Introduction: Eastphalia Emerging?: Asia, International Law, and Global Governance

I. From Westphalia to Eastphalia

In the late eighteenth century, as part of his effort to stop British imperial despoliation of India, Edmund Burke argued that the people and civilization of India were moral equals of Europe, deserving of British respect rather than rapacious exploitation. "I assert," Burke argued, "that their morality is equal to ours as regards the morality of Governors, fathers, superiors; and I challenge the world to shew, in any modern European book, more true morality and wisdom than is to be found in the writings of Asiatic men in high trusts, and who have been Counsellors to Princes."¹ Burke further argued that "in Asia as well as in Europe the same Law of Nations applies, the same principles continually resorted to, and the same maxims sacredly held and strenuously maintained" and that "Asia is enlightened in that respect as well as Europe."² Burke's words fell on deaf ears; British imperialism in India proceeded apace. In the nineteenth century, other Asian cultures and states of ancient origin, especially China and Japan, found their traditional cultural and political practices determined by Western imperial powers to be "uncivilized"³ and subject to dramatic changes at the hands of European nations and commercial interests. The twentieth century witnessed Asian countries emerge from colonialism into independent, sovereign states, but they often faced political and economic challenges in international affairs from a position of weakness. Not long ago, Asia's subjugation, exploitation, and vulnerability through its incorporation into the modern international system made the idea that Asian countries would one day reshape international politics from a position of strength a very distant dream.

The world may, however, be on the cusp of this possibility becoming reality. For a number of years, commentators on global affairs have been watching and analyzing the so-called "rise of Asia," a phenomenon largely driven by strong economic growth and development in India, China, East Asia, and Southeast Asia over the past twenty to thirty years. This perceived shift of material power and influence toward Asia provides Asian countries with their first real opportunity to significantly affect the structure and dynamics of international relations. This symposium attempts to provide insights into how this Asian opportunity might affect international law and global governance in twenty-first-century world politics.

Scholars of international politics and international law mark the beginnings of the modern international system with the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, which ended brutal wars Europeans had fought with each other for decades. The system of independent, sovereign states that developed after these wars ended came to be known as the "Westphalian" system. Asian countries and peoples were incorporated into this Westphalian system through European and Western imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The world turned Westphalian as it became organized into territorial states possessing sovereignty and interacting through consent-based rules called the "law of nations" or, later, international law. The history of international law is largely a story written by Western countries, which extended the reach of this law to every corner of the earth and dominated the substantive nature of the rules and the institutions designed to support them.

After the end of the Cold War and the acceleration of the latest phase of globalization, experts began to speak of the world entering a "post-Westphalian" period. The end of the ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union and the border-busting impact of globalization began to make central features of the Westphalian system, especially the principles of sovereignty and nonintervention in the domestic affairs of other states, look outdated and reactionary. In this post-Westphalian context, state and nonstate actors, predominantly from the West, began devising collective action mechanisms that went beyond traditional international law, leading many commentators to analyze the rise of "global governance."

This symposium poses the question whether the rise of Asia in global affairs might presage the emergence of an "Eastphalian" world order. The concept of "Eastphalia" attempts to capture the potential for Asian countries to reshape international politics, which have been long dominated...