Rethinking Security in East Asia: Identity, Power, and Efficiency / Edition 1

by J.J. Suh, Peter J. Katzenstein, Allen Carlson

Overview

Is East Asia heading toward war? Throughout the 1990s, conventional wisdom among U.S. scholars of international relations held that institutionalized cooperation in Europe fosters peace, while its absence from East Asia portends conflict. Developments in Europe and Asia in the 1990s contradict the conventional wisdom without discrediting it. Explanations that derive from only one paradigm or research program have shortcomings beyond their inability to recognize important empirical anomalies. International relations research is better served by combining explanatory approaches from different research traditions.

This book makes a case for a new theoretical approach (called “analytical eclecticism” by the authors) to the study of Asian security. It informs the analysis in subsequent chapters of central topics in East Asian security, with specific reference to China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. The authors conclude that the prospects for peace in East Asia look less dire than conventional—in many cases Eurocentric—theories of international relations suggest. At the same time, they point to a number of potentially destabilizing political developments.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804749794
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	09/03/2004
Series:	Studies in Asian Security
Edition description:	1
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

J. J. Suh is Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell University. Peter J. Katzenstein is the Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies at Cornell University. Allen Carlson is Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell University.

Table of Contents

	Figures and Table	ix
	Contributors	xi
	Preface	xiii
1	Rethinking Asian Security: A Case for Analytical Eclecticism	1
2	Beijing's Security Behavior in the Asia-Pacific: Is China a Dissatisfied Power?	34
3	Japan and Asian-Pacific Security	97
4	Bound to Last? The U.S.-Korea Alliance and Analytical Eclecticism	131
5	Coping with Strategic Uncertainty: The Role of Institutions and Soft Balancing in Southeast Asia's Post-Cold War Strategy	172
6	The Value of Rethinking East Asian Security: Denaturalizing and Explaining a Complex Security Dynamic	209
	Bibliography	235
	Index	265

Editorial Reviews

"Stimulating volume .... Each chapter of the book is elegantly and persuasively written for a specific puzzle each author or co-authors were looking at."—Peng Er. Lam, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (IRAP)

From the Publisher

"Stimulating volume .... Each chapter of the book is elegantly and persuasively written for a specific puzzle each author or co-authors were looking at."

International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (IRAP) - Peng Er. Lam