By Morgan Potts
A reluctant but pragmatic defense of neorealism in Northeast Asia.
Nuclear crises, propaganda and espionage, a clash of ideologies – the Korean peninsula is the only place in the world where the Cold War lingers. This persistence is the result of the 1953 Armistice Agreement and the apparent neorealist policies employed by North Korea. Despite the problems with neorealism and its appropriately dwindling popularity, it remains a useful lens through which to understand the conflict on the peninsula, and the defensive realist reactions on the part of China and South Korea.
Rather than asserting that realism or its offshoots are the ultimate International Relations grand theories, I suggest that neorealism remains a crucial aspect of IR security theory. The offensive realist behavior of the DPRK and the defensive realist policies of China and the South Korea serve to illustrate the unfortunate but continued significance of neorealism within international relations.
Neorealism, defined by Kenneth Waltz in 1959, holds that states are unitary rational agents acting in their perceived self-interest within a system wherein each state seeks to ensure its perpetuation and maintain a balance of power. Structure is the defining feature of the theory [PDF], with states the main actors competing within an anarchic system to maintain their power and stability. The modern East Asian regional complex has security dynamics very similar to those that prevailed in the Cold War during the second half of the 20th century. Because the Korean War concluded with an armistice agreement and not a peace treaty, the Cold War on the peninsula has effectively continued, producing a subsequent nuclear proliferation; the crisis has only escalated since the DPRK announced in May 2009 that it would no longer abide by the armistice. As during the Cold War, foreign relations in the region are based on allegedly rational cost-benefit analyses of war and executing the appropriate policies. The focus of North-East Asian states has been on classic security dilemma [PDF] proliferation and maintaining a balance of power to avoid war.
Just as during the 20th century Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., the objective of each actor is not to engage in war and suffer its costs and consequences; rather each state is more interested in preventing war and maintaining regional stability and their spheres of hegemony. This loosely follows the balance of power security model, which holds that: all states are power-seeking; states ultimately seek hegemony over their system; and that other states in the system will attempt to block those bids for hegemony. However, the regional system of East Asia is different from the Cold War bipolarity; instead, it has a multi-polar dynamic, in which China, South Korea, and the U.S. compete for regional hegemony. Actors optimally try to have good relations with the other players or minimally try to avoid hostile relations; and actors try to prevent threateningly close cooperation between the other actors. This logic is reflected in the defensive realist policies of China and South Korea, while North Korea has taken a more offensive power-seeking approach.
Read the full story at The Diplomat