Blue Territorialization of Asian Power

PROOF 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Buoyancy 12 13 Blue Territorialization 14 of Asian Power 15 16 AIHWA ONG 17 18 19 20 21 Are nations frmly delimited by national terrain? 22 Can sovereignty be expanded through the zoning of ocean and sky? 23 24 What are the implications of sovereign buoyancy for the world order? 25 26 27 Fixed and Contained? 28 Our notion of the nation- state as a physically fxed territoriality contained 29 by its formally delineated bound aries is increasingly difcult to uphold. It ap- 30 pears that the late twentieth- century global order is turning out to have been 31 a brief interregnum of agreed- upon sovereign power as contained within fxed 32 national borders. The League of Nations frst proposed an international sys- 33 tem of nation- states in the 1930s, and a global arrangement was formalized in 34 the aftermath of the Second World War. Defeated countries and newly inde - 35 pen dent ones were recognized as in de pen dent nation- states each with its own 36 politico- legal territoriality. Nevertheless, the requisite po liti cal infrastructure 37 of formal government with its own territoriality was not fully realized every- 38 where, and on some continents (with decolonized states or former Communist 39 218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 191 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF 1 Bloc countries), many nation- states have been challenged and fragmented by 2 breakaway groups, po liti cal uprisings, or drug cartels. The model of a sover- 3 eign nation- state with fxed physical borders may have a less stable temporality 4 than we imagined. 5 Sovereign power in the twentieth centur y has not always been contained 6 within nation bound aries, although most small countries toe the line. In the 7 aftermath of World War II, colonial empires unraveled, reverting back to small 8 Eu ro pean nations while the inde pen dence of many new nations from former 9 colonial rule became ordered under the auspices of the United Nations. The 10 geography and size of a nation- state, its mode of border management, and its 11 specifc goals for keeping things in or out of its territories are principle relative 12 variables through which sovereign space is managed. Maintaining clear bor- 13 ders is a basic requirement of state-premised governance in the global system 14 of nation- states. The politi cal and territorial containment of a nation- state, 15 however, comes into confict with humanitarian ideals of ofering asylum to 16 refugees. Some Eu ro pean nations challenged by the current food of refugees 17 and asylum seekers from poor countries and confict zones are closing their 18 borders against illegal arrivals. But even the continental United States has 19 long held an ambivalent view toward mi grants; the current administration is 20 planning to build a border wall to keep out aliens. Under the administration 21 of Donald Trump, nativist fervor against illegal immigration has reached its 22 highest point since the 1940s. But building walls against noncitizens does not 23 confict with the state’s pursuit of fexible borders to attract selective immi- 24 grants bearing human capital.1 25 26 Hard and Soft Power 27 28 Indeed, ambitious nation- states regularly violate their own borders, and tho se 29 of other nations as well. Over the course of the Cold War, the United States and 30 the USSR developed competing empires based on satellite regimes created after 31 the Second World War. As the Cold War was drawing to a close, the United 32 States’ victorious military- industrial complex gained the upper hand over the 33 USSR. Amer i ca subsequently not only established military bases in dozens of 34 allied countries, but “expanded into much more extensive alignments based 35 on ideology, economic interactions, technology transfers, mutual beneft, and 36 military cooperation.”2 As the lone remaining superpower, the United States 37 operated as the patron of the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World 38 Trade Organ ization, i.e., the system of international agencies that anchor the 39 global economic system. The North Atlantic Treaty Organ ization, moreover, 192 Aihwa Ong 218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 192 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF has formed a military network between twenty- nine North American and Eu- 1 ro pean nations under the “nuclear umbrella” of the United States. In other 2 words, American capacity to insert itself into other national sites is not due 3 exclusively to its nuclear and military arsenal, or what we may call hard power. 4 Equally impor tant is soft power, or the cultural capacity to attract and persuade, 5 to inspire emulation and adherence in others through ideological vision, cul- 6 tural institutions, and politi cal ideals.3 The strategic combination of hard and 7 soft powers is what has made the United States the paradigmatic model of an 8 exceptional nation- state, a charismatic hegemon that has sustained its buoy- 9 ant sovereignty through a kind of stealth imperialism. 10 11 12 Zonal Technologies 13 The most impor tant legacy of Pax Americana is East Asia, a region that has 14 rapidly developed under the American nuclear umbrella to achieve sustained 15 growth. From Asian tiger economies to rising China, Asian nation- states have 16 become the world’s manufacturing center of gravity and attained a high level 17 of technological prowess. The focus on developing civil rather than military 18 infrastructures has protected national autonomy and fast- tracked cap i tal ist 19 growth. A hallmark of Asian tiger economies has been their deliberate frag- 20 mentation of national territory into zones, which are then linked to global 21 fows of capital and technology. 22 The zoning of spaces is a distinctive Asian take on the governance of 23 people, spaces, and resources. Indeed, one may say that “vital security systems” 24 as evolved in Asia are less focused on securing normative conditions of mod- 25 ern life than on securing the critical spaces and connectivities that prop up 26 sovereign power.4 States learned that by carving out spaces of exception—for 27 manufacturing, investment, and shared governance— within a national terri- 28 tory, capitalism could be enhanced at strategic points and further reinforced 29 by tactfully calculated infrastructural connections. I have argued that the de- 30 liberate fragmentation of the national territory into zones has generated po- 31 liti cal efects of “graduated sovereignty” as sovereign power becomes unevenly 32 distributed across the land.5 As it advances beyond the nation’s terra frma, 33 this refexive sovereign practice of subdividing state space into a series of zones 34 has increasingly taken on volumetric heft. 35 Below, I juxtapose the dif er ent approaches taken by Singapore and 36 China— two ambitious Asian countries— seeking to materialize sovereign 37 buoyancy through infrastructural prowess, rather than military might, by 38 zoning the oceans as inclusive elements of a sovereign topology.6 Two kinds 39 Buoyancy 193 218-85414_ch01_1P.indd 193 12/03/20 4:23 AM PROOF 1 of challenges accompany a maritime thrust: the technological capacity to con- 2 trol watery spaces and resources, and the legal limits set by the international 3 maritime regime. This essay explores how the zonal manipulation of land- sea- 4 air interfaces can buoy sovereign power. A tiny nation delimited by its island 5 geography grows into a sea state, and a continental nation deploys zonal tech- 6 nologies in extraterritorial space. The question is whet her state buoyancy can 7 be sustained through the exercise of sheer material power, or whether soft 8 power is a necessary ingredient. 9 10 Buoy 11 12 At the Venice Biennale, 2015, the Singapore Pavilion hosted the exhibition SEA 13 STATE by Singapore-born artist Charles Lim Yi Yong. A former Olympic sailor, 14 Lim devised a method of spinning his sailboat in the water and repeatedly dip- 15 ping himself into the sea, thus performing the recursive pro cess of land- sea inter- 16 changeability that has become state policy. The SEA STATE exhibition has since re- 17 turned home to Singapore where it was mounted at the Center for Contemp orary 18 Art, Nanyang Technological University. When I visited on July 2016, Charles Lim 19 showed of a gigantic buoy he had retrieved from the seafoor. Planted like the 20 head of Neptune in the center of the room, the buoy’s pervasive odor of the ocean 21 washed over the exhibition. Charles noted that it did not take long for the aban- 22 doned buoy to be heavi ly encrusted with barnacles and seaweed. This manmade 23 object has been transformed into the property of the ocean. 24 Digital videos on multiple screens track Lim’s peregrinations in Singapore’s 25 surrounding sea, his recorded per for mances describing the elastic notion of 26 the state. We see Lim in his boat spinning in and out of the water. He also 27 prowls underwater caves, traces the seabed, and follows the “sandman,” a semi- 28 legal man- boat operation that pillages unguarded wat ers. He boards a survey 29 ship that engages in “sand search” by identifying rock formations, which dot 30 these waters’ surface like tiny islands. These outcroppings exist in a grey zone 31 of overlapping and ambiguous sovereignty and are considered “uncontrolled,” 32 since the neighboring countries of Malaysia and Indonesia have been unable 33 to patrol them. Like ghostly sentinels for pirates, the islets menace gigantic oil 34 tankers as they plow through the narrow Straits of Malacca en route to China.

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