Asia’s Transformations, no. 51. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2018. xiv, 238 pp. (Map.) US$149.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-138-09292-1.
Walking through a subway station in Seoul a number of years ago, I happened upon a miniature-scale diorama of the “beautiful Dokdo” islands laid out in the middle of the station concourse. At first glance, it seemed bizarre that a country would devote so much energy to imbuing its own citizens with a love for some disputed rocks, in this case the Dokdo/Takeshima islets. It was even stranger when one considers that South Korea already controlled the rocks; generally, the strategy for the state that controls disputed territory in a territorial dispute is to deny there is a dispute at all, but Dokdo was (at the time) front and centre in South Korea’s relationship with Japan.
How a dispute as seemingly minor as the Dokdo/Takeshima islets could have so much political salience is one of the questions ably answered by Christian Wirth’s well-written, exhaustively researched Danger, Development, and Legitimacy in East Asian Maritime Politics. In a nutshell, Wirth argues that the maritime domain has acquired political salience, and has thus become a source of conflict and competition within East Asia in recent years, because China, South Korea, and Japan have come to see the ocean as “one of the final frontiers of development and progress” (5). As such, the three countries have moved more forcefully to delineate, develop, and take control of the sea, resulting in increased friction within East (and Southeast) Asia.
At times, the book seems to depart from maritime security as such and dwells at some length on the larger issues affecting the South Korea-China-Japan triangle of relationships: historical memory, anxieties about cooperation and competition, and the continuing viability of the developmental state. But perhaps this is the point: maritime security issues, or more specifically regional states’ focus on the maritime domain, are an outflow of the overall anxieties and goals of states in Northeast Asia. Too often work on maritime security in East Asia devolves into a dry recitation of the legal and economic issues surrounding various territorial disputes, and the progress (or lack thereof) made in resolving them. Less attention is paid to why the states care about them in the first place, and why they care about them at specific times. As Wirth points out, even the disputes that seemingly have the most emotional purchase, such as South Korea and Japan’s dispute over the Dokdo/Takeshima islets, are, in terms of political salience, of relatively recent origin.
After placing East Asian seas in historical and academic context, Wirth places the salience of maritime security issues in the context of South Korea, Japan, and China’s drive to respond to perceived dangers that—while in and from the maritime domain—affected and were influenced by larger issues in society, the nation, and civilization. In the chapter on securing society, Wirth argues that the developmental states of all three countries have led to social transformation and modernization, but have also, ultimately, run out of steam, which has led to concerns about stability and security. Turning to the ocean can be seen in all three countries as a way to support continued development, and thus improve the global competitiveness of East Asian societies. As a result, all three countries have re-conceptualized themselves as some permutation of ocean states or maritime powers.
In the chapter on securing the nation, Wirth argues that Japan, South Korea, and China all see themselves as victims of others’ oppression, and thus place particular emphasis on delineating and protecting their territory—framing the space inside as safe, and the space outside as dangerous. But because of the contentious nature of maritime delineations, the huge task associated with actually controlling large swathes of maritime territory (and with many borders left unresolved since the 1951 San Francisco Conference), Northeast Asian countries have had difficulty establishing permanent boundaries, thus leading to conflict and anxiety. Japan’s disputes with China and South Korea, South Korea’s dispute with North Korea, and China’s disputes with a number of countries in the South China Sea have all escalated in recent years as countries have conflated security with overcoming past national humiliation while defending their maritime boundaries.
Finally, Wirth has a chapter on securing civilization through the maritime domain. It is a more expansive concept, but essentially speaks to the challenges faced by regional states in locating their states in or along imagined civilizational lines. In the case of Japan and South Korea, their turn toward the maritime domain (and more specifically the blue economy) is an attempt to assert that they are firmly on the side of the “West” rather than the “East.” China, by contrast, has no identity crisis in terms of which side of the civilizational line it falls. Instead, it has struggled with reconciling its historical status as its own civilization with its modern status as a Westphalian nation-state. China’s “historical” claims over the South China Sea, which are not in congruence with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), are the strongest examples of this tension.
What does all this mean for understanding Northeast Asian politics? Even if, or perhaps especially if, the maritime territories that are to be secured and exploited do not provide major economic benefits, Northeast Asian states will continue to find disputes in the maritime domain useful in legitimizing the state, securing society, and defining their place in the world.
Justin V. Hastings
University of Sydney, Sydney