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...

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...

This book contends that sovereignty, and more directly the extent to which it creates walls between any given state and other actors in the international system, lies at the core of China's foreign relations during the reform era. Through a comprehensive survey of both Chinese and English-language sources, the author shows that during this period China's stance changed in unexpected ways, and argues that such shifts were products of the evolving relationship between deeply entrenched sovereignty-centric values within China, new self-interests created by Deng Xiaoping's emphasis on reform and...

China's increasing economic and military capabilities have attracted much attention in recent years. How should the world, especially the United States, respond to this emerging great power? A sensible response requires not only figuring out the speed and extent of China's rise, but also answering a question that has received much less attention: What is China's grand strategy? This book describes and explains the grand strategy China's leaders have adopted to pursue their country's interests in the international system of the 21st century. The author argues that their strategy is designed to...

In this book, a leading authority on India's nuclear program offers an informed and thoughtful assessment of India's nuclear strategy. He shows that the country's nuclear-strategic culture is generally in accord with the principle of minimum deterrence, but is sometimes inconsistent and has a tendency to drift into a more open-ended process. He addresses areas of concern, notably the relationship between minimum deterrence and subnuclear conflict, the threat from nuclear terrorism, and the special challenges nuclear weapons pose for a democratic society.

In this book, a leading authority on India's nuclear program offers an informed and thoughtful assessment of India's nuclear strategy. He shows that the country's nuclear-strategic culture is generally in accord with the principle of minimum deterrence, but is sometimes inconsistent and has a tendency to drift into a more open-ended process. He addresses areas of concern, notably the relationship between minimum deterrence and subnuclear conflict, the threat from nuclear terrorism, and the special challenges nuclear weapons pose for a democratic society.

Does the proliferation of nuclear weapons cause ongoing conflicts to diminish or to intensify? The spread of nuclear weapons to South Asia offers an opportunity to investigate this crucial question. Optimistic scholars argue that by threatening to raise the cost of war astronomically, nuclear weapons make armed conflict in South Asia extremely unlikely. Pessimistic scholars maintain that nuclear weapons make the subcontinent war-prone, because of technological, political, and organizational problems. This book argues that nuclear weapons have destabilized the subcontinent, principally because...

Beyond Compliance argues that the record of China's international behavior since the 1970s indicates the long-term effectiveness of the multilateral system. Through its analysis of China's interaction with leading international organizations--such as the Conference on Disarmament, the IMF, and the United Nations Environmental Programme--it concludes that engagement with the multilateral system is the key to the gradual socialization of -rogue- states. Contrasting the People's Republic of China's post-1949 alienation from the international community with its increasing compliance since it...

Reluctant Restraint examines one of the most important changes in Chinese foreign policy since the country opened to the world: China's gradual move to support the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, missiles, and their related goods and technologies. Once a critic of the global nonproliferation regime, China is now a supporter of it, although with some reservations. Medeiros analyzes how and why Chinese nonproliferation policies have evolved so substantially since the early 1980s. He argues that U.S. diplomacy has played a significant and enduring role in shaping China's gradual...

Why has the PRC been so determined that Taiwan be part of China? Why, since the 1990s, has Beijing been feverishly developing means to prevail in combat with the U.S. over Taiwan's status? Why is Taiwan worth fighting for? To answer, this book focuses on the territorial dimension of the Taiwan issue and highlights arguments made by PRC analysts about the geostrategic significance of Taiwan, rather than emphasizing the political dispute between Beijing and Taipei. It considers Beijing's quest for Taiwan since 1949 against the backdrop of recurring Chinese anxieties about the island's status...