Asia’s Transformations, no. 45. London; New York: Routledge, 2015. xviii, 290 pp. US$145.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-13-879478-8.
It has become trendy to publish edited volumes on important anniversaries. This one—reflecting on the 60 years since the signing of the San Francisco Peace—explores the legacies that this treaty and associated agreements have bestowed upon East Asia. Probably the most problematic legacy—as emphasized throughout this book—are the lingering territorial disputes that plague the region. Indeed, more than half the essays are dedicated to this problem, including chapters on Takeshima/Dokdo, Senkaku/Diaoyu, the Kuriles, and the Spratly and Paracel Islands as well as on Okinawa and Taiwan. Other chapters look at “history issues” (such as ‘comfort women’) or evaluate the negative effects of the San Francisco Treaty system in a broader perspective. All these topics have been debated extensively in the past. Therefore, one will inevitably want to ask what new contributions this book brings to the debate. Despite the quality of the scholarly line-up, the answer is not too positive.
First, a seasoned reader of this literature will be familiar with many of the sources and arguments in this collection of essays. The editor’s own contributions are the most telling example. In her introduction, Hara posits that the San Francisco Peace Treaty structured the Cold War conflict in Asia, that this conflict has not yet ended, and that the current territorial disputes are a product of ambiguities that the United States deliberately left in the treaty. All these points are well taken. But the scholar has been making identical arguments in many of her previous publications. Similarly, in her conclusion she proposes a multilateral solution akin to the Åland Islands settlement as a way forward. This would be interesting if Hara had not already edited an entirely different volume that explored this idea (Kimie Hara and Geoffrey Jukes, Northern territories, Asia-Pacific regional conflicts and the Åland experience: untying the Kurillian knot, Routledge, 2009).
Those who do not necessarily seek original but rather a timely update on East Asian politics and the San Francisco System will not walk away satisfied either. Although published in 2015, the book is a product of a conference that took place in 2012. The content reflects this, as the governments of Koizumi (2001–2006) and Hatoyama (2009–2010) are the primary subjects of attention. The significant developments that have taken place since Xi Jinping’s accession to power and Abe’s return to it in late 2012 are not covered here. For these reasons this volume already appears a bit dated.
Readers might also at times be confused about the real target of this study. There are essays that keep their focus on the San Francisco Peace Treaty and its implications, or examine the US-Japan Security Treaty or the Taipei Treaty that together with the San Francisco Peace Treaty form the basis of the so-called San Francisco System. Other articles, however, refer to these agreements only very superficially. Given their content, they could have as easily been part of a different volume. This applies, for example, to Nong Hong’s discussion of the South China Sea disputes with regard to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) framework. Or to Konstantin Sarkisov’s essay that offers an overview of the last sixty years of Russia-Japan relations from the perspective of the Northern Territories problem. Lee Seokwoo’s essay then reads more like a treatise in defense of South Korea’s claims to Dokdo than a sober analysis of the Treaty’s effects on this issue. And Scott Harrison’s contribution rather laboriously injects the San Francisco Treaty as a casual variable into the debate when in fact the scholar has in mind the larger processes of the Cold War. Not differentiating between these categories, and using terms such as Cold War, the San Francisco Treaty, and the San Francisco System almost interchangeably presents serious problems for the proposed arguments. But this conceptual slippage also affects other chapters in the volume
To be sure, the book contains interesting pieces that are worthy of our attention. This is particularly true for chapters by John Dower, John Price, Unryu Suganuma, and Man-Houng Lin. But as is often the case with conference volumes, some of the other contributions that seem to require more fine-tuning before they can be recommended. For instance, in his chapter, Haruki Wada also suggests that multilateralism—in this case the Six-Party Talks—could be the key to solving territorial disputes in Asia. Notwithstanding the fact that the meetings have been discontinued since 2009, one wonders how realistic is this proposal? After all, the Six-Party Talks were not able to resolve even the one issue on which all its participants agreed. A multilateral approach that must include the US is also a proposed solution at the end of Dong-Choon Kim’s chapter. This comes, however, after a degree of US/Japan bashing, since Kim appears to hold both states responsible for the problems that befell the Korean Peninsula and its relations with Japan. In many ways this chapter is symbolic of today’s discourse in Northeast Asia: here, too, calls for multilateralism are often accompanied by uncritical insistence on one’s own national positions.
The authors in this volume do not always agree with each other. They do, however, share a similar view on the overall effects of the San Francisco System. For them the alliance structure based on the treaties signed in 1950–1951 was designed to primarily serve US interests with terrible consequences for East Asia (whether this includes problems of unresolved historical conflicts or national sovereignty/territorial issues). However, this is not the only way to assess the system’s long-term consequences. One could also, for example, consider the substantial economic and security advantages that this structure brought to various Asian countries. The authors–mostly progressive academics–downplay or avoid mentioning these benefits. Eventually, the reader will have to reach out to other works to obtain a fuller picture.
Ivo Plšek
University of California, Berkeley, USA
pp. 109-111