Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014. xii, 266 pp. (Figures, tables, maps.) US$54.95, cloth, ISBN 978-1-62616-102-3; US$32.95, paper, ISBN 978-1-62616-035-4; US$32.95, ebook, ISBN 978-1-62616-036-1.
The Sino-Japanese relationship has become increasingly tense in recent years, and some even worry that war is looming. Disputes over historical memory, disputed territory, and maritime space are sometimes interpreted as mere flashpoints in an ongoing power shift, but they are also crucial in their own right. Bridging Troubled Waters by James Manicom contributes a fresh perspective on the latter two bones of contention. In a nutshell, the book establishes its raison d´être by asking why and how Sino-Japanese cooperation has been achieved, and how can it be achieved in the future, despite lingering tensions. Manicom rightly argues that the East China Sea dispute should be considered a “least likely” case study in bilateral cooperation, and that it might “shed light on similar disputes” (5).
To address his research problem, Manicom stipulates that the value of disputed space has an impact on cooperative efforts between rival states. He constructs a 2×2 “Maritime Value Matrix” (MVM), where one axis represents the alleged dichotomy between “tangible” and “intangible” values, while the other one embodies a distinction between mutually salient issues and those that are salient only to one actor. Manicom hypothesizes that cooperation will be most reciprocal, enforceable, and lasting over tangible issues that concern both parties, while cooperation over issues that are important to just one party—tangible and intangible—will be weaker and more short-lived. However, he hypothesizes that intangible issues will be pursued reciprocally and tangible ones coercively.
These hypotheses are then confirmed in four cases: the islands conflict per se (since the 1970s), fishery cooperation (1997–2000), marine research activities (2000–2001), and resource development (2005–2008). Manicom finds that cooperation is easier and more durable over tangible matters that both parties have an interest in—fisheries is the case in point. In contrast, as soon as tangible issues are more important to just one party—for example maritime research—cooperation becomes more coercive, informal and short-lived. And when issues are intangible but concerns are shared, as with the territorial dispute, cooperation is reciprocal and informal, but also fragile. Resource development, finally, is a mixed case. Since only China would be able to use the resources effectively the issue has been more crucial to China in material terms. For Japan, in contrast, the issue becomes enmeshed in the allegedly more symbolic islands dispute.
The book not only contributes by demonstrating that Japan and China have been able to cooperate regarding the disputed islands and adjacent maritime space. Based on this understanding it also presents a roadmap for how to break up vicious circles and how to forge more virtuous ones. Manicom asserts that “cooperation will endure” (5), at least “[a]s long as states continue to reciprocate” (26). More concretely, he suggests that Japan could agree to abrogate the consensus on resource exploration from June 2008 “in exchange for an agreement on sharing jurisdiction in the contested area of the East China Sea” (188).
While this book makes significant theoretical, empirical and even policy contributions, I think some matters might be further discussed. First, the MVM distinguishes between tangible and intangible issues, but Manicom later concludes that the two are “nearly impossible to separate, in a political sense” (185). I agree with the afterthought, because even seemingly pure material matters acquire their meaning through symbols, ideas and discourses. Fisheries and fish, for instance, surely mean different things to a country where fish is an important part of the food culture, such as Japan, and a country where meat or vegetables are more prevalent. Likewise, the territorial dispute is classified here as an intangible issue, although, ironically, territory is often treated as the single-most material aspect of nation-states. Manicom argues that the conflation between symbolic and material aspects of contested space “militates against cooperation” in these particular cases (167), but such conflation is arguably inevitable.
Second, symbolic matters recur as a separate variable in the notion that leaders can reason and operate outside of the nationalist discourses and practices, which repeatedly aggravate the Sino-Japanese relationship over contested maritime space. Indeed, although Manicom provides a largely constructivist understanding of identity and refers to the “‘social construction’ of the world oceans” (7), his analysis is framed in the language of rational choice theory, where only costs and benefits seem to motivate the important actors: the strategizing leaders. This is not only inconsistent with social construction, but also quite unrealistic.
Third, Manicom’s belief in the possibility of Sino-Japanese cooperation is firm, but the picture that emerges from his own analysis is actually quite contradictory. He writes both that “the recent phase of tensions in the East China Sea seems to belie the cooperative track record presented in this book” (185), and that “[t]he cooperative track record between China and Japan in the East China Sea belies the expectation that the two countries are teetering on the brink of war over their disputed maritime space” (200). Yet one cannot have it both ways. Although the book demonstrates that cooperation is possible, it also shows that it is often fragile and short-lived. Indeed, this seems to be the gist of two of the hypotheses. Moreover, with the alleged importance of “coercive cooperation,” one needs to consider that coercion for the sake of cooperation is just as likely to have pacific outcomes as war for the sake of peace. Hence, with increasing confrontations at sea, and with mutually more exclusionary and antagonistic identity discourses in both countries, the prospects for cooperation actually seem quite dim.
These small objections notwithstanding, Manicom’s timely book contributes greatly to the understanding of one of the most pressing issues in Sino-Japanese relations, and is a must-read for serious students of East Asian international politics and maritime security alike.
Linus Hagström
Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Stockholm, Sweden
pp. 681-683