As one of the preeminent academic conferences on international studies in the Asia Pacific, the 2012 Oceanic Conference on International Studies, held at the University of Sydney (with co-sponsors at the University of New South Wales, the University of Technology, Sydney, and Macquarie University) from 18 to 20 July, played host to a large number of academics and international analysts who presented research on a variety of international studies topics. After a very successful conference in Auckland that emphasized the connection of the OCIS community to the Oceanic region, it seemed fitting that the conference would come to Sydney, the largest city in the Oceanic region, and one of the premier global cities in the Asia Pacific. In part because of the location of the conference, and because of the emphasis of many of the conference presentations on the Asia Pacific, no doubt inspired by underlying trends that are both exciting and worrying (sometimes at the same time), the organizers decided to focus this special issue of Global Change, Peace and Security on the challenges that the Asia Pacific faces, now and in the future. In short, this special issue is about the Asia Pacific going forward.
The conference keynote address was given by Professor Michael Williams from the University of Ottawa, who critically evaluated contemporary challenges to the liberal international order. Professor Williams returned us to the very foundations of the discipline, challenging us to reconsider the canon of international relations and its impact on how we understand international politics. The breadth and depth of Professor Williams' oration reminded us that how we tell our disciplinary history can shape how we view our work and our place in international relations.
The conference comprised two and a half days of intense and stimulating discussions across 63 panels and roundtables. A total of 274 participants – from PhD students to emeritus professors – were involved in eight simultaneous streams ranging from international security, gender, international relations theory, ethics and international law, climate change and the environment, health, and international political economy. A high level of participation across panels and roundtables demonstrated the depth of interest in the future of our academic discipline, and the breadth of subjects being tackled by scholars of international studies. Elsewhere in this volume, for instance, a forum composed of papers from the conference provides commentary on the Occupy movement that emerged in September 2011. This forum offers creative engagement with the movement: charting its effect on political discourse; understanding the role of conspiracy theories in commentaries on the movement; questioning who the ‘99%’ are; asking whether the Occupy movement has successfully represented disparate groups; and interrogating the translation of popular ‘imaginings’ into concrete political action. The papers within the forum take diverse views on important questions for the movement, for example by expressing doubts about whether the movement has met the demise attributed to it by institutionalized official public discourse, how and where it continues in forms different to its public, spectacular phase, or by examining how far from genuine political and social revolution the West remains.
The increasing number of abstract submissions and accepted papers and panels on the Asia Pacific, the Occupy movement, and many other topics from Australia, the region and the world demonstrates an ongoing need for conferences of this kind in Oceania. OCIS V continues the tradition of high quality research discussed in an informal manner. A hybrid of larger conferences and the more intimate workshop format, OCIS remains a key event for building our intellectual community. The importance of OCIS is that it brings scholars and institutions together. OCIS is one of the means of crossing geographic distances, not only between states and cities but also within them. The conference featured exciting panels on China's rise and its relations with the United States, panels on Asia Pacific politics, India's role in the region and international system as well as important theoretical and empirical research into all aspects of international relations.
When considering the Asia Pacific going forward, it is worth highlighting that, unlike many other regions of the world, the Asia Pacific has almost entirely avoided full-blown interstate wars since the end of the Cold War. Yet old conflicts have seemingly been reignited, the rise of new powers has disturbed regional security dynamics, and new non-traditional security threats have yet to be adequately addressed. Throughout the region, countries are grappling with the rise of China, and the trading benefits, but also the strategic uncertainties that China's rising power brings. In Northeast Asia, North Korea is dealing with a leadership transition, the effects of which are uncertain for the region. Maritime territorial disputes have raised tensions between South Korea and Japan, between Japan and China, and between China and Southeast Asian countries. While the disputes are long-standing, a combination of the drive by the Asia Pacific's growing economies to tend to their food and energy security by exploiting resources in disputed territories, and the lack of credible regional security institutions in either Northeast or Southeast Asia, have arguably made resolving the disputes more difficult.
While some countries in the Asia Pacific such as Taiwan and Hong Kong have some of the lowest birth rates in the world, and Japan's population has actually been contracting since 2007, other countries such as India, Indonesia, and the Philippines continue to see fairly robust population growth. Asia Pacific economic growth combined with its massive population have in turn led to pressure to exploit and manage natural resources such as timber, fisheries, oil, and natural gas, often in cooperation. A desire for a better future may also lead to pressure to improve governance and development in the region through better use of human capital and civil society.
The Global Financial Crisis has left both the US and Europe struggling, and its effects in Asia have been complex, as some countries were similarly knocked around, while others emerged surprisingly strong. China was forced to inject massive stimulus into its economy to keep up its economic growth of the past decade going. It succeeded in avoiding recession (at least for the time being), but at the cost of a housing bubble that is in the process of bursting (or at least deflating). Indonesia, on the other hand, was able to rely on its growing middle class and domestic consumption to maintain a stable growth rate that surpassed 6% in 2011. Australia has (until recently) been buoyed by a commodities boom, and has benefited handsomely from exporting natural resources to China, while Vietnam is wrestling with a raft of bad loans and creaky state-owned enterprises.
This special issue, then, brings together articles that engage with a wide cross-section of the challenges that the Asia Pacific faces in the present and going forward. The contributions can be divided into three overall themes.
The first deals with traditional security issues in the region, with two papers that look at China's interactions with other powers in different maritime domains. Niclas Weimar's piece examines the potential conflict between India and China in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. As both India and China have sought to power their economic growth with secure energy supplies, they have moved into both maritime areas in a big way, combining economic projects with military engagement. As India and China project power into maritime Asia, their interests could ultimately collide, leading to conflict.
The second theme touches on potentially innovative ways to resolve environmental problems afflicting the region as it grows economically. In her article, Andrea Haefner focuses on the countries in the Mekong River watershed in peninsular Southeast Asia. The Mekong subregion is an area where the challenge of balancing economic growth (for what are mostly quite poor countries) and environmental stewardship is particularly acute. This challenge has so far not been resolved, in large part because the two main organizations have significant defects: the Mekong River Commission does not have buy-in from all the relevant countries, and the Greater Mekong Subregion has largely ignored the environment in its push for economic growth. Rebecca Pearse, by contrast, looks at Australia, which as a developed country has its own challenges in dealing with the environmental costs of economic activity. Australia's experiments with land-based carbon sinks as a means of combating climate change have been contested, but Australia has pushed ahead despite concerns about the effectiveness (or even legitimacy) of such policies. Pearse examines Australian attempts to create and legitimate a market for carbon emissions reduction, and discusses the potential for Australia to have an impact on how other countries in the Asia-Pacific region think about carbon emissions reduction and implement their own climate change policies.
The final theme centres on a closer examination of societal change within developing countries in the Asia Pacific, first in Vietnam and then in Fiji. Thiem Bui reviews the emergence of civil society during Vietnam's Doi Moi period over the past two decades, discussing the seeming contradiction of societal groups existing outside of a party-state that claims unchecked control over society. Civil society in Vietnam, as a result, has been grudgingly accepted by the Communist Party of Vietnam and allowed to fill in gaps in governance and encourage economic development. While this role for civil society is at times useful to the state (such as, for example, by promoting nationalist protests), when civil society engages in criticisms of state institutions' handling of governance and development, it may also lead to challenges to the state's hegemony. Priya Chattier examines the effect(s) of cultural norms on continuing gender inequalities in Fiji. She finds that, while women have experienced increasing economic independence, this has not been accompanied by social independence, as women's access to economic opportunities is constrained by changing but still persistent norms about acceptable occupations, time spent on housework and childcare, and roles within the family. The solution, she suggests, may come in working around norms, rather than attempting to change them.
We are impressed by the breadth of research and depth of insight that emerges from these articles. We thank the contributors for their willingness to share their research for this special issue, and trust that these articles will give a sense of the vibrant intellectual debate at OCIS V, as well as provide insights for the Asia Pacific going forward.
Notes on contributors
Penny Griffin is a senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of New South Wales. Her research explores the processes, practices and effects of the contemporary global political economy with a view to understanding how these shape and are shaped by gender identity(ies). Her 2009 monograph, Gendering the World Bank: Neoliberalism and the Gendered Foundations of Global Governance, was awarded the 2010 British International Studies Association IPEG Book Prize.
Justin Hastings is a senior lecturer in International Relations and Comparative Politics at the University of Sydney. He works on transnational security issues, including nuclear proliferation, maritime piracy, smuggling, insurgency, terrorism, and black and gray markets, primarily in East Asia. He is the author of No Man's Land: Globalization, Territory, and Clandestine Groups in Southeast Asia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2010).
Susan Park is a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney. She was the convener of the OCIS V Conference and works on change in International Organisations, particularly the Multilateral Development Banks. She has published widely including her book World Bank Group Interactions with Environmentalists: Changing International Organisation Identities with Manchester University Press in 2010.