4/10/2015

AIIB: Whos a Revisionist Anyway? | The Diplomat

AIIB: Who's a Revisionist Anyway?

Not all revisionists are global revisionists.
By Robert Farley
April 10, 2015

In the early 1960s, France announced its dissatisfaction with the

international system. Having been chased from Indochina and Algeria,
and having seen its invasion of Egypt squashed by Dwight Eisenhower,
France was in no mood for accommodation. President Charles de
Gaulle captured the moment perfectly, charting an aggressive course
to restore Frances prestige (and authority over both economic and
security issues) within Europe.

Richard Nixon and Charles de Gaulle.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Empty Chair Crisis, in which France effectively stopped all work in
the European Economic Community in an effort to get the voting rules
it wanted, is an emblematic example of vigorous political competition within an existing rule-set. Similarly, the very public
French withdrawal from NATO military command (complemented by a very private set of arrangements that guaranteed
French support of NATO in the case of actual conflict) was representative of de Gaulles push to the absolute limits of
legitimate competition in the creation and management of the rules for Cold War European politics.
The comparison gets to the core of what it means to be a revisionist or a status quo state. France was deeply dissatisfied with
its position. Yet, while it strained against many of the norms and institutions of the system, it avoided challenging the most
important formal and informal rules for managing international politics in the Cold War era.
Was de Gaulle a revisionist? In a local sense, surely; he wanted to enhance Frances voice and had broader ambitions about
restoring Europes global influence. China and the Soviet Union, on the other hand, took steps of various magnitude to
completely upend the international system. Beijing, less comfortable than the Moscow, pursued even more radical efforts than
the USSR.
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4/10/2015

AIIB: Whos a Revisionist Anyway? | The Diplomat

To take another example, its clearly plausible to argue that Shinzo Abe wants to revise the domestic rule-set that guides
Japanese security policy, and that he wants to revise the role that Japan plays in securing its own space within the global ruleset. Its much more of a stretch to suggest that Abe wants to revise that global rule-set. The contrast between Abe and the
pre-World War II Japanese approach to East Asian politics is stark.
And so how should we think about this in context of the development of the AIIB? In the starkest terms, the AIIB doesnt rise
to the level of the Empty Chair Crisis, and even the construction of the Great Wall of Sand suggests a restrained approach to
international competition, an approach that pushes the existing rule-set, and that carefully bends or breaks part of that ruleset, but that in the end is recognizably restrained by the existing norms of international behavior.
Competition within a given system is still competition, and the United States should worry about increases in Chinese military
capabilities. Similarly, states invested in the South and East China Sea disputes should view the growth of Chinese power and
assertiveness with wariness. But we should also take care not to overstate the degree to which China is challenging the global
international order. We have plenty of examples from the 20th century of what revisionist states really look like.

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