Concert of Asia in Crisis

The often maligned aspiration for a "Concert of Asia" appears to be even more unlikely this year as Japan and China trade barbs at the UN and spray water cannons at each other over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.  Meanwhile in Southeast Asia, China has succeeded in fracturing the unity of ASEAN ministers over disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea. Even though these conflicts are unlikely to lead to war, the disputes matter because they influence whether the region will become increasingly bi-polar or whether an international institution/society will be permitted to develop in order to manage, or ideally "tame and sublimate," competition between states.

In the broader historical perspective, the current conflicts are relatively minor compared to the confrontations witnessed during the Cold War in Northeast and Southeast Asia.  Moreover, in the current situation some states are working to defuse tensions -- although no party is blameless.  For example, Japan -- as a state -- continues to act with a measure of restraint, even if some Japanese conservatives see an opportunity for publicity and self-promotion.  It is worth noting that Japan immediately expelled, as opposed to detaining and convicting, the Chinese activists from Hong Kong who landed on the disputed islands in mid-August. Japan's decision to purchase three of the disputed islands from private owners was also an attempt to diffuse bi-lateral tensions by foiling a campaign by the conservative Tokyo Governor, Shintaro Ishihara, to purchase the islands for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government through public donations.  That Japan may have exacerbated tensions by purchasing the islands directly instead of simply restraining Ishihara could be understood as either a miscalculation or an attempt to finish unpleasant business before China's leadership transition is consolidated with the hopes of repairing relations once the new administration takes power. Of course, it is understandable why the Chinese would view the entire purchase drama as a "farce" since this was likely the end result desired by Ishihara in the first place. Notably though, ever since the fallout of the nationalization of the islands, Japan has not escalated tensions by bringing in SDF ships.

Ultimately, even if neighboring powers are exploiting the Chinese regime's weakness during its leadership transition, China is harming its own strategic interests if its bickering or muscle flexing means that regional powers will increasingly ask the US to add more substance to its "pivot" toward Asia.  Of course, the situation is still in play and states are not mechanical actors; ASEAN may still be able to manage and regulate the conflict in its neighborhood, China and America are tied together economically, and not all Asian powers will line up behind the US despite their concerns about China.  But China is increasingly hemming itself in.  As Cheong Suk Wai writes regarding China's claim to the lion's share of the South China Sea:

"... China is now in a Catch-22 situation: on the one hand, if it does not fend off claimants, its increasingly nationalistic population will see its leaders as shrinking Chinese territory; on the other, China is party to the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), and its insistence that it owns most of the South China Sea would go against Unclos and anger its neighbours. Either way, China cannot win." (The Nation [Thailand], 29 September 2012)

China does not have an interest in exacerbating tensions from a strategic or economic vantage point, but its need to distract its domestic population from corruption scandals by fueling nationalist rage may wag the dog.  Stated another way, it may be China's domestic weakness as well as its growing military and economic strength which terminates the prospects for a Concert of Asia and promotes greater regional polarization.

[Cross-Posted from the Duck of Minerva]

ASEAN+6 In the Lead

It's time for the annual Asian multilateral alphabet soup round up... 

Long story short: APEC's proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), the US backed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the Chinese backed Tripartite Agreement all appear to have lost some of their thunder to the ASEAN+6's decision to begin negotiating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) next year.

In fact, if the ASEAN+6 negotiations are substantively successful and not riddled with exceptions clauses it will create the largest economic bloc in the world, the Asian Economic Community (AEC), by 2015.  A couple of the working groups have already met for a few rounds of discussions.  The advantages of the RCEP in the eyes of regional developing countries and emerging markets most likely stem from the open accession format, the inclusion of all regional powerhouses under the leadership of ASEAN, and the exclusion of America's intellectual property rights agenda.

As one might expect, the intense political tensions which have wracked East Asia in recent months have  spilled over to most trade negotiations in the region. The Tripartite Agreement reportedly might be stalled because of the intense political tensions between China, Japan, and South Korea. Similarly, China is unlikely to be included in the TPP so long as Vietnam has veto power over the admission of new members. In fact, the whole point of the TPP appears to be as a mechanism to give members a slight tariff advantage over China so few if any have a strong incentive to bring China into the group. New life may be breathed back into the TPP if President Obama defeats Governor Romney in the Presidential elections.  But the highly secretive character of TPP negotiations and the exclusion of Russia, China, and India in the TPP makes the initiative suspect in the eyes of the major Asian powers regardless.  Japan remains an observer to the TPP and domestic protectionist pressures particularly in the agricultural sector are likely to inhibit full Japanese participation in the future. 

The mystery then is why the ASEAN+6 negotiations seem to be moving forward while other agreements appear stalled. The ASEAN Secretary General, Surin Pitsuwan even noted that there was no sign of tension and even some cordial relations between the trade ministers from China, Japan, and South Korea who all sat next to each other at a recent meeting in Cambodia. China, Japan, and South Korea all gave their endorsement for the RCEP.  An obvious assumption is that the ASEAN+6 agreement is highly diluted or merely a lowest common denominator agreement. However, by its own (opaque) scorecard, ASEAN claims to have achieved 67.5% of its members' commitments toward paving the way for the Asian Economic Community in the last three years. Nevertheless, by all accounts the most contentious issues lie ahead.  In particular, it remains to be seen whether the regional powers will be willing to extend to one another the kinds of bargains they have made individually with ASEAN. Perhaps the key to forging an agreement in these politically tense times is letting ASEAN take the wheel instead of any one of the major powers.

[Cross-posted at the Duck of Minerva]

The Monopoly

Why should academics and policymakers prioritize a state's acquistion of  "... the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory"? Obviously, this monopoly is fundamental to masking the violence of the state in daily domestic affairs, but what about in areas where that violence cannot be masked under the guise of a neutral, rational-legal state that speaks for the "nation" in the first place? Is a Eurocentric model of the state still an appropriate priority for all territories, particularly in regions which have a long history of embattled states as well as fractured societies, and which are experiencing multi-pronged challenges to state authority?

Historically, of course, "pre-modern" states did not always feel the need or desire to acquire a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. For example, one of the greatest imperial states in history, the Mughal Empire which eventually covered much of modern South Asia (including Afghanistan), never sought or obtained a monopoly on violence and this "failure" did not hinder its progress. At the height of its power in the 17th century, the Mughal empire was more opulent than all of Europe combined. The cultural and particularly the architectural achievements of this imperial state are still considered among the finest in the world. Technologically, in 1526 it was the first to introduce the combined use of handguns and cannons with its military in the sub-continent. While its military superiority would eventually decline, it was never more than a decade behind its rivals in terms of military technology. In any case, in the early and middle period of the empire, the Mughal army could defeat any single opponent on the open battlefield, including European upstarts (see Child's War 1686-1690). Economically, the empire produced goods for the world market. The arrival of European merchants only further extended direct trade links to northern and western Europe, although prior to industrialization there was little to nothing that the Europeans could offer in exchange for goods produced in South Asia except silver bullion.

The Mughal state had some of the trappings of a modern state, including a large bureaucracy and an extensive police and intelligence apparatus. However, it did not seek to disarm the peasantry or dispossess local and regional rivals who acknowledged its superiority. In fact, as Peter Lorge argues in The Asian Military Revolution (Cambridge, 2008, pp. 130-131), Mughal emperors sat atop a vast "military labor market" of over 4 million infantrymen. The Mughal state's confidence rested on the fact that it had the best concentration of infantry and equipment as well as a massive treasury and spy network. The goal of the emperor was not to disarm its local and regional rivals, but to manage violence. In other words, the objective was "... to maintain the internal balance of center and periphery, not to annihilate external threats to the throne," (Lorge 2008, p. 138). This balance was maintained in part by keeping the state literally on the move  en masse from one hot spot to the next. The treasury could also be used to purchase a sufficient additional supply of soldier in order to deny those resources to regional rivals. In any case, military resistance to this peripatetic imperial state by regional rivals was often part of an elaborate bargaining procedure for improving one's rank within the finely graded official status hierarchy. Of course, once it was weakened by fighting against the guerrilla tactics of the Maratha Confederacy in the mid-17th century, the empire began a steady decline, eventually succumbing to domination by their British vassals and the creation of a "modern state" which did vigorously pursue a strategy to disarm the countryside and to monopolize legitimate violence. Notably, however, the emperor remained remarkably legitimate to large numbers of Hindus and Muslims even up to the dying days of the empire as the Great Rebellion of 1857 demonstrated.

I ask the question about the need for a monopoly not because I want to bring Babur & Co. back from the dead (although... well... that would be fun... after all, nobody parties quite like a Timurid...) but because it is clear that there are several territories in contemporary international affairs where the claim to a monopoly on legitimate use of violence is clearly unlikely to be established in the near future. Labeling such states as "failed" or "failing" in lazy and counter productive.

In places like Afghanistan, for example, the state does not have the monopoly of the legitimate use of force and won't for the foreseeable future; Afghans know they will have to pay homage indefinitely to a range of actors who have the ability to threaten the use of violence against them: warlords, insurgents, foreign troops, the police, etc. As Noah Coburn argues in Bazaar Politics: Power and Pottery in an Afghan Market Town (Stanford 2011, pp. 182-207), the Afghan state cannot serve as a vertical container of societal conflicts because many of the major actors in society are rivals of the state. Coburn adds that even the notion of a discrete border between the state and society is an artificial construct maintained in large part by society to prop up the state. In other words, the Afghan state is so weak and porous that it is up to society to sustain the illusion of the state as rational and professional. Maintaining the illusion allows aid to flow and keeps the peace, such as it is. Nonetheless, the population is not motivated solely by fear of violence, Afghans value the idea of a sovereign state and the integrity of their state's territory. The people of Afghanistan do not want their country partitioned or to have their state's sovereignty further diminished or humiliated by regional or global actors. At the same time, people are realistic enough to know that the state will not vanquish the insurgents and warlords -- even with massive international military and financial assistance.

But the choice is not between a monopoly on violence or total anarchy. For embattled states the issue is whether the effort to prioritize acquiring a monopoly by defeating the insurgency and all other challengers to the state is realistic. Building up massive armies in weak states through foreign funding is unsustainable if the state is ever to regain full sovereignty. Moreover, the prolonged presence of foreign troops and unaccountable international non-governmental organizations often undermines the state's authority and autonomy as much as warlords and insurgents. Perhaps the aim should be to develop sufficient violence capability and financial patronage to keep rival coercive threats in check. To paraphrase Coburn's depiction of the Afghan state a few years ago: it is too weak to be despotic but strong enough to keep warlords from the temptation of increasing their despotism. Perhaps that should be considered both sufficient and realistic as a marker of success, no? If so, then the question becomes how many elite forces, how much hi-tech weaponry, and how much direct budgetary support would be necessary to maintain that balance while gradually strengthening the state's ability to increase revenue extraction. This advice will be lost on the US and its partners who are moving toward the exit doors, but India, Russia, and Iran may see its wisdom after 2014...

[Cross-posted from Duck of Minerva]

Embezzlement and the Afghan Army

Although Americans and Europeans remain fixated on trying to decipher when their countries will finally leave Afghanistan, corruption continues apace in Afghanistan...

So. Why should we in the US or Europe care?

Well, the latest scandal involves the embezzlement of 6.7 milllion Afghanis (US$ 138,816) from the New Kabul Bank which was allocated to pay the salaries of soldiers 111 Military Corps of the Afghan Army (Tolo TV, 10 January 2012).  For those who understand the Afghan army, it is perhaps not much of a stretch to say that the Afghan Army will dissolve with a few weeks if the paychecks stop coming. I probably don't need to lay out what that implies for the stability of Afghanistan if the army crumbles...

A single incident of embezzlement probably would not be too alarming except that Afghan Attorney General's Office still has not solved a similar case of embezzlement worth $900 million.

Daily Life 1-30-12

An Afghan child sifts the usable residue from the ashes of coal used at a brick factory during the cold days of a harsh winter in Surkhroad, Nangarhar province east of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. Thousands of Afghan children work to make money to support their families in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul).

Surkhroad, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan

I've been a bit too busy teaching my courses on the Politics of Afghanistan to blog much about South Asia or Afghanistan lately, but I had to post this picture when I saw it. Perhaps this girl could be from anywhere in the subcontinent and this level of grinding poverty that afflicts children is not uncommon in many other parts of the world from Brazil to Turkey.  Nevertheless, it is still deeply upsetting... 

Daily Life 1-15-12

An Afghan man makes a snowman outfitted with body armor and a weapon after a snowstorm in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Jan, 15, 2012. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)

Kabul, Afghanistan

Daily Life 1-11-12

Pakistani truck driver Habibullah cleans a body of his truck decorated with traditional truck art in Lahore, Pakistan on Wednesday, Jan 11, 2012. (AP Photo/K.M.Chaudary)

Lahore, Pakistan