Challenges to peace in East Asia by Jordi Urgell

This article attempts to contribute to the discussion about the emerging concept of ‘East Asian Peace’, which in its narrower formulation refers to a dramatic decline in the number of battle deaths from 1979 onwards. By using the data on armed conflicts and peace processes from the School for a Culture of Peace at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the following article raises some academic questions that need further research.

Although there is a clear decline in warfare and battle-related deaths in East Asia since 1979, there are some issues in the discussion around the concept of East Asian Peace that need further research. While the number of active armed conflicts is already very high, especially in Southeast Asia , the several cases of latent, low-intensity or non-resolved conflict in East Asia increase the risk of warfare in the region. Moreover, the protracted character of many of the ongoing armed conflicts in the region – their duration is significantly higher than the world average – seems to illustrate the complexity of the disputes in East Asia. Finally, there are two more issues that need to be explained. First, is the reduction of battle deaths since 1979 attributable to economic, political or geostrategic systemic change or is it due to the fact that the armed groups no longer have the military capacity to pose a threat to the national security of the East Asian states? Second, why have there been so few peace agreements during the period of the ‘East Asian Peace’?

The many active and potential armed conflicts

While Northeast Asia has not had any major wars since the 80s, Southeast Asia continues to be one of the regions in the world with the highest number of armed conflicts – understood, according to the School for a Culture of Peace, to be any confrontation involving regular or irregular armed forces in which the continued and organised use of violence causes at least 100 battle-related deaths in the course of a year and has a serious impact on the human security of the population[SP1] . According to the School for a Culture of Peace data, there are currently five active armed conflicts in the region: one in southern Thailand, one in Burma and three in the Philippines – the Government against the New People’s Army (NPA), the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayyaf Group. If, as suggested by some authors, North East India is considered a part of Southeast Asia – for geographic, historical, and demographic reasons – then the number of active armed conflicts increases to seven due to the disputes in the states of Assam and Manipur. Then Southeast Asia alone would have 25% of all active armed conflicts in the world, and surpass regions like South Asia: Afghanistan, Pakistan (northeast and Baluchistan) and India (Kashmir and the communist insurgents of the CPI-M); the Great Lakes and Central Africa: DR Congo, Central African Republic, Chad and Uganda; the Horn of Africa: Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan (Darfur and South); the Middle East and North Africa: Algeria, Iraq, Yemen, Israel/Palestine; Europe: Turkey and the Russian regions of Chechnya and Ingushetia; Latin America: Colombia; and West Africa: Nigeria.

In addition to the active wars, there are many other cases of latent or unresolved conflicts. In the last decades there has been a significant number of relatively sudden outbreaks of violence, such as those in Kalimantan in 1997, Maluku and Sulawesi in 2000 and 2001, Southern Thailand in 2004, Timor-Leste in 2006, Tibet in 2008 and Xinjiang in 2009. In other cases, the potential for conflict stems from long-standing international disputes, such as between China and Taiwan, North and South Korea and, to a lesser extent, the claimants to the Spratly Islands. There is also the territorial disagreement between Thailand and Cambodia over the access to the temple of Preah Vihear. Other non-resolved, long standing, internal disputes are the self-determination conflict in West Papua (Indonesia), the repression of the Hmong minorities in Laos because of their support to the US in the so-called Secret War in Laos during the Vietnam War. Even in those cases that were settled through a peace or ceasefire agreement – with the Moro National Liberation Front in the Philippines in 1996, the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka in Aceh in 2005 and with several armed groups in Burma and Northeast India during the 1990s – new episodes of violence have often occurred and the risk of renewed conflict has not completely disappeared. Finally, there are several countries whose political stability is threatened by massive demonstrations (Thailand), frequent rumours about military coups d’état (the Philippines) or the holding of elections boycotted by the internal opposition and the international community (Burma).

Long conflicts, short peace

According to the data from the School of Peace Culture[LH2] [i], the average duration of the active armed conflicts in East Asia (31 years) is significantly higher than the average duration of the armed conflicts in the rest of the world (17 years). Several factors could explain this. Firstly, most of the conflicts in the region revolve around identity and self-determination issues, and are therefore more difficult to resolve than power- or resource-based conflicts. Secondly, many of the ongoing conflicts in Southeast Asia are closely related to the formation of the current states during the decolonization process. Some minorities, like the Acehnese and the Papuans in Indonesia, the Moros in the Philippines, the Karen in Burma or the Nagas in Northeast India, have strongly opposed their inclusion in the newly independent countries claiming illegal transfers of sovereignty, fears of repression or internal colonialism. Thirdly, the fact that many countries in East Asia were ruled by authoritarian regimes during most of the second half of the 20th century has prevented these armed conflicts from being resolved through negotiation and peace agreements. Fourth, with a few exceptions, the international community has not been involved in peace-making or conflict-prevention activities in the region as most of the conflicts in East Asia are do not feature in mass media and do not enter the international agenda, or because almost all the governments, and even the ASEAN, have traditionally rejected any outside interference as a violation of national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Considering the very few peace agreements that have been signed in East Asia over the last three decades, it seems that the decline in warfare in the region cannot be attributed to an increase in peace making capacity, but only to a certain degree of conflict avoidance. To synthesize, three kinds of agreements have been reached in East Asia since 1979: a) international agreements, e.g., between China and India in 1993, 1996 and 2005; between Indonesia and Malaysia in 2002; and between North and South Korea b) internal peace agreements, e.g., concerning Mindanao 1996; Cordillera 1986; Cambodia 1991; Sulawesi and Maluku 2001 and 2002 c) internal ceasefire agreements, e.g, in Burma and Northeast India, as well as the 2003 agreement between the MILF and the government of the Philippines. Although some of these agreements have successfully reduced the mortality rates in the region, in general terms they have either not addressed the root causes of conflict (like the ceasefire agreements with the ethnic armed groups in Burma and Northeast India), or they have not been fully implemented (like the 1996 peace agreement in Mindanao) and have thus not removed the risk of fresh outbreaks of violence.

Conclusions

Depending on the meanings attached to peace, diff
erent views of the situation in East Asia emerge. It can be argued that the governments in the region have managed the conflicts in a way that has prevented them from escalating to the stage of open violence, and that this has kept the number of casualties low – in comparison with East Asia before 1979 and with other world regions after 1979. However, there is also an alternative, more pessimistic view that regards these latent conflicts as a constant danger and emphasizes that East Asia has not been able to resolve its deep-rooted conflicts in a sustainable way, so violence may easily flare up again and spread.

Whatever the truth, further research is needed on the factors behind the dramatic decline in battle-related deaths from 1979 onwards. One plausible explanation may be that political, economical and geopolitical structural changes have created systemic conditions more conducive to peace. An alternative explanation, however, is that the non-state armed groups in East Asia have lost some of their former military strength to launch major attacks on the state. With the exception of the MILF and the NPA in the Philippines, all the armed groups in the region are small and factionalized – Abu Sayyaf, as well as the dozens of outfits operating in Northeast India and Southern Thailand, or old and ill-equipped -the OPM in West Papua, the MNLF in the Philippines, the KNU, the KNPP or the SSA-S in Burma, the ULFA or the NSCN in Northeast India. The reduction in the military capacity of the armed opposition groups is probably related to the end of the Cold War when most guerrillas stopped receiving economic, logistical and political support from foreign countries, and to the ‘Good Neighbour Policy’ prompted by the increase in regionalism and trade – the ‘liberal peace’ – during the 1990s.

[i] School for a Culture of Peace, /Alert 2009. Report on conflicts, human rights and peacebuilding/, Icaria Editorial, Barcelona, 2009.

Jordi Urgell is researcher at the School for a Culture of Peace

(Autonomous University of Barcelona). His teaching and research areas

include conflict analysis, peace negotiations and resolution of

self-determination struggles. He has done field research in conflict

areas in Latin America and Asia, like in India, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines or Thailand.

 [SP1]Whose definition is this? Compare to the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset which defines conflict as: “a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths.”

 [LH2]Please add reference: autor/editor, year of publication, full title, place of publication 

Understanding the East Asian peace: some findings on the role of informal processes by Mikael Weissmann, University of Gothenbur

Understanding the East Asian peace: some findings on the role of informal processes by Mikael Weissmann, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

This article will discuss why the interstate conflicts in the post-Cold War East Asian security setting have not escalated into war despite a lack of security organisations or other formalised conflict management mechanisms. It is argued that there are a number of informal processes in the region that can help explain this paradox. The article is based on the findings of the author’s doctoral project on ‘Understanding the East Asian Peace’ with focus on the role of China in the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and the Korean Peninsula.

The East Asian interstate peace since 1979 is a paradox. It has continued despite East Asia being a region with a history of militarised conflicts and many of the world’s most persistently militarised problems, including a number of unresolved flashpoints. It is also a region with a high of intraregional distrust including deep unresolved historical issues. In addition to this ther are strong nationalist tendencies and numerous ethnic conflicts across the region. The dominant research paradigm for analyses of the East Asian security setting is that of neorealism. Scholars following this paradigm have painted a gloomy picture of the future prospects of post-Cold War East Asia. They predict it to be a region of perpetual conflict. In addition to the above, neorealists also emphasise the presence of rising great powers and the shifting balance of power as causes of conflict. Still, the level of interstate violence has been very low.

It should be acknowledged here that other mainstream International Relations theories do not paint as dark a picture as realism, but they fail to fully account for the East Asian peace. For example, liberalism tends to either give the various institutional arrangements in East Asia more prominence than they deserve, or dismiss them simply because they are so different from the Western ones, while constructivism tends to give more credit to Asian identity building than it deserves.

The East Asian peace exists despite the region lacking any security organisation or other formalised mechanisms to prevent existing or potential conflicts from escalating and/or to build peace. Thus, the logical question to ask is whether there are other processes and mechanisms that can help to explain the East Asian peace. If so, what are they, and how do they work? In my forthcoming doctoral dissertation, I aim at developing an understanding of the role and impact of such cross-border interactions that go beyond formal peace-building, conflict prevention, conflict management, and conflict resolution mechanisms. An underlying hypothesis has been that a number of informal processes and related mechanisms can help explain the relative peace in East Asia.

The thesis takes account of the full range of informal–formal processes,ranging from those going on within formalised institutions such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the six-party talks, through semi-formal track-two frameworks, to purely informal ones such as interaction within personal networks.

Understanding the East Asian peace

The findings concerning China’s role in keeping peace in the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and on the Korean Peninsula confirm the underlying hypothesis that various informal processes and related mechanisms can help explain the relative peace. Virtually all of the identified processes and related mechanisms have been informal rather than formal. It should be noted that it is not necessarily the same types of processes that have been of importance in each and every case. In different ways these informal processes have demonstrated that the relative lack of formalised security structures and/or mechanisms have not prevented the region from moving towards a stable peace. Informal processes have been sufficient both to prevent tension and disputes from escalating into war and for moving East Asia towards a stable peace.

Elite interactions – i.e. personal networks, track-two diplomacy, and other forms of elite socialisation – have been essential both on the official and unofficial levels. Firstly, these interactions have been essential for trust and confidence building, which is of high importance in a region where trust and confidence building are not only key features of the accepted diplomatic norm, but are also deeply embedded in the regional cultures and societies. Elite interactions have been essential for peace in all three cases. They have also been important for the possibility to use back-channel negotiations, something that has been beneficial for conflict prevention across the cases. Elite interactions have also been important for the development of multilateralism and the building of peaceful relations. They have also been essential for enhancing the understanding of the other side(s). Understanding is important, because without an understanding of the others’ thinking, perceived interests and intentions it is very difficult to prevent conflict escalation, and virtually impossible to build a longer-term peace. Understanding is also important to be able to overcome the range of historical issues.

Economic integration and interdependence

(EII) and the interlinked functional cooperation have been important, as they have pushed positive relations towards a durable peace. This includes not only increasing cooperation and economic growth and development, but also developing a feeling of security as the economic integration and interdependence decreases the fear of others. EII and functional cooperation have also encouraged and created a need for diplomatic relations and intergovernmental communication and agreements. They have also been catalysts for all forms of cross-border contacts including being a driving force for regionalisation. This is clearly seen in Sino–ASEAN relations and the ASEAN+3 process, but also across the Taiwan Strait where it was part of the cause of the shift in power in the 2008 elections.

Together with the Chinese acceptance of multilateralism and its shift from big-power oriented foreign policy to a focus on soft power and the building of good relations with China’s neighbours, EII has been essential for the medium to longer-term overarching peace-building process in East Asia. In this context, what has been of particular importance for peace is both the high degree of economic interdependence that has developed, as well as the forces of the pan-regional ‘economics first’ policy focus. Here, the general acceptance of the ASEAN Way as the norm for diplomacy, with its emphasis on conflict avoidance, has worked together with the economic incentives in preventing conflict escalations and building peace.

A common feature of most of the processes is that they can be understood as aspects or manifestations of the East Asian regionalisation process. For example, elite interactions are in a sense both manifestations of, and catalysts for, regionalisation; these forms of interactions are an unavoidable result or regionalisation, while at the same time, elite interactions are in themselves important for driving regionalisation. The regionalisation process has been of foremost importance for virtually all East Asian states’ overall foreign policy interests and behaviours.

It has been important for ASEAN’s attempt to socialise China into becoming a responsible big power in the regional community, in order to ensure that the Chinese interests would gradually become integrated with the interests of East Asia as a whole. Over time, China has re-interpreted its role and interests as a rising power and has engaged in the ASEAN+3 process and embraced multilateralism and the ASEAN Way. This has been a reciprocal process between China’s ‘soft power diplomacy’ and ASEAN’s ‘constructive engagemen
t’ policies. It is difficult to say what has caused what, i.e., to what extent China has been socialised by ASEAN to accept current practices and to become what seems to be a more benign power, and to what extent the Chinese policies have influenced ASEAN’s increased acceptance of China as a partner and a (relatively) benign, peacefully rising power. It is most likely that it is not an either–or question, but a transformation where there have been synergy effects between ‘soft-power diplomacy’ and “constructive engagement”. Regionalisation has also ensured that China (and others) adheres to an ‘economic first’ foreign policy focus, and that the overall peaceful relations in East Asia have developed and have been institutionalised. Although multilateralism and institutionalisation have only been identified in the South China Sea and Sino–ASEAN relations, they still have a spill over effect on Chinese behaviour in other conflicts. If China would behave badly in one case, it would risk losing its laboriously built trust towards ASEAN.

Lastly, the USA has contributed to peace by working as a frame for acceptable behaviour, safeguarding against conflict escalation over the war threshold. It has helped to ensure that negative relations do not escalate into or beyond (temporary) crises. This is important, as little has been done to address and resolve underlying incompatibilities, tensions, and disputes. By its presence, the USA also gives space for the range of other processes beneficial for peace to develop in a positive direction. In short, as the USA is perceived as a safeguard against violent confrontations, the regional parties can focus on developing good relations and continue to increase cooperation in the economic and other spheres.

Mikael Weissmann is a doctoral candidate in Peace and Development Studies at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and the holder of one of the Swedish School of Advanced Asia Pacific Studies’ (SSAAPS) Ph.D. Fellowships. Mr. Weissmann has published on conflict prevention and peace building in East Asia. He has also written on informal networks, early warning and conflict management theory.

by: Mikael Weissmann, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. This article will discuss why the interstate conflicts in the post-Cold War East Asian security setting have not escalated into war despite a lack of security organisations or other formalised conflict management mechanisms. It is argued that there are a number of informal processes in the region that can help explain this paradox. The article is based on the findings of the author’s doctoral project on ‘Understanding the East Asian Peace’ with focus on the role of China in the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and the Korean Peninsula.

Introduction

The East Asian interstate peace since 1979 is a paradox. It has continued despite East Asia being a region with a history of militarised conflicts and many of the world’s most persistently militarised problems, including a number of unresolved flashpoints. It is also a region with a high level of intraregional distrust including deep unresolved historical issues. In addition to this there are strong nationalist tendencies and numerous ethnic conflicts across the region. The dominant research paradigm for analyses of the East Asian security setting is that of neorealism.  Scholars following this paradigm have painted a gloomy picture of the future prospects of post-Cold War East Asia. They predict it to be a region of perpetual conflict. In addition to the above, neorealists also emphasise the presence of rising great powers and the shifting balance of power as causes of conflict. Still, the level of interstate violence has been very low.

It should be acknowledged here that other mainstream International Relations theories do not paint as dark a picture as realism, but they fail to fully account for the East Asian peace. For example, liberalism tends to either give the various institutional arrangements in East Asia more prominence than they deserve, or dismiss them simply because they are so different from the Western ones, while constructivism tends to give more credit to Asian identity building than it deserves.

The East Asian peace exists despite the region lacking any security organisation or other formalised mechanisms to prevent existing or potential conflicts from escalating and/or to build peace. Thus, the logical question to ask is whether there are other processes and mechanisms that can help to explain the East Asian peace. If so, what are they, and how do they work? In my forthcoming doctoral dissertation, I aim at developing an understanding of the role and impact of such cross-border interactions that go beyond formal peace-building, conflict prevention, conflict management, and conflict resolution mechanisms. An underlying hypothesis has been that a number of informal processes and related mechanisms can help explain the relative peace in East Asia. The thesis takes account of the full range of informal-formal processes, ranging from those going on within formalised institutions such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the six-party talks, through semi-formal track-two frameworks, to purely informal ones such as interaction within personal networks.

Understanding the East Asian peace

The findings concerning China’s role in keeping peace in the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and on the Korean Peninsula confirm the underlying hypothesis that various informal processes and related mechanisms can help explain the relative peace. Virtually all of the identified processes and related mechanisms have been informal rather than formal. It should be noted that it is not necessarily the same types of processes that have been of importance in each and every case. In different ways these informal processes have demonstrated that the relative lack of formalised security structures and/or mechanisms have not prevented the region from moving towards a stable peace. Informal processes have been sufficient both to prevent tension and disputes from escalating into war and for moving East Asia towards a stable peace.

Elite interactions – i.e. personal networks, track-two diplomacy, and other forms of elite socialisation – have been essential both on the official and unofficial levels. Firstly, these interactions have been essential for trust and confidence building, which is of high importance in a region where trust and confidence building are not only key features of the accepted diplomatic norm, but are also deeply embedded in the regional cultures and societies. Elite interactions have been essential for peace in all three cases. They have also been important for the possibility to use back-channel negotiations, something that has been beneficial for conflict prevention across the cases. Elite interactions have also been important for the development of multilateralism and the building of peaceful relations. They have also been essential for enhancing the understanding of the other side(s). Understanding is important, because without an understanding of the others’ thinking, perceived interests and intentions it is very difficult to preve
nt conflict escalation, and virtually impossible to build a longer-term peace. Understanding is also important to be able to overcome the range of historical issues.

Economic integration and interdependence (EII) and the interlinked functional cooperation have been important, as they have pushed positive relations towards a durable peace. This includes not only increasing cooperation and economic growth and development, but also developing a feeling of security as the economic integration and interdependence decreases the fear of others. EII and functional cooperation have also encouraged and created a need for diplomatic relations and intergovernmental communication and agreements. They have also been catalysts for all forms of cross-border contacts including being a driving force for regionalisation. This is clearly seen in Sino-ASEAN relations and the ASEAN+3 process, but also across the Taiwan Strait where it was part of the cause of the shift in power in the 2008 elections.

Together with the Chinese acceptance of multilateralism and its shift from big-power oriented foreign policy to a focus on soft power and the building of good relations with China’s neighbours, EII has been essential for the medium to longer-term overarching peace-building process in East Asia. In this context, what has been of particular importance for peace is both the high degree of economic interdependence that has developed, as well as the forces of the pan-regional ‘economics first’ policy focus. Here, the general acceptance of the ASEAN Way as the norm for diplomacy, with its emphasis on conflict avoidance, has worked together with the economic incentives in preventing conflict escalations and building peace.

A common feature of most of the processes is that they can be understood as aspects or manifestations of the East Asian regionalisation process. For example, elite interactions are in a sense both manifestations of, and catalysts for, regionalisation; these forms of interactions are an unavoidable result or regionalisation, while at the same time, elite interactions are in themselves important for driving regionalisation. The regionalisation process has been of foremost importance for virtually all East Asian states’ overall foreign policy interests and behaviours. It has been important for ASEAN’s attempt to socialise China into becoming a responsible big power in the regional community, in order to ensure that the Chinese interests would gradually become integrated with the interests of East Asia as a whole. Over time, China has re-interpreted its role and interests as a rising power and has engaged in the ASEAN+3 process and embraced multilateralism and the ASEAN Way. This has been a reciprocal process between China’s ‘soft power diplomacy’ and ASEAN’s ‘constructive engagement’ policies. It is difficult to say what has caused what, i.e., to what extent China has been socialised by ASEAN to accept current practices and to become what seems to be a more benign power, and to what extent the Chinese policies have influenced ASEAN’s increased acceptance of China as a partner and a (relatively) benign, peacefully rising power. It is most likely that it is not an either-or question, but a transformation where there have been synergy effects between ‘soft-power diplomacy’ and “constructive engagement”. Regionalisation has also ensured that China (and others) adheres to an ‘economic first’ foreign policy focus, and that the overall peaceful relations in East Asia have developed and have been institutionalised. Although multilateralism and institutionalisation have only been identified in the South China Sea and Sino-ASEAN relations, they still have a spill over effect on Chinese behaviour in other conflicts. If China would behave badly in one case, it would risk losing its laboriously built trust towards ASEAN.

Lastly, the USA has contributed to peace by working as a frame for acceptable behaviour, safeguarding against conflict escalation over the war threshold. It has helped to ensure that negative relations do not escalate into or beyond (temporary) crises. This is important, as little has been done to address and resolve underlying incompatibilities, tensions, and disputes. By its presence, the USA also gives space for the range of other processes beneficial for peace to develop in a positive direction. In short, as the USA is perceived as a safeguard against violent confrontations, the regional parties can focus on developing good relations and continue to increase cooperation in the economic and other spheres.

Mikael Weissmann is a doctoral candidate in Peace and Development Studies at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and the holder of one of the Swedish School of Advanced Asia Pacific Studies’ (SSAAPS) Ph.D. Fellowships.  Mr. Weissmann has published on conflict prevention and peace building in East Asia. He has also written on informal networks, early warning and conflict management theory.<

Peace and Protest: Unarmed Insurrections in East Asia, 1946–2006 by Isak Svensson and Mathilda Lindgren, Uppsala University

Whereas the discussion on East Asian Peace has primarily focused on armed conflicts, this article contributes by discussing unarmed conflicts in the East Asian region. The article presents the regional picture of the prevalence of these types of non-violent, popular uprisings and contends that these types of social conflicts are important to consider in order to get a better grasp of what kind of relative peacefulness that East Asia is experiencing.

East Asia has witnessed a quite remarkable declining trend in intensity and frequency of armed conflicts, a phenomenon that has been called the ‘East Asian Peace’ (Tønnesson 2009). The discussion on East Asian Peace has hitherto focused on the armed dynamics of social conflicts. Yet, not all conflicts are necessarily armed. What does the picture look like if we focus onunarmed upheavals in East Asia instead?

Unarmed insurrections are broad, popular-based protest movements that use non-violent methods to air their aspirations, such as street demonstrations, boycotts, strikes, etc. Using the term ‘non-violence’ could be misleading since these protest-movements do not necessarily pay strict adherence to the principles of non-violence in the spirit of famous proponents such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact, it is empirically not uncommon that there are outbursts of violence on behalf of some protesters. Rather, many of these popular uprisings can be referred to as pragmatically guided unarmed insurrections with strategic behaviour and certain organisational structures that are distinctive in character from armed insurrections since they do not rely on force and military means.

Using data from a global dataset (Chenoweth and Stephan 2008), we can say that there have been quite a few unarmed insurrections in the region. In fact, there were 18 cases in East Asia over the course of fifty years since 1946. The first case during this period was China in 1956-57 and the last one Thailand in 2005-06. In terms of frequency, there was a peak around 1989, interestingly a parallel development to Eastern Europe, which also saw several unarmed insurrections around the end of the Cold War.

Some of the best-known examples of unarmed insurrections could be found in this part of the world. The non-violent insurrection in the Philippines in 1986 is sometimes lifted up as one of the prime examples of people power movements which successfully challenged the regime. On the other hand, the two unarmed mass-protests in Burma (1988 and 2007) were both brutally crushed by the military junta in the country.

Like armed conflicts, the incompatibility at stake can be distinguished between contest over the control of a specific territory and governmental power. The opposition forces in these unarmed insurrections aspire to either a change in the state-formation, demanding separation or territorial autonomy, or alternatively a change in government, its leadership or the ruling ideology. 

This distinction is pivotal and carries some significant explanatory power over the chance for success of unarmed insurrections. We have argued elsewhere (Svensson & Lindgren, forthcoming) that unarmed insurgents are more likely to be successful if they are able to mount a considerable challenge to the vertical legitimacy of the regime. Territorial conflicts – by their nature a horizontal divide in a society – have problems in launching successful campaigns questioning this vertical legitimacy, and should therefore be generally less likely to be successful. This proposition is supported by empirical evidence, drawn from global data.

Interesting in this regard is the fact that the majority of the unarmed campaigns in East Asia (such as the campaign in Thailand in 1973 or South Korea in 1987) have been fought over the control of government power. Only a minority of the unarmed insurrections concern a territorial incompatibility. Examples include Tibet in 1987-89 and East Timor in 1988-99. Another territorial conflict also stands out in terms of its longevity: the Papuan conflict in Indonesia started in 1964 and continued throughout the studied period (which ends in 2006). Mostly, the other campaigns are much shorter in their duration.

Overall campaign strategies of unarmed insurrections can vary. Building on Sharp’s (1973) critical distinction, there are three main strategies: protest, non-cooperation, and non-violent intervention. The East Asian region stands out in regard to strategies employed. A majority of the unarmed insurrections have relied on protest strategies. This form of strategy is generally considered to be one of the least comprehensive, yet most public form of strategy that unarmed insurgents can use.

An important point concerns how the regimes in power meet the challenge of the unarmed insurrections. In an overwhelming number of cases, the regimes have answered with repressive measures. This has implications for how to interpret the peace in East Asia. The presence of unarmed insurrections can be seen as a sign of healthy, vibrant and pluralistic societies where discontent can be aired. However, the prevalence of government repression as a counter-measure against such unarmed insurrections indicates that the peace in East Asia can be more authoritarian in nature.

Much remains to be understood and explained when it comes to unarmed insurrections and this calls for a systematic research endeavour as part of the East Asian Peace agenda.  For instance, why are some unarmed insurrections successful whereas others fail to reach their goal? Although some research has been done on this matter, it is striking how the attention towards armed conflicts in this matter clearly outbalances the focus on unarmed insurrections.

Moreover, the growth of unarmed insurrections in East Asia leads to the question whether we are witnessing a transformation in means utilised in social conflicts. Do conflicts previously fought with arms continue to exist but express themselves through more non-violent methods? This is an important avenue for future research in the context of the East Asian Peace.

All cases come from NAVCO 1.0 (Chenoweth and Stephan) and the list is compiled by the authors.

Sources

Chenoweth, E. and M. J. Stephan (2008). ‘Why civil resistance works. The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict’. International Security 33(1): 744.

Sharp, G. (1973). The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Boston, Porter Sargent Publisher.

Tønnesson ,  S. (2009). ‘What is it that best explains the East Asian peace since 1979? A call for a research agenda’,  Asian Perspective 33(1), 111-136.

Svensson I. and M. Lindgren (forthcoming). ‘Community and consent, unarmed insurrections in non-democracies’. European Journal of International Relations.

Isak Svensson is Associate Professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, and Visiting Research Fellow at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Otago University, New Zeeland.

Mathilda Lindgren is a Research Assistant at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University.