Thesis presented to the Faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF MILITARY ART AND SCIENCE General Studies
Name of Candidate: Captain Claus Aksel Wammen
Thesis Title: China’s Pacific Policy at the Turn of the Millennium
Thesis Title: China’s Pacific Policy at the Turn of the Millennium
INTRODUCTION
This thesis’s main concern is Modern China, but since China as a country has its foundation more than 2,000 years ago, it is not enough just to focus on the conditions within the past 25 years in order to fully understand China’s situation in the Pacific area.1 The Chinese culture was the dominant culture in East Asia through the past 2,500 years, and even now China is marked by the idea that it remains “The Central Kingdom,” which has historically been its self-image. As a result of the Chinese civil war, which was fought after the Second World War, China was divided into the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland, and the Republic of China (ROC) on the island of Taiwan. In 1949 the Communists, led by Mao Tse-tung, took victory on the mainland, the main part of the country, and transformed it into a communist state, the PRC. The losers of the battle for the mainland, the ROC government, led by President Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan where they maintained political control, promoted a market-based economy, and encouraged traditional Chinese values. In the PRC, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established a socialist republic with a planned economy. The CCP also worked to eliminate many traditional Chinese values. In the late 1970s the PRC began moving toward liberalization and at the same time began to regulate the population growth.
Through the 1980s China experienced massive economical growth, which was necessary to support the world’s largest population. As the country developed from an agrarian society to an industrial society, it demanded greater resources and better connections to the outside world.
Background
The dominant theory in international policy is that the international system belongs to the traditional theory--or, as it is also called, the realistic school.3 The realist school rests on two fundamental assumptions regarding the international system. Both are assumed to be true or substantiated in a broader connection of philosophy of life. These assumptions are:
1. The international system is a decentralized system of free and equal states.
A decentralized international system is one with no central governing authority. No authority issues laws and binding resolutions to the states, as known from the individual’s involvement in the domestic policy. Within states legislative, practicing and judging authorities are found, which are not to be found in an international system. This is the reason the international system is decentralized or as it is also called in this connection, anarchic.
2. The individual states are left with their own means to secure survival as a part of the international system.
When the states are left with their own means to secure survival, they are left to their own military means. This is not to say that economic and other resources are of no importance--they are; but the states as units in the international system only possess significance if they display military capacities (principle of self-help).
One can say that these two fundamental assumptions lay out minimum attributes that are common to the realistic school’s different variations.
When these minimum attributes are tied to other assumptions, two different sub-schools within the realistic school occur. These two subschools include two very differen schools--and then a mixture of the two. Each involves a different understanding of the phenomenon “international organization” yet is relevant to the employment of any international organization.
1. The Hobbesian Tradition (The Immature Anarchy)
According to the Hobbesian tradition, the international system is a system of states in a permanent state of war, where everybody is in constant struggle with each other. In this state of war any states’ interests are in direct contradiction to any other state – so, the gain of one state is the loss of another state (zero-sum-game). War is the normal activity while peace, in Hedley Bull’s words, is “a period of recuperation from the last war and preparation for the next.”5 Any state has the liberty to follow its goals without moral or legal bindings. Morality and law make sense within a society, but such is only to be found within the states – not among them. If the states anyway should commit to limitations by rules, principles, or arrangements with other states, it will only happen as long as the states find it beneficial or smart.
2. The Grotian Tradition (The Mature Anarchy)
According to the Grotian tradition it makes sense to talk about an international society of states. This is why the Grotian tradition views international policy as an area where the states bind themselves by accepting to follow rules, norms, and moral principles; not only because it is smart or beneficial in the actual situation, but because it is necessary to be able to exist side by side and cooperate in the international society. As such, it is normal in the international society that in the relationships between states elements of both conflict and cooperation occur. According to the Grotians, these conflicts do not ordinarily make a zero sum-relationship, in which one’s gain is another’s loss. In contradiction to the Hobbesians the relationship between states is viewed as a growing relationship, where everybody can gain although everybody might not gain equally. In contrast to the Hobbesians, war is looked upon as something out of the ordinary, which could be avoided--and only occurs in very special occasions.
Referring to the realistic school’s two minimum-assumptions, we can characterize the Hobbesian tradition by saying that it occurs by combining the two minimum-assumptions with the assumption that the structural characteristics of the international system makes war between states a structural necessity. Thereby, war becomes normal and peace abnormal--a pause in between wars. The Grotian tradition, on the contrary, occurs by combining the two minimum assumptions with the structural characteristics that peace is normal and war, from a structural viewpoint is unnecessary. The relationship between the states is a growing relationship where everybody gains at the same time, however, not necessarily equally.
A special variant of this growing relationship is found within the international system in the highly developed subsystem within the international system. Here there is high interdependence economically due to the economical division of labor and specialization at the security political area due to weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, that only allows common security or common destruction.
The two school directions’ different understanding of the structural necessities in the international system is of special and important value to the decisions makers, especially in crisis situations. That is, the understanding of the international system decides the expectations of the decisions by other players. So, self-fulfilling prophecies are hidden within the different understandings. If conflict, even armed, is expected, one can provoke it unintentionally--the same goes for cooperation. So, a relationship between understandings and practical consequences are established.
It can thus be seen that the realistic school varies from the Hobbesian understanding of war as an inexorable necessity to the Grotian understanding of an international society of states where war can occur--but only in the event of structural necessity. It is also vital to point out that in the Grotian tradition, international organizations are not valued in a way that they can be compared with the states as players in the international system. An international organization is no stronger than its member states or at least no stronger than the most important member states wants it to be.
As mentioned earlier, apart from the two main directions, there also exists a mixture of the two. Barry Buzan describes the difference between the Hobbesians and the Grotians from a developmental perspective: the Hobbesian “traditional” anarchy is an expression of an immature, “earlier” development stage of the international system, while the Grotian “mature” anarchy is a “later” stage of development.10 Buzan views the immature anarchy as one end of a spectrum in which, at the other end, we have the mature anarchy.11 In between these two ends, there exist various levels of maturity which reflect different stages of development of the international system and various subsystems. The maturity, as such, does not have to pass off equally at all places within the international system, which normally, and at the same time consists of mature and immature subsystems.
China’s growth as an economic and military power--and its increasing significance in the region around the Yellow Sea and the South China Sea have created security concerns in many countries.
This thesis examines the validity of these concerns using a theoretical framework developed by Barry Buzan. Buzan, professor of international studies at The University of Warwick and project director at the Center for Peace and Conflict Research at the University of Copenhagen, recommends a broadening of the security concept both horizontally and vertically. On the horizontal axis, security is seen as dependent on political democracy and a culture of human rights, social and economic development, environmental sustainability, as well as military stability. In this regard Buzan identifies five dimensions of security, namely political, societal, economic, environmental and military, which serve as analytical tools or “ordering priorities . . . woven together in a strong web of linkages.”12 The environmental sector, in particular, is about relationships between human activity and the planetary biosphere. The vertical hierarchy of analytical levels (from individual, state, and regional to international) is an enabler to see how the referent objects of security have evolved to include both state and nonstate players. State or national security is redefined to encompass human security.
The main purpose of this thesis is to reveal which factors on Buzan’s horizontal and vertical axes have influenced Chinese security policy over the past fifteen years.13 Buzan’s work has been chosen since he is internationally recognized for looking forward to a new field of international security studies as a necessary framework for understanding the politics of the post-Cold War international system.
Buzan’s five dimensions will be used to discuss whether or not China currently is performing as if she is a player in a mature anarchy; a structure described by Buzan in which benefits of fragmentation can be enjoyed without the costs of continuous armed struggle and instability; or if China continues to conduct security policy as if she belongs,
to the immature anarchy, defined by Buzan as one in which units, as an example, are held together by a force of élite leadership. A determination will be made of whether or not Chinese security policy has changed over the past fifteen years, and if so, which factors have changed it. Since the thesis is based on theories, It is realized that it will be hard to come up with a solid answer. As described earlier, the maturity of the international system is a fluid phenomenon, which only exists in theory. However, the project will point out a method and mechanics, which ideally can give a good hint about a country’s relationship to the international system.
Over the past twenty-five years, China has gone from a communistic state to a current one-party state with a communistic ideological foundation, open to outside contact and influence. China’s current economic policy seems to be a mixture of traditional Chinese views and liberal influences. This particular economic policy is believed to have been some kind of a lever to crack the Chinese wall of standoffish ness and, over the past ten to twelve years, a number of areas have been opened. Because China has acquired a growing role regionally and globally, an attempt is made to assess if China currently is performing as if a player within the mature anarchy.
It is fully intentional that the focus is on the mature anarchy. Today, most industrial countries cannot afford to view the world from a narrow perspective as to security since the majority of crises between countries are solved through political or economic measures.14 The believe is that China cannot be characterized as a fully active player within the mature anarchy. However, a number of sources seem to suggest that China is progressing and acts like a player within the mature anarchy or even performs as a mature anarchy. The development in the region around the Yellow Sea and the South
China Sea is of significant importance in the near future, since a growing part of the world’s economy is centered in that area. Even though the USA is still the largest economy in the world, the economies of China and Japan are growing, and together appear to be quickly approaching that of the USA. As of today, the economy of China is growing faster than the economy of the USA.
In an analysis of a country’s security policy it is not sufficient to look only at the country’s relationships at the state level. Other conditions also influence events, that is, the structure of the international system and the relationship between the Great Powers. For those reasons China’s security policy will have to be seen at the system level. In order to follow Buzan’s theory on the mature anarchy, a hybrid between the state level and the system level will be considered. It is at the regional level that China plays an increasingly important part.
Although in Western opinion China is a dictatorship, without many rights for the individual, there are factors within the security of the individual, which also are of importance to the security of the state level. However, since this research refers to the state as a player, the state’s influence on the individual is not discussed.
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