A cold war waiting ahead?

(Photo: Bilal Bassal, Franco-Lebanese illustrator)

Editor’s note: The current wholesale leadership transition across Northeast Asia comes at a time of renewed tension over North Korea’s belligerence, China’s more aggressive posture and the American “pivot” toward Asia. At stake in current diplomatic maneuvering, writes Gilbert Rozman on the spring 2013 issue of Global Asia, is whether the region will turn toward enhanced co-operation or a form of Cold War. Gilbert Rozman is Musgrave Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, specializing in Northeast Asian societies.

Northeast Asia’s New Leaders Must Tackle Mounting Tensions

March 2013 saw the culmination of more than a year of leadership renewal in Northeast Asia, the third mass change of leadership among the region’s countries since the end of the Cold War. It comes at a time of growing tensions and worrying relations.

Looking back, a feeling of rejuvenation was evident in 1992-93 when a crop of new leaders saw a world enamored with globalization, growing democracy, market reforms, human rights and decentralization. In the more ambivalent climate of the early 2000s, globalization and regionalism vied for attention in the aftermath of 9/11 and Washington’s “war on terror,” with its heightened concerns about Weapons of Mass Destruction. A new crop of leaders at the time faced shifting US priorities, China’s rapid rise, and steps by Japan, South Korea, Russia and North Korea to upgrade their status in the rapidly changing regional balance of power.

The atmosphere in the current transition can best be described as deteriorating. Sino-Japanese, Russo-US, Japanese-South Korean, Sino-US, and North Korean-US relations are all worse than they were and show no signs of stabilization. Leadership changes cannot but reflect a troubled security environment, less cultural understanding, and, despite an urgent quest for new free-trade agreements (FTAs), rising concerns that economic ties are no longer immune from political tensions.

Only US President Barack Obama is left among the leaders of states active in the stalled Six-Party Talks. With the selection of his new foreign policy team and the completion of the political transition in China, prospects for the two major powers are clearer. New US Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel can now go about the business of understanding the new Chinese Communist Party foreign policy line-up under President Xi Jinping, with outgoing foreign minister Yang Jiechi as state councilor and Japan expert Wang Yi as the new foreign minister.

Testing will begin in earnest and should last through the G-20 summit in Russia in September and the East Asia Summit in Brunei in November. Both Hagel and Kerry were skeptics about Washington’s past “rush to war” in Vietnam or later Iraq, and that would seemingly herald a cautious approach to the danger of conflicts in the East China Sea, South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula. Also, a Chinese team that includes a veteran diplomat known for prioritizing co-operation with Japan offers fresh hope. Yet the main lesson of recent years is that forces in China are aggressively insisting on changes that neither US leaders nor Chinese officials such as Yang Jiechi’s predecessor, Dai Bingguo, can control. Xi Jinping’s early assertive stance toward Japan, with Chinese ships and planes crossing well-established boundaries around the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, puts pressure on Obama to firmly back Japan.

Can a Cold War Be Avoided?

The year 2013 is likely to be critical for Northeast Asia and could determine whether a Cold War lies ahead for the region or not. It began with the question of a co-ordinated response to North Korea’s double provocations of a successful long-range missile test and an underground nuclear test. Unfortunately, as has been the case since the Six-Party Talks collapsed in 2008, there has been only minimal co-ordination.

US sources blame China for enabling North Korea’s tests, watering down the UN Security Council resolution to which it finally agreed and continuing to provide ample oil supplies while doing little to enforce the sanctions that Washington hopes will finally pressure North Korea to rethink its belligerence. Others echo China’s call for renewed US engagement with North Korea, assuming that a more secure nuclear state will agree to new steps conducive to regional stability.

But North Korea aside, before Sino-US relations are thoroughly tested, other bilateral ties are in the spotlight. Japan, Russia and South Korea are all showing new initiatives.

The fruits of bilateralism can initially be seen in the visits to Washington of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and new South Korean President Park Geun-hye, both of whom took office facing the twin challenges of China’s assertiveness and North Korea’s aggressive posture in addition to their own perennial bilateral tensions.

Abe saw Obama in late February, seeking support in the face of China’s encroachments around the Senkaku/ Diaoyu islands and against a backdrop of Japan’s backing for the US “pivot” to Asia, which Tokyo sees as countering China’s new assertiveness. He was met with a reaffirmation of the alliance minus renewed animus toward China. Washington restated its desire to see Japan formally join talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which some see as a move to counter China with a new Washington-led free-trade bloc. In mid-March, Abe acceded to that request, although negotiations may prove difficult.

History Is Still an Issue

Park will arrive in Washington on the heels of a presidential campaign in which she promised closer co-operation with China and renewed efforts to engage North Korea, although Pyongyang’s tough words and defiant acts put such promises in doubt. In the president’s annual March 1 speech to the nation she was somewhat conciliatory, calling on North Korea to give up nuclear weapons but omitting tough mentions of human rights violations. She also kept the pressure on Japan over its views of history. Abe’s statement in Washington that his grandfather, Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, had been a close friend of Park’s father, President Park Chung-hee, did not go down well in Seoul, where Kishi is remembered by Koreans as a war criminal. The mention also revived the unpleasant memory that Park Chung-hee served in Japan’s imperial army.

The US has been striving to get the two sides to cool off. Washington has tried to convince Abe to back away from conservative calls to revoke or change the 1993 Kono statement apologizing for the wartime use of “comfort women,” a deeply emotional issue in Korea and other Asian countries. It wants Park to pull back from Lee Myung-bak’s tough posture toward Japan in the last six months of his five-year term as president. Managing this troubled pairing will test Obama’s seriousness about advancing the pivot at a time when the Middle East again looms large. The task should be made easier given veteran diplomat Yachi Shotaro’s role as Abe’s chief advisor on foreign affairs and rising realism in Seoul about the importance of regional security ties.

Abe is wasting no time proving that not only is “Abenomics” a different approach to Japan’s long-troubled economy but also that his foreign policy is activist in a manner not seen in Japan since at least the 1980s. His January travels in Southeast Asia focused on competition with China and a more assertive Japan. In late February, former Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro went to Moscow, which was followed by reports that Abe himself would go there to pursue Vladimir Putin’s 2012 offer to find a compromise on the territorial dispute over the Southern Kuril Islands/Northern Territories. With talks gathering some momentum on deliveries of liquefied natural gas to Japan, the mood in Japan-Russia relations is more upbeat than at any time since 2001. Putin’s initiatives suggest that when Xi Jinping goes to Moscow in late March he will not win Russia’s backing on the Senkoku/Diaoyu islands even if bilateral energy ties and arms agreements point to a closer relationship.

Washington’s Missing Partners

Even before any major test of direct Sino-US diplomacy under the new Beijing leadership, Obama is signaling his intentions with the team he is assembling. The Senate hearings for Kerry and Hagel were concentrated on the Middle East in a way that deflected attention from East Asia. The departure of Hillary Clinton and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell removes the two most ardent champions of the US pivot as a way to bring China’s neighbors closer to the US while continuing to appeal for engagement.

Some analysts expect US policy to be more energetic in engaging China in what Beijing calls a “new type of great power relationship.” New teams in the State Department and Pentagon may be more amenable to a National Security Council initiative to redouble efforts to find common ground with China. Others worry that the pivot was more a façade than a real push-back against Chinese assertiveness and that countries in Asia will see a lack of will and decide that accommodation with China is advisable. Abe’s somewhat extreme public image won’t help to rally states to Japan’s side, which raises the burden on Obama to find a balance conducive to multilateralism. The US response to China’s moves in 2013 promises to be the true test of the pivot.

The leadership transitions make the task harder for the US, as some promising partners in the pursuit of a “rebalanced” Asia have stepped down. In 2010, there was hope that Lee Myung-bak was making South Korea the ideal partner because of his strong personal ties to Obama while former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was seen to be shifting Russia away from one-sided support for China. In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seemed to be turning toward an active, co-operative presence in East Asia and ASEAN was working cohesively to retain its centrality and unity over the South China Sea issue.

In 2013, the environment is less promising. Although the conservative candidate won in South Korea, the warm glow of a special bond with Obama is not easy to revive, especially given the strains with Japan. Medvedev has been replaced by Putin, who demonized the US in his election campaign and in office has intensified his rhetoric while drawing closer to China. Singh proved a weak leader with little impact on East Asian diplomacy. ASEAN was weakened in 2012 by Cambodia’s chairmanship of the bloc and its willingness to pursue Beijing’s goals by refusing to permit a resolution to pass that would have addressed China’s encroachments in the South China Sea; other states also did little to support the Philippines after China occupied the Scarborough Shoal.

Engagement in Peril?

The various changes may mean that US leadership in East Asia falls short of what is needed. The result might be “strategic patience” toward North Korea with no collective response, ASEAN may become dysfunctional in dealing with China’s enforcement of its broad “nine-dashed-line” map of the South China Sea and Japan could be isolated in the face of intense pressure from China.

The backlash in the US strategic community if East Asia were neglected in this manner would be unmistakable. Alarm could spread on China’s borders, even among countries that have been ambivalent about what the United States should do. Sino-Russian relations would presumably strengthen at a time when the US is pulling back from Afghanistan, in contrast to the opposite outcome when the US left a vacuum as it retreated from Vietnam. In other words, US weakness would not be an answer to regional concerns. Vigorous US engagement that helps to resolve problems might be the answer, but circumstances in the region and world also make that less likely.

North Korea’s nuclear test in 2006 led to a serious challenge of Pyongyang’s intentions and China’s willingness to apply pressure in return for US engagement, namely the resumption of the Six Party Talks, which restarted only to stall again in 2008. The nuclear test in 2009 set in motion a downward spiral in Sino-US relations and deepening security tensions in the region. The 2013 test could prove to be a turning point of comparable significance, hopefully toward renewed Sino-US co-operation if Obama and Xi, with Park’s encouragement, reach an understanding.

But it is at least as likely that a Cold War atmosphere could follow the test in which Obama and Abe draw closer in opposition to what is seen as a Chinese strategy backed by Russia to use North Korea’s threat as a means to weaken the US alliance system in Asia. Distinct from North Korea’s own motives, presumably Obama and Xi will be focusing on North Korea as a way of testing each other’s willingness to change course.

Rather than an emerging multipolar system, the ongoing reorganization under way across the eastern half of Asia is producing bipolarity. As the rising power, China is the driving force in changing the status quo. Xi Jinping’s relations with Japan, North Korea, Vietnam, and other states will test responses across the region. Obama is the key figure in responding. Abe is the leader who will make the strongest case for a vigorous response. Putin is the figure drawing closer to China but with the potential to use Central Asia, Vietnam and even Japan to show that his country will not fall in lockstep with Beijing. Park, whose domestic base is weak, does not have a lot of room to maneuver in this aggravated environment.

The chances of facilitating improved relations between China and the US are not high. During the Cold War few states had leverage on the two superpowers. While the US need for allies is far greater now than in that era and China’s economic interdependence is in sharp contrast with the Soviet Union’s autarchy, leaders in other states are likely to find optimism overblown about new diplomatic diversification or maneuvering.

Obama would obviously prefer not to face a crisis in East Asia. He is likely to encourage restraint in the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute, renewed engagement with China and joint persuasion as well as sanctions to induce North Korea to alter its course. Yet, the chances are high that he will not offer China and North Korea the gains that they demand. As tensions likely mount later in 2013 or 2014 — earlier should there be a maritime incident in the East China Sea or further aggression from North Korea — the US and its allies will face a serious challenge of crisis management.

The new regional leadership does not suggest an easy road ahead, meaning we should be hearing a lot about diplomacy by the foreign policy representatives of states struggling with a region in flux. We will keep our eyes on the leaders, but they must prioritize economic issues; it is figures such as China’s Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi, Japan’s Yachi Shotaro and the new Washington team who may play a critical role. They will be the ones who will seek a balance leading to improved relations, but, as seen in the mid-March decision to strengthen US missile defenses against North Korea amid talk of a Sino-US cybersecurity standoff, they may not be able to avoid a deepening arms race.