Southeast Asia-US relations: hegemony or hierarchy?

• Author: Misalucha, Charmaine G.
• Position: Report

At first glance, international relations seem to be mostly about the interactions between and among states. While this proposition does seem to carry significant weight, it glosses over other interfaces that take place in the international arena, such as transnational activities that involve actors other than states (e.g., non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations). More problematically, it obscures the asymmetric character of the actors that prompt such interactions. To be sure, scholars have already addressed the issue of the inequality of states and the types of international rule that result from such uneven relations. Muthiah Alagappa proposes a typology with anarchy and world government at opposite ends of the spectrum; in between lie what he calls the instrumental, normative-contractual and solidarist orders. (1) Barry Buzan posits the idea of superpower overlay in the context of regional security complexes to describe how the presence of external Great Powers conditions, and to a certain extent hampers, local security dynamics. (2) Employing the English School, Adam Watson uses the image of a pendulum to describe how international society "swings" between centralization and independence, or how it "tightens" or "loosens" over time. (3) Similarly, Ole Waever examines international relations as concentric circles consisting of--from the innermost to the outermost circle --direct rule, dominion, hegemony, and independent states and other imperial structures. (4)

This being the case, the subject of international orders still raises several questions. First, from where do these types of rule come? Constructivists suggest that they arise from the language games-rules logic of Nicholas Onuf. (5) This "paradigm of rule" is founded on the intersubjectivity of social relations, which is to say that actors, by virtue of their language (understood here as both verbal and textual), construct the rules of their interactions that through time and practice become "institutionalized" as a type of rule or international order. In Onuf's analysis, these "institutionalized" orders may take the form of hegemony or hierarchy.

Hegemony is reminiscent of the early Cold War era in Eastern Europe when "... the position of the ranking state is so overwhelming that it can dispense with the chain of command and cast directive-rules in a benign form as mere suggestions, and still have its rule effectuated". (6) Hierarchy, meanwhile, may be understood as a more stringent version of hegemony in the sense that the threat of or the use of force plays a significant role. Since the arrangement of units in a hierarchic relationship is likened to a bureaucracy, i.e., the bottom rung is accountable to the one above it, it thus follows that dominant actors may exact "punishment" from subordinates should the latter deviate from the wishes of the former. (7) Furthermore, one may also argue that the distinction between hegemony and hierarchy centres on the question of legitimacy. In a hegemonic rule, the dominant actor's position is accepted by subordinates with little or no question, and is thus considered "legitimate". Conversely, hierarchy implies that subordinates are not yet convinced of the legitimacy of the dominant actor's rule, which may explain why they sometimes challenge or display "deviant" behaviour towards the more powerful state. Consequently, the dominant actor's recourse to the threat of or the use of force is both an indication of its lack of legitimacy (i.e., its inability to keep its subordinates under control), as well as a desire to achieve it (because the monopoly of the use of force conveys that it is able to consolidate its position above its subordinates).

A second question that may be raised in regard to the existence of different types of rule in the international system is about how they are maintained. The Constructivist logic is germane: scholars loyal to using language as a method of analysis would argue that which language games, and ergo, which type of rule, become salient depend on how states that are parties to an interaction acknowledge or reject the veracity of the "games" they play. (8) The third question relates to how types of rule transform from one to another. Rather than argue that changes are due to exogenous factors, Constructivists conceive that variations in actors' language or rhetoric allow for the transformation of the rules of their interaction, and consequently, the institutionalized makeup of their relations.

How they came to be, how they are maintained, and how they can change are important issues, but these questions have a twofold presupposition: that only one type of rule is possible for any set of actors, and allowing for the fact that a rule can change, the demise of one is independent from, rather than inextricably linked to, the beginnings of another. Thus, the abovementioned issues raise another question: what happens to international relations when more than one type of rule seem to prevail over the same set of actors at the same time? It is argued in this article that multiple types of rule can and do coexist. In particular, it is advanced here that the relations between Southeast Asian countries and the United States in the post-9/11 era signify the intimate linkages between hegemonic and hierarchic rule. Insofar as the "war on terror" is concerned, the oscillating movement between, on the one hand, America's projection and insistence of the values it upholds, and on the other, Southeast Asian states' accommodation, negotiation, and thereafter resistance, depicts two things. First, that the United States is clear on the hierarchy necessary to carry out the "war on terror" implies that it would be on the topmost rung and that sanctions would be meted out should secondary powers veer away from this course of action. This threat of sanctions or the use of force that underlay US discourse was most clearly articulated in US President George W. Bush's "either you are with us or against us" statements. Yet, and this is the second matter, the hierarchic order was enfeebled by worldwide resistance, obliging the United States to fortify the righteousness of its fight against terrorism by applying hegemonic strategies, i.e., by appealing to the world that values such as freedom and justice were at stake, and that offensive strategies were better than defensive strategies. Thus, by appealing to the sympathy of its allies, America in this instance was projecting a hegemonic type of rule. In other words, in order for the United States to ensure its place in the hierarchy, it had to resort to projecting itself as a benign hegemon. A good indication that American hegemony was successfully deployed is the improved relations between the United States and Southeast Asian nations in the post-9/11 era. Moreover, by the time US President Barack Obama came to power, Southeast Asian states had strengthened their efforts to work towards community building, while the United States expressed a desire to participate in various regional multilateral forums, presumably to address the potential threats that Myanmar, North Korea and possibly even China could pose. A case in point is America's accession to ASEAN's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) in July 2009.

This article begins by exploring the concepts of hegemony and hierarchy before moving on to examine Southeast Asia-US relations post-9/11. As will be demonstrated, such relations portray the workings of two types of rule. The value of this endeavour lies in both policy and academic levels. With regard to the former, recognizing the nature of relations allows actors to direct--or redirect--their policies towards the role they each have to or want to play. The behaviour embodied in their policies towards each other therefore make more sense in recognition of the context of their relations. In terms of the academic value of this exercise, acknowledging the existence of multiple types of international rule exhibits the ongoing efforts of states towards building and maintaining deeper relations with each other. Ultimately, therefore, this hints at the active role that actors--be they major, medium or small powers--play in international relations.

Hegemony and Hierarchy in Theory

Hegemony in International Relations theory has two variants: on the one hand is the hegemonic stability theory, while the other variant uses Gramscian notions. (9) The hegemonic stability theory espouses the dominance of a Great Power to provide stability, maintain rules of interstate relations and offer collective goods. (10) Essentially a Liberal conceptualization of order that is rooted in the experiences of the Great Depression in the 1930s, International Political Economy scholars maintain that a hegemon is needed to ensure an open market for surpluses in primary products, and ergo, a hegemon is necessary to avoid or resolve economic crises. In this regard, hegemons create institutional structures or regimes to maintain economic order, and thus in the process provide collective goods to other members of the system, reduce transaction costs and increase certainty. (11) In short, hegemony is a situation wherein a Great Power provides public goods through the establishment of regimes, while the other members of the system enjoy the benefits of being free riders. In the words of Robert Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, a hegemonic system operates "when one state is powerful enough to maintain essential rules governing interstate relations, and [is] willing to do so". (12) The hegemonic stability theory also owes much to the Realist tradition in International Relations, particularly in the logic of the rise and fall of hegemons, as well as the manifestation of an international system that swings from equilibrium to disequilibrium and back again. (13) The tragedy is that hegemons plant the seeds of their own destruction by creating opportunities for...