Abstract
The general judgment of scholars and policy experts is that the U.S.-Japan alliance has been unsuccessful at thinking innovatively about architectural design and the role of China in Asia. On the one hand, the United States, unlike China, has eschewed any interest in the region’s various indigenous architectural efforts. Japan, on the other hand, is fully interested in regional architecture, but this enthusiasm is rejected by a region still suspicious of Japan’s past and future intentions. American and Japanese inactivity is compounded by an underwhelming record of regional architecture initiatives in Asia—evident in the lack of an overarching security structure like that of NATO in Europe. For these reasons, international relations and areas studies scholars have rushed to a judgment of failure in the U.S.-Japan alliance’s ability to think creatively and innovatively about regional architecture and about integrating China’s rise in Asia. In this chapter, I argue that the future may not be as dim as people surmise. There is a definitive architecture emerging and evolving in Asia that the United States and Japan both support. It is not one dominated by China. Nor is it one characterized by U.S. departure. On the contrary this evolving architecture is inclusive of both powers. But there is a clear security dilemma that needs to be overcome to realize this positive future for regional architecture. This is one in which U.S./Japan-initiated regional efforts are seen as latent efforts to contain China, while regional/China-initiated proposals are seen as attempts to exclude the U.S. non-zero-sum solutions are indeed possible.
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Notes
Cited in Paul Midford, “Japan’s Leadership Role in East Asian Security Multilateralism,”Pacific Review, 13, no. 3 (2000): 372.
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The Southeast Asian Treaty Organization was established at the Manila Conference of 1954 largely on the model of NATO, but failed because members found internal subversion rather than compelling external threats as their primary security concerns. The Australia-New Zealand-U.S. Pact formed in 1951 as an extension of the U.S.-Australia treaty (the U.S.-New Zealand axis dissolved in 1986). The Five Power Defense Arrangement was established in 1971 among Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore. Its function was consultative based on historical legacies of the Commonwealth rather than any overt security purpose (see Leszek Buszynski, SEATO: The Failure of an Alliance Strategy [Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1983]).
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© 2011 Takashi Inoguchi, G. John Ikenberry, and Yoichiro Sato
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Cha, V.D. (2011). The Security Dilemma in Asian Architecture: United States, Japan, and China. In: Inoguchi, T., Ikenberry, G.J., Sato, Y. (eds) The U.S.-Japan Security Alliance. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230120150_9
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