Studies in Asian Security. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. xiv, 168 pp. (Figures, maps, tables.) US$40.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8047-8652-2.
Dr. Miller has written an important book with significant implications for the study of modern India, China and broader Asian and international relations. The clearly presented and sophisticated arguments focus on colonialism and its legacy in India and China. Colonialism is seen to have been a transformative historical event resulting in collective historical trauma that strongly influences the behaviour of these countries up to the present. The collective historical trauma of colonialism is said to cause India and China to emphasize victimhood and entitlement, which dominate their decision calculus. The result is what the author calls “post-imperial ideology” (PII). PII comprises a sense of victimization and a dominant goal to be recognized and empathized with as a victim by others. PII also has subordinate goals: maximizing territorial sovereignty and maximizing status.
Three case studies illustrate the arguments. The first is the failed talks over the Sino-Indian border dispute between Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai in 1960. Analysis using previously unknown official Indian documents shows that these talks failed because of the respective PII of the Indian and Chinese leaders, leading to an impasse on territorial sovereignty and status and eventual war. Dr. Miller dutifully examines alternative explanations of the leaders’ behaviour leading to failure and impasse before concluding in support of her analysis.
The second case study is India’s decision in May 1998 to detonate five nuclear devices, which prompted Pakistan’s nuclear tests and a major international crisis. Careful review of Indian media is used to support the argument that PII and victimhood drove Indian decision making. Alternative explanations involving state security, domestic politics and prestige are seen as incomplete or otherwise flawed. The third case study is China’s reaction to Japan’s efforts in 2005 to seek a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The Chinese actions included popular demonstrations, high-level leadership opposition and strong attacks in official and unofficial media outlets. A careful review of commentary from Chinese official and unofficial media outlets shows that Chinese PII and a sense of having been victimized by Japan better explain Chinese behaviour than alternative explanations involving state security and domestic politics.
Whether or not specialists are persuaded by Dr. Miller’s thorough arguments, it seems clear that they will be debating her interesting and insightful analysis for some time to come. The book’s assessment also has major policy implications for contemporary Asian affairs. For one, if the world’s largest states remain driven by a sense of victimhood so long after the demise of colonialism and this sense of victimhood requires provision of maximum territorial sovereignty and maximum status, these two states presumably will have a very hard time resolving their differences. Moreover, their respective differences with neighbouring countries that also suffered the collective trauma of colonialism, and to varying degrees have a similar sense of victimization and goals of territorial sovereignty and status, strongly indicate that China and India also will have a very hard time resolving the differences they have with many of their neighbours. An overall finding from this kind of study is that Asia will remain unstable, with governments dissatisfied over issues of territorial sovereignty and status and thus suspicious and wary of one another.
A major question not fully addressed in the book is why the collective trauma of colonialism has endured and remained so vivid for so long. The study suggests that colonialism was so strong and bad that its negative legacy will last a very long time. This reviewer has investigated the China experience and finds that line of reasoning too simple.
For example, Ja Ian Chong’s award-winning book External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation: China, Indonesia and Thailand, 1893–1952 (Cambridge, 2012), shows that Chinese and other twentieth-century state builders in Asia used and collaborated with external powers in successful efforts to counter and defeat domestic opponents. While they may or may not have had a sense of victimization, these revolutionary leaders reached their goals by collaborating and working pragmatically with outside powers.
Scholarship in recent decades on Mao Zedong’s rise to power belies the publicized nationalistic themes of self-reliance and underlines strongly his Communist-led movement’s close dependence on financial and other support from the Soviet Union. And the Chinese Communists from the outset endeavoured in good Leninist fashion to control and manipulate the nationalist discourse prevalent in China for their tactical and strategic advantage in the struggle to gain power.
Subsequently, once gaining power, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) married its deepened control of and efforts to manipulate the nationalist discourse with pervasive image building regarding the PRC. This state-directed effort duly has emphasized the sense of victimization stressed by Dr. Miller as it also has stressed that Chinese actual behaviour abroad has always been consistent, correct and based on moral principles. The latter has led to the unique status of the PRC as the only large contemporary government never to have acknowledged making a mistake in foreign affairs. While the Chinese image building is viewed as grossly inaccurate by Chinese neighbouring countries and others experienced in the actual behaviour of the PRC, the result of this state-directed propaganda is a society that not only feels grossly victimized but judges that its foreign policies and practices are without flaw. Dr. Miller’s fine analysis highlights a need for further study, notably assessing the creation and sustaining of this uniquely self-righteous Chinese approach and its impact on China’s relations with India, other Chinese neighbours and the United States.
Robert Sutter
George Washington University, Washington DC, USA
pp. 830-832