[Nasional-e] Asians are wary of pushy outsiders

[Ambon]

Asians are wary of pushy outsiders
  Amitav Acharya IHT  Thursday, January 23, 2003



Sovereignty

SINGAPORE As Asia ponders its response to an eventual military strike on
Iraq led by the United States, two key European powers, France and Germany,
have indicated their strong reluctance to be dragged into war. In a much
debated article last year, Robert Kagan presented a contrast between U.S.
and European attitudes toward power and international relations. He argued
that Americans and Europeans live in very different worlds and represent two
increasingly divergent worldviews and strategic cultures.
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The Europeans, according to Kagan, are "Kantians" who have entered "a
post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity." They favor
peaceful solutions through diplomacy, persuasion and negotiation. The
Americans believe in a "Hobbesian" world in which international rules are
deemed inefficient and unreliable and security is seen to depend on the
"possession and use of military might." The world in which Asians live, and
the view of it that most Asian leaders have, appear to be more Hobbesian
than Kantian. Unlike Europe, Asia is rife with conflicts. It lags far behind
Europe's level of regional integration and commitment to liberal democracy.
Moreover, while relative lack of power compared with America is common to
both Europe and Asia, it has produced dissimilar responses. Kagan holds that
Europe's lack of power has led it increasingly along a path of
multilateralism. In the case of Asia, it has led to strategic dependence on
larger players, particularly the United States. Military alliances are in
decline in Europe, while they remain robust in Asia. But Asians are not, and
cannot be, Hobbesian in the sense that America is. Asia lacks the means to
pursue national objectives unilaterally through force.
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In the Cold War period, Asia's regional order rested on three pillars:
inward-looking, nationalist and state-led economic development strategies;
authoritarian rule; and bilateral alliances with major powers, especially
the United States. Today those pillars have given way to shared economic
liberalism (export-led growth, free trade and growing regional economic
interdependence), democratic transitions in many countries, and the
emergence of regional institutions. Asia, especially East Asia, is much more
interdependent, democratic and institutionalized now than in the 1960s.
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Hence, categories such as Hobbesian and Kantian do not do an adequate job of
explaining Asia's complex and fluid security predicament. Moreover, the
power gap emphasized by Kagan in explaining the Euro-American divergence is
not the sole or the most important determinant of Asia's attitude toward
international relations.
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Culture also matters in Asia. There is a far greater convergence of
strategic culture between Europeans and Americans than between Asians on the
one hand and the Europeans and Americans on the other. And of course Asia is
culturally far less homogeneous than is either Europe or America. While
Europe's commitment to regionalism and rule of law in international affairs
emerged from a determination to transcend the sovereignty-bound system of
the nation-state, Asia's recent move toward regional multilateralism came
primarily from a desire to preserve the existing rules of international
relations, especially those related to sovereignty.
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Europeans increasingly live in a post-sovereign region, and regard this as
more efficient and morally desirable. Asia remains firmly beholden to
sovereignty, taking it as the fundamental basis of stability and identity.
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Asians, like Europeans, oppose American unilateralism. This is evident in
recent debates about Iraq. Asians fear legitimizing outside intervention in
their internal affairs.
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The writer is deputy director of Singapore's Institute of Defence and
Strategic Studies. This is a personal commentary.