East Asia and international relations theory

East Asia now occupies a prominent place in the study of international relations (IR). This, of course, does not mean that IR scholarship in the past failed to pay due attention to East Asia. Wars, trade, and international integration in this region have been the subject of analysis in countless books and scholarly articles. However, the renewed interest in this region is not so much empirically driven (to increase East Asian coverage in the literature) as before but rather represents a theoretical inquiry pertinent to the intellectual underpinning of the scholarship itself. Today, some experts of the region harshly criticize the ‘euro-centric’ bias of existing IR study and seek to provide alternative conceptions based on the East Asian experience.1 In response, other scholars have advanced views less provocative but more nuanced about the originality of East Asia. And, there are still others who flatly reject the connotation that the logic of East Asian international relations is inherently different from that elsewhere. Thus, a diverse set of perspectives has been laid out on the table, but their strengths and shortcomings are yet to be evaluated systematically. The present article offers a critical review of this emerging debate on East Asia. I first examine some of the notable works published recently in the field, distinguishing their orientations in relation to the mainstream IR theories and highlighting the key differences in their empirical claims. My purpose here is not to recap each of the listed works in detail but to map out their characteristics in a contrasted way. After thus clarifying the key parameters of the debate, I proceed to argue that none of the perspectives currently available in the debate (nor, hence, the debate itself as it stands) addresses the definitive theoretical lesson that IR scholarship should draw from the East Asian experience. In my view, that lesson has to do with the question of the system–unit relation in international relations, on which the latter part of this article is devoted to elaborate. The contemporary world is based on a set of formal and informal organizing frameworks, including state sovereignty, norms of diplomacy and warfare, and institutions for capitalism and market economy, all of which we take for granted today. These frameworks originally evolved in Europe, and it was not until the 19th century that East Asia became absorbed into them. The process of this absorption took place gradually but forcefully, as the magnificent waves of Western industrial and imperial expansion reached the shores of East Asian countries one after another. Dramatic events such as the Opium Wars, the Meiji Restoration, and the decay and subsequent collapse of the Qing dynasty all illustrate how overpowering these waves were. In the traditional narratives on East Asia, this ‘encounter with the West’ was told as a story of great historical discontinuity.2 The circulated claim was that pre-modern East Asia itself was a ‘world’ and had a distinct international system, before it was ousted by the modern European alternative. Typically, this original system was described as a system of hierarchy where China, with its geopolitical and economic advantages, formed tributary relations with other states in return for their security guarantee. Further, according to these traditional accounts, this system sustained regional stability for a remarkably long period, in part because of the influence of Confucianism, which promoted the ideas of harmony, order, and nonviolence. Certainly, in the pre-modern era, Confucian teaching was prevalent throughout the region, not only in China but also in the neighboring states including its chief rival, Japan. Hence, to the extent that they attributed the absence/infrequency of major wars to the hierarchical structure of the regional society and the ideational force of Confucianism, these narratives advanced a kind of constructivist explanation for East Asian international relations, highlighting the unique organizing principles that had long regulated state-to-state interactions in this region. In a series of provocative studies, including the two books under review in this article, David Kang tries to revive these traditional accounts of East Asia. In the earlier work of the two, China Rising, which is primarily concerned with the present-day situation, Kang begins by emphasizing that while China has recently emerged as a major power, its rise has not destabilized the region. According to Kang, the neighboring states ‘are not balancing China’ but rather ‘accommodating it’, a behavioral pattern that ‘contradicts much conventional international relations theory’. Kang's own explanation for this pattern, then, turns to constructivism, highlighting the importance of identity: Identity is also central in framing how regional states interpret China's rise. East Asian states view China's reemergence as the gravitational center of East Asia as natural. China has a long history of being the dominant state in East Asia… Thus, to East Asian observers and other states, the likelihood that China will seek territorial expansion or use force against them seems low. Most see China as desiring stability and peaceful relations with its neighbors (pp.4–5). Kang's conviction of China's pacifism is derived from his understanding of the history of East Asia, which is revealed more fully in his second book, East Asia before the West. In this sequel, Kang engages in a long-range survey of trade and conflict in this region from the 14th to 19th centuries and elaborates on attributes like ‘hierarchy’, ‘Confucian society’, and ‘tribute system’ as the distinct characteristics of the pre-modern East Asian system. To be fair, as a historical documentation, Kang offers hardly anything new in this book, as he relies mostly on secondary sources. Yet, the largest merit of the book perhaps lies in his presentation of East Asia in a clear contrast with the European ‘Westphalian’ system that ‘emphasizes a formal equality between states and balance-of-power politics’ (p. 2). It is through such a contrast that he pursues his ambitious aim of questioning the euro-centric bias of the existing IR literature. For Kang, the East Asian international system presents an obvious alternative model, ‘both as a normative goal and as an underlying and enduring reality’ (p. 3). Thus, Kang's work can be placed unmistakably in a direct lineage of those traditional accounts described earlier. It should be noted, however, that Kang's position differs from those traditionalists' on one important score. As indicated, the earlier classic writings on East Asia were premised on the notion of historical discontinuity, suggesting that its encounter with the West had caused an irreversible change in the organizing principles of the regional international relations. By contrast, Kang believes that whatever mechanism had sustained its pre-modern order in this region was not totally obliterated, but somehow survived for all these years. What Kang offers, then, is a story of historical continuity: East Asia constituted a different world before and, despite the interruption of Western universalism, it still constitutes a different world today. The next book on the review list, Shogo Suzuki's Civilization and Empire, is an in-depth historical study that offers an entirely original reinterpretation of East Asia's encounter with the West. Couched in the English School tradition of IR theories, and drawing on vast Chinese and Japanese primary sources, Suzuki documents how East Asia generally, and China and Japan in particular, were socialized into the European ‘International Society’ in the late 19th century. Suzuki's book thus adds a third perspective to the current debate on East Asian international relations. Certainly, to the extent that he recognizes East Asia's integration into the Western world, his view advances a story of historical discontinuity and is thus consistent with those traditional narratives (and inconsistent with Kang's account). But, unlike the traditionalists who thought that this integration was brought about by the material superiority of the West, Suzuki presents a far more nuanced argument, pointing to the ideational factor associated with the then-prevailing concept of ‘standard of civilization’ as the key determinant of China's and Japan's engagement with the world. According to Suzuki, elites in these two countries understood correctly the complexity of this concept, and they ultimately made a conscious choice to learn and adopt it. Finally, Yuan-kang Wang's Harmony and War presents yet another important viewpoint in the current debate. Relying on the mainstream IR theory of structural realism, Wang rejects the connotation that the logic of East Asian international relations is different from that elsewhere both in the past and at present. To demonstrate his point, he chooses to investigate China's foreign relations under the Song and Ming dynasties. Because Confucianism was thought to be most influential under these two dynasties, they offer the hardest test with which to reject a constructivist argument that emphasizes the ideational force of Confucian pacifism. The empirical findings Wang presents based on his painstaking archive research are straightforward: even at its height under these two dynasties, ‘Confucian culture did not constrain the leaders' decisions to use force; in making such decisions, leaders have been mainly motivated by their assessment of the balance of power between China and its adversary’ (p. 181). Thus, according to Wang, there is nothing unique or cultural about the pattern of China's external behavior; international environment of East Asia is anarchical, not hierarchical, as elsewhere. Obviously, these argument and evidence are inconsistent with the other perspectives in the debate, and they are particularly in direct contradiction with the constructivist position taken by Kang. In summary, as the scholarly interest in East Asia has recently been renewed, a fresh debate is taking place about how this region should be understood both historically and in relation to existing IR theories. The variety of perspectives offered so far in the literature, as well as the major parameters of the debate, is summarized in Table 1. Distinct dynamics in East Asia? Distinct dynamics in East Asia? Having thus identified different perspectives, how can we evaluate various claims made in the debate, as well as the debate itself? Here I offer some observations and comments. First, generally, the debate is advancing a set of important questions for both the theories of international relations and the historical understanding of East Asia. Theoretically, the work of David Kang seems most provocative, in that his constructivist exercise self-consciously raises criticisms against the potential intellectual bias of mainstream IR scholarship. As an exercise of historical interpretation, on the other hand, the structural-realists' claim represented by Yuan-kang Wang's study is most significant, in trying to discard much of what has been believed as conventional wisdom about this region. The positions represented by these two authors are most clearly contrasted with each other, and it is according to this dimension that the exchange is likely to be most vibrant in future rounds of the debate. Needless to say, this contrast has direct, practical implications for policy makers in many countries, as it will greatly influence how one should infer and predict the behavior of the rising power, China, in today's world. Second, between the works of these two authors, I find Wang's empirical demonstration based on structural realism far more convincing than Kang's constructivist rendering. Not only does Wang conduct his own original research, utilizing massive primary sources, his research design is also methodologically sophisticated, particularly with regard to the criteria of case selection and the manner of testing hypotheses competitively against evidence. No such sophistication exists in the work of Kang, who uses far too many quotes out of context from other authors and makes far too many judgmental statements without substantiation. Just to give one example, Kang states, in his second book, ‘[t]he states of China, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan emerged over one thousand years ago as centralized political units, territorial states with internal control that conducted formal, legal international relations with one another, and for whom international recognition as a legitimate nation was an important component of their existence’ (p. 26). As far as Japan is concerned, which case I know the best, this characterization is totally inaccurate. Japan had never been a ‘centralized’ entity with ‘internal control’ prior to the late 16th century; nor was its territorial border firmly established even as late as the 17th and 18th centuries. I am surprised, even shocked, to find that such basic mischaracterizations of history (so many of them indeed) can be found in the work of this established scholar. Third, there is some irony in that, if my reading of the debate is correct that structural realism, not constructivism, is more convincing, one would have to conclude that IR scholarship does not gain much by focusing on East Asia per se. As forcefully argued by its founder (Waltz, 1979), the beauty of structural realism lies in its parsimony and generalizability, and the reasoning based on this theory will not be influenced by any region- or country-specific attributes. Does this mean, then, that we do not have to pay special attention to East Asia after all? My answer to this question is a tentative no, because it is possible that we may be missing out some points of importance because of the way the current debate itself has been framed so far. In the following section, I explore this possibility further. As surveyed in the previous section, the most significant cleavage in the current debate on East Asia appears to lie between the constructivist and structural-realist positions. It must be noted, however, that despite the contrast, these two theories share a common ontological premise. Structural realism describes the international system as anarchy, and Wang is convinced that such characterization applies to East Asia as well. Kang's constructivist account, on the other hand, perceives the East Asian international system as hierarchy. Note here that both ‘anarchy’ and ‘hierarchy’ are concepts used to characterize the ‘system’ without referring to its ‘units’. Here thus lies the underlying premise: a ‘system’ exists separately from the individual ‘units’ of which it consists. Does this ontological separation of system and units really hold? In my view, this is the key question that the analysis of East Asian international relations must address, and which the current debate has not yet raised properly. The long history of East Asia is full of events and phenomena, which cast doubt on this premise. Let me offer just two cases for illustration. In the late 13th century, the Mongolian empire led by Kublai Khan carried out a series of military campaigns against Japan. Japan managed to fend off the attacks, and the Mongolians were forced to retreat to China. Prior to this incident, Japan was hardly a unified state.3 The Mongolian invasion halted this situation and applied pressure for unification, but it did so only temporarily. Soon after the incident, the regional fragmentation progressed even further and internal wars ensued all over Japan. In the late 14th century, the Kyushu area of Japan was under the control of a regionally autonomous power led by Prince Yoshikane (aka ‘Kaneyoshi’), a son of the former Emperor, Godaigo. The frustrated government (Bakufu) of Ashikaga based in Kyoto sent troops repeatedly, but could not conquer the region for some time. In the midst of the stalemate, Yoshikane decided to form tribute arrangement for trade with the Ming dynasty. The Ashikaga government was shocked to find out that the Emperor of China accepted the offer and recognized Yoshikane as the ‘King (Kokuo) of Japan’. This incident prompted Ashikaga leaders themselves to apply for a tribute relation with the Ming dynasty as well as to step up their military and political pressure against the independent Kyushu.4 What do these two cases illustrate? At a glance, one might not notice anything particularly unusual or significant about them. Both the Mongolian invasion and the conclusion of a tribute agreement could be counted as ordinary incidents of state-to-state interactions. After all, states do invade other states, and they do establish trading relations with each other all the time. But, such a view would completely miss the crucial insights to be drawn from these historical incidents, regarding the ambiguity of such central concepts as ‘system’ and ‘unit’. Note these two cases show that the state of Japan, at least during these both as a and as a system. the one hand, Japan was a that with other units Mongolian empire and the Ming dynasty in in in military and trade the other hand, Japan also as a system where various autonomous themselves being individual units, for territorial control and The most and significant revealed in these two cases was that Japan became less of a system itself the pressure for its units I am not making the point, to be that Japan in those or states more generally, should not be to be would be an empirical And, that kind of hardly have been raised many against theories like structural My is not to the of or even and ‘system’ in It is such that the two cases that the to which Japan could be as a system and that to which Japan could be as a were As none of the perspectives available in the emerging debate on East Asia has raised this as a central for In my view, the to be to the ontological dimension of international relations to and a for example, at one of the in Kang's second book as Table which the of that China in under the Ming and Qing dynasties. Kang's of Kang's of on the summarized in Table Kang an consistent with his constructivist account, that modern East Asia was because the states Korea, Vietnam, and were so (p. while the of border with however, such an can only be by focusing on and thus by the of incidents as ‘internal as Kang the in the more and reading of the would to an entirely different perhaps not about and but rather about conflict and in this region. Kang's is his ontological with which he China only as a but not as a system. its the of China itself as a vast in which various autonomous for and from the of and system, it is entirely possible that the of wars was to the of internal And, if that were the to characterize such an situation as being peaceful would be a judgmental to the In his of of structural realism, made an important between the between and the of had these two concepts and was convinced that the for international would because of the process of selection and on the other hand, that the concept of is its importance would not (p. the by referring to the on the of which the units are from one (p. The history of East Asia an for the of that, in Europe, there was only one historical or one incident in which we a change in the from the to the modern system. The argument and which I have in the latter part of this article, that in East Asia, the principles for units were in Japan, China, and possible other states in this region were with each other, not only as units to a common international system, but each as a system in which autonomous units and with a and pattern is the definitive of international relations in East Asia, clearly distinct from the one that from as in this article, the emerging debate on East Asia, as it currently is yet to its I am to the for my research, which led to the in this I also of the at the School of of where an earlier of this article was