ABSTRACT
In 2005, the United States gave the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, designated by the United States as a terrorist state, the promise not to attack it with either nuclear or traditional weapons (Cha 2009). Such a rigid pledge contradicts both the realist calculus of the balance of power and the idealist undertaking not to negotiate with terrorists. Just a few years before this, the United States had invaded Afghanistan (2001) and then Iraq (2003) on the grounds that they trained terrorists and possessed weapons of massive destruction (according to the fabricated evidence) while neither country was capable of or had intent for a war with the United States. Again, these were incompatible with either realism or idealism. It is apparent that realism has not been exclusively the principle of International Relations (IR) for the United States. Since 2011, the United States has adopted the strategy of rebalancing toward Asia. This has included both partnership building with Myanmar, Malaysia, China and so on, on the one hand, and realist balancing against China via cooperation with Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam on their maritime disputes with China, on the other hand. Accordingly, balance of power (BoP) and balance of relationships (BoR) together characterize the United States’ endeavors to remain influential in spite of a relative power decline. However, in the current study of IR there is no systematic discourse on BoR. This chapter provides such a discourse. It will draw on Confucianism to map the route to the discovery of a general theory of BoR. Specifically, BoR is the process via which nation states stabilize reciprocal relationships with each other. Their purpose is to reduce uncertainty in the long run. We use Confucianism for three reasons: First, Confucianism contains clear doctrines that illustrate both the rationales of BoR and how the rational system of BoR can be culturally sensible. However, we argue that cultural and ideological routes to reach BoR are various and multiple. BoR can be universally accessible, if not universally practiced at any given time. Second, we want to reject the stereotype of Confucian pacifism and its alleged negligence of rationality for the sake of morality. We argue that BoR is a rational system of international politics, but definitely not about pacifism. Third, assessing Confucianism could be useful in surmising the impact of China rising on international politics. We believe that the much discussed Chinese School of IR in recent years would be misleading if China’s claimed
quest for relational security is mistaken as an exclusively Chinese phenomenon. We will demonstrate that BoR is not just Chinese. In this last regard, we will also draw implications of BoR for post-Western IR. The chapter proposes an IR theory as a parallel to the more familiar narratives of BoP, balance of interests, and balance of threat. These other narratives conceive of IR as structures independent of the maneuvering of individual nations. BoP, for example, typically conceives of structures as ultimate constraints that render the human choice at best a spurious process. Alternatively, BoR considers nation states as managers of mainly bilateral relationships that transcend structural constraints. We believe that the BoR theory not only incorporates nonstructuralist ways of thinking more effectively, but also transcends all civilizational divides and the epistemological gap between rationality and culture, with the exception that routes toward BoR could be localized or even individualized. We believe that BoR is more accessible and feasible than the above-mentioned structuralist narratives. Nation states always try to decide how to stabilize bilateral relationships regardless of whether or not the existing relationships are reciprocal. Current IR theories are biased toward estranging relationships, overlooking both the necessity of relational security as well as nations’ possessing the agency to achieve it (Yan 2011a; Hui 2005).
