Taking the 'taken-for-grantedness' seriously: problematizing Japan's perception of Japan-South Korea relations

The existence of acrimonious relations between Japan and itsimmediate neighbour, South Korea, is a familiar theme in theliterature on the international relations of the Asia-Pacific.Public discourse in Japan treats this acrimony as the startingpoint for the formulation of diplomatic policy towards Seoul.While not suggesting that such an outlook is wrong, characterizingthe bilateral relations as ‘tough’ has become ‘taken-for-granted’.By focusing on the representation of Japanese collective identitywithin the public discourse, and treating it as a foreign policyspeech act, this article argues that taking the ‘taken-for-grantedness’seriously allows us to unpack the intersubjective structureof Japan–South Korea relations, enabling us to appreciatefully the recurring invective across the Tsushima Straits.     

'Spying for Hitler' and 'Working for Bin Laden': Comparative Australian Discourses on Refugees

This paper argues that the complexity of recent debates about‘illegal’ refugee arrivals in Australia, held sincethe prominent MV Tampa incident of August 2001, might be betterunderstood by placing them in a comparative historical context.Towards this end, an investigation of previous debates on thesubject of Jewish refugees in Australia prior to the SecondWorld War is suggested. Such an exploration reveals a seeminglyidiosyncratic ‘Australian’ slant towards refugeesthat demonstrates a subtle process of marginalization and exclusionbased on notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’refugees. Such an approach further demonstrates the contradictoryattitudes of immigrant societies towards refugees notwithstandingthe cultural pluralism supposedly inherent in their outlooks.     

Ethnic Riots in Kosovo: What Went Right?

The world was shocked when deadly riots broke out in Kosovoduring March 2004, after nearly five years of involvement andfinancial support by NATO and the United Nations. But, despitethe widespread nature of the rioting, violence did not spreadinto communities of return that had benefited substantiallyfrom direct international financial aid and interventions inthe same way that riots infected the wider province. This wasthe experience of communities assisted by at least two internationalNGOs, both of which used the ‘Do No Harm’ methodologyof enhancing ‘connectors’ while minimizing ‘dividers’between ethnic groups. American Refugee Committee's programmeis described and displacement data are presented. In those communitiesassisted by American Refugee Committee, 85 per cent of the returneesdid not flee during the riots. It is concluded that communitiesof return succeeded in thwarting violence because they had astake in peace.     

Japan and two theories of military doctrine formation: civilian policymakers, policy preference, and the 1976 National Defense Program Outline

Using hitherto underutilized Japanese material, this paper systematicallyanalyzes two competing theories of military doctrine formation thataccount for the construction of the 1976 National Defense ProgramOutline (NDPO), postwar Japan’s first military doctrine.It demonstrates that, on balance, available evidence on thepolicy preference of two key civilian policymakers, Michio Sakataand Takuya Kubo, is more consistent with the interpretationdrawn from Posen’s balance-of-power theory than with thatfrom Kier’s domestic culturalist theory. While by no means ignoredby these policymakers, domestic political concerns neither dominantly shaped,nor gave a specific direction to their policy action. Rather,the policymakers were motivated to formulate the best responsepossible to Japan’s new international strategic conditions.This finding relates the hitherto neglected significance ofthe NDPO case to the larger, ongoing realist–constructivistdebate on the formation of military doctrine. It also leadsus to a more sophisticated understanding of NDPO formation,which focuses on the process of how a combination of politicalleadership and ideas triggered the breakthrough in Japanesesecurity policymaking.     

Japan's cautious new activism in the Middle East: a qualitative change or more of the same?

This article analyses Japanese policy towards the Middle Eastin the post-Cold War era. The article argues that Japanese policyhas begun to move beyond the reactive diplomacy of the ColdWar years. The focus of this new approach has been Japan's growingcontribution to ‘soft’ security in the region. However,Japan retains a tendency to focus on its narrow interests withoutfully taking into account the broader strategic consequencesof its policies. Yet, in order to protect its overall interestsin the region, Japan needs to recognize the diminishing utilityof this ‘free rider’ approach and adopt a more activerole regarding ‘hard’ security issues. Even allowingfor the domestic constraints on Japanese policy, there is muchJapan can do in this regard, especially in coordination withthe US.     

Why is there no Chinese international relations theory?

There is not yet a Chinese international relations theory (IRT)mainly due to three factors: the unconsciousness of ‘international-ness’in the traditional Chinese worldview, the dominance of the WesternIR discourse in the Chinese academic community, and the absenceof a consistent theoretical core in the Chinese IR research.A Chinese IRT is likely and even inevitable to emerge alongwith the great economic and social transformation that Chinahas been experiencing and by exploring the essence of the Chineseintellectual tradition. The Tianxia worldview and the TributarySystem in the two millennia of China's history, the radicalthinking and revolutions in the nineteenth and twentieth century,and reform and opening-up since 1978 are the three milestonesof China's ideational and practical development and thereforecould provide rich nutrition for a Chinese IRT. In addition,a Chinese IRT is likely to develop around the core problematicof China's identity vis-à-vis international society,a century-long puzzle for the Chinese and the world alike. Received for publication May 16, 2006. Accepted for publication June 27, 2007.     

Japan's conciliation with the United States in climate change negotiations

This paper attempts to analyze Japan's conciliation with theUnited States regarding national targets on greenhouse gas emissionsin the multilateral climate change negotiations (1990–2001)for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Changeand for the Kyoto Protocol to the Convention. Japan's conciliatoryproposals had nothing to do with bilateral pressure from theUnited States. Why, then, did Japan make special efforts toconciliate with the United States, and offer lenient proposals?I focus on three factors: concern for international status,the costs of the climate change regime and domestic politics.My main argument is that the Japanese Ministry of InternationalTrade and Industry used ‘conciliation’ with theUnited States in its favor as an excuse for making proposalsthat would emasculate the climate change regime and as a meansof receiving support from the United States for differentiationof national targets on greenhouse gas emissions.     

The transformationalist perspective and the rise of a global standard of civilization

The ongoing process of globalization is transforming the world.States, the principal actors in international systems, are theprivileged subjects of this transformation. State identitiesare changing and state sovereignties are challenged. Some scholarsrefer to this as a ‘Grotian moment’. I argue thata meaningful analysis of contemporary international politicsneeds to consider seriously questions related to the identitiesof actors and the quality of anarchy. Furthermore, I argue thatthe rise of a ‘global standard of civilization’reflects the transformation of the world and is affecting statesovereignty. Finally, I argue that only a truly democratic cultureis able to construct durable, peaceful and generative co-operation.     

Transforming international communications strategies

The strategy used by governments to communicate with foreign populations has changed dramatically in the twentieth century. The need perceived by governments to use such a strategy in the first place derived from numerous social changes in the 150 years before World War I, most particularly the increased role played in politics by the masses organized in nation‐states. The shifting strategy of persuasive communication since then forms part of a broader transformation of international political communication which includes technological change, organizational developments, and absolute but not necessarily relative growth in international communications transactions.

The predominant strategy developed in World War I was propaganda. It used fairly straightforward appeals to rationality, sense of morality, and such important but readily accessible emotions as hatred. Its excesses, especially the wide dissemination of atrocity stories which did not bear up well under later dispassionate examination, at once made all propaganda suspect and alerted governments to the necessity of refining their communicative techniques for the eventuality of future international conflicts.

The years before and during World War II saw international communicators—especially Goebbels in Nazi Germany and the Anglo‐American psychological warriors—develop a new strategy which utilized new knowledge about the psychological roots of human behavior. In addition to straightforward appeals to the consciousness of individuals, they sought to manipulate their audiences by playing on their deep‐seated desires and fears. Of particular importance for Nazi Germany were the allegedly racial ties of the individual to a people and the need for figures of authority.

First major experiments were made in World War II to develop an even more basic strategy of international communication: structuring the situation in which people learn their predispositions, perspectives, and behaviors. Its basic idea is to create situations in which the communicator does not have to tell the targeted audience anything at all, but in which the audience, left to its own devices, can only come to the conclusions desired by the communicator. Thus strategic bombing sought to destroy the morale of the enemy's home front and, through that action, to weaken its war‐making capacity. The postwar occupation of Germany originally sought to create a new environment in which Germans could be reeducated to democracy. Subsequent emphasis has also been on communications aimed at generating certain predispositions, such as a desire for consumer goods or a particular political style, which then spawn appropriate perspectives and behaviors.

This new strategy of structural communication has its limits. The most important of these is the difficulty of controlling all aspects of a foreign population's communications environment (which includes traditions, face‐to‐face networks, and conflicting sources of information). The potential importance of the strategy nonetheless makes it likely that governments will continue to work toward its development and implementation for their own international political purposes.     

The social construction of international institutions: the case of ASEAN + 3

Slowly but steadily, a new international institution is emergingin East Asia: the ASEAN + 3 forum, comprising the ten membersof the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus China,Japan and South Korea. ASEAN + 3 is an interesting case of institution-buildingin that it is constructed around the core of an already existinginstitution, ASEAN, which was founded in 1967. The followinganalysis of this multilateral forum seeks to answer two theoreticalquestions: (i) Why do states cooperate? (ii) What happens totheir interests and identities once they communicate with eachother? In view of this task, I will offer a social constructivistvariant of international relations theory to explain the instigationof the process on the one hand and the processual constructionof the institution on the other. The underlying belief is thatnot only do states influence the development of internationalinstitutions, but that institutions can also exert influenceon foreign policy behaviour. The approach introduced here acknowledges that internationalreality is a social construction driven by collective understandingsemerging from social interaction. This approach to the explanationof the initiation and the subsequent development of an institutionrecognizes the existence of both material and normative groundsof foreign policy action. It differs from neoliberal institutionalismbecause in this theory as well as in realism collective interestis assumed as pre-given and hence exogenous to social interaction.In contrast, we suppose that social interaction ultimately doeshave transformative effects on interests and identity, becausecontinuous cooperation is likely to influence intersubjectivemeanings. This method of analysis corresponds with Moravscik'stripartite analysis of integration decisions: while the initialphase refers to the formation of state preferences, the secondand third involve the dynamic aspect of ‘constructing’international institutions: the outcomes of interstate bargainingand the subsequent choice of the institutional design.     

American evangelicals and domestic versus international climate policy

Because a significant portion of the American electorate identify themselves as evangelical Christians, the evangelical position on climate policy is important to determining the role the United States could play in global climate cooperation. Do evangelicals oppose all climate policies, or are they particularly opposed to certain types of policies? We argue that American evangelicals oppose climate policy due to their distrust of international cooperation and institutions, which has been a prominent feature of evangelical politics since the beginning of the Cold War. Using data from the 2011 Faith and Global Policy Challenges survey and the 2010 Chicago Council Global View survey, we find support for the theory. Evangelicals are equally likely to support domestic climate policy as other Americans, but they are significantly less likely to support international treaties on climate cooperation. The findings suggest that proponents of climate policy could win more evangelicals to their side by focusing on domestic action, instead of multilateral negotiations or international institutions.     

Optimal transfers and participation decisions in international environmental agreements

The literature on international environmental agreements has recognized the role transfers play in encouraging participation in international environmental agreements. However, the results achieved so far are overly specific. Therefore, we develop a more general framework that enables us to study the role of transfers in a systematic way. We propose transfers using both internal and external financial resources for making “welfare optimal agreements” self-enforcing. To illustrate the relevance of our transfer scheme, we use a stylized integrated assessment simulation model of climate change to show how appropriate transfers may induce almost all countries into signing a self-enforcing climate treaty.      

Exit, voice, and loyalty in international organizations: US involvement in the League of Nations

Recent challenges to traditional international relations theory have questioned the nature of international organizations (IOs) as agents of powerful state-members and have examined various conduits through which non-state actors can voice their concerns. Yet little work has focused on participation in IOs when a powerful state’s official position contradicts the goals of actors within it. This article examines the archival record of American involvement in the League of Nations’ economic section to explore such a circumstance. I correct the prevailing historical view of American isolationism in the interwar period and argue that participation by advanced, industrial democracies can better be understood as combinations of exit, voice, and loyalty on the part of individual components of state and civil societies.

If not a clash, then what? Huntington, Nishida Kitaro and the politics of civilizations

The debate surrounding Samuel Huntington's influential Clashof Civilizations thesis has been focused too narrowly on theaccuracy of his categorization of civilizations. This focushas left the problem of the alleged inter-civilizational orderincompletely theorized. In particular, two theoretical issueshave been overlooked: first, can we really assume that civilizationsare capable of and prone to clashing as if they were statesand, second, surely a theory of global civilizations must besubject to itself, as a product of one such civilization. Thispaper explores the model of the inter-civilizational order theorizedoutside the ‘West’, by Nishida Kitarô in interwarJapan. A comparison with Huntington's vision demonstrates someradical differences in these models and their consequences forthe role of Japan in the so-called ‘new world order’of the 21st century. The conclusion suggests a need to theorizeinter-civilizational relations as seriously as inter-nationalrelations, but on different philosophical foundations, sincethe two describe qualitatively different aspects of coincidentworld orders. In particular, this paper calls attention to thespecial practical importance of non-Western traditions of politicalthought in an inter-civilizational world.     

Feedback loops in a world of complexity: a cybernetic approach at the interface of foreign policy analysis and international relations theory

Feedback in foreign policy occurs when a state's foreign policy affects the international context of that state and those changes in context subsequently impact on the state's future foreign policy decisions. In this way, feedback loops can develop, which may become self-reinforcing and in which foreign policy and international context continuously affect each other. Even though such processes are ubiquitous especially in a globalized world, they have hitherto received little systematic attention. We introduce cybernetics as a perspective that puts such feedback effects at the centre of attention and provides an accessible sequential framework for analysing them. Such a cybernetic analysis not only demonstrates the significance of feedback processes in foreign policies but also speaks to several recent debates in international relations theory and foreign policy analysis. In particular, it highlights processes of learning and change, of non-linearity and indeterminacy, and enables the researcher to integrate insights from structure- and agency-based approaches. We outline the merits of a cybernetic analysis by discussing the effects of feedback in the United States' War on Terror.     

Southeast Asia: theory between modernization and tradition

This article inquires into the absence of non-western theorizingupon Southeast Asian international relations by positing thatmodernization and its conceptual kin ‘realism’ haveproclaimed themselves as the mainstream in both theoreticaland empirical research. This is as much a product of postcolonialwestern scholarship as it is of indigenous scholarship in reproducingthe former's frameworks. The effect of this Gramscian hegemonyis to marginalize possibilities for non-western internationaltheory. There are nonetheless flickers of hope for a generic‘Southeast Asian contribution’ to theorizing InternationalRelations, inclusive of non-mainstream western scholarship,if one considers the categories of transitional and hybrid scholarship,in addition to historically informed possibilities of a traditionalSoutheast Asian statehood. Received for publication May 16, 2006. Accepted for publication June 27, 2007.     

日本经济怎样掉进了美国设计的陷阱

在 2 0世纪末期 ,过去一帆风顺的日本经济突然停滞 ,明明是世界最大的债权国 ,却只能目瞪口呆地看着世界最大的债务国美国把自己的财富掳走。日本的经济一筹莫展 ,而美国的经济却一步一层楼。美国人通过玩弄汇率就轻而易举地减少了自己的债务负担 ,同时还扼杀了日本的国力。日本人过去几十年在国际经济关系中几乎是不折不扣地采用美国的规则 ,却遭到如此的惨败 ,令全世界都为之震惊。为此 ,我们应该深入地研究 ,及早地引起我们的注意。     

A Battlefield of Meanings: The Struggle for Identity in the UN Debates on a Definition of International Terrorism

For nearly forty years, debates on a definition of international terrorism as part of a comprehensive convention have been preoccupying the United Nations. This article challenges conventional approaches referring to divergences in national interests and preferences, or to institutional constraints and national legal traditions, to explain why no definition has been agreed upon. It analyzes the inconclusive debates from a critical perspective and argues that the continuous search for a definition can be understood through the prism of collective identity struggles: the desire to define terrorism is not only the desire to give a precise content to terrorism and, thereby, create the identity of an Other. It is also the desire to create a collective identity, a “Self,” representing and uniting those who oppose terrorism. By applying a discursive understanding of collective identity construction to analyze the UN debates, the article elucidates how strongly the definition of terrorism hinders a common understanding among those who are opposing terrorism. Thereby, the analysis highlights that the demonization of terrorism foremost impedes a homogeneous understanding of a collective Self, ready to confront and define terrorism in the first place.     

Conclusion: On the possibility of a non-Western IR theory in Asia

In the conclusion, we seek to ascertain the possibility of anon-Western International Relations theory (IRT) in Asia. Wefind while there is a good deal of writing that can be regardedas ‘pre-theoretical’, these have not been fullyexploited or exported to other parts of Asia and beyond. Thereis certainly little that can be called an Asian IRT. This isnot because scholars in the region accept that Western IRT isunchallengeable nor that it has found all the answers to themajor problems of international relations. Nor is it becausenon-Western theories are ‘hidden from the public eye’.It is rather due to a lack of institutional resources, the head-startof Western IRT, and especially the hegemonic standing of WesternIRT. At the same time, the case studies point to the existenceof abundant intellectual and historical resources that couldserve as the basis of developing a non-Western IRT that takesinto account the positions, needs and cultures of countriesin the region. There is room in Asia for the development ofnon-Western IRT, but not an ‘Asian School of internationalrelations’ (although national perspectives such as a ‘ChineseSchool’ are possible) which would assume a degree of convergenceof perspectives and interactions among Asian scholars, whichclearly does not exist. This development should and could gobeyond simply ‘joining in to the existing game seekingto add local colour and cases to existing theory’, ordeveloping a localist exceptionalism (‘Asian values’)or organizing local thinking into rebellions against prevailingorthodoxies (especially realism and liberalism) in the mannerof the dependencia theory. Western IRT does not need to be replaced,but can and should be enriched with the addition of more voicesand a wider rooting not just in world history but also in informedrepresentations of both core and periphery perspectives withinthe ever-evolving global political, economic and social order. In the conclusion, we first offer some generalizations fromthe four case studies with a view to addressing the main questionposed in the introduction: the apparent absence of IRT in Asiaand possible explanations behind it. We then reflect on whetherthe question of a non-Western IRT in Asia is a meaningful one,and whether the way it is approached in this special issue couldresult in a productive debate that would advance the disciplineof IR. Although our empirical focus is on Asia, we suggest someinsights that have more general relevance for non-Western IRT. Received for publication May 16, 2006. Accepted for publication June 27, 2007.