Abstract
The dynamics of institutional balancing is the predominant factor prompting East Asian countries to move to mega-FTAs. Rather than seeking mega-FTAs purely on the basis of economic benefits, these countries, particularly major powers, have attempted to form mega-FTAs to counter the target state’s vision of the regional architecture.
PDF
Country or Region: Vietnam
Solís, Mireya
Abstract
High stakes are involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations: the United States seems to be on the verge of redirecting Asian regionalism towards an Asia–Pacific trade grouping that proclaims will not tolerate sectoral exclusions and will tackle head on non-tariff barriers (long considered glaring deficiencies of most free trade agreements). However, US domestic politics may prevent the realization of these lofty objectives. The influence of internal political constraints is evident in three areas: (i) the United States has pushed for a hybrid approach on market access negotiations that clouds the prospects of TPP adhering to the no-carve-out mantra; (ii) US trade negotiators have ramped up their negotiation objectives into a so-called platinum standard that could impose heavy preconditions on accession for new members and diminish the chances of growing the TPP membership; and (iii) the protracted ratification process and lack of trade promotion authority undermines the credibility of the United States in the eyes of prospective trade partners.
PDF
Kim, Euikon
Abstract
The international order in East Asia has been anchored on four pillars. The first pillar is the 1952 San Francisco peace treaty between the United States and Japan. The US–Japan mutual defense treaty was signed and Japan became demilitarized and its foreign policy was oriented toward the United States. Japan adopted the “peace” constitution. The second is the US–China Shanghai Communiqué of 1972. In this document, Nixon and Mao agreed that neither of their countries nor any power should seek hegemony in the Asia–Pacific region. The third pillar is the 1972 Sino–Japanese Joint Declaration. China recognized the US–Japan military alliance and Japan, in turn, recognized China as the sole legitimate government. The last is the 1965 ROK–Japan treaty to normalize bilateral relations. Japan recognized the ROK as the sole legitimate government representing the Korean people and nullified the treaties that led to Japan’s forceful annexation of Korea in 1910. In the 2010s, tensions and disputes between the United States and China and between China and Japan are undermining the four pillars of order. The United States, China, and Japan are now engaged in a dangerous power game to create a new international order in this turbulent region. China’s foreign policy toward East Asia will be predicated on three strategies. China will resort to soft balancing in dealing with the United States, unilateralism with Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam, and multilateralism vis-à-vis the remaining countries in East Asia. “The Asianization of China” would be a solution for future peace and prosperity in this region.
PDF
Huxley, Tim, and Benjamin Schreer
Abstract
A strategic choice is fast approaching between accepting China’s sub-regional hegemony and pushing back through strategies that would impose costs.
During the course of 2015, China used land-reclamation techniques to expand many of the features that it occupies in the South China Sea, most of which were then militarised. This development – alongside many other important signs of assertiveness, including China’s large-scale naval modernisation; its expanding deployment of maritime paramilitary forces to coerce other Asian states, including Japan, in the East China Sea; its efforts to undermine the unity of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); and its attempted creation of an alternative regional security architecture – not only indicated Beijing’s intent to reinforce its maritime claims, but also highlighted China’s drive to create a new regional order in which it plays a dominant and arbitrating role. Such an order could only undermine the interests of other regional states and the West. While the success of these efforts is by no means inevitable, the United States and its regional allies and security partners will need to respond more firmly to China, particularly in the South China Sea (SCS). By late October 2015, an initial ‘freedom of navigation’ patrol by the US Navy, which took one of its ships inside the 12-nautical-mile territorial waters claimed by China around one of the features that it occupies in the SCS, indicated that Washington recognised the necessity of stronger countermeasures. However, to succeed, this tougher approach will need to be both persistent and supported by US allies and security partners in the region and beyond.
PDF
Ayson, Robert, and Manjeet S. Pardesi
Introduction
Military coercion has already changed the Asia-Pacific region.
With so much attention being devoted to maritime security competition in Asia, including in the South China and East China seas, it is easy to forget how peaceful the region has been for several decades. In East Asia, no major power has been involved in so much as a limited inter-state war since China’s brief armed conflict with Vietnam in 1979. Peace among South Asian states has been broken more often, but mainly by circumscribed armed conflicts between India and Pakistan, including their most recent and very limited Kargil War in 1999.
This is an impressive record for a region that was riven by major wars in the middle of the twentieth century. But it does not mean that the making of military preparations has been abandoned in Asia. The region’s growing powers are devoting significant resources to their armed forces. Asian countries now spend $100 billion a year more on defence than all of the European members of NATO combined. Of particular note, China has emerged as the second-largest defence spender in the world after the United States. Beijing’s 2015 military budget was more than three times that of India’s, Asia’s second-largest defence spender, and almost four times as large as the combined defence spending of the 11 Southeast Asian states.
It is only right for scholars to wonder about the impact of China’s rapidly modernising military forces on US–China crisis stability, and to ask whether the economic interdependence between the United States and China really rules out an armed conflict between them. It is also important to consider what an Asian war might look like if it were to occur, and how it might be avoided in the first place. Uncertainty over quite how the Trump administration’s approach to Asia’s security will evolve increases the importance of this consideration. But there is another, more urgent strategic consideration for Asian countries as the locus of global power shifts in their direction. Strategic interactions that fall between complete non-violence and largescale combat are now ubiquitous in Asia. These events constitute a pattern of coercion involving the exploitation of potential violence to signal intent, influence behaviour, and change or uphold the status quo.
PDF
Wagner, Maren
Summary
This book presents a conceptualization of social emergence in international relations as a novel angle to analyse institutional dynamics in East Asia, introducing the concept of emergence from a critical realist perspective. The author examines East Asia’s characteristic mesh work of regional institutions that affect integrative processes and regional policies, exploring how such institutions emerge and acquire their own nature and why this pattern persists over time, an unresolved and contested subject in the field of International Relations. This book suggests that regional institutions are emergent entities of the international system that arise as forms of self-organization by states to achieve certain emergent properties and powers. The author’s approach sheds light on the particular emergent properties and powers of regional institutions and identifies discourse as a key mechanism of social emergence. Besides engaging in relevant questions of the philosophy of science and its methodological implications for studying social emergence in world politics, the book also analyses the concrete case of two East Asian regional institutions: ASEAN Plus Three and the East Asia Summit. This book will engage scholars and postgraduate students of Asian Studies and International Relations.
Long, Yingxian
Abstract
This article sheds light on developing a hybrid analytical construct by combining Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) theory and modifications tailored to the case of China. It employs the bureaucratic politics model to China’s decision making during the China–Vietnam standoff in 2014 and adjusts the traditional model with intervening variable – the party ranking system and Democratic Centralism doctrine. I argue that the bargaining game among different actors who have diverse agendas led to the shift in China’s strategy. It would concurrently advance FPA studies while developing a future avenue for research on foreign policy formulation of China.
Read more here (purchase required)
Courmont, Barthélémy, Frédéric Lasserre, and Éric Mottet, eds
Summary
Combining practical and theoretical approaches, this book addresses the political, legal and economic implications of maritime disputes in East Asia.
The maritime disputes in East Asia have multiplied over the past few years, in parallel with the economic growth of the countries in the region, the rise of nationalist movements, fears and sometimes fantasies regarding the emergence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a global power, increasing military expenses, as well as speculations regarding the potential resources in various disputed islands. These disputes, however, are not new and some have been the subject of contention and the cause of friction for decades, if not centuries in a few cases. Offering a robust analysis, this volume explores disputes through the different lenses of political science, international law, history and geography, and introduces new approaches in particular to the four important disputes concerning Dokdo/Takeshima, Senkaku/Diaoyu, Paracels and Spratlys. Utilising a comparative approach, this book identifies transnational trends that occur in the different cases and, therefore, at the regional level, and aims to understand whether the resurgence of maritime disputes in East Asia may be studied on a case by case basis, or should be analysed as a regional phenomenon with common characteristics.
Pollmann, M. Erika
Abstract
This article builds on previous academic works to elucidate a theory as to how Japan’s historical revisionism could have a negative impact on Japan’s security. It then tests this theory by examining the impact that the 1982, 1986, 2001 and 2005 controversies had on Japan’s relationships with China, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. It concludes that historical revisionism does not have a significant security impact, defined as audience states’ distancing themselves from Japan, diplomatically ‘soft’ balancing Japan, or militarily ‘hard’ balancing Japan. This research design is an improvement over previous works on this subject because it draws a clear distinction between reaction and impact. Even though it is ‘cheap’ to impute Japanese motives following an act of historical revisionism, it is ‘costly’ to act on such accusations by either distancing from Japan or balancing against Japan. This helps clarify what concerns–if any–Japan should have about the collateral damage arising from historical revisionism. Based on the empirical evidence examined, historical revisionism per se does not pose a serious problem to Japan because the most important determinant of how severe a controversy’s impact on Japan’s relationship with a given audience state is the pre-existing nature of Japan’s security and economic relationship with that state. The most significant consequence of revisionism is that it presents an opening for China—Japan’s main security rival in the region—to attempt to ‘soft’ balance Japan by rallying international opinion against Japan in such a way as to impede other Japanese diplomatic objectives.
PDF
Parameswaran, Prashanth
Introduction
The highlight of U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Vietnam this week was Washington’s decision to finally fully lift a decades-long lethal arms embargo on Hanoi after much speculation. But while the move was significant both symbolically and substantively, it is really just the latest in a series of boosts for the U.S.-Vietnam defense relationship across a range of areas over the past few years. And while both sides are optimistic about the future prospects for defense ties, they also admit that there are still major challenges that remain.
Read more here
Nguyen, Hang
Abstract
This essay analyses the foundations and future of the Vietnam-US partnership. It shows that Vietnam and the United States have sought to broaden and deepen the bilateral relations in three main areas: (i) trade and investment relations, (ii) political and security relations, and (iii) people-to-people cooperation. These areas continue to be the pillars for Vietnam and the United States to build up their ties. Given China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea and the United States rebalance to the Asia-Pacific, Vietnam and the United States will become closer and will work together to add strategic values to their partnership.
PDF
Emmerson, Donald K
Introduction
The disputes over the South China Sea are complex, and they overlap and collide in complex ways. At stake are questions of ownership, demarcation, rights of passage, and access to resources—fish, oil, and gas. The resulting imbroglio implicates all six claimants, not only China but Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam as well. It is wrong to blame China alone for all that has happened in the South China Sea—nationalist moves, stalemated diplomacy, and the potential for escalation.
Read more here
Luong, Dinh Thi Hien
Abstract
As the regionalism in East Asia has largely been characterized by networks of bilateral relations, the linkages between regional factors and bilateral relations in East Asia were clearly witnessed in the Cold War and the post-Cold War period. As a new period of regional cooperation has been ushered in under the so-called “East Asian Community” framework, it is essential to note that such interplay continues to be one of the most prominent characteristics in East Asia. The case study analysis of bilateral relations between Vietnam, a developing member in the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Japan, the region’s leading economic power in Northeast Asia, provides an insightful look at the positive relationship between the regional conditions and bilateral relations in the new East Asia context. More importantly, bilateral relations can make significant contribution to shaping the regional setting, instead of being passively affected as in the past.
Read more here (purchase required)
Ng, Thiam Hee
Introduction
With the completion of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, economists and policymakers have turned their attention toward the trade agreement’s implications for Southeast Asian economies. Four countries in the region – Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam – are signatories of the deal, and, until this point, discussion on both the domestic and international fronts has focused on how each of them will benefit from greater openness to the trade of goods. However, the TPP also includes provisions to liberalize entry into each of their respective service sectors, a component of the agreement that has garnered little attention and that will uniquely impact these countries’ economies. Because liberalization in the services sector has traditionally lagged behind that of the goods sector, the passage of the TPP has the potential to herald a new era of greater openness in Southeast Asia.
Read more here
Hayton, Bill
Introduction
The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs sat down with Bill Hayton, a longtime reporter for the BBC whose latest book, The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia and Vietnam, was published in September, to discuss rising tensions amongst China, its regional neighbors, and the United States in the Asia Pacific.
Read more here
