Author   Chaesung Chun received both his B.A. and M.A. from Seoul National University’s Department of International Relations, and his Ph.D. from Northwestern University’s Department of Political Science. He served as Assistant Professor at Sookmyung Women’s University, and is currently Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at Seoul National University. His recent works include: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Catholic Realism International Political Ideas (in Korean); Thoughts on Realists’ International Institutions (in Korean); and Normalization of Diplomatic Relations between Korea and Japan and U.S. Policy Towards Korea’s Dispatch of Troops to Vietnam (in Korean).         Abstract   An alliance system has evolved throughout history among nation-states that strive to secure their survival in an anarchic, decentralized, and self-help international system. Initially formed to maintain balance of power among contending states in the system, the concept of alliance was enlarged to reflect collective security in the Concert of Europe in the 19th century and ultimately to address non-military aspects, such as the development of democracy and ideological conflict, along with traditional security concerns like the emergence of nuclear weapons in the 20th century. Acknowledging the importance of studying the fundamentally changing nature of alliance networks to better adapt to a changed security environment of the 21st century, this paper primarily focuses on a comprehensive historical overview of an alliance system since the 17th century and its implications for today. The careful examination of alliance history in light of the post-Cold War politics shows that states still share interests in balancing against the United States in the unipolar system rather than in bandwagoning with the United States; regional balance of power comes into play in regional conflicts as the United States cannot oversee all regional matters as a balancer; the rise of non-state actors, including transnational terrorist groups, further emphasizes a necessity of alliance networks at the global level as a response to new threats, changing the concept of alliance itself; although the unipolar system under the U.S. hegemony is undeniable, a rising China both in economic and military terms presents another uncertainty in the international system, which in turn requires preventive military alliances to balance against it; the superior military capabilities of the United States implicitly force other states to conform to the global order maintained by the world’s superpower; the mega-trends of globalization, IT revolution, and democratization empower the general public to increase their influence in foreign or military policy-making process in the form of public opinion.   The full text in Korean is available here

Author   Young Nam Cho has been an Associate Professor of the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University since 2002. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Politics at Seoul National University in 1999, and served as a visiting fellow at the Center for Contemporary Chinese Studies at Peking University, visiting scholar in the Department of Political Science at Nankai University in Tianjin, and visiting scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute. His major works include: Local People’s Congresses in China: Development and Transition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); China’s Path in the 21st Century (in Korean, Paju: Nanam, 2009); The Development of China’s Parliamentary System (in Korean, Seoul: Politeia, 2006); Chinese Politics in the Hu Jintao Era (in Korean, Paju: Nanam, 2006); and China’s Political Reform and the National People's Congress (in Korean, Seoul: Nanam, 2000). His current research is focused on China’s parliamentary system, the rule of law, and the changes in state-society relations.         Abstract   This article aims at analyzing China’s alliance policy in the 21st policy. To this end, it investigates three topics. First is the readjustment of China’s foreign policy in the reform period and its effect on the changes of China’s alliance policy. Second is China’s countermeasure against the incremental strengthening of U.S.-Japanese alliance since the 1990s, which is the most serious security concern for China. Third are case studies of China’s alliance policy: one is Sino-North Korean alliance; another is Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The former is China’s sole official military alliance that is still legally effective, and the latter is the result of cooperation between China and Russia facing the so-called “hub-and-spokes system” led by the U.S.   Based on the analysis of above-mentioned three topics, this article argues that China in the post-Cold War period has implemented “soft balancing” policy which is argued by T.V. Paul, James J. Wirtz, and Michel Fortma, instead of “hard balancing” of realist balance of power. This will not change in the foreseeable future. First of all, China theoretically excluded the traditional realist alliance policy in its foreign policy since the early 1980s on the basis of non-alliance principle, and the New Concept of Security (Xinanquanguan) which was raised in 1996 justified and intensified this Chinese position.   Furthermore, practically, China has flexibly coped with the strengthening of American-Japanese alliance by, for example, adopting limited build-ups of military power, maintaining good relationships with both the U.S. and Japan, and championing the establishment of regional multilateral security cooperation. In addition, China has taken initiative in weakening the Sino-North Korean alliance from “blood-tie” to “normal state-to-state-relationship,” and establishing SCO with Russia as soft balancing measure against American security policy in Asia.   The full text in Korean is available here

China’s Foreign Policy and Alliances in the 21st Century   China’s Alliance Strategy   Since Deng Xiaoping embarked upon reform policies in 1978, China’s alliance strategy has followed a two-track path. It has stuck to a principled “non-alignment” policy while also emphasizing its so-called “a new concept of security”. This concept focuses on mutual trust, benefit, equality and coordination. These two policies laid the ground for China’s foreign policy when engaging in either bilateral strategic partnerships with major countries or in multilateral settings with neighboring countries.   “Hard” balancing has not been the major strategic objective in Chinese foreign policy. It would mean building up an alliance to balance against the U.S. If we look back on the times when the Bush administration strengthened and reinforced the U.S.-Japan alliance, China did not try to balance against this bilateral move. Rather its policy response was based more on what T.V. Paul calls “soft balancing”. While it maintained its bilateral relations with both Japan and the U.S., China also strengthened its efforts on constructing a regional multilateral security organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), both militarily and diplomatically. This is the kind of “soft balancing” policy response we can expect from China in its approach not just to the U.S.-Japan alliance but to other challenges it will face.   China’s Security Challenge   Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S.-Japan alliance has been strengthened and renewed to expand its function to better manage future challenges in the region. By comparison, China has been more prudent in matching rapid changes in the post-Cold War East Asia. In terms of balance of power, China could not make an explicit effort to build up an alliance to counter this because of its economic interdependence with the U.S. and Japan. This economic interdependence is something that it cannot sacrifice. China’s future and the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership both depend upon continued and sustained economic growth.   Economic ties aside, further challenges will endanger China, if it tries to build up an alliance against the U.S. and Japan. In order to form an effective and meaningful alliance, China would need to offer economic and military support, and security guarantees to any potential ally. Providing sufficient resources for this kind of security benefits and guaran-tees to forge an alliance will pose a big chal-lenge to China, especially if it wishes to continue its economic growth. Then, it might be said that the Chinese policy of “non-alignment” comes out of this dilemma.   Efforts to Resolve the Difficulties   China hopes to resolve this difficulty by trying several approaches. These range from espousing the rhetoric of “strategic partnership”, maintaining ‘harmonious” relations with its neighbors, strengthening its military, using FTAs to expand economic influence, notably with ASEAN, to forming regional multilateral organizations such as the SCO and the Asian Monetary Fund. China has put strong emphasis on build-ing various bilateral partnerships with a plethora of titles, “strategic cooperative partnerships”, “constructive strategic partnerships”, and sought to utilize them to alleviate its fears of isolation in the international scene. Through these partnerships with key countries in the region, China hopes to create a degree of diversification between alliance partners in those alliances that surround China. But one has to be aware of the strategic implication of China’s foreign policy and try to find a place of cooperation and coordination.   The Outlook for U.S.-China Relations   Currently the Obama administration is facing two major challenges. The first is to overturn the mistakes in U.S. foreign policy made post-9/11 and the second is to deal with the current economic crisis. The performance of the Obama administration will be measured against how it is able to deal with these challenges effectively. We can then see that both these challenges will have a strong bearing on the U.S. foreign policy strategy for East Asia.   We are familiar with how, under the Bush administration, the U.S.-Japan alliance was the mainstay of its strategy towards East Asia. However the situation today is different and we can expect that Japan’s role may well be redefined according to the changes of strategic architecture of these two countries.   The challenges of the current economic crisis are very pressing. While Japan has economic downturn experience from its own “lost decade,” continued economic difficulties and political turmoil work against it from playing a major role in any economic recovery. We, then, see how China, in this regard, will gain the upper hand and have a stronger role to play in East Asia.   The U.S. does not want to act unilaterally as it did in the past, and the current challenges it faces are simply too great for it to bear by itself. Therefore we will see the U.S. working through various channels to push through its East Asia strategy. And the U.S. has many channels to work through. By using its alliances, its partnership with China and other multilateral channels in the region, it will be simultaneously working with China while also making Japan feel assured. China would prefer the U.S. to work in reverse, focusing first on the multilateral channels, then on its partnership with China and lastly on its alliances.   In order to formulate the right policy, we should look at both the U.S. and China’s strategy together. In this way we can begin to understand where the two strategies have common ground and where they come into conflict or differ. By understanding effectively these two strategies, Korea can then begin to formulate its own effective strategy and establish its place in the region.■    

The Obama Administration and Strategies for East Asia

EAI Fellows Program Working Paper Series No.15 Abstract By comparing Korea’s relative level of corruption with that of Taiwan and the Philippines and examining how a political economy of corruption has developed over time within Korea, I test my “inequality hypothesis” and existing theories on causes of corruption. I find that inequality of income and wealth best explains the relative level of corruption among these countries and across time within Korea, consistent with my hypothesis. Although developmental state and crony capitalism literature paradoxically emphasize the “autonomous and uncorrupt bureaucracy” and “rampant cronyism and corruption” in Korea, respectively, I find that Korea has been neither as corrupt as the Philippines nor as clean as Taiwan. Successful land reform in Korea and Taiwan brought about low levels of inequality and corruption, while failure of land reform in the Philippines led to a high level of inequality and corruption. Wealth concentration due to chaebol industrialization, however, increased corruption over time in Korea, in comparison with Taiwan. Author Dr. You received his Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University in June 2006. His research focuses on Korean politics, comparative politics, political sociology, and comparative public policy. His doctoral thesis explored how income inequality affects corruption and how corruption and inequality erode social trust through a large cross-national study and comparative case study of South Korea, relative to Taiwan and the Philippines. His article with S. Khagram entitled "A Comparative Study of Inequality and Corruption" was published in the American Sociological Review (February 2005). At IR/PS he teaches graduate courses on Korean politics and justice, development, and public policy, and an undergraduate course on course on corruption, inequality, and democracy. Before pursuing an academic career, he worked for democratization and social justice in South Korea. He was imprisoned for more than two years because of his active role in the anti-dictatorship student movement under the military regimes, but later was recognized as a person of merit for democratization by a democratic government. He worked for Citizens" Coalition for Economic Justice, an influential NGO in Korea, as Director of Policy Research and later as General Secretary.  This paper was submitted to "EAI Fellows Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia" supported by the Henry Luce Foundation based in New York. All papers are available only through the online database.   South Korea (Korea hereafter, except occasionally), together with Taiwan, has been praised by many scholars as a model developmental state with a competent and uncorrupt bureaucracy (Johnson 1987; Amsden 1989; Evans 1995; Wade 1990). Since the financial crisis of 1997, however, Korea has often been labeled as an example of crony capitalism, together with other Asian countries like the Philippines (Kang 2002). Hence, an important question to be resolved is whether Korea has been as corrupt as the Philippines or relatively clean like Taiwan.   Indeed, Taiwan and the Philippines are ideal comparison cases. Korea shares many similarities with Taiwan and the Philippines. The initial economic conditions in the 1950s and 1960s were not much different among these countries. The three countries all experienced colonial rule before World War II, and were all heavily supported by the US during the Cold War era. They all have been experiencing democratization processes over the last two decades. Despite the similar initial conditions, however, the levels of corruption and economic development today are quite different. Taiwan has an obviously lower level of corruption than the Philippines. Not only do all the available quantitative measures of (perceived) corruption indicate that this is the case, but this has not been contradicted by any qualitative studies, to my knowledge. Where, then, does Korea fall relative to Taiwan and the Philippines, and why is that so?   The second set of questions is about Korea’s corruption trend. Many scholars, including Alice Amsden (1989) and Peter Evans (1995), regarded Park Chung-Hee’s regime (1961-79) as a prototype of a developmental state, while they judged Syngman Rhee’s regime (1948-60) as predatory. Others such as Andrew Wedeman (1997) and David Kang (2002), however, argued that both regimes were similarly corrupt. Thus, the controversy regarding the transition from a predatory state to a developmental state is another interesting question. Understudied, yet no less important, are the questions of how industrialization and economic development since the 1960s and political democratization since 1987 have affected the level of corruption in Korea. By corruption, I mean “abuse of power for private gain.” There are many kinds of corruption, but this paper will focus on political corruption and high-level bureaucratic corruption. Although petty corruption may be more important for the everyday lives of most people, there is evidence that the degree of petty corruption is closely correlated with the degree of political and high-level bureaucratic corruption.1 Also, I use the term capture, which indicates that corruption has reached to the point in which the state has lost autonomy and serves for the special interests of the privileged...(Continued)    

EAI Fellows Program Working Paper Series No. 18   Abstract After centuries of dependence on the Qing and Soviet domains, Mongolia became independent in 1990. Since then, it has sought to preserve independence while balancing the interests of its two neighbors, Russia and the People’s Republic of China. To counterbalance the influence of these two actual neighbors, Mongolia has cultivated relations with states that do not border it, but which serve as metaphorical "third neighbors." Chief among those external balancers is the United States, the involvement of which provokes anxiety in Moscow and Beijing. Thus, Mongolia’s independence has affected, and is affected by, geopolitical rivalries among the great powers. One manifestation of rivalry is competition for access to Mongolia’s mineral and energy resources, leaving Mongolia vulnerable to "soft colonialism," in which its economic and political autonomy may be compromised, even if territorial integrity is not. Ulaanbaatar’s clever foreign policy has enhanced Mongolia’s status, but its independence is threatened by factors it cannot control. 1. Mongolia 2. Geopolitics 3. Geostrategic 4. Great Game 5. Third neighbor 6. Mining 7. Soft colonialism 8. Buffer 9. Sino-Russian relations   Author Alan M. Wachman, Associate Professor of International Politics, The Fletcher School, Tufts University This paper was submitted to "EAI Fellows Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia" supported by the Henry Luce Foundation based in New York. All papers are available only through the online database.     For centuries, Mongolia was a territorial buffer. When the Manchus conquered China and established the Qing empire, they swept Mongolia into their realm. When the Qing collapsed, Moscow sucked Mongolia into its own expanding domain and, during the period of Sino-Soviet enmity from the mid-1960s to 1989, the Soviet Union stationed troops and military equipment in Mongolia to enhance its strategic advantage over the PRC. For Moscow, Mongolia was then a territorial buffer.the particularities of Mongolian terrain underscored its salience as a shield behind which Russia felt more secure than if Mongolia had been in China’s hands (Garver 1988, 217; Liu 2006, 342). While Mongolia apparently sought Soviet protection against the prospect of Chinese irredentist expansionism, its territory was used by Moscow to ensure shorter lines of attack on the PRC than the Soviet Union would have otherwise had and to offer greater strategic depth in which to combat a PRC assault, had Beijing launched an assault on the Soviet Union (Soni 2002).   Since Mongolia became independent of the Soviet Union in 1990, neither Beijing nor Moscow has viewed Mongolia as a territorial buffer. However, Mongolia has played the role of what might be called a geopolitical buffer. What Moscow and Beijing seek of Mongolia is not a barrier that can be subordinated by one to enhance the defense of the homeland territory from assault by the other, but a neutral region where each of the two neighbors can be assured of Ulaanbaatar’s political pliability and an absence of menace. It suits Beijing and Moscow that Ulaanbaatar is deferential to their own core interests, so long as Mongolia does not give precedence to the interests of one over the other. In that sense, Mongolia is still a buffer, but its role is defined politically and economically, rather than territorially, by its determination to be an unaligned zone of neutrality in a region with a fierce and bloody history of geopolitical friction. If Mongolia were to align itself too closely to either of its proximate neighbors, it would surely spark alarm. Should it lean too far toward Moscow or Beijing, the other would swiftly see Mongolia as a territorial buffer subject to exploitation by the other side. Likewise, both Moscow and Beijing would balk if Mongolia were drawn too tightly into the embrace of the United States...(Continued)    

EAI Fellows Program Working Paper Series No. 5   Author David Kang is Associate Professor of Government, and Adjunct Associate Professor and Research Director at the Center for International Business at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Kang is author of China Reshapes East Asia: Power, Politics, and Ideas in International Relations (Columbia University Press, forthcoming). He has also written Crony Capitalism: Corruption and Development in South Korea and the Philippines (Cambridge University Press, 2002), and Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies (coauthored with Victor Cha) (Columbia University Press, 2003). This paper was submitted to "EAI Fellows Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia" supported by the Henry Luce Foundation based in New York. All papers are available only through the online database.     A central debate in the field of international relations concerns the extent of balancing behavior. Kenneth Waltz’s confident assertion that “hegemony leads to balance,” and has done so “through all of the centuries we can contemplate”—is perhaps the default proposition in international relations. 1 Yet in recent years, the balancing proposition has come under increasing empirical and theoretical scrutiny. Empirically, the absence of obvious balancing against the United States in the post-Cold War era led to a scholarly debate about why that might be the case.2 Theoretically, advances by scholars working in both the rationalist and constructivist traditions have pointed out the myriad of ways in which state strategies depend on more than purely the distribution of power.   However, scholars are only in the beginning stages of focusing on another case that has the potential to yield significant insights into this debate: China. In the past three decades, China has rapidly emerged as a major regional and global power. Since the introduction of its market reforms in 1978, China has averaged over nine percent economic growth. Foreign businesses have flocked to invest in China, and Chinese exports have begun to flood world markets. China is modernizing its military, has joined numerous regional and international institutions, and is increasingly visible in international politics. However, although it would appear that these conditions are ripe for balancing behavior, China appears to have managed to emerge without provoking a regional backlash. South Korea presents perhaps the clearest example of this anomaly. A balance of power perspective would expect South Korea to fear a rapidly growing, geographically and demographically massive authoritarian and communist China that sits on its border. Not only does China already have the military capability to threaten the peninsula, but the power disparity is widening. China also maintains close relations with North Korea – South Korea’s main external threat since 1945. Furthermore, the US and South Korea have enjoyed a close alliance with the United States...(Continued)    

EAI Fellows Program Working Paper Series No. 8   Author Jacques E. C. Hymans is Assistant Professor of Government at Smith College in Massachusetts, USA. He is the author of The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions, and Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and articles in the European Journal of International Relations, the Journal of East Asian Studies, Security Studies, and other publications. Hymans received his Ph.D. from the Harvard University Department of Government in 2001. This paper was submitted to "EAI Fellows Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia" supported by the Henry Luce Foundation based in New York. All papers are available only through the online database.     What are the strategic intentions and technical capacities of the nuclear program of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), also known as North Korea? Notwithstanding the strident debates over how to deal with the DPRK nuclear issue, in fact no one can claim to know the answers to these basic questions. Indeed, even to the extent rough mainstream consensus answers have emerged, the evidence supporting them is very thin. But the cloud of ignorance that hangs over the DPRK nuclear debate contains a silver lining. The absence of solid information about the case actually can free us to focus on the theoretical assumptions that usually remain implicit in proliferation threat assessments. The result of this exercise is an alternative assessment of the DPRK case that defies the standard formulae. Moreover, the return to theoretical basics promises to improve our understanding not only of this case, but of other current cases of proliferation concern as well. For the sad truth is that even for countries on which plentiful information has been available, the record of strategic threat assessment is abysmal.     The paper is organized as follows. The next section briefly reviews the literature on DPRK strategic intentions and capacities. It finds that even the best, most theoretically self-conscious work on the case suffers from questionable assumptions about the general dynamics of nuclear proliferation. In particular, first, the typical assumption that the DPRK’s nuclear intentions can be viewed as a rational response to the unfriendly post-Cold War external environment can be called into question—not on the grounds that the DPRK is uniquely irrational, but instead because the basic choice to go or not to go nuclear is a revolutionary one that rarely if ever lends itself to rational, cost-benefit analysis. Bomb desires are better understood as the product of non-rational emotions, and in particular, of the fear and pride that grips “oppositional nationalists.” The paper provides evidence that the DPRK leadership is and has always been oppositional nationalist, and preliminary evidence that its desire for the bomb dates back many decades. Second, the typical assumption that the technical challenges of building the bomb are mere nuisances for heavily (albeit inefficiently) industrialized states like the DPRK can also be called into question—not on the grounds that it may not yet have acquired certain key pieces of technology, but instead because its regime type is prone to extreme organizational and managerial ineptitude. The DPRK fits snugly into a class of regimes that from a neo-Weberian perspective can be labeled “neo-patrimonial” or “sultanistic.” The comparative politics literature indicates that even when such regimes gain access to the latest technology, their management pathologies are so pronounced that their “big science” projects routinely run aground. The paper provides preliminary evidence that the DPRK may indeed not be up to the nuclear research and development challenge. Finally, the conclusion of the paper briefly tackles the question of how the United States should handle this very different DPRK than the one usually portrayed...(Continued)