Organizer: Andrew Scobell, University of Louisville
Chair and Discussant: Muthiah Alagappa, East-West Center
Do Asian countries approach matters of war and peace differently than Western states? Are there important similarities and/or differences among the strategic cultures of Asian states? Do these similarities and/or differences help explain the strategic behavior of the individual states? Can one speak of an "Asian strategic culture"?
Scholars of international relations now attach greater importance to culture as a variable affecting how individual states act in both situations of conflict and cooperation. Cultural analyses are increasingly applied to military matters, as evident by the growing usage of the concept "strategic culture." Strategic culture-type analyses, initially formulated at the height of the Cold War to examine the two superpowers, now are being used to examine Asian countries.
Strategic culture analyses should provide important insights into how key actors in major regional tensions view conflicts with their neighbors on the eve of the twenty-first century. This panel examines four countries: India is analyzed in light of its 1998 nuclear tests and persistent tensions with Pakistan; China is examined as a burgeoning economic and military power that has recently shown little hesitation in putting on shows of force; South Korea is analyzed in the context of how it is likely to cope with the challenges posed by North Korea and the peninsula’s proximity to the major powers of the region; Japan is examined in light of a strategic contradiction: possessing both a constitutional commitment to forsake war and the region’s best equipped and financed conventional military force.
Ideas, Identity, and Korea
Victor D. Cha, Georgetown University
This paper investigates the extent to which a coherent set of ideas, either domestically produced or externally imposed, shapes the contours of South Korea’s security and economic policies. A common supposition is that because Korea is a small, relatively weak power sitting at the intersection of interests among the major military and economic powers in the region, policy is determined in a reactive fashion, responding to the exigencies thrust upon Korea. According to this interpretation, foreign policy formulation only becomes proactive if there is a corresponding elevation of Korea in the region’s status and power hierarchy.
This paper argues that South Korea’s foreign policy rests on a set of values, ideas, and identity that are domestically rooted. In some cases, these values may have been defined through interaction with the external environment, but the critical point missed in the conventional wisdom is that this does not mean the external environment is all-determining. External forces only affect the formation of foreign policy to the extent that they are refracted through the domestic prism of ideas and identity. The paper examines the impact of balance-of-power thinking and the Korean concept of "globalization" on national security strategies. The paper also considers whether bandwagoning has been the norm historically in Korean strategic thinking, the extent to which Korea’s external associations are grounded in commonly-held values and norms; and whether Korea’s natural inclination is toward bilateral or multilateral forms of association. This paper takes an initial cut at understanding whether there is a distinct strategic culture behind Korea’s security behavior.
Indian Strategic Culture
Sumit Ganguly, Hunter College
At least two recent studies (Tanham, 1995; Rosen, 1997) have suggested that India lacks a strategic culture. A similar assertion was made over two decades ago (Larus, 1976). None of these contributions was made by either regional security or area specialists. Not surprisingly, all three studies tend to rely inordinately on secondary (and, of course, English language sources). Additionally, all three studies fail to show much sensitivity to the larger institutional and political contexts in locating their arguments. As a consequence all three studies make sweeping assertions on the basis of partial and even questionable evidence.
This paper argues that India does have a strategic culture, which it has derived from three distinct sources. First, India’s strategists and decision-makers have made certain inferences about the utility of force from a particular reading of India’s pre-colonial history. Second, they have drawn strategic concepts and ideas from the British colonial experience. Finally, they have also sought to tailor their strategic needs and thinking to the exigencies that India has faced in the post-independence era.
India’s strategic culture often appears implicit and inchoate because of the overweening power of civilian authority in India, a legacy of the Nehruvian era. However, this inability to articulate doctrinal questions pertaining to the utility of force in the international system cannot be construed as the absence of a coherent strategic culture.
A New Culture of National Security?: The (Re)Negotiation of Civil-Military Authority in Postwar Japan
Sheila A Smith, Boston University
Recent scholarship on international security has sought to examine the normative and cultural influences on the shaping of state security choices. Japan’s postwar experience offers an opportunity to examine how the domestic balance between civil and military authority is negotiated and how domestic and international structures shape national security policy-making. While the framework for civilian authority in Japan was crafted in the early postwar period, the actual process by which civilians exercise that authority continues to be negotiated. Norms regarding strict parameters for the Self Defense Force’s external missions and restrictions on the scope of military participation on national security planning exert considerable influence. But this on-going re-negotiation of civil-military relations is influenced also by the structure and evolution of Japan’s alliance with the United States.
Defining the goals of the U.S.-Japan alliance since the end of the Cold War has produced a new emphasis on developing a legal and legislative basis for military planning within Japan. The new guidelines for U.S.-Japan cooperation in the case of a crisis in the region call for civilian policy-makers to take on an expanded role in this area, and establish a greater presumption of state authority. This paper focuses on domestic debates in Japan over the creation of the Self Defense Force in 1954, the adoption of the National Defense Program in 1976, and the current deliberations over the new guidelines for U.S.-Japan security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific. The paper evaluates whether the adjustments of the 1990s signal the emergence of a new Japanese culture of national security.
The Chinese Cult of Defense: A Great Wall of the Imagination?
Andrew Scobell, University of Louisville
In the late 1990s China is viewed by many as a looming strategic threat. To some observers a military buildup coupled with China’s saber rattling in the Taiwan Strait in 1995–96 and its activities in the South China Sea seemed to signal the emergence of a bellicose and expansionist power. This perception is in direct conflict with earlier images of China. Ancient China is usually depicted as possessing a weak martial tradition (especially in contrast to Japan), a cultural predisposition to seek non-violent solutions to problems of statecraft, as exemplified by the thinking of sages like Sun Zi and Confucius, and a defensive-mindedness, favoring sturdy fortifications over expansionism and invasion (e.g. Fairbank and Kierman, 1974). A recent study challenges this orthodox interpretation and argues that China’s strategic culture is actually realist that sees war as a central feature of interstate relations (Johnston, 1995).
Is China best viewed as a peaceful and defensive-minded state or as a bellicose and expansionist one? Has China been transformed from a pacifist culture to a militaristic one? Is there a distinctive Chinese strategic culture that places a premium on defense over attack? Through a careful analysis of military doctrine, and the perceptions of Chinese civilian and military leaders this paper analyzes the impact of China’s strategic tradition on its disposition to use force. The paper concludes that China’s strategic culture has a more complex and paradoxical effect on behavior that has not been recognized in the past.