Applied Constructivism Rising

[ 162 ] asia policy Applied Constructivism Rising Jalal Alamgir Hegemonictransition—theeclipseofonesuperpowerbyanother—makes for dangerous times, especially when seen from the conventional approach to international relations that informs many U.S. academic and policy circles. David Kang’s China Rising is a welcome, persuasive, and iconoclastic intervention into that discourse. With both elegance and clarity, Kang shows that China’s rise has been “peaceful”—and starkly so when compared to the belligerence that has been endemic to the West since the Middle Ages. China’s interest is squarely to ensure that this peace and stability remains by and large undisturbed. The odds are good: reasoning that there is more to be gained from accommodation than from balancing and confrontation, countries in East and Southeast Asia have come to accept China’s rise. Though this argument by itself would have made a solid book, Kang admirably goes beyond. In fact, his most significant contribution is in delineating not interests but the ideas and norms that underpin states’ interpretations of interests. Debunking the notion that interests derive primarily from calculations of power and capabilities, Kang argues lucidly that East Asia’s accommodation of China’s rise is based on a history of sanguine perceptions of China’s role in the region and on centuries of China’s ideational and institutional influence. The emphasis on the role of ideas is provocative first of all for its academic import: Kang’s work is an excellent showcase of what may be termed “applied constructivism.” This focus is also provocative, however, from a policy perspective. Even though the embrace of rational positivism became identifiable as a quintessentially American approach to studying international relations, policy analysis in the West, especially in the United States, is marked by a struggle to underplay identity. Rational positivism’s lure of objective criteria that can assess interests and draw unbiased conclusions sits uncomfortably with its own ideational edifices, which—in both realist and liberal variants—highlight confrontation. jalal alamgiris Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His work on the interrelations between globalization and representational politics highlights ideas, norms, strategy, and risk. His upcoming book, India’s Open-Economy: Globalism, Rivalry, Continuity, will be published by Routledge in late 2008. He can be reached at . [ 163 ] book review roundtable • china rising U.S.policy,forexample,continuestoconstructIslamismasacivilizational tendency defined and situated primarily by the relation of Islamism to the West rather than by the complex relation of Islamism to its own adherents. Oppositional terms dominate the discourse, and the mainstream intellectual current in U.S. foreign policy is unable to entertain Islamism—whether in Iran, Turkey, or Indonesia—as anything but confrontational. Misperceptions are common by-products. Kang’s analysis of China offers a corrective to the analytic lenses of mainstream international relations theory. China’s rise is one of the core concerns of U.S. foreign policy; however, this phenomenon is a concern primarily because of a portrayal of China in oppositional terms, ranging from conflicting values to conflicting interests and everything in between. By articulating the role of ideas, norms, and identity, applied research in the line of Kang’s work promises to offer alternatives to oppositional terms, and as a result, one hopes, may prompt more imaginative thinking in policy circles. There is one area in which further insights are needed. This concerns the role and influence of China beyond its immediate neighborhood in East and Southeast Asia. Up north, Russia watches uncomfortably, and misperceptions have pestered relations between the two countries even though forecasts in the West tend to cast Russia and China as loose allies to balance Western power. In the south, India’s view of China is also problematic. Though friendly on the surface, New Delhi vacillates between assertion and accommodation. India’s golden age of accommodation toward China was the decade immediately after Indian independence. Conversely, India may have reached the peak of assertiveness when, in the wake of the 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, India’s defense minister identified China—not Pakistan—as the country’s “threat number one.”1 India’s image of China has evolved considerably—fromsolidarityinthe1950s,toenmityinthe’60s,torejectionin the’70s,toenvyinthe’80s,andtoemulationsincethe’90s.Myownresearchin applied...