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A Critical Understanding on the Territorial Disputes of East Asia
Territorial Disputes proceed basically based on the “power”, and in the process various “logics” are mobilized by both sides. By the way, those logics are “political”, in the sense that their conclusions are not drawn out through sound reasoning, but decided in advance and then necessary logics are mobilized. People showing this kind of attitude most vividly are politicians representing their country. By the way, ordinary people living in each country engaged in a territorial dispute usually, consciously or unconsciously, adopt the patriotic logics that their politicians and intelligentsia offer. It seems that two factors are influential in this phenomenon. One is the “ontological” aspect, that is, each person is a component of the nation engaged in the win-or-lose territorial dispute. The other is the “epistemological” aspect, that is, he is situated in the limited information. We need to pay attention that logics offered in the process of territorial disputes by this kind of patriotic politicians and intelligentsia are not constructed from the fair viewpoint, but “edited” intending to lead to the conclusion favorable to their country. So the people of the relevant country who live in the situation where they are exposed to and accept the patriotic logics often think that the position of his own country is “vividly” right. Then, they easily think the opponent is a “bad” country which purports unreasonable logics. In the territorial dispute, if both countries try to secure momentum by uniting each people to be prepared to fight to the death, the dispute is easily escalated to the limit. Of course, this kind of phenomenon works towards the direction of worsening their mutual relationship. The position each country takes in a territorial dispute, from the viewpoint of each country, is “patriotic”. But from a wider viewpoint, we can say that it is based on “national egotism”. The alternative to this kind of vicious cycle is that more and more people will escape from the “political” viewpoint and take the “critical” viewpoint and then try to dissuade the government and the ordinary people of each country from behaving excessively obsessed with its national egotism respectively.
