at examples from other elds is instructive A world of complexprocesses can be captured by thinking about what Arthur Koestler dubbedldquoholonic principles of architecturerdquo that is the relation between the whole andits parts in two different ways111 First following Herbert Simon we can thinkof the social world as a set of nearly decomposable systems with tight causal


108 Rudra Sil ldquoThe Foundations of Eclecticism The Epistemological Status of Agency Cultureand Structure in Social Theoryrdquo Journal of Theoretical Politics Vol 12 No 3 (2000) pp 353ndash387109 Ibid p 372110 Robert Jervis System Effects Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton NJ PrincetonUniversity Press 1997)111 John Mathews ldquoHolonic Organisational Architecturesrdquo Human Systems Management Vol 15(1996) pp 27ndash54 See also Arthur Koestler The Ghost in theMachine (London Hutchinson 1967)

linkages among subsystems of factors that form a loosely coupled broader en-semble112 In developing his point Simon used the parable of two Swiss watch-makers Tempus and Horus Tempus assembled his watches from separateparts When interrupted he had to put the unnished watch down on the ta-ble where it fell apart forcing him to start again Tempus produced fewwatches Horus on the other hand built his watches by assembling the indi-vidual pieces into modules that he subsequently put together Horus producedmany watches The recent history of watchmaking illustrates a second pointabout the whole and its parts Seiko watchmakers revolutionized miniaturiza-tion by splitting the motor into three components and inserting them into tinyspaces between the watchrsquos gears Rather than thinking as did the Swiss ofmotor and gear as natural components that help in the production of thewatch Seiko engineers thought of the total product and the purpose and roleof each component in relation to the whole113

In contemporary social theory the variable relation between the whole andits parts is the core insight of structuration theory Thinking of political realityas a sequence or co-occurrence of structure and agency opens up the possibili-ties for an agnostic epistemological stance in which empirical puzzles drive theanalysis within a broader perspective that is not committed a priori to the pri-macy of either agency or structure materialism or idealism114 Choosing suchan agnostic position has the advantage of being in agreement with much ex-tant research practice the implicit relaxation of strong a priori epistemologicaland ontological commitments in the process of relating substantive ndings toanalytical perspectives In the analysis of international relations too epistem-ological exibility that supports a problem-driven eclectic analytical stance inboth scholarship and teaching suits the needs of individual scholars

This is not to argue that analytical eclecticism is cost-free This approachmay be too exible to dene by itself a research program capable of mobilizingstrong political preferences and enduring professional ties The advantages ofeclecticism however may well outweigh these costs Scholars and policy-makers try to gain analytical leverage over multilayered and complex connec-tions between power interest and norms Analytical eclecticism highlights


112 Herbert A Simon The Sciences of the Articial 2d ed (Cambridge Mass MIT Press 1981)pp 200ndash202113 Mathews ldquoHolonic Organisational Architecturesrdquo pp 27ndash28114 Sil ldquoFoundations of Eclecticismrdquo pp 376ndash380 and Christopher Daase Kleine Kriege-GrosseWirkung Wie Unkonventionelle Kriegfuumlhrung die Internationale Politik Veraumlndert [Small warsmdashbig ef-fects How unconventional warfare alters international politics] (Baden-Baden Nomos 1999)pp 255ndash268

different layers and connections that parsimonious explanations conceal Andit is attuned to empirical anomalies that analytical parsimony slights Eclecti-cism protects us from taking as natural paradigmatic assumptions about theworld It regards with discomfort the certainties that derive from relying solelyon a single paradigm And it protects us imperfectly to be sure from the inevi-table failings of any one paradigm unfounded expectations of what is naturaland the adoption of awed policies that embody those very expectations The-ory and policy are both served better by eclecticism not parsimony


Because the demand for academic spectacles continues to be strong journaleditors are not averse to committing their pages to polemics International Secu-rity is no exception The length of the rst footnote of this article shows that theeditors have made a truly exceptional effort to present all sides of various de-bates This editorial policy however has its costs Editors who publish grandparadigmatic debates have less space for other articles More important it isbecoming increasingly difcult for scholars to disabuse their students of thenotion that in international relations paradigmatic clashes are what scholar-ship should be about rather than the disciplined analysis of empirical puzzlesas is true of other elds of political science and the social sciences moregenerally

Given the substantial proportion of pages that International Security has de-voted to grand debates in the last decade it is our sense that the intellectual re-turns from these exchanges are diminishing sharply Extolling in the abstractthe virtues of a specic analytical perspective to the exclusion of others is intel-lectually less important than making sense of empirical anomalies and strip-ping notions of what is ldquonaturalrdquo of their intuitive plausibility With specicreference to Japanese and Asian-Pacic security affairs this article arguesagainst the privileging of parsimony that has become the hallmark of paradig-matic debates The complex links between power interest and norms defy an-alytical capture by any one paradigm They are made more intelligible bydrawing selectively on different paradigmsmdashthat is by analytical eclecticismnot parsimony

We illustrate this general point with specic reference to Asia-Pacic an areacentral to security affairs since the end of the Cold War In the rst section wequestion briey what is supposedly ldquonaturalrdquo or ldquonormalrdquo about Japan In thesecond section we analyze the formal and informal bilateral and embryonicmultilateral security arrangements that mark Japanese and Asian-Pacic secu-rity affairs Next we argue that styles of analysis that focus exclusively on ei-ther material capabilities institutional efciencies or norms and identitiesoverlook key aspects of the evidence We conclude with some general re-ections on the advantages and disadvantages of analytical eclecticism forunderstanding Japanese and Asian-Pacic security affairs

What Is a ldquoNaturalrdquo or ldquoNormalrdquo Japan

To many observers US-Japan security arrangements and Japanrsquos passivestance on issues of defense are unnatural to be superseded sooner or later by












































































































































Conclusion



























































































































































Conclusion

















japan, asian-pacific security,and the case for analytical ... · ... see john j. mearsheimer, ......

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