Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific Series. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. xiv, 219 pp. (Tables, figures.), US$90.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-230-31396-5.
Given that the East Asian headlines most prominent in the global press recently focus on maritime military tensions and dark warnings about the conflicts these could spark, many will be surprised to pick up a book entitled The East Asian Peace and discover that this region has been uniquely peaceful. Quantitative research confirms that East Asia has been relatively more peaceful than other regions. As author Mikael Weissmann observes, the “last major armed interstate conflict” in East Asia was the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war (7–8).
Lest one is tempted to conclude that harmony is breaking out in East Asia, alas, the recent headlines are not entirely wrong. Weissmann finds many potential conflicts, not only in Northeast Asia, but also in Southeast Asia, where numerous unresolved territorial disputes remain, some of which became militarized. Nonetheless, this militarization failed to lead to armed conflict, a fact reflecting the East Asian peace (8). His explanation for this is “an underlying peace-building process has concurrently transformed interstate relations” (10). Weissmann goes beyond identifying a “no-war peace” and asserts “East Asia indeed enjoys a ‘relative peace’ both in terms of quality and stability”(10). Supporting this, he notes that “all of China’s land border disputes with its Southeast Asian neighbors have been resolved”(10). One might add that the same is true for China’s land border disputes with Russia and the Central Asian Republics.
Weissmann makes an even more distinctive claim when he challenges the dominant Western view that East Asian multilateralism has been ineffective. Unlike this view, he takes informal processes seriously, and finds that East Asia has developed significant preventive diplomacy and conflict management mechanisms. I have heard Japanese diplomats make a similar claim, namely that Western accounts overlook the ASEAN Way of conflict management. This consists of several processes in Weissmann’s view: elite interactions, back-channel negotiations, economic interdependence and integration, functional integration, multilateralism, and institutionalization of peaceful relations (149). East Asians thereby develop “positive relations despite the existence of conflicting issues,” and this “has been institutionalized in the ASEAN Way, with its sensitivity for avoiding confrontation, focusing on conflict avoidance, and saving face while building consensus”(164). Western approaches to conflict resolution emerge from this book as intellectually well developed, but benighted in terms of emotional intelligence. By contrast, the ASEAN Way emerges as less intellectually developed, but as more emotionally intelligent, and thereby ultimately as more successful.
For a Scandinavia-based observer, Weissmann expresses surprising belief in the efficacy of personal networks. Rather than seeing these as synonymous with corruption, he argues that “personal networks facilitate the optimal selection of participants for track-two diplomacy” (163).
Weissmann suggests that these regional processes are leading to the Asianization or “ASEANization” of China: “the ASEAN Way has been important for the Chinese learning and self-redefinition process” (160). He claims that ASEAN has “entangled the dragon”: “China has become locked into a web of institutionalized multilateral practices, agreements and norm systems”(159). Nevertheless, it remains unclear to what extent China has become “locked in,” and how much mutual interdependence there is versus one-sided dependence by China’s neighbours? China has rather appeared to socialize to the US practice of using economic sanctions as a weapon in political disputes.
This book reflects the peak of East Asia’s security multilateralism that was reached in 2003-2004, and largely overlooks more recent troubles. Yet, one can use this book’s framework to understand some of the recent tensions. For example, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) emphasized transparency, official diplomatic channels, and rule of law in its dealings with China, especially regarding the Senkaku/Diaoyu island dispute, which contrasts strongly with the non-confrontational, back-channel approach favoured by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) (and which avoided applying Japanese law to these islands). In light of Weissmann’s analysis we can identify the DPJ’s transparent and formal approach as a major reason for the aggravation of this bilateral dispute from 2010.
Weissmann appears over-optimistic in light of recent events when claiming “key maritime flashpoints in the South China Sea have been mitigated and a consensus has been reached among the parties to resolve the dispute peacefully” (10). In contrast to Weissmann’s constructivist approach, which sees these informal peace-building processes socializing states and leading to a redefinition of national interests and identities, realists would view the progress this book identifies as an artifact of a transient distribution of power, with a rising China interested in closer economic integration and a peaceful environment, and not yet strong enough to unilaterally have its way. One problem with such a critique, however, is that it is not clear ten years later that the distribution of capabilities has moved enough to explain China’s shift in behaviour, assuming there has been a shift.
Weissmann identifies the US military presence in the region as one important cause for the East Asian peace. As a non-US-based observer, he can arguably look at this more dispassionately than many US-based observers who dominate the discourse on East Asian security, and who can have institutional and even identity and emotional investments in the US military presence. Although Weissmann identifies the US role as positive for regional peace (with the partial exception of the Korean Peninsula), he nonetheless argues that the US role has been modest, as it has not contributed much to improving the quality of the East Asian peace, and only contributes to the no-war peace. A realist might argue that it was precisely in 2003–2004, when the US was distracted from the region, that regional processes reached their height and that it was when the US reengaged and attempted to contain China that regional tensions rose. Recent tensions notwithstanding, the East Asian peace, at least as a minimal no-war peace, remains largely intact. No armed conflicts have erupted. The regional preventive diplomacy and conflict resolution mechanisms that Weissmann identified persist and are at work attempting to resolve current tensions.
In sum, this book is a must-read for anyone focusing on East Asian regional security. It presents the most comprehensive argument to date about how and why East Asia’s informal conflict prevention and peacebuilding mechanisms are more effective than Western observers realize.
Paul Midford
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway