EDITORIAL : THE TODAY'S ZAMAN, TURKEY

              

 

Asia’s threesome turns four

Like many regions of the world, Northeast Asia faces severe political challenges in creating a viable structure of peace.

But, given China’s rising power, such a regional structure is becoming all the more necessary if today’s lack of trust is not to devolve into military antagonism. Relations among the region’s three major powers, China, South Korea and Japan, are burdened both by territorial disputes and by the bitter historical legacies of Japanese colonialism. Of course, economic interdependence has deepened over the past three decades, but nationalism remains a convenient tool for political mobilization -- and of manipulation for domestic and diplomatic purposes. Moreover, although the Cold War is two decades in the past, South Korea and China remain divided nations. Furthermore, North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, its economic fragility and uncertainty about its very future as a state, are causes of deep anxiety among its neighbors. Yet, despite all of these obstacles, there are signs that momentum is building for greater regional cooperation in overcoming them. The recent trilateral summit of China, South Korea and Japan is the fourth such meeting to be held, in addition to meetings that take place at international gatherings such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summits. Unfortunately, however, the leaders of China, South Korea and Japan have not yet made any major breakthroughs on the most sensitive security issues that divide them. But this lack of quick success does not mean that these efforts are futile. Indeed, any breakthrough to the sort of trust needed to resolve these festering security disputes will require that the three countries establish their annual gatherings as a meaningful multilateral body in its own right -- one that can address major issues in dispute and plan for a better regional future. For example, at the first trilateral summit, held in May 2008, as the global economic crisis was gathering pace, currency-swap arrangements were agreed upon among the three powers. At the second summit, in May 2009, the three heads of state agreed to start a feasibility study on a trilateral free-trade agreement (FTA). If such a trilateral FTA can be realized, its political and economic significance has the potential to equal that of the creation of European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, the first step in Europe’s integration process. At last year’s third trilateral summit, the leaders went further still, agreeing to establish a Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat in Seoul for institutionalizing cooperation among the three governments. They also adopted a blueprint for cooperation over the next 10 years. Among the issues discussed at this year’s summit in Tokyo, a few stand out. First, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao agreed to strengthen mutual cooperation on nuclear safety and disaster-relief activities, reflecting the three states’ concerns about how effectively they can cooperate in preventing and confronting a nuclear crisis like the Fukushima disaster. They also promised to cooperate on the development of renewable energy, improvement of energy efficiency and denuclearization of North Korea. In addition, they agreed to speed up the feasibility study for an FTA. South Korea and China have already finished a feasibility study for a bilateral FTA and probably will enter into formal negotiations soon. In the summit’s joint declaration and the three leaders’ remarks at the concluding press conference, one can see China’s clear intention to improve bilateral relations with Japan by promising cooperation on the issue of Japanese imports that might be contaminated by radiation from Fukushima. Such political goodwill is essential for regional stability, particularly given the deterioration in Sino-Japanese relations following last year’s confrontation over the arrest of a Chinese fisherman by Japan’s coast guard. China’s cooperative approach on Japanese imports was a response to Kan’s ongoing effort to calm international concern about the safety of Japan’s agricultural products. Kan undoubtedly hopes that success in convincing trade partners to lift their bans on such products will boost his exceptionally weak domestic political support. Lee, meanwhile, sought to bring to the fore the issue of North Korea’s drive for nuclear weapons. Thus, he solicited commitments from China and Japan on denuclearization and realization of the 2005 agreement on North Korea reached by the six-party talks (involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan, North Korea and South Korea). Though the history of the trilateral dialogue between China, Japan and South Korea is short, it marks a new and constructive effort toward regional cooperation. This kind of pragmatic and functional approach, if strengthened, promises to generate momentum for cooperation on more sensitive security issues. At least so far, security relations between South Korea and Japan, both US allies, and China have been more or less confrontational. Strengthening these two countries’ relations with China would increase the possibility of building a new, peaceful order for Northeast Asia. Indeed, measures aimed at creating a climate of genuine trilateral cooperation are the only effective way to improve regional security.

Like many regions of the world, Northeast Asia faces severe political challenges in creating a viable structure of peace.
 
But, given China’s rising power, such a regional structure is becoming all the more necessary if today’s lack of trust is not to devolve into military antagonism.

Relations among the region’s three major powers, China, South Korea and Japan, are burdened both by territorial disputes and by the bitter historical legacies of Japanese colonialism. Of course, economic interdependence has deepened over the past three decades, but nationalism remains a convenient tool for political mobilization -- and of manipulation for domestic and diplomatic purposes.

Moreover, although the Cold War is two decades in the past, South Korea and China remain divided nations. Furthermore, North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, its economic fragility and uncertainty about its very future as a state, are causes of deep anxiety among its neighbors.

Yet, despite all of these obstacles, there are signs that momentum is building for greater regional cooperation in overcoming them. The recent trilateral summit of China, South Korea and Japan is the fourth such meeting to be held, in addition to meetings that take place at international gatherings such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summits.

Unfortunately, however, the leaders of China, South Korea and Japan have not yet made any major breakthroughs on the most sensitive security issues that divide them. But this lack of quick success does not mean that these efforts are futile. Indeed, any breakthrough to the sort of trust needed to resolve these festering security disputes will require that the three countries establish their annual gatherings as a meaningful multilateral body in its own right -- one that can address major issues in dispute and plan for a better regional future.

For example, at the first trilateral summit, held in May 2008, as the global economic crisis was gathering pace, currency-swap arrangements were agreed upon among the three powers. At the second summit, in May 2009, the three heads of state agreed to start a feasibility study on a trilateral free-trade agreement (FTA). If such a trilateral FTA can be realized, its political and economic significance has the potential to equal that of the creation of European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, the first step in Europe’s integration process.

At last year’s third trilateral summit, the leaders went further still, agreeing to establish a Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat in Seoul for institutionalizing cooperation among the three governments. They also adopted a blueprint for cooperation over the next 10 years.

Among the issues discussed at this year’s summit in Tokyo, a few stand out. First, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao agreed to strengthen mutual cooperation on nuclear safety and disaster-relief activities, reflecting the three states’ concerns about how effectively they can cooperate in preventing and confronting a nuclear crisis like the Fukushima disaster.

They also promised to cooperate on the development of renewable energy, improvement of energy efficiency and denuclearization of North Korea. In addition, they agreed to speed up the feasibility study for an FTA. South Korea and China have already finished a feasibility study for a bilateral FTA and probably will enter into formal negotiations soon.

In the summit’s joint declaration and the three leaders’ remarks at the concluding press conference, one can see China’s clear intention to improve bilateral relations with Japan by promising cooperation on the issue of Japanese imports that might be contaminated by radiation from Fukushima. Such political goodwill is essential for regional stability, particularly given the deterioration in Sino-Japanese relations following last year’s confrontation over the arrest of a Chinese fisherman by Japan’s coast guard.

China’s cooperative approach on Japanese imports was a response to Kan’s ongoing effort to calm international concern about the safety of Japan’s agricultural products. Kan undoubtedly hopes that success in convincing trade partners to lift their bans on such products will boost his exceptionally weak domestic political support.

Lee, meanwhile, sought to bring to the fore the issue of North Korea’s drive for nuclear weapons. Thus, he solicited commitments from China and Japan on denuclearization and realization of the 2005 agreement on North Korea reached by the six-party talks (involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan, North Korea and South Korea).

Though the history of the trilateral dialogue between China, Japan and South Korea is short, it marks a new and constructive effort toward regional cooperation. This kind of pragmatic and functional approach, if strengthened, promises to generate momentum for cooperation on more sensitive security issues.

At least so far, security relations between South Korea and Japan, both US allies, and China have been more or less confrontational. Strengthening these two countries’ relations with China would increase the possibility of building a new, peaceful order for Northeast Asia. Indeed, measures aimed at creating a climate of genuine trilateral cooperation are the only effective way to improve regional security.
 

Bombs away

One of the most dispiriting features of today's international debates is that the threat to humanity posed by the world's 23,000 nuclear weapons -- and by those who would build more of them, or be only too willing to use them -- has been consigned to the margin of politics.
 
US President Barack Obama did capture global attention with his Prague speech in 2009, which made a compelling case for a nuclear weapon-free world. And he did deliver on a major new arms-reduction treaty with Russia, and hosted a summit aimed at reducing the vulnerability of nuclear weapons and materials to theft or diversion.

But nuclear issues still struggle for public resonance and political traction. It would take a brave gambler to bet on ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by the US Senate any time soon.

The film “An Inconvenient Truth” won an Academy Award, led to a Nobel Prize for Al Gore, and attracted huge international attention to the disastrous impact of climate change. But “Countdown to Zero,” an equally compelling documentary, made by the same production team and making shockingly clear how close and how often the world has come to nuclear catastrophe, has come and gone almost without trace.

Complacency trumps anxiety almost everywhere. Japan's Fukushima disaster has generated a massive debate about the safety of nuclear power, but not about nuclear weapons. Fear of a nuclear holocaust seems to have ended with the Cold War.

Indeed, Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem an eternity ago; new nuclear-weapons states have emerged without the world ending; no terrorist nuclear device has threatened a major city; and possession of nuclear weapons, for the states that have them, seems to be a source of comfort and pride rather than concern or embarrassment. With only a handful of exceptions, the current generation of political leaders shows little interest in disarmament, and not much more in non-proliferation. And their publics are not pressuring them to behave otherwise.

Few have worked harder to shake the world out of its complacency than four of the hardest-nosed realists ever to hold public office: former US Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former US Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former US Sen. Sam Nunn. In a series of opinion articles over the last five years, they have repeatedly sounded the alarm that the risks of nuclear weapons outweigh any possible usefulness in today's security environment. Moreover, they have called for a complete rethinking of deterrence strategy, in order to minimize, and ultimately eliminate, reliance on the most indiscriminately destructive weapons ever invented.

Last week in London, the “gang of four” convened a private meeting with leading think-tank researchers and a worldwide cast of some 30 former foreign and defense ministers, generals, and ambassadors who share their concern and commitment. But our average age was over 65, and the limits of our effectiveness were neatly described by former British Defense Minister Des Browne: “People who used to be something really want to tackle this issue. The trouble is that those who are something don't.”

No quick fix will turn all this around. Getting the kind of messages that emerged from the London meeting embedded in public and political consciousness is going to be slow boring of hard boards. But the messages demand attention, and we simply have to keep drilling.

The first message is that the threat of a nuclear weapons catastrophe remains alarmingly real. Existing global stockpiles have a destructive capacity equal to 150,000 Hiroshima bombs, and in handling them there is an omnipresent potential for human error, system error or misjudgment under stress.

Pakistan versus India is a devastating conflict-in-waiting, and North Korea and Iran remain volatile sources of concern. We know that terrorist groups have the capacity to engineer nuclear devices and would explode them anywhere they could; we simply cannot be confident that we can forever deny them access to the fissile material they need to fuel them.

The second message is that the Cold War nuclear-deterrence doctrine is irrelevant to today's world. So long as nuclear weapons remain, states can justify maintaining a minimum nuclear-deterrent capability. But that can be done without weapons on high alert, and with drastically reduced arsenals in the case of the US and Russia, and, at worst, at current levels for the other nuclear-armed states.

The third message is that if the existing nuclear powers sincerely want to prevent others from joining their club, they cannot keep justifying the possession of nuclear weapons as a means of protection for themselves or their allies against other weapons of mass destruction, especially biological weapons, or conventional weapons. Indeed, the single most difficult issue inhibiting serious movement toward disarmament -- certainly in the case of Pakistan versus India, and Russia and China versus the US -- are conventional arms imbalances, and ways of addressing them must rise to the top of the policy agenda.

The final message is that neither piecemeal change nor sloganeering will do the job. Nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation, counter-terrorism, and civil nuclear-energy risk reduction are inextricably connected, and they call for sustained commitment around a comprehensive agenda, and detailed argument. Sound bites and tweets are an unlikely route to nuclear salvation.

Kissinger is no idealist icon. But he's always worth listening to, and never more so than with respect to the question that he has been asking for years: When the next nuclear-weapons catastrophe happens, as it surely will, the world will have to respond dramatically. Why can't we start right now?