Danger, Development and Legitimacy in East Asian Maritime Politics: Securing the Seas, Securing the State

Abstract

At first glance, the title of Christian Wirth’s Danger, Development and Legitimacy in East Asian Maritime Politics might give readers an impression that this is a book that applies mainstream theories of International Relations (IR)—realism, liberalism and constructivism, respectively—to the study of major East Asian states’ maritime policies and their interactions. Not so fast. Unlike an oft-seen practice in the IR literature that bends the data to fit the already chosen theoretical framework, Wirth’s book is empirically grounded in his long-time observation of the politics and societies in China, Japan, and South Korea. Rather than repeating the familiar mantra that ‘each theory captures some parts of the East Asian reality’, East Asian Maritime Politics advances a succinct and valid claim that rapid socio-economic changes under globalization have created crises of legitimacy for East Asian states in the 21st century; looking for a way out, they increasingly resort to the re-inscription of various ocean-related, multilayered borders separating external dangers from internal orders upon which elites seek to replicate their postwar developmental success stories. Unlike many established policy analysts, moreover, Wirth’s work does not rely on an army of research assistants to assemble materials from news reports, official statements and think tank analyses that conclude with ‘implications for US (or the like) foreign policy toward East Asia’. Representing a newer generation of non-Asian researchers of East Asian international relations, Wirth has not only conducted substantial field work in these three countries but also painstakingly studied their languages and obtained his PhD degree in Japan. These experiences contribute to an engaging and balanced analysis that does not privilege any particular state actor’s interest. Indeed, among the extant literature on the region’s territorial and maritime demarcation disputes, East Asian Maritime Politics is exceptional in its sympathy toward the East Asian peoples who are at times abused or even victimized by their own governments, whose legitimacy largely rests on their claims to protect the nation against (real or imagined) external dangers and deliver continued economic growth.

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