Contested multilateralism 2.0 and regional order transition: causes and implications

Abstract

This article proposes a new concept of 'contested multilateralism 2.0' to describe the puzzling institutional building efforts by non-ASEAN members after the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) in the Asia-Pacific. It suggests that different to 'multilateralism 1.0' of the 1990s, which was mainly led by ASEAN, this wave of multilateralism has been initiated by other powers, such as the United States, China, Japan, Australia, and South Korea, either by forming new institutions or by reinvigorating existing ones. This article advances an institutional balancing argument. It suggests that 'contested multilateralism 2.0' is a result of institutional balancing among major states under the conditions of high strategic uncertainty and high economic interdependence after the GFC. One unintended consequence may be that it could well lead to a more peaceful transformation of the regional order in the Asia-Pacific if regional security hotspots, such as the Korean crisis and the South China Sea dispute, can be managed appropriately.

After Hedging

“…As mentioned earlier, ASEAN played an active and even leading role in constructing multilateralism in the Asia Pacific in the post-Cold War era. However, this independent role of ASEAN in constraining and shaping great power behaviors has been eroding in recent years because both China and the United States have started to dominate the institutional games through their preferred and initiated multilateral institutions (He, 2019(He, , 2020.…”

“…As Gideon Rose observes, the reason for grouping these different theories together is that neoclassical realists share a similar theoretical framework that differentiates them from classical realists and structural realists. Simply put, if we see classical realism as "first image" (individual level) and structural realism as "third image" (system level) approaches, neoclassical realism is a multilevel approach, whose research framework crosses individual (first image), domestic (second image), and systemic (third image) levels of analysis (Lobell, Ripsman, & Taliaferro, 2009;He, 2016). All these Type I neoclassical realists start their research by identifying the historical anomalies that structural realism, especially Waltz's neorealism, cannot explain.…”

Geopolitics and Geoeconomics in the China–Latin American Relations in the Context of the US–China Trade War and the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The Bretton Woods institutions have failed to accommodate a rising China, and many authors describe this moment as a crisis of the liberal order (Ikenberry, 2018), which China is intentionally contesting (He, 2019; Morse and Keohane, 2014). The World Trade Organization (WTO) was incapable of offering a solution to the trade war, and more recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) was incapable of reducing – and rather partly contributed to – tensions between the US and China in the management of the COVID-19 crisis.…”