If the twenty-first century is to be “Asia’s century,” what are the roadblocks that AsiaPacific nations must overcome? And what role can countries such as Australia, Canada and South Korea play in the region’s rise?
Canada, Australia and South Korea are united by a shared awareness that their futures are intimately tied to East Asia’s. How will these “constructive powers” — countries of significant size and influence that seek to protect their own interests while taking into account their effect on other countries — address the economic and security challenges that loom in the Asia-Pacific? Which parts of the governance system that has served so well since World War II should be preserved? And which should be changed to recognize East Asia’s hard-won political and economic influence, while helping to ensure a stable, predictable political environment? Mutual Security in the Asia-Pacific offers responses to these questions, presenting a number of policy-relevant ideas, with a particular emphasis on the potential for Australia, Canada and South Korea to take an active role in the region. Kang Choi is the vice president of research and director of the Center for Foreign Policy and National Security at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. Before joining the Asan Institute, he was dean of planning and assessment at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy; president of the Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security (2012); and chief executive officer for the Task Force for Current Defense Issues (2002–2005) at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. He also served in the National Security Council Secretariat as senior director for Policy Planning and Coordination (1998–2002). James Manicom was a research fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation from 2012 to 2014. The author of Bridging Troubled Waters: China, Japan and Maritime Order in the East China Sea (Georgetown University Press 2014), he has taught peace and conflict studies, international political economy, strategic studies, Arctic governance and Chinese foreign policy at Flinders University (Australia), York University and the Balsillie School of International Affairs (Waterloo, Ontario).
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MUTUAL SECURITY IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC ROLES FOR AUSTRALIA, CANADA AND SOUTH KOREA
Choi/Manicom/Palamar
Simon Palamar is a research associate with the Centre for International Governance Innovation and a doctoral candidate at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. His work on nuclear weapons proliferation and arms control has been recognized by the Simons Foundation and Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. He is a past recipient of the Barton Award in Arms Control and Disarmament.
Mutual Security in the Asia-Pacific
Myriad challenges to regional stability and security threaten East Asia’s burgeoning growth and prosperity: territorial and maritime boundary disputes, political relations strained by unresolved historical legacies and seemingly intractable disagreements about national sovereignty. Some security threats cannot be mitigated or solved by military force. Climate change-driven natural disasters, declining fish stocks, volatile crop yields and food prices, and the rapid pace of urbanization could each slow the region’s remarkable upward trajectory.
Edited by Kang Choi, James Manicom and Simon Palamar
Edited by Kang Choi, James Manicom and Simon Palamar
© 2015 the Asan Institute for Policy Studies and the Centre for International Governance Innovation ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, application for which should be addressed to the Centre for
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ISBN 978-1-928096-13-9 (paper)
ISBN 978-1-928096-14-6 (ebook) The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Centre for International Governance Innovation or its Board of Directors.
The chapter “An Assessment of the Security Situation in Northeast Asia: A South Korean Perspective,” by Kang Choi and Gibum Kim, is based on a discussion paper by Kang Choi titled “Security Challenges in
Northeast Asia: A South Korean Perspective,” presented at the 4th Berlin Conference on Asian Security in October 2009, jointly organized by Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin, and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta.
Published by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies and the Centre for International Governance Innovation Printed and bound in Canada.
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Contents Foreword: Constructive Powers and Regional Security in the Asia-Pacific. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Ambassador Leonard J. Edwards and Ambassador Yim Sung-joon Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Abbreviations and Acronyms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Introduction: Constructive Powers in a Deconstructed Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 James Manicom and Simon Palamar
Part One: Security Challenges and the Regional Response 1
An Assessment of the Security Environment in Northeast Asia: A South Korean Perspective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Kang Choi and Gibum Kim
2
A Constructive Contribution to Non-traditional Security Challenges: Areas for Australia-Canada-South Korea Cooperation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Hayley Channer
3
Conflict Prevention in the Asia-Pacific. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Fen Osler Hampson and James Manicom
Part Two: Constructive Powers and Their Regional Agenda 4
South Korea as an Emerging Constructive Power: Issue Leadership and Limits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Benoit Hardy-Chartrand
5
Will Canada Be a Constructive Power in East Asia?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 Simon Palamar
6
Australia: A Constructive or a Confused Power?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Andrew Carr
Part Three: Constructive Powers Cooperation in Regional Security 7
Rule Making for State Conduct in the Attribution of Cyber Attacks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Samantha Bradshaw, Mark Raymond and Aaron Shull
8
Friends, Allies and Partners: The Past, Present and Future of Canada-Korea Defence Relations (1950–2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Tina Jiwon Park
Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Foreword Constructive Powers and Regional Security in the Asia-Pacific Ambassador Leonard J. Edwards and Ambassador Yim Sung-joon
It is our pleasure to introduce to readers this volume of papers and commentary arising from a workshop held in Seoul, Korea, in October 2013 on the subject of constructive powers and regional security in the Asia-Pacific. Organized through a partnership between Korea’s prestigious Asan Institute for Policy Studies and Canada’s Centre for International Governance Innovation, the workshop featured delegations from Canada and Korea, as well as participants from Japan, Australia, the United States and China. The notion that Canada and Korea can work together — and with other similarly minded powers, notably Australia — to promote peace and security in the region may seem to be breaking new ground to some. Yet this workshop is an example and model of how non-governmental institutions in Korea and Canada can start to build the habits of cooperation — through discussion and debate — that could one day translate into real government-led initiatives by Seoul and Ottawa around particular issues. The concept of “constructive” powers is relatively new, but in Canada’s case, it draws from its historical role as a so-called middle power — a developed and affluent state whose effective exercise of power and influence was achieved through ideas, diplomacy and modest military clout. Korea’s remarkable rise to the status of a top-15 economy, with its affluent people, world-class corporations
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Mutual Security in the Asia-Pacific: Roles for Australia, Canada and South Korea
and growing global influence, puts it solidly at the front edge of middle power status. The objective of the workshop, and of assembling this volume, is to demonstrate that as new forces and new players emerge, traditional global players such as Canada can and should welcome and work with states such as Korea to strengthen the network of constructive engagement. And Korea, like other new players, can and should use relationships with some of the traditional middle powers to leverage its own influence and broaden the range of its impact on regional and global affairs. More than that, we see particular potential in a Korea-Canada partnership derived from their respective proximity to the two great powers of the twentyfirst century — China and the United States. Each country lives alongside one of them. Better than most other nations, Korea and Canada understand the benefits and the challenges that such proximity brings. The issues encountered in this volume are Asia-centred, but the relationship between China and the United States permeates throughout. The discussions that took place in Seoul confirmed that while political and security tensions in the Asia-Pacific were lessened by state interest and participation over almost three decades of phenomenal economic development through the 1980s and well into the first decade of this century (with the notable exception caused by the antics of the North Korean regime), the past decade has brought a reverse in that trend as a result of new threats (some from outside the region), pressures from population migrations and climate change, rising nationalism, military modernization programs, the changing dynamics in regional and great power relationships, and growing competition for resources — many offshore. In this dynamic, and with the region’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations-based governance mechanisms in the security domain understandably challenged to contend with these situations, there is a greater need for informal and constructive initiatives that complement and assist these governance mechanisms, and that can help, with time and dialogue, to build confidence and find innovative solutions. Unlike the approach to problem solving in many other parts of the world, the less structured, less formal Asian approach can be more open to unconventional ideas if put forward by trusted powers that have an interest in resolving disputes, but without “skin in the game.” The workshop concluded that there were indeed particular openings and areas where Korea and Canada could bring value, especially in dealing with less
Foreword ix
conventional threats. It also looked at involving others, such as Australia, which is also considered to be a constructive power in the region. While no one would question Korea’s stake in the region’s security, some participants in the workshop felt that Canada needs to reassert its status as an Asia-Pacific state in ways that go beyond its trade and economic objectives. Working constructively with Korea on regional security issues would send powerful messages in that respect. The workshop concluded that some areas of major tension are bound to remain intractable and only resolvable by the main players. This is especially true with respect to most aspects of the geopolitical adjustments at work between the United States and China. But even here, enlightened and far-sighted initiatives can ensure that unrelated points of tension in the region do not become caught up in the US-China equation, with increased dangers for conflict. It was also evident that any role for constructive power cooperation in dealing with the North Korean threat is also highly constrained. Although Canada initiated a track two security dialogue in the early 1990s that helpfully exposed many North Korean officials to outside thinking, Ottawa terminated the exercise prematurely — and is now not seen as a player in Northeast Asia security. This does not mean that a similarly bold non-governmental initiative, with Seoul’s blessing and engagement, would not be helpful at some stage. The workshop — assisted by the background papers in this volume — looked realistically at both the potential opportunities and limitations for constructive power initiatives in Asia-Pacific security affairs. Within that context, it considered whether Korea and Canada would make good partners in this respect. On balance, the conclusions reached were exceedingly positive. In several areas, there is the potential for significant benefits, as long as institutions and governments in Korea and Canada are innovative, bold, prepared to take the risks involved and committed to the needed time and effort. We wish you good reading. Ambassador (ret’d) Leonard J. Edwards Canadian Co-Chair Ambassador (ret’d) Yim Sung-joon Korean Co-Chair
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank (in alphabetical order), Carol Bonnett, David Dewitt, Len Edwards, Hahm Chaibong, Patricia Holmes, Nicole Langlois, Lee Jaehyon, John Lee, Lee Seung Hyok, Andrew O’Neil, John Ravenhill, Melodie Wakefield, David Welch and Yim Sung-joon for their various contributions and efforts that helped make this volume possible. The editors would also like to express their gratitude to all those who participated in the Asan-CIGI-ASPISeoul Forum Workshop, on which this book is based.
xi
Abbreviations and Acronyms
ABC
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
ACC
Australian Crime Commission
ACDM
ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management
ADB
Asian Development Bank
ADFAT
Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
ADMM
ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting
ADS
approved destination status
AGD
Australian Attorney-General’s Department
AIC
Australian Institute of Criminology
AMMTC
ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime
ANSN
Asian Nuclear Safety Network
ANZUS
Australia-New Zealand-United States
APC
Asia-Pacific Community
APCERT
Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team
APEC
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
APP
Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate
ARF
ASEAN Regional Forum
ARIN
American Registry for Internet Numbers
ASEAN
Association of Southeast Asian Nations
ASEAN+3
ASEAN Plus China, Japan and South Korea
ASEAN+6
ASEAN Plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India xiii
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Mutual Security in the Asia-Pacific: Roles for Australia, Canada and South Korea
BC
British Columbia
BMWG
Border Monitoring Working Group
CAF
Canadian Armed Forces
CAP
Consolidated Appeal Process
CBC
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
CERT
Computer Emergency Response Team
CKFTA
Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement
CICA
Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia
CMF
Combined Maritime Forces
CoC
code of conduct
CSBM
confidence- and security-building measures
CSCAP
Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific
C-SPOD
Canada-South Pacific Ocean Development
CTBT
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
CTF
combined task force
DAC
Development Assistance Committee (OECD)
DFATD
Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (Canada)
DMZ
Demilitarized Zone
DOC
Declaration on the Conduct of the Parties in the South China Sea
DoD
Australian Department of Defence
DoI
Australian Department of Industry
DPRK
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
EAS
East Asia Summit
EEZ
Exclusive Economic Zone
FAO
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
FIRST
Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams
FTA
free trade agreements
G20
Group of Twenty
Abbreviations and Acronyms xv
GATT
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GGE
United Nations Group of Governmental Experts
GGGI
Global Green Growth Institute
HADR
Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief
IAEA
International Atomic Energy Agency
ICJ
International Court of Justice
ICOD
International Centre for Ocean Development
ILO
International Labor Organization
INTERFET
International Force for East Timor
IPCC
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
ISIL
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
ITLOS
International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea
JMSU
Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking
JSCT
Joint Standing Committee on Treaties
MCS
maritime monitoring, control and surveillance
MIKTA
Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey and Australia
MoU
Memorandum of Understanding
MRC
Mekong River Commission
NAPCI
Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative
NEACD
Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue
NGO
non-governmental organization
NPT
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty
NSS
Nuclear Security Summit
NTS
non-traditional security
OCHA
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
ODA
official development aid
OECD
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OFWG
Oceans and Fisheries Working Group
OSCE
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
PD
preventive diplomacy
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Mutual Security in the Asia-Pacific: Roles for Australia, Canada and South Korea
PIF
Pacific Island Forum
PKOs
peacekeeping operations
PPB
Pacific Patrol Boat
R2P
responsibility to protect
RIMPAC
Rim of the Pacific Exercise
ROK
Republic of Korea
ROK MOFA Republic of Korea Ministry of Foreign Affairs RMA
Revolution in Military Affairs
SARS
severe acute respiratory syndrome
SCAP
Strategic Consultation for Allied Partnership
SCO
Shanghai Cooperation Organization
SNS
Social Networking Services
SPNFZ
South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone
TAC
Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (ASEAN)
TCS
Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat
THAAD
Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense
TPP
Trans-Pacific Partnership
UNC
United Nations Command
UNCTAD
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNEP
United Nations Environment Programme
UNESCAP
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
UNISDR
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction
UNOCHA
United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
UNODC
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
UNPKO
United Nations Peacekeeping Operations
UNTCOK
United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea
WCPFC
Western Central Pacific Fisheries Commission
WGU
weapons-grade uranium
WHO
World Health Organization
Abbreviations and Acronyms xvii
Introduction Constructive Powers in a Deconstructed Region James Manicom and Simon Palamar
The Scenario The Asia-Pacific — the region composed of China, Indochina, Japan, the Korean Peninsula, the Malay Archipelago, Oceania and Taiwan — contains more than one-third of humanity and increasingly lies at the centre of the global economy. Whereas American consumers used to be the global economy’s locomotive, East Asian economies are now often seen as the ones that will determine the health (or sickness) of the world economy. Two dramatic trends that took off in the aftermath of World War II — remarkable population and economic growth — have led pundits, politicians, bureaucrats and bankers alike to declare that the twenty-first century will be Asia’s century. Even if the economic growth rates of the past 50 years continue to slow in the next two decades, Asia — by virtue of its stunning recent growth — will simply become so large and so wealthy that it could become the natural centre of gravity for the world’s politics and economic activity. If this comes to pass, Asia would be retaking its position as the world’s largest economic subregion — a title it held before the industrial revolution — and it would mark a historic transition of political and military power from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific. In more concrete terms, such a transformation could have a profound — and positive — effect on the lives of the world’s ordinary people. Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms are already widely credited with pulling 1
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Mutual Security in the Asia-Pacific: Roles for Australia, Canada and South Korea
some 600 million Chinese out of poverty, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) foresees the possibility of three billion people in Asia living a current European standard of living by 2050 (ADB 2011, 3). Higher standards of living in East Asia could also become lucrative export markets for the mature North Atlantic economies. Asia’s rise does not have to mean the West loses, and in fact that rise may be necessary to usher in a new era of prolonged global growth and prosperity. Beneath the surface of this sunny narrative, however, numerous challenges to regional stability and security pose a threat to Asia’s rise. From Seoul to Manila, the region is afflicted with a number of territorial and maritime boundary disputes, poor political relations defined by unresolved historical legacies, and two frozen civil wars that have created apparently intractable disagreements about national sovereignty across the Taiwan Strait and on the Korean Peninsula (Manicom 2013). These tensions are happening against the backdrop of a slow but steady regional power transition between a rising China and the United States, which has been the region’s de facto hegemon since the dissolution of the Empire of Japan. Indeed, the region is becoming increasingly divided along these lines as Washington has announced a “rebalance” to the region (Obama 2014), which Beijing perceives as an American attempt to contain China’s influence. These long-standing political disagreements, coupled with a cool Sino-American relationship, have helped drive the region’s governments to upgrade their military hardware, including building new capital ships, purchasing advanced submarines and increasing the quantity and sophistication of their ballistic and guided missile arsenals. In other words, the Asian paradox is alive and well: despite the high levels of commercial trade within the region, there are still enough bilateral political issues of significant national importance to merit the occasional threat or use of force. Though many of these bursts of conflict involve relatively minor stakes — such as coast guard or naval vessels chasing or boarding foreign fishing vessels — the underlying political conflicts are very real, and we should not take comfort in the fact that so far none of the region’s long-standing international political grievances have broken out in large-scale conflict. Beyond traditional international security challenges, the region is also facing security threats that cannot be mitigated or solved by military force. Climate change-driven natural disasters, declining fish stocks, volatile crop yields and food prices, and the pace of urbanization all hold the potential to threaten the security of the region’s peoplesf and thereby pose challenges for the region’s governments. Preventing overfishing, deforestation or anthropogenic climate change from devastating livelihoods and forcing the region’s peoples to scramble
Introduction 3
to find ways to adapt haphazardly to a new (and possibly frightening) normal will require governments to cooperate and at times subordinate their own narrow interests to the region’s collective welfare. Finally, there are security challenges that the region’s governments will need to address through a mix of collaborative policy efforts. Human smuggling, narcotics and arms trafficking, piracy and other forms of transnational organized crime are often best addressed by a combination of policies that include policing, aid for victims and development projects aimed at eliminating the economic incentives for crime. These policies also work best when national governments collaborate, since, by definition, transnational crime crosses borders. In the Asia-Pacific, these sorts of challenges include illegal logging and piracy in the Indonesian archipelago and Malay Peninsula, opiate production in the Mekong and human trafficking across the region. The collective human security burden of these non-traditional threats — despite its scope and potential long-term consequences — is often overshadowed by the more parochial interests of the region’s capitals. This causes many governments in the region to worry about the region’s future political and military stability, and by extension their own fortunes. Many welcome the perspective of outside countries on ways to support regional economic and strategic frameworks. Australia and Canada both have legacies of, at key times, making significant contributions to East Asia’s regional security arrangements. Moreover, both countries have recently reinvigorated their diplomatic activity in East Asia. Australia appears to have finally embraced its geographic location, and increasingly sees itself as part of Asia (if not culturally, then at least politically and economically), and has begun to refer to the region as the “Indo-Pacific” in an effort to firmly place Australia within it. After a decade of neglect, Canada seems poised to capitalize on its legacy as a reliable partner for several of the region’s states, and appears eager to offer new ideas to help mitigate some of the region’s security challenges. South Korea, long preoccupied with the existential threat posed by its northern neighbour, has refocused its regional diplomacy in recent years. It is now seeking to carve out a niche for itself as a bridge builder in Northeast Asia that does not threaten to destabilize its neighbourhood in the pursuit of narrow national aims, but instead aims for win-win political and economic arrangements for the region. This was the context in which the Centre for International Governance Innovation, in partnership with the Seoul Forum on International Affairs, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, convened a two-day workshop in Seoul on October 18 and 19, 2013. The discussions were fruitful, candid and wide-ranging, as scholars and former
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Mutual Security in the Asia-Pacific: Roles for Australia, Canada and South Korea
policy makers from Australia, Canada, China, Japan and Korea compared notes and shared anxieties and hopes about the future of regional security in East Asia. Participants advanced a number of policy-relevant, actionable ideas for the amelioration of the regional security climate, which are outlined in this book. A key unifying theme of the conversation, and of this book, was the enormous potential for “constructive powers” such as Australia, Canada and South Korea to take on an active and productive role in East Asia. Despite their differences, Australia, Canada and Korea all face similar foreign policy challenges when looking at Northeast Asia. All three have benefitted from American dominance in the region since the end of World War II. Australia found a security partner in the United States, especially as the United Kingdom made its strategic withdrawal from the region in the 1960s and 1970s. Canada, like Australia, has benefitted from America’s interest in the Pacific, which allowed Ottawa throughout the Cold War to focus its diplomatic and military policies on the North Atlantic. For South Korea, its mutual defence treaty with the United States has been an important guarantor of its security and sovereignty. All three countries have also prospered under and taken advantage of the postwar international trade system that the United States, among others, has championed. The postwar world, crafted in large part by the United States, has been good for these three countries. Today, Australia, Canada and Korea are united by democratic values and a desire to keep as much of the postwar status quo in Northeast Asia as possible, but also by the fact that all three, by economic necessity or by virtue of geography, see their futures intimately tied to Asia’s future. How to, on the one hand, preserve aspects of the postwar order that has served Australia, Canada and Korea so well, while making the necessary changes to ensure a stable, predictable political environment in East Asia so that the region can meet its economic potential, is in many ways the chief foreign policy challenge for these three nations when they look to East Asia’s future.
Constructive Powers When putting together this volume, we encouraged the authors to think about the region’s challenges and opportunities, and how Australian, Canadian and Korean foreign policy should approach these challenges and opportunities using the concept of “constructive powers.” “Constructive power,” as we use the term, is not a strict, parsimonious concept. It is not precisely defined by a country’s gross domestic product (though bigger is generally better), by the size of its military or by the political orientation of
Introduction 5
its leaders. Generally, we consider “constructive” behaviour to be proactive and deliberate. Constructive powers — like all states — are trying to shape the world, to the extent they can, in order to satisfy their preferences and protect their interests. Where constructive behaviour is different from middle power behaviour (at least in the way that scholars use the term) is that it explicitly takes the preferences and interests of others into account. This does not mean that it is altruistic or idealistic, but instead recognizes that we live in a complex world in which one country’s behaviour can easily and inadvertently affect the welfare of another. Constructive powers seek to better their own welfare and reify their own preferences, but try to do so in a fashion that minimizes the externalities for other countries,1 while understanding that often international politics is inherently and fundamentally competitive, and when it comes to certain issues, not everyone can get what they want. There are certain qualities that allow a country to be either more or less constructive in world affairs. These qualities include size. Countries with substantial — though not overwhelming — wealth, and considerable militaries and diplomatic services, are better suited to be constructive powers than the very small or very poor. A certain level of wealth and capability is simply a matter of necessity. Constructive powers cannot be too big, rich or militarily powerful, as they will have less need to be constructive or will lack the perceived neutrality that is necessary to be accepted as such. Instead, the world’s most powerful countries have the option of unilateral action, and may be tempted to resort to it when the political, economic or military stakes are high enough. An important element of being a constructive power is a willingness to invest time, human resources, political standing and money in the interests of others. This is not to say that constructive powers must be altruistic. Instead, making commitments to help secure other countries’ interests is necessary if governments expect others to provide aid or political support when their own interests are at risk. This sort of behaviour is sometimes derided as a sort of “transactional” foreign policy that is based on a quid pro quo exchange rather than on the basis of mutual values ( Jones 2014). This critique is off base, as it misses the fact that different countries — even if they share some important qualities, such as a commitment to democratic rule — will inevitably have some different preferences, priorities and interests. Take, for example, Canada and the Republic of Korea. The two countries are not only separated by geography, 1
Doing public policy in a way that minimizes negative externalities is desirable since it reduces the likelihood that the actors bearing the externalities will retaliate in an effort to reimpose those costs on the first country, or that they will enact policies to further shift those externalities onto a third party.
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Mutual Security in the Asia-Pacific: Roles for Australia, Canada and South Korea
but have different histories, neighbours and cultures, and face different public policy challenges. Canada was not divided into two countries in a civil war, and does not have an antagonistic, nuclear-armed neighbour to contend with. South Korea was and does. Even in North America, Canada’s friends and partners face remarkably different sets of public policy challenges. Mexico, for example, faces a substantial public security problem in the form of terrific violence between drug cartels. Canada does not. Part of being a leader and a reliable partner is delivering tangible and useful assistance when it is needed. Expecting two countries’ national interests and public policy priorities to overlap (unless those interests are incredibly vague, such as “prosperity” or “security”) is unrealistic. If interests are heterogeneous, then constructive powers need to have long time horizons, and understand that deploying political, economic and military capital today will not necessarily pay off immediately. This may be a serious operational challenge for democracies. However, there are also reasons to suspect that certain aspects of democracies — namely, the need of democratic governments to deliver public goods to stay in power — might offset the short-term views of democratic politicians (de Mesquita et al. 2003). Academics and analysts have tended to describe middle powers in a different fashion. A typical scholarly description of a middle power often emphasizes an intertwined combination of behaviour and motives. Scholars have described middle powers as seeking “ethical outcomes” in world affairs (Ravenhill 1998, 309; Schoeman 2000, 48), as being “bridge builder[s] and consensus seeker[s]” (Higgott and Cooper 1990, 591), or as mediators and conciliators (David and Roussel 1998). Another common formulation of the middle power concept describes middle powers as deliberately functionalist entities in an ecosystem of states (for example, see Cooper et al. 1993, 18-19; Neack 1995). These functionalist (or behavioural) definitions of middle powers tend to frame middle powers as countries that are deliberately trying to contribute to the maintenance and effectiveness of the postwar liberal international system. The functionalist/ behavioural definition implicitly assumes that middle power interests are generally aligned with the interests of the hegemonic state (or leading powers). Hence, middle powers, in their functional role, enhance and reinforce the status quo. Of course, middle power interests and preferences will not always be aligned with major power interests and preferences. Thus, another chief distinction between the constructive powers concept and the middle power concept is the degree to which one assumes interests and preferences are aligned, not just between large and small countries, but between geographical neighbours and long-time partners as well. When countries have different priorities, interests and face different policy challenges (and potential solutions require the aid or
Introduction 7
cooperation of foreign governments), then designing and implementing policy solutions requires governments to bargain, compromise and, at times, commit financial, political or military resources to short-term aims that are not at the top of their priority list. This means prioritizing long-run goals over short-run concerns in order to create long-run win-win (or “integrative”; see Hoppmann 1995) bargains. It also requires governments to soberly assess what they value, and what they are willing to trade in order to secure the things that matter most to them. The constructive powers concept was devised to describe a certain type of behaviour in a world where the postwar multilateral institutions are not working as intended, and where, despite the existence of a single predominant military and economic power in the world (the United States), that predominant power’s leadership appears to be fading, and its ability (or willingness) to provide global public goods and maintain the network of alliances and multilateral institutions that it created is in question (Hampson and Heinbecker 2011). The prominence of this set of circumstances in East Asia makes the constructive power concept particularly useful for thinking about challenges to peace and security in that region. East Asia is host to a number of issues that are — or could become — major international public policy challenges. These include government-to-government challenges, such as disagreements over maritime boundaries, and clashes over international borders and ownership of islands. Other issues are of concern to governments, but are not (directly, at least) caused by them, such as human security consequences of the Golden Triangle heroin trade or human smuggling in Southeast Asia. Some other threats to sustained peace, prosperity and security — such as the challenges that changing climate patterns, rising sea levels and warming oceans pose for the hundreds of millions of people who live along the region’s coastline and rely on the sea for their livelihoods — are far beyond the capability of any single government or society to address. Many of these challenges are not simply matters of national pride, or efforts to live up to some sort of identity as a modern state. Instead, they often revolve around questions about the distribution of resources (maritime disputes), legitimate disagreements about who rules a particular piece of territory (such as the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands or the Liancourt Rocks), situations where the internal social, political or economic situation in one country affects the material well-being of people in another (in economic terms, externalities), and profound disagreements about who will set the rules of future international conduct in the region (what constructivists call norms and what economists call expectations). Disputes of this nature can, at their worst, become situations
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Mutual Security in the Asia-Pacific: Roles for Australia, Canada and South Korea
involving zero-sum bargaining (where one party can only gain at the expense of another) or showdowns where countries either try to economically or militarily strong-arm one another. At their best, these tough distributional issues can be resolved through creative, integrative bargaining, where parties trade off one issue for another, and might achieve win-win agreements. While there is a near-consensus in North America that East Asia will become the world’s largest and most important economic region in the next one or two decades, what this means for the rest of the world is uncertain. East Asia’s remarkable economic trajectory, on the one hand, is a cause for optimism, and many firms and politicians see its ascendance as a remarkable economic opportunity. On the other hand, there is tremendous concern about whether China’s increasing wealth and military capabilities will reduce or increase the likelihood of interstate conflict (either armed or unarmed). One potential outcome is that a more capable and confident China will become involved in intensified political competition — or even armed conflict — with the United States (Palamar and Jardine 2012). American foreign and defence policy has increasingly oriented itself toward the Asia-Pacific region in recent years. This Asia-Pacific pivot — even if it does not involve redistributing large absolute numbers of military personnel and assets to the Pacific — is a strong signal that the United States, when formulating its foreign and military policies, will — at least in relative terms — prioritize its continued dominance in the Pacific. Take, for example, the US Department of Defense’s Air-Sea Battle concept, which seems to be squarely aimed at countering the People’s Liberation Army’s growing anti-access and area denial capabilities. Thus, despite cordial relations between Beijing and Washington, each is designing its future defence doctrines to counter the other. The Asia-Pacific is still afflicted by a number of frozen armed conflicts and uncertainty about whether a new distribution of economic wealth in the region will presage a new distribution of political power and influence. While in the broadest terms every country in the region has a shared interest in peace and prosperity, not all governments share a view of how some long-standing territorial and political disputes should be resolved, and how future international policy challenges in the region should be addressed. On the face of it, therefore, there is a clear role for constructive-minded governments in the region to help fashion mutually acceptable bargains for conflicting parties, invest financial and political resources in solutions to neglected policy challenges, and create coalitions of like-minded states on issues where there is presently a lack of leadership.
Introduction 9
The Way Forward The remainder of this book is divided into three sections. The first section outlines the changing landscape of regional security in East Asia with chapters that discuss emerging security challenges, the state of regional architecture and the regional track record in conflict prevention. The second section of the book outlines the constructive characteristics of Australia, Canada and South Korea. The third section explores the scope for constructive powers’ contributions to regional security challenges in the emerging area of cyber security and in traditional defence relations. Kang Choi and Gibum Kim open the volume with a view from Seoul of security challenges in Northeast Asia. While the list of challenges is long, Choi and Kim draw the reader’s attention to the core dynamic that they believe will shape the region’s security environment for the foreseeable future: the USChinese relationship. While it is too early to say if the relationship between the two countries will deteriorate into a Cold War-style competition for power and influence, Beijing and Washington certainly are mistrustful of each other. Thus, while the Asia-Pacific region could develop a multilateral security system, continued American dominance or Sino-American spheres of influence are other likely possibilities for the region’s future. While Beijing’s and Washington’s decisions will have the greatest influence on determining which of these three outcomes the region arrives at, other states, working at the margins of Chinese and American policy, may be able to shape the region’s future. For example, cooling nationalistic voices that draw from resentment caused by historical grievances, such as in the Korean-Japanese relationship, could go a long way toward establishing formal and institutional security dialogue. In essence, while Choi and Kim foresee the region’s security politics being dominated by China and the United States, they also highlight that there is a range of actions that smaller states can take to shape the region’s security environment. Moving the focus away from “traditional” sources of insecurity, such as military rivalries between national governments, Hayley Channer strongly argues that populations living in the Asia-Pacific region could face serious “non-traditional” threats to continued prosperity and their physical security. These threats include — but are not limited to — the destruction of fisheries stocks due to unfettered fishing, pollution and climate change; transnational criminal networks that prey on the weak and vulnerable across borders; natural disasters subsequently leading to humanitarian disasters; and the risks posed by loose and badly managed stocks of nuclear materials. While the Asia-Pacific region has no shortage of multilateral institutions that could act as a focal point for coordinated efforts to address some of these issues, the major multilaterals (ranging from the United
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Mutual Security in the Asia-Pacific: Roles for Australia, Canada and South Korea
Nations and World Health Organization to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the East Asia Summit) have made limited headway. Channer suggests that if traditional multilateral groups cannot get the job done, it may be time for experimental minilateral cooperation among Canberra, Ottawa and Seoul on some of these issues. While responding to crises and conflicts in a timely fashion is good, preventing them in the first place is even better. In Chapter 3, Fen Osler Hampson and James Manicom survey conflict-prevention efforts in East Asia. While the region has no shortage of multilateral forums — many of which aspire to take on an overt role in managing the region’s security challenges — Hampson and Manicom contend that formal efforts to implement conflict-prevention policies in East Asia have failed to take root widely, despite rhetoric to the contrary. That does not mean there have been no successes in introducing conflict-prevention measures in East Asia. Confidence- and security-building measures in particular appear to be popular. Conflict management in East Asia is still often an ad hoc process, rather than a predictable, standardized and institutionalized part of politics in the region. The Asia-Pacific region is largely free, however, of active, armed conflict, and the region has been relatively stable since the end of the Vietnam War. Whether this stability is a result of US hegemony, Chinese restraint or a host of other factors is unclear. Thus, Hampson and Manicom argue for the need for regional entrepreneurs to keep the process of developing conflict-management mechanisms moving forward. Simply because war has not broken out in the region is no reason to blithely keep the status quo. While Hampson and Manicom conclude that the countries best suited to drive the process of developing conflict-management mechanisms are the Southeast Asian states, there may be a need for Australia, Canada and Korea to play supporting roles. In Part Two, Andrew Carr, Simon Palamar and Benoit Hardy-Chartrand, respectively, assess the foreign policies of Australia, Canada and Korea toward the region. The authors note that although the three nations have deep interests in the Asia-Pacific, all face significant challenges in their efforts to develop proactive, constructive policies. In Chapter 4, Carr argues that Australia’s reluctance to embrace the AsiaPacific and to see itself as an integral part of the region has delayed and impeded Australian efforts to develop a coherent Asia policy, and has prevented Canberra from having more influence in the region’s politics. Given Australia’s history of creative policy entrepreneurship, Carr argues that it is not a lack of creativity, skill or resources that is checking Australia’s influence in Asia but rather the country’s lack of a vision of what sort of Asia it wants to be part of. Instead,
Introduction 11
Australian governments have preferred to continue quietly keeping military ties with the United States, while fostering trade ties within the broader region. This has hobbled Australia’s Asia policy, since it has failed to recognize that the Asia-Pacific has changed dramatically in recent years — and is still changing. Instead of Australia’s political class developing a new policy toward the region that maintains the best elements of the postwar, American-led order that has benefitted Australia, while making the requisite changes to continue to secure Australian priorities in a dynamic environment, Canberra seems to have settled on hoping that the status quo in Asia will simply persist. In Chapter 5, Palamar argues that even though Canada has much at stake in the region, Ottawa so far appears unwilling to make any major political commitments to any of Canada’s traditional (or potential) regional partners. Instead, Canada is promoting a prosperity agenda: Ottawa has set out to secure trade agreements and launched missions to open Asian markets to Canadian firms and vice versa. Yet, when it comes to diplomatic efforts to help solve some of the region’s political challenges, increased financial resources for battling multinational criminal organizations or enhanced military diplomacy with friends in the region, Canada has made only modest progress recently. Palamar thus asserts that Canada, until it is willing to make tangible political commitments to its partners in the region, is not well positioned to exert much influence in Asia. Since Canada already has a reputation (deserved or otherwise) for being “absent” from Asia, attempting to ingratiate itself into the region without making firm political pledges to potential allies and commitments to share some of the security burden, Ottawa risks being seen as a fair-weather trading partner, and little else. While Australia and Canada are both physically distant from mainland Asia, South Korea is not. Fittingly, as Hardy-Chartrand discusses in Chapter 6, South Korea’s foreign policy toward Asia is the most active of the three countries. In fact, Hardy-Chartrand argues, South Korea’s foreign policy is increasingly global in scope (if not in scale), as Seoul sends development experts around the world and participates in far-flung conflict-management and peacekeeping missions, such as in Afghanistan and Haiti. However, like Australia and Canada, South Korea also faces some challenges. North Korea still poses a serious security threat, and Seoul continues to rely on its alliance with the United States as its ultimate security guarantor. This security relationship ultimately means that South Korea must, in Hardy-Chartrand’s words, “carefully calibrate its foreign policy” toward China, which is an important trade partner to Seoul and a strategic rival to Washington. Meanwhile, the relationship between Tokyo and Beijing has deteriorated in recent years, as the two capitals argue over sovereignty in the East China Sea. While Seoul is not a direct participant in that conflict, its
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Mutual Security in the Asia-Pacific: Roles for Australia, Canada and South Korea
position is illustrative of another major challenge for Korean policy makers: how to be a constructive regional actor when your neighbours are still enmeshed in serious conflicts and are willing to rattle their sabres at one another. Thus, as Hardy-Chartrand concludes, South Korea is more of a constructive power outside its home region than within. Developing a constructive policy agenda that can help cool tensions in Northeast Asia will require Korean policy makers to walk a fine line between China, Japan and the United States. In the end, all three countries are reorienting their foreign policies toward the region. However, they are doing so with different degrees of effort and success. For Korea, because of its history and geography, a robust and active foreign policy that strengthens Seoul’s network of friends and allies around the world is imperative. Asia is important for Canada’s economic future, but given Canada’s distance from mainland Asia and its historical ties to Europe (including NATO), so far Canada has attempted to avoid deep engagement with the region, hoping that stronger economic ties do not have to be accompanied by stronger diplomatic and military ties. Australia literally and figuratively sits between the two, growing its economic presence in the region while quietly working to reinforce the political status quo. All three states, as these chapters attest, have shown the potential to be constructive actors in the region, but none have reached their potential. Part Three offers two visions of the future of cooperation among Australia, Canada and Korea. Samantha Bradshaw, Mark Raymond and Aaron Shull forcefully argue that Canberra, Ottawa and Seoul can and should work together in developing a robust, institutionalized system for identifying governments and private organizations that conduct cyber attacks in Asia. As Bradshaw, Raymond and Shull point out, it is difficult to attribute cyber attacks to perpetrators. Therefore, when a government assigns blame for an attack, there is always a degree of uncertainty about whether the perpetrator has been correctly identified. The politics of cyber-attack attribution can therefore be hotly contested. The authors pose an interesting solution to the challenge: outsourcing attribution to a network of trusted non-governmental experts. They argue that taking the responsibility for attribution out of government hands would help depoliticize the process and make it easier and faster to identify attackers accurately. Cyber attacks are becoming an increasingly common tool of military and foreign policy, and in Asia we have already seen recriminations between Seoul and Pyongyang, and Beijing and Washington on the issue. Bradshaw, Raymond and Shull offer a clear path for constructive powers to collaborate on an emerging and critical security issue in a novel fashion.
Introduction 13
Tina Park concludes the volume by reminding readers and analysts that while Canada has not always placed Asia at the top of its foreign policy priority list, there is still a considerable history of cooperation between Seoul and Ottawa. Park recounts this history and identifies a broad range of issues on which Canada and Korea could fruitfully collaborate, from providing humanitarian disaster relief in the Pacific, to sharing best practices in cyber-security policy, to working together on the Arctic Council (where South Korea has recently acquired observer status). Park’s chapter is a welcome reminder of how much two seemingly different and distant countries such as Canada and Korea have in common when we scratch below the surface of policy debates.
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Manicom, James. 2013. Sources of Tension in the Asia-Pacific: Strategic Competition, Divided Regionalism and Non-Traditional Security Challenges. AustraliaCanada Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Series, Paper No. 1. Waterloo: CIGI. Neack, Laura. 1995. “UN Peace-Keeping: In the Interest of Community or Self ?” Journal of Peace Research 32 (2): 181–96. Obama, Barack Hussein. 2014. “Remarks by President Obama at the University of Queensland.” Brisbane, November 15. www.whitehouse. gov/the-press-office/2014/11/15/remarks-president-obama-universityqueensland. Palamar, Simon and Eric Jardine. 2012. “Does Canada Need a New Asia Policy?” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 18 (3): 251–63. Ravenhill, John. 1998. “Cycles of middle power activism: constraint and choice in Australian and Canadian foreign policies.” Australian Journal of International Affairs 52 (3): 309–27. Schoeman, Maxi. 2000. “South Africa as an emerging middle power.” African Security Review 9 (3): 47–58.