Table of Contents
Foreword by Akihiro Iwashita and Jonathan Bull..................................................... v
Preface by Mihoko Kato...................................................................................... vi

Positioning Asia and Kyushu in Shifting Global Politics
A Reflection on East Asian IR Theory Building: From Here to Where?
by Yong-Chool Ha (University of Washington)...................................................... 1
Shaping East Asia’s Regional Order
by T.J. Pempel (University of California, Berkeley)................................................ 6
Relationship between Asia and Kyushu
by Hiroyuki Okamoto (Kyushu Economic Research Center)..................................... 9
Building Trust in Northeast Asia under Gloomy Global Skies:
The Role for Academics
by Paul Evans (Institute of Asian Research, University of British Colombia).................... 20
Discussants’ Comments
by Beom-Shik Shin (Seoul National University)................................................... 23
by Sergey Sevastyanov (Far Eastern Federal University)........................................ 25
Discussion with the Audience........................................................................ 27

Appendices
Appendix 1
JAPAN, MULTILATERALISM AND BILATERALISM: CONTESTING
THE FUTURE SHAPING OF EAST ASIA’S REGIONAL ORDER

by T.J. Pempel (University of California, Berkeley)............................................. 33
ENDING BIPOLARITY....................................................................................................... 34
DEEPENING INTRA-ASIAN ECONOMIC AND
FINANCIAL INTERDEPENDENCE................................................................................... 35
DEEPENING REGIONAL INSTITUTIONALIZATION.................................................... 37
JAPAN’S BALANCE OF SECURITY AND ECONOMICS,
BILATERALISM AND REGIONALISM.......................................................................... 40
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................... 44

Appendix 2
BUILDING TRUST IN NORTHEAST ASIA: THE ROLE FOR ACADEMICS

by Paul Evans (Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia)............. 48
GETTING TO COOPERATION........................................................................................... 50
ACADEMIC ROLES............................................................................................................ 51
CONCLUDING NOTE......................................................................................................... 52

About the Contributors................................................................................. 53

Foreword
We are pleased to announce the latest research publication supported by the Northeast
Asia (NOA) project of the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center (SRC) of Hokkaido University. The project has been sponsored by the National Institute for the Humanities(NIHU) since 2016. This issue comes as a special edition of the on-line journal Northeast Asia Today (https://hokudaislav-northeast.net/en/publication/), part of the Slavic
Eurasia Papers series. The project has helped to develop and promote Northeast Asia
area studies in Japan and its neighbors, with our SRC team mobilizing their gifts inorder to shed light on the region’s international relations and the institution-building
taking place there.
This publication comprises the keynote speech and subsequent kick-off session
on “Positioning Asia and Kyushu in Shifting Global Geopolitics,” which was held
as part of the International Symposium entitled “There Goes the Neighborhood: Increasing Tensions in Cooperative Northeast Asia” (Kitakyushu City, December 17-18,
2016). The International Symposium was also part of the 70th anniversary events for
the Kyushu Economic Research Center.
The publication opens with Yong-Chool Ha’s opening speech and an insightful
analysis of the contemporary situation in Asia from T.J. Pempel. It also includes local
insights on Fukuoka presented by Hiroyuki Okamoto and a short but impressive commentary by Paul Evans. The four papers are bookended with commentary provided
by Sergey Sevastyanov and Beom-Shik Shin and the discussion sparked by questions
from the floor. The full papers by T.J. Pempel and Paul Evans have also been included
as appendices.
Rather than providing polished papers, each speaker was asked to present raw ideas. Such a fresh and provocative record, therefore, should stimulate us to think throughthe realities that Northeast Asia currently faces. We also need to reflect upon how we
may come together to overcome these challenges in the international field through theapplication of judicious wisdom and a deep philosophical engagement with the region.
Our mission is still in its opening phases, and this publication aims to promote
our goal of conceptualizing Northeast Asia as a field applicable across all disciplines,
and of developing a research community able to provide comprehensive coverage ofthe region.
Finally, the editors would like to thank Megumi Sasaya (Slavic-Eurasian Research Center) for her help with this publication’s design and Edward Boyle (Center for
Asia-Pacific Studies, Kyushu University) for his assistance with proofreading.
July 31, 2017
Akihiro Iwashita and Jonathan Bullv

Preface
The international symposium “There Goes the Neighborhood: Increasing Tensions in
Cooperative Northeast Asia” was held on December 17-18, 2016 at the Kitakyushu
International Conference Center (Kokura, Kitakyushu City). This conference was thesecond event in 2016 hosted by the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center (Hokkaido University) base of the NIHU Area Studies Project for Northeast Asia. During the twoday symposium, we discussed the problems of existing cooperation and the potential
conflict in Northeast Asia from a variety of perspectives such as geopolitics, international relations, migration policy, population, and gender. The keynote speech, “International Relations Theory in East Asia,” was delivered by Professor Yong-Chool Ha(University of Washington), who for many years has been making great contributions
to the academic field of Northeast Asian community building. In his lecture, Professor
Ha discussed what kind of intellectual infrastructure exists in the region and whether
it can make a positive contribution to international community building. To explain
the peculiar characteristics of East Asian international relations theory, he pointed out
how modernization and economic development have evolved at the national level inthese countries, and how the traditions and international positions of each country wereformed and established. This lecture provided participants with significant issues to begone over in order to figure out the regional architecture of Northeast Asia.
On the first day, two sessions were held: “Positioning Asia and Kyushu in Shifting Global Geopolitics” and “Integration, Population, and Gender in Northeast &Southeast Asia”. Scholars from Canada, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the UK, and the
US discussed the numerous geopolitical and social problems of Northeast Asia. The
second day consisted of three sessions: “Sino-Russian Dynamics: The Fault-line ofNortheast Asian Competitive Cooperation,” “Migration Policy and the Movement ofPeoples in the Russian Far East,” and “Theorizing Northeast Asia: Power, Interests, andIdeology”. At these sessions, scholars from China, Japan, Poland, Russia, Singapore,
South Korea and the US analyzed the process of formation of regional communities
and theory construction from the perspective of bilateral relations in the region. Amongthe many fruitful discussions, the keynote lecture and the first session were further developed for this publication.
The NIHU Area Studies Project for Northeast Asia of the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center (Hokkaido University) co-hosted this symposium with several different
universities and research organizations including the Center for Northeast Asian Studies (Tohoku University), Center for Asia-Pacific Future Studies (Kyushu University),
University of Kitakyushu, Kyushu Economic Research Center, Asian Growth ResearchInstitute, Japan International Border Studies Network (JIBSN), academic institutions
and organizations of Kitakyushu City, and the West Japan Industry and Trade Convention Association. This project aims to facilitate the inter-university research activitiesvi

as well as the interactions between academia, and local government and municipality.

Mihoko Kato
Research Fellow, Center for Transdisciplinary Innovation, NIHU
Specially-Appointed Assistant Professor, Slavic-Eurasian Research Center,
Hokkaido UniversityviiPositioning Asia and Kyushu
in Shifting Global Politics
A Reflection on East Asian IR Theory Building:
From Here to Where?
Yong-Chool Ha (University of Washington)
Good morning ladies and gentleman. It is my honor to make a keynote speech today.
Before I start my speech, let me begin by expressing my deep gratitude to Professor
Iwashita at the Center for Asia-Pacific Future Studies, Kyushu University for organizing this timely and important conference. Professor Iwashita has been a long-timefriend and colleague of mine who has been tirelessly working for new visions for the
future of East Asia and Eurasia and beyond. He has been a leader, innovator and true
entrepreneur in initiating many projects and ideas to promote a better future for East
Asia and Eurasia. By now we all are familiar with border studies, which is his signature
project. I only wish him further success in whatever he chooses to do in the future.
Today I would like to make a few reflections on the current status of studies in
East Asia with a particular focus on East Asian international relations theories andregional integration. I will raise two broad questions regarding building East AsianIR theories: One concerns how to identify distinctive aspects of East Asia in thinking
about international relations theories. The second is the level of analysis in the current
discussions of building IR theories in East Asia.
For the last two decades, scholars have paid attention to the challenging quest for
IR theories which are germane to East Asia. Most agree that the mainstream international theories are limited in being able to capture international phenomena in the East
Asian region. Theories based on Western, and especially West European experience,are of limited value in making sense of the Asian context. The reason for the limited
value of mainstream international relations theories is that they are based on Western
experiences, which include histories, experiences and traditions of the United Statesand Western Europe.
The initial effort to apply Western frameworks to East Asia turned out to be limited and most scholars agree that further exploration of the distinctive aspects of East1

Asia is necessary to build new international theories for the region. Distinctions include
the hierarchical nature of the regional order, Asian state behaviors that cannot be explained by current IR theories and limited liberal institutionalism due to variations ineconomic and social systems. The admission that Western frameworks are limited iswelcome. However, this list of distinctive features is not exhaustive. A critical questionis whether Asia’s distinctive qualities which are relevant to new international relations
theory can be fully grasped by the current international relations theories, or not. I contend that we should go beyond the IR field in preparing a base for new international relations theories in East Asia. The intellectual history of Western international relations
theories demonstrates that building international theories involves so many areas, suchas history, economy and psychology. The current training background of the IR field isinadequate for new theory building because of the artificial disciplinary boundaries towhich scholars in the IR field cling.
The existing situation in East Asia international theory building is analogous
to long forgotten modernization theory in comparative politics and sociology. Morespecifically, I am referring to the debates on the validity of modernization theory inunderstanding the third world development in the late 1960s and 1970s. Modernization theory assumed unidirectional social and economic change and was based on theassumption of universal change. It projected the future of the non-Western world basedon Western experiences. Ultimately, modernization theory was criticized logically andempirically. The sources of challenge were varied, and included political economy, BA
regime theory and sociology of late development.
The analogy between the contemporary status of IR in East Asia and modernization theory cannot be more vivid in that the initial application of Western frameworks
turned out to be inadequate to explain the non-Western world. If this analogy stands,
reviewing intellectual trends in the aftermath modernization theory to derive any hints
in developing East Asian IR theories would be useful.
The assumption of uni-directionality of modernization theory has been severely
criticized by the counter argument that history goes through multiple paths. The assumption of universality has also been challenged by diversity in the patterns of socialchange in the non-Western world. In short, universal claims by the modernization paradigm shifted to the efforts to contextualize each case of modernization. Contextualization arose in different fields and in different forms: varieties of capitalism in political
economy and democratic transition in political science are good examples. What ismost notable in challenging the modernization paradigm, however, was recognition of
the role of tradition in understanding social change in the non-Western world.
Tradition is assumed to disappear in modernization theory. Contrary to this claim,
however, later findings indicate that the role and impact of tradition varies widely depending on different contexts for change. Sometimes tradition even plays a positiverole in economic development. As the cases of late industrialization illustrate, traditional institutions and values facilitate institutional workings in non-Western industrialization. In fact, the role of tradition in modernization in the non-Western world turned out
to be the most important factor in differentiating non-Western modernization from that2

of Western Europe.
Lessons from the fate of the modernization paradigm for IR in East Asia should
not be limited to abstract thinking that Western IR theories may not work and thus thatthey should be not applied to East Asia. We should think about what is involved in understanding the distinctiveness in East Asian experiences and what the implications arefor IR theory building on East Asia.
Most important is recognition that building theory is not the same as its application. IR theory building is based on the totality of experiences from which IR theories
can be formulated, as the backgrounds of Western IR theories clearly indicate. One
critical variable in Western IR theories is the nation state. As we all are fully aware,
the process for the nation state to emerge was a long and protracted one even after
the Westphalian treaty. There was a constant interplay of dynamics between economy,
ideology, politics and the military. In fact, the different orientations in Western IR tradition stem exactly from how to interpret this long historical process. It is also clearthat Western IR theories are extensions of domestic political order, whether liberalism
or Marxism.
What Western experiences show us is that IR theory building is a complicatedprocess involving the close examination of all the relevant experiences to international
relations. Viewed in this perspective IR theory building on East Asia has barely made afirst step. All the phenomena that are suggested by IR specialists as unique to East Asia
are restricted in scope as they are limited to only those that are different from Western
experiences. One typical example is the so-called ‘Asian paradox’. The Asian paradox
is a paradox largely because it is understood in neo-functional terms. Identifying differences is not the same as grasping the whole of which those differences are only a part.
What is necessary is to scrutinize modernization going on in East Asia. This job clearlygoes beyond the conventional territory of international relations. I question whether thecurrent IR field is adequately equipped in terms of training and the coverage of fields
needed for theory building.
There are many areas that require detailed analysis to flesh out international perspectives that will, in turn, become a foundation for building IR theories on East Asia.
Among them I will point to history, industrialization and international development.
History provides important clues to international experiences of peoples and nations,and as such, it is an essential part of new theory building. One historical questionthat has been mentioned in delineating the distinctiveness of the East Asian regionis humiliation and the sense of inferiority from colonial rule or imperialism. There isno denying that they are important historical legacies. However, one cannot but wonder whether studies on the colonial and imperial legacies remain at a superficial level
without being fully analyzed in conjunction with IR theory building in East Asia. For
example, questions, such as how colonial rule affected the perception of war and peaceand how the concept of enemy evolved in the process and aftermath of colonial ruleneed to be addressed.
Another question for East Asia IR theory building is whether, or not, a past regional order will remerge. This is certainly an interesting intellectual exercise. What is3

at stake in the debate is how to understand the return of tradition. If indeed tradition
comes back, will it be same as in the past or in changed forms? If the latter is the case,what determines the difference from the past?
Discussions on the invention of tradition in comparative politics are quite relevant. Tradition should not be taken as static; it should be distinguished from the traditional. Tradition is constantly redefined and upgraded depending on who takes up thetask. When we discuss the reemergence of the 19th century Chinese world order weneed to be very specific about the contexts in which tradition changed.
One of the most important contexts is industrialization and modernization. One
clearly distinct aspect of East Asian industrialization is lateness, whether in Japan, Korea, China or elsewhere. Late industrialization always brings up the issue of tradition.
Unlike the modernization paradigm claimed, traditional institutions and values are frequently invoked to facilitate late industrialization. This invocation of traditional institutions and values is bound to have a bearing on social and political development. Eachcase of late industrialization has its own unique way of assimilating its own tradition,
causing diversity in patterns of social and political change. This diversity also means
variety in international perspectives. Analyzing the distinct international perspectives
that are developing in different countries is therefore necessary. One example is nationalism. Rather than developing different labels for nationalism, its contents need to beclosely examined in specific contexts.
A related factor that causes divergence is the international environment in whichlate industrialization occurs. For example, Japan’s industrialization unfolded in thecontext of imperialism, for South Korea in the context of the Cold War, and for China
in the context of globalization. In each case, the international environment affected themode of economic development differently and each case picked up distinct international perspectives. For example, Japan was able to justify its international behavior by
way of the international standards of the time, while China is rapidly learning international norms in the context of globalization. Such distinctive international learning and
its impact need to be considered in thinking about IR theories on East Asia. In this regard, the mundane issue of nationalism needs to be examined in the context of different
late industrialization cases. In addition, at a domestic level late industrialization gives
rise to distinct international perspectives separate from the international environment.
As a result, the revival of the 19th century regional order should be approached inconjunction with modernization and industrialization processes going on in East Asia,
especially from the perspective of how tradition is invented.
Another example which deserves attention in thinking about IR on East Asia isinternational development that has been evolving in the region. This goes beyond shifting military power balance. Unlike in Western Europe, East Asia has gone through a
convoluted historical process. For a long time, East Asia has been under the influenceof Western powers, most prominently American power. What is unfolding before oureyes is finally the beginning of what I call the de-Americanization process. The diminishing influence of the United States seems inevitable, and this process is not limited
merely to policy shift; it has serious implications for structural changes in international4relations in East Asia. How to handle the de-Americanization process will have a profound impact on the future of the regional order.
As Western international relations theories are based on domestic, regional andinternational experiences as they pertain to international relations, so too should IR
theories in East Asia. Beyond the stage of identification of differences from the West,IR theory builders should start looking into the totality of East Asian experiences thatare relevant to IR theory building. As most nations in East Asia are late comers to industrialization, so the process and nature of building a regional order in East Asia willcertainly be different. While we should learn from Western experiences, we should notforget that the region will tread a different path. We must remember that the processof preparing new IR theories in East Asia goes way beyond the conventional territoryof the IR field. In this sense, we must change our position from theory application totheory building mode. Most important would be to flesh out the international orientations that may develop from the modernization and industrialization process unfoldingin East Asia. From this perspective, perhaps it may be premature to take the job of IR
theory building in East Asia.
Lastly, I would like to mention methodology in thinking about IR theories in East
Asia. Mostly coming from the Western IR background there seems to exist a rigid conceptual barrier between macro and micro phenomena. This conceptual barrier leads toa tendency in the field that whatever happens at local levels or micro-levels is regarded
as insignificant. The rigid distinction between macro-structural and micro-processes
may be sensible in the already fixed international structure. However, in a region like
East Asia where everything is so fluid, it is strategically important to pay attention to
local and micro dynamics. To understand macro implications of micro phenomena isan essential part of our theoretical imagination. In this regard, I would like to direct
our attention to so many happenings at the local level. For instance, local interactions
among Japanese, Koreans and Chinese in Fukuoka, on Jeju Island, on Tsushima Island,at the Tuman River, and in the Dandong area are good examples where we can observea possible divergence between the formal state level actions and those at the local level.
As far as I can see, people in the region have increasingly experienced human interactions that sometimes overwhelm the central government’s formal policy directions.
During my stay at Kyushu University I heard a moving story where local residents in
Kyushu looked for family members of forced mining workers in Korea during the colonial period for reconciliation.
Most importantly the border study projects that Professor Iwashita launchedhave produced so many stories about border regions. North Korean border stories, theOkinawa situation and Sino-Russian border areas are good cases in point. In one of theconferences that he was involved in, as I distinctly remember, Professor Iwashita remarked that nationalism near the border is quite different from other regions. I propose
here to start a project to collect all the micro cases of regional dynamics. These cases
will provide us with important opportunities not only to understand local dynamics;
they may open up new clues in thinking about macro-structural consequences in the
future. I argue it is high time to loosen the shackles of macro-determinism, especially5when we are dealing with an ever-changing regional order.
Concluding my speech, I would like to make summarizing observations. First,
we should realize that building new international theories requires close examinationof the international implications of political, economic, historical and psychologicalchanges that develop in a region. In this regard, East Asia is not an exception. From
this perspective, in the current field of IR theories, East Asia has just completed thetask of identifying the limited value of Western IR theories in understanding East Asianinternational dynamics. We should go beyond this initial stage to identify and analyze
the totality of East Asian experiences from the perspective of IR theory building. This
would require us to go beyond conventional IR fields. Our hands are full, and as lateindustrializations forge ahead, perhaps we need to hurry in catching up with the history
and reality of East Asia.

Shaping East Asia’s Regional Order
T.J. Pempel (University of California, Berkeley)
I will talk about the changing order in East Asia, and the Asia-Pacific, and specificallyJapan’s role within that changing order. Mine will be a rather macro-level perspective.
But let me start with a very obvious point: the Asia-Pacific is undergoing a change in
its order, reconfiguring both economics and security. This process has been going onwith varying degrees of acceleration and deceleration over time. The result has been
deeper and more encompassing lines of interdependence across the Asia-Pacific region.
Yet within that general outline, the specific details of the emerging order remain murky
and will remain subject to the actions of individuals and different states. The emerging
order is thus very much a work in progress.
To sketch this changing order, I want to draw your attention to three major dimensions along which change is taking place. The first is the change in the nature of security. Changes in security have been going on since the end of bipolarity, which I markfrom the 1972 visit of Richard Nixon to China and the changes in Chinese economic
policy begun under Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. There has been a significant improvement in the positive state-to-state interactions that have taken place, perhaps untilvery recently. In addition, there has been a parallel decline in the military confrontations across the region, along with a diminution in most countries’ reliance on militaryprowess as a tool of foreign policy.
The second big change involves economic shifts that blurred the ideological gapsthat once separated the two sides in the Cold War, and that were erected to stymie
economic interactions between China and America’s Cold War allies. These economic
shifts have since been marked by extensive cross-border investments, interdependence,
foreign direct investment in East Asian finance and investment and trade.
Third, we have seen substantial growth in the number of regional institutions that6

span the arc of security and economics and pull together at the official level a numberof different governments in a variety of different organizations.
I want to go into a little bit more detail on each of these. Let me start with ending
bipolarity. The normalization of relations between China and the United States, Japan,
South Korea, and a number of America’s Cold War allies, began this process, and it was
accelerated with the economic changes introduced in China by President Deng Xiaoping. The end result has been the general diminution of state-to-state conflicts. The Cold
War has hardly vanished in East Asia, but the degree of hard security conflict has been
severely diminished. Despite the tensions that we see in the newspapers on a regularbasis, we have had the benefits of what might be called an East Asia peace in Northeast
Asia, since the end of the Korean conflict in 1953, and across Southeast Asia as wellsince 1979. So, while we do have tensions on the Korean peninsula and between Taiwan and the PRC, as well as over island disputes in the East and South China Seas, weshould remember that, for the most part, these have not been generating state-to-state
conflicts and major warfare.
The second point to stress is the deepening of intra-Asian economic relationships
and financial interdependence. An important starting point is that as economic development across individual countries began to proceed in East Asia, numerous leadersbegan to pivot their domestic legitimacy on the provision of economic benefits to theircitizens. They have moved away from focusing on military prowess and have insteademphasized domestic economic development as the main basis for their legitimacy. In
this context we have seen national development projects within numerous countries becoming increasingly interwoven with one another through the development of regional
production networks and cross-border investments. Consequently, intra-Asian trade isalmost at the same level as intra-European trade levels. We have had a number of these
corporate moves to weave together closer linkages across national borders in East Asia.
Meanwhile, intra-Asian investment has risen, particularly since the 1990s, thecumulative effect of which has been the increase in cross-border production and deepening levels of interdependence within East Asia. A further effect has been the reduced
dependence of individual East Asian countries on the markets within the United States,
even though the US ultimately remains a major market for many of the goods that aresent from the collective Asian development effort.
Finally, the third point is deepening regional institutionalization. Bottom-up corporate development in investment and trade ties has been enhanced by a build-up informal regional institutions that involve a top-down process driven by government interactions. The Cold War has not disappeared. We still have the alliance structuresthat link certain governments, but these have been supplemented by a growing interdependence among states and a growing institutionalization of state participation informal institutions, particularly within the economic area. This has led to an increase ininter-governmental interactions that cut across security tensions as well as the old Cold
War lines that previously divided the region.
This process happened for most of the 1990s and well into the 2000s. It has led toincreased interdependence and the rise in a huge number of regional institutions, many7

of which are familiar to you. We have had Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum(APEC), the ASEAN regional forum (ARF), we have had the Chiang Mai Initiative, wehave had the ASEAN-plus-three, and numerous others. In particular, these have been
forming within Asia in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 and 1998.
The crisis led many countries to recognize that they had much more in common with
one another on economic grounds. However, there has yet to be any conviction on thepart of East Asian governments that they have some common enemy that would linkthem together on security. So there has been a much closer inter-connection institutionally in economics and finance, than there has been in security.
How does Japan fit into this emerging order, and what role does it play? One way
to think about this is the tension that Japan faces between security and economics on the
one hand and then bilateralism and regionalism on the other. Everyone recognizes thatthe starting point for Japan is to continue making the United States the major pillar for
its foreign policy. It has maintained robust ties on both economics and security to theUnited States. Nevertheless, once bipolarity began to end in East Asia, Japan opened
itself up to closer ties with China. As we know, economic relations between Japan and
China grew very quickly after the normalization of relations in 1972, and then accelerated during the 1980s. Ministry of Foreign Affairs data suggests that between 1979and early 2016, Japan sent approximately 3.3 trillion yen in loan aid, 157 billion yen in
grant aid, and 181 billion yen in technical aid to China. This aid, however, represents a
dependence that China has not been very vocal in articulating. Japan, on the other hand,
took a great deal of pride for a very long period of time in its role in boosting Chinese
economic development. There was a 30-year period of congeniality between the twocountries that only began to be challenged around 2008.
Despite Japan’s deepening economic ties with China, and despite the rise in thenumber of regional and multilateral bodies that Japan has participated in, Japan’s foreign policy continues to be closely tied to that of the United States. As a consequence,
and as a result of trying to keep the United States deeply engaged in the Asian region,
Japan, along with Australia and other countries, created APEC and the ARF. These
were institutional efforts to weave the United States more deeply into links across the
Asia-Pacific, and to keep the United States closely engaged with Japan and with therest of the region. This relationship came to something of a crisis in the 1997 financial
difficulties when Japan proposed the Asian Monetary Fund as a way to deal with thefinancial turmoil. China, the United States, and the IMF were very upset, and Japan
dropped its proposal. Nevertheless, Japan has been a strong proponent of regional integration through institutions and has played a powerful role in helping to create closer
security relations within Asia, and in keeping the United States engaged in Asian regional institutions.
The United States and Japan deepened their bilateral security ties as part of the
Obama pivot, or the re-positioning. As China’s rise has challenged previous foreign
policy considerations of the United States and Japan, the US and Japan have drawn
ever closer in their security relationships. Japan has taken on a much more active rolein its own hard security and has re-defined what is constitutionally possible in using8

its self-defense forces. However, we are coming to something of a watershed with theelection of Donald Trump as president, and the possibility that many of the long-standing relationships between Japan and the United States will be up-ended as a result of
his priorities. Many of the long-standing expectations about that relationship are being
drawn into question. Trump has started by removing the US from the Trans-PacificPartnership, which for both Obama and Abe was an important part of linking the UnitedStates and Japan economically to the Asian region and to one another.
To conclude let me say that economics and finance continue to show an expanded
integration, and are increasingly organized through multilateral forms and multilateral
institutions. Regional security institutions, on the other hand, have not been equally
forceful in pulling the countries together. I think this is a point — the lack of empathy
among the various states in the region — that the next speaker, Professor Evans, will
be drawing to our attention. Nevertheless, Japan has been an active and enthusiastic
member of multilateral institutions. In the economics and finance areas it has worked
energetically to keep the United States closely engaged with the Asian region. On security Japan has endeavored to forge a close tie with the US.
The great difficulty Japan currently faces and that Asia faces collectively, is thepossibility of a serious withdrawal politically and institutionally from the continent by
the United States. This is something that Donald Trump has emphasized with his promise of “making America great again”, advocating increased protectionism and isolation
for the United States, and a growing reduction of the US role in East Asia. For Japanand for other countries in the region, this is going to create serious problems not only
in security but also in the economic arena. So, it is with that relatively pessimistic notethat I want to bring my comments to a close, and let me thank you very much for yourattention.

Relationship between Asia and Kyushu
Hiroyuki Okamoto (Kyushu Economic Research Center) (Figure 1)
Kyushu is a gateway to Asia. The role of Kyushu is to connect Asia and Japan. Shanghai and Seoul are closer than Tokyo. Fukuoka airport has convenient access to themajor Asian cities. (Figure 2)
Historically, in Kyushu, there were threats from the Asian continent. In the 6th
century, there was Dazaifu. The imperial regional government office, Dazaifu and Mizuki were built as defense facilities against threats from the Asian continent. In the
13th century, Kyushu suffered two attacks by the Mongolian army. As Professor Ha
described in his keynote speech, Kyushu has been experiencing interactions with Asian
countries for a long time ago. Let us look at our history with Asian countries.
This gold seal (Figure 3), which was granted by ancient China, was found in Kyushu. There was Kolkan which was the imperial guest house for envoys from China and9

Korea in the 6th century. In the 11th century, Kyushu had the first Chinatown in Japan.
In the 13th century, green tea, udon noodles and, manju sweet buns were brought from
China into Japan via Kyushu. Today, all of them are common foods.
Kyushu was the first place in Japan where Christianity was introduced by Francisco Xavier. Although Japan had a period of national isolation in the Edo era (c16001868), Dejima in Kyushu was the only open port to foreign nations. In the Meiji
Restoration, a political transformation to build a modern state, Kyushu served as adriving force in the movement, because samurai of Kyushu could get information on
foreign countries. (Figure 4)
Japan’s traditional industry is also affected by Asia. The town of Arita, which is
100 miles from here, was the first place to produce porcelain in Japan. Porcelain produced in Arita is the most refined. Production began in 1600. That was supported by a
Korean potter called Ri Sanpei (year of birth unknown-1655). He was one of the mostrespected Koreans in Japan. People in Arita built a monument to him to express their
gratitude. (Figure 5)
People of Kyushu had supported Sun Yat-Sen who forged a political revolution in
China, called the Xinhai Revolution, in 1911. I think this is the empathy that Professor
Evans described in his speech. People of Kyushu had empathy for Sun Yat-Sen andhelped him.
Kyushu is highly dependent on Asia. Kyushu’s largest trading partner is China,accounting for 20 percent of exports and 60 percent of imports. Figure 6 indicates that
Kyushu’s economy is closely linked to the Asian economy. The degree of Kyushu’s
economic linkage with Asia is higher than the national average, except for the value ofimports. (Figure 7)
In 2015, Kyushu posted a record high number of foreigners entering, due to a
sharp increase in the number of foreign cruise ships calling port at Kyushu. Most tourists who use cruise ships are Chinese. By nationality, Koreans occupy the majority.
(Figure 8)

Kyushu has close relationships among local governments in East Asian countries.
We have had the Japan-Korea Strait Governor meeting since 1992. In this meeting, we
discuss sightseeing, environmental technology, and youth exchange programs. (Figure

9)

Kyushu, China, and Korea face the Yellow Sea. The Pan-Yellow Sea Economic
and Technical Exchange Meeting has been held in this region’s coastal cities since2001. This meeting aims to expand exchange and create investment and technology in
the Yellow Sea region. It consists of ten think-tanks in Kyushu and Korea. We hold ageneral meeting and study meeting annually in Kyushu and Korea. (Figure 10)
Kyushu’s economy is relatively large. Kyushu’s Gross Regional Product (GRP),
which has a similar meaning to Gross Domestic Product, is as large as that of Norway,
which ranks 20th worldwide. It is larger than Thailand and Malaysia. Kyushu is as large
as Spain and larger than Korea and Taiwan. (Figure 11)
Kyushu’s economy is known as the 10 percent economy of Japan. Key indicators10

such as land area, population and GRP are 10 percent of the national figure (Figures
12 & 13). However, there are several industries with a high market share relative to therest of Japan. Kyushu is often called the “silicon island” or the “car island” or the “foodisland” (Figures 14, 15 & 16). Let me briefly explain about the features of Kyushu’s
main industry. In Japan, the semiconductor industry has been forced to reorganized, but
30 percent of integrated circuit production in Japan is still carried out in Kyushu. Kyushu is one of Japan’s largest automotive production bases. There are several assemblyplants for Nissan, Toyota and Daihatsu. Nissan is purchasing components and materials
from China and Korea. The amount of cars produced in Kyushu reached 1.3 million
vehicles. Toyota is producing Lexus brands. About 70 percent of vehicles produced by
Nissan and Toyota are exported to China and the United States. Motor vehicles are a
top item of exported goods in Kyushu. The automotive industry creates 46,000 jobs
in Kyushu. Agricultural products amounted to 1.8 trillion yen. This is 20 percent of
national agricultural output. Now we are trying to export our agricultural products toother Asian countries.
For greater stability in Asia, Kyushu can cooperate with Asian countries on someissues. Firstly, air pollution issues. As cities close to Kyushu have rapidly grown, they
face serious environmental issues such as air and water pollution. It is difficult to respond to these issues without inter-city cooperation and mutual networks. Kyushu has
a history to overcome air pollution. We can help other Asian people and countries. Secondly, water issues. Water is a must for cities to grow. The city of Fukuoka has sufferedfrom a serious shortage of water for years. Today, Fukuoka is a water-efficient city. The
city of Kita-Kyushu has cooperated with China, Cambodia, and Vietnam to solve waterleaks and water quality management. I think inter-city cooperation on environmental
issues will stabilize Asia.
Thirdly, cultural exchange in the arts and animations contribute to peace in Asia.
The Fukuoka Asia Culture Prize started in 1990. It is a means of showing respect tothose who have contributed to the arts and culture in Asia. Animation also contributes
to understanding. For example, 60 million copies of One Piece are printed and sold in
more than 35 countries. Galaxy Express 999 is also a famous animation. The best authors of these animations were born in Kyushu.

11Figure - 1

Figure - 2

12Figure - 3

Figure - 4

13

Figure - 5

Figure - 6

14

Figure - 7

Figure - 815Figure - 9

Figure - 1016

Figure - 11

Figure - 1217

Figure - 13

Figure - 1418

Figure - 15

Figure - 16

19

Building Trust in Northeast Asia under Gloomy
Global Skies: The Role for Academics
Paul Evans (Institute of Asian Research, University of British Colombia)
I am going to begin where Professor Pempel ended, which is with a view of the gloomyskies of 2016. What I would like to do is paint a global picture and then bring it down
to the local situation, about which Professor Ha opened the conversation.
Why do I say, “gloomy global skies?” Historians may well look back on the year
2016 as the moment when the liberal world order that we have lived under and supported for most of the last 70 years reached a tipping point. It is not going to collapse,
but it is going to change. If we look at the output of the world economy, we are getting
growth estimates of 1.2 percent for the past year. More than that, liberal democratic
institutions have not had a good year. Several countries are sliding backwards, Turkey, Thailand and the Philippines among them. Populism, extremism, xenophobia, anddistrust of institutions are eroding support for moderate politics. Simply use the word
“Brexit” to summon to mind the challenge presented by anti-globalization views, extremism, populism, and the fractures within democracies.
Professor Pempel, I apologize in advance (the Canadian way) because I am goingto make some comments about Canada’s nearest neighbor, its President elect, and what
this means for the world democracies.
The unease about Mr. Trump’s victory is palpable in Canada, Japan and the othercountries I have visited in the past month including China, Indonesia, and Singapore.
The anxiety is not just about Mr. Trump as President but the social forces in the United States revealed during the campaign. We all saw new fissures and divisions within
American society, deeper polarization, a dysfunctional Congress. America has a wonderful system but it is not perfect and this may have been one of its most imperfectyears.
Some of the forces at play are not unique to the United States. The backlash
against globalization, anger about the 1 percent and inequality, intertwine with elementsof racism, xenophobia, protectionism, and “us first”-ism. Multiple forces will constrain
the new President from acting on his election promises. But one thing of which we
can be very sure is that the United States will be more unpredictable for friend and foe
alike. There will be major disruption to the patterns of expectations and relationships
about American behavior and the US role in underpinning the liberal world order thatit has anchored since the Second World War.
This world order will not suddenly collapse but it is going to demand leadershipfrom new quarters and in new ways, often without the United States or around theUnited States on matters including climate change, the multilateral trading system,
multilateral institutions, alliances, and peace keeping operations.
Let me give an example at the regional level: the American pivot, or re-balancing
to Asia-Pacific. As I spoke last month with people at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

20and at Japan’s Self Defense Forces, it became very clear that everyone was deeply uncertain and anxious about the alliance system and the US role in the region. The Obamapolicy had been built on three foundations
One of them, the most important — at least the most evident, was a slow but
steady build-up of military capacity across the Pacific. My sense is America is notgoing to back away from that military build-up. There is every indication that, in fact,
we have the kind of leadership group which is about as close to a military-industrial
complex as we have ever seen in an American cabinet, that the idea of more Americanships, more American troops, in this region, are very strong possibilities.
Where we see potential disengagement is in the realms of trade and institution
building. As Professor Pempel indicated, there are clear signs of protectionism and an
America First approach. Mr Trump will likely withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and possibly NAFTA. These will likely be replaced by new sets of bilateralnegotiations.
As Canadians who live next door to the United States, we love our Americanneighbors dearly but do not always trust them and expect them to act largely on their
immediate self-interests. At the same time, we have admired the United States as thecreator of public goods and a country that lives largely by the rule of law and treaties.
The United States is not going to withdraw from its trading arrangements with individual countries or its involvement in multilateral agreements — but it does appear poised
to play a different game in trade matters, more transactional and US-centric. Officials
in Ottawa, Tokyo, Singapore and virtually every other capital will scramble to secure
their bilateral understandings and agreements with the US even as their knees shake
about the future of the multilateral trading system that is so central to their economic
well-being.
The third pillar is support for multilateral diplomatic process like the UN at the
global level and the various ASEAN-centered security and political processes in the region. Professor Pempel provided a wonderful map of these cross-cutting and overlapping institutional footprints. To be sure, there has always been an American preference
for bilateral agreements. But Washington has also supported nascent regional processes
for several decades. Under Obama US diplomats gave a strong boost to regional multilateralism, trying to support rather than dominate or erode them. Mr. Trump’s government will not abandon all of these processes but neither will it make them priorities.
Those who work on regional institutions in Asia know how slowly they are developing, how much patience is necessary to see them get traction on economic or security
issues. So, for all of those reasons, I think that governments, including in Tokyo, arevery concerned about what comes next, recognizing we are simply guessing.
It is in that context that this project is so important. I only know what I haveheard in the two hours, mainly about what is happening at the ground level and in people-to-people contacts in Northeast Asia. What a wonderful project! I have been hoping
this would happen for many years. But these micro-projects are going to be affected bywhat I fear is a coming geo-political tension of the sort we have not seen since the Cold
War and even back to the 1930s when liberal democracies turned in against themselves,21the international institutions of the day collapsed and a naked form self-interest andstrategic competition flourished.
And I am going to make two suggestions on what we do under that gloomy sky.
The first of them is in the paper that I am tabling today but not presenting (See Appendix 2). It is about trust-building and confidence-building, through empathy in Northeast
Asia. I am humbled and just delighted to see what this process is doing. Whatever else,
it is making connections at the intellectual level, at the historical level, at the culturallevel — connections among people that allow them to see the world through the lensesof others in the region. This is a topic we have been exploring with Chinese colleagues
for the past three years and about which we recently published a special volume of themagazine Global Asia. The idea of empathy is a much under-valued concept in international relations and appears to be one of the things you are seeking to generate in thisproject.
But let me suggest a second thing that can be done. And this time I can speak withsome pride, as a Canadian. Canada has a new government. Canada has a liberal government, a liberal internationalist government that defines itself in part by its “sunnyways” optimism. It came with a new approach to governance domestically. It has comein with an agenda that focuses on support for multilateralism and multilateral institutions. Canada is returning to peacekeeping and peace support operations. It is committed to open borders, reception of refugees and immigrants, free-trade arrangements,and fundamentally, a rule-based international order. Some say Canadians are acting like
Canadians again. Canadians may be playing a Middle Power role again but it has 21st
century characteristics and involves a new approach to mainland China.
Prime Minister Trudeau made a trip to China in August and September. And Premier Li Keqiang then visited Canada. We have had a quiet reset of the bilateral relationship, some of it focused on economics, including the first steps toward a free trade
agreement. Some of it was on educational exchanges and other things. But the bigger
picture was that we need to engage China at the global level on global issues, with thepotential for responsible leadership on several key ones including climate change, environment, global health issues, and now, peacekeeping and peace support issues, China
is not on the periphery. China is coming close to the center. And what Robert Zoellick
referred to as China becoming a “responsible stakeholder” almost now seems passé. We
need it as a responsible leader as America steps back from the role it has long played.
Some of the things China is doing are not so nice from that perspective, particularly in its maritime boundary issues. But in general, the argument is that we need tobring China more deeply into key institutions and regimes. What Mr Trudeau’s groupis thinking about is the next level of that process. If any of you followed the G20 meetings in Hangzhou, and saw the dynamics of those meetings, the three countries that had
the most ambitious agenda for institution-building in the G20 were the Germans, theCanadians, and the Chinese. The experience of interactions with China on high financeissues sees them now playing a role in producing public goods as important as anyother major power.
Let me then conclude that we are now in an era that has been variously described22

as multi-polar or multi-centric. We cannot count on the United States as we have in earlier times and will need to look for new types of leadership and coalitions of the willing
and the relevant to address major global and regional issues. China will need to be acentral part of that new order. It is the Canadian bet that with the right mix of firmness
and accommodation China can play a constructive, indeed essential role in shaping it.
Thank you.

Discussants’ Comments
Beom-Shik Shin (Seoul National University)
Professor Pempel explained how security and economics have various dimensions in
the region. In addition, he suggested the kinds of institutional results that exist in theregion. I think his theory has raised important and serious theoretical challenges. Firstof all, the issue of the relation between security and economy, and the theoretical taskof understanding the security-economy nexus in international relations theory. As Professor Ha elaborated in his speech, international relations theory has evolved mainly
from the experiences of the Western European states. As a result, IR theory cannot
sufficiently explain the security-economy nexus in this region. At the risk of over-simplification, the realist perspective tends to understand security as leading the economy. A liberalist perspective, especially the functionalist group, tends to emphasize theeconomy’s leading role over security. Nevertheless, both theories posit that security
and economy move in the same direction. However, we need to consider what kind of
condition underlies this coupling process of economy and security.
The role of the United States is very important. After World War II, until the endof the Cold War, the United States was the leading hegemon. It had responsibility for
maintaining world security and the economic structure. Under these conditions, security and the economy could move in the same direction. However, with the advent of the
post-Cold War era and the rise of China, the United States can no longer dominate theworld economy. Changing international relations have come to challenge the existing
situation. In Northeast Asia, security and the economy cannot go together. Even though
security competition goes higher, economic cooperation goes further. In other words,
hot economy and cold security co-exist. Some call this contradictory phenomenon to
traditional Western IR theory the ‘Asian Paradox’. Professor Pempel has appropriately
pointed out that the combined changes in the external security order plus the increased
significance of the cross-border economy and financial ties pose serious challenges tothe deeply institutionalized combination of security and economy power positions, andthe policies that were previously in play.
Adding to these findings, I will now consider the security-economy nexus and dynamics along with its conditions in the region. This can provide us with a more creative
platform for building a new regional IR theory — a hope that Professor Ha expressed23

in his speech. We need to study the following factors. First, we need to study how transformations in regional states impact on the regional order. If we look only through thegreat power politics framework, we cannot grasp and evaluate appropriately the changes in regional international politics. Of course, since the post-Cold War Era, Northeast
Asia has been changed in a sense, but at the same time, it remains unchanged. The main
rules or the actors may change, but the structure continues. However, regional playertransformations have a strong impact on the regional mode of international interactions. Therefore, the task ahead is to explain the impact of regional states’ transformations, such as democratization, marketization, or industrialization on the regional order.
Second, Professor Pempel’s emphasis on the role of Japan in the region is interesting. Some may say that the rivalry between the United States and China will be thebasic framework of the regional order. However, besides the United States and China,
we need to pay more attention to relations between the so-called middle ground states,
such as Japan, South Korea, North Korea, and Russia. If we put aside the extraordinarycase of North Korea, cooperation between the middle-ground states can ultimately be
the foundation of the future regional order. Especially if we accept that neither the United States nor China can prevail in this region for the time being, cooperation among the
middle-ground states may have a decisive role in the process of regional transformation. In this respect, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s efforts to improve relations
with Russia, or the re-consolidation of South Korea and Japan’s relations that havebeen fluctuating in recent years, can have a significant impact on the regional dynamics
in the future. Furthermore, if Japan, South Korea, and Russia cooperate tri-laterally thiswill contribute greatly to stabilizing the regional order. They may take the buffer function between the United States and China. In this respect, we need to pay more attention
to the significance of tri-lateral cooperation and unilateralism in the region. Concerning
this, I would like to ask Professor Pempel two questions: firstly, whether, or not, therole of the United States will diminish in this region? And; secondly, if the Americanrole diminishes, what role or strategy would be appropriate for Japan?
My third point is the importance of leadership and ideas in the formation of regional cooperation and institutions. I want to ask Professor Evans, besides the leadingrole of the United States in the region, who or what can take the capitalist role of cooperation in Northeast Asia?
Finally, I want to point out the under-represented importance of various actors
besides the nation-state in the region. Mr. Okamoto’s presentation showed the position
and the possible role of Kyushu in the region. I fully understand the importance of thecity, and the region, and the locale can be solid grounds for regional cooperation. Somesay that this kind of interaction in low politics may have some meaning, but that it is not
so important, and cannot overcome the lead that comes from high politics. However,many scholars have found various examples of how continuous pressure from below
became a resource for high political change. In addition, many East Asian businesspeople have a tendency to invest despite existing geopolitical competition and instability
in the region. Furthermore, although time does not permit me to explain in detail, we
should consider the importance of the construction of city networks and local networks.

24Such networks are increasing in the region. Therefore, pressure from below will continue to be influential. This would leave security and the economy in such a way that East
Asia is different from other regions. If the coming Trump administration pursues a socalled ‘US-first diplomacy,’ which is an isolationist diplomacy, the significance of pressure from below will need to be discussed more seriously among the regional states.
Sergey Sevastyanov (Far Eastern Federal University)
We have heard from several very famous speakers, and it is a great honor to respond tosome of their ideas. I will elaborate on how Russia can contribute to improving Northeast Asian security. As we know, the main strategy for Russia in the Asia-Pacific andNortheast Asia is to use regional economic integration to boost economic developmentof the vast and under-populated territories of the Russian Far East. In addition, Moscow
is interested in promoting initiatives to shape the new security architecture in Northeast
Asia. Security should be based on a balance of bilateral mechanisms and multilateraldiplomacy that exclude any closed or restricted systems or blocs. This is the peacefulprincipal position for Moscow and Beijing, and it is important for discussions in our
session.
According to Professor Pempel, one important component of the emerging Asianorder is represented by the rapid increase in formalized governmental links that marknew institutional commitments reflecting enhanced regional interdependence. This isabsolutely true. I also agree with him that at the same time, security arrangements suchas the Asian Regional Forum and the Six-Party talks are not working so well. Furthermore, Track II, Track 1.5 and Track 1 diplomacy have become less effective. What we
see is that Cold War views still exist. They demonstrate different visions of the East
Asian security order and shape modern security relations.
As for multilateral economic cooperation projects, those involving Russia, North
Korea, and South Korea, are making little progress. This is a big setback for Northeast
Asia and for Russian plans to realize these projects as an option for economic integration with Northeast Asian countries. On the other hand, a positive development is the
improving relationship between Japan and Russia. There is a good chance for these
economic and political ties to improve. There are some interesting projects under discussion such as the proposal to connect Sakhalin and Hokkaido with a gas pipeline,
electricity grid and rail transportation, and many others. They are to be further discussed during the forthcoming visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe to Vladivostok in early September 2017 to participate in the annual Eastern Economic Forum.
Now, about the experience of 1.5 Track diplomacy on security in Northeast Asia.
First of all, the Six-Party talks are now dormant, but we have two other structures.
These are the Northeast Asian Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD) and the Northeast Asia
Peace and Cooperation Forum (NEAPCF). The NEACD is well-known; it is about
traditional security, mostly North Korean security issues. It is attended by active diplomats, most of whom also represented their country at the Six-Party talks. It is an important mechanism to keep alive intellectually the process of discussions on Northeast
Asian security and Korean peninsula security issues at times when Six-Party talks have25not been operational.
I do not think anyone has mentioned the NEAPCF. It was launched three years
ago by the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs This is a strong initiative. They discuss
non-traditional security issues with the full support of the Korean Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. Again, the leaders of these NEAPCF delegations are the same diplomats who
participate in the NEACD and the Six-Party talks. Lately, however, there have beensome problems due to the difficult geopolitical situation in the region. For example,
three years ago I was asked by the NEACD leaders to arrange a conference in Vladivostok. We started preparations, but because of events in the Ukraine in the spring of2014 the conference was cancelled. More or less the same happened with the NEAPCF. The conference was arranged for October 2016 in Washington DC. However, theRussian and Chinese diplomats did not attend, because they were unhappy with recent
South Korean initiatives to install a new American air defense system. These geopolitical aspects influenced 1.5 Track diplomacy in a negative way.
The prospects for these mechanisms are mixed. The NEACD is not a high priority project for the American State Department, while the Korean initiative is fully
supported by the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I think Korea has a good position
and I am sure that the new presidential administration of South Korea will continue todevelop this resource.
My first conclusion is that overall Northeast Asia could not avoid or postpone
finding a solution to the nuclear security threat posed by North Korea. Some people say
if North Korea does not want to cooperate then we should do nothing. I think that is not
the right idea. So far, Beijing has been the most consistent proponent of the idea thatsomething should be done. What may have a positive effect is to arrange multilateral
exercises including not only US military allies in the region, but also China and Russia.
Another effective step is to decrease the level of US-South Korea exercises in the vicinity of the Korean Peninsula so as to not to directly provoke North Korea. I agree withProfessor Evans’ point that the missing ingredient in moving from confidence to trust is
empathy. We do not have enough empathy. We are frustrated with North Korea because
Pyongyang as of late, has been lacking empathy, too. Empathy needs cultivation andI think Seoul has no choice but to change this in some positive way. Newly-elected
President Moon Jae-in has already declared such plans.
My second conclusion is that, taking into account the dangerous security situationon the Korean peninsula, in a short term perspective multilateral cooperation projects in
the Russian Far East could become an interim substitute for the idea of Northeast Asian
economic integration. China is already active in this context. Several recent summits
between Putin and Abe brought Japan into this scenario as well, and Korean businessshould engage too. It is an innovative and promising idea for forging trust and cooperation between key actors in Northeast Asia.
Lastly, Russia and Northeast Asian countries have great potential for developing
cooperation in security, science and education. According to Professor Evans, the university is a natural place to cultivate empathy. My view is that the newly formed Far
Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok is particularly relevant to promote dialogue

26

with universities and research institutions from Northeast Asia. We are ready and liketo discuss different aspects of soft security, including nuclear safety, energy security,
the environment and climate change to develop empathy that is lacking in the region.
I have one question for our speakers. It could sound a little bit provocative, taking into account that most of our speakers are from North America. Professor Pempel
spoke about the emerging regional order. According to him, it involves the recognition
that any Asia-Pacific security order will depend on two things: a balance of power andan accepted set of norms. This is certainly true. However, he says that such a set of rules
could be agreed upon only in the distant future. I suggest that if President Trump realized only some of his presidential campaign promises, for example, to focus mainly on
domestic politics, and to be less interested in multilateral institutions in East Asia, thenmaybe China, Russia, Korea, and Japan, could play a more important role in Northeast
Asian security. As you know, Russia has a double identity. We are an Asian and European country, but as far as cooperation norms go, Russia is happy to follow the “Asianway”. These countries are able to develop new norms for multilateral security to makeour region safer.

Discussion with the Audience

Marcin Kaczmarski (University of Warsaw & Slavic-Eurasian Research Center)I have a question for Professor Evans. You said that there is a need to reach out to China
to make it a kind of responsible leader, but my question is to what extent China is reallyinterested. Professor Ha warned us about being too Western-centric. Aren’t we projecting our own expectations, Western expectations, when we speak about China having
potential to be a “responsible” leader?
David Wolff (Slavic-Eurasian Research Center)I was very struck by the introduction of how the economic research institute here in
Kyushu comes directly from the research department of the South Manchurian Railroad, and I thought that resonated very nicely with Professor Ha’s point about how
the persistence of tradition has up-ended our predictions about modernity. I wanted toinvite members on the panel to talk about ways in which they can imagine tradition
being guided into useful or not useful channels, if they can see those kinds of visions in
the future. And I was also very struck by Professor Evans’ idea about the middle powerwith 21st century characteristics, and I’m wondering if Canada’s potential effectiveness comes from being a middle power or from being not fully in the region? I wanted
to invite him to elaborate upon that.

27

Naomi Chi (Hokkaido University Public Policy School)
The first question is directed to Dr. Evans. I fully support the Trudeau administration on
trying to engage China, but we need to be cautious. Isn’t it dancing with the devil, so
to speak, in trying to engage with China? The second question goes to all the panelists.
We talked about empathy. We talk about this in conferences and people say that it’s
important. But we never really talk about how we do this. Do you have any ideas as to
how we can go about increasing empathy?
Professor Pempel
I am going to make one very broad observation and hope that it picks up some of thethreads in the questions. There is, I think, a central tension that goes on between what
we tend to think of as operating at the macro level and what happens at the micro level.
It is very interesting to me to recognize that, as an American with a particular focus onwhat is going on between the major powers, we hear a great deal about what goes onat the lower level, for example, in the case of Kyushu and relations with the rest of theregion. But the difficulty that I think needs to be confronted is the question of whether
these micro-level interactions are successfully operating below the radar or whether
they are going to be up-ended or interfered with by national-level political considerations. I am very conscious of the fact that a number of efforts were made to improve ties
with Hokkaido and Manchuria, Russia, North Korea, and they tended to be up-ended
by the failures of national politics to go along with the very creative efforts at the local
level. I would love to see a situation in which local-level efforts can go forward andbuild a kind of bottom-up regional cooperation mechanism, but my fear constantly isthat national politics and national finance, will make it difficult if and when those local
initiatives do not parallel or are not compatible with what the national leaders (whomay be driven by xenophobia, by nationalism, by animosity) decide are relations thatthey do not want to see go forward.
Professor Evans
Let me deal with two of the questions to lay a foundation for what comes ahead in thenext day and a half. I think it is an interesting question about empathy-building measures. What do we do? Well, my guess is that the process that you are involved with in
this project is a valuable contribution in its own right. I wonder how far and how often
people speak outside their national positions. One of the things when I go to a meetingthat I find interesting is how many seconds does it take me to tell what country someone
is from. Not necessarily their accent, but how fast do they identify with their national
positions. And I think all of us have been at many meetings where this is pretty quick. I
found it quite interesting that for part of the discussion earlier today I could not recognize where Professor Ha comes from. I mean by that, his position. If I heard Professor
Pempel talk, and I put him in a Korean mask, most of what he said could have beenfrom Korea. Cultivating such cosmopolitanism is something we do with our students,and something universities are good at.

28

As for empathy-building I sit on the group called the ASEAN Regional Forum
Experts and Eminent Persons Group. One of the things we have been talking throughis the logic of preventive diplomacy. What are the measures that are appropriate? Moving from confidence-building to preventive diplomacy to conflict resolution. We havebeen talking about what actual empathy-building measures can be created, and it is
nice when people study in other countries and that sometimes works. But we have avery concrete idea we are working on now, it is mainly with militaries, and with map
exercises and simulations, where we do a simulation of a particular kind of crisis, but
we make sure that the players do not play their own national role. So you put a Chinese
as the head secretary-general of the United Nations, dealing with a humanitarian crisis
that demands huge intervention into that outside position. Japanese are not quite asstrong at playing other roles. In any case, those are little kinds of examples, and in thesweep of things, we know they are not determinant, but they can be the kind of things
that open up possibilities.
Now let me get to this middle power-ism with 21st century characteristics. Because the twist — a middle power is not just in the middle. This is middle power-ism
3.0. And its principal feature that distinguishes it from the other is — you are interested
in a rule-based order, but you are willing to have some flexibility on who makes therules. The idea of a principled security order, is a really great idea, if the principles are
made by more countries than the United States. This is the era where that kind of input
is needed, and it takes enormous judgment to dance with the devil. Now, those of you ininternational relations: you tell me who the devil is? I am quite happy to say that mostsuper-powers are devils. And that we like some devils more than we like other ones, but
do not think there are angels out there. And I will conclude with this observation: China
is a devil. It is doing things domestically that are working to make it a more repressive
government, a more authoritarian government. It is doing things internationally thatsometimes make us very nervous. But — and its global role on climate change, already,now on peacekeeping and peace support operations — what it is doing looks very much
like a responsible international actor, not because it is embracing Western norms, but
because it is dealing with practical problems that need creative solutions that just sometimes look like Western norms.

29

Appendices

31

32

Appendix 1
JAPAN, MULTILATERALISM AND BILATERALISM:
CONTESTING THE FUTURE SHAPING OF
EAST ASIA’S REGIONAL ORDER
T.J. Pempel (University of California, Berkeley)
The Asia-Pacific is in the midst of reconfiguring its economic and security order.1
This process has been going on with varying degrees of acceleration and deceleration
since bipolarity began to fade, a process which started in the 1970s with the Nixon
visit to China and subsequent moves by President Deng Xiaoping and his reformist
allies to reshape China’s approach both to economic development and to jettisoning
the worst foreign and domestic abuses of the Maoist period. Bipolarity ended mostdramatically in Europe with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the demise of
the Soviet Union in 1991. In the years since, East Asia has been shifting away from anorder previously defined by rigid economic and security isolation and confrontation
between two hostile blocs toward an order characterized by reduced security conflicts
and a spiraling escalation in cross-border economic transactions. The result has been
deeper and more encompassing lines of interdependence across the Asia-Pacific. Yet
within such general outlines, the specific details of the emerging order remain murky
and will be subject to human and state action. As such, any new order will involvethe complex interplay of many competing agendas concerning what an “ideal” orderwould resemble.
To sketch the main outlines of the emerging regional order, however, three corecomponents demonstrate major departures from the previously dominant Cold War
order. The first such change involves diplomacy and hard security. There has been asignificant improvement in positive state interactions with (perhaps until very recently)
a parallel decline in overt military confrontations and reliance on military prowess asa key tool of foreign policy. Nonetheless, while the Cold War has ended in Europe residues of its previous divisions continue to shape state-to-state interactions throughout
the Asia-Pacific, particularly in Northeast Asia. Coercive diplomacy has by no means
vanished. The second change involves economic shifts that ended the stringent ideological barriers previously erected to stymie economic linkages between China andAmerica’s Cold War allies and that have since been marked by extensive cross-bordereconomic interdependence in East Asian trade, investment and finance. Third and finally, an arc spreading over both of these security and economic shifts is represented by
the rapid increase in formalized governmental links that mark new institutional commitments reflecting the enhanced regional interdependence.
1

Evelyn Goh, The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy, and Transition in Post-Cold
War East Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

33

ENDING BIPOLARITY
Normalization of diplomatic relations between China on the one hand, and theUnited States, Japan and South Korea (ROK), as well as other countries previously on
opposite sides of the bipolar ideological divide, on the other, was the most profoundof East Asia’s shifting tectonic plates. Security tensions among the major actors in
the Asia-Pacific have since diminished giving rise to what some have called “the East
Asian peace,” represented by a sharp decline in battlefield deaths and the absence ofstate-to-state conflict across all of East Asia since 1979 and more narrowly in Northeast Asia since the 1953 termination of the Korean War.2 These and related shifts haveworked to blur East Asia’s previously rigid and mutually hostile security bipolarity bymoving toward a security order based on much more porous and preponderantly harmonious national interactions. In conjunction with improvements in security relations,as noted, the rigidity of bipolar economic separation has also given way to enhanced
cross-border investment, production, and trade that show few remnants of prior ideological motivations.
Etel Solingen underscores these ongoing improvements: Existing disputes
have been restrained as never before in recent history, and major powers have normalized diplomatic relations despite continued tensions. Military modernization has notundermined macroeconomic and regional stability. Military expenditures relative to
GNP have declined from 2.6 percent (1985) to 1.8 percent (2001), lower than world
averages of 5.4 percent (1985) and 2.5 percent (2001), with parallel declines — inmost states — in military expenditures relative to central government expenditures.
Steve Chan (2010) provides detailed country-by-country data showing the same pattern. Timo Kivimäki (2010) also provides compelling support for the relative peace inthe region as does the Uppsala project on East Asian peace.3
Though many of its most acute lines of confrontation have been blurred, particularly as a consequence of cross-border economic and financial integration and thecollective improvement in most countries’ national economic profiles, in contrast to
its termination in Europe the Cold War has hardly vanished in East Asia. This is mostdemonstrable in the area of security relations. The broad East Asian peace, for example,
masks a number of neuralgic security hot potatoes — the divided Korean peninsula; aTaiwan separated from the PRC and devoid of representation in a host of international
institutions and its prior diplomatic relations with the US, Japan and South Korea, as
2 On this see Stein Tonnesson et al., “The East Asia Peace: How it Came About and WhatThreats Lie Ahead,” Global Asia 10, no.4 (Winter 2015).
3

Etel Solingen, “Pax Asiatica versus Bella Levantina: The Foundations of War and Peacein East Asia and the Middle East,” American Political Science Review 101, no.4 (2007):
757. See also, Steve Chan, “An Odd Thing Happened on the Way to Balancing: East
Asian States’ Reactions to China’s Rise,” International Studies Review 12, no.3 (September 2010): 387-412; Timo Kivimäki, “East Asian Relative Peace - Does It Exist? What Is
It?” The Pacific Review 23, no.4 (2010): 503-526.

34

well as a series of maritime disputes still unresolved since World War II, to mention
only the most obvious problem areas. Moreover, although big jumps in military expenditures have not been seen in the budgets of most countries in the region (with theconspicuous exception of China), the years since about 2010 have been pockmarked
by numerous examples of coercive diplomacy and heightened security and diplomatic
tensions.44

DEEPENING INTRA-ASIAN ECONOMIC AND
FINANCIAL INTERDEPENDENCE
The region’s improved security climate following the American defeat in Vietnam was followed by the noteworthy movement of state leaders within the vast majority of governments in Northeast and Southeast Asia (with a few notable exceptions suchas the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Myanmar) to prioritize
national economic development as the basis for their domestic legitimacy, simultaneously downplaying the predominance of military prowess and strongman leadership.5
This trend persisted for the first four plus decades since the 1970s as states across theregion followed one another in eschewing the expansion of military muscle as manifestations of national power while shifting political attention and resources to the pursuitof national economic development and improved day-to-day lives for their citizens.
In the apt phrasing, again, of Etel Solingen, East Asia’s rulers “pivoted their politicalsurvival on economic performance, export-led growth, and integration into the global
political economy.”6
Most regimes opted in this shift to pursue national economic development
along lines that differed from US laissez faire or USSR state-ownership while making“economic security” an integral component in their broader goal of ensuring what mostcalled “comprehensive security.” Countries across the region concluded that “security” remains too vital a treasure to be entrusted exclusively to the military. Domestic
security goals and foreign policy aspirations must be kept in balance. “Comprehensive
security,” represented a perspective that acknowledged the value of such things as economic, energy and environmental security, along with security in the face of pandemics, natural disasters and intrastate crime. (Certainly this was true of Japan since its
articulation of a doctrine of “comprehensive security” that was crystalized under the4

Thomas J. Christensen, Worse Than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).

5

Much of this movement can be attributed to the demonstration effect of the phenomenal
economic success of Japanese development efforts. And for countries in Southeast Asia,
there was an additional impetus coming from the subsequent successes of South Korea,
Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

6

Solingen, “Pax Asiatica versus Bella Levantina,” 760.

35

administration of Prime Minister Ohira in 1980).
In the process, individual national development projects within most countries
became woven into the rapid expansion and economic success of an exploding numberof regional and global production networks. Multinational companies had learned how
to separate and diversify the locations of their many functions. Increased efficiencies intransportation and communication made it profitable to position design, manufacturing,
wholesaling, and retailing operations in diverse locations chosen for effective and efficient contributions to the bottom lines of individual companies. Fragmented operations
across multiple geographical boundaries followed, ushering in the widespread expansion of truly multinational production networks.7
Western-based companies were hardly alone in developing regional production
models. Spurred by their rapidly rising currencies — stimulated in large measure bydemands from the US and other governments, as well as their search for more direct access to final markets triggered by stronger currencies — Japanese companies as early as
the 1970s and then Korean and Taiwanese companies, as well as some Singaporean andHong Kong companies, by the mid-1980s began to relocate many of their production
facilities abroad, primarily in the countries in Southeast Asia with lower labor costs. In
the process, such corporate moves undercut many of the prior presuppositions behind
the insulated greenhouse models of national development that had been pivotal to theirearly industrial development.88
Intra-East Asian investment has, since then, taken a sharp turn upward, particularly since the mid-1990s, and the cumulative effect has been a substantial increase incross-border production. This in turn has bolstered enhanced intra-Asian trade and a
deeper East Asian interdependence while at the same time reducing the previous East
Asian dependence on exports to the United States. In the 1990s the US was the major
export destination for virtually every country in East Asia. By 2015, intra-Asian trade
represented 56 percent of total Asian trade, a figure close to that of the EU; China had
become the major destination for most Asian exporters while Asian reliance on the US
market declined rapidly with the exception of China. The US was ultimately the export
market for many goods produced and assembled in China while China was a major
7

A considerable literature exists on this subject but one of the earliest and more influential
analyses was Mitchell Bernard and John Ravenhill, “Beyond Product Cycles and Flying
Geese: Regionalization, Hierarchy, and the Industrialization of East Asia,” World Politics
47, no.2 (1995): 171-209.

8

Sven W. Arndt and Henryk Kierzkowski, eds., Fragmentation: New Production Patterns
in the World Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Dennis Tachiki, “Between Foreign Direct Investment and Regionalism: The Role of Japanese Production Networks,” in Remapping East Asia: The Construction of a Region, ed. T.J. Pempel (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 149-169; Henry Wai-chung Yeung, “Regional Development and the Competitive Dynamics of Global Production Networks: An East Asian
Perspective,” Regional Studies 43, no.3 (2009): 325-351; Yeung, Strategic Coupling: East
Asian Industrial Transformation in the New Global Economy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016).

36

purchaser of US debt. Interdependence in trade within Northeast Asia more narrowly
has risen in tandem with the broader regional trend, creating an extensive economic interdependence among Japan, China, Taiwan, the ASEAN member states and the ROK
as well as between Northeast and Southeast Asia.9

DEEPENING REGIONAL INSTITUTIONALIZATION
Economic and security organizations established in the wake of World War II
reflected the comprehensive global power of the United States. The United Nations,the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were but a few of the most prominent economic
and security bodies undergirding the architecture of a US-led agenda.10 Many played
instrumental roles in the economic recovery and the sweeping economic improvements
across much of the world, including in East Asia. Yet, a number, particularly those mostcentral in shaping the regional order in East Asia, were security-focused and as suchbore the indelible fingerprints of the Cold War. Nowhere was this more apparent thanin the network of hub-and-spoke security alliances that linked a number of America’s
allies to US security priorities. Important to remember, similar arrangements tied China
and the USSR to the DPRK and regimes in Central Asia. For three or more decades
the political-economic-security order across the Asia-Pacific was strongly structuredby this matrix of global and regional arrangements and remnants of that order continue
into the present.
The balancing act between economics and security is among the most perplexing difficulties confronting national policymakers. As E.H. Carr noted long ago: “power is indivisible” and “military and economic weapons are just different instruments ofpower.” It is not always clear when to move the ships and when to keep them in port infavor of mustering trade sanctions and when to try both avenues simultaneously. Thereis a long history of governments synchronizing the two spheres as related facets of national power. The US certainly treated both as intimately linked during the Cold War,as “the two halves of the same walnut,” in President Truman’s melding of the Truman
Doctrine and the Marshall Plan in his doctrine of containment.11 At the same time, US
hegemony and the globally oriented neo-liberal institutions that were established “after
9

Avery Goldstein and Edward Mansfield, eds., The Nexus of Economics, Security, and International Relations in East Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). See also,
Goldstein and Mansfield, “When Fighting Ends,” Global Asia 6, no.2 (2011): 8-17; Pempel, ed., Remapping East Asia.

10

G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding ofOrder After Major Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

11

Walter LaFeber, America, Russia and the Cold War 1945-2006 (Boston: McGraw-Hill
Humanities, 2008), Chapter 3.

37

victory” put considerable emphasis on the alleged benefits of globalized markets, deregulation, convertible currencies, free trade, et cetera. These gave American foreign
economic policy its own logic and advocates. Moreover, as will be noted below, muchof East Asia’s collective foreign policy approaches have concentrated far more heavily on enhancing national economic muscle and less on traditional military buildups.
Scholarship as well as bureaucratic organization also often separate economics fromsecurity with the latter emphasizing military hardware, territorial security and the useof force.
During the Cold War, as noted above, economic interactions mirrored lines of
security contestation. Friends traded with friends and little trade or investment managed
to bridge the deep bipolar abyss separating capitalist from communist regimes. Thisprior division has been mitigated by a sweeping array of new institutional arrangementsthat reflect enhanced economic ties on the ground. These illustrate the extent to which
old Cold War bifurcations have been diminishing in finance and economics across East
Asia. The ASEAN plus Three (APT), the East Asia Summit (EAS), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum, the AsianInfrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the New Development Bank (NDB) and a hostof minilateral and multilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) are but a few of the more
prominent manifestations of governmentally-engineered institutions that complement
the pervasive corporate activities to forge the more economically and financially integrated East Asian order that undergirds narratives and norms highlighting “Asia’s rise,”and the “East Asia peace.”
Security arrangements such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (AFR), the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting Plus (ADMM +) and the now dormant Six-Party Talks(SPT), along with a number of Track-2 and Track 1.5 bodies (such as NEACD, CSCAP, and the Shangri-la Dialogue) have also been forged to deal with changes in state
power and new security challenges. Yet, despite their potential to reduce state-to-statetensions, these security-oriented institutions have been less numerous and less effective
in weaving cross national networks of cooperation and trust that are in any way comparable to the increasingly dense connections being forged in economics. Cold War walls— real or imagined — remain divisive reminders of the diverging state visions of any
ideal East Asian security order; in the interim powerful vestiges of the old order shape
security relations.
The combined changes in the external security order plus the increased significance of cross-border economic and financial ties posed serious challenges to the deeply institutionalized combination of security and economic institutions, power positions,and policies previously in play. Not only were political and business elites challenged
to reassess longstanding predispositions but the new exogenous conditions quickly filtered into the domestic arena where social groups, political parties, and non-state actors
were provided with a mixture of new challenges and new opportunities.
For most of the 1990s and well into the early 2000s, East Asia generally, andNortheast Asia in particular, were marked by increasing economic interdependence, a38deepening multilateralization, and a reduction in military clashes and threat levels. And
relations of the United States with China, Korea and Japan were all largely positive.
Emblematic of such benignity were China’s formal recognition of the regime in South
Korea; its accession to the World Trade Organization; its “charm offensive” and theofficial projection of a doctrine of “peaceful rise;” economic outreach by South Korea to the DPRK; the Kim-Obuchi meeting promising forward looking ROK-Japaneserelations along with Japanese-Korean cooperation in co-hosting the 2002 World Cup;
generous official aid from Japan to China; new institutions such as APEC, the ASEAN
Regional Forum; the ASEAN plus Three process; the Chiang Mai Initiative and its
multinationalized successor, CMIM; the East Asia Summit; the Six Party Talks; and thecreation of a Trilateral Secretariat among China, Japan and South Korea.
East Asia (and the Asia-Pacific), in these ways has seen an explosion of new
security and economic institutions. These have generally been organized along functional lines rather than combining economic and security goals.12 All were collectively
presumed to be fostering closer state-to-state ties through the socialization of members,
the development of epistemic communities and the regularization of institutionalized
processes to which members would adhere. Regional institutional cooperation, it wasincreasingly assumed, would foster a reduction in security tensions and an ability tokeep collective economic growth moving forward, unimpeded by security challenges.13
But these bodies have enjoyed widely different degrees of success.
At the heart of the difference between them is the fact that most economic
and financial institutions in the region have been able to emphasize cooperation in theinterest of a “common good.” Particularly since the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98
they have emphasized the ways in which East Asian financial and economic interests
are often collectively different from the global interests pressed by the US, the IMF and
the WTO along with the interests of hedge fund operators, currency manipulators andother non-Asians whom many Asian leaders were convinced had been responsible forthe devastation brought to the region’s prior economic development in 1997-98. Suddenly, East Asia had a collective exogenous challenge against which they collectively
sought to securitize the region. That common sense of purpose has given considerable
energy to the financial and economic institutions forged in the wake of the Asian financial crisis.
The states of Northeast Asia have also been moving in many common directions and closer cooperation in the area of finance. China, Japan, Taiwan, the ROK andeven Southeast Asian states such as Vietnam have opted for strategies of expanded foreign reserve holdings in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis, a move that Gregory Chin has labeled “self-insurance’’ and “regional insulation” against the previously
12
13

The East Asian Summit might be offered as a partial exception.
For example, see: Alastair Iain Johnston, “Treating International Institutions as Social
Environments,” International Studies Quarterly 45, no.4 (2001): 487-515; Amitav Acharya, “Ideas, identity, and institution-building: From the ‘ASEAN way’ to the ‘Asia-Pacificway’ ?” The Pacific Review 10, no.3 (1997): 319-346.

39

disruptive forces of global capital and “hot money” that challenged so many economies
across East Asia in 1997-98.14
Such measures are, as noted, predicated on some element of collective cooperation against a (real or imagined) exogenous challenge. That commonality of interest has
been far less in evidence in the area of security where in fact there is no agreed-uponexternal challenger to East Asian security. Virtually all of the security threats perceived
by governments in the Asia-Pacific are endogenous to the region (taking the US as aregional player). The guns in East Asia are aimed, not at potential enemies outside theregion, but at other countries within the region.
Not surprisingly, national governments have not all engaged this embryonic regional order with compatible goals or equal political enthusiasm. Indeed the very thinness of most security arrangements reflects the wariness with which governments havebeen approaching formal institutional cooperation. Moreover, the extent of a country’s commitment to regional multilateral bodies undulates with the shifting climateof regional geopolitics and geo-economics. Again, national commitments to regional
institutions remain primarily instrumental; regional institutions are still seen by mostparticipant countries as means to particularistic national goals rather than as ends inthemselves. Regional institutions continue to be seen as providing opportunities for‘forum shopping’ by governments in pursuit of their discreet national foreign policy
agendas.

JAPAN’S BALANCE OF SECURITY AND ECONOMICS,
BILATERALISM AND REGIONALISM
How has Japan been operating within this changing environment? Japanesepolicymakers have long anchored their country’s foreign policy around one central
pillar — the US-Japan security alliance. That security alliance has brought with it closebilateral ties on a multiplicity of dimensions. Prior to the 1970s and the ebbing of regional bipolarity, Japanese policymakers kept considerations of security and economics
in sync with one another — security and economic ties with the US, few or none with
communist regimes. Meanwhile, bilateralism under America’s hub and spoke system
was the only viable option available to Japan on security even as active participationin such global multinational institutions as the UN, the IMF and the World Bank contributed greatly to postwar Japan’s global rehabilitation and subsequent positioning.
Important to note, during the Cold War, Asia-Pacific or East Asian regional institutions
were all but nonexistent.
Japanese ties to the US were thus robust in both their economic and security dimensions. The military component of the relationship took center stage as US bases in
14

Gregory T. Chin, “Remaking the architecture: the emerging powers, self-insuring and regional insulation,” International Affairs 86, no.3 (2010): 693-715.

40

Japan provided rear base support for American combat missions in both the Korean and
Vietnam wars as well as allowing ongoing demonstrations of the naval predominanceof the US Seventh Fleet. The US nuclear umbrella also bolstered Japanese perceptionsof security in a neighborhood rife with unfriendly nuclear powers (the PRC and theUSSR). Important as these security connections were, the bilateral relationship was
equally welded together by means of economic linkages. US Cold War considerations
underwrote generous one-way access to the US market for the exports of Japan (andother of America’s East Asian allies). Even as late as the mid-1990s, Japan sent roughly
30-35 percent of the nation’s exports to the US while its second largest export market(variously Germany and South Korea) rarely received more than 5-6 percent.15 Japan’s
postwar economic success depended greatly on easy access to the US market.
Political relations across Northeast Asia had been fraught with deep security fissures during the Cold War. However, normalization of ties between Japan and China in
1972 and between China and the US in 1979 put a blunt, if temporary, end to the mutual
animosity, mistrust, and saber-rattling of each toward the other that had followed thecommunist victory in 1949 and the decades of regional bipolarity fostered by the Cold
War. Without glossing over many profound security differences among states sincethen, it is fair to say that regional relations warmed for most of the next three decades.
Japan reembraced its close prewar ties to China offering massive packages of foreign
aid along with investment and trade by Japanese corporations. According to Japan’s
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from 1979 to early 2016, Japan sent approximately 3.3164
trillion yen in loan aid (yen loans), 157.2 billion yen in grant aid, and 181.7 billion yen
in technical cooperation.16 For the period 2005 to 2012, for example, Japanese FDI to
China ranged between $5 billion and $15 billion per year.17 Equally, and as a consequence of Japanese aid and investment, China soon replaced the US as Japan’s mostsignificant trading partner. These diplomatic and economic improvements ushered in athirty year period of bilateral congeniality that only began to chill around 2010.
The US, like Japan, embraced China’s “peaceful rise,” both predicating theirembrace on the assumption that the country was moving in the direction of becoming
what then Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Zoelick, called “a responsible stakeholder” within the American dominated global and regional order.18 During the early 2000s,
for example, the US supported China’s accession to the World Trade Organization andthe creation of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR). A growing financial andtrade interdependency across the region was enhanced, as were US-China economic
15

For details see T.J. Pempel, “Trans-Pacific Torii: Japan and the Emerging Asian Regionalism,” in Beyond Japan: The Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism, eds., Peter J. Katzenstein, and Takashi Shiraishi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 47-82.

16

MOFA web site at http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/oda/region/e_asia/china.

17

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-30/southeast-asia-is-winning-more-japanese-investment-than-china.

18

https://www.ncuscr.org/content/robert-zoellicks-responsible-stakeholder-speech41

ties quite specifically. The US also deferred to Chinese leadership in multilateral cooperation efforts to check North Korea’s nuclear program through the Six-Party Talks.
Despite Japan’s deepening economic ties with China, and despite the rise in thenumber and agendas of regional multilateral bodies, Japan’s central foreign policy focus has remained unshakably focused on retaining close ties with the United States.
Thus when it appeared during the late 1980s that the US was toying with a reduction of
its presence in East Asia, Japan along with Australia, took an active role in creating andpromoting APEC and the ARF as institutions that would operate to keep the US deeply
engaged in the region. APEC presented a stark contrast to proposals by some East Asianleaders such as Mahathir Mohanmmed of Malaysia for institutions that would represent“Asia for the Asians.” Japan, in contrast, was insistent that new regional institutions
such as APEC and the ARF represent the “Asia-Pacific,” preventing what US Secretaryof Defense James Baker once called “a line down the middle of the Pacific.” For muchof the 1990s — largely until the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98 — both the Japaneseand US governments collaborated actively with other APEC member economies inlaying the groundwork for an interwoven nexus of policies aimed at enhancing regional
economic cooperation.
Japan did much the same with the ARF despite an initial concern that it might
compromise its commitment to the US-Japan security alliance. Although initially greeted with skepticism by the United States and ASEAN, the Japanese proposal gained
traction, including the endorsement of the new Clinton administration in July 1993.
The US ultimately declared that “a multilateral forum for security consultations” wasone of the ten major goals for US policy in the Asia-Pacific region.19 Though scorned
by officials in the Bush Administration, the Obama presidency has seen a consistentengagement and the presence of high level officials in ARF meetings.
Both institutions had to confront diminished credibility, however. The Asian economic crisis diminished APEC’s stature, even though the institution had never claimed
a mandate to deal with problems of finance. Even more damaging was the Bush administration’s actions in the aftermath of 9/11 when it sought to securitize APEC in
its “global war on terror” and to eschew regional bodies in favor of creating ad hoc“coalitions of the willing.” However, Japan drove its own nail into the APEC coffin by
its refusal to collaborate with Early Voluntary Sector Liberalization (EVSL) efforts due
to domestic interest group pressures.20
19

T.J. Pempel, “Japan: Dealing with Global Forces: Multilateralism, Regionalism, Bilateralism,” in Governing the Global Economy: Politics, Institutions and Economic Development, eds., Dag Harald Claes and Carl Henrik Knutsen (London: Routledge, 2005),
213-214. See also Kuniko P. Ashizawa, “Japan, the United States and Multilateral Institution Building in the Asia-Pacific,” in Beyond Bilateralism: U.S.-Japan Relations in the
New Asia-Pacific, eds., Ellis J. Krauss and T.J. Pempel (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2004), 248-271.

20

Ellis J. Krauss, “The United States and Japan in APEC’s EVSL Negotiations: Regional
Multilateralism,” in Beyond Bilateralism, eds., Krauss and Pempel, 272-295.

42

If Japan’s engagement with regional institutions was driven heavily by its efforts
to keep the US engaged in Asia, a rupture of sorts occurred during the Asian Financial
Crisis when Japan, in an autonomous effort aimed at assisting the countries in trouble,
proposed a substantial Asian Monetary Fund (AMF) to be 50 percent funded by Japan.
The US, the IMF and China all recoiled at what appeared to be a challenge to the global
financial balance. Yet in the end, the crisis and the stringent IMF conditions imposedon the countries that received its aid packages spurred a widespread conviction acrossmuch of Asia, often led by Japan, that regional financial solutions could serve as analternative and that the global financial architecture should be reconfigured to takegreater account of the growth in financial power of the Asian economies. A series ofmoves toward intra-Asian currency swap arrangements followed with the Chiang Mai
Initiative of 2000, then subsequently expanded and multilateralized as the CMIM. Also
created in large part through Japanese initiatives were two Asian bond markets andeventually the East Asia Summit (EAS). Yet the EAS hardly represented abandonmentof the US by Japan. In its effort to check the rising regional influence of China, particularly in the ASEAN plus Three (APT), Japan pushed for the EAS and its expanded
membership as a body that would dilute the influence of China and other authoritarianregimes with an EAS membership that included Australia, New Zealand and India. And
as is well known, the Obama repositioning eventually led the US also to join the EAS
in 2010.
Within Japan, any enhanced embrace of regional institutions has thus continued
to be counter-balanced by overwhelming efforts to ensure close security relations with
the United States. Hence Bush’s shift away from multilateralism and demands to be“with us or against us” spurred Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi, among other things,
to alter a series of security laws allowing direct Japanese cooperation with US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq; he forged a New Defense Planning Guidelines
around cooperation with the US; joined with the US in introducing a ballistic missile
system into Japan; centralized Self-Defense Forces command and control operations
and integrated them with US operations; and upgraded the Japanese Defense Agency
to ministerial status. Japan also worked with the US under the Six-Party Talks format
to confront the challenge of North Korea’s nuclear program and entered the US-created
Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI).
Closer bilateral security ties have continued and been expanded as part of the
Obama repositioning. In recent years, China’s rise, the US pivot/rebalance and the assertive behavior of China in the East China Sea and the South China Sea have led to afurther strengthening of defense linkages in the region, particularly between Japan andthe US (but also of many other US allies and security partners). Of particular anxiety
to the current Abe government is Chinese behavior in the Senkaku/Daioyu islands, forwhich the US and Japan have made clear that the US-Japan Security Treaty will be
operative and bring the US to Japan’s defense in the event of any Chinese efforts at a
military takeover. With these radical revisions of its post-war defense posture, Japanis now playing a more active military role and has strengthened its military assistance43

and co-operation with several countries in the region, generally against the interests ofChina.21
Equally promising in tightening US-Japan bilateral connections has been theTrans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Following years of reluctance in opening certain “sacred” areas of Japan’s domestic market to foreign competition, Prime Minister Abe
finally in 2013 announced his country’s willingness to join TPP negotiations. That decision followed his predecessor, Prime Minister Noda’s announcement at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in 2011 that Japan was “interested” in the TPP
negotiations and almost two years of discussions between the Japanese government
and the other TPP parties on their expectations should Japan join the trade negotiations.
But once in the negotiations, Japan embraced the TPP both as a major cudgel withwhich Abe could bludgeon domestic resisters to deregulation and structural reforms
and also as an economic mechanism by which to strengthen bilateral US-Japan ties.
And certainly for the United States, the inclusion of Japan in TPP negotiations wasseen as a major reinforcement of US regional economic engagement. Multiple delays,
widely attributed to Japanese reluctance to go far enough in agricultural liberalization,
delayed final agreement, as a series of promised deadlines came and went. Yet, a bevy
of enthusiastic statements by trade negotiators followed the LDP electoral victory inDecember 2014 on the assumption that enhanced power for Abe would allow his government to enact powerful steps to make enough concessions to ensure TPP agreement.
Indeed, the TPP was signed by all twelve participants in February 2016 following five
years of tough negotiations and promising to include roughly 40 percent of world trade.
But ironically, now that an agreement has been reached that is being highly touted bya once skeptical Japan, it is the US Congress that has become the major roadblock tomultilateral ratification and implementation.

CONCLUSION
The Asia-Pacific is in the midst of a transformation of its regional economic andsecurity order. For the moment, these two sectors have been evincing very different
levels of cooperation and competition. Economics and finance continue to show an
expanded integration and are increasingly organized though regional multilateral institutions.22 Regional security institutions on the other hand have been far thinner intheir ability to forge common agendas agreed to by large numbers of countries. Instead,
21
22

https://globalasia.org/bbs/board.php?bo_table=articles&wr_id=9090.
I do not wish to discuss here the apparent institutional contestation between the AsianDevelopment Bank (ADB) for example and China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank(AIIB). As of this writing even though Japan and the US have not joined AIIB it is clearthat the ADB and AIIB are joining forces in a number of projects and that early US opposition to AIIB has begun to wane.

44

security relations remain structured in large measure by a deep residue of unresolved
territorial issues, by longstanding alliances, and by increased tensions surrounding
the toxic combination of China’s military expansion, the DPRK’s nuclear and missile
threats and the US repositioning.
Japan has been an active and enthusiastic member of multiple regional institutions, particularly in the economic and finance areas. At the same time it has worked
energetically to keep its close bilateral ties to the US from eroding in any way. To thisend it has bolstered the security links and has negotiated TPP. But the TPP raises a final
point about the emerging order, and one that is of considerable concern to Japanesepolicymakers, namely concerns about the potential staying power and commitment of
the US. How longstanding, they ask, will the Obama repositioning prove to be?
American policymakers articulate a strong intention to remain engaged in Asia.
Yet wars in the Middle East continue to drain the American treasury and the attentions of policymakers. And economic engagement through the Obama administration’s
showcase piece, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, faces the high probability of non-passage by the Senate as well as vocal opposition from both presidential candidates. Furthermore, sustained US engagement now confronts rising American populist demands
for greater budgetary constraint and increased policy and budgetary attention to domestic problems. In addition, the US public — joined by many policymakers — showsa growing reluctance to support overseas military actions after fifteen years of costly
wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Thus, it may become more difficult for US
policymakers to marry tough regional actions to the best of intentions.
It is worth noting in this regard that Asia has been compelled to deal with earlier
periods of reduced US focus on Asia such as the Nixon Doctrine, President Carter’splans to reduce US troop levels in Korea, and efforts to take advantage of the “peace
dividend” in the early 1990s. US engagement levels may go through ebbs and flows
but in the long term its engagement in the region has remained high. This is likely tocontinue.
At the same time, worries about possible US disengagement remain strong among
Japanese analysts and policymakers. They express their concerns about America’s staying power, especially under a possible Trump administration, a prospect that has worried policymakers across East Asia. Equally worrisome to many Japanese is their belief
that the US is trapped in its relations with China between economic interdependence
and strategic competition. As a result, many Japanese officials worry quietly that theUS, in their eyes, has been too tepid over the past few years in its responses to China’s
military assertiveness, particularly in the East China Sea.
An ongoing concern about abandonment is one with deep roots going back to
the 1950s albeit in slightly different form today. Would the US, in the face of a DPRK
nuclear threat, be willing to risk Los Angeles to save Tokyo? (Such worries extend to
South Korea as well: many there ask whether Japan would be willing to risk Tokyo toaid South Korea from a similar threat). From this perspective it remains likely that Japan, along with other counties in the region, will pursue their own best strategies going45

forward, always less than 100 percent sure of US strategic assurances.
A concluding point on the emerging regional order involves the recognition that
any Asia-Pacific security order will depend on two things: 1) a balance of power; and 2)
an accepted set of norms. At present, the Asia-Pacific has some semblance of a balanceof power but it lacks agreement on a comprehensive set of norms. Regional security
institutions have thus far been unable to develop confidence in even the most basic
agreement on norms of security conduct. As a result what are now most needed acrossthe region are rules that can be commonly accepted by all players. That such a set ofrules could be agreed upon, however, almost surely remains a long way off.

46

JAPAN’S TRADE WITH MAJOR PARTNERS

47

Appendix 2
BUILDING TRUST IN NORTHEAST ASIA:
THE ROLE FOR ACADEMICS1Paul Evans (Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia)
It is an honour to attend this conference in Fukuoka, a beautiful setting for an academic
gathering involving scholars from several Northeast Asian countries all studying theregion or engaged in people-to-people exchanges and educational cooperation.
The issue before us is very clear. Despite a long history of interaction in Northeast
Asia, political and security tensions are significant and the level of economic operation
well below its potential. The important question is how to build mutual understanding
and trust as the foundations for a more peaceful and prosperous region.
My own perspective is that of a North American academic who teaches andwrites about the international relations of East and Southeast Asia and the broader
Asia-Pacific and focuses on regional security issues and the limits and possibilities ofmultilateral institution building. Over the last twenty-five years I have participated in adozen different regional processes and attended some fifty workshops and conferencesin Northeast Asia.
Canadians do not claim to be part of Northeast Asia but do have an abiding interest. One of the earliest efforts at inclusive regional security dialogue was a Canadian
initiative between 1990 and 1993, the North Pacific Cooperative Security Dialogue,that brought together academics and, in their private capacities, officials from eight
countries (Canada, China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Mongolia, Russia, theUnited States) for discussions of regional issues with particular attention to confidencebuilding measures appropriate to the region.
There have been dozens of subsequent efforts at regional dialogue, some of themlike the American-led Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue now more than 20 years
old. And it has been a fertile two decades for broader Asia-Pacific discussions, many ofthem ASEAN-led including the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) at the governmental
level and the Council for Security Cooperation in Asia Pacific (CSCAP) at the tracktwo level.
It is fair to say that efforts focussed on Northeast Asia have rarely been successful in sustaining deep collaboration on economic matters or lowering tensions in the
security realm. Many analysts see Northeast Asia as the graveyard for cooperative initiatives. Some do not see Northeast Asia as a region at all but instead as an “anti-region”
1

This paper builds on a paper presented at the meeting on “Northeast Asia People-to-People Exchanges and Cooperation: Cultural Interaction and Mechanism Innovation,” Dalian
University of Foreign Languages, 28 April 2016 and a collection of essays which I edited
and contributed to on “Cooperative Security 2.0: Recasting the East Asian Security Order,” Global Asia 11, no.1 (Spring 2016).

48

in which the national political cultures “largely define themselves by virtue of theirdifferences and in relation to their opposition against their neighbors.”2
It is difficult to think of an area of such size and significance that is more bereftof multilateral institutions. This is immediately apparent if we compare the level of
institutional development in Northeast Asia to the Americas, Africa, and especially Europe. And within Asia, Northeast Asia is operating at a lower base than Southeast Asia,
the broader Asia-Pacific or even South Asia and Central Asia. As one American author
noted more than a decade ago, and it still rings true, “many of the factors normallyconstitutive of a ‘region’ are in scant supply.”3
Geographically, it is not easy to make the case for an area that does not havecommon or defining topographic boundaries, similar climate patterns, or an integrated
infrastructure. On identity, differences heavily outweigh similarities. Culturally, partsof Northeast Asia have a common Confucian heritage, but others do not. There is nounifying religion, language, consciousness or sense of shared destiny. The history of
the Liaodong and Korean peninsulas speak to more than a century of geo-politicalcompetition, volatile state-to-state relations, high levels of militarization and defence
spending, divided countries and unresolved historical legacies.
There are significant flows of investment and trade tied to global production networks and value chains in the broader region. China, Japan, South Korea and to someextent Mongolia and Russia are all outward-looking, global trading nations. But thelevel of transnational activity, the transnational flows, the major infrastructure projects,
the level of institution building to address common problems, are all below their potential and vulnerable to political dislocations.
In a place where the security situation remains turbulent, it makes sense to try
to build the foundations for cooperation on shared economic interests and common
problems, environmental degradation a prominent example. Yet the abiding presenceof political and security conflicts makes this functional cooperation tortuous, especiallybut not exclusively when North Korea is centre stage. Those who advocate waiting fora solution to the political security problem before addressing the functional issues facea long wait. And those who advocate pushing ahead on the economic and environmental fronts as a way of loosening the security knot face severe constraints and frustration.
My purpose is not to pour cold water on plans for deeper cooperation and the
reduction of tensions. To the contrary, I will make the case for a long-term approach ofwhich this conference is a part. The objective is to build confidence then trust with theinterim step being empathy.

2

Peter Hayes and Linda Zarsky, “Acid Rain in A Regional Context,” June 1995, 4. Available on-line at http://www.nautlius.org.

3

Lowell Dittmer, “The Emerging Northeast Asian Regional Order,” in The International
Relations of Northeast Asia, ed., Samuel S. Kim (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003), 304.

49

GETTING TO COOPERATION
Virtually every leader in Northeast Asia has used terms like “mistrust,” “strategic
mistrust,” “trust deficit” or “absence of trust” to describe a fundamental obstacle toimproved relations and deeper interactions. No one doubts that more trust would be agood thing. The debate is about how to define and build it.4
Trust is best understood as a certainty that a state can count on non-violent interaction and peaceful dispute settlement based on mutual respect and concern for the other’s well being. It involves a sense of shared interest and identity. We see it in several
bilateral relations, for example Canada-US relations. We see it in the strong elements ofa security community in Europe. And we may now see it in the US-Japan relationship.
In all three instances, war is virtually unimaginable.
One school of thought is that trust is the by-product of a long and sustained periodof functional cooperation in trade, movement of people, and common endeavour.
Another school of thought is that a first step in building trust is the creation ofconfidence building measures. This normally focusses on trying to make states confident that their neighbours will not surprise them or cause them imminent harm. Confidence building measures often take the form of codes of conduct, prior notification of
military exercises, transparency about force levels and doctrine, rules of engagement
and the like. In the ASEAN Regional Forum process a formative idea was that its members should pursue a three-stage process — confidence building, preventive diplomacy,
and resolution of conflicts — as the road to trust.
In Northeast Asia it has proven immensely difficult to deepen functional cooperation in a context of acute security tensions that repeatedly de-rail cooperation projects.
Even modest confidence building measures are painstakingly difficult to implement.
The missing ingredient in moving from confidence to trust, in establishing higher
levels of cooperation, is empathy. Empathy is best understood as the capacity to understand another’s view of the world, to walk in another’s shoes, to understand and shareanother’s experiences and emotions. Empathy is different from sympathy because it
does not demand agreeing with another’s point of view, just understanding it.
Scholars of Southeast Asian international relations frequently identify the socialization and creeping empathy-building among officials and political leaders that comeswith an enormous number of meetings. Years of intense interaction and close cooperation help dispel misconceptions. This does not mean that the leaders and officials fromdifferent countries like or always trust each other. But it does demonstrate that empathy
can take hold in a very complicated and diverse region and is a necessary if insufficientcondition for moving up the trust ladder.
Advocates of something akin to “empathy building measures,” like the Canadian
4

The government of President Park Kyung-hye launched the much publicized approach oftrustpolitik to the North that takes a very narrow view of trust as reciprocity and quid pro
quo and has been largely abandoned.

50

professor David Welch, have offered several suggestions for deeper dialogues among
former and current decision makers, role playing exercises, and crisis management
simulations.5

ACADEMIC ROLES
What functions can researchers and educators play?
Existing Activities. In many respects the academic enterprise is fundamentally
about deepening knowledge and understanding among specialists and students and providing information and analysis for governments and broader publics. International
conferences, faculty and student exchanges, international student recruitment, summer
institutes, are all well explored mechanisms for working across national boundaries.
Has anyone tried to map past and existing networks in this part of Northeast Asia? Do
Northeast Asian academics function as what have been described as “rooted cosmopolitans” based in single countries but endowed with openness to foreign others?6
Revisiting History. As an example, the track record of multiple efforts to produce
a common history of Northeast Asia is not good. State-sponsored projects for devisingcommon textbooks have not only failed, they have in some cases been counter-productive by increasing animosities rather than reducing them. Non-governmental projects, including the Harvard-sponsored program to create a serious dialogue about thehistory of World War II as seen by American, Japanese, and Chinese historians, also
failed. Simply mentioning topics including “comfort women,” “Nanjing massacre,”or “Diaoyutai/Senkaku,” polarizes discussions and reinforces strong nationalist sentiments. As noted in a recent article, “debates over wartime history intertwined withterritorial disputes have inflamed nationalistic sentiment and prevented pragmatic diplomatic solutions…Just as memory affects and shapes present and future international
relations, current relations and future visions affect our views of the past.”7
But are all projects destined to failure? Why and how have US-Japan explorations of their wartime experiences led gradually to historical reconciliation and fosteredmutual trust and strengthened bilateral relations? What are the impediments for doing
5

David Welch, “The Trust Deficit and How to Fix It,” Global Asia 11, no.1 (Spring2016); and “Crisis Management Mechanisms: Pathologies and Pitfalls,” CIGI Papers no.40 (September 2014), available at: https://www.cigionline.org/publications/crisis-management-mechanisms-pathologies-and-pitfalls.

6

Ulrich Beck, “‘Rooted Cosmopolitanism’ Emerging from a Rivalry of Distinctions,” inGlobal America? The Cultural Consequences of Globalization, eds., Ulrich Beck, Natan
Sznaider and Rainer Winter (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003), 15-29.

7

Seiko Mimaki, “Case for ‘Enlightened Realism’: Reconciliation as an Imperative Task
for Regional Peace and Stability,” PacNet # 37 (April 2016). Available at http://csis.org/
publication/pacnet-37-case-enlightened-realism-reconciliation-imperative-task-regional-peace-and-sta.

51

this within Northeast Asia? How can they be overcome? Are there historical figures or
fictional characters, political leaders or artists, who should be celebrated regionally asembracing values and ideas that engender widespread respect? Can, as argued by Hiro
Saito, new networks of historians over time find ways to propagate a cosmopolitan
point of view on topics such as commemorations of World War II?8
Publicizing the Positive. Most academic activities do not communicate theirachievements on a regional level. Information and publications are sometimes disseminated but are rarely summarized in the kind of short, vivid portrayals that attract attention in neighbouring countries or with senior officials. What types of social media canbe employed? How to overcome language barriers? How can transnational networks ofscholars find ways to influence policy communities and publics and counteract narrowly nationalist accounts?

CONCLUDING NOTE
Empathy will not solve all problems and will not naturally emerge from closer
and more frequent interactions. Sometimes states simply have incompatible identities,
conflicting interests, and the intention to actually do harm to each other. A South Korean intellectual once pointedly observed that the problem in North-South relations is notthat the two sides do not know enough about each other but that they know too much.
Even so, empathy needs cultivation and has no more natural an incubator thanthe modern university. It will be a pleasure to see what fresh ideas and strategies thisgathering can produce about how better to organize and harness academic debates andexchanges in a trust building agenda.

8

See Hiro Saito, “Historians as Rooted Cosmopolitans: Their Potentials and Limitations,”
Global Networks 15 no.2 (2014).

52

About the Contributors
Yong-Chool Ha is currently the Korea Foundation Professor at the Henry Jackson

School of International Studies, University of Washington. His main teaching areas
are: comparative politics with a focus on social change of late industrialization, lateindustrialization and international relations, Northeast Asian community and IR theories, and the Korean peninsula and world politics. His primary academic interests havebeen comparative politics and society with a particular focus on late coming nations,
Soviet and Russian politics, Korean domestic and international politics, inter-Korean
Relations and East Asian regional politics. He has published articles, monographs
and books in Korean, English, Japanese and Russian. His publications include “Late
Industrialization, the State, and Social Changes: the Emergence of Neofamilism inSouth Korea,” Comparative Political Studies 40, no.4 (2007) and Colonial Rule andSocial Change in Korea, 1910-1945 (jointly edited with Hong Yung Lee and Clark
W. Sorensen) (Washington: University of Washington Press, 2013). He is currently
completing a book on late industrialization and social change.

T.J. Pempel is Jack M. Forcey Professor of Political Science at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, US. Professor Pempel’s research focuses on comparative politics, Asian regionalism, and contemporary U.S.-Japan relations. He has authored or
co-authored numerous books and articles, and has been published in a wide array of
disciplinary and area-studies journals. His latest works include, Two Crisis, Different Outcomes: East Asia and Global Finance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,2015) and “Alliances and the Future Asia-Pacific Order,” Global Asia 11, no.1 (2016).

Paul Evans is Professor of International Relations at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His research covers a wide array of topics including Canada-China
relations, regional security processes in the Asia-Pacific, and East Asian regionalism.
Professor Evans’ recent work includes “Searching for Cooperative Security 2.0: fromSecurity Architecture to Security Order in the Asia Pacific,” China Quarterly of International Strategic Studies 1, no.4 (2015) and “Living with Global China,” in Moving
Forward: Issues in Canada-China Relations, eds., Asif Farooq and Scott McKnight(Toronto: Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs, 2016).
Hiroyuki Okamoto is Deputy Director of the Biz Communication Library at the

Kyushu Economic Research Center. His research is about Kyushu’s regional economy, and he looks to promote the development of logistics and commodity distribution
within Kyushu. He holds an MBA from the Department of Business and Technology Management, Kyushu University. His publications include co-authoring Kyushu
Sangyō Dokuhon [A Kyushu Industrial Primer] (Osaka: Nishi Nippon Publishing,2010) and Sasaeau Toshokan: ‘shakai sōchi’ to shite aratana moderu to yakuwari[Support Libraries: a new model and role as social devices] (Tokyo: Bensei Publishing, 2016).

53

Beom-Shik Shin is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at
Seoul National University, South Korea. His area of specialization is Russia and Eurasia in world politics, with an emphasis on such topics as nonproliferation in Northeast Asia, Russia’s foreign policy and the strategic partnership between South Korea
and Russia. Professor Shin’s most recent publications include, “Russia’s Place in the
Changing Strategic Triangle in the Post-Cold War Northeast Asia: From an Outcast
to a Strategic Player,” Journal of International and Area Studies 22, no.2 (2015) andSouth Korean-Russian Strategic Cooperation (Seoul: Hankuk University of Foreign
Studies, 2015).
Sergey Sevastyanov is Professor of International Relations at Far Eastern Federal
University, Russia. Professor Sevastyanov’s research focuses on models of regionalism and regionalization in the Asia-Pacific, and socioeconomic policies in the region.
He is the author of several books and many articles. His most recent publications
include Introduction to Border Studies (co-edited with Jussi Laine and Anton Kireev)(Vladivostok: Dalnauka, 2015) and “China’s Integration Projects in the Asia-Pacificand Eurasia,” World Economy and International Relations 60, no.4 (2016).

54

55

スラブ・ユーラシア研究報告集 No. 9

Positioning Asia and Kyushu
in Shifting Global Politics

ISBN：978-4-938637-90-3
発行日：2017年8月28日
編集者：岩下明裕、加藤美保子、
ジョナサン・ブル
発行者：仙石学発行所：北海道大学スラブ・ユーラシア研究センター
060-0809 札幌市北区北9条西7丁目
Tel. 011-706-2388 Fax. 011-706-4952
http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/

56