2018 Book DestinedStatecraft

Pak Nung Wong
Destined
Statecraft
Eurasian Small Power Politics and
Strategic Cultures in Geopolitical Shifts
Destined Statecraft
Pak Nung Wong
Destined Statecraft
Eurasian Small Power Politics and Strategic
Cultures in Geopolitical Shifts
123
Pak Nung Wong
Department of Politics, Languages &
International Studies
University of Bath
Bath
UK
ISBN 978-981-10-6561-3 ISBN 978-981-10-6563-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6563-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952520
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To Claudia
About the Book
This book is intended to make a substantial contribution to a few interconnected

subfields in international relations. First, it is the growing interests in Pierre
Bourdieu’s sociological works among the international relations scholars. Second is
the geopolitical shifts characterized by the US ‘pivot to Asia’ policy and the
emergence of a new global order partially triggered by China’s ‘One Belt One
Road’ initiative, which were both launched in the 2010s. Third is the small power
politics, which concerns about how the small powers survive and thrive in world
politics. Fourth is the study of strategic cultures, which asks what is the better, if not
the best, theoretical tool and empirical scheme to capture strategic culture.
The main goal of this book is to conduct a global-historical, comparative and
inter-regional empirical application of Bourdieu’s post-structuralist theory for
attaining new theoretical advances in the subfields of small power politics and
strategic cultures in international relations. This application is conducted against the
larger backdrop of the post-WWII US-China competition, which is characterized by
geopolitical containment and geoeconomic counter-containment.
To achieve this goal, this book argues that Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’ is the
key concept to devise a new theory of practice of statecraft. Integrating it with the
existing theoretical strand of African-Asian critical realism (which was developed
by the author and his colleague Prof. George Klay Kieh Jr. in 2014), a
habitus-inspired critical realist statecraft agenda—destined statecraft—entails the
proactive, agile, humble and operating-on-the-ground approach to constantly detect,
identify, accept, embrace and make good use of the already-given geopolitical,
political-economic and strategic-cultural structuring structures in order for the small
power to take full advantage of the circumstances, earn surprising political gains
and make maximal economic benefits from the ever-changing, often uncertain and
sometimes volatile situations. The strategic gist of this destiny-remaking process
of the small power is dubbed as ‘go with the flows’. It refers to the strategist’s
patience, calmness, resourcefulness, wisdoms and capability in discerning, grasping
and going with the embedded structural flows of the often complexly morphing
situation so that one would be able to generate the best outcomes out of the least
inputs.
vii
viii About the Book
Pulling empirical materials from a wide array of historical case studies from Asia
and Europe of the pre- and post-war periods, this book is interwoven by the
strategic wisdoms and applications of such remarkable Eurasian strategic thinkers
in both ancient and contemporary times as Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Kautilya, Halford
Mackinder and Karl Haushofer. Apart from being used as a key text for advanced
courses in statecraft and geopolitics, this book is deliberately written in lucid and
straightforward language so that the diplomats, policy-makers, national develop-
ment planners and security practitioners of the Eurasian small powers would find it
accessible.
Keywords: Africa, Asia, Europe, International relations, Geopolitics, Small power
politics, Statecraft, Strategic cultures, US-China competition
Preface
I would like to thank a number of individuals and institutions, who made this book
possible. In the first place, the following professors and administrators in the aca-
demia listened, read or commented in parts or full of the manuscript: Tukumbi
Lumumba-Kasongo, N’Dri Assie-Lumumba, George Kieh Jr., Suchitra
Chongstitvatana, Gerald Chan, Catherine Montgomery, Changjiang Yu, Yang
Chun, S.I. Keethaponcalan, Wing-tai Chan, Stephen Mayinja, Ranhilio Aquino,
Wing-tai Leung, Sunait Chutintaranond and Timo Kivimaki.
The research for this project was funded by the following two grants: (1) General
Research Fund Grant No. 456610 of the Hong Kong Research Grant Council
(2011–2013) and (2) Strategic Research Grant of the City University of Hong Kong
(2013–2014). I thank Archbishop Sergio Utleg of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese
of Tuguegarao, Prof. Trinidad Osteria of De La Salle University, Dr. Jun Flores of
Our Lady of the Pillar College, Dr. Suppakorn Disatapundhu of Chulalongkorn
University for making my field research in the Philippines and Thailand possible.
Chulalongkorn University, Cagayan State University, Hong Kong Society of
Indonesian Studies, Indonesian Ministry of Culture and Education, Hong Kong
Baptist University’s Geography Department, Peking University’s Shenzhen
Graduate School, Breakthrough Youth Village, National Chengchi University,
Lumina College Hong Kong, Harvard University, Shanghai Academy of Social
Sciences, Huaqiao University, Minnan Normal University and Savanna College,
South Africa, kindly invited me to present some of the interim findings in their
well-organized seminars and conferences. The Sino-Thai communities in Bangkok
and Nakhon Sawan made my fieldwork more comfortable than expected.
In various occasions, I am privileged that various versions of parts of this book
were presented to, read and commented by the following senior practitioners,
policy-makers and diplomats: Ambassador Professor Wilfrido Villacorta,
Archbishop Paul Kwong, Ambassador Jerzy Bayer, Ambassador Sungnam Lim,
Mr. Sante Hong, Commodore R.S. Vasan, Bishop Joseph Nacua, Dr. Rohan Perera,
Dr. Manuel Mamba, Ambassador Gurjit Singh, Mr. Tze-chia Chng, Dr. Chaerun
Anwar and Mr. Randolph Ting. I thank them for keeping my Chinese and English
writing lucid, straightforward and accessible. I also wish to thank the prayerful
ix
x Preface
encouragements of Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, Reverend Jerome Francis, Prof.

Andres Tang, Reverend Vincent Lau and Mr. Tak-shing Lee. In the monastery of
Downside Abbey, I thank the Benedictine monks and oblates such as Dom
Alexander George and Dr. Scott Thomas for their prayers. I also wish to thank the
Quakers in Bath for the precious moments of silence and clearness.
Bath, UK Pak Nung Wong

2017
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the permissions granted by the publishers
and the co-authors for using some of the materials from the following journal
articles in preparing the following chapters:
Chapter 2
Wong, Pak Nung & George Kieh Jr. (2014). ‘The Small Powers in World Politics:
Contours of an Asian-African Critical Realism’. African and Asian Studies. 13:
13–32. (Leiden: Brill Publishers)
Chapter 3
Wong, Pak Nung & Ricky Wai-Kay Yue (2014). ‘US-China Containment and
Counter-containment in Southeast Asia: The “Battle” for Myanmar (Burma)’.
African and Asian Studies 13: 33–58. (Leiden: Brill Publishers)
xi
Book Review
In Destined Statecraft, Professor Pak Nung Wong addresses an interesting yet

rarely handled topic of how small powers engage in foreign policy in a dynamic,
fast-paced world. Most literary works on world politics revolve around great
powers, based on the deeply ingrained belief that their decisions shape the world
order, whereby middle and small powers merely sustain their destinies under their
influence. Seldom do we come across a book where small powers are at the center
of its focal point.
Professor Wong defies such conventional notions and writes that there does exist
considerable maneuvering room for small powers, on the premise that they have an
accurate understanding of their given circumstances and status quo. What is
idiosyncratic in Professor Wong’s approach to international relations is that he
places the concept of strategic circumstances in parallel with Bourdieu’s socio-
logical principle of “habitus”. Employing diverse theories ranging from Thucydides
to Sun Tzu to Karl Marx, Professor Wong goes on to interpret historic events and
current situations from multiple angles.
Destined Statecraft enriches our understanding of global affairs by presenting a
perspective where small powers are no longer in the periphery, but take up the main
narrative. This standpoint is all the more valuable in an age where the proactive
decision-making of small powers often goes unobserved. Professor Wong’s
Destined Statecraft offers a fresh lens for discerning world issues, helping to extend
the reader’s vision beyond the exterior towards a greater perception of the world we
live in.
Seoul, Republic of Korea Ambassador Mr Sungnam Lim

Vice-Minister of Ministry of Foreign Affairs
xiii
Contents
1 Introduction: Remaking the Small Powers’ Destines . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1 The Melian Fate Reconsidered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 The Problem: Destined Statecraft—Optimal Fate-Remaking . . . . . . 2
1.3 Shifting Poles: Conceptualizing an Emerging Global Order . . . . . . 4
1.3.1 The ‘One Belt One Road’ Initiative: Background,
Goals and Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 4
1.3.2 Existing Approaches of the OBOR Initiative . . . . . . . .... 7
1.3.3 Global Financial Leninism: My Positional Approach
of OBOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 11
1.4 The OBOR’s Challenge to the Small Powers: Hypothesis
and Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 14
1.5 The Key Argument: Destined Agency—Go with the Flows . . .... 14
1.6 The Habitus Shift in International Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 16
1.7 Visualizing the Small Power Politics in Plate Tectonics
Imagery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 18
1.8 Book Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 19
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 20
2 The Small Powers in World Politics: Outline of a Theory
of African-Asian Critical Realism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.2 Small Power Politics: Theoretical Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.2.1 Major Paradigms of Small Power Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.2.2 Towards an African-Asian Critical Realism . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.2.3 Definition of Small Power Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.3 African and Asian Small Power Politics in Global Context:
Empirical Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.3.1 Different Trajectories Towards the Great Power-Hood:
USA and China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
xv
xvi Contents
2.3.2 African and Asian Small Power Politics: Liberia and

the Philippines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.4 Conclusion: Small Power Politics as Practice of Statecraft . . . . . . . 45
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3 USA–China Containment and Counter-Containment in Southeast
Asia: The ‘Battle’ for Myanmar (Burma) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.2 Strategic Issue I: Worldview, Rationale and Objective
of the US Containment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.2.1 The Making of Anglo-American Geopolitical
Realism I: Mackinder’s Pivot of the Heartland . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.2.2 The Making of Anglo-American Geopolitical
Realism II: Spykman’s Quest for US-Centric Global
Balance of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.3 Strategic Issue II: US Containment Policy and China’s Response
After Second World War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.3.1 US Containment Strategy and the ‘Washington
Consensus’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.3.2 China’s Counter-Containment Strategy and the ‘Beijing
Consensus’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.4 Small Power Politics in the USA–China Relations: The Case
of Myanmar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.4.1 USA–China Containment and Counter-Containment
Through the Lens of Sun Tzu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.4.2 Myanmar—Where China Jail-Broke US Containment. . . . . 67
3.4.3 The New US Containment Since Obama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.5 Conclusion and Policy Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4 Strategic Cultures as ‘the Powers’: Kautilya’s Hindu Statecraft
and the ‘String of Pearls’ in the Indian Ocean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.2 Key Theoretical Issue: What Is Strategic Culture? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.2.1 Three Generations of Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.2.2 Strategic Culture as Context: A Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.2.3 Strategic Culture as Habitus: A Critique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.3 Strategic Cultures as ‘the Powers’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.3.1 State-Centrism as Epistemology-Cum-Ontology . . . . . . . . . 85
4.3.2 The ‘Deep State’ Methodological Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.3.3 Strategic Cultures as ‘the Powers’: An Outline . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.4 Generating Indian Strategic Culture: Kautilya’s Hindu Statecraft
and the ‘String of Pearls’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.4.1 Kautilya’s ‘Double Policy’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Contents xvii
4.4.2 The Mandala-like Bi-Centric International System . . . .... 93

4.4.3 The Formation of the ‘String of Pearls’ in the Indian
Ocean Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 95
4.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 103
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 104
5 Chaperoning Thai Populist Democracy: Habitus, Structure
and Technique of King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s Statecraft
(1946–2016) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
5.2 Restoring Royal Sovereignty: King Bhumibol’s Pathway to Be
the Thai Sovereign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
5.2.1 Phase I: Rebuilding Royal Authority (1946–1970) . . . . . . . 112
5.2.2 Phase II: Uplifting the Royal Power over Military Power
(1970–1990) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.2.3 Phase III: The Sovereign Who Constitutionalized the
Chaperoned Democracy (1997–2016) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.3 Chaperoning the Thai ‘Thick-Dark’ Democracy:
An Exposition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
5.3.1 Western Democracy—A Political-Economic System
Preserving Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.3.2 Resilience of the ‘Sakdina’ Habitus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
5.3.3 Thai ‘Thick-Dark’ Democracy: A Post-imperial Chinese
Theorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
5.4 Thai Rice Political Economy: Historical Formation and the
Populist Policy Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
5.4.1 Early Formation of the Ethnic Monopoly in the Thai Rice
Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
5.4.2 Post-Second World War Ethnic Division of Labour
and Thai National Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
5.4.3 Rise of Populist Democracy and Rice Policy Change
Since the 1990s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
5.5 Bloodless Coup: Technique of Chaperoning Thai Populist
Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
5.5.1 Background of the 2014 Coup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
5.5.2 Two Phases of Thai Coups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
5.5.3 ‘Law/Force Indistinction’ as the Gist of German Coup
Technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
5.5.4 Technique of Bloodless Coup: Rotation of Judicial Coup
and Military Coup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
5.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
xviii Contents
6 Practicing People’s Diplomacy Over Disputed Waters: Peaceable

Intervention Across the South China Sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
6.2 Mimesis in Pre-Second World War German Strategic Culture . . . . 150
6.2.1 First Model/Rival: Halford Mackinder’s English School
of Geopolitics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
6.2.2 Second Model/Rival: Karl Haushofer’s German School
of Geopolitik . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
6.2.3 Third Model/Rival: Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the ‘Great
Space’ (Grobraum) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
6.2.4 Three Models/Rivals Compared . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
6.3 Mimesis for Peace: Outline of a Theory
of ‘People’s Diplomacy’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
6.3.1 Two Ethics of Mimetic Peace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
6.3.2 ‘People’s Diplomacy’: Outline of a Theory of Peaceable
Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
6.4 ‘People’s Diplomacy’ Across the Disputed South China Sea . . . . . 164
6.4.1 Background of the Philippines–China Maritime
Dispute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
6.4.2 The Philippines as an Archipelagic Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
6.4.3 People’s Diplomacy to De-escalate the China–Philippines
Tensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
6.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
7 How Would China Approach the European Rimland?
The Pivots of Poland and the UK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
7.1 Introduction: Poland and the UK as Pivots in European
Rimland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
7.2 The Changing Geopolitical Structures of Europe Since 2006 . . . . . 182
7.2.1 The 2006 Ukraine Gas Crisis and the EU–Russia
Relational Downturn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
7.2.2 A Miscalculated Eurasian Small Power: Ukraine
and the 2014 Crimean Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
7.3 How Would China Approach Poland? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
7.3.1 The ‘Logics of the Powers’ as Strategic Habitus . . . . . . . . . 187
7.3.2 Stages and Structures in Poland–China Relations Since
the 1990s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
7.3.3 Polish Strategic Habitus: The Greater Poland’s Eastern
Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
7.3.4 Policy Recommendations to Future China–Poland
Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
7.4 How Would China Approach the UK? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
7.4.1 British Conservative Party’s Strategic Habitus: The
Logics of New Right Populism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Contents xix
7.4.2 Destined Brexit? A Structural Analysis of the 2016

and 2017 Votes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
7.4.3 The Geopolitical, Economic and Governance Structures
of a Pre-Brexit Britain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
7.4.4 Charting the ‘One Belt One Road’ in Future UK–China
Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
7.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
8 Conclusion: The Small Will Do What They Can! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
8.1 The Bourdieusian Turn in International Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
8.2 Habitus-Inspired Critical Realism: Concluding Exposition . . . . . . . 218
8.3 The ‘American First’ Statecraft of the Trump Presidency . . . . . . . . 219
8.3.1 Twilight of the Liberal World Order: Structural
Trajectory and Populist Consequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
8.3.2 The Trump Doctrine: An Initial Comparative
Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
8.3.3 ‘America First’ Global Security Strategy: Past, Present
and Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
8.4 Towards ‘Radical Post-Colonial Conservatism’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Neocolonial circulatory structures between domestic politics

and foreign relations in post-colonial Liberia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Fig. 2.2 Hedging the great powers in the post-colonial Philippines . . . . . 45
Fig. 3.1 Mackinder’s world map (I) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Fig. 3.2 Mackinder’s world map (II) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Fig. 3.3 Spykman’s US global strategy—surrounding
the ‘Old World’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 57
Fig. 3.4 Spykman’s containment plan—Rimland contains
Heartland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Fig. 3.5 China’s oil demand versus real GDP (1990–2010) . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Fig. 3.6 China’s oil usage trend (1990–2012) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Fig. 3.7 China’s crude oil imports by source (2009) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Fig. 3.8 China’s major oil pipeline projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Fig. 3.9 Burma–China jail-broke US containment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Fig. 3.10 China’s alternative land-route for oil supply . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Fig. 3.11 Oil and gas pipeline going through Myanmar to China . . . . . . . . 71
Fig. 3.12 The ‘String of Pearls’ of China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Fig. 4.1 An illustration of Colin Gray’s ‘strategic culture as context’
position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Fig. 4.2 An illustration of Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus . . . . . . . . . 84
Fig. 4.3 An illustration of strategic cultures as the powers . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Fig. 4.4 The ‘string of pearl’ and Indian responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Fig. 5.1 King Solomon’s statecraft model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Fig. 5.2 Chinese party politics in Sung dynasty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Fig. 5.3 Total rice production of the largest rice-producing Thai
Provinces (2005–2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Fig. 5.4 Productivity of major rice crop in Nakhon Sawan Province
(1974–2009) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Fig. 5.5 Major rice crop average yield by region in Thailand
(1974–2008) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
xxi
xxii List of Figures
Fig. 5.6 Thai major rice crop production by region (1974–2010) . . . . . . . 134
Fig. 5.7 Thai rice exports (1979–1999). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Fig. 5.8 Total exports of Thailand (1966–2008) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Fig. 5.9 Thai rice total production and farm price change
(1974–2009) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Fig. 5.10 Thailand’s 2011 election results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Fig. 6.1 The Heartland Thesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Fig. 6.2 The Mimetic Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Fig. 6.3 Karl Haushofer’s Pan-Regions Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Fig. 6.4 Disputed Claims in the South China Sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Fig. 6.5 National Outposts in the South China Sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Fig. 6.6 The Austronesian Cultural-linguistic Groups in the
Indo-Pacific Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Fig. 6.7 Electricity generation by source in the Philippines
(Year 2009) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
List of Tables
Table 1.1 Changes of trade dependence on China and the USA

(2010–2014), by trade partner (%) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Table 4.1 Demographic changes by religion in Bangladesh
(1901–2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
xxiii
Chapter 1
Introduction: Remaking the Small Powers’
Destines
Abstract This introductory chapter will contextualize the US–China geostrategic

shifts and an emerging global order as the background to study Eurasian small
power politics. In reference to the strategic and sociological thoughts of
Thucydides, Sun Tzu and Pierre Bourdieu, I shall start to develop a
post-structuralist perspective of small power politics. I will delineate the definitions
of two key concepts: ‘destined statecraft’ and ‘destined agency’. A subsequent
literature review of China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative will identify several
existing theoretical approaches. Building on these instructive works, I will state the
purpose of this book is to illustrate how the Eurasian small powers respond to these
global changes as both opportunities and challenges to remake their own destinies.
Keywords China–US relations ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative Small power

politics Destined statecraft
1.1 The Melian Fate Reconsidered
This book is an attempt to articulate a more comprehensive statecraft for the smaller
powers not just to survive in world politics, but also to thrive in it. It is a corrective
to a common reading of the ancient Greek strategist Thucydides’ most cited quote
—‘while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’—a realist
ultimatum for war issued to the small Mediterranean island of Melos by the
Athenian Empire of ancient Greece, whose territories stretched across
Mediterranean Europe and Asia Minor (Thucydides, 1998: Book 5, Chap. 89).
During a truce with Sparta in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.), in 416 B.
C., the Athenian conquistadors sent the ultimatum to the Melians of Melos, a tiny
island polity in the Aegean Sea inhabited by the colonists from Sparta. It is often
interpreted as if the Melians were catastrophically slaughtered by the more powerful
Athenian forces because they failed to recognize their own fate as a weak small
power was to either surrender or be destroyed. As they refused to surrender to
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 1

P.N. Wong, Destined Statecraft,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6563-7_1
2 1 Introduction: Remaking the Small Powers’ Destines
Athens, all the Melian men were eventually executed, and the women and children
were enslaved—a realist tragedy widely believed to be inevitable.
This ultimatum issued from the Athenian conquistadors did not only reflect the
spirit of realism already haunting ancient Eurasian international relations, but it also
embodied the doctrinal ideology of fatalism to other Sparta-related Aegean small
powers—to surrender or be destroyed by the Athenian great power. The ultimatum
therefore suffered from a great power, if not imperialist bias, which conceived the
Athens–Melos international relations only from a perspective of realist fatalism. In
the present global context where great and small powers continue to dominate our
international political life, this ancient Greek small power’s tragedy warrants our
revisit.
1.2 The Problem: Destined Statecraft—Optimal

Fate-Remaking
This book is my full-fledged response to this incomplete view of ancient Greek

small power politics. While I contend that the small powers will do what they can, I
will argue that the small powers can have more options than just either surrender or
be destroyed. The small powers are not easily kicked around, and they are not easily
threatened, bullied and defeated by the great powers. Moreover, they are all in the
active self-remaking processes along their own unique trajectories towards their
own destined visions of great-power-hood; thus, inherently, they are competing
against the existing great powers, for not just power, but also for what
constitutes/defines greatness, and for the rule-setting capacity that would shape a
global order concomitantly binding the great powers. In other words, though a
small power does not have the equal power with a greater power, it can still be
competitively equal or equally competitive, as far as it never gives up to find
innovative ways to survive and thrive. As the small will to compete with the great,
there are new strategies to be invented and deployed. The statecraft of the small
power politics is the key to unlock these creative strategies of the seemingly vul-
nerable and weak in this book.
There are two key issues to be clarified here. First, what do I mean by statecraft?
Second, what do I mean by destiny/fate? In the light of Bourdieu’s (1977)
post-structuralist notion of the ‘habitus’, which refers to the deep-seated yet con-
stantly self-changing structuring structures, these two key concepts are intercon-
nected. By statecraft, I mean the instituted practices and creative strategies that a
small power is constrained/enabled to deploy and devise by a summated complex of
the uniquely given geopolitical, economic and strategic-cultural structures. By
fate/destiny, I mean the limited yet constantly changing varieties of developmental
trajectories or evolutionary pathways of a small power can pursue. The variety is
often preselected, predetermined and made possible by the already-given geopo-
litical, economic and strategic-cultural structures, which are however constantly
1.2 The Problem: Destined Statecraft—Optimal Fate-Remaking 3
changing on their own as they continue to interact with other deep structures in the
international arena and of the other powers.
Three practical reasons are important here (Bourdieu, 1998). First, it is in the
interests of the small power to fully know, embrace and utilize its own deep and
situational structural constraints. Second, it is in the interests of the small power to
know, embrace and utilize the structural constraints effecting from another power,
may it be of great or small. Third, it is in the interests of the small power to know,
embrace and utilize the constantly changing structural circumstances generated
from the international arena. The collection, accumulation and analysis of these
structurally embedded knowledge of one self’s state and others states are what the
state’s intelligence and security apparatuses are used to perform. As Sun Tzu once
reminds us,
So it is said that if you know yourself and the enemies, you can win numerous battles
without jeopardy. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or you
may lose. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will surely lose every battle
(Sun Tzu, 1981: Chap. 3).
I will argue in this book that the best knowledge of the self and others is the
knowledge of the habitus.
To effectively integrate these Eurasian concepts, reasons and wisdom all toge-
ther, the notion of ‘destined statecraft’ is introduced here. Destined statecraft refers
to the context-sensitive art of governing the state affairs along the interface between
the two interpenetrating realms of domestic affairs and foreign relations, for which
the small power’s strategists and policy-makers strive developing the state in
accordance with the most suitable policy options reflecting the core national
interests. This is to choose the optimal—viz. the destined—trajectory of national
development towards its own vision of great-power-hood, which is often very
special and therefore difficult to replicate.
The destined developmental pathway is selected when the strategists and
policy-makers are able to accurately identify, humbly recognize and acceptingly
embrace all the structural constraints given, thus enable them to astutely utilize
these constraints to devise the most appropriate state strategy and policy options.
The destined agency of the small power is the most desirable form of agency of
statecraft. It generally refers to the wisdom to discern, policy-making craftsmanship
and policy-implementation capability to go with the flows of the given internal and
external structural forces so that they can be used to enable the optimal results of
national development to be effected.
In line with the 1955 Afro-Asian Bandung conference spirit (Kahin, 1956),
destined statecraft is a post-colonial state-building agenda holding that there is no
‘the best’ model to follow in this world. Every small power can be the champion of
its own model of development, simply because each one of them is uniquely
situated within their own already-given structural constraints. Nevertheless, there
can always be a better model, but this should be determined in the terms of the
small power concerned, not by the other powers. The dangerous peril that the small
power should therefore avoid is to uncritically imitate another power without
attaining a sufficient level of self-knowledge about its own structural constraints and
its optimal fate-remaking option.
To empirically illustrate how the Eurasian small powers can remake their des-
tinies, I am going to contextualize two geostrategic shifts that have taken place in
the early 2010s, which involve two competing great powers in the global scene—
China and the USA.
1.3 Shifting Poles: Conceptualizing an Emerging Global

Order
1.3.1 The ‘One Belt One Road’ Initiative: Background,

Goals and Strategies
In September and October of 2013, shortly after resuming the supreme power as the
President of the People’s Republic of China in March 2013, President Xi Jinping
(习近平) announced two high-profile initiatives during his state visits to
Kazakhstan and Indonesia—the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ and the ‘twenty first-
century Maritime Silk Road’, respectively (Xi, 2014: 315–324). The former ini-
tiative aims to build a complex of economic corridors connecting China with the
inland countries in Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The latter initiative
aims to build a maritime trade network connecting China with the countries in East
Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the Oceania and the
Americas. These two initiatives were then combined and are widely known as the
‘One Belt One Road’ (OBOR) initiative, which is translated from the Chinese
phrase ‘一带一路’ (yidai yilu). Since its inception, the background, motivations
and grand strategy of this ambitious initiative have been a main topic of public
debates, both in China and overseas.
Since the socialist China embarked upon the liberalist market reform and
adopted the open door policy in 1978, China’s global development can be divided
into two phases. The first phase spanned from 1978 to 2010. Deng Xiaoping and his
successors succeeded in using the economic reform to attract substantial foreign
direct investments and technological transfers to China. This period recorded very
significant volumes of annual economic growths, which is often recognized an
economic miracle (Lin, Cai, & Li, 2003). In this period, China’s national devel-
opment policy was by and large still in line with Deng’s principal statecraft strategy
—‘韬光养晦’ (taoguan yanghui), which may mean ‘to hide one’s capabilities and
bide one’s time’. Deng recognized that China needs time to rebuild its strengths
from the past traumas. As a peaceful international environment is very desirable for
national rejuvenation, China therefore should prevent herself to be perceived as a
threat to the world, nor could China afford war and conflict.
The second phase started sometime in 2010–2011 before Xi Jinping rose to the
helm of the Chinese state power in 2012 and 2013. In 2010, China historically
1.3 Shifting Poles: Conceptualizing an Emerging Global Order 5
surpassed Japan to be the world’s second largest economy, putting itself into the
position right after the USA—the world’s largest economy and lone superpower.
This, however, strengthened the threat perception of China’s rise especially to the
US policy-makers. In the late 2011, the administration of former US President
Barack Obama (2009–2017) formally announced the signature ‘pivot to Asia’
policy, which did not only ignite new debates in the USA, China and Asia, but also
brought new uncertainties to China’s relations with her Asian neighbours (Clinton,
2011).
In response to these nuanced changes, although the Xi administration appears to
adhere to Deng’s strategic dictum, Beijing also added a new strategy,‘有所作为’
(yousuo zuowei) or ‘奋发有为’ (fenfa youwei), which has the similar meanings
—‘to accomplish something’ and ‘striving for achievement’, respectively (Wang,
2014; Yan, 2014). In this new era, while Xi continues to adopt Deng’s reformist
principle, a new but puzzlingly self-contradictory economic phenomenon emerged
in China towards the late 2000s. The 2008 global financial crisis caused a signif-
icant shrinkage of global demands for China’s products and manufacturing
capacity. To avoid China’s national economic growth to be affected by the global
economic recession, the Chinese government adopted a fiscal stimulus package
policy to greatly enhance the governmental expenditures in order to generate
internal demands for sustaining the domestic economic growth. A substantial
portion of these expenditures was used to construct large-scale infrastructures such
as highways, speed-rail networks, electricity supplying networks and housing
facilities.
A consequence of this fiscal policy is the creation of the present-day overca-
pacity problem. In general, the problem of overcapacity exists when a country’s
industrial production facilities have not been fully utilized, which cause economic
shrinkage and slowdown. In China, a significant number of shipyards,
cement-making plants, steel-making plants and energy facility-making plants have
become either unproductive or idle (Wong, 2017). Since 2010, despite the over-
capacity problem, whereas the Chinese economy has started to experience slow-
down after more than two decades of continued staggering growths, China’s
outward investments had historically surpassed the total amount of the foreign
investments in China.
Facing this unprecedented watershed in China’s economic transformation and a
rapid-changing, uncertain international environment, the Xi administration recog-
nized the need of comprehensive state policy adjustments in order to maintain
China’s long-term peaceful rise and sustainable economic growth, which can only
be achieved by developing a new international cooperation model of mutual ben-
efits. A purpose of this new model is to further extend China’s overseas commodity
markets and facilitate effective channelling of the needed overseas natural resources
to fuel China’s industrialization and economic development. It is intended to
resolve the overcapacity problem in two counts. First, by identifying new overseas
markets for China’s products and excessive industrial capacity, the overcapacity
problem would be gradually absorbed by new overseas demands for not just the
Chinese commodities, but also China’s means of production for building large
infrastructures such as seaports, road networks, railways, energy supplying net-

works and energy plants. Second, by finding new supplies of overseas natural
resources, the existing overcapacity could be transformed into other capacities in
demand (Wong, 2017).
This Chinese global development initiative was created against the background
that complexly interweaves China’s national economic development with her
multifaceted foreign relations with a range of countries of diverse cultural-religious,
political, economic and geographical differences. In the public knowledge that the
Xi administration has adopted a more proactive, assertive and high-profile approach
than his predecessors, the OBOR initiative is devised to achieve the following
objectives to build a ‘community of shared destiny’ (Chinese: 命运共同体; min-
gyun gongtong ti) (Wong, 2015a):
• To strengthen international policy communication in order to craft strategies and
policies conducive to common economic development.
• To strengthen international transportation networks, including transnational
railways and road infrastructures.
• To strengthen and promote international free trade. This consists of removing
trade barriers, decreasing transaction costs and capacity-building to address
financial risks.
• To strengthen the exchanges of international currencies. In particular, it aims to
encourage the use of local currencies to conclude international trade deals and
transnational payments.
• To strengthen the people-to-people exchanges, mutual understanding and
communication.
In association with the OBOR initiative, the China-led alternative global
financial system was swiftly established in 2014 and 2015 through the newly
formed international financial institutions of the New Development Bank (BRICS
Bank, 2014), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB, 2014) and the Silk
Road Fund (2015). Gathering a significant number of Western and non-Western
countries as the founding members of these institutions, this alternative system is
established in parallel and inevitably, in competition with the US-led Bretton
Woods system in which the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
the Japan-led Asian Development Bank (ADB) have constituted the post-Second
World War liberal world order. The former is known to fall into the orbit of the
‘Beijing consensus’ while the latter operates along the course of the ‘Washington
consensus’. In general terms, whereas the ‘Beijing consensus’ adopts an interest-
based, exchange-oriented transactional model in international cooperation, the
‘Washington consensus’ adheres to the liberalist values and mission to include and
socialize the developing countries into the rule-abiding citizens of the liberal global
order. Both of them were nonetheless trumpeting proponents of the neoliberal
globalization agenda since the Cold War ended in the early 1990s.
What would be the implications of these global changes for the small powers?
There is a clear need for us to identify and analyze the challenges and opportunities
these geopolitical shifts would bring to the small powers. To devise a suitable
framework of analysis of small power politics, a review of the existing theoretical
approaches of the OBOR initiative should be in place first.
1.3.2 Existing Approaches of the OBOR Initiative
1.3.2.1 Critical Constructivism
The existing scholarly literature of the OBOR initiative can be mainly categorized
in several theoretical approaches: critical constructivism, defensive realism and
liberalist institutionalism as well as global financial capitalism. In the first place, the
approach of critical constructivism suggests that OBOR entails an ambitious grand
strategy to use economic leverage to build a Sino-centric ‘community of shared
destiny’ in Asia, which will in turn ‘make China a normative power that sets the
rules of the game for global governance’ (Callahan, 2016: 228). Building upon the
rhetoric of the ‘China dream’ (Chinese: 中国梦; zhongguo meng), OBOR signifies
a clear shift from Deng Xiaoping’s strategic wisdom of ‘hiding capability and lying
low’ (taoguang yanghui) to the more proactive articulation of ‘striving for
achievement’ (fenfa youwei) by the Xi Jinping regime (Poh & Li, 2017; Sorensen,
2015).
In particular, the proponents of the critical constructivist approach suggest that
these rhetorical shifts have brought significant policy and material changes in both
the domestic governance and foreign relations realms of China. These include the
establishment of the National Security Commission in 2013 chaired by President Xi
Jinping. Apart from overseeing and monitoring all governmental bodies, it enjoys
the relative superior power to craft and coordinate new policies internally and
externally (Sorensen, 2015: 66). Another significant policy change is the creation of
an alternative financial institutional system which gives China normative power to
shape the regional order. This includes the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2015. The rhetorical shifts reflect Beijing’s wish to
actively shape a more favourable and peaceful international environment for
China’s national rejuvenation (Sorensen, 2015; Yan, 2014).
However, informed scholars also pointed out that despite China’s efforts in
advocating the ‘peaceful rise’ rhetoric in which the principle of ‘non-interference’ is
said to be upheld in its foreign policy, China’s actual performance to adhere to these
rhetoric and principle in critical issues such as the South China Sea territorial
dispute has been undermined by its increasingly assertive stance and proactive
imperatives (Nie, 2016; Poh & Li, 2017). A main contribution of the constructivist
school is therefore to show the discrepancy between rhetorical articulation and
realpolitik performance in the OBOR initiative. To explain this discrepancy, the
approach of realism would do a good job.
1.3.2.2 Defensive Realism
A general realist position suggests that China’s OBOR initiative is developed from
integrated economic, political and national security considerations, which does not
significantly break from the US Cold War vision of geopolitical containment
(Overholt, 2015). Rather, instead of passively reacting to the US geopolitical
containment, China has taken a more proactive stance to compete against the USA
geopolitically and geoeconomically (Clarke, 2016). As China was excluded from
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) programme under the former US President
Barack Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ policy, China seeks to find new ways to compete
for regional political-economic influences by either neutralizing or competing
against the USA’s pivots in Asia such as the Philippines and Japan. For instance, the
newly established Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has already ren-
dered one of its founding members—the Philippines—not to fully dependent on
USA and also undermined Japan’s projected regional leadership in the
Japan-dominated Asian Development Bank (ADB) .
Nonetheless, the realist scholars have a nuanced point to make in regard to what
strand of realism China’s OBOR initiative falls into. While they tend to agree that
the OBOR initiative is intended to compete with USA primarily and then Japan
geopolitically and geoeconomically, they seem not to reject its compatibility with
liberalism (Bennett, 2016; Fallon, 2015; Ferdinand, 2016; Lim, 2015a; Wang,
2016). For instance, Palit (2017: 1) argues that it is important for India to ‘appre-
ciate the geopolitical character’ of the OBOR initiative, which China’s geopolitical
interests ‘might not be inimical to India’s economic ambitions’. In particular, while
the Peking University scholar Wang (2016: 455) argues that the OBOR initiative is
more defensive than offensive in nature, he justifies this nuanced distinction by
suggesting that the OBOR initiative is actually a follower of economic liberalism, in
which international economic and trade interdependency is the main intended
outcome of the OBOR initiative. This defensive realist position would therefore
find a comfortable ally with the liberal institutionalist strand.
1.3.2.3 Liberal Institutionalism
The above liberalism-augmented defensive realist position would find some support
in the substantiated argument that the USA has gradually been losing regional
economic influences to China, who will gradually either fill in or overtake the
global leadership vacuum or position of a declining America in Asia (Guo, 2017).
Specifically, from 2010 to 2014, most of the East and Southeast Asian countries
have increased their trade dependence on China whereas many decreased their trade
dependence on the USA (Guo, 2017: 400) (Table 1.1).
The liberalist institutionalist approach would therefore argue that the establish-
ment of the new China-led global financial system such as the AIIB reflects China’s
intention and capability of being an institution-builder (Xiao, 2016), which would
potentially defend and sustain the liberal world order through establishing
Table 1.1 Changes of trade dependence on China and the USA (2010–2014), by trade partner
(%)
Chinaa USAa
Trade partner 2010 2014 Change 2010 2014 Change
Australia 18.55 27.40 +8.85 8.86 7.80 −1.06
Brunei 9.02 13.73 +4.71 1.19 4.12 +2.93
Cambodia 12.07 15.46 +3.39 20.57 13.06 −7.50
China – – – 15.36 13.73 −1.64
Hong Kongb 18.78 23.01 +4.24 2.51 2.86 +0.35
Indonesia 14.57 17.93 +3.36 7.98 7.80 −0.18
Japan 20.34 20.73 +0.39 12.37 13.33 +0.97
Macau 34.84 29.99 −4.85 5.64 4.02 −1.62
Malaysia 20.44 23.03 +2.59 11.01 9.82 −1.19
Philippines 25.25 34.29 +9.04 13.97 14.34 +0.38
Singapore 10.10 12.36 +2.25 5.58 4.81 −0.77
South Korea 23.23 26.45 +3.22 9.84 10.38 +0.54
Taiwan 27.65 33.74 +6.08 11.77 11.44 −0.33
Thailand 14.07 15.94 +1.87 8.42 8.55 +0.13
USA 11.87 13.81 +1.94 – – –
Vietnam 19.15 27.90 +8.75 11.82 12.12 +0.29
a
The bilateral trade of China includes re-exports and re-imports, while that of the USA does not
b
For Hong Kong and Singapore, the total trade includes re-exports and re-imports
Source of data: Guo (2017: 400, Table 12.2)
institutional multilateralism and free-trade regimes with regional organizations such

as the European Union (E.U.) and the Association of South East Asian Nations
(ASEAN) as well as the African Union (Callaghan & Hubbard, 2016; Casarini,
2015; Chen, 2016; Grossman, 2017; Soong, 2016). This position seems to paint a
picture that China’s rise will continue to perfect the liberal world order that the
West has led in the past two centuries, instead of undermining it.
The liberal institutionalist position is, however, not without a critic. For instance,
Yu (2017) questioned that given China still faces a number of serious and irre-
solvable internal and external challenges, for Beijing, to lead and run a new global
institutional system is a tall order to succeed. Moreover, Summers (2016)
insightfully points out that despite the OBOR initiative’s high-profile institutional
face, in actual practice, it is a spatial complex of global political-economic net-
works. This implies that the OBOR’s global institutional framework is either a
surface phenomenon or a geopolitical cover-up. These two criticisms are instructive
because they seem to question the liberal-institutionalists’ optimism that China will
unconditionally continue and defend the liberal world order. If the liberal world
order is not what China really aims from this build-up of the new institutions, what
does China really aim to achieve?
As China’s economic rise has gradually taken the Asian countries’ economic
dependence away from the USA, China would only need some extent of defensive
realist measures mainly by creating and sustaining an alternative global economic
order, which is mainly driven by market-based networked transactions across a
transnational space in Eurasia, but not necessarily always promoting the liberalist
values (Cheng, 2016: 309). Liberalist values are inherently incompatible with the
ideological doctrines of the Chinese Communist Party. In other words, as China is
actually bandwagoning with the conventional liberal world order, what kind of
global order is it going to create? This critical question highlights the significant
contribution of the fourth approach found in the scholarly literature—global
financial capitalism—for capturing a main gist of the OBOR initiative.
1.3.2.4 Global Financial Capitalism
It is consented by a group of scholars who study water, agricultural and energy

resources that the OBOR initiative aims to build a new and sustainable economic
realm for not just China, but also for other regions such as Central Asia (Chen, Wu,
Qian, & Li, 2016; Dong et al., 2015; Huang, 2016; Li, Qian, Howard, & Wu, 2015;
Wusiman, Buwajar, Luo, & Shao, 2015). They argued that the OBOR initiative is
able to facilitate more efficient uses of the food, energy and water resources through
free trade, offshore investments, better transportation infrastructural networks and
more closely connected markets. Despite their consented ‘good’ intention of the
OBOR initiative, another group of scholars in international relations, international
finance and military science, however, consented that there is a deeper layer of
critical inquiry to be conducted before coming to a conclusion.
In the first place, the OBOR initiative was intended to resolve three main
governance challenges that Beijing faces: (1) the overcapacity problem, (2) future
increasing demand for energy resources such as oil and (3) changes in Chinese
demographic structures leading to the rising demand for middle-class positions and
risk of civil unrest. It was reasoned that if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
fails to address these problems, the party’s legitimacy and rule will be significantly
undermined in the foreseeable future (Tsui, Wong, Lau, & Wen, 2017; Zhao, 2017).
These perceptive scholars also conceive that in order for China to address these
looming governance challenges effectively, China will need to decrease its currency
dependency over the US dollar’s global regime. A main reason explaining why the
post-Second World War global liberal order was sustained by the USA-led Bretton
Wood system has to do with the strategic domination and credibility of the US
dollar as a global currency in most of the international trade, especially of such
strategic commodities as oil (Yue & Wong, 2012). To sustain China’s economic
growth, China’s substantial national foreign reserves have been denominated in US
dollar because oil trade must be transacted in the US currency since Second World
War. This renders China’s monetary and fiscal policies to be easily affected by, if
not entirely at the mercy of, the monetary and fiscal policies of the Washington D.
C. (Wong, 2017). While China recognized this historical reality to persist in the
immediate and intermediate future, she also recognized the future need to gradually
decrease the Chinese currency’s dependency over the US dollar:
After the United States overtook the United Kingdom to lead the world in industrial
production capacity in the late nineteenth century, it took another fifty years and two world
wars before it could dominate global finance. China recognized this reality, and has con-
sistently promoted the AIIB and other organizations as complements, not competitors, of
the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB). (Tsui et al., 2017: 39)
In the longer future, therefore, a China-led alternative global financial system

needs to be built and sustained so that it will promote the transnational use of the
Chinese currency into a global currency. Together with institutional multilateralism,
free trade, joint investment, cross-border policy communication, improvement of
transportation infrastructures and communication networks, the internationalization
of the Chinese currency—Renminbi (RMB; the Chinese yuan)—is actually at the
core top priority of the entire OBOR strategic agenda. Apart from Hong Kong and
London, China has been eyeing at other cities in the European Union, which may
serve as the offshore trading centres of the Chinese currency (Casarini, 2015: 8;
Herrero & Xu, 2016; Lin, Xiao, Liang, & Zhang, 2017; Luo, 2016). These offshore
financial centres will be able to raise the needed capitals, issuing bonds in RMB,
identifying and extending new markets for the Chinese currency, and eventually
will institutionalize the global use of the Chinese yuan, as both a reserve currency
and trading currency of a strategic/rare commodity.
Because the OBOR initiative grounds the building of a new world order into the
edifice of global financial capitalism, it is therefore unsurprising that the US Army
scholar Lieutenant Colonel Haley (2016) forcibly argued that one has to conceive
the entire OBOR plan as an instrument of the Chinese Communist Party to expand
China’s economic boundaries in the similar materialist-developmental patterns of
great powers such as the American, British and the Japanese empires. Lieutenant
Colonel Haley’s view should be taken seriously.
1.3.3 Global Financial Leninism: My Positional Approach

of OBOR
Building upon the very instructive works of the above approaches, this is my
positional approach to re-conceptualize the entire OBOR edifice. In contrast to the
Anglo-American empires whose logics of capitalism were by and large operated
and determined by the ‘imperial capitals’, an economic system of mutually com-
peting capitalistic corporates in the global markets whose conflicting interests are
coordinated by the political system of parliamentary liberal democracies mostly in
the West, China’s logic of global financial capitalism is operated by the ‘state
capitals’ —capitals monopolized and controlled by the single-party communist state
—therefore rendering liberal democracy unnecessary because the single-party state
can just coordinate the competing interests within itself (Wong, 2016c).
The core logic of the Chinese socialist state capitalism must be unpacked here.
Despite the competing political factions within the Chinese single-party state such
as of the ‘princelings’ (Chinese: 太子党; taizidang) and the ‘Communist youth
league’ (Chinese: 团派; tuanpai) (Lim, 2015b), the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) started to monopolize all the means of production through a series of
socialist policies such as the land reform during the Mao era (1949–1976). The Mao
era had consolidated a solid foundation of the Chinese state’s monopoly over the
Chinese capitals. Since Deng Xiaoping embarked upon the reform in 1978, because
the newly introduced market economy has been guided and led by the socialist
command economy, socialist state capitalism in China is coined ‘market Leninism’
(Sigley, 2006).1 Here is my rendition of the materialist logic of the Chinese socialist
state’s market Leninism model (Wong, 2017):
(1) The CCP monopolizes all the means of production and therefore successfully
monopolizes all the capitals into the form of state capitals.
(2) Because the mode of production of the CCP is market Leninism, it does not
grant absolute freedom to the individual capitalists to privatize the means of
production.
(3) Instead, CCP is still in full control of the means of production. Therefore, CCP
accumulates the state capitals through the leadership of socialism-led market
economy.
(4) Despite the individual capitalists continues to generate capitals in their
market-based endeavours, their capitals are constantly absorbed by state capi-
tals through means of taxation, regulation, acquisition and political absorption.
Based on this state capitalism model, the OBOR initiative is intended to build a
socialist state-led global financial-capitalistic order by the Xi administration, dub-
bed as ‘global financial Leninism’. This new order is able to resolve the governance
and external challenges of the Chinese single-party state in the long run. To make
this order come true, the internationalization of the Chinese currency through the
OBOR global financial system will be very critical.
In contrast to the liberalist global order-making agenda, a socialist state-led
global financial Leninist order-making agenda does not necessarily promote cultural
values such as democracy and liberty. Rather, it will adhere to the indispensable
role and importance of the socialist state apparatus in guiding, regulating and
leading the domestic and foreign free markets. As the market’s freedom does not
necessarily contradict with the state’s developmental freedom, the state will take the
lead in cooperating, regulating and coordinating with other states in managing their
financial and commodity markets.
In other words, as far as the transacting states are well connected with each other,
their markets will be also coordinated well. Under the leadership of the financial
1
Sources: (1) ‘China Sees “Market Leninism” as Way to Future’. The New York Times.
6 September 1993. (2) ‘State Capitalism: China’s “Market-Leninism” Has Yet to Face Biggest
Test’. Financial Times. 13 September 2010.
Leninist state, the excessive supply and unmet demand in the global markets will be
met. The implication of this will be for the involved countries in this new order to
be socialized into a form of state-led, if not statist or Leninist, financial capitalism,
in which mere economic interest-based transactions conducted in the markets to be,
however, guided by the interacting sovereign states’ centralized financial apparatus
as the main global political-economic institutional model. And the core means of
communicating and sharing this new political-economic model must be financially
conducted through the international use of a common currency owned by the
Chinese state, e.g. the Chinese yuan.
This new global financial order is therefore different from the post-Second
World War liberal financial capitalist world order in main three counts. First,
whereas the liberal world order emphasizes a restrained, if not limited, role to be
played by the state, this emerging state-led global financial-capitalistic order would
restore the centrality of political and economic powers back to the state from the
market.
Second, whereas the liberal world order suggests that a sustainable world order
hinges on the institutionalization of the democratic peace in an international
anarchy, this emerging global financial Leninist order suggests otherwise that as far
as the competing capitals are solidly led and regulated by the states and their
financial apparatuses, peace would naturally be in place, with or without democ-
racy. In other words, international anarchy only exists when the capitals are
absolutely free from the state’s financial regulatory control.
Last but not the least, the liberalist resolution of international political conflicts
such as wars and nuclear proliferation has been delegated to international organi-
zations such as the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO). Despite the US-led World Bank and International Monetary Fund per-
formed the economic and socialization role in developing the poorer countries
through providing aids, loans and promoting liberal values to them, these institu-
tions have not addressed the root cause of prolonged poverty and conflicts in the
developing world—the over-liberalization of the capitals. Therefore, the liberalist
agenda of dealing with political conflicts is still dominated by the liberalization
agenda and influences of the private/imperial capitals.
In contrast to this perceived inherent deficiency of the post-Second World War
liberal world order, the emerging state-led global order would directly address
political conflicts into their economic root causes through state-driven actions such
as financial regulations, cross-border wealth redistribution and restructuring mar-
kets. This does not mean that there will be zero political conflict in this emerging
statist global financial order. However, as the states will gradually dominate the
private capitals, international conflicts in the future will mainly stem from the
states’ competition for the means of production and means of accumulation of state
capitals.
1.4 The OBOR’s Challenge to the Small Powers:

Hypothesis and Questions
Facing these ongoing changes and challenges brought by the OBOR’s geopolitical,
geoeconomic and geofinancial shifts, how do the Eurasian smaller states/powers
live with these currents and the emerging alternative global order? This question
sets the terrain of this book.
My main hypothesis is that China’s economic rise since 1978 has gradually
triggered two geostrategic shifts in contemporary global history: (1) the US ‘pivot
to Asia’ and (2) China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative. While the former was
intended to extrovertly reassert the primacy of US geopolitical interests in the
Asia-Pacific region in the midst of China’s rise, the latter was intended to achieve
two contradictory goals.
On the one hand, China tries to avoid a direct confrontational conflict with the
USA’s reassertion of her geopolitical supremacy in Asia. Beijing recognizes China
needs a relatively peaceful external environment for development. On the other
hand, it continues to compete for global supremacy with the USA in the very long
run. To do so, it is intended to go with the America’s self-asserting energies in the
immediate future, make use of these released energies so that China could go with
the energetic flows of the USA’s geopolitical shift and then tune China’s devel-
opmental thrusts back inwardly to the Eurasian landmass. This is in order to con-
struct, consolidate and maintain a new common ‘space of development’ (Chinese:
发展空间; fazhan kongjian) with the countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt
and the twenty-first-century Maritime Silk Road.
Several research questions will contour the terrain of this book. What is China’s
strategic gist in conceiving, developing, constructing and maintaining this new
developmental space? How have the small powers responded? What have been the
domestic, geopolitical and structural factors explaining their different responses and
strategies? To what extent the Eurasian small powers’ strategic cultures shape the
specific ways that they act?
1.5 The Key Argument: Destined Agency—Go

with the Flows
Although China’s OBOR initiative does not appear to directly compete against the
USA, it is actually competing with USA in a very different way. In Taoist Chinese
strategic culture (Wong, 2012), competition can be either short term or long term, as
there are different motivations of competing. One is usually driven by a carnal
desire to win in order to accomplish one’s egoistic goals and to seek recognition.
This motivation of competition is often rule-binding and rule-reproducing because
the competing agents’ common object is to win the recognized trophy issued by the
rule-maker. The aspiring agent wills to gradually ascend in the same institutional
1.5 The Key Argument: Destined Agency—Go with the Flows 15
hierarchy that promotes him/her to be the champion of the institution. In this case,
whoever wins the competition, the rule-maker nonetheless perpetuates her/his
dominance over the game and the participants. In other words, as no winner can
always win the competition, the change of winners would mean that rule-maker and
the rule of the game will always prevail.
Another motivation of competition is driven by a very different cause of action
mainly in serving the others by humbling oneself as being a self-less, non-egoistic
yet paradoxically more powerful instrument-conduit of the collective interests for a
structurally more compatible purpose. The humbled agent is therefore operating in
an arena beyond certain institutional-hierarchical boundary, forging a range of
forces hailing from separate domains, towards an endless competition. While the
agent’s primary intention is not to win in any short-term game, an outcome of this
agency can be surprisingly so powerful that one ‘could even launch a successful
military campaign to conquer another nation’, according to the fifteenth ‘humbling’
hexagram of the classic Taoist text, I-Ching (Wong, 2012). This is indeed a paradox
to be unpacked into a non-Chinese rendition.
In the Christian tradition, this paradoxical form of strategic leadership also
exists. It can be traced to the notion of ‘servant leadership’, which has been per-
formed by the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles as well as
the post-colonial South African Anglican church (Wong, 2015b, c, 2016a:
Chap. 5.8). The gist of this Christian-destined agency is to achieve a perfect union
with God so that the agent will only act in God’s will. As one only acts in
accordance with the most powerful sovereign’s will and plan, the human agent will
be able to optimally act what is destined to be.
I argue that the OBOR presents both challenges and opportunities for the small
powers to survive and thrive. The key to this is ‘destined agency’. The gist is for the
small power to wisely ‘go with the flows’. These flows are the criss-crossing
interplays of the structures, institutions, forces, the regimes and the powers, which
are more powerful and enduring than the small power. These flows are moreover
deeply embedded in the three primordial forms of the this-worldly domination
systems—capitalism in the economic realm, statehood in the political realm and the
‘principalities and powers’ in the spiritual realm (Wong, 2016a). These flows are
moreover constantly morphing among themselves thus structuring the economic,
political and religious-cultural structures unceasingly, causing always-unfolding
uncertainties. As there is indeed very little way to gain full command over them and
their concomitantly changing dynamics, a plausible way to survive and thrive in
these ever-changing flows is to discern and live with the ways as they are, then
devise the optimal strategy to go with them to maximize one’s gain and to discern
the optimal timing to disengage in order to minimize one’s loss. Bourdieu’s habitus
can help to illustrate this alternative strategic agency.
1.6 The Habitus Shift in International Relations
In the past decade, there has been a surge of interests in Pierre Bourdieu’s socio-
logical works among the international relations scholars in both the Western and
non-Western academic circles (Achsin, 2016; Adler-Nissen, 2012, 2013; Arnholtz,
2013; Berling, 2012; Bigo, 2011; Brown, 2014; Jackson, 2008, 2009; Karnanta,
2013; Leander, 2011; Merand & Pouliot, 2008; Misalucha, 2014; Ongur & Zengin,
2016; Wong, 2016b). These scholars commonly seek to not just elucidate and
clarify the substance and relevance of Bourdieu’s major theoretical contributions to
the humanities and social sciences in general, but they also call for more solid
empirical works to be done in applying and testing Bourdieu’s key concepts for
better understanding international affairs.
In response to these scholars’ call, this book represents an attempt to apply and
test Bourdieu’s key concept of ‘habitus’ to the subfields of small power politics and
strategic cultures in international relations. By making the concept of habitus a
bridge linking the two scholarly fields of the small power politics and strategic
cultures, I will argue for the strand of critical realism as a plausible theory, practice
and strategy of statecraft in world politics.
To elaborate this post-structuralist logic of the destined agency, Bourdieu’s
habitus refers to the
systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function
as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and
representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a
conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to
attain them (Bourdieu, 1990: 53).
To Bourdieu, habitus is the most deep-seated structures governing both ‘prac-

tice’ and ‘strategy’:
Through the habitus, the structure of which it is the product governs practice, not along the
paths of a mechanical determinism, but within the constraints and limits initially set on its
inventions (Bourdieu, 1990: 55, italics original).
Even when they look like the realization of explicit ends, the strategies produced by the
habitus and enabling agents to cope with unforeseen and constantly changing situations are
only apparently determined by the future. (Bourdieu, 1990: 61, italics original)
Habitus shapes, informs and produces practice and strategy in statecraft. Practice
of statecraft refers to the instituted set of acts and their tacit rules to be reproduced
and redeployed in state affairs. An example is the self-perfecting technique of
plotting and launching a series of successful coup d’état through the sophisticatedly
combined uses of the judicial and military coups in contemporary Thailand (see
Chap. 5). Strategy of statecraft refers to the creative, often rule-surpassing and
surprising strategies to be produced and deployed in state affairs. An example is the
British new-right populist politics in the Brexit referendum (see Chap. 7).
Nonetheless, both practice and strategy are produced by the habitus, which is the
constellation or total sum of the embedded geopolitical structures, economic and
1.6 The Habitus Shift in International Relations 17
trade structures and strategic cultures in a particular context of time and space.
Strategic habitus refers to the systems of deep-seated geopolitical, economic and
cognitive-emotive (cultural) structures constantly structuring the strategic options of
the strategists and policy-makers of the small powers. However, instead of merely
conceiving them as constraints, they should also be regarded as enabling instru-
ments of new and unprecedented opportunities of development and/or crisis. It is
mainly because these structures are constantly changing among themselves,
resultant of the unceasing interactions with other habitus.
In a nutshell, destined agency entails the following attributes:
• Go with the flows. Constantly discern and clarify what are the more/less
powerful entities and the enduring structures around and within. Go with them,
embrace and make use of them.
• Do not recklessly antagonize and openly confront the competing great and small
powers non-purposively. There are often more powerful (joint) forces around us.
Keep an arm’s length from them, go with them and engage them if necessary.
Disengage and/or selectively confront when the situation allows. True victory
only exists in many thousand miles away. Do not rush to win—live with them
and be observantly patient.
• When there is an inevitable conflict or crisis (mostly resultant of the unintended
structural interplay), instead of uncritically plunging into it, act fast by firstly
seeking to clarify one’s own position through asking these sets of self-probing
questions in quietness:
(1) What can we get out of it? What are the potential harms?
(2) Would it be useful to us? How to achieve the intended outcome?
(3) How to manage or steer it in order to achieve what we want? How to
minimize its harm to us?
(4) What is the plan and contingency?
• It is alright to give up when the situation is no longer conducive to the core
interests and the main stakes. Then, reduce the damage and loss to the
minimum.
• Situation always changes. Observe and humbly reassess it constantly. Adjust
swiftly in accordance with the change. Live with uncertainties.
• When opportunity arises, take it decisively and make the maximal use of it.
A lost opportunity rarely re-emerges.
• Destiny-remaking is an always-unfolding venture. While one cannot resist the
more powerful structural forces shaping our destinies, the diverse processes are
still full of uncertainties and possibilities that can be shaped by us, which
necessitate prudent decision-making and careful crisis management along the
way.
1.7 Visualizing the Small Power Politics in Plate Tectonics

Imagery
To sum up, a geoscientific analogy of the plate tectonics would clarify what do I
mean by the destined agency of the small power.
In the earth’s lithosphere—the outermost shell of the planet which is broken up
into a number of tectonic plates—there are seven large plates and a number of small
plates. Their perpetual movements constitute volatile and potentially dangerous
activities such as earthquake, volcano eruption, tsunami, mountain-building,
rift-making and oceanic trench formation occurring along the inter-plate bound-
aries. Where the plates meet, their relative motion would determine the type of
boundary: convergent, divergent and transformative.
A convergent boundary is where violent collision takes place. It often entails a
plate to be submerged by another plate in a subduction zone where earthquake and
volcanic eruption take place. A divergent boundary exists when two plates depart
from each other, thus leaving a gap for new lithic formation to take place. Oceanic
basin and continental rift may be formed. A transformative boundary is where two
plates slide and/or grind with each other. Frictions exist along transformative
boundary. Though plates are neither created nor destroyed along the transformative
boundary, strong earthquakes are often consequential of such powerful friction.
In the light of the plate tectonics imagery, we can now visualize the Eurasian
small power politics in the midst of an always-shifting and always-unfolding
geopolitical arena where the great powers and the small powers compete against
each other. In the first place, it is of utmost importance to acknowledge that there is
always a risk for the smaller powers to be submerged by the greater powers’
convergent politics at the expense of the small power’s sovereignty, territorial
integrity and national interests, mainly in the undesirable forms of colonialism,
infiltrated coup, secessionism, separatism, national disintegration, territorial parti-
tion, neocolonialism, foreign annexation and occupation by a foreign power. These
things do happen. Live with them, and try best to minimize the damages when they
come. Survival is the priority in this situation.
However, by remaining patient, the small powers can still buy time and seek to
be in some realistic extents of control of their own circumstances and to remake
their own destinies. These mainly entail finding creative but structurally compatible
ways to facilitate the other two formation possibilities for prosperity to happen:
transformative and divergent small power politics.
By transformative small power politics, I mean to make use of two competing
greater powers by either hedging them against each other or bandwagoning them,
thus generating surprising benefits at the interests of the small power and its
inhabitants.
By divergent small power politics, I actually mean to stay neutral and/or aloof
from the great powers of animosity in order to allow the small power to first wait
and see, then seize the opportunity to fill in the geopolitical gap where the departing
great powers would leave behind. In other words, where the great powers depart
1.7 Visualizing the Small Power Politics in Plate Tectonics Imagery 19
from each other, there will be a political-economic opportunity and geopolitical gap
for the small power to fill in, expand into and fulfil its dream.
In sum, small power politics aims neither to change the structural reality of the
plate tectonics nor to unrealistically try to submerge the large/small plates. Rather, it
aims to take full advantage of all the activities of the plate tectonics and the large
plates for its own survival and prosperity.
1.8 Book Plan
This book aims to show how the Eurasian small powers can make use of the US–
China geostrategic shifts and China’s OBOR initiative for their own benefits.
In Chap. 2, I shall use the African and Asian small powers of Liberia and the
Philippines for a comparative analysis. It will establish a new theoretical framework
dubbed ‘critical realism’. In sum, critical realism does not attempt to break away
from the structural properties that constrain the small powers in international
relations. In line with Bourdieu’s habitus position, critical realism is a strand of
structural realism for the small power to find practical ways to make use of the great
powers’ competition for its own surprising gains.
Chapter 3 contextualizes the US–China geopolitical competition against their
historical-developmental and strategic-cultural background of containment and
counter-containment dynamics in the Indo-Pacific region. In this chapter, I shall use
the Asian small power of Myanmar (Burma) for case study. I aim to illustrate the
geostrategic and geoenergy importance of Myanmar for the post-1989 China to
jailbreak the US geopolitical containment plan. It then opens up China to the Indian
Ocean rim region, where China gradually developed her ‘string of pearls’ strategy
up to the present day.
In Chap. 4, I will engage with the ancient Hindu statecraft of Kautilya to
illustrate the regional dynamics of the South Asian small power politics, where
China’s ‘string of pearls’ is coincidentally formed resultant of a few
regional-historical dynamics. Through examining Kautilya’s ancient Hindu state-
craft as a lens to unpack (1) contemporary Indian strategic culture and (2) the
theoretical relevance of Bourdieu’s habitus to the contemporary debate of strategic
cultures, case studies from the South Asian small powers of Sri Lanka, Nepal,
Pakistan and Bangladesh will illustrate how the ‘string of pearls’ was formed. The
argument will go into this direction: on the one hand, the ‘string of pearls’ is formed
consequential of India’s strained relations with her small power neighbours. On the
other hand, as both the South Asian small powers and China find each other useful
to counter the hegemonic thrust of India, the ‘string of pearls’ was formed in the
Indian Ocean region.
In Chap. 5, I will use the Asian small power of the Kingdom of Thailand as a
case study to show how the Thai monarchy was able to survive and thrive in the
midst of the Cold War-triggered internal turmoil, which was mainly featured by
China-backed communist insurgency and USA-backed counter-insurgency. I will
argue that the core political-economic strategy of the national rice policy was
innovatively generated by the late Thai king Bhumibol Adulyadej from the
already-given geopolitical, ethno-class and political-economic structures of the Thai
rice economy that he inherited from his royal predecessors. During the post-Cold
War democratic period, the Sino-Thai Shinawatra business family rose to power
through populist politics and posed a significant challenge to the Thai monarch’s
supremacy and its political-economic order. In this turbulent period, I will argue
that King Bhumibol creatively developed a sophisticated set of combined coup
techniques from the Cold War period and perfected them in the democratic era for
defending the monarchy’s supremacy and keeping the kingdom intact as a solid
sovereign state.
Chapter 6 will dwell into the rich and resilient strategic cultures of the
Malayo-Polynesian peoples in the Indo-Pacific region. Engaging with a few
European strategic cultures before and after Second World War, I shall discuss
whether a non-state-centric strategic culture is theoretically and practically possible.
I will argue that the strategic agency of the ‘people’s diplomacy’ is an alternative
practice to rein in the war-waging mimetic rivalry which might have been haunted
the ambitious European geopoliticians between the two world wars. I shall use the
China-Philippines territorial dispute in the South China Sea for a case study to
illustrate how to practice ‘people’s diplomacy’ in making international peace.
Chapter 7 will analyse the geopolitical conflicts between Russia and the
European Union since 2006. In the light of their common realist security-seeking
pattern, I will examine the bilateral relations between Poland and China, and
between the UK and China through the structural lens of the European states’
strategic habitus, their international trade pattern and unique economic develop-
mental pathways. The issues of the Poland-China economic corridor, Brexit and the
intended internationalization of the Chinese currency in London will be covered.
In the concluding chapter, in asserting ‘the small will do what they can!’, I shall
sum up the main lessons learnt in the book. I will also ponder how the Eurasian
small power politics will continue to remake their destinies under the ‘America
First’ foreign policy agenda of the US presidency of Donald Trump.
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Chapter 2
The Small Powers in World Politics:
Outline of a Theory of African-Asian
Critical Realism
Abstract This chapter aims to conceptualize a framework of for better under-

standing the challenges, actions and rationales of the African and Asian small
powers in the post-1989 global order. It will be divided into three parts. First, it will
review the literature on small power/state studies. Second, following a critique of
the major approaches in small power studies, I will argue for the need for a theory
of critical realism to better capture the relationships between domestic politics and
foreign relations of the small power in Africa and Asia. Third, using Liberia and the
Philippines as case studies, against the comparative trajectories in which the USA
has attained global hegemony after 1991 and China has gradually become a great
power after 2000, in the light of the recent US containment policy shift towards
China, which has stirred up versatile dynamics of East Asian small power politics,
in favor of a global multipolarity, I will highlight the foundation of this critical
realism theory as a practice of statecraft for building the strong small powers in
terms of two main aspects of economic nationalism: resource-focused and
sovereignty-asserting.

Keywords African and Asian politics African-Asian critical realism Hegemony

and multipolarity International relations Liberia The Philippines Small power

politics USA–China relations
2.1 Introduction
Pressured by internal public demand, the early 1990s witnessed the Philippine
state’s successes in negotiating for the withdrawal of the US military bases from its
territories. On the US side, the disintegration of the Soviet bloc in 1991 and that
China’s Deng Xiaoping reverted Mao Zedong’s foreign policy not to export
communist revolution but chose to engage the post-1978 China with the global
capitalist economy would be regarded as a significant success in US containment of
communism and therefore partially justified the withdrawal of US troops from the
Philippines and other neighboring countries in the Pacific Rim. The following two

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6563-7_2
26 2 The Small Powers in World Politics …
decades witnessed burgeoning economic relationships between Southeast Asian

countries and China. However, in January 2012, troubled by continued territorial
disputes with China in the South China Sea where oil and fishery resources were
perceived to be abundant, and in view of the US policy in returning to Asia, the
Philippines offered the USA for reopening its military base.1
Such move immediately put China into a diplomatic test. Instead of immediately
launching economic sanction against the Philippines, the analysis indicated that
China would first attempt to lobby for Philippine sectoral supports through pouring
in more resources. Hence, the Philippines was capable of ‘cashing in’ from the great
powers’ competition.2 Despite the perception that the Philippines’ is a small power
in comparison with the USA and China, the above episode shows the astuteness of
an Asian small power in maneuvering and gaining benefits from the great powers.
Against the post-millennial context where USA and China engaged in global
competition, the Philippines’ flexible diplomatic maneuvering also called for the
need to reconsider the nature and possibilities of small power politics in the
developing countries of post-colonial Asia and Africa. In line with this call, I will
answer the following questions in the following pages:
(1) How could we account for the root causes and developmental trajectories
leading to the emergence of the present US–China global competition?
(2) How could we contextually account for the interests, rationales and actions of
the African-Asian small powers vis-à-vis the great powers?
(3) How could we account for the prospects of small power politics?
These questions warrant a more comprehensive, if not better, theoretical
framework which should be grounded in Asian and African empirical realities. To
begin with, a critique of the existing paradigms of the small power politics will
follow.
2.2 Small Power Politics: Theoretical Issues
2.2.1 Major Paradigms of Small Power Politics
Contemporary small power politics may be categorized into three major paradigms
of international relations; realism, constructivism and dependency theory. In the
first place, realism defines interests in terms of power thus reduce state rationales
and actions to the will to dominate (Morgenthau, 1962). Realism has mainly two
roots in German social and political thoughts (Williams, 2004). First, influenced by
1
Sources: (1) ‘US Could Increase Pacific Presence with the Return to the Philippines’. The Daily
Telegraph, 26 January 2012. (2) ‘US Opens Talks to Establish Foothold’. The Daily Telegraph, 26
January 2012.
2
Source: ‘China Infuriated by US-Philippines Defense Plans’. Russia Today TV, 31 January 2012.
2.2 Small Power Politics: Theoretical Issues 27
Weber’s (1948) theorization of the state as a human community that inevitably

monopolizes physical violence, realism proposes a power politics perspective for
which states are constantly engaging in violent struggles for its survival and
domination, both domestically and internationally. The second is legal exception-
alism. Schmitt’s (2005[1922]) theorization of the sovereignty is realized through
exception; a volatile zone where the state’s enemies are negated, therefore quali-
fying the sovereign state’s exceptional measures by acting outside the usual
juridical and civic realms. Although civil conflict and inter-state war constitute the
core of realist thinking, the state is conceived to be a functioning unit within the
international anarchy whereby state rationales and actions are driven by power.
Morgenthau (1962: 29) therefore suggested that the state’s political power is
actually consolidated in ‘psychological relation between those who exercise it and
those over whom it is exercised’. As a result, in parallel with the development of
objective criterions attempting to define the small power/state (e.g., population,
territorial size and other socio-economic indicators), various definitions of the small
power are consistent with the small power’s own perception or evaluation of its
material and security relations with the other states (Hey, 2003a: 3; Keohane, 1969:
296; Rothstein, 1968: 29; Vital, 1967: 7). Equally important, the small power’s
subjective evaluation should be informed and guided by certain external structural
properties embedded in the hierarchical international system. Privileging external
variables over domestic factors, realist policy-making requires the ‘small states to
recognize the importance of geopolitical factors for small-state security’ in six
counts (Knudsen, 1996: 8–9): (1) the geostrategic significance of the small power’s
location; (2) the stage of power cycle in which the nearest great power finds itself;
(3) the degree of rivalry of the great powers; (4) the history of relations with the
nearest great power; (5) the policy towards the small power of other, rivaling great
power; (6) the existence of multilateral frameworks of security cooperation, which
might help to compensate the power disparity between the small power and great
power.
Although the second paradigm, constructivism, also tends to conceive the small
power in relations to the great powers, at odds with the realists’ ‘interest = power’
formulation, constructivists conceive the state’s primary interests lie in generating
rules, norms, identity and institutions as binding instruments for constructing
international politics (Wendt, 1994, 1995). Moreover, influenced by the sociology
of agency-structure dualism (Giddens, 1979; Wendt, 1987), instead of emphasizing
how external structural properties can determine state actions, constructivists argue
for the possibilities that the state is an agent who could alter and reshape structures
through creating institutions and devising rules/norms for governing the interna-
tional conducts of the self and others (Wendt, 1999). Although the more recent
debate on ‘state personhood’ indicated that there may be durable personality traits
and deep-seated strategic repertoires crystallized in the state formation processes,
which should be able to inform state actions (Lomas, 2005; Wendt, 2004, 2005),
such security identity differences among, for example, the small European states,
would suggest that there are rooms whereby institutions and rules may be cocon-
structed by and governing the small/great powers (Goetschel, 1998a: 27–31;
Hänggi, 1998). Scholars of ‘small power-hood’ have recently argued for the
presence of the small powers’ strategies in maximizing their influences and binding
the great powers by mainly through the platform of supranational institutions such
as the European Union (Melakopides, 2010; Pantev, 2010; Rood, 2010; Steinmetz
& Wivel, 2010a; Wivel, 2010).
At odds with the constructivist paradigm, the third paradigm is the dependency
theory, which provides a neo-Marxist structuralist perspective in understanding
international politics. Instead of looking into how structural properties may be
constructed by the states, this paradigm suggests that state action is largely deter-
mined by the relations of economic productions between two groups of states: the
metropolis/core states and the satellite/peripheral states, which constitute a con-
stellation of pyramidal structural complexes of core-periphery relations (Frank,
1969). The core-periphery relations between the great power minority and the small
power majority are structured around the themes capital accumulation,
commodity-market expansion and resources predation as well as capital-driven
military conquests (Amin, 1974). Conceivably vulnerable, the small powers are
forced to engage in a structurally dependent relationship with the great powers by
engaging in unfair and exploitative trade relations to the great powers. The great
powers used foreign policy means such as aids and military protections as well as
international institutions such as the World Bank to perpetuate the small powers’
political-economic dependency over them. In partial alignment with the realist
‘interest = power’ formulation, dependency theory would add that economic power
precedes political power when defining interest and explaining state action. In view
of the small powers’ dependency over the great powers (Doerner, 1983; Payne,
1987; Sieber, 1983; Wickham, 1983), constructivism-informed counter-strategies
against dependency would include actively establishing multilateral international
framework such as the European Economic Community (ECC) for the small
powers to bind the great powers and negotiate for more influence (Rotter, 1983).
2.2.2 Towards an African-Asian Critical Realism
Realism, constructivism and dependency theory as well as the literature of small

power politics have provided some important insights for developing a critical
realist, if not better, an approach for studying international politics in the con-
temporary global contexts. These insights are being elaborated in the following
paragraphs.
In the first place, in contrast to the neoliberal paradigm in international relations
for which non-state actors such as transnational/supranational organizations (e.g.
World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund) ‘help states coordi-
nate their activities by allowing for repeated interactions, during which trust can
grow’, ‘reduce transaction costs’ and enhance cooperation constituting a ‘complex
interdependence’ (Keohane & Nye, 2012; Mansbach & Taylor, 2012: 16), the three
paradigms in small power politics have commonly suggested that the international
society is mainly constituted by the state as the central unit of analysis.

Nevertheless, such notion of state-centrism does not necessarily downplay the roles
and functions that non-state actors may perform in international affairs. Non-state
and transnational actors can be regarded as the forces who struggle for state power
(Migdal, 2001). It therefore warrants us to conceive the state into a dynamic cru-
cible whereby arrays of multiple internal and external forces compete and collab-
orate (Kieh, 2008; Lumumba-Kasongo, 1994).
Second, while realism and dependency theory rightfully portray the international
society into a hierarchy of states who maintain asymmetric political, security and
economic relations among themselves, in contrast to neo-realism in international
relations for which state actions and foreign policy choices are largely determined
and limited by structural constraints (Lamy, 2001: 185), realism and constructivism
remind that there is certain degree of freedom for maneuvering on the part of the
small powers to neutralize security threats, renegotiate unfavorable
terms/conditions by accurately assessing one’s geostrategic significances, adopting
active foreign policies to enhance international influences, and establishing multi-
lateral international institutions through regional integration to increase bargaining
chips (Olafsson, 1998: 153–155; Vital, 1971: 9).
Third, although realism stresses that political power is the end of state actions
whereas dependency theory precedes economic power to political power as the
ultimate end of state actions, in the light of the neo-realist position that power is the
means for the state to enhance its capabilities to achieve any designated ends
(Lamy, 2001: 185), a better integrated approach should be able to portray the
intricate means-ends interplays between political power and economic power in
actual operation. Such dimension would lead us to see how economic wealth may
well be translated into political control and how political control could lead to
further economic gains.
Fourth, while realism and dependency theory stress on how external relations
with the great powers may impinge upon the domestic politics of the small power,
constructivism proposes an inside out dimension by seeking the normative mea-
sures and institutional strategies for the small power to neutralize security threats,
increase influence and even bind the great powers. All of the three paradigms seem
to agree that there should be an empirical reality and analytical space wherein
foreign relations and domestic politics are interconnected.
Methodologically, global case studies of the small powers suggest that there are
regional variations, especially between the relatively developed countries in Europe
and developing countries in the Global South such as Africa and Asia. European
case studies suggested that because of the presence of regional institutions (espe-
cially the European Union), the European small powers have been able to turn
challenges into opportunities (Goetschel, 1998b; Steinmetz & Wivel, 2010b). For
instance, given the favorable historical geography, efficient bureaucracy and an
educated population, the wealthy Western European small power Luxemburg
serves as an exemplar, which ‘does not suffer so many of the problems that plague
most of the world’s small countries’ such as those in Africa (Hey, 2003b: 93;
Hughes, 1987; Lemon, 1987). For example, the conflict-ridden and underdeveloped
Western African small power Liberia has remained vulnerable to the pressures and
manipulations of the external powers (Kieh, 1992; Wong, 2012b).
Hence, in the light of the ‘global-historical-structuralist’ methodological turn
(Kieh, 1992: 5; Wong, 2012b: 69–71) and habitus-based practice of statecraft
(Bourdieu, 1977), a critical-realist comparative analysis should therefore examine
several aspects:
(1) The internal deep-seated political-economic structural workings of the small
power;
(2) The external historical-structural linkages between the small power and the
great powers;
(3) The intricate nexus and relationship between the collaborative classes in the
small powers and the ruling classes in the great powers;
(4) The consequences of the conduct of the foreign policies of small powers.
However, since the majority of the studies were done in relatively developed
Europe and little has been done after the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, there
is a knowledge gap for understanding the nature and development of small power
politics in post-Cold War Africa and Asia.
According to the United Nations Development Programme (2013: 46–47),
although the Global South is not taking the same paths as those of the former
colonial powers to greatness or to development, the growing figures in South–South
trade (especially with China) have surpassed South–North and North–North trades,
and, increasing foreign investment flows into the Global South since the 1990s
would necessitate an African-Asian critical-realist definition of small power politics
for us to examine how the small states in the Global South will not only survive, but
also thrive.
2.2.3 Definition of Small Power Politics
Based on the above expositions of an African-Asian critical realism, we may define

small power politics in terms of the following four components:
• The qualification of a small power entails its state-insider’s subjective evalua-
tion of the concerned state’s psychological, political, material and security
relations with another state, which qualifies the concerned state’s ‘small
power-hood’ vis-à-vis the other state’s perceivably great power status against
the hierarchy of states in the often unstable and exploitative global capitalist
structure.
• Small power-hood entails two essences. First, it entails the honest and objective
self-account of the small power’s geopolitical location and sensitivity, the actual
sizes of all tangible and intangible resources as its assets, and demographics of
the state represents. Second, it entails the continuous strategic calculations and
impermanent situational analyses, which requires the small power’s security
policy-makers to deduct the often-minor and delicate changes in domestic and

international affairs into an array of falsifiable contingency measures.
• When implementing these measures, these must be directed towards the goal of
economic nationalism of the small power. As a development principle, small
power economic nationalist ideology aims to accurately identify and unam-
biguously secure the sovereign control of the state’s natural, human and artificial
resources, by mobilizing either the relevant state apparatuses or the representing
societal sectors.
• Small power politics therefore entails the historically structured and often
habitus-rooted, deep-seated repertoire of practices and creative strategies for the
small power to adjust the development pathway, strengthen state capacity and
uplift international status. Depending on the internal and external situations and
the foreign state that it is interacting with, these practices and creative strategies
are often selectively deployed. However, such strategic flexibility would vary
from the situation to situation and depend on who the foreign state is.
2.3 African and Asian Small Power Politics in Global

Context: Empirical Issues
2.3.1 Different Trajectories Towards the Great Power-Hood:

USA and China
2.3.1.1 The Making of the Post-cold War US Global Hegemony
To better understand the global context where the African and Asian small powers
are situated in after the disintegration of the Soviet bloc in 1991 marked an end to
the Soviet-US bipolarity, a comparative analysis of the emergence of the post-Cold
War US global hegemony and the gradual rise of China as a post-millennial world
power would be instructive.
From the nineteenth to early twentieth century, decades of scrambles for con-
cessions in non-European lands, in parallel with the surge of nationalist struggles
among the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America, while the European imperial
powers started to find themselves struggling hard in maintaining the global colonial
status quo through arduously repressing indigenous resistance and dealing with
nationalist upheavals, the resource-rich and territorially vast USA gradually con-
solidated its present global superpower status through three major ways (Huang,
1997; Krauthammer, 2002; Wallerstein, 1983; Wolf, 1997).
First, instead of occupying the strings of many overseas big and small colonies
that her European counterparts committed to competing for, USA did not join the
competition but selectively installed only a few small colonies, but of great
geostrategic significance. Major examples would include Puerto Rico in Central
America, Liberia in West Africa and the Philippines in Southeast Asia. These
satellite/client states served as the overseas stations for monitoring and intervening
foreign affairs. This actually saved USA from pouring in substantial financial
resources and military manpower in the overseas and facilitated its mercantile class
to develop a global capitalist economy by using these small overseas satellites to
protect and further USA and her allies’ interests in ensuring free trade, exploring
new resources, and extending trade routes and commodity markets to the new
worlds. Since then, US leadership among the Western powers has hinged on a
mixture of commercial, cultural, diplomatic, intelligence and military neocolonial
measures that she managed to know and protect the Western allies’ foreign interests
(Wong, 2012b).
Second, as the escalated consequences of intense colonial competition, while
Europe was troubled by the two world wars when the rise of the Nazi Germany
forced the well-educated and wealthy Jewish population to flee, the relatively
peaceful and prosperous USA was able to further absorb substantial Jewish capitals
and technologies for her own advancement. These consisted of strategic and mil-
itary sciences such as nuclear technologies. Without fully plunging herself into the
world wars, USA managed to survive the great recession in the 1930s and continue
to develop amidst the post-war world rubbles. Whereas post-Second World War
European powers were busy in rebuilding themselves, the Bretton Woods System
and its global institutions (e.g. International Monetary Fund and World Bank) had
granted the gold-rich USA to make US dollars pegged with the international gold
trade and therefore become the official currency for international transactions such
as giving loans to the developing countries. In the 1970s, a significant USA further
advancement towards the global superpower status was largely due to the US
dollars’ formal delinking from the gold-pegged Bretton Woods System but shifted
to peg with crude oil, endorsed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC). As a necessary commodity fueling many developed and
developing states’ daily operations and industrialization programs, oil was strate-
gically pegged with US dollars rendering the international oil trades must be
transacted in US dollars. As a result, for the purposes of purchasing oil and financial
security, many governments determined that US dollar to be the major state reserve
currency. This provided the necessary global material and security conditions for
the USA to establish her unipolar hegemony in the post-Cold War era after her
bipolar arch-rival Soviet Union was disintegrated in 1991 (Yue & Wong, 2012).
How could the Soviet Union be disintegrated? The third point will explain.
Third, from the 1950s to 1960s, US military capability might not be capable of
defeating the well-equipped Soviet Union army, how did the USA manage to win
over the Soviet Union? By both might and wits. In terms of might, since the US
dollar has attained its hegemony as the global currency in the 1950s, US govern-
ment could infinitely print banknotes through ‘quantitative easing (QE)’ measures,
which also ensure increasing US military spending despite the recession. Given that
US dollar has been the global currency; QE measures are able to siphon US
financial risks and economic losses to other countries, who took US dollar as the
state reserve currency. By printing more US dollar notes, these foreign countries’
2.3 African and Asian Small Power Politics in Global Context: Empirical Issues 33
US dollar reserves would naturally depreciate, which then cause local currency
devaluation and inflation.
In contrast, because the Soviet Union ruble could not be freely convertible and
did not peg with any strategic commodity, Soviet Union was not able to print as
much ruble as they wished. As a result, the planned Soviet economy could not
siphon its financial risks and economic losses to the satellite states in Eastern
Europe and other continents but tended to rely so much on military might and
totalitarian control, which were not just costly but also increasingly burdensome. In
terms of wits, starting in the early 1980s, USA launched the surreal ‘star war’
aeronautic programs. Having miscalculated the complex international and domestic
situations, the Soviet Union engaged in the very expensive aerospace armament
race with USA and gradually over-stretched and exhausted her own economic
capacity, serving as a major cause for the eventual fall of the Soviet Union (Yue &
Wong, 2012). With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the USA has become the
global hegemon, for which the rise of the socialist China is perceived to pose
significant challenges in the post-millennial era.
2.3.1.2 The Rise of the Post-millennial China as a ‘Great Power’
Given the geoeconomic disparity, crime, corruption, poverty, unrests and other
many social problems, Chinese state and society remain skeptical if China should
be qualified to be a ‘great power’. Even it is, China has to redefine ‘greatness’. For
example, in his infamous international relations theory of the ‘three worlds’, Deng
Xiaoping made it clear that China should only identify and unite with the oppressed
people and nations, especially in the third world countries (National People’s
Congress of the People’s Republic of China, 1978: 130). Such position has been
kept in line with the most updated 2004 version of the Chinese constitution.
Moreover, according to the other official versions of the Chinese constitution
(National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China, 1954, 1975, 1978,
1982, 2004), China consistently projects herself that she will not be a superpower,
always opposes hegemonism, colonialism and imperialism, and stands for world
peace. After the 1955 African-Asian conference held in Bandung, Indonesia (Lee,
2010), in particular, China’s foreign policies have then been redefined more
explicitly and consistently in accordance with the five principles: (1) mutual respect
for sovereignty and territorial integrity, (2) mutual non-aggression,
(3) non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, (4) equality and mutual benefit,
and (5) peaceful coexistence.
However, it is realistic that the African and Asian small powers would not
always take China as the ways that she projects herself. It is because as whether a
state is a great or small power depends on the subjective evaluation of the other
related states, given its large territorial size, populous population, continued eco-
nomic growths, growing military expenses, and increasingly frequent overseas
activities in the political, economic, diplomatic and security domains, being the
second largest economy in the world now, China has been widely perceived by
various scholars as a great power of significant weights, reminiscent of the features

that some of the developmental stages that the Western and Japanese colonial and
neocolonial powers had experienced (Lumumba-Kasongo, 2011). China’s rise is
strongly related with its economic development agenda since Deng Xiaoping took
power and adopted the economic reform and open door policy in 1978. Since then,
economic development has become the main strategy for the Chinese Communist
Party’s domestic and international legitimacy engineering, however, sidelining the
inner demands for political reform.
On the one hand, as a single-party socialist state, China’s continued economic
development reflects the Chinese people’s common expectation to aspire to be a
modernized nation and to elevate China’s status in the international hierarchy. On
the other hand, while China’s peaceful rise would be perceived by the developing
countries as an alternative source to obtain foreign aids, loans, investments and
technologies as well as political supports, it also poses worries and concerns
regarding China’s different attitude towards the US-centric global order. Widely
known as the Washington consensus, US foreign policy holds that aids and loans
should go with the conditions of instituting neoliberal measures and
liberal-democratic values. Instead, China’s foreign policy has been largely char-
acterized by the Beijing Consensus, for which aids and loans are often offered
relatively condition-free and with the agenda to facilitating self-determined alter-
native models of the developing countries. In contrast to the Washington
Consensus, neoliberalist measures and democratization are therefore not mandatory
in the Beijing Consensus (Yue & Wong, 2011).
In the light of the five foreign policy principles explicated in the post-Mao
versions of Chinese constitution (National People’s Congress of the People’s
Republic of China, 1978, 1982, 2004), two stages of development may be roughly
used for categorizing China’s post-1978 development. First is from 1978 to 2000.
In these two decades, because of lack of capitals and technologies for economic
development, in view of the rapid development of the neighboring and foreign
capitalist economies, China opened ‘special economic zone (SEZs)’ in south China
to attract foreign companies to invest. As doing businesses in SEZs would receive
policy concessions such as lower-tax rates, plus other favorable business conditions
such as cheap labor costs, foreign companies were attracted to invest and forge joint
ventures with the Chinese state-owned enterprises (Howell, 2000). Through these
measures, China was able to absorb substantial capitals and new technologies from
these foreign investors and gradually opened up the entire country for development
(Wong, 2002).
The second stage is from 2000 to the present. Only absorbing foreign capitals
and technologies would not lead to sustainable economic development. The sus-
tainable economic development would only be possible when a national economy
has evolved to a stage that necessitates the exportation of capitals and technologies
to foreign destinations in order to construct its own global investment circles (in-
cluding financial institutions) and global supply-demand chains (markets) (Bao,
1991: Chap. 9). With these transnational financial and market platforms, China
would be able to upgrade its own commodity standards and institutionalize its
global supply-demand chains so as to increase its products’ competitiveness.

Roughly starting from 2000, in order to further uplift its modernization and
industrialization programs, China started to export its own capitals and technologies
for securitizing overseas supplies of natural resources such as oil, minerals and
food, on the one hand. On the other hand, China also engaged with foreign gov-
ernments and non-governmental actors to identify the suitable market niches for
Chinese-made products. Starting from the low-end to mid-range commodities such
as garments and electronics in the 1980s and 1990s, the 2000s and 2010s then
witnessed China manufactured and exported more high-tech and heavy-industry
products, e.g. computers, smartphones and cars.
Because of her increasingly active presence in the overseas context, the
post-millennial China has been engaged with and therefore involved in the complex
political-economic dynamics in the developing world. To just name a few exam-
ples: Chinese oil companies were alleged of supporting the genocide movement in
the oil-rich Darfur region in southern Sudan and the counter-insurgency of the
Gaddafi regime in Libya (Holslag, 2008),3 Chinese mining companies received
severe local resistance in the northern Philippines rendering operations to be halted
(Wong, Aquino, Lara-De Leon, & So, 2013), Chinese business migrants from
Yunnan province were reportedly driving away the local Burmese businesses away
from the central business district of Myanmar’s second largest city, Mandalay,
which aroused local anti-Chinese sentiments.4 As a result, considering China has
increasingly engaged with the domestic politics of the developing countries where
the USA has ever been doing, in 2009, alongside with the listed targets of Iran,
North Korea and Russia, the US state intelligence specified China’s
‘resource-focused diplomacy’ and overseas political-economic activities as the
major tasks for global intelligence collection (Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, 2009: 3). Approaching from an African-Asian critical-realist per-
spective, I argue that USA has adopted a different, if not neocolonial, containment
strategy towards a resource-seeking China in the post-Cold War era in order to
maintain US global hegemony.
2.3.1.3 USA Post-cold War Containment Strategy Towards China
Although the post-1978 China has been gradually absorbed into the global capitalist
economy, the fact that it is being ruled by the Chinese Communist Party would lead
to a critical-realist argument that the single-party communist state has been gen-
erating and maintaining a mirage of peaceful capitalistic transformation and buying
their time in waiting for the right moment for launching a new round of global
3
Sources: (1) ‘China Sought to Sell Arms to Gaddafi, Documents Suggest’. New York Times.
4 September, 2011. (2) ‘Libya: Chinese Arms Firms Offered to Sell Weapons to Gaddafi’. The
Telegraph. 5 September, 2011.
4
Source: ‘Dangerous Anti-Chinese Discontent Growing in Mandalay’. The Irrawaddy. Friday 8
July 2011.
communist revolution. Critics have been assessing China’s consistent efforts in

pushing for international multipolarity (Amin, 2006; Cheng, 1999), which would
not necessarily mean giving up communist ideology, may it be in its original form
or revisionist manner. It would be natural for the USA to continue to contain a
resource-seeking China in the post-Cold War era (Gaddis, 1982; Spykman, 2007).
In continuation of US foreign policy towards the Orient, neocolonial containment
of China in the post-Cold War era is largely resource-focused. In other words, by
maintaining its control over the world’s oil supply and trade, the US dollar-oil peg
and guarding the major oil-shipping geopolitical choke points, the USA would have
been able to control the essentials of the African and Asian developing countries
through exercising exceptionalism in three intervention curves (Wong, 2012c).
The first curve centers on the Israel–Palestine peace process for which the USA
has meddled since the 1960s (Vital, 1971: Chap. 3). The USA–Israel alliance
enables the US military power to have a reliable offshore security outpost in the
Near East, monitoring the choke points of the Suez Canal and Bab-el-Mandeb
Strait, which connect the major oil-producing African and Asian countries along the
Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. The second curve consists of the Islamic
democratic state-building projects in the post-2001 Iraq and Afghanistan, where US
troops have been present. The military operations in the Middle East provide the US
additional strategic rooms for guarding the geopolitical choke points of the Gulf of
Aden, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. These choke points also enable
the USA to monitor and intervene in the state affairs of the major oil-producing
countries along the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and in Central Asia.
The third curve consists of the East and Southeast Asian countries in the Far East
region. Because from the 1990s to 2000s, the USA was occupied by the wars in the
Middle East and the global wars against terrorism, and the consideration that China
was gradually absorbed by the global capitalist economy, USA therefore chose to
strengthen economic and trade ties with the countries in the Far East. Many Asian
countries therefore took the opportunity to absorb US investments and technologies
and became the major manufacturers and markets of US commodities. In contin-
uation of the containment of the communist China policy during the Cold War
period, although the USA gradually withdrew the military bases from her Far
Eastern allies, she continued to enjoy military agreements and conduct joint exer-
cises with the countries that control the oil-shipping choke points of the Malacca
Strait and the Pacific entrance points around the territorially disputed South China
Sea and East Sea. Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Korea and Japan
are the examples. The presence and activities also provide US additional strategic
mileage in monitoring the state affairs of the oil-consuming and industrializing
countries in the Far East (Yue & Wong, 2011).
Viewing from the above three US intervention curves towards Africa and Asia,
the US military has been effectively guarding literally all the oil-shipping and
geopolitical choke points in the Near East, Middle East and the Far East. To
maintain the US global neocolonial hegemony, post-Cold War US geostrategy must
therefore be material-based. Resource-focused geo-strategy is capable of control-
ling the essentials of the development of the Far Eastern countries. In particular,
China has been one of the largest buyers of oil-producing countries who earned the
ire of USA, e.g. Iran and Libya. Because of the recent fall of the Gaddafi regime in
Libya, analysis held that Iran has therefore supplied China’s one-third annual oil
consumption (Wong, 2012c).
In early January 2012, it is henceforth unsurprising for the USA to issue a new
global military strategy. The new strategy temporarily dropped North Korea and
Russia from the 2009 list (which consisted of Iran, North Korea, Russia and China)
but concentrated on China and Iran as the two potential targets for armed conflict
(Kwong, 2012).5 Being the largest oil-supplier and largest oil-consumer of each
other, solely targeting Iran and China may be the most cost-effective strategy
attempting to shoot two birds with one stone. It is because the Chinese and Iranian
national securities may be undermined by interfering and threatening to blockade
the geopolitical choke points spanning from the Near East to the Far East, where
Iran is well positioned. Undermining Iran’s political stability would naturally
undermine China’s energy security.
From this perspective, China has been contained by USA at two geostrategic
fronts in the post-Cold War era. First, US military presence and active diplomatic
interventions in the East and Southeast Asian countries and their international
institutions (e.g. Association of Southeast Asian Nations) continued to complicate
China’s sovereignty claims in territorial disputed hotspots such as the South China
Sea. Because US sides with several Southeast Asian small powers who then forge
joint oil-exploration deals with USA, Japanese and Indian oil companies and asked
for US military protection, US interventions in these China-related disputes also
stirred up political mistrusts and therefore weaken China’s diplomatic ties with
neighboring countries, especially Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam. China has
been therefore contained by the foreign relations impermanence, political intrigues
and false diplomatic friendship, competition, resource-related disputes, military
threats and territorial conflicts with the neighboring small powers (Wong & Yue,
2011). Second, as China’s continued development largely relies on foreign supplies
of energy and natural resources, US military presence in the major geopolitical
choke points and interventions in the African and Asian oil-producing countries’
state affairs would naturally pose significant psychological interferences and se-
curity concerns to China. China’s resource-led development and national interests
are therefore constantly checked, restricted and even sabotaged by these interfer-
ences and military might.
The above discussion on the recent development of USA–China relations has
provided the necessary contextual backdrop for which an African-Asian critical
realism could be applied to two small powers: Liberia and the Philippines. The two
countries are selected for inter-regional comparative analysis because of two
empirical commonalities. First, they were among the few countries in the world that
5
Sources: (1) ‘China Syndrome Dictated Obama’s Asia-Pacific Strategy’. The Guardian. 6 January
2012. (2) ‘New U.S. Military Strategy Reflects Concerns about Rise of China’. Tehran Times. 15
January 2012.
had experienced US colonialism. Although Liberia and the Philippines gained flag
independence from US colonial rule in 1847 and 1946, respectively, they continued
to maintain strong political-economic ties with USA. Examining them would
enhance our understanding on how the US Empire extends across the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans to Africa and Asia. Second, comparing the Liberian and Philippine
small power politics would enhance our understanding of how US neocolonialism
interacts with the African and Asian body politics, on the one hand. On the other
hand, it may tell us the difference of local receptions of neocolonialism between a
non-China-neighbored country (i.e. Liberia) and a China-neighbored one (i.e.
Philippines).
2.3.2 African and Asian Small Power Politics: Liberia

and the Philippines
2.3.2.1 Behind the Nobel Peace Prize: Liberian Pathway

of Underdevelopment
The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf before she ran
for re-election for the Liberian presidency. Apart from being the first African female
president, Sirleaf was the first Liberian president who succeeded to finish the first
six-year term and be successfully re-elected since the Liberian civil war ended in
2003. Behind the Nobel Peace Prize, what developmental pathway Liberia has gone
through?
If we would accept that USA’s ‘tutelary colonialism’ in Puerto Rico and the
Philippines have common essences (De La Costa, 1965: Chap. XV; Go, 2008: 1),
US colonial rule in Liberia would be of comparative significance. In Puerto Rico
and the Philippines, USA chose to collaborate with the local elites who had ties
with USA. These collaborative agents had lived or studied in USA. They could gain
US political trust and the local population’s recognition simultaneously. As the
double-faced agent, to remain in power, the local elites tended to use leverage
politics to balance Liberian domestic politics and foreign relations.
Pressurized by the rapid population growth of the black slavery, in early
eighteenth-century USA, the white ruling class decided to repatriate the black
slaves to Africa through the American Colonization Society, which was established
in 1816. West African coastal locales such as nowadays Liberia became the usual
landing point. However, the seemingly familiar America-hailed black repatriates
were not welcome by the local tribal populations. As the black repatriates’
descendants were also socialized in their parents’ Christian culture, their
double-identity qualified them to be the delegated agents of colonial state’s
‘plantation economy’ structure. Top colonial officials were American whites,
mid-level bureaucrats were mulattoes (white–black mixed blood), the lower level
was constituted by black repatriates and the co-opted tribes (Kieh, 2008).
USA provided military and other supports for the colonial authority to extend
into the interior. On one hand, the colonial state gradually posited Liberia to be a
periphery of the global capitalist system. On the other hand, using divide-and-rule
tactics to conquer the warring tribes, the Commonwealth of Liberia was established
in 1839. Although the repatriates were delegated as the governing agents, the
American Colonization Society still had the final authority to assess legislation and
interpret the constitution. Such move institutionalized the agricultural trade between
Liberia and Western countries, and formalized the oligarchic status of the black
repatriates and their descendants, who are known as the ‘Americo-Liberians’ (Kieh,
2008).
Although as early as the mid-1800s Liberia gained flag independence, its con-
stitution was modified from USA. Only colonial officials and the repatriates were
regarded as citizens, enjoying private property rights and voting rights. Possessors
of the property would therefore become the ruling class, controlling the state
apparatus. The post-independence Liberian state is therefore neocolonial in nature.
What does it mean?
It means that Liberian post-colonial sovereignty has not escaped from ‘colo-
niality of power’ (Mignolo, 2010; Quijano, 2000). Post-colonial Liberian colo-
niality of power refers to the West-hailed capitalistic form of power that the
Liberian post-colonial state and society continue to inherit from the colonial state
architecture. The post-colonial Liberian state remains as the instrument for the
Western powers and their Liberian collaborators to preserve their own sectoral
interests and the neocolonial state structures in Liberian domestic and foreign
politics mainly through means of exploitation and coercion. Bluntly put, neocolo-
nialism refers to the historical-structural fact that the post-colonial Liberian
sovereignty has been shaped to largely aim to plunder the precious state resources
and exploit the Liberian peoples for the benefits of their former colonial masters and
their Liberian compradors.
Due to continued conflicts with the interior tribes, Liberian Frontier Force was
established in 1907, responsible for collecting taxes, counter-insurgency and border
guarding. When the interior region was mostly pacified, in 1926, USA substantially
invested and set up Firestone Plantation Company, making Liberia be a major
rubber-producing country (Kromah, 2008). Afterwards, Liberia also made use of its
rich reserves of gold, iron ores, diamond, oil and timber to exchange for US
capitals, and used the capitals to extend state power into the tribal frontiers.
Gradually, its economy was mortgaged to USA and USA also used her voluminous
capitals and international influences to maintain her core-periphery relationship
with Liberia (Kieh, 2008).
In terms of foreign relations, USA mobilized international institutions such as the
World Bank to implement ‘Structural Adjustment Program’ to maintain the
core-periphery relations. Major policies included local currency devaluation, a
decrease of public expenditures, minimization of market intervention and trade
liberalization. In terms of regional security, Liberia provided an African base for US
intelligence agency to monitor the situations in Arabic-African countries, contain
communism in Angola and Mozambique, and neutralize self-determining
nationalist movements in Africa. Although many African countries gained flag

independence, they still embraced neocolonialism by perpetuating colonial
political-economic structures, which led to the crises resultant of prolonged
underdevelopment (Kieh, 2008).
In the early 1980s, accumulated socio-economic problems resultant of neo-
colonialism led to a coup. Although military strongman Master Sergeant Samuel
Doe announced to change the fate of Liberia, because of the short-circuiting
structure between domestic and foreign politics, Doe had to return to the orbit of
neocolonialism. The end of the 1980s witnessed the Soviet dissolution caused
drastic US foreign aids. The aggrieving population of the underdeveloped economy
eventually spun into civil war. Americo-Liberian warlord Charles Taylor armed the
tribes and launched a coup against the Doe regime. Taylor announced to uplift
Liberia to become the ‘Hong Kong of West Africa’; a semi-peripheral agent in
brokering between the Western metropolitan-core states and the African peripheral
states. However, the situation continued to remain anarchic. Caught in continued
violent civil conflicts, predating for rich diamond resources in the neighboring
Sierra Leone, Taylor took an adventurist position by participating in the Sierra
Leonean civil war and received supports from Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya
(Wong, 2012b). By doing these, Taylor earned the ire of US Taylor was elected as
the president in 1997 but the civil war only ended in 2003. Taylor was then charged
war crime and trialed by the international court. During the civil war, Sirleaf once
supported and fund raised for Taylor, therefore she also faced war crime accusa-
tions but was not trialed (Wong, 2012a).
Regarding the international society’s different attitude towards Sirleaf and
Taylor, in view of the evidence that Sirleaf received US supports to run for the
presidency, Kieh warned that the Peace Prize award may distort the normal
development of the Liberian democracy and rule of law (Wong, 2012a). In the past,
Sirleaf was criticized for nepotism for nominating her own family members to the
key state positions. For example, her brother was the Minister of Internal Affairs
from 2006 to 2010. Economically, the opposition candidate economics professor
Dew Mayson criticized Sirleaf for having Liberia returned to the colonial structure
of plantation economy (Zaza, 2010). Despite Sirleaf was successfully re-elected in
2011, Liberia has not gone out of the neocolonial darkness (Fig. 2.1).
To conclude, since the colonial time, US neocolonialism has sunk its roots into
the Liberian political economy. When post-Cold War Liberia faced the drastic
decline of US foreign aids, acute socio-economic problems resultant of prolonged
underdevelopment burst into violent civil conflicts. Liberian small power politics,
hence, provides a variety for which relative homogenous political-economic peg-
ging with the US metropolis-superpower rendered it very little flexibility and fewer
choices in ensuring its survival and advancing its interests. On the contrary, the
Philippines would serve as a different example for which the Asian small power has
managed to hedge more than one great power.
Foreign powers U.S.A. Libya

* Intelligence * LegiƟmacy
* Mineral & Ɵmber * Resource contracts * Arms
resources * Aids * Military
* Allegiance collaboraƟon
State rulers Doe, Taylor & Sirleaf
* Civil war
* Counterinsurgency * Arms
* Oppression * Containment
* Electoral frauds
DomesƟc & Ethnic rebels & Angola & Sierra Leonean
regional forces poliƟcal rivals Mozambique rebel groups
Fig. 2.1 Neocolonial circulatory structures between domestic politics and foreign relations in
post-colonial Liberia
2.3.2.2 Hedging Great Powers: Repertoire of Philippine Versatile

Diplomacy
China, Taiwan and the Southeast Asian small powers of the Philippines, Vietnam,
Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei have had competing claims over the South China
Sea. Given the seabed’s perceivably rich deposits of oil resources, during the
administration of President Gloria Arroyo (2002–2010), the Philippines and China
agreed to put aside disagreements and opted for joint-exploration ventures.6 China
and the Philippines also extended bilateral cooperation into other domains espe-
cially trade and infrastructure. Following the end of the Arroyo regime, the
administration of President Benigno S. Aquino III (2010–2016) was pressured to
revert Arroyo’s position to be more assertive in her sovereignty claims over the
South China Sea and demonstrating stronger position to nationalize the involved oil
and maritime resources.7
In line with Philippine economic nationalism, such foreign policy agenda would
require astute maneuvering in positing the Philippines at the middle of the two
competing great powers: China and USA Since 2010, China–Philippines maritime
6
Source: ‘RP, China Approve Joint Oil Exploration in Spratlys’. The Philippine Star. 2 September
2004.
7
Sources: (1) ‘PNoy: PHL will not Abandon Claim on Disputed Spratlys’. GMA News. 22 June
2011. (2) ‘Philippines’ Aquino to Press China on UN Role on Spratly Island Row’. The China
Post. 16 July 2011. (3) ‘Oil Deal with China will Destroy Spratlys’. Philippine Daily Inquirer.
6 September 2011. (4) ‘President Reiterates Peaceful Approach to Spratlys’. Sun Star. 12 October
2011.
disputes and vessel conflicts over the Spratly islands in the South China Sea had
signified the newly installed Aquino regime would take a stronger position on the
issue. Despite China insisted on resolving the dispute bilaterally, as a small power,
to increase its bargaining chips, the Philippines invited US presence and inter-
vention. For example, having gained the support of Vietnam and USA, the
Philippines proposed to discuss the South China Sea disputes multilaterally in the
East Asian Summit and ASEAN meeting in Indonesia in late 2011.8 Although the
proposal did not push through, this move realized the Asian small powers’ capa-
bility in hedging the great and small powers for binding a neighboring but
threatening great power—China. Such astute maneuvering repertoire is worthwhile
for unpacking. Redefining the post-colonial sovereignty of the Philippines in the
light of neocolonialism and a subsequent case study of the Aquino-Cojuangco clan
of the Philippines would help to illustrate.
To start, it is important to state that post-colonial Philippine sovereignty is
neocolonial in nature because it has not totally escaped from the ‘coloniality of
power’ that the Philippine post-colonial state has inherited from her colonial
masters (Mignolo, 2010; Quijano, 2000). Such Philippine post-colonial specifics of
coloniality can be elaborated in the following aspects (Sison & De Lima, 1998: 89–
99):
• USA continues to dominate the Philippines through her military bases. Even
after the USA withdrew her military bases in the 1990s, regular joint USA–
Philippines military exercises provide the USA inroads to control the Philippine
military because the latter has become dependent on the former’s strategic
planning, intelligence, training and military supplies.
• So long as the postcolonial Philippine state serves US interests, the USA allows
the collaborating classes of Philippine landlords and capitalists to make use of
the Philippine coercive state apparatuses to suppress the peasants’ and workers’
pursuits for justice. In exchange, USA gives loans to the Philippine government,
rendering the post-colonial state debt-dependent on USA.
• During the Marcos martial law regime, the post-colonial state elites intensified
their collaboration with US imperialism to suppress and pacify armed revolution
of the oppressed Filipino peasantry, mainly through counter-insurgency and
land reform.
• In the post-Marcos period, the introduction of electoral politics came into effect
as a pseudodemocratic pacifying measure in which vote-buying, vote-rigging
and electoral violence feature in neutralizing and dividing the unity of the
oppressed Filipino majority.
Benigno Aquino III’s father is the late Benigno Aquino Jr. As an opposition leader
against the Marcos martial law regime, he was imprisoned and exiled to USA.
8
Sources: (1) ‘South China Sea to Overshadow ASEAN Summit’. Taipei Times. 20 July 2011.
(2) ‘Aquino to Discuss Spratlys Issue in ASEAN Summit’. Sun Star. 9 November 2011. (3) ‘Why
Philippines again Churns up South China Sea?’ Xinhua News. 15 November 2011.
When he returned to Manila in 1983, he was assassinated in the airport. This trig-
gered the People Power Revolution, which caused the downfall of the Marcos regime
in 1986. His wife Corazon Cojuangco Aquino then became the first president of the
democratic era. The resilience of the Aquino-Cojuangco family would warrant some
explanations.
The Aquino-Cojuangco clan is from Tarlac province of central Luzon. Since
World War II, the majority of Philippine presidents hailed from the provinces,
instead of the national capital. They used the provinces as the primary power base
by being the major economic stakeholders and local government officials. Then,
when circumstances allowed, they extended into the national state offices (Wong,
2006). Western colonialism expanded into Asia rendered the sixteenth-century
Philippines to be absorbed into the global capitalist system. Spain used the
Philippines as the Asia-Pacific outpost to buy silks, porcelains and other com-
modities from China to Europe. To finance the galleon trade, tons of silver were
shipped from Europe to Mexico, then to China (Frank, 1998). Spain co-opted the
Philippine landed elites (caciques) for the indirect rule (de Jesus, 1980).
In the late nineteenth century, USA took the Philippines from Spain. The
Philippines served as an important outpost for the USA to maintain the smooth
operation of the global capitalist economy in the Asia-Pacific. The Philippine
caciques continued to be the collaborative agents of the US colonial authority
(Paredes, 1988). During that period, the grandfather of President Benigno
Aquino III, Benigno Aquino Sr. was the Secretary of Agriculture and Commerce
from 1938 to 1941. When the Philippines gained flag independence from USA, the
Aquino family made an important decision to let Benigno Aquino Jr. marrying
Corazon Cojuangco, a daughter of a major Chinese–Filipino landed-cum-business
family in Tarlac province. Forging the political-economic power of the lands and
capitals together, the Aquino-Cojuangco alliance constituted an oligarchy in Tarlac
Province (Anderson, 1988).
The Cojuangco clan owned the 4,000-ha Hacienda Luisita. Decades of
patron-client bondage with the peasantry was adversely affected by the leftist
movement and the land reform program. The peasants therefore petitioned for their
landownership rights and redistribution. A rebellion broke out in 2004 but was
dissolved by the military.9 Apart from being a landlord, the Cojuangco family is
also a commercial conglomerate. An uncle of President Benigno Aquino III,
Eduardo Cojuangco owns and operates the San Miguel Corporation (Parreno,
2003). Apart from liquor and beverage business, San Miguel has extended into
other business domains such as food, packaging, property, banking, telecommu-
nication, shipping, infrastructure construction and energy resources as well as
agribusiness. In particular, San Miguel bought the formerly public oil company;
9
Sources: (1) ‘A Year after the Hacienda Luisita Massacre in the Philippines—No One Charged’.
World Socialist Web Site. 18 January 2006. (2) ‘Hacienda Luisita’s Past Haunts Noynoy’s Future’.
GMA News. 18 January 2010. (3) ‘For a Philippine Family in Politics, Land Issues Hit Home’.
New York Times. 14 March 2010.
Petron Corporation.10 Petron has been responsible for oil drilling, refinery and
distribution for the Philippines. As the Spratly islands are believed to be rich in oil,
it would not be surprising for the Aquino-Cojuangco family to take a stronger
position over the South China Sea territorial claim by seeking an alliance with USA
and Vietnam on the issue.
Relatively disadvantaged in national military and political-economic resources
and powers, there are two relevant Philippine political wisdoms to inform the
repertoire of the practices and strategies of versatile diplomacy, which facilitates the
Philippines to hedge the great powers in order to maximize her own interests:
bamboo politics (Filipino: kawayan politika) and star-fruit diplomacy (Filipino:
balimbing diplomasya). Bamboo politics signifies the ways that the Philippine
small power is able to bend towards where the great powers go, reminiscent of the
ways that the Filipinos manage to survive frequent typhoons, because of their
flexible and adaptable traits. Through bending towards the great powers, the
Philippines would be able to share their capitals and technologies, reminiscent of
the way that the bamboo siphons water through its hollow body (Wong, 2011).
Star-fruit diplomacy refers to the manipulation of the Philippine multicultural
identity to speak, act and behave differently in accordance with the practical situ-
ational needs. Filipino cultural hybridism is consolidated through decades of
colonialism and external influence from historical great powers such as Spain, USA
and China. An astute star-fruit diplomat is able to seek sympathy, common iden-
tification and personal recognition in negotiation. President Benigno Aquino III’s
mother, the former president Corazon Cojuangco Aquino would be an exemplar
(Wong, 2009: 58–59). After she stepped up as the president in 1986, to rescue the
bankrupting governmental coffer, she ran to the Federation of the Filipino–Chinese
Chamber of Commerce in Manila to seek for supports. In the round-table meeting,
she deliberately mentioned that her very poor great-grandfather actually hailed from
the Chinese province of Fujian, who faced and resolved many difficulties when
doing business in Luzon as a migrant. By doing this, she illuminated her Chinese
ethnicity, which won her many sympathies and eventual supports from the
Chinese–Filipino tycoons. When Corazon Aquino visited China, she also visited
the village where her great-grandfather hailed from. As a result, when President
Benigno Aquino III visited China in August 2011, he followed his mother’s
footstep in visiting his great-great-grandfather’s village and conducted ancestral
worship (Wong, 2011).11
Although bamboo politics and star-fruit diplomacy seek for the counterpart’s
recognition, sympathy and identification, the actor is governed by the collective
interests that she or he represents. As a result, after visiting China where he suc-
cessfully signed major bilateral agreements to ensure incoming Chinese invest-
ments, once President Benigno Aquino III returned to the Philippines, he then
Source: ‘San Miguel Acquires Majority of Petron’. Reuters. 16 December 2010.

10
Source: ‘Fujian Village Prepares for Return of One of their Own’. China Daily. 3 September
11
2011.
Foreign powers U.S.A. China

* Intelligence base * LegiƟmacy * Natural resources
* Resources & trade * Aids & investments * Food
* Joint military exercises * Defence * Aids & projects
* CommodiƟes
State ruler Aquino III * Investments
* AnƟ-corrupƟon campaign
* Development projects * AsserƟng territorial claims
* Law Enforcement * PacificaƟon * ProtecƟng fishery &
* Land reform * Peace talks mariƟme rights
DomesƟc & Masses & Islamic & Communist China, Taiwan,

regional actors poliƟcal rivals rebels Malaysia & Vietnam
Fig. 2.2 Hedging the great powers in the post-colonial Philippines
sought supports from USA and other concerned small powers to reassert the claims
in the South China Sea in the following East Asia Summit and ASEAN Summit in
November 2011. Despite the Chinese public opinions protested, the Chinese gov-
ernment did not change its foreign policy direction towards the Philippines.
In contrast to the Liberian small power politics, Philippine small power politics
is more versatile because of the emerging USA–China bipolarity in Southeast Asia.
The Philippines has been able to hedge the two great powers in order to cash in
from them, marked a historic 33% annual increase in the Manila stock market in
2012.12 And more importantly, the Philippines has been consistent in defending its
sovereignty claims and attempting to secure control over its resources (Fig. 2.2).
2.4 Conclusion: Small Power Politics as Practice

of Statecraft
In the foregoing pages, I have reviewed the major paradigms in small power/state
studies and constructed an African-Asian critical-realist perspective for a new
approach for small power politics. Against the larger global-historical-structural
backdrop and comparative analysis of USA as a hegemonic superpower and
China’s rise as a great power in the post-Cold War era, a comparison of Liberia and
12
Sources: (1) ‘The Philippine Stock Market Boom’. Philippine Star. 9 January 2013.
(2) ‘Philippine Growth Underpinned by Revitalised Manufacturing Sector’. Financial Times.
30 May 2013.
the Philippines have identified two different repertoires of small power politics.
While the small Liberian power case study suggests its relatively homogenous
pegging with the US superpower renders its political-economic development con-
tinues to be tarnished by neocolonialism, the Philippine small power case study
points out that with the presence of China as an emerging great power in the
Asia-Pacific region, the Philippines has been able to cash in from hedging the US–
China competition. If we tend to accept that the Philippine case has provided an
instructive example for Asian and African small power politics, then the small
powers’ foreign policy agenda for pushing for global multipolarity should be pri-
oritized and stressed by the small powers’ security policy-makers.
Hereunder are a few policy implications for practicing small power politics in
statecraft:
• Small power policy-makers should support global multi-polarity because the
presence of such world order will provide more hedging opportunities for the
small powers to benefit from. They may form their own supranational organi-
zations by inviting different great powers to sit in.
• In defending disputed territorial claims with a great power, it is advisable for the
small power to neutralize the disputed great power’s apparent military capability
by inviting another great power to come in. They may make use of the
supranational/regional organizations to neutralize the conflicting claims of the
concerned great power.
• In enhancing the small power’s national economic growth, it is advisable for the
small powers to diversify venues to cash in from the great powers. These consist
of trade, finance and manufacturing sectors. In order not to be overly dependent
on the great powers, the small powers should continue to intensify South–South
trades with other emerging great and small powers, including South Africa,
India and Brazil.
• In principle, small power policy-makers should uphold the ideologies of eco-
nomic nationalism and national sovereignty. By securing firm controls over the
state’s natural, maritime and human resources for which the great powers desire,
policy-makers should also not be hesitated to educate their countrymen the
values and practice of these principles. Countrymen should also be educated
about the state’s rich and diverse resources and why the great powers desire
them.
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Chapter 3
USA–China Containment
and Counter-Containment in Southeast
Asia: The ‘Battle’ for Myanmar (Burma)
Abstract In 2011, the United States of America (USA) adopted the ‘pivot to Asia’
(also known as ‘return to Asia’) foreign policy. In order to provide a critique of this
policy change, this chapter has two aims. First, it will contextualize such policy
agenda against the Anglo-American strategic culture of ‘containment’ as a strand of
geopolitical realism and a foreign policy practice against communism. Second, by
providing a case study on the changing relations between the Union of Myanmar
(Burma) , the People’s Republic of China and the USA, it will characterize US
containment and China’s counter-containment strategies through the lens of Sun
Tzu’s Art of War.
Keywords Comparative strategic cultures

Containment and

counter-containment Foreign relations Myanmar (Burma) Resource-focused

political economy Small power politics USA-China relations in Southeast Asia
3.1 Introduction
On 1 April 2012, Asian democratic icon Aung San Suu Kyi (Suu Kyi) led Myanmar
(Burma1)’s main opposition party—National League for Democracy (NLD)—to a
landslide victory in the lower house (parliament) by-election. Although the
by-election only enabled NLD to occupy less than 7% of the lower house seats, it
signified a milestone in Burma’s politics. The military junta and the opposition have
started unprecedented collaboration for the sake of their people’s collective welfare.
For the first time in twenty-four years, moreover, in order to improve the country’s
economy and international profile, Suu Kyi was able to join the World Economic
Forum on East Asia in Bangkok from 30 May to 1 June 2012. In the event, Suu Kyi
publicly shared her worry regarding USA–Myanmar–China relations:
1
As Myanmar is also known as Burma, both names are used interchangeably in this book.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6563-7_3
52 3 USA–China Containment and Counter-Containment in Southeast Asia …
‘Many people are now wondering what is the position of Burma towards the United States,
and how this will affect our relations with China, […] I am always concerned when Burma
is seen as a battleground for the United States and China. (Burma) should be an area of
harmony for these two great countries.2’
How could we contextualize Suu Kyi’s worry? What are the geopolitical,
strategic and historical grounds purporting such worry? What might be the policy
implications of Suu Kyi’s worry for the small powers? Against the post-World War
I (WWI) backdrop where the Anglo-American strategic culture of ‘containment’
started to gain currency within the security policy circle and its implementation
comes to shape US foreign policy vis-à-vis the two largest socialist states (i.e. the
former Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China), this paper will account
for the theoretical roots and strategic realization of US containment policy towards
China in post-World War II (WWII) era.
Since the former Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, I will argue that US
containment policy has been mainly directed towards China. Although the USA has
constructed a containment circle by forming political-economic and military alli-
ances with the small powers in East and Southeast Asia, where China and its
neighbouring states have disputed territorial claims and competing economic
interests, the USA has left an ‘escape route’ for China through Myanmar. However,
the recent development in Myanmar has given the USA an opportunity to close that
escape route. Using Myanmar for case study, I will argue that a better explanation
of the US containment policy towards China in the post-Soviet era will benefit from
employing the classic Chinese strategic culture of Sun Tzu’s (544–496 B.C.) Art of
War. Such strategic thinking does not only help us to comprehend the subtlety of
US containment policy from the Chinese side, but also help us to understand the
counter-containment options that China might have. By ‘strategy’, I mean ‘the
process by which ends are related to means, intentions to capabilities, objectives to
resources’ (Gaddis, 1982: viii).
This chapter will hold that the post-millennial US containment policy towards
the socialist China has been operating along a few strategic lines. First, by forging
military and political-economic alliances with China’s neighbouring smaller states,
the containment policy aims to strengthen the Asian small powers’ capacity in
negotiating with and resisting China’s growing influences in their domestic politics
and foreign relations. Second, by co-constructing the encircling chains surrounding
the socialist China, the containment policy aims to allow the Southeast Asian small
powers not to be over-reliant on an economic development-oriented and
resource-seeking China. It is also to counter the growing regional assertiveness and
global influences of China by encouraging the small powers to concomitantly
strengthen their engagement with Western countries. Third, the US containment
policy empowers the Southeast Asian small powers so that they would also be
2
Sources: (1) ‘Aung San Suu Kyi: China and U.S. Should not Use Burma as “Battlefield”.’ The
China Times. 1 June 2012. (2) ‘Suu Kyi Asks U.S., China not to Squabble over Myanmar.’
Deutsche Welle. 1 June 2012. (3) ‘Burma Should not be Battleground for U.S. and China: Aung
San Suu Kyi.’ The Lahore Times. 1 June 2012.
3.1 Introduction 53
assertive to China over such sovereignty-related issues, such as natural resources

and territorial claims.
This chapter therefore identifies the following strategic issues to be clarified in
the forthcoming sections: (1) What have been the worldview, rationale and
objective of US containment policy? (2) How has this policy been implemented?
(3) What counter-containment options China has adopted? To answer these ques-
tions, I will use Burma for case study.
3.2 Strategic Issue I: Worldview, Rationale and Objective

of the US Containment
3.2.1 The Making of Anglo-American Geopolitical Realism

I: Mackinder’s Pivot of the Heartland
The idea of containment was the brainchild of the British geographer Sir Halford
Mackinder (1861–1947) in 1887 (Mackinder, 1969). However, it was only in 1904
that the idea received wider public attention when Western liberal democracy was
threatened by the worldwide growth of communism. Communism gradually rose to
prominence by the end of nineteenth century and was fully materialized when the
Soviet Union was formally established through the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
In the midst of the gradual realization of the ‘Communist International’ project,
after Second World War, a substantial population of Europe and Asia was turned to
be either the satellite states of the Soviet Union (e.g. Eastern European states) or
self-founded communist states (e.g. People’s Republic of China). In view of many
countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America were also turning red, Anglo-American
security circles continued to find Mackinder’s geopolitical realism to be a viable
foreign policy option to counteract the spread of communism (Walsh, 1951). The
following paragraphs will discuss the major building blocks of Mackinder’s
geopolitical realism in terms of its worldview, rationale and objective.
Mackinder’s world map is characterized by three forms of geopolitical power:
land power, sea power and river power. As political geography ‘deals with the
internal geographical factors which contribute to the state’s individuality and, at the
same time, with the geographical factors which condition the external relations
between states’ (Weigert et al., 1957: 18), geopolitical realism would refer to the
state–earth relational analysis and state policy-making method resultant of the study
of the internal dynamics within and interactions between the three forms of powers
by mainly correlating geographical considerations (mostly materialist factors) such
as natural resources and terrain characteristics with political-economic considera-
tions. Land power refers to a state which establishes its sovereignty by relying on its
land-based troops and bureaucracy for territorial maintenance and expansion. China
and Germany would be examples of land power. Sea power refers to a state which
establishes its sovereignty by relying on its naval forces and offshore colonial
Fig. 3.1 Mackinder’s world map (I)
administrations for territorial maintenance and expansion. The Roman and British
empires would be exemplars of sea power. River power refers to a state which
establishes its sovereignty by relying on its riverine forces and infrastructures (e.g.
canal and irrigation systems) as well as bureaucracy for territorial maintenance and
expansion. Egypt and Siam would be examples of river power (Mackinder, 1962
[1919]: 48–49).
Based on the above categorizations, Mackinder (1969: 42–43) suggested that
there are three ‘natural seats of power’ on earth which constitute a pattern of
balance of power: ‘pivot area’, ‘inner crescent’ and ‘outer crescent’ (Haushofer,
2002[1924]: 328) (Fig. 3.1). Pivot area is also known as the Eurasian ‘heartland’
(Weigert et al., 1957: 211), where Russia and particularly its Siberian ‘cold land’
are centrally located and surrounded by the icy sea in the north, various mountain
ranges, lakes, seas and deserts ranging from the West (bordering continental
Europe) to the south (bordering the Middle East and South Asia) and the southeast
(bordering East Asia) as well as extreme geographical conditions serving as a
natural shield against external powers (Fairgrieve, 1948: 102). As the heartland is
de facto where the seat of the Russian Empire has taken, continued failure to
conquer Russia by significant powers such as Napoleon’s France and Hitler’s
Germany suggested that the Eurasian heartland qualifies to be a ‘pivot area’, where
the world’s sole heartland power, the Russian Empire, could comfortably defend
itself and launch offensives against other states (Fig. 3.2).
The inner crescent consists of the states in continental Europe, the Middle East,
South Asia and East Asia that surround the heartland. The inner crescent is also
known as the ‘rimland’, which may mean ‘marginal land’ (Weigert et al., 1957:
223). Rimland is where a number of significant land powers took their seats, such as
the empires of Prussia, Persia and China. The outer crescent is where the major sea
3.2 Strategic Issue I: Worldview, Rationale and Objective of the US Containment 55
Fig. 3.2 Mackinder’s world map (II)
powers are occupying such as the British Empire, USA and Japan, plus the
Malayo-Polynesian island powers (e.g. the Sirivijava Empire of the Malacca Strait)
who occupy nowadays the archipelagos and major islands spanning from
Madagascar (East Africa) to maritime Southeast Asia and to the Pacific Ocean.
Rimland is also a critical region where the heartland power, land powers and island
powers coalesce and collide constantly.
In view of the growing threats of the Soviet Union after First World War, by
rejecting the historical determinism embedded in both Marxism and Social
Darwinism which gained currency in the public and policy circles, Mackinder
asked his contemporaries to ponder the question of ‘how unequal nations can be
shaped to survive and grow without danger to themselves or to their neighbours’
(Pearce, 1962: xix). In defence of liberal democracy and free market economy, his
liberalist quest for a global balance of power then laid the foundation for the
Anglo-American containment policy which was originally designed to ‘check
expansion from the [Soviet] Heartland, and, second, the deliberate control of
economic growth in accord with a universal plan [i.e. permanent war economies in
Russia and China]’, in order to safeguard ‘the freedom of men’, instead of privi-
leging the ‘freedom of nations’ pursued by the socialist states (Pearce, 1962: xx–
xxi). Mackinder’s strategic thinking has been influential in Anglo-American foreign
policy-making. Since 1942, the crafting of Anglo-American containment policy has
been based on his theories. His American critic, Nicholas Spykman (1893–1943), is
known as the architect of US containment policy. The following section will dis-
cuss his worldview, rationale and objective.
3.2.2 The Making of Anglo-American Geopolitical Realism

II: Spykman’s Quest for US-Centric Global Balance
of Power
Spykman shared the theoretical building blocks of Mackinder’s geopolitical real-

ism. In the first place, he conceived the world as an ‘international anarchy’ con-
stituted by Mackinder’s categorizations and therefore:
‘Power is in the last instance the ability to wage successful war, and in geography lie the
clues to the problems of military and political strategy. The territory of a state is the base
from which it operates in time of war and the strategic position which it occupies during the
temporary armistice called peace. Geography is the most fundamental factor in the foreign
policy of states because it is the most permanent.’ (Spykman, 2007: 41)
Second, his quest for global balance of power largely shared Mackinder’s views
regarding the nature of the state and international politics:
‘Other things being equal, all states have a tendency to expand. […] The realm of inter-
national politics […] is like a field of forces comparable to a magnetic field. At any given
moment, there are certain large powers which operate in that field as poles. A shift in the
relative strength of the poles or the emergence of new poles will change the field and shift
the lines of force.’ (quoted in Sempa, 2007: xvi)
To Spykman, a statesman must therefore behave differently from a politician. As

moral values (e.g. freedom, justice and fairness) are often used by politicians to
justify and facilitate the attainment of power, statesmen ‘must concern themselves
with the global balance of power’ (Sempa, 2007: xviii). Spykman continued to tell
what he expected from a statesman: ‘Experience has shown […] that there is more
safety in balanced power than in a declaration of good intention’ (quoted in Sempa,
2007: xviii).
In terms of foreign policy rationale, since the states are only interested in a
balance which is in their own favour, Spykman held that US foreign policy must
aim to maintain the balance of power. In the ‘game’ of balance of power, one ‘can
have no permanent friends’ (Spykman, 2007: 103). It is therefore not a static
phenomenon, but a never-ceasing, constantly shifting relationship among the
powers. Security for a state is therefore defined as ‘the margin of danger for the
other, and alliance must, therefore, be met by counter-alliance and armament by
counter-armament in an eternal competitive struggle for power’ (quoted in Sempa,
2007: xviii). To achieve the global balance of power, war is inevitable because it is
‘an inherent part of state systems composed of sovereign independent units’ and
war must therefore be ‘total war’, which was waged not just militarily, but also
psychologically, politically, economically and ideologically (quoted in Sempa,
2007: xviii; Spykman, 2007: 33–40). It is therefore obvious that a balance of power
agenda is in the first place for the US foreign policy-makers.
In terms of foreign policy objective, Spykman objected Mackinder’s dictum,
which stated that ‘Who controls eastern Europe rules the Heartland; who rules the
Heartland rules the World Island [i.e. Eurasia and Africa]; and who rules the World
Fig. 3.3 Spykman’s US global strategy—surrounding the ‘Old World’
Island rules the World’. Instead, he provided a corrective: ‘Who controls the rim-
land rules Eurasia; who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world’ (Spykman,
1969: 43). Whereas Mackinder stressed the strategic significance of the European
rimland in countering the Soviet threat as the buffer zone in defending human
freedom, Spykman emphasized the strategic significance of the entire Eurasian
rimland in not just containing the threats posed by Soviet Union and China, but also
to constantly keep the global balance of power in US terms. The two men’s dif-
ferent emphasis may originate from Spykman’s concern that US national security is
inevitably intertwined with Eurasian balance of power and therefore would be
easily threatened if the US would allow any overwhelmingly dominant force to hail
from the Eurasian ‘Old World’ (Figs. 3.3 and 3.4):
‘Within the framework of a geopolitical analysis, the United States is seen to be geo-
graphically encircled [by the Old World constituted by the powers in Africa, Asia,
Australasia and Europe]. The distribution of power resources gives to the Old World greater
possibilities for the exertion of force than to the New World. […] The situation at this time,
however, makes it clear that the safety and independence of this country [U.S.] can be
preserved only by a foreign policy that will make it impossible for the Eurasian land mass
to habor an overwhelmingly dominant power in Europe and the Far East.’ (Spykman, 1969:
58–60 & Map 51)
In response to such concern, US foreign policy should be crafted in line with the
following points so to encircle the Old World (Spykman, 1969: 61, 2007: 98–103;
120–121; 132–137; 153; 180–181):
• US foreign policy should aim to maintain a balance of power in the Eurasian
rimland primarily for the protection of US position as a Eurasian power. This
could be done by having USA and allies’ naval and land powers surrounding
heartland-based military powers as the main deployment strategy.
Fig. 3.4 Spykman’s containment plan—Rimland contains Heartland
• In order to neutralize the heartland power, rimland balance of power is critical

for US national security. This could be ensured by keeping the rimland free from
any power’s domination.
• The Soviet Union occupies the heartland, and China is the largest rimland
socialist power. They should therefore be checked and contained by neigh-
bouring smaller powers’ combined efforts. The US-led alliance initiatives
should serve the purpose. These include the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) and Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO); the former body
of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
• The two world wars proved that German and Japanese ambitions are well-suited
for such purpose. Nonetheless, German and Japanese ambitions should also be
checked by such powers as UK in order to safeguard the balance of power in
Europe and East Asia.
• The global balance of power can only be actualized along the shifting rela-
tionships between the powers. Such constant shifting implies that USA can have
no permanent friends and no permanent enemies.
• Maintaining global balance of power is the core interest of US national security,
which is intertwined with the destinies of the world. Since historically, the
threats mostly hailed from the Eurasian Old World (e.g. Germany, Japan, China
and Soviet Union), US sea power should therefore work out a plan to check on
and encircle Eurasia in order to control the destinies of the world.
With its solid implementation, the above points characterized the gradual for-
mation of the US-centric global balance of power in the post-Second World War era.
3.3 Strategic Issue II: US Containment Policy and China’s

Response After Second World War
3.3.1 US Containment Strategy and the ‘Washington

Consensus’
Since Second World War, US national security policy has been consistent in
implementing the containment policy. Although the Nixon administration (1969–
1974) established formal diplomatic tie with Beijing, this should be seen as the two
powers’ strategic response to the worsening relationship between China and Soviet
Union (Macmillan, 2007; Wong, 2009: 71). Based on Washington’s 1947 predic-
tion that the Beijing–Moscow rivalry would be increasingly acute which later
became true (Gaddis, 1982: 43), the Nixon administration determined that the
‘hostility between China and the Soviet Union served our purposes best if we
maintained closer relations with each side than they did with each other’ (Gaddis,
1982: 297). It was partly because the Nixon administration determined that the state
resources available for backing the containment policy would only allow the US
armed forces to fight on a ‘one-and-a-half war’ standard—‘conventional forces
capable of meeting major aggression in Europe or Asia, but not in both at the same
time’ (Gaddis, 1982: 297). Such strategy and standard continued to influence
succeeding administrations in the White House.
From 1989 to 1991, the contained Soviet bloc was eventually dissolved. As the
heartland power, Russia, was significantly weakened, US containment policy in the
1990s and 2000s entered into a new phase. In this period, US domestic debates
regarding the future of international politics can be characterized by two dominant
theses: Fukuyama’s (1992) ‘the end of history’ thesis and Huntington’s (1996)
‘clash of civilizations’ thesis.
In 1978, Deng Xiaoping and his successors reverted Mao’s policy and adopted
‘open door policy’, implemented liberalist market reform and engaged socialist
China with the global capitalistic economy. Following the disintegration of the
Soviet bloc in 1991, it was therefore anticipated that the People’s Republic of China
would be fully absorbed into the global capitalistic economy, and
liberal-democratic reforms would eventually take over Chinese communist power.
Under this expectation, Fukuyama proclaimed that the ideological tussle between
capitalism and communism had been settled; in the ‘end of history’, there should
only be just one form of governance under democratic capitalism.
Fukuyama’s optimism was not shared by Huntington, whose ‘clash of civi-
lizations’ thesis argued that major transnational conflicts would occur and
fault-lines would be drawn between the civilizational camps of nation-states which
share the same cultural-religious origins, namely Buddhism, Christianity,

Confucianism, Hindu, Islam and Orthodox, etc. The September-11 and the 7th July
attacks launched by Islamic terrorist networks such as al-Qaeda on the USA and
UK in 2001 and 2005, respectively, have, on the one hand, validated Huntington’s
concern, but, on the other hand, exposed one of the weaknesses in his argument that
the fault-lines of future conflict would be along the borders where different ‘civi-
lizations’ meet. The attack on US soil has alerted US President George W. Bush on
the vulnerability of the nation and triggered re-adjustment in foreign policies and
re-positioning in strategic deployments, resulting in the declaration of ‘global war
on terror’ and started wars in the Middle Eastern countries of Iraq (2003–2011) and
Afghanistan (2001–2014). During this period, the impetus of the Washington
consensus was given further push into the former Soviet-influenced states in
Eastern Europe and to a lesser extent, Central Asia. As a global political-economic
system, the Washington consensus is mainly characterized by the giving out of
financial loans and foreign aids through the Bretton Woods institutions (e.g. World
Bank and International Monetary Funds) in exchange for the receiving country’s
neoliberalist (‘small-state-big-market’) reforms, including downsizing governmen-
tal expenditure, abolition of trade barriers, devaluation of national currency and
introducing liberal market reform (Wong, 2012a).
3.3.2 China’s Counter-Containment Strategy

and the ‘Beijing Consensus’
The People’s Republic of China’s counter-containment policy could be character-

ized into five phases. The first phase is the Mao era (1949–1976). China experi-
mented war communism economy and supported armed communist movements
overseas as a counter-containment policy. During this period, USA backed mili-
tarist and right-wing regimes such as South Korea’s militarist regimes (1962–1979),
Kuomintang’s military rule in Taiwan, the Philippines’ Marcos’ martial law regime
(1972–1986), Thailand’s military rule (1957–1988) and Indonesia’s Suharto regime
(1968–1998). Together with Japan, these neighbouring smaller powers formed a
U-shaped first containment chain surrounding China in East and Southeast Asia,
with the second containment chain formed by such Pacific states as Guam and
Australia. In response, China supported the communist movements in Southeast
Asia as a counter-containment strategy. For examples, the Communist Party of
Burma, the Communist Party of Thailand and the Communist Party of the
Philippines, all received tangible and intangible supports from China (Wong, 2013).
Although the communist regimes in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos tended to side
with the Soviet Union, China maintained strategic relationships with these
Southeast Asian socialist states as part of its counter-containment plan.
The second phase is the Deng era (1978–1989), when the liberalist economic
reform also known as the ‘open door policy’ was introduced by Mr. Deng Xiaoping
3.3 Strategic Issue II: US Containment Policy and China’s Response … 61
(1904–1997). This period was characterized by warming relationship with the West
and re-engagement with the outside world. Facing a devastated domestic economy
and the communist state’s fiscal constraints after Chairman Mao died in 1976, Deng
Xiaoping substantially curtailed the programme in supporting communism over-
seas. In order to revive the nation, the Chinese Communist Party recognized the
need to improve the people’s living standards as a way to rescue the party’s fal-
tering legitimacy caused by policy failures, famines and the Cultural Revolution
(1966–1976) during the Mao era. Through the introduction of economic reforms,
overseas investors were encouraged to take advantage of China’s cheap labour to
set up subsidiaries, build factories and form joint ventures to develop the country’s
infrastructure and power supply. During this period, China and the USA enjoyed
unprecedented level of cooperation, allowing the latter to lower its guard on China
and concentrate its effort on dealing with Soviet Union.
However, this honeymoon period did not last long and took an abrupt turn after
Beijing forcefully clamped down the student protest in 1989. The third phase
(1989–2000) arrived in the wake of the Tiananmen Square incident, when the West
imposed sanctions on China and a new frosty relationship with the USA began.
During this difficult time, China’s ASEAN neighbours did not join the West in
condemning China, but instead maintained a policy of non-interference in other
countries’ domestic affairs. Harnessing on ASEAN’s friendly gesture and using it as
a counter-containment strategy, China re-engaged with the capital-rich overseas
Chinese in the region. By opening up ‘Special Economic Zones (SEZs)’ with
pro-business policies such as lower tax rates, export rebates and cheap labour in the
overseas Chinese’s home provinces in southern China, ethnic Chinese businesses
from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Southeast Asia were attracted to invest and
forge joint ventures with Chinese state-owned enterprises. China then used these
foreign capitals and technologies for improving its own economic and industrial
profiles.
The fourth phase is from 2000 to 2008. It is the period when China actively
reaches out to Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as the Western countries for
securing more natural and energy resources and expanding its export markets. This
led to the emergence and consolidation of the ‘Beijing Consensus’. From 1980 to
the present, following Deng Xiaoping’s ‘taoguang yanghui’ (韜光養晦, which
means ‘hide one’s capability and bide one’s time’) dictum, China gradually
established the ‘Beijing Consensus’ foreign policy agenda and formulated its own
international political-economic system. In principle, China conducted active
resource-led diplomacy in Africa and Asia to syphon foreign energy and natural
resources in order to fuel its economic development and industrial modernization.
In exchange for their natural resources and recognition of the ‘one China policy’,
China gave out no-strings-attached loans and foreign aids as well as other con-
cessions to the developing countries (Ramo, 2004). Although Deng’s successors
Jiang Zemin (1989–2002) and Hu Jiantao (2002–2012) invented their own strategic
slogans such as ‘daguo celue’ (大國策略, which means ‘great power strategy’) and
‘heping jueqi’ (和平崛起, which means ‘peaceful rise’), they have not deviated
from Deng’s original dictum.
The fifth phase is from 2008 to present. The subprime financial crisis in 2008 has
rocked the foundations of capitalism and has weakened US economy. In contrast,
China emerged from the crisis relatively unscratched and overtook Japan as the
world’s second largest economy. In response to China’s increasing impacts on the
global political economy, Barack Obama has adopted a realist stance after taking
presidential office in 2009 and has revised the country’s foreign policy direction and
re-oriented the containment policy in response to China’s post-millennial devel-
opment. Realizing America is a much weaker economic power than before, Obama
immediately started pulling out troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and started out-
sourcing containment of China through strengthening ties with countries in Asia.
China’s overseas political-economic activities and ‘resource-focused diplomacy’ in
the developing world have also been targeted by the US intelligence service agency
(Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2009: 3).
To be sure, the containment objective of the USA in the post-Tiananmen Square
era is no longer about ideology, but one that is based on maintain US global
economic and political supremacy. Consistent with the aforementioned
Anglo-American geopolitical realism expositions, the Obama administration
(2009–present) has become concerned about China’s rising economic power at the
expense of the USA and therefore aimed to monitor and check on China’s devel-
opment to ensure the US dollar will not be replaced by Chinese renminbi as the
global reserve currency, for this will curtail America’s ability to print more money
and severely undermine America’s global reach (Yue & Wong, 2012). In the fol-
lowing sections, I shall substantiate the argument that the new US containment
policy should be better conceived through the lens of Sun Tzu’s Arts of War, and
how Myanmar, as an Asian small power, can take advantage of the tussle between
the USA and China.
3.4 Small Power Politics in the USA–China Relations:

The Case of Myanmar
3.4.1 USA–China Containment and Counter-Containment

Through the Lens of Sun Tzu
Sun Tzu’s Art of War has recently been argued to be a geopolitical realist and
dialectical-materialist theory of international relations, found in ancient China’s
Warring States Period (circa 475–221 B.C.) (Chang, 2011). Nonetheless, its
influences are still found in contemporary Chinese strategic thoughts; one of
Chairman Mao’s main guerrilla strategies of ‘fanweichao’ (反圍剿, which means
‘counter-containment’) against the Kuomintang’s strategy of ‘weichao’ (圍剿,
which means ‘containment’) in the Chinese Civil War (1927–1950) is a good
example (Mao, 1971[1967]: 176–189). More recently, two retired generals of the
People’s Liberation Army authored ‘unrestricted warfare’ against the USA might be
3.4 Small Power Politics in the USA–China Relations: The Case of Myanmar 63
regarded as a further updated rendition of applying Sun Tzu’s strategic thoughts in

the post-Cold War era (Qiao & Wang, 2007). Literally, containment in such con-
texts involves two strategic actions. First is to encircle or surround and then to
eliminate. However, when referring to the contemporary US containment of China,
the Chinese translation would mean first to encircle/surround and then to blockade.
Although it does not entail the meaning of elimination, it does not exclude such
possibility.
Sun Tzu unfailingly urged his students to observe the strategic principle of
non-war-making: 「不戰而屈人之兵」, which means ‘to win without fighting a
war’ (Li, 2010: 30). His strategic thought can be characterized by the following
dictum: 「上兵伐謀,其次伐交,其次伐兵,其下攻城」, which can be translated as:
‘The best and first strategy is to destroy the enemy’s plan [authors’ note: in order to
frustrate and weaken the enemy’s will so that the enemy will give up]. The second best is to
destroy the enemy’s diplomatic ties. The third best is to occupy the enemy’s military power
by creating distractions. The last and worst strategy is to wage a full-blown war against the
enemy.’ (Our translation from Li, 2010: 30–31)
The wisdom of Sun Tzu is not just used by Chinese strategists and military
officials; his work has been widely translated into many other languages, including
English, German, Italian and Spanish. More importantly, there are clear evidences
to suggest that Sun Tzu’s philosophy has been incorporated into American military
culture. There is a classic US military manual entitled Elements of the Art of War:
Prepared for the Use of the Cadets of the United States Military Academy (Mercur,
1894), which strongly suggests the American military has taken Sun Tzu very
seriously. A more recent reference can be seen from Luttwak (1984). Indeed,
scholars continue to apply the Art of War in contemporary wars, for example, the
wars against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan (Gagliardi, 2004). While it is not
within the scope of this paper to compare the strategies in the Art of War with the
Western ‘bible’ of warfare—On War (von Clausewitz, 1993)—it is important to
note that the key strategies of von Clausewitz in emphasizing the integration of
political, social and economic factors into warfare management are not very dif-
ferent from what Sun Tzu advocates. Indeed, comparing Sun Tzu and Clausewitz
has been one of the core subjects taught to military academy students in America.
For instance, Handle’s (1991) work has become a major reading in the Army War
College Strategic Studies Institute in Pennsylvania. Aside from the contribution to
military strategy, the Art of War has also been applied in Western-styled business
management, with many top Executive Masters of Business Administration pro-
grammes include the Art of War as part of the curriculum.
Based on Sun Tzu’s expositions, I am going to provide the following perspective
to account for the USA–China containment and counter-containment. In particular,
readers should take note on the subtlety by which the USA has implemented Sun
Tzu’s first and second dictums on destroying the enemy’s plans and severing
enemy’s ties with allies.
Although the post-1978 China has been gradually absorbed into the global
capitalist economy, the fact that it is being ruled by the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) would lead to the Anglo-American geopolitical realist calculation that the
single-party communist state has been generating a mirage of peaceful capitalistic
transformation and buying their time in waiting for the right moment for launching
a new round of global communist revolution. The Western suspicion is only natural
given that Deng Xiaoping’s ‘taoguang yanghui’ 韜光養晦 dictum on ‘hiding one’s
capability and biding one’s time’. Even though the ruling CCP will not launch a
new round of global communist revolution, the historically imperialistic repertoire
of the pre-1949 Chinese state would still warrant a sound geopolitical policy to
check on its expanding development and global reaches.
Critics have been assessing China’s consistent efforts in pushing for international
multipolarity (Amin, 2006; Cheng, 1999), which would not necessarily mean
giving up communist ideology, may it be in its original form or revisionist manner.
As discussed in previous paragraphs, the USA sees China’s increasing economic
strength is posting serious threats to its global leadership status, and in particular,
the internationalization of Chinese renminbi can potentially undermine the dollar
being used as a de facto reserve currency. Therefore, containing China’s rise is not
just about trumping over Beijing Consensus, but carries a much more significant
mission to control China’s economic development. Translating this into Sun Tzu’s
strategy on destroying enemy’s plan, this would mean controlling the source of
China’s economic growth—the energy supply route. It would also be natural for the
USA to continue to contain a resource-seeking China in the post-Cold War era. In
continuation of US foreign policy towards the Orient, containment of China in the
post-Cold War era is largely resource-focused. In other words, by maintaining
control over the world’s oil supply and trade, the US dollar oil peg and guarding the
major oil-shipping geopolitical choke points, the USA would be able to control the
essentials of the African and Asian developing countries through exercising
exceptionalism in three intervention curves (Wong, 2012b).
The first curve centres on the Israel–Palestine peace process for which the USA
has meddled since the 1960s (Vital, 1967: Chap. 3). The USA–Israel alliance
enables the US military power to have a reliable offshore security outpost in the
Near East, monitoring the choke points of the Suez Canal and Bab-el-Mandeb Strait
which connect the major oil-producing African and Asian countries along the
Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. The second curve consists of the Islamic
democratic state-building projects in the post-2001 Iraq and Afghanistan, where US
troops have been present. The military operations in the Middle East provide the
USA additional strategic rooms for guarding the geopolitical choke-points of the
Gulf of Aden, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. These choke points also
enable the USA to monitor and intervene in the state affairs of the major
oil-producing countries along the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and in Central Asia.
The third curve consists of the East and Southeast Asian countries in the Far East
region. Because from the 1990s to 2000s, the USA was occupied by the wars in the
Middle East and the global wars against terrorism, and the consideration that China
was gradually absorbed by the global capitalist economy, USA therefore chose to
strengthen economic and trade ties with the countries in the Far East. Many Asian
countries therefore took the opportunity to absorb US investments and technologies
and became the major manufacturers and markets of US commodities. Although the
USA gradually withdrew the military bases from her Far Eastern allies, she con-
tinued to exploit military agreements and conduct joint exercises with the countries
that control the oil-shipping choke-points of the Malacca Strait and the Pacific
entrance points around the territorially disputed South China Sea and East China
Sea. Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Korea and Japan are the
examples. The presence and activities also provide USA additional strategic
mileage in monitoring the state affairs of the oil-consuming and industrializing
countries in the Far East.
Viewing from the above three US intervention curves towards Africa and Asia,
the US military have been effectively guarding literally all the oil-shipping and
geopolitical choke points in the Near East, Middle East and Far East. To maintain
the US global hegemony, post-Cold War US geostrategy must therefore be
material-based. Resource-focused geostrategy is capable of controlling the essen-
tials of the development of the Far Eastern countries. In particular, China has been
one of the largest buyers of oil-producing countries who earned the ire of USA, e.g.
Iran and Libya. Because of the recent fall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, analysis
held that Iran has therefore supplied China’s one-third annual oil consumption
(Wong, 2012b).
In early January 2012, it is henceforth unsurprising for the USA to issue a new
global military strategy. The new strategy temporarily dropped North Korea and
Russia from the 2009 list (which consisted of Iran, North Korea, Russia and China)
but concentrated on China and Iran as the two potential targets for armed conflict
(Kwong, 2012). Being the largest oil-supplier and largest oil-consumer of each
other, solely targeting Iran and China may be the most cost-effective strategy
attempting to shoot two birds with one stone. It is because the Chinese and Iranian
national securities may be undermined by interfering and threatening to blockade
the geopolitical choke-points spanning from the Near East to the Far East, where
Iran is well positioned. Undermining Iran’s political stability would naturally
undermine China’s energy security.
From this perspective, China has been contained by USA at two geostrategic
fronts in the post-Cold War era. First, as China’s continued development largely
relies on foreign supplies of energy and natural resources (Figs. 3.5 and 3.6), US
military presence in the major geopolitical choke points and interventions in the
African and Asian oil-producing countries’ state affairs would naturally pose sig-
nificant psychological interferences and security concerns to China (Fig. 3.7).
China’s resource-led development and national interests are therefore constantly
checked, restricted and even sabotaged by these interferences and military might.
This is the realization of Sun Tzu’s first dictum on destroying enemy’s plan.
Second, the US military presence and active diplomatic interventions in the East
and Southeast Asian countries and their international institutions (e.g. Association
of Southeast Asian Nations) continued to complicate China’s sovereignty claims in
territorial disputed hotspots such as the South China Sea. Because USA sides with
several Southeast Asian small powers who then forge joint oil-exploration deals
with USA, Japanese and Indian oil companies and asked for US military protection,
China Oil ConsumpƟon ('ooo barrels per day) 12000
10000
8000
China Oil ConsumpƟon

6000
4000
2000
0
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000 40000 45000
China Real GDP (Current Prices Rmb bn.)
Fig. 3.5 China’s oil demand versus real GDP (1990–2010). Source BP statistical review 2100;
China statistical yearbook
China's Oil Production and Consumption 1990-2012

12000
Thousand Barrels per Day
10000
8000
Net Imports
6000
ProducƟon
4000
ConsumpƟon
2000
Year
Fig. 3.6 China’s oil usage trend (1990–2012). Source BP statistical review 2011
US interventions in these China-related disputes also stirred up political mistrusts

and therefore weaken China’s diplomatic ties with neighbouring countries, espe-
cially Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam. China has been therefore interfered by
the foreign relations impermanence, political intrigues and false diplomatic
friendship, competition, resource-related disputes, military threats and territorial
China's Crude Oil Imports by Source 2009

('000 barrels per day)
Venezuela Others
3% Saudi Arabia
17%
21%
Kazakhstan
3%
Libya
Angola
3%
16%
Kuwait
3%
Sudan Iran
Iraq 6% Russia 11%
4% 7%
Oman
6%
Fig. 3.7 China’s crude oil imports by source (2009). Source FACTS global energy
conflicts with the neighbouring small powers (Wong & Yue, 2011). This is the
realization of Sun Tzu’s second dictum, severing the ties between your enemy and
her allies.
3.4.2 Myanmar—Where China Jail-Broke US Containment
Due to its geographical location and political environment, Myanmar provides an

ideal jail-breaking point for China from USA’s containment. Since General Ne Win
initiated a coup in 1962, the nationalistic Burmese junta determined that in order for
the national economy to be entirely free from dependency over British neocolo-
nialism, Indian mercantile supremacy and ethnic Chinese economic dominance, the
junta adopted ‘Burmese Way to Socialism’ and nationalized private properties.
Such move enabled the military to monopolize the national economy. From 1962 to
1988, because of the junta’s inexperience, Burma’s economic impoverishment
caused widespread social poverty and repressive rule. Burmese people gradually
lost confidence in the military regime. Troubled by prolonged armed ethnic
insurgencies, in order to rescue its faltering domestic and international legitimacy,
the junta launched a nationwide election in 1990. To its surprise, the junta suffered
substantial losses to the opposition led by Suu Kyi. The electoral results were then
abruptly abolished and Suu Kyi was house arrested by the military regime since her
1990 victory (Wong, 2012c).
Facing Western sanctions and isolations, the post-1990 junta immediately fell
into the orbits of the ‘Beijing Consensus’. China’s resource-led economic
Fig. 3.8 China’s major oil pipeline projects
development agenda started to intertwine with Burma’s development agenda in

which Chinese capitals and foreign aids were poured into Myanmar in exchange for
its rich natural and energy resources. Nowadays, it is estimated that China has
constituted more than 55% of Myanmar’s total foreign direct investments, while
ASEAN has contributed 25%. Perhaps the most geopolitically significant project
for China has been the construction of the 2,906-km-long ‘Myanmar–China Crude
Oil and Gas Pipelines’, which will connect Burma’s Indian Ocean port Kyaukpyu
with the inland Chinese city of Kunming of Yunnan Province and Chongqing, one
of China’s industrial capitals. With estimated maximum discharges of 440,000
barrels of crude oil per day and 14 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year
(Fig. 3.8), these pipelines serve well for China to jail-break US containment in
South and Southeast Asia for a few reasons.
First, it will enable China to avoid the US-guarded and heavily congested
Malacca Strait, where over 83% of China’s oil supply used to come from (Fig. 3.9).
Second, known as China’s immediate exit to the Indian Ocean, Myanmar is sig-
nificant in China’s counter-containment plan. Myanmar is a key component of
China’s regional alignment in South Asia, where China also allied with India’s
small power-neighbours of Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan to check and
counter the growing influences of India and its alliance with USA. Third, Burma
constitutes a core part of China’s ‘string of pearls’ security project for monitoring
and safeguarding the oil-shipping and commercial-shipping routes from Africa to
China. The ‘string of pearls’ usually refers to the Chinese sea lines of communi-
cation that extend to Port Sudan of Sudan, one of China’s main oil suppliers in
Africa. Apart from paving Myanmar for being an alternative inland oil-shipping
Fig. 3.9 Burma–China jail-broke US containment
route to decrease China’s reliance over the Malacca Strait (Figs. 3.10 and 3.11),
Myanmar also provides a major overseeing and backup base for the other ‘pearl’-
states along the Indian Ocean (including Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan,
Iran, Iraq, Maldives, Seychelles and Kenya), in which China’s energy, military,
intelligence and political-economic outposts may be coordinated to check on the
geopolitical choke-points of Suez Canal, Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, Gulf of Aden, the
Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman (Fig. 3.12).
Since the 1990s, leveraging on its irreplaceable geostrategic location to the
contained China, Myanmar has absorbed substantial Chinese investments to fill the
gap left by Western sanctions and isolation. Carefully engineered and in accordance
with the ‘Roadmap to Discipline-flourishing Democracy’, Myanmar conducted the
second nationwide election in 2010 and the military successfully won majority of
the seats. A societal consent has emerged in Myanmar, that it is not in the nation’s
interest to solely depend on China’s resource-led development agenda and
Myanmar must find alternative ways to seek international legitimacy so that it will
be able to absorb foreign capitals from different sources for its development.
Consequently, on September 2011, while implementing gradual democratic reform,
in response to the growing local resistance against the construction of the Myitsone
Hydroelectric Dam, which upon completion China would get 90% of the electricity
generated, the reform-minded newly installed President Thein Sein suspended the
controversial China-sponsored project.3 As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have
been winding down in the late 2000s, the Obama administration has strengthened
3
Source: “Myanmar Backs Down, Suspending Dam Project.” The New York Times. 30 September
2011.
Fig. 3.10 China’s alternative

land-route for oil supply
ties with Asian countries, much characterized by its ‘pivot to Asia’ policy. Seeing it
as an opportunity for Burma to re-establish its ties with the Western nations, it is
therefore unsurprising for the military regime to strategically collaborate with NLD
and stage Suu Kyi’s landslide victory in the April 2012 by-election.
3.4.3 The New US Containment Since Obama
It is necessary to distinguish Obama’s containment strategy towards China from

those of his predecessors. During the Obama administration, containing China does
not solely contain communism, but more to contain China’s resource-led devel-
opment and diplomatic agenda. This is to address a few US public worries. First,
China might change the US-centric global order and therefore undermine US
national interests. Second, China’s relentless economic growth might affect USA’s
basic political-economic interests in the domestic and international arenas. Third, in
the long run, China’s ‘Beijing Consensus’ might also change the neoliberal global
political-economic order that USA has established through the ‘Washington
consensus’.
Fig. 3.11 Oil and gas pipeline going through Myanmar to China
Fig. 3.12 The ‘String of Pearls’ of China

Despite that President Obama openly denied that USA ever attempts to contain
China, we think that Obama’s containment policy towards China may well be
conceived in terms of the ‘sovereignty versus economic development’ dualistic core
constructs. As China and its neighbouring states are undergoing rapid capitalistic
development and they have overlapping territorial claims over strategic areas such
as South China Sea and East China Sea, the concerned Asian states’ sovereignty
assertions and domestic economic development constitute a dualistic predicament
that becomes very difficult to resolve for China and its neighbours. As sovereignty
is based on nationalism’s highly exclusive nature, it would increase the possibility
of international armed conflicts and undermine mutual economic development and
trade relations. If a state’s foreign policy is over-stressing on economic develop-
ment, it would be easily undermined and controlled by foreign capitals and rival
powers (Wong, 2011). Nonetheless, by no means, USA wants to militarily engage
with China directly. Instead, the dualistic core constructs would provide USA the
necessary intervention inroads to maintain a ‘balance of power’ between China and
Southeast Asia.
In a nutshell, the new containment policy would entail several operating
strategies. First is to use the ‘balance of power’ as a main strategy to illuminate
potential threats and mobilize allied small states to counter-check China’s
expanding power. Second, by forging military and political-economic alliances
with China’s neighbouring smaller states, the containment policy aims to strengthen
the Southeast Asian small powers’ capacity in negotiating with and resisting
China’s growing influences in their domestic politics and foreign relations. Third,
by co-constructing the encircling chains surrounding the socialist China, the con-
tainment policy aims to allow the Southeast Asian small powers not to be
over-reliant on an economic development-oriented and resource-seeking China. It is
also to counteract the growing regional assertiveness and global influences of China
by encouraging the small powers to concomitantly strengthen their engagement
with Western countries. Fourth, the containment policy empowers the Southeast
Asian small powers so that they would also be assertive with China over such
sovereignty-related issues as natural resources and territorial claims. Fifth, it is to
extend China-related intelligence works in foreign countries since China has
reached out overseas.
In the November 2011 ASEAN Summit (Bali, Indonesia), with USA support,
the Philippines sought to form an alliance with concerned ASEAN states to open
talks with China on their disputed claims over the South China Sea. Being a
strategic chokepoint and rich in fishery, natural and oil resources, the South China
Sea dispute has historically been a major irritant between China and Southeast
Asian states.4 Despite that China insisted on solving the South China Sea dispute on
a bilateral basis (e.g. China to the Philippines), the Philippines and Vietnam insisted
on dealing with the dispute multilaterally through the ASEAN platform. To China,
4
Source: “Military Buildup Sparks Fears; U.S. Stirring Wrong Hornet’s Nest.” Russia Today TV, 4
June 2012.
as there are at least four involved ASEAN member-cum-claimant-states (Brunei,

Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam) on the issue, solving the dispute through
ASEAN would significantly decrease China’s bargaining power. It is because if it
would have gone through voting, China’s singular vote would likely lose to the
concerned ASEAN states’ plural votes. To the concerned ASEAN states, it is
therefore at their collective advantage to group together through the ASEAN
platform which would constitute the Southeast Asian small powers’ ‘pooled
sovereignty’ in order to negotiate with and bind China more effectively. However,
because of the ASEAN Summit host—Indonesia—objected to list the issue in the
meeting agenda, the South China Sea dispute was not formally discussed at the
meeting (Wong & Yue, 2011).
In the similar vein, in the following November 2011 East Asia Summit held in
Indonesia, US President Obama announced that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton
will pay a historic visit to Myanmar in December 2011. Clinton’s visit marked the
first time in 50 years and signified a major change in USA–Myanmar relations. It
also paved the way for lifting sanctions and prepared Western investors to return to
Myanmar. Because Myanmar is strategically very significant to China and it pos-
sesses substantial Chinese investments and ongoing infrastructural projects, USA’s
move immediately attracted China’s strong reaction as China would fear that its
counter-containment plan and resource-focused economic development agenda in
Myanmar would be disrupted. Shortly afterwards, as a result, Chinese Vice
President Xi Jinping publicly announced to strengthen military ties with Myanmar.
To Myanmar, who will be the host of the 2014 ASEAN meeting, nonetheless, it is
in its own interest to keep ties with both China and USA so that it will benefit from
the ‘rise of China’ and ‘USA’s return to Asia’ simultaneously.
3.5 Conclusion and Policy Implications
Given that the post-Second World War and post-Cold War USA–China contain-
ment and counter-containment strategies in Southeast Asia may well be conceived
through the lens of Anglo-American geopolitical realism and Sun Tzu’s Arts of
War, Suu Kyi’s worry that Burma would have become a ‘battleground’ between
USA and China is indeed justified. Nonetheless, Burma’s post-Second World War
trajectory has also provided a solid case to show how an Asian small power can
benefit from the USA–China containment and counter-containment.
In order to entirely detach from neocolonial and foreign economic dominance,
from the 1960s to 1980s, the Burmese junta adopted socialist reform mainly for the
purpose of internal political-economic restructuring. It ensured that the Burmese
majority would be able to control the national economy. This period was, however,
characterized by the military’s economic monopolization, social poverty and
repressive rule. In 1990, facing faltering domestic and international legitimacy, the
junta conducted nationwide election but lost to the opposition led by Suu Kyi. As
the electoral result was abruptly abolished and Suu Kyi was house arrested by the
junta, Burma was sanctioned and isolated by Western countries.
However, in the midst of USA–China containment and counter-containment,
Burma collaborated with China and fell into the orbits of the ‘Beijing Consensus’.
Such move provided China a counter-containment route to escape from the US
containment circle in Southeast Asia by fully engaging Burma in China’s
resource-led development agenda. From 1990s to 2000s, utilizing on Burma’s
strategic location to avoid the Malacca Strait choke-point and serve as China’s exit
to the Indian Ocean, the Myitsone Dam Hydroelectric Dam and the Burma–China
oil pipelines projects were launched to ensure China’s energy security.
When Obama administration announced its ‘return to Asia’ policy in 2010, the
Burmese junta and the Suu Kyi-led opposition saw to it as a good opportunity to
alter Burma’s China-dependent political economy. Since then, Burma actively
solicited with USA and Western countries to lift their sanctions and welcome
Western investors to return to Burma. Aiming at benefiting from both China and
USA, in April 2012, the military regime even allowed Suu Kyi and the opposition
to run and win parliamentary seats, further enabling Burma to operate along the
criss-crossing orbits of ‘Beijing Consensus’ and ‘Washington consensus’ con-
comitantly. Will Burma continue to thrive in the future? Although I am not sure,
based on what Burma has achieved in the past decades, I remain cautiously
optimistic.
Based on the Burmese model, I recommend the following policy implications for
the small powers.
• In the midst of USA–China containment and counter-containment, small powers
must first establish economic nationalism, which means to first detach the
colonially hailed national economy from any dependency, may it be neocolo-
nialism or dominance by foreign ethnic groups. This was done by some through
the nationalization of private properties and ethnic mercantile minorities.
• In terms of geostrategy, small power governments should study and utilize one’s
own geopolitical significance to the great, medium and small powers.
• In terms of domestic governance, small power governments should continue to
pacify internal unrests and armed insurgency through internal
political-economic restructuring. To achieve this end, both economic socialism
and political democratization could be considered and used in selected
situations.
• In terms of foreign relations with the great powers, small power governments
should continue to engage with all great powers and their political-economic
systems in order to benefit from them. In short, ideological dogma is incom-
patible with small power statecraft.
• In terms of foreign relations with the small powers, small power governments
should actively join regional and international organizations in order to generate
collective binding effects over the great powers and increase one’s bargaining
capacity with the great powers.
3.5 Conclusion and Policy Implications 75
• The small power’s rich natural and manpower resources are the primary assets
for not just national development, but also for engaging with the
resource-seeking great powers. These resources must be carefully studied,
systematically documented, securely guarded and properly used by the national
state to benefit its own people and develop the economy.
• In order to avoid mismanagement and misuse of these invaluable national
resources, citizens and civic groups should be legally granted the rights to
participate and check over the usages of the state’s resources. This would also
create an internal democratic public sphere for the government to detect problem
and enhance its resource governance and legitimacy.
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Chapter 4
Strategic Cultures as ‘the Powers’:
Kautilya’s Hindu Statecraft
and the ‘String of Pearls’
in the Indian Ocean
Abstract What is strategic culture? How does strategic culture help us to under-
stand the international dynamics in the Indian Ocean? How could we make sense of
the ‘string of pearls’ phenomenon in the Indian Ocean? These questions set the
terrains of this chapter. I will first engage with a scholarly debate on strategic
culture. Based on the debate, I will develop an alternative approach in conceiving
strategic culture as ‘the Powers’ (Wong in Discerning the powers in Post-Colonial
Africa and Asia: A treatise on Christian statecraft. Springer Science + Business
Media, Heidelberg & Singapore, 2016a: Chap. 1). Through examining Kautilya’s
ancient Hindu statecraft as a lens to unpack contemporary Indian strategic culture,
case studies from the South Asian small powers of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and
Bangladesh will illustrate how the ‘string of pearls’ was formed. The argument will
go into this direction: on one hand, the ‘string of pearls’ is formed consequential of
India’s strained relations with her small power-neighbours. On the other hand, as
both the South Asian small powers and China find each other useful to counter the
hegemonic thrust of India, the ‘string of pearls’ was formed in the Indian Ocean
region.

Keywords China in South Asia Hindu statecraft Indian international relations

Kautilya Indian Ocean Small power politics Strategic culture The ‘string of
pearls’
4.1 Introduction
Through engaging with an enduring debate in the field of strategic culture, this
chapter will develop an alternative conceptualization of strategic culture. An
identified unresolved issue in the Gray-Johnston debate of strategic culture is
whether culture (e.g. strategic ideations and beliefs) over-determines or
under-determines actions (e.g. strategic behaviours and decisions) (Gray, 1999;
Johnston, 1995, 1999; Poore, 2003). By translating this ‘culture vs. action’ dualistic
divide into the equally enduring ‘object/structure vs. subject/agency’ dualistic

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6563-7_4
78 4 Strategic Cultures as ‘the Powers’: Kautilya’s Hindu …
divide in the broader social scientific context, this chapter will aim to achieve three
goals.
First, it will argue that Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical notion of ‘habitus’ is able to
illuminate a root cause of the theoretical stalemate in the Gray-Johnston debate.
I will suggest that despite their differences, both Gray and Johnston seemed to
espouse a structuralist-systematic conceptualization of strategic culture. By stress-
ing how strategic cultures shape strategic behaviours and actions, either in context
or through the organization, both run a risk of downplaying the innovative, gen-
erative and constructive capability and potentiality of human agency/action.
Second, following a critique of Bourdieu’s post-structuralist rendition of
strategic culture, I will argue for a more balanced theoretical scheme to bridge the
dualistic divide. Attempting to pay equally sufficient attentions to both the
subjective/agentive/constitutive and objective/structural/constitutive aspects of
strategic culture, I will outline an exposition for approaching strategic cultures as
‘the Powers’ (c.f. Wong, 2016a). In short, by juxtaposing strategic culture with the
strategic agency, I argue that like ‘the Powers’ (e.g. cultural custom, structure,
system, institution, ideology, religion and the state), strategic culture possesses the
dual properties of both as a cultural constraint and an agentive enablement.
Although strategic culture constraints (shapes and determines) strategic impulses
and reproduces strategic behaviours, it enables the individual strategist’s agency to
generate, invent and devise new strategies as alternative strategic cultures. This
alternative conceptualization recognizes that the strategic culture entails a complex
field of juxtaposing and competing discourses and practices, which are both
reproduced and innovatively produced by the agents, who aim to strategize state
affairs.
Third, a case study of the Hindu strategic culture generated by the ancient Indian
strategist Kautilya will illustrate how the Hinduism-originated Mandala-like
bi-centric international system is able to help understanding the ‘strings of pearls’
phenomenon in the Indian Ocean region. The ‘string of pearls’ refers to a string of
interconnected dots of either permanent or temporary seaports, bases, resupplying
stations and infrastructure sites constructed and/or operated by China in the small
powers of the Indo-Pacific maritime region, which spans from the South China Sea
to the Indian Ocean. In the Indian Ocean, the ‘string of pearls’ mainly connects with
India’s neighbouring smaller countries of Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka
and Pakistan. Despite the ‘string of pearls’ is mainly of economic functions, as a
constellation of energy-supply, maritime transportation and commercial/trade lines
overlapping India’s sphere of maritime influence, one cannot rule out its potentiality
for ensuring China’s security interests in the Indian Ocean region, especially there
have been occasions of tensions and mistrusts between India and China since the
Sino–Indian border conflict in 1962.
I will, however, argue that the formation of the ‘strings of pearls’ is neither a
direct result of China’s planned efforts nor her conscious attempts to connect the
4.1 Introduction 79
South Asian small powers to deliberately encircle or contain India, but more as a
consequence of the following three interweaving factors.
The first factor has to do with the economic rise of China. On the one hand,
China would need to ensure stable energy supplies from the oil-producing African
and Middle East countries shipping through the Indian Ocean sea lanes, given that
significant portions of China’s oil supplies came through the geopolitical choke
points of Malacca Strait (83%), Strait of Hormuz (47%) and the Gulf of Aden (9%),
which are located along the Eastern and Western rims of the Indian Ocean (see
Chap. 3). On the other hand, China would need to ensure the safety of the com-
mercial sea lanes in the Indian Ocean. These shipping routes connect China with the
countries in not just Africa and the Middle East, but also connect Europe further
through the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
Because the Western rims of the Indian Ocean off the Somalian coasts had been
a hot-spot of piracy, China was compelled to join the international community by
taking part in the multinational naval task force to combat piracy. This is also
enhanced China to establish closer ties with Somalia through reopening its embassy
and engaging in bilateral economic relations (Venkataraman, 2016). Venkataraman
(2016: 9) established that through combating piracy, China has gained inroads into
the maritime security of the Indian Ocean rims and bilateral developments with
countries in the Horn of Africa. This chapter will therefore mainly discuss the
second and third factors.
The second factor has to do with the rise of India as a regional hegemon in the
Indian Ocean and its status as an emerging world power. This change would
naturally trigger India’s neighbouring small powers to rebalance towards China.
This factor applies to the cases of Nepal and Sri Lanka, where Islam is not the
majority religion.
The third factor is the rise of India’s Hindu cultural nationalism as a catalyst of
three consequences to the Indian domestic politics and foreign relations: (1) the
consolidation of the Hindu majority’s political and religious solidarity within India,
(2) the antagonism between India’s growing Muslim minority and the Hindu
majority and (3) the straining of the foreign relations between Indian and her
Muslim neighbouring small powers. The third factor would apply to the cases of
Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Here is my central argument: while the rise of India as a regional hegemon and
the rise of Indian Hindu nationalism creates ripple effects upon the small powers of
Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan who recognize the needs to rebalance
the rise of an Hindu-nationalist India, an incoming China who seeks to secure her
energy and economic lifelines in the Indian Ocean would mean that the South Asian
small powers find China conveniently useful to rebalance India. These interwoven
factors contribute to the formation of the ‘string of pearls’ nowadays.
4.2 Key Theoretical Issue: What Is Strategic Culture?
4.2.1 Three Generations of Theory
The theoretical puzzle being addressed here was triggered by the Gray-Johnston
debate on strategic culture (Gray, 1999; Johnston, 1995, 1999; Poore, 2003). The
debate continues to have significant impacts in later scholarships (Biava, Drent, &
Herd, 2011; Norheim-Martinsen, 2011; Zaman, 2009).
What is the debate about? It is about what strategic culture actually means. To
answer this question, Johnston (1995: 36–43) conducted a scholarly review and
divided the previous studies of strategic culture into three generations of works. The
first generation of theorists conceived there is causality between strategic culture
and strategic behaviours. For example, Colin Gray’s notion that national belief as
strategic culture is seen to possess certain determining power over strategic deci-
sions and actions (Johnston, 1995: 36), i.e. culture determines strategic behaviours.
Strategic behaviours mean ‘behaviour relevant to the threat or use of force for
political purposes’ (Gray, 1999: 50). Johnston (1995: 36), however, criticized that
the causative relationship between the two variables was often as unclear as either
‘over-determined’ or ‘under-determined’.
The second generation adopts the Gramscian notion of hegemony. Strategic
culture is seen to be a political tool of political hegemony instrumentalized by the
ruling class. The strategic decision-making in the realm of the state therefore
reflects the class interests of the ruling elite and their hegemonic quest. For
example, Johnston suggested that Klein (1988) conceived the US political elites
instrumentalized strategic culture (mostly in cultural and linguistic terms) to fashion
nuclear policy and justify operational strategy because they were defending the
American ruling class’s vision of US hegemonic interests (Johnston, 1995: 39).
However, Johnston (1995: 40) criticized such hegemonic instrumentality approach
as ‘ambiguous’ as the first generation theory.
The third generation theory, according to Johnston (1995: 41–43), conceives
strategic culture (including behaviours and decisions) is shaped by the ‘organization
culture’ of the situated decision-makers. This broader notion of strategic culture
consists of the institutional culture of the state bureaucracy, military culture and the
historical-materialist constraints that the decision-makers are situated in. Critics
such as Zaman (2009: 80) observed that Johnston’s (1996) own work on ‘cultural
realism’ is ‘often cited as the quintessential third generation work on strategic
culture’.
Partially influenced by the cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s (1973, 1993
[1973]) culturalism and primordialism approaches, Johnston defined strategic cul-
ture as
an integrated system of symbols (e.g. argumentation structures, languages, analogics,
metaphors) which acts to establish pervasive and long lasting strategic preferences by
formulating concepts of the role and efficacy of military force in interstate political affairs,
4.2 Key Theoretical Issue: What Is Strategic Culture? 81
and by clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that strategic preferences
seem uniquely realistic and efficacious. (Johnston, 1995: 46)
As a result, in his study of Chinese strategic culture in Maoist China, Johnston

argued that
China has historically exhibited a relatively consistent hard realpolitik or parabellum
strategic culture that has persisted across different structural contexts into the Maoist period
(and beyond). Chinese decision-makers have internalized this strategic culture such that
China’s strategic behaviour exhibits a preference for offensive uses of force, mediated by a
keen sensitivity to relative capabilities. (Johnston, 1996: 217)
Johnston therefore conceived strategic culture as the embedded and enduring

‘organization culture’ which, as an intervening variable, constantly shapes how the
situated decision-makers and strategist-actors think, behave and equally impor-
tantly, conceive the strategic reality as real. It is evident that Johnston did not reject
Gray’s position that strategic culture determines strategic behaviours.
4.2.2 Strategic Culture as Context: A Review
In defence of his ‘first generation theory’, while Gray recognized there was sharp
difference between his position and Johnston’s ‘third generation theory’ regarding
what domain of culture that students of strategic culture should study, he seemed to
suggest that he and Johnston would both concern about how culture may shape
strategic impulses and behaviours. As a result, without entirely dismissing
Johnston’s ‘organization culture = strategic culture’ formulation, Gray asserted that
strategic culture ‘should be approached both as a shaping context for behaviour and
itself as a constituent of that behaviour’ (Gray, 1999: 50), i.e. context determines
strategic behaviours. What does ‘strategic culture as context’ mean? Gray continued
with clarity:
In calling this article “strategic culture as context”, I accept, actually I even welcome, a key
dualism in social-scientific definitions of context. To be specific, context can be considered
as something “out there”, typically in concentric circles, meaning “that which surrounds”.
Alternatively, or, methodologically perilously, as well, one can approach context as “that
which weaves together” (from the Latin, contextere: to weave together). In this discussion
strategic culture can be conceived as a context out there that surrounds, and gives meaning
to, strategic behaviour, as the total warp and woof of matters strategic that are thoroughly
woven together, or as both. (Gray, 1999: 50–51)
By conceptualizing strategic culture as an attempt to integrate the dualistic

entities of (1) culture and (2) strategic behaviours, Gray’s theoretical notion of
‘context’ provides the necessary two-sidedness to study strategic culture in two
equally important empirical realms. On the one hand, context refers to the
objective-institutional surroundings in which the strategic actors’ decisions and
actions were shaped, made and taken. On the other hand, context also refers to the
subjective-mental processes in which the strategic actors’ decisions and actions
Strategic Behaviours
(e.g. subjective strategic calculations, decision-making and actions)
Constitutive/ Non-determining/
determining/ reproduction
shaping
Strategic Cultures
(e.g., objective strategic codes, ideations and cultural-religious beliefs)
Fig. 4.1 An illustration of Colin Gray’s ‘strategic culture as context’ position
were cognitive-emotively received, formulated and given culture-specific meanings

too. These two yet dualistic (object vs. subject) sides of the context, however,
interweave with each other, thus forming a cyclical, recursive and perhaps
diachronically evolving pattern of strategic culture for which we can identify and
track down (Fig. 4.1).
If this is the new definition of strategic culture that Gray wanted us to defend, it
does not seem to entirely reject Johnston’s (1996: 217) original position that
Chinese strategic culture should be diachronically conceived for which it endures
across various historical-structural contexts and continue to shape strategic beha-
viours of the strategist-actors and decision-makers in different eras. In fact, Gray
advanced that strategic culture can be seen as a contextual reality for which sub-
jective strategic perceptions and objective strategic actions are formulated and
reproduced, respectively. As Gray showed theoretical preference to culturalism and
realism (Gray, 2007: 8), the objectivist-structuralist tendency of Gray’s conceptu-
alization is of two main characteristics.
First, it is that this interwoven subject–object two-sidedness of the context
wherein subjective strategic actions took place and objective strategic culture
reproduced constitute the cyclical, recursive and evolving (if not reproductive)
process for which strategic cultural pattern may be identified.
Second, as Gray (1999: 50) humbly advised us ‘to look more for complemen-
tarities of approach, than to try and elect one or another view the methodological
winner’, the core issue highlighted by the Gray-Johnston debate is not only relevant
to students of international relations, but also to those of anthropology and
sociology. As Gray’s notion of ‘context’ is intended to bridge the divide between

culture and strategic behaviours, it also has promised to bridge the divide between
the objective cultural-institutional surroundings and subjective-mental-symbolic
processes. As Fig. 4.1 shows, Gray’s notion of ‘strategic culture as context’ seems
to privilege the deterministic propensity of strategic culture over strategic beha-
viours, rather the other way round. He seems to suggest that strategic behaviours are
largely reproductions of the strategic cultures, instead of suggesting the former
would have any impactful change upon the latter.
In this regard, Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’ actually offers a strikingly
similar structuralist tendency as Colin Gray’s notion of ‘context’, which is also
intended to bridge the subject–object divide, a social-scientific dualism as enduring
as the ‘structure vs. agency’ in sociology and international relations (Giddens,
1979; Wendt, 1987).
4.2.3 Strategic Culture as Habitus: A Critique
Although Bourdieu produced a voluminous corpus of studies, he consistently

defended a theoretical notion, which was intended to transcend an analytic dualism
in the social sciences: the subject–object divide (Mouzelis, 1995: 112–113). On the
one hand, subjectivist social sciences (e.g. symbolic interactionism in sociology and
constructivism in international relations) propose to examine how norms and social
practices are first shaped and objectified in the minds and interactions of individual
agents and/or state actors, and how these (inter)-subjective constructions are further
institutionalized into macro-structural properties (Goffman, 1970, 1997; Lantis &
Howlett, 2007: 89–92; Wendt, 1987, 1995). On the other hand, objectivist social
sciences (e.g. structural-functionalism in sociology and realism in international
relations) propose to study how objective-macro structures such as culture may
shape actions, values, perceptions and impulses of the individual and state actors
(Keohane & Nye, 2012; Parsons, 1964; Parsons & White, 1961; Waltz, 2000).
As subjectivist social sciences conceive actions as conscious and voluntaristic,
criticisms usually point to their inability to account for how structural constraints
inhibit or confine the context-specific calculation, formulation and deployment of
strategic actions. As objectivist social sciences conceive that structural properties
have more determining effects upon actions, criticisms are raised against their
reluctance to engage in interactive contexts where strategist-actors often find room
to manoeuvre structural constraints. The two strands of social sciences moreover
carry very different implications for strategic praxis. To Bourdieu, the subject–
object divide could nevertheless be bridged through the notion of ‘habitus’, which
refers to:
the durably installed generative principle of regulated improvisations, produces practices
which tend to reproduce the regularities immanent in the objective conditions of the
production of their generative principle, while adjusting to the demands inscribed as
Social & mental structures Habitus (disposiƟons)
Strategy & pracƟce PercepƟon (rules of game)
Capitals
Keys: Specific historical
SubjecƟficaƟon/internalizaƟon of structures circumstances
DirecƟon of causaƟve determinaƟon
ObjecƟficaƟon/reproducƟon of structures
CircumstanƟal influence/perceptual change
Fig. 4.2 An illustration of Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. Source of inspiration Mouzelis
(1995: 194–195, with modifications)
objective potentialities in the situation, as defined by the cognitive and motivating struc-
tures making up the habitus. (Bourdieu, 1977: 78, italics added)
Habitus refers to the socialized outcomes of subjective internalization of the

objectified structures that encompass perception, instituted practice and creative
strategy (Fig. 4.2). What qualifies as a good strategy? Bourdieu said it is ‘[t]he most
profitable strategies are usually those produced, without any calculation, and in the
illusion of the most absolute “sincerity”, by a habitus objectively fitted to the
objective structures’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 292, italics added). Although a state actor
may eventually improve her/his state’s structural position in the hierarchical
international field, the habitus of the perception of the rules of the game and the
strategies would be automatically reproduced:
The idea of strategy, like the orientation of practice, is not conscious or calculated nor it is
mechanically determined. It is the intuitive product of “knowing” the rules of the game.
(Harker, Mahar, & Wilkes, 1990: 17)
There are, however, two criticisms of habitus. First, despite that the concept of
habitus manages to bridge the subject–object divide, Bourdieu appears to fall into
the same trap of the objectivist social sciences, which he originally intended to
escape: over-determination of the subject/agency. By stressing the cyclical pattern
of social reproduction and the nearly non-voluntarist deployment of predetermined
strategies, little room is left for explaining why new/unanticipated changes may
occur in the hierarchical field and new strategies may be innovated (Fig. 4.2). As
the field entails a set of interrelated objective relations (of economic production)
and structurally given positions (of geopolitical locations), habitus of perception
and practices/strategies are deterministic in that the ‘field ! habitus ! practice
nexus portrays human beings just as passively as’ would most objectivist social
sciences assume (Mouzelis, 1995: 111). It is henceforth criticized that Bourdieu’s

scheme tells little about how interactive-situations may impact and alter habitus and
structures (Mouzelis, 1995: 114). To escape from the ‘field ! structure ! habi-
tus ! strategic practice’ cul-de-sac is to take the voluntaristic dimension of sub-
jectivist social sciences more seriously. This will be elaborated in the second
criticism with regard to Bourdieu’s rather monolithic conceptualization of agency.
When confronted by an array of circumstances, which limit life chances, agency
refers to the capacity to deploy creative strategies and exercise power in the midst of
impinging structural constraints to achieve a designated goal. Anderson (1980: 19–20)
instructively identified three forms of agency: (1) self-serving, (2) communal-serving,
and (3) global-serving. In contrast to Anderson’s heterogeneous conceptualizations,
Bourdieu’s agency remains monolithically self-serving. Bourdieu’s conceptualization
of agency appears to be as egoistically competitive as simply to compete and per-
petuate one’s dominance in the field as Swingewood suggested:
[c]learly there are determining elements involved in the workings of a field: structured
around the distribution of capital, the internal logic of fields is linked with the type and
volume of capitals possessed by individuals and groups as they formulate strategies for
advancing their positions. (Swingewood, 1998: 105)
Privileging the structural, institutional-organizational and discursive properties,

this relatively deterministic portrayal of the agency/action constitutes the ontolog-
ical foundation of the strategic culture conceived by Gray and Johnston. To address
this problem, an alternative conceptualization of strategic culture will be outlined.
4.3 Strategic Cultures as ‘the Powers’
4.3.1 State-Centrism as Epistemology-Cum-Ontology
Perhaps a more subtle epistemological issue in the Gray-Johnston debate of

strategic culture has not been problematized. It has to do with the proposition of
state-centrism embedded in the subfield of strategic and security studies. For the
past decades, the subfield of strategic and security studies had concerned about how
the state, its institutions and actors understand, conceive, formulate and devise
security policy and coercive measures in response to the threats of internal/external
forces, which may undermine the legitimacy, territorial intactness and
political-economic stability of the state. Because the studies of these threats and
undermining forces were developed in the ‘we vs. enemy’ dualistic thinking, in a
world of realpolitik, the state’s security policies towards the threats were discussed
and formulated in secrecy, deeply within the state’s security and intelligence
apparatuses. State-centrism is therefore a natural outcome of strategic and security
studies.
State-centrism has two definitional aspects. First, it may refer to the epistemo-
logical belief that the generation and organization of knowledge are centred upon
the security interests of the sovereign state. Second, it refers to the ontological
presumption that the state apparatus is an autonomous actor who can determine its
own path of development and remake its own destiny on behalf of the society and
its inhabitants.
State-centrism, however, has ramifications. Given its secretive nature, state
security policies were processed in a less transparent and open manner. As the
strategic and security practitioners mostly operated under confidential cover and
complied with tacit rules and stipulated restrictions, they tend to operate within the
realm of the ‘deep state’, which is a newly developed concept largely influenced by
the works of the German jurist Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) (Wilson, 2009, 2012). In
contrast to the usually democratic, relatively transparent and empirically reachable
domain of ‘public state’ wherein open elections and public opinions were the
venues to help reaching state-society consensus and formulating public policies, the
‘deep state’ generally refers to the non-visible and/or secretive power networks and
non-democratic shadow governmental institutions, which cannot be reached by
mainstream empiricist methodologies. The ‘deep state’ can be formal and informal
and can be inside and outside the realm of ‘public state’, though it continues to
interfere and shape the processes and outcomes of public affairs.
For example, it is suggested that in contemporary non-Western polities such as
Thailand, more than a dozen of judicial and military coups since World War II were
involved and engineered by a ‘deep state’ monarchic network of military officers,
judges, academicians and members of the royal court (Merieau, 2016). A similar
observation is also found in Turkey (Unver, 2009). The ‘deep state’ actors may be
low-key and do not appear to actively participate in the public spheres. They
actually exercise concrete influences and possess subtle authority over the formal
processes and to shape the final outcomes.
However, it is important to suggest that the ‘deep state’ does not only exist in
non-Western politics and non-liberal democracies. In Western liberal democracies,
it also exists. For example, the former chief of the British Secret Intelligence
Service (MI6)—Sir John Sawers (2009–2014) once publicly revealed how he
happened to join the British state’s security and intelligence apparatus. When Sir
Sawers was an undergraduate student at the University of Nottingham, as the
secretary of the Student Union, he regularly interacted with the university senior
management. One day, a member of the university senior management approached
him to consider joining and having a career in the British security and intelligence
service. Although he was a bit surprised by the fact that the university senior
management was connected with the MI6, he accepted the invitation.1 There is
indeed a need for us to recognize that there have been invisible, secretive inter-
actions and development of professional/personal relationships within the ‘deep
state’, of both democratic and non-democratic regimes.
Source: ‘Lunch with the FT: Sir John Sawers’. Financial Times. 19 September 2014.
1
4.3 Strategic Cultures as ‘the Powers’ 87
4.3.2 The ‘Deep State’ Methodological Challenge
In a nutshell, the ‘deep state’ methodological problematics may be captured by ‘the

Schmittian complex’ (Wong, 2016b), which has the following three characteristics.
They pose a few serious methodological challenges pertinent to the study of
strategic culture.
4.3.2.1 Challenge I: Sovereign-Centrism
First is sovereign-centrism. It refers to the centrality and emphasis of the ‘sover-

eign’ as the sole authority-person in determining the outcomes of public affairs.
Schmitt’s conceptualization of state sovereignty was centring on the most powerful
person in the state—the ‘sovereign’—the sole dictator who enjoyed the constitu-
tionalized monopoly of physical and legal forces (i.e. military and judiciary)
(Schmitt, 1921, 2005). The sovereign enjoyed the exceptional freedom to act
outside/above the realms of force and law. Although she or he had to make deci-
sions in accordance with the necessities of the situations, as she or he was protected
by laws and military, her/his authority is undemocratic in nature and is hardly
constrained by democratic politics.
Strategic and security practitioners are therefore in a good position to advise the
sovereign in a balanced, neutral and objective manner so that the sovereign would
not commit serious mistakes and cause disastrous follies to her/his constituents and
country. They are naturally the main subjects of an investigation of strategic culture.
There are certainly cultural limits to what extents one can attain in terms of balance,
neutrality and objectivity. Strategic culture is therefore an important topic of
inquiry. However, methodologically, to study how the strategic and security
practitioners advised the sovereign is almost a mission impossible because these
actors are mostly operating within the secretive, non-transparent and invisible ‘deep
state’ realm.
4.3.2.2 Challenge II: Decisionism
Second is decisionism. It refers to the postulate for which the decision outcome is
more important than the procedure in all decision-making processes, i.e.
decision-outcome justifies all (non)-procedures. The sovereign did not only make
decisions in formal institutions (e.g. parliament) and procedures (e.g. committee),
but she or he also made them in non-formal, hidden networks and flexible channels.
In these venues, the actors were more capable of reaching consensus and making a
decision in trust and honesty. If a decision made within the ‘deep state’ contradicts
a ‘public state’ consensus reached in the parliament or formal procedure, the
sovereign’s decision would override any publicly consented decisions (Schmitt,
2004). This often occurs when the sovereign intervened in crisis as the arbitrator,
wherein antagonistic forces were engaged and the settlement was reached.
However, as the process to make a decision was non-transparent and non-public,
decisionism is non-democratic in nature.
This poses another methodological challenge to the researchers of strategic
culture. Although it may be a Nobel-awarding project to study how strategic culture
informs and shapes decisionist behaviours co-committed by the sovereign and the
strategic and security practitioners, there is no way to gain access to the intimate
data unless the researcher is part of the ‘deep state’ network/circle. However, if the
researcher is part of this network, she or he will be either restricted by the internal
rule of confidentiality or expected to identify with the sectoral interests of the ‘deep
state’ network/circle. This would significantly compromise the representativeness
and validity of the data collected. Moreover, as the data can unlikely be replicated,
its reliability is also compromised.
4.3.2.3 Challenge III: Confidentiality
Within the ‘deep state’ networks/circles, topics of discussion usually have signifi-
cant impact on policy-making and easily attract controversies and public reper-
cussions. Confidentiality is a usual rule to protect the contents of the privy
discussion. For the researchers of strategic culture, this poses a further significant
methodological challenge. Confidential conversations are certainly an invaluable
source of data. However, given the strategic and security practitioners have their
discretions to observe the rule of confidentiality or not, the researcher of strategic
culture would be easily caught in the ethical dilemma and complicity in regard to
what data, when and to whom the data should be used and disclosed in their
analyses and publications.
The methodological challenge is therefore an ethical one. The safest answer to
deal with such sticky situation in the graduate school would for the instructor to
advise the research student to stay away from such situation where ethical issues
would often be at stake. However, for the researchers of strategic culture, they are
expected to study how culture informs confidentiality as a strategic behaviour and
how confidentiality is conducted and (ab)-used by the strategic and security prac-
titioners. Therefore, we should neither shy away from such challenging terrain nor
taboo it.
Despite what said above, it remains a difficult task to collect data from the ‘deep
state’ domain where the rule of confidentiality is generally enforced and observed.
Data on strategic culture collected from this realm would naturally run a high risk of
incomplete and subject to the criticism of generating data from the ‘black-box’,
which renders the validity, reliability and replicability of the data in question
(Goldthorpe, 2007: Chap. 3).
4.3.3 Strategic Cultures as ‘the Powers’: An Outline
In the foregoing sections, I identified a few theoretical and methodological chal-

lenges that the scholars of strategic culture would need to address. These challenges
are important reference points for us to develop an alternative theoretical scheme of
strategic culture as a remedy.
Theoretically, the Gray-Johnston debate suggested that the mainstream theo-
retical approaches in strategic culture tend to privilege how the structural, systemic
and organizational-collective aspect of culture determines/shapes individual
strategic agency and situational behaviours. Strategic culture is seen to be either an
independent variable (in Gray’s case) or intervening variable (in Johnston’s case),
whereas strategic behaviour is commonly regarded as a dependent variable.
Despite their tremendous contributions, the existing scholarships have not been
able to answer the following critical questions:
(1) Who generated the strategic culture in question?
(2) Why did the state ruler select and adopt certain strategic discourse and practice
but not the others?
(3) What were the other competing variations of strategic culture that were for-
mulated and/or already existed?
To answer these questions empirically, one would need to pay equally sufficient
attentions to the voluntaristic and productive aspects of strategic culture. Thus, the
notion of the strategic agency should be taken seriously. What does strategic
agency mean? It has dual properties. On the one hand, strategic agency refers to the
predetermined conditions wherein the strategist-actor is inevitably embedded in
certain historically constituted structural/systemic constraints and discursive forces
of strategic culture (e.g. strategic traditions, religious thoughts and moral codes).
Her/his strategic calculations and deployments are conducted upon and drawn from
them as the given pool of cultural resources.
On the other hand, in the light of Levi-Strauss’s (1996) ‘bricolage’ concept,
strategic agency refers to the strategist-agent’s innovative, voluntaristic, conscious
and productive actions in selectively receiving, actively integrating and mixing and
creatively generating alternative variations of strategic cultures, which are usually
different from the existing and/or dominating ones. The goals of such strategic
agency may serve the causes of instrumental purposes (e.g. economic gains and
political interests) and/or substantive purposes (e.g. ideals, commitments and reli-
gious faith). They may therefore be self-serving, communal-serving and
global-serving concomitantly (Anderson, 1980: 19–20).
Methodologically, in response to the problem of state-centrism and the
methodological and ethical challenges in studying the ‘deep state’, I propose that
instead of merely studying strategic culture within the realms of the state apparatus
and the ‘deep state’, a complete approach to study strategic culture is to pay equally
sufficient attentions to such non-state actors as civil society and non-governmental
organizations. As the organization of the state cannot be detached and independent
(SubjecƟve-mental) Strategic Behaviours

(e.g. strategic calculaƟons, percepƟon of threat, decision-making and acƟons)
Domain of
the state’s
Non-state strategic Non-state
strategic reproducƟon strategic
variaƟons variaƟons
(Objective-insƟtuƟonalized) Strategic Cultures

(e.g. strategic codes, tradiƟons, religious beliefs and cultural ideaƟons)
Fig. 4.3 An illustration of strategic cultures as the powers
from the society, engaging with civil society and societal actors would help us to
learn how the state’s strategic culture is received and interpreted as well as rein-
vented at the societal level (Migdal, 2001). In doing so, we would be able to know
how a strategic culture was generated and how it (re)-constituted the state actors’
strategic culture and behaviours.
To strike the delicate balances between strategic culture and strategic agency and
between what happens inside and outside the realm of the state, I conceive strategic
culture as one of the ‘principalities and powers’ (the ‘Powers’) (Wong, 2016a:
Chap. 1). Hereunder is an exposition of ‘strategic cultures as the Powers’, both in
theory and practice (Fig. 4.3).
First, in the light of Giddens’ (1984) ‘duality of structure’ notion in which
structure has both constraining and enabling effects of actions, strategic culture also
has duality. On the one hand, strategic culture has an enduring structural face
therefore the certain cultural-symbolic order of predictable reproduction may be
determined. On the other hand, strategic culture has a less predictable agentive face
for which the subjective-mental strategic calculations and context-specific
decision-making process of the strategists and practitioners are constantly rattled
by a complex range of changing personal and institutional circumstances, and
historical-structural and organizational-contextual constraints. While it is important
to pay equal attentions to both the constraining and enabling sides of strategic
culture, the domain of strategic decision-making is conceived as an ‘uncertain
contact zone’ where not just these structural-objective and agentive-subjective
factors meet, but also where competing forces meet (Wong, 2016a: Chap. 6).
Second, there is apparently nothing wrong with aiming to control and make
strategic culture more predictable. However, one would need to recognize that
strategic culture as a ‘Power’ has a domain of unpredictability and uncertainty.
Therefore, it is not entirely controllable. While I acknowledge the well intentions of
the existing scholarships to make strategic culture predictable in order to bring and
ensure security and protection to their countrymen, I want to highlight that these
good intentions are actually the products of modernity. Since the inception of the
Enlightenment project, the modern state-building project was believed to be a major
vehicle, which promises to bring human progress, development and welfare
(Habermas, 1985). However, modern statehood was also a main source of violent
conflicts such as war and genocide (Bauman, 1989; Maldonado Torres, 2008).
A complete praxis of strategic culture to address and reconstitute the violent cultural
propensity of the modern statehood should therefore be explored.
Finally, a complete praxis of strategic culture should have two aims. First, as
most of the state’s strategists and decision-makers operate within the ‘deep state’,
their visions and definitions of national interest are naturally informed by their
positions in the state hierarchy and might therefore be confined by the state’s
organizational culture. To sidestep this structural constraint, the practice of
democratizing statecraft would necessitate the strategists to operate not just within
the state, but also in the civil society and public sphere. Because one can move
across the domestic and international boundaries of the state and society, she or he
seems to be more capable of generating alternative versions of strategic culture as
attempts to reconstitute the state’ dominant strategic culture and influence the
policy-makers’ decision-making. Second, as the strategists, it is crucial that they
should constantly remind themselves that once they are absorbed by the state
hierarchy into the state’s strategists, their neutrality, capability and niche to generate
creative strategic cultures may be compromised.
In the following section, I will review a classic example from ancient India that
may empirically concretize a generative approach to strategic culture for the
present-day Indian Ocean region.
4.4 Generating Indian Strategic Culture: Kautilya’s

Hindu Statecraft and the ‘String of Pearls’
4.4.1 Kautilya’s ‘Double Policy’
The Sanskrit statecraft manual ‘The Arthasastra’ was authored by the ancient
Indian strategic thinker Kautilya (1992), who enjoyed rivalled prestige with Sun
Tzu’s Art of Wars and Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince (Modelski, 1964: 550).
Kautilya served as the Chief Minister (321–296 B.C.) to the Emperor Chandragupta
(circa 324–297 B.C.), the founder of the magnificent Mauryan Empire (circa 322–
180 B.C.) of ancient India. Kautilya generated and established a complex set of
hands-on statecraft principles for managing domestic affairs and foreign relations,
‘which a king or administrator would be wise to follow if he wishes to acquire and
maintain power’ (Modelski, 1964: 550).
Although Kautilya did not articulate an exposition of the balance of power, it
was evident that his conceptualization of the international system was influenced by
the ancient Hindu idea of Mandala, which is ‘commonly translated as the Circle of
States’ (Modelski, 1964: 554). In Hinduism, Mandala is often symbolically rep-
resented by an outer larger circle, which encompasses onion-like layers of ordered
concentric squares and circles. These alternate layers of concentric squares and
circles may then be unfolded centripetally and multiplied infinitely. The concept has
a prominent position in both Hindu and Buddhist writings but was then fully
developed in international politics by Kautilya in ‘The Arthashastra’ (Modelski,
1964: 554).
What would be a relevant rendition of Mandala in international relations?
Mandala may refer to a loose and always-unfolding bi-centric international system
wherein Kautilya needed to constantly discern in order to properly advise his king
how to conduct state affairs properly. This had to do with the Mauryan Empire’s
sensitive geopolitical relationships with the two more powerful and competing
Eurasian powers during Kautilya’s time, i.e. Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.) of
Macedonia and the Nanda Empire (345–321 B.C.) of Magadha, ancient India.
Resultant of Kautilya’s efforts and assistance, Emperor Chandragupta was even-
tually able to gain control over a large part of the Indian subcontinent, which was
once occupied by the Macedonian satraps and the Nandas (Modelski, 1964: 549).
As a result, the Mandala-like bi-centric international system fitted neatly to the
specific geostrategic conditions where Kautilya was already given to. In other
words, despite that Kautilya was geopolitically constrained by the competing
Macedonian and Indian greater powers and the consequential uncertainties, the
Mandala-like bi-centric international system was actively generated by Kautilya in
order to enable himself and his king to objectively conceive the Mauryan Empire’s
geopolitical and political-economic positions and to devise appropriate measures in
relations to these external powers and unstable dynamics. This was particularly
useful when situations of altering friendship and enmity were often experienced in
foreign relations. To survive and thrive in such unstable and dynamic bi-centric
international system, Kautilya offered an interesting anchorage to analyze foreign
policy. Instead of biasedly recognizing what an up-start ego usually desires to be
(i.e. superiority), Kautilya humbly recognized, as ‘the king’s status determines his
foreign policy’, one’s foreign policy options directed towards the competing powers
would depend on whether the foreign kings are superior, inferior or equal to the
king (Modelski, 1964: 552).
Kautilya then laid out his classic ‘six-fold policy’ (Sanskrit: sadhgunya) which
consisted of six foreign policy options: (1) accommodation (sandhi); (2) hostility
(vigraha); (3) indifference (asana); (4) attack (yana); (5) protection (samsraya); and
(6) double/dual policy (dvaidhibhava). As a general rule of thumb, an inferior king
would pursue accommodation, seek protection or adopt the double policy. Whereas
4.4 Generating Indian Strategic Culture: Kautilya’s Hindu … 93
a superior king would afford hostility or attack, one facing a king of equal status
would maintain indifference (Kautilya, 1992: 512–514; Modelski, 1964: 552).
To effectively engage with the unstable alternations of friendship and enmity in
the bi-centric international system, in small power statecraft, special attentions
should be paid to what Kautilya meant by the ‘double policy’:
The third type, the so-called Double Policy, too, is a resort of the weak, but allows greater
freedom to act in pursuit of one’s own interests. It entails the maintenance of entente with
one king, purchased by concessions of the sandhi [accommodation] type, in combination
with an active policy of harassment of another king. Profits of such action may be shared
with the first king. (Modelski, 1964: 553)
In Kautilya’s (1992: 514) own words, dvaidhibhava (double policy) refers to

‘the policy of making peace with a neighbouring king in order to pursue, with his
help, the policy of hostility towards another’. The implications of such policy are
potentially beneficial for the small powers. As the Mandala-like bi-centric inter-
national system represents the all-encompassing universe and its ultimate force—
dharma (Sanskrit: the order that holds all), instead of mimicking the ambitions of
the hegemons (such as Alexander the Great), Kautilya sought to find realistic ways
for the relatively weak King Chandragupta to coexist with these hegemonic powers.
The ‘double policy’ option thus suggested how the small power of the Mauryan
kingdom could make use of the existing ‘Macedonia vs. Nanda’ bi-centric rivalry as
both a space and an opportunity to manoeuver and generate foreign policy
measures.
In practice, the double policy would entail at least two parallel strategies. First, it
is to engage into a series of temporary, tactical alliance, sometimes with the more
powerful Macedonians and sometimes with the more powerful Nandas in order to
attain maximum self-gains. Second is to engage into a series of temporary, tactical
alliance with the equally weak and/or weaker neighbouring states in order to
achieve a better position of bargaining power so to hedge and negotiate for the
maximum self-gains.
The next section will detail how Kautilya’s double policy may help us to
understand the geopolitical dynamics in the Indian Ocean, where a competing sets
of double policies were concomitantly generated by India and the South Asian
small powers.
4.4.2 The Mandala-like Bi-Centric International System
What would be the double policy’s strategic implications to the Indian Ocean? If
the Philippines and Japan are the geopolitical pivots of USA in East Asia, Myanmar
would be one of China’s geopolitical pivots in not just Southeast Asia, but also the
Indian Ocean region. The Indian Ocean connects the energy supplies, natural
resources and commodities that China trades with countries in South Asia, the
Middle East and Africa. Starting from the 1990s when the special Sino-Myanmar
relations started (see: Chap. 3), the Indian authorities have paid close attentions to
the increasing presence of China in the Indian Ocean region.2
During the Cold War period, Sino–India relations were troubled by their dis-
agreements on the question of Tibet, and the territorial disputes in Arunachal
Pradesh and Kashmir where China and Pakistan have overlapping claims, respec-
tively. On the one hand, India would be a geopolitical pivot in the US containment
plan of China and the Soviet Union in the South Asian rimland. On the the other,
India’s relationship with the Soviet Union was able to deter part of the threats posed
by the China–Pakistan alliance. After the Cold War, as India has gradually become
an emerging power and a hegemon of the Indian Ocean region, and China regards
the Indian Ocean as her ‘lifeline’, Kautilya’s bi-centric international system would
be an instructive lens for us to understand how India conceives her strategic rela-
tionships with USA and China, and how the neighbouring South Asian small
powers in the Indian Ocean respond.
Being a member of the Brahmin (priest) class in the Hindu caste system, the kind
of unstable bi-centric international system which Kautilya conceived actually sus-
tained and perhaps reinforced the political-economic supremacy of the Kshatriya
ruling and military elites in various South Asian politics.3 In other words, the
persistently unstable dynamics in South Asian international relations paradoxically
provided the Brahmins a favourable sociopolitical condition to preserve their own
supreme status-position in the Hindu caste system, wherein they constantly col-
laborated with the Kshatriya ruling elites, who constantly competed for political
domination in the Indian subcontinent. If the Hindu caste system constitutes the
habitus of the South Asian strategic cultures, Kautilya’s The Arthashastra was
actually a generative attempt of himself as not only being a Hindu priest, but also a
conscious agent who managed to establish a particular form of Hindu strategic
culture when he worked with King Chandragupta. This Hindu strategic culture was
established in relations, either in juxtaposition or in competition, with other
Brahmins’ similar attempts to establish different versions of Hindu strategic culture
when each of them collaborated with one’s own king.4
As a result, hereafter I would argue that as a South Asian strategic culture, the
Mandala-like bi-centric international system perceived by India and the neigh-
bouring small powers are actually qualified to be one of the ‘the Powers’. Same as
2
Source: Dialogue with Commodore R.S. Vasan of the Indian Navy (Retired), Head of Strategy
and Security Studies, Center of Asian Studies, Chennai, Republic of India. In: the ‘Security Panel’
of the ‘Harvard Project for Asian & International Relations 2012 Asia Conference in Taipei’, 24–
28 August 2012, Organized by Harvard Project for Asian & International Relations of Harvard
University and National Cheng Chi University, Taipei, Republic of China.
3
There are four recognized classes or social orders (varna) in the Hindu caste system. From the
highest to the lowest ranks, they are: Brahmin (the priests), Kshatriya (the rulers and military elite),
Vaishya (the traders and farmers) and Sudra (the workers). For those excluded from the caste
system, they are generally known as the ‘untouchables’ (Dalits).
4
Here, I admit my limitation in not yet able to identify Kautilya’s contemporaries and their
strategic discourses.
the Hindu religious thoughts, which were used by Kautilya to actively generate his
theory and practice of statecraft in dealing with the international tensions and
conflicts resultant of the bi-centric rivalry of the Macedonian and Nanda powers, I
argue that the contemporary South Asian international dynamic is being constituted
by the US—China international rivalry.
Despite that there is a regional rivalry between India and China, India would also
need to seek an alliance with USA in order to balance off China’s increasing
influence in the Indian Ocean. It is mainly because the post-Second World War
India–China trusts continued to be undermined by the Tibetan question, the terri-
torial disputes with China and Pakistan, and India’s rivalry with a China-backed
Pakistan, India would naturally be willing to be another US geopolitical pivot to the
Indian Ocean, after the US military base in the British Indian Ocean islands of
Diego Garcia. And such US–China bi-centric rivalry in the Indian Ocean region has
contributed to the formation of the ‘string of pearls’ phenomenon, which China
effectively connects with such South Asian small powers as Nepal, Sri Lanka,
Pakistan and Bangladesh into an apparent containment circle surrounding India.
Having said that, ahead of President Xi Jinping’s visit to India, Pakistan and Sri
Lanka in 2014, China made it clear that ‘not seeking to contain India’.5
4.4.3 The Formation of the ‘String of Pearls’ in the Indian

Ocean Region
Similar to the ‘Beijing consensus’ concept (Ramo, 2004), the ‘string of pearls’ only
became a social scientific concept after it was firstly generatively coined by the US
consultancy Booz Allen Hamiton in 2005 (Baker, 2015). The concept has then been
used by the international security policy researchers (Baker, 2015; Vasan, 2015;
Wong, 2012; Wong & Yue, 2014). It would therefore be an overstatement to
suggest that China planned in advance to deliberately construct a ‘string of pearls’
in the Indian Ocean region. Instead, I hypothesize that the ‘string of pearls’ is a
natural outcome of a complex of interweaving circumstantial factors specific to the
South Asian strategic culture.
4.4.3.1 The Enduring Structural Dilemma in the Pan-Hindu Caste

System
First, the formation of the ‘string of pearls’ actually reflects the deep-seated
structural (inter-class) dilemma in the post-colonial pan-Hindu world, mainly
5
Sources: (1) ‘India and China in Wary Dance as Xi Visits South Asia’. Dawn.com. 11 September
2014. (2) ‘Ahead of Xi Trip, China Says Not Seeking to Contain India’. Reuters. 9 September
2014.
constituted by the Hindu majority of India and the Hindu communities in such
South Asia countries as Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Following the
discussion in the above sections, we should consider linking Kautilya’s strategic
culture with the class structure of the Hindu caste system. As the Hindu caste
system was the sociocultural context where The Arthashastra was generated, the
fact that South Asian individuals were not able to change their designated social
classes at birth would provide an entry point for any political forces to seek alle-
giance with the aggrieving lower social classes and the ‘untouchables’, who were
exploited, oppressed and excluded by the Hindu caste system. In the past two
decades, examples can be found in the regime changes among the South Asian
small powers.
4.4.3.2 Sri Lanka–China Relations Since 2007
For example, in colonial Sri Lanka, the Tamil ethnic minority collaborated with the
British colonial rulers and became the colonial governing elite. The Sri Lankan
Tamils are mostly Hindus, and many of them are Christians.6 However, in
post-colonial Sri Lanka, the Tamil minority rule was quickly replaced by the
Sinhalese ethnic majority, who are mostly Buddhists. Supported by India, from
1976 to 2009, the Tamil Tigers guerrillas (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam)
launched a two-decade-long civil war against the Sinhalese government, aiming for
secessionism (Keethaponcalan, 2011b, c).
However, soon after the US ended direct military aid in 2007 because of Sri
Lanka’s deteriorating human rights record, China immediately engaged with Sri
Lanka. China provided substantial military and economic aids to the Sinhalese
government, which marked itself as the biggest donor to the South Asian
island-state. China also encouraged her ally Pakistan to sell more arms and to train
pilots for the China-gifted fighter jets to Sri Lanka. As China used her veto power to
prevent the United Nations Security Council from putting Sri Lanka on its agenda,
the protracted civil war formally ended in 2009 when the top Tamil Tigers leaders
were found dead on 19 May.7 Despite there was a motion raised in the United
Nations intending to investigate the alleged atrocities against the ethnic Tamils
committed by the Sinhalese regime, the motion did not pass mainly because of
China’s stern opposition in the United Nations Security Council (Keethaponcalan,
2011a).
In recent years, China increased her presence in the Indian Ocean region and
constructed a number of infrastructures in Sri Lanka (Keethaponcalan, 2015). Apart
from building roads and schools to illustrate her soft power, China also built a
strategic seaport in Hambantota, at the southern tip of Sri Lanka. The seaport was
6
Source: ‘Are Religious Conversions Taking Place in Sri Lanka?’ Colombo Telegraph.
4 November 2016.
7
Source: ‘How Beijing Won Sri Lanka’s Civil War?’ The Independent. 23 May 2010.
intended to refuel Chinese vessels and serve as an interim supplying station

between the Malacca Strait, and the seaports in Sittwe of Myanmar, Chittagong of
Bangladesh and Gwadar of Pakistan. As these corresponding seaports appear to be
connected by China, the idea of the ‘string of pearls’ was visualized. Sri Lanka is
undoubtedly of strategic importance to China (Wong, 2012).
4.4.3.3 Rise of Communism and Nepal After 2008
Second, since the 1960s, while communist insurgency has been active in eastern
and central India, recent evidence showed that the Maoists started to gain a foothold
in the Indian north-eastern states bordering China and Myanmar, where Chinese
weapons were procured.8 The enduring existence of the Maoist forces in India and
Nepal can be, on the one hand, considered to be a consequence of the deep
structural tensions within the pan-Hindu caste system. On the other hand, it may be
fuelled by cross-border collaboration among the communist parties in South Asia.
Unsurprisingly, China was accused in 2011 by the Indian police authority for
providing sanctuary to the Indian communist insurgency’s leadership in China.9
Continued mistrust between China and India over the question of communist
insurgency in South Asia would naturally linger.
For instance, in Nepal, the long-reigning caste-based monarchic system was
taken over by a left-wing government of Maoist background under the leadership of
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal (2008–2009; 2016–Present) in 2008. Known
as Prachanda, Dahal is also the chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists
(CPN-M). Existing evidences, however, suggested that the Nepalese communists
first arrived from India (not via China directly) and China actually supplied military
aid to the Nepalese monarchic government in 2005 (Lawoti & Pahari, 2009: 5 and
339). As the Nepalese Maoist movement was given strengths by the social injustice
and failed governance of the monarchic establishment, which operated within the
orbits of the traditional caste system, the 2008 regime change actually opened up
more space for social and political reforms, which generated further pressures upon
the sociocultural and political-economic structures of the caste system (Muni, 2003;
Pandey, 2005).
Since 2008, the change in the triangular relationships among Nepal, India and
China has been rapid. Although China was careful not to recognize the CPN-M
before 2008, India’s China expert Rajan (2010) observed that soon after the 2008
regime change in Nepal, the Chinese Communist Party officially sets up party-level
exchanges with the CPN-M and the CPN-M chairman was then received in China
8
Sources: (1) ‘Profile: India’s Maoist Rebels’. BBC News. 4 March 2011. (2) ‘India Maoists
“Spread to North-East States”’. BBC News. 23 November 2011. (3) ‘Analysis: India’s Maoist
Challenge’. Al Jazeera. 24 August 2013. (4) ‘Maoist Insurgency Still Simmers in Modi’s India’.
World Politics Review. 20 August 2014. (5) ‘India’s Conflict Minerals’. National Geographic.
April 2015.
9
Source: ‘Cops Nail China Link with Naxals’. Times of India. 8 October 2011.
as a party leader in October 2009. It is evident that China actively sought to

recognize the Nepalese communist regime, establish closer ties with the post-2008
Nepalese government and to engage with Nepal for forging a comprehensive
bilateral strategic partnership.10 For instance, shortly after a joint military exercise
between India and Nepal concluded in November 2016, Nepal announced that it
will hold the first military drill with China in the early 2017.11
4.4.3.4 Rise of Hindu Nationalism and India–Pakistan Tensions
The third interweaving factor is the rise of Hindu cultural nationalism in India. For
instance, since its formation in 1980, the major Indian political party Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) has adopted Hindu cultural nationalism as its core policy agenda
(Swamy, 2003). The victory of the Gujarat-hailed BJP politician Narendra Modi to
become the Indian Prime Minister in 2014 may be considered a milestone in the
consolidation of Hindu nationalism in India.12 This would mean that the political
ideology of Indian nationalism is based on the religion of Hinduism, which rejects
secularization and is less tolerant of other religions, especially Islam.
In 2015, the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs census showed that India’s Hindu
population dropped from 2001s 80.5% to 2011s 79.8%, whereas the Muslim
population increased from 2001s 13.4% to 2011s 14.2%.13 As India is predicted to
home the largest Hindu and Muslim populations in the world by 2050,14 the rise of
Hindu nationalism would have ramifications to India’s domestic politics and for-
eign relations towards its Muslim population and with such Muslim neighbours as
Bangladesh and Pakistan.
10
Source: ‘China-Nepal Ties Reach New Heights’. Asia Times. 17 March 2009.
11
Sources: (1) ‘India, Nepal Hold Military Exercise with Terror Focus’. The Diplomat. 15
November 2016. (2) ‘Nepal-China Joint Military Exercise: Envoy Says India Shouldn’t Worry’.
Times of India. 26 December 2016. (3) ‘Nepal-China Military Drill Worries India’. Times of India.
27 December 2016. (4) ‘China, Nepal to Conduct First Ever Joint Military Drill’. NDTV.
30 December 2016. (5) ‘Nepal and China to Hold First Ever Military Drill’. Voice of America
News. 2 January 2017. (6) ‘India Need Not Worry over Nepal-China Ties’. The Hindu. 18 January
2017.
12
Source: (1) ‘Hindu Nationalists are Gaining Power in India—Silencing Enemies along the Way’.
The Independent. 26 February 2014. (2) ‘What Hindu Nationalism Means’. The Economist.
18 May 2014. (3) ‘What We in BJP/RSS Mean When We Talk of Nationalism?’ DailyO (www.
dialyo.in). 28 March 2016.
13
Sources: (1) ‘Hindus Drop Below 80% of India’s Population’. Al Jazeera. 26 August 2015.
(2) ‘India Hindu Population Drops Below 80% as Muslim Ratio Rises’. 26 August 2015.
(3) ‘Census 2011: Hindus Dip to Below 80% of Population; Muslim Share Up, Slows Down’. The
Indian Express. 27 August 2015.
14
Source: ‘By 2050, India to Have World’s Largest Populations of Hindus and Muslims’. Factank:
News in the Numbers (Pew Research Center). 21 April 2015. Washington D.C.: Pew Research
Center.
In regard to the Hindu–Muslim relations within India, researchers have estab-

lished two important findings. First, India’s adoption of Hindu cultural nationalism
would mean that the existence of a Muslim minority as the ‘other’ had provided the
Hindu majority a convenient instrument for constructing the Hindu-centric Indian
cultural and political identities (Das, 2004). Second, against the larger
national-political context where Hindu religious groups continue to play significant
roles in Indian democratization and nation-building (Hansen, 1999), there is a
scholarly and journalistic consensus that a militant and exclusionist Hindu political
identity was given birth and sustained by the Hindu cultural nationalism project,
thus explaining the continued presence of Hindu terrorism, Hindu violence against
Muslims and Christians, which are found in communal, urban and provincial set-
tings (Brass, 1997, 2003; Ghassem-Fachandi, 2012; Hansen, 2001).15
These findings have significant implications to understand India’s strained for-
eign relations with her Muslim neighbours, which is the fourth factor.
In Pakistan, for instance, apart from Pakistan’s rivalled nuclear ambition with
India, it is suggested that Pakistan’s approach in defining its nationalism and
identity is in opposition to the Hindu-nationalist India. This can be traced to par-
tition of British India.16 At the time of the partition of British India in 1947, Hindus
represented almost 15% of Pakistan’s population. Their representation has come
down to less than 2% nowadays (Jamal, 2016). While estimated five thousands of
Hindus flee from Pakistan annually, some two thousand Hindu girls were forced to
convert to Islam each year (Jamal, 2016). It was therefore not surprising that
anti-Hindu violence also staged in Pakistan (Hinnells & King, 2007).17 These
evidences show a parallel trend in Pakistan—Pakistan uses Islam as a state-building
instrument to construct a nationalist ideology that consists of exclusion, hostility
and militancy against other non-Muslims such as the Hindu minority (Kaur, 2006).
Given the antagonistic cultural-religious contents in the Pakistani and Indian
identities, it is therefore unsurprising that Pakistan would find China an ally to resist
Indian regional hegemony.
4.4.3.5 Anti-Hindu Violence and Strained Bangladesh–India Relations
In a similar vein, after Bangladesh gained independence in 1971, repeated incidents

of organized anti-Hindu violence by Islamist groups were more frequently
15
Sources: (1) ‘Pakistan Christians Slam Violence in India’. AsiaNews. 21 October 2008. (2) ‘India
Must Face Up to Hindu Terrorism’. The Guardian. 19 January 2011. (3) ‘Christian Persecution by
Hindus Rises in India, Say Humanitarian Groups’. Fox News. 14 March 2016.
16
Source: ‘The Great Divide: The Violent Legacy of Indian Partition’. The New Yorker. 29 June
2015.
17
Sources: (1) ‘Violence against Hindus’. The Express Tribune. 9 November 2011. (2) ‘Pakistan’s
Hindus, Other Minorities Face Surge of Violence’. Reuters. 5 May 2014.
recorded, especially in 1990–1992, 2013, 2014 and 2016.18 Following Islam was
constitutionally declared the state religion of Bangladesh in 1988,19 the ‘Ayodhya
Crisis’ in India served as the main catalyst of anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh
(Ghosh, 1993). The ‘Ayodhya Crisis’ generally refers to a series of religious riots
and violence happened in Bangladesh and India from 1990 to 1992, which were
organized by the Islamists in Bangladesh and the Hinduists in India to, respectively,
protest against and for the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, India.
Before Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in 1971, there was
already communal violence occurred between the Muslim and Hindu local com-
munities from the 1900s to 1950s (Gossman, 1999). As there were more organized,
state-sponsored anti-Hindu riots and killings in 1964 and 1971, respectively
(Bhattacharyya, 1988; Hasanat, 1974),20 it is therefore reasonable to suggest that
the anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh was intensified after 1971 resultant of not so
much the long-term animosities, but rather deadly ploys deliberately orchestrated
by mid-level and big-time politicians who used religious violence as an instrument
for territorial aggrandizement and political advancement.
While concerned Indian researchers suggested that the frequency increase in
anti-Hindu violence in post-1971 Bangladesh may be correlated with the gradual,
significant decrease of the Hindu population in Bangladesh (Table 4.1), they made
two advocacies. First, India ‘should try to influence Bangladeshi authorities to save
18
Sources of 1990–1992 anti-Hindu violence: (1) ‘Moslems Attack Hindu Temples in
Bangladesh’. Associated Press. 31 October 1990. (2) ‘Anti-Hindu Violence in Bangladesh Leaves
One Dead’. Associated Press. 1 November 1990. (3) ‘Two Killed, 350 Injured in Anti-Hindu
Violence’. Associated Press. 2 November 1990. (4) ‘Chronology for Hindus in Bangladesh’.
Refworld (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). 17 October 2012.
Sources of 2013 anti-Hindu violence: (1) ‘Bangladesh Minorities “Terrorised” after Mob
Violence’. BBC News. 9 March 2013. (2) ‘Bangladesh Minorities Bear Brunt of Violence’. Al
Jazeera News. 24 March 2013. (3) ‘Bangladesh: Wave of Violent Attacks against Hindu
Minority’. Amnesty International Press Release. 6 March 2013.
Sources of 2014 anti-Hindu violence: (1) ‘The Hindus of Bangladesh Fear for Their Future’.
Time. 14 January 2014. (2) ‘Banglastan: Do Hindus Have a Future in Bangladesh?’ International
Business Times. 19 February 2014.
Sources of 2016 anti-Hindu violence: (1) ‘15 Hindu Temples in Bangladesh Vandalised’. The
Times of India. 31 October 2016. (2) Hundreds Attack Hindu Homes and Temples in Bangladesh’.
New York Post. 31 October 2016. (3) Hindu Temples and Homes in Bangladesh Are Attacked by
Muslim Crowds’. The New York Times. 2 November 2016. (4) ‘Dozens Arrested for Attacks on
Hindus in Bangladesh’. Al Jazeera News. 6 November 2016. (5) ‘Violence Against Non-Muslims
Increases in Bangladesh’. Gatestone Institute International Policy Council. 14 December 2016.
19
Sources: (1) ‘Bangladesh Court Upholds Islam as Religion of the State’. Al Jazeera News. 28
March 2016. (2) ‘Keeping Islam as State Religion in Bangladesh Triggers Mixed Reactions’.
Voice of America News. 28 March 2016.
20
Sources: (1) ‘1,000 Killed in Riots’. The Hindu. 23 January 1964. (2) ‘Riots Arouse Moslem
Shame’. The New York Times. 24 January 1964. (3) ‘Moselm-Hindu Violence Flares Again’. New
York Times. 5 April 1964.
Table 4.1 Demographic Census year Muslim (%) Hindu (%)

changes by religion in
Bangladesh (1901–2011) 1901 66.1 33.0
1911 67.2 31.5
1921 68.1 30.6
1931 69.5 29.4
1941 70.3 28.0
1951 76.9 22.0
1961 80.4 18.5
1974 85.4 13.5
1981 86.7 12.1
1991 88.3 10.5
2001 86.6 9.3
2011 90.0 8.5
Source of data Sahoo & Mohaptra (2014: 28–29)
the minorities Hindus in Bangladesh’ (Sahoo & Mohapatra, 2014: 36). Second,
‘India and the Hindus in rest of the world need to intensify their campaign for
safeguarding of minority rights in Bangladesh’ (Sahoo & Mohapatra, 2014: 37).
Here are my thoughts of two cents. If the advocated rights campaign does not
also aim to protect the minority rights of the Muslims and the non-Hindus inside
and outside India, such advocacies would only serve the political agenda of the
Hindu nationalists to counter ‘the growth of Islamic politics’ in the region
(Bhardwaj, 2011: 20–21). Moreover, they would just merely reproduce the
deep-seated Hindu strategic habitus of imagining and establishing the pan-Hindu
world order, where the Mandala (bi-centric) international system was firstly gen-
erated by Kautilya. As Muslim–Hindu relations in Bangladesh have also been a
concerning foreign policy issue for India, Bangladesh–India relations would natu-
rally be strained by the recurring anti-Hindu violence.
On 14 October 2016, when President Xi Jinping visited Dhaka, China and
Bangladesh formally elevated the bilateral relations to ‘Strategic Partnership of
Cooperation’, which included deepening security cooperation.21 Unsurprisingly,
this was perceived in Bangladesh that while Dhaka wishes to benefit from China’s
‘One Belt One Road’ initiative, Bangladesh has now found a way to balance the
Sources: (1) ‘Political Economy of Bangladesh-China Relations: Current Trends and Future
21
Direction’. The Independent. 7 October 2017. (2) ‘Bangladesh-China Joint Statement—Ministry of

Foreign Affairs Dhaka Press Release’. The Daily Star. 14 October 2016.
‘elephant’ (India) through engaging with the ‘dragon’ (China).22 As the US global
leadership and reaches in South Asia dwindles, China has now become
Bangladesh’s largest supplier of military hardware.23 About two weeks after
President Xi left Bangladesh, waves of anti-Hindu riots were again launched in
Bangladesh.24
4.4.3.6 Indian Responses to the ‘String of Pearls’
Since the ‘string of pearls’ was formed, India has made the following responsive
deployments (Fig. 4.4):
• To strengthen coastal naval facilities and bases in such Indian seaports as
Visakhapatnam, Kochi, Karwar and Mumbai.
• To strengthen the naval facilities and bases in Port Blair of Andaman Islands in
order to monitor the Malacca Strait more closely.
• To strengthen India–US security cooperation on nuclear proliferation,
counter-terrorism, counter-piracy and border conflict management. This would
include holding regular joint military exercises.25
• To install listening stations in Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar in order to
monitor Chinese movements along the Western rim of the Indian Ocean.
• To strengthen security cooperation and joint energy exploration with China’s
territorial disputants in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, especially
with Japan and Vietnam.
22
Source: ‘Xi Jinping’s Visit: Implications for Bangladesh-China Relations’. The Daily Star.
14 October 2016.
23
Sources: (1) ‘What Bangladesh Hopes to Gain from Milestone Visit by China’s Xi Jinping’.
South China Morning Post. 13 October 2016. (2) ‘Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Visit to
Bangladesh Gives Boost to Bilateral Relations’. Forbes. 14 October 2016.
24
Sources: (1) ‘15 Hindu Temples in Bangladesh Vandalised’. The Times of India. 31 October
2016. (2) ‘Hundreds Attack Hindu Homes and Temples in Bangladesh’. New York Post.
31 October 2016. (3) ‘Hindu Temples and Homes in Bangladesh Are Attacked by Muslim
Crowds’. The New York Times. 2 November 2016. (4) ‘Dozens Arrested for Attacks on Hindus in
Bangladesh’. Al Jazeera News. 6 November 2016. (5) ‘Violence Against Non-Muslims Increases
in Bangladesh’. Gatestone Institute International Policy Council. 14 December 2016.
25
Sources: (1) ‘India, US to Hold Joint Military Exercise in September in Uttarakhand’. Hindustan
Times. 22 July 2016. (2) ‘India and US Hold Joint Military Exercise Near Chinese Border’. The
Diplomat. 16 September 2016. (3) Joint Indian-US Army Exercise ‘Yudh Abhyas 2016’ to Begin
in Uttarakhand. The Indian Express. 26 September 2016.
4.5 Conclusion 103
Fig. 4.4 The ‘string of pearl’ and Indian responses
4.5 Conclusion
To conclude, I wish to reiterate the necessity to depart from the structural-systemic

approaches of strategic culture and move towards a more balanced approach. In
conceiving strategic cultures as the historically constituted deep-seated religious
‘Powers’ of the main civilizational tenets (e.g. Christianity, Confucianism,
Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam) (c.f. Huntington, 1996), it has the dual properties
of both constraining and enabling strategic actions and impulses, thus rendering the
geopolitical dynamics in the Indian Ocean less stable than any structuralist-systemic
approaches would tend to portray.
In this chapter, I chose Kautilya’s Hindu statecraft as both a cultural and ana-
lytical lens for us to understand the deeply embedded Indian strategic habitus,
which has been structuring the unstable South Asian international relations. In a
nutshell, I argued that Kautilya’s statecraft espoused a very deep and strong desire
to imagine and establish a pan-Hindu world order, which fits into the
Hindu-nationalist state-building agenda of contemporary India. The pan-Hindu
caste system and the rise of Hindu nationalism have been strongly correlated with
the persistent inter-class conflict and recurring religious violence found in India and
her small power-neighbours. The cases of Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and
Bangladesh seem to substantiate this argument. Moreover, because their relation-

ships with India have been strained, to balance India’s hegemonic thrust and her
exported Hindu force, they found China a useful ally for furthering their own
economic development and national security. These complex factors explained the
formation of the ‘string of pearls’.
Lastly, I would like to suggest that such new approach of strategic culture can
also promise a historical-processual approach of studying strategic culture, mainly
by examining and patterning out the interactions between the strategic agency and
the strategic culture. In doing so, alternative strategic cultures may be generated for
promoting international peace. I will detail more in the next chapters, especially
Chap. 6.
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Chapter 5
Chaperoning Thai Populist Democracy:
Habitus, Structure and Technique of King
Bhumibol Adulyadej’s Statecraft
(1946–2016)
Abstract In order to identify the structural source of contemporary Thailand’s

statecraft, this chapter mainly accounts for the accomplishments for which King
Bhumibol Adulyadej managed to establish himself as the de facto sovereign of
Thailand. In the first place, it will account for how King Bhumibol consolidated and
uplifted the royal power over the military power during and after the Cold War
period. It will argue for the ways how King Bhumibol went with the larger but
contradictory flows of China-backed communist insurgency and US-backed
counter-insurgency, which he gradually absorbed the military and uplifted the
royal power. Secondly, through examining the historical formation of the Thai rice
political economy, it will argue that developing the national rice economy was a
major achievement of King Bhumibol to establish his royal sovereignty especially
among the rural majority. Nevertheless, this royal sovereignty has been structured
following the historical orbits of the ‘sakdina’ (Thai: meaning ‘power over the
land’) order. Thirdly, it will examine the rise of the Shinawatra group as a locally
hailed populist force in north and north-eastern Thailand. It will argue that the rise
of the post-1990 democratic populism had undermined the monarch-centric ‘sak-
dina’ structured order. The populist rice policies of the former Prime Ministers
Thaksin Shinawatra and Yingluck Shinawatra also posed a significant challenge to
the conservative elite of the monarchy, the military and the judiciary. Finally, by
asking how to plot bloodless coup in Thailand, it will argue that such technique is
essential for the conservative elite to chaperone the populist democracy and defend
the ‘sakdina’ order as the most resilient habitus in Thailand.

Keywords Chaperoned democracy King Bhumibol Adulyadej Populism Rice

policy Techniques of coup Thailand

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6563-7_5
110 5 Chaperoning Thai Populist Democracy …
5.1 Introduction
On 13 October 2016, after months of ill health, the seventy-year reigning King
Bhumibol Adulyadej (1946–2016) of Thailand passed away. The whole kingdom
mourned over his death.1 His heir, the Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn,
announced that due to mourning reason, the official resumption of his kingship was
delayed for one year.2 According to the August 2016 referendum result in which the
Thai majority voted to approve a new constitution drafted by the military junta,3
while the king-entrusted General Prem Tinsulanonda of the Privy Council imme-
diately resumed royal power as the regent of the kingdom on 13 October 2016, the
Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-Ocha publicly restated the democratic pro-
mise once made during the August 2016 referendum: Thailand will hold the
planned general election in 2017.4
What can we learn from King Bhumibol’s Thailand as a small power? How did
Thailand manage to develop into the world’s largest rice-exporting country and a
monarchic constitutional democracy after the Cold War? These two empirical
questions set the terrain of this chapter.
By engaging with selected aspects of Thai political development after the
Second World War (WWII), I will argue that the seventy-year reign of King
Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand represented a relatively unique type of small
power statecraft for which the Thai-networked monarchy (tightly interwoven with
the military, judicial and the traditional political-economic elites) had effectively
made use of the country’s situated geopolitical advantage and the given rich
agricultural and natural resources as the only Southeast Asian rice-producing
riverine power that connects both the Indian and Pacific Oceans. In the midst of the
Cold War bipolar competition between US-led Western bloc and the Communist
bloc led by China and the Soviet Union, the Thai monarchy’s goals and consistent
efforts to (1) uplift royal power over the military junta, and (2) to enhance the
livelihood, welfare and economic development of the deprived rural populations,
1
Sources: (1) ‘Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej Dies, Ending Reign of World’s Longest
Serving Monarch’. The Telegraph. 14 October 2016. (2) ‘Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej
Dead at 88’. BBC News. 13 October 2016. (3) ‘What will King Bhumibol’s Death Mean for
Thailand?’ Reuters. 13 October 2016. (4) ‘Thailand’s King Bhumibol Takes Final Journey Past
Grieving Subjects’. Reuters. 14 October 2016. (5) ‘Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej Dies after
70-year Reign’. The Guardian. 13 October 2016. (6) ‘King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand Dies
Aged 88’. Financial Times. 13 October 2016.
2
Source: ‘泰國王儲延遲一年登基, 普密蓬親信、樞密院院長任攝政王’ 端傳媒. 17 October
2016.
3
Sources: (1) ‘Voters in Thailand Endorse Military’s Proposed Constitution’. The New York Times.
7 August 2016. (2) ‘Thai Referendum: Military-Written Constitution Approved’. BBC News.
7 August 2016. (3) ‘Thailand Referendum: New Constitution Wins Approval’. Al Jazeera.
7 August 2016. (4) ‘泰國新憲法公投日, 沉默大眾能否叫停軍方主政?’ 端傳媒 7 August 2016.
(5) ‘泰國新憲法公投開票8成62%民眾支持’ 自由時報. 7 August 2016.
4
‘Thai “Roadmap” to Democratic Rule Unchanged by King’s Death: PM’. Reuters. 18 October
2016.
5.1 Introduction 111
had given Thailand an important anchorage of statecraft to steer across various

waves of Cold War political crises and post-Cold War populist turbulences.
Through following the flows and taking contextual advantages of the given internal
and external circumstances, by gradually restoring the royal sovereignty over an
array of domestic competing forces, King Bhumibol successfully constitutionalized
himself as the true sovereign of Thailand who crafted Thailand to be the world’s
largest rice-exporting country and a chaperoned democracy for ensuring future
domestic sociopolitical stability.
To substantiate this main argument, this chapter will first review the political
career of King Bhumibol in three phases. These phases will then serve as the key
ethnographic-historical signposts to illustrate two periods in contemporary Thai
political development. The first period covered the 1950s to 1980s when Thailand
was caught in the Cold War confrontation mainly between China-exported com-
munism and US-led anti-communism campaigns in Southeast Asia. In this period,
the historically constituted deep-seated habitus of the Thai kingdom ‘sakdina’
(Thai: power of the land) was significantly challenged under tremendous pressure
by the communism-influenced rural insurgency and social unrests.
In summary, ‘sakdina’ may refer to the Thai-specific historical-culturally con-
stituted monarch-centric political-economic order espoused by such key networked
actors as the military, judicial, business, intellectual and bureaucratic elites
(Hewison, 1989). As ‘sakdina’ has shaped the trajectory of Thai state formation
from such ancient kingdoms as Sukhothai (circa 1238–1583) and Ayutthaya (circa
1351–1767) to the present-day kingdom, it informs how this power endured across
monarchic, dictatorial, democratic, and populist regimes, and how it is constituted
and operated in Thailand. Under ‘sakdina’, Thai royal power is structured around
and by the Hinduism-hailed caste-like social stratification system, in which power
and supremacy stem from the land of the Thai kingdom and its main economic
production of rice, as the essential resource foundation of the Thai statehood, viz.
power of the land.
In this chapter, I will aim to show how did King Bhumibol managed to defend
the ‘sakdina’ structured order through developing the inherited Thai rice industry
from his predecessors, in which the Sino-Thai businesses historically played critical
roles.
The second period (1990–2016) was characterized by the introduction of elec-
toral democracy, which witnessed the rise of locally hailed populist forces mainly
of the former Prime Ministers Thaksin Shinawatra (2001–2006) and his sister
Yingluck Shinawatra (2011–2014). Because of the two Shinawatra administrations’
populist rice policies, the embedded Thai ‘sakdina’ structures were again chal-
lenged and undermined. I will argue that King Bhumibol and the associated elite
demonstrated foresight when crafting the 1997 Constitution. By adopting the
Germany-styled ‘Constitutional Court’ functionary, while King Bhumibol consti-
tutionalized his sovereign status as the head of the state, the 1997 Constitution also
crafted a chaperoned democracy to preserve the ‘sakdina’ order for future stability.
Equally important, this chaperoned democracy would not be made possible without
instituting a complex set of techniques of coup d’état. Using the 2014 coup as an
example, I will illustrate how this set of Thai-specific techniques of bloodless coup
operated to suspend democratic rule when necessary, which may be traced to the
roots of contemporary German political and juristic thoughts.
5.2 Restoring Royal Sovereignty: King Bhumibol’s

Pathway to Be the Thai Sovereign
King Bhumibol’s political career may be demarcated into three historical phases:
(1) 1946–1970, (2) 1970–1990, and (3) 1997–2016. These three phases will be
outlined in the following paragraphs.
5.2.1 Phase I: Rebuilding Royal Authority (1946–1970)
The first phase (1946–1970) was mainly characterized by an arduous process in

which the young and newly installed but politically weak king had to negotiate part
of the state power back from the military regents. In 1946, after his elder brother
King Ananda Mahidol was mysteriously shot to death inside the royal palace,
Bhumibol Adulyadej was made to be the next king when he was eighteen years old.
While spending the first several years in Switzerland for study, the initial seven
years of King Bhumibol’s reign were actually taken charge by the military regency
(Wong, 2016b).
The military regency ended in 1957 when Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat suc-
cessfully launched a coup and seize state power from the military regent, Prime
Minister Field Marshal Phibun Songkram (1948–1957). Thanarat took advantage of
the growing dissatisfactions against Songkram’s government expressed by the
masses, the students and the monarchy. He gained the support of King Bhumibol
who publicly granted him the position of the ‘defending commander of the royal
capital’.5 Under the dictatorship of Prime Minister Sarit Thanarat (1958–1963),
while King Bhumibol prudently collaborated with the military, he gradually rebuilt
his own position, status and royal power as the king. On the one hand, he went with
the flows of the US-backed counterinsurgency military programme, in response to
the security threat of growing unrests posed by the communist insurgency. On the
other hand, he had to find ways to restore the royal authority when the international
and domestic political environments of communist insurgency and counterinsur-
gency were actually more in favour of the Thai military to seize state power.
As a result, instead of rushing to compete for power against the military, King
Bhumibol chose to tour around and conduct frequent field visits to the rural areas of
5
Sources: (1) ‘How King Bhumibol Shaped Modern Thailand’. BBC News. 13 October 2016.
(2) ‘Obituary: King Bhumibol of Thailand’. BBC News. 13 October 2016.
5.2 Restoring Royal Sovereignty … 113
the whole country. With US support and in the midst of the military government’s
country-wide anti-communism campaign (Landsdale, 1972), King Bhumibol took
initiatives to develop the rural agricultural economy.6 His efforts did not only
complement the military government’s hard-power counterinsurgency programme,
but also introduced such soft-power measures as developing the irrigation systems
and rural infrastructures, implementing land reform, and instituting rural
financial/banking system to help the poor farming communities to develop the rural
economy.
In contrast to the military government’s combative campaign which tended to
terrorize people and inflict enduring wounds, King Bhumibol’s soft-power mea-
sures were capable of preventing the aggrieving rural populations to recognize the
communist cause. His measures proved to be more effective in neutralizing the
communist threat (Wong, 2016b). In other words, by directly addressing the
root-cause of peasant grievances resultant of poverty and underdevelopment, he
introduced effective, concrete and timely livelihood-improving programmes to
uplift the rural economy, thus gradually won the hearts and minds of the rural
populations. With hard work and persistence, King Bhumibol reconfigured a pos-
itive image of the Thai monarchy and re-installed the economic, political and
cultural influences into the countryside. In this period, Prime Minister Thanarat also
restored the suspended royal ceremonies, which mandated every Thai to knee down
with elbows touching the ground when seeing the king. This significantly restored
the symbolic supremacy of the monarchy.
In the first phase, through collaborating with the military junta, King Bhumibol
absorbed part of the military. By going with the flows of the military’s coun-
terinsurgency and the US-backed anti-communism campaigns in Southeast Asia, he
began to establish himself a positive image of being a hard-working king of
humility who identified with the sufferings and problems of the poor. His monar-
chic legitimacy in the countryside was therefore solidly established.
5.2.2 Phase II: Uplifting the Royal Power over Military

Power (1970–1990)
The second phase of King Bhumibol’s political career spans from the 1970s to the
early 1990s. By acting as an arbitrator in a few critical political crises, he further
uplifted the monarchy’s royal power over the junta’s military power.
Confronted by waves of the communism-influenced social movements in which
the middle class, educated elite and the university students demanded for more
democracy from the prolonged militarist rule, in 1973, Prime Minister Field
Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn (1963–1973) ordered the government security forces
to open fire at the protestors in Bangkok. King Bhumibol, however, intervened
Source: ‘Obituary: King Bhumibol of Thailand’. BBC News. 13 October 2016.

6
openly and allowed the protesters to seek refuge inside the royal palace. Such move
immediately caused the collapse of the Kittikachorn regime and significantly
undermined the military junta.7 By appointing the leading Thai jurist—Dean of the
Faculty of Law and Chancellor of Thammasat University—Professor Sanya
Dharmasakti to be the 12th Prime Minister (1973–1975), on the one hand, King
Bhumibol introduced an interim civilian government as an initial attempt to satisfy
the opposition’s demand for democratic reform. On the other hand, the monarchy
began to absorb part of the judicial elite and educated elite. This intention and
arrangement were made explicit when the king-entrusted Sanya Dharmasakti was
further appointed to be the long-time President of the Privy Council of Thailand in
1975 until 1998, when another entrusted military—General Prem Tinsulanonda—
was appointed to succeed him as the long-time President (1998–present) of the
Privy Council.
In 1981, the newly installed Prime Minister General Prem Tinsulanonda (1980–
1988) was challenged by a coup launched by an opposing military faction. The
rebel forces overran Bangkok. King Bhumibol forcibly supported Tinsulanonda and
helped him to drive away the rebels. Since then, Tinsulanonda has become a highly
entrusted military general by the king.8 Apart from being chosen to be the successor
of Sanya Dharmasakti to be the President of the Privy Council from 1998 till now,
General Tinsulanonda was constitutionally recognized as the regent of the Thai
kingdom with immediate effect after the death of King Bhumibol on 13 October
2016.9
In 1992, democratization continued to sink its root in Thailand. The opposition
organized public protests against the undemocratic self-installation of General
Suchinda Kraprayoon as Prime Minister (April–May 1992), who launched a mil-
itary coup against the elected Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan (1988–1991)
in 1991. The military opened fire at the protestors. King Bhumibol intervened and
summoned both Kraprayoon and the opposition leader who both kneed down in
front of him. Kraprayoon was forced to resign. As the respected civilian politician
Anand Panyarachun was appointed to be the interim Prime Minister in 1992, he
pushed for a number of political and economic reforms which were intended to
undermine the junta. Although the Panyarachun administration further strained its
relationship with the military and caused his resignation after a few months,
Thailand was successfully transitioned to a civilian and more democratic rule under
the lawyer-politician Chuan Leekpai of Democratic Party, who was elected to
two-time Prime Ministers (1992–1995; 1997–2001).10
Through intervening into several political crises and coups as the supreme
arbitrator, King Bhumibol gradually absorbed the military and judicial as well as
7
Sources: (1) ‘How King Bhumibol Shaped Modern Thailand’. BBC News. 13 October 2016.
(2) ‘Obituary: King Bhumibol of Thailand’. BBC News. 13 October 2016.
8
Source: ‘Profile: Thai Regent Prem Tinsulanonda’. BBC News. 15 October 2016.
9
10
the educated elite into his orbits of royal power. While he succeeded in uplifting the
royal court over the military and opposition forces, considering the rising public
demand for democratic reform, he carefully steered Thailand moving towards
electoral democratic politics and paved the way to prepare for the third phase—the
rise of democratic populism.
5.2.3 Phase III: The Sovereign Who Constitutionalized

the Chaperoned Democracy (1997–2016)
The third phase spans from 1997 to 2016. In order to balance and prepare for the
anticipated competition and conflict between the ‘sakdina’ structured order and the
democratic order, the networked monarchy of military, judicial, academic and
political-economic elite consented to use the constitutional and judicial reform to
chaperon electoral politics. An objective was to ensure future elected prime min-
isters and parliamentarians would not be able to overthrow the traditional sakdina-
elite group’s authority and interests, i.e. to establish a chaperoned democracy in
Thailand.11
In 1995, following the publication of a commissioned comparative study of
several continental European constitutional systems, the privy members of the Thai
military, judiciary, academia and the royal court consented to follow the German
constitutional tradition by introducing the German Constitutional Court into the
Thai judicial system (Merieau, 2016: 451 and 462 footnote 5; Rattansakawong,
1995). Therefore, in the 1997 Constitution, the Constitutional Court was designed
to have the legal authority to perform the following key functions (Merieau, 2016:
451):
• It could review, investigate and determine the constitutional legality and legit-
imacy of any laws crafted by the Thai legislature (i.e. the parliament).
• It could investigate the conducts and qualifications of any public officials and
impeach any public office-holders, whether they are elected or appointed.
• It could rule on the legality and legitimacy of any electoral process and
outcomes.
• It could review, investigate and determine the constitutional legitimacy of any
political party to the extent that one may be ordered to be dissolved.
• To hear and rule on the disputes of any state organs.
11
Sources: (1) ‘Thailand Votes for a New Constitution’. The Economist. 8 August 2016. (2) Patrick
Jory (2016). ‘The Real Meaning of Thailand’s Constitutional Referendum’. Asian Currents (Asian
Studies Association of Australia; http://asaa.asn.au). 16 August 2016.
Equally important, the 1997 Constitution also stipulated that before taking office,
every judge was expected to take an oath before the king to declare her/his loyalty
and allegiance to the king as the head of the state (Merieau, 2016: 451).
Through this new constitutional arrangement, on the one hand, King Bhumibol
authorized the Constitutional Court the exceptional powers to investigate, review,
impeach, sanction and rule over any elected officials, political party and govern-
mental agencies (Harding, 2007). On the other hand, because all the judges and
justices had to declare allegiance and loyalty to the king, this granted the king the
constitutional status as the ‘sovereign’ (Schmitt, 2005[1922]), who could operate
above/out of the legal realm. As a result, in 1997, after fifty years of his persistent
efforts to uplift the kingship over the military, King Bhumibol did not only succeed
to transform himself from a weak king to the de facto military commander-in-chief,
but he also succeeded to constitutionalize himself as the sovereign king and the
head of the state, in which he was both in and above the legal realm of the Thai
constitution. In sum, King Bhumibol had effectively commanded the two powers of
the judiciary and the military.
In response to the challenge of populism since the late 1990s when Thaksin
Shinawatra was firstly elected as the Prime Minister in 2001, after several
monarch-endorsed coups staged from 2006 to 2014,12 a new constitution was
approved by the Thai majority in the August 2016 referendum.13 The 2016 new
constitution stipulated that all seats in the Senate will be sat by the military officers
and appointed legislators. This legal framework will have significant constraining
and determining impacts over the future elected prime minister, the elected par-
liamentarians and the government officials. Moreover, the new electoral regulations
will only likely enable the future elected prime ministers to establish weak-coalition
governments, which will be chaperoned by a special commission appointed by the
junta. This was intended to prevent any possibility that the constitution would be
amended by any future elected governments.14
To ensure the future stability of Thailand, King Bhumibol left the carefully
crafted constitutional framework as his legacy since 1997 (Ginsburg, 2009). The
2016 Constitution provided the necessary legal foundation and juristic guidance for
Thailand’s future democratization. This constitutional design is largely intended to
guard against populist forces as a potent threat to the sakdina structured order
12
Source: ‘King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, 1927–2016’. Financial Times. 13 October
2016.
13
Source: ‘泰國憲法公投過關, 走向隱性軍政府’ 端傳媒. 9 August 2016.
14
Sources: (1) ‘Thai Referendum: Why Thais Backed a Military-backed Constitution’. BBC News.
9 August 2016. (2) ‘Thai Junta Passes Ballot Box Test with Referendum Win’. Reuters. 8 August
2016. (3) ‘Thailand Votes in Favour of Military Backed Constitution’. Financial Times. 7 August
2016. (4) Mong Palatino (2016). ‘Thailand’s New Constitution: A Blow to Rights?’ The Diplomat.
17 August 2016.
(Crispin, 2016), which King Bhumibol had consistently defended in his

seventy-year reign. In anticipation, future elections and elected governments in
Thailand will continue to be chaperoned by a group of constitutional commissariats,
mainly composed of the military officers and judges.15
To further strengthen the above argument theoretically and empirically, in the
following sections, I will first seek to conduct a cross-disciplinary dialogue with
selected Western and non-Western political, social and theological thoughts. By
arguing for the ‘thick-dark’ elements as the habitus of Thai-specific political
strategies, I aim to articulate an outline of the theory of practice of chaperoned
democracy in Thailand.
Based on such theoretical exposition, I will then empirically contextualize King
Bhumibol’s political career against the historically structured Thai rice political
economy for which he inherited. By identifying the central position of rice in the
political-economic structure of the Thai state and society, the Thai notion of
‘sakdina’ (Thai: power of the land) is argued to constitute the deep-seated habitus
that informs the political strategies of the competing royalist and populist forces
since democratic electoral politics was introduced in the 1990s. The constitutional
crafting of the post-1997 chaperoned democracy granted the Germany-hailed
Constitutional Court the exceptional powers to investigate, sanction and suspend
the elected prime minister and parliament as well as government agencies.
Bloodless coup d’état was made possible through a set of intricately combined
power techniques of judicial and military coups. These are recognized as King
Bhumibol’s conscious efforts and prudent achievements to uplift, restore and per-
petuate the royal sovereignty over the military and populist forces as the ultimate
sovereignty-holder of the Thai Kingdom. While King Bhumibol was destined to be
the king in 1946, he actually had to spend the ensuing decades to seal this destiny to
be the true sovereign of Thailand.
5.3 Chaperoning the Thai ‘Thick-Dark’ Democracy:

An Exposition
To understand why the King Bhumibol and the associated elite adopted the hybrid
model of chaperoned democracy, it is instructive to conduct a dialogue between
various Western and non-Western insights, resultant of years of field research and
dialogue with my colleagues in Thailand since 2009.16 Confronted by the
US-backed democratization programme in the 1980s when communist China
15
Sources: (1) ‘Political Implications of the Draft Constitution of Thailand: A Conversation with
Prof Tom Ginsburg and Mr Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang’. International Idea (www.idea.int).
28 July 2016. (2) ‘政變兩年後泰國舉行新憲法公投’ BBC News. 7 August 2016.
16
Since 2009, I have served as a visiting researcher at the Institute of Thai Studies of
Chulalongkorn University. Over the years, I thank its director Arjahn Suchitra Chongstitvatana for
having engaging dialogues with me (Wong & Chongstitvatana, 2014a, b ‘thick dark democracy’).
stopped exporting communist insurgency and started to experiment market reform

and open door policy, key US allies in Southeast Asia such as Thailand were
encouraged to introduce democratization. However, to the Thai ruling elite, the
question of how to translate, implement and localize Western-styled democracy
needed to be answered.
In this section, against the populist turbulences associated with the Yingluck
Shinawatra administration (2011–2014), I will illustrate how theoretically possible
for the Western-styled democracy be absorbed by the Thai ‘sakdina’ structured
order. In the light of the late imperial Chinese theorist Li Zongwu (1879–1943;
Chinese: 李宗吾), I will also illustrate how the localization of Western democracy
in the Thai Buddhist context would give birth to a specific type of ‘thick-dark’
democracy, which necessitates the dictatorial guardians to chaperone.
5.3.1 Western Democracy—A Political-Economic System

Preserving Capitalism
Democratic ideal may be traced to the city-state (polis) of ancient Greece of sixth
century B.C. The Greeks assumed individuals to have the intellectual capability of
independent thinking to fully participate in the inclusive, open-minded and delib-
erative process of collective decision-making. Public policy affecting the individ-
uals was believed to be possibly crafted through such individualized democratic
process. Nonetheless, the formal institutionalization of democracy only happened in
the eighteenth century Europe wherein industrial revolution swiped across the
continent. In such context, ‘representative democracy’ was introduced. Instead of
the original Greek polis democracy, representative democracy requires the indi-
vidual citizens to vote-elect their representatives into the parliament, who are
expected to participate in the public policy decision-making process on behalf of
the individual citizens. Why it took more than twenty centuries for democracy to be
institutionalized in the state politics of the West? I will argue that the institution-
alization of electoral-representative democracy cannot be detached from the
development of capitalism.
At the beginning of the industrial revolution in Europe, the French Revolution
broke out in 1789. The French Revolution marked the bloody political struggle
between the two antagonistic classes in feudalism. One was the nobility who based
their political power on the estate capital (i.e. land possession). Another was the
bourgeoisie (capitalists) who based their political power on commodity capital (i.e.
merchandises). The latter class challenged the former’s supremacy in the feudal
(Footnote 16 continued)
I also wish to acknowledge the Dean of Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts of Chulalongkorn
University, Arjahn Suppakorn Disatapundhu for generously sharing his insights.
5.3 Chaperoning the Thai ‘Thick-Dark’ Democracy: An Exposition 119
system. Before the revolution broke out, because intensifying competitions were
emerging among the neighbouring Western empires both regionally and overseas,
France saw the need to extend central state authority into the territories.
To do so, the French monarch aimed to increase tax revenue without further
antagonizing the opposing nobility. Multiple taxes were therefore levied upon the
bourgeoisie. French scholars Georges Lefebvre (2001) and Alexis de Tocqueville
(2010) both reasoned that such fiscal policy sowed the seeds of inter-class antag-
onism between the French nobility (including the monarchy) and the bourgeoisie,
which then led to the democratic yet bloody French Revolution. The bourgeoisie
led the nobility-exploited serfs to launch a violent revolution against the nobility
and overthrew the feudal system. The French Revolution established the supremacy
of capitalist state rule.
Later on, why was the bourgeoisie willing to share power through establishing
‘representative democracy’? There should be at least two factors.
Firstly, despite the bourgeoisie already seized French state power, their primary
intention was still capital accumulation, i.e. to use the state power to legitimize
capital accumulation and ensure market access. To achieve this goal and sustain the
outcomes in the long run, they wanted to ensure the accumulated capitals could be
shared with the proletariats. On the one hand, this was intended to ensure domestic
stability and to facilitate French state power’s overseas reaches. On the other hand,
this capitalistic state-building project was intended to uplift the entire French social
class pyramidal hierarchy to become an economic power on par with other
European powers.
French representative democracy allowed a cohort of politicians as the agents of
the bourgeoisie who also well connected with the proletariats. Through the works of
the elected politicians in the representative democracy, accumulated capitals pos-
sessed by the bourgeoisie might be trickled down to the proletariats. The relatively
stable development of the French class society was therefore made possible by the
representative democracy as a wealth re-distribution system to address the structural
antagonism of the two classes. The French bourgeoisie therefore could concentrate
on a systematic attempt to accumulate capitals overseas and channelling them back
to the French governmental coffer.
The second reason has to do with the notion that economic capital is protected
by the legal concept of ‘private property ownership’. As the bourgeoisie’s main
objective was to accumulate capitals, in order to earn the maximum surplus values
(as profits) from the exchange values of the commodities traded, the bourgeoisie
would necessarily need to ensure their commodity-products to occupy a special
niche and position in the market so that long-term capital accumulation would be
possible. As a result, the representative democracy introduced a series of such
private property-related legal concepts as patent, copyright, licence and franchise
into the legislature. The legislature (e.g. parliament) then legislated laws to protect
the commodity-products’ exchange values and market positions. In other words,
representative democracy legislated the notion of ‘private property ownership’ into
state laws and institutionalized them into the civil society.
Such measure served two functions well. First, it encouraged enterprise inno-
vation and entrepreneurship. Second, it stabilized the market environment for
capital accumulation. The entire experience of the industrial revolution and the
establishment of the representative democracy suggested one point: although the
collaborative relationships between the politicians and the bourgeoisie were not
entirely free of corruption, Western bourgeoisie seemed to emphasize the impor-
tance of the legal framework (especially the rule of law) to ensure long-term capital
accumulation and innovative entrepreneurship.
In a nutshell, while Western representative democracy enabled the self-interested
nature of capital accumulation, it also served as a safety valve to absorb the tensions
and conflicts resultant of the problems of injustice caused by capitalistic exploita-
tion and oppression. Furthermore, through legislating laws, Western representative
democracy legally constrained self-interested capital accumulation and therefore
protected each commodity’s unique position in the market. Representative
democracy serves as a political-economic system coordinating competing processes
of capital accumulations, in which inter-class tensions were addressed and violent
conflict might be prevented.
Representative democracy was proved in Western capitalistic societies to be an
effective political-economic system for distributing wealth and managing inter-class
conflict. In contrast, democracies in Southeast Asia and the Global South are often
plagued by corruption, vote-buying, money politics and political violence. Why? I
think the answer has to do with their different understanding and methods in
accumulating capital.
Comparatively speaking, contemporary capitalism in the Western-metropolitan
states tends to see capital as ‘commodity capital’, i.e. money is invested to generate
more monetary profits. Instead of experiencing the industrial revolution from
within, Southeast Asian countries generally experienced an externally imposed,
exploitative and coercive form of ‘peripheral capitalism’, mainly found in the
African, Asian and Latin American states—primitive accumulation (Wong, 2016a:
Chap. 2). With the establishment of the colonial state architecture by the West in the
Global South peripheries, primitive accumulation did not follow the route of the
‘commodity capital’ usually found in the metropolitan centre. Rather, primitive
accumulation entails the often fierce, unruly competition for the colonial state
power in order to extract the rich resources and exploit the peoples of the periph-
eries. This form of capital formation found in the Global South may be coined as
‘power capital’ (Wong, 2014a, c).
In contrast to the ‘making money out of money; money ! money’ formula in
the formation of commodity capital, power capital injects political power as an
intervening variable into the accumulation process, i.e. making infinitely bigger and
quicker money out of political power; ‘money ! power ! money∞’. The com-
peting theoretical strands of political business, rent-seeking, patrimonial plunder,
bossism, cronyism and oligarchy would be the varied manifestations of power
capital in post-colonial Southeast Asia (Gomez, 2002; Hutchcroft, 2000; McVey,
2000; Sidel, 2004; Wong, 2009).
Because the public office-holders possess the executive power and planning
authority to regulate the means of economic production, post-colonial capitalists
consider hooking up with the officials a way to gain privileged access to govern-
mental powers, thus enable them to accumulate more and faster economic capitals.
To gain privileged access to the economic capitals controlled by the capitalists, the
office-holders are also willing to collude. The result was obvious—the officials and
friends competed for the concentration of political and economic powers into their
own hands, causing widening rich-poor gap, inter-class antagonism, resulting in
social unrest and conflict.
As the constitution of power capital in Thailand is embedded in the
monarch-centric ‘sakdina’ habitus, this Thai-specific political-economic structure
provided the essential soil for populist politics, which was witnessed soon after the
democratization was implemented in the early 1990s. The following sections will
elucidate the structural composition of the ‘sakdina’ habitus.
5.3.2 Resilience of the ‘Sakdina’ Habitus
If Wright Mills’ (1959) The Sociological Imagination is a classic in sociology,

Walter Brueggemann’s (1978) The Prophetic Imagination would be a classic in not
just theology, but may also inform the possibility of having a prophetic social
science, which may connect us to the future of state development. Based on the
statecraft of King Solomon of Israel (970–931 B.C.), Brueggemann accurately
identified the intricate dynamic interplay between a range of political, economic and
religious forces. While it is regarded that King Solomon was blessed with excep-
tional wisdoms, he led the Israeli kingdom into unprecedented economic prosperity
and political strengths. This is the result of three state strategies he adopted
(Fig. 5.1).
First is economic strategy. King Solomon was perceptive about the sensitive
geopolitical position of Israel. It was not just a hub of the land-trade route con-
necting between the two competing imperial powers of Africa (i.e. Egypt) and Asia
(i.e. Assyria), but also a main sea-port connecting with other ports in the
Mediterranean maritime trade system. King Solomon’s astute diplomacy allowed
Israel to monopolize these major trade-routes and share the gains with his
Ins tu onaliza on of state religion
Economic affluence Poli cs of oppression
Fig. 5.1 King Solomon’s statecraft model

neighbour-allies. Israel was thus able to generate substantial wealth and experienced
unprecedented affluence.
Second is political strategy. King Solomon made use of the temple construction
project for the God Yahweh. He adopted an oppressive iron-fist policy to conscript
the Israeli subjects into the forced labour and military service for the state. The
conscripts were mobilized to build the imperial palace and such defence infras-
tructures as the city walls of Jerusalem.
Third is religious strategy, which is perhaps the most important. King Solomon
institutionalized the worship of God Yahweh into an official ‘state religion’
(Brueggemann, 1978: Chap. 2). The religious prophets and priests were formally
absorbed into the state hierarchy as officers under the king as the head of the state.
Using state religion institution as a political, economic and cultural system to
address social grievances and redistribute state wealth to the oppressed and
deprived, King Solomon was able to strengthen and sustain his political legitimacy.
King Solomon’s ancient Hebrew statecraft and strategies are of significant
implications for understanding King Bhumibol’s contemporary statecraft model and
the enduring Thai strategic culture. In the first place, the constitution of the eco-
nomic, political and religious powers in contemporary Thailand can be traced to the
Sukhothai Kingdom (1238–1438) in northern Thailand. The Yunnan-hailed ethnic
Tai rulers of Sukhothai introduced Sanskrit and Pali languages from South Asia to
create its own language and therefore established a unique cultural identity among
the neighbouring polities. Later, because Sukhothai was absorbed by the Ayutthaya
Kingdom (1351–1767), Buddhism and Hinduism started to sink its political-
economic roots into the sociocultural fabrics of Thailand. The Hinduist caste-based
social stratification system was then gradually established in contemporary
Thailand where the deified monarch possesses the unrivalled powers of ownership
and distribution of the land as a form of modern feudalism, viz. ‘sakdina’ (Wong,
2013b).
Following Bourdieu (1990), habitus refers to the deep-seated dispositions of
one’s objective-structural (e.g. class and caste) positions which inform how
subjective calculations, creative strategies and social practices are determined,
shaped, effected and deployed. Habitus therefore is the enduring root of the
historical-structural and objective-systemic properties (of both objective and mental
structures) that constrains/enables human agency and predetermine both of its room
and boundaries of social, political and cultural manoeuvring and strategic calcula-
tions as well as actions.
‘Sakdina’ is a habitus because it informs how the Thai political, economic and
religious powers are reproduced. Similar to the Hinduist caste system, both as a
religious symbol, political order and socio-economic structure, the ‘sakdina’ (Thai:
the power of the land) is composed of political, economic and religious powers. It
ranks its subjects into a hierarchy of social strata in which Buddhism is instituted as
the state religion to cement these different classes and status groups together under a
common ideology of reincarnation. As the monarchy is the largest landowner in
Thailand, the ruled rural majority would consist of the landed minority and the
landless folks, who are expected to declare allegiance to the king.
Near the end of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, capital-rich Chinese migrants from
southern China were gradually absorbed by the Siamese monarchy. They became
landlords and then joined the upper strata of the ‘sakdina’ ruling elite. Despite there
were anti-Chinese campaigns after the Second World War, these campaigns were
not intended against the ethnic Chinese, but was China’s communism. Communism
is ideologically incompatible with the ‘sakdina’ system. The Sino-Thais were then
successfully absorbed into the ‘sakdina’ system and identified themselves with the
monarchy. On the one hand, the Sino-Thai businesses were given accesses and
rights to the land ownership and trade in rural Thailand. On the other hand, the
Sino-Thai-educated and professional elite were either appointed or elected to such
government offices as bureaucrats and parliamentarians. In present-day Bangkok, it
is estimated that 40% of the capital’s population has Chinese ancestry (Wong,
2013b).
In the 1990s, democratization in the form of electoral politics was introduced
and implemented in Thailand. Since the rise of the popular Shinawatra family in the
late 1990s (who also Chinese ancestry), in order to garner the Thai rural majority’s
votes, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra (2001–2006) introduced a number of
governmental policies to enable the rural poor majority to become the middle class.
The most controversial was the rice mortgage policy, which will be discussed later.
Although these social and economic policies were welcomed by the rural majority,
they were perceived to be against the interests of the urban middle-class and pro-
fessional elite. Most importantly, these popular policies were perceived to under-
mine the ‘sakdina’ system and challenge the royal power and the ruling elite. As a
result, in the past decade, we have witnessed the political violence and social
conflicts were results of the constant clashes between the Shinawatra-backed
‘red-shirt’ protestors and the royalist ‘yellow-shirt’ protestors.
As the ‘sakdina’ system was under unprecedented pressures since democrati-
zation was introduced in the 1990s, there is a need to re-conceptualize how the Thai
democratic practice is different from the Western democratic practice within the
larger state religion context of Buddhism. As Western social and political thoughts
have yet developed a Buddhist-sensitive political theory, I will use a post-imperial
Chinese perspective.
5.3.3 Thai ‘Thick-Dark’ Democracy: A Post-imperial

Chinese Theorization
In January 2014 Bangkok, during a royalist demonstration led by the Democratic

Party leader Mr Suthep Thaugsuban, a ‘yellow-shirt’ Sino-Thai protester upheld a
banner accusing the Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra (2011–2014) of the Pheu
Thai Party as having ‘thick face, dark heart’ (Wong & Chongstitvatana, 2014b).
What did these words actually mean? How could we make sense of the later coup
that ousted Yingluck from office?
To answer this question, I will first trace the culture-specific meanings of the
Chinese notion of ‘thick face, dark heart’ to the Buddhism-informed ‘thick-dark’
political theory founded by the post-imperial Qing Chinese scholar Li Zongwu (李
宗吾, 1879–1943) (Li, 2013). Then, I will argue how this ‘thick dark’ Chinese
political theory is able to illustrate how Yingluck’s options of political struggles
were actually structurally constrained and limited by the sakdina-determined
strategic context.
Socialized by the Buddhist teachings, the Thai people learn about the Buddhist
essence of ‘emptiness’, in order to discern and appreciate the impermanent and
transient nature of the world, thus enhancing one to surrender her/his own attach-
ments and be charitable with each other (Wong & Chongstitvatana, 2014a).
However, years of democratization made people more aware about their own
political and economic interests. The Thais gradually became more attached to the
selfish pursuant of economic interests and political power. The Buddhist practice of
‘emptiness’ experienced a subtle shift from its original meaning. Engaging with Li
Zongwu’s political theory would help us to identify such shift.
Traumatized by the turbulent times when China suffered from major military
defeats leading to humiliating treaties and territorial scrambles by the European and
foreign powers after the two Opium Wars (1839–1842; 1856–1860), like many of
his contemporaries who urged for China’s national revival, Li (2013) witnessed the
collapse of the imperial Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) and the ensuing Chinese civil
war (1927–1936) where the Kuomintang warlords and communists drew their
multiple battlefields in China. Confronted by the burning question why China failed
so badly, Li boldly advocated that China must save itself by discarding the
Confucian doctrines. After broadly re-examining a range of Chinese and Western
social and political thoughts, Li concluded the supremacy of Buddhism, Taoism
and Social Darwinism for ironing out his ‘thick dark’ political theory. ‘Thick’ refers
to the art of having a ‘thick face’ or being shameless, which is to act calculatively
beyond the Confucian morality for all the possible means would justify the intended
ends. ‘Dark’ refers to the art of having a ‘dark heart’ or being ruthlessly cruel,
which is to act astutely in accordance with one’s self-interests without being bound
by the Confucian morality. ‘Thick-dark’ political theory is therefore a Chinese
theory of practice of political struggle and competition in the everyday life.
In summary, the gist of Li’s ‘thick-dark’ political practice is threefold:
• First, one should acknowledge that there is an omnipresence of the Buddhist
notion ‘dharma (fa; 法)’ and the Taoist notion ‘tao (道)’, which would both
entail the larger objective forces, natural rules and self-existing orders that make
lives and the universe possible. The Buddhist practice of ‘emptiness (kong; 空)’
is a key to humbly recognizing and reconciling with ‘dharma’ and ‘tao’, which
would enable the actor to ‘go with the flows (of dharma and tao)’. In the light of
the ‘survival the fittest’ doctrine of Social Darwinism (Li, 2013: 96–97), because
resisting the flows of these larger, ever-changing and far more powerful forces
will eventually lead to failure, self-destruction and elimination, the actor would
Fig. 5.2 Chinese party Party Poli cs in Sung Dyansty

politics in Sung dynasty
Shuo Party
Conten ons Conten ons
Luo Party Shu Party

Wang
Anshi
Conflicts
need to find a way to go with the flows in order to first survive, then achieve the
intended goal, and finally to thrive (Li, 2013: 45–46).
• Second, to accurately identify one’s situated strategic context of the competitive
struggles, the Buddhist practice of ‘emptiness’ is essential here. ‘Emptiness’
enables the actor to be able to detach from all kinds of attachments so that she/he
can possess the capability to identify and know the larger objective forces and
self-existing orders that she/he will need to pay attentions to and cope with
(Li, 2013: 29).
• Third, Li did not want to see the strategic actor to become the slave of his/her
own self-interests. Rather, Li suggested that without recognizing that humans
are inherently selfish beings, one would not be able to effectively organize
multiple competing interests into the more defensible notion of ‘collective
interests’ or ‘common good’ of the larger entities such as the entire country
(Li, 2013: 22–23 and 421).
How does the ‘thick dark’ political practice work? To answer this, Li suggested
we would need to first learn from past failures. For instance, Li reviewed the failure
experience of the Chinese Confucian reformist Wang Anshi (王安石, 1021–1086)
of the Sung Dynasty (960–1279) and suggested why his reforms failed so badly
(Fig. 5.2) (Li, 2013: 221).
Confronted by the rapid decline of the Sung Dynasty, the well-intended Wang
Anshi self-established a new political party called ‘Xin party (新黨)’, which for-
cibly pushed for a series of social, economic and political reforms to restore the
nation’s wealth, strength and glory. However, he encountered strong oppositions
from the conservatives. Conservative politics within the imperial court during that
time were already dominated by three main competing forces. They were repre-
sented by the Shuo party (朔黨), Luo party (洛黨) and Shu party (蜀黨), whose
party-members hailed from three regionally entrenched factions of the present-day
Hebei province, Luoyang city and Sichuan province, respectively. While the Luo
party and the Shu party engaged in continued conflicts, contentions were found
between the Shuo party and the other two.
As Wang’s Xin party pushed for reforms in the midst of these struggles, he
immediately found himself being caught in-between and consumed by the internal
conflicts and contentions. Therefore, none of the reforms succeeded. By contrast,
the Shuo party was able to step back, insulate from and let the struggles consume
the Luo party, the Shu party and the Xin party into mutual destruction. Eventually,
as the competing forces were significantly weakened by their own political strug-
gles, the Shuo party was able to preserve its strengths and wait for the final moment
to take control of the imperial court.
The failure of Wang Anshi’s reforms would be attributed to a major strategic
miscalculation. Instead of finding a way to go with the flows of the already existing
contentions and conflicts among the three conservative parties, he chose to establish
the Xin party and self-stood as the leading reformation force, which went against
the vested interests of the three conservative parties. By making himself a common
enemy of all the competing conservative forces, Wang’s reforms did not only end in
utter failure, but he also became a scapegoat of their bitter struggles. In short, Wang
failed because he went against the complex reality of the situated strategic context.
The ‘thick dark’ political practice has three main assumptions on human nature
and the development of political dynamics in general:
• The practical art of having a ‘thick face’ or being shameless—despite the
Confucian doctrines suggest that morality has the effect to constrain actions, in
reality, morality is often used to justify actions and their outcomes. In other
words, they were often used to construct moral high grounds and legitimacy for
the motivating interests and powers behind the actions.
• The practical existence of having a ‘dark heart’ or being ruthless—the darkness
of human nature is actually not incomprehensible. In contrast, it is conceivably
in this pattern: while the actor is inherently selfish and therefore always after
his/her interests, the actor is also bound to be power-seeking. Such formulation
of human nature accurately informs the ferocity of human competition.
• Eventual success/failure of a competing actor has to do with a complex of the
following factors: (1) the jealousy levels of other competing actors in the same
field, (2) the larger strategic agenda of the highest authority of the field and
(3) the impermanence or unpredictability within the course of development of
the field (e.g. emergency and accident). Thus, the Buddhist practice of
‘emptiness’ is the key to be agile and adaptive to these changing factors while
remain detached from one’s own desires (for power and interest) and subjective
wishes (to selectively believe in what one wishes to believe in), which may
distort one’s objective assessment of the situation (Li, 2013: 96–98).
On the one hand, to successfully accomplish a goal necessitates the cooperation
and giving-in of other interested-parties. On the other hand, the singleness and
sameness of time, space and the achievable goal would naturally render most of the
fields to be fiercely competitive. As such, an actor is not advised to act by pure
strengths and be antagonistic. She/he should adhere to the Social Darwinist wisdom
of ‘survival the fittest’. In other words, in order to minimize the risk of harm, an
actor should try best to integrate different interests of the others into a tactical
alliance. This is to create a larger allied force, which will naturally eliminate the
weaker force of the enemy.
The above exposition informs the operational gist of the Thai ‘thick dark
democracy’ in the following counts.
First, as a non-Western form of majoritarian realist politics, ‘thick dark’ political
practice rejects the hierarchical, orderly and usually top-down view of the
Confucian conceptualization of human relations, e.g. between the emperor and
officials and between the patriarch and sons. Instead, it conceives that individuals
are creative, atomistic and subversive actors who are rationally selfish and
power-seeking operating in anarchic field of competition. Bluntly put, everyone
equally desires to be the emperor.
Second, every actor is therefore subject to the same Darwinist rule of natural
selection, not excluding the emperor himself and top-ranking officials. In other
words, if the emperor or a prime minister failed to go with the flows of the
majoritarian forces but chose to go against them alone, he will naturally perish and
be expectedly outwitted by the majoritarian forces. Conflict therefore does not stem
from a lack of morality. Conflict is as natural as the competitive human nature.
Third, electoral democracy in Thailand therefore provides an opportunity for the
competing actors to seek to garner majoritarian votes and mobilize popular support
for pursuing state power. As the political actors equally desire for the sovereign
power of the Thai statehood, they are naturally in competition with the monarchy.
From the 1950s to 1990s, King Bhumibol Adulyadej gradually won the majori-
tarian support of the rural population. The introduction of electoral democracy in
the 1990s would naturally enable ambitious politicians to compete for the same
majoritarian popularity enjoyed by the king.
Fourth, Thai ‘thick dark’ democracy is therefore by nature populist. Aiming to
gather majoritarian political support from the relatively poor and often marginalized
rural population, the popularly elected prime ministers Thaksin and Yingluck
Shinawatra consistently engaged in populist mobilization during and after elections.
Populist mobilization refers to ‘any sustained, large-scale political project that
mobilizes ordinarily marginalized social sectors into publicly visible and con-
tentious political action, while articulating an anti-elite, nationalist rhetoric that
valorizes ordinary people’ (Jansen, 2011: 82).
Fifth, the Thai ‘thick dark’ democracy is a non-Western form of democratic
populism. It is a Thai-specific populist political project which engages in sustained
and large-scale political movements, mostly found during and after elections that
mobilize and valorize aggrieving actors from the rural majority into publicly visible
and contentious political action. It also formulates and implements a public policy
agenda, which challenges and intends to change the existing authority and political
relations of the ‘sakdina’ social structure and its monarchic order. As the entire Thai
establishment is embedded on the monarch’s power over the land and the organi-
zation and trading of its major economic production—rice, the most contested and
controversial public policy agenda would be the rice policy. The next section will
detail.
5.4 Thai Rice Political Economy: Historical Formation

and the Populist Policy Challenge
Based on my field research (2009–2013) in central and northern Thailand along the
Chaoprayer River, the Thai rice industry was monopolized by Sino-Thai businesses
of Teochiu/Teochew ancestry. Originally hailing from the coastal province of
Guangdong in southern China, the Teochiu ethnolinguistic group has a historical
pattern of kin-chained migration to Southeast Asia, especially in Thailand. In the past
decades, individual kinsman followed the footprints of their predecessors to migrate
to Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries to do businesses, therefore constitute
a transnational kinship-cum-business network (Akira, 1989; Chantavanich, 1997;
Hamilton & Waters, 2006). This culture-specific historical formation of Teochiu-
Chinese migration contributed to the ethnic monopoly of rice industry in the
present-day Thailand.
In the wealth of literature of Chinese business networks in Southeast Asia,
whereas scholars of the culturalist approach argues that the traditional Chinese
business ethos of hierarchy, hard work, organizational solidarity, frugality, diver-
sification of risk and financial prudence would best explain the economic success of
the Chinese businesses in Southeast Asia (e.g. Tan, 2007), proponents of the
political-economic approach argues that the Chinese business success in Southeast
Asia is made possible by establishing intricate political-economic linkages between
the Chinese businesses and the hosting state and political actors in Southeast Asia
(Gomez, 2000; Wong, 2011a).
In respect of this culturalist-Vs-political-economist dualistic debate, the complex
historical formation processes of the Sino-Thai rice business monopoly in Thailand
after the Second World War (WWII) would suggest that both the culturalist and
political-economic explanations are likely to be the second-order codetermining
variables, being intervened by a first-order independent variable—the sovereign
King Bhumibol as the structural embodiment of the ‘sakdina’ habitus. Actually, my
argument that the Thai monarch being the first-order intervening variable was
already evidently conceived in the eighteenth century Siamese political history.
5.4.1 Early Formation of the Ethnic Monopoly in the Thai

Rice Industry
In 1767, the once very powerful Siamese Kingdom of Ayutthaya (1351–1767) was
besieged and defeated by the expansionist Konbaung Dynasty of Burma in the
Burmese–Siamese War of 1765–1767. The Burmese armies burned the magnificent
Siamese capital-city of Ayutthaya (which could mean ‘the invincible city’) into
rubbles. While grieving the loss of the Siamese kingdom, the remnants of
Ayutthaya made a political leader of mixed Sino(Teochiu)-Thai ancestries, Taksin
(Chinese name: 鄭信, 1734–1782) to be their king. After successfully defeating and
5.4 Thai Rice Political Economy … 129
driving away the Burmese armies, King Taksin (1767–1782) claimed back the
territories of the Ayutthaya Kingdom from the Burmese hands. He founded the
Thonburi Kingdom of Siam (1768–1782) along the Chaopraya River. During his
reign, King Taksin launched successful conquests to extend the Siamese territories
by absorbing the Lanna Kingdom of northern Thailand, and annexing lands in Laos
and Cambodia (Xu, 2007: 16–20).
In order to revive the devastated Siamese economy after the Burmese occupa-
tion, King Taksin delegated a special envoy to the Chinese empire of Qing to
negotiate for trade ties and economic benefits. Also troubled by the ambitious
Burmese invaders who launched simultaneous attacks against Qing’s south-western
frontiers, the Qing court granted trade supports and economic aids to Siam. At
behest of the imperial Qing authority, King Taksin was able to mobilize fleets of
Chinese trade-junks from the Teochiu locales in southern China, where his paternal
ancestry and Chinese kinsmen were traced. In Siam, King Taksin granted these
Teochiu-Chinese migrant-traders special concessions and policy privileges to
conduct agricultural, trade and economic activities in Siam. The favourable policy
treatments further attracted waves of Teochiu migrations to Thailand (Wong, 2010).
Selected Teochiu-Chinese leaders were then absorbed as the ‘Thai royal Chinese’
(Thai: jin luang), who pledged loyalty to the Thai monarchy (Wong, 2010; Xu,
2007: 21–23).
5.4.2 Post- Second World War Ethnic Division of Labour

and Thai National Security
After Second World War, the main rice business networks in central, northern and
north-eastern Thailand are dominated by the ethnic Teochiu Sino-Thais. In southern
Thailand where the rubber plantations constitute the main agricultural economy,
another Sino-Thai ethnolinguistic group, the Hokkiens (originated from southern
Fujian province of China) are believed to hold the economic lifelines. Despite their
ethnolinguistic differences, their finances both sustained and were supported by the
capital-rich Sino-Thai banking and financial system, which was gradually devel-
oped and established in the Chinatown of Bangkok (i.e. Yaowarat) before and after
Second World War (Akira, 1989; Brown, 1988; Hewison, 1988; Skinner, 1957;
Yoshihara, 1994).
Against such background, in post-Cold War Thailand, the Teochiu-Thai
agro-businesses gradually controlled the loan-making, rice-buying, rice-milling
and rice-selling processes, effectively connecting the demand-supply routes from
the farm-gates to the markets (Auansakul, 1994). Shortly after Second World War,
it was believed that among the rice-trading communities in central Thailand that
another Sino-Thai ethnolinguistic group, the Hainanese-Thais, who originally
hailed from the Hainan province of southern China once controlled the rice-milling
technologies of ‘firing dragon-stone’ (Chinese: 火礱; Teochiu: hea-ling). Because
the Teochiu gradually established their ethnic monopoly in Thai rice industry, the
Hainanese and Teochiu business communities had to consent an ethnic division of
labour. As the Hainanese transferred their rice-milling technologies to the
logging/lumber technologies of ‘firing saws’ (Chinese: 火鋸; Teochiu: hea-ki), they
gradually established their monopoly in the Thai timber industry. Given the fact that
the Hainanese-Thai businesses were able to penetrate into forested frontiers and
reach isolated communities, they naturally became the key providers of intelligence
and collaborators in stabilizing the frontiers with the Thai state authority. The
Teochiu rice-traders gradually took over the rice-milling technologies from the
Hainanese millers, which allowed them to monopolize the Thai rice industry
(Wong, 2010).
Thai economist Sompop Manarungsan (1989) suggested that such ethnic divi-
sion of labour was of the necessity to the Thai national security, especially in
northern and north-eastern Thailand where cross-border conflicts (e.g. in the
China/Lao/Myanmar bordered Golden Triangle region) and communist insurgen-
cies (which involved China, the Soviet Union and Vietnam) posed significant
threats after Second World War. Under King Bhumibol, the Teochiu-Thai busi-
nesses and Hainanese-Thai businesses in central, northern and north-eastern
Thailand were identified as the key business partners of the Thai government’s local
campaigns to defend national borders, pacify peasant unrests and counter-
insurgency (Saiyud, 1986).
For instance, the Teochiu-Thai rice-traders were important contributors to the
construction projects of an extensive irrigation and dam systems in northern and
north-eastern Thailand. Under the ‘State Irrigation Act’, a large complex of
‘Tributary Irrigation System’ was engineered by the various administrations under
King Bhumibol.17 The State Irrigation Act was first legislated in 1942. From the
1950s to 1980s, it was then successfully re-legislated several times to give national
agencies more authorities and accesses to conduct irrigation-related works through
the local governments and with the local communities (Wong, 2011b).18 While
these irrigation infrastructures were very instrumental in developing the rural
economy, they also provided plenty state-business collaborative opportunities for
the Sino-Thais to establish closer linkages with the Bhumibol monarchy and the
state agencies, which gradually enhanced their ethnic Chinese monopoly on the
Thai rice industry.
17
State Irrigation Act (B.E. 2485 [1946]). English source: Thailand Law Forum (www.thai-
landlawforum.com). Date of document: 1 February 2010.
18
Section 17, Chapter III, State Irrigation Act (B.E. 2485 [1946]). English source: Thailand Law
Forum (www.thailandlawforum.com). Date of document: 1 February 2010.
5.4.3 Rise of Populist Democracy and Rice Policy Change

Since the 1990s
However, this monarch-endorsed Sino-Thai rice monopoly, its associated

political-economic order and policy arrangements were significantly challenged by
the Chiang Mai-hailed populist politician-cum-businessman Thaksin Shinawatra,
who was firstly elected to be the prime minister in 2001 and ousted by a military
coup in 2006. The Shinawatra group’s challenge to the monarch-centric estab-
lishment continued to take effect when Mr Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra
was successfully elected as the prime minister in 2011, and again was ousted by a
coup in 2014. During the two administrations of the Shinawatra family, Thai rice
policy experienced substantial changes, thus significantly impacting upon the
Sino-Thai rice industry. To understand how the Shinawatra group attempted to
change the political-economic order which King Bhumibol, the Thai state and the
Sino-Thai agro-businesses coestablished, it is important to answer how the Thai rice
industry operated before and after the Shinawatra took power in 2006 and 2011.
Although Thaksin Shinawatra and Yingluck Shinawatra were two separate
administrations, their rice policies share more similarities than differences.
How did the Thai rice industry operate before and after the two Shinawatra
administrations? Based on my field research conducted from 2009 to 2013 in the
largest rice-producing Thai province of Nakhon Sawan and its highest yielding
neighbouring rice-producing provinces in central and northern Thailand (Figs. 5.3,
5.4 and 5.5) (Johnston, 1975), there are several key operational features and major
changes in the Thai rice industry before and after the Shinawatra group were in
power.
Total Major Rice ProducƟon (5-year:

2005/06 - 2009/10)
7000.000 Nakhon Sawan
Sum of ProducƟon (1,000 tons)
Surin
6000.000
Nakhon Ratchasima
5000.000 Ubon Ratchathani
4000.000 Buri Ram

Roi Et
3000.000
Suphan Buri
2000.000 Si Sa Ket
1000.000 Phichit
Khon Kaen
0.000
Fig. 5.3 Total rice production of the largest rice-producing Thai Provinces (2005–2010). Source
of data Thai Government Statistics
Fig. 5.4 Productivity of major rice crop in Nakhon Sawan Province (1974–2009). Source of data
Thai Government Statistics
Major Rice Crop Average Yield

700.00
600.00
500.00
Yield (per rai/kg)
400.00
Northern Region
300.00
North-Eastern Region
200.00 Central Plain Region
100.00 Southern Region
0.00
1974/75
1977/78
1980/81
1983/84
1986/87
1989/90
1992/93
1995/96
1998/99
2001/02
2004/05
2007/08
Fig. 5.5 Major rice crop average yield by region in Thailand (1974–2008). Source of data Thai
Government Statistics
5.4.3.1 Rice Policy Before 2000
In the first place, since the restoration of the Siamese Kingdom of Thonburi under
King Taksin, ensuring Thai monarchic authorities continued to permit and attract
the Teochiu-Chinese merchant-migrants from China to invest in and trade agri-
cultural products in Thailand. The highly organized Teochiu-Thai business com-
munity formed themselves into a centripetal constellation of layered networks of
rice-traders radiating from the royal capital to the main provincial cities; then from
the provincial cities to smaller towns; and finally from smaller towns to the local
rice-farming villages (Wongtada, 1986). Mediated by the parallel national-to-local
institutions of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, lineage and hometown asso-
ciations, Chinese banks and loan-giving institutions, temples, cemeteries and fun-
eral houses, and such Chinese charitable associations as hospitals and schools, a
hierarchical complex of Sino-Thai-networked rice-traders are being despatched
from the royal capital down to the villages (Xu, 2007: 87).
In the rice-growing villages I visited, it was not uncommon to find small-size
grain-traders and money-lenders of ethnic Chinese ancestry. From the bigger
traders/millers to the smaller traders/millers and from the smaller traders/millers to
the rice-farmers, the traders/millers lend financial loans to the borrowers, who can
be another trader/miller or a rice-farmer. The loan-borrower would in turn agree to
sell their rice products or farm-gate harvests to the lenders at a pre-agreed price of
lower-than-market-price level. After gathering all the rice from the borrowers, the
trader as lender would normally keep the rice in storage and wait for the desired
timing when the rice-buying market price would increase. They would then sell the
rice when the offered buying price would meet the desired profit-making target
(Auansakul, 1994; Dawe, Moya, Casiwan, & Cabling, 2008).
In Teochiu-Thai language, this strategy is known as the ‘all-hooking rule’ (Thai:
tuk-diao; Chinese: 全釣律). In other words, by giving loans to the rice-farmers in
contractual terms, the rice-farmers were indebted to the moneylenders (mainly
traders and millers) and therefore were obliged to sell all their rice during the
harvest time in order to pay the debts. Gradually, the entire kingdom was covered
by an extensive fishnet of hooks of loans, which was designed to effectively gather
all the rice harvests in entirety (Wong, 2012). Naturally, the Sino-Thai rice-traders
of the biggest volume of capitals would be able to gather most of the rice harvests in
the country (Ishii, 1978; Johnston, 1975).
From the Cold War-period militarist regimes to the post-Cold War democratic
regimes, the Sino(Teochiu)-Thai businessman-cum-politician Kamnang Song
(English: Headman/Mayor Song)19 gradually established the nationally known
‘Mayor Song’s Rice Market/Port’ (Thai: Tar Khao Kamnang Song) in Nakhon
Sawan province. His rice port gradually emerged as the leading coalitional
price-coordinating centre of the major rice-traders in Thailand until Thaksin
Shinawatra became prime minister in 2001 (Vanichjakvong, 2002; Wong, 2012).
Mainly due to his growing influence and reputation in the Thai rice industry,
Kamnang Song was twice appointed to be a senator (1989–1991; 1996–2000) by
the former prime ministers General Chartchai Choonhavan (1988–1991) and
Barnhan Silpa-Archa (1995–1996).20
19
Kamnang Song’s original Thai and Chinese names are ‘Song Ongchaiwatana’ and ‘翁樹松’,
respectively. Sources: (1) Individual interview with Kamnang Song in his residence in Bangkok,
Thailand. 12 May 2012.
20
Source: (1) Individual interview with Kamnang Song in his residence in Bangkok, Thailand.
13 May 2012. (2) Nadon, Somwong (1987). ‘Kamnang Song Aungchaiwattana’ (In Thai lan-
guage). Business Leader (ผู้นำธุรกิจ). Volume 1.7.
Under the development of the Teochiu-Thai agribusinesses, there are two main
categories of Thai rice: white rice and jasmine rice. The first is ‘white rice’ (Thai:
khao suai), which is less expensive than the jasmine rice. Apart from being con-
sumed domestically and daily by the Thais, white rice is exported to foreign
countries in Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia. White rice can be
harvested two to three times a year and is widely grown in central and northern
Thailand, especially along the Chaopraya River.
The second category is ‘jasmine rice’ (Thai: khao hom mali), which is more
expensive and can be harvested one to two times a year. Thai jasmine rice is, however,
more suitably grown in the dryer lands of north-eastern Thailand, an area commonly
known as ‘Isan’ in Thailand. Considering that the unique Isan soil composition can
produce the Thai jasmine rice of chewy stickiness and special fragrance, King
Bhumibol therefore encouraged the farmers and Sino-Thai businesses in
north-eastern Thailand to organize to grow more jasmine rice with governmental and
technological supports. It is regarded that the isolated and poor populations in the
Cambodia-bordering provinces of Buriram, Surin and Srisaket were significantly
uplifted because of King Bhumibol’s introduction of the jasmine rice industry. Such
efforts were also able to pacify social unrests among the poor farmers, therefore
effectively reduced the chance for the communist guerrillas to launch insurgency in
this deprived region. From the 1970s to 2010s, the north-eastern region consistently
recorded to be the most productive region in major rice crop (Fig. 5.6).
Due to decades of state-initiated efforts that involved the Sino-Thais and the
rural populations, Thailand gradually develops the global branding of ‘Thai pre-
mium jasmine rice’, which is exported to the overseas markets in East Asia, Europe
and North America. In particular, the relatively expensive jasmine rice is gradually
welcomed by the affluent Chinese consumers in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and
Southeast Asia, where ethnic Teochiu-Chinese also actively engage in rice-trading
businesses, thus forming a transnational rice-trading network in East Asia (Zheng &
Wong, 2005, 2009, 2010).
After the Cold War, through developing the export-led rice industry in the rural
areas, an export-led Thai national economy was also gradually developed under
King Bhumibol (Figs. 5.7 and 5.8) (Ganjanapan, 1984; Kruavan, 1986). These
significant economic developments were made possible through the close
Fig. 5.6 Thai major rice crop production by region (1974–2010). Source of data Thai
Government Statistics
Fig. 5.7 Thai rice exports (1979–1999). Source Thai Government Statistics
Fig. 5.8 Total exports of Thailand (1966–2008). Source of data Thai Government Statistics
collaboration between the Thai state and the Sino-Thai businesses (Yano, 1978).
King Bhumibol made effective use of the Sino-Thai economic organization accu-
mulated since King Taksin enabled such arrangement possible. This would confirm
that the sovereign king as the intervening variable has been effecting over the
ethno-cultural and political-economic workings of the Sino-Thai businesses in
Thailand.
5.4.3.2 Rice Policy After 2000
Shortly after Thaksin Shinawatra was elected as prime minister in 2001, noticing
that the rice price in Bangkok had been reflected by the rice price reported by
‘Mayor Song’s Rice Port/Market’ (Thai: Tar Khao Kamnang Song) in Nakhon
Sawan province, Thaksin realized that Mayor Song’s rice business coalition had
controlled the rice price of the country. Considering the reality that the national rice
industry was controlled by the powerful rice business coalition and the global trend
that there were rising demands for Thai rice, Thaksin positioned the Thai rice
industry was of essential strategic value for national economic development.
Plans to nationalize the rice industry from the private sector were devised and
implemented. In order to consolidate his power among the rural populations,
Thaksin launched a populist electoral campaign which promises the increase of the
farm-gate rice-buying price so that the rice-farmers could earn more money and
improve their living standards. After Thaksin won the election and became the
prime minister in 2001, this populist platform was immediately implemented as a
popular rice policy among the farmers, which was widely known as the ‘rice
mortgage system’ or ‘rice pledging scheme’. What did this new policy entail?
In the first place, in order to liberate the rice industry from the monopolistic
control of a group of private agro-businesses and politicians associated with the
‘Mayor Song’s Rice Port’, it required that all rice-farmers, rice-traders and
rice-millers in the provinces and the capital to register themselves with the gov-
ernment. Registered rice-traders and rice-millers were then given governmental
loans to buy rice from the farmers at an instructed price level much higher than the
one listed by ‘Mayor Song’s Rice Port’ in Nakhon Sawan province. This caused
most rice farmers to sell their rice products to the registered rice-traders and
rice-millers, which significantly undermined the monopolistic influence of Mayor
Song’s Rice Port over the rice industry. Furthermore, the rice mortgage system then
endorsed the registered rice-traders and rice-millers to sell their rice products to the
domestic and overseas customers at a higher selling price. In doing so, the gov-
ernment, the registered rice-traders and rice-millers agreed to share the profits in
advance.
This new rice policy achieved a double-edged sword effect. On the one hand, the
rice-farmers deflected from their original loan-lenders (rice-traders and rice-millers)
and were absorbed by the government’s new policy into the means of economic
production. The Thai government suddenly found itself to be the largest rice-trader
in the country, which replaced and succeeded the ‘Mayor Song’s Rice Port’. The
new government-business coalition led by the Thaksin administration was also
made possible by gaining the support from the largest agro-food company in
Thailand, Charoen Pokphand Group (CP) (Wong, Chongstitvatana, & Yue, 2012).
On the other hand, the rice mortgage system did not only significantly increase
the productivity and price of Thai rice (Fig. 5.9), but it also helped Thaksin
Shinawatra to win the votes and political support from the rural majority, which
enabled him to organize the ‘red-shirt’ protestors as a political force, in contrast to
the royalist ‘yellow-shirt’ protestors.
Divisive, confrontational and populist politics started to emerge from 2001 to
2014 when the Thaksin Shinawatra and Yingluck Shinawatra were elected the
prime ministers. In particular, the ‘red-shirts’ showed allegiance to the Shinawatra
group and associated political parties. They were mainly composed of the
marginalized, aggrieving and disaffected rural groups, especially the rice farmers in
Major & Second Rice Crop

35,000 12,000.00
Farm Price (baht per ton)

ProducƟon (1,000 tons)
30,000 10,000.00
25,000
8,000.00
20,000
6,000.00
15,000
4,000.00
10,000
5,000 2,000.00
- -
1974/75
1976/77
1978/79
1980/81
1982/83
1984/85
1986/87
1988/89
1990/91
1992/93
1994/95
1996/97
1998/99
2000/01
2002/03
2004/05
2006/07
2008/09
Year
Produc on (1,000 tons) Farm Price (baht per ton)
Fig. 5.9 Thai rice total production and farm price change (1974–2009). Source Thai Government
Statistics
the northern and north-eastern Thailand. The ‘yellow-shirts’ showed allegiance to

the opposition party—the Democratic Party—and were perceived to be loyal to the
monarchy. They were mainly joined by the affected urban middle-class and rural
folks from southern Thailand. Unlike northern and north-eastern Thailand where
rice-farming constituted the main economic activity, southern Thailand’s economy
largely relied on rubber plantations, which operated in a slightly different political
economy from rice. It was also a traditional political stronghold of the Democratic
Party. Populist divisions were then created along the fault-lines of ‘rural versus
urban’, ‘poor versus middle class’ and ‘north versus south’, especially in the
mobilization of protests, which led to violent clashes.
The new rice policy seemed to serve well the populist purpose to make Thaksin
Shinawatra a popular and vote-attracting political figure in the rural areas of
northern and north-eastern Thailand. His popularity was sometimes perceived to
rival King Bhumibol. That was the main reason why the Thai conservative forces
felt threatened by the new rice policy and its populist orientation.
Thaksin’s populist rice policy was perceived to go against and undermine the
vested interests of the stakeholders and beneficiaries of the ‘Mayor Song’s Rice
Port’ conglomerate, which included some leading military generals, aristocrats,
landlords, politicians, bureaucrats, bankers and agribusinesses. In other words, as
the Cold War formation of the ‘Mayor Song’s Rice Port’ conglomerate did not
contradict the ‘sakdina’ structured order, the fact that it defended and conserved
‘sakdina’ contributed to its monopolistic status blessed by the monarchy. As a
result, Thaksin’s rice mortgage system did not only challenge, undermine and erode
the political-economic monopoly and symbolic supremacy of ‘Mayor Song’s Rice
Port’ in Thai rice industry, it also posed a challenge and generated considerable
pressures upon the ‘sakdina’ structure as if the king’s ‘power over the land’ was
pressed to be distributed back to the rural farmer-majority. It was therefore
unsurprising that a bloodless military coup was staged in 2006 wherein Prime
Minister Thaksin was ousted from power. Despite Thaksin’s sister Yingluck was
elected the prime minister in 2011, months after relaunching the populist rice
policy, she was ousted by a bloodless coup in 2014. How does the Thai authority
craft bloodless coup? What are the techniques of bloodless coup?
The sophisticated technique of engineering a bloodless coup is quite unique in
Thailand. In the following section, using the 2014 coup as an example, I will
illustrate how to launch a bloodless coup. I will argue that the combination of
judicial and military coups in Thailand has been an essential technique for the king
to exercise sovereign power to chaperon populist democratic politics and therefore
preserve the sakdina structured order.
5.5 Bloodless Coup: Technique of Chaperoning Thai

Populist Democracy
5.5.1 Background of the 2014 Coup
From November 2013 to May 2014, the continued political stalemate between the
ruling Pheu Thai Party and the opposition Democratic Party caused a number of
violent clashes between the pro-Shinawatra ‘red-shirt’ protestors and the loyalist
‘yellow-shirt’ protestors in and beyond Bangkok. The protest leader of the
‘yellow-shirt’ opposition camp was Suthep Thaugsuban, a member of the
Democratic Party and a former deputy prime minister (2008–2011). While the
Yingluck Shinawatra administration’s populist rice policy was widely welcomed in
the rural areas and gained popular support from the rural voters in northern and
north-eastern Thailand, the urban middle class and professionals complained about
the problems of continued rice price hike, inflation and rising costs of living.
As a populist tactic, Suthep publicly demanded Prime Minister Yingluck to step
down. He also openly advocated the Yingluck administration to be replaced by a
temporary care-taking government chaperoned by a non-democratically appointed
‘People’s Council’, which was mainly composed of the Thai middle class and
professionals. Suthep was therefore able to attract the middle class and profes-
sionals in Bangkok to join his ‘yellow-shirt’ protest teams. In response, Pheu Thai
Party organized the ‘red-shirt’ protesters and mobilized them from the rural areas to
Bangkok to protest against Suthep and the ‘yellow-shirt’ royalists.
After several violent clashes, the Thai military eventually stepped in and initiated
a military coup in mid-2014, which was believed to be silently endorsed by King
5.5 Bloodless Coup: Technique of Chaperoning Thai Populist Democracy 139
Bhumibol (Wong et al., 2012). The military took over the government and imposed
a curfew. Public meetings such as demonstration and protest were banned. The
military was assigned to patrol for the public safety and social order. Leaders from
the ruling and opposition parties were persecuted, including Prime Minister
Yingluck Shinawatra. Although Yingluck was temporarily released, the parliament
was dissolved. With the aim to re-draft the constitution and remake the political
order for Thailand, the military organized a junta to govern the country, known as
the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO).
5.5.2 Two Phases of Thai Coups
The 2014 coup was arguably the twelfth coup since King Bhumibol resumed royal
power after Second World War (Chen, 2009). The dozen of coups may be cate-
gorized into two phases. The first phase spanned from the 1950s to the 1980s.
During the Cold War, military coups were launched to bring order onto the political
instability caused by communist insurgency and left-wing social movements. In the
midst of social conflicts, the military took over government and imposed martial
laws to restore public order.
The Second phase spanned from 1990 to 2010. Thanks to the nation-wide
democratization which formally instituted electoral politics in the early 1990s,
populist forces emerged from the local level where they based their powers on the
local resource-based political economy. These forces competed for the prime
ministership and parliamentary seats under the democratic constitutional monarchy.
The most dominant two forces were: (1) the southern Thailand-based Democratic
Party, and (2) the northern Thailand-based Shinawatra group.
Reflected by the 2011 electoral results (Fig. 5.10), the Democratic Party won
majority votes in the southern region whereas the Pheu Thai Party won majority
votes in northern and north-eastern regions. Democratic Party’s political machinery
relied upon the rich resources of the rubber plantations in the southern Thailand.
The Shinawatra group’s rise was strongly related with the rich rice resources in
northern and north-eastern Thailand. Rubber and rice therefore constituted the
material bases for the votes and mobilization machinery that the two parties were
based. The two parties grew strongly over the years and therefore constituted the
north–south divide and caused the stand-offs between the ‘red-shirt’ and
‘yellow-shirt’ protesters (Wong & Chongstitvatana, 2014b).
Coups in this second phase of democratization were of two layers. On the
surface, they were dictatorial interventions by the military. Deep under, the ‘sak-
dina’ structure was actually reacting to cope with the populist pressures demanding
for political reform and socio-economic structural change in favour of the
marginalized and aggrieving groups in the rice-producing rural areas.
Fig. 5.10 Thailand’s 2011 election results. Source of image STRATFOR Enterprises LLC (2013).
Source ‘Thailand’s 2011 Election Result’. Stratfor Media Center. 9 December 2013. URL: https://
www.stratfor.com/image/thailands-2011-election-result (accessed on 20 December 2016). The
image is republished with permission of Stratfor wherein the following code was provided on the
access date: <a href=“https://www.stratfor.com/image/thailands-2011-election-result”>Thailand’s
2011 Election Result</a> is republished with permission of Stratfor
5.5.3 ‘Law/Force Indistinction’ as the Gist of German Coup

Technique
Thai Constitutional Court was modelled after the German Constitutional Court
model, which had a tendency of countering majoritarian politics (Merieau, 2016:
451). Given its German roots, I shall use the German jurist Carl Schmitt’s political
theory to identify an exposition of coup technique.
After the World War I, the defeated Germany had to face harsh treaties and the
economic problems of the Great Depression. The German intelligentsia strived to
find a solution to revive the nation. Under such currents, the Catholic German jurist
Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) chose to radically discard the pursuits for liberalism, the
culture of rational deliberations and representative government in parliamentary
democracy. Instead, he pursued the theory and practice of sovereignty, statism and
decisionism which he became a member of the Nazi party (Schmitt, 2004[1934]:

16–19). As his political and legal theories resonated and indirectly endorsed the rise
and ideologies of Nazism between the two world wars, he was controversially
named as ‘godfather of Nazi philosophy’ (Schmitt, 1988[1923]: 5–10). However,
his theory of sovereignty is instructive for teasing out the technique of coup d’état
in contemporary Thailand.
Schmitt considered the constitution was a different matter from the constitutional
laws. The former was a crystallized collective and unified will of the individuals of
the German state. The latter was the legal doctrines and written clauses of the
constitution (Schmitt, 2008[1928]: 80). When the constitution is threatened, the
constitutional laws would be suspended temporarily. It was in such specific time
and space where the constitutional laws were suspended, the national security
forces (who monopolize the use of coercive violence such as the police and mili-
tary) would intervene, step in and take control of the situation. They would use pure
force to take over the state apparatus as dictator to maintain or remake the social
order. The usual means include declaring the state of emergency, imposing curfew
and enforcing martial laws.
Schmitt considered there were two forms of dictatorship: commissarial dicta-
torship and sovereign dictatorship. Their common gist is to use force to replace the
laws, and to use force to regenerate the legal order. Such intricate interactions
between force and laws happened in the ‘state of exception’ where the practice of
‘law/force indistinction’ is essential (Agamben, 2005). Commissarial dictatorship
suggests that the coup plotters already suspended to apply the state laws but they
are still defending them by pure force. Sovereign dictatorship suggests that the coup
plotters already recognized the old constitution was nullified while the new con-
stitution is still being drafted. Although the state laws are still being used and
applied, they are defended by the legitimate use of force. Whereas the two dicta-
torships operate differently, they both suggest that the combined use of law and
force (viz. law/force distinction) is the ultimate power or means to defend the
constitution as the collective will of the national people (Agamben, 1998; Schmitt,
1921).
Thailand adopts the system of monarchic constitutional democracy. The
democratic political system had to be constitutionalized by the king in order for the
government to implement electoral politics. Democratic powers sourced from the
constitution, and the constitution had to be endorsed and signed off by the king. As
a result, the ultimate holder of Thai national sovereignty was the king. As the
sovereign, after experiencing a dozen of coups, King Bhumibol, with his entrusted
agents of the judiciary and the military, had already accumulated a set of sophis-
ticated techniques of launching coup d’état. In stark contrast to most of the bloody
and violent coups in the developing world which usually led to civil wars (Decalo,
1976; Kieh & Agbese, 2004; Onwudiwe, 2004; Wong, 2013a; 2016a: Chap. 2),
coups in Thailand were relatively bloodless and therefore may serve as a model of
transitional politics for the countries in the Global South.
5.5.4 Technique of Bloodless Coup: Rotation of Judicial

Coup and Military Coup
In November 2013, the opposition leader Suthep Thaugsuban of the Democratic

Party organized the urban middle class and professionals as well as the
‘yellow-shirts’ to street protests. They proposed to use the non-democratically
formed ‘People’s Council’ to replace the democratically elected Prime Minister
Yingluck Shinawatra and parliamentarians. Although such move openly challenged
the constitutional laws, because the ruling Pheu Thai Party’s populist policy (e.g.
rice policy) was criticized to be biased towards the interests of the rural population,
Suthep received the implicit support from the conservative forces (Wong, 2014b).
5.5.4.1 Step I: Judicial Coup
The first step is to initiate a judicial coup. The gist of it is to use such legal means as
the Constitutional Court to issue a ruling to nullify the government’s authority in
using the legitimate use of physical force (normally wielded by the security forces;
police and military).
In December 2013, Prime Minister Yingluck was under pressure and therefore
dissolved the parliament. She organized a caretaker government and prepared to
hold a re-election. However, the re-election was not successfully held in February
2014 because the opposition boycotted it. Near the time when another re-election
was planned to be held in May 2014, based on a legal verdict on the alleged ‘abuse
of power’ in Prime Minister Yingluck’s handling of the rice policy, the
Constitutional Court ruled that the caretaker government had no authority over the
national security forces. Such judicial ruling actually took away the care-taker
government’s authority in commanding the police force. Yingluck’s government
formally lost the monopoly of the legitimate use of force (Wong, 2014b).
A judicial coup is intended to create a vacuum of power so that the security
forces can step in and take over the government.
5.5.4.2 Step II: Military Coup
When the Yingluck’s caretaker government officially lost the legal and executive
authority over the police force as prescribed by the constitution, the military
immediately intervened and took over the government. This started the process of a
‘military coup’, which is step two.
A military coup is intended to fill the power vacuum created by the judicial
coup. As the caretaker government was no longer able to exercise the monopolistic
legitimate use of physical force, it failed to ensure public safety and maintain social
order. The sovereign—King Bhumibol—would naturally have to step in and
endorse the military to fill this power vacuum by taking control of the government.
The junta used pure force to temporarily suspend the nullified constitutional laws so
that a new constitution would be re-drafted and a new political order would be
established later (Wong, 2014b).
In this regard, King Bhumibol was the de facto sovereign who can operate both
inside and outside the judicial realm and the security apparatus. He wielded both the
laws and the force and rotationally deployed them at his own discretion. As the
sovereign of the Thai state, King Bhumibol had effective control over the judiciary
and the military—two essential instruments of sovereign power. In other words, the
combined and rotational uses of the judicial coup and the military coup constitute
the essential technique of sovereign power for the Thai monarch to chaperon
populist democracy. In doing so, the ‘sakdina’ structured order is conserved and
perpetuated.
5.6 Conclusion
This chapter has substantiated the main argument that King Bhumibol’s restoration
of the royal power over the military and the judiciary was essential for him to
become the de facto sovereign of Thailand. The success of re-establishing his royal
sovereignty was made possible by the Thai culture-specific way that the
deep-seated ‘sakdina’ structure had to be preserved and defended.
I argued that this Thai technique of conservative sovereign power must be
attested against the fact whether the king was able to master the art of rotating the
combined techniques of plotting and executing judicial coup and military coup in
political crisis.
King Bhumibol is proved in this chapter that he did not only manage to keep
Thailand intact, but he was also able to lead Thailand thriving by developing the
Sino-Thai dominated rice industry and absorbed them into his instrument of state
rule. During the Cold War, King Bhumibol went with the contradictory flows of
China-backed communist insurgency and US-backed militarist counter-insurgency.
He was able to collaborate with and gradually absorbed the Thai military under his
royal rule. By introducing social and economic development programmes in the rural
areas, he succeeded in making Thailand to become the largest rice granary in the
world. This earned the Thai monarchy the popular support and legitimacy among the
rural populations. In the turbulent times of social conflict during the military rule,
King Bhumibol acted as an arbitrator to settle disputes and disagreements, for which
he further uplifted the royal power over the military and the opposition.
After the Cold War, Thailand adopted democratic electoral politics in the 1990s.
Populist forces emerged and took advantage of the electoral system. Based on their
local resource-based political economy, they gained popularity at the local level and
established national legitimacy. The rise of the former Prime Ministers Thaksin
Shinawatra and Yingluck Shinawatra was perhaps the most notable contemporary
Thai populist political force. From the 2000s to 2010s, the two Shinawatra
administrations implemented the populist rice policies, which consolidated their
own power bases and political machineries in the northern and north-eastern
Thailand. As electoral democracy continued to fuse with populist politics, the
Shinawatra group generated considerable pressures upon the ‘sakdina’ structured
order and posed significant challenges to undermine the supremacy of the net-
worked monarchy which consists of the conservative forces and the associated elite
who defended the ‘sakdina’ order.
Using the German-modelled Constitutional Court as an instrument for plotting
and executing the judicial coup, from 2013 to 2014, the networked monarchy was
able to engineer a bloodless military coup to oust Prime Minister Yingluck and take
over the government. As the August 2016 referendum voted in favour of a con-
stitutional change in which the military and the judiciary will have more control
over the parliament and the future elected prime ministers, despite King Bhumibol
died in October 2016 and the junta promised to hold a general election in 2017, I
believe that the monarch-centric ‘sakdina’ structured order as the habitus of
Thailand as an Asian riverine small power will continue to be its primary source of
the political, economic and religious powers, in which Thailand’s political stability
has been historically embedded and its democratic future will be chaperoned.
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Yano, T. (1978). Political structure of a “rice-growing state”. In Y. Ishii (Ed.), Thailand: A
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Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (H.K.) Co., Ltd.
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Zheng, W. T. V., & Wong, S.-l. (2010). A thought on a Hong Kong Chaozhou rice merchant’s
Thai rice network (In Chinese). Asia-Pacific Forum, 47(March 2010), 87–105.
Chapter 6
Practicing People’s Diplomacy Over
Disputed Waters: Peaceable Intervention
Across the South China Sea
Abstract What do I mean by ‘people’s diplomacy’? As a theory of practice of

international peace, how could the ‘people’s diplomacy’ complement the
pre-Second World War theories of geopolitics? How to practice ‘people’s diplo-
macy’ in the context of China–Philippines dispute over the South China Sea? What
would be the significance of studying Philippine geopolitics? What are the
anthropological roots and culture-specifics of contemporary Philippine strategic
culture? How to de-escalate international tensions in the South China Sea? This
chapter is an attempt to answer these questions.
Keywords Archipelagic power

China–Philippines relations
European and

Austronesian strategic cultures People’s diplomacy The Scarborough Shoal

2012 stand-off South China sea Strategic agency
6.1 Introduction
In Chap. 4, in respect of the existing scholarships, while I develop an alternative

model of strategic culture (see especially Chap. 4: Fig. 4.3), I highlight a few
important questions to be examined when studying strategic culture:
1. Who generates the strategic culture concerned?
2. What is its specific content and what are the other competing strategic cultures
generated?
3. Why is a strategic culture selectively adopted by the state?
These questions highlighted the salience of strategic agency as an essential
concept in studying strategic culture and practicing small power politics.
In general, strategic agency refers to the creative capacity of the individual actor
in generating alternative, if not new, strategic moves. One’s strategic agency would
become more active when one is confronted by an array of complex,
objective-structural strategic constraints, which compel him/her to devise innova-
tive resolution to enhance the survival of oneself and others. The dualism between

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6563-7_6
150 6 Practicing People’s Diplomacy Over Disputed Waters …
‘strategic culture’ and ‘strategic behaviours’ has proved to be useful. It helps to

understand the circulatory relationships between two dualistic entities: (1) the
objective-structural-institutional constraints that reproduce the strategic culture and
(2) the (inter)-subjective-mental processes, actions, meanings and calculations that
either produce new or reproduce existing strategic culture(s).
In operational definition, strategic agency would refer to the conscious efforts
and innovative acts of the strategist as an agent, who is both a creator of changes
and a creature of the already-given circumstances in the inter-state affairs. Strategic
agency can be productive and reproductive. To say it is productive is to suggest that
a strategist-actor can inventively produce alternative, if not new, strategic ideation
or practice with an intended tendency to alter existing power relations and authority
structure as well as the given conditions of the international relations and order.
Second, a strategist-actor would deliberately or otherwise reproduce an existing or
old strategic culture resultant of either the structural-institutional constraints or
conscious consideration calculation. In actual practice, nonetheless, these two types
of strategic agency are not mutually exclusive; they can coexist. As a result, there is
still a need to identify an empirically grounded henceforth more concrete forms of
strategic agency.
To fill this knowledge gap, this chapter aims to achieve two goals. In the first
place, through studying three competing strategic cultures in pre-Second World
War England and Germany, I will argue that Rene Girard’s mimetic theory is a
concrete form of strategic agency which informs how international wars and deadly
conflicts were mimetically generated (Girard, 2005; Kirwan, 2004; Thomas, 2014).
Secondly, in view of this war/conflict-driven strategic agency, I will argue for a
peace-oriented strategic agency for which international conflict may be prevented.
Its gist is to generate peaceable, if not pacifist, strategic cultures originated from
domains outside the realm of the state, such as the public sphere, civil society and
the church. I will use the territorial dispute over the Scarborough Shoal in the South
China Sea1 between China and the Philippines since 2012 as a case study. My goals
in the case study are (1) to establish that the Philippines as a new type of geopo-
litical power and (2) to illustrate how to make peace with such geopolitical power.
6.2 Mimesis in Pre-Second World War German Strategic

Culture
6.2.1 First Model/Rival: Halford Mackinder’s English

School of Geopolitics
Before the First World War, one saw the twilight of the colonial world order. The
cross-disciplinary field of geopolitics emerged and received considerable
1
Since the presidency of Benigno Aquino III (2010–2016), the Philippine government has called
the South China Sea as the ‘West Philippine Sea’.
6.2 Mimesis in Pre-Second World War German Strategic Culture 151
international attentions from European researchers and strategic practitioners as

well as policy-makers of national development, who were more or less commonly
concerned about two major developmental trends in the world.
First, it was the increasingly ferocious competitions among the Western powers
in their scrambles for the colonies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The industrial
revolutions in England, France and Germany drastically changed the
socio-economic structures of these European countries from traditional land-based
feudal system to more capital-based modern class society (Marx, 1992[1978]).
Their scrambles for natural resources and commodity markets outside Europe can
be characterized by what scholars coined as ‘primitive accumulation’, for which the
European powers used coercive and inhuman methods (e.g. slavery) to plunder the
rich natural resources and exploit the peoples of the colonies (Amin, 1974;
Lumumba-Kasongo, 1999; Wolf, 1997). Influenced by the diffusing ideologies of
nationalism and communism from the West, a consequence of ‘primitive accu-
mulation’ would be the rise of local political consciousness among the colonized
indigenous population, which then gave birth to their anti-colonial struggles,
nationalist resistance movements and de-colonialization projects. Gradually, pres-
surized by continued social upheavals and violent revolts, the European colonial
administrations started to account for the increasing political and economic costs in
maintaining these colonies overseas.
The second trend was the radical transformation from traditional monarchic
system to socialism in Russia. As the Bolshevik revolutionaries succeeded in
overthrowing the Tsars and established a socialist state in Russia, the ideology of
communism was experimented and actualized through the practice of totalitarian-
ism. This was manifested mainly through the combined practice of the ‘dictatorship
of the proletariat’ and ‘democratic centralism’, which the Bolsheviks performed as
the vanguard party of the Soviet-led ‘communist international’ project, who led the
workers to conduct transnational class struggle against the worldwide
capitalist-imperialist rule (Lenin, 1999). In association with this development,
European colonial powers were concerned about two perceived threats. First was
whether such political project would fuel and integrate with the anti-colonial
struggles that the colonial administrations were already entangled with. Second was
whether such project would trigger similar revolutions in Europe, thus posed a
threat to the status quo and liberal values of the Western parliamentary
democracies.
These two trends set the historical backdrop for the English geographer Sir
Halford Mackinder (1861–1947) to found the modern school of geopolitics. As
many major maritime sea routes during that time were under the patrols of British
ships, confronted by the spread of communism and the crumbling control over the
colonies, Mackinder had to re-conceive the world map in order to address these two
pressing issues for preserving the British Empire’s global supremacy (Mackinder,
1902).
Instead of thinking of how to defeat and eliminate these two threats, Mackinder
acknowledged their existence and understood them in a very different new light,
known as the ‘heartland thesis’ (Fig. 6.1) (Mackinder, 1969). In the first place,
Fig. 6.1 The Heartland Thesis. Source of image Birmingham War Studies Undergraduates
(2012). ‘The Role of Geography in Strategic Culture.’ In: Unofficial ‘Birmingham at War’ Blog
(dated 4 June 2012). URL: https://birminghamwarstudies.wordpresscom/tag/mackinder/. Accessed
on 21 March 2017
Mackinder conceived the Soviet regime as the heartland power, which shared
geopolitical essences with its predecessors in imperial Russia. Despite Moscow
enjoyed the status of being the national capital, like the previous Russian regimes,
the Soviet regime actually had its power comfortably seated in Siberia, where its
severe climate and inaccessible geographic environs constituted an ideal natural
shelter to defend from such conquistadors as Napoleon Bonaparte.
By conceiving the British Empire as the leading sea power at that time, the
Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans became the British seas, which surrounded the
‘World Island’ of Europe, Africa and Asia (Fig. 6.1). Mackinder’s ‘heartland
thesis’ had two strategic aims. First, in order to prevent the Bolshevik heartland
power’s potentially direct, bordered offensive against the British homeland, British
sea powers should maintain the Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South Asia,
Southeast Asia and East Asia to be the ‘rimland’. The ‘rimland’ was intended to
contain the Russian heartland, the geopolitical ‘buffer zone’ separating the British
Isles from the Russian heartland.
Second, many overseas British colonies during that time were already located in
the ‘rimland’. Instead of administering them for capital accumulation, these colo-
nies’ desires and energetic struggles for nationalist independence should be used for
containing, if not deterring, Russian ambitions and the Bolsheviks’ encroachments.
British policies towards the rimland colonies should then be modified from exer-
cising direct colonial rule to indirect, neo-colonial rule. The purpose was to groom
collaborative local elites into established regimes in order to achieve two aims:
(1) to prevent ideological and political integration between anti-colonial
nationalism and communism in the rimland, (2) if a rimland collaborative regime

was not pro-British, it should at least show its non-allegiance to the heartland.
In sum, the strategic gist of Mackinder’s ‘heartland thesis’ was containment, i.e.
to pit the revolting rimland colonies’ nationalist struggles against the communist
advance of the Russian heartland. Mackinder’s English School of Geopolitics
became a model-rival of his German contemporary—General Karl Haushofer
(1969–1946), who established his German school of Geopolitik through mimicking
the Japanese empire’s expansion in the Far East.
6.2.2 Second Model/Rival: Karl Haushofer’s German

School of Geopolitik
When two (or more) actors desire and then compete for the same object, mimesis
exists within them. In order to appropriate the desired object to be one’s own
identity, they compete to be the most recognized model of the other competitors.
According to Girard (2005), such competitive process puts all the actors into
rivalrous relationships of mutual mirroring and envious imitation (Kardong, 2012:
117–118; Kirwan, 2004: 20–21). While they are driven by the same desires (to
become each other’s model), Girard revealingly suggests that they are bound to
clash as rivals:
‘We find ourselves reverting to an ancient notion – mimesis – one whose conflictual
implications have always been misunderstood. We must understand that desire itself is
essentially mimetic, directed towards an object desired by the model.
The mimetic quality of childhood desire is universally recognized. Adult desire is virtually
identical, except that (most strikingly in our own culture) the adult is generally ashamed to
imitate others for fear of revealing his lack of being. The adult likes to assert his inde-
pendence and to offer himself as a model to others; he invariably falls back on the formula
‘Imitate me!’ in order to conceal his own lack of originality.
Two desires converging on the same object are bound to clash. Thus, mimesis coupled with
desire leads automatically to conflict. However, humans always seem half blind to this
conjunction, unable to perceive it as a cause of rivalry. In human relationships, words like
‘sameness’ and ‘similarity’ evoke an image of harmony. If we have the same tastes and like
the same things, surely we are bound to get along. But what will happen when we share the
same desires? Only the major dramatists and novelists have party understood and explored
this form of rivalry. (Girard, 2005: 155)
The model is therefore also the imagined ‘other’ who is to be mimicked by the
rivals. To maintain one’s model status would naturally of everyone attract rivalrous
imitations by the others, who are often driven by jealousy and the same desire to be
the sole model. The intensity of mimesis would be at least doubled in the rela-
tionship between the models and rivals. Mimetic rivalry therefore refers to a
cultural-psychological process in which competitors see each other as both model
and rival of mimesis (Fig. 6.2).
Fig. 6.2 The Mimetic

Mechanism. Source of image
Rebecca Fox (n.d.) ‘Rene
Girard: Mimetic Theory.’ In
Blog: ‘Reconciling Myth: The
Turn and the Scapegoat.’
URL: https://reconcilingmyth.
wordpress.com/rene-girard/
mimetic-theory/. Accessed on
21 March 2017
Girard’s insights are not only relevant to the field of cultural studies, but also
relevant to the studies of strategists and geopoliticians. This lens may help us to
better understand how the German geopolitician General Karl Haushofer (1869–
1946) formulated and founded the German School of Geopolitik.
If we compare Sir Halford Mackinder’s major geopolitical publications with
those of General Karl Haushofer, we could hypothesize that there is a pattern of
mimesis, apparently initiated by Haushofer. In 1902 and 1904, Mackinder pub-
lished his two defining works for establishing the English school of geopolitics:
(1) Britain and the British Seas (1902) and (2) The Geographical Pivot of History
(1904). A theory of heartland was originally formulated by Mackinder in Britain. In
1913, after conducting a period of field research in East Asia, Haushofer published
his first piece of major geopolitical work in Berlin—Dai Nihon: A Contemplation
over Greater Japan’s Military Power, Worldview and Future (1913).
In 1919, in defence of the British democratic system, Mackinder elaborated the
theory of heartland into a geostrategy of containment against the rising heartland
power—the Russian Bolsheviks (Mackinder, 1962[1919]). In 1921 and 1924,
Haushofer published two major works which established his founder position in the
German school of Geopolitik: (1) The Japanese Empire and Its Geographical
Evolution (Haushofer, 1921) and (2) The Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean
(Haushofer, 2002[1924]). From 1924, Haushofer served as the founding editor of
the German geopolitical journal—Zeitschrift für Geopolitik—until 1944.
Although it remains unclear if Haushofer imitated Mackinder in the first place
and if Mackinder counter-imitated Haushofer later, both men’s leadership positions
and contributions to the competing British and German schools of geopolitics were
evident. Moreover, the fact that Britain and Germany fought the two world wars as
rivals would suggest that the two geopoliticians would likely have known each
other’s works in those years. Whether the two men engaged in mimetic rivalry is
yet to be proved with more concrete evidence. However, it is clear that Haushofer,
in mimicking Japan’s expansion in East Asia, projected what he meant by the
‘Greater Germany’ (Groß-Deutschland) geopolitical project, which Adolf Hitler
was interested in. Therefore, in generating his strategic theory and practice of
geopolitk, Haushofer regarded Japan as a model/rival, which Nazi Germany imi-
tated Japan to rival and conquer her neighbours in Europe. Mimesis was therefore
an evidenced form of strategic agency in pre-Second World War Europe.
To desire to become the leading model in a field of knowledge production and

policy-making such as geopolitics would necessitate one to establish a distinctive
school of theory and practice uniquely different from the perceived model/rival. As
a result, in contrast to Mackinder’s gist to use geopolitical containment to attain a
balance of power between the Russian heartland and the British Empire, Haushofer
took a different position. Influenced by the ‘survival the fittest’ doctrine in social
Darwinism, Haushofer conceived German geopolitk as a strenuous and violent
process of ‘battle or struggle’ (German: kämpfen). The purpose of this process
would entail at least an action and a consequence. In terms of action, it is for the
conceivably most superior German race to establish and extend their ‘living space’
(German: Lebensraum) on earth. Consequentially, the conceivably inferior races’
controls over the geographical resources in their territories were to be taken over
and annexed by the superior German population, constituting the ‘living space’
(Lebensraum) of the ‘Greater Germany’ (Groß-Deutschland).
In fact, an initial conceptualization of the ‘Greater Germany’ living space was
already mimetically projected in Haushofer’s (1913) first defining geopolitical
concept which he coined as the ‘Greater Japan’ (Japanese: Dai Nihon; 大日本).
Accordingly, following the Japanese Empire’s historic consecutive victories over
China and Russia in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese
War (1904–1905), Japan gained significant inroads into the rich mineral, coal and
timber resources in the Russian Far East and Manchuria of north-eastern China. The
territorial accesses to these abundant natural resources further propelled the Greater
Japan’s industrialization and military modernization projects under the Emperor
Meiji (1868–1912).
Haushofer argued that as a uniquely mixed race of the Malayo-Polynesian,
Mongolian and Ainu peoples settling in north-eastern Asia, after signing the
unequal Convention of Kanagawa with the USA in 1854, to defend their racial
pride, Japan’s ruling elite recognized the urgency to immediately launch the
‘honour the Emperor and drive away the barbarians’ (Japanese: 尊王攘夷; Sonno
Jyoi) movement (Wong, 2014). The reigning Tokugawa Shogunate then surren-
dered power to the Meiji Emperor, who was restored to spearhead Japan’s mod-
ernization from feudalism. As the Meiji Restoration received persistent supports
from the feudal lords and the samurai-military elite, the development of Japanese
capitalism since Meiji had been characterized by a strong culture of militarism.
According to the Chinese scholar Ye Zicheng (1998: 276), the Meiji Emperor
once openly told the world that Japan ‘being the foundation of ten thousands of
nations’, Meiji was determined to establish the ‘Greater Japan’ in the universe by
‘expanding through thousand miles of waves’ and ‘declaring national might in all
directions’. Effectively integrating centralized political authority, the financial
monopoly of the zaibatsu (large business and financial conglomerate), the institu-
tionalization of Shintoism as the state religion and the military ethos of bushido
(chivalry) into a new form of statecraft, Japan gradually developed a strong and
agile Imperial Japanese Army (Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun), as the key agent of
national development.
Fig. 6.3 Karl Haushofer’s Pan-Regions Theory. Source of image Eric Ross (2015). ‘Blog: Of
Heartlands and Pan-regions: Mapping the Spheres of Influence of the Great Powers in the Age of
World Wars.’ URL: http://ericrossacademic.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/of-heartlands-and-pan-
regions-mapping-the-spheres-of-influence-of-the-great-powers-in-the-age-of-world-wars/. Access
on 21 March 2017
Following Germany’s defeat in the First World War (1914–1918), Haushofer

witnessed the British-allied Japanese Empire took away the German colonies in
China’s Jiaozhou Bay and the South Pacific. Japan’s move made Haushofer to
realize that Japan’s ambition was not only in East Asia, but also in the Indian and
Pacific Oceans, i.e. the Indo-Pacific region. Based on his social Darwinist notion of
‘living space’, Haushofer demarcated the world map into four main spheres of
influence (Fig. 6.3). Centering on the USA, Russia and Japan as well as a cluster of
competing European countries (mainly Germany, France and England) as the four
major seats of geopolitical greater powers, Haushofer conceived the world in four
pan-regions of these greater powers: (1) the Americas, (2) Eurasia, (3) the
Indo-Pacific and (4) Europe-Africa.
Haushofer (2002[1924]) established that during the early period of Meiji
Restoration, Japan’s intended sphere of influence was already designed to cover
East Asia in its ‘mainland policy’. This policy entailed five steps in conquering the
Asian mainland: (1) the invasion of Taiwan, (2) the conquest of the Korean
peninsula, (3) the occupation of Manchuria and Mongolia, (4) the takeover of the
entire China and (5) world hegemony. Despite the plan for ‘world hegemony’
seemed unclear at that time, the post-WWI development had just pre-maturely
revealed Japan’s deep-seated strategic visions to eventually establish the ‘Imperium
Pacificum’ (the Pacific Empire), which even cover the eastern rims of the Pacific
Ocean (Wong, 2014).
This was intended to prepare the Japanese Imperial Army to achieve the fol-
lowing goals: (1) establish political control in Southeast Asia, South Asia,
Australasia and the Americas, (2) control the major geopolitical chokepoints such
as the Malacca Strait and Sunda Strait, (3) control the wool production and trade in
Australia and New Zealand, (4) control the wilderness and forest resources in
Alaska and Canada, (5) control the mutually dependent maritime trade and fishery
resources transacted between Japan and such neo-Hispanic communities as Guam,
the Philippines and even as far as Chile (Haushofer, 2002[1924]: Chap. 16).
Although the USA was surprised by Japan’s attack of the Pearl Harbor in 1941, it
was actually a planned and perceivably necessary step to establish Japan as the
Pacific Empire.
In mimicking Japan’s imperial expansion policy in East Asia, Haushofer con-
ceived the German sphere of influence was primarily in Europe and secondarily in
Africa, where advances of the Greater German living space towards all directions
were desired. Out of his own initiation, his theory was put into practice by the Nazi
regime. In mimicking Haushofer’s concept of the ‘living space’ (Lebensraum),
traces of this geopolitical ideations can be found in Hitler’s Mein Kampf (My
Struggle) (Hitler, 1925). For instance, in the chapter on ‘Eastward Orientation and
Eastern Politics’, Hitler (1925: Vol. 2, Chap. 14) narrated a plan and policy towards
the Eastern European and Russian lands (Bulloch, 2009: 64, footnote no. 33).
6.2.3 Third Model/Rival: Carl Schmitt’s Theory

of the ‘Great Space’ (Grobraum)
Mimesis was a key strategic agency in pre-Second World War European geopo-
litical thoughts. It was found in the German intellectual circle and therefore stim-
ulated a chain of resonating yet competing geopolitical theories resultant of
mimesis. I will argue that the pre-Second World War Catholic German jurist Carl
Schmitt’s theory of the ‘great space’ (Grobraum) was the efforts of his imitation of
the ‘living space’ (Lebensraum) theory, which was originated by Haushofer and
imitated by Hitler. Nonetheless, Schmitt’s works have endured after Second World
War to the present day.
Although Haushofer’s works had influenced the Nazi leadership’s geopolitics,
neither he himself was directly involved in Nazi politics, nor he advised as Hitler’s
geostrategist (Heske, 1987; Murphy, 2014; Wolkersdorfer, 1999). The best analogy
of this diffusion of his geopolitical ideation to the Nazi leadership can be testified in
the poem ‘Der Vater (The Father)’, written by Haushofer’s son, Albrecht:
Mein Vater hat das Siegel aufgebrochen. Den Hauch des Bösen hat er nicht gesehn. Den
Dämon ließ er in die Welt entwehn. (Haushofer, 1948: 45)
(My English translation from German language: ‘But my father opened the seal. He,
however, did not notice the rise of the evil wind from it. Since then, he allowed the demon
flying in the world’.)
In contrast to Haushofer, however, Carl Schmitt’s (1888–1985) approach to

Nazi politics seemed to be more upfront, direct and involved. For instance, Schmitt
already joined the Nazi party as early as 1933 (Schmitt, 2004[1934]: 16–19).
According to Bulloch, Schmitt’s
theory of Grobraum (great space) was first hinted at in the 1920s long after the notion of
Lebensraum was first intimated in Hitler’s Mein Kampf [My Struggle], and is crucially
different from it in several aspects. It actually bears closer resemblance to the European
element of longstanding German thinking on geopolitics, which aimed at the domination of
three separate spaces Mitteleuropa [Central Europe], Mittelafrica [Central Africa] and
Mittelasia [Central Asia]. Grobraum can be conceptually as a way of grounding powerful
states within specific spatial zones in which their primacy is clearly recognized, but most
importantly it was a ‘political idea’. The Cold War antithesis of East versus West, although
resembling a spatial distinction, was different for Schmitt because East and West were
relative positions, unlike North and South which were fixed. Each Grobraum would in
itself constitute—to adopt the language of the English School—an international society,
allowing for some complex juridical formulations, but relations between Grobräume (great
spaces) would be more systemic. (Bulloch, 2009: 64–65)
In short, what is the ‘great space’? To Schmitt, in contrast to Hitler’s

Lebensraum-imperialism, Grobraum represents the German-centric nationalist
expansionist project in which the international laws play a more central role in
creating a Eurocentric greater space of combined land, maritime and aerial
dominion for Germany, though the means of international trade and war were not
excluded (Zeitlin, 2015: xxxix). The international-legal basis of the ‘great space’ is
fundamental to Schmitt, both religiously and geopolitically, which they intertwined.
First is the religiosity of Schmitt’s geopolitics. As a Roman Catholic, Schmitt
actively integrated his Christian faith into his political theory and praxis. In 1942,
upon compiling together a series of articles he published in the Nazi mouthpiece
weekly Das Reich (‘The Empire’) from 1940 to 1941, Schmitt (2015[1942])
published his first geopolitical work ‘Land und Meer: Eine weltgeschichtliche
Betrachtung (Land and Sea: A World-Historical Meditation)’. In particular, when
Schmitt was narrating the history of human social development to his daughter—
Anima, Schmitt used the following Latin biblical verse in the Book of Hosea for
meditation: ‘post Dominum ambulant quasi leo rugiet quia ipse rugiet et for-
midabunt filii maris’ (Hosea 11: 10) (Schmitt, 2015[1942]: 5). Based on the English
translations in the Duaoy-Rheims Catholic Bible and the New International Version
Bible, I provided the following English re-interpretation: ‘God shall roar like a lion.
His people shall walk after the Lord. When He shall roar, the children from the west
sea shall tremble’ (Wong, 2017). This meditation should be decoded in its
historic-specific context.
In 1941, based on the biblical imageries of the two beasts—the ‘Leviathan’ and
the ‘Behemoth’—narrated in Chaps. 40 and 41 of the Book of Job in the Holy Bible
(Zeitlin, 2015: xliii), Schmitt meditated on Germany’s geopolitical situation when
publishing his thoughts in the Nazi mouthpiece, Das Reich. Whereas the British
Empire was symbolized as the Leviathan sea-breast reminiscent of the geopolitical
sea power, Germany was symbolized as the Behemoth land-beast reminiscent of the
geopolitical land power. Facing the aerial bombing threats issued by the British
Royal Air Force from the west sea, Schmitt believed that Germany must depend on
the Christian God Yahweh so that the British Leviathan will fear (Wong, 2017).
Henceforth, Schmitt initiated a new spatial revolution, in which he
seemed to hope in February and March 1941, might consist in a revolution reorienting
geopolitics toward Großraum [great space] spatial orders as well as toward a spatial order
in which Germany might surpass British sea power with the aerial supremacy of the
Luftwaffe [German Air Force] – a spatial revolution from the element of water to the
element of air. (Zeitlin, 2015: lxviii)
In Schmitt’s own words, the ‘sea is no longer an element, but has rather become
a space [Raum], as the air has also become a space of human activity and the
exercise of human dominion’ (quoted in Zeitlin, 2015: lxvii). In doing so, Schmitt
issued a timely propaganda, which resonated the German Air Force’s (Luftwaffe)
1941 critical decision in massively producing the new type of aircraft-fighters—
Focke-Wulf Fw190 Würger—to compete for aerial supremacy against the British
Royal Air Force’s Spitfire aircraft-fighters (Wong, 2017). It is evident that Schmitt’s
geopolitical theory of the ‘great space’ has a religious anchorage.
Second is the geopolitical dimension of his Roman Catholic faith. Schmitt’s
early works in political and legal theories already reflected his attempted integration
with his faith. For example, his early work on sovereignty was self-branded as
‘political theology’ (Schmitt, 2005[1922]). His Catholic faith had persistently
influenced his geopolitical work and vice versa. For instance, after Second World
War, Schmitt’s geopolitical theory of the ‘great space’ was further developed in his
major work in international law published after Second World War: Der Nomos der
Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (The Nomos of the Earth in the
International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum) (Schmitt, 2003[1950]). As an
early brain-child of the present-day European Union, Schmitt conceived a
Eurocentric global-legal federal order established by international laws, free trade
and war. This Eurocentric spatial order, despite it was qualified to be a variety of his
earlier geopolitical notion of the ‘great space’ (Großraum) (Bulloch, 2009: 69), it is
inherently religious with its deep roots in Constantinianism, Christian realism and
just war theory for which the exercise of secular state power should reflect the one’s
vocation in the actualization of the Christendom in this world (Wong, 2016:
Chap. 1). The gist was that the modern Christian Empire should serve as a
restrainer of the evil; the ‘anti-Christ’ (Greek: Katechon) (Schmitt, 2003[1950]: 59–
61). As such, the ‘great space’ had a new post-Second World War rendition, which
was the Respublica Christiana (Christian Republic) (Schmitt, 2003[1950]: 57–58).
Respublica Christiana as a modern Christian re-invention of the German and
Eurocentric ‘great space’ after Second World War could trace to its precedent form
before Second World War. In 1950, while Schmitt argued that European
land-appropriation had its bases in international law and Spanish colonial theology
(Schmitt, 2003[1950]: Part II), he conceived that the state ‘as the agency of a new,
instate, Eurocentric, spatial order of the earth’ (Schmitt, 2003[1950]: 140). This
state-centric position could actually be traced to its pre-Second World War form. In
1942, for instance, citing the biblical verses in the Second Letter to the
Thessalonians of the New Testament, Schmitt already conceived that the state
performed the divine functions of ‘restraining’ the ‘lawlessness’ and to remove the
anti-Christ from the historical scene (Schmitt, 2015[1942]: 17–18).2 It was, how-
ever, evident that international law is an instrument for achieving Christian realist
mission—rein in evilness in this world, which founded the basis of Schmitt’s
geopolitics. For instance, in connection with the European ‘great space’, Schmitt
openly defended the legality of Hitler’s invasions of Czechoslovakia, Austria,
Denmark, Poland, Belgium and France, whereas he also publicly criticized Hitler’s
invasion of the Soviet Union as an ‘international crime’ because it violated a valid
international law signed by Berlin and Moscow in 1939 (Zeitlin, 2015: xl).
6.2.4 Three Models/Rivals Compared
Effectively mimicking and deflecting from Haushofer’s school of Geopolitik and the
Lebensraum-imperialism of Hitler, Schmitt established his original theory of ‘great
space’ (Großraum) in which international law, Christian faith and free trade as well
as just military intervention were essential and instrumental in building and main-
taining a post-Second World War Eurocentric global-legal order. This order can be
seen in present-day’s more institutionalized forms such as the European Union.
Nevertheless, Schmitt still shared the following characteristics with Haushofer and
Mackinder in which they all made mimesis as a core strategic agency possible:
• They all shared the same ambition to become the model in the field of
geopolitics. All of them had to write and publish extensively in order to establish
their national statures in the field of knowledge. To do so, they inevitably had to
first imitate and then deflect from their predecessors as rivals.
• In various extents, they all aspired for positions of prestige, status and power.
For Mackinder, he was knighted by the British Empire and introduced the
teaching of geography at Oxford University and the London School of
Economics. For Haushofer, he was a military general and founded the Institute
für Geopolitik. For Schmitt, as a jurist and political theorist, he joined and stayed
as an active member of the Nazi party when Hitler firstly founded the German
Reich in 1933 and throughout Second World War. Schmitt continued to be
intellectually active and respected in Germany after Second World War.
• They generated not just alternative theories, but also invented new praxes,
which had actual, real-life influences over the policy-making processes of state
affairs, both in war and peace times. Either directly or indirectly, they collab-
orated and interacted with the state and participated in the historical and inter-
national development of their nations.
2
The two biblical verses are: ‘And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in
his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. But the one who restrains is to do so
only for the present, until he is removed from the scene’ (2 Thessalonians 2: 6–7, New American
Bible).
• Although they achieved tremendously and scored great successes, they were
driven by the same mimetic mechanism in which personal ambitious desires
were self-sustained for their determined self-actualization and relentless
self-improvement to be the model and concomitant rival of the imagined others.
Despite the illusory nature of mimesis in the sense that they all became their
own slaves of their own ambitious desires, their significant influences beyond
their own workplace and affiliated organizations (e.g. learnt society, university,
research institute and bureaucracy) suggested that their common object of desire
is actually nothing but state power, or put it more bluntly, earthly kingship.
• As the nature of state power has the tendency to monopolize coercive violence,
it is unsurprisingly that all these three distinguished men had their careers and
works closely related with, if not contributing to, war-making, which is the twin
of modern state-making (Tilly, 1985).
• As such, when mimesis happened in the field of geopolitics, it does not seem to
reduce or curtail the violent propensity of the state, it even reinforces and
increases state violence and geopolitical competition through the mimetic
competition among the mutually entangled, yet highly learnt individuals, may
one’s professional identity be a geographer, a geopolitician or a jurist.
Established by the discussions above, thanks to mimesis as a key strategic
agency in pre-Second World War Europe, the cross-disciplinary study of geopol-
itics was mainly shaped to be a field of competing theories and practices of war. It is
neither possible to change nor to discard mimesis because of its inborn human
nature, if it is not an original sin. However, it does not mean that we should give up
the hope to identify an alternative geopolitical practice for peace. The next section
will outline one.
6.3 Mimesis for Peace: Outline of a Theory of ‘People’s

Diplomacy’
6.3.1 Two Ethics of Mimetic Peace
By humbly admitting and humanly accepting mimesis is an integral part of

knowledge production, we could possibly go with the mimetic flow in order to attain
an alternative practice for international peace. The operational logic of mimetic
knowledge production entails a few cyclical steps, which I identified in my previous
work: (1) to know and imitate others’ works; (2) to deflect from the existing works
and make a difference from them as ‘new’; and (3) to reject the others’ works so to
surpass and outdate them (Wong, 2016: 157). For decades, this inherent mimetic
mechanism has qualified what the modern science is and constituted the main
psychological impetus in most scientific careers. While I propose neither to reject
nor to denounce our very mimetic human nature, in outlining a peaceable geopo-
litical practice, it is essential to consider two ethics of mimetic peace here.
First is to openly acknowledge whose works I am imitating from. The profes-

sional ethic of plagiarism is useful here, though it does not explicitly recognize the
fact that despite authors may claim originality in their works, they actually develop
seemingly ‘new’ ideas in overlapping connections with the ‘old’ ideas. I therefore
think that one should be prudent when claiming her/his argument is ‘new’ at all,
which in fact often consists of bits and pieces from the ‘old’ arguments. There may
be new findings, yet they can only be ‘new’ in relations with the existing estab-
lished ones. I therefore humbly admit that in critiquing Mackinder, Haushofer and
Schmitt, they also become my models/rivals for establishing the present argument.
Through gently mimicking and non-violently critiquing their works, I try to make a
difference from theirs and develop a theory of peaceable intervention in preventing
international conflicts. This is the first ethic for practicing mimetic peace.
Second is to seek continued repentance, forgiveness and attain non-violence in
knowledge production. As mimesis is the underlying logic of ‘ontological
violence’—power released and exerted in the knowledge production process to
establish one’s scientific claim as the most objective ‘truth’ (Milbank, 1993),
regular meditations, prayers/retreats and repentance were argued to be the ways to
redeeming knowledge from power/ontological violence (Wong, 2016: 160). This
ethic is however inherently Christian because an epistemic redemption cannot be
complete without seeking help from and attain union with an other-worldly deity,
who already triumphed over the violence and tyranny of mimesis in this world. In
this regards, Jesus Christ, as both the victim of and victory over the mimesis of all
sorts (e.g. of the Pharisees, the Roman authorities, and the Jewish nationalists)
(Schwager, 2000[1978]: 149–165), his crucifixion and resurrection serve as the
spiritual-epistemic anchorage to practice non-violence in this world while
upholding the hope of the most genuine, eschatological peace is in the other world,
i.e. the heavenly realm.
In practicing these two ethics, one shall be able to gain the peace and clarity of
mind in regard to the ongoing dynamics and underlying currents in the international
tensions as they are (Wong, 2012a: 160).
6.3.2 ‘People’s Diplomacy’: Outline of a Theory

of Peaceable Practice
Based on the two ethics discussed above, my aim here is to outline and substantiate
a theory of peace-making geostrategic practice, which is dubbed the ‘people’s
diplomacy’. To start with a working definition, when speaking of ‘people’s
diplomacy’, I refer it to a complex set of invented strategic ideations and practices
for which the strategist-actors do not necessarily hail from the realm of the state and
therefore do not share an egoistic desire for state power and the usual realist
calculative logics of zero-sum competition, which are often found among the
mainstream state strategists. Mackinder, Haushofer and Schmitt are no exception.
6.3 Mimesis for Peace: Outline of a Theory of ‘People’s Diplomacy’ 163
Although the practitioners of the ‘people’s diplomacy’ may be well-connected

with both the state and non-state actors, they know well about their original
‘home-base’ is the civil society, not the state. As the state has a natural tendency to
monopolize the use of physical force, economic resources and symbolic violence
(Bourdieu, 1998; Giddens, 1987; Weber, 1948), the state would naturally be a
crucible of deadly violence, economic competition and egoistic rivalry. In recog-
nizing this fact of the very nature of the state, the people’s diplomats would have
the relative freedom to move across the boundaries of state and society and more
importantly, the freedom to negotiate the freedom to stay away from the state’s
ever-encroaching reaches attempting to entice and absorb them into its instruments
of state rule.
This model is however not my own invention. Two sources of inspiration should
be acknowledged here. First was the Mohist strategist Mo Di (circa 470–391 B.C.)
(Mei, 1934), and the Taoist strategist-turned-hermit Lu Zhonglian (circa 300–250
B.C.), both of ancient China’s Warring States period (475–221 B.C.) (Wong, 2016:
107–110). Another important source of inspiration was the Israelite prophets Elijah
and Elisha who both hailed from the prophetic tradition of Samuel. Their works are
recorded in the two books of Kings in the Bible (Ellul, 1972). These ancient
Chinese strategists and Israelite prophets shared several commonalities which are
instructive for the outlining a theory of practice of the ‘people’s diplomacy’:
• They consistently keep an arm’s length from the state rulers and stay indifferent
towards the rulers’ tempting offers, e.g. position, prestige and wealth.
• They selflessly identified with the civilians’ livelihood and welfare in terms of
the necessity for them to live in peace and in harmonic union with the larger
omnipresent order or the all-powerful deity in the universe, i.e. Tao and the God
Yahweh respectively.
• Based at the society, they selectively engaged in critical battlefields and
strategically interacted with targeted state rulers in order to achieve their
peace-making purposes and other-worldly goals, which did not necessarily fall
in line with the state rulers’ this-worldly agendas and self-interests.
• Though the people’s diplomats perform para-diplomatic functions in parallel
with the state’s formal diplomacy, their analyses and policy recommendations
are openly shared with the public to consider, including the state authority.
Whether the state authority would adopt their recommendations or not, is
actually the decision to be made by the policy-makers themselves. Neither it is
the primary concern of the people’s diplomats, nor should they attempt to
influence the policy decision-making process.
• They recognized a major source of war and violence had to do with the mimetic
and aggrandizing propensities of the human nature and the sovereign state.
Ambitious desires of the rulers and their strategists were an essential aspect of
this-worldly strategic agency.
In the next section, I shall illustrate how to practice ‘people’s diplomacy’ for
peace in the context of the 2012 China-Philippines stand-off over a disputed island
in the South China Sea, the Scarborough Shoal. I shall first provide the background
of the stand-off. Then, I’ll establish the Philippines as an archipelagic power, which
necessitates creative efforts to de-escalate her tensions with China by drawing pubic
attentions to the problem of Philippine energy security.
6.4 ‘People’s Diplomacy’ Across the Disputed South

China Sea
6.4.1 Background of the Philippines–China Maritime

Dispute
Despite China claims the entire South China Sea, her Southeast Asian neighbours
make overlapping claims. These include the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia,
Vietnam, Indonesia and Taiwan (Fig. 6.4). Out of an estimated total of one hundred
Fig. 6.4 Disputed Claims in the South China Sea. Source of image see footnote number 3.
Source of Map Agence France Presse (2013). URL: http://www.southchinasea.org/files/2013/01/
Disputed-claims-in-the-south-china-sea-Agence-France-Presse.jpg. Accessed on 28 March 2017
6.4 ‘People’s Diplomacy’ Across the Disputed South China Sea 165
Fig. 6.5 National Outposts in the South China Sea. Source of map Central Intelligence Agency.
Cropped and Flags added by Estarapapax.—Central Intelligence Agency., Public Domain, URL:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3770917. Accessed on 28 March 2017
islands and islets in the disputed maritime areas, about half of them are occupied by
Vietnam. China, Malaysia and the Philippines each occupy less than ten islands and
islets. Brunei, Indonesia and Taiwan each occupied a few of them (Fig. 6.5).
Since China defeated Vietnam in the 1988 naval conflict over the disputed
Spratly Islands,3 China has developed substantial trade and investment ties with the
Southeast Asian nations (Wong, 2013: Chap. 1). Their increased multilateral eco-
nomic interdependence rendered international armed conflict unlikely to occur.
However, due to the rise of nationalistic sentiments in China and Southeast Asia,
the South China Sea disputes on one hand continue to fuel militant public opinions
in these countries which regimes occasionally instrumentalize to strengthen
domestic legitimacy. On the other hand, the disputes also cause the concerns of
such superpower and regional great powers as the USA, India and Japan. For them,
they do not wish to see the disputes to escalate and then disrupt their commercial
sea-lanes in the South China Sea where they all heavily rely on. However, over the
years, each of them has different strategic interests and subtle deployments in the
3
Source: ‘Spratly Islands Dispute Defines China–Vietnam Relations 25 Years after Naval Clash.’
South China Morning Post. 17 March 2013.
South China Sea. These moves need to be contextualized against the backdrop of
China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific region.
To India, given China’s increasing presence in the Indian Ocean and the
emergence of the ‘string of pearl’ phenomenon which causes Indian anxiety (see
Chap. 5), despite China’s stern objection, India signed defence and joint oil
exploration agreement in the disputed South China Sea with Vietnam in 2014.4 For
the USA, through attempts to strengthen and normalize security ties with such
Southeast Asian countries as the Philippines and Vietnam, the Obama adminis-
tration’s signature ‘pivot to Asia’ policy since 2011 indirectly empowered these
small powers to be more assertive in their claims against China in the South China
Sea (Clinton, 2011). For Japan, amidst the recent worsening Sino-Japanese relations
since the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan’s 2012 decision to
buy the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea was in parallel
development with her efforts to provide patrol vessels for the Philippines to counter
Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea.5
The situation in the South China Sea has therefore been complex and sensitive,
which is widely regarded as a hot-spot of potential conflict and instability.
Nonetheless, for a small power such as the Philippines, it provides a versatile
opportunity to seek and hedge for gains. During the administration of President
Benigno Aquino III (2010–2016), he made a few strategic moves in regards to the
South China Sea dispute with China. First was in April 2012, the Philippine Coast
Guard and the Philippine navy staged a stand-off against China near the disputed
Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, where the Philippines claimed the shoal
was actually within its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of two hundred nautical
miles. Second, in September 2012, President Aquino signed off a presidential
administrative order to rename its EEZ as the ‘West Philippine Sea’, which
attempted to legalize the Philippine claim.6 Third, in January 2013, the Aquino
administration formally filed an arbitration case against China in the Permanent
Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the Netherlands. The court’s ruling in July 2016
was in favour of the Philippines and therefore legalized its claims over the disputed
waters, despite China denied its legality.7 As these moves were well-thought, if not
4
Sources: (1) ‘Risking China’s Ire, India Signs Defense and Oil Deals with Vietnam.’ Time.
29 October 2014. (2) ‘Vietnam and India Sign Oil, Naval Agreement amid South China Sea
Disputes, Angering Beijing.’ International Business Times. 29 October 2014.
5
Sources: (1) ‘Japan to Provide Patrol Vessels to Philippines.’ Wall Street Journal. 4 June 2015.
(2) ‘Japan Provides Ships for Philippines to Help Counter China at Sea.’ Financial Times. 6
September 2016. (3) ‘Philippines to Get 9 More Patrol Vessels from Japan.’ Philippine Star.
14 October 2016.
6
Source: ‘It’s Official: Aquino Signs Order on West Philippine Sea.’ Philippine Daily Inquirer. 13
September 2012.
7
Sources: (1) ‘Tribunal Rejects Beijing’s Claims in South China Sea.’ The New York Times. 12
July 2016. (2) ‘Aquino on Arbitral Court Ruling: “A Victory for All”.’ Philippine Daily Inquirer.
13 July 2016. (3) ‘Beijing Rejects Tribunal’s Ruling in South China Sea.’ The Guardian. 12 July
2016.
well-planned, the Philippines’ unique historically constituted geostrategic repertoire

needs to be unpacked.
6.4.2 The Philippines as an Archipelagic Power
6.4.2.1 The Question of the ‘Archipelagic Power’ in Geopolitics
Mackinder’s geopolitical typology of the sea power, land power and riverine power
would serve a good entry-point for conceptualizing the Philippines’ unique
geopolitical type. While a sea power establishes its sovereignty and territories
through offshore naval maritime conquest (e.g. overseas colonization of the Spanish
Empire), a land power and a riverine power achieve the same outcomes through
land-based reaches (e.g. cavalry-led annexation of the Mongol Empire) and
river-based expansion (e.g. canal-infrastructure build-up in the Siamese Kingdom)
respectively.
However, these three geopolitical types are hardly applicable to the Philippine
case, which is geographically a 7,641-island scattered archipelago. In a similar vein,
being an archipelago of more than 17,400 islands, Indonesia represents the largest
archipelagic power in the world. As the Malay-speaking inhabitants in the
Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia could trace their common cultural-linguistic
root to the Austronesian people, it is therefore instructive to investigate the strategic
culture of the Austronesian civilization. The outcome would help us to identify the
geostrategic archetype of these Indo-Pacific small powers. In definition, an archi-
pelagic power refers to a state which establishes its sovereignty and territories
through gradual island-to-island colonization.
To understand the Philippines’ strategic habitus as an archipelagic power, we
would need to identify the historical-specific dispositions of the pre-Hispanic
Filipinos, whose root is connected with the Austronesians. The question how the
Austronesian-speaking people first came to settle in the Philippine archipelago
would offer important insights for us to identify the specifics of their maritime
colonial culture, which would inform us more about their unique strategic culture.
6.4.2.2 The Austronesian Colonial Strategic Culture
In general, the ‘Austronesian’ is a relatively self-contained civilizational

umbrella-tenet of some cultural groups of common cultural-linguistic roots, which
consists of the larger groups of the Malayo-Polynesians and the Indo-Melanesians
(Fig. 6.6). The Austronesians are generally believed to be the earlier
migrant-inhabitants of such present-day islands and archipelagoes as Taiwan, the
Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia in Southeast Asia. They also inhabit in the
Pacific Ocean in such archipelagos as Hawaii, Fiji, Tonga and most eastwardly, the
Maori tribes in New Zealand. In the Indian Ocean, they also settle in the islands and
archipelagos stretching from Indonesia to Madagascar of eastern Africa.
Based on anthropological, linguistic and archaeological evidences, Bellwood
(1995: 98) argued that the ultimate homeland of the Austronesian-speaking peoples
was near the Yangzi river basin in China between 5000 and 4000 B.C.. He sug-
gested that:
One has to consider very seriously the possibility that the initial expansions of Austronesian
and Thai-Kadai languages (and probably also Austroasiatic) began among Neolithic
rice-cultivating communities in China south of Yangzi. (Bellwood, 1995: 98)
After the Austronesian agriculturalists crossed the Formosan Strait to the island
of Taiwan, they then moved to the Philippines, Borneo, Sulawesi, and the Moluccas
and the colonists spread across the whole constellations of archipelagos in maritime
Southeast Asia. It was a process of dispersal movement from north to south down to
the equatorial archipelagos of nowadays Indonesia, Papua New Guinea where they
met the Papuan-speaking peoples who were already occupying some areas in the
New Guinea.
Later in the Lapita expansion between 1600 and 1000 B.C., the Austronesian
colonists also moved from Taiwan further east to Melanesia and Polynesia in the
Pacific Ocean, and further west to the Indian Ocean and reached the island of
Malagasy, which is nowadays Madagascar (Bellwood, 1995: 100). Accordingly,
‘there is a direct association with the dispersal of the Austronesian language
speakers, rather than dispersal of these cultural items by diffusion alone’ (Bellwood,
1995: 100). In other words, the dispersal of language and culture is attached with
the migrating subjects rather than a subject-less diffusion movement by its own.
The Austronesian-speaking agricultural colonists underwent a fairly continuous
expansion, over a period of about four thousand years to go through all the odds to
travel across the mainland of China down to the coastline, and then sailed across the
wide sea gaps eastwards to the Pacific Ocean and westward to the Indian Ocean. In
the followings, I would discuss why the Austronesian colonial expansion occurred
and the means in which they used to travel. These data constitute the
historical-structural dispositions which are very critical for understanding contem-
porary Philippine strategic habitus.
Bellwood (1980, 1995) developed several reasons in explaining why the
Austronesian agriculturalists involved in such large-scale colonization movements.
In the first place, the expansion occurred because of the population growth resultant
of sufficient agricultural food supply. Systematic agricultural cultivation technology
was invented near the Yangzi river basin where the first group of migrants brought
the skills to Taiwan. Systematic cultivation skills ensured a stable supply of agri-
cultural food with effective domestication of animals such as pigs and fowls.
Provided that the archipelagos were already occupied by the non-agriculturalists,
for example in Papua New Guinea, land was abundant and was ready for the
Austronesian agriculturalists to occupy and develop systematic agriculture (Fox,
1985).
Fig. 6.6 The Austronesian Cultural-linguistic Groups in the Indo-Pacific Region. Source of Map
Wikimedia Commons. URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Austronesian_
languages.PNG. Accessed 28 March 2017)
In this connection, Blust (1976: 43) suggested that the original Austronesian
speakers (circa 4000 B.C.) were sedentary villagers who possessed root and grain
crops, iron and loom as well as domesticated animals with sophisticated maritime
technology and sea-faring skills. With a preference for rapid coastal movement and
exploration for favourable environments for cultivation and sheltered inshore
fishing, it is quite safe to say that the stable supply of food is positively correlated
with the Austronesian population growth. Given the stable population growth
backed up by a good food supply, the expansion would occur since people were
driven to find more favourable environment to maintain the standard of living.
However, their expansion into a tropical and equatorial region also changed their
systems of horticulture as the early Austronesian settlers in the Pacific Ocean took
rice with them but that rice did not succeed under Oceanic conditions and sooner or
later passed away together (Bellwood, 1980: 59). Nevertheless, such diet change
did not contradict the original drive of the Austronesian expansion was the need to
look for more favourable environment for subsistence due to constant population
growth.
The second reason is the transportability of agriculture to small islands in the
archipelagos (Bellwood, 1995). Certainly this reason could only be applicable once
the colonists moved from Taiwan to the Southeast Asian archipelagos when they
reached the islands of the Philippines. Agricultural products were transported and
exchanged between islands and islands, between communities and communities.
For instance, Blust (1976) also argued that the domesticated pigs were introduced
into New Guinea from outside with possible human transportation. Such scene
would suggest that the Austronesian expansion is not only a one-way movement
from one island to another new island. It could also be conceived as a maritime
networking process which was formed into a web of islands and communities
where multilateral transportations and connections between them were made pos-
sible. The trans-island colonial expansion was also driven by the desire to find new
raw materials for the prestige goods’ exchange trade. A certain chiefdom-centric
exchange network was gradually developed in maritime Southeast Asia such as in
the pre-Hispanic Philippines (Junker, 2000). As a result, the economic drive to
exchange goods between individuals and communities and to look for more pres-
tige goods also contribute to the formation of the Austronesian colonial expansion.
The third reason offered by Bellwood (1995) was the desire to find new set-
tlements in order to be the founding ancestor of a new genealogy of future gen-
erations. This reason becomes more illuminating when it is correlated with the
claim that the language on Formosa did not belong to any language group but form
the others. Foley once argued,
As Formosa is adjacent to the southern China coast and there are no Austronesian lan-
guages on the adjacent mainland, the logical conclusion is that Formosa was the homeland
of the Austronesian-speaking peoples. (Foley, 1980: 78)
If there is an island-communal consensus among the established settlers and the

younger generations that more lands were desired to produce sufficient food to meet
the future needs of a growing population, to encourage the young leaders to venture
and re-settle in a new island, being the founding ancestor of a new genealogy of
future generations on the new island settlement would naturally be a consequence,
if not a conditional reward. It would also not be surprising if one intentionally
modified the inherited linguistic system so that the new island-master could
establish and perpetuate one’s legacy for the future generations. Clearly there was a
linguistic break when the Austronesian moved from mainland China to Taiwan—
Taiwan seems to be the geolinguistic watershed in dividing the Sino-Tibetan lan-
guage from Austronesian language in the early days.
Interestingly, Foley (1980) observed that although Taiwan is the homeland of
Austronesian speakers, it still has a wide linguistic diversity in contrast to Java and
Sumatra’s linguistic homogeneity. Has such wide linguistic diversity already sug-
gested that there was an intended differentiation among the first batch colonists
when they decided to move to Taiwan? It seems this is a viable theory to draw in
suggesting that the unprecedented linguistic transformation in Taiwan was resultant
of the early Austronesian colonists’ quest for new ancestry and identity.
Here is the final reason: in order to make the transportation of agricultural goods
and the colonial expansion possible, Bellwood (1995: 104) also considered the
development of seafaring skills and canoe constructions among the Austronesian

peoples. Sea navigation and the use of sail-canoe seem to be the only means they
used to travel across the wide sea gaps during the Austronesian expansion down to
Southeast Asia. Bellwood suggested that the Austronesians lost lots of seafaring
terminology in Taiwan due to the heavy overlay of Chinese settlement in coastal
regions of mainland China. Bellwood (1995: 104) also hypothesized that there
should be some other archaeological remains of Austronesian boat constructions
among the islands which flank the coast of the Chinese provinces of Fujian and
Zhejiang, apart from the Fuguodun shell-mound on Quemoy/Jinmen. The
Austronesian descendants in Southeast Asia then developed sea-nomadism and a
good level of seafaring skills.
Certainly, the Austronesian development of maritime technology would not be
possible without their persistent drives to seek for more favourable environment for
agricultural cultivation and population growth, the economic drive of exchange and
the desire to construct new cultural identity and political authority by finding new
settlements in order to be the founding ancestor of a new genealogy of future
generations. In the past several thousand years, these complexly inherited
psycho-biological motivations and cultural-historical experiences have gradually
constituted the deep-seated strategic habitus of the Austronesian colonial ventures
into the Indo-Pacific archipelagos.
6.4.2.3 ‘Datu’ as the Malayo-Polynesian Geostrategic Type
Building upon the argument presented above, I now argue that further anthropo-
logical and historical evidences from Polynesia, Melanesia, Indonesia and the
Philippines also suggested that the organization of such Austronesian trans-islandic
colonization process was centring on the political type of big-man chiefdom
institution, which its patron-client relational content has remained resilient from
western colonial period to the present time (Abinales, 2000a; Fox, 1995, 1996;
Sahlins, 1963; Scott, 1979; Thoden van Velzen, 1973; Wong, 2006).
In particular, the village-level administrative unit in the Philippines nowadays is
called ‘barangay’. This Filipino terminology has its Malayo-Polynesian
cultural-linguistic root into the old Malay word of ‘balangay’, which actually
means a very large boat capable of carrying forty to one hundred kinsmen with their
nipa(palm)-huts stalled on it when travelling very long distance over the sea (Scott,
1994). As both a maritime transportation unit and a political-economic organiza-
tion, the balangay was likely the key instrument of trans-archipelagic colonial-
ization used by the early-day Austronesians who travelled from Taiwan to maritime
Southeast Asia, and to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
The captain-chieftain of the ancient Malayo-Polynesian balangay-boat and
present-day Filipino barangay-village is both known to be the ‘datu’ (headman).
Mostly male in gender, the datu-ship can be inherited but should be elected by the
tribesmen. The datu-ship should be given to a respected, wise, brave and
resourceful individual who could perform the roles of a political leader, arbitrator,
broker, protector and strongman (Abinales, 2000b; Wong, 2013). The title of datu
and its cultural equivalents (e.g. dato, datuk and ratu) are still being used in the
present-day Malaysia, Indonesia and as far as in such Pacific island-state as Fiji.
Such Malayo-Polynesian political type has significant implications for under-
standing contemporary Philippine geostrategy.
In order to establish and expand one’s sphere of political influence, the
Austronesian datu-chiefs encouraged their tribesmen to seek new islands for col-
onization and settle there with their offspring as the self-established datu of the
newly founded island settlement. Gradually expanding from one island to another,
an inter-trading network of archipelagic regime was formed centring on the
supreme datu-chief who managed to occupy the most resourceful and prosperous
island and possessed the largest balangay-fleets and raiding companies. As
inter-island war and inter-communal raiding was not uncommon in those days
(Gidson, 1990; Junker, 2000; Warren, 2002), the datu-chiefs would naturally have
to compete against each other for the extra fishery and the natural resources of the
islands.
A usual strategy was to send a raiding legion to first set a temporary foothold on
the targeted island. After a period of scouting around, based on the circumstances
and the capability of the enemy, the datu would consider launching a full-scale raid
or tribal war aiming for complete occupation of the targeted island (Wong, 2012e).
These operational specifics would constitute the geostrategic gist of the Philippine
datu, who is expected to consolidate one’s political position and to secure addi-
tional political-economic gains, food and natural resources for the followers. As the
head of the Philippine state elected democratically by its voters inhabiting in the
7,641 islands, the Philippine president is the de facto supreme datu of all the
barangay-settlements of the archipelago.
As a result, before western colonialism came to the Indo-Pacific region, the
Malayo-Polynesians already developed a unique set of techniques and systems of
colonial governance. It is widely believed that there are rich oil resources in the
disputed maritime areas of the South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand and the Bay
of Bengal. Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam have overlapping claims in
the Gulf of Thailand, whereas Myanmar and Bangladesh have overlapping claims
in the Bay of Bengal. The rich fishery and oil resources in these disputed waters
were naturally wanted by these competing small powers. Given the geostrategic
culture of the Austronesian datu political institution, the Philippine President
Benigno Aquino III (2010–2016) was naturally under domestic pressures to secure
sustainable energy resources for the Philippine national development.
6.4.3 People’s Diplomacy to De-escalate the China–

Philippines Tensions
6.4.3.1 The Problem: Philippine Energy Security Crisis
When the 2012 Scarborough Shoal stand-off caused substantial China-Philippines

tensions, I was involved in the public sphere commenting about the matter.
I noticed that major Chinese think-tanks and security practitioners had different
opinions from mine. Our difference can be summarized in two points. First, the
Chinese side perceived that the Philippines collaborated with the USA to stage the
stand-off against China, which the Philippines gained benefits from the USA.
Second, the Philippines took advantage of the US ‘pivot to Asia’ policy to counter
China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea. This was intended to
increase her bargaining chips against China. The former (Chinese) opinion con-
ceived the Philippines as an US henchman. The latter (my) opinion hypothesized
that the Philippines was a relatively independent state which hedge the US against
China (Wong, 2012d).
In July 2012, a Philippine congressman visited me in Hong Kong and suggested
that the Scarborough Shoal stand-off was driven by the Philippines’ urge for
national energy security. Approach from the angle of energy security, I was
therefore disseminating my works through all possible means in the public sphere
especially the Chinese media in order to help de-escalating the tensions (Wong,
2012b, c, d, e).
As a matter of fact, the Philippines’ energy security problem has been on the
agenda of most past presidents. Since the 1970s, Philippine President Ferdinand
Marcos conceived a strong correlation between national economic development and
sustainable energy supply. He ordered to conduct a maritime survey and established
that there were oil and gas deposits near the Scarborough Shoal. However, lack of
drilling technology and insufficient finance forced the Marcos administration to
suspend the intended drilling plan. In the 1980s, the Philippines initiated drilling
but was called to stop due to China’s objection. In the 1990s, the Philippines
re-activated the drilling but China again objected. In the 2000s, bilateral negotia-
tions for joint explorations were conducted but these talks were in vain. In 2011, the
Aquino III administration commissioned a British energy company to conduct a
natural gas survey near the Scarborough Shoal. Chinese vessels were however sent
to obstruct the survey (Wong, 2012d). In sum, the Philippines felt that repeated
attempts to explore and drill the natural gas near the Scarborough Shoal have been
obstructed by China.
It was established by energy researchers that in 2008 that 70% of the
Philippines’ electricity was generated by natural gas, oil and coal (Fig. 6.7). 90% of
these fuels were imported from overseas (Rein & Cruz, 2008). As an
energy-dependent country, the Philippines did not give up to achieve energy
independence. According to an anonymous cabinet member of President
Aquino III, while he recognized that the Philippines was enjoying a trade surplus
Fig. 6.7 Electricity generation by source in the Philippines (Year 2009). Source of chart Rein &
Cruz (2008: 132, Fig. 1)
over China and more than 15% of its exports were destined to China, he anticipated
that China’s economy would gradually transform from industrialization-led to more
service-oriented. As such, the labour and operational costs in China would increase.
The assembling and manufacturing works used to be done in China would need to
be relocated to Southeast Asia where there are lower production costs. To prepare
for the Philippines’ further industrialization and future economic development, the
Philippines greatly needs to attain energy self-sufficiency in the long run. As most
of the industries concentrated in central Luzon and near the national capital region
outside Manila, energy supplies to far-flung areas in the northern and southern
Philippines were not prioritized (Wong, 2012d).
For example, the inhabitants in the northern Luzon had to experience at least two
times of electricity black-out in each week. When President Aquino III started the
presidency in 2010, various Philippine civic groups raised the concern to lobby the
newly elected administration to properly address the country’s ‘energy security
crisis’. The Philippine government attempted to resolve the problem through means
of privatization. However, as the government and the private businesses failed to
reach a consensus in regards to how to raise the much needed capitals, the
Philippines’ ‘energy security crisis’ was not resolved. If the problem persisted, this
cabinet member said that the Philippines would not have the choice but to actively
seek support from the USA to intervene and arbitrate the maritime dispute with
China (Wong, 2012d). These were actually very reasonable views, partially because
they are in line with the Malayao-Polynesian strategic culture that the supreme
Philippine datu—President Benigno Aquino III—is expected by his people to

defend the energy security interests of all the Filipino peoples and their future
generations.
6.4.3.2 The Seven Stages in the US ‘Pivot to Asia’ Policy
After the 2012 Scarborough Shoal stand-off, the Philippine Roman Catholic arch-
bishops and bishops were debriefed by the Philippine military about the incident.
Integrating their views with the interviewed cabinet member and an anonymous
source from the Philippine Left, it was concluded that the Scarborough Shoal
stand-off was de facto a China–US stand-off, which revealed the following specific
steps in the US containment plot of China (Wong, 2012d):
1. In the first stage, the US economic and military might returned to Asia. The US
return was welcomed by the Asian small powers, which commonly saw into it
as an opportunity to reduce their economic and trade dependency over China.
2. The second stage: Asian small powers were empowered by US return to Asia,
which strengthened their negotiation power over China and serve as a coun-
tering force against China’s increasingly assertiveness in the disputed waters. In
other words, it was to make use of the sovereignty disputes and resources
competition between China and her neighbouring small states to escalate their
dilemmas.
3. The third stage was when China started to pressurized the small power, the small
power would invite the USA to enter the scene, who would forge stronger
security and military ties with the Asian small powers.
4. The fourth stage was when China would feel challenged and tempted to use
armed measures against the Asian small powers. The Asian small powers would
be triggered to swing back to the USA
5. The fifth stage was when the threat issued by China would continue to escalate,
the USA would be pushed to form military alliance with the small powers to
encircle China.
6. The sixth stage was when war and armed conflict broke out between China and
the Asian small powers. As international war will adversely affect the interna-
tional economic and trade flows between China and the Asian small powers, the
USA will be able to take the advantage to fill in the trade vacuum and
re-engineer its economic leadership in the Asia-Pacific region.
7. The seventh stage was when the USA would take back the economic dominance
and military leadership in Asia, the Cold War containment of a re-isolated China
would then be fully activated. This would effectively curtail China’s rise and
hallow the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.
6.4.3.3 Peaceable Public Engagement Through Knowledge Transfer
There was a third opinion in the Philippines theorizing that because of the Aquino
family’s long historical ties with the USA, the Aquino III administration was forced
to be the ‘geopolitical pivot’ of the USA in East Asia. If Aquino III did not comply
with US demand, his regime would not be stable. However, in my opinion,
whichever is the most accurate account was not so important. Rather, what was in
common among them was the realist culture of egoism and rivalrous enmity, often
found in mainstream geopolitics and foreign policy formulation. To de-escalate the
tensions between China and the Philippines, I generated the following alternative
strategic cultural narrative in my Chinese commentary article published in the Hong
Kong Economic Journal:
The present situation has pushed China’s diplomacy towards a crossroad, which necessi-
tates the Chinese people’s deep self-reflection. Throughout the historical cyclical rise and
fall of the world powers, what kind of developmental worldview and values should we –
the Chinese people – adopt so that we can rein in the obsessive and illusory insistence of the
egoistic-self in the capitalistic liberal democracy?
Apart from economic rise, what diplomatic values should the Chinese people adopt so that
we can remain peaceful and tranquil in the midst of never-ceasing adversity and inevitable
success/failure in all competitions?
In the past, the ‘Beijing consensus’ has become an alternative development pathway
welcomed by the developing countries. China has also become the leader of the developing
world. However, the South China Sea problem has exposed a self-contradictory face of
China – when sovereignty and resource-interests were threatened, the ‘non-string attached’
spirit in the ‘Beijing consensus’ to help the developing countries to seek their own national
development pathway was suddenly suspended.
China really needs to return to the ‘Beijing consensus’ to conceive ‘joint development’
proposal in the South China Sea. This is intended not only to benefit the development
countries, but also to facilitate the collective revival of Asia, so that our original
kind-hearted national character will not be contaminated by our illusory obsessions with
such objects of desire as ‘sovereignty’ and ‘great power-hood’. This is intended to address
the root-problems of inequality and injustice. The US containment plot against China will
self-dissipate. (Wong, 2012d)
6.5 Conclusion
In order to substantiate a theory of practice of ‘people’s diplomacy’ to make

international peace, this chapter has achieved the following goals.
First, it critiqued the pre-Second World War geopolitical thought generated by
Sir Halford Machinder, General Karl Haushofer and Professor Carl Schmitt through
the prism of mimesis. It argues that because the mimetic mechanism was the key
strategic agency at work among these three English and German geopoliticians, the
Second World War would be partially attributed to their mimetic rivalries, which
6.5 Conclusion 177
were however driven by their ambitious desires, realist egoism and their overem-
phasis on war and conflict.
Second, in reconciling with our very mimetic human nature, I outlined the ethics
of mimetic peace and developed a theory of practice of ‘people’s diplomacy’ as an
attempt to practice international peace and prevent war.
Third, using the China-Philippines disputes over the South China Sea as a case
study of ‘people’s diplomacy’, I first established that the Philippines is an ‘archi-
pelagic power’, a new concept which is complementary to Mackinder’s original
geopolitical typology. I have then provided the anthropological, linguistic and
archaeological specifics to qualify the Philippines as a resilient Austronesian
archipelagic power with ‘datu’ as the key geostrategic type. Then, I accounted how
I conducted people’s diplomacy to de-escalate tensions following the
China-Philippines stand-off near the Scarborough Shoal in 2012.
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Chapter 7
How Would China Approach
the European Rimland? The Pivots
of Poland and the UK
Abstract The ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative aims to connect China with the
Eurasian landmass through economic corridors, rail networks, infrastructural pro-
jects and cultural exchanges, etc. In the previous chapters, I have covered various
states in the Asian rimland. How would China approach the European rimland?
This chapter will answer this question with the case studies of Poland and the UK.
Approaching from critical realism, while I will analyse the geopolitical conflicts
between Russia and the European Union since 2006 and 2014 in the light of their
common realist security-seeking pattern, I will examine the bilateral relations
between Poland and China, and between the UK and China through the structural
lens of the European states’ strategic habitus, their international trade pattern and
unique economic developmental pathways, which they are destined to be. Destined
statecraft therefore highlights the necessary wisdom to not just honestly
acknowledge, but also to unselectively embrace the embedded structural constraints
of the bilateral relations between two engaging countries. In devising a better
foreign policy for a mutually beneficial relationship, the involving countries would
constitute a ‘community of shared destiny’.
Keywords China–Europe relations

Europe–Russia relations since 2006

Geopolitics Habitus Logics of the powers Poland–China relations UK–China
relations
7.1 Introduction: Poland and the UK as Pivots

in European Rimland
Under the Obama administration, if Japan and the Philippines were identified to be
the USA’s geopolitical pivots in the East Asian rimland, Poland and the UK would
be the USA’s geopolitical pivots in the European rimland. As a central European
land power, Poland could serve as a direct deterrent against Russian advance
towards the West, whereas the British sea power would serve as surveillance
outpost monitoring continental European (especially German) affairs and exercise

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6563-7_7
182 7 How Would China Approach the European Rimland? …
long-range, subtle restraint over Russia. This geostrategic protocol would entail at
least four elements (Wong, 2016f).
First was to use the Polish land power and British sea power to contain and to
simultaneously constrain and enable Germany and Russia as the land and heartland
power respectively.
Second, the blueprint of this Eurasian containment strategy in the European
rimland was to use the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the
European Union (EU) as two international and security platforms to construct an
onion-like layered interlocking mutually constraining mechanism. This gist of such
mechanism was to maintain a balance of power in Eurasia.
Third, the gist was to make use of the existing European powers to indirectly
influence European affairs and to infiltrate into the Russian heartland. This would
hinge on the sophisticated management and containment of both Germany and
Russia which had recorded invasive attempts in the European rimland.
Finally, the goal was to contain the entire Eurasia and to maintain the balance of
power within it. This was considered to be a more, if not the most cost-effective
way to manage the Eurasian powers and to maintain US leadership in the world
with the least inputs.
In this chapter, through the prism of critical realism (see Chap. 2), I will explain
why the 2006 Ukraine natural gas crisis constituted a critical historical juncture in
the post-Cold War Europe–Russia relations. As the Europe–Russia relations con-
tinued to be unstable since 2006, the 2014 Crimean crisis was just an escalated
outcome. This geopolitical development is essential for contextualizing how China
would approach Europe after 2014. This is my main argument: instead of appearing
to undermine the US geopolitical interests in the pivots of Poland and the UK and to
undermine Russian geopolitical interests in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, China
would find pragmatic ways to cooperate with Poland and the UK as its geoeco-
nomic pivots along the lines of energy security, trans-Eurasian trade corridor and
economic cooperation, and last but not the least, the internationalization of the
Chinese currency.
7.2 The Changing Geopolitical Structures of Europe

Since 2006
7.2.1 The 2006 Ukraine Gas Crisis and the EU–Russia

Relational Downturn
Shortly after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1989–1991, the Maastricht
Treaty on the European Union was formally signed in 1992 by the major European
powers. The Maastricht Treaty formally gave birth to the European Union and
introduced a common currency among the member-states (Denmark and the UK
7.2 The Changing Geopolitical Structures of Europe Since 2006 183
were, however, not included in the common currency zone).1 In the 1990s, as the
Cold War ideological fault-line disappeared, the relationship between Europe and
Russia underwent a warming period.
On the European side, the enlargement of the European Union (EU) marked a
major geopolitical development. From the 1990s to the 2000s, many Central and
Eastern European countries joined the European Union. In 2002, the European
common currency (Euro) formally replaced the national currencies of twelve
member-states. On the Russian side, as the Cold War ended, one saw Russian
rapprochement in its relations with Europe. Moscow established an energy-oriented
economic development policy in which Russia gradually became the major supplier
of European energy especially natural gas. Europe and Russia developed interde-
pendence—mutual dependence wherein there were reciprocal effects of interna-
tional trade between them as partners.
From the 1990s to the first half of 2004, liberalist interdependency theory
seemed to gain currency in the studies of Europe–Russia relations, mainly in three
counts. First, economically interdependent states were prevented from having
conflicts with trading partners due to high economic costs and loss of commercial
gains (Chifu, 2014). Second, security of interdependent states is highest when
consumers and producers are mutually interlocked at all phases of the supply chain
due to their common economic interests (Chifu, 2014). Finally, the liberalist
interdependency theory also warned that an asymmetric interdependence would
tend to break down due to power disparity.
Although the EU and Russia are considered as two powerful geopolitical entities
of insignificant disparity, their increasing confrontation could not simply attribute to
an alleged asymmetric interdependence portrayed by the liberalist perspective. Two
factors should be counted in here. First is the asymmetrical relationship between
Russia and the bordering smaller power—Ukraine. Second factor was the growing
insecurities on the parts of Russia and EU resultant of their increasing
interdependence.
According to the realist interdependence theory, interdependence is actually a
major source of conflict because interstate interdependence causes the state actors to
seek measures to reduce one’s vulnerability to improve national security. Such
vulnerability entails the state’s compromised decision-making autonomy and its
reduced capacity to defend and assert sovereignty resultant of increasing depen-
dence on another state (Krickovic, 2015). States are therefore bound to improve
security through overcoming vulnerability (Copeland, 1996). A realist under-
standing of energy security would suggest that the state actors are in general
sceptical of long-term energy supply from the foreign countries (Luft, 2009: 340).
As there is fundamental difference between nationalized energy resources and
international-market commercialized energy resources, policy-makers must reduce
1
The signing members were Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, France, Ireland, Italy,
Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and UK, whereas Belgium, Germany, France, Italy,
Luxembourg and the Netherlands are the founding countries, the other six countries (Denmark,
Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and the UK) are considered in the outer circle.
the strategic value of imported/foreign energy resources so that one’s national

energy policy would be neither dictated by nor contradicting with its foreign policy
(Collins, 2015: 347–348). In contrast to the liberalist position that energy inter-
dependence can enhance both sides to make absolute gains in the international
trade, a realist would remind us that policy-makers should be mindful in only
aiming at a limited level of relative gains in all international trades. Desiring only to
secure the absolute gains works against one’s national security because it will
compromise one’s decision-making autonomy, policy agility and expose its vul-
nerability (Krickovic, 2015: 1).
This realist interdependence perspective would help us to understand the
emergence of the EU–Russia confrontation from the 2000s. The 2014 Crimean
crisis was just an interim escalated outcome of the confrontation. The 2006 Ukraine
gas crisis was actually the turning point of their relationship. In late 2004, friction
arose between Ukraine and Russia over Ukraine’s inability to pay for Russian gas.
As most of the Russian gas had to pass through Ukraine to Europe, Ukraine then
negotiated an agreement with Russia to charge Moscow a transit tariffs for gas
bound for Europe. The negotiation, however, failed. Bilateral relations between
Ukraine and Russia worsened when Moscow insisted that Ukraine could charge
such transit tariffs only if Ukraine was willing to pay for a higher price for its own
gas import from Russia. The tensions escalated to a gas crisis in 2006. In early
2006, Russia decided to shut off its gas supply to Ukraine which seriously affected
the gas supplies in other EU countries (Hadfield, 2016).
It was established that gradually after the Cold War, both Russia and the EU
became heavily dependent on each other for the supply and demand of natural gas
(Hadfield, 2016). For instance, gas exports to the EU accounted for 35% of the
Russian flagship company—Gazprom’s sales, and 60% of its earnings. Russia was
the EU’s largest supplier—the EU imported 40% of its gas from Russia. Some EU
member-states’ dependency was almost 100% (Gwertzman & Mankoff, 2009). EU–
Russian energy interdependence resulted in cooperation until the 2006 Ukraine gas
crisis. The Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) was signed by EU with
Russia in 1994. This very important agreement formed the basis of EU–Russia
contractual relations for the past two decades (Bastian, 2007). Their interdependent
cooperation continued after the 2006 Ukraine gas crisis, leading to the establish-
ment of the Early Warning Mechanism in 2009, the EU–Russia Gas Advisory
Council in 2011, and the EU–Russia Roadmap agreement in 2013 (Pick, 2012).
Though the 2014 Crimean crisis suspended all these cooperative mechanisms, to
avoid huge loss of incomes, two sides have no other option but to continue to trade
energy.
Until 2006, relationship between EU and Russia was characterized by
energy-driven interdependent cooperation. The 2006 Ukraine gas crisis, however,
suggested to the EU member-states that their dependence on Russia was a source of
insecurity (Güney & Kormaz, 2014). Since 2006, despite their energy interde-
pendence continued, EU–Russia cooperation deteriorated because they became
more self-conscious in their own vulnerability and insecurity. Increasing EU–
Russian competitions were marked by EU’s ‘Eastern Partnership’ programme
which it attempted to enlarge its sphere of influence towards the Eastern Europe.
Russia reacted by adopting a divide-and-rule tactic in Eastern Europe to drive the
EU apart (de Jong, 2016). As the tensions and mutual suspicions continued to
mount, unsurprisingly, the 2014 Crimean crisis further triggered the European and
Russian actions to deploy economic sanctions and ban trade. For instance, Russian
assets were tuned to freezing by the USA and EU whereas Russia retaliated by
banning Western food imports.2 Russia–EU trade balance decreased at least 30%
from 2014 to 2015 (Nevskaya, 2016). It also clearly marked the European and
Russian common goal in diversifying their energy supply and demands to other
producers and consumers.
Whereas since 2014 Russia has made a strategic move to trade more energy to
China through the development of the ‘Power of Siberia Pipeline’ and the proposed
Altai Gas Pipeline (Adamson, 2015), the EU turned to other regional supplies
(especially North Africa and the Middle East) and exploring new energy tech-
nologies (e.g. liquefied natural gas—LNG) (Chyong, Slavkova, & Tcherneva,
2015), despite in the short to medium terms the Russian supplies would still have an
overall heavy weight in the EU gas imports. This is safe to suggest that since the
2006 Ukraine gas crisis, both Russia and EU recognized that though in the near
future they would continue to trade energy, they will enhance their own security
interests by decreasing their interdependency. The increasingly confrontation
between the EU and Russia was further exacerbated by the 2014 Crimean crisis.
7.2.2 A Miscalculated Eurasian Small Power: Ukraine

and the 2014 Crimean Crisis
In 2014, various European leading foreign policy think tanks commonly expressed
worrying concerns to a series of events following Russian annexation of Crimea in
2014—the Ukraine crisis and its consequential proposed partition by Russia, the
shoot-down of the Malaysian airline flight MH17, and Russian intent to push
westward towards Eastern Europe.
For example, the Centre for European Policy Studies of Belgium analysed that
since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1990s, although Russia resisted the
EU’s enlargement towards the East, the main source of Russian resistance was
connected with the competing economic interests between Russia and EU (Delcour
& Kostanyan, 2014). It was believed at that time that their economic competition
would be resolved in the long run. What caused most of the Russian anxiety and
insecurity was actually the security and military enlargement of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) towards the East. The EU–Russian relations in recent
years gradually turned from mistrusts to confrontation. The Ukraine crisis was just a
2
Source: ‘Russia Bans Import of Food from West in Response to Sanctions’ VOA News. 7 August
2014.
natural consequence of the EU–NATO enlargement towards the East and Russia’s
reactionary defence mechanism.
Moreover, the Danish Institute for International Studies suggested that although
the Crimean crisis signalled Russia’s blunt move to stop EU enlargement towards
the East, Russian 2008 intervention in Georgia was an earlier sign to say ‘No’ to the
EU enlargement project towards the East. Russia–EU relationship in 2008 was
worsened. After the EU launched the ‘Eastern Partnership’ programme in 2009,
Russia counteracted by launching the competing ‘Eurasian Customs Union’ in
2011. Both Russia and EU trumpeted their campaigns by either inviting or pres-
surizing the Eastern European countries to join their initiatives (Larsen, 2014).
However, in November 2013 when Kiev were about to sign the ‘Association
Agreement’ with the EU, as a strategy to deter Moldova, Georgia and Armenia to
follow Ukraine’s pro-EU move, Russia immediately threatened Ukraine by
imposing economic sanctions and cutting off energy supply, which effectively
caused Ukraine’s former President Viktor Yanukovych (2010–2014) to abruptly
suspend the EU agreement. There were evidences suggesting that the Central
Intelligence Agency chief John Brennan and other US diplomats had various levels
of infiltration and involvement in Ukraine’s colour revolutions in 2004–2005 and
2014. It was also hypothesized that Washington would have made use of the EU
enlargement project to subtly catalyse the conflict between Russia and EU (Wong &
Khiatani, 2014).
The 2014 Crimean annexation and the Ukraine crisis just showed that as a
miscalculated Eurasian small power—Ukraine, who failed to recognize from the
realist perspective that it was at the common security interest of EU and Russia to
reduce their energy and economic interdependency. Because of such misrecogni-
tion, Kiev unfortunately became the main victim loser of the great powers’ com-
petition among Russia, EU and USA, causing to its present-day partition
conundrum (Larsen, 2014). Should the Ukrainian strategists and policy-makers
recognized that the 2006 Ukraine gas crisis had actually triggered the changing
security-seeking pattern of EU and Russia, they would henceforth make necessary
policy adjustments to stay aloof and neutral by not aligning with either Moscow or
Brussel. This would prevent the two great powers to compete for influences within
Ukraine, which further caused its turmoil in 2014. Ukraine would have been able to
keep itself intact nowadays.
In continuation of the 2006 Ukraine gas crisis and the common realist
security-seeking pattern for EU and Russia to reduce their interdependency, the
2014 Crimean crisis and its aftermath again proved that the Eastern European
rimland has been a highly contested arena of geopolitical competition among such
great powers as Russia, EU and USA Since then, Russia has clearly shifted its
energy supply policy towards East Asia (especially China) in order to reduce it
export dependency on EU In a similar fashion, EU has started to increase energy
imports from North Africa, the Middle East and the USA in order to reduce its
import dependency on Russia. The two great powers clearly intended to reduce
their interdependency as a means to enhance their own policy-making autonomy
and therefore security (Wong & Khiatani, 2014).
The above Eurasian geopolitical shift and ongoing dynamics set the necessary
energy and economic structural backdrop for China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ ini-
tiative to enter the European rimland. In the midst of existing great power com-
petition among Russia, EU and USA, how would China approach the European
rimland states? In the following sections, I will use Poland and the UK for com-
parative analysis for the purpose of illustrating how China could engage with the
European rimland.
7.3 How Would China Approach Poland?
7.3.1 The ‘Logics of the Powers’ as Strategic Habitus
Shortly after winning the August 2015 Polish general election, the presidential
candidate of the pro-Catholic and centric-rightist political party—the ‘Law and
Justice Party’—President Andrzej Duda (2015–present) formally indicated his wish
to visit China as the head of the Polish state. Duda’s China visit was then swiftly
conducted in late November 2015, which received Beijing’s significant attentions.
Duda’s visit also achieved to renew the ‘strategic partnership relationship’ between
the two nations.3 In the ‘Central and Eastern Europe’ region,4 Poland was among
the founding members of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
(AIIB).5 Poland was identified by China to be a key partner of the ‘One Belt One
Road’ initiative in Central and Eastern Europe. Poland seemed to reciprocate its
willingness to cooperate.
Influenced by realism’s state-centrist presupposition in the development of
international relations theories, conventional foreign policy-making has centred on
the nation’s own self-interests and the state as the basic unit of analysis.
A consequence of this is to mainly regard the transacting state as the ‘other’ and
therefore, the bilateral relationship would largely serve as an instrument to satisfy
one’s self-interests. An underlying operational logic of the realist statecraft would
hinge on whether the state strategist could instrumentalize other countries in a
complex web of multilateral relations, for which the acting state’s interests and
3
Sources: (1) ‘China, Poland Agree on Better Cooperation’ China Daily. 24 November 2015.
(2) ‘Interview: Poland Can Act as Ambassador in Relations between China, Europe: Polish
President’ Xinhua News. 21 November 2015. (3) ‘More Chinese Investment Expected in Poland’
CCTV News. 24 November 2015. (4) ‘波蘭留學:搭上 “一帶一路” 的順風車–專訪波蘭駐華大
使林譽平 (Mr. Miroslaw Gajewski). 留學 (Studying Abroad Magazine). 第22期:35-39頁;2015年
11月20日’。.
4
In general, the Central and Eastern European region may consist of the following countries:
Poland, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia,
Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia,
Macedonia, Armenia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Russia and Georgia as well as Kazakhstan.
5
Here are the founding members of the AIIB in the Central and Eastern Europe region: Austria,
Georgia, Germany, Poland and Russia.
power could be maximized. Instrumental rationality seems to be the embedded

logic of this realist foreign policy practice.
However, if China would like to develop long-term sustainable relationships
with countries in the Global South, there is a need to redefine the ‘logics of the
powers’ in Chinese foreign policy analysis and practice. By the prism of the ‘logics
of the powers’, I want to capture the very different historically constituted
deep-seated logics of national security interest formation and the context-specific
strategic considerations of each state, whether one is a small power, middle-sized
power or great power, in how to achieve its own national security goals. By
allowing the powers to identify and articulate their core national interests and
security agendas, China would be able to avoid simply seeing the small powers as
her own instrument of national development. This would also reduce the risks that
China would run to undermine the diverse core interests and context-specific needs
for various developmental pathways in the Global South.
According to the administration of Xi Jinping, consistently from 2015 to 2017,
the goal of this ‘community of shared destiny’ is to forge a genuinely mutually
beneficial and interdependent global community of different nations and peoples,
which was in the words of Chinese President Xi Jinping, the ‘community of
common/shared destiny’ (mingyun gontongti; 命运共同体) in the world.6 In sum,
this ‘community of common/shared destiny’ has the following characteristics:
• In emphasizing the cooperative and mutually beneficial aspect of international
relations, it aims to facilitate win–win collaboration and suggest that zero-sum
competition is outdated.
• In emphasizing peaceful development, it suggests that colonialism, imperialism
and the Cold War were the culprits of international conflicts and violence in the
past centuries.
• Instead of emphasizing inter-civilizational clash and one’s cultural superiority, it
advocates for the closer communication, equal-footing interaction and exchange
among cultures for peaceful coexistence and inclusive interdependency.
• It advocates for the importance of such values as justice, equality, peace,
inclusiveness, interdependency, mutual benefits and mutual respect in interna-
tional relations.
• It indicates the need for a new foreign policy agenda which could facilitate
integrative and scientific development among the countries in the world.
• It advocates creating a world order of a shared and common future.
6
Sources: (1) Xi Jinping (2015). ‘携手构建合作共赢新伙伴,同心打造人类命运共同体。[Let’s
Join Hands to Construct Cooperative All-wins New Partnerships, Let’s Create a Human Community
of Shared Destiny].’ Speech Delivered in the 70th Meeting of the United Nations in Geneva,
Switzerland (28 September 2015). People’s Daily. 29 September 2015. (2) Wang Yi (2016). ‘携手打
造人类命运共同体。[Let’s Create]’ People’s Daily. 31 May 2016. (3) Xi Jinping (2017). ‘共同构
建人类命运共同体——在联合国日内瓦总部的演讲。’ Speech Delivered in the United Nations
Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. 18 January 2017. Xinhua News. 19 January 2017. (4) ‘習近平
聯合國演講:構建人類命運共同體。’ China Times. 19 January 2017.
7.3 How Would China Approach Poland? 189
In furthering these goals, the ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative aims to construct a
complex of transnational energy, trade, transportation and communication networks
in connecting Europe and Asia as well as Africa and other continents. Chinese
foreign policy practice has then injected the elements of multilateralism and insti-
tutionalism often found in the international relations theories of constructivism and
liberalism. This new Chinese foreign policy practice is aimed to reshape the
international landscape of the countries in Europe and Asia. This is intended to
create a mutually enmeshed and interpenetrating Eurasian landscape whereby
China, Asia and Europe will be interconnected in one economic whole. The concept
of ‘destiny’ (mingyun; 命运), which can also mean ‘common future’, has become
both a cultural anchorage policy and entry-point of this new transnational logic of
the Chinese state).
According to Bourdieu’s (1977) post-structuralist theory of the ‘habitus’, the
capacity to act and make change of every individual, group, institution, organiza-
tion and state regime in this world is constrained by a set of predetermined and
pre-existing yet self-changing structural factors. The summation of these structural
factors constitutes the deep-seated ‘logics of the powers’—the objective-structural
habitat where the subject-actors are prearranged to dwell and live—habitus. If the
state strategists neglect or ignore these deep structures, despite how well intended
and hard-working are the two governments aiming to forge a long-term sustainable
partnership, the outcome would neither be proportionate to the inputs, nor be a
success.
In the following section, as an attempt to outline the already given habitus of
Poland–China relations, it will first identify the consensus and observations of
Polish and Chinese scholars in regard to the structural landscape in Poland–China
relations. Second, it will generate foreign policy advices in enriching both coun-
tries’ logics of the powers.
7.3.2 Stages and Structures in Poland–China Relations

Since the 1990s
From Beijing’s perspective, Poland is a major member of the regional organization

—‘China and Central and Eastern European Countries Economics and Trade
Forum’, abbreviated as ‘CEE 16+1’ (URL: http://www.china-ceec.org/eng/).7
Poland is also the only founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank (AIIB) among the members of the ‘CEE 16+1’ regional organization
(Szczudlik-Tatar 2014a).
7
The ‘CEE 16+1’ consists of the following countries in the Central and Eastern Europe: Albania,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Estonia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania,
Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia.
In the past decade, although the trade volumes between China and four Central
and Eastern European countries (i.e. Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and
Poland) multiplied, the persistently widening trade deficits were a major concern of
these European countries. For example, despite China was consistently among the
top fifth country of imports for the four European countries, their exports to China
were at least ten times lesser. According to the 2012 statistics of the Polish gov-
ernment, total import from China to Poland reached a total of US$17,620,453.00.
However, total Polish export to China was only worth a total of US$1,747,335.00
(Kong 2014). This serious trade deficit was widely recognized in the discussions
among the Chinese intelligentsia and Polish academia as a major challenge in the
future development of Poland–China relations (Cieslik, 2014; Hryniewicz, 2015;
Palonka, 2010; Polskie Radio, 2014; Yao 姚, 2015; Zhang 張, 2015). Nonetheless,
both Chinese and Polish scholars were also aware that due to China’s ‘world
factory’ status and the significant economic volume difference between China and
Poland, the trade deficit problem would not be easily resolved in the short and
middle runs.
The Crimean geopolitical crisis taken place in Ukraine during 2013 and 2014
brought significant ripple effects which widened the Poland–China trade deficit
problem. This would necessitate a new strategy for the two countries to address this
long-term problem and alleviate the short-term losses. To do so, the key milestones
in the development of the Poland–China relations since the 1990s would need to be
identified. Contemporary Poland–China relations can be understood in three main
stages.
Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the warming of
the Poland–China relations formally started in November 1997. This was first stage
of the bilateral development, which was marked by a joint declaration issued by
both countries, which stated that
雙方將在相互尊重獨立、主權和領土完整,平等互利和互不干涉内政及其他公認的國
際法則的基礎上發展長期、穩定的友好合作關係。8
My English interpretation from Chinese: ‘both countries will develop long-term, stable and
friendly cooperative relationship. This will be based on the principles of mutual respect in
the independence, sovereignty and territorial intactness of the two countries. Both will
strive to forge mutually and equally beneficial relationship, with non-interference and other
international legal foundations as the guiding principles’.
Since then, Poland recognized the ‘one China’ principle. In reciprocity, China
expressed understanding for Poland’s wish to seek stronger cooperation with the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and seek integration with the European
Union (EU) . This was the first milestone in Poland–China relations.
The second developmental stage of Poland–China relations started in 2004.
Following China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 and Poland
joined EU in 2004, both countries expressed stronger desires to strengthen bilateral
cooperation. In mid-2004, Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Poland. Two
Source: 《中華人民共和國和波蘭共和國聯合公報。》1997年11月17日。.
8
countries formally signed a joint declaration which Beijing uplifted the bilateral
relations to the level of ‘friendly and cooperative partnership’ (youhao hezuo
huoban guanxi; 友好合作伙伴关係). Apart from expressing mutual respect to
adopt different context-sensitive developmental pathways in accordance with each
country’s national circumstances, they affirmed mutual respect and support to both
sides’ efforts to defend sovereignty and territorial intactness. At the same time, the
two countries unprecedentedly openly exchanged their views and indicated mutual
willingness to conduct constructive dialogues in regard to the differences in their
political, economic and social systems, as well as cultural values and human rights.
This marked the second stage of the development of the Poland–China relations.
The third developmental stage in Poland–China relations started in 2011.
Although the 2008 global financial crisis caused the European debt crisis, Poland
and China both managed to maintain stable economic growths. In consideration of
the new changes in the international environment, in December 2011, Beijing
formally signalled an intention to uplift China’s relationship with Poland to the
‘strategic partnership’ relationship (zhanlue hezuohuoban guanxi; 战略伙伴关系).
In March 2012, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao paid a historic state visit to Poland and
conducted dialogues with the Polish leaders in regard to the issues pertinent to
bilateral relations, China–Europe relations, regional and international problems.
They recognized the principles of mutual respect and equality to transcend differ-
ences. To ensure the development of a long-term sustainable relationship, they also
agreed to take care of each other’s core interests (Cui 崔, 2013). The 2012 visit
marked the third milestone in the bilateral development between China and Poland.
In the early 2010s, the strengthened pushes of USA, NATO and EU towards the
East had created ripple effects affecting the democratization movements and energy
policies in Ukraine and countries in the south Caucasus region. The relationship
between Poland and China was inevitably complicated by the competing geopo-
litical forces of the USA, Germany and Russia. Historically, Poland was at times
invaded, partitioned and subjugated by such neighbouring powers as the Prussian
Empire, the Nazi Germany and Russia. Considering the experience of Soviet rule
after Second World War, Polish sociologist Joanna Wawrzyniak suggested that the
concrete cultural content of contemporary Polish national identity was characterized
by a strong alertness towards Germany and Russia as the ‘other’.9 The Polish
deep-seated alertness guarding against Germany and Russia would nevertheless
persist despite the facts that in recent years, whereas Germany has been the largest
trading partner and investor to Poland, Russia has been the largest energy supplier
to Poland. This cultural identity feature contributed to the formation of Poland’s
consistent nationalist sentiment structure in: (1) resisting Germany, (2) anti-Russia
and (3) pro-USA.
9
Joanna Wawrzyniah (2016). ‘Seminar: The Making of a War Story: The Politics of the Past in
Poland, 1995–2015.’ Department of Politics, Languages & International Studies, University of
Bath, UK, 12 April 2016.
Cautiously monitoring the bordered Germany and Russia—the two great powers
who invaded Poland before, Warsaw would on the one hand need the USA and
NATO to counter Russian pushes towards the West. On the other hand, to counter
German dominance in EU, Poland would need to distinguish its geopolitical
uniqueness and the strategic importance to USA and NATO. This hedging
geostrategy was a critical realist element in the deep-rooted strategic habitus of
Poland’s ‘Eastern policy’ (Zhao 趙 & Tang 唐, 2013).
7.3.3 Polish Strategic Habitus: The Greater Poland’s

Eastern Policy
In the Middle Ages, Poland was once an multiethnic empire occupying a vast
territory between today’s Germany and Russia. Its Western frontiers covered parts
of present-day Germany and Austria. Its frontiers also reached east to the Baltic
States, Belarus, Ukraine and the Black Sea. This ‘Greater Poland’ historic identity
constituted the dispositions in the memorial structure of the modern Poles, which
continued to influence the Polish strategists’ planning of their national development
policy.
According to the Chinese scholars Zhao and Tang (2013), in contrast to the
Polish geostrategists who advocated the ‘Western policy’ agenda which mainly to
resist Germany, the proponents of the ‘Eastern policy’ strategy aimed to restore the
past glory of the Middle Ages Polish Empire. They proposed Poland to actively
infiltrate eastward to Lithuania, the Baltic region and then into the Russian territory.
Approaching the twenty-first century when one witnessed Poland joined EU and
NATO, the strategic repertoire of ‘Eastern policy’ was revived, henceforth res-
onating the ‘Greater Poland’ ambition to expand towards the East.
Therefore, on the one hand, Poland adopted an active foreign policy agenda
towards the West. It actively sought to establish positive relationships with such
great powers as the USA and Germany. On the other hand, Poland made astute use
of the geopolitical expansions of the EU and NATO towards the East to achieve
two aims of its own interests. First, it cooperated and instrumentalized the EU’s
political-economic powers to propel Poland to make political-economic advances
towards the East. Second, it instrumentalized NATO and USA’s military and
security thrusts against Russia to deter Russian advance towards the West. In other
words, the specific logic of Poland’s ‘Eastern policy’ geostrategy was
‘Polandization’ of the greater powers, i.e. to ride on and make use of the larger
geopolitical forces of EU, NATO and the USA for its own political-economic
benefits and national security interests (Wong, 2016b).
This strategy would have two main characteristics. First is Poland’s voluntarism
in performing as the combined offensive-stagger of EU, NATO and USA which
was pointedly thrusting towards the Russian heartland. Second is for Poland to
actively infiltrate into and influence the political and economic affairs of the
countries involved in the EU’s ‘Eastern Partnership’ programme, which is a major

policy instrument of the ‘European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement
Negotiations’. These countries were Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia
and Azerbaijan as well as potentially countries in the Central Asia. As these
countries neatly fell into the ‘Greater Poland’ imagined territory, Poland naturally
intended to make use of these greater powers to achieve its own ambitions and
restore its past glory.
Poland’s ‘Eastern policy’ strategic repertoire would be able to explain why
before the 2013–2014 Crimean crisis, Poland was already reported to support the
‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine (Dempsey, 2016), which caused the present
geopolitical division between eastern and western Ukraine. Having western Ukraine
to be incorporated into the EU would serve as a buffer zone separating Poland and
Russia. This arrangement would be at the interests of Polish national security.
Despite Poland continued to depend on Russian energy supply, its policy to
Russia was structured in the following double actions of subtle control: to guard
against while conduct dialogue; to suppress while cooperate. In the long run,
however, the geostrategic proponents of the ‘Eastern policy’ would need to
establish strategic and security ties with Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia. In order to reduce their common dependency on Russian
energy supplies and to achieve full independence from Russian control, a common
aim would be to form an alternative energy security coalition to channel energy
supplies to other energy-exporting countries in Central Asia (Wong, 2016b).
Since the Crimean crisis in 2014, Russia–EU relations reached its lowest point
after their mutual exchanges of economic sanctions and trade embargos. According
to an anonymous official Polish source, Poland–China trade deficits have been
further widened because the Russian authorities banned Polish commodities such as
meat and agricultural products to be transported through the Russian territory to
China (Wong, 2016b). As the maritime route would take too long and the aerial
route would cost too much, the Polish government had an urgent need to discuss
with China how to formulate a long-term resolution to develop bilateral relations
against the larger backdrop of the Crimean geopolitical deadlock and bilateral
economic structural constraints.
7.3.4 Policy Recommendations to Future China–Poland

Relations
Before and after the Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Poland in June 2016, I
considered there is a possible policy agenda to be coformulated by the two gov-
ernments. In the first place, a series of informal dialogues should be conducted after
the state visit. Using the trade deficit as an entry-point for opening the discussion,
the two governments could exchange their views regarding how to improve the
Eurasian railway system project connecting Poland’s Łódź Special Economic Zone
with the south-western Chinese city of Chengdu. The original design of the Łódź-
Chengdu railway had to pass through Russia, which was the fastest and most direct
route (Szczudlik-Tatar, 2013, 2014b, 2015). In view of the complications caused by
the Crimean crisis and the EU–Russia confrontation, China and Poland needed to
find an alternative connecting route (Wong, 2016b).
I think China should consider falling in line with Poland’s ‘Eastern policy’
strategic habitus in her approach to Poland. The purpose should be to open an
alternative route of the Łódź-Chengdu rail network that should be able to avoid
entering into Russian territory, but to connect Poland with Romania, Bulgaria,
Turkey, Armenia, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and finally reach
China. Although this alternative detouring route would take longer distance and
time, as it connects with the main oil-generating countries in the Middle East and
Central Asia, it would be able to help solving two problems for both countries.
First, the alternative route would meet the long-term energy security needs of both
Poland and China. By connecting with such oil-rich countries as Iran and
Kazakhstan, Poland and China would be able to gain alternative energy supplies
from them. Second, it would prevent China and Poland from being affected by the
negative consequences, caused by the economic-trade sanctions and political con-
flicts between EU and Russia. In the long run, this alternative detouring route would
more likely to increase the volume of Poland–China trade which will also involve
other countries, thus hopefully their trade deficit gap would be narrowed.
A point of caution should, however, be stated here. The construction of the
Łódź-Chengdu rail network would potentially undermine the relationship between
China and Russia. To ensure its success, both China and Poland should handle this
project delicately. Apart from the AIIB, the New Development Bank (BRICS Bank)
and the Silk Road Fund which China uses to gather capitals and generate invest-
ment funds overseas, the National Development and Reform Commission of the
Chinese government discussed with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO) to build an additional SCO-associated international financial institution,
where Russia and other Central Asian states have had major roles in it.10
In order to reduce potential Russian anxiety, China could consider inviting
Russia to join the new Poland-to-China transnational infrastructure cooperation
initiative for the common security concerns of Eurasian energy security, terrorism,
separatism and extremism. To proactively persuade Russia that for Moscow to join
the trans-Eurasian project would also protect long-term Russian interests in East
Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and the Central and Eastern Europe. As in the
long run Russia would also need to address the negative consequences resultant of
its conflict and confrontation with the EU and NATO, it would be at Russia’s
interests to explore an alternative developmental space and corridor to release its
pressures and maintain its international influence.
Source: ‘Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century
10
Maritime Silk Road.’ National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, and Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, with State Council, March
2015.
In other words, if the ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative could open up a new
developmental space for Poland and Russia to cooperate and resolve their conflicts,
China would indirectly increase the bargaining powers for Poland to counter-hedge
against Germany and the USA. In doing so, China would indirectly trigger-activate
Poland’s ‘Western policy’ strategic habitus, which was intended to revive the past
glorious days of the ‘Greater Poland’ into Western Europe. This strategy would
further uplift Poland–China relations to another unprecedented level of closer
cooperation.
Poland’s contemporary strategic motivations are mainly characterized by a
trinity of intents: (1) to resist German domination in Europe, (2) to guard against
Russian advance towards the West, (3) and to compete with Germany and Russia
for influences in the Eurasian landmass. Its ‘Greater Poland’ identity and strategic
repertoire are deeply embedded in its national development planning agenda. As
Poland would naturally aspire for political leadership and influence in Europe and
Central Asia, it was therefore reasonable to suggest that despite the rise of populism
in Europe since the UK’s 2016 Brexit referendum, in the foreseeable future, Poland
would still wish to stay in the EU To preserve itself, this is strategically essential for
Poland to make continued use of its EU and NATO membership statuses to
compete with Germany and guard against Russia.
In contrast, the UK’s strategic intention behind the Brexit referendum seemed to
be complexly intervened by domestic politics and its foreign relations with the EU
and USA in particular. These factors set the geopolitical and international economic
backdrop for understanding how China would engage with the UK. The next
section will detail.
7.4 How Would China Approach the UK?
7.4.1 British Conservative Party’s Strategic Habitus: The

Logics of New Right Populism
In October 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a high-profile state visit to the
UK to spark a new era in bilateral ties. Before the official visit, both countries’
leaders and diplomats publicly expressed that the Sino-British relations entered a
‘golden era’.11 How can we contextualize this intended move by the UK and
China? What are their driving motivations? This section will discuss from the
Sources: (1) ‘Chinese Ambassador: “2015 Is a Most Significant Year for UK-China Relations”’
11
Asia House. 5 August 2015. (2) ‘Xi’s Visit to Kick Off a Golden Age of China-UK Relations’ The
Diplomat. 15 October 2015. (3) ‘China, Britain to Benefit from “Golden Era” in Ties—Cameron.’
Reuters. 18 October 2015. (4) ‘China and Britain Head into Golden Era of Relations.’ China
Daily. 20 October 2015. (5) ‘China, Britain Open Up “Golden Era” with Billions of Dollars in
Deals.’ Xinhua News. 22 October 2015.
British Conservative government’s perspective and what does China actually want
from Britain.
As the UK’s decision to leave the EU was endorsed by a Brexit referendum and
legislated by a majority-approved parliamentary bill in June 2016 and February
2017, respectively, a shadow of uncertainty has been casted upon UK–China
relations as the Brexit negotiation was expected to take place between the UK and
EU from mid-2017 to 2019. Brexit will expectedly cause Beijing’s adjustment to
re-tune China–UK and China–EU relations. Against these ongoing uncertainties, I
will nonetheless argue that despite the UK’s uncertain future relations with the EU,
Sino-British relations will remain pragmatic and will be influenced by British
domestic politics. On China’s side, the UK’s strategic importance to Beijing would
then hinge on whether and to what extent and in what role will and can the UK play
in China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative, whether the UK will remain in the EU or
not. Although the internationalization of the Chinese currency will remain a major
focal point of discussion for future Sino-British collaboration, it would likely put
the UK–US special relationship under certain pressure (Cohen, 2017). It is because
internationalizing Chinese currency would intensify the Sino-US competition for
global political-economic leadership, as already galvanized by the ‘One Belt One
Road’ initiative.
7.4.1.1 The Rise of New Right Populism
When considering British domestic political factor, it is essential to examine the

political culture of British party politics. The present body politics in the UK is very
much influenced by the Conservative Party rule since 2010. I will selectively
discuss two major referendums held by the Conservative government, which have
significant implications for understanding present-day British political and strategic
cultures. They are the 2016 Brexit referendum and the 2014 Scottish independence
referendum. I will argue that the Brexit referendum was a strategic continuation of
the Scottish independence referendum for the Conservative Party to successfully
struggle against the Labour Party, causing the Labour Party’s marginalization and
disarray from 2014 to 2017.
In June 2016, under the leadership of the centre-right Conservative Party, the
UK conducted the Brexit referendum for the voters to consider leaving or remaining
in the EU With a record high 71.8% voting rate, the Brexit referendum result
showed that 51.9% of the British voters chose to leave EU whereas 48.1% voted to
remain. Nonetheless, the process and the outcome were widely reportedly caused
by populist mobilizations by the politicians of the Conservative Party (Wong,
2016a, c, d, e, f, g, h). Therefore, it is important to unpack the Conservative Party’s
political cultural repertoire, which should constitute an integral part of the con-
temporary British strategic habitus.
The present Conservative Party rule started in 2010 when David Cameron
was elected to the prime minister position. In July 2016, Cameron resigned and
was succeeded by his pro-Remain party-mate, Prime Minister Theresa May
7.4 How Would China Approach the UK? 197
(2016–present) after the June 2016 Brexit referendum. Despite he was successfully
re-elected in 2015, Cameron resigned due to his failed campaign to convince the
voters to remain in the EU.12 However, it was actually Cameron himself who
promised to hold the referendum in 2013 during his re-election campaign.
According to The Economist’s estimation in 2015, during Cameron’s term as the
prime minister, there was already a revolt initiated by some one hundred
Conservatives in the parliament, who advocated for ‘Britain to exit the EU (Brexit)’
position.13 As an attempt to appease the anti-EU faction within the Conservative
Party, Cameron announced that if he will be re-elected as the prime minister, he will
hold the Brexit referendum during his term.14 Soon after Cameron was re-elected in
2015, he kept the electoral promise to hold the Brexit referendum in 2016.
The Conservative Party leadership has therefore been facing a problem of
internal divisions. Conflicts and revolts were mounting among the Brexit faction
and the Remain camp. The rise of competing right-wing and populist parties such as
the UK Independence Party (UKIP) also posed an erosive threat to the Conservative
Party’s traditional stronghold especially among the constituency pool of the more
right-wing voters. I argue that this in-party division has been driving British
domestic politics and foreign policy agendas since Cameron’s time. To address this
internal division within the Conservative Party, the present leadership of the
Conservative Party has resorted to an innovatively populist strategy of New Right
party politics, which could be traced to its more original form of ‘populist
authoritarianism’ used by the former Conservative Party leader and British prime
minister, Margaret Thatcher (1979–1990).
Whereas Thatcher’s right-wing ‘populist authoritarianism’ was mainly intended
to construct her own political charisma, the post-2010 Conservative Party’s New
Right populism is a new strategy to keep the Conservative Party intact and per-
petuate its state rule in the midst of the in-party contentions and deepening
social-structural divisions in the British society. The New Right continued the
Thatcherite ideological and populist legacy which mainly entails the ‘small
state/government’ rightist policy stance and by prioritizing policies to reduce the
individuals’ over-reliance over British state provisions. This would include the
privatization of public service provisions, reducing public expenses and social
welfare, marginalization of the trade unions and strengthening central governmental
authority. However, a difference between Cameron and Thatcher would be that
Cameron stressed the equal importance of both the ‘state’ and ‘society’ when
strengthening the self-reliance of the British individuals (Wong, 2016a).
12
Source: ‘David Cameron Officially Resigns as the UK Prime Minister’ The Independent. 13 July
2016.
13
Source: ‘Why Britain Is so Eurosceptic?’ The Economist. 3 May 2015.
14
Sources: (1) ‘In ‘Brexit’ Vote, David Cameron Faces Problem of His Own Making’ The New
York Times. 21 June 2016. (2) ‘These 3 Facts Explain Why the U.K. Held the ‘Brexit’
Referendum’ Time. 24 June 2016.
7.4.1.2 Object, Strategy and Pattern of the New Right Populist Party
Politics
From 1997 to 2010, under the leadership of the former Prime Ministers Tony Blair
(1997–2007) and Gordon Brown (2007–2010) of the Labour Party, the Labour
Party won a number of general elections over the Conservative Party. In order to
devise new, effective strategy to compete against the long-reigning Labour Party’s
‘Third Way’ ideology and the ‘New Labour’ political practice, Cameron
re-emphasized the important role of the British state, through promising better
social policy, public health care, education service and social security. Although
Cameron reduced social welfare expenses and the central government’s control
over education, he injected the ‘New Right’ statecraft; to use social policy as a
‘carrot and stick’ strategy and instrument of state rule to generate economic growth
and social prosperity. On the one hand, Cameron aimed to provide social protec-
tions and set up a social security net to harness the British lower classes. On the
other, he encouraged the people to become more self-reliant and less dependent on
state provisions. This was intended to prevent the vicious cycle in which overex-
pansion of the state provisions would be mutually reinforced by the constituents’
dependency on the British state (McEnhill, 2015).
What is the gist and main objective of the New Right populist strategy? It is to
constantly re-divert the internally generated energy of power politics from the
irresolvable in-party division and accumulated tensions towards the direction of
inter-party political struggle, especially to direct those energies towards and against
its largest competitor, the Labour Party. The main objective is to maintain the
pivotal role of the Conservative Party as the ‘indispensable agent’ connecting the
British state and society, which enables the Conservative Party to seize British state
power perpetually (Wong, 2016a). This pattern of party struggle was already found
in 2014 when Cameron defended his decision to allow the Scottish independence
referendum to take place.15
Why did Cameron allow the Scottish independence referendum to take place in
2014? On the surface, it was a publicly acknowledged attempt to resolve the
long-entangling problem of Scottish independence movement. However, for the
Conservative Party, the real political benefit from the Scottish independence ref-
erendum was to achieve two strategic aims. First, it was to undermine the Labour
Party’s traditional dominance and influence over the left-wing faction of the
Scottish National Party (SNP), the largest and leading political party in Scotland.
Second, it was to create an opportunity for the Labour Party’s pro-union stance and
SNP’s nationalist stance to generate conflicting ideologies and competing agendas.
This indirectly encourages SNP to seek more autonomy and eventually to go out of
the umbrella of the Labour Party. This double-edged strategy led to very fruitful
results when SNP eventually won 56 out of the 59 Scottish seats in the 2015 general
Source: ‘David Cameron Defends Decision to Allow Scottish Independence Vote’ The
15
Guardian. 8 May 2014.

election, making SNP the third largest political party in the Westminster parliament,
after the Conservative Party and Labour Party which won 331 seats and 232 seats,
respectively. By making the SNP stronger, the Conservative Party was able to
weaken and further marginalize the Labour Party (Wong, 2016g).
A similar strategy of party struggle against the Labour Party was redeployed in
the 2016 Brexit referendum. During the campaign, while Cameron openly cam-
paigned for the UK to remain in the EU, his Conservative party-mate—the former
mayor of London—Boris Johnson publicly campaigned for Brexit and surprisingly
gained popular supports. Aiming to secure the votes along the wider public opinion
spectrum which was polarized by the televized sensational debates between the
‘Brexit’ and ‘Remain’ camps, the Conservative Party deployed the strategy of
‘semi-coordinated split dynamics’16 to allow the party-mates to cooperatively
compete for the populist anchorages through the referendum, especially sur-
rounding the emotional and scapegoating public debate on the EU migrants and its
alleged correlation with the British labour market and the worsening conditions of
the British working class. Such public sentiments as fear and anger were stirred up
in order to contest the targeted relations of authority–UK’s relations the European
Union (Wong, 2016h). By concomitantly making Brexit a populist appeal to the
aggrieving, less educated and lower class voters, the Conservative Party’s
double-campaigns achieved three strategic goals. First, they were able to tap on the
larger pools of votes along the Brexit–Remain spectrum. Second, the double-
campaigns were intended to lead, if not to dominate, the public discourses of the
cross-party debates between the highly polarized Brexit and Remain campaigns.
Last but not the least, through the double-campaigns, the Conservative Party was
able to effectively struggle against the Labour Party in two ways.
The first struggle was led by David Cameron’s pro-Remain campaign which
directly competed against the pro-Remain campaigners within the Labour Party.
This was intended to expose the ideological incoherence and internal divisions
within the Labour Party.
The second struggling strategy was connected with the first. It was to make
further use of the Brexit referendum as a discursive arena to galvanize the internal
contentions within the Labour Party, which would generate more pressures for its
leader—Jeremy Corbyn—to step down. This was intended to catalyse the implo-
sion, fragmentation and eventual disintegration of the Labour Party. For example,
although the party line of the Labour Party was to remain in the EU, in actuality,
there were Labour Party members who supported Brexit. A Labour Party member
openly accused Corbyn had covertly voted for Brexit. This member argued that
Corbyn’s socialist ideology and pro-working-class political stance actually
16
This strategy proved to be successful when the populist Brexit campaigner Boris Johnson
decided not to run for the prime ministership once an in-party poll result was in favour of Theresa
May in late June 2016. Johnson’s decision actually restored the internal solidarity among the
Brexit wing and Remain camp of the Conservative Party. Sources: (1) ‘Ex-London Mayor Halts
Bids to be UK Prime Minister Upends Race.’ Reuters. 30 June 2016. (2) ‘脫歐派大將、前倫敦市
長約翰遜宣布棄選首相。’ 端傳媒. 30 June 2016.
overlapped, if not matched, with the Brexit campaigners’ advocacies in protecting

local employment opportunities, anti-immigration and antiglobalization.17
The ideological incoherence and seed of internal contention within the Labour
Party was sowed from 1997 to 2010 when Tony Blair was the party leader and
British prime minister. In order to compete against the long-reigning Conservative
Party, Blair boldly adopted the ‘Third Way’ ideology to establish the ‘New Labour’
pathway (Giddens, 1999). This ideology was intended to find an alternative from
capitalism and socialism. Apart from introducing market economy model, he
replaced the traditional left-wing concept of ‘social equality’ with ‘equality of
opportunity’ for devising social and economic policies, fully integrated with the
globalizing capitalistic economy. European left-wing critic, however, criticized
Blair of deviating from the socialist doctrine of the Labour Party (Freeden, 1999),
therefore confusing the party’s traditional ideology. Since then, while Blair’s New
Labour attracted substantial supports from industrial-commercial elites and capitals,
ideological contradictions and in-party divisions started to pile up. The present
disarray within the Labour Party can be attributed to the Blair era (Wong, 2016g).
The Labour Party’s internal problem then caused a substantial portion of its
working-class votes to be won by the Conservative Party’s New Right populism.
To sum up, two specific party-struggle strategies of the Conservatives’ New
Right populism were identified in the 2014 Scottish independence and 2016 Brexit
referendums. First, it is to allow the other Conservative Party members to actively
participate and compete for populist anchorages in order to ignite more vibrant
public policy debate and maintain a high level of energy for inter-party competition
to struggle towards its main competitors, especially to further marginalize the
Labour Party. Second, it is on the one hand, to allow the voters to actively participate
in the public policy debate within the party. On the other, it enables the party-mates
to make use of the populist anchorages (e.g. migration, health care, education and
social welfare policies) as the means of party struggle against an ideologically
incoherent Labour Party. These were intended to better connect the Conservative
Party line and ideology with the populist demands. A stronger collective will of the
British state under the Conservative rule would then be possibly ironed out.
7.4.2 Destined Brexit? A Structural Analysis of the 2016

and 2017 Votes
The above discussion has outlined the strategic and political cultural repertoire of
the post-2010 British Conservative government. While British foreign policy would
17
Sources: (1) ‘Brexit: Jeremy Corbyn May Have Voted to Leave, Claims Chris Bryant.’ The
Independent. 27 June 2016. (2) ‘Jeremy Corbyn Refuses to Confirm He Voted “Remain” at EU
Referendum, Claims Chris Bryant.’ The Huffington Post. 27 June 2016. (3) ‘How the United
Kingdom Voted on Thursday … and Why.’ Lord Ashcroft Polls (www.lordashcorftpolls.com).
24 June 2016.
remain pragmatic in principle, the populist ethos of Brexit has opened up

unprecedented uncertainties towards Britain’s future relations with not just EU, but
also other countries, including China. It is mainly because of an in-built structural
problem of the British parliamentary democracy reflected by the Brexit. Despite
48.1% of the British voters decided to remain in the EU in the 2016 Brexit refer-
endum, the voting result in the British Parliament (House of the Commons) in
February 2017 on the Brexit bill (to trigger the Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty) was,
however, overwhelmingly pro-Brexit. In scoring 494 votes (for) over 122 votes
(against), the House of Commons voted for a much higher 76% in favour of the
Brexit bill than the 2016 Brexit referendum result, which was 51.9%. Why was
there such a significant gap between the parliamentary vote and the Brexit refer-
endum vote? This has to do with a deeper structural feature of British parliamentary
democracy.
According to a statistical analysis conducted by the University of East Anglia
and the investment analysis company—Nomura, the vote in the 2016 referendum
and the 2017 parliamentary vote are two types of votes and of very different
nature.18 The referendum result represented the national votes whereas the parlia-
mentary vote represented the constituency votes. The national votes include two
types of voters. First type is the constituency voters who regularly voted in the local
elections. The constituency voters tend to regularly interact and seek help from their
locally elected Members of the Parliament (MPs). Second type is the mobile voters
who did not regularly vote in the local elections but would choose to vote in the
referendum. The mobile voters are mostly from the middle and upper classes. In the
February 2017 parliamentary voting of the Brexit bill, only the constituency voters’
views were reflected in their MPs’ voting decision. Why was that?
It is because at the end, it is in the interests of the MPs who would only represent
the interests of their constituency voters, but not the mobile voters. It was statis-
tically calculated that only 38% of the constituency voters supported to remain in
the EU whereas a high 61% of them supported Brexit.19 Considering that the MPs
have to ground their daily work with the local constituency as part of their duties
and also part of their needs to secure future votes for next election, the MPs would
naturally be more bound by their constituency voters, not the mobile voters (Wong,
2017a). The Brexit referendum and bill actually reflected a structural problem of the
British parliamentary democracy. That is, despite the 2016 referendum national
18
Sources: (1) ‘Most MPs are Terrified of Opposing Brexit Because the Constituency Vote for
Leave is Far Greater than the National Vote.’ Business Insider UK. 30 October 2016. (2) ‘If you
think Corbyn’s Wrong on Labour’s Brexit Policy, Voters Say Otherwise.’ The Guardian.
2 February 2017. (3) ‘Revealed: The Crucial Statistic Showing Why MPs Must Not Vote against
Article 50.’ Express. 4 November 2016.
19
Sources: (1) ‘Most MPs are Terrified of Opposing Brexit Because the Constituency Vote for
Leave is Far Greater than the National Vote.’ Business Insider UK. 30 October 2016. (2) ‘If you
think Corbyn’s Wrong on Labour’s Brexit Policy, Voters Say Otherwise.’ The Guardian.
2 February 2017. (3) ‘Revealed: The Crucial Statistic Showing Why MPs Must Not Vote against
Article 50.’ Express. 4 November 2016.
vote was only in favour of Brexit with a very small margin, the constituency vote
already determined how the parliamentarians would vote. This would explain why,
in February 2017, a large percentage of the Conservative and Labour MPs voted in
favour of the Brexit bill in the House of Commons. That is also why the UK is
structurally bound to Brexit, whether the 48.1% Remainers like it or not (Wong,
2016g). This is a very significant domestic factor intervening with the UK’s
geopolitical and economic structural factors, accounting for a more complete
understanding of the British strategic habitus.
7.4.3 The Geopolitical, Economic and Governance

Structures of a Pre-Brexit Britain
7.4.3.1 Post-2014 Geopolitical Changes in the European Rimland
Geopolitically, two events are significant for understanding the structural con-
straints of the UK foreign policy towards Brexit: the 2014 Crimean crisis and the
2016 populist victory of the US presidency of Donald Trump. During the US
presidency of Obama, the Crimean crisis had made the EU (especially Germany and
Poland) the more important strategic partners than before as Berlin and Warsaw
stood as the core NATO outposts guarding against potential Russian advance
towards the West. As traditionally the US–UK ‘special relationship’ was now
augmented by a newly strengthened US–EU alliance against Russia, during the
Obama administration, the UK’s geopolitical position in Europe was paralleled with
Germany. Unlike before when the UK enjoyed a distinctive ‘special relationship’
with the USA for which they shared intelligence and security collaboration, the
Crimean crisis indirectly raised up the geopolitical significance of Germany as a US
pivot to the European rimland vis-à-vis Russia.
In 2016, the Republican and populist candidate Donald Trump caught many
pollsters’ surprises in winning the US presidency over the popular Democratic
candidate Hilary Clinton, whose foreign policy agenda was believed to continue
from Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ policy. Trump’s victory caused new uncertainties to
the US–UK relations, especially in Brexit.20 It is mainly because if Clinton would
have won the presidency, in order to rebalance Russia’s new advance in Eastern
Europe, Clinton would put efforts to maintain the unity of the EU and NATO. This
would also mean that she would try to keep the UK in EU. Though Clinton once
openly opposed Brexit, she would probably intervene in the Brexit negotiation too.
The UK would have a higher chance to hedge USA with EU and bargain for a
20
Sources: (1) ‘Donald Trump is a Disaster for Brexit.’ Financial Times. 30 January 2017.
(2) ‘Preparing for the UK's Brexit Negotiation.’ Chatham House. 5August 2016. (3) ‘Britain is
Caught Between Trump and a Hard Place’. Chatham House. 16 November 2016.
better deal from the EU. A Clinton presidency would possibly bring positive result
for Brexit (Wong, 2017b).
However, since Trump has resumed the US presidency in January 2017, on the
one hand, he scaled back US commitments in Europe by normalizing the USA–
Russia relations and withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement. On the other,
he openly criticized Germany in its car trade with the USA and manipulating the
Euro currency. Trump also refrained from assuring the USA commitment for
Article 5 of the 1949 Washington Treaty which created the cornerstone of NATO.
These moves raised wide speculations and criticisms that Trump would undermine
the EU and NATO (O’Hanlon, 2017).21 The implications for the UK and Brexit are
significant.
As Trump openly supported Brexit, his antiglobalization, anti-free-trade and
pro-Moscow stance immediately put the UK in a geopolitical dilemma. On the one
hand, Trump’s intention to show the obsoleteness of EU and NATO caused the UK
in losing the bargaining chips in the Brexit negotiation. It is because a potential US
retreat from Europe would mean the EU’s increasing economic and security
importance to the UK On the other hand, Brexit will cause a worsening UK–EU
relationship. The core problem is that the UK would need Europe more than before,
and Brexit basically goes against the British national interest, given the new
geopolitical uncertainties brought by the Trump presidency (Niblett, 2016/2017;
Raines, 2016).
7.4.3.2 International Trade and Investment Structures of a Pre-Brexit

Britain
The 2008 global financial crisis caused significant turmoil to the British economy.
At the local government level, projects and employees were either suspended or laid
off. Though there was positive economic revival towards the end of the previous
Labour government, local economic growth disparity existed. Wealth has been
concentrated in the capital region of London and south-eastern England. In terms of
international trade volumes, for instance, since 2008, the devoluted nations of
Scotland and Wales as well as Northern Ireland were significantly left behind.22
Such uneven economic growth disparity provided the structural conditions for the
Scottish independence movement. It was therefore unsurprising that in the 2015
general election, whereas the Conservative Party pushed for austerity measures, the
21
Sources: (1) ‘Criticism of Germany Reveals the Trump Administration’s Economic
Incoherence.’ Chatham House. 3 February 2017. (2) ‘Russia: We Want to Normalize Relations
with US, Europe.’ CNN News. 25 January 2017. (3) ‘Russifying of America Commences.’ The
New York Times. 22 February 2017. (4) ‘Trump Will Withdraw U.S. from Paris Climate
Agreement.’ The New York Times. 1 June 2017.
22
Source: UK Regional Trade Regional Trade Statistics Releases and Commentaries (2011–2016).
London: United Kingdom HM Revenue & Customs. URL: https://www.uktradeinfo.com/
Statistics/RTS/Pages/RTSArchive.aspx (Retrieved on 5 June 2017).
SNP advocated for anti-austerity policy. This was perhaps intended to challenge
Westminster to look into the prolonged rich-poor gap caused by the structural
disparity between England and the devoluted nations of Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland (Wong, 2015).
Moreover, the UK consistently recorded an international trade deficit problem.23
For example, according to the British official statistics published in March 2015, the
UK’s largest trading partners were ranked in the following order: (1) Germany,
(2) USA, (3) China, (4) the Netherlands, (5) Switzerland and (6) France. However,
only the UK’s trade with the USA and Switzerland recorded surpluses. Although
the UK’s total trade volume with non-EU countries reached zero deficit, UK–EU
trade deficit had sustained for years (Wong, 2015). The protracted UK–EU trade
deficits provided a convenient cause of argument for the British Euro-sceptics to
push for the Brexit agenda.
A structural reality is that despite Germany, USA and China were Britain’s
largest partners in international trade; the USA was still the largest importer of
British exports. The USA was also the largest foreign direct investor in the UK for
more than a decade. American investment in the UK recorded far more than the
whole EU in total. For instance, in 2013, American investment in the UK already
contributed to a significant 31% of the annual total foreign investments, whereas the
EU contributed 11%. As a result, given the USA’s significant economic weight in
the British economy, it is reasonable to suggest that the USA enjoyed significant
political influences over British policy-making process. The implication would be
obvious: when the UK will negotiate for Brexit with the EU, US national interests
will naturally be prioritized in British foreign policy-making. This would be an
important intervening factor for conceiving future development of UK–China
relations.
7.4.3.3 Governance Challenges for a Pre-Brexit Britain
The 2016 Brexit referendum showed that 62 and 55.8% of the voters in Scotland
and Northern Ireland indicated to remain in the EU, respectively. England and
Wales recorded 53.4 and 52.5% of their voters who chose Brexit, respectively. As
such, the four devoluted governments had significant differences in regard to Brexit.
According to Whitman (2017: 5, Fig. 1), these differences constituted the following
governance structural challenges for a Brexit Britain.
In the first place, the laws passed in 1998 have so far ‘devoluted’ more state
powers to the local governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
(Whitman, 2017: 4–5, Box 1).24 Except the policy domains of energy, national
defence and foreign affairs which are handled by London, the local governments
Source: ‘UK Trade Deficit Expands in June.’ Financial Times. 8 August 2014.
23
24
These are the Scotland Act 1998, the Government of Wales Act 1998 and The Good Friday
Agreement and Northern Ireland Act 1998.
enjoy high level of autonomy. They can self-legislate laws in the other policy
domains of education, agriculture, housing, environment, economy, culture and
tourism, etc. In the past two decades, the local governments already established
their own negotiation mechanism and channels with the EU headquarters in
Brussel. They have formulated their own contours of para-diplomacy with EU
functionaries. London cannot simply neglect the local governments’ interests and
needs when conducting the Brexit negotiation. The local governments will likely
maintain their own para-diplomatic relationships with EU after Brexit.
However, the present intergovernmental decision-making mechanism between
the four nations (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) was the ‘joint
ministerial committee’ which only allowed the Westminster cabinet members and
the local governments’ chief executives to participate. It remains unclear if this
mechanism would be a good fit for London to coordinate the Brexit negotiation
domestically so that diverse local interests and voices would be represented on the
Brexit negotiation table with EU (Whitman, 2017: 4–5).
In other words, it will be a very challenging task for the Conservative govern-
ment to effectively connect with and represent the divergent local interests and
different opinions in the forthcoming complex Brexit negotiation in which the
devoluted governments will have the legitimacy and authority to speak for their
local constituencies. The situation will be difficult for the Conservative government
to handle. On the one hand, the government would need the supports of the interest
groups and individuals in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, in which their
diverse interests and demands would need to be met in the Brexit negotiation. On
the other hand, London would naturally need to concomitantly coordinate and
debate with Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff in regard to the competing concerns and
opposing opinions. This would place the Brexit negotiators under tremendous
domestic pressures as they would constantly need to face and address diverse arrays
of conflicting agendas and competing interests from below/within. London would
need to prevent the Brexit negotiation to become a crucible of antagonism and
conflict between the central government and the local authorities.
Secondly, as there were 62% of Scottish voters voted to remain in the EU,
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of SNP already expressed her wish for a
second Scottish independence referendum so that Scotland would choose to stay in
the EU To prevent SNP to make further use of the Brexit to galvanize its nationalist
cause, London had to assure Edinburgh that Scottish interests will be well placed in
the Brexit negotiation table. Nonetheless, it was reasoned that the EU would not
allow the Scottish independence movement to hijack the Brexit negotiation with the
UK It was because the EU did not wish EU membership would become a tool of
political convenience for encouraging separatist movements in other European
regions such as Basque of Spain (Zalan & Maurice, 2016).
Thirdly, Wales has benefited from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and
Structural Funds. For example, in 2014, Wales gained substantial net profits of GBP
£245 million from trading agricultural products with EU Therefore, the Welsh First
Minister Carwyn Jones and the Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood copublished a
white paper in early 2017. They requested that a post-Brexit Wales will still remain
in the EU single market and that the Welsh economy will not be negatively affected
(Springford, Tiford, Odendahl, & McCann, 2016; Welsh Government, 2017).
Finally, Northern Ireland was concerned about its future relationship with the
Republic of Ireland after Brexit. Belfast was also concerned about the future peace
process in which religious conflicts and separatist terrorism were featured in its
contemporary history. As both Ireland and Northern Ireland belong to the EU and
the single market, their borders have been blurred in the past two decades. Their
common EU memberships helped to de-escalate the tensions between the
Protestants and Catholics, and between the unionists and the separatists. Belfast
would naturally concern if a post-Brexit Northern Ireland would bring those past
traumas back to the future (Wong, 2017c).
To sum up, Brexit would bring new uncertainties to the unity of the UK. In
particular, as the devoluted nations have their own positions to Brexit, it is a
challenging task for London to identify, coordinate and channel their diverse
interests and concerns to the Brexit negotiation table. Moreover, decades of de-
volution have given Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast para-diplomatic powers in
certain policy domains of external relations which do not necessitate London’s
approval. Their autonomies in handling external affairs with EU will not be easily
negotiated back and recentralized to London. Therefore, a challenge for London
would be how to secure additional financial and policy resources to make the Brexit
negotiation work for all the devoluted nations. This is intended not just to prevent
the potential conflict between the central state and local governments to be triggered
by Brexit, but also to prevent the Scottish separatism and the Northern Irish conflict
from gaining strength, which would threaten the territorial integrity of the UK.
The above geopolitical, international trade-economic and domestic governance
structural features of a pre-Brexit Britain would constitute the necessary grid for
exploring the future of Sino-British relations. In the following section, I will detail
in the order of three counts. First, it will discuss what would be the major con-
siderations on Brexit from the perspective of Beijing. Second, it will discuss the
possible foreign policy challenges for a Brexit Britain in regard to its future rela-
tions with the EU, USA and China. Third, it will summarize the joint research
findings found by the British and Chinese leading think tanks in regard to the
internationalization of the Chinese yuan in London.
7.4.4 Charting the ‘One Belt One Road’ in Future

UK–China Cooperation
7.4.4.1 China’s Considerations of the Brexit
According to selected analyses published by Chinese (state and non-state) media

and the leading US think tank Brookings Institution, the Chinese policy-makers’
major considerations on Brexit would entail the following areas (Wong, 2016g):25
• The EU has been China’s largest trading partner. Brexit would likely cause both
the British and EU currencies to plummet. British purchasing power from China
would decrease. As China has been struggling with its overcapacity problem,
weaker British Sterling and Euro would negatively affect China’s exports to
Europe. Brexit would slow down China’s economic growth.
• The UK is the only advocate within the European Union to grant China the
status of ‘market economy’. From Beijing’s perspective, if EU would grant
China the ‘market economy’ status, this would mean that some of the China–EU
trade restrictions would be lifted. A China–EU free trade scenario is believed to
benefit China more. If Britain will leave EU, it is unlikely that the EU would
grant China the ‘market economy’ status. Brexit would go against EU–China
trade negotiation and may affect the trade volumes of the two entities.
• As Britain has been the second most attractive destination for Chinese invest-
ments in Europe, Brexit would mean that China will possibly lose an important
bridge with Europe.
• London being the first sovereign bond issuer of the Chinese currency outside
China,26 Brexit would undermine London’s international status as the leading
global financial centre. This would negatively affect the prospect of the inter-
nationalization of the Chinese yuan in London.
• After Brexit, the UK will not be fully bound by EU laws. The UK may have
more freedom to conduct international trade and foreign economic relations.
This might bring more benefits to future UK–China cooperation, which would
facilitate better policy communications under the ‘One Belt One Road’
initiative.
25
Sources: (1) Joshua P. Meltzer (2016). ‘Brexit: Less Freedom, Economic Costs, Meaner
Politics.’ Brookings Briefs. Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution. 24 June 2016. (2) 「一
張圖看懂:英國脫歐如何影響你。」端傳媒 (www.project.initiumlab.com/brexit-interactive/)
No date (Retrieved on 5 July 2016). (3) David Dollar (2016). ‘Brexit Aftermath: The West’s
Decline and China’s Rise.’ Brookings Briefs. Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution.
27 June 2016. (4). ‘中英“黄金時代”不會因英脫歐而改變。’ 人民日報海外版 (http://paper.
people.com.cn/rmrbhwb/html/2016-06/25/content_1690257.htm) 25 June 2016.
26
Source: HM Treasury (2016). ‘China Chooses London for Its First Ever Sovereign renminbi
(RMB) Bond Issued outside of China.’ Gov.uk. 26 May 2016. Website: https://www.gov.uk/
government/news/china-chooses-london-for-its-first-ever-sovereign-renminbi-rmb-bond-issued-
outside-of-china.
• Before Brexit, the UK is represented by the EU in many international organi-

zations. This includes the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is concerned that
a post-Brexit UK would have to re-negotiate all the terms with each WTO
member-states. This would not only be time-consuming, but would bring much
uncertainty to the whole world’s future trading partnerships with Britain.
• Brexit may also pull Britain out from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership (TTIP) in which the EU and USA are involved. If this would be the
case, a post-Brexit Britain would have to re-negotiate with more than thirty-two
international trade treaties and organizations in Europe and the Mediterranean
region. This would not only be time-consuming, it will also cause great burdens
to the British state apparatus. These unprecedented complexities in these
re-negotiation processes may also cause uncertainties to UK–China relations
because the re-negotiation results may directly or indirectly affect China’s
relations with the these organizations’ and treaties’ signatories.
• Brexit may trigger domino effect to other EU member-states to consider using
similar vote-to-leave referendum to negotiate for better terms from the European
Union. Brexit would also encourage the rise of right-wing, divisive populism in
Europe. These would undermine the solidarity of EU and NATO in the long run.
Geopolitically, the unintended beneficiaries of a Brexit-infected and
populist-divisive Europe would likely be Russia and such terrorist organizations
as the ‘Islamic State’. Europe may become more unstable in the future and
vulnerable to Russian interferences and terrorist attacks, eventually rendering it
to be unconducive to international cooperation and investment from China.
7.4.4.2 Post-Brexit British Foreign Policy and Economic Challenges
Brexit has drastically changed British foreign policy agenda. To ensure British
national interests, the government has to face a new geopolitical dilemma and to
achieve a set of contradictory goals. Geopolitically, on the one hand, the Brexit
negotiation casts unprecedented uncertainties upon UK–EU relations. On the other
hand, Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy agenda also casts a great deal of
uncertainties to the USA’s future relations with the UK and EU. In the midst of
these geopolitical uncertainties, Britain would need to achieve two sets of contra-
dictory goals.
First, London would need to seek new potential markets and alternative trade
deals in order to bring new opportunities and additional markets for its manufac-
turing and service sectors. In this regard, China could provide investment, market
and trade partnership for Britain. As London would need to maintain its interna-
tional status as a leading global financial centre, London would consider becoming
an offshore centre of the internationalization of Chinese currency. A consequence
would be for the UK to tune down its cultural and value differences with Beijing. In
the long run, the UK could help China to be better integrated with the international
trade system, international legal framework and the global financial mechanism.
This would bring more bilateral technological, education and academic exchange
programmes. Whether the UK will eventually leave or stay in the EU, Sino-British
collaboration along these lines would likely continue. A pragmatic bilateral rela-
tionship would ensure both China and Britain will get what they want from each
other (Brown, 2017: 9–10).
Second, Britain should ensure that it would not appear to antagonize or oppose
the USA. In 2015, the UK’s decision to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank (AIIB) already caused open dissatisfaction expressed from the
Obama administration. Although it is still too early to identify the role of Britain in
Trump’s ‘America First’ grand strategy, it is a structural reality that the USA has
been the largest importers of British exports and largest investor in the UK (see
Sect. 7.4.3.2). As a result, it is not in the British interests to scale back its ‘special
relationship’ with the USA. In the long run, in order not to arouse US suspicion and
anxiety that the UK would align with China politically and culturally, Britain will
maintain its relations with China in pure pragmatic, interest-based and transactional
terms. This is to prevent Britain to be affected by potential USA–China conflict in
issues such as international trade, regional security, human rights, Tibet and Taiwan
(Brown, 2017: 10).
In anticipation, a post-Brexit Britain would need more foreign investments to
compensate the potential economic loss caused by its possible leave from the EU
single market. In the past, migrants and transnational labour forces have brought in
a substantial portion of these foreign capitals to Britain. However, Brexit will
tighten immigration policy and indirectly decrease foreign investment. This will
cause economic loss (Subacchi, 2016). Moreover, the Pound Sterling has plum-
meted within a range of 15–20% since the Brexit referendum in June 2016. In the
UK, total imports exceed total exports while the British populations consume more
than they produce. Although a weaker Pound Sterling can increase British exports,
British manufacturers would still need to import foreign materials for producing
goods. Furthermore, the UK economy has a high-debt rate. For instance, the debt
rate of the British household reaches 87% of the GDP, while the British govern-
ment’s debt rate is 108%. All these economics suggest that Britain actually needs to
constantly attract high volumes of foreign capitals and foreign labour-migrants to
maintain its financial stability and the growth of its consumption-led economy
(Subacchi, 2016).
In summary, if the UK will continue to stay on the ‘hard Brexit’ (i.e. to leave the
EU single market and restore national border control) track, as the UK–EU relations
will be worsened by the Brexit negotiation, the UK will need more from the USA
and China to fill in the economic and trade gap that EU will leave. On the one hand,
China’s wish to have London to be her offshore centre to internationalize the
Chinese currency would be something that London may need (Wheatley &
Subacchi, 2015). On the other hand, as the UK will need the USA even more than
before, it will put London into a more challenging position to balance the com-
peting interests of the USA and China. The next section will discuss how the
internationalization of Chinese yuan in London would bring both opportunity and
challenge to the UK, China and the USA.
7.4.4.3 Internationalization of the Chinese Yuan in London: British

and Chinese Considerations
Since 2009, the Chinese currency, renminbi (RMB) or yuan, has been increasingly
used in transnational payments. As the billing currency in China-related trade,
RMB has now become the fourth mostly used transactional currency in the world.
Although the international usage of RMB is still very much behind the US dollar
and Euro, following the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) October 2016 deci-
sion to add RMB as one of its reserve currencies, RMB enjoys the ‘special drawing
rights’ and is granted the same status with the US dollar, Euro, British Sterling and
Japanese yen. In IMF, the weightings of each reserve currency are: US dollar
(41.73%), Euro (30.93%), renminbi (10.92%), Japanese yen (8.33%) and British
Sterling (8.09%) (Subacchi, 2015). As the RMB would become an international
currency in the future, the leading British and Chinese think tanks—the Royal
Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences in Beijing—published three joint research reports in January 2017
(Liu et al., 2017; Liu, Gao, Xu, Li, & Song, 2017; Subacchi & Oxenford, 2017).
These were published during the Brexit bill debate in the British Parliament. Their
policy relevance and significance should therefore not be underestimated.
Hereunder is a summary of the main considerations reported by the researchers
of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences from Beijing:
• The Chinese side noted that the internationalization of the Chinese yuan is a
core tool or means in the entire ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative. While 44.1% of
the infrastructure projects are calculated and transacted in RMB, the Chinese
yuan has become the main currency in China’s outward direct investment
overseas. From January 2012 to September 2015, China’s outward direct
investment increased to 20.8 billion yuan (Liu et al., 2017: 7). The ‘One Belt
One Road’ initiative encourages the countries involved to use yuan as their
reserve currency. Gradually, RMB will become an international currency.
• The establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the
New Development Bank (BRICS Bank) suggested that the infrastructure pro-
jects in the developing countries would use RMB to raise capitals. The opera-
tional structures of the two new global financial institutions would encourage
the development of offshore RMB financial products. In the similar vein, they
can also plan for developing the RMB offshore investment fund to raise capitals
for the overseas infrastructure projects. These initiatives will quicken the
development of the RMB offshore trading centre in London (Liu et al., 2017:
10–11).
• The existing global financial institutions do not fully support the investment
needs of global infrastructural development. The total demands even exceed the
total capital volume of the Silk Road Fund, Forum on China–Africa
Cooperation, AIIB, BRICS Bank and China Development Bank. Therefore, the
RMB offshore trading centre will perform the function of raising sufficient
capitals to meet the global infrastructural demands. As a global financial centre,
London is well placed to perform the functions for raising capitals to meet the
above needs. It would be able to (1) raise capitals and issue bonds for the ‘One
Belt One Road’ infrastructural projects, (2) trade shares and stocks in Chinese
currency, (3) launch RMB financial products, (4) issue Chinese local govern-
ments’ bonds and (5) transact the issuance of RMB offshore loans (Liu et al.,
2017: 14–20).
Here is a summary of the main considerations reported by the researchers of the
Royal Institute of International Affairs of London:
• The British side recognized that among the developing countries in the ‘One
Belt One Road’ initiative, there is a huge gap between infrastructural demands
and infrastructural funding. Aspects of the internationalization of the Chinese
yuan including bond issuance and raising capital would be able to close such
gap. Although London possesses the potential advantage to raise capitals for the
‘One Belt One Road’ initiative, London would still need to construct additional
market mechanisms in order to create and maintain a secondary market for the
RMB bonds and investment products. This is intended to diversity risks and to
ensure there long-term gains (Subacchi & Oxenford, 2017: 2).
• However, the British researchers expressed worries that following the mod-
ernization of the mainland Chinese financial institutions and Hong Kong as the
first offshore RMB trading centre, the prospect for London’s development
would be limited. Nonetheless, under the larger background of Brexit, it is
believed that the bonds, shares and other investment products launched in
London will enjoy free access to the Euro zone. The British and Chinese
governments should grasp the pre-Brexit opportunity to accelerate the negoti-
ation. Otherwise, it will not be impossible that after Brexit, the UK–China
agreement would need to be approved by each EU member-state (Subacchi &
Oxenford, 2017: 19).
• The British and Chinese researchers therefore consented that the two govern-
ments would need to participate and guide the process of the whole matter. They
would need to craft and establish a transnational policy in order to iron out the
actual concrete steps to develop London as an offshore centre in Europe to
internationalize the Chinese yuan (Liu et al., 2017).
7.5 Conclusion
In conclusion, this chapter has substantiated the main argument that China’s ‘One
Belt One Road’ initiative would approach the European rimland in straight prag-
matism, when seeking economic, international trade and global financial coopera-
tion with such countries as Poland and the UK. Such pragmatic approach would
necessitate the policy-makers of the Chinese, Polish and British states to recognize
the larger geopolitical changes involving Europe–Russia relations since 2006 as the
necessary geostructural background. When dealing with bilateral relations with

China, it is also important for the foreign policy-makers to recognize the
deep-rooted strategic cultures (habitus) that they inherited from their past and their
unique political culture which shape their decision-making tendency. Moreover,
they should also need to track down the economic and international trade structures
that they are given when approaching each other. Without acknowledging these
structural realities, despite how well intended the policy-makers were originally,
their policies would not be successful in the pragmatic sense that they could not get
the best from the bilateral relations with China.
In connection with the above main gist, this chapter has established the fol-
lowing subarguments:
• The 2006 Ukraine gas crisis already triggered the EU and Russia to realize their
security needs in the midst of growing economic and energy interdependency.
In stark contrast to the liberalist argument in which a state can cooperate
interdependently when they can make absolute gains, this security-seeking
pattern of both entities is, however, realist in nature in the sense that both Russia
and EU would only cooperate if they can make relative gains from each other.
To defend their own policy-making autonomy and decision-making indepen-
dence, they would keep an arm’s length from each other, after almost two
decades of energy and economic interdependency. The 2014 Crimean crisis was
resultant of such common yet competing security-seeking pattern of both Russia
and EU. The EU–Russia antagonism has set the necessary geopolitical structural
backdrop for charting how China would approach Poland and the UK as its
geoeconomic pivots in the ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative.
• Informed by its ‘Greater Poland’ strategic habitus of the Eastern policy, when
charting new economic corridors, Eurasian railway and trade deals with
Warsaw, Beijing would go with the ambitious flows of the ‘Greater Poland’
imagery to connect Warsaw with the Eurasian landmass. Nonetheless, this
would be done cautiously. Given the geopolitical deadlock between Russia and
the EU since 2014, this Poland–China economic corridor would naturally avoid
entering into the Russian landmass but take a detour down to south-eastern
Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and then China. To prevent this to appear
threatening Russian interests, the corridor would necessitate the involvement
and approval of Moscow.
• For the UK, as the Conservative Party’s New Right Populist party politics have
shaped British political culture and its strategic culture, its foreign policy gist is
still pragmatic. The Brexit referendum and the Trump presidency in 2016 and
2017, respectively, have brought uncertainties to not just the UK’s relations with
the EU, but also with the USA and China. Nevertheless, evidences suggest that
as far as a post-Brexit Britain would maintain its access to the EU financial
market, China would want to see London to be its main offshore centre for the
internationalization of Chinese yuan project in Europe. It is mainly because both
Britain and China have recognized that the internationalization of Chinese yuan
is critical, if not central, in the entire edifice of the ‘One Belt One Road’
7.5 Conclusion 213
initiative. Having said that, it is equally important for the UK and China to seek
contingency measures to address the potential conflict of currency statecrafts
with Washington D.C.
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Chapter 8
Conclusion: The Small Will Do What They
Can!
Abstract This concluding chapter has two goals to achieve. First, in response to
the increasing scholarly interests among the Western and non-Western academic
circles to make the sociological works of Pierre Bourdieu relevant to international
relations, I will highlight the main advances that this book has made. Secondly, I
will decipher the genealogy of another geostrategic shift—US President Donald
Trump’s ‘America First’ statecraft—and anticipate its implications to the small
powers. My concluding position is that as far as the small powers will stick with the
critical realist position, their national interests will be safeguarded whatever the
future change will be. This habitus-informed critical realism position will enable the
small powers to remake destinies.

Keywords ‘America first’ statecraft Bourdieu Habitus Radical post-colonial

conservatism International relations
8.1 The Bourdieusian Turn in International Relations
In the past decade, there has been a surge of interests in Pierre Bourdieu’s works
among the international relations scholars in both the Western and non-Western
academic circles (Achsin, 2016; Adler-Nissen, 2012, 2013; Arnholtz, 2013;
Berling, 2012; Bigo, 2011; Brown, 2014; Jackson, 2008, 2009; Karnanta, 2013;
Leander, 2011; Merand & Pouliot, 2008; Misalucha, 2014; Ongur & Zengin, 2016;
Wong, 2016b). These scholars commonly seek to not just elucidate and clarify the
substance and relevance of Bourdieu’s major theoretical contributions to the
humanities and social sciences in general, but they also call for more solid empirical
works to be done in applying and testing Bourdieu’s key concepts for better
understanding international affairs.
In response to these scholars’ call, the foregoing chapters represent an attempt to
apply and test Bourdieu’s key concept of ‘habitus’ to the sub-fields of small power
politics and strategic cultures in international relations. By making the concept of
habitus, a bridge linking the two scholarly fields of the small power politics and

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6563-7_8
218 8 Conclusion: The Small Will Do What They Can!
strategic cultures, I have argued for the strand of critical realism as a plausible
theory, practice and strategy of statecraft for the small powers in world politics.
Hereunder is an exposition.
8.2 Habitus-Inspired Critical Realism: Concluding

Exposition
By habitus, I refer to the deep-seated structuring structures that constantly shape the
authority relations, dynamics, perceptions, instituted practices and creative strate-
gies deployed in the international arena. These geopolitical, economic and
strategic-cultural structures of the small powers are already given, pre-determined
and pre-structured as the internal-subjective and external-objective realities to be
taken as they are. However, these structures are also concomitantly changing
among themselves because of the simultaneously structuring movements and effects
generated from other co-existing structures inside and outside the intended field of
state action. Although these structures will surely limit the options that the small
power can conceive and deploy, they also constantly enable new policy possibilities
and strategic potentialities for the small power to identify and capitalize on for its
own maximal gains and surprising benefits.
To survive and thrive in this constantly (re)-structuring structural reality of the
international arena, the practice of destined statecraft is argued to be essential. By
destined statecraft, I mean the art of governing the state affairs along the often
uncertain interface between the interpenetrating realms of domestic governance and
foreign relations. It entails the internal calmness and wisdom of humble discern-
ment, evidence-based analysis, swift decision-making, appropriate execution and
constant preparation for contingency plans for unexpected incidents and crisis. As
things always happen in their own structuring ways, unpredictable terms and out-
comes (in contrast to what most human agents often desire), destined statecraft does
not aim to achieve egoistic ambitions. Rather, it aims to strike the appropriate
balance to discern, identify and attain the optimal option, in an often very complex
situation, wherein the small power can actually make the maximal benefit and
reduce the damage to the minimum. By appropriate, I mean to bat the ball onto the
most central point of a tennis racket, i.e. the ‘sweetest spot’. It is neither performing
over the top nor behaving below the belt. It is neither too little nor too much. It is
just right. Destined statecraft is therefore the optimal fate-remaking process.
To practice destined statecraft, the notion of destined agency is essential. In
contrast to the over-deterministic view of the structuralist social sciences in which
human agents are merely dopes of the more powerful structural forces, destined
agency holds that there are creative ways to survive and thrive in the flows of these
constantly self-structuring structures of the geopolitical, political-economic and
strategic-cultural realities.
8.2 Habitus-Inspired Critical Realism: Concluding Exposition 219
The gist of this agency is to go with the flows—by humbly going with the
internal and external structural flows, the agent-strategist is constantly and patiently
observing, discerning and acting in the collective interests of the inhabitants and
other related powers and entities. Within the ceaseless flows of these structural
juggernauts, one would still find opportunities to either hedge or bandwagon them
for generating surprising gains. In regard to the structures of the strategic cultures,
an informed strategist and policy-maker of an embedded strategic tradition should
be able to find creative and practical ways in recycling and reinvent them for a new
purpose.
It is intended to humbly serve as a self-less instrument or conduit so that the
others’ interests can be met and actualized through the agenda-(re)setting and
actions of the small power. The result of this could be surprisingly powerful and
fruitful. As the small power has become the nexus of a number of simultaneously
criss-crossing powers and joint forces, once it is able to discern and identify the
optimal strategic option for action, its actual capability will multiply than for one to
act just on its own.
As an imagery, a destined agent is just like a skilful surfer who is destined to
(must) find the optimal balancing foothold on top of the roaring waves (otherwise
she/he will fall)—she/he no longer needs to exert energy—it is the far more
powerful roaring waves that move her/him in accordance with their trajectory and
bring her/him to the destiny. Although the surfer cannot choose which direction the
waves will bring her/him to, she/he can still find surprising freedom of high-speed
manoeuvring and perhaps some good views, especially when riding on the waves
and through inside the wave curl.
8.3 The ‘American First’ Statecraft of the Trump

Presidency
8.3.1 Twilight of the Liberal World Order: Structural

Trajectory and Populist Consequence
The years of 2016 and 2017 witnessed the twilight of the USA-led liberal global
order, especially in the wake of the Anglo-American populism. This was featured
by Britain’s 2016 referendum and the subsequent 2017 parliamentary votes to leave
the European Union, and the electoral victory of the US President Donald Trump,
who attempted to scale back the USA’s global leadership and commitments through
his ‘America First’ statecraft agenda. Despite these two developments caught the
surprises of many observers, pollsters and analysts, the global-structural-historical
trajectories on why they took place, and their ramifications to the future small
power politics should be accounted.
Since the Soviet Union disintegrated in the early 1990s, an ‘elite social move-
ment’ comprised of the transnational corporations and global financial capitalism
gradually created a ‘borderless world’ for the Western capitals and elite groups to
generate a liberal hegemony over the entire world (Ohmae, 1999; Sklair, 1997,
2001). In the midst of this neo-liberal globalization process, the governmental
advocacy for the neo-liberal ‘small government, big market’ model of the
metropolitan states has actually served the interests of the global capitals and their
intended liberal world order (Sassen, 1996). Mainly through launching various
military and diplomatic campaigns (especially in the oil-rich Middle East) and
leading international organizations (e.g. the World Bank) , the identified
non-status-quo states were deterred, toppled or contained. Former communist states
in Eastern Europe have been successfully absorbed into the globalizing liberal
market led by the West.
In order to import less expensive labour force for more convenient and efficient
capital accumulation in a global scale, the metropolitan states have gradually shifted
from the pre-1990s assimilative nation-state model to the multi-cultural
container-state model (Grillo, 1998; Vertovec, 1996). The purpose is for the
Western governments to adopt the multi-ethnic immigration policy. It is to con-
struct a multi-cultural transnational labour market, which serves the interests of the
transnational capitals and their economic globalization project (Sassen, 1988).
However, since 2001 when one sees China’s rise after joining the World Trade
Organization (WTO), given its continued economic growths and being the largest
population in the world, the Chinese Communist single-party state has gradually
and concomitantly monopolized the means of production, the state apparatus and
the largest consumer and labour markets in the world. The socialist Chinese state
has then integrated the ‘sovereign statehood’ and ‘transnational capitals’ into one
entity in its own (Wong, 2016e).
China has also actively participated in the liberal globalization project. From the
early 1980s to 2000s, China continued to experience high level of economic
growths. Due to the 2008 global recession, China’s economy experienced slow-
down and overcapacity. In order to restructure its foreign-investment-led industri-
alization economy to become a more high-value-added innovation-export-led
industrialization economy, in 2013, the administration under President Xi Jinping
started to initiate and institute an alternative globalization process, based on China’s
national interests. Against this context and aim, the ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative
was introduced in 2013 with the establishment of a new global financial system
consisting of the New Development Bank (2014), Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank (AIIB, 2015) and the Silk Road Fund (2015). This China-initiated global-
ization project has put additional competitive pressures over the metropolitan
powers, which also diluted and complicated their respective dominance and
coherence of the post-Cold War USA-led liberal globalization project (Wong,
2016c).
Moreover, two decades of the liberal globalization project has caused such
socio-economic problems in the West as widening rich–poor gap, out-draining of
industries, increased unemployment rate and shrinking household incomes. These
have put substantial pressures on the existing liberal democratic political system.
Throughout the years, the voters started to realize that the representative
8.3 The ‘American First’ Statecraft of the Trump Presidency 221
government system has gradually lost its original functions in re-distributing eco-
nomic wealth and political power to the lower socio-economic classes and the
deprived social groups. In actuality, the democratic political system has seemingly
become a convenient tool for the big business-stakeholders and the governing
political elites of the liberal globalization project to strengthen their own political
legitimacy and perpetuate their alternate state rule through the regularly held
elections. In other words, the existing national democratic system is no longer be
able to channel and dissolve the interpersonal, inter-class, urban-rural,
inter-generational, religious, communal and ethnic-racial tensions and the social
contradictions caused by transnational exploitation and neo-liberal oppression, thus
causing widespread disaffections among the masses (Wong, 2016e).
Against this global historical-structural backdrop, the rise of Anglo-American
populism in 2016 and 2017 actually turned on the systemic red light of the post-Cold
War USA-led global liberal political-economic system. If it does not reform, it is
likely that the internal social conflicts may be exacerbated by the divisive populist
politics. In other words, the rise of populism is a symptom warranting the
metropolitan capitalistic states to claw back some political-economic powers from
the transnational capitals, e.g., through taxation and regulation. This is intended to
siphon more of the capitals accumulated overseas back to the deprived, marginalized
and poor social groups in the metropolitan-homelands (Wong, 2016d).
Consequentially, the Brexit Britain and the Trump presidency actually represent
a different type of Anglo-American statecraft. In parallel with the critical realist
small power politics framework, I established in the previous chapters, this
Anglo-American statecraft entails the following characteristics: (1) economic
nationalism; (2) sovereignty-asserting; (3) protectionism; (4) more restrictive
immigration policy; and (5) the strengthening of the state’s wealth-distribution
power. Nonetheless, there is a difference to be noted in the Trump administration.
Despite Trump won the presidential election through populist mobilization tactics,
contemporary US statecraft is inherently realist by religious-cultural nature, which
determines its strategic-cum-political cultural structures (Wong, 2016a: Chap. 1).
How does Trump reconcile his populist ethos with the realist habitus of the
Republican-majority government is a billion-dollar question to be answered. If
there would be an effective populist-Republican coalition framework, what would
the Trump doctrine entail? This doctrine should be known later in 2017 as President
Trump will be expected to release the legislatively mandated National Security
Strategy (NSS) document (Feaver, 2017). Hereunder are my initial thoughts.
8.3.2 The Trump Doctrine: An Initial Comparative

Assessment
The former President George Bush Jr.’s (2001–2009) Republican administration is

known to adhere to the ‘neo-conservative’ doctrine, which consisted of the liberalist
world order-making agenda and such offensive realist policies as ‘pre-emptive
strike’ and ‘preventive warfare’, especially towards the warlord and terrorist
regimes in the Middle East (Marten, 2006; Wong, 2017c). The Bush administration
was known to enjoy relatively cooperative relationship with China than the Obama
administration.
As the Trump administration aims to relocate some of the American transna-
tional capitals back to the US homeland to rejuvenate the nation’s faltering
industrial sector, the liberalist influence in the Bush’s neo-conservative doctrine is
expectedly diminished in the Trump administration. What would remain in the
Trump doctrine is the offensive realist element. The Trump administration already
issued a high-profile strategy and planned to address the terrorist threats hailing
from the ‘Islamic State’ in the Middle East, mainly by building a more aggressive
coalition forces and campaigns to fight against terrorism with the Middle East allies.
For instance, since Trump resumed the presidency in 2017, he has already con-
ducted a number of pre-emptive military strike against targets in Yemen, Syria and
Afghanistan.
As Trump has a clear vision and concrete plan to fully liberalize the US energy
sector and the domestic oil and shale industry in order to reduce its energy
dependency on the Middle East oil suppliers, the USA will be in a better future
position to launch any military campaign in the Middle East. This will serve a
parallel geopolitical realist objective to check on China’s expanding influences in
the Middle East and North Africa, given that China relies on the Indo-Pacific
oil-shipping routes connecting the Middle East and Africa to East Asia. As a
countering geo-strategy, China has adjusted its energy policy by importing more
oils from Russia (see Chapt. 7 for more details).
An intended outcome is that since January 2016, Russia has historically become
China’s largest crude oil supplier, up to the present time.1 This significantly reduces
China’s geopolitical risks caused by its reliance over the Malacca Strait choke point
(see Chap. 3). This constitutes a significant Eurasian geostrategic shift due to the
coordinated efforts of China and Russia, in their concerted response to the
energy-geopolitical shift of the Obama and Trump administrations.
In a nutshell, the Trump doctrine has already adopted an offensive realist policy
stance towards the Middle East and the terrorist-backing countries. Its main
objective is to defeat such terrorist groups and warlord regimes as the ‘Islamic
State’. In regard to China, Trump seems to take a more sophisticated approach. This
needs to be contextualized in the geopolitical relationship between America and
Eurasia.
1
Sources: (1) ‘Russia Beats Saudi Arabia as China’s Top Crude Oil Supplier in 2016’. Reuters. 23
January 2017. (2) ‘俄國上月對華出口原油破頂成最大供應國。’ 信報財經新聞。23 June
2017.
8.3.3 ‘America First’ Global Security Strategy: Past,

Present and Future
8.3.3.1 The ‘America First Committee’ and the Rise of Radical

Conservatism
To start with, in early May 2017, the US Secretary of the State Rex Tillerson openly
stated that the Trump administration’s ‘America First’ foreign policy entails the
following main points (Wong, 2017b):2
• US foreign policy in the past had already lost its balance, causing damages to
US national security and interests. ‘America First’ foreign policy is to elevate
the US national interests above everything else.
• In the past, the USA overemphasized to develop economic and trade relations
with emerging economies. The USA now needs to rebalance these international
trade relations in more solid line with US national interests.
• In the past, the US foreign policy advocated such American core values as
freedom and human rights. However, these values obstructed the US foreign
policy to effectively protect American economic interests and national security.
Although the US government and society will continue to uphold these values,
the ‘America First’ foreign policy-makers will separate policy matters from
value matters. In other words, the USA will not expect other countries to adhere
to American values.
It was consented by the US public opinion that Donald Trump’s ‘America First’
doctrine could be traced to the pre-Second World War ‘America First Committee’,
a pressure group and civic movement advocating against the USA to join the
European world war. The movement was active in the 1930s and early 1940s.3
Influenced by the ideology of conservatism, the America First Committee had the
following core positions (Cole, 1953: 15–16):
• The USA must establish an impregnable defence system.
• No country and international alliance could successfully attack a well-prepared
America.
• The only means to preserve the American democracy is not to be involved in the
European and overseas battlefields.
2
Sources: (1) ‘Rex Tillerson: “America First” Means Divorcing Our Policy from Our Values’. The
Guardian. 3 May 2017. (2) ‘Here’s What “America First” Means at the Rex Tillerson State
Department’. Reuters. 4 May 2017. (3) ‘“America First” Foreign Policy May Mean Ignoring
Human Rights, Rex Tillerson Says’. Vice News. 3 May 2017. (4) ‘Rex Tillerson Spells out US
Foreign Policy’. The Atlantic. 3 May 2017.
3
Sources: (1) Krishnadev Calamur (2017). ‘A Short History of “America First”’. The Atlantic.
21 January 2017. (2) Lily Rothman (2016). ‘The Long History behind Donald Trump’s “America
First” Foreign Policy’. Time. 28 March 2016. (3) Susan Dunn (2016). ‘Trump’s “America First”
Has Ugly Echoes from U.S. History’. CNN News. 28 April 2016.
• Adopting the ‘aid short of war’ policy towards Great Britain undermines
America’s defence capability and increases its risks to get involved in the
European world war.
The America First Committee’s isolationist and non-interventionist advocacy
was brought to an end on 7 December 1941, when Japan’s surprising attack of the
Pearl Harbor formally took America to the Second World War. Although it remains
unclear to what extent and in what way does the American First Committee
influences the Trump doctrine, it is safe to say that the ideology of conservatism
does. Conservatism is a general social and political philosophy that promotes the
preservation of cultural traditions and social institutions as the cornerstones of
stability and continuity of a society and civilization.
During the Bush administration, resultant of the 9–11 attack and the subsequent
wars in the Middle East, it was suggested that the Republican administration’s
neo-conservative doctrine was actually a form of ‘radical conservatism’ (Broder,
2002; Delgaudia, 2007; Toplin, 2006). In contrast to the classical conservatives’
objective to use modest domestic policy such as national schooling to preserve the
internal traditions and social institutions, radical conservatism incorporates
aggressive foreign policy and pre-emptive military campaign as the essential
instrument to safeguard the national security. What would be the implications of
this radical conservative embedding of the Trump doctrine? There are two ways to
think about this.
8.3.3.2 Offensive Realism as Radical Conservative Strategic Culture
First, the repeated emphasis on America’s national interests reflects a deep-seated

strategic-cultural worldview that America is a fully autonomous agent, a free
sovereign state in the anarchic international arena. It suggests that the Trump
administration views that America can act on its own to preserve its own national
interests. This position is in line with the realist thinking that every state acts to
pursue its own self-interest and out of fear. Even with the allies, one cannot be
always sure about the reliability because they are also the competitors in the same
arena.
Second, Trump’s electoral campaign slogan—‘make America great again’
would be another hint. While he perceived that America was no longer great, he
promised to make it great again through putting America again into the first place
ahead of the whole world. This articulates an assumption that America was already
dragged back by the other nations, therefore, America has to take back its first place
in the world. Viewing from the realist perspective, this seems to communicate a
readiness to compete against all those in the international arena in order to get ahead
of them.
In May 2017, President Trump’s first state visit was marked by two major
controversies. First, when he met the leaders of the NATO alliance in Brussels, he
refrained from affirming the NATO’s Article 5.4 Second, soon after the trip, he
withdrew from the Paris agreement on climate change, which further strained the
relations with the European allies.5 Revealingly, his national security advisor
Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster and the director of the National Economic
Council Gary Cohn—two of the supposed leaders of the globalist contingent in the
White House—contributed an interesting commentary in the Wall Street Journal in
late May 2017 (Karabell, 2017). The following two paragraphs would help to
outline the deep-seated strategic-cultural worldview of the Trump doctrine:6
The president embarked on his first foreign trip with a clear-eyed outlook that the world is
not a “global community” but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and busi-
nesses engage and compete for advantage. We bring this forum [NATO] unmatched mil-
itary, political, economic, cultural and moral strength. Rather than deny this elemental
nature of international affairs, we embrace it.
This historic trip represented a strategic shift for the United States. America First signals the
restoration of American leadership and our government’s traditional role overseas—to use
the diplomatic, economic and military resources of the U.S. to enhance American security,
promote American prosperity, and extend American influence around the world.
This is the core strategic worldview embedded in the Trump doctrine. At odds
with China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative which aims to build a ‘community of
shared destiny’, the Trump administration suggests otherwise that the world is not a
‘global community’ at all, but rather—an ‘arena where nations, nongovernmental
actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage’. They further state that
instead of denying this ‘elemental nature of international affairs’, the two Trump’s
most senior officials agree to ‘embrace it’, implying America will savour the
inherently competitive, anarchic nature of international politics, even to make good
use of it—to take the most advantages out of it for America’s interests.
This radical conservative worldview resonates quite well with the theoretical
strand of offensive realism proposed by the American political scientist John
Mearsheimer (2014). Accordingly, the USA under the Trump presidency should
‘embrace a realist foreign policy’ (Mearsheimer, 2016). This policy has the fol-
lowing main positions:
• America should stop repeating the mistake in attempting to maintain the liberal
hegemony and promote liberal democracy across the world. It was a bankrupt
strategy to topple the regimes in the Middle East and turn them into democra-
cies. America’s long-running wars and state-building failures in Afghanistan,
Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen are already the obvious evidence. These
campaigns have also made America’s terrorism problem even worse—Al Qaeda
4
Source: ‘Trump Declines to Affirm NATO’s Article 5’. The Atlantic. 25 May 2017.
5
Sources: (1) ‘Trump Will Withdraw U.S. from Paris Climate Agreement’. New York Times.
1 June 2017. (2) ‘Donald Trump Confirms Withdrawal from Paris Agreement on Climate Change
in Huge Blow for Global Deal’. The Independent. 1 June 2017.
6
Source: ‘America First Doesn’t Mean America Alone’. The Wall Street Journal. 30 May 2017.
has morphed and multiplied, the ‘Islamic State’ is largely a consequence of the
US invasion of Iraq.
• In Europe, America should stop creating an unnecessary crisis with Russia that
would upset the peace in Eastern Europe and make it harder for Washington and
Moscow to work together in ending the blood-letting conflict in Syria.
• Realist policy is chiefly concerned with America’s position in the global balance
of power. America should respect the sovereignty of other states, even it dis-
agrees the domestic policies of these countries. America should treat other
countries in the same standard—respect their sovereignty and avoid engineering
their societies and political systems.
• East Asia and Europe are more important because of the relative concentration
of wealth and home to world’s other great powers. The Persian Gulf is important
because it produces about 30% of the world’s oil, which is a critical resource for
the functioning of the global economy. America should prevent any regional
hegemon in these regions.
• Europe is an easier task to handle. Germany is not able to dominate because of
its shrinking population and its declining power. The Russian economy is too
dependent on its gas and oil revenues. As the Europeans can afford to build
forces to check on Russian ambitions, America should encourage the Europeans
to take the responsibility for their own security, thus reducing the US troops
there.
• Russia is not a serious threat to America. America should make concerted efforts
to normalize its relations with Moscow by ending the Syrian conflict and
combating terrorism together. Most importantly, America needs Russia’s help to
contain a rising China. It is a strategic error for America to drive Russia towards
China.
• The Trump administration should let the Middle East local powers to deal with
the ‘Islamic State’. It is a more serious threat to them than to America.
• The only bad news concerns the situation in East Asia. If China continues to
record its impressive rise, it is likely to dominate Asia similar to America’s
dominance in the Western hemisphere. America should strive to contain China
and prevent it to become the regional hegemon.
• Expecting the Asian allies to deal with China’s rise is not going to work because
Beijing is more powerful than its neighbours. It is also difficult for them to form
an effective balancing coalition. American leadership in Asia is indispensable.
This requires a lot of strategic thinking and hard work of the American
policy-makers to devise a complex strategic plan to prevent China from
becoming a peer competitor. This mission is of paramount importance.
8.3.3.3 Indo-Pacific Strategic Planning to Conserve U.S. Global

Primacy
As Mearsheimer’s former student in the University of Chicago, the Indian-born

American strategist Ashley J. Tellis’ works on the Indo-Pacific security warrant our
considerations. During the former Bush administration, Tellis worked as a senior
advisor to the US Ambassador to India in New Delhi (2001–2003). He also served
as a special assistant to President Bush Jr.’s National Security Council (Wong,
2017a). Currently, he serves in the executive panel in the Chief of Naval Operations
of the US Department of Navy. Because Tellis has a track record in serving the
Republican government, there were some public speculations in both the US and
India that he would become the next US Ambassador to India of the Trump
administration.7 These speculations seem to settle as Kenneth Juster—a top aide of
President Trump is set to be confirmed as the next US Ambassador to India.8
Nonetheless, the actual impacts of Tellis to the US foreign policy-making process
cannot be underestimated.
During the Obama administration, Tellis (2010, 2014) proposed that America
should strengthen her relations with India and other Asian countries to ‘manage’
China’s rise so to maintain the balance of power. Both the USA and India were
aware of China’s increasing presence and assertive activities in the Indo-Pacific
region. While this would require the strategic cooperation of other allies such as
Japan and Australia, the USA should prevent any public accusation that it will
contain China. This proposal was not without positive policy outcome when
President Obama took it and established closer security ties with India (Henry &
Pritzke, 2015).9
It seems that during the Obama period, Tellis’ geostrategic gist was to recycle
the already given Pacific island-chain geopolitical structures to manage China’s
rise. As a non-status-quo state, China’s rise needs careful management, not con-
tainment (Tellis, 2014). To achieve this, America and her Pacific island-chain allies
would need to pursue a few goals:
• America must strive to maintain its supremacy in the region as China poses
unacceptable risks to the security and interests of the USA and allies.
• The Cold War containment policy towards China is politically, economically
and practically unthinkable from both the perspectives of America and her Asian
7
Sources: (1) ‘US Ambassador to India Ashley Tellis? All You Need to Know about Mumbai-born
Strategic Expert’. First Post. 10 January 2017. (2) ‘Trump Could Make Obama's Pivot to Asia a
Reality’. Washington Post. 8 January 2017. (3) ‘Ashley Tellis: From a Bandra Boy to Trump’s
Probable Pick for US Envoy to India’ Hindustan Times. 11 January 2017.
8
Sources: (1) Kenneth Juster Set to be New US Ambassador to India: All You Need to Know
about Richard Verma’s Successor’. First Post. 22 June 2017. (2) ‘Trump Aid Kenneth Juster Set to
be Next US Ambassador to India’. Hindustan Times. 22 June 2017. (3) ‘Kenneth Juster to U.S.
Ambassador to India’. The Hindu. 21 June 2017.
9
Source: 「奧巴馬再度訪印鞏固兩國關係。」金融時報中文版。2015年1月23日。.
allies. Washington should balance China’s rise through bolstering its military
capabilities and strengthening economic ties with other regional actors.
• China’s power, unlike that of the former Soviet Union—stems from its deep
integration into the USA-led liberal global political economy. To encourage
China to participate and contribute to the existing world order is a strategy to
increase China’s stake in the existing global system and raise its costs of abusing
its power.
Nonetheless, Tellis did not cease improving his strategic framework towards
China as the most significant competitor to America. For instance, in a 2015 joint
publication, he realized that America’s past efforts to ‘integrate’ China into the
liberal global order actually generated new threats to the US primacy in Asia (Tellis
& Blackwill, 2015). Furthermore, in late April 2017, Tellis made a testimony to the
US Senate Armed Services Committee which further concretized China as
America’s major security challenge (Tellis, 2017). Here are the main points of the
proposed strategic plan:
• China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative launched in 2013 has revealed the real
ambition of Beijing, which is a most feared scenario in the minds of the tra-
ditional American strategists—to forge, establish and maintain a Eurasian
hegemony. In order to undermine the US leadership in Asia, China keeps on
promoting a ‘counter-intervention’ narrative internationally. It is intended to
deter America to use military means to intervene the conflicts between China
and the Asian rimland states.
• America must strive to defend and maintain her primacy in Asia globally.
America must resist the threats of a Chinese hegemony and refuse to compro-
mise with China.
• In response to the ‘internal sea’ that China is building in the South China Sea,
the USA must (1) deny her sovereignty claims, (2) use public diplomacy to
embarrass China, (3) launch protests in all international organizations, (4) im-
pose sanctions on China, (5) assist Southeast Asian states to develop and
establish relevant technologies to surveillance and check upon China’s activities
in the South China Sea, and (6) publicly declare America’s security commit-
ments and guarantee in all disputed islands.
• China is not restricted by the ‘Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty’ which
has however restricted American military capability for three decades. Beijing is
therefore able to develop and use the less expensive land-based missile
launching systems, covering any target within the shooting range of 500–
5,500 km. On the contrary, the USA has to depend on more expensive air and
sea platforms to launch missiles, e.g. warships, submarines and aircraft bombers.
In order to fully utilize all kinds of missile platforms, America should consider
withdrawing from the treaty and declare it obsolete. This future comprehensive
missile defence system can better project American military might across the
globe. It can also deflect China’s ‘counter-intervention’ narrative, enable
America to freely launch any missile strikes from the military bases along the
western Pacific island-chains, especially Japan.
• America should strengthen its military and security cooperation with allies along
the island-chains. This will strengthen its control over the geopolitical choke
points connecting the East and South China Seas. China’s degree of freedom of
movement will be complicated and restricted. India and Japan will be the main
regional partners to resist China.
• America should recognize the ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative as a core security
challenge. It should work with Japan to devise an alternative transnational
infrastructure initiative to rebalance China’s increasing political-economic
influences in the region.
• In short, comparing to Russia and North Korea, China’s growing military
capabilities stems from its solid economic foundation. This qualifies China to be
the primary global competitor of the USA.
In continuation with Mearsheimer’s offensive realist stance which also identifies
China as the major global security concern of the USA, Tellis’ Indo-Pacific strategy
articulates a more concrete strategic plan to compete with China in Asia.
8.4 Towards ‘Radical Post-Colonial Conservatism’
For the small powers to survive and thrive in this anarchic jungle of the ‘American
First’ offensive realism and the statist space of China’s ‘One Belt One Road’
financial Leninism, it is essential to stick with the theory and practice of critical
realism in order to preserve and perpetuate the treasured traditions and unique
institutions of the small powers. In other words, African-Asian critical realism is a
statecraft hailing from the philosophy of radical post-colonial conservativism,
which entails the following meanings:
• By ‘radical’, I neither mean being aggressive nor imply militancy. It refers to
‘from the root’ and being ‘whole-hearted’ as being faithful to one’s spiritual
anchorage (Stott, 2010; Yoder, 2012). Genuine development must stem from a
society’s spiritual root-base. It is to recognize, restore and conserve the small
power’s pre-colonial cultural heritage, social tradition, political-economic
institutions, religion and civilization as the essential assets for national devel-
opment. These are also indispensable resources for the small power to find
refuge in difficult times and crises. These constitute the habitus—the
deep-seated structuring structures—that the small power can recourse to and
depend on as well as to rejuvenate from.
• By ‘post-colonial’, I mean to decolonize. Colonialism left us many assets and
burdens. It is important to critically filter and select which are compatible with
one’s root and which are not. Decolonization does not necessarily mean to
exclude and reject those seemingly incompatible colonial legacies.
Decolonization entails the active agency of the small power to live with the past
and to remake the optimal destiny out of the pre-colonial and colonial
experiences.
• While the state and capitalism are two traumatic colonial legacies that the
post-colonial states inherit from, these two colonialities have constituted the
necessary structural (one is political and another is economic) pillars of destined
statecraft. Without these two pillars, the small power cannot construct and
maintain a central state authority to ensure social stability, accommodate its
inhabitants, heal the wounds, and defend their sovereignty and economic
interests in the international arena. In other words, sovereign statehood and
capital are two essential instruments to conserve, innovate and remake the small
power’s past, present and future.
• By ‘conservatism’, I simply mean for the small power to confidently declare to
the great powers: the small will do what they can to become what they are
destined to be.
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Index
A Chatham house (Royal Institute of International

Adulyadej, King Bhumibol, 110, 127 Affairs), 210
Agamben, Giorgio, 141 China, 1, 4, 5, 7–11, 14, 19, 20, 25, 26, 31,
America First, 20, 208, 217, 219, 223, 224 33–37, 41, 42, 44, 46, 51–53, 57,
America First Committee, 223, 224 59–65, 67, 68, 70, 72–74, 78, 79, 81,
Annexation, 18, 185, 186 94–97, 102, 110, 124, 130, 150, 156,
Anti-Hindu violence, 99–101 164–166, 170, 173–176, 181, 182, 187,
Anti-Muslim violence, 99 189–191, 194–196, 206–210, 212, 220,
Archipelagic power, 164, 167, 177 222, 226–229
Asian Development Bank, 6, 8, 11 Chinese academy of social sciences, 210
Asian Infrastructure Development Bank, 6, 8, Chinese Communist Party (CPP), 10, 12, 61,
220 97, 175
Asia-Pacific, 14, 43, 46, 175 Choke-point, 36, 37, 64, 65, 69, 74
Association of South East Asian Nations Christianity, 60, 103
(ASEAN), 9 Clinton, Hilary, 5, 73, 166, 202
Austronesia(n), 167–172, 177 Colonialism, 18, 33, 38, 43, 172, 188, 229
Communism, 25, 39, 51, 53, 59, 60, 70, 111,
B 123, 151, 153
Bandung, 3, 33 Confidentiality, 88
Bangladesh, 19, 68, 77, 79, 95, 97, 99–101, Conflict, 4, 13, 17, 27, 37, 39, 40, 59, 67, 91,
104, 172 102, 115, 120, 121, 125, 127, 139, 150,
Barangay/balangay, 171 153, 165, 175, 181, 186, 194, 195, 205,
Beijing consensus, 6, 34, 61, 67, 74, 176 206, 213, 221, 226, 228
Blair, Tony, 198, 200 Confucianism, 60
Bourdieu, Pierre, 1, 2, 16, 19, 78, 83, 122, 189, Conservative party, 196–200, 212
217 Constructivism, 7, 26, 28, 29, 189
Bretton woods system, 6, 32 Containment, 8, 19, 25, 35, 36, 51–53, 55, 59,
Brexit, 16, 20, 196, 197, 199, 201–209, 211, 60, 62–64, 67, 70, 72–74, 94, 153, 155,
221 175, 182
Brexit referendum, 195, 196, 199–201, 209 Counter-containment, 19, 51, 52, 60, 62, 68,
Buddhism, 60, 122, 124 73, 74
Burma/Myanmar, 19, 51, 60, 68, 128 Coup (judicial and military), 16, 86, 117, 138
Crisis, 5, 17, 62, 100, 143, 174, 182, 184–186,
C 191, 193, 202, 212, 218, 226
Cameron, David, 196, 199 Critical realism, 16, 19, 25, 30, 37, 182, 218,
Catholic, 140, 158, 159, 175, 206 229
21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, 4, 14

P.N. Wong, Destined Statecraft, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6563-7
234 Index
D India, 8, 46, 68, 78, 79, 91, 94–102, 104, 165,

Darwinism, 55, 124, 155 227
Datu, 171, 172, 175, 177 Indian Ocean, 19, 68, 77–79, 91, 93–96, 103,
Decisionism, 87, 141 166, 168, 171
Defensive realism, 7, 8 Indonesia, 4, 33, 41, 60, 72, 73, 164, 167, 168,
Democracy, 11, 12, 40, 51, 55, 109–111, 113, 171
115, 117–120, 127, 140, 143, 144, 201, Indo-Pacific, 19, 20, 78, 156, 167, 171, 222,
223, 225 227, 229
Destined agency, 1, 3, 15, 16, 18, 218 Institutionalism, 7, 189
Destined statecraft, 1, 3, 181, 218, 230 Intelligence, 3, 32, 35, 39, 62, 72, 86, 130, 202
Destiny, 6, 7, 86, 181, 188, 189, 230 Internationalization of Chinese currency/yuan,
Devolution, 206 208
International Monetary Fund, 6, 13, 28, 60, 210
E Islam, 60, 79, 98–100
East China Sea, 65, 72, 166 Island-chain, 227, 229
Eastern policy, 192–194, 212
Economic nationalism, 25, 31, 46, 221 J
Energy security, 37, 74, 173, 182, 194 Japan, 5, 8, 36, 60, 65, 93, 154–157, 166, 181,
England, 150, 151, 203, 205 224, 229
European Union (E.U.), The, 9, 11, 20, 28, 29, Jinping, Xi, 4, 7, 73, 95, 101, 188, 193, 195,
159, 160, 181–183, 207, 219 220
F K
Fatalism, 2 Kautilya, 19, 77, 78, 91, 93
Fate, 1, 2, 4, 40, 219 Kieh Jr, George Klay, 221
G L
Gas, 68, 173, 182–186, 212, 226 Labour party, 196, 198–200
Geopolitics, 149, 151, 154, 155, 158–161, 176 Law/force indistinction, 141
Germany, 32, 53, 140, 150, 154, 155, 158, 182, Lebensraum (German–living space), 155, 157,
191, 192, 195, 202, 204, 226 158
Girard, Rene, 150, 153, 154 Leninism, 12, 229
Globalization, 6, 220, 221 Liberalism, 8, 140, 189
Go with the flows, 3, 15, 17, 124, 126, 127, Liberia, 19, 25, 30, 37–40, 45
219
Greater Poland, 192, 193, 195, 212 M
Grobraum (German-great space), 158 Mackinder, Halford, 53, 150, 151, 154, 176
Gulf of Aden, 36, 64, 69, 79 Malacca strait, 36, 55, 68, 79, 102, 222
Malayo-Polynesia(n), 20, 55, 167, 171, 172
H Mandala, 92, 101
Habitus, 2, 15–17, 19, 78, 83, 84, 94, 103, 109, May, Theresa, 196
117, 121, 122, 144, 168, 181, 189, 194, Mearsheimer, John, 225
196, 212, 217, 229 Melos, 1
Haushofer, Karl, 54, 153–157, 176 Mimesis, 153, 154, 157, 161, 162, 176
Heartland, 54–56, 58, 59, 152–154, 168, 192 Mimetic theory/rivalry/violence/peace, 150
Hinduism, 92, 98, 103, 122
Hitler, 54, 154, 157, 158, 160 N
Nazi, 32, 141, 157, 158, 160, 191
I Neo-colonialism, 18, 38–40, 46, 67, 74
I-Ching, 15 Nepal, 19, 68, 78, 79, 96, 97, 103
Imperial capital, 11, 13 New Development Bank, 6, 194, 210, 220
Index 235
New labour, 198, 200 182, 183, 186, 188, 193, 194, 198, 203,
New right, 197, 200, 212 212, 223, 225–227, 229
Northern Ireland, 203–206 Shale, 222
Shinawatra, 20, 109, 111, 116, 123, 127, 131,
O 133, 136–139, 142, 143
Obama, Barack, 5, 8, 62 Silk road economic belt, 4, 14
Offensive realism, 229 Silk road fund, 6, 194, 220
Oil, 10, 26, 32, 35, 37, 41, 43, 65, 68, 72, 79, Small power, 1–4, 7, 14–20, 25–31, 33, 37, 40,
166, 172, 173, 222, 226 42, 45, 46, 52, 65, 72–74, 77–79, 93, 94,
One Belt One Road (OBOR), 1, 4, 14, 101, 96, 110, 149, 166, 172, 175, 186, 188,
187, 195, 196, 207, 210–212, 220, 228, 217–219, 229, 230
229 Solomon, King, 121
South Africa, 46
P South China Sea, 7, 20, 26, 37, 41, 44, 65, 72,
Pacific Ocean, 38, 55, 110, 154, 156, 168, 169 73, 102, 149, 150, 164–166, 173, 177,
Pakistan, 19, 68, 78, 79, 95, 96, 98–100 228, 229
Partition, 18, 99, 186 Sovereign, 15, 20, 27, 56, 86, 87, 109, 111,
People’s diplomacy, 20, 149, 162, 163, 176, 116, 127, 135, 141, 143, 163, 207, 224,
177 230
Philippines, The, 8, 25, 31, 37, 38, 41–44, 46, Sovereignty, 18, 27, 33, 39, 41, 45, 46, 53, 65,
60, 66, 72, 93, 150, 164, 166, 167, 171, 72, 73, 87, 109, 111, 117, 141, 143, 159,
173, 174, 176, 177, 181 167, 176, 183, 191, 226, 228
Pipeline, 68, 71, 74, 185 Soviet Union, 30, 32, 33, 53, 58, 59, 94, 160,
Pivot to Asia, 5, 8, 51, 166, 202 182, 219, 228
Poland and the United Kingdom, 181, 187 Spykman, Nicholas, 36, 55
Populism, 109, 115, 127, 195, 197, 200, 219, Sri Lanka, 19, 69, 78, 79, 95, 96, 103
221 State capital, 11, 12, 118
Statecraft, 1, 2, 4, 16, 19, 25, 74, 77, 91, 92, 95,
R 103, 109, 111, 122, 155, 187, 219, 221
Radical conservatism, 224 State religion, 100, 122, 123, 155
Radical post-colonial conservatism, 229 Strait of Hormuz, 36, 64, 79
Realism, 2, 8, 26, 28, 29, 51, 53, 56, 73, 82, Strategic culture, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 52, 77, 78,
159, 187, 225, 229 80–83, 85, 87–91, 94, 96, 104, 122,
Religion, 78, 79, 98, 122, 229 149, 150, 167, 174, 196, 212, 218
Religious violence, 100, 103 String of pearls, 19, 68, 77, 78, 95, 97, 104
Renminbi, 11, 62, 210 Sunda strait, 157
Rice policy, 20, 131, 136–138, 142
Rimland, 57, 94, 152 T
Russia, 20, 37, 54, 59, 151, 152, 155, 181–186, Taoism, 124
191–195, 202, 208, 212, 222, 226, 229 Tellis, Ashley, 227, 228
Thailand, 16, 60, 86, 109, 111, 114–117, 122,
S 127–130, 132, 134, 136–139, 141, 143,
Sakdina (Thai-power of the land), 109, 111, 172
115, 117, 122 Thick dark theory/democracy, 124, 127
Scarborough shoal, 150, 164, 173, 175, 177 Thucydides, 1
Schmitt, Carl, 27, 86, 87, 116, 140, 141, 157, Trump, Donald, 21, 202, 217, 219, 223
159, 176 Tse-tung/Zedong, Mao, 25, 61, 62
Scotland, 198, 203–205 Tzu, Sun, 1, 3, 51, 52, 62–65, 67, 73, 91
Scottish independence referendum, 196, 198,
205 U
Secessionism, 18, 96 Ukraine, 182–186, 191–193
Security, 3, 7, 27, 29, 30, 32, 36, 37, 46, 52, 56, United States (U.S.), 5, 8, 11, 14, 20, 25, 26,
58, 59, 65, 68, 78, 85–88, 91, 96, 101, 31–40, 43, 46, 51–53, 55–60, 62–67,
102, 113, 130, 142, 143, 166, 173, 174, 70, 73, 74, 80, 95, 96, 102, 109–113,
236 Index
117, 143, 173, 175, 176, 182, 184, 196, 143, 150, 154, 155, 158, 159, 161, 172,
202–204, 207, 209, 210, 219, 221–223, 175, 177, 182–184, 188, 221, 223, 225,
226–228 227
Washington consensus, 6, 34, 60, 74
V World Bank, 6, 11, 28, 39, 220
Votes, 42, 73, 123, 136, 139, 199–201, 219
X
W Xiaoping, Deng, 4, 7, 12, 25, 33, 34, 59, 60,
Wales, 203–205 61, 64
War, 1, 4, 6, 8, 11, 19, 20, 27, 31, 32, 35, 36,
38, 40, 45, 52, 56, 60, 62–64, 69, 73, 86, Z
91, 94, 96, 110, 123, 124, 128, 133, 139, Zongwu, Li, 118, 124

2018 Book DestinedStatecraft

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2018 Book DestinedStatecraft

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Pak Nung Wong

ISBN 978-981-10-6561-3 ISBN 978-981-10-6563-7 (eBook)

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

This book is intended to make a substantial contribution to a few interconnected

encouragements of Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, Reverend Jerome Francis, Prof.

Bath, UK Pak Nung Wong

In Destined Statecraft, Professor Pak Nung Wong addresses an interesting yet

Seoul, Republic of Korea Ambassador Mr Sungnam Lim

1 Introduction: Remaking the Small Powers’ Destines . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2.3.2 African and Asian Small Power Politics: Liberia and

4.4.2 The Mandala-like Bi-Centric International System . . . .... 93

6 Practicing People’s Diplomacy Over Disputed Waters: Peaceable

7.4.2 Destined Brexit? A Structural Analysis of the 2016

Fig. 2.1 Neocolonial circulatory structures between domestic politics

Table 1.1 Changes of trade dependence on China and the USA

Abstract This introductory chapter will contextualize the US–China geostrategic

1.1 The Melian Fate Reconsidered

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 1

1.2 The Problem: Destined Statecraft—Optimal

This book is my full-fledged response to this incomplete view of ancient Greek

1.3 Shifting Poles: Conceptualizing an Emerging Global

1.3.1 The ‘One Belt One Road’ Initiative: Background,

infrastructures such as seaports, road networks, railways, energy supplying net-

1.3.2 Existing Approaches of the OBOR Initiative

1.3.2.1 Critical Constructivism

1.3.2.2 Defensive Realism

1.3.2.3 Liberal Institutionalism

institutional multilateralism and free-trade regimes with regional organizations such

1.3.2.4 Global Financial Capitalism

It is consented by a group of scholars who study water, agricultural and energy

In the longer future, therefore, a China-led alternative global ﬁnancial system

1.3.3 Global Financial Leninism: My Positional Approach

1.4 The OBOR’s Challenge to the Small Powers:

1.5 The Key Argument: Destined Agency—Go

1.6 The Habitus Shift in International Relations

To Bourdieu, habitus is the most deep-seated structures governing both ‘prac-

1.7 Visualizing the Small Power Politics in Plate Tectonics

1.8 Book Plan

Wong, P. N. (2015a, May 1). 「一帶一路」與全球管治新架構。[The ‘Belt and Road’ initiative

Abstract This chapter aims to conceptualize a framework of for better under-

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 25

decades witnessed burgeoning economic relationships between Southeast Asian

2.2 Small Power Politics: Theoretical Issues

2.2.1 Major Paradigms of Small Power Politics

Weber’s (1948) theorization of the state as a human community that inevitably

2.2.2 Towards an African-Asian Critical Realism

Realism, constructivism and dependency theory as well as the literature of small

society is mainly constituted by the state as the central unit of analysis.

2.2.3 Deﬁnition of Small Power Politics

Based on the above expositions of an African-Asian critical realism, we may deﬁne

policy-makers to deduct the often-minor and delicate changes in domestic and

2.3 African and Asian Small Power Politics in Global

2.3.1 Different Trajectories Towards the Great Power-Hood:

2.3.1.1 The Making of the Post-cold War US Global Hegemony

2.3.1.2 The Rise of the Post-millennial China as a ‘Great Power’

various scholars as a great power of signiﬁcant weights, reminiscent of the features

global supply-demand chains so as to increase its products’ competitiveness.

2.3.1.3 USA Post-cold War Containment Strategy Towards China

communist revolution. Critics have been assessing China’s consistent efforts in

2.3.2 African and Asian Small Power Politics: Liberia

2.3.2.1 Behind the Nobel Peace Prize: Liberian Pathway

nationalist movements in Africa. Although many African countries gained flag