By Ankit Panda
Soft power won’t solve all problems for these East Asian neighbors, but it can ease the path away from brinksmanship.
Hard power is the predominant realist mode of measuring power, relative and absolute. We measure military and economic capabilities and draw conclusions about a given state’s ability to seek the outcomes it desires from other political actors – friend or foe. Generally, this is a useful model for thinking about states’ options and underlies a good deal of contemporary analysis in international security. In East Asia, hard power distributions, buttressed by U.S. alliance networks (particularly with South Korea and Japan), have kept conflict at bay, despite widespread mistrust and resentment (between U.S. allies and China).
In the East Asian security equation, there seems to be little interest in challenging the tense current status quo. Using the East China Sea dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands as a case in point, it is evident that the stand off between China and Japan shows no signs of drawing down due to third-party mediation, international arbitration, bilateral diplomacy, or unilateral capitulation. While current trends are subject to change with a unilateral policy revision by either China or Japan, the probability of a skirmish – or indeed war – is not remote.
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