GEOGRAPHY AND THE SECURITY DILEMMA IN ASIA Introduction

GEOGRAPHY AND THE SECURITY DILEMMA IN ASIA

• Introduction

Introduction

• Contemporary Asia is host to numerous security competitions. In South Asia, Pakistan, and India sit in a long-standing rivalry fraught with mistrust, tension, and periodic violence. In Southeast Asia, several countries—among them Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia—compete with China for ownership of islands in the South China Sea. As China grows increasingly powerful and assertive in its claims, this dispute grows ever more dangerous.

• In Northeast Asia, severe tension and periodic small-scale violence between North and South Korea could lead to the eruption of war on the Korean peninsula at any time. Moscow is uneasy about the rise of China’s power, and is particularly concerned by the growth of the Chinese population and its influence in Siberia. Northeast Asia also has its share of territorial disputes, with Japan and the Koreas contesting ownership of the Dokdo/Takeshima islets, and Japan and China embroiled in a dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. • And in relations between the United States and China— which will be the focus of this chapter, as they will define trends in the region—security competition intensifies.

• The security dilemma is a model that has vast explanatory power for analyzing these and other security competitions across Asia (Jervis 1978; Glaser 1997; Booth and Wheeler 2008; Herz 1950). The model is based on the observation that efforts that countries take to increase their own security have the effect of reducing the security of others. • As a consequence, even countries with peaceful aims can be ensnared by mutual suspicion and arms races. Furthermore, once begun, militarized disputes are difficult to resolve, because steps taken to enhance security can reinforce perceptions of hostile intent

• Scholars have argued that the severity of the security dilemma is powerfully affected by geography (Jervis 1978). Yet Asia is an enormous, sprawling region, encompassing every type of geography: massive deserts, the world’s tallest mountains, barren steppes, dense jungles, and, of course, enormous megacities. Geography is a variable that affects the severity of the security dilemma in Asia. But the unit of analysis must be narrower than “Asia” because of the widely varying values of that variable across the region.

• From the standpoint of geopolitics, however, the essential parts of East Asia are the maritime regions—namely, the part of the Asian landmass within a few hundred miles of the coast, the island chains in the Western Pacific—Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and so on—and the sea lanes that divide them. That region encompasses the vast majority of Asia’s economic output, an even greater percentage of East Asia’s economic growth, and the region’s population expansion. From the standpoint of geopolitics, East Asia’s most relevant geography is the maritime region

• This chapter makes three arguments about the effect of geography on security dilemmas in East Asia. First, the region’s maritime geography and prevailing military technology create powerful defense dominance: a situation that favors the defender in warfare. the vast waterways of the region, power projection is extremely difficult. As some scholars have already argued (Lind 2000; Ross 1999), the region’s defense dominance reduces the likelihood of security dilemmas among countries by dampening both aggressive ambitions and countries’ fears of their neighbors’ aggression.

• Second, at the same time there is a side of defense dominance—one understudied by scholars—that could contribute to conflict spirals in East Asia. Defense dominance makes it extremely challenging for the United States to project power into the region in order to bring to bear the necessary capabilities to defend its allies. Regional defense dominance means that the United States must generate enormous military power relative to any potential adversary. The level of necessary US dominance is likely to alarm other great powers. The United States, in turn, will be easily threatened by even small efforts to erode US military dominance

• Third, these dynamics are already occurring in the region. Nascent Chinese efforts to push the United States further from its shores and out of its airspace—maritime military modernization employed in a strategy known as “antiaccess, area-denial”—have alarmed the United States. The US military has designed a doctrine aimed at securing continued US access to the western Pacific known as “Air-Sea Battle. ” This doctrine, because it is focused on degrading the Chinese ability to locate, track, and strike US military forces in the Pacific, has already alarmed the Chinese. Indeed, current relations show all the hallmarks of a spiral. Assuming the continued growth of the Chinese economy, 1 and continued Chinese efforts to modernize its maritime capabilities, the future of US -China relations looks tense and ripe for conflict.

The Security Dilemma and Defense Dominance

• Scholars of international relations often use two general models to describe tension, arms races, and the outbreak of interstate war: the deterrence model and the spiral model (Jervis 1976). In the deterrence model, conflict occurs when a country that wants to change the status quo —that is, expand its borders or seize the resources of others— sees an opportunity to use aggressive means to achieve its aims; it observes weakness in another country, and leaps through the window of opportunity before the target can rectify the imbalance. This is called the deterrence model because it prescribes strength as the best means for avoiding conflict. In a deterrence world, military weakness is the problem; the solution is to increase one’s military power.

• By contrast, the spiral model describes circumstances in which military power is the problem, not the solution (Jervis 1976). According to the logic of the security dilemma, the spiral model describes circumstances in which one country’s efforts to make itself more secure reduce the security of other countries (Jervis 1978; Glaser 1997; Booth and. Wheeler 2008; Herz 1950). This leads them to take countermeasures, which in turn alarm the other country, confirming its initial suspicions. The result is a spiral of distrust, arms racing, and possibly war.

Geography and the Offense. Defense Balance