Analyzing the unfolding of events in East Asia is a risky business. And when a book attempts to review the relationship between the United States and East Asia, the task becomes doubly daunting. Indeed, events on both sides of the Pacific have a tendency to move faster than expected and in ways that are often difficult to predict. This collection of essays had its origin in a conference held in 2005, and the updated papers were published in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration. Since then, the full effects of the global economic crisis have rippled around the world, the Obama administration has taken over in Washington, there has been a change in government in Japan, and China has become an even more significant presence on the international stage. Yet, the main questions addressed in this volume and many of the insights provided by the contributors have considerable resonance for current U.S.–East Asian relations.
The central theme of the book, as laid out in its Introduction, is that East Asia suffers from an “organizational gap.” By this the editors mean that, compared to Europe and North America, East Asia has not yet fully developed effective, formal multilateral organizations that can promote greater economic integration and political and security cooperation in order to deal with intraregional tensions and threats to instability. The various chapters examine the reasons for this gap: the different country perspectives on recent regional developments, as well as the ways that Washington might participate in expanding existing, or creating new, regional multilateral institutions to fill the void while at the same time ensuring the continuation of U.S. influence in East Asia.
The first two chapters, by Kent Calder and Bruce Cumings, explore the reasons for the current “organizational gap.” Both authors see the Korean War as the crucial period that established the bilateral “hub and spoke” system of alliances that came to dominate U.S. relations with its allies in the region, and which inhibited the development of a multilateral regional organization. Calder makes imaginative use of the historical institutionalist concept of critical junctures to evaluate why and how the Korean War set the pattern for America's relations with East Asia. He also sees the period directly after the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis as a critical juncture that opened up space for new regional institutions such as the Chiang Mai Initiative. Cumings bemoans the extent to which the Bush administration reinforced America's past unilateralist approach to U.S.–East Asian relations. Intriguingly, however, he argues that the United States “remains the key enabler of either multilateralism or unilateralism in East Asia.” “Either way,” he notes, “East Asian leaders are still on the outside looking in” (p. 55).
Both David Hale and John Ravenhill provide useful data on economic developments in the region. Hale's chapter, which tends to concentrate on trends up to 2005, offers a helpful account of key features of the region's political economy, but its empirical overview is vulnerable to fast-changing events. Ravenhill's chapter concentrates on the rapid increase in bilateral preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Generally skeptical about the advantages to be gained from the burgeoning number of PTAs, Ravenhill is concerned about the continuing protectionist forces at work in the region and argues that the most significant economic benefits are to be had from global multilateral trade agreements. In his view, the PTAs are motivated as much, if not more, by political or strategic considerations as they are by economic factors. Crucially, he makes the important point that given the continuing fluidity in the definition of the East Asian region, the United States still has an opportunity to participate more directly in a broader “regional” trading group. Indeed, this is what both Australia and Japan, in slightly different ways, are currently attempting to sponsor.
The four country chapters—two on China by Cheng-Chwee Kuik and Daniel H. Rosen, one on Japan by Kazuhiko Togo, and one on Korea by Sook-Jong Lee—provide perceptive analysis of three key regional players. Rosen's chapter, like Hale's, is full of valuable data, which, unfortunately, only go up to 2005. Somewhat ironically, the other three chapters tend to indicate that the “organizational gap” identified by the editors may not be as large as some think. Kuik notes China's post-1989 interest in multilateralism and its increasingly active participation in such organizations as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the ASEAN Plus Three, the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement, and the East Asian Summit. He argues that there are both internal and external factors at work in China's support for multilateralism, and that China is likely to continue to develop this approach well into the future. Togo reviews Japan's role in the ARF, the ASEAN Plus Three, the East Asian Summit, and the Six-Party Talks and in promoting the idea of an East Asian Community. He sees Japan's interest in “re-entering Asia” as a significant factor in future Japan-U.S. relations. Lee recounts South Korea's active interest in, and support for, regional multilateral institutions, and he envisages the country playing a major role as a “balancer” between China and Japan and as an aide to engaging the United States in regional security issues.
The concluding chapters explore the policy implications for the United States of recent events in East Asia. G. John Ikenberry argues that the United States should renew its bilateral relations with key players in the region and shape “an East Asian regional order that can accommodate both a rising China and a Japan that has a sense of its own statehood” (p. 230). Francis Fukuyama sees the various multilateral organizations that are emerging as complementing, rather than substituting for, the hub-and-spoke bilateral set of alliances, especially the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, that the United States has with its regional allies. Significantly, in their Conclusion, the editors warn that a deeper form of East Asian multilateralism that excludes the United States in some dimensions “might be in the cards” (p. 261). Certainly, some of the chapters could be criticized for underestimating the extent to which the lack of attention paid to the region by the Bush administration meant that the United States was essentially absent as the pace of East Asian multilateralism increased markedly and, just as importantly, the region's governments developed the habit of talking to each other without looking over their shoulders to see whether or not Washington approved. There is an argument to be made that China's dramatic ascendency and the increasing coherence of the region means that it is now the United States that is on the outside wanting in.
Overall, this is a useful collection that not only provides a detailed and accessible overview of U.S.–East Asia relations during the Bush years but also offers important clues as to why the Obama Administration has sought to develop an approach to the region that links the United States to the increasing multilateral nature of East Asian relations. The East Asian “organizational gap” appears to be shrinking and, as a number of the contributors optimistically note, it is perhaps not yet too late for the United States to engage all governments in the region in order to help define the emerging multilateral regional order.
