Dialogue above everything else
West’s security concept based on military deterrence, rather than talks and cooperation, is wrong
The United States and Japan have got into full swing in strengthening their alliance since the beginning of this year. In January, the two sides held the US-Japan Security Consultative Committee, a meeting attended by senior diplomats and defense ministers, before the US visit by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, which they claimed was aimed at “bolstering deterrence in an integrated manner” to maintain security in East Asia.
The above signals are based on their shared view that the USJapan military alliance is the cornerstone of security in East Asia and that military deterrence is the fundamental guarantee for the region’s security. In my view, this points to the core issue for security in East Asia. The essence is the difference between two regional security concepts that are vying for primacy in the region, namely a security concept based on military deterrence and a security concept based on dialogue and cooperation.
The concept based on military deterrence, as pursued by the
US and Japan, seeks to attain security by demonstrating and using the credibility of military capabilities to deter possible hostile actions by an opponent. It can be said that all countries harbor the desire to build up their national defense force for purposes of stronger deterrence and security. However, the problem is that the means to achieve national security that are mainly based on military deterrence will give rise to unhealthy security concepts.
The most extreme form of this security concept is military alliances, which seek common responses to the so-called common enemies by continuously strengthening deterrence. The essence of such alliances is a closed and one-sided security concept.
The security concept based on dialogue and cooperation focuses on nurturing the habit of dialogue, mainly through the establishment and strengthening of mutual trust in dialogue and cooperation, and emphasizing non-military means to manage and control conflicts, rather than through the mutual feeding of a sense of deterrence and fear. This is an open and mutual security concept, and its purpose is to avoid an arms race and security dilemma caused by the escalation of negative mutual cognition caused by the excessive emphasis on military deterrence.
The self-identification by the US military alliances that they are the cornerstone for regional security and the primary way to maintain regional security lacks support from historical practices and logical evidence.
First of all, Asia experienced hot wars during the era of the Cold War. The US military alliance not only failed in its deterrence to realize peace, but led to the escalation of wars. After World War II, the US and the Soviet Union respectively established NATO and the Warsaw Pact — military alliance systems in Europe built on military deterrence and confrontation.
In Asia, after its failed attempt to emulate NATO with the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, the US has focused on building a bilateral military alliance structure with itself as the axis, supported by Japan, Australia, the Republic of Korea, and the Philippines. The US-Japan alliance is the core of this system.
But has the Asian military alliance system led by Washington attained its expected deterrence purposes? The Korean War and the Vietnam War proved the logic of the deterrence effect of a military alliance to be flawed, with the expansion and escalation of these wars leading to more insecure and unstable consequences in the region.
Second, the security practices of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations during the Cold War and
East Asia after the Cold War have proved that dialogue and cooperation are the main and effective channels for achieving common and mutual security.
The establishment of ASEAN in 1967 marked the beginning of a fundamental change in the regional security concept. The bloc’s members believe that the collective defense concept of establishing military alliances with foreign powers will not help solve the security problems of Southeast Asian countries.
In their view, the fundamental security threats to Southeast Asian countries arise from unfinished internal national-state building process, economic and social underdevelopment, instead of external threats. The resolution of these problems can only be achieved through their own development efforts, coupled with the overall stability of the region.
This requires ASEAN to seek security through dialogue without interference from external powers. After the Cold War, the security situation in East Asia has followed this line of thought in its development. A series of regional dialogue and cooperation mechanisms represented by the ASEAN Regional Forum provide an important platform for establishing and consolidating mutual trust.
On this basis, China advocated a new security concept, and later established the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, all of which represent key outcomes for a security concept based on dialogue and cooperation. The Global Security Initiative proposed by China can also be regarded as a major theoretical and practical initiative for the development of this security concept in the new era. The Global Development Initiative, with its emphasis on practical cooperation for shared development, inherited and developed the security concept for dialogue and cooperation in East Asia.
Third, the theory that the security concept based on military deterrence is more effective than the security concept based on dialogue and cooperation is inherently wrong.
There is now an argument on Asian security, which declares that the lesson of Ukraine is that a lack of military deterrence led to the conflict. Quite the opposite!
It is my belief that the lesson was that Europe wrongly gave up the habit of actively and regularly engaging in dialogue between the East and the West from the Cold War period, and military deterrence had disproportionately occupied the mainstream of European security thinking. Although some dialogues continue, ideological correctness overshadowed the need for genuine dialogue. Dialogue became a oneway street of missionary discourse rather than a two-way street of mutual respect.
In Asian security discussions, we should guard against the thinking that security through dialogue and cooperation is inefficient and useless in the prevention of wars. This argument believes that even a powerful military alliance such as NATO in Europe had not deterred Russia from its special military operation in Ukraine, and that was mainly because NATO’s deterrence was too little in the past and its expansion was too slow. The argument holds that there is not a military alliance system like the NATO in Asia, so it would be even more difficult to deter China if the alliance system based on the US-Japan alliance and the quasi-alliance network is not expanded. Is East Asia going to repeat the mistakes of Europe, which replaced dialogue and cooperation with military deterrence and saw sharp deterioration in regional security?
The history of the security situation in East Asia and a comparison between Asia and Europe prove that the main channel for establishing a sustainable regional security order must be based on the security concept of dialogue and cooperation, with the support of deterrence, not the other way around. The establishment of a positive security concept that promotes security together with others, rather than seeking security without a third party, is the right pathway to a durable security order in East Asia.