The United States and Asian Security

The United States and Asian Security Matthew Evangelista and Judith Reppy, eds. Peace Studies Program Cornell University CORNELL UNIVERSITY PEACE STUDIES PROGRAM OCCASIONAL PAPER #26 ©May 2002 © 2002 Cornell University Peace Studies Program. All rights reserved. ISSN 1075-4857 The United States and Asian Security Matthew Evangelista and Judith Reppy, eds. The Peace Studies Program was established at Cornell in 1970 as an interdisciplinary program concerned with problems of peace and war, arms control and disarmament, and more generally, instances of collective violence. Its broad objectives are to support graduate and post-doctoral study, research, teaching and cross-campus interactions in these fields. Copies of Occasional Papers may be ordered from: Peace Studies Program 130 Uris Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853-7601 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ...................................................................v INTRODUCTION: THE UNITED STATES AND ASIAN SECURITY ...................1 Matthew Evangelista PART I: THE ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES IN ASIA THE COMING ARMS RACE IN ASIA: CAN WE AVOID REPEATING THE COLD WAR WITH NEW PLAYERS? ............................................8 Randall Forsberg THE TWO-WAR DOCTRINE AND REGIONAL ARMS RACE: CONTRADICTIONS IN U.S. POST-COLD WAR SECURITY POLICY ON KOREA....................36 Jae-Jung Suh U.S.-JAPAN DIPLOMATIC AND SECURITY RELATIONS POST-1945: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE........................................................66 John Swenson-Wright EAST ASIAN RESPONSES TO THEATER MISSILE DEFENSE.....................105 Adam Segal PART II: ASIAN SECURITY IN A REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE CHINA’S PERIPHERY POLICY AND CHANGING SECURITY ENVIRONMENT IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION...........................................132 Suisheng Zhao JAPAN’S REGIONAL SECURITY POLICY IN POST-COLD WAR ASIA .............160 Lisa J. Sansoucy THE CHANGING SECURITY PICTURE IN THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST ..............176 Cristina Chuen CONTRIBUTORS...........................................................208 iii PREFACE The papers collected here are the product of a workshop on “The United States and Asian Security” held on 9-11 March, 2001 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The workshop brought together specialists in Asian security issues from the United States and England to dis- cuss regional security issues from a variety of perspectives. The rich discussion and debate during the workshop are reflected in the arguments pre- sented in the following chapters, which we have grouped into two parts: The Role of the United States in Asia, and Asian Security in a Regional Perspective. This collection is one of the first to study 21st century Asian security policy both in its regional context and with regard to the major role played by the United States. It is the first to highlight the findings of the weapons data project of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies and to examine their implications for Asian security. Finally, the collection features mainly younger scholars—graduate students and professors—at early stages of their careers, but with impressive regional expertise and analytic skills. The Peace Studies Program is grateful for their participation in the project. We would also like to thank the other participants in the workshop who wrote papers, served as discussants, and contributed comments that have improved the quality of this collection: Greg Brazinsky, Allen Carlson, Tom Christensen, Wade Huntley, Peter Katzenstein, Barry Strauss, Eric Tagliacozzo, Takao Takahara, and Joel Wit. The workshop was sponsored by Cornell’s Peace Studies Program, with funding from an institutional grant to the Program from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Matthew Evangelista and Judith Reppy organized the workshop, with help from Jae-Jung Suh and Allen Carlson. Elaine Scott and Sandra Kisner provided essential administrative support for the workshop, and Sandra Kisner contributed significantly to the editorial task of producing this publication. INTRODUCTION: THE UNITED STATES AND ASIAN SECURITY Matthew Evangelista George W. Bush came into office in January 2001 with a team of foreign-policy advisers largely inherited from his father. Their experience ranged from negotiating the Soviet Union’s military withdrawal from Eastern Europe to forging a multinational coalition to wage war against Iraq and end its occupation of Kuwait. Expertise in Asian affairs was conspicuously absent from the collective résumé of the Bush team. Not surprisingly, the administration’s first initiatives towards Asia reflected both the experiences of its main foreign policymakers and a certain ambivalence about how to deal with issues that had not loomed large on their radar screens—at least not outside of the Cold-War context. Indeed, to refer to the early policy moves of the Bush administration as initiatives is per- haps inaccurate. Many were, rather, reactions to prior policies of the Clinton administration or to events that caught the Bush team by surprise. In the first category was Korea. Clinton’s State Department had attempted to deal with North Korea’s pursuit of missile and nuclear-weapons technology essentially by bribery. In return for constraints on its missile tests and inspections of its nuclear facilities, the United States would provide food aid and technical assistance and give its blessing to efforts by the South Ko- rean government at North-South rapprochement. Distracted by the controversy over who actually won the U.S. presidential election of November 2000, and giving priority to trying to secure an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, the Clinton administration failed to nail down the final de- tails of a deal with North Korea. The new Bush administration was divided over how to proceed. Secretary of State Colin Powell initially signaled that the administration would take up where its predecessor had left off. Officials in the Defense Department and National Security Council quickly repudiated that posi- tion. They preferred to put a freeze on relations with North Korea, even at the risk of undermin- ing the “sunshine policy” of South Korea’s President Kim Dae-Jung. The arguments put forward to justify a go-slow approach to the North held echoes of the Cold War and the Bush team’s un- derstanding of how the East-West confrontation in Europe had ended. Limiting North Korea’s 1 2 nuclear capabilities would be insufficient without substantial cuts in its conventional military forces. Limiting military forces would be a reliable route to security only if accompanied by moves towards greater openness in North Korea’s regime—otherwise, lack of trust would under- mine further progress. Within months, however, the Bush administration had reconsidered its all- or-nothing approach, which had in any case been rejected outright by the North Korean government, and seemed willing to pursue the diplomacy that Clinton’s State Department had initiated. Diplomacy carried the day in the next major issue of Asian security to confront the new administration. On 1 April 2001, a fighter-interceptor jet of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) collided with a U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft and forced it to land on PRC territory. The Chinese jet evidently crashed, killing the pilot. The PRC government detained the 24-member crew of the U.S. plane for 11 days while demanding an apology. The U.S. government won the crew’s release by saying it was very sorry for the loss of the Chinese pilot’s life and for landing without permission. It eventually managed to get the valuable EP-3 spy plane back, dismantled in crates, and it paid the Chinese government nearly $35,000 for its expenses (China had de- manded $1 million). As one administration official explained, “as far as Defense Department accounting goes, this is pretty close to zero. It’s cheaper than sending delegations back and forth to talk about it.”1 Thus the Bush administration was compelled to deal with the People’s Republic of China in a diplomatic crisis, with military overtones, before it had successfully fashioned an overall China policy. The Republican Party was already deeply divided over China: one faction was ex- tremely critical of the regime’s record on human rights and still nostalgic for the days when the United States acknowledged only Taiwan as the legitimate representative of China. Another was willing to look the other way on human rights in order to pursue investment opportunities in China’s vast potential market and to take advantage of its pool of low-wage labor. Some Repub- licans expressed concern about the emergence of China as the next major military threat to the United States, replacing the Soviet Union as a challenger to U.S. hegemony. Others were more complacent and believed that China could be smoothly integrated into a U.S.-dominated interna- tional system. 1 Erik Eckholm, “China Agrees to Return Partly Dismantled Spy Plane as Cargo,” New York Times, 29 May 2001, p. A8. 3 Relations between Japan and the United States were also strained during the first months of the Bush administration. On February 9, 2001, a Navy submarine, the USS Greenville, hit and sank a Japanese fishing boat off the coast of Hawaii during a rapid ascent, resulting in the death of nine Japanese, including high school students and teachers who were on a field trip. The sub- sequent investigation revealed that the submarine was playing host to a party of civilian observ- ers, some of whom were actually at the controls when the commander ordered the emergency ascent because they were running behind schedule in returning to port. The commander was forced to resign from the Navy, but Japanese sentiment was outraged that he was not punished more severely. This incident, along with an alleged rape involving U.S. military personnel on Guam, stoked anti-American feeling in Japan, not least because they echoed earlier incidents in which the United States military has appeared insensitive to Japanese public opinion. The crises with China and Japan and the Bush administration’s contradictory approach to Korea came as surprises to everyone. Yet, within the scholarly community of Asia specialists, the broader questions about U.S.

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