NIAS Studies in Asian Topics, no. 60. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2017. xii, 315 pp. (Illustrations.) US$27.00, paper. ISBN 978-87-7694-220-5.
Once the world’s deadliest battlefield, East Asia since the late 1970s has been enjoying relative tranquility, which is also remarkable when stacked against its own bloody history and that of other regions of the globe. Taking this fact as a point of departure, this book probes the genesis as well as the depth of East Asian peace, defined in terms of the reduction of armed conflicts and resultant deaths. A collective effort of the East Asian Peace Programme at Uppsala University in Sweden, it consists of contributions from authors of differing empirical, theoretical, and methodological concerns, each of whom introduces a particular approach toward peace, and then proceeds with an empirical examination of the Asian experience and a broad discussion about the challenges moving forward.
Besides the introductory and concluding chapters, this volume can be divided into three parts. Part One aims to explain Asian peace by focusing on one main causal factor at the international or national level. Taking a conventional liberal view, chapter 2 argues that international trade has lowered the probability of conflict, whereas chapter 3 puts a premium on international law as the legal structure of global governance. Instead of characterizing peace as the outcome of states’ strategic interactions, as the two preceding chapters do, chapter 4 attributes it to decisions by national leaders to prioritize economic development while steering clear of external entanglements. Similarly, chapter 5 focuses on external powers’ shift of attention to their own domestic policy considerations as critical to furthering peace. Chapter 6 takes heed of, and finds that it has to do with, strong state capacities in the region. Chapter 7 draws attention to demographic trends—declining fertility rates and the dissipating “youth bulges” in particular— that are conductive, inadvertently, to strengthening peace.
Part Two moves on to examine the consequences of East Asian peace and its underlying values, preferences, and limitations. These chapters are much more straightforward than previous ones in terms of their substantive claims. Appropriately, they are entitled along the lines of state repressiveness, societal inequality, deficits in government trust, masculine honour, as well as the absence of reconciliation over past wrongs, all of which render peace problematic. The ensuing Part Three delves into the more tangible challenges and threats to East Asian peace. While chapter 13 dwells on the rising tide of nationalism that impedes the formation of a regional community, chapter 14 credits China’s cooperative tendencies with enhancing peace but cautions against what a more competitive US-China relationship might portend. In ending the debate, seven authors jointly argue that the East Asian peace remains shallow and fragile, and warn against possible outbreaks of conflict stemming from the escalation of the contentious politics of ongoing inter-state territorial and maritime disputes.
Each chapter of the book largely stands on its own and makes its own unique contribution. Taken together, the project is a tour de force by scholars who share the same regional interest but come from a diversity of intellectual dispositions. What is equally valuable and important is that, instead of talking past each other, the authors engage one another’s assumptions and arguments explicitly and vigorously. In so doing, they end up sharpening the interlinkages and core disagreements among themselves while also enriching the dialogue with empirical evidence, thus exposing readers who are typically ensconced in one area of study or discipline to a more fully rounded picture. Furthermore, the authors are methodologically conscientious, as they reflect upon whether the insights they gather about Asia are also applicable elsewhere.
The book is of course not free of flaws, perhaps unavoidable due to its broad range and inter-disciplinary character. In this regard, two issues stand out. First, select authors occasionally touch upon the cultural and historical divide between Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, but no coherent rationale is provided to present East Asia as one organic entity. While subsuming the two subregions into one area of focus is not necessarily without merit, putting two rich industrialized democracies (Japan and South Korea) together with the mostly under-developed Southeast Asian countries in the same basket in order to generalize about Asia can carry serious analytical perils. In the meantime, the outsized impact of China, as addressed in chapter 3 and chapter 14 on issues of regional security, deserves more scrutiny in a nuanced and methodic manner.
Second, even though plenty of ink is spilled on the definitions, measurements, and mechanisms of peace across different chapters, the book lacks an organizing principle that distinguishes inter-state conflict from intra-state conflicts. This has caused some confusion and inconsistencies as a result. For example, the introduction defines peace “as a reduction of armed conflict between states, and its causes, costs, limits and potential for survival” (7), but Part Two is almost exclusively on internal factors that undermine the quality of peace and justice within a state. Such a distinction is important because national sovereignty is entrenched here and intra-state conflict is less likely. Therefore, even though East Asian Peace is of low-quality, “a causal path via which the region may revert to its violent past” (10) is much more likely to be found in contentious international politics, as laid out in Part Three.
Finally, the book is a bit uneven, with some chapters better developed than others. That said, overall this book is a multifaceted and ambitious endeavour that not only meets its projected goals but also greatly expands our knowledge about the form and substance of Asian peace. It is a timely contribution to the study of Asian politics and society broadly conceived.
Xiangfeng Yang
Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea