- Abstract
- Democratization in East Asia has dual, contradictory implications for security. It tends to enhance human security, by increasing responsiveness to human need. Yet it also weakens central authority and introduces new populist actors into decision-making, generating uncertainty regarding national purpose. The latter problems have particularly serious consequences for security in Northeast Asia, given the lack of either commonly accepted political boundaries or a coherent multi-lateral framework for regional security.
- Democratization, which has traditionally had a more conservative bias in East Asia than elsewhere, creates four particular challenges for stable regional security relationships: intensified nationalism; pressures for the withdrawal of foreign troops; terrorism; and providing adequate human security to groups dis-advantaged by rapid but volatile growth. As democracy is consolidated, however, the prospects are good that they will be addressed successfully, even in large, complex nations such as China.
- Keywords : securitization, East Asian democratization, regional security complex, Asian Way, human security, internal security
- I. Introduction
- Democracy and security have long and complex relationships, in both political theory and international relations scholarship. For Hobbes, they were antithetical concepts, in view of what he presumed to be the natural unwillingness of citizens to sacrifice their lives in defense of the state, and the impracticality of state efforts to induce them voluntarily to do so.1) For Rousseau, by contrast, democracy and security were deeply and symbiotically related, with democracy promoting the social equality and fraternity that provided, in his view, the best possible bedrock for popular solidarity, and hence state security.2)
- Liberal theorists of international relations have long contended that national governments need the broad legitimacy of being based on democratic principles, in order to be fully secure, both domestically and internationally3) Democracies, they argue, do not fight one another, leading ultimately to the prospect of perpetual peace, as the sphere of democratic governance inexorably broadens.4) Realists, by contrast, see no special implications of democratic governance for the security of nations, contending that patterns of war and peace are determined by broad national interest rather than the details of domestic structure.5) Some, such as Jack Snyder, argue that the turbulent process of democratization in fact begets conflict, as nationalist assertions by emerging democracies in revolutionary France, early Twentieth Century Serbia, and Weimar Germany demonstrate.6)
- Since the mid-1980s, and particularly since the waning of the Cold War in Europe, there has, of course, been substantial debate and conceptual innovation regarding the meaning of security itself.7) Through new approaches like critical security studies, securitization, and the human-security concept, epitomized in the work of Copenhagen School authors such as Barry Buzan and Ole Weaver, the notion of security itself has been both broadened and deepened.8) These analyses have expanded the analytic scope of security beyond military dimensions to include economics and the environment, while also broadening the referent object of security what is to be secured from the state to society more generally.
- II. East Asian Experience in Global Perspective
- East Asia provides an excellent laboratory for testing broad theories about the relationship between security and democracy in both their classical realist and more contemporary conceptualizations. Methodologists often stress the importance in research design of substantial variation among relevant cases, especially with regard to the dependent variable.9) Clearly East Asia is close to ideal in that regard.
- Indeed, the East Asian region exhibits broad variation in patterns of democracy and the lack thereof, ranging from established democracies such as Japan and South Korea since 1988, on the one hand, to dictatorships like North Korea and to a lesser extent China on the other. It also exhibits widely varying patterns of security and insecurity, along both classical and critical security studies dimensions, ranging from peaceful Japan to a much more turbulent and economically distressed Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand. It also features a broad range of aligned and traditionally non-aligned nations. Furthermore, East Asia also exhibits substantial changes over time with respect to both the democracy and the security variables. This broad variation along both dimensions of analysis facilitates rigorously establishing causal relationships, provided that the intermediate causal linkages can be adequately specified.
- Ⅲ. The Dual Impact of Democratization
- This paper will argue that democratization in East Asia has dual, contradictory implications for security. It clearly enhances security, in the broad, humane, and contemporary sense of the term, by increasing governmental and societal responsiveness to human need. Yet it also creates ambiguities with respect to national purpose and intent, and constraints on governmental actors, which can seriously destabilize political-military relations among nation states themselves.
- This latter problem is particularly acute in Northeast Asia. In that volatile region early post-World War II divisions flowing from the breakup of the Japanese Empire, the triumph of the 1949 Chinese Revolution, and the Korean War created severe intra-national divisions, multiple unrecognized boundaries, and a heavy buildup of military forces particularly across the DMZ in Korea and the Taiwan Straits further south.10) The existence of this Northeast Asian arc of crisis11), compounded by an emerging nuclear dimension, renders any ambiguities in national intent particularly dangerous in a traditional security calculus.
- Democratization, in the sense of movement toward the democratic pole in terms of Dahl’s classic criteria of participation and contestation 12), has these dual effects on security, because it fundamentally shifts the domestic political calculus of a nation, in terms of which national-security policy is made. 13) Under the classical elite-dominated paradigm of security policy formation14), stable trans-national networks of veteran diplomats and security specialists deal with one another confidentially and predictably over long periods of time, largely detached from popular pressures. Due to the mutual expectation that their relationships will smoothly continue, and that they will be insulated from random external pressures, these elite decision-makers can, so the logic goes, be flexible, creative, and predictable in dealing with complex problems of state. Metternich, Bismarck, and Kissinger are playing, to put matters more formally, a multiple iterative game, which allows the players concerned considerable flexibility in their short-term actions, while maintaining some predictability in long-term mutual expectations.15)
- Democratization, or so the diplomatic purists would argue, erodes the positive central features of diplomacy that render elite national-security dealings at once stable and potentially flexible, as well as creative. The transition to democracy, as Snyder and Mansfield point out, involves four concrete structural changes in political systems that reduce the ability of national decision-makers to unilaterally and coherently determine security policy.16) These confounding influences, from an elite decision-making standpoint, include: (1) weakening of central authority; (2) competitive mass mobilization; (3) widening of the political spectrum; and (4) rigidification of interests. Through the domestic uncertainty that democratization generates, it undermines the trans-national credibility, or reputation of national-security elites with one another, by casting doubt on their ability to deliver promised results.
Beyond democratization, in the world of stable democracy, the prospects for stable security relations among nations appear brighter. As Doyle has pointed out, fully democratic states tend to check aggressive impulses, because citizen consent is required to wage war17) As Schultz also notes, democracies also tend to be credible in security terms. Their relative transparency makes it difficult for democratic governments to conceal domestic constraints against using force. Yet democracies can still credibly demonstrate resolve, when their threats to use force have strong domestic support.18)
- Ⅳ. East Asian Country-Specific Perspectives
- To understand concretely the impact of democratization in East Asia along the dual classical and contemporary dimensions of security outlined above, it is useful to consider specific country cases. Over the past century, there have been six major cases of democratization in East Asia with major consequences for regional security, broadly defined: (1) Japan (1889-1931); (2) South Korea (1987-present); (3) Taiwan (1988-present); (4) Philippines (l986-present); (5) Thailand (l990-present); and (6) Indonesia (l998-present). Although the process of democratization in China is only in its infancy, the relationship between security and democratization there certainly merits serious consideration also, due to the substantial implications for the East Asian region, and for the world more generally, of China’s fateful transition. In particular, China’s nascent democratization, which may have more momentum than often appreciated 19), raises the pressing issue of whether the democratic peace will hold in its dealings with the broader world.20)
Four specific implications of democratization in East Asia for security need to be considered: (1) how democratization affects a nation’s general assertiveness in dealing with the broader world; (2) how democratization affects policies regarding the presence of foreign forces on a nation’s soil; (3) how democratization affects national policies regarding human security; and (4) how democratization affects internal security, including the capacity to deal with terrorism. The former two of these dimensions relate to classical nation-state level external political-military security concerns. The latter two are more closely related to human security, and other critical security studies concepts.
Security concerns, it must be emphasized, can also affect a nation’s trajectory of democratization. This paper considers two variants in particular. Military alliances, such as those between East Asian nations and the United States, can affect domestic political profiles, as they did in South Korea under Park Chung-Hee, or in the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos. Internal security concerns can also affect democratic evolution, as they demonstrably have of late in Indonesia.
- V. Democratization and National Assertion
- An influential stream of analysis in comparative politics argues, mainly from European, African, and Middle Eastern experience, that democratization leads to nationalist and communalist conflict.21) The history of Taisho democracy in Japan, where emerging socio-economic groups, including the bourgeoisie and labor, began to challenge the position of the military, and where social fluidity exacerbated the military’s tendency toward nationalist self-assertion, exhibited some of these tendencies.22) This fledgling Taisho democracy led ultimately to Showa militarism, just as nascent Bismarckian and Weimar social democracy led ultimately to Hitler. Yet the economic cataclysm of the Great Depression, rather than the fragile democratization process itself, was arguably the key factor in provoking the nationalistic assertiveness in Japan that led to aggression against China, and to ultimately to the Pacific War.
China, with the largest national population on earth, clearly appears to have begun the process of democratization.23) To be sure, China’s political order remains a mixed regime, in which pluralist elements are most vigorous at the local level, and substantial authoritarian constraints remain in national politics,24) It may well take very considerable time to move beyond this bifurcated pattern. Yet given the immense potential importance of China in the East Asian regional order, and in the global security calculus, the dimensions of China’s democratic transition, and their implications are critical uncertainties in the overall Asian security equation.
Democratization in Greater China does appear, since the late 1990s, to have exacerbated the rhetoric of the Diaoyutai (Senkaku Islands) territorial dispute in the East China Sea between Japan and PRC/Taiwan, even if the PRC’s policies themselves have remained prudential,25) As democratization has proceeded, especially in Taiwan and Hong Kong, students and NGOs have been freer to demonstrate, and to attempt landings on the disputed islands. Their efforts have also been more broadly covered in the mass media than was previously the case.
This grass-roots assertiveness on the part of Chinese expatriate NGO groups has, in turn, provoked Japanese activists, and resolute Japanese official counter-reactions, stirring an inter-active cycle of nationalism on both sides of the East China Sea. Mainland China’s lesser degree of democratization, compared to Taiwan in particular, has actually been something of a stabilizing factor thus far. Chinese nationalist sentiment against Japan has, however, flamed up on the Intemet26), where the government’s power to restrain it is more limited than against overt physical expressions of protest.
A similar nationalist dynamic exacerbated South Korean conflict with Japan over territorial and historical issues, in the early days of Korean democratization during the 1980s and the early 1990s. Comfort women, textbooks, and the Tokdo/Takeshima island territorial dispute became more salient in Korean domestic politics during the mid-1990s. This was particularly true under the transitional democratic administration of Kim Young Sam, provoked by the enhanced freedom of students, NGOs, and grassroots special-interest groups to influence foreign policymaking processes.
The Korean case also demonstrates clearly, however, the potential role of democratic leaders in deflecting or re-directing grassroots nationalistic sentiment. Kim Dae-Jung’s conciliatory 1998 visit to Japan, for example, played a key role in dampening nationalistic pressures in Korea, and in facilitating a triangular security relationship among the Republic of Korea, the United States, and Japan that ran counter to the grassroots bias toward confrontation. Recently demographic change, and a sense of camaraderie flowing from a shared 2002 World Cup experience, appear to have greatly decreased the salience of anti-Japanese sentiment in domestic Korean politics,27)
In Indonesia the implications of democratization for nationalistic assertion on security matters have not been so benign as in Korea. Grassroots pressures, and the substantial autonomy of the military early in the 1998-1999 democratic transition, arguably contributed to the Indonesian government’s early tolerance for a brutal suppression of the East Timor independence movement. Democratization clearly did not make it easier for the Indonesian government to work with other democracies, such as Australia and the United States, in supporting the independence and economic development of East Timor under United Nations auspices. In contrast to the case of Korea under Kim Dae-jung, national leadership in a newly democratic Indonesia did not work actively to contain nationalist pressures at home.
Taiwanese democratization since the 1980s also clearly appears to have stimulated nationalist sentiments, as manifest in the provocative political appeals of the DPP. Now that the DPP is Taiwan’s ruling party (since 2000), these appeals have distinctly destabilizing implications for regional security, since mainland China has vowed to suppress overt Taiwanese steps toward independence. Indeed, democratization has probably created stronger pressures for national assertion in Taiwan than anywhere else in East Asia, with distinctly unsettling consequences for regional security.
Managing this democratic transition process, so that popular nationalism does not endanger regional stability, is a high-priority task for the nations of the region. Enhanced intra-Asian cultural communication, directed especially toward a common understanding of what happened during World War II, is one major element. The United States and, in increasingly important ways, the European Union as well, can also playa constructive role in aiding such a dialogue, if they embrace the potential strengths that their detached geographical position afford them. At all costs they should not exacerbate local conflicts through destabilizing sales of military technology or advanced armaments.
- VI. Democratization and Foreign Troops
- Clearly the coming of democracy has made life more difficult for the diplomats and military professionals who manage status of forces agreements (SOFAs), host-nation support (HNS) arrangements, and other procedures governing the presence of foreign forces in East Asian countries. Democratization’s role in complicating foreign military presence has been clearest in the Philippines. There the democratic transition of 1986, bringing Corazon Acquino to power, led within six years to the withdrawal of a major US air force and naval presence considered to be highly strategic, which had been continuous for nearly a century.28) Popular dissent in a proto-democratic system was also a factor behind the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Thailand in 1976. In addition, democratization has also generated serious pressures against presence of foreign forces in South Korea, and to a lesser extent Japan, even though those forces themselves for the moment remain in place.
Democratization undermines foreign troop presence in East Asia for several reasons. Perhaps most importantly, it empowers parochial, grassroots interests, such as NGOs, local governments, and students, who have little vested interest in such foreign military presence, and who often suffer from negative externalities like pollution and crime, that are related to such a presence. Such grassroots actors have, in Romer and Rosenthal’s parlance, low costs for dis-agreement.29) The more autonomy such actors have in a political system, the more difficult national agreements regarding military bases become.
Countries vary significantly, it should be noted, in the autonomy they accord to groups with low costs to disagreement on national-security matters, both cross-nationally and over time. South Korea, for example, has accorded significantly more autonomy to its local governments since 1991 than has Japan, with important implications for dissent regarding base presence, and for the status of forces agreements (SOFAs) that govern the day-to-day operation of the bases.30) The freedom and access accorded in the Philippines under the Aquino government to NGOs with parochial interests was likewise a factor in creating the difficult negotiating environment on base issues that U.S. diplomats confronted there during the late 1980s.
Democratization also typically generates a populist backlash against previously dominant political elites, creating further complexity that imperils a pre-existing foreign base presence. The Philippines again provides a graphic case in point. For more than a decade, the United States strongly supported an increasingly dictatorial Ferdinand Marcos, who came to personify the bilateral U.S.-Philippine security relationship. When Aquino came to power, she named long-time dissident Raul Manglapus as Foreign Minister, which manifestly complicated base negotiations with a U.S. Government that had cooperated so closely with his personal adversaries.
A third important consequence of democratization for the politics of military bases in East Asia is the increased uncertainty that democratization introduces into the calculations of national elites dealing with base-related issues. Host-national political, diplomatic, and military elites have less confidence that their judgments and decisions will be sustained, and are sometimes forced into aggressive, nationalistic stances that preclude agreement with foreign partners. These partners, conversely, are less confident than before the advent of democracy that commitments made by host-nation negotiating partners can be sustained.
This uncertainty factor was a decisive element in the complex evolution of U.S. Philippine base negotiations, the failure of the draft agreement in the Philippine Senate, and the ultimate withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Philippines in 1992.31) Neither Philippine nor U.S. elites either wanted or expected the U.S. to close Clark Field, employing 9000 U.S. service personnel, and operated by the U.S. since 1903. Neither did these elites expect the U.S. to close its Subic Bay naval base, employing 6000 military personnel,32) Yet uncertainty regarding intentions and ability to implement played a key role in producing this result.
Uncertainty plagued the base negotiations of the late 1980s, due to high and inconsistent Filipino base-lease demands, inflated by grassroots pressure. After an agreement was tortuously achieved in 1990, lingering uncertainty about the limits of U.S. willingness to increase base lease payments led to a rejection of the base agreement in the Philippine Senate. The U.S. then promptly announced a withdrawal from the Philippines, in yet another un-expected and largely undesired outcome.
Steady democratization since 1988 has thus far failed to undermine the presence of U.S. forces in South Korea, in contrast to the Philippine pattern of the late 1980s.33) Yet it has arguably led to the important 2001 revisions in the bilateral SOFA, to U.S. decisions to relocate the headquarters of its forces away from Yongsan garrison in the heart of Seoul (1991-2004), and to more active protests against individual incidents involving resident U.S. soldiers. The political environment confronting U.S. forces in Korea has been much more delicate since the 1994 election of Korea’s first recent civilian president, Kim Young Sam, than was previously the case.
Synergistic with democratization, and dramatically leveraging its implications for Korean security, including the U.S. troop presence there, have been two dynamic new factors: Korea’s marked demographic transition, and its Internet revolution.34) Inspired by Korea’s dramatic 2002 World Cup successes, and subsequent military incidents, and simultaneously empowered by their new-found on-line capabilities35), young people in their 20s and 30s have become much more vocal and active in politics than previously. Lacking their elders’ vivid memories of the Korean War, they have been markedly more critical of their parents’ erstwhile American allies’ continuing military presence.36)
The seemingly deep, if volatile and generationally specific popular ferment regarding the U.S. military presence in Korea that is manifest through such protests, clearly could affect long-term prospects for their continued presence. The demographics involved enhance this possibility. It is, after all, the World Cup generation, now in its twenties and thirties, that is most antagonistic to a continued U.S. military presence.
A waning U.S. security role in Korea could in tum help precipitate the sort of regional power struggles among China, Japan, and Russia that prevailed a century ago, before the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905,37)The political uncertainties being created may also affect the North Korean perception of alliance solidarity between the U.S. and South Korea, thus affording Pyongyang more short-term freedom of maneuver on nuclear and other strategic questions than would otherwise be the case. Enhanced North Korean nuclear and missile capabilities could in tum potentially have important security implications for the broader Northeast Asian region, especially for Japan, its missile-defense preparations, its peace constitution, and its broader role in North Pacific security affairs.
- Ⅶ. Democratization and Human Security
- Human security questions, including unemployment and hunger, have arguably been most salient in modem East Asia during three periods the Depression of the 1920s and 1930s,38) the early aftermath of World War II, and the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998. The first period coincided with Japan’s fledgling democratization, but that experiment with democracy sadly had little positive social impact, as the political system was strongly elite-dominated, and popular interest-articulation mechanisms were not well-institutionalized. Democratization after World War II had more pervasive social-policy implications, including the beginnings of an enhanced social role for women, agricultural groups, and small business. Yet social-welfare policies were, following an initial surge of transplanted New Deal liberalism on the part of the Allied Occupation, slow in coming, and driven to a large degree by political-survival impulses on the part of the ruling conservatives,39)
The positive contributions of democratization to human security would seem natural in the abstract. Free-hold agriculture has benefited in several countries, including Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, to be sure. Yet the human implications, along other dimensions, have often been more mixed, even outside the human-rights area.
Contemporary Indonesia is a disappointing case in point evocative of the difficulties a poorly institutionalized Taisho democracy in Japan eighty years ago had in dealing with problems of human security.40) According to a 2003 Asia Foundation poll, for example, most Indonesians indicate that they are worse off now than before they elected their first post-Suharto government in 1999.41) They complain that unemployment remains high, crime has worsened, and corruption is once again rampant. To be sure, the autocratic Suharto regime, encouraged in its rigidity by the International Monetary Fund, was quite slow in responding to the initial social dislocations of the crisis, and the more democratic Habibi and Wahid appear to have been initially more responsive, in terms of public pronouncements. Yet implementation of social policy appears to have been poor, and momentum has been lost.
- Ⅷ. Democratization and Internal Security
- The Rousseauean proposition that democracy brings solidarity does not seem to be borne out in at last one Asian nation: Indonesia. Whatever the enhanced responsiveness to human-security needs, democratization clearly seems to have intensified communalism, even as it undermined govern-ability. Problems of internal security, including terrorism, have become especially acute since 9/11, as Indonesia is nearly 90 percent Muslim.42)
Democratization in Indonesia has clearly eroded the power of Jakarta. In the Aceh region of northern Sumatra, this gave rise to regionalist separatism. In the Moluccas and East Timor, it precipitated open Christian-Muslim conflict.43) Declining governability initially gave increased latitude to radical Islamic groups like Jemaah Islamiah (JI) until the Bali bombing of October 2002 led to a crackdown.44) Yet the weakness of central authority leaves large areas of the country, including the smaller among Indonesia’s 17,000 islands, and the archipelago’s strategic sea lanes45) as potential places of refuge for terrorists, and for pirates preying on the substantial sea-borne commerce plying that sprawling archipelago. How the Indonesian central government can sustain both national cohesion and internal security against pirates and terrorists, on the one hand, and maintain fidelity to democratic values on the other remains to be seen.
- IX. Security as a Structural Constraint on Democracy
- This paper has focused on democratization as an independent variable. It has stressed the multiple ways in which democratic transition has transformed the East Asian security calculus, and how it shows promise of doing so further in future, especially in Greater China. Yet security also has profound effects on the course of democratization itself that deserve serious analysis.
Broadly speaking, during the Cold War security considerations arguably often made the United States, in particular, cautious about actively promoting democratic pluralism when it conflicted with perceived short-run security imperatives. The United States has, for example, stationed more than 37,000 troops for more than fifty years in South Korea, to forestall a repeat of the 1950 North Korean invasion. From the mid-1960s until the mid-1980s it was generally reluctant to oppose steps by the South Korean military to suppress student and worker dissent, including most notably the 1981 K wangju rebellion, in which over 2500 people reportedly died.46)
To be sure, the U.S. has at times clearly used its substantial political leverage to promote democratization and human rights in Korea, as in backing the fall of the autocratic Syngmun Rhee government in 1960, and in periodically moderating military persecution of Kim Dae-Jung, especially during his long imprisonment. Yet the overall picture is controversial and mixed.
The pattern has been similar in the Philippines, where the U.S. maintained major military bases until 1992. The U.S. backed the Ferdinand Marcos regime long after it assumed dictatorial powers, and qualified that backing only when massive popular protests arose at the fraudulent Presidential election of 1986. It provided refuge for dissident leader Benigno Aquino until he returned to be murdered on the Manila Airport tarmac, and supported his widow, President Cory Aquino, in the face of coup attempts in the early 1990s. Since the advent of the war on terrorism, however, the U.S. has once again tilted in favor of conservative forces within the Philippines, the 1992 withdrawal of the formal U.S. base presence notwithstanding.
Security considerations especially those of internal security have also constrained the stances of national governments in East Asia toward democratic pluralism. This proclivity has, for example, been pronounced in Indonesia. Its military clearly used security for many years as a rationale for brutal suppression of the democratic movement in East Timor during the 1990s. More recently, in the wake of the 2002 Bali bombings, many observers, especially in the NGO community, have feared that the new Anti-Terrorism Law will create a rationale for further suppression of democratic impulses.
- X. Conclusion
- In assessing the broader implications of security and democratization in East Asia, it is of course always important to remember how distinctive the East Asian region is in comparative perspective. As Fareed Zakaria points out, East Asian has achieved two essential attributes of good government, perhaps accidentally, that James Madison specified in The Federalist Papers: governmental ability to control the governed, and also government ability to control itself. Order, in short, plus liberty.47) In addition, the region is more deeply integrated into the U.S.-centric global security structure than any other part of the developing world.48)
These underlying institutional strengths and geo-political peculiarities consolidated particularly over the past two decade shave made the East Asian region’s recent democratic transitions somewhat less turbulent than in many parts of the world, such as Africa, the Balkans, and the former Soviet Union. The relatively homogeneous character of many East Asian populations has also helped to ease what is an intrinsically perilous process. And the social coalitions on which East Asian democratic transition has typically been basedoften business, free-hold agriculture, real-estate, and military interests49), excluding labor– have been profoundly conservative, with a clear Confucian bias against the concept of pluralism for its own sake that Madison himself valued so deeply.
Although East Asia’s democratization has been rather orderly in comparative perspective, it has nevertheless often had its turbulent aspects. The de-stabilizing implications for both internal and international security of that democratic transition have been magnified by the global strategic importance of the region. Generational conflict has often, as in Korea today, been quite pronounced.
Nationalism has periodically been strident, and has grown more so over the past largely democratic decade. Nationalism has been disturbingly pronounced in Greater China, poisoning Cross-Straits relations, as well as relationships between Japan, on the one hand, and PRC/TaiwaniHong Kong on the other. Base relations, between U.S. military forces and host governments in the Philippines (1986-1992), and then in South Korea have clearly grown more tense, especially since 2000, although there appears to have been a counter-trend toward greater stability of base relations in Japan.
Democratization has marginally enhanced human security in Southeast Asia, although local responsiveness to the profound social issues raised by the Asian financial crisis has been uneven. The fledgling democratic process as a whole seems to be gradually intensifying pressures for responsiveness across the region, as evidenced in Indonesia by the substantial gains for Golkar, party of discredited former strongman Suharto, now in the Opposition, during the 2004 national legislative elections. The pressing problem has been weak implementation of promises made. There are signs, however, that the Indonesian Presidential administration inaugurated in 2004 will be more effective at implementing nominal policy reforms, and at curbing corruption, than the ineffectual Megawati government has been.
Technological changes, such as the mass diffusion of cell phones and the coming of the Internet, are amplifying grassroots pressures for change in security policy, by broadening the community of politically active citizens. Such changes are thereby diminishing the power of elite cartels that have traditionally dominated the politics of nations like the Philippines, and insulated leaders from populist pressures there.50) Some argue that cell phones and the Internet have had similarly democratizing effects in South Korea51), while others caution of the potentially authoritarian implications if top leadership aligns with and manipulates the politics of the new information society.
Whatever its social implications, democratization appears to have eroded govern-ability and internal security throughout Southeast Asia, in particular. This erosion of govern ability opens unsettling opportunities for terrorism, and for the use of isolated island and jungle sanctuaries as redoubts for terrorists with destructive ambitions, both within the region and elsewhere. T~e danger of terrorism is especially acute in the substantial Islamic portions of Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Mindinao, and has unsettling implications for the ability of these areas to sustain authentic pluralist democracy.
Looking forward, the crucial looming issue is how Greater China’s democratization, including that of Taiwan and Hong Kong, will proceed, and what implications that evolution will have for regional and global security. The historical experience of other nations in East Asia, as indicated above, is moderately unsettling. In the short to medium term, their experience would lead one to expect intensified nationalism from the PRC, although the recent moderation and support for multi-lateralism of the Hu Jintao administration in its early days initially belies that assessment. Over the longer term, beyond the turmoil of transition, the security implications of China’s democratic future appear brighter. At that stage, one must hope for the powerful logic of the democratic peace, which has re-asserted itself so often, and so positively, in the Western political context.
- Footnotes
- 1)The author expresses special thanks to Ahn Cheong Si, Pratikno, Michele Schmiegelow, Ian Marsh, Ian Neary, and Baogang Ge for comments, and to Min Ye for research assistance. On Hobbesian conceptions of obligation, see, for example, Michael Walzer. Obligation. New York:Simon and Schuster, 1971.
- 2)Ibid.
- 3)See Albert Shaw (editor). The Messages and Papers of Woodrow Wilson. New York: The Review of Review, 1924; and Michael W. Doyle. Ways of War and Peace. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1997, pp. 205-314.
- 4)Hans Reiss (editor). Kant’s Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970; and Doyle. Ways of War and Peace, pp. 251-300.
- 5)See, for example, Kenneth Waltz. The Theory of International Politics. Reading, Massachusetts:Addison Wesley, 1979.
- 6)See Jack Snyder. From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict. New York:W.W. Norton, 2000.
- 7)Among the important early catalysts was Barry Buzan. People, States, and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post Cold-War Era (Second Edition). Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991.
- 8)See, for example, Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup, Pierre Lemaitre, E1zbieta Tromer, and Ole Waever. The European Security Order Recast. :London: Pinter, 1990; Ole Waever, Barrry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup, and Pierre Lemaitre. Identity, Migration, and the New Security Agenda in Europe. London: Pinter, 1993; and Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde. Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998. For a general survey of the Copenhagen School, and an assessment of its impact, see Bill McSweeny, Identity and Security:Buzan and the Copenhagen School, Review of International Studies, January, 1996, pp. 81-93.
- 9)See Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 139-146.
- 10)See Kent E. Calder. Pacific Defense. New York: William Morrow, 1996, pp. 13-42; and Kent E. Calder, Securing security through prosperity: the San Francisco System in comparative perspective, The Pacific Review, Volume 17, No.1, March, 2004, pp. 135-157.
- 11)On this analogy to Brzezinski’s notion of the Middle Eastern arc of crisis, see Kent E. Calder. Pacific Defense, p. 14.
- 12)Robert A. Dahl. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 1-10.
- 13)Samuel P. Huntington. The Soldier and the State. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1957.
- 14)For a proto-type, consider Henry Kissinger. A World Restored. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964.
- 15)George Tsebelis. Nested Games: Rational Choice in Comparative Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, pp. 72-78.
- 16)Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, Democratization and the Danger of War, International Security, Volume 20, Number I, Summer, 1995, pp. 26-30.
- 17)Michael W. Doyle, Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, in Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller. Debating the Democratic Peace. Cambridge, Massachusetts:MIT Press, 1996, pp. 3-57.
- 18)Kenneth Schultz. Domestic Opposition and Signaling in International Crises. The American Political Science Review, Vol. 92, No.4. Dec., 1998, pp. 829-844.
- 19)See, for example, Arthur Waldron, How Would Democracy Change China?, Orbis, Spring, 2004, pp. 247-261.
- 20)On this subject, see Bruce Gilley. China’s Democratic Future: How It will Happen, and Where It Will Lead. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, pp. 227-241.
- 21)See, for example, Jack Snyder. From Voting to Violence; Samuel P. Huntington. The Clash of Civilizations. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996; and Fareed Zakaria. The Future of Freedom:Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003.
- 22)Masayo Ohara. Democratization and Expansionism: Historical Lessons, Contemporary Challenges. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 200 I; and Robert Scalapino. Democracy and the Party Movement in Prewar Japan: The Failure of the First Attempt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962.
- 23)Bruce Gilley. China’s Democratic Future, pp. 60-136.
- 24)Baogang He, The Theory and Practice of Chinese Grassroots Governance: Five Models, Japanese Journal of Political Science 4(2), 2003, pp. 293-314.
- 25)Erica Strecker Downs and Phillip C. Saunders, Legitimacy and the Limits of Nationalism, International Security, Volume 23, No.3, Winter, 1998-1999, pp. 114-146.
- 26)Sankei Shim bun, December 30, 2003.
- 27)Sook-Jong Lee, The Rise of Korean Youth as a Political Force: Implications for the U.S.-Korea Alliance, in Richard C. Bush, Sharon Yanagi, and Kevin Scott (editors). Brooking Northeast Asia Survey, 2003-2004 edition. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2004, pp. 15-30.
- 28)Stanley Karnow. In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989, especially pp. 411-434; and Amy Blitz. The Contested State: American Foreign Policy and Regime Change in the Philippines. Lanham, Maryland: Rowan and Littlefield, 2000, pp. 193-214.
- 29)On the general conceptual problems for conflict resolution that the existence of significant groups with low costs for disagreement creates, see Thomas Romer and Howard Rosenthal, Political Resource Allocation Controlled Agendas, and the Status Quo, Public Choice, Volume 33, no. 4, 1978, pp. 27-44.
- 30)On the relation between local government pressure and the 200 I reversion of the South Korean SOF A, see Center for Strategic and International Studies International Security Program. Path to an Agreement: The U.S.-Republic of Korea Status of Forces Agreement Revision Process.Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2002, pp. 7-8.
- 31)Natural uncertainty, in the form of a volcanic eruption of nearby Mount Pinatubo seriously damaged the Clark Field Air Base, but was far less important than negotiating uncertainty in contributing to the U.S. withdrawal.
- 32)Bonn International Center for Conversion. Conversion Survey 1996: Global Disarmament and Demilitarization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 191-192.
- 33)The Bush Administration did, however, in May, 2004 announce that a unit of 4000 US Army troops redeployed from South Korea to Iraq would not be returned to Korea when its Iraq duty tour was complete, which spurred speculation in Korea about future downsizing of the local US presence.
- 34)On these developments and their implications, see Sook-long Lee, The Rise of Korean Youth as a Political Force: Implications for the U.S.-Korea Alliance, Brookings Northeast Asia Survey, 2003-2004 edition. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 2004, pp. 15-30.
- 35)Almost 90 percent of Koreans in their 20s are now Internet users, compared to only 9.3 percent of those older than 50. See Ibid., p. 20.
- 36)More than one third of Koreans in their 20s and 30s now support U.S. withdrawal from Korea immediately or soon, compared to only 8.5 percent of Koreans over 50. See Ibid., p. 26.
- 37)On this turbulent period see, for example, Bruce Cumings. Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1997, pp. 94-138.
- 38)Japan’s agricultural and small-business Depression really dated from the late 1920s, before the Great Depression emerged on a global scale.
- 39)Kent E. Calder. Crisis and Compensation: Public Policy and Political Stability in Japan. Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1988.
- 40)See Terence C. Malkin, Indonesia: Struggling between Authoritarianism and Democracy, Brookings Northeast Asia Survey, 2003-2004 edition, pp. 119-135.
- 41)Ibid., p. 123.
- 42)On terrorism in Indonesia, see Zachary Abuza. Militant Islam in Southeast Asia: Crucible of Terror. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003.
- 43)David Rohde, Indonesia Unraveling?, Foreign Affairs, July/August, 2001, pp. 110-124.
- 44)Alan Collins. Security and Southeast Asia: Domestic, Regional, and Global Issues. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003, pp. 200-211.
- 45)Two fifths of the world’s shipping, and one half of its imported oil, are estimated to pass through Indonesia’s sea lanes. See Singapore Straits Times, January 19, 2004.
- 46)Bruce Cumings. Korea’s Place in the Sun, pp. 377-378.
- 47)See Fareed Zakaria. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. New York:W.W. Norton, 2003, p. 55.
- 48)On the details of the region’s distinctive economics for security bargain with the United States, see Kent E. Calder, Securing Security through Prosperity: the San Francisco System in Comparative Perspective, The Pacific Review, Volume 17, No. I, March, 2004, pp. 135-157.
- 49)For an early comparative analysis, see Kent Calder and Roy Hofheinz, Jr. The Eastasia Edge. New York: Basic Books, 1982, pp. 27-83.
- 50)See KAIS and Asia-Europe Foundation. Democracy in Asia, Europe, and the World: Toward a Universal Definition? Seoul: KAIS, 2004, pp. 281-286.
- 51)See, in particular, Hyug Baeg 1m, Korean Democracy after Transition: Challenges and Opportunities, in Ibid., pp. 223-246.