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SALT LAKE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

A Region Divided
Cameron Noyd-Nidros
POLS 2100 001
08 Aug 2016
Mehran M. Mazinani

This essay covers some of the basics involved in the China-East Asian security
environment. Accompanied with it are some purported ideas recommended on the
East Asian dilemma. Interpretations on the primary schools of thought Realism,
Liberalism, and constructivism are given at the end.

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East Asia is undergoing a dynamic transformation, perpetuated by a rising China. In the


post-Cold War era and in the early 21st century, the region of east Asia remains one of the most
unstable areas in Asia and in the world compared with other regions of Southeast Asia, Central
Asia, Southern Asia, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America. The result can lead
the region towards confrontation between the major powers in Asia and the world if nations like
China, Russia, Japan, and the United States cannot manage their relationships.
In this time of rising security concerns, no one is surprised that the actors in the region
are becoming increasingly uncertain about the future. As a result, there is stronger than ever
demand from Americas allies and partners for U.S. engagement, activism, and leadership.
The preeminent geo-strategic challenge facing the United States in East Asia, is posed by
an economically and military powerful China eager to establish itself as a dominant perhaps
the predominant actor in the region. The main tasked given to U.S. foreign policy makers has
been accommodating Chinas determination to play a greater role in the region while reassuring
allies and partners that Beijing will not become a regional hegemon. Washington must handle the
situation by keeping U.S.-China relations positive to establish a modus vivendi with a state
whose intentions are opaque, whose ambitions are multi-dimensional, and whose ideological
underpinnings run counter to core U.S. values.
The Challenge of China has major implications for the regions economic and trade
institutions, as well as East Asias military balance. The military dilemma holds particular
importance to the regions stability. Beijing has demonstrated many times their intent and is
prepared to use military might to enforce their territorial claims. These actions have serious
impact on the United States, which has critical investments in the region. This has lead the

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United States committed to the support of free trade and navigation in these waters for the
region.
Beijings continuous despotism towards human rights and liberty along with their
vitalized campaign to perpetuate their increasingly authoritarian Communist Party, has led to
worldwide regional concerns about China. Because of this, U.S.-China relations will continue to
remain highly complex, difficult, and sensitive for the foreseeable future.
China desires a more prominent role in regional institution building and utilizes its
considerable economic power to ensure it happens. Beijings establishment of the Asia
Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and its One Belt, One Road initiative, with their active
membership in Asias Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), shows Beijings
ambitions and their ability to do so.
As long as Beijing remains transparent and open to broad participation while adhering to
the globally accepted standards and refraining from undercutting the roles of existing
institutions, they will be welcomed. America for a long time has been urging China to take a
more responsible central role in the regional affairs. They are an economic powerhouse in the
region, why wouldnt Washington want them to take a bigger role?
However, as Chinas power and influence grows, U.S. policy makers become
increasingly concerned on how to prevent China from rewriting the rules of the regional
economic and political order to dominate regional institutions in their favor that damages the
status quo to the point it becomes detrimental to the interests of the United States and friends.
Responses towards China up to now have only been problematic. The reject of AIIB
membership sent the wrong message to Beijing about Washingtons support and cooperation

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with a more active China. It also told China that Washington was not as serious as they claimed
about the longstanding stakeholder argument. Washingtons decision not to join translated that
the United States would not take part in the decision-making fabric of the organization, resulted
in preventing the United States from having any power in shaping the organizations
development. A decision, filled with repercussions that can only be avoided for so long.
Another mishap is the U.S. argument that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) is designed
to prevent China from making rules on trade in the Asia- Pacific region has only caused that the
TPP is perceived as Anti-China by Beijing. This approach should be revised by one that stresses
that China is welcome when Beijing is ready to meet the TPPs high standards. Such an action
would be a major geopolitical and economic step forward and send a strong signal throughout
the region.
Chinas growing military power is rapidly developing to the point where it can advance
its regional interests using force. This buildup does not correspond with Chinas neighbors. The
speed and scope of their military expansion leaves questions about whether Chinas ultimate goal
is to achieve regional dominance and knock off the United States as the leading military power in
East Asia.
Chinas leaders continue to reassure that their intentions are not to substitute the United
States or force America out of the region. Beijing claims that the pacific is big enough for both
powers. However, Chinas attempt to match Americas defense budget mixed with the
acquisition of sophisticated systems that can disturb the military advantages help by the U.S.
military in the region, the development of a blue-water nay (expeditionary navy), and Chinas

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assertiveness towards island control and anti-access strategy imply that Beijing intends to keep
its option open.
However, these approaches along with their assertive territorial claims have put China at
odds with its neighbors, including U.S. and allies like Japan and the Philippines, leading to the
increasingly rising tensions in the region.
U.S. policy makers in the future will be tasked with developing mechanisms designed to
manage relations with China that fosters cooperation without damaging ties. Several principles
that may be helpful in guiding U.S. policy makers by Evans J.R. Revere are:
First, the two countries should continue to acknowledge their differences, including
those of fundamental values and ideology, and accept the fact that some of these
differences may be irreconcilable, although they may be able to be managed.
Second, the U.S. and China should acknowledge areas where their respective interests
and goals create the potential for strategic rivalry and should seek to prevent these from
negatively affecting areas of ongoing or potential cooperation. However, the United
States should make clear its determination to abide by its principles, including by
vigorously and coherently defending freedom of navigation.
Third, both countries should make avoidance of military confrontation between them a
central goal of their relationship and agree that a confrontation between the two would be
disastrous and difficult to control.
Fourth, Washington and Beijing should increase military transparency through
exchanges, dialogue, and cooperation. Such cooperation should include a formal, highlevel dialogue on nuclear weapons and strategic stability.
Fifth, expanding the zone of cooperation between the U.S. and China should be a core
goal of the relationship, and both sides should identify a range of issues on which they
see real potential for enhanced bilateral cooperation.
Sixth, the two sides should identify one or more areas that are particularly ripe for
cooperation and use upcoming summits or other high-level leadership meetings as actionforcing events to energize their respective bureaucracies to develop plans for
cooperation.
The distribution has changed with the end of the Cold War, which spelled the end of
Bipolarity. The end of the Cold War would witness the decompression of conflicts held under
check by bipolar management. The favorite realist clich in the initial post-Cold War years was
the power vacuum created by the withdrawal of the Soviet Union. The question is then asked

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who will fill the power vacuum? At first, a multi-polar contest between China, Japan, and India
was to be expected. However, with Chinas double-digit economic growth combined with their
double-digit increase in defense spending, realists were then aware that China became the focal
point in Asian security.
From a power transition theory perspective, it was foreseen that a confrontation
between the status quo and a rising China was inevitable by offensive realists, which have a
tendency to see rising powers lean towards regional expansion. John Mearsheimer likened the
rise of China to that of the United States in the nineteenth century who went on a territory
acquisition spree. Expansionism occurs not because countries are wired to do so, but because
anarchy induces a concern for survival even among the most powerful actors. It is that concern
for survival that drives an actor towards regional hegemony. The result is the paradoxical logic of
expand to survive.
The limited role of regional institutions notwithstanding, Realists see Asias international
relations to be rife with uncertainty and danger of conflict due to the absence of conditions in
Asia that ensure a multipolar peace in Europe. Aaron Friedberg wrote an essay arguing that the
factors that might prevent anarchy in Europe from the absence of a bipolar system are not present
in Asia leaving the region ripe for rivalry. These mitigating factors deterring disorder in
Europe are institutions like the EU and economic interdependence with a shared political system.
Realists like Friedberg see Asian economic interdependence to be thin compared to Europe and
the West. Others argue that economic interdependence cannot keep peace and may even cause
strife rather than order in the region. Realists perspective on Asian IR has come under attack.
The predictions that were made about post-Cold War Asia security have yet to sufficiently
materialize.

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Liberal conceptions of the international relations of Asia have stressed the role of
interdependence as a force for peace. With the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet
Union, interdependence was pushed stronger than ever with the rise of China. Liberals, both
Western and especially Chinese, thought it was crucial that Chinas rise to power be a peaceful
one. This approach came with criticism, especially with the realists who see the failure of
interdependence as a failure to prevent WWI if goods do not cross boarders, soldiers will.
The democratic peace theory has found very little expression in writing on Asian IR. For
the most part that is because, historically Asia has had few democracies to test the claim of this
theory. Democracy in Asia also had the tendency to be that of the illiberal type, whereby a group
of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states avoid conflict by focusing on economic growth,
performance legitimacy, and sovereignty-preserving regional institutions. Critics of democratic
peace , such as Jack Snyder and Ed Mansfield, question the normative claims of democratic
peace by highlighting war that is associated with the democratic transition period.
Liberal/democratic peace argument has found more critics than adherents on the subject.
Liberal institutionalism, on Asian IR discourses is both easier and harder to establish. The
growth of regional intuitions in Asia allows greater space to Liberal conceptions of orderbuilding through institutions. However, the Liberal understanding of how institutions come about
and preserve order overlaps considerably with social constructivist approaches. Constructivism
(with its stress on the culture and identity derived notion of the ASEAN way) has been a more
popular mode of analysis than neo-Liberalism or classical Liberalism (collective security and
regional integration). Liberal perspectives have made little impact on the study of Asian IR.

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Constructivism has helped to answer a number of questions about Asian security order.
Constructivists stress the role of collective identities in the foundation of Asias post-Cold War
relations. Chris Hemmer and Peter Katzenstein explain the puzzle of why there is no NATO in
Asia by examining the differing perceptions of collective identity held by U.S. policy makers in
relation to Europe and Asia. Policy makers in the early postwar period saw their potential Asian
allies as part of an alien and, in important ways, inferior community. This is in contrast to
how they viewed Europeans, who were seen relatively equal to themselves. As a result, Europe
was determined to be a better area for multilateral engagements and therefore, no Asian NATO
was formed. It was also noted that the normative concerns of Asian actors themselves, especially
their nationalist leaders, who viewed collective defense as a form of power intervention.
Constructivists have advanced the understanding of international relation in Asia in a few
ways.
First, focus on the role of ideational forces, such as culture, norms, and identity, enriches
our understanding of the sources and determinants of Asian regional order not compared
to a purely materialistic perspective. Second, Constructivists have challenged the
uncritical acceptance of the balance of power system posited by realist and neo-realist
scholars as the basis of Asian regional order by giving greater play to the possibility of
change and transformation driven by socialization. Third, constructivist writing have
introduced greater theoretical diversity, opened the space for debate in the field, and
helped to link the insights of the traditional area studies approach to Southeast Asia to the
larger domain of international relations.
The situation in East Asia is a dynamic and critical one. Due to a rising China, power
relationships between actors are in an unstable state. Concerns rise as it is unclear what actions
China will take with its newfound power or what the solutions to the situation will be.

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Works Cited
hu, Shulong, and Gilbert Rozman. East Asian Security: Two Views. Carlisle, PA: Strategic
Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2007. Nov. 2007. Web. 7 Aug. 2016.
Revere, Evans. "U.S. Policy and East Asian Security: Challenge and Response Institution."
Brookings. N.p., 2016. Web. 2 Aug. 2016.
Shambaugh, David L., and Michael B. Yahuda. International Relations of Asia. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. Web. 8 Aug. 2016.

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