Erstellt am: 29.03.2009 Autor: Christian Rieck Status: Senior
The Legacy of the Nation-State in East Asia
Political and economic realignments in East Asia need a less classical understanding of sovereignty. Integrating China requires not only a notion of regional interdependence but of regional peace, anchored in a shared history and common destiny. In many ways, East Asia remains a region stuck in the 19th century.
Some have likened the rise of China to the rise of Germany in 19th century Europe. This is a helpful analogy: the tremendous speed of economic growth of the rising power and its newfound desire to (re)enter the stage of world affairs on an equal footing with the established powers had – then as now – profound (and potentially destabilizing) impacts on the traditional balance of powers in the region. The “unequal treaties” have long been China’s “Versailles”, a cause of national humiliation. Chinas economic miracle has already realigned the whole supply chain in East Asia, intensifying competition with (as well as anti-Chinese sentiment in) the traditional low-cost low-value manufacturers in Southeast Asia, offering new opportunities for the economic powerhouses in the region, mostly Japan and Taiwan, but increasingly the United States as well, who moved more and more manufacturing to the mainland, thus improving company profit margins. And even though deeper economic integration within the region translates into higher opportunity costs for war (i.e. a higher probability for peace), trade alone will not assure that the “power realignment” in East Asia will go smoothly: In pre-World-War-Europe, the economies were also very much integrated economically, but still war was intentionally unleashed (mainly because the Powers thought this to be a short war, a “cakewalk” with only minor economic disruptions – arguably, something that can be perceived as the new-old thinking in a possible struggle over Taiwan, from both mainland China as well as the US).
What Europe lacked then (and East Asia is just starting to create) were meaningful institutions that helped institutionalise trust in the relations amongst them – this made the instrumentalisation of their nationalisms a cheap and easy way to deflect from any internal disgruntlement that there may be. East Asia today is also experiencing a resurgence of nationalisms, mostly because national histories still glorify the past and have still not been able to correctly address the national failures and humiliations that all countries in the world have. Together with a slow but constant “militarization” of foreign policy (Japan’s new “Defense Department” and constitution, China’s “modernization” of its own forces), this makes a peaceful realignment of power in the region ever more difficult.
Integration is coming, however, in different names and speeds. Both ARF and the East Asian Community have the potential to become platforms not just for dialogue between but for solutions for the regional powers. For a strong platform for serious and unpoliticised dialogue is needed to keep the peace: Far-reaching readjustments in the regional economies are difficult enough, nationalisms only further complicate matters. Peace is not declared, it is a hard-won state of mind, a fragile balance not of fear but of friendship.
However, trust and friendship are elusive commodities. They need a commitment towards integration that goes beyond mere interaction: an integration of hearts and minds that has to reach down into society. Integrating China, therefore, requires not only a notion of regional interdependence but of regional peace, anchored in the notion of shared history and common destiny. So, also on the social and cultural levels, for political and economic realignments to be successful a less classical understanding of sovereignty is needed from the one that has traditionally been founded on autarky, emancipation and self-centeredness. A (perceived) lack of “enlightened national history” that reinforces this classical notion of “national sovereignty” inhibits the productive and peaceful sharing of sovereignty and responsibility that meaningful integration entails. It translates into a lack of trust between the regional actors (Japan-China, Japan-Korea, but also China-Vietnam or within countries like Indonesia or Thailand in respect to their own minorities) and is at least in part to be blamed for the tensions in the region.
European legal postclassicism with its highly complex and rules-based politico-constitutional integration does not necessarily have to be the shining example for East Asian integration. It is by no means a panacea. But East Asia does need more integration between hitherto exclusively national narratives. The good news is that even though it cannot replace the (self-confident but tolerant) discourse on fundamental interests and values that characterizes the openness of a nation, economic integration can help.
This is not the worst starting point for East Asia, but the region is still in many ways stuck in the long, conflicted 19th century. (Unilateral) Chinese assurances of a “peaceful rise” or Japanese pronouncements that its “new normalcy” is not bellicose will not do to defuse the simmering conflicts in the region.
