Ocean governance, maritime security and the consequences of modernity in Northeast Asia

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254347188 Ocean governance, maritime security and the consequences of modernity in Northeast Asia Article in The Pacific Review · May 2012 DOI: 10.1080/09512748.2012.658847 CITATIONS READS 3 58 1 author: Christian Wirth Tohoku University 9 PUBLICATIONS 14 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Christian Wirth on 22 May 2015. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. All in-text references underlined in blue are added to the original document and are linked to publications on ResearchGate, letting you access and read them immediately. DRAFT VERSION: NOT FOR CITATION! Forthcoming in The Pacific Review OCEAN GOVERNANCE, MARITIME SECURITY, AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNITY IN NORTHEAST ASIA Christian Wirth1 Abstract High economic growth rates, the revolution in telecommunications, and the end of the Cold War have brought about rapid and profound changes to the domestic as well as regional environments of Northeast Asian governments. The maritime sphere, where increasingly militarized state boundaries delineate political authority and economic activities link increasingly interdependent communities therein, bears high significance for the study of regional cooperation. This paper looks at how the maritime sphere of Northeast Asia is represented in common political and academic discourses of international relations. It finds that maritime affairs are firmly cast in the language of national security, and that empirical evidence against perceived threats and related security imperatives is often neglected if not completely ignored. The paper argues that the maritime space, due to its special character, has become the stage on which the consequences of modernity appear particularly strong. The relentless quest to develop and control the ocean clashes with the notion of the sea as a space of global trade and communication flow. At the same time, the ocean as an entity itself is excluded from the discourse because it is irreconcilable with the conception of the international system of sovereign territorial units. As a result, the maritime sphere is seen as a dividing element between nations rather than a connecting element, and salient environmental problems of the maritime space remain low on political and academic agendas. This is also a consequence of mainstream methods of political science that continue to reproduce discourses of territorial division and fail to offer alternative approaches suitable for the study of contemporary Northeast Asia. Keywords Northeast Asia, Maritime sphere, Energy security, Sea lane security, Environmental governance, Territorial sovereignty 1 Christian Wirth is a PhD Candidate at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies (GSAPS) at Waseda University. Address: 1-21-1 Nishi-Waseda, Nishi-Waseda Bldg. No. 9, 508, Shinjuku-Ku, 169-0051 Tokyo, Japan. Email: chwirth@gmail.com 1 INTRODUCTION Academic conventions divide up reality into separate spheres, each with its own theorizing (Cox 1981). The consequences of modern modes of scientific enquiry and policy-making are particularly apparent when it comes to the discourses and practices of ocean governance. Since ancient times Northeast Asian waters encompassing the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan have not only served as an abundant reservoir of natural resources, the maritime sphere was also the space in which human communities interacted across political boundaries in the forms of commerce, scientific and political exchange, and warfare. Under the impact of a set of developments commonly referred to as globalization, the economic and political meaning of the maritime sphere changed. As a result of growing populations and industrial production and consumption, the ocean became heavily polluted while ecosystems became significantly degraded (UNESCAP 2005). Further, the number of goods shipped across Northeast Asian seas between the booming economies and the related consumer markets soared. In short, the density of interaction within the ocean sphere increased drastically, and the notion of a maritime world economy became crucial for explaining globalization (Cartier 1999). Since the Northeast Asian boundaries of the Chinese, Korean, Russian and Japanese states largely concern the maritime sphere the delimitation of ocean space into areas of clearly defined territorial jurisdictions has significant implications for how transactions between human communities are shaped. The system of territorial states enshrined in the United Nations Charter further expanded into the ocean with the promulgation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1994. This way of ordering human interaction and managing ecological systems raises questions about how to organize transactions among different political communities on the one hand, and human communities and the wider ecosystem on the other. I argue that maritime space, due to its special character, has become the stage on which the consequences of modernity appear particularly strong. The relentless quest to develop and control the ocean through geometric zoning clashes with the notion of the sea as a space of global trade and communication flows. This results in the perpetuation of securitization of the maritime sphere in terms of national security, thereby reifying the territorial dimension of states. At the same time, the ocean as an 2 entity itself is excluded from the discourse because its nature is irreconcilable with the modern conception of the territorially defined system of sovereign states and bureaucratic institutions designed for economic development. As a result, the maritime sphere is generally seen as a dividing rather than a connecting element between societies, and salient environmental problems occupy low priorities on political and academic agendas. This is also a consequence of traditions of political science which rely on Cartesian methods of enquiry manifest in disciplinary orthodoxy and assumptions about spatial order. While research on ocean governance remains confined to disciplinary spheres, the adherence of political scientists to positivism and the explicit or implicit focus on states as units of analysis continues to reproduce discourses of territorial sovereignty as well as political division, and therefore fails to offer alternatives suitable for the study of contemporary Northeast Asia. The next section refers to existing studies and the background of the securitization of the maritime sphere in Northeast Asia. The third, fourth, and fifth sections examine securitization arguments in the forms of the geostrategic discourse of territorial integrity, the role of hydrocarbon resources such as oil and natural gas, and ship-borne trade to, from, and within Northeast Asia in the context of Sea Lanes Of Communication (SLOC) security. Sixth, fishery and environmental governance as trans-boundary issues are discussed in relation to state sovereignty. The last section draws conclusions from the above cases in view of prospects for regional cooperation in Northeast Asia. ANALYZING MARITIME AFFAIRS IN NORTHEAST ASIA Unlike Europe, East Asia has not witnessed a decline of military spending since the end of the Cold War. While certain defence budgets, such as the Japanese, generally remained stable, others steadily increased. At the same time, military security strategies have significantly evolved as Northeast Asian and United States (US) policymakers continued to put more emphasis on the modernisation of their air forces, air defence and missile defence systems, and their navies in particular (Hartfiel, Job 2007; Holmes, Yoshihara 2010; Zhu 2009). The naval dimension is of primary interest due to the ongoing disputes about territorial and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) delimitation, and the importance attached to East Asian seas in view of concerns with energy and economic security. The disputes Japan has with Russia over the four southernmost Kurile Islands/Northern Territories, with South Korea over Dokdo/Takeshima Island, with the governments in Beijing and Taipei over the EEZ delimitation in the East China 3 Sea as well as the sovereignty over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands; the Chinese contentions with South Korea over the EEZ delimitation in the Yellow Sea, and with Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Taiwan and the Philippines in the South China Sea attract enormous political and scholarly attention. One major reason therefore is that, in view of the discourse of a ‘rising China’, the maritime sphere figures as a prominent indicator, especially in the eyes of North American observers, of how ‘peaceful’, as claimed by Chinese academics and policy-makers, that rise really is (Christensen 1999, Ross 2009), and how Beijing’s increasing influence can and should be contained, ‘hedged’ against, or its ‘choices being shaped’. Moreover, as the June 2008 Sino-Japanese consensus on the East China Sea is stalled and the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of the Parties in the South China Sea remains fragile, these maritime disputes are major points of contention among Northeast Asian governments which seriously hamper efforts at better regional cooperation, and may lead to armed conflicts. With very few exceptions such as Valencia and Amae (2003), Valencia (1996) or Paik (2005) who advocate the building of maritime regimes in East Asia, the literature of political science dealing with the maritime sphere focuses rather narrowly on a few issues of seemingly intricate maritime conflicts. Emphasis is usually put on geopolitical arguments (Emmers 2010; Holmes, Yoshihara 2008). Other major strands take legal perspectives (Kim 1995; Valencia 2007; Zhou 2008; Zhu 2008), discuss the influence of nationalism in territorial disputes (Deans 2000; Jiang 2007; Manicom 2008), or focus on the backgrounds and political management of the disputes (Drifte 2009; Hara 2001; Koo 2009). In summary, instead of comprehensive analyses of ocean politics, one is left with accounts of the emergence and management of disputes rather than the exploration of reasons why ocean affairs are so heavily framed in terms of national security. Taking the East China Sea with a focus on Chinese and Japanese concerns as an example, this article critically examines different dimensions of security, illustrates their interplay and seeks to shed light on the assumptions underlying the political and scholarly discourses about maritime affairs in Northeast Asia. A look at official documents and governmental statements shows that the East China Sea is most likely the area where China and Japan, as the two major Asian actors of the regional security order, may clash in the event of a political crisis. The escalation of tensions over the ownership of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands and the EEZ delimitation in September 2005 and 2010 revealed this potential. The 1998 white paper, National Defense of China, refers to ‘disputes on territorial and marine rights and interests,’ in an optimistic way and highlights the need to find settlements through negotiations (State Council 1998). The 2000 edition raises the concern that ‘Encroachments on China's 4 sovereignty and interests in the South China Sea are not infrequent, and some extra-regional countries are attempting to interfere in this issue.’ The 2006 document, for instance, mentions the ‘growing complexities in the Asia-Pacific security environment’ and ‘territorial disputes, conflicting claims over maritime rights and interests,’ among others, as factors that ‘undermine trust and cooperation among states in the Asia-Pacific’ (State Council 2006). More explicit statements are regularly voiced in the official press (China Daily 2009; Li 2009). In Japanese defense white papers’ concerns of territorial and EEZ delimitation as well as sea lane security are both more explicit and acute. The 2005 report Defense of Japan, comments on Chinese activities: ‘In recent years, we have witnessed vigorous maritime activities by Chinese naval vessels and oceanographic research ships navigating in waters near Japan. One of the most notable cases has been the incident caused by a submerged Chinese nuclear powered submarine that intruded into Japan’s territorial waters last November’ (MOD 2005:14). The more recent editions update in detail Chinese naval activities in waters around Japan, including movements in the disputed areas consequently termed as ‘intrusions’ (MOD 2009). In short, maritime issues, especially in the East China Sea, make for major Japanese security concerns vis-à-vis China, while the same issues represent some of the most sensitive problems for Chinese policymakers and strongly influence public opinion towards Japan and the US. Arguments for the securitization of the maritime sphere raised by Japanese, Chinese, as well as US defence analysts, and echoed by politicians and academics revolve around the same three issues: defence of territorial integrity essential for national security; access to hydrocarbon resources and rare metal deposits in order to alleviate the shortage of domestic reserves, and safeguarding of sea lanes of communication (SLOC) in order to secure the free circulation of trade flows. Security is closely related to identity. Camilleri (2000:308) in line with McSweeney (1999) defines insecurity as ‘related to the experience of social disruption, the fragility of social relationships, the absence of cognitive control over, or affective empathy with, various forms of human interaction.’ Thus, levels of insecurity increase during times of rapid socio-economic change which leads to the securitization of certain issues based on historical experience (Buzan, Waever, De Wilde 1998). However, Caballero-Anthony and Emmers (2006) point to the need for closer analysis of the nature and motives of securitizing actors, the mechanisms at work, linkages between security issues, securitization outcomes, the influence of political systems, and the relevance of international norms. In exploring the strongly dividing construction of the Northeast Asian maritime sphere, the article seeks to answer two questions: 5 First, how can we understand the strong securitization of the maritime sphere framed in terms of national security despite the rapidly increasing interdependence of Northeast Asian societies? Second, why do questions of territorial and EEZ delimitation, as well as sea lane security receive this much political and scholarly attention while salient questions about environmental problems such as ocean pollution, the crisis of fisheries and the surge in intra-regional ship-borne trade do not? Due to the limited space, this study focuses on those aspects and areas of the maritime sphere that are deemed relevant by the governments in Tokyo and Beijing, and influence Northeast Asian politics. The next sections assess the most common claims about maritime security and raises questions concerning their underlying assumptions. JAPANESE AND CHINESE CONSTRUCTIONS OF MARITIME SECURITY Military security: the imperative of securing strategically important footholds Political and academic discourses about international security often highlight the strategic value of certain territories in the event of armed conflict. With regard to the East China Sea, and also several geographic features (reefs, rocks, or islands) in the Western Pacific, these arguments are frequently made. For instance, the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands are part of an imagined ‘island chain’ which stretches from the southern main island of Japan, Kyushu, south-westward including the Ryukyu (Okinawa) Islands to Taiwan. Looking at a map, this ‘island chain’ appears to connect the bigger land masses of Japan and Taiwan, thereby separating the East China Sea from the Western Pacific. Similar island groups can be found between Taiwan and the Philippine archipelago, north of Japan between Hokkaido and Russia, and to the south of Japan scattered across the Western Pacific from just south of Tokyo to the Indonesian Irian Jaya. These island chains are marked with thick red lines in the US Department of Defense’s Annual Report to the US Congress titled Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2006. The construction of island chains by strategic analysts is used to draw lines that would mark barriers or defence perimeters relevant to surface and submarine combatants in the event of military conflict. How precisely these island chains would be relevant in contemporary warfare often remains unclear though. Some refer to them as creating passages obligés, narrow strips of water that vessels need to pass through, making them more easily spotted by adversaries, thereby providing tactical advantages for the side in control of these features and the surrounding waters. Apparently, this kind of strategy was employed during the Cold War as Japanese and US submarines 6 tried to contain Soviet boats within the semi-enclosed waters of the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan (Holmes and Yoshihara 2010). In this context, for instance, the features that Tokyo claims to be classified as the Okinotori Islands (some experts describe it as ‘two eroding protrusions no larger than king-size beds’) located 1700 km south of Tokyo, are said to be of strategic importance in naval warfare (cited in Yoshikawa 2007). The natural environment of the oceans does have a significant impact on military operation and islands in the vast Pacific may be of strategic value. Apart from the need to assess the specific use of each feature in question, the geopolitical argument should be qualified in at least three respects though. These are described by what McGwire calls the ‘Colonel’s fallacy’ (in Booth, Wheeler 2008:59-61). First, one should not confuse strategic planning with political analysis because strategic planning inherently assumes not only the most likely but also the worst case scenario of conflict, starting with the assumption of aggressive intent and a certain quality and quantity of capabilities. By focussing on worst case scenarios of conflict, analysts and politicians create hegemonic discourses. Due to their very desire to eschew situations associated with the loss of control, political leaders prepare for resistance in the event of the worst case and thereby marginalize alternate courses of action as unlikely or even impossible and tend to create self-fulfilling prophecies. Thus, such securitization serves to define issues in terms and scope which match previous experiences and are suitable for existing institutions to deal with by the application of their standard doctrines. Second, as countless historical examples demonstrate, strategic thinkers, be they civilian analysts or military strategists, do have a strong propensity to prepare for the conflicts of tomorrow based on assumptions and strategies which have proved successful in the past (Van Creveld 1991). This often leads to disastrous failures of policies and military campaigns because change in technological, social and political circumstances is underestimated, if not ignored, due to the application of outdated frames of reference. Third, even if worst case scenarios were to come true, tactical planning would depend heavily on the specific situation of the contingencies to be addressed. Such details in the form of crucial tactical intelligence are, even hours ahead of planned operations, hard to get in sufficient quality and quantity. It is thus an impossible and dangerous undertaking to project courses of events into the distant future in which basic assumptions underlying one’s reasoning will, more often than not, fundamentally change. Rethinking all these aspects leads to the conclusion that the discourse of island chains in China is essentially about the stages of the technical development of the 7 Chinese Navy from a coastal defence force, termed as ‘brown water’ towards a ‘blue water’ navy capable of operating on the high seas, and denying access to US forces in the event of a Taiwan contingency. For Japanese strategists, island chains served for the purpose of the conceptual delimitation of a ‘maritime safety zone’ based on the experience of the WWII naval blockade by the Allied forces, rather than actual tactical necessities (Graham 2006). In short, the importance attributed to the disputed maritime territories in the East China Sea cannot be justified by military concerns because the features in question are, unlike the bigger islands of the Okinawa and Mariana groups, not militarily important enough. If not militarily important per se, the heightening interests of national governments in delineating and defending as vast maritime territorial and EEZ borders as possible, the intensifying search for natural, especially energy resources may be a more likely cause of the securitization of the maritime sphere. The East China Sea dispute between Japan and China, for instance, became only salient after reports of the existence of hydrocarbon resources had been published in 1970 (Austin 1998). Energy security: the imperative of securing hydrocarbon resources Energy security concerns gained salience after China became a net importer of oil in 1993 while its GDP continued to grow at double-digit rates (Zhao 2008). The surging demand put domestic refining capacities, as well as transport infrastructure under heavy strain. Subsequently, the Chinese government and state-owned petroleum enterprises started their ‘going out’ strategy in search for supplies, including opportunities for direct investment in the exploration for new oil reserves and the construction of pipelines (Buszynski 2006; Goldstein, Kozyrev 2006). On the background of impressive growth of the Chinese economy owing to large FDI inflows and surging demand from North American, European and Japanese consumers, this dynamic raised fears of future competition for scarce resources. In tandem, the oil price on the world market continued to climb to an all-time high. It was not until the start of the financial crisis in 2008, that voices which attributed the price-hike to speculation in financial and commodity markets, rather than Chinese demand only were taken seriously. In this context, due to the fact that hydrocarbon resources are thought to lie under the South and East China Seas in considerable quantities, threat perceptions heightened mainly in two respects. First, national governments came to think that this increased the stake and strengthened the imperative to secure the concerned ocean space through EEZ delimitation. Second, in view of a possibly intensifying global resource competition along mercantilist thought, not only did deposits need to be secured, but 8 also the stronger consideration of transport to home markets in order to assure continued flows of oil and gas. In Northeast Asia such concerns are particularly salient because economies display heavy import dependencies on hydrocarbons, especially oil: 52%, and rising, for China, close to 100% for Japan and 100% for South Korea (METI 2008; Wang 2010). Furthermore, South Korean (75%), Japanese (90%), and to a lesser extent Chinese (50%) oil import dependencies are concentrated on Middle Eastern deposits (DOE 2008). The securitization of energy supply by proponents of maritime security, however, needs to be qualified in three respects: oil processing in the upstream business, the production and distribution of petroleum products in the downstream process, and oil dependencies of national economies in general. First, the fact that governments in East Asia disagree over EEZ delimitation means that the actual size of deposits cannot be explored without causing diplomatic turbulence, and once sufficient deposits are confirmed, disputes hinder their development. Buszynski and Sazlan (2007) have shown that in certain parts of the South China Sea, oil exploration has been able to proceed despite disputed EEZ delimitation because it was ultimately in the interest of all parties to continue resource extraction. Hydrocarbon exploration is technically complex and needs to promise a sufficient return on investment. In this regard, the kind and size of deposits in the East China Sea are highly speculative. For the entire area encompassing about 22,000 km², Chinese estimates range from 70 to 160 billion barrels (Bbbl) of oil, while foreign estimates are around 100 Bbbl. Natural gas deposits were estimated at 7 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) by a 1970 Japanese survey. Chinese estimates tend to be high and range between 175 and 210 Tcf. With regard to the contested area of the Xihu/Okinawa basin, these numbers are 20 million barrels of oil and 17.5 Tcf of natural gas by Chinese estimates (DOE 2008). Thus, if just over 20 million barrels of oil and 17.5 Tcf of natural gas are expected to be found in the disputed area, this would cover only 4 days of oil and 5 years of natural gas consumption in Japan as of 2007. This is of relevance for economic calculations because, due to the separation of the continental shelf from the Japanese islands by the Okinawa trench, which inhibits the construction of undersea pipelines, additional costs for the liquefaction and shipment natural gas need to be taken into account (APERC 2000). Moreover, due to structural demographic and economic changes in the country, after a peak in 2005, demand is predicted to further decline (METI 2008; IEEJ 2006). Second, unlike during the mercantilist era of 16th Century Europe, markets for natural resources, oil and natural gas in particular, are highly commodified. This means 9 that extracted crude oil when it leaves the drilling facility, is channelled into global supply chains. Hydrocarbons are subsequently traded, and speculated on, at commodity markets rather than appropriated and nationalized barrel by barrel. Thus, it is not necessarily decisive which company or state-owned enterprise explores and develops the deposits, because overall increasing production rates will make more oil available for purchase by any buyer on the world market and the purchase of equity interest also does have its drawbacks (ICG 2008; Downs 2004). Therefore, what really matters for the stability of energy supplies are sufficient investments into oil exploration and development. Given the monopolies that oil corporations have in most countries, the resulting lack of market transparency and investment protection is what leads to poor market capacity, and may negatively affect supply (China Daily 2010a; Thornton 2009). The determining factors of oil supply security, thus, are not the ownership of oilfields, but rather the efficient functioning of production chains (Manning 2000). Given the high oil dependency, the predecessor of the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), together with oil-importing companies, established a system for the storage of oil to bridge shortages such as experienced during the oil crises of 1973 and 1979. At the end of 2007, these national and private reserves were sufficient to cover 182 days of the whole Japanese consumption according to current patterns (METI 2008). China too, with technical assistance from the International Energy Agency, Japan and the US, started to build up strategic oil reserves which could substitute for at least 30 days of imports in early 2010, and are scheduled to cover up to 100 days by 2020 (China Daily 2010b). The lack of refining capacity had led to shortages in China which stood in contrast with significant overcapacities in Japan (METI 2008). Subsequently, the Chinese state owned enterprise CNPC (PetroChina) purchased a 45.5% stake in Singapore Petroleum and received approval to acquire a 49% share of Nippon Oil’s Osaka refinery in June 2009 (DOE 2008; Forbes 2008). On the other hand, the Chinese oil and gas industries, despite the very limited liberalization, required and welcomed significant foreign investment in order to meet domestic demand (OECD 2002). Political analysts and policy-makers, later than energy experts, became aware of the interdependence of their economies, and their dependence on Middle Eastern suppliers which the recent economic dynamism in Northeast Asia had further strengthened. As a result of the Chinese state-led modernization project, and the lingering late-developmentalism prevalent among ocean-policy circles in Japan, mercantilist thought was revived. Maehara Seiji (2010:23, 24) then Minister for Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and responsible for the Japan Coast Guard in 10 January 2010 noted that ‘(…) Japan, a small country territorially and with an aging population, must establish a secure foundation as an ocean state if it would continue to thrive’. In this regard he continued ‘The waters surrounding Japan can be regarded as a gold mine for resources and energy’. Further noting that Japan’s marine industry ‘(…) which first came on the world stage during the Meiji era, has been rapidly fading in recent years in the face of neighbouring Asian countries’ rapid development.’, he announced the intent to establish a growth strategy for Japan’s marine industry. Maehara concludes that ‘(…) in order to secure Japan’s path into the future (…)’ he will continue his efforts ‘to tap the vast frontiers of the ocean’. In summary, concerns which reflect anxieties about the continuation of fast economic growth in China, the decline of industrial production and economic stagnation in view of its international standing in Japan, and mutual fear of increasing interdependency continued to drive the securitization of energy supply and promote EEZ claims. Economic security: the imperative of securing sea lanes The freedom of navigation is a long-standing issue, most of all for states with a strong maritime presence such as the European colonial powers from the mid-15th Century and the United States since the late 18th Century. The perceived imperative to control worldwide trade flows from the places of resource extraction over shipping to the distribution of goods in domestic markets was one major reason for the build-up of ‘sea power’ which made for a substantial component of the 16th Century mercantilist ideology. This idea is underlying contemporary concerns about sea lanes prevalent in security-policy making circles in Beijing and Tokyo (Zhao 2008; Graham 2006). The think tank of the Chinese Ministry of State Security argued for a cooperative approach to SLOC security (CICIR 2005). The positive though very limited cooperation within the international anti-piracy missions in the Gulf of Aden (Christoffersen 2009) shows, however, that these ideas did not find much support among the relevant decision-makers, especially when it concerns East Asian waters. Ye Helin (2009) from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences posits that, given China’s economic miracle, it has‚‘(...) billions of reasons to guard the safety of its SLOC’ and that the Malacca Straits ‘which is overcrowded and increasingly fragile, not only illustrates China’s growth, but also exposes China’s deadly weakness’. In 2001, the Ocean Policy Research Foundation (OPRF, Kaiyo seisaku kenkyu zaidan), Japan’s leading think tank on maritime issues, supported by the Nippon Foundation, released a report on Asian Sea Lane Security and International Relations 11 (OPRF 2001a).1 It highlights that freedom of navigation, especially along the route from the Middle East to Japan, is ‘(…) the fundament of its economic security in terms of imported oil, and trade with Southeast Asia and Western Europe. And to the United States it is critical to the mobility and flexibility of its Seventh Fleet, and thus to the defense of its allies – Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand.’ (OPRF 2001a:1). The report focuses on the Malacca and Singapore Straits and potential causes of interruption of this trade route. By doing so, it combines Japanese economic interests and US military strategic interests of freedom of navigation. The assessment which exemplifies Japanese concerns carries an alarmist undertone that basically concludes that it is necessary for the US Navy to provide the public good of East Asian sea lane security. Due to the Chinese territorial claims in the East and South China Sea, the PLA is seen as the main threat the US and its allies have to deal with. Mirroring these anxieties is what the Chinese press termed the ‘Malacca dilemma’.2 This assessment requires clarification in several respects. First, while it indicates that China also relies on these sea lanes for its economic security, the interdependence of East and Northeast Asian economies, including the heavy dependency of the Chinese economy on foreign trade and investment, is hardly accounted for. Second, the political impact of Chinese assertiveness on its East Asian neighbours is not considered. Instead of the likely ‘diplomatic chain reaction’ in the region (Austin 1998: 321), Japanese voices such as those quoted above tend to see themselves as being left facing Beijing alone, and therefore completely reliant on the US. Third, when it comes to the main focus of Japanese and Chinese concerns, the Malacca Straits, the likely causes of the interruption of shipping are of technical and sub-national nature. Due to their draft, often reducing ground clearance at the shallowest sections of the Malacca Straits to one meter, for Very Large (VLCC) and Ultra Large Crude Carriers (ULCC) with sizes greater than 160’000 and 250’000 Dead Weight Tons (DWT), the passage through the Lombok-Makassar Straits and the Sulawesi Sea-Surigao Strait is a requirement of navigational safety.3 This has led to the notion of ‘Malacca-max’ crude oil tankers optimized to carry the largest cargoes with lesser draught through the strait. Moreover, Bateman, Ho and Mathai (2007) demonstrate that unlike in the Gulf of Aden, piracy in Southeast Asia is mostly affecting local traffic, and according to Mak (2006) has been exaggerated by the International Maritime Bureau. Apart from the fact that coastal states are primarily interested in keeping shipping lines open, Noer and Gregory (1996) calculated the additional costs in the hypothetical worst case scenario of the closure of all sea lanes traversing Southeast Asia due to large scale armed conflict involving Indonesia and necessary circumnavigation of 12 Australia to amount to $8 billion per year for all seaborne trade.4 With regard to Japanese oil imports, an additional cost of $1.5 billion in case of a closure of all sea lanes through Southeast Asia, a number seen as alarming in the preceding OPRF report, is now toned down by comparing it with the total amount of Japanese imports. The additional costs in the extreme case of a closure of the routes through the South China Sea in the event of armed conflict over the status of the Spratly Islands between several of the surrounding claimants, are estimated at a mere $200 million. Consequently, the Malacca and Singapore Straits are not a priori ‘chokepoints’ for political reasons, but rather because of the economic imperatives of shipping companies to exploit any possible reduction of transport costs by building ever larger ships and avoiding slightly longer voyages. Thus, if threats from national governments to the freedom of navigation are perceived, it the result of the discursive construction of ‘chokepoints’. Another OPRF report released the same year changes the focus away from national security. Nevertheless, at the outset, it reminds the reader of the ‘timeless message’ of Alfred Thayer Mahan, a 19th Century US Navy Rear Admiral known for his advocacy of naval arms build-up and an imperialist stance, that ‘When fashioning a national security policy, it is essential to take stock of the World’s sealanes, as they hold the keys to a nation’s prosperity and standing in the world.’ (OPRF 2001b:2). Subsequently, however, the report goes on to emphasize the importance of trade, stating that in the year 2000 intra-Asian trade made for 50% of all the traffic in Asian ports and more than 70% in Yokohama, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. This is compared to a mere 40 to 50% for European hub ports. Moreover, the report demonstrates that the containerization, and therewith the unbundling of international trade is rapidly increasing due to higher efficiency in handling freight which can seamlessly and more and more automatically be transferred from ship to rail and trucks. A further argument against securitization is the continuing de-nationalization of the world’s merchant fleet. More and more ships travel under flags that do not match their operators’ origin. Additionally, ownership structures dictated by economic considerations mean that the control over a vessel cannot be attributed to one company alone, let alone to a single state. Apart from multiple owners of freight, the stakeholders involved are not only the flag state, but also the operating, including subsidiary and holding companies, banks, and insurance companies. Thus, it is far from reality to imagine something as a ‘national fleet’, which would allow for the clear distinction between friend and foe. This is also true for China’s crude oil imports of which in 2008 only 10% of came aboard what could be described as ‘Chinese’ vessels (Zhao 2008). 13 The difficulty of fleet nationalization is reflected in the operational guidelines for Japanese warships protecting merchant vessels from piracy attack in the Gulf of Aden. In order to make sense, the mandate needed to be extended to include: Japan-registered ships; foreign-registered ships with Japanese crew members on board; and foreign registered-ships operated by Japanese shipping companies, and foreign-registered ships with Japanese cargo on board which are important for the stable economic activities of Japanese people (MOD 2009:190). In this regard, Yamamoto (2004) notes that the ‘Japanese’ merchant marine depends on foreign seafarers to cover more than 90% of its need for crew. In summary, the SLOC security discourse represents anxieties about the loss of cognitive control due to the increasing interdependence of economies and societies in general, and expanding sovereign and jurisdictional claims which regulate the free flow of goods over the ocean in particular. The next section looks at how the management of natural resource exploitation other than hydrocarbons and the consequences of economic development in the form of ocean pollution influenced the political conception of the maritime sphere. Environmental security: pollution, fishery and the securing of food With economic development and dietary transition, world fish consumption has undergone major changes in the past four decades and contributed to the worldwide crisis of fisheries (FAO 2009). The Northwest Pacific is by far the world’s most important fishery region as China remains by far the world’s largest producer, with a reported fisheries production of 51.5 million tons in 2006 (17.1 and 34.4 million tons, from capture and aquaculture, respectively) whereas Japan is just ahead of the US the world’s biggest importer of fishery products (FAO 2009:11). Due to the adoption of the global UNCLOS EEZ regime and because of the need to enhance the sustainable management of fish stocks, as well as the prevention of related fishery disputes, Tokyo and Beijing have been pressed to revise the existing fishery order and reached a new agreement in September 1997. The main feature of the new fishery agreement is the ‘provisional measures zone’ (PMZ), which covers the disputed area in middle of the East China Sea, 52 Nautical Miles (NM) off the Chinese and Japanese baselines. The 1997 bilateral agreement is also significant because its impact on both national economies is considerable, and represents an outstanding political compromise between two states with otherwise very complicated diplomatic relations. As a result of the implementation of the new agreement, due to the imposition of stricter quotas, the Japanese and Chinese fishery industries suffered considerably 14 (Xue 2004; Valencia and Amae 2003). Given fish migration patterns, and the ever farther venturing fishing fleets, however, regimes based on bilateral agreements are far from sufficient to guarantee sustainability. The shortcomings of bilateralism also plague law enforcement. From 1999, Chinese and Japanese officials tasked with coast guard duties started to meet, and the North Pacific Coast Guard Forum (NPCGF), a Japanese initiative, has since its inception in 2000, developed. From the discussion of initially general topics of law enforcement at sea, the participants moved to work on joint documents, and within several working groups addressed various problems they were facing. From 2005, apart from two annual meetings, exercises related to the working group topics were also conducted at sea. Despite its success, the NPCGF remains a confidence and security building measure rather than a framework of functional cooperation.5 Pollution of Northeast Asian seas is another salient issue. Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB), or red tides, occurred in all Northeast Asian waters, but were concentrated along the coast of Northern Kyushu and the Southern coast of Korea, as well as the Bohai Sea. Twenty-three percent of the cases of red tides in the Bohai Sea were larger than 1,000 km², and usually lasted about one week. In 1989, the poisoning of shellfish, for instance, caused total losses of $38 million to aquaculture farms around the Bohai Sea alone (POMRAC 2007:32-38). The reason for the increasing occurrence of HAB since the 1970s lies in the eutrophication of the seas due to excessive nutrient input, mostly from domestic and agricultural wastewater discharge. Along with the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, and the Northeast Atlantic, East Asian Seas are classified as high risk oil spill regions by the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation (ITOPF). Between 1990 and 2005 the Sea of Japan and the Northern part of the East China Sea experienced at least 19 major oil spills larger than 1,000 tonnes (POMRAC 2007:40). Given this evidence, one would expect a certain degree of securitization, or at least decisive action by governmental bodies in addressing transnational environmental problems. However, the assessment of Northeast Asian environmental cooperation mechanisms reveals that inter-governmental cooperation at the working level is fraught with various problems ranging from questions of financing to transparency and governing capacity (Nam 2002; Wirth 2010). The positive rhetoric at high-level meetings between heads of state, prime ministers and environment ministers, which so often stress the importance of environmental protection, and programs such as the North West Pacific Action Plan (NOWPAP), the Partnership in Environmental Management for the Seas in East Asia (PEMSEA) and others, did not translate into decisive action as 15 these initiatives remain severely underfunded and have for several years been stuck at the stage of initial pilot projects (TJR 2009). In a study of the prospects for effective marine governance in the Northwest Pacific area, Haas (2000) comes to the conclusion that the reason for the limited progress of NOWPAP compared to other regions is due to the preoccupation of East Asian governments with economic growth, especially during the financial crisis (of the late 1990s). He finds that there was a lack of visionary national leadership in the environmental field all over Northeast Asia. Even ten years ago, Haas pointed to the fact that most discussions on environmental management were cast in terms of energy-efficient technology that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the long-term, that is, technical solutions introduced by market-mechanisms instead of concrete policy measures to address pressing concerns. Elliott (2007) finds that there is insufficient interaction between the respective communities of environmental management and security policy actors, and that the former are often not taken seriously by the latter. In summary, salient problems of environmental degradation and ocean resource depletion, despite talk of environmental sustainability in publications such as those issued by the OPRF, and by state leaders, gained scant attention outside their respective epistemic communities, which remained seriously underfunded. Moreover, the practice of geometrical ocean zoning, and their delimitation inhibited research and implementation of effective measures. The discussion of questions of military, energy, economic, and environmental security in the previous three sections revealed that despite some reasons for debate, none of the issues can adequately be understood and addressed by the application of a territorially-based framework of analysis. The next section aims to shed more light on why this thinking is still prevalent. THE PERSISTENCE OF MODERN CONCEPTIONS OF SOVEREIGNTY, TERRITORIAL TRAP OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS STUDIES AND THE Pye (1971) argued that it is due to the changing national identity constructions in the course of development that political elites in developing countries are paying particularly high attention to the territorial delimitation of their states, feeling the need to guarantee economic and energy security, and are keen to assert their international status. Moreover, as developing countries per definition lag behind in the establishment of bureaucratic and political institutions the likelihood of inter-agency competition spilling over into the international realm increases. Indeed, the lack of oversight and 16 control over the seven agencies involved in various tasks of ocean governance was most likely the reason why two Chinese maritime research ships entered the Japanese-claimed waters around the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands just ahead of Hu Jintao’s trip to the first ever tripartite summit with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts in Japan in December 2008.6 Also, the difficulties of bureaucracies and governments in proposing, formulating and implementing coherent ocean policies due to the fragmentation of national policymaking and orthodox disciplinary thinking results in low governmental capacity, a phenomenon which is not limited to developing countries (Dupont 2001; Valencia 1996; Wirth 2010). These explanations correspond to other literature discussing Chinese practices of sovereignty (Deng 2000; Zheng 1999). However, if the defining feature is the state of development and administrative capacity, as Pye argues, the question remains why the United States and Japanese governments and linked international politics research institutions are among the primary securitizers and why they are, similarly to their Chinese counterparts, very sensitive to the delimitation of maritime jurisdiction, and the freedom of navigation respectively (Dutton 2009; Hoyt 2007; Posen 2003). The habit of privileged, axiomatic and often out of context quoting of A.T. Mahan a 19th century imperialist naval strategist in most contemporary writings on conventional maritime security is an interesting phenomenon which cannot be addressed here though. Steinberg’s (2001) explanation that the contemporary construction of the ocean is a result of three contradicting elements of modernization, namely the idealization of the deep seas as a great void of distance subject to annihilation for the acceleration of economic flows; the increasing territorialisation of the seas to enable development by spatially fixed investments; and the designation of specific areas of the seas as spaces of stewardship, is very insightful. OPRF publications which cover maritime affairs comprehensively, discuss topics related to all three elements. However, as the proponents of the 2006 Basic Ocean Policy Law openly state, the primary concerns behind these various issues are territorial integrity and natural resource development (Takemi 2006). The above discussion leads to the finding that the second element which emphasizes territorial control and natural resource development has become more and more salient with the rapid growth of East Asian economies over recent decades. As a result, imperatives to develop natural resources clash with concerns about the freedom of navigation embodied in the first element. This contradiction manifest in threats perceived from ‘creeping jurisdiction’, that is the extension of national and international regulations limiting the ‘freedom of the seas’, promotes the strong securitization of the 17 maritime sphere which becomes apparent in the reification of the principle of territorial sovereignty. The excessive focus on the territorial aspects of political authority overrides the third element of ocean stewardship which emphasizes the sustainable use and the connecting elements of the ocean such as ecologic and economic interdependence. This phenomenon, dividing reality into different spheres in turn perpetuates concerns of national security by fuelling discourses of maritime security and state sovereignty which are unsuitable to understand the present environment. Due to the special character of the ocean as uninhabitable space in which nevertheless a wide range of human activities across many different sectors of society take place, the maritime sphere represents a political frontier where anxieties pertaining to the future of societies relying on economic growth and increasingly interdependent with one-another are projected into. Because access to, and expertise in, a wide range of scientific knowledge is necessary to comprehend the meaning of the ocean, securitizing arguments largely remain unquestioned in political discourses. This would also explain why maritime territorial disputes are even more difficult to solve than terrestrial ones, as the cases of China and Japan demonstrate. With the exception of India, Beijing has settled all its territorial disputes on land. Japan, just as China, seems far from settling its maritime boundary disputes though (Carlson 2005). Given that territorial sovereignty, as practiced by governments and discussed in scholarly writings dealing with East Asian maritime affairs, is unable to deal with the various aspects of ocean governance, it is necessary to rethink this concept which is so central to the study of international politics. As Agnew (2005:438-441) argues, ‘Effective sovereignty is not necessarily predicated on and defined by the strict and fixed territorial boundaries of individual states.’ He points to three problematic assumptions: first, that sovereignty is acquired exogenously, or in a ‘state of nature’ rather than in an ongoing system of states. Second, notwithstanding the obvious reality of hierarchy in power between actors in world politics, an essential equality between sovereign states is more often than not unquestioned. Third, it is imagined that sovereignty is invariably territorial or exercised over blocs of terrestrial space. Rethinking territoriality and sovereignty does not only require that scholars of international relations overcome the ‘territorial trap’ in which their discipline remains caught up and look out for the connecting elements in international politics (Agnew 1994). It means that a deeper discussion of the nature of the political, of the community and the legitimacy of authority is necessary (Camilleri 2008). In conclusion, state developmentalism understood as nationalist projects emanating from the background of the not too distant (cold) wartime history and its 18 aftermath (Johnson 1995; Beeson 2009), despite its changing nature, accounts for the findings that national governments seek to control and develop the ocean by territorial delimitation while at the same time being concerned about the freedom of shipping, and neglecting the sustainable management of the ocean as an ecosystem. At a time when the task of governance becomes ever more complex and the creation of stable social order, that is, the provision of security, requires more than economic growth, it is necessary to reassess the role and effectiveness of central political authority embodied in the primacy given to national governments in organizing societies in general and ocean governance in particular. This requires a shift of attention towards institutional arrangements and political priorities essential for the maintenance of social order and the production of security for human communities at the local as well as the regional levels. If the securitization of the maritime sphere in terms of the national is a result of diffuse fears about the continuation of familiar structures of social, economic and political life, that is, the uncertainty of the future rather than grounded in specific evidence, two important questions arise. First, how and on which societal and political background has the meaning of the maritime sphere as a site for the production of external danger to state identities and the ensuing effect of discipline of populations (Campbell 1992) developed over time, and second, how does the power structure of the Asia-Pacific continue to influence Northeast Asian state developmentalisms after the end of the Cold War? 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Apart from supporting humanitarian projects, its main objective has been to promote Japan’s maritime industries. 2 In November 2003 President Hu Jintao declared that ‘certain major powers’ were bent on controlling the strait, and called for the adoption of new strategies to mitigate the perceived vulnerability. Thereafter, the Chinese press devoted considerable attention to the country’s ‘Malacca dilemma,’ leading one newspaper to declare: ‘It is no exaggeration to say that whoever controls the Strait of Malacca will also have a stranglehold on the energy route of China’, China Youth Daily (zhongguo qingnian ribao), 15.06.2004. 3 The Malacca Strait at its shallowest stretch is only between 21.1 and 22.9 m deep. 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