Hugh White's Power Shift builds a structurally sound case: China's rise is an extraordinary phenomenon in regional and world affairs; this challenges US primacy, and therefore gives rise to some difficult choices for Washington and its allies.
But 'structural' is the word. As Geoff Miller points out, Power Shift discusses international relations in almost mechanistic terms.
This is where the utility of Power Shift's realism reaches its limits. Hugh has constructed (very convincingly, in my view) purely realist grounds for believing that a concert of powers is good idea. But this does little to explain how such a concert might be created or why it might endure. In fact, as Raoul Heinrichs demonstrates, there are realist grounds for believing that a concert of powers will never come about, or that it would at best be a tenuous arrangement.
But if Raoul is right about the security dilemma undermining the strategic logic of an Asian concert of powers, then how did the original concert ever endure? It's not as if 19th century Europe was immune from the logic of realpolitik.
Cultural and what we might call 'constitutional' factors played an important part. The Concert was run by a pan-European society of aristocrats who shared a common culture and a sense of common good. The Concert was also seen as an authoritative institution; its members respected the body and the rules by which it operated. This was the product of centuries of vicinity and affinity, the material expression of what Edmund Burke, writing in the 1790s, called 'the Commonwealth of Europe'.
The open question is whether Asia can draw on a similar cultural and constitutional affinity for its concert. This is where I'm left wondering about Hugh's dismissal of Asia's existing multilateral institutions. Again, the grounds on which he does so are mechanistic — the bigger the institution, the less likely anything of substance will get done. It would be foolish to dismiss this concern, but equally, for the concert of Asia to work, it must carry a sense of legitimacy and authority. That's the best argument for adapting an existing institution rather than starting afresh.
Photo by Flickr user Jono Brennan, used under a Creative Commons license.
UPDATE: On reflection, this post reads like I'm damning Power Shift with faint praise. That was not the intent (rather, I was trying to take up the debate where Power Shift leaves off), and I would associate myself with Crispin Rovere's commendation of Hugh White's work.
