Security challenges and options in Northeast Asia

The discussion starts by making the point that history is not a reliable gu ide to the future of Northeast Asia. The unique geo-strategic and military balance circumstances of East Asia during the first half of the 20th centur y are not in evidence today. The current environment is so fundamentally di fferent than 75 years ago that historically based arguments used to buttres s or fashion strategic options and power relations are largely irrelevant. Today the region is militarily stable because of a de facto condominium of power that exists between the United States and China. Each country has in effect a geographic sphere of military influence. China's sphere is the con tinent of Asia. The United States preserves its military sphere of influenc e through an alliance system on the rimland of Asia, and forward deployed f orces. Any attempt by either China or the United States to undermine this essentia lly stable status quo is fraught with danger as it could unhinge the stabil ity that has been so essential to the economic development of Asia. Reconci ling these different views will be essential if the US and China are to sus tain a long-term normal relationship. The concept of regional stability as spoken and written about today is at o nce general in conception and vague in scope. Once the need to deter confli ct in Korea is no longer a requirement it will be the job of American milit ary planners to translate the conception into more precise terms that recog nize the realities of power and geography in East Asia. Whether that will i nclude US forces in Korea depends upon how the process of peace and eventua lly reunification unfolds. Predictions about the future are almost certain to be wrong. The number of variables is too large, global changes are too rapid and diverse, and our i maginations are too limited. Who could have foreseen the world of 2000 in 1 970, or even in 1990? Since the end of the Cold War expert opinion has had a dismal record in trying to forecast future outcomes.' But what if we could foresee the future perfectly? In the area of security policy it would still be difficult to translate today's vision into a futur e outcome. This is so because national security planning and strategy are n ot played out in a vacuum. Necessarily two or more nations are in a dynamic interaction. For example, when the United States responds to perceived dan gers or tries to "shape" or hedge against uncertain outcomes in North Korea , Pyongyang, as the object of these initiatives, will in turn adapt its sta nce in response to the actions of the United States. As a result, even with prefect foresight it is impossible to be enduringly correct. Instead one m ust constantly reassess the current situation and make changes accordingly. This reality is not meant to imply that thinking and talking about the futu re is a waste of time. To the contrary, the very process of thinking about the future-which entails weighing alternatives, trying to understand relati onships and linkages, appreciating that all actions have consequences, and trying to understand what these consequences may be helps one to comprehend a range of plausible outcomes. With these cautions in mind, this paper is going to focus on three of the m any complex challenges for the future of Northeast Asia.