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An emerging 3rd pillar in Asian architecture? AIIB and other China-led initiatives
Get PDFFor more about the East-West Center, see http://www.eastwestcenter.org/Cheng-Chwee Kuik, Associate Professor, Strategic Studies and International Relations at the National University of Malaysia, explains that "the emerging institutional pole is China-centered [and] anchored on remuneration-calculated and identity-based 'common security'."
The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the East-West Center or any organization with which the author is affiliated
Malaysia’s China policy in the post-Mahathir era : a neoclassical realist explanation
No full textMalaysia’s China policy in the post-Cold War era – as an instance of a smaller state’s strategy toward a proximate and rising great power – has been characterized by three patterns. First, there was a shift from hostility and guarded rapprochement during the Cold War to cordiality and maturing partnership in the post-Cold War era. Second, despite the overall positive development, Malaysia’s China policy has remained, in essence, a hedging approach that is driven by both a pragmatic desire to maximize benefits from a closer relationship with the neighboring giant and a contingent calculation to guard against any long-term strategic risks in the uncertain regional environment. Third, such a two-pronged approach, which took shape since the 1990s under Mahathir Mohamad, has endured beyond the Mahathir era. Indeed, under his successors Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib Tun Razak, Malaysia has continued to pursue a policy of dualism vis-à-vis China. What explains the enduring continuity of the hedging approach in Malaysia’s China policy? This paper adopts a neoclassical realist perspective, arguing that the continuity is attributed to both structural and domestic factors. Domestically, the changing bases of political legitimation in the multi-ethnic country, which highlight the increasing salience of economic performance and political inclusiveness as key sources of moral authority to the UMNO-led coalition government, have necessitated the succeeding leaders to continue pursuing a pragmatic policy aimed at ensuring a stable and productive relationship with China, not least to gain from the steadily growing bilateral trade and the giant’s growing outward investment. Structurally, Malaysia’s position as a smaller state has compelled it to be constantly vigilant about the uncertainty of state intentions and inter-great power relations, which in turn demands it adopts contingent measures to hedge against longer-term risks. It is such structural and domestic determinants that have fundamentally shaped the country’s policy towards China in general and the South China Sea issue in particular, which characteristically bears the mark of a delicate dualism, i.e. an explicit preference for engaging China through bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, but one that is backed by a low-key practice of maintaining and strengthening its traditional military links with its Western security partners.
* An earlier version of the paper was presented at the 8th International Malaysian Studies Conference (MSC8), Bangi, 9 July 2012. I would like to thank Zakaria Haji Ahmad, Tang Siew Mun, Nor Azizan Idris, Chin Kok Fay, Ravichandran Moorthy, Heng Pek Koon, Lee Poh Ping,
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Stephen Leong, and Joseph Liow for their comments and suggestions to improve the paper. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the UKM Centre for Research and Innovation Management (CRIM)’s grant GGPM-2012-038, and the ISIS-UKM Project on Malaysia-China Relations. I also thank my research assistants Wong Chee Ming and Aini Raudhah Roslam for their help in data collection. All shortcomings are my own
Smaller states' alignment choices: A comparative study of Malaysia and Singapore's hedging behavior in the face of a rising China
No full textThis is a comparative study about smaller states' alignment choices in the face of a rising and proximate power. Specifically, it adopts the approach of structured, focused comparison of cases, examining how and why Malaysia and Singapore have responded to a rising China the way they have. The study indicates that Malaysia and Singapore's China policies share four basic features: economically, a pragmatic approach to maximize commercial benefits; diplomatically, an engagement policy to integrate China into the ASEAN-based regional institutions; politically, a dominance-denial position to prevent Beijing from evolving into an unchecked hegemon; and militarily, an indirect-balancing stance to prepare for a possible scenario of failed engagement. Despite these similarities, however, the two countries' policies are critically different in one important aspect. That is, while Malaysia has demonstrated a greater readiness to accommodate and utilize the growing Chinese power as a force to pursue its own interests, Singapore – due to its own domestic and geopolitical calculations – has rejected such a limited-bandwagoning approach. These findings highlight that smaller states often do not have to choose between balancing and bandwagoning; rather, under the conditions of high-uncertainties and high-stakes, smaller states tend to exhibit different degrees of "hedging" behavior, which, in essence, is a two-pronged approach of maximizing economic and diplomatic returns when things are fine, while simultaneously preparing for strategic contingency in order to mitigate the long-range risks surrounding the rise of a big power. That the two similarly-situated states have demonstrated dissimilar degrees of hedging behavior further suggests that, while the structural pressures amid the shifting distribution of power do compel both countries to opt for hedging, it is the dissimilar domestic factors that have driven them to hedge differently. These findings lead us to argue that, the substance of smaller states' reactions vis-à-vis a rising power is not determined by their concerns over the growing power gap per se; rather, it is a function of domestic legitimation through which the ruling elites seek to capitalize on the dynamics of the rising power for the ultimate goal of justifying their own political authority at home
MALAYSIA’S U.S. policy under Najib: Ambivalence no more?
No full textThis paper adopts a neoclassical realist perspective to explain Malaysia’s evolving policy towards the United States under Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. It argues that to the extent that there is a “shift” in Malaysia’s U.S. policy under the current leadership, the substance and symbolism in Najib’s U.S. policy has been driven and limited by the needs of the ruling elite to strike a balance between a variety of structural imperatives and domestic considerations. Structurally, in the face of a fast rising China (with whom Malaysia has come to develop an increasingly productive relation in both economic and diplomatic domains, but with whom it has unresolved territorial issues), the leader of the smaller state is increasingly confronted with the geostrategic need to keep a more balanced relationship with all the major players. This is especially so with the United States, which, under the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia policy, has demonstrated a renewed and enhanced commitment to engage countries in the Asia-Pacific, including Malaysia. This structural push, however, has been counteracted by the smaller state’s desire of not wanting to be entrapped in any big power rivalry, and by its concern about the uncertainties of great power commitments. Domestically, there is a strong economic need to further enhance two-way trade and increase the flow of American capital and technology into Malaysia, deemed vital to Najib’s Economic Transformation Program. Perhaps more importantly, there is also a political calculation by the governing elite to capitalize on the increasingly warm and close bilateral ties as a leverage to reduce – if not neutralize – Washington’s support for the Anwar Ibrahim-led opposition and civil society movements, which have presented a growing challenge to the ruling BN coalition. This calculation, however, has been counteracted by UMNO’s domestic concern of not wanting to appear too closely aligned with America, in order not to alienate the country’s Muslim majority voters who have been critical of U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These structural and domestic determinants together explain Malaysia’s evolving policy toward the superpower under the current leadership
Stratеgi Lithuania Dalam Menjamin Akses Еnеrgi Dari Rusia Tahun 2009-2015
Get PDFEnergi menjadi kebutuhan yang cukup eksklusif secara geografis. Salah satu negara yang mengalami permasalahan energi adalah Lithuania. Lithuania merupakan salah Negara Baltik yang sangat bergantung terhadap impor energi negara pemasok tunggal Rusia, khususnya pada jenis energi listrik dan gas alam. Tidak terhubungnya Lithuania dengan pasar energi lain, membuat keamanan akses energi Lithuania menjadi sangat rentan. Permasalahan terhadap akses energi Lithuania dari Rusia sudah terjadi beberapa kali untuk kedua sektor energi dalam beberapa dekade. Disisi lain, Lithuania memiliki sumber daya terbatas untuk memproduksi energi domestik secara mandiri.
Penelitian ini membahas mengenai strategi yang dilakukan Lithuania untuk memastikan dan menjamin keamanan akses energi dari Rusia menggunakan strategi hedging oleh Kuik Cheng Chwee. Dan menganalisis mengenai orientasi power yang lebih dominan, power acceptence atau power rejection
Linking local insights to global IR: locating Malaysian contours and contributions
Get PDFThis article traces the trajectories, theoretical propensities, and thematic insights underlying Malaysian scholarly thinking and writings about international relations (IR). It argues that while their contributions to the Global IR research program have been indirect and implicit, they are not insignificant. The contributions are not claims of exceptionalism but expressions of diverse experiences, perspectives, and narratives that are reflective of the contesting, yet recurring logics significant for understanding and explaining small- and medium-sized states' behavior in an anarchical world. Three themes are particularly pertinent: (1) external policy choices are extensions of internal attributes; (2) small-state outlook on regionalism and multilateralism; and (3) middle-state alignment behavior. Local insights contribute to Global IR by enriching, expanding, and exporting national narratives and regional mindsets into thematic thrusts pertinent for making sense of similar cases elsewhere, thereby pluralizing the universality and inclusivity of IR concepts and theories
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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