Amid the barrage of criticism that Rudd’s new architectural blueprint has been subjected to, little if any has focused on potential flaws in the concept of ‘architecture’ itself and its application to the Asian region. In the past decade, this terminology has become so deeply entrenched in the lexicon and discourse of Asian security politics that its usage has been taken almost as a given. As this section goes on to demonstrate, however, the term ‘architecture’ is really quite a confused and confusing one when used by scholars of Asian security. Further, a strong case can be made that the Asian region is simply not conducive to the application of the architectural metaphor, and even that architecture in any genuine sense of the term is, for the foreseeable future, unlikely to emerge in this part of the world.

Among Asian analysts, the eminent Indonesian scholar Jusuf Wanandi (1994) pioneered usage of the architectural metaphor in a paper delivered to the eighth Asia-Pacific Roundtable in June 1994. As Nick Bisley (2007:342–3) observed, however, its rise to prominence in the lexicon and discourse of Asian security politics was inspired primarily by calls during the late 1990s to reform the international financial ‘architecture’—described by Barry Eichengreen (1999:1) very simply as institutions, structures and policies—in the aftermath of the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis. As often occurs in Asian security politics, strategic thinkers borrowed directly from their economic counterparts.

The subsequent decade has seen a veritable plethora of books, edited volumes, refereed journal articles, policy briefs and academic conferences embrace the architectural metaphor. Despite the popularity of its usage, however, only rudimentary efforts have been expended amid this flurry of intellectual activity to define explicitly what the term ‘architecture’ really means, especially within an Asian regional context. As the following analysis demonstrates, when employing the architectural allegory, many leading scholars of Asian security tend not even to formally define the terminology or to consider whether their implicit understanding of ‘architecture’ is consistent with how others are using it. This is problematic in that there appears to exist within the broader scholarly debate at least several clusters of assumptions as to what the term connotes.

First, different pride of place is afforded to the economic and security dimensions of regional architecture. Some, for instance, refer to an overarching regional or institutional ‘architecture’, but do not clearly distinguish between its economic and security components (see, for example, Patel 2008). Others specify an overarching regional architecture, but see it as comprising two distinct economic and security ‘pillars’ or ‘legs’ (see, for example, Nanto 2006). Yet another perspective views trade and security arrangements as distinct components of a broader Asian institutional architecture, but also considers the ‘strategic interaction’ between them (Aggarwal and Koo 2008). Last, but not least, a number of analysts refer to the Asian security architecture as a separate and largely distinct construct (see, for example, Ball 2004:48; Desker 2008a).

Second, ‘architecture’ is often employed as one and the same term, but with reference to quite different ‘layers’ or ‘levels’ of collaborative security arrangements. As the preceding paragraph suggests, for instance, the term can be used in a broad sense to describe the overarching architecture across an entire region. The question of where such boundaries can and should be drawn geographically, however, remains unclear. Some refer, for instance, to an ‘Asia-Pacific security architecture’, some to an ‘Asian security architecture’, while others refer to an ‘East Asian security architecture’. The Singapore-based scholar Mely Caballero-Anthony (2007:1–3, 8, 10) even uses the terms ‘Asia’ and ‘East Asia’ interchangeably when referring to one and the same ‘regional security architecture’. In many regards, however, these trends can also be seen as reflecting the contested nature of the concept of ‘Asia’ itself (Katzenstein 2005:10).

Compounding this problem, some scholars assume the existence of ‘architectures’ within the overarching regional architecture. David Shambaugh, for instance, suggests that ‘the US-led [bilateral alliance] security system remains the predominant regional architecture across Asia’. Shambaugh (2005:3, 11, 14), however, also goes on to refer to an emerging ‘multilateral architecture that is based on a series of increasingly shared norms (about interstate relations and security)’ and suggests that regional security architecture can be likened to a ‘mosaic’ comprising ‘different layers that address different aspects of regional security’. Similarly, Desker (2008a:56–8, 62, 70) writes simultaneously of ‘Asia’s security architecture’ and ‘the Northeast Asian security architecture’. Adding to the confusion, scholars seem unable to agree about whether the architectural terminology should be employed in the plural or the singular sense. Highlighting this tension, Nick Bisley’s (2007) recent contribution to the National Bureau of Asian Research’s annual Strategic Asia series is entitled ‘Asian security architectures’, while he refers to ‘Asian security architecture’ in the singular throughout the piece.

Finally, and perhaps most problematically, ‘architecture’ is also often used interchangeably with other terms. Tsinghua University Professor Chu Shulong (2007:8–11), for instance, uses the term ‘architecture’ interchangeably with that of ‘mechanism’ and ‘framework’. Hanns Maull (2005:69) exchanges the term with what he considers the more ‘appropriate’ descriptor, ‘security arrangements’. Along similar lines, while referring to the US-led alliance ‘system’ as ‘the predominant regional security architecture across Asia’, Shambaugh (2005:2–3) depicts an Asia-Pacific security architecture that is embedded within an imprecisely defined Asian regional ‘system’. In so doing, he would appear to have blurred the distinction between the terms ‘architecture’ and ‘system’ to the point where they become almost indistinguishable.

A large part of the problem here could stem from the fact that Asia is simply not conducive to the macro-analytical notion of ‘architecture’, which implies that an overarching structure can be fashioned and implemented to address the daunting array of security challenges currently facing the region. The sheer diversity—economic, cultural, geographic, historical and political—of ‘the region’ could simply make it unsuited to such processes of formalisation. As Gyngell (2007:8) observes, ‘the multiplicity of visions of the region and the variety of functional needs that must be accommodated’ are such that ‘the Asia Pacific has never been headed towards the goal of a comprehensive European-like arrangement: its history and geography are of a very different order’.