[A]mong the countries in the world, it is the Asian states that most clearly approximate the Westphalian state…. The aspiration of the Asian political elite is to build strong, sovereign nation-states.Footnote 1
[T]he Asian subsystem is dressed in Westphalian clothes, but is not performing according to a Westphalian script.Footnote 2
In Japan and South Korea, important strategic debates have involved rhetorical contestation over the meaning of – and how best to achieve – sovereign autonomy. This is significant because there is only a limited availability of vocabularies and concepts with which political leaders can articulate or legitimate their actions within a given social context. And in Japan and South Korea, it is the language of sovereign autonomy that reverberates in domestic political discussions of major foreign policy issues. In Japanese and South Korean debates on alliance relations with the United States, for example, the language of autonomy has been used variously, in conjunction with criticisms of taibei jūzoku (subordination under the United States) or sadaejuui (Great-Power-revering ideology), on the one hand, and rallying calls to “catch up” with the West or exercise independent leadership in global affairs alongside the United States and other major powers, on the other.
Because the set of meanings attached to autonomy has so widely varied, even when discussing the same concept, it is not enough to simply examine the usage of the word autonomy on its own. We need to analyze the context in which it is used. To that end, this book applies the insights from Reinhart Koselleck's conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte) approach, a method of analyzing the use and development of language in its social–historical context.Footnote 3 The basic assumption is that political vocabularies derive from the timing and mode of specific historical experiences. In the case of modern East Asian international relations, sovereign autonomy emerged as the central concept for debating strategies of state-building and status-seeking in international hierarchy in the late nineteenth century. In short, sovereign autonomy is imagined differently, and this fact has profound consequences for East Asian security politics.
The objective of this book is to show how historical experiences have contextualized East Asian security debates, as reflected in these enduring concerns with sovereign autonomy. The central claim is that competing ideas about state sovereignty resulted from complex late nineteenth-century politics at both domestic and regional levels due to the region's insertion into a global hierarchy of interstate relations.Footnote 4 The immediate impact was that sovereign autonomy emerged as a particularly important security concept, discussed in conjunction with sovereignty, state power, and national advancement. Moreover, this book argues, these ideas of status-seeking have remained embedded in the concept of sovereign autonomy and endure as alternative security frames that continue to inform contemporary strategic debates in East Asia.Footnote 5
The idea that autonomy is a variable, rather than a fixed or static attribute, in world politics is itself not novel. In the literature on military alliances, for example, and international relations theory in general, loss of autonomy is viewed as a necessary trade-off for enhanced security. Bargaining power determines what Glenn Snyder refers to as the “security-autonomy trade-off,” the optimal mix of security and autonomy valued by each alliance partner.Footnote 6 Intra-alliance negotiations can occur over time, moreover, following changes in the level of one ally's dependence on the other or shifting levels of external threat. Therefore, autonomy-promoting stances – particularly in weaker allies – by definition pose a challenge to existing alliance relations.
But the two sets of alliance relationships in East Asia present a more complicated picture. Autonomy matters in terms of not only its varying degree but also its kind. It is such qualitative variation in the rhetoric of autonomy that is the subject of investigation in this book. Autonomy, the book will show, has a specific set of meanings in the East Asian context. In Japanese and South Korean discussions of alliance politics, the language of autonomy has been used, in different contexts, to both dispute and strengthen alliance ties with the United States. In two of the most heated periods of alliance tensions in recent history, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio (2009–2010) used the rallying calls of “autonomous defense” and “autonomous (or independent) foreign policy,” respectively, to publicly contest existing modes of cooperation with the United States. In contrast, some leaders, such as South Korean leader Park Chung Hee (1961–1979) and Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro, have at times defined autonomy more expansively, in terms of playing an autonomous role in global affairs, under the influence of or aided by the United States.
What are the consequences of such varied interpretations of autonomy? A good example illustrating the effects of different political rhetoric on autonomy is the contrasting outcomes of alliance cooperation in Japan and South Korea during the Iraq war. When, in March 2003, the United States requested aid from its allies in the Iraq war campaign, governments in both Tokyo and Seoul complied by dispatching troops to Iraq. Yet, while in Japan the effects of the Iraq war on alliance relations were fairly limited, in South Korea ensuing tensions destabilized relations with the United States and threatened to derail cooperation on a wide range of alliance commitments and issues. The nearly year-long delay of the dispatch of additional South Korean troops to Iraq, contentious negotiations on the returning of the Yongsan military base land and on the timing of relocating US forces stationed in South Korea, the moving of select American troops from South Korea to Iraq, and public disagreements on policy toward North Korea were indications of widespread politicization of alliance relations.
Such contrasting politics of alliance cooperation in Japan and South Korea in 2003–2004 was not just about the Iraq war; what mattered was whether or not there had been a preceding shift in leaders’ rhetorical stance. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun (2003–2008) challenged the existing security consensus based on alliance-supporting roles by redefining jaju (autonomy) and offering his own vision of jaju gukbang (autonomous defense). In Japan, however, the rhetoric on autonomy was of a different nature. In justifying his decisions to send the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to Afghanistan and Iraq, Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro (2001–2006) continued to use the language of increasing kokusai kōken (international contribution), referring to the widely supported mission to increase Japan's autonomy within the alliance structure. In other words, different conceptualizations of autonomy led to varied outcomes in alliance politics. How leaders chose to describe and contest (or not) state status in dealing with dominant powers affected the type and character of alliance cooperation.
The challenge of the Iraq war for American leadership, authority, and legitimacy has been widely acknowledged.Footnote 7 The aftermath of the Iraq war also underscores the point that hierarchical stability depends on more than coercive power. This is consistent with the existing scholarship on hierarchy that takes seriously the necessity of examining both its material and ideational aspects.Footnote 8 But, as the above examples of Japan and South Korea show, the United States was not alone in facing a crisis of legitimacy. American power and influence constitute a structure of international hierarchy, one that affects foreign policy choices and paths of legitimation for political leaders in the global security partners of the United States. How international hierarchy affects domestic legitimacy politics in non-dominant states, however, has not yet been systematically examined.
This book seeks to fill this lacuna by empirically examining how political leaders talk about international hierarchy. Why is it important to examine the language of hierarchy? The type of status-seeking strategy advocated by leaders of non-dominant states can have major consequences for specific hierarchical relationships and also the stability of the international system.Footnote 9 For example, whether or not China embraces a system-supporting status or seeks to revise the existing status quo has consequences for regional and global order.Footnote 10 In the East Asian region, domestic political debates on dealing with dominant powers continue to impact foreign policy outcomes, including in cases of Japan–US and South Korea–US alliance cooperation. Specifically, the rhetorical framing of autonomy, as seen during the Iraq war, is an important factor in explaining alliance relations and stability of the regional order in East Asia.
The book is divided into two parts, motivated by the following related questions: How did the introduction of Westphalian sovereignty principles affect the East Asian regional order in the late nineteenth century? Why, and in what ways, does sovereign autonomy remain contested in contemporary Japan and South Korea? The key insight offered in the book is that autonomy is the language with which to conceptualize and contest the status of the state within a hierarchically ordered system of international relations. This is because Westphalian sovereign autonomy was adopted as regional practice in a context where international hierarchy expanded in scope – from regional to global – in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The repeated contestation of autonomy in status-seeking states, furthermore, is what maintains the institutional and ideational foundations of a durable hierarchical order. That is, the politics of sovereign autonomy allows the continued imagining of hierarchy.Footnote 11
The specific processes by which international hierarchy is reproduced via the language of sovereign autonomy in domestic legitimacy politics will be further explored in Chapter 1. The remainder of the book answers the questions raised above by first examining how sovereign autonomy was conceived as a dilemma of status-seeking in East Asia against the backdrop of the region's insertion into an expanding “international society,”Footnote 12 and then empirically showing how these status-seeking frames continue to provide a key source of domestic legitimacy politics in Japan and South Korea, particularly in their relations with the United States.
Significance of Study: Hierarchy and East Asian International Relations
To reiterate, this book argues that sovereign autonomy is the language with which to articulate the problem of status-seeking within international hierarchy. What are some of the theoretical and empirical contributions offered by this argument? At the level of theory, this book adds to the growing literature on the role of international hierarchy in maintaining regional order. While a number of scholars have already examined different periods of hierarchy in historical and contemporary East Asia, none have systematically compared these past and present hierarchical orders.
In his seminal study of premodern East Asian international relations, David Kang has argued that the region has historically been most stable under a single dominant power.Footnote 13 Because his emphasis is on the shared cultural norms and institutions underpinning the Sinocentric tributary order, however, Kang overemphasizes the “Chinese” character of hierarchical order in the region's history. In fact, he restricts the applicability of his hierarchical stability argument to countries within the region, from which outside powers such as the United States are explicitly excluded.Footnote 14 The different types and sources of non-balancing behavior in hierarchical orders, however, need not only apply to a regional scenario in which China is dominant.
In fact, it could be argued that hierarchical order in the region was reestablished with stronger impetus in the late nineteenth century via European gunboat diplomacy, imperialism, and “civilizational” standards.Footnote 15 In his study of East Asian socialization into European international society during this period, Shogo Suzuki examines how Chinese and Japanese elites began to recognize that “the international environment was not simply that of anarchy and power but of differentiated modes of interaction.”Footnote 16 In other words, hierarchy did not disappear with the arrival of the West and the decline of China. It simply expanded, from a regionally circumscribed hierarchical order (the traditional Sinocentric order) to a global hierarchy which included the militarily dominant European powers as well as the United States.
Indeed, Edward Keene suggests we should replace the concept of “expansion” with “stratification” of the international social space in the nineteenth century.Footnote 17 Similar to the argument presented in this book, Keene contends that social stratification, determined not only by the material capability of states but also by their relative social standing based on prestige and authority, is a key attribute of international hierarchy during this period.Footnote 18 Global racial discrimination added another layer to this social context of international hierarchy. Japan's quest for greater status vis-à-vis the Western powers – in particular, Britain and the United States – continued in the first half of the twentieth century, taking the form of diplomatic measures (seeking, for example, to propose a racial equality clause at Versailles in 1919 and to overturn the Immigration Act of 1924 in the United States, which sought to exclude Asian immigrants) and eventually imperialism and militarization.Footnote 19
After 1945, by virtue of its dominant material capabilities and unsurpassed political influence in East Asia, the United States has shaped and led the regional order. The special role that the United States plays in East Asian security has been well documented in terms of its security commitments to its allies, threat-balancing between China and Japan, and political and economic leadership.Footnote 20 In recognition of such American power and influence, the regional order has been variously characterized as a “hub-and-spokes” system of bilateral alliances, “incomplete hegemony,” or hegemony under the United States.Footnote 21 Yuen Foong Khong claims that “the United States is so deeply embedded in the international relations of Asia in general, and implicated in the region's relative peace and economic dynamism in particular…that it is not possible to analyze the international relations of the region without reference to the United States.”Footnote 22
Seen from this perspective, hierarchy never left East Asia since the decline of the premodern Sinocentric order. In the late nineteenth century, a new global hierarchy replaced the existing regional system of stratification. In other words, hierarchy did not exit the region, but rather expanded in scope. A new global and regional hierarchy was firmly established under US leadership after 1945. While existing studies of hierarchy have conducted cross-national comparisons of hierarchical relations with the United States (or other dominant powers), this book focuses on how hierarchy has continued to evolve over time in a specific regional context – that of East Asia.Footnote 23
There are two major reasons why a diachronic analysis of the East Asian region is important for understanding hierarchy. Because of the historical influence of Confucianism in East Asia, and the Confucian rules and rituals upon which the Sinocentric tributary system was built, it is too easy to assume that belief in hierarchy is somehow hardwired into the region.Footnote 24 While shared cultural norms no doubt played a central role in maintaining hierarchical relations in the premodern diplomatic order,Footnote 25 hierarchy continued to be part of East Asian countries’ strategic environment even after the end of Sinocentrism, imperialism, and colonization. In that sense, the East Asian region offers a unique opportunity to study the effects of cultural influences compared to other causal factors on the maintenance of hierarchical orders. The findings from this book show that, hierarchy, like any other form of power, has always been politically contested, even in cases we are most likely to uncritically accept as hierarchy-prone, such as the Sinocentric tributary system.Footnote 26 That is, hierarchy is neither culturally innate to the region nor structurally determined by asymmetrical distributions of power. The variations in historical experiences and foreign policy outcomes in Japan and Korea reveal that hierarchy in East Asia has been politically constructed and contested – by legitimacy-seeking political leaders. In contrast to most existing studies, this book analyzes hierarchy as is experienced and politicized from the non-dominant state's perspective. This emphasis on the domestic politics of hierarchical relations also highlights the agency of local actors in sustaining the material and ideational structures of international hierarchy.
A second way in which the temporal dimension of hierarchy in East Asia stands to offer important theoretical and empirical insights is by showcasing the significance of the long-enduring domestic political and institutional context in which hierarchy has persisted. This is not to say that a prior history of hierarchical orders necessarily creates conditions for uncritical acceptance of hierarchy in the future. But it is important to recognize that hierarchical orders are not newly created on blank canvases. The postwar security and economic “contract” between the United States and its allies in East Asia took place in a region-specific context already familiar with the political challenge of advancing the nation within international hierarchy. The postwar context in East Asia was one that was embedded with a set of institutionalized ideas and practices of hierarchical relations. In other words, the language with which to articulate, problematize, and legitimate a course of action on dealing with the condition of international hierarchy existed as a “usable past” for Japanese and Korean political leaders.Footnote 27 What I am not suggesting here is that the imagining and use of history is purely instrumental. In this book, I am interested in examining how the condition of international hierarchy has repeatedly become a usable past in Japanese and Korean politics. As Thomas Berger argues, official political narratives are neither historically determined nor unrestricted in their malleability and use by powerful political actors. Rather, collective memory “sets sharp boundaries to the kind of historical narrative that can be adopted and sustained over time,” although narratives do become reshaped through processes of political contention and cultural resistance.Footnote 28
The continued debates on the meaning of sovereign autonomy and the type of status to pursue vis-à-vis dominant powers in discussing Japan–US and South Korea–US relations indicate the enduring ideational foundations of hierarchical order in East Asia. Hierarchy, in this sense, should not be understood as an “independent” variable that competes with and outperforms alternative causal explanations. Rather, the theoretical framework of hierarchy complements existing accounts of East Asian international relations by adding explanatory depth to what has previously been treated as instances of ordinary alliance negotiations, nationalism, or anti-Americanism in Japan and South Korea.Footnote 29
Still others might question just how much hierarchy matters in postwar Japan and South Korea, especially given the significant domestic and global transformations in the twentieth century. This puzzling resonance of the sovereign autonomy concept and language, which suggests a strong hierarchical worldview, is what motivated the research questions raised in this book. Rather than theoretically precluding it a priori, however, I believe the degree of hierarchy's relevance and significance in postwar East Asian international relations is an empirical question that deserves systematic exploration, which I seek to do in this book. The evidence suggests that the need to enhance status within an international hierarchy has surprisingly, and quite stubbornly, remained a resonant goal among Japanese and Koreans. This has remained the case despite structural transformations – including deimperialization, decolonization, rapid economic development, and democratization – that have pushed these two countries to become modern “Westphalian” states.
The Language of Sovereign Autonomy
The late nineteenth century provides a critical political–historical context for East Asian international relations because the adoption of Westphalian sovereignty principles and socialization into an expanded international hierarchy were shared regional experiences. While the transition from feudal societies to modern nation-states was a varied experience for each individual country, encounters with European powers during this period necessitated changes in regional diplomatic relations and domestic legitimacy politics in China, Japan, and Korea. Practices (and statuses) that had been bilaterally negotiated between each country fell victim to the new “script” of Westphalian sovereignty.Footnote 30 At the same time, and somewhat paradoxically, regional encounters with the Western state system based on sovereign autonomy crystallized the notion that external – and separate – standards of power determined the strength and status of non-Western nation-states.
One of the most fundamental transformations during this period was the creation of a regionally shared language of sovereign autonomy. Contemporary security concepts, such as sovereignty, autonomy, and (state) power, were recreated through translation, transliteration, or recombination following regional encounters with Western powers in the nineteenth century.Footnote 31 Whereas past security discourses and regional diplomacy in East Asia had been conducted in a language common to a largely Confucian (or Confucian-influenced) elites across the region, the concept of autonomy helped to create new elites and sources of political mobilization that led to the vertical incorporation of various societal members into a national citizenry.Footnote 32
Thus, the new language of sovereign autonomy helped reshape the legal and institutional context for conducting foreign relations in the region. But it is also important to recognize that the new rules and principles of Westphalian sovereignty did not simply replace, but were rather juxtaposed against, traditional diplomatic practices. That is, discourses of Westphalian autonomy and Western international law emerged in the context of legal pluralism in the last phases of the Sinocentric order.Footnote 33 As a consequence, a central problem facing East Asian state officials was not merely responding to Western demands for trade and extraterritoriality, but dealing with intra-regional complexities arising from this dual political institutional context. Western standards of statehood introduced another layer of international hierarchy rather than erasing the existing hierarchical order in the region.Footnote 34
As China, Japan, and Korea deepened their interactions with the Western powers, gaining recognition as capable modern states and enhancing status vis-à-vis other Great Powers became a shared concern. In Japan and Korea, Western political concepts such as privilege, right, and sovereignty were also carefully studied and reconstructed during this time to connote the power and authority of the state (kokken). Sovereignty itself was given a strictly state-centric interpretation, as “a term representing a country's esteem and prosperity, its unlimited powers, its unrestricted kokken.”Footnote 35 Even the imperial institution was linked to kokken in that Shinto was made a state religion.Footnote 36 The symbolism of the emperor changed from its emphasis on the “national essence” (kokutai) to the external civilizational status of the Japanese state.
What is notable about the nineteenth century, and what makes it such a “critical” juncture for studying region order, is this mixed legacy of Westphalianization. Reaching advanced-nation status through a “rich country, strong army” (fukoku kyōhei in Japanese, buguk gangbyeong in Korean) became an all-important agenda, but within the context of a reimagined and reified hierarchical order.Footnote 37 In other words, to be a truly sovereign state was to be judged favorably against civilizational standards, as promoted by dominant powers in the international system.Footnote 38
The new legitimating language of sovereign autonomy emerged as a focal point and shared knowledge for regional diplomacy. But the task of state-strengthening via status enhancement remained in the late nineteenth-century context of a reconstituted regional hierarchy. Sovereign autonomy was understood as status to be negotiated with dominant powers, either by integrating into the existing hierarchy or by seeking insulation from, or minimizing dependence on, external influences. These strategies of integration and insulation, not surprisingly, were adaptations of the alternative security frames that had at various times legitimated and challenged Japanese and Korean rulers in the previous hierarchical order. In other words, as a recalibrated hierarchy was established in the region, previous frames that offered solutions to dealing with international hierarchy were mobilized for political action. It is these existing modes of legitimation and contestation in international hierarchy that endure as institutionalized ideas in contemporary Japanese and South Korean security politics.
The Dual Frames of Sovereign Autonomy
A careful examination of discussions about sovereign autonomy reveals that they occur within certain “patterned constraints.”Footnote 39 That is, foreign policy problems – including the quest for sovereign autonomy – are presented as choosing between two alternative status-enhancing security frames.Footnote 40 My definition of frames as schemas of interpretation, or filters to make sense of the world, is similar to that of Goffman, Gamson, and other social movement scholars.Footnote 41 Frame analysts have pointed out that frames are context-dependent and in many ways culturally constrained.Footnote 42 Frames are made possible through socially shared expectations – based on common political vocabularies and knowledge of what is being discussed. Framing vocabularies “provide words for interpreting things – and interrelated set of terms through which meaning, value, and reason are attributed to the world. The vocabulary is intersubjective, a social fact, and it is handed down to us by a shared tradition to which each successive generation adds its respective neologisms.”Footnote 43 Within this intersubjective context, alternative frames exist and are pitted against each other.Footnote 44
Each frame of status-seeking in hierarchy emphasizes either integration into or insulation from the dominant power's “sphere of influence.” Through integration, states gain coveted membership into an exclusive club of “advanced” or “civilized” nations. Integration has meant the emulation of “advanced countries” (senshinkoku in Japanese, seonjin-guk in Korean) or to “become advanced (countries)” (J: senshinka, K: seonjinhwa), a consistent theme in Japanese and Korean politics and foreign policy.Footnote 45 Other common terms or phrases that indicate the frame of integration include “international contribution” (J: kokusai kōken, K: gukje gongheon), global standards, national status, or position, and “catching up” with the Great Powers of the world.Footnote 46
The insulation frame on the other hand emphasizes a very different type of status for the state: self-reliance, or foreign policy independence. The goal of insulation is to minimize the direct involvement – and indeed, the political authority – of the dominant powers. In recognition of the power and authority of local or global hegemons, however, insulation has not meant complete isolation or “exit” from the system but rather creating distance from outside influences or “hiding” from the dominant power.Footnote 47 Keywords representative of the insulation frame include (un)equal status, independence, self-reliance, and economic or cultural sovereignty.
The frames of integration and insulation represent ideal types of enduring foreign policy ideas in Japan and South Korea.Footnote 48 At any given time, leaders will espouse foreign policy positions that usually mix elements of both but emphasize one over the other, especially when facing intense political competition. While in international relations theory the term “autonomy” conventionally evokes the frame of insulation and demands for equal status with more powerful countries, the catch-up mentality undergirding the integration frame has been just as prominent in the East Asian region. Framed as integration, foreign policy autonomy is seen as more fluid and complex, based on a general recognition of limits to complete autonomy as “small states.”Footnote 49 Thus, we see tacit accommodation of some sovereignty violations in exchange for security and economic benefits.Footnote 50 Emphasis is put on pockets of autonomy in global affairs alongside, and usually in support of, what are perceived to be “global standards” or the dominant power's rules and institutional preferences.Footnote 51
A common reference point for both of these frames, and what ties them together, is an underlying worldview of international hierarchy that recognizes differential power and status among states.Footnote 52 Objectively accurate or not, modern readings of Japanese and Korean histories of foreign relations are often premised on such Great-Power-centrism. Security choices are about the fate of “small countries” surrounded by Great Powers and striving to become Great Powers themselves. Integration and insulation then represent competing modes of status-seeking within the social context of international hierarchy. These security frames also reflect a deeply embedded foreign policy perspective based on international hierarchy.
Hierarchy then is reproduced through patterned usage of language, one that indicates a distinct “problem-space” reflecting East Asian experiences in the late nineteenth century. Put simply, a “problem-space” is a demarcated discursive context, a context of language and argument. It is:
an ensemble of questions and answers around which a horizon of identifiable stakes (conceptual as well as ideological-political stakes) hangs. That is to say, what defines this discursive context are not only the particular problems that get posed as problems as such (the problem of ‘race,’ say), but the particular questions that seem worth asking and the kinds of answers that seem worth having.Footnote 53
In other words, the nineteenth-century political experience of compromised sovereignty – both perceived and real – provides the politically “identifiable stakes” and continues to inform Japanese and Korean security debates.Footnote 54 Hierarchical ranking and status, especially their country's standing in the world, remain all-important to the Japanese and Koreans.Footnote 55 Since the Meiji period, Japanese leaders strove to “catch up with and surpass” (oitsuku or oikosu) the West and become a “first-class nation” (ittō koku).Footnote 56 According to Akira Iriye, Japanese political leaders in the modern era have been devoted solely to the enhancement of the power of the state (kokkashugi).Footnote 57
While a burgeoning literature on the origins of modern political concepts has surfaced in the study of East Asian international relations, the focus of these studies has been on how concepts emerged during critical junctures in regional political development, such as the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century or the postwar period.Footnote 58 What has not yet been systematically explored is the political origins of the sovereign autonomy concept and its long-term impact – that is, how it has been contested throughout key structural changes in the East Asian region, such as the decline of the premodern Sinocentric order in the late nineteenth century, the end of the Asia-Pacific War in 1945, and the end of the Cold War in the 1990s. Based on the recognition that references to and contestation over sovereign autonomy occur within the nineteenth century problem-space described above, I conduct a historical analysis of the concept of sovereign autonomy in East Asia, tracing security debates in Japan and Korea from the late nineteenth century to the post-Cold War period.
A major purpose of this study then is to show how the concept of sovereign autonomy in East Asia – as it has evolved since the late nineteenth century – is not analogous with the conventional assumption of formal (Westphalian) or legal sovereignty.Footnote 59 In Japan and South Korea, this book argues, sovereign autonomy is commonly understood as status to be negotiated through relations with other dominant powers in the international system. The patterns of language use in Japan and South Korea reveal hierarchy to be a regionally shared constraint – embedded in the concept of autonomy. Hierarchical orders endure not because of voluntary consent but because the constraints of hierarchy are a socially recognized fact and they provide meaning for leaders’ actions and words. This novel conceptual historical approach to studying regional security order allows us to recognize such key moments of legitimacy politics during which hierarchy is politically reconstructed.
Plan of the Book
This book examines the recreation of hierarchy in the regional order in the late nineteenth century and its lasting impact on contemporary East Asian international relations. In the following chapters, I seek to explain how contemporary security debates – surrounding the concept of autonomy – are informed by specific historical configurations of sovereign statehood and status-based conceptions of state power. Specifically, I argue that strategic debates in East Asia are based on shared contextual knowledge – that of international hierarchy. The mechanism that reproduces this lens of hierarchy is domestic legitimacy politics that contest the meaning of sovereign autonomy in order to reorient state status vis-à-vis the dominant power.
Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical framework of the book – on the enduring social context of hierarchy in East Asian international relations. I show how the nineteenth-century problem-space, reflecting a lens of Great-Power-centric hierarchy, has been institutionalized through practices of legitimation – which involve the usage of specific language (that of sovereign autonomy) and the interpretation of its meaning (within the frames of integration or insulation). Chapter 2 examines how hierarchy and power asymmetry provided varying sources of regime legitimacy in premodern East Asia. For ruling regimes in Joseon (Chosŏn) Korea and Tokugawa Japan, positioning and status-seeking vis-à-vis China was crucial for domestic political legitimation. Through this comparison, this chapter shows the political variability of hierarchical order in the region. In Chapter 3, I compare how sovereign autonomy as a concept was reformulated and contested in Japan and Korea as both countries attempted to transition to modern statehood. I also examine the domestic political processes by which hierarchy was reconfigured in the regional order in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Chapter 4 examines how status-seeking security frames persisted in Japanese and South Korean language and legitimacy politics during the Cold War. This is illustrated in Chapter 5 through empirical case studies of Japanese and South Korean leaders attempting to generate political legitimacy by promoting alternative conceptions of sovereign autonomy: Kishi Nobusuke's rejection of Yoshida's “Middle Power” integration strategy and his attempt to achieve greater foreign policy autonomy through the revision of the security treaty with the United States; and Park Chung Hee's mobilization of a comprehensive, nationwide “self-reliance” movement in the aftermath of the Guam Doctrine and the Nixon administration's decision to reduce the number of US troops in South Korea.
Chapter 6 analyzes two additional periods during which legitimacy politics occurred via pro-autonomy mobilizations: the Roh Moo-hyun presidency in South Korea in the early 2000s and Japan under Hatoyama Yukio in 2009–2010. While both instances were conventionally portrayed as expected stories of anti-American or “nationalistic” responses to American foreign policy choices, I argue it was the attempt to shift the framing of autonomy in each case that prompted widespread societal mobilizations and political backlash. The final chapter concludes with a discussion of the broader theoretical and policy implications of this study.
