Security in Asia
| DOI | 10.1177/2347797013518403 |
| Published date | 01 April 2014 |
| Date | 01 April 2014 |
| Author | Mark Beeson |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Security in Asia:
What’s Different,
What’s Not?
Mark Beeson1
Abstract
Intuitively, we might expect that security would be broadly conceived in the
same way across the world. And yet even the way the security of the state is
understood is quite different from the predominant ‘Western’ model in some
parts of Asia in particular. Indeed, the constituent parts of broadly conceived
‘security governance’ reveal surprising and illuminating differences about a con-
cept we might otherwise expect to be universal. Nowhere better illustrates this
possibility than the East Asian region, which has come to be associated with a
distinctive notion of ‘comprehensive security’, which embraces a range of fac-
tors beyond conventional military concerns. To understand why East Asia is dif-
ferent we need to consider the region’s specific history and the contemporary
challenges it faces. Paradoxically enough, however, the region may be beginning
to demonstrate some patterns of behaviour and security concerns that are
reminiscent of an earlier ‘Western’ era, raising important theoretical and com-
parative questions in the process.
Keywords
East Asia, security, history, China, Japan, international relations
Introduction
‘Asia’ is a big place. At the outset, therefore, it is important to emphasize that
most of the discussion in what follows is preoccupied with East Asia, or the
region we associate with China, Japan, the Korean peninsula, Taiwan and the
countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Even this relatively narrow conception of Asia contains a remarkably diverse
group of states with every conceivable form of government, level of economic
development and security challenge it is possible to imagine. As we shall see,
though, other formulations of regional identity are possible and have potentially
Article
Journal of Asian Security
and International Affairs
1(1) 1–23
2014 SAGE Publications India
Private Limited
SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi, Singapore,
Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/2347797013518403
http://aia.sagepub.com
Mark Beeson, Professor of International Politics, Murdoch University, Australia.
E-mail: M.Beeson@mudoch.edu.au
Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs, 1, 1 (2014): 1–23
2 Mark Beeson
quite different implications for thinking about broadly conceived security
issues. Not only are the protagonists different as regional definitions shrink or
expand, but so, too, are the issue areas that preoccupy policymakers in different
parts of the world. For example—and all its current problems notwithstand-
ing—Western Europe remains far less concerned about conventional military
security than East Asia does, where unresolved territorial claims have given a
surprising and rather deflating immediacy to the sorts of security problems
many thought were being erased by the pacifying influence of ‘globalization’
(Gartzke, 2007; Weissman, 2012).
There are, then, major differences in the way regions have developed and the
sort of security practices that distinguish them, but these are not always captured
in ‘traditional’ security studies. On the contrary, traditional security studies is
invariably preoccupied with ‘sovereign states, military power and the preserva-
tion of international order’, and is ‘derived from a combination of Anglo-
American, statist, militarized, masculinized, ‘top-down’, methodologically
positivist and philosophically realist thinking’ (Booth, 2007, p. 28). It is still com-
mon to assume that the essence of security threats remains universal, despite an
appreciation of the changing nature of conflict, ‘new’ security threats and a grow-
ing recognition of the importance of human security (Newman, 2013).
Nevertheless, in an East Asian context, where a preoccupation with the security of
the state has been a long-standing obsession, the traditional approach looks intui-
tively appropriate as a result.
And yet there is much about the historical East Asian experience that is signifi-
cantly at odds with the notional Western template. Not only has most of ‘East
Asia’s’ history occurred in the complete absence of the Westphalian-style states
that form the core of most International Relations (IR) scholarship, but ideas
about international order, authority, not to mention the nature and locus of power,
have also been very different from their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere.
Even now, when the state has become the default expression of geographically
demarcated political authority and power across the world, the role states play in
Asia in underpinning national security remains different and distinct and shows
few signs of disappearing. On the contrary, scholars in the Peoples’ Republic of
China (PRC), for example, are exploring that country’s immense history to
develop a very different understanding of international order (Qin, 2011). Put dif-
ferently, China’s material transformation, which induces such alarm amongst tra-
ditional security analysts (Mearsheimer, 2010), is also having important ideational
consequences. Whether this recognition will generate more accurate explanations
of international development is moot, but it does serve as a powerful reminder that
our notions about the world we inhabit are socially constructed (Searle, 1995;
Wendt, 1999).
Some of the theoretical implications of these initial observations are devel-
oped and explained in the first part of the following discussion. The principal aim
of the article, however, is to highlight some of the enduring differences that
characterize thinking about security in East Asia. I shall suggest that ideas about
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