Constructing Regional Security Community in East Asia from Difficult Conditions: From Community of Commerce to Community of Nations

East Asian Community Rev (2018) 1:75–88 https://doi.org/10.1057/s42215-018-0001-9 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Constructing Regional Security Community in East Asia from Difficult Conditions: From Community of Commerce to Community of Nations Hyug Baeg Im1,2 Received: 31 January 2018 / Revised: 1 April 2018 / Accepted: 17 May 2018 / Published online: 30 July 2018 © Asiatic Research Institute 2018 Abstract This paper explores why is there no regional, multilateral, collective security community like NATO in East Asia and how to construct regional security community from difficult conditions. East Asian regional community originated from two divergent paths of international system: the regional community of commerce called East Asian Mediterranean and Chinese tributary system of hub-and-spokes. These divergent systems reappeared in the post-World War II. The USA constructed a hub-and-spokes system that suffocated the regional multilateral security community while a community of commerce resurrected in the post-Cold War spilled over into security community. I explore the opportunities and constraints that East Asia has faced in constructing a regional security community. Then I will investigate what is needed for East Asia to construct regional security organization, shared values and identities, and the assurance of balanced multi-polarity by core states that are the core conditions in constructing regional security community. Keywords East Asian Mediterranean · East Asian regional community of commerce · East Asian regional security community · Hub and spoke system in East Asia · Six Party Talks · The debate on East Asian identity & Hyug Baeg Im ; 1 Professor Emeritus, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea 2 Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Gwangju, South Korea 1 Introduction: Divergent Paths to Regional Community in East Asia An answer to the question, “Why there is no NATO-like security community in East Asia” can be found in historical differences of international system in Europe and East Asia. Compared to European international system of states, two divergent international systems had coexisted in East Asia, that is, first, the regional community of commerce called East Asian Mediterranean and second, the Chinese tribute system of hub-and-spokes. The divergent paths of international system have acted upon as path dependence to make it very difficult forming a security community like NATO in East Asia. In East Asia, the modern system of territorial states such as the Westphalian system of states had not emerged until the late nineteenth century. Before the Western invasion of China in the nineteenth century, two different international systems coexisted and complemented each other in East Asia: the tribute system of the Chinese empire and the maritime community of commerce called the East Asian Mediterranean. The tribute system of the Chinese empire had operated with a hierarchical but reciprocal principle of 事大字小 (tributary states worship the emperor and the emperor loves and takes care of the tributary states) and this principle applied to the political, economic, and cultural relations between the Chinese emperor and the tributary states. The Chinese tribute system is a hierarchical but reciprocal system in which official tributary trade (朝貢貿易) was made by means of exchanges between vassal state king’s tribute and the Chinese emperor’s gifts to the king. The international system of Chinese Imperium is a kind of a hub-and-spokes system in which China communicated and traded bilaterally with each spoke country and thus made little room for multilateral 76 communication among spokes. In the sphere of power and influence of the Chinese empire, the tributary trade was the only officially permitted trade that did not meet the demand of merchants and people in the spoke countries. Therefore, official trade through tributary exchanges had been complemented by unofficial and sometimes illegal maritime private trades. In this milieu, a maritime network of merchants and coastal port cities and kingdoms—called the “East Asian Mediterranean”—emerged in the East Asian corridor linking the basins of the East Sea, the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, the South China Sea, the Celebes Sea, and the Sulu Sea (Gipouloux 2011). In contrast to the Chinese tribute system of hub-and-spokes, the East Asian Mediterranean community of cities and ports were linked with horizontal, non-political, and commercial networks. While the episode of the Chinese tribute system of huband-spokes gives us clues to the question why there has been no regional security community like NATO in East Asia, the episode of the East Asian Mediterranean tells us why East Asian regional community that resurrected in the post-Cold War has been one of market-driven, informal, under-institutionalized, bottom-up community of commerce. In this paper, I have premised that the characteristics of current East Asian regionalism originated from divergent paths of regional community, that is, the regional community of commerce called the East Asian Mediterranean and the hub-and-spokes system led by the USA. Thus, I will trace back to the history of the East Asian Mediterranean, and compare it with the international system of the European Mediterranean of the Long Sixteenth Century (Braudel 1973) in order to look for historical origins of the characteristics and properties of East Asian regionalism. Then, I will explore, in chapter 3, why there is no regional, multilateral, and collective security community like the NATO in East Asia. It is not the East Asian Mediterranean but the Chinese tribute system of the hub-and-spokes system that explains the non-existence of the regional security community in East Asia. In the post-World War II, the USA revived a hub-and-spokes system in East Asia. I explore why the USA adopted a hierarchical and bilateral hub-and-spokes system in East Asia while applying multilateral pluralistic security community in Europe. The huband-spokes system led by the USA had suppressed the rise of the regional security community in East Asia. I will trace back, in chapter 4, the resurrection of a regional community of commerce, particularly in Southeast Asia since the end of the Cold War. ASEAN was created in 1967 and has since matured into the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). In chapter 5, I will explore why has it been very difficult for a regional security community to take roots in Northeast Asia in contrast to the prospering regional community of commerce in Southeast Asia. A possible answer can be found in the East Asian Community Rev (2018) 1:75–88 characteristics of East Asian tradition of international system that have been “power over plenty” and bilateral hub-and-spoke system. Under these settings, the community of commerce was very difficult to expand its sphere and organization into a security community. Chapter 6 explores how can East Asians craft, under v (...truncated)