Paul M. Evans

Human Security and East Asia: In the Beginning

Abstract Though operating at the margins of security discourse and policy, the idea of human security is of growing significance. Human security comes in two basic packages, one concerned with multiple aspects of human well being and the other more directly focussed on the protection of individuals and communities in situations of violent conflict. The reports of two international commissions, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2001) and the Commission on Human Security (2003), reflect these different emphases. In East Asia the concept has been debated with some intensity. The initial reaction was cautious and negative, not surprising considering that the region has embraced a state-centric, neo-Westphalian, security order emphasizing national sovereignty and non-interference in domestic affairs. But since the economic crisis in 1997, states, regional institutions, academics and civil society groups have taken a more positive approach to the concept. Most of the attention ...

Responding to global China: Getting the balance right

For Canada, like other countries, getting China policy right is both exceedingly difficult and fundamentally important. Credit Bruce Gilley’s cri de coeur for injecting energy and ideas into a peculiar Canadian debate that inspires considerable public passion but little serious intellectual exchange. As he notes, the old alignments and assumptions that constituted a durable consensus under earlier Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments are indeed in question in some circles in Ottawa. Less clear is if these prevailing alignments and assumptions should be adjusted rather than replaced. The political context is a palpable shift in the tone and temperature of the bilateral relationship under the Harper government in a direction that can be described as “cool politics, warm economics.” This shift has not been articulated in a major speech or policy statement but rather has been signalled in occasional public statements by the Prime Minister, the known views of some around him, and some incremental policy adjustments related to Taiwan and Tibet. Gilley speaks as an academic with an independent voice. But the general thrust of his ideas resonates with some of the new thinking inside the Conservative government. The social context is a growing public anxiety about China on a panoply of issues including human rights, democracy, economic competition, product safety, climate change, foreign policy in the developing world, and military modernization. Gilley’s primary focus is on human rights and democratization. Whether or not these are the most important issues facing Canada, or China, they are the most salient ones in the minds of many Canadians. In his attempt to refashion an avowedly “liberal internationalist” approach to China, Gilley takes on the history of the relationship before turning to current policy issues. It may be my parti pris as one of the company of bien pensants and Old China Hands who has chronicled the evolution of Canadian relations with China and occasionally been at the margins of the policy debate, but I think he is mistaken in his portrayal of the origins of Canadian actions at the time of recognition, the intellectual and political moorings of its evolution over the next 35 years and in several of his prescriptions for a new policy direction. Gilley’s revisionism commits the intellectual error of projecting current values and perspectives onto an earlier era when political leaders and the public viewed China and China policy through a different lens. And he compounds the problem by adhering to a form of values fundamentalism that gives primacy to just one aspect of a complex bilateral relationship. He is asking Canada to walk down a path that no other country is pursuing. Many of his prescriptions would not just harm other Canadian interests but would undermine Canada’s impact on the progressive agenda in China that he rightly endorses.

John Fairbank and the American understanding of modern China

Part biography, part intellectual history, this book explores the emergence of 20th-century China as a political force and the rise of US-China relations through the life of one of the most celebrated American intellectual figures of modern time, John King Fairbank. The author reconstructs the central events of Fairbanks life and times, concentrating especially on his role as a scholar and shaper of public opinion and policy. He explores the policy issues and cultural upheavals that accompanied the rise of modern China and US-China relations by examining Fairbanks role in this historic period. He describes the young Fairbanks awakening, during the 1930s, to the realities of Chinese political culture, his advocacy of a liberal response to the Chinese Revolution, his reluctant conversion to the Cold War orthodoxy, his emergence as a belated critic of the Vietnam War, and his self-vindicatory trips to China after the rapprochement of the 1970s. The growth of 20th-century Western knowledge of China, beginning with the writings and activities of a small group of British and American sinologists, developed largely as a result of Fairbanks leadership into a broad and vigorous transnational intellectual community. In rounding out his portrait of Fairbank as scholar-activist and academic entrepreneur, Evans explicates the political and theoretical struggles which have shaped Western understanding of the emergent China.

Studying Asia Pacific security : the future of research, training and dialogue activities

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The Emergence of Eastern Asia and its Implications for Canada

In 1959 Kenneth Waltz made a compelling case in his book, Man, the State and War, that three images or levels of analysis human beings, their national groupings or states, and the international system itselfare central to explaining the origins of war. In the 1990s those of realist persuasion (and others) will find it increasingly useful to explain international behaviour by concentrating on a fourth level somewhere between the state and the international system: the region. Even though we live in a world of unprecedented transnationalism and supranationalism above the state and resurgent ethno-nationalism below it, regions are assuming greater importance for two fundamental reasons. First, the ending of Soviet-American strategic competition has placed greater emphasis on local rather than on global dynamics in security matters. Second, the globalization of production and finance is having the unexpected consequence of accelerating regional economic integration, usually along continental lines, in the most economically advanced areas of the world. Most North American and European analysts have been transfixed by the dramatic events surrounding the ending of the Cold War in Europe, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and the new era in RussianAmerican relations. These developments certainly have had their reverberations in an area covering the Asian side of the Pacific

Canada's relations with china emergent

China in 1993 is more connected with the world economy than at any time in its history. The article argues that because it is in Canadas interests that the future be shaped along Asia Pacific rather than continental lines, China must be a functioning part of the regional and world order. Although a national consensus on Canadas China policy is unlikely, a new Canadian government and an attentive public will have to be clear on the importance of China as a trade partner and on the related questions of human rights advocacy and Canadas bilateral Official Development Assistance (ODA) program. The article states that the “thorniest” problem for Canada in its post‐Tiananmen Square bilateral relations with China is the management of value differences.

Searching for Cooperative Security 2.0

At a moment of strategic transition in Asia Pacific security, views differ widely on the inevitability of conflict and the prospects of a managed accommodation of great power relations. There is widespread agreement that economic integration is deep and valuable, that a power shift is underway, and that the new array of multilateral institutions are welcome but merely formative. At the end of the Cold War period, there was a creative moment in which key concepts like cooperative and comprehensive security underpinned an era of institution building. The essay argues that it is time to revisit these ideas and look at the fundamental elements of a security order appropriate to a diverse and increasingly interconnected region in the midst of a power transition. It examines some of the key ideas offered by security thinkers from several countries and pays particular attention to the concept of a consociational security order as an entree to constructive discussion. As important as the U.S.-China relationship is to a future security order, a G2 is neither likely nor desirable. The conclusion poses a series of questions that will need to be answered as a new version of cooperative security with 21st century characteristics is developed.