Tønnesson Stein Explaining Explaining the East Asian Peace
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Tønnesson How come East Asia is so peaceful? Can peace last? Stretching from the cold steppes of Mongolia to the tropical jungles and wetlands of Indonesia, East Asia is home to 30% of humanity. And since it is divided between 17 countries, several with border disputes or local Explaining separatist movements, it is no surprise that the region has seen its share of conflict. Indeed, for over three decades after the end of World War II, East Asia was the bloodiest place on the planet, home to several major conflicts. Explaining the East Asian Peace the East But then something strange happened – the region saw a steep decline in violent conflicts and in subsequent years this relative peace has actually deepened. As such, East Asia saw a dramatic drop in its share of global battle deaths from 80% in 1946–79 to just 6.2% in the 1980s. Since 1990 Asian its share has been a mere 1.7%. In recent years, a group of scholars based at Sweden’s Uppsala University and led by Stein Tønnesson have investigated this so-called East Asian Peace. Instead of explaining conflict, they have sought to explain peace. This is Professor Tønnesson’s personal story of that six-year multinational Peace research effort. The book recounts heated discussions over how to explain a regional transition to peace. Was it due to a changing power balance? The ASEAN A Research Story Way? China’s ‘peaceful development’ doctrine? Growing economic interdependence? Or (as the author contends) a series of national priority shifts by powerful Asian leaders who prioritized economic growth and thus needed external and internal stability? The author also discusses why Thailand, Myanmar and the Philippines have not yet achieved internal peace, and includes a thorough discussion of how to predict China’s future. Can China keep peace with its neigh- bours as well as with the USA? In a time when international relations are increasingly fraught and un- predictable, these are important questions to consider. About the author: Stein Tønnesson is a historian and research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). He served as leader of Uppsala University’s East Asian Peace programme from 2011 to 2017. www.niaspress.dk Stein Tønnesson Tonnesson-pbk-cover.indd 1 08/03/2017 12:27 Tonnesson_book.indd 6 08/03/2017 12:20 EXPLAINING THE EAST ASIAN PEACE Tonnesson_book.indd 1 08/03/2017 12:20 NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies ASIA INSIGHTS A series aimed at increasing an understanding of contemporary Asia among policy- makers, NGOs, businesses, journalists and other members of the general public as well as scholars and students. 1. Ideas, Society and Politics in Northeast Asia and Northern Europe: Worlds Apart, Learning From Each Other, edited by Ras Tind Nielsen and Geir Helgesen 2. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Eurasian Geopolitics: New Directions, Perspectives, and Challenges, edited by Michael Fredholm 3. Burma/Myanmar – Where Now? edited by Mikael Gravers and Flemming Ytzen 4. Dialogue with North Korea? Preconditions for Talking Human Rights With the Hermit Kingdom, by Geir Helgesen and Hatla Thelle 5. After the Great East Japan Earthquake: Political and Policy Change in Post- Fukushima Japan, edited by Dominic Al-Badri and Gijs Berends 6. Walking a Tightrope: Defending Human Rights in China, by Gert Holm gaard Nielsen 7. The Pragmatic Dragon: China’s Grand Strategy and Boundary Settlements, by Eric Hyer 8. End of Empire: 100 Days in 1945 that Changed Asia and the World, general editors David P. Chandler, Robert Cribb and Li Narangoa 9. Explaining the East Asian Peace: A Research Story, by Stein Tønnesson NIAS Press is the autonomous publishing arm of NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, a research institute located at the University of Copenhagen. NIAS is partially funded by the governments of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden via the Nordic Council of Ministers, and works to encourage and support Asian studies in the Nordic countries. In so doing, NIAS has been publishing books since 1969, with more than two hundred titles produced in the past few years. UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN Nordic Council of Ministers Tonnesson_book.indd 2 08/03/2017 12:20 EXPLAINING THE EAST ASIAN PEACE A Research Story Stein Tønnesson Tonnesson_book.indd 3 08/03/2017 12:20 Explaining the East Asian Peace A Research Story by Stein Tønnesson Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Asia Insights, no. 9 First published in 2017 by NIAS Press NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 Copenhagen K, Denmark Tel: +45 3532 9501 • Fax: +45 3532 9549 E-mail: [email protected] • Online: www.niaspress.dk © Stein Tønnesson 2017 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-87-7694-222-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-87-7694-223-6 (pbk) Typeset in Arno Pro 12/14.4 Typesetting by BookWork Printed and bound in Great Britain by Marston Book Services Limited, Oxfordshire The cartoon on the cover page, showing weapons and arms factories being re-forged into office buildings, trains, ships, fire engines and electricity masts, is a copy made by the Cambodian artist Chan Wai of a Japanese drawing from 1947. It is remem- bered by post-war Japanese generations, who saw it in their textbooks at school. The cartoon was drawn in order to explain Japan’s new role as a ‘peace nation’. The original version (displayed on p. 38) carries a text using Chinese characters that are no longer used in Japan: 戦争放棄 (sensō hōki) – ‘The renunciation of war’. Tonnesson_book.indd 4 08/03/2017 12:20 The month in question was April, the cruellest month. (…) It was a month that was both an end of a war and the beginning of … well, ‘peace’ is not the right word, is it, my dear Commandant? – Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer (New York: Grove Press, 2015), p. 1. Tonnesson_book.indd 5 08/03/2017 12:20 Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements x Introduction xi Part I: Explaining Regional Peace 1 Part II: Predicting China 79 Part III: A Viable Peace? 145 Part IV: Conclusions 195 References 227 Appendix: Participants in the East Asian Peace Programme 241 Index 245 vii Tonnesson_book.indd 7 08/03/2017 12:20 EXPLAINING THE EAST ASIAN PEACE Figures 1. Map of East Asia xv 2. Battle deaths in East Asia and the rest of the world, 1946–2015 11 3. Violent deaths in armed conflicts, non-state conflicts and one- sided violence, East Asia and the rest of the world, 1989–2015 11 4. Renunciation of war – a Japanese drawing from 1947 38 5. China’s future: Western predictions until 2010 86 6. China’s future: Western predictions since 2010 87 Tables 1. Battle deaths in East Asia and the rest of the world 12 2. China’s economic preponderance 50 3. Independent variables affecting China’s future 138 4. East Asia by rank in the Global Peace Index 2015 and 2016 148 5. Population and average life expectancy at birth by country, 1981 and 2013/14 149 6. Duration of peace in East Asian countries (as of 2015) 152 viii Tonnesson_book.indd 8 08/03/2017 12:20 Preface he purpose of this book is threefold. First and foremost, it seeks to explain how a region with thirty per cent of mankind T made a transition from frequent, intense and widespread warfare to relative peace. Second, it aims to stimulate debates about the quality or viability of the East Asian Peace. Is it authoritarian, on its way to becoming liberal, or perhaps something that transcends these categories? Is it a peace by unpeaceful means? How fragile or threatened is it? How might it be made more robust? Third, the book aims to tell the story of a six-year research programme at Uppsala University in Sweden, involving more than thirty researchers in over ten countries. I shall present my recollections of how the programme came to be, and reflect on the debates we have engaged in while researching the many aspects of peace and conflict. We decided early on to bring together ad- vocates of diverging theories, methods and viewpoints, and were aware that this might lead to contradictory answers to our two central research questions: How deep is the East Asian Peace? How can it be explained? This personal account is published alongside Debating the East Asian Peace, a book edited by Elin Bjarnegård and Joakim Kreutz, which does fuller justice to the many findings of the programme researchers. Below I shall reveal my doubts and prejudices, and not seek to hide the mo- ments where my own views diverge from those of my colleagues. I shall do my best, though, to present their findings and conclusions loyally, even when they challenge my own. Readers may wish to consult our journal articles, op eds, blogs and YouTube videos at www.pcr.uu.se/ research/eap/. Together, they display a range of approaches. What has united us is a desire to explain peace instead of war. ix Tonnesson_book.indd 9 08/03/2017 12:20 Acknowledgements et me thank the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, which hosted our programme for six years and Lorganized our opening and closing conferences, in September 2011 and June 2016. I am grateful to Yonsei University in Seoul, Peking University, the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam and the Asia Research Institute in Singapore for hosting our annual conferences 2012–15. The United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC contributed to kick-starting the programme by hosting me as a Randolph Jennings Senior Fellow during 2010–11. My main employer, the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), provided generous support and an inspiring environment throughout.