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The price of Asian
conflict
By Chietigj Bajpaee
HONG KONG - The Asian way of resolving
conflicts - sweeping disputes or areas of
disagreement under the carpet and focusing on
developing economic relations - has failed.
This is proven by a  series of
long-standing disputes that have exploded in
recent weeks, including a maritime territorial
dispute in the Sulawesi Sea between Malaysia and
Indonesia, a dispute between South Korea and Japan
over the Tokdo/Takeshima islets, and growing
tensions between China and Japan over Japan's
republishing of a controversial textbook and over
potentially energy-rich territory in the East
China Sea. The escalation of these disputes has
highlighted the urgent need for Asian states to
reform their multilateral conflict and dispute
resolution mechanisms.
While growing trade
and economic interdependence between states
increases the cost of conflict, it does not deter
it. The recent protests in China against Japan's
bid for a permanent seat in the United
Nations Security Council, which included attacks
on Japanese shops and a boycotting of Japanese
brands, has highlighted this. In fact, growing
cross-border exchanges reinforce differences and a
sense of national identity, while economic
prosperity restores national pride and confidence
to address past injustices.
Across the
region numerous territorial disputes lie dormant,
awaiting only the manipulation by politicians to
stoke nationalist passions or the discovery of
natural resources to reawaken them. The fact that
oil prices are rising and the majority of Asian
states are significant energy importers has also
placed pressure on Asian states to look for energy
resources closer to home, and in some cases in
disputed territories.
Long-standing
disputes are also undermining confidence-building
measures and preventing cooperation in addressing
shared security threats, such as international
terrorism, piracy in the Strait of Malacca,
through which a third of the world's trade and
half of the world's oil supplies transit, as well
as less conventional security threats such as
AIDS, SARS, bird flu and
tsunamis.
Finally, Asia's climate of
suspicion and distrust, coupled with its code of
conduct based on non-intervention and
non-confrontation, has allowed a number of
internal instabilities to escalate into regional
and international security crises.
For
example, instabilities in Myanmar's military
regime through its suppression of ethnic groups
and the democratic process are fueling tensions
within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) over the question of Yangon's chairmanship
next year. Similarly, the insurgencies in India's
northeast, commonly referred to as the "Seven
Sisters", have the potential to combine with the
Maoist insurgency in Nepal, the insurgencies in
Myanmar and rising Islamic fundamentalist
sentiment in Bangladesh to create a "failed
region" in Asia.
Frictions between China
and Taiwan and on the Korean peninsula, while
rooted in internal conflicts, have regional and
global ramifications. In Central Asia, the
Ferghana Valley has become a focal point for
instability fueled by poverty, dictatorial
regimes, growing Islamist sentiments, and "great
power" competition over energy resources. This was
evinced recently with a wave of protests in
Kyrgyzstan, resulting in the ousting of president
Askar Akayev, followed by the repression of
opposition protests in neighboring Uzbekistan by
President Islam Karimov.
Asia's
multilateral and bilateral security bodies are
proving to be deficient in addressing these
disputes. Most of the current security
arrangements are only temporary stop-gap measures.
The irony is that while North America and Europe
represent relative "islands" of peace, with few
internal security threats, they possess a number
of well-developed multilateral security forums,
think-tanks and consultancies that continuously
investigate global and regional threats to
internal stability. On the other hand, in Asia,
where there exist states with significant defense
budgets and a high concentration of inter-state
disputes and internal instabilities, multilateral
security bodies are sorely lacking, or lack
maturity. This discrepancy is understandable,
given the legacy of the Cold War division of Asia
and the fact that most Asian nation-states have
only come into being in the last half
century and have a still developing
sense of identity. However, Asian states cannot
afford to be complacent any longer, given the
growing economic interdependence of the region.
Nationalism and natural resources
Most inter-state tensions in Asia combine
tangible disputes over natural resources with
intangible disputes over historical animosities
and jingoistic passions. In East Asia, Japan has
been a focal point for these disputes as a result
of its World War II legacy. For example, while
China has become Japan's largest trading partner,
this economic progress could be unraveled by
political and military confrontation and energy
competition.
Most recently, protests not
seen since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
have taken place across more than a dozen cities
in China, resulting in attacks on Japanese people,
shops and brands. The protests were set off by
opposition to Japan's bid to gain a permanent seat
on the UN Security Council, Japanese Prime
Minister Koizumi's annual visits to the Yasukuni
Shrine that honors war dead, including 14 class A
war criminals, and Japan's republication of
a history textbook that allegedly understates
the brutality of Japan during its invasion of
Asia, including the issues of "comfort" women and
the Nanjing massacre.
These tensions only
add to a string of recent Sino-Japanese frictions,
which include football hooliganism at the
Japan-China finals of the Asian Cup tournament in
August 2004, and former Taiwanese president Lee
Teng Hui's visit to Japan at the end of 2004.
Japan has also decided to cut its overseas
development assistance to China in the presence of
China's improving standard of living, high growth
levels and confrontational relations with Japan.
The sporadic discovery of chemical weapons left
over by the Japanese army on Chinese soil and
reports of biological tests on Chinese civilians,
such as those of the infamous Unit 731, have also
fueled Sino-Japanese tensions.
These
tensions culminated with Japan identifying China
as a potential security threat in its National
Defense Program Outline released in December 2004,
and the US and Japan issuing a security statement
that designated the Sino-Taiwan dispute as a
"common strategic objective" in February.
These tensions are likely to be further
inflamed by both states' quest for energy
security, as both are net oil importers. A
territorial dispute between China and Japan in the
East China Sea, which both sides claim as their
exclusive economic zone, is being fueled by
reports of vast supplies of oil and gas in the
area. The disputed territory includes the Diaoyu
or Senkaku islands and the Chunxiao gas field.
Japan regards the median line as its border, while
China claims jurisdiction over the entire
continental shelf. Although the Chunxiao gas field
is on the Chinese side of the median line, Japan
claims that China may be siphoning energy
resources on the Japanese side. China has been
drilling in the area since 2003 and the Japanese
government gave the green light for oil and gas
exploration in the disputed waters in mid-April.
This competition took the form of a military
confrontation following the incursion of a Chinese
nuclear-powered submarine into Japanese waters off
Okinawa in November 2004. The intrusion was
followed by a two-day chase across the East China
Sea. While China offered a swift apology for the
incursion, this was soon followed by the intrusion
of a Chinese research vessel into Japanese waters
near Okinotori in December. The vessel is believed
to have been surveying the seabed for oil and gas
drilling purposes. This was the 34th maritime
research exercise by Chinese vessels within
Japan's economic zone in 2004, up from eight in
2003, with China not giving prior notification in
21 of the 34 cases.
A similar pattern of
relations can be seen between Japan and South
Korea, with economic cooperation coexisting with
political and military confrontation. Relations
between South Korea and Japan have shown
considerable improvement in recent years, with
both states co-hosting the soccer World Cup in
2002 and growing cultural exchanges through
tourism and the popularity of South Korean soap
operas in Japan and Japanese pop music in South
Korea. Being the 40th anniversary of the 1965
normalization treaty, 2005 was designated the
"friendship year" between South Korea and Japan.
Nevertheless, tensions have recently
resurfaced over a territorial dispute in the Sea
of Japan, which South Korea refers to as the East
Sea, over the Takeshima islets, as known in Japan,
and Tokdo, as known in South Korea. While the
islets, which are currently occupied by South
Korea, are of little value, the seas around them
are rich fishing grounds and possibly possess
natural gas and mineral deposits.
Emotions
in South Korea flared when a Japanese
prefecture declared February 22 Takeshima Day.
Flag-burning and protests against Japan have since
become commonplace across South Korea, as well as
attacks on Japanese government websites. The South
Korean military has also increased patrols and
allowed civilian tours of the disputed territory.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has also
demanded that Japan apologize and offer
compensation for World War II atrocities, although
Japan claims that it has fulfilled its obligations
under the 1965 normalization treaty.
Japan's relations with Russia have also
been strained, as both states have not signed a
formal peace treaty ending the hostilities of
World War II due to a territorial dispute over the
Southern Kuriles, or Northern Territories.
Tensions have been further fueled by Koizumi's
sail around the disputed territories in September
2004. These actions are undermining cooperation in
the energy sphere. Russia had recently given the
go-ahead to construct an oil pipeline from Taishet
to the pacific port of Nakhodka on the Sea of
Japan over a route favored by China, to Daqing in
northeast Heilongjiang province. However,
Russian-Japanese frictions have delayed
construction and forced Russia to consider
building a branch of the pipeline to China.
Another inter-state dispute that has
flared in recent weeks is between Malaysia and
Indonesia. Malaysia-Indonesia relations were
already tense as a result of Malaysia's harsh
crackdown on a million illegal workers, 450,000 of
whom were Indonesians, following the end of a
four-month amnesty. The situation was aggravated
by Indonesia's subsequent slow processing of
travel documents for Indonesians wishing to return
to Malaysia, which created labor shortages in
Malaysia. Tensions were further fueled by a
territorial dispute in the Sulawesi Sea, set off
on February 16 when Malaysia's state-owned oil
company Petronas awarded oil exploration rights to
Shell in two blocks of an offshore oil field where
Indonesia had awarded rights to Unocal last year.
A war of words ensued, with racist slurs
and Sukarno-era anti-Malaysian slogans accompanied
by protests, attacks on Malaysian websites and the
deployment of military aircraft and naval vessels
to the disputed region. This culminated in the
collision of a Malaysian patrol boat with an
Indonesian navy ship in April when Malaysian
vessels attempted to approach a lighthouse being
built by Indonesia on the Unarang reef.
While not an active dispute, the
long-standing maritime territorial dispute in the
South China Sea over the Spratly and Paracel
islands may also be reignited by the potentially
rich supply of energy resources in the disputed
region. The 130 small islands making up the
Paracel islands, which have been occupied by China
since 1974, are also claimed by Vietnam and
Taiwan. The 400 islands of the Spratly chain have
partial claims by the Philippines, Brunei and
Indonesia, and are fully claimed by Vietnam,
Taiwan and China. Five states have permanent
military garrisons on the atolls, in addition to
surveillance facilities under the guise of
"bird-watching" towers, weather huts and tourist
facilities.
Most recently, China commenced
joint pre-exploration studies with the Philippines
in the South China Sea, which have been openly
opposed by Vietnam. China, meanwhile, has
protested over PetroVietnam welcoming
international bids for drilling and exploration
activities in the disputed waters and Vietnam
starting commercial flights and tours of the
disputed territory. Both states have engaged in
sporadic clashes on at least four occasions, the
most violent of which took place in 1988, in which
the Chinese sank three Vietnamese naval vessels,
killing 76 sailors.
Sino-Vietnamese
tensions have recently taken a back seat to the
burgeoning trade relationship between both states,
with China now becoming Vietnam's third largest
trading partner. A hotline was also established
between both states in August 2004 as part of a
commitment to resolve land and sea border disputes
by peaceful means. However, as China expands its
naval power projection capabilities and becomes
increasingly desperate to access the potential
energy resources in the region, conflict may once
again overtake cooperation.
A series of
smaller scale disputes also continue to plague the
region, such as between Malaysia and Singapore
over the Johor causeway, the price of Malaysian
water for Singapore, rival claims for the rocky
islet of Batu Puteh or Pedra Branca, which is
currently held by Singapore, Singapore's use of
Malaysian airspace, Malaysia's railway land in
Singapore and the bitter legacy of Singapore's
separation from Malaysia in 1965. Thailand and
Myanmar also have frictional relations, with the
latter accusing the former of supporting insurgent
groups with help from the US. Most recently,
Myanmar's ruling junta accused the US and Thailand
of supporting the May 7 triple bombing in Yangon
that killed 19 people.
In some cases,
territorial disputes are rooted in historical
memory, such as the Sino-Korean dispute over the
ancient kingdom of Koguryo. Other disputes are
recent, such as that between Australia and East
Timor over the energy-rich Timor Sea, with the
former claiming the entire continental shelf as
part of its exclusive economic zone, while the
latter regards the median line as its boundary.
Australia has been pumping oil out of the disputed
territory since 1999 and has withdrawn from
sections of the International Court of Justice
relevant to maritime boundary disputes. The issue
of terrorism is also adding an additional
dimension to inter-state tensions, as seen with
recent frictions between Thailand and Malaysia
over the increasing violence in Thailand's south
and between Indonesia and its neighbors, with the
latter accusing the former of spawning terrorism
in the region.
Diverting attention from
internal problems
In many cases these
inter-state instabilities emanate from internal
instabilities. Many disputes are constructed or
inflated to deflect attention from domestic
problems. For example, as the Japanese government
has had limited success in restarting the Japanese
economy, it has diverted attention to
international issues with attempts to resolve
territorial disputes and grant Japan a more active
role on the world stage. Koizumi's visits to the
Yasukuni Shrine, his sail around the disputed
Southern Kurils/Northern Territories, and
deployment of Japan's Self Defense Forces to Iraq
are all part of this process, as are attempts
to gain a permanent seat on the UN Security
Council and possibly amend Japan's pacifist
constitution with respect to Article 9, which
renounces war.
Meanwhile, in South Korea
growing anti-Japanese sentiment has been used by
the government to target the opposition Grand
National Party, with investigations into wartime
collaborators. In China, protests against Japan
come at the same time as growing protests against
the Chinese government over corruption and
unemployment. With the Chinese Communist Party
losing its communist credentials, as the economy
increasingly resembles a capitalist market, it has
put more emphasis on its Chinese credentials by
addressing past injustices against the Chinese
people.
The dispute between Indonesia and
Malaysia also flared at the same time as the
Indonesian government decided to cut fuel
subsidies in the presence of rising oil prices,
which raised domestic fuel prices by 30%.
New leaders, such as Indonesian President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Malaysian Prime Minister
Abdullah Badawi and Chinese President Hu Jintao,
may also reignite inter-state disputes to
demonstrate their patriotic credentials. For
example, China's new anti-secession law targeting
Taiwan could be used by Hu to solidify his support
base and appease the hawks and hardliners within
the Communist Party.
Finally, many of
Asia's inter-state conflicts are rooted in the
weak national identities of the region. In Asia,
statehood has often been achieved or imposed by
former colonial rulers before national identity
has been forged, resulting in situations where the
only binding factor in a country is its common
external enemy. This increases the likelihood of
inter-state disagreements and frictions escalating
into full-scale conflict.
Irrelevant
conflict resolution mechanisms
Current
dispute resolution mechanisms have proven
themselves deficient in addressing recent
inter-state disputes, let alone resolving more
active disputes such as the nuclear flashpoints
between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, between
China and Taiwan, and on the Korean peninsula.
While Asia has a number of multilateral security
bodies, most are still in their infancy when it
comes to addressing active conflicts and security
crises.
The plethora of regional bodies,
such as the Asia Cooperation Dialogue, the East
Asia Summit, the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization, ASEAN, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation, the
Asia-Africa Dialogue, the Non-Aligned Movement,
and the Conference on Interaction and
Confidence-Building Measures in Asia are usually
sidelined when addressing inter-state disputes. In
most cases, if a dispute were to escalate into
full-scale conflict, short of external involvement
such as referring the dispute to the UN Security
Council, no regional solution exists.
The
code of conduct for these
organizations, based on the principles of
non-interference and state sovereignty, has also
allowed for wealthy and stable states to coexist
with poverty-stricken and conflict-ridden states
and led to the escalation of internal
instabilities into regional crises.
Furthermore, emphasis on non-confrontation
and face-saving has sidelined regional bodies from
addressing regional crises. For example, the
"Bandung Spirit", the "ASEAN Way", the ASEAN
Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and China's Five
Principles of Peaceful Coexistence basically
emphasize the need to avoid conflict at all costs,
even it means avoiding discussion of the issues.
For example, the Five Principles of
Peaceful Coexistence, which was first introduced
between China and India in 1954, did not prevent
the two states from going to war in 1962 and
having adversarial relations ever since.
The "ASEAN Way" has not prevented states
in Southeast Asia from making harsh statements
against each other and engaging in occasional
skirmishes. Even today, the "hands-off" code of
conduct of the numerous security bodies of the
region has prevented their involvement in
addressing internal security problems that are
fast escalating into regional crises. These
include the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, the Muslim
insurgency in southern Thailand, Islamic terrorism
in the southern Philippines from the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front and Abu Sayyaf, and instabilities
in Indonesia from the Jemmah Islamiah terrorist
movement and the Aceh and Papau separatist
movements.
Finally, the climate of
distrust created by long-standing inter-state
disputes prevents cooperation on shared security
threats such as international terrorism and
piracy, energy security, epidemics such
as bird flu and SARS, and developing a
tsunami detection system to prevent a repeat of
Boxing Day 2004. These disputes are also hindering
attempts at regional integration. For example,
Japan's tense relations with its neighbors are
delaying plans for an ASEAN+3 Free Trade Area.
At this rate, Asia's multilateral security
bodies could soon join the list of previously
irrelevant and failed security bodies, such as the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, which was
envisioned by the US as Asia's version of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization and which
dissolved in 1977, and the Association of
Southeast Asia (ASA), which was ASEAN's
predecessor.
Part of the problem lies in
the fact that the Cold War did not end in Asia.
Few of Asia's communist regimes collapsed with the
fall of the Soviet Union. Vietnam, China and North
Korea still retain their communist credentials,
although all three have developed capitalist
characteristics to varying degrees. Even states
that claim to have shed their communist shackles
maintain many of their communist-era institutions,
as seen in Central Asia. Thus the Cold War climate
of distrust is still very much present in Asia, as
evinced by talk of a US-Japanese-Indian
containment of China. This culture of mistrust in
the region increases the potential for
long-standing internal and inter-state disputes
and conflicts to escalate into full-blown regional
and international crises and undermines the
utility of regional bodies to address these
crises.
Conclusion
It is widely
believed that through developing relations in
economic and cultural arenas that the security
arena will somehow become irrelevant, or
disappear. However, the popularity of Japanese pop
music in South Korea or South Korean soap operas
in Japan has not prevented the escalation of
tensions between both states over the
Tokdo/Takeshima islets.
Nor has the fact
that China is now Japan's largest trading partner
prevented protests against Japan's bid for a
permanent seat on the UN Security Council, or
deterred football hooliganism at the Asian Cup
final between the two states.
To
be sure, economic interdependence and cultural
exchanges are important, as can be seen by growing
Taiwanese investment in China having a restraining
influence on the separatist tendencies of the
Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan. Increasing
transport linkages and cricket and Bollywood
diplomacy have also reignited a sense of shared
history and culture between India and Pakistan.
However, these processes can only go so
far. Rapprochement in the security arena must
proceed in tandem with improving relations in the
economic and cultural arenas for the sense of
goodwill to be solidified. Economic, political and
security cooperation are not mutually exclusive,
but rather mutually reinforcing.
Chietigj Bajpaee is a researcher
for Civic Exchange, a Hong Kong-based
public-policy think-tank. He has been a researcher
for the London-based International Institute for
Strategic Studies and a risk analyst for a New
York-based risk management company. He has a
graduate degree in international relations from
the London School of Economics and an
undergraduate degree in economics and government
from Wesleyan and Oxford Universities. His areas
of interest include energy security and political,
economic and security developments in the Asia
Pacific region. The views expressed here are his
own. He can be contacted at
c.bajpaee-alumni@lse.ac.uk
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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