The Asia-Pacific security lexicon

The

ASIA-PACIFIC

SECURITY

LEXICON

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) was established as

an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional research

centre for scholars and other specialists concerned with modern

Southeast Asia, particularly the many-faceted problems of stability

and security, economic development, and political and social change.

The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic

Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and

Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies

(RSCS).

The Institute is governed by a twenty-two-member Board of

Trustees comprising nominees from the Singapore Government, the

National University of Singapore, the various Chambers of

Commerce, and professional and civic organizations. An Executive

Committee oversees day-to-day operations; it is chaired by the

Director, the Institute’s chief academic and administrative officer.

First published in Singapore in 2002 by

Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace

Pasir Panjang

Singapore 119614

Internet e-mail: [email protected]

World Wide Web: http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

First reprint 2002

The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively

with the authors and their interpretations do not necessarily reflect the

views or the policy of the Institute or its supporters.

ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Capie, David.

The Asia-Pacific security lexicon / David Capie and Paul Evans.

(Issues in Southeast Asian security)

1. National security—Asia—Dictionaries.

2. National security—Pacific Area—Dictionaries.

3. Asia—Strategic aspects—Dictionaries.

4. Pacific Area—Strategic aspects—Dictionaries.

I. Evans, Paul M.

II. Title.

UA830 A81 2002

ISBN 981-230-149-6 (soft cover)

ISBN 981-230-150-X (hard cover)

Printed in Singapore by Seng Lee Press Pte Ltd.

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

v

CONTENTS

Abbreviations ............................................................................. vii

Authors ....................................................................................... xi

Introduction ................................................................................. 1

Ad Hoc Multilateralism.............................................................. 11

The “ASEAN Way” ..................................................................... 14

Balance of Power ....................................................................... 28

Bilateralism ................................................................................ 39

Coercive Diplomacy .................................................................. 43

Cold War Mentality ................................................................... 45

Collective Defence .................................................................... 48

Collective Security ..................................................................... 53

Common Security ...................................................................... 59

Comprehensive Security ............................................................ 64

Concert of Powers...................................................................... 76

Concerted Unilateralism ............................................................ 82

Confidence-Building Measures .................................................. 84

Confidence- and Security-Building Measures............................. 89

Constructive Intervention ........................................................... 92

Co-operative Security ................................................................. 98

Engagement ............................................................................. 108

Ad Hoc Engagement

Comprehensive Engagement

Conditional Engagement

Constructive Engagement

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Co-operative Engagement

Deep Engagement

Preventive Engagement

Realistic Engagement

Selective Engagement

Flexible Consensus .................................................................. 136

Human Security ....................................................................... 139

Humanitarian Intervention ....................................................... 147

Middle Power .......................................................................... 161

Multilateralism ......................................................................... 165

Mutual Security........................................................................ 171

New Security Approach ........................................................... 175

Open Regionalism ................................................................... 179

Preventive Diplomacy .............................................................. 185

Security Community ................................................................ 198

Security Pluralism .................................................................... 207

Track One ................................................................................ 209

Track One-and-a-Half .............................................................. 211

Track Two................................................................................. 213

Track Three .............................................................................. 217

Transparency ............................................................................ 220

Trust-Building Measures ........................................................... 222

vi The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

ABBREVIATIONS

ABAC APEC Business Advisory Council

AFTA ASEAN Free Trade Agreement

AMM ASEAN Ministerial Meeting

ANZUS Australia, New Zealand, United States [Treaty]

APEC Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation

APSD Asia-Pacific Security Dialogue

ARF ASEAN Regional Forum

ASA Association of Southeast Asia

ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations

ASEM Asia-Europe Meeting

CAEC Council for Asia-Europe Co-operation

CANCHIS Canada-China Seminar

CBMs confidence-building measures

CDE Conference on Disarmament in Europe

CINCPAC Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command

CPM Communist Party of Malaysia

CSBMs confidence- and security-building measures

CSCA Conference on Security and Co-operation in Asia

CSCAP Council for Security Co-operation in the Asia Pacific

CSCE Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe

CUA concerted unilateral action

DFAIT Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

DFAT Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

DPRK Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

EAEC East Asia Economic Caucus

EASI East Asia Strategy Initiative

FPDA Five Power Defence Arrangements

vii

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

G7 Group of Seven

GATT General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs

GDP gross domestic product

GNP gross national product

HR House Resolution

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

IISS International Institute for Strategic Studies

IMF International Monetary Fund

INCSEA Incidents at Sea Agreement

ISG Inter-Sessional Support Group

ISIS Institutes for Strategic and International Studies

ISM Inter-Sessional Meeting

JCAPS Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies

KEDO Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization

MBFR Mutual Balanced Force Reduction Talks

MFN most-favoured-nation

MITI Ministry for International Trade and Industry

MOF Ministry of Finance

MOFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs

MRMs mutual reassurance measures

MST Mutual Security Treaty

MTCR Missile Technology Control Regime

NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NEASD Northeast Asia Security Dialogue

NGOs non-governmental organizations

NLD National League for Democracy

NPCSD North Pacific Co-operative Security Dialogue

NPT Non-Proliferation Treaty

NSC National Security Council

ODA Official Development Assistance

OSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

PAMS Pacific Armies Management Seminar

PBEC Pacific Basin Economic Council

PBF Pacific Business Forum

PECC Pacific Economic Co-operation Conference

viii The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

PKO peacekeeping operations

PLA People’s Liberation Army

PMC Post-Ministerial Conference

PRC People’s Republic of China

ROK Republic of Korea

SDF self-defence force

SDSC Strategic and Defence Studies Centre

SEANWFZ Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapons Free Zone

SEATO Southeast Asia Treaty Organization

SLOCs sea lines of communication

SLORC State Law and Order Restoration Council

SOM Senior Officials Meeting

SPDC State Peace and Development Council

START Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty

TAC Treaty of Amity and Co-operation

TBMs trust-building measures

TCOG Trilateral Co-ordination and Oversight Group

U.N. United Nations

UNDP United Nations Development Programme

U.S. United States

USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

WMD Weapons of Mass Destruction

WPNS Western Pacific Naval Symposium

WTO World Trade Organization

ZOPFAN Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality

Abbreviations ix

AUTHORS

David Capie is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of

International Relations in the Liu Centre for the Study of Global

Issues, the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Paul Evans is Professor and Director of the Program on Canada-Asia

Policy Studies and cross-appointed at the Institute of Asian Research

and the Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues, the University of

British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

xi

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

INTRODUCTION

Amitav Acharya, David Capie, and Paul Evans

The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon focuses on the vocabulary of Asia￾Pacific security, mainly as it developed in the creative decade of the

1990s. The goal is to dissect thirty-four ideas and concepts that have

been at the core of debates about multilateral security co-operation.

The study of multilateral institution-building in the Asia-Pacific has

usually focused on material determinants, especially the relationship

between the balance of power and regional institutions. By contrast,

the focus here is on ideas.

The Lexicon originated from a Canadian project to assist China’s

participation in multilateral security institutions, which dated back

to China’s entry into the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1994. As

part of what became an annual “Canada-China Seminar on Asia

Pacific Multilateralism and Cooperative Security”, a team of Canadian

academics identified a set of central concepts and prepared

bibliographical essays on each. Our partner on the Chinese side, the

Asian Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, discussed all

the entries with us, prepared some, and translated an early draft of

the Lexicon into Chinese. In 1998, the first draft was circulated as a

working paper by the Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies (JCAPS) in

Toronto. It included a Chinese and a Japanese translation, and a

note on the Japanese translation.1

Others seem to have found it

useful. The draft, in whole or in part, has subsequently been translated

into Korean (separate translations in the Republic of Korea and the

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), Mongolian, and Thai. A

This entry is reproduced from The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon, by David Capie and Paul Evans (Singapore:

Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher

on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording

or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

2 The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

second Chinese translation has also been produced by academics

in Taiwan.

The current version of the Lexicon has been rewritten to take

into account changes in regional discussion since 1998 and to add

several new terms. It does not include translations into other

languages, although we hope that this will occur subsequent to

publication. While English is the language of Asia-Pacific

multilateralism, it is not the language of most Asians. We have

observed with interest how complex terminology, developed in

international processes, moves from English into other languages.

From the perspective of diplomacy, this adds an extra layer of

complications and increases the chance of misunderstandings and

distortions. From the perspective of scholarship, the act of translation

raises difficult issues of linguistics, conceptual starting points, and

world-views that need further, and we hope collaborative,

programmes of study.

The objectives are both practical and theoretical. The Lexicon is

primarily intended as a handbook to assist policy-makers and

researchers as they participate in multilateral activities. Much of the

debate and controversy in regional discussions still revolves around

conceptual questions. Is “confidence-building” a Western process

involving measures too legalistic and formalistic to suit the Asian

context? Does “preventive diplomacy” involve the use of force? Is

“humanitarian intervention” different from “humanitarian assistance”?

Does it involve a challenge to state sovereignty? Is “human security”

merely a Western restatement of the old Asian notion of

“comprehensive security”? What is the real nature of “engagement”?

Is it simply a softer form of containment?

We address these questions but can scarcely resolve them. Our

purpose is not to offer definitions and interpretations that are fixed

and incontestable. The concepts we examine, to borrow T. S. Eliot’s

phrase, “will not stay still”. Rather, the aim is to set an intellectual

and historical context, and examine how the concepts have evolved.

On the theoretical side, the principal objective is to apply and

broaden the constructivist approach to international relations. The

view that ideas matter in international affairs is hardly new. Yet most

Introduction 3

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

of the writing about ideas has been explicitly rationalist. For example,

an influential study argues that ideas matter because they help

policy-makers pursue their rational self-interest in more efficient

ways. “Ideas affect strategic interactions”, write Judith Goldstein

and Robert Keohane, “helping or hindering joint efforts to attain

‘more efficient’ outcomes”.2 By contrast, constructivism takes a

more complex view of the impact of ideas on international relations.

Ideas do not simply help states to develop more cost-efficient ways

of pursuing their interests; they can also redefine these interests and

lead to collective identities.

Constructivism faces a special problem in looking at ideational

debate across cultural and socio-political divides in a region as

diverse as the Asia-Pacific. Because of an implicit normative bias in

favour of collective identity formation, constructivists have tended

to take an oversimplified view of how ideas shape interests and

identities. Despite a professed sensitivity towards cultural variances,

there have been very few empirical studies that deal with the

contested ideas informing and shaping co-operation in different

regional contexts.

Asian policy-makers have often treated ideas proposed by

Western scholars and officials with suspicion. A prime example is

the idea of “common security”, which was the philosophical basis

of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE)

and which played an instrumental role in reducing East-West tensions

resulting in the end of the Cold War. When common security was

first proposed in the early 1990s as a possible basis for multilateral

security dialogues in the Asia-Pacific by policy-makers from the

Soviet Union, Canada, and Australia, Asian scholars and government

officials were quick to criticize it. Its emphasis on military

transparency, confidence- and security-building measures, and

formalistic mechanisms for verification and compliance were seen

as reflecting European circumstances and diplomatic traditions that

were unsuitable for Asia. The negative reaction was surprising

considering that common security’s emphasis on security with, as

opposed to security against, was deemed important by Asian policy￾makers as a needed shift in approach in dealing with regional

4 The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

rivalries. The same pattern emerged in regional reactions to “co￾operative security” and, a decade later, “humanitarian intervention”.

In the case of “preventive diplomacy”, the ARF agreed to develop

such mechanisms as part of a three-step process of security co￾operation. However, controversies about what preventive diplomacy

actually means and how it is to be pursued have stymied its

incorporation into the ARF’s agenda.

Preventive diplomacy was a highly contested notion when it

was outlined in the ARF Concept Paper as stage two of its three￾stage approach to security co-operation (the other two being

confidence-building and conflict-resolution, or “elaboration of

approaches to conflicts”). Some ARF participants expressed deep

misgivings about the notion, apprehensive that the use of force was

to be a tool of preventive diplomacy. However, by the late 1990s,

mainly through conceptual debate and discussion described in the

Lexicon, it had been made clear that preventive diplomacy was

quite distinct from coercive diplomacy.

Asian anxiety about importing security concepts from outside

has four foundations. One is essentially linguistic. Many English

words about security relationships simply do not translate into some

Asian languages. Chinese writers, for example, have noted that the

term engagement has no direct Chinese equivalent. In these situations,

policy-makers often use rough approximations and analogues that

open the door for misunderstanding and suspicion.

A second is more directly political. Many ideas originating in

Europe and North America, such as human rights, humanitarian

intervention, and preventive diplomacy, either implicitly or explicitly

challenge state sovereignty, which remains the core of Asian political

thought and practice. The precise meaning and scope of these ideas

is a matter of intense political debate within individual countries in

Asia and on a regional basis.

A third centres on the established traditions of diplomatic

interaction in the region. Many ideas about security co-operation

are expected to require institutionalization. This goes against the

grain of informality in time-honoured Asian approaches, especially

those associated with the “ASEAN way”. Indeed, the very novelty of

Introduction 5

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

multilateral security co-operation in Asia predisposes its policy￾makers against embracing new proposals that call for putatively

benign formal procedures and mechanisms.

Finally, the suspicion of imported notions of security is integral

to efforts by some Asian élites to construct and project a regional

identity. Carefully constructed notions about an Asian identity cover

issues ranging from human rights and democracy to multilateral

security co-operation. Ideas from outside the region can become

targets to foster an insider/outsider distinction that sustains a sense

of Asian exceptionalism. In terms more subtle than a lingering

suspicion of Western “cultural imperialism”, there is a widely shared

belief that many security concepts generated in the West project

external values, beliefs, and practices without realizing how poorly

they fit in with local situations.

Multilateral efforts to expand security co-operation have involved

Asian and non-Asian actors, a debate about fundamental ideas, and

attempts to find common understandings of key concepts. Concepts

introduced from outside Asia have rarely been accepted and adopted

in that region without revision or modification. Rather, they have

been adapted to suit local conditions and to support local beliefs

and practices. Asian states have not been passive recipients of

foreign ideas, but active borrowers, modifiers, and in some instances

initiators. There are also indications of mutual learning. While many

ideas concerning security co-operation have been “Asianized”, some

Asian ideas and practices (for example, the “ASEAN way” and

flexible consensus) have been “Westernized” or “universalized”.

Asian notions of comprehensive security developed by Japan,

Malaysia, and Indonesia not only pre-dated trends in Europe and

North America to redefine and broaden the meaning of security,

they helped promote them. Seen in this light, the controversies

which the Lexicon chronicles indicate the progress made in building

an Asia-Pacific region.

The Lexicon indicates that the discourse of multilateralism has

evolved in the 1990s. Three trends are clear. First, it is too simplistic

to treat debates about core security concepts as a matter of East

versus West. Understandings of concepts, such as human rights and