Senkaku Islands Dispute: Realism, Liberalism & China–Japan Rivalry

Introduction: The Senkaku Islands Dispute

The Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea have become a flashpoint, with China and Japan in particular engaged in military exercises in the region. The United States is another major player, offering full support to Japan — including sending military vessels to the disputed area and threatening a response should China attempt to seize the islands (McCurry & Branigan, 2014). The Senkaku Islands are presently uninhabited but have been under Japanese administration since the United States returned them to Japan in 1972.

The history of the islands is essentially a convoluted legal dispute. China has old maps showing the islands and assumes this meant they were under Chinese legal control. The islands were formally ceded to Japan at the end of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 as part of Taiwan. Taiwan was technically returned to China after World War II, but the islands remained under U.S. administration before being returned to Japan. China believes the islands should have been returned to China at the same time as Taiwan (Posner, 2014). There is an obvious further complication: the People's Republic of China has never, for a single day, controlled Taiwan. Even if the islands were legally part of Taiwan, they would not fall to the PRC but to the Republic of China. It has also been noted that China showed no concern about the sovereignty of the islands until hydrocarbon reserves were discovered in their territorial waters (Posner, 2014).

This dispute — which naturally involves a fourth party in Taiwan — is a useful case study for international relations theory. There are essentially two issues at play. The first is the obvious matter of hydrocarbons: their value and what they mean to each of the respective countries. The second is global power and influence. When Japan seized control of the islands, and throughout the Second World War, it was a major global military power. While Japan remains an economic power, it currently maintains no meaningful independent military capability. China, meanwhile, endured a period of considerable turbulence — first living under Japanese imperial rule, then undergoing a civil war and the disastrous domestic policies that followed. As China has reasserted itself, it has risen considerably in power to the point where it now seeks to assert itself both regionally and globally. It typically does this through economic means, but has also engaged its military on numerous occasions — in Tibet, in support of the Khmer Rouge, and more recently around disputed islands such as the Spratly Islands and the Senkakus. Concerns have also been raised that China has designs on the Ryukyu Islands (Holmes, 2014). Compounding all of this is the weight of strong historical grievance in China stemming from the Japanese occupation and the conduct of Japanese forces during that period.

International Relations Theory and Realism

The primary international relations lens through which this conflict should be viewed is the realist perspective, as it best describes the key players. Japan has some elements of liberalism, and there are undertones best explained by constructivism, but China, Japan, and the United States are all historically realist actors on the world stage. Offensive realism in particular treats aggression and conflict as a defining feature of international relations. This school of thought holds that nations should not trust one another, as they are fundamentally in competition. This conflict can certainly be understood through that lens. China is acting as the aggressor here, partly because it is dissatisfied with the status quo, but mostly because it wants to establish its military credentials in the region. The United States and Japan have issued a strong response — including warplanes and naval vessels — to curtail China's military ambitions in an area that could extend to territories firmly within the Western sphere of influence, such as Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands. For Japan and the United States, checking China's ambitions early is a strong motivator for taking a firm military stance over the Senkaku Islands (Kirshner, 2012).

For its part, China seeks to leverage and reinforce its bargaining power in the region. There is reason to doubt that China has a truly substantial interest in the Senkaku Islands themselves. Any country would take an interest in oil and gas development, and China undoubtedly needs greater domestic energy production, but the resources beneath Senkaku are unlikely to power China for very long. The more probable motivator is the bigger picture: extending China's sphere of influence in the region. Most significantly, China wants Taiwan. There is considerable ideological weight within the Chinese Communist Party attached to the Taiwan question, since the split left the country's civil war as unfinished business. For China, Taiwan is the main prize in the region, but before moving in that direction it needs to build its credentials. Small islands are a convenient place to start, and China has adopted a policy of asserting claims over nearly all of them. China is taking a realist view of the region while simultaneously playing the long game.

The United States, as the other serious military power involved, is a central actor in this dispute — though Japan remains important, its independent military capacity is limited. The United States has sought to maintain strong influence in the Asia-Pacific region for well over a century. It has many interests, bases, and territories in the Pacific, and has maintained a military presence in both Japan and South Korea for many decades. This has ensured that the region has remained largely within America's sphere of influence, contributing to a measure of stability — Southeast Asia excepted. With China, Japan, and Russia all present, U.S. influence has served as an important stabilizing factor, and much of the world economy is now closely tied to a stable Asia-Pacific. For the United States, the status quo is the ideal outcome — not territorial expansion or even an expansion of influence.

Japan's perspective is somewhat harder to read. Japan wishes to retain the islands, if for no other reason than national pride — it has never developed the hydrocarbon resources there, though as an energy-dependent nation it may wish to do so in the future. More likely, Japan's core interest is in preventing any further erosion of its regional influence. Competition with China operates on a large scale — not merely military — and in that respect Japan would fight for these islands on principle, as a matter of asserting its standing in the region.

Liberalism and Regional Cooperation

Liberal theories do not share the competitive worldview of realist theories. They prefer to emphasize that international relations need not be a zero-sum competition, and place faith in international cooperation, dialogue, democratic norms, and consensus-building among parties. This does not eliminate competition, but liberalists prefer to emphasize collaboration. China had until recently shown some openness to liberalist approaches, such as joining the World Trade Organization and participating in the Asia Cooperation Dialogue. However, more recent actions suggest China may be moving away from this orientation. It could be argued that, given China's rather limited embrace of liberalism, it used the WTO primarily to gain economic advantage — its newfound wealth then providing an opportunity to expand its influence globally through economics and regionally through its military.

Japan and the United States, by contrast, have cooperated extensively since the Second World War, and on the Senkaku question that cooperation is strong. This is more bilateral than broadly multilateral, but nonetheless reflects a clear alignment of interests regarding the power structure in Asia.