A Conversation on the Strength of Asian States
Video Transcript:
Robert D. Kaplan: Hello. I'm Robert Kaplan, Chief Geopolitical Analyst for Stratfor and I'm here with Matt Gertken, a senior analyst for East Asia. What we see in Asia is diametrically opposite to what we've seen in the Middle East in the past few years. In the Middle East we see the breakdown of states, we see sectarian chaos.
In Asia, though, we see the consolidation of states. We see states that in the '50s, '60s and early '70s were in the throes of internal turmoil. In Mao's China one thinks of the great cultural revolution, one thinks of the Vietnam War, the Malaya insurgencies, the weakness in the Philippines. And now over the past twenty years or so, Matt, these countries have congealed, they've adhered together and gradually have been building -- especially in the case of China -- air and sea assets where they can project power outward into blue territorial water. And lo and behold, we have conflicts over territory. So Asia really shows us almost like a modern state system at an earlier phase than the West, which is in a very pronounced way nationalistic. So we see almost an earlier version of Europe and the West.
Matt Gertken: You know this is an interesting way of approaching the region. I think it's helpful to look back to the Asian financial crisis, because that was the end point at which the decades of growth and prosperity kind of created a rupture. And since then, many of the Southeast Asian states especially have been able to grow and --
Robert: This was the Asian financial crisis of 1997? Okay.
Matt: Yeah, in '96 and '97 you had this big disjunction between the rapid growth that they had had previously but their inability to sustain that growth domestically because of shortfalls in consumption. And they corrected after that. And many of the Southeast Asian states in particular, but also you know South Korea, they made a dramatic about-faces in order to be sure that they had enough reserves to cover future crises, and also planned more strategically how to have a balanced system. And, you know, since that time we've seen a build up in their economic capacity. We've seen them go through the recent global crisis and really be the hotspots for growth in the region. And that has also yielded dividends in terms of their ability to develop other national assets, other --
Robert: Like the military.
Matt: Like the military.
Robert: Yes. In fact, it sounds like a harsh truth. But it's nevertheless undeniable that capitalist expansion and liberal capitalism leads to military acquisitions. Because the more developed an economy becomes, the more dynamic it becomes, the more it trades with the outside world, the more it builds up interest in the outside world. And then it wants a navy and perhaps an air force to defend those interests. The military rise of China since the Taiwan crisis of 1996 I would think totally falls within that category.
Matt: That's absolutely right, I mean that's a classic balance-of-power situation where China's neighbors are having to reconsider their national security because of this looming potential threat. Of course, many of them are optimistic that China will maintain a peaceful rise, basically keeping with Deng Xiaoping's strategy of laying low in the world. But there's a sense that if China were to decide to use its new, much more modernized military power to assert its claims more aggressively -- especially the territorial claims where we've already seen it do that -- that has triggered this attitude, which goes back to the Romans saying that if you don't want war, you've got to prepare for war.
Robert: Yes, and certainly as one analyst in Singapore told me, Matt, submarines are the new bling. Everybody wants one. The Chinese are increasing their submarine fleet from the low 60s to the mid-70s over the next 10 or 15 years; the Vietnamese have just acquired six new Russian Kilo-class submarines; and so it goes. So there's real high-end modernization going on, from Japan all the way to Australia. And I would say that the biggest arms buildup in the world in terms of serious high-end materiel, not low-end AK-47s but real air and sea power, is in Asia.
Matt: Yeah, and you know looking at Vietnam is a great illustration of what's happening because Vietnam has been forced in the position where they cant remember the grievances that they held against the United States as sharply, because that would hinder their ability to respond to the immediate threat, which is China. And historically China has been an overbearing neighbor.
So Vietnam has conveniently dropped some of the grudge against the United States, reached out to the United States, and you see that partnership developing strategically. But at the same time, of course Vietnam can't trust the United States, and so it looks to the Russians where it can revive Soviet ties, where the technology is better -- not necessarily the best in the world, but it is affordable -- and they can bring that in and hope to create enough of an improvement in their maritime defense especially to at least give the Chinese second thought if they intend to really be aggressive on the disputed islands.
Robert: Yes. For someone like myself who remembers the Vietnam War, it's an incredible irony to see the Vietnamese modernizing Cam Ranh Bay naval station, hoping to attract more visits by U.S. warships. You know, what goes around comes around in a certain way. And of course it's not just Vietnam. We have Japan, which has been gradually shedding its quasi-pacifistic shell and adopting nationalism is a default option.
Matt: Yeah that's definitely true, and you see the same reversal of the recent exercises with the United States and Japan where they simulated invading an island off of California -- very interesting to see the United States helping Japan learn tactics that are marine amphibious island invasion tactics that the United States learned by attacking Japan.
Robert: And the United States suffered by Japanese attacks.
Matt: Exactly.
Robert: You know if you follow the whole Pacific Island war with the blood of U.S. Marines going from one island to the other in the Pacific, and now everything is flipped.
Matt: Right. This is all reflection of the fear of China. The fact that China's capabilities have reached an extent that even if intentions don't seem to be hostile, if they should turn in any way, resulting from internal shifts or outside pressure, that could be very detrimental to the security of these states.
And also looking at Japan, nationalism is a curious phrase with the Japanese because in some ways they exemplify nationalism in Asia, and many of the Southeast Asian states have tried to imitate Japan's independence, its adoption of high technology, its economic vibrancy. But what we currently see is a post-pacifism -- it's not a militaristic nationalism in the same way that it used to be -- but that normalization is enough to create jitters.
Robert: Also, Japan has geographical advantages. It's an island nation, so a very uncomplicated nationalism comes naturally to it, whereas Vietnam is an agglomeration of Sinic, Khmer and Indic influences.
Well one thing we have to watch about all of these developments in Asia is China's internal development. In other words, were China to face a major socio-economic political upheaval, how would that affect the emerging military map of Asia? We'll be following this at Stratfor. Thank you so much.
