Brahma Chellaney: The Resistible Rise of Asia? / 可阻擋的亞洲崛起？

NEW DELHI – A favorite theme in international debate nowadays is whether Asia’s rise signifies the West’s decline. But the current focus on economic malaise in Europe and the United States is distracting attention from the many serious challenges that call into question Asia’s continued success.

To be sure, today’s ongoing global power shifts are primarily linked to Asia’s phenomenal economic rise, the speed and scale of which have no parallel in world history. With the world’s fastest-growing economies, fastest-rising military expenditures, fiercest resource competition, and most serious hot spots, Asia obviously holds the key to the future global order.

But Asia faces major constraints. It must cope with entrenched territorial and maritime disputes, such as in the South China Sea; harmful historical legacies that weigh down its most important interstate relationships; increasingly fervent nationalism; growing religious extremism; and sharpening competition over water and energy.

Moreover, Asia’s political integration badly lags behind its economic integration, and, to compound matters, it has no security framework. Regional consultation mechanisms remain weak. Differences persist over whether a security architecture or community should extend across Asia, or be confined to an ill-defined “East Asia.”

One central concern is that, unlike Europe’s bloody wars of the first half of the twentieth century, which made war there unthinkable today, the wars in Asia in the second half of the twentieth century only accentuated bitter rivalries. Several interstate wars have been fought in Asia since 1950, when both the Korean War and the annexation of Tibet started, without resolving the underlying Asian disputes.

To take the most significant example, China staged military interventions even when it was poor and internally troubled. A 2010 Pentagon report cites Chinese military preemption in 1950, 1962, 1969, and 1979 in the name of strategic defense. There was also China’s seizure of the Paracel Islands from Vietnam in 1974, and the 1995 occupation of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, amid protests by the Philippines. This history helps to explain why China’s rapidly growing military power raises important concerns in Asia today.

Indeed, not since Japan rose to world-power status during the reign of the Meiji Emperor (1867-1912) has another non-Western power emerged with such potential to shape the global order. But there is an important difference: Japan’s rise was accompanied by the other Asian civilizations’ decline. After all, by the nineteenth century, Europeans had colonized much of Asia, leaving in place no Asian power that could rein in Japan.

Today, China is rising alongside other important Asian countries, including South Korea, Vietnam, India, and Indonesia. Although China now has displaced Japan as the world’s second largest economy, Japan will remain a strong power for the foreseeable future. On a per capita basis, Japan remains nine times richer than China, and it possesses Asia’s largest naval fleet and its most advanced high-tech industries.

When Japan emerged as a world power, imperial conquest followed, whereas a rising China’s expansionist impulses are, to some extent, checked by other Asian powers. Militarily, China is in no position to grab the territories that it covets. But its defense spending has grown almost twice as fast as its GDP. And, by picking territorial fights with its neighbors and pursuing a muscular foreign policy, China’s leaders are compelling other Asian states to work more closely with the US and each other.

In fact, China seems to be on the same path that made Japan an aggressive, militaristic state, with tragic consequences for the region – and for Japan. The Meiji Restoration created a powerful military under the slogan “Enrich the country and strengthen the military.” The military eventually became so strong that it could dictate terms to the civilian government. The same could unfold in China, where the Communist Party is increasingly beholden to the military for retaining its monopoly on power.

More broadly, Asia’s power dynamics are likely to remain fluid, with new or shifting alliances and strengthened military capabilities continuing to challenge regional stability. For example, as China, India, and Japan maneuver for strategic advantage, they are transforming their mutual relations in a way that portends closer strategic engagement between India and Japan, and sharper competition between them and China.

The future will not belong to Asia merely because it is the world’s largest, most populous, and fastest-developing continent. Size is not necessarily an asset. Historically, small, strategically oriented states have wielded global power.

In fact, with far fewer people, Asia would have a better balance between population size and available natural resources, including water, food, and energy. In China, for example, water scarcity has been officially estimated to cost roughly $28 billion in annual industrial output, even though China, unlike several other Asian economies, including India, South Korea, and Singapore, is not listed by the United Nations as a country facing water stress.

In addition to its growing political and natural-resource challenges, Asia has made the mistake of overemphasizing GDP growth to the exclusion of other indices of development. As a result, Asia is becoming more unequal, corruption is spreading, domestic discontent is rising, and environmental degradation is becoming a serious problem. Worse, while many Asian states have embraced the West’s economic values, they reject its political values.

So make no mistake. Asia’s challenges are graver than those facing Europe, which embodies comprehensive development more than any other part of the world. Despite China’s aura of inevitability, it is far from certain that Asia, with its pressing internal challenges, will be able to spearhead global growth and shape a new world order.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is the author of Asian Juggernaut and Water: Asia’s New Battleground.

可阻擋的亞洲崛起？

新德裡—如今，國際爭論最熱門的話題是亞洲的崛起是不是意味著西方的衰落。但最近一段時間，歐洲和美國的經濟窘境吸引了人們的目光，以至於許多事關亞洲能否持續保持成功的嚴峻挑戰都被忽視了。

誠然，當今世界正在發生的實力轉移主要與亞洲令人矚目的經濟崛起相關，亞洲速度是人類歷史上所罕見的。亞洲擁有世界增長最快的經濟體、膨脹最迅速的軍費開支、最激烈的資源競爭。而最重要的熱點在於，全球秩序的鑰匙顯然含在亞洲嘴裡。

但亞洲也面臨著沉重的約束。亞洲必須處理好根深蒂固的領土和領海糾紛（比如南海問題）、妨礙其最重要國際關系的歷史遺留問題、愈演愈烈的民族主義、日滋月長的宗教極端主義，以及日益尖銳的水和能源之爭。

此外，亞洲政治一體化嚴重滯後於經濟一體化，更嚴重的問題是，亞洲缺少安全框架。地區協商機制仍然相當無力。亞洲存在持久的分歧——安全機構或共同體應該將整個亞洲納入其中，還是隻局限於定義模糊不清的“東亞”？

一個關鍵問題在於，亞洲和歐洲不同。歐洲在20世紀上半葉經歷了兩次慘烈的戰爭，時至今日，歐洲人已對戰爭深惡痛絕。而亞洲在20世紀下半葉所經歷的戰爭加劇了各種仇恨。自1950年的朝鮮戰爭和解放西藏戰事以來，亞洲經歷了多場戰爭，但基本爭端仍未得到解決。

一個顯著的例子是，中國在其一窮二白、仍面臨諸多國內麻煩時仍進行了軍事干預。五角大樓一份2010年的報告援引了中國在1950、1962、1969和1979年以戰略防御為名進行的先發制人。1974年中國從越南手中奪取西沙群島、1995年在菲律賓的抗議聲中佔領南沙群島美濟礁亦是明証。這段歷史有助於解釋中國快速膨脹的軍力為何會引起當今亞洲的嚴重憂慮。

事實上，日本在明治時期（1867—1912年）躋身世界強國之林方才開創了非西方勢力參與決定全球秩序的局面。但日本的例子有一個絕大不同點：其崛起伴隨著其他亞洲文明的衰落。畢竟，19世紀時，歐洲人已經在亞洲廣開殖民地，因此沒有哪個亞洲國家可以制約日本。

如今，中國正在與其他重要亞洲國家一同崛起，包括韓國、越南、印度和印尼。儘管中國現已超越日本成為世界第二大經濟體，但在可預見的將來，日本仍將保持超群的實力。從人均水平看，日本仍比中國富裕九倍，而且擁有亞洲最大的海軍艦隊和最先進的高科技產業。

日本崛起為世界一強后便開始了帝國主義征服，而中國的擴張沖動在某種程度上受著其他亞洲力量的制約。從軍事上看，中國還無力染指其所覬覦的土地。但其國防開支增長速度要比其GDP幾乎快出一倍。此外，通過與其鄰國的領土角力和強硬外交政策，中國領導人正在迫使其他亞洲國家加強與美國和彼此之間的聯系。

事實上，中國似乎走在讓日本成為激進軍事化國家的老路上，這將給地區（以及日本）帶來災難性後果。當年明治維新在“富國強兵”的口號下創造了一支強大的軍隊，終於造成了尾大不掉之局，文職政府不得不受軍隊擺布。中國也可能發生這一幕，共產黨越來越依賴軍隊維持權力壟斷。

從更廣的角度看，亞洲實力格局可能仍將維持變局，新的（或變化的）盟友關系和軍事實力的增強將繼續對地區穩定構成挑戰。比如，中國、印度和日本都在追求戰略優勢，正在形成一種印日戰略合作日漸緊密、與中國競爭日漸尖銳的關係。

未來不會因為亞洲是世界最大、人口最多、發展最快的大洲而屬於亞洲。規模並不一定是優勢。從歷史上說，戰略導向的小國也可以成為列強。

事實上，如果人口再少一點，亞洲可以獲得更佳的人口規模與自然資源（包括水、食品和能源）之間的平衡。比如，據中國官方數據估計，水資源短缺每年要造成大約280億美元的工業產出損失，儘管中國並沒有出現在聯合國面臨水壓力國家的名單中（印度、韓國和新加坡在列）。

除了日益嚴峻的政治和自然資源挑戰，亞洲還犯了過度強調GDP以至於忽視了發展指標的錯誤。結果，亞洲的不平等問題愈演愈烈，腐敗橫行，國內不滿情緒日益高漲，環境破壞也日益嚴重。更糟糕的是，儘管許多亞洲國家接受了西方的經濟價值觀，但卻拒絕接受其政治價值觀。

因此，不要搞錯了。亞洲面臨的挑戰比歐洲還要嚴峻，歐洲的整體發展是其他任何地區所不能比你的。儘管亞洲打上中國烙印已成定局，但面臨嚴峻內部挑戰的亞洲能否充當全球增長領頭羊並創造新的世界秩序還遠未可知。

Brahma Chellaney: South Asia’s False Spring

NEW DELHI – From the armed coup that recently ousted the Maldives’ first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, to the Pakistani Supreme Court’s current effort to undermine a toothless but elected government by indicting Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on contempt charges, South Asia’s democratic advances appear to be shifting into reverse.

Nasheed’s forced resignation at gunpoint has made the Maldives the third country in the region, after Nepal and Sri Lanka, where a democratic transition has been derailed. The Maldives, a group of strategically located islands in the Indian Ocean, now seems set for prolonged instability.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has yet to begin a genuine democratic transition, because the chief of army staff remains its effective ruler. How can democratization begin if Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency are immune to civilian oversight and decisive power rests with military generals?

The Supreme Court’s move against Gilani makes matters worse. A constitutional – rather than a military – coup will be a win-win situation for the army and the ISI, allowing them to rule behind the scenes through a more pliable government, on which all of the blame can be pinned for civil disorder and economic turmoil.

Sri Lanka’s human-rights situation under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s quasi-dictatorship also continues to evoke international concern. The recent end of the country’s 26-year civil war has left behind a militarized society and an emboldened Rajapaksa, who has curtailed media freedom and stepped up efforts to fashion a mono-ethnic identity for a multiethnic Sri Lanka.

In Nepal – a strategic buffer between India and restive Tibet, where China claims to be at “war against secessionist sabotage” – political disarray persists, with political parties bickering over a new constitution. Nepal is in danger of becoming a failed state, which would have major implications for India, with which it has an open border permitting passport-free passage.

Finally, the recent abortive coup attempt in Bangladesh has shown that the world’s seventh most populous country, struggling to remain a democracy under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, remains vulnerable to its unruly military. In its four decades of independence, Bangladesh has experienced 23 coup attempts, some of them successful.

Political developments in the region underscore the insufficiency of free, fair, and competitive elections for ensuring a democratic transition. Elections, by themselves, do not guarantee genuine democratic empowerment at the grassroots level or adherence to constitutional rules by those in power.

As a result of sputtering transitions elsewhere in South Asia, India is now the sole country in the region with a deeply-rooted pluralistic democracy. That is not in India’s interest, for it confronts the country with what might be called the “tyranny of geography” – that is, serious external threats from virtually all directions.

To some extent, it is a self-inflicted tyranny. India’s security concerns over Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and even Pakistan stem from the failures of its past policies. At the very least, the rollback of democracy in the region exposes India’s inability to influence political developments in its own backyard.

Today, political chaos and uncertainty in the region heighten the danger of spillover effects for India, threatening the country’s internal security. An increasingly unstable neighborhood also makes it more difficult to promote regional cooperation and integration, including free trade.

The rise of Islamist groups that has accompanied anti-democratic developments in South Asia represents a further threat to the region. In vandalism reminiscent of the Taliban’s demolition of the monumental Buddhas of Bamyan in Afghanistan in 2001, Islamists ransacked the Maldives’ main museum in Male, the capital, on the day Nasheed was ousted, smashing priceless Buddhist and Hindu statues made of coral and limestone, virtually erasing all evidence of the Maldives’ Buddhist past before its people converted to Islam in the twelfth century. “The whole pre-Islamic history is gone,” the museum’s director lamented.

Encouraged by opposition politicians, Islamist groups in the Maldives are “becoming more powerful,” according to Nasheed. Likewise, in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the military intelligence agencies have nurtured jihadist groups, employing them for political purposes at home and across national frontiers.

This follows a well-established pattern in the region: autocratic rule has tended to promote extremist elements, especially when those in power form opportunistic alliances with such forces. For example, Pakistan’s thriving jihadist factions arose under two military dictators: Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who used them to confront the Soviets in Afghanistan, and Pervez Musharraf, who fled to London in 2008 under threat of impeachment and was subsequently charged with involvement in the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007 – a milestone in Pakistan’s slide into chaos.

When a democratic experiment gains traction, as in Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina, it crimps the extremists’ room for maneuver. But a broader lesson in much of the region is that democratic progress remains reversible unless the old, entrenched forces are ousted and the rule of law is firmly established.

For example, the Maldives’ 2008 democratic election, which swept away decades-old authoritarian rule, became a beacon of hope, which then dissipated in less than four years. As the freshly deposed Nasheed put it, “Dictatorships don’t always die when the dictator leaves office….[L]ong after the revolutions, powerful networks of regime loyalists can remain behind and can attempt to strangle their nascent democracies.”

As its tyranny of geography puts greater pressure on its external and internal security, India will need to develop more innovative approaches to diplomacy and national defense. Only through more vigorous defense and foreign policies can India hope to ameliorate its regional-security situation, freeing it to play a larger global role. Otherwise, it will continue to be weighed down by its region.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is the author of Asian Juggernaut and Water: Asia’s New Battleground.

Brahma Chellaney: No Escape from Empire’s Graveyard / 無法從帝國的墳墓脫身

NEW DELHI – With the stage set for secret talks in Qatar between the United States and the Taliban, US President Barack Obama’s strategy for a phased exit from war-ravaged Afghanistan is now being couched in nice-sounding terms that hide more than they reveal. In seeking a Faustian bargain with the Taliban, Obama risks repeating US policy mistakes that now haunt regional and international security.

Since coming to office, Obama has pursued an Afghan strategy that can be summed up in three words: surge, bribe, and run. The military mission has now entered the “run” part, or what euphemistically is being called the “transition to 2014.”

The central objective is to cut a deal with the Taliban so that the US and its NATO partners exit the “graveyard of empires” without losing face. This approach – aimed more at withdrawing forces as soon as possible than at ensuring enduring peace and regional stability – is being dressed up as “reconciliation,” with Qatar, Germany, and the United Kingdom getting lead roles in facilitating a settlement.

Yet what stands out is how little the US has learned from the past. In critical respects, it is beginning to repeat its own mistakes, whether by creating or funding new local militias in Afghanistan, or by striving to come to terms with the Taliban. As with the covert war that the US waged in the 1980’s in Afghanistan against Soviet military intervention, so, too, have short-term interests driven US policy in the current overt war.

To be sure, any leader must work to extricate his country from a protracted war, so Obama is right to seek an end to this one. But he was not right in laying out his cards in public and emboldening the enemy.

Within weeks of assuming office, Obama publicly declared his intention to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan, before he even asked his team to work out a strategy. A troop surge that lasted up to 2010 was designed not to rout the Taliban militarily, but to strike a political deal with the enemy from a position of strength. Yet, even before the surge began, its purpose was undercut by the exit plan, followed by a publicly announced troop drawdown, stretching from 2011 to 2014.

A withdrawing power that first announces a phased exit and then pursues deal-making with the enemy undermines its regional leverage. It speaks for itself that the sharp deterioration in US ties with the Pakistani military has occurred since the drawdown timetable was unveiled. The phased exit encouraged Pakistani generals to play hardball. Worse, there is still no clear US strategy on how to ensure that the endgame does not undermine Western interests or further destabilize the region.

The US envoy to the region, Marc Grossman, has already held a series of secret meetings with the Taliban. Qatar has been chosen as the seat of fresh US-Taliban negotiations in order to keep the still-skeptical Afghan government at arm’s length (despite the pretense of “Afghan-led” talks), and to insulate the Taliban negotiators from Pakistani and Saudi pressure. Meanwhile, even as a civil-military showdown in Pakistan compounds Washington’s regional challenges, the new US push to contain Iran threatens to fuel greater turbulence in neighboring Afghanistan.

In truth, US policy on the Taliban, at whose birth the CIA played midwife, is coming full circle for the second time in little more than 15 years. The Clinton administration acquiesced in the Taliban’s ascension to power in 1996 and turned a blind eye as that thuggish militia, in league with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, fostered narcotics trafficking and swelled the ranks of Afghan war alumni waging transnational terrorism. With the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, however, the chickens came home to roost. In declaring war on the Taliban, US policy came full circle.

Now, US policy, with its frantic search for a deal with the Taliban, is about to complete another orbit. Indeed, the Qatar-based negotiations highlight why the US political leadership has deliberately refrained from decapitating the Taliban. The US military has had ample opportunities (and still has) to eliminate the Taliban’s Rahbari Shura, or leadership council, often called the Quetta Shura because it relocated to that Pakistani city.

Yet, tellingly, the US has not carried out a single drone, air, or ground strike in or around Quetta. All of the US strikes have occurred farther north, in Pakistan’s tribal Waziristan region, although the leadership of the Afghan Taliban and of its allied groups, like the Haqqani network and the Hekmatyar band, is not holed up there.

Like the US occupation of Iraq, the NATO war in Afghanistan will leave behind an ethnically fractured country. Just as Iraq today is, for all intents and purposes, ethnically partitioned, it will be difficult to establish a post-2014 government in Kabul whose writ runs across Afghanistan. And, just as the 1973 US-North Vietnam agreements were negotiated after the South Vietnamese regime was shut out of the talks, the US today is shutting out the Afghan government, even as it compels President Hamid Karzai to lend support and appears ready to meet a Taliban demand to transfer five incarcerated Taliban leaders from Guantánamo Bay.

These negotiations, in which the US is seeking the creation of ceasefire zones to facilitate its forces’ withdrawal, can only undercut the legitimacy of the Karzai government and bring the Quetta Shura back to center stage. But Afghanistan is not Vietnam. An end to NATO combat operations will not mean the end of the war, because the enemy will target Western interests wherever they may be. America’s fond hope to contain terrorism regionally promises instead to ensure that Afghanistan and Pakistan remain a festering threat to regional and global security.

Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and the author of Asian Juggernaut.

Brahma Chellaney: 無法從帝國的墳墓脫身

新德裡——隨著美國和塔利班在卡塔爾籌備秘密會談，美國總統貝拉克•奧巴馬從飽受戰爭蹂躪的阿富汗分階段撤離的戰略現在使用了悅耳的措辭，其隱含的意思比表明的意思要多。為了與塔利班達成浮士德式的交易，奧巴馬有可能再犯美國在當今地區和國際安全方面的政策錯誤。

自執政以來，奧巴馬追求的阿富汗戰略可以概括為三個詞：增兵、賄賂、撤離。軍事任務現在進入了“撤離”階段，委婉一點就是“2014年之前的轉型期”

核心目標就是與塔利班簽訂協議，這樣美國及其北約的盟友就可以撤出“帝國的墳墓”，又不丟面子。這種做法——與其說是為了確保長期和平和地區穩定還不如說是為了部隊盡快撤離——披上了“和解”的外衣，卡塔爾、德國和英國在牽頭促成協議。

然而，引人注目的是美國竟然好了傷疤就忘了痛。在關鍵領域，美國開始重蹈覆轍了，比如在阿富汗組建或資助本土的武裝組織、努力與塔利班達成協議等。20世紀80年代，出於短期的利益，美國在阿富汗發動了秘密戰爭，應對蘇聯的軍事干預，但是在當前這場眾人皆知的戰爭中，引導美國政策的還是短期的利益。

當然，任何領導人都必須努力讓自己的國家從曠日持久的戰爭中脫身，因此奧巴馬試圖結束這場戰爭無可厚非。但是他在公眾面前攤牌，為敵人壯膽，這是不對的。

執政才幾個星期，奧巴馬就公開宣布他打算讓美國部隊從阿富汗撤離，此前他甚至沒有要求他的團隊制定相關戰略。拖到2010年才出台的增兵戰略並不是為了擊潰塔利班軍隊，而是為了在與敵人達成政治協議時處於優勢地位。然而，增兵還未開始，撤退計劃就使增兵的目的大打折扣了。隨后，奧巴馬又公開宣布，2011至2014年期間，美國軍隊將逐步撤離阿富汗。

這個正在衰退的大國先是宣布分階段撤離的計劃，接著又努力與敵人達成協議，這降低了其在該地區的影響力。自撤退時間表公布以來，美國與巴基斯坦軍方的關系顯著惡化就是明証。分階段撤離的計劃促使巴基斯坦的將軍強硬起來。更加糟糕的是，該如何確保在不損害西方利益或導致該地區更加動蕩的情況下結束阿富汗戰爭，美國還沒有清晰的戰略。

美國該地區的特使馬克•格羅斯曼已經與塔利班舉行了一系列會談。美國和塔利班新一輪談判的地點選在了卡塔爾，一來是為了防范仍然持懷疑態度的阿富汗政府（盡管談判假裝由阿富汗領導），二來是讓塔利班的談判人員免受來自巴基斯坦和沙特阿拉伯的壓力。與此同時，雖然巴基斯坦文官和軍方之間的攤牌會使美國面臨的地區挑戰更加復雜，但是美國遏制伊朗的新行動會導致阿富汗的鄰國更加動蕩不安。

實際上，中情局催生了塔利班，在短短15年內，美國針對塔利班的政策重復了一遍。1996年，克林頓政府默許塔利班獲得了執政地位，這個殘暴的軍政府與巴基斯坦的三軍情報局合作，助長了毒品走私，壯大了阿富汗戰爭暴徒的隊伍，任由他們發動國際恐怖襲擊。然而，2001年9.11事件發生後，美國開始自食其果。向塔利班宣戰，美國政策完整地實施了一遍。

如今，美國竭力與塔利班達成協議，美國政策將再完整的重演一遍。實際上，在卡塔爾舉行的談判突出表明了美國的政治領導層故意放過塔利班的原因。美國軍方曾有（現在還有）大量的機會消滅塔利班的領導委員會，通常又稱為“基達領導委員會”，因為該委員會搬到了這個巴基斯坦城市。

美國從未在基達周圍進行過無人機轟炸，也沒有進行過陸空襲擊，這很能說明問題。所有美國的襲擊都發生在偏遠的北部，巴基斯坦部落的瓦齊裡斯坦地區，盡管阿富汗塔利班及其哈卡尼組織和希克馬蒂亞爾組織等盟友沒有隱藏在那裡。

與美國佔領伊拉克一樣，北約在阿富汗的戰爭將留下一個種族四分五裂的國家。如今，由於各種各樣的意圖和目的，伊拉克的種族四分五裂，與伊拉克類似，阿富汗人都知道，2014年后，喀布爾將成立新政府，但是這很難實現。此外，正如1973年，美國和北越在南越沒有參與的情況下協商達成協議一樣，如今美國也把阿富汗政府拒在了門外，盡管美國還要求哈米德•卡爾扎伊總統提供支持，似乎准備滿足塔利班的要求，釋放關在關塔那摩監獄的五名塔利班領導人。

美國想通過這些談判創造停火區，促進其部隊撤離，但是這些談判隻會削弱卡爾扎伊政府的合法性，讓塔利班的領導委員會回到中心位置。但是阿富汗與越南不同。北約的作戰行動結束並不意味著戰爭的結束，因為敵人總是會針對西方的利益。美國最希望遏制地區的恐怖主義，但這反而確保了阿富汗和巴基斯坦仍然將進一步威脅地區和全球安全。

Brahma Chellaney，新德裡政策研究中心戰略學教授，著有《亞洲主宰世界》。

Brahma Chellaney:Asia’s New Tripartite Entente

NEW DELHI – The launch of trilateral strategic consultations among the United States, India, and Japan, and their decision to hold joint naval exercises this year, signals efforts to form an entente among the Asia-Pacific region’s three leading democracies. These efforts – in the world’s most economically dynamic region, where the specter of a power imbalance looms large – also have been underscored by the Obama administration’s new strategic guidance for the Pentagon. The new strategy calls for “rebalancing toward the Asia-Pacific” and support of India as a “regional economic anchor and provider of security in the broader Indian Ocean region.”

At a time when Asia is in transition and troubled by growing security challenges, the US, India, and Japan are seeking to build a broader strategic understanding to advance their shared interests. Their effort calls to mind the pre-World War I Franco-British-Russian “Triple Entente” to meet the threat posed by the rapid rise of an increasingly assertive Germany.

This time, the impetus has been provided by China’s increasingly muscular foreign policy. But unlike the anti-German entente a century ago, the aim is not to contain China. Rather, US policy is to use economic interdependence and China’s full integration into international institutions to dissuade its leaders from aggressively seeking Asian hegemony.

Indeed, the intention of the three democratic powers is to create an entente cordiale without transforming it into a formal military alliance, which they recognize would be counterproductive. Yet this entente could serve as an important strategic instrument to deter China’s rising power from sliding into arrogance. The three partners also seek to contribute to the construction of a stable, liberal, rules-based regional order.

After their recent first round of strategic dialogue in Washington, the US, Japan, and India will hold more structured discussions in Tokyo, aimed at strengthening trilateral coordination. Over time, the trilateral initiative could become quadrilateral with Australia’s inclusion. A parallel Australia-India-US axis, however, is likely to precede the formation of any quadrilateral partnership, especially in view of the earlier failure to launch such a four-party coalition.

Important shifts in American, Japanese, and Indian strategic preferences and policies, however, are needed to build meaningful trilateral collaboration. Japan, America’s treaty ally, has established military interoperability only with US forces. Following its 2008 security-cooperation declaration with India, Japan must also build interoperability with Indian naval forces, so that, as former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said, “Japan’s navy and the Indian navy are seamlessly interconnected.”

American and Indian forces have conducted dozens of joint exercises in recent years, but some US analysts complain that India still hews to “nonalignment” in power politics by guarding its strategic autonomy. In reality, India is just being more cautious, because it is more vulnerable to direct Chinese pressure from across a long, disputed Himalayan border. Whereas Japan is separated from China by an ocean and the US is geographically distant, China has sharply escalated border violations and other incidents in recent years to increase pressure on India, even as the US has maintained tacit neutrality on Sino-Indian disputes.

But, in view of America’s dire fiscal challenges, the Obama administration has just announced plans for a leaner military and greater reliance on regional allies and partners. This demands that the US transcend its Cold War-era hub-and-spoke system, whose patron-client framework is hardly conducive to building new alliances (or “spokes”). India for example, cannot be a Japan to the US. Indeed, the US has worked to co-opt India in a “soft alliance” devoid of treaty obligations.

The hub-and-spoke system, in fact, is more suited to maintain Japan as an American protectorate than to allow Japan to contribute effectively to achieving the central US policy objective in Asia: a stable balance of power. A subtle US policy shift that encourages Tokyo to cut its overdependence on America and do more for its own defense can more effectively contribute to that equilibrium.

Such a shift is likely to be dictated by the US imperative to cut defense expenditure further, in order to focus on the comprehensive domestic renewal needed to arrest the erosion in its relative power. If the US is to rely less on prepositioned forward deployments and more on acting as an offshore balancer, it will need to make fundamental changes in its post-1945 security system.

The three entente parties must also understand the limits of their partnership. The broad convergence of their strategic objectives in the Asia-Pacific region does not mean that they will see eye-to-eye on all issues. Consider, for example, their earlier contrasting approaches toward Burma, or their current differences over the new US energy sanctions against Iran.
Building true military interoperability within the entente will not be easy, owing to the absence of a treaty relationship between the US and India, and to their forces’ different weapon systems and training. But, given that no formal tripartite alliance is sought, limited interoperability may mesh well with this entente cordiale’s political objectives. Indeed, the entente’s political utility is likely to surpass its military value.

Even so, the deepening cooperation between the US, India, and Japan can help to strengthen maritime security in the Indo-Pacific region – the world’s leading trade and energy seaway – and shape a healthy and stable Asian power equilibrium.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the independent Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author of Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India, and Japan.

Brahma Chellaney: Asia’s Natural-Born Allies

NEW DELHI – At a time when China’s economic, diplomatic, and military rise casts the shadow of a power disequilibrium over Asia, the just-concluded visit of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to India cemented a fast-growing relationship between two natural allies. Now the task for Japan and India is to add concrete strategic content to their ties.

Asia’s emerging balance of power will be determined principally by events in East Asia and the Indian Ocean. Japan and India thus have an important role to play in preserving stability and helping to safeguard vital sea-lanes in the wider Indo-Pacific region – a region defined not only by the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, but also by its significance for world trade and energy supplies.

Asia’s booming economies are coastal, so maritime democracies like Japan and India must work together to help build a stable, liberal, rules-based order in Asia. As Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at the East Asia Summit (EAS) meeting in Bali last month, Asia’s continued rise is not automatically assured, and is “dependent on the evolution of a cooperative architecture.”

Japan and India – as energy-poor countries heavily reliant on oil imports from the Persian Gulf – are seriously concerned by mercantilist efforts to assert control over energy supplies and the transport routes for them. So the maintenance of a peaceful and lawful maritime domain, including unimpeded freedom of navigation, is critical to their security and economic well-being. That is why they have agreed to start holding joint naval and air exercises from 2012 – just one sign of a shift from emphasizing shared values to seeking to protect shared interests.

Indeed, despite their messy domestic politics and endemic scandals, India and Japan have the fastest-growing bilateral relationship in Asia today. Since they unveiled a “strategic and global partnership” in 2006, their political and economic engagement has deepened remarkably.

A growing congruence of strategic interests led to their 2008 Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation, a significant milestone in building a stable Asian order, in which a constellation of states linked by common interests has become critical to ensuring equilibrium at a time when ongoing power shifts accentuate security challenges.

The joint declaration was modeled on Japan’s 2007 defense-cooperation accord with Australia – the only other country with which Japan, a US military ally, has a security-cooperation arrangement. The India-Japan security declaration, in turn, spawned a similar Indian-Australian accord in 2009.

A free-trade agreement between Japan and India, formally known as the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), entered into force in August. And, in response to China’s punitive use of its monopoly on rare-earths production to cut off such exports to Japan during the fall of 2010, Japan and India have agreed to joint development of rare earths, which are vital for a wide range of green-energy technologies and military applications.

Today, the level and frequency of official bilateral engagement is extraordinary. Noda’s visit to New Delhi was part of a commitment by the two countries to hold an annual summit, attended by their prime ministers.

More important, Japan and India now conduct several annual ministerial dialogues: a strategic dialogue between their foreign ministers; a security dialogue between their defense ministers; a policy dialogue between India’s commerce and industry minister and Japan’s minister of economy, trade and industry; and separate ministerial-level energy and economic dialogues.

And, to top it off, Japan, India, and the US initiated a trilateral strategic dialogue in Washington on December 19. Getting the US on board can only bolster India-Japan cooperation. As Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba said recently, “Japan and the US are deepening a strategic relationship with India,” and the trilateral dialogue is “a specific example of collaboration” among the three leading Asia-Pacific democracies. Such collaboration is likely to become quadrilateral with Australia’s inclusion.

Japan and India need to strengthen their still-fledgling strategic cooperation by embracing two ideas, both of which demand a subtle shift in Japanese thinking and policy. One is to build interoperability between their formidable naval forces, which, in cooperation with other friendly navies, can undergird peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. As former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe put it in a recent speech in New Delhi, the aim should be that “sooner rather than later, Japan’s navy and the Indian navy are seamlessly interconnected.” Currently, Japan has naval interoperability only with US forces.

The second idea is to co-develop defense systems. India and Japan have missile-defense cooperation with Israel and the US, respectively. There is no reason why they should not work together on missile defense and other technologies for mutual security. Their defense cooperation must be comprehensive and not be limited to strategic dialogue, maritime cooperation, and occasional naval exercises.

There is no ban on weapon exports in Japan’s US-imposed Constitution, only a longstanding government decision, which in any case has been loosened. In fact, the original decision related to weapons, not technologies.

The most-stable economic partnerships in the world, including the Atlantic community and the Japan-US partnership, have been built on the bedrock of security collaboration. Economic ties that lack the underpinning of strategic partnerships tend to be less stable and even volatile, as is apparent from the economic relationships that India and Japan have with China. Through close strategic collaboration, Japan and India must lead the effort to build freedom, prosperity, and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Center for Policy Research, is the author of Water: Asia’s New Battleground.