19 January Thursday, 2012

The U.S. plans to pull its major combat forces out of the Middle East (troop withdrawal from Iraq already took place in December, 2011 and the U.S. government plans to withdraw active combat forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 even though conflicting signals are coming from the Pentagon) and initiate a strategic return to Asia. Hillary Clinton’s long article appeared in Foreign Policy only a few days after Gadhafi was killed and Obama announced the troop withdrawal from Iraq. In the article, Clinton maintained that the U.S. had lost a decade in the Middle East and failed to dedicate the required time and energy to East Asia. She suggested that in order to make up for the lost time and energy, the U.S. would reintroduce American weight and power in East Asia by launching a new economic, political and strategic initiative. If the contemptuous and boastful rhetoric is set aside, the article is important in laying out the proposed road map for the new U.S. policy toward East Asia.


It is argued that, in this new period, the U.S. strategy toward East Asia will contain more hard-power instruments than it has in the past ten years. It was certainly not a coincidence that the announcement came at a time when the U.S. decided to scale down its military presence in the Middle East and Europe. Obviously, the scaling down is more a repositioning than a substantive reduction in overall military spending. The U.S. is likely to continue to utilize the strongest aspect of its total power in accruing economic benefits from the rising economies of East Asia. Given the meltdown that the U.S. economy suffered in the past three years, and with no sign of a speedy emergence out of it, the Obama administration is forced, in a sense, to return to Asia to secure employment opportunities for its increasingly restless middle class and impoverished lower class.


This is indeed an interesting convergence of international politics and international economy. Thus, evaluating the new U.S. strategy toward Asia through two major international relations approaches, namely the British and American schools, is crucial in crafting policies in response to the strategic challenges of the world’s military hegemon. It follows that even though this article concerns itself with the new U.S. challenge in East Asia, for such a strategically positioned country as Turkey, which has the immense task of developing policies to address the U.S. actions in the Middle East, such an analysis will be constructive in countering the U.S. moves and initiating proactive policies. 

 

This comparative analysis intends to shed light on the United States’ new Asia strategy by attempting to decipher its intellectual and strategic components in order to see which of the two above-mentioned schools provides a better explanation of this novel global phenomenon. To this end, below, I first give a short introduction to the primary components of the British and American schools, largely drawing from articles by Benjamin Cohen and Susan Strange. Then I attempt an analysis of the current U.S. approach to see which one provides a better explanation in terms of Obama’s return to Asia plan. 


According to Cohen, as international political economy (IPE) developed, two major schools emerged: The American and British schools. The American school gives priority to the “scientific method – what might be called a pure or hard science model... based on the twin principles of positivism and empiricism, which hold that knowledge is best accumulated through an appeal to objective observation and systematic testing” (Cohen, 2007). The British school, in contrast, is seen to be “less wedded to scientific method and more ambitious in its agenda” (Cohen, 2007). Hence, the British school is considered more explicit, normative and interpretive. Consequently, these two schools differ in the ontologies, epistemologies and normative postures in their approach toward “the complex linkages between economic and political activity at the level of international affairs” (Cohen, 2007).


Furthermore, whereas the American school is seen to be state-centric and more concerned with the material aspects of international relations, the British school maintains a more constructivist stance by including culture and identity in its analysis, challenging orthodoxies (fixed beliefs and postulations) and replacing them with a more critical perspective. One another important point of divergence between the two schools is that while the U.S. school considers IPE as a subset of international relations (IR) theory, the UK school believes that IR should be part of IPE. 


Cohen argues that the global dominant version of IPE is currently the one that has been developed in the U.S. The U.S. version gives priority to the state whereas the British model considers the state one agent out of many. For the American school, the intention is to identify the cause-effect relationship and find a solution without going outside the boundaries of the existing system. The UK school is more flexible in this sense; it is more open to diverse interpretations and judgments. From the perspective of epistemology, the U.S. school is seen to be traditionalist, that is, it applies the traditional “deductive logic parsimonious reasoning” (Cohen, 2007).


The British version, by contrast, remains more historical and less formal (more eclectic, drawing on multiple theories and explanations) in applying methodologies.

It follows that the new American strategy toward East Asia is better explained under the American school of IPE. The primary reason for this argument is that, as will be noticed in Clinton’s article, the new policy is highly state-centric and contentious, and economics is seen as an aspect of international relations where the grand strategy of American hegemony is to maintain an overall dominance in the region.


It must be emphasized here that even though Clinton’s article appeared just a few days before the APEC summit (this might lead some into thinking that the new strategy is more related to economics than politics), it in fact contained elements that are far beyond the radius of economics. As a matter of fact, in the very first paragraph, Clinton makes it clear that the objective for a “return” is to “put ourselves in the best position to sustain our leadership, secure our interests, and advance our values.” This hegemonic understanding of international relations is very much in line with Gilpin’s emphasis on the power of political relations in shaping economics.

 

It is also worth noting that, as has been slightly touched upon above, Clinton reveals the intention of her administration in applying more hard power instruments in the execution of the United States’ new Asia policy when she ascribes this “return” to the diminishing implications of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the U.S. ability to project leadership in East Asia. In fact, the very language in the article, as well as many of Obama’s recent statements, suggest a more hawkish posture in which allies are supported militarily and enemies are contained largely through a naval dominance of the high seas and key trade routes.


The U.S. utilization of bilateral or multilateral institutions in attaining certain policy goals (i.e., the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP) must be considered instrumental, but not an end in itself. This is in contrast to the ideas of Strange, who argued that IPE should be about justice, efficiency, order and cohesion (Strange, 1984). The overall aim of the U.S. intentions is not peaceful, harmonious, or diffusive as is apparent in Clinton’s article. Rather, it is threatening, interest-driven and linear (ahistorical: unable to learn from past mistakes), hence the reason why Clinton believes that past actions (wars in the Middle East) do not have real consequences. This is very much in contrast to the critical approach endorsed by the British-style IPE.


Lastly, although not a novel phenomenon, the overreliance on defense spending as well as arms sales to foreign militaries, training and other forms of military support is another defining characteristic of this new Obama strategy vis-à-vis East Asia. This foreign-policy structure that emerged more starkly during the APEC Summit as a for-profit business policy clearly involves the orthodoxies of the American-style IPE with its over-reliance on the state, military apparatus and explicit intention of a hegemonic design of the region. This approach still does not deny the interconnectedness of global economies (Hence, Koehane and Nye’s complex interdependence model which does not necessarily suggest harmony and cooperation since alliances can be formed to serve as tools to threat and contain the unruly states); however, the American grand strategy toward East Asia still involves hard-power to a large extent and is contentious.


*Serafettin Yilmaz is a doctorate student in Asia-Pacific Studies at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. He can be reached at syilmaz1864@yandex.ru



References:

Cohen, Benjamin. “The Transatlantic Divide: Why are American and British IPE So Different?” Review of International Political Economy, 14 (2007).

Strange, Suzan. “Preface,” in Susan Strange, ed., Paths to International Political Economy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984).