Between Confucius and Kant: Democracy and Security
Written in 2003.
An important transition is taking place in Asia which will profoundly affect its security order in the 21st century. For much of the Cold War period, a small but influential elite argued that authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes focusing on growth and development (“performance legitimacy”) could better ensure domestic stability and regional order than fragile and instability-prone democratic ones. While Western security thinking progressively embraced a neo-Kantian vision of world order resting on three primary pillars — economic interdependence, international institutions and liberal democracy, the dominant Asian paradigm, with neo-Confucian underpinnings, posited a positive correlation between political stability (strong authoritarian state), state-directed economic growth, and balance of power dynamics (backed by US forward military presence).
