China’s performance in numerous environmental areas—emission of greenhouse gases, use of ozone-depleting substances, reduction of sulphur dioxide emissions, or exploitation of fishing grounds in the western Pacific—will help determine the success of various global and regional environmental protection efforts. And as the World Bank’s recent study Clear Water, Blue Skies: China’s Environment in the New Century documents, the quality of life within China will be greatly affected by efforts to protect air, water, and soil, all of which are under heavy assault.

Ever since 1973, when Premier Zhou Enlai attended the United Nations–sponsored Stockholm Conference, the Chinese government has paid steadily increasing attention to environmental issues. It has joined many international accords, passed numerous environmental protection laws, and established a national environmental protection bureaucracy. On the surface, at least, there has been considerable movement. But how about beneath the surface?

With regard to its international commitments and agreements, what is the record to date? Why does China join international environmental accords? What happens domestically once it enters into an agreement? And what lessons can both China and the international community derive from the record to date? What factors encourage and inhibit effective implementation and compliance? What measures can be undertaken to improve the record?

This paper addresses these questions through an examination of China’s accession to and compliance with five environmental protection treaties: the Convention in Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in January 1981; the London Convention against Ocean Dumping in October 1985; the World Heritage Convention in December 1985; the International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA) in July 1986; and the Montreal Protocol in June 1992.

The paper is part of a multi-nation study under the direction of Professor Edith Brown Weiss of George Washington University Law School and Professor Harold Jacobson of the University of Michigan Political Science Department comparing compliance with these same treaties in the United States, Russia, Brazil, India, Japan, the Cameroons, and portions of Europe. The MIT Press is publishing the results of these studies under the title Engaging Countries: Strengthening Compliance with International Environmental Accords.

This study examines the likely security consequences of the continued growth in energy consumption in East Asia, and in particular:

security.

dependencies and insecurities.

The study concludes that:

1. Energy supplies for East Asian economic growth, as well as for other anticipated energy needs in the world, can be available at prices that will not set growth back provided that international markets for fuels, exports, technologies, and capital continue to operate.

2. The main source of insecurity connected with energy use will be the anticipation, on the part of countries partially or wholly dependent on imports of fuels and energy technologies, of political developments that would interfere with either energy-related imports or the exports needed to pay for them.

3. Economic and technical solutions to the problems posed by economic and energy consumption growth in East Asia and elsewhere, and by their regional and global environmental impacts, exist if the political framework is available to carry them out. Seeking out and implementing those solutions would serve U.S. leadership and prosperity. As a result, a principal goal of U.S. policies will be to make politically possible the combination of economic and security policies needed to provide that framework. These policies are highly interactive: failure of economic policies, or even misperception of the nature and impact of economic policies, can greatly heighten security problems.

This APARC discussion series clearly recognizes that the international and regional condi- tions of the post–Cold War era raise new and vexing questions about the future of the United States and its alliance relations in Northeast Asia. Today I would like to raise and begin to analyze a specific subset of questions related to proliferation, which I believe have a direct bearing on the future security situation in the region—and, more importantly for us, the U.S. alliances there. I do not think that this subject receives sustained analysis, so I would like to try to initiate that process. I am at the outset of putting this research together and welcome the opportunity to hear your thoughts and criticisms as the study evolves.

In this presentation, I take a preliminary look at how issues of proliferation affect the present and future disposition of U.S. alliances in Northeast Asia. In particular, I hope to answer three questions. First, how do issues of proliferation either weaken or strengthen U.S. relations with its allies in Northeast Asia? Second, how do issues of proliferation affect the overall security situation there? And third, how does the security situation, in turn, shape the rationale or justification for continued U.S. alliance presence in the region? For this presenta- tion, when I speak of proliferation I generally refer to the spread of nuclear, missile, and advanced conventional weapon capabilities. I will not address issues related to chemical and biological weapons, although I do believe that these are a concern. Such a definition obviously casts a rather wide net, and in a presentation such as this at a relatively early stage of the research, I want to keep my focus relatively narrow. Thus, I will not address what I consider global issues of nonproliferation, such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Rather, I want to focus more narrowly on issues of specific relevance to Northeast Asia.

In trying to keep this focus narrow, then, I will proceed in four steps. First, I wish to briefly consider the contemporary trends of proliferation, around the globe and regionally, which have a bearing on the security situation in Northeast Asia. Second, I want to discuss three types of proliferation concerns and show how they intersect and interact with U.S. alliance relations. The first is nuclear proliferation, and here I would like to look at alliance relations in the context of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO. On the issue of the proliferation of theater missile defenses (TMD), I want to look specifically at the development of these capabilities by South Korea and Japan. And third, on the issue of ballistic missile proliferation, I would like to consider the efforts by South Korea to develop a more powerful ballistic missile force. In the third part of the talk, I would like to address how these and other proliferation issues affect relations with China, because future U.S. alliance relations will be shaped in no small measure by Chinese reactions to them. In the fourth and concluding section of the talk, I will try to look ahead and assess how these several developments affect relations between the United States and its allies in Northeast Asia; how they influence security in the region; and how U.S. alliance relations in Northeast Asia might be readjusted in the future so that cooperation and nonproliferation can help justify a continued U.S. presence in the region, simultaneously contributing to long-term regional confidence and stability.

Published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.