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Strategic Abandonment: Alliance Relations in Northeast Asia in the Post-Iraq Era

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This chapter is part of a yearly publication that compiles the edited and revised versions of papers presented at the Korea Economic Institute's (KEI) most recent Academic Symposium.

The chaper considers the security alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) as the foundation for the architecture of strategic stability in Northeast Asia that has endured for more than a half century. Along with the U.S. alliance with Japan, this security architecture has maintained the balance of power despite vast geopolitical changes, not least the end of the global Cold War. It provided an environment that fostered spectacular economic growth and the institutionalization of democratic governance.

The stability created under this strategic architecture is now challenged by a unique combination of three developments—the rise of China, North Korea’s bid to become a nuclear power, and the weakening of the United States in the wake of the Iraq War. These events disturb the carefully crafted balance of power that was created during the Cold War era. China’s growth as an economic and military power, combined with its aspirations for regional leadership, creates an alternative pole of power to the United States. The defiant decision of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to test a nuclear device threatens the security of Korea and Japan and opens the door to further proliferation in the region.

These two developments have been widely discussed among policymakers and experts in the region and in the United States. But there has been little examination of the dangerous dynamic between these events and the Iraq War. The deteriorating military and political situation in Iraq and in the Middle East more broadly has significantly weakened the United States in East Asia. It has swung public opinion against the United States and, as collateral damage, undermined support for the alliances. The focus of U.S. attention and resources on the Middle East feeds a perception that U.S. interest in East Asia is declining. More profoundly, it encourages powers such as China and Russia to assert more frequently and more boldly their desire for a more multipolar power structure.

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Hidden Alliance: While the West Hears Only a Cacophony of Mutual Recriminations, Beijing and Tokyo are Quietly Making Sweet Music Together

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Conventional wisdom says that relations between China and Japan are fated always to be exceptionally wary, if not openly hostile -- and Japanese leaders' visits to the notorious Yasukuni have done nothing to undermine this view. Nor have Sino-Japanese standoffs over the disputed Senkaku islands. Meanwhile Beijing's opposition has been widely credited as the reason why Japan has failed in its reported aspiration to join the United Nations Security Council. Author and long-time Tokyo-based East Asia watcher Eamonn Fingleton argues that these issues have been grossly misunderstood in the West and that on closer inspection they say little if anything about the true state of Sino-Japanese relations. He insists that on a host of substantive issues overlooked by the press, Japan and China have been cooperating closely for decades. So much so that Japanese help has been one of the most powerful factors in China's rise.

A former editor for Forbes and the Financial Times, Eamonn Fingleton has been monitoring East Asian economics since 1985. He met China's supreme leader Deng Xiaoping in 1986 as a member of a New York Stock Exchange delegation. The following year he predicted the Tokyo banking crash and went on in Blindside, a controversial 1995 analysis that was praised by J.K. Galbraith and Bill Clinton, to show that a heedless America was fast losing its formerly vaunted leadership in advanced manufacturing to Japan.

His 1999 book In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity anticipated the American Internet stock crash of 2000. In his 2008 book In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony, he issues a strong challenge to the conventional view among Washington policymakers and think tank analysts that China is converging to Western economic and political forms and attitudes. His books have been read into the U.S. Senate record and named among the ten best business books of the year by Business Week and Amazon.com.

He was born in Ireland in 1948 and is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. He was the recipient of the American Values Award from the United States Business and Industry Council in 2001.

Copies of Fingleton's newest book In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony - due March 4 by St. Martin's Press - will be for sale during the event.

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Eamonn Fingleton author Speaker
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February 2008 Dispatch - How Autonomous Are China's Trade Unions?

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Since China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, its already cheap labor force has been exposed to global market competition. The country’s domestic employment situation, particularly with respect to guarantees of workers’ rights and interests, has likewise come under pressure. In the years from 1999 to 2002, recorded urban unemployment rates regularly increased, from 3.1 percent in 1999 and 2000, to 3.6 percent and 4.0 percent in 2001 and 2002, respectively. At the end of March 2003, they rose again to 4.1 percent. The number of labor disputes received by labor dispute arbitration committees at every level reached 184,000 by 2002, with the number of participating workers climbing to 610,000, numbers that were 19.1 percent and 30.2 percent higher, respectively, than the previous year. In short, while China’s participation in the WTO propelled economic development, trade system reform, adjustments to the economic structure, and privatization of enterprise, it also resulted in an uneasy state of affairs for labor and management relations. For instance, in October 2004, at Shenzhen’s Hong Kong-owned Meizhi Haiyan Electronics Factory, four thousand people went on strike and blockaded the roads to protest low wages.

In November 2004, amid concerns about deteriorating working conditions at foreign-funded enterprises, the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) confronted Chinese locations of WalMart, which is well known for obstructing the establishment of trade unions. The ACFTU declared: “They [WalMart] are in violation of the Trade Union Law, and we are prepared to sue them.” WalMart yielded, conceding that, “[i]f workers ask to establish a trade union, we will respect that request, [and] fulfill our duties and responsibilities under the Trade Union Law.” This landmark event demonstrated not only the ACFTU’s power in a direct confrontation, but also its opposition to the intensifying WTO-driven competition in the Chinese labor market. Thus far, the power of trade unions in general and the ACFTU in particular has been felt primarily at foreign-funded enterprises. But what about locally owned and operated enterprises?

In order to understand the actual level of autonomy that trade unions enjoy at the grassroots level, the chairmen of 1,811 trade unions in major cities and provinces—including Liaoning, Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Gansu, Guizhou, and Henan—completed a questionnaire survey. The Chinese Institute of Industrial Relations (Beijing) facilitated the survey, which was carried out between March 2004 and June 2006. The major findings confirm that, although the independence of trade unions at foreign-funded enterprises has increased, the unions’ autonomy at local level enterprises remains fairly low. According to survey results, China continues to be a predominantly state-corporatist system, between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on the one hand and workers and state-owned/state-held enterprises on the other.

The survey revealed other data about the leadership of China’s state-owned/state-held enterprises. Most notably, the Party organization was still appointing 24.5 percent of the chairmen of these work units. Even in cases where chairmen assumed their posts through election or open selective examinations, 35.1 percent of them participated in the election or examinations after the Party recommended them to the work unit in question (see figure 1). The ratio of chairmen who are CCP members to those who serve concurrently as a “secretary,” “vice-secretary,” or member of the Party committee at a corresponding level reached high percentages, of 90.0 percent and 46.4 percent, respectively. In addition, 72.1 percent of the chairmen of state-owned/state-held enterprises answered in the survey that their union committee had established a Party group or Party branch at their workplace. These data clearly indicate that, unlike their counterparts at foreign-funded companies, the trade unions of state-owned/state-held enterprises not only lack autonomy, and but that their management also often remains subject to Party control.

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Japan's Nationalism: Myth and Reality

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Some observers of Japan have pointed to a dangerous rise in Japanese nationalism. Advocates of that idea claim that this is evident in a number of events, such as, the visits of former Prime Minister Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine; former Prime Minister Abe's plan for constitutional reforms and his statements regarding the comfort women; the adoption of "revisionist" history textbooks; the territorial disputes with countries such as China and South Korea; and Japan's efforts to strengthen the Japan-U.S. security arrangements.

However, such observations invite the following questions:

  • If there are such signs in Japan, do they reflect Japanese society as a whole? Japan has been strongly pacifistic since the war, avoiding any entanglement in military conflict. This seems to be deeply rooted in the minds of the Japanese people. Just what is the relationship between the purported rise in nationalism and these pacifistic tendencies?
  • Most commentators who warn of rising nationalism in Japan fear a return of the extreme nationalism of prewar Japan. However, are not today's political regime, economic institutions and social conditions, all vastly different from those of prewar Japan?
  • Even though a trend toward nationalism can be witnessed in some quarters of Japan, it doesn't necessarily mean that Japan has become a country that would take dangerous actions. Nationalistic emotions and movements are not directly linked to the actions of a country. Rather, are there not some intervening factors between them?
Minister Kitano will address three points in answering these questions. First he will examine the current situation of Japan by discerning the ‘goals' of Japanese nationalism. Second, he will evaluate the strength of the nationalist movement in Japan by comparing the contemporary movement with the movement in prewar Japan. Last, he will analyze the function of nationalism in different stages of nation states. Through this process, Minister Kitano will reveal the 'myth and reality' of Japan's nationalism.

Mitsuru Kitano currently serves as minister for public affairs at the Embassy of Japan to the United States in Washington, D.C. where he is in charge of outreach to press/media, intellectual exchanges, art and cultural exchanges as well as support for Japanese language education. Kitano has written a number of op-ed articles, including ones analyzing U.S. opinions about Japan in such papers as the Washington Post, the Washington Times, and the International Herald Tribune.

Minister Kitano is a career diplomat and has been posted in Tokyo, France, Geneva, China and Vietnam since joining Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1980. He has been professionally engaged in Japan's bilateral relationship with the U.S., China and Southeast Asian countries, and Japan's policies regarding the United Nations and other international organizations. He was active also in such areas as economic cooperation and nuclear energy issues.

His academic achievements include being a lecturer at Sophia University (Tokyo) and a senior visiting fellow at RIETI (Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry) in Japan. In 2007, he co-authored a book, Paburikku Dipuromashi: Seron no Jidai no Gaiko Senryaku (Public Diplomacy: Diplomatic Strategy in the Age of Public Opinion) (Tokyo: PHP Kenkyujo).

Minister Kitano received a B.A. from the University of Tokyo in 1980 and a M.A. in international relations from the University of Geneva in 1996.

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Mitsuru Kitano Minister for Public Affairs Speaker Embassy of Japan in the United States
Seminars

2008 Year Ahead Part II: Politics and Diplomacy in Japan

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What issues await Japanese politicians and diplomats in 2008? At home, Japan's new Liberal Democratic Party Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda must rebuild confidence in his party while working with an upper house controlled by the opposing Democratic Party of Japan. Abroad, Japanese politicians and diplomats grapple with Japan's role in the U.S.-led "War on Terror," a nuclear North Korea, and sovereignty disputes with South Korea and China. Our two panelists will share their views on Japanese political, diplomatic and security challenges in the year ahead.

Andrew Oros is an assistant professor of political science and international studies at Washington College. Selected as one of five "emerging leaders" in US-Japan relations by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2007, Oros specializes in international and comparative politics of East Asia. His work has appeared in Japan Forum, Intelligence and National Security, and the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, among others. His forthcoming book, Normalizing Japan: Politics, Identity, and the Evolution of Security Practice, will be released in May 2008.

Yuki Tatsumi is research fellow of the East Asia Program at the Henry L. Stimson Center. Prior to her current position, she worked as a research associate at the CSIS, as well as, at the Henry L. Stimson Center. Her analyses on Japanese security policy, Japanese defense policy, US-Japan alliance, and Japanese domestic politics frequently appear in the PacNet Newsletter. In September 2006, Tatsumi testified before the House Committee on International Relations regarding Japan's relationship with its Asian neighbors.

Robert Weiner is an assistant professor of political science at the Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey, CA). His research and teaching focus on Japanese and East Asian politics, political parties and elections, democratic institutions, and research methods. He earned his Ph.D. in political science at the University of California at Berkeley. Weiner spent the 2006-2007 academic year at Stanford's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as a Shorenstein Fellow. He was an assistant professor in the Government Department of Cornell University for three years before joining NPS in 2007.

Please visit www.usajapan.org or call 415-986-4383 for reservation.
2008 Year Ahead is made possible by the generous support of Union Bank of California
 

Union Bank of California
400 California Street, 11th Floor Assembly Hall
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Andrew Oros Professor of Political Science and International Studies Speaker Washington College
Yuki Tatsumi Research Fellow of the East Asia Program Speaker Henry L. Stimson Center, Washington, D.C.
Robert Weiner Assistant Professor of Political Science Speaker Naval Postgraduate School
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Beyond Borders: Global Entrepreneurship

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Up-and-coming Stanford entrepreneurs must think and act globally. Critical resources, markets and opportunities are around the world. Come meet three global entrepreneurs and hear how they got started, challenges they are wrestling with right now, and their best advice on going global.

SPRIE Co-Director Dr. William F. Miller will moderate a panel discussion featuring William A. Chen, Dr. Robert P. Lee, and Gadi Maier.

After the panel discussion there will be a question and answer period, followed by Chinese appetizers and networking.

This event, co-sponsored by the Asia-Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society (ASES), is open to students, the Stanford community and the general public and is part of Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford University.

You can see the entire Entrepreneurship Week agenda at eweek.stanford.edu, including information about the Innovation Tournament for student teams.

About the panelists
William Chen: A General Partner with DT Capital Partners, Chen has been involved in technology companies and startups in Silicon Valley and China, most recently as Founder and CEO of Accelergy Corporation, a R&D technology company with operations in the US and Shanghai. Prior to Accelergy, Chen was Founder and CEO of OnePage, Inc., an enterprise software company that developed a suite of portal products and management tools for the corporate market (acquired by Sybase, Inc.). Before starting OnePage, he was one of the Founders of Billpoint, Inc., which pioneered the concept of online person to person payments. Chen has a BS from the University of Florida and a MBA from Harvard Business School.

Dr. Robert P. Lee: Lee, a 30-year veteran of the computer industry, is Chairman and CEO of Achievo Corporation, which he co-founded in 2002 while he served as president and CEO of Accela, Inc., a leading government automation software company. He was president and CEO of Inxight Software, Inc. before joining Achievo. Prior to that, he was Chairman, President and CEO of Insignia Solutions plc, a software company he took public in 1995. Dr. Lee has served as Executive VP at Symantec Corporation, and was Senior VP at Shared Medical Systems Corporation (now merged with Siemens). He received a BS from the University of California, Berkeley, and MS and PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, all in computer science.

Gadi Maier: Most recently, Maier was CEO and President of Israel-based FraudSciences Corporation, (recently purchased by eBay), and prior to that he spent a year as Venture Partner at Pinnacle Ventures and Benchmark Capital. He was a co-founder and CEO of Scalent Systems (advanced datacenter virtualization software) and he co-founded Currenex, (a marketplace for buyers and sellers of foreign currency, sold to State Street Bank). Preceding Currenex, Maier was CEO, President and Chairman of GetThere, (on-line travel technology to corporations and airlines), leading GetThere's IPO as well as its sale in 2000 to Sabre Corporation. He has served as CEO for Memco Software, Inc., VP & General Manager for Cisco Systems' Internet Business Unit and held senior-level management positions at Oracle. Gadi holds a BS and MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

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William F. Miller Moderator
William Chen General Partner Panelist DT Capital Partners
Dr. Robert P. Lee Chairman and CEO Panelist Achievo Corporation
Gadi Maier CEO and President Panelist FraudSciences Corporation
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Conference on Healthcare Payment Incentives in the Asia Pacific

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Karen Eggleston
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The Asian health policy program is pleased to announce that a conference on "Provider Payment Incentives in the Asia Pacific" will be held November 7-8, 2008, at the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University in Beijing, P.R. China.

Organizers of the conference include health economists at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University; the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University; Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management Department of Economics; and Seoul National University School of Public Health.

We welcome empirical and theoretical research analyzing how reimbursement incentives shape health and healthcare behavior in the economies of the Asia Pacific. We especially welcome evaluations of policy reforms and natural experiments impacting health service provider incentives. The papers can examine payment incentives in one country, region, or healthcare setting, or include comparative analysis of two or more regions in the Asia Pacific.

Please email papers or extended abstracts (about 500 words) to Karen Eggleston. The submissions deadline is June 1, 2008. The selection committee will notify authors by July 1, 2008.

We also encourage inquiries from researchers that may have access to relevant payment reform data but are interested in support regarding their research design or analytic methods. We will work with you to identify appropriate collaborators and possible financial support for completing the research.

Authors of papers selected for presentation will receive partial subsidy for their participation in the conference as well as opportunity to publish their research in a special volume through the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University or in a special issue of an English-language health policy journal.

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John Hagel and Henry Chesbrough deliver keynote addresses at "The Shape of Things to Come" conference

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George Krompacky
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"The Shape of Things to Come," a conference presented by the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship on January 17-18, 2008, featured keynotes by John Hagel, co-author of The Only Sustainable Edge and Co-Chairman of the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation, and Dr. Henry Chesbrough, Executive Director of the Center for Open Innovation at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and author of Open Innovation.

The keynotes bookended Thursday's forum, "New Patterns and Paradigms in Global Innovation Networks," and were a prelude to Friday's academic workshop, "A Global Perspective on Regional Innovation Indicators." Hagel's talk focused on the need for a more explicit taxonomy of innovative collaboration and discussed the "huge need to define pragmatic migration paths"--routes that the average manager and company can take to reach the opportunities that normally are only accessible to cutting-edge companies.

The forum closed with a presentation by Dr. Henry Chesbrough, who provided an overview on the globalization of innovation in the Chinese semiconductor industry, which he sees as split into a "globally oriented, globally competitive" industry segment and a domestically-oriented segment with "backward technologies" and lacking access to capital. The question, he explained, is how China will shift its resources, now entrenched in the latter, to the former, competitive segment.

Chesbrough finished with a discussion of intellectual property rights (IPR) in China, looking at flows of knowledge and current IPR challenges; he mentioned some surprising developments--the rise of businesses to "promote the legal exchange of IP" and the growth of a domestic constituency for stronger IPR--and discussed future implications for IPR in China.

In between the keynotes, the forum featured sessions on innovation in internet services in China, the role of venture capital as a network builder, and discussions on two rapidly moving industries: cleantech and thin film transistor LCD displays.

Conference materials, including presentations and audio files, will be made available on the SPRIE website.

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The Future of Democracy in Southeast Asia

This program will bring together some of the world's leading experts on Southeast Asia and democracy to consider critical questions facing the region. Has the American model of democracy become tarnished in Asia, and is the Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism of growing appeal and significance? What are the dimensions and implications of Islamicization for Southeast Asia? What are the prospects for cleaning up notoriously corrupt party politics? Will the military ever be driven out of politics in places like Thailand and the Philippines? Is the American-led "war on terror" helping stabilize politics in the region, or is it exacerbating already serious problems? What do these developments mean for U.S. foreign policy and American influence in Asia?

 

Kishore Mahbubani, one of Asia's leading public intellectuals, is author of the forthcoming The New Asian Hemisphere: the Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East; and Can Asians Think? and Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust Between America and the World. Now the dean and professor of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, he served for 33 years as a diplomat for Singapore.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author or editor of more than twenty books, including Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, and the newly-released The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World.

Donald K. Emmerson has written or edited more than a dozen books and monographs on Southeast Asian politics, including the forthcoming Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia and Indonesia Beyond Suharto. His latest publication is titled "Challenging ASEAN" (Jan 2008). He is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he also heads the Southeast Asia Forum.

Douglas Bereuter (moderator) is president of The Asia Foundation. He assumed his current position after 26 years of service in the U.S. Congress, where he was one of that body's leading authorities on Asian affairs and international relations.

Co-sponsored with the Asia Society; Business Executives for National Security; UC Berkeley Center for Southeast Asian Studies; USF Center for the Pacific Rim; and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this panel discussion.

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Kishore Mahbubani author and dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Speaker National University of Singapore
Larry Diamond Senior Fellow Speaker the Hoover Institution

Donald K. Emmerson

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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
aparc_dke.jpg PhD

At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

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