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Defending the Indo-Pacific Liberal International Order: Lessons from France in Cold War Europe For Promoting Détente in Asia

  • Benedict E. DeDominicis (Department of International Studies, The Catholic University of Korea)
  • Received : 2023.04.20
  • Accepted : 2023.05.06
  • Published : 2023.06.30
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Abstract

As tension escalates between the US and China, scenarios for maintaining peace in Northeast Asia imply that secondary powers will perceive increasing incentives to reappraise their respective international roles. This analysis proposes that an analysis of France's Cold War role in Europe and the world under President Charles de Gaulle provides insights into conflict management in an increasingly multipolar international political environment. Their respective interests in preventing a so-called new Cold War emerging between the US and China include avoiding its excessive economic costs, if only because China is a massive trade partner. This study engages in theoretical framework-informed process tracing of de Gaulle's role. It explicates the assumptions that functionally underpinned de Gaulle's policy of soft balancing between the US and China. The analysis explores de Gaulle's contribution to the decay of the Cold War. It illuminates de Gaulle's contribution to a regional international environment that made West German Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik strategy more feasible politically. This study applies these findings in the formulation of strategy recommendations focusing on Japan. Valid inferences regarding the predominant motivations driving American and Chinese international interaction are necessary for this task. To the extent to which the US and China have entered into a conflict spiral, Japan's hedging towards Washington is further incentivized. Tokyo would necessarily need to convince the Chinese that Japan is no longer Washington's unsinkable aircraft carrier off its coast. Tokyo, like de Gaulle's France, would maintain close relations with Washington, but it would need to project to its interlocutors its commitment to its own strategic autonomy. Tokyo's emphasis on closer relations with liberal democratic Indo-Pacific actors would potentially fit well with a commitment to strategic autonomy to defend the global liberal order.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback The author would also like to thank the Virtual Open Research Laboratory program in the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for digital access to library resources. Any errors and omissions are solely the responsibility of the author.

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