CIAO DATE: 05/02

The Major Powers in Northeast Asian Security

Introduction

The political, economic, and security environment of the Asia-Pacific region in the 21st century will be shaped in very large part by the interrelationships among the United States, Japan, China, and Russia. To the extent these four nations can cooperate, a generally benign environment can develop in which the challenges sure to develop in the region can be managed. Conversely, tensions and conflict among the four will have a profoundly destabilizing impact regionally, if not globally.

This monograph addresses the future roles and interests of the four major Asia-Pacific powers and how their policies will affect security in Northeast Asia and, more specifically, on the Korean Peninsula as we enter the 21st century.

Each of these powers is undergoing a transition of sorts. In the case of the United States and possibly Japan, the changes may be more of style than substance, but will impact their respective foreign policy outlooks nonetheless. In the case of China and especially Russia, the potential for significant change is much greater. There is a high degree of unpredictability regarding the future paths of these two nations as we approach the 21st century.

The future course and behavior of the two Koreas, individually and (at some unpredictable point in the future) together, add to the uncertainty. While the four major powers have the ability to influence events on the Korean Peninsula, they cannot direct or fully orchestrate them. On the other hand, actions by the Koreas can force policy choices by the big four that they might otherwise not pursue; the Korean "tail" has on occasion proven itself capable of wagging some very large dogs.

Further complicating the analysis are the complex interrelationships that are created with each set of two major powers. Among the four nations, six sets of bilateral relationships occur: U.S.-Japan, U.S.-China, U.S.-Russia, Japan-China, Japan-Russia, Russia-China. Worse yet, fifteen sets of bilateral relationships occur when each of the four deals not only with each other, but with the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) and the two Koreas deal with one another (figure 1). Changes in any one set of relationships will undoubtedly affect several, if not all, the other sets.

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