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Building Asian security

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In Brief

A principal challenge to Asian security today is that the various approaches to the security order seem to be working at cross-purposes. Take the United States and China.

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Washington insists that its rebalancing strategy enhances regional stability. Sure enough, it is possible to see the military dimension of rebalancing as crucial to maintaining the military balance of power in the region. But the economic aspect of rebalancing — the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) — excludes China and challenges United States–China economic interdependence.

Similarly, China professes a deep interest in enhancing regional economic interdependence. But its own initiatives, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and One Belt One Road, challenge long-standing modalities of regional economic cooperation.

These developments call for a major rethink of existing approaches to security in Asia. The new approach to Asian security might be called security pluralism.

Security pluralism holds that security requires multiple conditions and approaches, rather than any single one, and maintaining a positive relationship among them. The major conditions of security pluralism are economic interdependence, stability in the balance of power, multilateral institutions, and ideological tolerance and accommodation.

Security pluralism is broader than the familiar Asian notion of ‘comprehensive security’, which refers to different dimensions of security without clarifying how they relate to each other. And unlike ‘cooperative security’ — which focuses on multilateral institutions — security pluralism recognises the importance of balance of power.

Yet security pluralism is not a purely balance of power system as it relies on other mechanisms. Nor is it a ‘security community’, which is marked by a collective identity that renders war unthinkable. Security pluralism is less idealistic. National identities and competition remain, but they are controlled by the interplay of interdependence, institutions, value pluralism, military equilibrium and a shared imperative for avoiding system collapse.

Security pluralism aims for a relationship of mutual accommodation among unequal and culturally diverse states that preserves the relative autonomy of each and prevents the hegemony of any or a few. In other words, security pluralism respects political and cultural diversity, but fosters accommodation among the great powers and their restraint towards the weaker actors, such as ASEAN members.

The architecture of security pluralism can be likened to an ecosystem. The components support each other and the loss or weakening of one would damage the others and endanger overall stability. For instance, economic interdependence acts as a check on security competition, contributes to state consolidation and regime legitimation, as well as encourages strategic and ideological accommodation. Interdependence also necessitates and supports regional institutions, which not only help to manage frictions, but also dampen great power rivalry.

Contrary to a popular understanding, ecosystems are not self-sustaining. Their stability requires careful and cooperative management. The following suggestions, though not exhaustive, deserve consideration as a source of policy ideas, from which specific recommendations can be derived.

First, it is essential to maintain the openness and inclusiveness of regional economic arrangements. More specifically, this means ensuring that the AIIB and TPP do not undermine economic interdependence and engender conflict. A forum of economics and security officials under the auspices of the East Asia Summit (EAS) and the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation — which would include the United States — could be useful for this purpose.

Second, governments should avoid policies that prioritise offence over defence. This demands fresh attention in light of the growing Chinese military presence in the maritime sphere as well as the United States rebalance to Asia. Another important part of this is to develop mechanisms to avoid incidents and accidents in areas of competing territorial claims and establish channels of communication between parties.

A multifaceted restructuring of regional institutions is also necessary. This includes creating more manageable priorities, avoiding duplicating tasks and developing Track II dialogues based on empathy rather than national advocacy. It should also address mission creep in regional institutions and coordinating their activities closer with relevant global bodies, civil society groups and the private sector to address transnational challenges.

ASEAN centrality should not preclude giving non-ASEAN members more voice — and hence stake — in setting the agenda of ASEAN Regional Forum and the EAS and increasing their contribution to regional equilibrium.

And finally, there is a need to explore the common ground and promote mutual learning of the norms and practices of pluralism, restraint and cooperation in Asian and Western civilisations. This includes ideas such as democratic peace, liberal internationalism, strategic restraint, universalism and the ‘new model of major power relations’.

Amitav Acharya is the UNESCO chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and professor of international relations at the School of International Service, American University, Washington DC.

This article is part of an EAF special feature series on 2015 in review and the year ahead.

4 responses to “Building Asian security”

  1. It seems that the author may be premature in the view reflected in the follow paragraph: “Similarly, China professes a deep interest in enhancing regional economic interdependence. But its own initiatives, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and One Belt One Road, challenge long-standing modalities of regional economic cooperation.”
    As Andrew Sheng described in his post on 23 January 2016, the AIIB is an initiative after the refusal by the US congress to ratify the 2009 G20 agreement to widen the voting rights distribution of the IMF. It is a rational reaction to an irrational behaviour by the US congress.
    China’s One Belt One Road initiative should be commended as opposed to be labelled as something abnormal.
    The world is changing. As it happens in many countries, reforms are necessary to progress. In that contest, new world modality is not necessarily wrong.
    Further, while the majority of the following statement seems correct, it is unclear or confusing in the part “stability in the balance of power”. What does it mean in a changing world? If the world is changing and the relative power changes with it, is it still “stability in the balance of power”?
    No one can hold the world not to change.

    • What I meant exactly was that the initiatives of AIIB and One Belt One Road from China are categorically different to the Americans’ deliberate exclusion of China in the TPP negotiations to become a member while China sought it. Further the US authorities campaigned against the AIIB and asked its close allies not to join the AIIB process and to become founding members.
      The Americans relevant actions has indicated its attempt to contain China not only militarily and politically, but also economically.
      In the bilateral relationship between the two countries, they show very different behaviours.
      China has proposed for new kind of relationship between major countries and the US has been cool on that. There can be different reasons for the coolness, but it also shows the US is not willing as cooperative with China as China is with the US. That says a lot in itself.

  2. Amitav’s concept of “security pluralism” seems a better articulated and more sophisticated statement of what Yudhoyono and Natalagawa were driving at in their vision of an East Asian “dynamic equilibrium.” In both cases, what is described is a condition, but without strategic or policy guidelines informing us as to how such a condition is to be realized. There is no “invisible hand” leading to the convergence of security interests of the great and lesser powers, a prerequisite of such a condition. The decade and a half dead-end efforts to established a South China Sea code of conduct is illustrative in this respect. Furthermore,the acknowledgement that a balance of power is built into security pluralism suggests that the security instabilities inherent in the political management of the regional balance=of-power system will not be eliminated either for China and the US as well as their friends, allies, and the he “hedegers.” politics are built into necessary The explicit acknowledgement of a necessary balance of power in security perquisite of such a condition. ym

    • Dear Don,

      Your basic point is right: there is no invisible hand, whether in a natural or a in security ecosystem. My key argument is that neither institution-building nor the balance of power is sufficient in itself. We need all four conditions -equilibrium, interdependence, institutions and ideological tolerance in a positive configuration and this has to be built.

      A fuller versions of Security Pluralism -with detailed policy recommendations on how to achieve it, will be published in Global Asia in March. And the academic version of Security Pluralism “Consociational Security Order” (CSO), has been developed in International Studies Quarterly in 2014 (albeit without policy prescriptions, since ISQ is an academic journal) under the title: “Power Shift or Paradigm Shifh: China’s Rise and Asia’s Security Order”. Thanks for your interest and comment.

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