Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press; Chicago: University of Chicago Press [distributor], 2013. 236 pp. US$62.50, paper. ISBN 978-90-8964-477-0.
This book is in the main a self-reflection of the author’s thinking on the making of the Asia Pacific. He treats such making as a discourse put forward by analysts involved in the so-called Track 2 diplomacy in the region. Track 2 diplomacy is a kind of “semi-official process of multilateral security dialogue and cooperation” (18). It is different from Track 1 diplomacy between governments. Participating in the Track 2 channel are mostly academics, journalists, businesspeople and government officials in their private capacity. Their deliberations are not binding on governments. This situation allows a greater degree of freedom of expression and exchange of ideas valuable to policy makers. The author of this book, Professor Tan of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, calls these participants knowledge brokers. He is interested in how they make representations of themselves and of others towards understanding and promoting their ideas of security in the region, often to the exclusion of interpretations from different quarters.
Professor Tan is a long-time observer of this Track 2 process, so he is telling his story here from experience. He tells his story, however, not from the usual angle of policy making, but from a rather unique perspective of critically rethinking how the discourse of Asia-Pacific security is made and passed on to peers and students. He is not interested in reproducing “a history of Track 2 diplomacy and the policy think tanks and academic institutions that participate in it” (17). Instead, he is interested in the “effects that arise from the discourses on security produced and circulated by the region’s premier knowledge communities” (17; emphasis mine). Tan focuses, with good reason, on knowledge growth and discourse making rather than policy making. He is interested in narratives and ideas rather than political strategies per se. The result is a very well-researched book.
According to Tan, most observers “propose that the Asia Pacific idea had its beginnings in policy discourses in the late 1980s” (13), but the critical period under his study is the 1990s, when “epistemic networks contributed to the post-Cold War Asia Pacific” (17). Many of these networks proliferated during the late 1980s and 1990s, and Tan chooses to concentrate on a few prominent ones such as the Council for Security Cooperation in Asia Pacific, the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council, and the ASEAN-ISIS.
Tan is not satisfied with the traditional constructivist school of thinking about Asia-Pacific security, which has become a popular discourse developed, paradoxically, out of Singapore, in particular by a group of scholars associated with the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at the Rajaratnam School, of which Tan is at present the deputy director. To Tan, the traditional constructivist view has essentialized ideas and norms over material forces; it has assumed the interaction between agency and structure without going deep into the dynamic process involved. Also, traditional constructivism has taken the state as a given, although what makes the state is very much up to the perception of its stakeholders. As a result of these shortcomings, Tan proposes to adopt a radical constructivist view. However, he does not seem to have spelt out in very clear and precise terms what radical constructivism is, referring to it as a “text-based methodology” (22). He seems to stress the need to be more dynamic and critical in analysis, more multi-dimensional in understanding, and more pluralistic and democratic in the making of Asia-Pacific security. His proposal is to be appreciated, but the devil is in the details, and what details that Tan has given us do not seem to lend themselves to vigorous empirical testing. The focus on effects is useful, but the processes and practices involved (referred to on pages 40–4) deserve a much closer tracing. In the end, he seems to have heaped ideas onto ideas, resulting in more polarizations than clarifications. But the contributions that Tan has made are helpful in opening up more different, critical interpretations of the same subject matter.
Another interesting contribution made by Tan is the concept of the “politics of representation.” In chapters 4 to 7, Tan gives us a detailed and elucidated account of how the Track 2 participants or knowledge brokers have represented the “Asia Pacific,” sovereign states, the “in/human” faces of Asia-Pacific security, and the “authority” of knowledge networks. These substantive chapters are preceded by an introduction (chapter 1), the desire for essence (chapter 2, in which Tan sets up nicely the case of essentialism by the knowledge brokers before he proceeds to knock it down, with some success), and knowledge networks (chapter 3). The last chapter (chapter 8) serves as a conclusion, which Tan uses as a platform to encourage us to devote more energy to strengthen the study of Asia-Pacific security.
All in all, Tan has made a valuable contribution by offering a different path towards understanding Asia-Pacific security, a path that can potentially open up new avenues for further thinking. This novelty is to be treasured. The book is not for the faint-hearted, because it is written in a style that is couched in more philosophical terms and concepts than many other books in the field of Asia-Pacific security. Occasionally Tan uses long sentences which have to be read and re-read in order to grasp the message he tries to convey. Those who are persistent enough to plough on are likely to find many words of wisdom, although some of them are partially hidden from the surface.
Gerald Chan
University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
pp. 828-830