Realism, liberalism and regional order in East Asia: toward a hybrid approach

Abstract

East Asia offers a fertile ground for applying dominant theoretical perspectives in International Relations and understanding their relevance and limitations. As this region has seen much conflict and cooperation historically and is re-emerging as a key theater of great power competition in the 21^st century even when states maintain high levels of economic interactions, our understanding of the regional order will be enhanced by the theoretical tools available in the larger mainstream IR perspectives. The existence of a peculiar regional order of no war, yet a number of simmering disputes (along with high levels of economic interdependence) can be characterized as cold peace which deserves an explanation. The paper applies two variants of realism—balance of power and hegemonic stability – and the key arguments in liberalism to analyze the cold peace in Northeast Asia and normal peace in Southeast Asia from a historical perspective. It finds both grand theoretical approaches have partial applications for understanding the East Asian order. A hybrid approach is more valuable to better explain regional order during diverse time periods and different sub-regions of East Asia. Although the presence of both hegemony and balance of power can prevent major wars for a period, they do not help resolve the pre-existing disputes. Deepened economic interdependence mitigates some spiraling tendencies as states fearful of losing too much economically do not escalate crises beyond a point.

Keywords:

• Regional order
• realism
• liberalism
• East Asia
• peaceful change

Acknowledgement

I thank Bhubhindar Singh, Evan Resnick, Arie Kacowicz, Benny Miller and the two anonymous reviewers of the journal for their comments on an earlier version.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 I thank Bhubhindar Singh, Evan Resnick, Arie Kacowicz, Benny Miller and the two anonymous reviewers of the journal for their comments on an earlier version.

1 Several IR books have emerged since the 1990s on regional orders. See for examples Lake and Morgan (1997), Buzan and Waver (2003), Katzenstein (2005), Acharya (2001), Miller (2007), and Paul (2012).

2 These concepts are developed in States, Nations and the Great Powers (Miller, 2007, pp. 42-47).

3 The ‘regional security complex’ approach captures the role of great powers in determining the regional order in the security domain (Buzan, 1991; Buzan & Waver, 2003).

4 I use the same definition of region I developed in a previous work: “A cluster of states that are proximate to each other and are interconnected in spatial, cultural, and ideational terms in a significant and distinguishable manner” (Paul, 2012, p. 4).

5 Some scholars see a neglect of regional orders in realist theory. This regional void” is largely the function of the theory’s focus on the international system and the great power relations that define it. See Merom (2003).

6 For classical balance of power theory, see Claude (1962), Sheehan (1996), Kissinger (2014), Little (2007), and Paul et al. (2004).

7 On this, see various chapters in Feng and He (2020).

8 See Kang (2010).

9 For such a perspective, see Singh (2020).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

T. V. Paul

T.V. Paul is James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. For more, see: www.tvpaul.com