Asia's Security Role Goes Global

March 11, 2008

By Rodger Baker
Over the last few decades, China, Japan and South Korea have dabbled on the international stage mainly via “soft” tools such as cultural and economic exchanges. But as the global trading system has evolved — along with the East Asian trio’s stature within that system — the three countries’ hunger for resources and markets has grown to an all-time high. This has pushed them into increasingly bold experiments on the international stage with “harder” tools such as military and security exchanges.
China is contributing troops to a hybrid U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region. Japan has resumed refueling operations in the Indian Ocean in support of U.S. and coalition anti-terrorism operations in Afghanistan. And South Korea, which at one point had the third-largest contingent of troops in Iraq, is revisiting its defense relationship with the United States and preparing to take a more active role in East Asia and elsewhere.
U.S. distractions in the Middle East and the collapse of U.S. Cold War security guarantees to Japan and South Korea have played a key role in creating the environment necessary for these experiments to occur. Overall, a fundamental reassessment has been taking place in Northeast Asia over the past decade. Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul are reviewing their strategic positions not only in relation to one another in Asia, but in regard to their global role and vulnerabilities. Once-insular East Asia is debating the merits of breaking from historic patterns and seeking a more assertive global role economically, politically and militarily. To help understand how Asia got to where it is today, some historical background is in order.
The European Age
In the 1500s, Europe underwent a rapid expansion of global exploration and conquest, spreading European influence and involvement far beyond the North Atlantic and Mediterranean to nearly every part of the globe. The European age, stretching from the late 1400s to the late 1900s, was driven by the need for raw materials and resources, markets and power. Power resulted from industrial capacity and wealth, which foreign resources and domestic labor fed.
The imperial age created a competitive cycle, with European powers building bigger fleets and armies to protect their economic interests and scrambling for new territories and resources to feed their war machines. The more territory a country held, the bigger its navy needed to be; the bigger the navy, the more resources the country needed; the more resources it needed, the more territory it needed to hold.
For better or worse, Europe engaged the world aggressively, spreading European influence and power worldwide. It engaged other countries in their respective regions. For example, when Europe engaged Asia, it did so in Asia. Europe colonized the world; the world did not colonize Europe. Before the European age, spreading powers had engaged Europe in Europe via the Mediterranean or the Eurasian heartland, but these occurred before European exploration created the first truly global international system. For the most part, Asian powers stayed in Asia, African powers stayed in Africa, and so on. It was Europe — and its technological revolutions in shipbuilding, navigation and naval warfare — that united the world into an integrated system.
By the mid-1800s, and increasingly after the U.S. Civil War, the United States had joined the Europeans in spreading its own economic, political and military power and influence in the world. The United States spread its wings in the Western Hemisphere, but its aspirations later extended far beyond. With one flank on the Pacific, the United States was perfectly positioned to take a more active role in Asia, which was increasing in importance due its trade and resources. While the United Kingdom had “opened” China to the outside world, it was the United States that had opened Japan and Korea.
Cold War to Asia as Trade Cornerstone
World Wars I and II left Europe in shambles and its global empires crumbling. As the European age faded, the United States and the Soviet Union embarked on a global Cold War, spreading their respective influence and power in a strategic worldwide chess game. Soviet and U.S. interests squared off in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. What had once been the playground of Europe was now the proxy battleground of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. While Europe still dabbled in internationalism, its focus mostly shifted inward.
Like the imperial age it replaced, the Cold War brought a certain sense of order to the world despite the high-stakes rivalry. The collapse of the Soviet Union left a power vacuum, with the United States as sole global hegemon. The U.S. Navy was far and away the most powerful in the world, giving the United States the ability to assert its interests quickly, nearly anywhere in the world. After Sputnik, the United States worked to establish a strong lead in space, which evolved into a cornerstone of U.S. technological dominance and war-fighting capability. Global trade patterns had shifted, too. Trans-Pacific trade equaled trans-Atlantic trade by 1980, and surpassed it in the next decade.
While post-Cold War America remains the dominant global power by dint of sheer size and industrial and economic heft, global trade is focused on Asia. The Asian export powers — China, Japan and South Korea — all sit among the top 12 economies in the world. But their dependence on resources from abroad, particularly energy, and on overseas export markets have stretched their economic interests far beyond the reach of their military capabilities. During the Cold War, this did not matter nearly so much. Japan and South Korea fell under the U.S. security umbrella, while China was not really a part of the global economic system. It matters now, however.
China is now a major global economic player. And U.S. interests now more frequently collide with Japanese and/or South Korean interests. For example, Japan’s energy deals in Iran greatly displeased Washington, and South Korea has different views on relations with North Korea than the United States does. The vulnerabilities of the three Asian countries’ respective economic positions are increasingly obvious. But as Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul consider expanding their political and security reach to ensure their economic interests, they have little experience to build on outside of Asia.
China
China, the “Middle Kingdom,” was long the dominant power in Asia. In times past, it demanded tribute from surrounding nations and maintained land-based trade routes southward into Southeast Asia, northward into the Mongolian and Russian steppes, and westward into Central Asia — and even as far as South Asia and Europe. But China had little experience with maritime power projection.
The treasure fleets of Chinese explorer Zheng He, which reached along Middle East and African coasts and might have spread to the shores of South America, were more of a frivolity than a necessity for China’s economic security. So when trouble developed at home in China, the government scuttled the massive fleet. The Chinese disregard for maritime power was dramatically highlighted once again when the naval budget was redirected to the construction of Beijing’s Summer Palace, including a massive hand-dug artificial lake.
Until the modern era, China could get its vital resources — including its energy needs — domestically or via land routes. But that has changed. China now reaches far abroad not only for oil, but for minerals and other raw materials to feed its export-driven economy and internal growth and urbanization. It is also seeing a training ground in the developing markets for its budding global commercial players.
This has caused a major shift in Chinese strategic thinking, and the once-reticent giant — which for the vast majority of its history held an insular view of its role in the world — has of late taken a more proactive role internationally. This has included everything from a stronger role in international organizations such as the United Nations, to sending peacekeepers abroad, to working with the government of Sudan to break a deadlock over the deployment of foreign forces to Darfur.
Certainly, China’s steps are hesitant. And Beijing is working to stress to the nations it is dealing with and the United States that its interests are not imperialistic, but simply friendly and mutually beneficial. But despite its efforts to sugarcoat its global ambitions, China is starting to see some resistance to its encroachments in Africa — Beijing has been accused of coming to Africa just to despoil its mineral resources, as the Europeans have done before. Despite the resistance, the need for secure supply lines and market access will continue to drive China away from its long-held insular focus and into more proactive international involvement.
Japan
Japan has the greatest experience in recent history in imitating the imperialist system of Europe. From the time Commodore Matthew Perry’s black ships steamed in and opened Japan to the world, Tokyo began seeking not only to play on European terms, but to rewrite the rules of the game in its own favor. But even Japan’s imperialist moves were limited to the Asia-Pacific theater. Moreover, Tokyo quickly found itself caught in the same cycle Europe had faced — it needed more resources and territory to supply the industrialization and military construction necessary to ensure resource security. Ultimately, Japan ran up against U.S. interests in the Pacific, and lost.
Following World War II, Tokyo exploited the U.S. position in the Cold War to gain security guarantees while building up its own economic might. But Japan’s economic rise eventually began raising concerns in the United States.
With the end of the Cold War, Japan’s interests were no longer necessarily synonymous with U.S. interests. Since Tokyo could no longer count on Washington to ensure Japanese national interests, Tokyo began rethinking its military capabilities and reach. Japan has the world’s second-most powerful navy, and aside from domestic constitutional restrictions on the use of its military abroad, it has the technological prowess to further expand its military capabilities. But historic animosities with its neighbors — and in many cases, former colonial subjects — as well as a domestic satisfaction with the Cold War status quo that required little military or political action abroad, have left Tokyo walking a cautious line in restructuring its regional and international role.
The United States in some ways is encouraging the reassertion of Japanese power, treating Japan as a partner in regional security, and encouraging the strengthening of Japanese defense capabilities. This cooperation with the United States helps mask Tokyo’s own national interests and keeps the expanding role couched in terms of international cooperation. But Tokyo is also learning from the cooperation. Refueling U.S. vessels in the Indian Ocean provides real-world training for sustaining a force abroad — potentially even a naval force in the Indian Ocean as part of Tokyo’s energy supply lines — and Japanese defense procurement plans show a clear path toward power-projection capabilities.
South Korea
South Korea, by far the smallest of the trio of Northeast Asian powers — but not necessarily the least technologically advanced — also is rethinking its own defense posture in relation to its international economic vulnerabilities. Korea has flirted with big regional power status in the past — the Koguryo kingdom reached far into Manchuria — but for the most part, it has been overshadowed by its neighbors, in part since it has the weakest geographic position of the three. South Korean foreign policy thus has been to appear as inconspicuous as possible and to portray itself as not worth attacking.
Successive Korean kingdoms would pay homage to China to maintain Korean independence, but would be most unwelcoming to visitors trying to open the so-called “hermit kingdom” in the peninsula. Certainly, there was maritime and land-based trade throughout the region, but the Koreans made sure to keep that trade largely away from their peninsula. When the regional system grew too difficult for Korea to handle on its own, it would turn to one of the larger regional powers to keep the others at bay.
This strategy ultimately failed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and Korea became a Japanese colony. The practice of turning to larger powers was resumed after World War II, with the North seeking Soviet and Chinese assistance and the South turning to the United States.
Since the Korean War, South Korea largely has depended upon the United States for its security abroad, and to a large extent for domestic security. Only in the past decade has there been a significant shift in Korean defense policy and capability, with South Korean forces taking a larger role in defense of the peninsula. First and foremost, its defensive posture has been aimed at North Korea. More recently, it has focused on threats further abroad, particularly Japan, with which South Korea has competing claims on islands in the East Sea/Sea of Japan.
Like Japan, South Korea can no longer fully rely on the United States to ensure its strategic interests. After all, both Japan and South Korea in many ways are economic competitors to the United States. Without the common threat of the Soviet Union, Washington has little interest in sacrificing U.S. economic interests to keep these East Asian allies happy. Seoul is now debating a more active and assertive role internationally, building on the so-called Korean Wave, which has seen the spread of Korean TV dramas, movies and pop music abroad and the election of a Korean as U.N. secretary-general.
This is not to say that South Korea and Japan are both fleeing the U.S. embrace altogether, only that the two East Asian nations also are addressing their own independent strategic needs as well. Thus, South Korea contributed the third-largest contingent of military forces to Iraq, not necessarily just to appease the United States, but rather to expand its own interaction and influence in Iraq and the Middle East. Korean forces were stationed in Iraqi Kurdistan, and Korean energy companies followed the troops in a bid for access to the region’s petroleum. South Korea is considering establishing its own Peace Corps-type concept, sending Koreans abroad to spread influence and increase the political clout of the nation. It also plans to expand its overseas development assistance — a tool Japan once used to spread its influence and ensure its interests in Southeast Asia.
A Shared Conundrum
Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul at present all face a similar problem: Their economic interests — both in resources and markets — are spread further and further around the globe, but each lacks the military ability, established policy or experience to ensure their interests far from their shores. While soft power formerly was all they could bring to bear, this is slowly changing. The initiative is now present for more active political and security roles to match their economic involvement around the world.
While the United States will remain the dominant power globally, East Asia is waking up to the prospect of an active global role. This marks a further evolution in the global system, which has gone from European global activity to American interaction, and has seen Soviet and now Asian involvement. This represents untried territory for the Asian nations, which will face new challenges in logistics, in foreign policy and in the widespread strength of the United States

Occasion: 7th Annual St. Joseph’s Day Diner
Date: March 16th-Sunday
Time: 6p.m.
What to bring: 1.Bottle of wine or libation to share.
2. Donation for the Ugandan Kitchen well for drinking water
If you can’t join us feel free to send money for the well! :)

Dear Friends,

Well the time is quickly approaching for another St. Joseph’s Day dinner celebration.

As most of you know, this is our friend Kathy Bardo’s ‘holiday celebration’ from her Sicilian tradition. I have opened up my kitchen to her magic with and the incredible six course meal for our enjoyment.

In the years past we have made donations totaling in the thousands of dollars for charities ranging from the local community resource center, to the San Juan Bosco Orphanage in Tecate, and this year I want to shift gears to a wonderful work being done in Uganda.

Here is the connection to this school in Uganda. My neighbor Nicole got involved in this school by supporting a child for $35 a month and traveled there last year. Her life was profoundly touched by these beautiful children. There is a master plan for sustainability from farming to education to build for the next generation. Since Nicole’s return she has helped raise over $15,000 and also to get some 50+ kids sponsored! I love to see her passion and commitment.

I asked what our dinner might specifically help out with. She says there is a need for another well that will supply the new kitchen plans. The well cost approximately $8,000 .

So I’d love for you (and friend) for this great event.

As in the past, we are hoping for donations of $10-$500 to get us to the $1000 mark.

As always, no one is looking what we put in the donation bucket.


We have seating limited to 28.


Cheers!
Dan

Fox Fallon, one to watch on China
Fallon is the new head of Pacific Command. Despite all the war-posturing and tough talk on China coming out of that command, he's calling for more mil-mil cooperation with China.

Here's a snippet from a recent WP article:

"Do we have to have conflict because of the rise of China? I don't believe so," said Adm. William J. Fallon, who heads the Hawaii-based Pacific Command from an office with a sweeping view of Pearl Harbor and the vast ocean beyond.
"As they grow, there's going to be an inevitable push as they take advantage of their economic ability to improve their military capabilities," he said of the Chinese. "We ought to recognize that as a reality. This is not a zero-sum game.

"I do not buy the program," he said, referring to the presumption that conflict cannot be avoided. "I just don't buy it."

Fallon said he had received a clear mandate in this regard from Washington, despite widely noticed remarks in June from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld questioning China's motives in modernizing its military forces. In addition, Fallon said in an interview, this approach means China's cultivation of stronger diplomatic and military ties with other Asian nations does not have to compete with U.S. changes in the Pacific.

"A rising China that is actively engaged in helping the countries of the region maintain security and stability can be a very good thing," he explained.

Fallon is a bright guy and a bright star. One can only wish him well. While you might expect him to tout the highly anti-China line coming out of too much of the Navy, he's done the right thing by thinking of how best he can make his mark in the region during his time. War over Taiwan is unlikely, so if he's going to get credit for anything, it might as well be for improving relations between the U.S. and Chinese militaries. Lotsa Combatant Commanders go all "SysAdmin-y" (meaning they focus more on administering to the regional system of security than posturing for war) when they reach that post. Why? It's just the natural inclination when you sit in the top spot and say to yourself: What can I do to make this region better than I found it?

Full story at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/16/AR2005091601983.html.

Thanks to Manuel Sandoval for reminding me that I need to get a paper subscription to the WP.

Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett on September 20, 2005 11:26 AM Permalink

Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization (Hardcover)
by John Robb (Author)

War in the twenty-first century will be very different from what we've come to expect. Terrorism and guerrilla warfare are rapidly evolving to allow nonstate networks to challenge the structure and order of nation-states. It is a change on par with the rise of the Internet and China, and will dramatically change how you and your kids will view security.

In Brave New War, the counterterrorism expert John Robb reveals how the same technology that has enabled globalization also allows terrorists and criminals to join forces against larger adversaries with relative ease and to carry out small, inexpensive actions—like sabotaging an oil pipeline—that will generate a huge return. He shows how taking steps to combat the shutdown of the world's oil, high-tech, and financial markets could cost us the thing we've come to value the most—worldwide economic and cultural integration—and the crucial steps we must take now to safeguard our systems and ourselves against this new method of warfare.

See all Editorial Reviews

March 9, 2008
Vietnam Culture by the Glass

By NEIL SAMSON KATZ
Many people go to Vietnam for the food, for the beaches, for the history. My wife and I went there to drink.

It was that liquid pilgrimage that found us rumbling down a windy dirt road in Vietnam’s northern mountains on a crystal January day. Our target, Vietnam’s homemade rice wines and Sa Pa, a stunning mountain town less than 200 miles northwest of Hanoi, near Lao Cai. Once a 19th-century retreat for the French elite, today it is home to mostly ethnic minorities like the colorful Black Hmong and Red Dzao, who have been making rice wine in the same simple fashion for generations.

Indeed, rice is the crop of life there. Nearly every inch of available land is used to cultivate it. And for the Black Hmong, according to our guide, a young Hmong woman from the area, accepting rice wine in a buffalo horn is a vital part of their courting ritual.

In Sa Pa’s mountainous environs, steep valley walls are terraced with the crop’s beautiful geometries. Small wooden huts dot the valley floor, revealing a communal life that, despite motorcycles and the occasional satellite TV, still churns at its own pace. In one such village, Ta Van, we found Huong Van Thi tending to a large steaming pot of rice.

Ms. Huong’s family has been making rice wine as far back as anyone can remember. Her neighbors claim it’s some of the best. They should know. They buy 70 liters of it a week.

Inside her wood-slatted shack, the air was thick with yeasty smoke. Ms. Huong threw long sticks into a small fire as she explained her provincial technique.

First, she boils rice in a huge metal pot, then ferments it with yeast and lets it sit for two weeks. The fermented rice is boiled again and alcohol rises from it as steam. A pan of cold water on top of the pot cools the rising steam, condensing it into a warm potent liquid ready for drinking.

Others make it faster, but Ms. Huong claims her slow fermentation “makes the wine taste and smell better, with no side effects, no headaches.”

Our first taste came straight from the pot. It was warm, smelled of flowers and went down easily. Local residents pay 10,000 dong for a liter, about 62 cents at 16,000 dong to the dollar. We gladly paid a little more.

We had gone to Sa Pa by overnight train from the capital of Hanoi, where life moves at breakneck speed.

Vietnam’s economy has almost doubled in the last 10 years, and on Hanoi’s leafy boulevards it shows. The occasional Porsche or Hummer mixes with the swarm of motor bikes. A Louis Vuitton outlet competes with its knock-off neighbors and still has customers.

So it makes sense that while tourists flood the country in search of 50-cent beers — and find them — there is an emerging class of Vietnamese seeking a more refined tipple.

“In our restaurant, a Vietnamese spends so much more money than a foreigner,” said Marcus Madeja, owner of Highway 4, a stylish chain that brews more than 20 unique Vietnamese liqueurs. “Four lads can drink four bottles of liquor while a foreigner is already looking at the card — ‘Oh, that’s $3, I’ll take the French fries for a dollar fifty.’ ”

Highway 4 is the love child of the Swiss-born Mr. Madeja and his Vietnamese wife, Thoa Vu Thi. Their Son Tinh brand of aperitifs claims to blend native rice wines with Swiss engineering. That pitch may sound like a car commercial, but the results are very good.

An apricot liqueur was pleasantly tart with a touch of sweet and a light floral scent. An herbal variety blends more than 20 roots and purports to be a recipe stolen from Emperor Minh Mang’s cellar in Hue. (Mang, a 19th-century monarch who enraged Europe by booting out Christian missionaries, mythically had a 500-woman harem and likely needed a tonic or two to sire his more than 100 children.)

Of course, few Vietnamese have the luxury of making their own love potions. For that, many still turn to traditional elixirs like snake wine or snake blood. According to lore, snake blood delivers an amphetamine-like shock to the heart and snake wine connects jumper cables to the loins. People also believe they clean the blood and soothe lower-back pain.

Snake wine can be purchased in most parts of the country. Blood is a bit harder to find. In the snake-rich Mekong Delta we got our fix of both.

Thuy Van is a dusty canteen in the small, bustling river city of My Tho, about 40 miles southwest of Ho Chi Minh City. Past rows of giant amber liquid-filled jars stuffed with cobras, scorpions and black bird heads, we found the proprietor, Nguyen Yan, tending to a giant blue tub brimming with water snakes.

Mr. Nguyen gave us a toothy smile and stuck his arm deep into the writhing pile of snakes. He is choosy, and he rejected a few sub-par reptiles before finally emerging with a satisfactory specimen. He casually walked to the kitchen, picked up a pair of scissors, snipped the snake’s head clean off and stretched its open neck into a plastic cup. Mr. Nguyen then handed the snake to a young woman, leaving her to finish draining its blood while he snipped fresh ginger into long, thin strips — the sole addition to the glasses of blood.

At our table, the blood was served in a small pitcher with shot glasses. Still warm and slightly thick, it tasted of brine and light smoke. My lips tasted of fire, a flame that would not extinguish for hours. My heart raced, but managed to stay in my chest. My wife wisely sat this one out.

Still reeling from the snake blood, we discovered nothing is wasted.

A steaming metal pot arrived with heaping plates of whole scallions and watercress, then smaller dishes of spicy fish sauce and fresh cut green chilies. In the pot, a fragrant rice porridge, smelling strongly of ginger and lemongrass, showed giant chunks of button mushrooms and our newly departed snake. His bones came separately, deep-fried. Locals eat them like potato chips.

To finish the meal, shots of snake wine were served. The name is a misnomer. The liquor is made from rice and has the horsepower of a whiskey. Snakes or other animals are added later to soak in the brew.

It’s pure firewater, and by Vietnamese standards, it’s not cheap. A quarter liter of the good stuff goes for 70,000 dongs. For real players, a Costco-size jug of King Cobra runs 11,500,000 dongs — over $700. But considering that it has enough firepower to sire a small village, it’s not a bad deal at all.

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