The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (42 page)

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Walt’s analysis of alliance formation in Southwest Asia showed that states almost always attempted to balance against external threats. It has also been generally assumed that balancing behavior was the norm throughout most modern European history, with the several powers shifting their alliances so as to balance and contain the threats they saw posed by Philip II, Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, the Kaiser, and Hitler. Walt concedes, however, that states may choose bandwagoning “under some conditions,” and, as Randall Schweller argues, revisionist states are likely to bandwagon with a rising power because they are dissatisfied and hope to gain from changes in the status quo.
[34]
In addition, as Walt suggests, bandwagoning does require a degree of trust in the nonmalevolent intentions of the more powerful state.

In balancing power, states can play either primary or secondary roles.
First, State A can attempt to balance power against State B, which it perceives to be a potential adversary, by making alliances with States C and D, by developing its own military and other power (which is likely to lead to an arms race), or by some combination of these means. In this situation States A and B are the
primary
balancers of each other.
Second, State A may not perceive any other state as an immediate adversary but it may have an interest in promoting a balance of power between States B and C either of which if it became too powerful could pose a threat to State A. In this situation State A acts as a
secondary
balancer with respect to States B and C, which may be primary balancers of each other.

How will states react to China if it begins to emerge as the hegemonic power in East Asia? The responses will undoubtedly vary widely. Since China has defined the United States as its principal enemy, the predominant American inclination will be to act as a primary balancer and prevent Chinese hegemony. Assuming such a role would be in keeping with the traditional American concern with preventing the domination of either Europe or Asia by any single power. That goal is no longer relevant in Europe, but it could be in Asia. A loose federation in Western Europe closely linked to the United States culturally, politically, and economically will not threaten American security. A unified, powerful, and assertive China could. Is it in American interest to be ready to go to war if necessary to prevent Chinese hegemony in East Asia? If Chinese economic development continues, this could be the single most serious security issue American policymakers confront in the early twenty-first century. If the United States does want to stop Chinese domination of East Asia, it will need to redirect the Japanese alliance to that purpose, develop close military ties with other Asian nations, and enhance its military presence in Asia and the military power it can bring to bear in Asia. If the United States is not willing to fight against Chinese hegemony, it will need to foreswear its universalism, learn to live with that hegemony, and reconcile itself to a marked reduction in its ability to shape events on the far side of the Pacific. Either course involves major costs and risks. The greatest danger is that the United States will make no
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clear choice and stumble into a war with China without considering carefully whether that is in its national interest and without being prepared to wage such a war effectively.

Theoretically the United States could attempt to contain China by playing a secondary balancing role if some other major power acted as the primary balancer of China. The only conceivable possibility is Japan, and this would require major changes in Japanese policy: intensified Japanese rearmament, acquisition of nuclear weapons, and active competition with China for support among other Asian powers. While Japan might be willing to participate in a U.S.-led coalition to counter China, although that also is unsure, it is unlikely to become the primary balancer of China. In addition, the United States has not shown much interest or ability at playing a secondary balancing role. As a new small country, it attempted to do so during the Napoleonic era and ended up fighting wars with both Britain and France. During the first part of the twentieth century the United States made only minimum efforts to promote balances among European and Asian countries and as a result became engaged in world wars to restore balances that had been disrupted. During the Cold War the United States had no alternative to being the primary balancer of the Soviet Union. The United States has thus never been a secondary balancer as a great power. Becoming one means playing a subtle, flexible, ambiguous, and even disingenuous role. It could mean shifting support from one side to another, refusing to support or opposing a state that in terms of American values seems to be morally right, and supporting a state that is morally wrong. Even if Japan did emerge as the primary balancer of China in Asia, the ability of the United States to support that balance is open to question. The United States is far more able to mobilize directly against one existing threat than it is to balance off two potential threats. Finally, a bandwagoning propensity is likely to exist among Asian powers, which would preclude any U.S. effort at secondary balancing.

To the extent that bandwagoning depends on trust, three propositions follow. First, bandwagoning is more likely to occur between states belonging to the same civilization or otherwise sharing cultural commonalities than between states lacking any cultural commonality. Second, levels of trust are likely to vary with the context. A younger boy will bandwagon with his older brother when they confront other boys; he is less likely to trust his older brother when they are alone at home. Hence more frequent interactions between states of different civilizations will further encourage bandwagoning within civilizations. Third, bandwagoning and balancing propensities may vary between civilizations because the levels of trust among their members differ. The prevalence of balancing in the Middle East, for instance, may reflect the proverbial low levels of trust in Arab and other Middle Eastern cultures.

In addition to these influences, the propensity to bandwagon or balance will be shaped by expectations and preferences concerning the distribution of
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power. European societies went through a phase of absolutism but avoided the sustained bureaucratic empires or “oriental despotisms” that characterized Asia for much of history. Feudalism provided a basis for pluralism and the assumption that some dispersion of power was both natural and desirable. So also at the international level a balance of power was thought natural and desirable, and the responsibility of statesmen was to protect and sustain it. Hence when the equilibrium was threatened, balancing behavior was called for to restore it. The European model of international society, in short, reflected the European model of domestic society.

The Asian bureaucratic empires, in contrast, had little room for social or political pluralism and the division of power. Within China bandwagoning appears to have been far more important compared with balancing than was the case in Europe. During the 1920s, Lucian Pye notes, “the warlords first sought to learn what they could gain by identifying with strength, and only then would they explore the payoffs of allying with the weak. . . . for the Chinese warlords, autonomy was not the ultimate value, as it was in the traditional European balance-of-power calculations; rather they based their decisions upon associating with power.” In a similar vein, Avery Goldstein argues that bandwagoning characterized politics in communist China while the authority structure was relatively clear from 1949 to 1966. When the Cultural Revolution then created conditions of near anarchy and uncertainty concerning authority and threatened the survival of political actors, balancing behavior began to prevail.
[35]
Presumably the restoration of a more clearly defined structure of authority after 1978 also restored bandwagoning as the prevailing pattern of political behavior.

Historically the Chinese did not draw a sharp distinction between domestic and external affairs. Their “image of world order was no more than a corollary of the Chinese internal order and thus an extended projection of the Chinese civilizational identity” which “was presumed to reproduce itself in a concentrically larger expandable circle as the correct cosmic order.” Or, as Roderick MacFarquhar phrased it, “The traditional Chinese world view was a reflection of the Confucian vision of a carefully articulated hierarchical society. Foreign monarchs and states were assumed to be tributaries of the Middle Kingdom: ‘There are not two suns in the sky, there cannot be two emperors on earth.’ ” As a result the Chinese have not been sympathetic to “multipolar or even multilateral concepts of security.” Asians generally are willing to “accept hierarchy” in international relations, and European-type hegemonic wars have been absent from East Asian history. A functioning balance of power system that was typical of Europe historically was foreign to Asia. Until the arrival of the Western powers in the mid-nineteenth century, East Asian international relations were Sinocentric with other societies arranged in varying degrees of subordination to, cooperation with, or autonomy from Beijing.
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The Confucian ideal of world order was, of course, never fully realized in practice. None
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theless, the Asian hierarchy of power model of international politics contrasts dramatically with the European balance of power model.

As a consequence of this image of world order, the Chinese propensity toward bandwagoning in domestic politics also exists in international relations. The degree to which it shapes the foreign policies of individual states tends to vary with the extent they share in Confucian culture and with their historical relationships with China. Korea culturally has much in common with China and historically has tilted toward China. For Singapore communist China was an enemy during the Cold War. In the 1980s, however, Singapore began to shift its position and its leaders actively argued the need for the United States and other countries to come to terms with the realities of Chinese power. With its large Chinese population and the anti-Western proclivities of its leaders, Malaysia also strongly tilted in the Chinese direction. Thailand maintained its independence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by accommodating itself to European and Japanese imperialism and has shown every intention of doing the same with China, an inclination reinforced by the potential security threat it sees from Vietnam.

Indonesia and Vietnam are the two countries of Southeast Asia most inclined toward balancing and containing China. Indonesia is large, Muslim, and distant from China, but without the help of others it cannot prevent Chinese assertion of control over the South China Sea. In the fall of 1995 Indonesia and Australia joined in a security agreement that committed them to consult with each other in the event of “adverse challenges” to their security. Although both parties denied that this was an anti-China arrangement, they did identify China as the most likely source of adverse challenges.
[37]
Vietnam has a largely Confucian culture but historically has had highly antagonistic relations with China and in 1979 fought a brief war with China. Both Vietnam and China have claimed sovereignty over all the Spratly Islands, and their navies engaged each other on occasion in the 1970s and 1980s. In the early 1990s Vietnam’s military capabilities declined in relation to those of China. More than any other East Asian state, Vietnam consequently has the motive to seek partners to balance China. Its admission into ASEAN and normalization of its relations with the United States in 1995 were two steps in this direction. The divisions within ASEAN and that association’s reluctance to challenge China make it highly unlikely, however, that ASEAN will become an anti-China alliance or that it will provide much support to Vietnam in a confrontation with China. The United States would be a more willing container of China, but in the mid-1990s it is unclear how far it will go to contest an assertion of Chinese control over the South China Sea. In the end, for Vietnam “the least bad alternative” could be to accommodate China and accept Finlandization, which while it “would wound Vietnamese pride . . . might guarantee survival.”
[38]

In the 1990s virtually all East Asian nations, other than China and North Korea, have expressed support for a continued U.S. military presence in the
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region. In practice, however, except for Vietnam, they tend to accommodate China. The Philippines ended the major U.S. air and naval bases there, and opposition has mounted in Okinawa to the extensive U.S. military forces on the island. In 1994 Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia rejected U.S. requests to moor six supply ships in their waters as a floating base to facilitate U.S. military intervention in either Southeast or Southwest Asia. In another manifestation of deference, at its first meeting the ASEAN Regional Forum acquiesced to China’s demands that the Spratly Islands issues be kept off the agenda, and China’s occupation of Mischief Reef off the Philippines in 1995 elicited protests from no other ASEAN countries. In 1995-1996 when China verbally and militarily threatened Taiwan, Asian governments again responded with a deafening silence. Their bandwagoning propensity was neatly summed up by Michael Oksenberg: “Asian leaders do worry that the balance of power could shift in China’s favor but in anxious anticipation of the future, they do not want to confront Beijing now” and they “will not join the United States in an anti-China crusade.”
[39]

The rise of China will pose a major challenge to Japan, and the Japanese will be deeply divided as to which strategy Japan should pursue. Should it attempt to accommodate China, perhaps with some trade-off acknowledging China’s political-military dominance in return for recognition of Japan’s primacy in economic matters? Should it attempt to give new meaning and vigor to the U.S.-Japanese alliance as the core of a coalition to balance and contain China? Should it attempt to develop its own military power to defend its interests against any Chinese incursions? Japan will probably avoid as long as it can any clear-cut answer to these questions.