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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 1/00
Security Multilateralism in Asia: Views from the United States and Japan
Ralph Cossa, Akiko Fukushima
Stephan Haggard and Daniel Pinkston
Policy Paper 51
June 1999
Table of Contents
| Preface by Stephan Haggard and Daniel Pinkston | ||
| U.S. Views Toward Northeast Asia Multilateral Security Cooperation by Ralph Cossa | ||
| Overview | ||
| Background | ||
| ASEAN Regional Forum | ||
| General Observations | ||
| Four-Party Talks | ||
| Impact of Asian Financial Crisis | ||
| Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization | ||
| Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific | ||
| CSCAP North Pacific Working Group | ||
| Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue | ||
| Other Northeast Asia Initiatives | ||
| Benefits of Multilateral Cooperation | ||
| Caveats | ||
| Conclusion | ||
| Japan’s Emerging View Of Security Multilateralism in Asia by Akiko Fukushima | ||
| Background: The Evolution of Security Multilateralism in Asia | ||
| Japan’s Multilateral Security Cooperation until the End of the Cold War | ||
| Post-Cold War Evolution of Japan’s Security Multilateralism | ||
| The Nakayama Proposal | ||
| Japan’s Engagement in Track-One Security Dialogues in the Asia Pacific | ||
| Japan’s Engagement in Track-Two Security Dialogues in the Asia Pacific | ||
| Japanese Proactive Approaches to Security Multilateralism in the Asia Pacific | ||
| What Lies Ahead | ||
| Figure 1. Japan’s Bilateral Principle and Military Ministerial Talks with Asia-Pacific Countries | ||
| Figure 2. Multilateral Security Dialogues in Which the Japan Defense Agency Has Participated or Hosted | ||
| Figure 3. Examples of Asia-Pacific Security Dialogues in Which Japan Is Currently Involved | ||
Preface
Stephan Haggard and Daniel Pinkston
The end of the Cold War in Europe spawned high hopes of fundamental political realignments and the possibility of an expanded role for multilateral security arrangements. In East Asia, however, the Cold War did not quite end with the same dramatic bang as it did with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Of course, the Soviet Union was an important naval and political power in the Asia-Pacific, and its demise opened the door for changed relationships on the Korean Peninsula and with Japan and even China. However, a number of the vestiges of the Cold War remain in Asia, including divided nations (the two Koreas and China/Taiwan), a number of territorial disputes, and continued uncertainty about the relationships among the great powers in the region: the United States, China, Russia and Japan.
Nonetheless, there has been an efflorescence of regional multilateral activities since the end of the Cold War, some with roots that are of longer standing. In this policy paper, two leading authorities on the topic—one Japanese and one American—take a look at the rise of regional multilateralism in Asia.
Akiko Fukushima’s monograph provides a rich historical background on Japan’s periodic flirtation with multilateralism, including the disappointments during the inter- war and immediate post-war period. Dr. Fukushima traces renewed interest in multilateralism to a thaw in relations with Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and outlines in rich detail the range of initiatives in which the Japanese have not only participated, but played a central role. Her analysis points to an emerging liberal consensus that multilateralism, while beneficial, needs to be seen as augmenting the core, bilateral relationship with the United States. Moreover, she traces the complex thinking about the appropriate scope for multilateral initiatives and notes that there is no natural or easy membership that makes sense for Japan. However, the inclusion of the US as a player in any initiative, whether tripartite or wider seems to be a consistent theme. The reasons for this center on concern that multilateralism not be perceived as an alternative to the core alliance relationship, but also as a way of providing assurances to regional parties that Japan’s leadership will not become intrusive or threatening.
Ralph Cossa’s paper focuses on five multilateral institutions that have emerged in the 1990s: the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the Four-Party Talks, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP), and the Northeast Asian Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD). Cossa concurs with Fukushima that the end of the Cold War and decline of the Soviet Union provided other actors, principally the US, with incentives to support multilateral security institutions in the region. Previously, the Soviet Union had proposed multilateralism in an attempt to weaken the United States’ strong bilateral ties in East Asia.
Cossa explains some of the limits to multilateralism in the region, as well as linkages between track I and track II dialogues. For example, the ARF is limited by an agreement to “move at a pace comfortable to all participants.” However, this creates opportunities for track II institutions such as the NEACD and CSCAP to discuss issues that may be too sensitive for government representatives in an official setting. Furthermore, some countries in the region are apparently reluctant to participate in multilateral dialogues when there is fear of becoming a target of ridicule from others in the group. This may explain the establishment of issue-specific institutions such as the Four-Party Talks and KEDO.
The review here suggests the conclusion that multilateralism may be entering a period of pause or perhaps even slowdown. The initial enthusiasm for multilateral initiatives has not altogether dissipated, but there is a greater sense of limits on what they might accomplish. Focused multilateral dialogues at both the track one and track two levels can in themselves constitute important exercises in confidence building and socialization. However, they cannot overcome more fundamental conflicts of interest and perception, and it is misleading to think that they can. Moreover, there is clearly an evolutionary process in train; the system is not likely to sustain as many initiatives as now exist, and we already have examples of efforts which have flourished and later fallen by the wayside. We may now be entering a period of consolidation when the plethora of existing initiatives demands some rethinking. We hope that these papers contribute to that effort.
U.S. Views Toward Northeast Asia Multilateral Security Cooperation
by Ralph A. Cossa
The U.S. government has been generally supportive of, and an active participant in, a broad variety of multilateral security dialogue mechanisms that have emerged in the Asia-Pacific region in recent years. These efforts at building trust and confidence, both at the official and at the nongovernmental or so-called track-two level, have the potential for enhancing Northeast Asian regional security. All Northeast Asian nations express support for such efforts, and the current trend toward multilateralism is generally consistent with U.S. foreign policy objectives in Asia as an important complement to America’s bilateral security arrangements, which remain the foundation of U.S. security policy in Asia.
Foremost among the official mechanisms is the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which brings together the foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) with other key regional players (Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, Japan, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Russia, South Korea, New Zealand, the United States, Vietnam, and the European Community)-twenty-two members in all-to discuss regional security issues. This annual ministerial gathering, first held in 1994, provides a clear signal of the growing regional commitment to multilateral security dialogue throughout the Asia-Pacific.
At the subregional level, the most prominent official effort is the Four-Party Talks among North and South Korea, China, and the United States that formally began in early December 1997 in Geneva, some twenty months after being originally proposed by then South Korean president Kim Young-Sam and U.S. president Bill Clinton. The Four-Party Talks have the specific aim of replacing the current Korean War Armistice with a formal Korean Peninsula Peace Treaty, ending the state of war that has existed on the peninsula for almost five decades. The talks are also intended to develop and pursue confidence building measures between North and South Korea.
Another multilateral governmental effort of great significance is the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), the multilateral vehicle established by the United States, Republic of Korea (ROK), and Japan to implement the October 1994 Agreed Framework Between the United States of America and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The Agreed Framework and KEDO are aimed at achieving “an overall resolution of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.” Their broader mutual goal is the promotion of peace and stability and the eventual peaceful reunification of the peninsula.
Other multilateral mechanisms aimed at enhancing Asia-Pacific security also exist at the nongovernmental or track-two level. Most prominent among them are the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) and the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD).
CSCAP was established in June 1993 to provide a structured process for regional confidence building and security cooperation among countries and territories in the Asia Pacific region by linking regional security-oriented institutes. CSCAP, though predating the ARF, is now focusing its efforts on providing direct support to this governmental forum while also pursuing other track-two diplomacy efforts.
The aim of NEACD is to enhance mutual understanding, confidence, and cooperation through meaningful but unofficial dialogue among China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and both South and North Korea. The aim of NEACD is to enhance mutual understanding, confidence, and cooperation through meaningful but unofficial dialogue among China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and both South and North Korea. Although North Korea has not participated in any of the eight formal NEACD meetings held since October 1993, the NEACD has been fruitful nonetheless, bringing together senior officials and academicians and security specialists from the other five countries for dialogue on political, security, and economic issues of concern to all parties.
This paper will review the efforts of these five major initiatives as well as briefly review selected other efforts that are either focused on or having an effect on Northeast Asia. The paper will focus on the U.S. government’s attitude and approach to multilateralism in general and these initiatives in particular. Special attention is paid to the Four-Party Talks, KEDO, and the NEACD since these are largely U.S.-initiated mechanisms aimed at satisfying specific foreign policy objectives.
It was not that long ago that most Asia-Pacific policymakers viewed multilateral security dialogue mechanisms with a great deal of apprehension and suspicion. As recently as 1991, when Japan’s foreign minister Nakayama suggested at an ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference (PMC) gathering that a forum be established to discuss regional security issues, his remarks were not well received by either the ASEAN states or their other dialogue partners.
The United States, in particular, was cool to such an idea. More comfortable with the one-on-one approach to security issues in Asia, U.S. officials at the time were hesitant to embrace multilateral approaches, especially for addressing security concerns. This was no doubt prompted, in part, by memories of previous failed efforts, specifically, the old Southeast Asia and Central Asia Treaty Organizations (SEATO and CENTO, respectively). Sponsorship of Asian multilateral initiatives by various Kremlin leaders during the Cold War, which were widely seen as thinly veiled attempts to dilute or eliminate American influence while gaining Soviet entry into Asia, also added to the earlier cautious approach toward multilateral security initiatives, both in Washington and Asia.
This is not to imply that security-oriented multilateral dialogue has been completely resisted or unsuccessful in the Asia-Pacific region. In many respects, the region’s militaries have been ahead of their political counterparts. For example, the Pacific Armies Senior Officer Logistics Seminar, instituted by the U.S. Army in 1971, today brings military officers together annually from over twenty Asia-Pacific nations to discuss common logistics matters and joint operations and training. Similarly, the Pacific Armies Management Seminar, established in 1978, provides a forum for senior military officers from more than thirty Asia-Pacific nations to discuss military management problems.
These forums remain relatively low-key, however, and are aimed primarily at promoting dialogue and increased understanding among the uniformed militaries at the middle and upper-middle management levels. They generally avoid potentially contentious issues.
With the end of the Cold War, there has been a decided shift in regional attitudes toward more senior-level, issue-oriented multinational security initiatives in Asia as well. On the U.S. side, the first clear signal of this shift was presented during the April 1993 Senate confirmation hearings of Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Winston Lord. He identified a commitment to enhance multilateral security dialogue as one of the Clinton administration’s ten priority policy goals for Asia.
Concurrently, voices were being raised within ASEAN calling for the introduction of security-related issues into PMC deliberations. One early instance occurred at the 1992 ASEAN-PMC in Manila when a joint statement was issued calling for the peaceful settlement of territorial disputes involving the Spratly Islands (claimed in whole by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam and in part by Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines). This change in attitude in favor of multilateral dialogue was solidified at the 1993 ASEAN-PMC meeting when the assembled foreign ministers met informally over lunch to talk about security matters. The group decided that they would reconvene the following year in Bangkok for the inaugural meeting of the precedent-setting ASEAN Regional Forum.
U.S. support for multilateral cooperation was underscored by President Clinton when he called for the creation of “a new Pacific community, built on shared strength, shared prosperity, and a shared commitment to democratic values.”
He identified four priorities for the security of this new community: a continued U.S. military presence/commitment, stronger efforts to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, support for democracy and more open societies, and the promotion of new multilateral regional dialogues on the full range of common security challenges.
The successful establishment and generally productive results to date of the ASEAN Regional Forum and KEDO, the promise (as yet unfulfilled) of fruitful engagement of the DPRK in the Four-Party Talks, and the willingness of government officials to actively participate (in their private capacities) in such track-two organizations as CSCAP and the NEACD provide ample evidence of both U.S. and broader regional acceptance of, and official governmental support for, multilateral security dialogue.
U.S. policymakers continually stress, however, that U.S. support for increased regionalism is based on the premise that such multilateral efforts complement or build on, and are not seen as a substitute for, enduring bilateral relationships. As Clinton’s four priorities stressed, the current U.S. bilateral military alliance structure-to include the basing of U.S. forces in Asia as a visible manifestation of America’s security commitment to its allies-serves as the “bedrock” for his vision of a new Pacific community. This central role of U.S. bilateral alliances in general, and of the U.S.-Japan security alliance in particular, as the “linchpin” of America’s national security strategy in Asia was reaffirmed in the pentagon’s December 1998 East Asia Strategy Report (EASR).
Some U.S. policymakers, especially within the Defense Department, remain concerned that a few regional proponents of multilateralism see this as an alternative to the American bilateral alliance structure. Chinese officials in particular have questioned the relevance of these U.S. bilateral alliances-“leftover vestiges of the Cold War”-and see multilateralism as the new security paradigm.
From a U.S. perspective, however, bilateralism and multilateralism are not mutually exclusive, but mutually supportive. This is not, and should not be seen as, an “either-or” proposition. Without solid bilateral relationships, few states would have the confidence to deal with one another in the broader context. Conversely, some problems can best, perhaps only, be solved bilaterally. It was with this one caveat firmly in mind and clearly articulated that the United States became engaged in multilateral security dialogue in earnest with the advent of the ARF.
The Chairman’s Statement issued at the end of the inaugural ARF meeting in Bangkok in July 1994 underscored the commitment of the participating nations “to foster the habit of constructive dialogue and consultation on political and security issues of common interest and concern” in order to make “significant efforts toward confidence-building and security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.” It was further agreed to make the ARF an annual event. Of particular note was the ARF’s willingness to look beyond the immediate ASEAN neighborhood and address broader regional concerns.
The second ARF meeting, held in Brunei in August 1995, was a full-day session aimed both at defining organizational principles concerning the ARF (including goals and expectations) and at determining how best (and how fast) to implement proposals and ideas. It was also agreed that the ARF would “move at a pace comfortable to all participants.” This was further defined in the 1995 ARF Concept Paper as being an “evolutionary” approach, beginning with a focus on the promotion of confidence-building measures. With time, ASEAN members saw the forum as being more pro-active, with preventive diplomacy as a midterm objective. Conflict resolution or the “elaboration of approaches to conflict” was identified in the Concept Paper as the ARF’s eventual goal. The potential importance of track-two activities was also fully recognized, and cooperation between official and nongovernmental efforts was encouraged.
ARF meetings since that time have been widely publicized full-day affairs and have included reports from the various Inter-Sessional Support Groups (ISGs) and ARF-sponsored track-two meetings, all with the aim of promoting greater confidence and mutual understanding in the region. The ARF’s potential future role as a preventive diplomacy mechanism has also been examined and, at least in principle, endorsed.
With one exception (when a crisis in the Middle East intervened), the U.S. secretary of state has attended each of the ARF meetings, along with a senior Defense Department representative, normally at the deputy assistant secretary level. The United States has seemed content to let the ASEAN states drive the agenda but has taken an active role in the various ISGs, initiating the group effort on search and rescue and co-hosting two ISG meetings (with Thailand) on confidence-building measures during 1998-99.
The ARF seems particularly well suited to serve as the consolidating and validating instrument behind many security initiatives proposed by governments and nongovernmental organization (NGO) gatherings in recent years, including efforts at the official and nongovernmental levels to develop innovative new measures for dealing with potentially sensitive regional security issues both in Northeast Asia and in the Asia Pacific region as a whole. ARF ministers have already surprised many security analysts by dealing with substantive, even contentious issues in a fairly direct manner. Nonetheless, the ARF has its limits, especially when it comes to Northeast Asian security issues. Although the ARF has taken a position on the need for increased dialogue between the DPRK and the ROK for instance, only the ROK is a member at present.
There are also few illusions about the speed with which the ARF will move. The agreement to “move at a pace comfortable to all participants” was aimed at tempering the desire of more Western-oriented members for immediate results in favor of the “evolutionary” approach of the ASEAN states, who see the process as being as important as its eventual substantive products. The time-honored Asian principle of “noninterference in one another’s internal affairs” also places some important topics essentially off limits. All appear to agree, for example, that one of the most potentially explosive East Asian security issues-namely, China-Taiwan-is an internal Chinese matter. The Chinese have also been reluctant to address conflicting claims in the South China Sea at the ARF, insisting instead on talks with ASEAN or with the other claimants on an individual basis.
Meanwhile, the need for consensus assures that the ARF will move ahead only as fast as its most cautious members desire or permit. This ensures that the evolution of the ARF from a “talk shop” for discussing confidence-building measures to a true preventive diplomacy mechanism (as called for in its Concept Paper) will be a long, difficult one, since several members (China and India, in particular) fear that moving ahead with preventive diplomacy will somehow open the door for ARF interference in the internal affairs of its members. It also underscores the utility of track-two mechanisms that can tackle the more difficult or more sensitive problems while focusing on mid- to long-range solutions.
During their April 1996 summit meeting on Cheju Island in the ROK, then-ROK president Kim Young-Sam and U.S. president Bill Clinton proposed Four-Party Talks among South and North Korea, the United States, and China. The expressed purpose of the talks was “to initiate a process aimed at achieving a permanent peace agreement,” thus replacing the current Korean War Armistice with a formal peace treaty and ending the state of war that has existed on the Korean peninsula for almost five decades.
The Four-Party Talks proposal was a direct response to Pyongyang’s continuing demand for direct bilateral peace talks with the United States. The joint presidential declaration flatly stated that the current armistice should be maintained until it is succeeded by a permanent North-South peace treaty and that “separate negotiations between the United States and North Korea on peace-related issues cannot be considered.”
The Four-Party Talks put the ball back in the North’s court by refusing to accept its unilateral declaration regarding the armistice and by flatly ruling out any hope of a separate peace agreement solely with the United States. The aim was to use the multilateral process, in the first instance, as a substitute for bilateral U.S.-DPRK talks that would isolate and alienate South Korea, while at the same time using this four-party process to facilitate eventual bilateral North-South direct dialogue.
After well over a year of tedious negotiations, all four parties finally agreed to enter into formal peace talks. The first meeting, chaired by the United States, took place in December 1997 in Geneva but was more ceremonial than substantive. Working-level preparatory talks for the second meeting were to begin in February 1998, but North Korea opted (for reasons known only to them) to skip this phase. The second official session, this time chaired by China, took place in March 1998. On the positive side, all parties did agree that, once underway, the talks could include discussion about potential North-South confidence-building measures as well as the establishment of a peace treaty. However, as they had in many of the earlier preparatory sessions, the North Koreans once again insisted that the subject of U.S. troop withdrawals also be put on the table. The United States and ROK just as consistently refused to allow this, and the meeting made no substantive progress toward establishing a Korean Peninsula Peace Treaty.
Pyongyang, after months of hesitation, agreed to resume the Four-Party Talks, and the third formal session, chaired by the ROK, took place on 21-24 October, 1998, in Geneva. The DPRK stuck to its demand that U.S. troop withdrawals be discussed and also persisted in its efforts to reach a separate treaty with the United States only, excluding the ROK. On the positive side, the DPRK did agree with an ROK proposal to establish two subcommittees, one to pursue a peace treaty and the other to investigate confidence-building measures. The key question now is how seriously the DPRK will participate in these subcommittee proceedings at the next scheduled meeting, in late January 1999 in Geneva, which the DPRK will chair.
Obviously, the mere holding of Four-Party Talks does not ensure their success. Difficult negotiations lie ahead and it is impossible to predict either the outcome of the talks or the terms of an eventual peace treaty. Events on the periphery of the talks, such as DPRK compliance with the Agreed Framework-to include the most recent controversy over the planned use of suspicious (possibly nuclear-related) facilities being constructed underground near the currently frozen nuclear research reactor-the continuation of missile testing or attempted satellite launches (especially if it again involves over-flight of Japan), and continued DPRK submarine espionage missions, all help sour the environment, as does the increasingly partisan nature of the Korean debate (and of foreign policy in general) in Washington.
In the final analysis, much depends on a DPRK decision to proceed in good faith. In my own discussions with DPRK officials, I notice a most welcome change in tone and attitude since Kim Dae-Jung’s election. For example, at UN-sponsored meetings in Jakarta and Kathmandu in February 1998 and again at the CSCAP Confidence and Security Building Measures (CSBM) Working Group meeting in Washington in May and the CSCAP North Pacific Working Group meeting in Beijing in November, the DPRK presentations were generally balanced and polite.
However, the positions put forth after Kim Dae-Jung’s December 1997 election have not varied significantly from earlier DPRK pronouncements; namely, that the Four-Party Talks should not discuss inter-Korean affairs but only a U.S.-DPRK peace treaty and U.S. troop withdrawal from the peninsula. Pyongyang still sees a co-equal confederation that respects both sides’ different systems as the near-term “solution” to the problem and discounts the need for ROK formal participation in the peace treaty. In short, the DPRK appears no less committed to their old positions, but the mere fact that the talks are proceeding is encouraging.
Impact of Asian Financial Crisis
The severe financial crisis in the ROK has not had a direct bearing on the Four-Party Talks themselves or on the major issues on or off the table. The ROK’s current economic difficulties, severe as they are, pale in comparison with those of the DPRK. (The joke in Seoul, however, is that former President Kim Young-Sam’s major accomplishment was in narrowing this gap-just not in the way South Koreans had anticipated.)
The crisis may have had an impact on the attitude of the South, however, while perhaps lowering the paranoia of the North. While the conventional wisdom has long held that the South was in no rush for reunification, given the enormous costs sure to be involved in absorbing the North, some in Seoul appeared in recent years to be challenging this view. The North, meanwhile, was ever suspicious of the South’s desire to force their collapse in order to absorb them. To the extent either of these views held sway in the past, they have significantly diminished today.
The ROK’s top priority today is getting its own economic house back in order, whereas the DPRK must look inward for the most serious threat to its own survival. Each sees the maintenance of the geopolitical status quo on the peninsula as in its interest (as do the other two members of the Four-Party Talks). One of the basic tenets of the ROK’s “constructive engagement policy” (also known as the “sunshine policy”) is the assurance that Seoul is not attempting to absorb the North-this represents a dramatic shift from previous policies that focused on reunification rather than reconciliation.
In short, one could argue that the financial crisis has thus contributed to a greater spirit of cooperation on both sides by decreasing Seoul’s incentive for promoting the DPRK’s collapse while hopefully reducing the DPRK’s paranoia about the ROK’s intentions. It should be noted, however, that Kim Dae-Jung had long advocated the positions outlined in the current ROK policy and this more conciliatory approach would likely have been followed even if the financial crisis had not occurred. The crisis makes this approach more politically acceptable in the South, however, and perhaps more believable by the North.
Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization
KEDO was established by the United States and its security partners to implement the U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework (a Pacific Forum CSIS study document). The success of the Agreed Framework thus far is closely linked to KEDO’s success in achieving its two primary objectives: arranging for fuel oil deliveries and arranging for the construction of two nuclear-power light water reactors (LWRs) to replace the DPRK’s more proliferation-prone graphite nuclear reactor (by negotiating the supply agreement and necessary support contracts). The August 1997 groundbreaking in the DPRK to prepare the site for construction of the first LWR was a major milestone that many critics predicted would never be reached. So, too, was the canning of the spent fuel from the DPRK’s existing (now shut down) nuclear reactor, which now remains under the watchful eye of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Of equal importance, the establishment of KEDO has provided a creative way for the ROK to be directly involved in the Agreed Framework process in a meaningful way. From its inception, the ROK has been a member of KEDO’s executive board and has had a direct role in KEDO’s decision-making process. ROK officials have been involved in all KEDO meetings with the DPRK; as a result, KEDO has become an important vehicle for direct North-South contact.
As the LWR project progresses, thousands of ROK workers will be traveling to the North and be coming in direct contact with the up to 10,000 DPRK workers who will be involved in construction activity (largely under ROK supervision). Although such activity is being kept low-key and may not technically qualify as direct dialogue, it is an important confidence-building mechanism.
In short, one of the unsung successes of KEDO is that it has transformed the bilateral U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework process into a multilateral dialogue in which the ROK now plays a leading role. This has also helped restore ROK confidence in the multilateral process; confidence that was shaken during the negotiating process leading up to the Agreed Framework.
KEDO has also successfully brought Japan into the Agreed Framework process. Japan is one of the three co-founders of KEDO and also sits on the executive board. In addition to the most obvious benefit-Japanese financial contributions-this direct participation has helped to ensure a coordinated approach toward the DPRK among the United States, the ROK, and Japan. Japan’s involvement here is particularly important since it is not a part of the four-party process and would otherwise feel cut out of peninsula decision making that affects Japan’s national security interests.
For KEDO to fulfill its obligations over the next decade, observers estimate that it will have to raise US$5-6 billion. The ROK and Japan are expected to provide the bulk of the money, but the future U.S. contribution is still expected to be in the tens of millions of dollars. President Kim Dae-Jung has pledged that Korea will keep its commitments to support KEDO and the LWR project. However, Seoul is publicly calling on Tokyo to front-load its contribution and on Washington for at least “token” U.S. support to the LWR project.
Japan has echoed the ROK’s call for greater U.S. financial support while agreeing to accelerate (but not increase) its contributions. Japan temporarily refused to move forward with this agreement in the aftermath of the DPRK’s apparent attempted satellite launch on 31 August 1998 (which resulted in a missile over-flight of Japanese territory) but has now agreed to commit the necessary funds. Renewed missile launches could again jeopardize this funding, however.
U.S. flexibility in easing the more immediate KEDO financial burden would certainly be helpful and appropriate, but even a token U.S. contribution to the LWR construction effort seems politically impossible today. As the Asian financial crisis causes trade deficits with Japan to skyrocket further and the ROK ceases to become the only Asian state with whom the United States enjoys a trade surplus, the prospects of the U.S. Congress trying to relieve the financial burden of either nation (especially Japan) becomes even more remote.
Worse yet, the Clinton administration seems increasingly unable to come up with the funds necessary to pay for its obligated fuel oil deliveries. This compelled Secretary of State Albright in mid-1998 to go hat in hand to Japan and Korea asking both of these hard-hit economies to help cover the United States’ share. As David G. Brown has noted, “this nickel and dime approach to a crucial foreign policy interest is inappropriate for a great power; it is putting at risk the benefits won through laudable American leadership. ”
Should any of KEDO’s three primary partners fail to fully fund their acknowledged share, the prospects for “peace and stability on a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula” will be severely set back. America’s failure to live up to its share of the bargain-or, worse yet, renewed appeals for its allies to cover Washington’s share (when the United States should be offering to lighten their load)-will also place strains on both the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-ROK alliances.
The recent agreement by the U.S. Congress to fund initial fiscal-year 1999 KEDO fuel oil shipments was helpful, although it comes with several long strings attached, including an insistence that “progress is being made on the implementation of the North-South dialogue.” The House-Senate Conference Report on HR4328 (Omnibus Appropriations Bill) also calls for the appointment of a “North Korea Policy Coordinator” and for progress on the implementation of the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. While the president retains the ability to waive certain restrictions on national security grounds, the legislation limits his flexibility and political room for maneuver and adds to the politicization of Korean peninsula security decision-making.
Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific
Among the most promising mechanisms at the track-two level is the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, which links regional security-oriented institutes and, through them, broad-based member committees composed of academicians, security specialists, and former and current foreign ministry and defense officials.
CSCAP member committees have been established in Australia, Canada, China, the European Community, Indonesia, Japan, North and South Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam. An Indian institute has joined as an associate member, and several UN organizations enjoy affiliate/observer status. In addition, individual Taiwan scholars and security specialists participate in working-group meetings in their private capacities.
CSCAP continues to focus its efforts on providing direct support to the ARF. Several CSCAP issue-oriented working groups are already focusing on specific topics outlined in the various ARF communiques. These include international working groups on confidence- and security-building measures, comprehensive and cooperative security, transnational crime, and maritime security cooperation, as well as the North Pacific Working Group, which is focused on establishing frameworks for Northeast Asia security cooperation. One of CSCAP’s current strengths is that it is one of the few multilateral organizations that can boast of DPRK membership-through Pyongyang’s Institute of Disarmament and Peace. DPRK representatives now regularly attend steering committee meetings and participate actively both in CSBM Working Group and North Pacific Working Group meetings.
Although a U.S. institute, the Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu, was among CSCAP’s founders, CSCAP’s formative years (1991-92) pre-dated U.S. official endorsement of the multilateral process, and there was little early government financial or moral support for its creation. By the time it was formally established in 1993, however, U.S. sentiments had shifted, and both State and Defense Department officials now regularly participate in CSCAP activities in their private capacities (even though there remains no direct U.S. government financial support for CSCAP, outside of a modest U.S. Department of Energy grant for the CSBM Working Group’s efforts on nuclear energy cooperation).
Many of the organizing institutes comprising the CSCAP steering committee have direct or close links to their respective foreign ministries, and former foreign ministry and defense officials are heavily represented at the various working group meetings, along with government representatives (again in their private capacities). CSCAP has maintained close links with the ARF; the ASEAN members of CSCAP have been instrumental in creating the ARF Concept Paper that guides its efforts.
CSCAP has also stimulated discussion and debate on the ARF’s possible future preventive diplomacy role first within its own working groups and also during a September 1997 track-two seminar conducted on behalf of the ARF. CSCAP plans to hold a Preventive Diplomacy Workshop in March 1999 that will define principles of preventive diplomacy and examine case studies of previous efforts in order to create broader understanding of the process. ARF ISG participants will be invited. This track-two effort continues to provide a forward-leaning vision as well as recommendations for getting there from here, thus setting the stage for future governmental deliberations.
This preventive-diplomacy effort provides a working example of how tracks 1 and 2 complement each other-the ARF ministers at the track-one level first identify preventive diplomacy as a potential future role of the ARF and then call for an independent track-two assessment of how to bring this about. Track-two participants, not being bound by current government positions, have the license to pursue more innovative and forward-leaning approaches and solutions. Their recommendations are likely to be tempered, however, by their close association and familiarity with government thinking. This may make their advice less bold and imaginative than one might expect from a purely academic exercise. But, it also increases the likelihood that their recommendations will be implemented or at least seriously considered by regional policymakers.
CSCAP North Pacific Working Group
Although all CSCAP working groups touch on Northeast Asia security as part of their broader deliberations, Northeast Asia is the sole focus of the North Pacific Working Group. The North Pacific Working Group’s first meeting was held in Tokyo in April 1995. Although the meeting was successful in setting an agenda for future study, it suffered from the lack of PRC or DPRK participation. The China Centre for International Studies (then a candidate CSCAP member) preferred to wait until China had officially become a full member of CSCAP before participating. And although the DPRK’s Institute of Disarmament and Peace had earlier joined CSCAP, it chose not to participate in this first meeting. No formal reason was given, but DPRK officials have informally expressed their discomfort with attending multilateral meetings in which the Korean peninsula is the sole or primary focus of attention or study. The focus of the first North Pacific Working Group was the development of a framework for stability on the Korean peninsula.
The North Pacific Working Group’s second meeting was held in Vancouver in January 1997. It focused more broadly on generalized frameworks for Northeast Asian security and was attended by representatives from all the Northeast Asian states (including the PRC and DPRK). At its third meeting in Tokyo in December 1997, the North Pacific Working Group examined Northeast Asia economic cooperation, emerging institutions, and confidence-building efforts, as well as explored the ARF’s potential role in Northeast Asia security affairs. A DPRK representative gave a presentation on regional confidence building that focused on peninsula security issues.
During the North Pacific Working Group’s fourth meeting in Beijing in November 1998, discussions focused on the security implications of the Asian financial crisis and on bilateral and multilateral developments and approaches. Once again, CSCAP-DPRK sent two representatives who were fully engaged in the discussions. Although the atmosphere remained cordial at the meeting, DPRK positions remain essentially unchanged and unyielding.
Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue
There have been many proposals in recent years for the creation of a six-party, or “four plus two,” dialogue mechanism among the United States, China, Japan, Russia, and the two Koreas. To date, none has been established at the formal, governmental level, despite the personal efforts of several regional leaders. Most specifically, then-ROK foreign minister Han Sung-joo proposed the creation of a Northeast Asia Security Forum at the second ARF meeting, and most recently ROK president Kim Dae-Jung has been proposing a Northeast Asia Regional Security Forum. Japan has made similar proposals for six-party talks, as has Russia, which is eager not to be left out of the Northeast Asia security process. The United States has been generally (but not enthusiastically) supportive of these initiatives, the Chinese much less so. China claims that holding official six-party talks is “premature” and cites DPRK reluctance as a reason. One also suspects a lack of eagerness on China’s part to involve Japan more intimately in regional security affairs. For its part, the DPRK, to date, has rejected all six-party proposals (governmental or nongovernmental) out of hand.
The most prominent and (partially) successful attempt to establish a four-plus-two mechanism at the track-two level is the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD) sponsored by the University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Its purpose is to enhance mutual understanding, confidence, and cooperation through meaningful dialogue in an unofficial setting. The NEACD has enjoyed strong U.S. government backing since its inception. At Winston Lord’s confirmation hearings to become President Clinton’s first assistant secretary of state for East Asia, Lord laid out the United States’ commitment to multilateral dialogue; the NEACD was a direct manifestation of this approach.
The NEACD was established to bring together two government officials (normally one each from the foreign and defense ministries) and two private individuals (normally noted academicians or security policy specialists) each from the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and the two Koreas for dialogue on political, security, and economic issues of concern to all parties. The NEACD has now met eight times since October 1993, most recently in Moscow in November 1998. Although DPRK representatives attended a preparatory meeting in July 1993, it has not participated in any of the formal meetings held to date.
DPRK spokesmen acknowledge Pyongyang’s commitment, at least in principle, to multilateral security dialogue, with one important caveat; namely, that the dialogue not be directed specifically toward (that is, against) them. The DPRK’s resistance to four-plus-two settings also stems from their resentment, if not feeling of betrayal, over the lack of progress in establishing diplomatic relations with both Japan and the United States.
After both Koreas joined the UN and Beijing and Moscow established diplomatic relations with Seoul, there was an expectation in Pyongyang that Washington and Tokyo would soon follow suit and recognize the DPRK. Ironically, it was DPRK actions-specifically their threatened pullout of the nonproliferation treaty and refusal to permit International Atomic Energy Agency inspections-that delayed this outcome.
Nonetheless, DPRK spokesmen continue to make it clear that the DPRK has no intention of participating in four-plus-two dialogues until “all bilateral relationships are in balance,” that is, until the United States and Japan recognize the DPRK. Instead, DPRK officials maintain that, “in order to ensure security in the region through multilateral negotiations, it is important to create an atmosphere of confidence building above all by resolving the complicated issues bilaterally.”
NEACD continues to serve as an extremely useful dialogue mechanism despite the absence of the DPRK. In fact, one could argue that its absence probably contributes to the frankness and openness of debate among the remaining five. NEACD members initially set up two study projects consisting of one participant from each country to examine more closely mutual reassurance measures and principles governing state-to-state relations. The mutual reassurance measures study project laid out some general guidelines and identified specific topics for further study, including defense-information sharing (the subject of several NEACD-sponsored working group meetings) and energy-related cooperation. At the December 1997 Tokyo NEACD meeting, the participants also approved a set of general principles for consideration by their respective governments. The Asian financial crisis and its security implications were among the topics of discussion at the eighth NEACD in Moscow in November 1998.
The NEACD is sometimes referred to as “track-one and one-half” because government officials and academicians from government-sponsored institutes are heavily represented. Although this sort of representation can inhibit debate by locking participants more closely to government positions than at other track-two forums, it is also one of the NEACD’s strengths, since it comes close to serving as the Northeast Asian governmental forum that most nations want but have been unable thus far to achieve.
Should the DPRK elect finally to join, or if the other five governments decide to proceed with some type of formal official regional security forum without the DPRK (while keeping the door open for Pyongyang’s eventual participation), the NEACD will provide the ready-made blueprint. At that point, the decision will have to be made whether to let NEACD evolve into the governmental forum by excluding the current nongovernmental participants or to have NEACD and the new organization coexist. In the latter case, NEACD would take on the track-two support role for the new Regional Security Forum, similar to CSCAP’s role in support of the ARF.
One note of possible concern: The U.S. government is normally represented at NEACD meetings by senior representatives from the Departments of State and Defense, including an officer from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The level of representation has varied, however, and has steadily fallen below the deputy assistant secretary level, which others may read as a signal of diminishing U.S. commitment to the NEACD process.
Other Northeast Asia Initiatives
Several other subregional efforts focused on Northeast Asia also show promise, and others may prove useful in overcoming lingering regional apprehensions about the future intentions of many of the region’s central actors. Both official and NGO forums seem useful, with the latter better suited to dealing initially with politically sensitive issues. In some instances, the track-two efforts are aimed at facilitating eventual official dialogue.
For example, in August 1994 the Pacific Forum CSIS and the Gaston Sigur Center for East Asian Studies at George Washington University sponsored what is believed to have been the first-ever (while still unofficial) meeting among defense (including uniformed military) officials from Japan, the ROK, and the United States, providing a politically acceptable forum for the three sides to discuss common security concerns while bringing the United States’ two closest allies in Northeast Asia closer to one another. Such talks have now become formalized, as has direct military-to-military dialogue between Seoul and Tokyo. The nongovernmental participants, having served their purpose in bringing the three sides together, have now bowed out.
Many other Northeast Asia multilateral initiatives focus on the different sets of three-way regional relationships, most prominently examining U.S.-China-Japan, U.S.-Russia-Japan, and U.S.-Japan-Korea relations. The United States and Japan have expressed interest in formalizing three-way official governmental dialogue with China, but Beijing appears more comfortable keeping such efforts at the track-two level at present.
Another somewhat more contentious track-two initiative is the Asia-Pacific Security Forum, which was established in 1997. Sponsored by Taiwan’s Institute for National Policy Research, its agenda includes PRC-Taiwan cross-straits relations-a subject that is specifically not on the agenda of any dialogue in which mainland China security specialists formally participate. As a general rule, Chinese officials are prohibited and Chinese security specialists are strongly discouraged from participating even in general security discussions if Taiwan officials or scholars are present or if cross-straits relations or other China “sovereignty issues” are being discussed. Many (myself included) would argue that this self-exclusionary policy works against China’s long-term interests and adds to the general lack of understanding and mistrust between Beijing and Taipei.
The UN has also gotten into the track-two act. For the past ten years, the UN Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific has sponsored “unofficial” meetings in which regional scholars and government officials gather in Kathmandu, Nepal, and other locations to discuss various regional and global disarmament issues in what has become known as the “Kathmandu process.” All Northeast Asian nations regularly participate, including both the DPRK and the ROK. Despite the nonofficial status of the Kathmandu process, Taiwan has not been invited to these meetings, since, though unofficial, the gatherings are still UN-affiliated and Taiwan has been specifically excluded from UN events because of strong PRC objections.
Other major track-two initiatives include a series of Indonesian-hosted workshops on the South China Sea that focus on technical issues among the various Spratly Island claimants and a Philippine-hosted series examining the security implications of conflict over these islands. Both are aimed at promoting greater understanding and cooperation in order to reduce the prospects of conflict in this potentially volatile area.
Benefits Of Multilateral Cooperation
Emerging multilateral security mechanisms in Asia can be important vehicles for promoting long-term peace and stability. Institutionalized multilateral forums can be most valuable if they serve as confidence-building measures aimed at avoiding, rather that reacting to, crises or aggression. In time, they should also be capable of dealing with less politically sensitive, nontraditional security concerns such as disaster relief, coordination of refugee problems, and pollution and other environmental issues. In this regard, the decision by the ARF to establish a working group to discuss multinational cooperation in the area of search-and-rescue seems particularly noteworthy. It also provides a vehicle for uniformed military participation in this track-one effort in a positive, nonthreatening context.
Multilateral settings can also facilitate bilateral (or subregional) dialogue among nations and their official or unofficial representatives who, for a variety of reasons, may be unable or ill-prepared to make arrangements directly with one another. The annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Meetings, for example, made it possible for President Clinton to engage in direct discussions with Chinese president Jiang Zemin during Clinton’s first term in office when bilateral summit meetings would have been otherwise politically impossible to arrange. These meetings helped set the stage for the successful 1997-98 Clinton-Jiang summits in Washington and Beijing.
Multilateral security mechanisms are, by their mere existence, confidence-building measures, in that they promote greater trust and understanding in the region. They also provide a forum for the further investigation and development of confidence-building measures that may be applied either regionwide or on a more selective, subregional basis. In this, as in many other instances of multilateral dialogue, the process itself is an extremely important product, since increased dialogue promotes increased understanding, which, in turn, may lead to a reduced risk of conflict.
Multilateral forums also provide a venue for other regional actors to be heard on security issues that affect them all. Track-two organizations such as CSCAP and NEACD can provide “benign cover” for governments to vet new policies and strategies in a more academic setting before adopting formal proposals at the official level. Nongovernmental organizations can also provide a voice to nations, territories, and regional groupings that, for a variety of reasons, might be excluded from official gatherings. Especially important in this regard in CSCAP’s case is the ability to provide the Chinese people on Taiwan with a voice in regional security affairs, given Beijing’s refusal to permit Taiwanese representation in official forums.
In addition, nations or entities that might find it uncomfortable or politically unacceptable to engage in bilateral dialogue can still effectively interact at the multinational level, particularly in NGO forums. As noted earlier, forums such as CSCAP can provide a useful means for Koreans from both the DPRK and the ROK to engage one another in broader security discussions that otherwise may be difficult to arrange. Asian multinational gatherings also contribute to a sense of regional identity and cooperation that can spill over into the political and economic spheres, just as growing political and economic cooperation has helped set the stage for an expanded security dialogue.
Multilateral security forums provide a framework for enhanced U.S. involvement in Asian security that complements the United States’ current bilateral security commitments. They permit Japan to become more actively involved in regional security matters in a manner that is nonthreatening to neighboring countries. They also provide a useful vehicle for greater interaction between China and its neighbors while promoting greater transparency regarding Chinese capabilities and intentions.
Multilateralism also provides Russia with opportunities for greater regional integration while bolstering those in the Kremlin most committed to international cooperation. Finally, nongovernmental forums provide a venue for bringing DPRK officials into direct contact with their southern counterparts in a less-confrontational atmosphere, while also helping expose them to broader regional realities.
A clear understanding of the weaknesses and boundaries of Asian multilateral security organizations is also needed in order to prevent false or over-optimistic expectations and allow the nations of the region to maximize the opportunities and benefits to be derived from multilateral approaches to regional security.
Broad-based institutionalized multilateral forums like the ARF are useful vehicles for discussing potential problems but seem ill-equipped (and not very eager) when it comes to resolving crises once they have occurred. This is especially true if the use of force is contemplated or proves necessary. The ARF is not today, nor does it have aspirations of becoming, a military alliance.
In the event of military hostilities or a clear threat to U.S. national security interests in Asia, the United States is more likely to act in concert with its existing allies or through an ad hoc grouping of like-minded states similar to the Desert Storm coalition assembled to deal with Iraqi aggression during 1990-91. A standing NATO-type alliance aimed at defeating or containing a specified threat simply does not apply to a post-Cold War Asia-nor, for that matter, was it possible to sustain it even at the height of the Cold War.
Multilateral dialogue is useful on the Korean peninsula because it creates a more cooperative environment and builds a level of familiarity and comfort, if not trust and confidence, between the two sides. But there are limits to how far the multilateral process can go, given the strong belief (both in Seoul and in Pyongyang) that, ultimately, a Korean solution must be found to this Korean problem. In the final analysis, direct dialogue between South and North still appears essential to reducing tensions, building confidence, and eventually helping to bring about the peaceful reunification of the peninsula.
As noted earlier in describing the ARF, multilateral organizations (governmental and nongovernmental) generally act through consensus in setting their agendas and making recommendations. This decision style acts as a brake of sorts on how fast these organizations can move forward. For this reason, those promoting multilateral dialogue and various forms of regional confidence building realize the continued value and relevance of unilateral and bilateral measures that not only build trust and confidence in their own right but also help lay the foundation for broader-based cooperation. Such efforts set useful precedents and place pressures on multilateral organizations to move forward.
Emerging Asia-Pacific multilateral security mechanisms hold great potential for enhancing regional security. Efforts that build on and seek to complement, not replace existing bilateral security relationships that already exist in Asia are of particular value from a U.S. perspective.
Although multilateral security initiatives hold many promises for Asia, understanding their limits as well as the opportunities they present is important. A NATO-type alliance aimed at containing a specified threat simply does not apply to a post-Cold War Asia. Rather, emerging mechanisms should be viewed more as confidence-building measures aimed at avoiding or dampening the possibilities of, rather than reacting to, crises or aggression.
As far as the Korean peninsula is concerned, significant progress is expected to be slow and contingent on eventual active, constructive participation by the DPRK. Although formal arrangements such as the ROK-proposed Northeast Asia Regional Security Forum do not appear likely in the near term-for that matter, it is difficult to envision an Association of Northeast Asian States, even with an economic or political focus-track-two approaches like the NEACD and CSCAP hold some promise. Meaningful progress, especially at the official level, will require a resumption of South-North dialogue. Subsequent recognition of the DPRK by both Japan and the United States as part of the process leading to the establishment of a permanent peace regime on the Korean peninsula is an important interim step toward eventual reunification.
Japan’s Emerging View of Security Multilateralism in Asia
by Akiko Fukushima
Background: The Evolution of Security Multilateralism in Asia
A discussion of multilateralism is perhaps best begun by posing the question, what is multilateralism? In the world of international relations, the term multilateralism means much more than its simple quantitative definition of relations among three or more parties. John Gerard Ruggie has described the qualities of multilateral institutions as (1) generalized principles shared by members, (2) indivisibility of welfare among participants, and (3) diffuse reciprocity. Generalized principles are rules that govern the behavior of multilateral institution members regardless of individual preferences. Ruggie illustrates generalized principles of conduct by using the most favored nation treatment in the economic sphere and by using collective security in the security sphere. Indivisibility of welfare means that costs and benefits are spread among members; for example, if troubles afflict one country, there would be ramifications for institution members. Their stakes are indivisible. International public goods are good examples of indivisibility. Diffuse reciprocity means that a member of a multilateral institution, in cooperating with other members, expects rewards, not necessarily on every issue all the time, but members do expect to benefit eventually. In other words, benefits to members of a multilateral institution are not immediate but are diffused over a longer timeline. Can we observe this kind of multilateralism in the Asia Pacific today?
In Europe and the Asia Pacific, multilateralism has painted a very contrasting landscape. Europe has a rich history of multilateral cooperation dating back to the European Concert of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, leading to the post-World War II multilateral constructs of the European Community (EC) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to name a few.
In sharp contrast, the Asia Pacific region has experienced nothing on a scale comparable to the European Concert, NATO, or the European Union (EU), though the Southeast Asia subregion established the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967 for multilateral political and economic cooperation. ASEAN, however, could not gain the kind of substantial momentum during the Cold War that it has today. International relations in the Asia Pacific grew mainly along bilateral lines, leaving the region devoid of intergovernmental multilateralism. Nonetheless, there have been some attempts to create multilateral organizations. On the economic front, in 1968, business leaders in Pacific Rim countries created the Pacific Basin Economic Conference (PBEC) to exchange views, and they have hosted annual plenary and steering committee meetings ever since. In 1980 the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) was launched in Canberra following a meeting sponsored by Japan and Australia to examine the idea of economic cooperation in the region. Participation in PECC has been by a tripartite of entities; namely, government officials in their private capacities, members of the private sector, and academia. PECC holds a major conference every two years and sponsors forums and working groups on functional areas such as energy and trade policy; however, PECC did not develop into an intergovernmental process.
On the security front, ASEAN was far from being a multilateral security institution, as indicated in the declaration on the Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) adopted in the first meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers in 1971. Although the governing principle of “freedom” denotes an opposition to communism, the institution, which also upholds neutrality as a governing principle, can be regarded as pursuing a security agenda only indirectly at best.
The United States under the Truman administration considered the idea of a collective security system for the Pacific; the Eisenhower administration pursued the idea further and in 1955 set up the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) to counter communist insurgency in Southeast Asia, but its limitations soon became apparent. Asian states were unwilling to discuss embarrassing security problems in the SEATO forums, and the United States was unwilling to have its activities scrutinized by SEATO. The wars in Laos and Vietnam illustrated SEATO’s inadequate handling of countersubversion. By the mid-1960s, the SEATO alliance was no longer in the mainstream of security cooperation in Southeast Asia. Following the fall in April 1975 of the U.S. supported regimes in Vietnam and Cambodia, SEATO started to crumble and eventually dissolved on 20 June 1977. Simply put, SEATO did not work. The United States realized its shortcomings shortly after its creation in 1955, and began realigning itself accordingly, although SEATO was kept alive, at least in form, for twenty-two years.
What came closest to a NATO in the Asia Pacific was the ANZUS Treaty or Security Treaty between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, which was concluded in 1951. Australia was concerned about a re-militarization of Japan and wanted to have an alliance with the United States. However, as the Cold War progressed, by the mid-1950s the target of ANZUS shifted to preventing the spread of communism.
Nations of the Asia Pacific, therefore, found that a bilateral, rather than a multilateral, approach was more appropriate, particularly for security issues. They opted for mutual security treaties, mainly with the United States, which resulted in the so-called hub-and-spoke type of security architecture in the Asia Pacific.
Why did the Asia Pacific lack regional multilateral security institutions? The factors most frequently cited are the region’s extreme diversity in terms of population, per capita gross domestic product (GDP), economic and political systems, military preparedness, cultural heritage, religion, historical experience, and ethnicity. Differences in population range from China’s, at 1.2 billion, to Brunei’s, at 300,000; per capita GDP ranges from the United States, Canada, and Japan at the high end of the scale to Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos on the low end. Ethnic makeup also ranges from countries like Japan and Korea, which are ethnically homogeneous, to Singapore and Malaysia, which have a dynamic mix of ethnic groups. This diversity among potential members of an Asian multilateral institution has been the major inhibiting factor in creating a regional institution because potential members they do not share common behavioral norms.
Another reason often given for the absence of multilateral security institutions is the lack of a shared perception of threat as well as a lack of shared values to uphold in the Asia Pacific. In the case of NATO during the Cold War, members shared a common enemy in the Soviet Union and had common values, namely liberal democracy, the market economy, and preventing the spread of communism by the Soviet Union. On the other hand, states in the Asia Pacific have been more or less afraid of each other and have thus lacked a perception of a common external threat. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was the common threat for the United States, Japan, Canada, and China (after its confrontation with the Soviet Union). However, threats for other countries were various; Korea’s threat was China, Vietnam’s threat was China, and ASEAN’s threat was domestic instability. During the Cold War, Asia did not have the conditions needed to create a multilateral alliance similar to NATO.
Some scholars have argued that another reason why Asia has long been resistant to multilateralism is because of its history of domination by external powers in the region. Imperial China’s long-standing colonial dominance up until the middle of the nineteenth century was followed by Western colonial domination, and then by the Japanese prewar attempt to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Wary of being ruled by other powers and having their interests marginalized, Asian countries had thus avoided forming a multilateral institution. The loss of sovereignty is not a distant memory in some Asian countries.
This landscape, however, started to change in the 1990s. As a result of growing economic interdependence, including an increase of intraregional trade among Asia Pacific economies, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Conference was launched as an informal dialogue on economic cooperation in November 1989. Coincidentally, this was the same month the Berlin Wall, symbol of the Cold War, came tumbling down. With the successful evolution of APEC, despite the initial skepticism of such an intergovernmental regional framework, the impetus to create a regional security organization gradually followed.
So what kind of regional security order has evolved in the Asia-Pacific, if any? First let us consider the three major types of regional security mechanisms and then view them in the Asia Pacific context. They are (1) a collective defense institution that requires a common threat or an enemy shared by member states, such as NATO; (2) a concert-type multilateral security cooperation short of collective defense alliance or enforcement mechanisms necessary to deter an aggressor state, such as the European Concert or entente cordiale after the Napoleonic War-a concert regulates relations among major powers by sharing information about capabilities and intentions and by creating norms of cooperation; and (3) security dialogue forums, such as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).
Of these three types of regional security mechanisms, Asia does not have the first type and will most likely be unable to create one in the foreseeable future. Asia does not embrace the second type of structure encompassing the whole region, since countries do not share strong enough incentives to act together. Each country seems to have its own concerns and threats that are not necessarily shared by the whole region. However, some Asian countries have formed issue-specific coalitions such as the cases of Cambodian peace in the early 1990s and the Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO) formed in the mid-1990s to manage the question of nuclear power development by the DPRK.
Meanwhile, in the 1990s several of the third type of architectures, security dialogues, have emerged in the Asia Pacific. The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is the most notable example. Some subregional security discourses have the potential to work as a concert of powers, if they do not do so already.
Japan’s Multilateral Security Cooperation Until The End Of The Cold War
During the Cold War, bilateralism-or more specifically a bilateral alliance with the United States-was at the core of Japan’s security policy, leaving little room for multilateralism. This is an inevitable consequence of the dearth of multilateral security institutions in the Asia-Pacific as well as of the bitter taste left in Japan’s mouth from experiences of the period prior to World War II.
Japan made its debut at a multilateral forum for the first time after the Meiji Restoration (1867) when it was invited to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as one of the victorious powers of World War I. Up until that point, an alliance with the United Kingdom had been the mainstay of Japan’s foreign relations. In Paris, having been selected to be a part of a supreme executive Council of Ten, which consisted of two delegates each from the five major victorious powers, “Japan felt that it was finally recognized as a power not only in Asia but also in the world.” Reporting on the Paris Peace Conference, the Japanese media trumpeted that Japan had finally became a “first-class country.”
In the ensuing negotiations, however, the Japanese contribution was dismal, because the delegation, headed by Kinmochi Saionji, was instructed from Tokyo to simply follow the majority positions expressed at the Peace Conference, in particular that of the United Kingdom, unless an issue was to undermine Japanese interests. When the creation of a draft committee on a Covenant of the League of Nations was discussed on 25 January, according to the U.S. daily newspaper The New York Sun,ѻdelegations in turn made speeches to favor the creation of the League of Nations. What attracted the attention of the attendees was the Japanese delegation who buried their heads in their notebooks busy taking notes and did not utter a word.” Silent during most of the Paris Peace Conference, Japan failed to fulfill its role as a first-class country and subsequently was humiliatingly dubbed the “silent partner.”
Another multilateral forum Japan was invited to attend was the Washington Naval Conference held from November 1921 to February 1922. The United States took the initiative to convene the conference to control the naval armament race. The conference produced the Washington Treaty, reducing the number of warships and carriers to a ratio of 10:10:6 among the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan, respectively. Since Japan wanted to achieve the ratio of 10:10:7, the conference left Japan terribly dissatisfied. More importantly, the conference also terminated the U.K.-Japan alliance, which had been the core of Japanese foreign policy, and replaced it with the Four-Power Treaty on the Pacific, committing to respect the sovereign rights of signatories, that is, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. The conference also produced the Nine-Power Treaty on China signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, China, and Portugal. This treaty committed signatories to honoring the sovereign right, independence, and territorial and administrative preservation of China; and it aimed to prevent any further aggression of Japan into China.
The United States introduced these multilateral treaties in order to end the .K.-Japan bilateral alliance that had been the core of Japanese foreign relations and that had supported the Japanese war against Russia and China. But the new multilateral treaties produced at the Washington Conference were much weaker than the bilateral Japan-U.K. alliance, which, in retrospect, left Japan feeling somewhat insecure. Therefore, Japan sought a new, stronger alliance after the Washington Conference, leading to the subsequent Axis alliance with Germany and Italy and to World War II.
Despite Japanese dissatisfaction over the outcome of the Washington Conference, then-Foreign Minister Kijuro Shidehara did try to honor the Versailles-Washington System and to maintain multilateral cooperation with the United States and the United Kingdom. Although some in Japan argued that the time was ripe for further expansion into China in order to take advantage of Chinese domestic instability at the time, Shidehara honored the Washington agreement of nonintervention. In 1927, the United Kingdom and subsequently the United States asked Japan to join their alliance by sending Japanese troops to China when Shanghai, inhabited by many foreigners, including Japanese, was about to be hit by the Chinese reformist army. Shidehara rejected the request. In his foreign policy, with the exception of dispatching Japanese troops to China, Shidehara collaborated closely with the United States and the United Kingdom. In fact, he worked relatively more closely with the United States than with Japan’s traditional ally, the United Kingdom.
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Giichi Tanaka, who rose through the ranks of the Japanese Army, was dissatisfied with the Washington system. When Tanaka later succeeded Shidehara as foreign minister in April 1927, he took a different approach than his predecessor, however, and did not hesitate to use military force to secure Japanese interests overall and in China in particular; for example, Tanaka sent troops to Shangdong Province in June 1927. Tensions escalated, culminating with a railway explosion that later became known as the Manchurian Incident of September 1931.
The League of Nations was concerned with this Japanese expansionism in China and sent an investigatory mission headed by Victor A. G. B. Lytton in response to a Chinese request. Based on the mission’s findings in 1932, a resolution was adopted on 24 February 1933 charging Japan with undertaking aggressive activities in China; the vote on the resolution showed forty-two in favor, one against (Japan); and one abstention (Thailand). Japan responded to the accusation by withdrawing from the League, of which it was a founding member, in March 1933. The League of Nations’ response to the Manchurian Incident did not help to enhance Japan’s sympathy toward multilateralism. From that point on, Japan was isolated from the international community-except Germany and Italy, with whom Japan entered World War II in alliance-until the San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed nearly two decades later.
Emerging from World War II in defeat, Japan was very anxious to return to the international community, the symbol of which in the eyes of the Japanese was accession to the UN. In the 1950s Japan had embraced a very idealistic image of the UN to the extent that it expected the UN to protect Japan’s national security. This euphoria or idealism about the UN, however, was short-lived. With the paralysis of the UN collective security by the Cold War divide, Japan naturally leaned on the U.S.-Japan security alliance for security and foreign policy; this reliance was well reflected in what has been called the Yoshida Doctrine, which was established as Japan’s foreign policy during Shigeru Yoshida’s tenure as prime minister until December 1954.
The first tenet of the Yoshida Doctrine was for Japan to belong to the Western camp in the Cold War divide, particularly placing its alliance with the United States as the core of Japanese foreign policy. The second tenet of the doctrine was to rely on U.S. military force to defend Japan from external threats based on the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and in return to provide base facilities for U.S. military forces in Japan. Yoshida aimed at minimizing Japan’s own defense preparedness and prioritized economic reconstruction over military buildup. The third tenet of the doctrine was to emphasize economic diplomacy. Yoshida underscored close economic relations with the United States, with its abundance of raw materials and a huge market for Japanese manufactured products, as well as collaboration with the international economic community.
The Yoshida Doctrine prevailed more or less throughout the Cold War. Although Japan enunciated “UN-centered diplomacy” as one of the three pillars of its foreign policy when it joined the UN, the paralysis of the UN itself along the Cold War divide did not leave much room for Japan to truly exercise this policy. This left Japan with bilateral relations as a main venue for its foreign policy. Japan was not in a position to lead multilateral security relations, given its constitution and the role of the Self-Defense Forces designated as defense only. Some scholars argue that Japan’s aggressive past in East Asia prevented it from taking any initiative in multilateral settings for fear that neighbors in the region might harbor deep suspicions about its true intention.
As a matter of fact, proposals on multilateral security cooperation came from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev first proposed an Asian Community on Security in 1969. The region received this proposal as mere propaganda at best. Later, when General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev proposed a Pacific Ocean Conference along the lines of the Helsinki Conference in his Vladivostok speech in July 1986, and a regionwide security consultative community with a seven-point proposal in his Krasnoyarsk speech in September 1988, the region, including Japan, again received Gorbachev’s proposals as mere propaganda. Moreover, the Soviet proposals included a freeze on naval forces in the western Pacific, limitations on air and naval forces around the Korean peninsula, and nuclear-free zones for Korea and for the Indian Ocean; Japan saw the proposal as aiming at naval disarmament to the advantage of the Soviet Union, since in the Asia Pacific theater the Soviets had inferior naval capabilities and superior ground power vis-à-vis the United States. Japan also saw the Soviet Union’s proposal on a multilateral forum as a means to drive a wedge into the Japan-U.S. security alliance. Thus, Japan did not take up the Soviet proposal for multilateralism in the Asia Pacific.
Post-Cold War Evolution Of Japan’s Security Multilateralism
Around the end of the Cold War, regional multilateral proposals emerged from countries other than the Soviet Union. In 1990, when Australian and Canadian foreign ministers first proposed an Asian version of the CSCE, the region was not ready to accept the idea. Whereas Canadian external affairs minister Joe Clark’s proposal was an adaptation of the CSCE to the North Pacific, the Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans proposed that the whole of Asia adopt CSCE and call it CSCA.
These proposals, strongly influenced by the success of the CSCE, were received coldly, if not rejected outright, by ASEAN, China, and the United States. Japan also rejected a “CSCA” idea on the grounds that security imperatives are different in the Asia-Pacific region from those in Europe and therefore require different mechanisms to maintain security. Specifically, Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu in July 1990 stated that it was too early for an Asian CSCE.
In August 1990 Japan’s Foreign Ministry rejected both the Canadian and Australian proposals by saying that “Japan doubts if such a grouping could produce fruitful results. . . . Conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region would be better settled through meetings of the concerned parties rather than at an international security forum.” Japan argued that Asia needed Asian solutions for its security needs, tantamount to a web of bilateral alliances. Japan was still very skeptical of the virtue of security multilateralism that might undermine its bilateral alliance with the United States, with memories of the 1920-21 Washington Conference in mind. Japan was also said to be concerned that a CSCE-type security construct would obstruct the settlement of the Northern Territories issue.
As signs of the Cold War have dissipated, however, Japan has seen the new Russia, the traditional advocate of security multilateralism in the region, pursuing democracy and sharing more or less the same values as Japan. This transition has led to a change in the Japanese position on regional security cooperation.
Japan reversed its position conspicuously on regional security multilateralism after Gorbachev’s visit to Tokyo in April 1991, which marked the first visit by the head of the Soviet Union to Japan. During his visit to Japan, Gorbachev emphasized that the Soviet Union no longer opposed the U.S.-Japan alliance. This removed Japan’s concern about Russia secretly wanting to drive a wedge into the Japan-U.S. security alliance with multilateral security proposals and signaled a shift in Japan’s foreign policy toward Russia, from disengagement to engagement. As a manifestation of this shift, Japan announced during Gorbachev’s visit that it welcomed Soviet participation in PECC.
Japan’s next step was taken by Foreign Minister Taro Nakayama in his speech at the ASEAN-PMC in July 1991. He proposed the creation of a multilateral security dialogue within the ASEAN-PMC framework. This initiative represented Japan’s first regional security initiative since the end of World War II. However, Nakayama’s proposal did not get much support in the meeting. Prior to this proposal, the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in ASEAN countries (ASEAN-ISIS) met in Jakarta in June 1991 to discuss its recommendations to the fourth ASEAN summit to be held in Singapore the following year. The meeting adopted the memorandum entitled “An ASEAN Initiative for an Asia-Pacific Political Dialogue,” which proposed looking into the creation of a multilateral security framework, Conference on Stability and Peace in the Asia Pacific, or CSPAP, using the existing institution, namely ASEAN-PMC. The meeting declared as follows: “[ASEAN] should be a creative initiator as well as an active participant . . . for maintaining peace in the region. . . . We propose that at the end of each PMC an ASEAN-PMC-initiated conference be held at a suitable retreat which will allow for the appropriate ambiance for the constructive discussion of Asia-Pacific stability and peace.”
Immediately following the ASEAN-ISIS meeting in Jakarta, the Foreign Office of the Philippines hosted the Conference on ASEAN and the Asia-Pacific Region: Prospects for Security Cooperation in the 1990s. This conference made similar proposals to enhance and expand the function of ASEAN-PMC for a security dialogue. This new ASEAN position on regional security cooperation was said to have stemmed from its concern about a possible withdrawal of the U.S. military from Asia.
Regional security cooperation was designed to be an insurance policy in the case of an American departure. Some in ASEAN cite Japan as a reason for creating a multilateral institution in the Asia Pacific. Kusuma Snitwongse of the Thai Institute for Strategic Studies, for example, argues that “ASEAN members are concerned that if there is a rupture in the U.S.-Japan military alliance or if the United States reduces its military operations, Japan might be left with the feeling that it has to undertake its own defense.” Kusuma also noted that “the U.S.-Japan conflicts over trade issues appear at times disturbing, fraught with the potential to create a decisive rift between the two countries.”
Ambassador Yukio Satoh, then Director General of the Foreign Ministry’s Intelligence and Analysis Bureau was invited to the Jakarta and Manila meetings held in June 1991. He agreed with the ASEAN participants that the time was ripe for establishing an Asia-Pacific regional security dialogue, which led him to recommend the proposal to then-Foreign Minister Nakayama. Nakayama’s proposal was in line with the recommendation of the ASEAN-ISIS conference held in Jakarta.
Nonetheless, neither the ASEAN-PMC dialogue partners nor even the ASEAN members received this proposal warmly. Thus, the question remained as to why the proposal was not accepted at the 1991 ASEAN-PMC meeting. Various explanations were given. Some observers strongly underscored the lack of prior consultation with member states before submitting the official proposal and the fear of Japan assuming a leadership role in regional security. Another plausible explanation is that the memorandum was for the next ASEAN summit held in Singapore in February 1992, and the Nakayama proposal surfaced too soon in an official setting. Some scholars have pointed out that ASEAN, which wanted to expand the membership of a new security forum beyond ASEAN-PMC members by including China, Russia, and the DPRK, was uncomfortable with Nakayama’s idea of limiting membership to ASEAN-PMC. Moreover, ASEAN members were uneasy with Nakayama’s proposal to create a Senior Official Meeting (SOM) for a new security forum, since ASEAN did not want to create an image that the PMC would be perceived as a security forum rather than a more general economic forum.
Notwithstanding this rather unsuccessful experience, Japan remained supportive of the idea of a regional security dialogue. Two years after Nakayama’s proposal, in July 1993, the ASEAN-PMC in Singapore did agree to create the ARF along the lines that Nakayama had proposed. By this time, others in the region had also shifted their positions about a multilateral security dialogue. ARF held its first ministerial-level meeting in July 1994 in Bangkok between the ASEAN ministerial and PMC meetings.
Clearly ARF was created as the third type of security mechanism described earlier, namely, a security dialogue. ARF agreed to promote dialogue in political and security issues of common interest and concern in the Asia-Pacific region and committed to a gradual three-stage evolution from (1) confidence building and (2) preventive diplomacy to (3) a body capable in the longer term of developing approaches to conflict resolution as stipulated in the Second ARF Chairman’s Statement made in Brunei in August 1995. Japan has been supportive of the ARF since its inception, if not earlier, by chairing and hosting a variety of ARF meetings.
Japan’s Engagement in Track-one Security Dialogues in the Asia Pacific
In the 1990s Japan has been very forthcoming in promoting bilateral political/security/military dialogues (Figure 1). These bilateral dialogues have laid the groundwork for Japan’s engagement in multilateral security dialogues, as shown in Figures 2 and 3. Since the creation of ARF, Japan, mainly through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) and subsequently the Japan Defense Agency (JDA) since 1996, has been a strong supporter of the process. In addition, the JDA has taken its own initiatives in hosting track-one dialogues, as shown in Figure 2, and in January 1997 created an International Policy Planning Division in the Bureau of Defense Policy to promote these dialogues. This activism is a reflection of a change in the Asian security landscape, namely the disappearance of the bipolar structure, as reflected in the 1995 National Defense Program Outline.
The forerunner of this new policy can be found in the 1994 findings of Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa’s Special Advisory Committee on Defense Issues, which produced a report calling for new defense policies comprising enhanced indigenous defense capabilities, the U.S.-Japan security relationship, and utilization of multilateral security forums. This report served as a basis for a new National Defense Program Outline adopted by the Murayama Cabinet in 1995 that revised the 1976 National Defense Program Outline.
The new outline alludes to the intensified interdependence of nations and recognizes the future roles of defense capability: (1) national defense, (2) response to large-scale disasters and various other situations, and (3) contributions toward creating a more stable security environment. The third role embraces promoting security dialogues and exchanging defense officials. Since 1997, the JDA’s annual white paper, Defense of Japan, has included a separate section devoted to this role entitled “Contributions to the Creation of a More Stable Security Environment.” The section acknowledges the importance of a stable security environment as one of the roles of defense capabilities and notes that this can be achieved “by increasing the transparency of each country’s armaments and defense policy, and by deepening mutually trustful relations through dialogues and exchanges among defense authorities.” The JDA is actively taking part not only in Senior Officials Meetings (SOM) of the ARF but also in the Inter-Sessional Meetings (ISMs) regarding cooperative activities such as UN peacekeeping activities as well as search-and-rescue capabilities.
In addition to the ARF and the bilateral defense exchanges ranging from port calls to senior officials’ visits, JDA and its affiliated organizations have taken initiatives in hosting multilateral forums to promote exchanges in the region in the 1990s in response to the new thrust of the National Defense Outline, as shown in Figure 2. For example, the JDA has hosted a forum for defense authorities in the Asia-Pacific region since 1996 by inviting defense policymakers from countries in the region, the third meeting of which was held in October 1998. The National Institute for Defense Studies has provided a venue for a multinational security dialogue every year since 1994 by inviting mid-level military officers from countries in the Asia-Pacific region for the Asia-Pacific Security Seminar. Sixteen countries attended the fourth meeting, held in November 1997, and discussed their security policies, the security environment in the Asia Pacific, and confidence building. The National Defense Academy also held an international defense studies seminar in March 1996 by inviting instructors of defense academies and equivalent educational institutions in the surrounding region; it has continued to hold such seminars since then. The third meeting was held in March 1998.
Moreover, the Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) has been participating in the Western Pacific Naval Symposium (WPNS) ever since its second session. The WPNS has been held every other year since 1988; its goal is to further mutual understanding among countries in the West Pacific area. Japan hosted the fifth WPNS in 1996. The MSDF also organized the first seminar of Naval Academies in the Asia Pacific and had exchanges of information between instructors who attended from the United States, Russia, Australia, and the ROK. The ASDF has hosted International Seminars on International Air Defense by inviting Air Force Academy personnel to exchange views on the training of senior officers since 1996. Japan has also participated as a formal member in the Pacific Area Senior Officer Logistics Seminar (PASOLS) since the twenty-fourth meeting in 1995. PASOLS is a forum for developing trust through the exchange of information regarding logistical support among the thirty Asia-Pacific countries participating.
When former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and President Bill Clinton announced a new Joint Security Declaration in 1996, which reaffirmed the continuing importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance and the maintenance of U.S. forces in Japan, they also embraced multilateral security dialogues and cooperation by stating that “The Prime Minister and the President reaffirmed that the two governments will continue working jointly and with other countries in the region to further develop multilateral regional security dialogues and cooperation mechanisms such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and, eventually, security dialogues regarding Northeast Asia.”
Furthermore, reflecting the intensive bilateral summits held in the fall of 1997 among Northeast Asian countries, Japanese prime ministers have since encouraged the creation of additional multilateral dialogue processes, particularly in Northeast Asia where such a process at the track-one level is lacking. Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, in his General Policy Speech to the Diet on 16 February 1998, stated that “the peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific region hinges on Japan, the United States, the People’s Republic of China, and the Russian Federation building mutual ties based on confidence and cooperation.” Foreign Minister Keizo Obuchi in his foreign policy speech on the same day further stated that “in the Asia-Pacific region, to which Japan belongs, it is essential to ensure cooperation among Japan, the United States, China, and Russia towards the establishment of a framework for peace and stability in the region. I believe that as these quadripartite relations evolve, we should be aware of the possibility of the four nations meeting together in the future to have discussions on various matters of mutual concern.” Prime Minister Obuchi in the summit meeting with President Clinton in New York on 23 September 1998 alluded to further regional multilateral dialogue and stated that “although I am fully aware that it would not be realized immediately, looking towards the future we should look into the creation of a forum to discuss security and confidence building of Northeast Asia.”
Japan’s Engagement in Track-two Security Dialogues in the Asia Pacific
Supplementing the track-one process, as shown in Figure 3, track-two multilateral dialogues have flourished since the mid-1980s in the Asia Pacific and continue to evolve, amounting to more than one hundred meetings in 1997. This is evidence of the tremendous growth of multilateral security dialogues in the region from almost none a decade ago.
Here, a definition of tracks one and two might be in order. Track-one, or the first track as it is sometimes called, represents the official governmental channel for political and security dialogue. Participants in track-one meetings attend as representatives of their respective states. Discussions, though often informal in terms of style or setting, are assumed to be official statements of national policy. The principal track-one organization in regional security for Asia is the ARF. The term track-two was coined in 1982 by Joseph Montville of the Foreign Service Institute to describe “methods of diplomacy that are outside the formal governmental system.” In literature on Asia-Pacific security, track-two, or the second track, is the unofficial channel for political, economic, and security dialogue in the region. Track-two meetings and organizations are typically made up of scholars as well as civilian and military officials acting in their private or unofficial capacities.
The Council for Security Cooperation in Asia Pacific (CSCAP) is the most inclusive track-two dialogue in the Asia Pacific. According to Seizaburo Sato, the idea emerged among Amos Joe Jordan of CSIS, Jusuf Wanandi, and Seizaburo Sato in an airplane on their way back from a PECC meeting in Hawaii as they agreed that a security version of PECC should also be created. Han Sung-Joo, from South Korea, later joined this seed group. The idea was proposed officially at a meeting of Asia-Pacific think tanks in Seoul in November 1992. It was the fourth meeting on Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific organized by the Pacific Forum/CSIS, the Japan Institute of International Affairs, the Seoul Forum for International Affairs, and the ASEAN-ISIS. Participants of the meeting agreed that “conditions were ripe for the creation of a PECC-like institutional process focusing on security issues.” The meeting adopted the Seoul Statement, and the CSCAP Steering Committee was formed.
CSCAP is a multilateral, nongovernmental organization that links regional, security-oriented research institutes. Participating countries form member committees composed of academics, business executives, security specialists, and current foreign ministry and defense officials. CSCAP has created working groups on confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs), comprehensive and cooperative security, maritime security cooperation in the North Pacific, and a study group on transnational crime. The formal charter of CSCAP was approved by the steering committee in Lombok, Indonesia, in December 1993. Ambassador Nobuo Matsunaga of CSCAP-Japan, who co-chaired the CSCAP Steering Committee, added momentum to the CSCAP process by facilitating Chinese participation in December 1996, making the institution even more inclusive. The DPRK attends CSCAP through Pyongyang’s Institute of Disarmament and Peace and attends steering committee meetings and the CSBM and North Pacific Working Group meetings. CSCAP is the most inclusive security dialogue in the Asia Pacific, as Figure 3 shows, and seems to be aiming to be a track-two in support of the ARF, since its working groups take up much of the ARF agenda.
The subregion of Northeast Asia has the strongest vestiges from the Cold War era, including the divided Korean Peninsula and thorny territorial issues. Because of its rivalries and distrust, the subregion remains one of the toughest areas in terms of security relations in the world. Thus, even an organization as limited as the ARF, which is still at the phase CSCE was at during the Cold War, had difficulty establishing a foothold in Northeast Asia. However, the subregion has witnessed improvements in the security outlook, aided partly by bilateral summits held in the fall of 1997 as well as by the Four-Party Talks currently underway. The subregion, taking advantage of this momentum for cooperation, has proposed subregional cooperative processes, including an idea to create a subregional development bank, the creation of ANEAN (Association of Northeast Asian Nations), and a Northeast Asia Energy and Environment Community. The latter has particularly been promoted as a feasibility study for a natural gas pipeline from Irkutsk to China and eventually to Japan.
In the subregion of Northeast Asia, numerous track-two dialogues are flourishing. A notable example, which Japan has supported, is the North Pacific Working Group of CSCAP, which is now attended by all the North Pacific countries, including the DPRK. Another example is the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD), which was launched in 1993. Its origin traces back to the North Pacific Cooperative Security Dialogue (NPCSD). In September 1990, Canadian foreign minister Joe Clark proposed NPCSD, which held seven conferences and workshops between April 1991 and March 1993 on topics such as unconventional security issues, regional confidence-building measures, and the connections between history, culture, and the prospects for regional security cooperation. Participants in NPCSD included academics and officials in their private capacities from Canada, China, the DPRK, Japan, Mongolia, the ROK, Russia, and the United States.
Professor Susan Shirk, then Director of University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) attended the last meeting of NPCSD in March 1993 and saw value in multilateral security/political discourse like NPCSD. She approached the Clinton administration and others informally with an idea for hosting a track-two conference for Northeast Asia, less inclusive than NPCSD. The reaction to her proposal from the State Department was positive. Professor Shirk invited government and academic persons from China, Japan, Russia, the United States, the ROK, and the DPRK to attend the planning conference in July 1993 for a track-two multilateral conference on security in Northeast Asia. The meeting supported her proposal and agreed to call the conference “the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD).” It was agreed that two academics and two government personnel from each of the six countries would attend. It was also agreed that NEACD would operate on the basis of consensus. The agenda of the meeting was agreed to include security issues as well as nontraditional security issues such as economic and environmental issues, the latter of which has always been included in the dialogue agenda.
The first meeting of the NEACD was held in October 1993 in La Jolla, California, at which it was agreed to expand the participation of defense representatives by extending invitations for participants from both the defense ministries and the armed forces of each participating country. The NEACD has been unique in pioneering the involvement of military uniformed personnel in the security dialogue process of a multilateral forum. Since the NEACD’s initiative in this vein, the subregion has witnessed more frequent exchanges among defense personnel both bilaterally and multilaterally. Today there are many dialogue forums involving uniformed personnel, as is the case in the Trilateral Forum on North Pacific Security Issues.
The DPRK participated in the planning session but did not attend the first meeting and has been consistently absent ever since, despite repeated overtures toward Pyongyang by members of the NEACD. The inclusion of the DPRK in the NEACD was regarded as essential in light of the security scene in Northeast Asia, and its absence has haunted the process.
Nonetheless, the NEACD has maintained its momentum, and since the first meeting has met every eight to twelve months. The second meeting was held in Tokyo in May 1994, the third in Moscow in April 1995, the fourth in Beijing in January 1996, and the fifth in Seoul in September 1996. The NEACD agreed to continue the process to the second round, and thus the sixth meeting was held in New York in April 1997, the seventh in Tokyo in December 1997, and the eighth in Moscow in November 1998.
In addition to a plenary, the NEACD created two study projects in 1995 on principles governing inter-state relations in Northeast Asia and mutual reassurance measures. The first study project completed its work, and NEACD adopted a set of principles at the Tokyo meeting in December 1997; these principles included sovereignty, territorial integrity, equality, countries refraining from the threat or use of force against each other, commitment to the protection and promotion of human rights, promotion of dialogue, information exchange and transparency on security issues of common concern, and economic cooperation, as well as transnational issues such as organized crime, illegal immigration, and cooperation in humanitarian assistance. The second study project, mutual reassurance measures, led to the defense information-sharing working group, which has been underway since 1997.
Japan has supported the NEACD process since its very beginning as reflected in its sponsorship and hosting of the second and seventh plenary as well as the study project on mutual reassurance measures in Tokyo. In addition, Japan is co-chairing the Study Project on Defense Information Sharing. There seems to be a consensus among Japanese participants that the NEACD has offered an unofficial venue for members to voice their frank views and has cultivated reassurance among members.
On the other hand, the chronic absence of the DPRK at NEACD meetings has lessened the value of the process, since the Korean peninsula is the common major concern of Northeast Asia. The DPRK seems to be interested in talking only to the United States and nobody else in the region, believing that the rest of the countries, including Japan and the ROK, will follow whatever agreements the DPRK reaches with the United States. The DPRK, however, does attend track-two meetings with larger geographical footprints like CSCAP and its North Pacific Working Group, but they do not attend subregional processes like the NEACD because of a fear of being singled out in the discourse.
Views are divided as to whether the NEACD should be upgraded to the track-one level before the DPRK joins. Some participants are in favor of upgrading the NEACD to track-one level soon and keep inviting the DPRK. Others insist that the NEACD should be kept at the track-two level until the DPRK joins, otherwise the DPRK will never come to the NEACD meetings. Some observers suggest that the NEACD member countries recommend that DPRK participate in the ARF to enhance the DPRK’s engagement in the regional security discourses. Meanwhile, some observers no longer consider NEACD a track-two process, but a track-one_ process moving ever closer to track-one status with a dominance of government personnel.
Despite the chronic absence of the DPRK from the NEACD meetings, no one interviewed in Japan negated the value of the NEACD or suggested terminating the process. The assessment of the NEACD process, however, is varied. Some observers rate the NEACD highly for pioneering contacts among uniformed personnel, paving the road for frequent exchanges among countries in Northeast Asia at the governmental level, and warming the overall relations in the subregion. Others feel that the NEACD has not made any substantive contributions to the security of the region but acknowledge that the simple survival of the NEACD since 1993 in itself is an achievement. They all agree that ARF is a regionwide process promoting transparency but is not well equipped to consider security matters in Northeast Asia simply because of its geographical footprint and because a process like NEACD is needed.
Another example of the track-two process in the subregion functioning in a minilateral format is the Trilateral Forum on North-Pacific Security Problems, which was launched in early 1994 by three nongovernmental think tanks from Japan, the United States, and Russia. The think tanks are the Japan Institute of International Affairs, the Carnegie Foundation of the United States, and the Institute of World Economics and International Relations of Russia. This forum is a track-two dialogue among Japan, the United States, and Russia, the three countries rotating as host. The forum has completed the second round in its sixth meeting in Tokyo in December 1998.
The Trilateral Forum was originally established to enhance the security dialogue between Japan and Russia that had been weakened because of the Northern Territories issue. By bringing the United States into the process, an attempt was made to melt the ice between Japan and Russia. Although academics participated and led the proceedings, the Trilateral Forum was close to a track-one_ since it involved participants from foreign and defense ministries, including uniformed personnel. The process has contributed to lowering the Russo-Japan psychological fence. This effect has been demonstrated by recent stepped-up defense exchanges, including mutual visits of senior officials, bilateral military talks since 1996 (as shown in Figure 1), and mutual visits of naval ships. It further led to the first visit by a Japanese defense minister to Russia in the spring of 1996 and the subsequent visit of the Russian defense minister to Japan in May 1997.
In the summer of 1998 another trilateral track-two process, this time involving only Japanese, American, and Chinese private experts, was launched in Tokyo, and its first meeting was held in January 1999. According to media accounts, “although Japan and the United States wanted to launch it as a track-one forum, China rejected the idea, insisting it was premature to let government officials participate in such a forum.” The Trilateral Forum of Japan, Russia, and the United States has focused on expanding the security dialogue between Japan and Russia beyond its territorial disputes; The Japan, America, and China Conference, or JAC Conference, aims (according to publicized information) at developing three sets of bilateral relations in a balanced manner to remove any misunderstanding or miscalculations. Although the forum is at the track-two level, governments (at least the Japanese government) are behind the scenes in promoting this dialogue.
Although the number of track-two dialogues in the region is growing, a challenge lies in whether or not they can influence policymaking. These processes produce publications and recommendations that are often submitted to the respective governments of participating representatives, international organizations, and regional organizations in the Asia Pacific. While ASEAN-ISIS has had a conspicuous impact on the creation of ARF and AFTA by its reports, the effects of other dialogue processes have remained less visible so far and have lacked tangible results. Nonetheless, dismissing these processes simply as talk shops is not a fair assessment. These multilateral security dialogues have been instrumental in removing unwarranted concerns and misunderstandings in the region. Defense exchanges between Japan and Russia involving uniformed personnel that were unimaginable in the beginning of the 1990s are now well accepted and promoted. The Asia-Pacific security dialogue processes cannot supplant, but can supplement the bilateral security architecture of Asia by providing a multilayered, multidimensional forum of bilateral, trilateral, quadrilateral, and multilateral security relations/dialogues.
In this domain of security discourse, the recent cases demonstrate that Japan is no longer a reluctant player-a label associated with Japan during the Cold War regarding political and security affairs. On the contrary, Japan is a strong supporter of track-one processes, such as the ARF, and is becoming proactive to the extent of initiating some new multilateral track-two dialogues in the Asia-Pacific, such as CSCAP, NEACD, the Trilateral Forum on North Pacific Security, and the JAC Conference.
Japanese Proactive Approaches to Security Multilateralism in the Asia Pacific
The conspicuous shift in Japanese policy on security multilateralism from reluctance to proactiveness seems to have taken place between Gorvachev’s visit to Tokyo in April 1991 and Nakayama’s proposal in July 1991. Why and how has Japan shifted its position in the 1990s?
Japanese policymakers give the demise of the Cold War divide as the most compelling reason for Japan’s endorsement of security multilateralism in Asia. With the end of the Cold War, Asia lost one pole of the Cold War’s bipolar structure, the Soviet Union, and the vacuum of power created by its collapse generated security concerns in some quarters in the Asia Pacific. Despite high expectations after the end of the Cold War, symbolized by phrases like “peace dividend,” Cold War vestiges remain in the Asia-Pacific region, such as the tensions between China and Taiwan and between the DPRK and the ROK. In addition, there are territorial disputes left unresolved in the region, such as the Northern Territories between Japan and Russia, the Spratley Islands, the Tokdo/Takeshima dispute between the ROK and Japan, and the Senkaku/Daioyutai dispute between Japan and China. Almost every country in Asia has some sort of territorial issue with one or more of its neighbors; the question is how to garner security in the region. Should it be along bilateral lines as during the Cold War? Or does the new power distribution demand a new approach to security?
The other pole of the Cold War, the United States, has remained intact and remains a global power; nonetheless, countries in Asia began to doubt whether the United States will remain committed in the Asia Pacific as they witnessed reductions in U.S. forward-deployment forces immediately after the end of the Cold War. Although this concern was eased after the United States’ declaration that it would maintain a forward deployment of 100,000 troops in its 1995 and 1998 East Asia Security Report by the Department of Defense, Asian countries remain concerned about an eventual reduction of U.S. forces in the Asia Pacific. Meanwhile, the post-Cold War world presents an agenda that cannot be fully responded to by the United States alone. The security agenda has expanded to include issues such as terrorism, drug trafficking, and the migration of refugees, all of which demand multilateral approaches.
On the other hand, the United States after the end of the Cold War has asked for more burden sharing for regional and international peace and security, implying that it is no longer in a position to defend the Asia-Pacific alone. This implies that the region ought to seek multipolar peace rather than unipolar peace. In other words, the region has entered into an age of pax consortis where leading countries in the region must lead together to maintain peace and stability.
All of these elements have contributed to Japan’s perception that the region is more prepared for security multilateralism. Furthermore, Japan has aspired to play a more international role in political affairs commensurate with its economic power. This sense was further enhanced during and after the 1990-91 Gulf War when Japan was harshly criticized for not contributing enough despite its $14 billion contribution to the allied effort. This experience sent a message that Japan should take a more proactive role in security as well. However, Japan’s aggressive history in the region makes it difficult to take unilateral initiatives, particularly in the realm of security, because of the possibility of evoking concerns among other Asian nations about Japan’s remilitarization or the memory of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The multilateral avenue seems more benign. These factors lead Japan to multilateral security dialogues.
Japan’s attitude has not been completely unified, however, but has some variance in its support of multilateralism. Some observers in Japan argue that states in the Asia Pacific have conflicting interests. Uncertainties in Asia-above all, the more immediate possibility of conflict on the Korean peninsula-require Japan to maintain and strengthen its bilateral alliance with the United States as the sole viable and dependable means for Japanese national security. This argument has been further enhanced after the missile test launch by the DPRK in August 1999. This group, who previously tended to regard security dialogue processes like the ARF as unsustainable and doomed to collapse, have gradually shifted their position to accept and admit the emerging multilateral security dialogues as enmeshed alternatives so long as they do not undermine the existing security structure, namely the U.S.-Japan security alliance.
Some Japanese observers believe that the end of the Cold War has widened the choices for regional security cooperation and that peace and stability in Asia represent an indivisible benefit for states, satisfying one of the three qualities of multilateralism. They strongly support the ARF and ultimately the security community and even argue that a multilateral security forum will pave the way to free Japan from the U.S. military umbrella. This view, however, is not predominant in Japan today.
A majority of Japanese opinion leaders accept the view of welfare indivisibility and acknowledge the virtue of transparency measures in the ARF and other processes in sharing defense and defense policy information by exchanging white papers and policy papers. At the same time, however, they strongly believe in maintaining the Japan-U.S. security alliance. They do not pursue creation of a security community to replace the U.S.-Japan bilateral alliance; yet they value a security dialogue like the ARF as a process for confidence building and for improving the security climate but do not regard them as viable enough to replace the bilateral security alliances. The predominant views expressed in Japan are that security multilateralism, though at the level of security dialogues, is worth pursuing so long as it does not undermine bilateral alliances. Security dialogues, however successful in confidence building, cannot defend Japan nor the region from conflict or wars once they occur.
These are well illustrated in the actions taken in the 1990s. Japan, which had traditionally been skeptical of multilateral institutions in Asia, has become more forthcoming in supporting and creating bilateral and multilateral security forums to enhance mutual reassurances while maintaining its alliance with the United States. In some people’s view, this is in the international public good for Northeast Asia. In fact, Japan’s host-nation support to the United States is about $6 billion a year, which covers two-thirds of its costs, having increased from one-third ten years ago. The present amount is significantly higher than the host-nation support provided by the ROK and Germany.
Some question why Japan is proposing a series of trilaterals and quadrilaterals rather than multilaterals. In multipolar Asia, leading countries must lead. The United States, China, Japan, and Russia are important players for peace and security in the region, and it is essential to forge good partnerships and confidence among these leading countries. The Trilateral Forum on North-Pacific Security Problems has been launched to improve relations between Japan and Russia with the support of the United States. The JAC Conference aims at removing unwarranted concerns and misunderstanding between two respective countries, namely Japan and China or China and the United States. Japan finds significance in solidifying its alliance with the United States and also in improving relations with other leading powers in the region like China and Russia. This approach of creating minilaterals, including the United States, to enhance Japan’s relations with leading powers in the region is one way to resist some attempts to drive a wedge between the two countries.
Another question often asked is why Japan takes initiatives in launching track-two dialogues instead of operating at the track-one level. This is not a proactive choice by Japan, but rather a reflection of the preferences of other regional powers for track-two. The region includes less open countries that feel more comfortable with track-two discourse than with track-one because of sensitive and potentially controversial issues. To date, China has been reluctant to initiate dialogue at the track-one level but is not averse to engaging in dialogue at the track-two level.
Those track-two processes that are closer to track-one and sometimes called track-one_ are predominantly attended by government officials. Yet some of the participants insist on keeping the process at the track-two level so that they can have a free flow of views and discussions, making it a good testing ground for new ideas. In the case of Japan, some track-two dialogues are closely supported and controlled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Japan Defense Agency even though the official organizers are think tanks-most frequently semigovernmental ones. Track-two dialogues are ways to promote contacts and confidence building among officials in areas in which governments are not yet comfortable in meeting as government officials.
How does Japan wish to garner peace and security in the next millennium? Although potential flash points remain in the Asia Pacific, particularly in Northeast Asia, Japan ought to maintain its bilateral alliance with the United States to defend itself for contingencies, but the multipolar region demands cooperation, if not pax consortis, as the security agenda broadens beyond a traditional military one.
Security multilateralism, particularly the current Asia-Pacific security dialogues, are somewhat fragile; and multilateral security institutions may collapse due to divergent interests among members. More importantly, multilateral cooperative security institutions cannot be effective in fighting and defending against armed conflicts. Nonetheless, multilateral security cooperation has the virtue of warming regional relations and promoting confidence and trust, thus removing unwarranted concerns and accidental miscalculations.
Despite criticisms that these forums are mere talk shops bearing no tangible results, they provide venues for people in the region to meet regularly to exchange views and help to improve the overall security ambience. Moreover, track-two processes have been instrumental in creating and supplementing track-one processes, such as PECC to APEC and CSCAP to ARF. Here, multilateralism has developed bilateralism by accommodating bilateral meetings during the multilateral forums, while improvements in bilateral relations have enhanced multilateral activities. Trilaterals or quadrilaterals that Japan has launched and proposed are issue-specific, ad hoc coalitions that could be dismantled when their original mission is accomplished. Otherwise, they might invite skepticism if not a backlash from countries left outside of such minilateral forums. Or they could be extended in terms of duration and membership if common interests are shared and to gain more permanency.
Although the region may not be able to create a NATO-like institution, it can forge an ad hoc entente cordiale among some willing powers to solve specific issues such as reunification of the Korean peninsula, of which KEDO is a harbinger. What has emerged in the Asia Pacific is multilateral security cooperation in varying degrees. Although a single process may not be able to garner peace in the region, scattered pieces of multidimensional security mechanisms when harmoniously linked like a jigsaw puzzle may lead to regional multilateralism.
